Tuesday 7 January: Labour has dodged the reform that could ease pressure on the NHS

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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932 thoughts on “Tuesday 7 January: Labour has dodged the reform that could ease pressure on the NHS”

  1. Morning, all Y'all.
    First!
    Huge quantities snow overnight: very jingle-bellsy. Glad I chose to work at home today. Couldn't even get up our hill if I wanted, in the car, and in any case, public transport is mostly cancelled. Ho hum, more coffee…

  3. Labour has dodged the reform that could ease pressure on the NHS

    Just heard the Cultural Marxist Starmer's NHS announcement on the radio, using private hospitals to help with waiting lists.
    But wait a minute, didn't they just spend the last fourteen years slagging off the last government for wanting to do the same thing?

    1. I believe they did. The useless Tories should have grown a spine. But the equally useless MSM is to blame for supporting Liebour all those years.

    2. But on the other hand, heaven forbid private schools from easing pressures on the 'NES' National Education System

  4. Morning sleepyheads! I’ve been waiting for you all to wake up and come to play. It’s 10 am already over here!!!!

        1. Just a thought.
          Are you sure it's wise posting on Nottle while you are there?
          They aren't known for their tolerance of many views expressed here.

    3. Will it be the black burqua or that other rather nice black one over there today. I found Jeddah quite pleasant in winter, the rag heads generally ignored you unless you were introduced and then it would be like they had been your best friend since birth. I heard that Rhiyad was rather more fundamental though. As-salamu alaykum..

      1. Same to you. It’s changed since I was last here in mid-2023 and dramatically since my first visit in 2015. I don’t bother with dressing up anymore but wear very modest dress. The new underground has literally just opened, so I might investigate that on Friday. I am also meeting up with a friend of my brother’s, who is doing his last 2 years here (property management). On Saturday I met up with an old friend I know who is working at Neom. I first met him in Kenya when I was in Tanzania in 1995.

        1. We had a few lady pilots who flew the Hajj when we had a contract to fly pilgrims from Indonesia. They had to wear an abaya to go outside the hotel but I resisted the dangerous suggestion of them walking 10 steps behind us! Later, I did end up in a Jeddah hospital, close to death with peritonitis, but that is another story. I returned with some souvenirs from my time based over 10 years in the far East, which includes Mrs Pea.

    2. A truly disgusting way for any British prime minister to behave.
      But something that we have come to expect.

    3. Kier Stammer is so far left even Karl Marx, Lennin and Engles, bastions of communism, are 'Far Right' of his moronic ideology.

  8. Lesson for Nigel: Britain doesn’t want to be Elongated. Charles Moore. 7 January 2025.

    I also notice a tendency in Mr Musk’s remarks – reflecting a meme common on the internet – to obsess about “pedo guys” in a wider sense. He taps into the current love of accusing people in all institutions of dereliction of duty, sometimes even of personal perversion, over child abuse, secret paedophile rings etc.

    There are certainly serious child abuse issues in Britain, including that of the grooming gangs, but the wildness of the claims disturbs me. It is like anti-Catholic scares in the 17th century or anti-Communist ones in 1950s America. Mr Farage is red-faced now, but he is well shot of Elon Musk.

    This is another hit job on Musk. Mr Moore’s globalist credentials have become even more obvious since he quit being editor of the Telegraph. The last paragraph is particularly repellent in its assertion that the exposure of the Rape Gangs is mere scaremongering.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/01/06/lesson-for-nigel-britain-doesnt-want-to-be-elongated/

    1. Morning Minty.
      I don't agree with his whole article but I do like the 'Elongated' term he has coined 😀

      1. Morning Stormy. There is of course some reason to resent Mr Musks meddling in our affairs but who else is there that could, or would, say these things? The worst part from the Government's point of view is that they are getting through and not just in the UK.

        3. Good morning, agreed. Musk has used his free speech platform to hold a mirror up to the UK establishment and their supine media, and they don't like what they see…nor do the wider public. Hence Starmer and his defensive swipe at the 'far right' rather than addressing the problem.

          Sadly, there is no simple answer for Westminster as all parties rely on the muslim vote. Five MPs were elected as de facto Muslim Party candidates, with at least two others missing out by less than 700 votes. Which is why Jess Phillips and Wes Streeting, having scraped in, are dancing around the issue.

          Starmer, as ever, is being disingenuous as he attempts to lay the blame for criticism of Phillips on the mythical far right, when the fact is that if she sets up an inquiry all hell will break loose amongst the subcontinental muslims, and not just in her constituency.

          Westminster/Whitehall have kept the lid on the muslim gang rapes for over 50 years. As the rest of the world is made aware of the horrors inflicted (last week's release of court transcripts was unhelpful to Starmer and his #KeirmerRouge) via free speech platforms, I expect the heavy hand of censorship will be utilised in the UK, as is threatened in the EU and Australia. To protect us from the far right, obviously.

    3. I agree. I got increasingly cross as i read the article. Moore is becoming unhinged.

    4. Musk is a technocrat and he definitely has an agenda. But Moore is sickening – perhaps he wants to go back to the comfortable situation (in which he has been very successful in his career), where mass rape, torture and murder of white working class girls is swept under the carpet?
      Britain has been broken for a long time.

      It would seem likely that Musk's intervention is merely a deliberate shifting of the Overton window, so that we can now have energetic discussion about the rape gangs, while the import of single, military aged men carries on apace.

    5. BTL Comment:-

      Charles, could I point out that it was not just the Labour Party who suppressed reports of the Pakistani Rape Gangs from coming to public knowledge, but also your own profession of Journalism?
      Let it be remembered that when Andrew Norfolk eventually published his long overdue Times reports in 2011, he'd been sat on the story for eight years since he'd had his wrist slapped for reporting on Anne Cryer's remarks made in 2003 in Keighley and even then he only broke his silence to counter the publicity being gained by the British National Party who'd taken up the matter on behalf of the abused girls in Rotherham.
      Even then, elements of your profession criticised him for giving ammunition to the "Far Right".

    1. Good morning all!
      Well done Stormy – that sets the standard for today!
      Wordle 1,298 3/6

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  10. Good morning good people.
    And not so good!

    Still dark, but not raining nor is there much wind.
    A bit cooler this morning according to the replacement Yard Thermometer. Temperature down to 0.8°C just now after a high of 4.2°.

  13. Good morning, chums. And thanks, Geoff, for today's NoTTLe site.

    Wordle 1,298 4/6

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  14. The range of subjects that it is deemed OK to discuss seriously in public.
    Saying you want more money spent on the NHS is inside the Overton window – they’re quite happy for you to debate that to your heart’s content.
    Calling for the abolition of the Bank of England and a return to sound money is most definitely outside.

    It has been deliberately shifted to the left (insofar as the old left/right paradigm was ever valid).

    1. Those perky central banks! If we abolished the Bank of England, who would be responsible for issuing currency, ad why would they be certain to do a better job of it? (Not the ECB, I imagine.)

      1. A problem I agree, but perhaps a few fair trials and criminals strung up would persuade the Treasury to stick to the straight and narrow.
        The Creature from Jekyll Island makes depressing reading, because it shows how honesty in banking has rarely flourished, but when it did, it was good for everyone. Except governments who want to wage war, and other criminals of course.

        1. Sparing your company, but I often finf that people who know about the New York bankers’ night train to Jekyll Island know little more about the subject.

  17. Morning all 🙂😊
    Grey damp and cold. Possibly more snow. Oh well its winter.
    And more government crap being shovelled about. It seems when a problem is exacerbated this mob will always blame their own invented excuses as in the 'Far right'.
    They need to take into account how stupid it makes them all look.
    Nearly 15 years of the same old nonsense from politics, is obviously not a desirable situation for the born and bred, hard working people of this country to be in. And obviously it's becoming more than obvious to those elsewhere.

  18. What you reckon? Two.. Three years?

    Jack Bennett, 39, has been charged with three counts of malicious communications & misinformation regarding Jess Phillips not doing her job.

  19. Good morning, all. Dry, clear sky and evidence of frost on the shed roof.

    Rape gang ongoing news: ex-PM Gordon Brown has been drawn into the mess surrounding this vile stain covering the UK and its administrations at all levels, both former and present.

    https://x.com/nicholaswatt/status/1876410902205104392
    BTL is interesting.

    Pressure for an inquiry is growing but would anything new be revealed? Destruction of the legacy parties and their enablers has to be a priority.

      1. Not as long as they acknowledge Musk has records of ALL of their tweets and DMs. Just as Zuckerberg has records of all Meta users messages.

        You may recall that the perpetual race-baiter Hapless Humza Yusaf threatened to sue Musk after he called Hapless a 'super racist'. When Musk responded that he based his comment on the content of Hapless' DMs, which would have to be provided under the legal discovery process, Hapless rapidly retreated. Hapless is happier as a race-baiter arguing 'he said, she said' against those he considers to be weaker opponents.

        I am sure that there are politicians/civil servants/councillors/police/social workers embroiled in the cover up who would rather not have their social media correspondence aired to the general public.

    2. There is no doubt that Brown called a voter "a bigoted woman" when she questioned him about immigration. No smoke without fire, in my view.

  20. Good Morning!

    Betrayal is in the air. The British Establishment has been betraying the British people and everything British for years now. Yesterday FSB's leading article, ‘ Industrial Organised Juvenile Rape in Britain Today ’ was about the betrayal of underage British girls. Today it is on the betrayal of the British Chagos Islanders and, inevitably, the British taxpayer who has been lined up to give the Mauritius government up to two billion of our money.

    Energy watch 08:00: Demand: 42057GW. Supply: Hydrocarbons 32.39%; Wind 33.4%; Imports 13.1%, Biomass 5.5% and Nuclear 12.9%

    Yet again, high levels of imports and zero solar. As demand rises, the level of renewables falls. We are dangerously reliant on imported energy to bridge the gap.

    freespeechbacklash.com

    1. We watched a Film called Wicked Little Letters. It's quite amusing with disgusting language but based on true events. British made and acted. Set in Littlehampton after WW1.
      But the directors strangely included several people of colour. Including a lady working in the post office, a boy friend of an irish girl, a police man, an aisian police woman and a black judge. This would never have happened in the UK earlier 1900s.
      So what point were they trying to make or even achieve ?

      2. The usual. These days no film stands a chance of awards at the Oscar ceremony unless it includes multiple races in its cast.

      3. We commented on this some time ago. It was remarked that it made the BBC's Father Brown look like a documentary.

  24. He said under the text of Sir Keir speech..
    "Jess Phillips has done a thousand times more than they’ve even dreamt about when it comes to protecting victims of sexual abuse throughout her entire career."

    He said.. "Are you sure about that!"

    That exclaimation mark is going to cost him another 6 months.

    1. Wow. Wow. Wow. Police state, anyone?

      For the avoidance of doubt. I am sickened by the “justice” system.

      Malicious communication?

      Misinformation?

      I mean, what even is that?

      (I know. It’s rhetorical).

  25. G'Day all,

    Light overcast at McPhee Towers, wind West, 1-4℃ today, a light dusting of the white stuff overnight. Is that racist?

    I see Sherelle Jacobs on about the Tories having one last card to play. It seems to include 're-inventing' Net Zero, according to Sherelle. She doesn't get it at all, poor lass, does she.

    The Tories last chance is to remove Badenough and replace her with Jenrick who might have had some sort of a Damascene conversion..

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/34642e3b8f4f86a229c956859ecba12ea7d158909d62885a6e3d8b79158a46a4.png https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/01/07/politics-latest-news-jenrick-starmer-musk-farage-grooming/

    Robert Jenrick said some immigrants who come to the UK have “backward, frankly medieval attitudes to women”.

    The shadow justice secretary said he stood by his claim that the grooming gangs scandal “started with the onset of mass migration”.

    He tweeted on Jan 4: “Importing hundreds of thousands of people from alien cultures, who possess medieval attitudes towards women, brought us here.”

    Asked if he stood by the comments, he told GB News this morning: “Yes, absolutely. We have seen millions of people enter the UK in recent years and some of them have backward, frankly medieval attitudes to women.

    “We are talking here about thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of vulnerable young girls being tortured and raped.

    “I will not disguise or sanitise my language simply to ensure that some people are not offended.”

    It still doesn't go far enough but the lad might get there.

    1. Great response as these tin pot politicians think they are fire proof. With Musk and the Donald at the helm, there is some hope on the horizon.

      1. Well, I do hope so. Somehow it seems scripted, everything happening at once, almost tragi-comedy, a farce if you like. You have Trudeau 'intending to resign' shuffling off stage right, Musk leaping into centre stage like a playful fox scattering the pigeons, Starmer standing stage left as the evil wizard winding absolutely everyone up, manipulating everyone's emotions, our world view being turned upside down; Palestinian marches weaving and wending their way through it all, waving their flags, Farage being the master in the ring of clowns seemingly directing proceedings, what does he exactly stand for? Every so often the threat of nuclear war is thrown into the mix to add that exciting little frisson, that shiver, of fear. Something feels very off, the population is being played with like a fish. We are about to be neatly netted and directed into the waiting arms of the one world government. We must never lose sight of the bigger picture, of what this mayhem is really all about.

    2. Interesting that Sir Ed Davey does not object to Bill Gates interfering in our politics and who claims to be handing

      out large sums of money to certain politicians and leftie organisations, such as the BBC.

      1. Thank you Ndovu. I do hope so. It is costing an arm and a leg. I can't eat this morning and I'm getting a headache now!

          1. I could drink water until 10.00 am. Yesterday was a long day, my surgery was delayed because of problems further up the line, so I was stressed and v. dehydrated by the time it happened. Home now, knee comfortable, no pain!! – but washed out and tired. I’ll have to stop now because I think this day’s blog sheet is going to close any second. Night night xx

    3. Everything crossed for the knee op!

      (Except, ironically, my knees, as I have sprained one and, unable to dance and sulking, have escaped into the countryside.)

      2. Oh ashes, I hope its not painful for too long, do rest it which is what I didn't do. Knees are quite literally pivotal to one's ability to getting around.

          1. Now, you're talking! My ambition entirely… maybe a chaise longue, as it makes drinking without spilling easier!

        2. Don't I know it! My right one has been swollen and refusing to bend properly for about a fortnight. Dog hasn't been getting very long walks in consequence. Suspect the vet will complain he's become porky 🙁

        1. Actually, I think I twisted it doing other exercise – but I certainly didn’t help it by dancing all day and night… 🙄

  28. Morning all. Thick ice on windscreen today.
    Hard work this one:
    Wordle 1,298 4/6
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  29. 3997445+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Tuesday 7 January: Labour has dodged the reform that could ease pressure on the NHS

    Truth be relling,
    Tuesday 7 January: Labour has dodged the reform as have the torys (ino) / lib dems (ino) acting as ONE odious anti Brit coalition these past forty years, even though getting progressively worse year on year, supported ALL the way by the tribals.

    Tell me.
    After the JAY REPORT and its contents was revealed was there NOT a major " peoples responsible for the cover-up head hunting campaign"

    If I remember ,NO arrests and one rotherham council member was moved to a higher position, didn't macshane mp / ex MP have some rhetorical input after the JAY REPORT, something along the lines of " been going on for years"

    It's an ill wind that blows no good
    Currently the "good" is it has made the covering odious
    paedophile umbrella held aloft by political overseers and most importantly their employees, NO LONGER fit for purpose.

    Any course of action taken by the indigenous peoples MUST be strongly pursued and gain strength daily.

    "Lest we forget" the children come well before diversity, and any party misguided loyalty..

  31. Good morning all. For us, the Orthodox, today is Christmas day. I woke up to snow on the ground this morning. Not much, more a token, but nice anyway. So. Merry Christmas to you all. I usually post the Christmas service, but this year I thought it would be nice to post a video of the Christmas activities in beleaguered Moscow which we all know is on its knees due to Ukrainian bombs and Western sanctions (sarc) So here you go Moscow at Christmas.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C58r3lZn0ho

    1. Not a proper Christmas without bombers, stabbers and cars mowing into crowds. Must be doing something wrong.

      1. That’s true. When I think about it that’s odd too. Russian food is not a dieters dream. But it is good.

        1. Maybe it's the hour wait between courses – or has that stopped now with the end of communism? I haven't been back since the late sixties.

          1. I know that foodwise Moscow/Saint Petersburg are very cosmopolitan nowadays when it comes to food. But I wish that I had gone to Russia with my step father. I would have learnt a lot. But I have never been able to go and now it is to late. But, of course, I’m aware there is propaganda, even so it seems to be pretty nice from what I hear and what a friend tells me that lives there. So, if you can, you should visit and compare now with your visit in the 60’s. That would be quite interesting.

  33. Hardeep Singh
    What’s the real reason Labour is reluctant to hold a grooming gangs inquiry?
    7 January 2025, 5:23am
    https://www.spectator.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/GettyImages-1727630642-3.jpg
    Keir Starmer is facing growing pressure to a launch a national review into grooming gangs, but so far the Prime Minister is holding firm. ‘This doesn’t need more consultation, it doesn’t need more research, it just needs action. There have been many, many reviews…frankly, it’s time for action,’ he said yesterday. Starmer’s comments reinforce the position of Jess Phillips, the safeguarding minister, who last week refused Oldham Council’s request for a government-led public inquiry into grooming gangs in the town. But what’s the real reason Labour is so reluctant to probe these appalling crimes?

    It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Phillips’ wafer-thin majority might play a part in her thinking. The Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley won at the last election by just 693 votes. When she made her acceptance speech, she was heckled. Phillips responded by saying: ‘I understand a strong woman standing up to you is met with such reticence’. Her constituency, like others in Birmingham, has a significant Muslim population. Is Phillips reluctant to give the go ahead to an inquiry that might ask difficult and sensitive questions about the identity of the perpetrators in Oldham, and indeed in other towns affected by Pakistani grooming gangs who exploited children for their own sexual gratification?

    Phillips’ letter to Oldham Council, seen by GB News, claims that it is for the local authority ‘alone to decide to commission an inquiry into child sexual exploitation locally, rather than for the government to intervene.’ Whether or not this increasingly untenable position can hold isn’t clear. But what is plain to see is that Labour appears petrified of having an open discussion on the ethnicity of perpetrators, in places like Rochdale, Rotherham and Telford. Is this because vote bloc politics risks swinging elections in marginal constituencies?

    Whatever the reason, this issue isn’t going away. Elon Musk at least appears determined that it won’t. The X owner has said: ‘So many people at all levels of power in the UK need to be in prison for this’. He even suggested Phillips herself should be jailed. Whatever you think of Musk’s intervention, the choice here must surely be to prioritise justice for victims of child sexual exploitation. But is Labour’s fear of losing seats influencing their apparent reluctance to give the green light to a broader inquiry?

    Comments by ex-Labour MP for Rochdale, Simon Danczuk who responded to Musk’s ‘prison’ post on X, makes it clear that Labour at least has questions to answer on this subject. Danczuk, a Reform candidate at the last election, made a bombshell accusation that ‘senior Labour politicians warned me not to mention the ethnicity of the perpetrators, for fear of losing votes, when I tried shining a light on the Rochdale grooming gangs’. His accusation, if true, pours further fuel on this increasingly explosive issue.

    The role of the perpetrators’ religion in these crimes remains a sensitive issue in British politics, which many politicians are clearly wary of addressing. Yet it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that this was an important factor in at least some of the crimes. Notably, in 2012, Judge Gerald Clifton, who sentenced members of the Rochdale ‘grooming gang’ at Liverpool Crown Court, said: ‘All of you treated them [the victims] as though they were worthless and beyond respect. I believe that one of the factors that led to that was they were not of your community or religion’.

    Despite this clarity, many still remain fearful of pointing to the truth. The ‘Islamophobia’ definition drafted by the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on British Muslims (and adopted by Labour) hardly helps; it says using the phrase ‘sex groomer’ in relation to someone of Muslim heritage might be an example of ‘Islamophobia’.

    According to GB News’s Charlie Peters, whose dogged reporting has shed much light on these horrific crimes, there are ‘credible reports’ of grooming gangs being active in dozens of different towns and cities across Britain. These organised rape squads have targeted mainly white working-class but also Sikh girls, inflicting unimaginable horrors on children for decades. Former home secretary Jack Straw said victims were seen as, ‘easy meat’. Indeed, victims say perpetrators referred to them as, ‘white slag,’ ‘white trash,’ and one case even involved forced sharia marriages.

    Despite this, the racially and religiously motivated element of these heinous crimes remains hardly discussed. The Telford inquiry (2022) revealed more than 1,000 girls were abused, and said it had gone on for decades, beginning as far back as the 1980s. The Jay report into Rotherham (2014) said that 1,400 children in the town were subject to ‘appalling’ abuse over 16 years from 1997. The ‘majority’ of known perpetrators were of Pakistani heritage. In Oxford, there may have been as many as 373 victims.

    The harrowing reports of what children in Britain have endured over the last few decades are nightmarish. Several children were murdered (one was allegedly dismembered and disposed of at a kebab shop), a girl was kept caged and made to act like a dog, abusers routinely tortured children, a perpetrator branded ‘M’ (for Mohammed) on a victim’s buttock with a hairpin to indicate ownership, and an aborted foetus was taken by the police for DNA purposes, without the 13-year-old grooming victim being told. In some cases, the girls were dismissed by the authorities as ‘child prostitutes’ and betrayed by the very people tasked with their welfare. The police botched investigations, fathers trying to save daughters were arrested, and cries of ‘racism’ shut down discussion about a clear pattern of criminality occurring within local authorities, emboldening perpetrators.

    But amongst the darkness, there has been light, not least the efforts of Andrew Norfolk, whose investigations for the Times triggered the Rotherham inquiry. Whistleblowers like Jayne Senior and Maggie Oliver, and former prosecutor Nazir Afzal deserve credit. So, too, does Sarah Champion, the Labour MP for Rotherham, who received death threats and was forced to quit her role as shadow equalities minister in 2017, after she wrote, ‘Britain has a problem with British Pakistani men raping and exploiting white girls’. We must also pay tribute to courageous campaigning survivors like Sammy Woodhouse, Samantha Smith, Dr Ella Hill and Elizabeth Harper.

    Musk’s intervention has put the global spotlight on the issue and there is mounting pressure on the government to act. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has called for a national inquiry into grooming gangs. There’s still time for self-proclaimed feminist and ‘strong woman’ Phillips to do the right thing. As minister with responsibility for violence against women and girls, she owes it to survivors and families to shine a spotlight on this nationwide scandal.

    Hardeep Singh is deputy-director at the Network of Sikh Organisations

    *****************************

    Andrew Beaumont
    3 hours ago
    The clear conclusion which follows from this is that the UK’s 4 million Muslim diaspora is unable to integrate into a western Christian culture. This same pattern is repeated across Europe. This scandal is just one of many indications of the Muslim failure to integrate.
    Our cultural and political elites simply will not admit to this. Many,who might, run the risk of being accused of being racist islamophobes.

    Charles Vaughan Andrew Beaumont
    2 hours ago
    These people are not “unable” to integrate, they refuse to integrate. This is not a “failure”, it’s an conscious decision.

    Sorengard
    3 hours ago
    If a another country threw open its doors and millions of white people moved in, taking over entire communities, setting up their own unofficial courts and then thousands of those white people began raping, mutilating and, in rare cases, killing tens of thousands of non-white girls on the basis they were “lesser” for being non-white and then if people who complained were met by being called racist, stupid and called a derogatory term akin to “gammon” and then if it was discovered the authorities looked the other way on these crimes the left would call all this genocide.

    Maybe its time to start calling what multiculturalism it is and maybe its time we start holding the left accountable for what “rubbing the right’s face in diversity” has got us.

    1. Hang on, Sorengard (last comment above)
      I'm not going to be very popular for saying this, but isn't this exactly what happened when, for example, the Europeans sailed to North and South America, Africa, India, etc from the 15th Century onwards? They murdered or enslaved the indigenous people, set up their own systems of laws and rules… I could go on.

      1. It was wrong then. The Spaniards, the Portuguese and the Frogs were empire building. But. some settlers were escaping religious persecution – such as the Pilgrim Fathers who settled in North America. They hoped to live alongside the natives but, once again, religious and cultural difference put paid to that.

      2. Indeed.
        And in the case of the British Empire thrust upon them;
        common law. modern medicine. concept of double entry ledger with retained earnings. phonetic alphabet. education. Francis Bacon's objective evidence based truth. 3Rs. trade & prosperity. safety. industry. the concept of life is sacred. Judeo-Christian ethics.
        In other words modernity.

        1. Kowloonbhoy, I totally agree, but I just wished to be provocative to see what the reactions would be.
          We gave these other countries multitudinous improvements and they've never forgiven us. And now they are coming here to get their own back. No good deed goes unpunished.

        2. Kowloonbhoy, I totally agree, but I just wished to be provocative to see what the reactions would be.
          We gave these other countries multitudinous improvements and they've never forgiven us. And now they are coming here to get their own back. No good deed goes unpunished.

      3. Indeed.
        And in the case of the British Empire thrust upon them;
        common law. modern medicine. concept of double entry ledger with retained earnings. phonetic alphabet. education. Francis Bacon's objective evidence based truth. 3Rs. trade & prosperity. safety. industry. the concept of life is sacred. Judeo-Christian ethics.
        In other words modernity.

      5. There's a huge difference between the European empires in the New World and the Old. Europe colonised the former, not the latter, from which the migrants are arriving in their millions. We are not being inundated by the descendants of native Americans, Australians and New Zealanders engaged in an act of revenge.

        1. WS, as I replied to Kowloonbhoy below, I was just being provocative. I have lived and worked in the USA and even have a Social Security number. Both my sons have American MBAs. It has even occurred to me lately that I might emigrate there, but at my advanced age, and with family here, it isn't a goer.

    2. Hang on, Sorengard (last comment above)
      I'm not going to be very popular for saying this, but isn't this exactly what happened when, for example, the Europeans sailed to North and South America, Africa, India, etc from the 15th Century onwards? They murdered or enslaved the indigenous people, set up their own systems of laws and rules… I could go on.

    4. Hardly mentioned in the comments about Jess Phillips is what she said after she was threatened at the election count: "It's not because they're Muslims but because they're men."

      Like just about everyone in the Labour Party, she can't face the real truth.

      1. If you want the details of those who allowed this to happen you should watch the Tousi interview with Raja Miah MBE. It was posted here earlier today.

    5. The real reason is that if the enquiry is genuine and not biased, it will reveal just how culpable people currently in power actually are by turning a blind eye or actively suppressing the truth.

  34. "A six-month-old girl has died after a crash in a multi-storey car park.

    Sophia Kelemen, from Leigh, Greater Manchester, was taken to hospital following the crash in Tenby, Pembrokeshire, on 2 January but died the next day.

    Dyfed-Powys Police said: "Our thoughts remain with her family at this difficult time. They are being supported by specially trained officers."

    Flaviu Naghi, 33, from Wigan, is due to appear at Swansea Crown Court on 7 Februarycharged with causing death by dangerous driving and driving without a licence and without insurance."

    One of the well known old Lancashire families, the Naghis…… Always thought the paperwork connected with motoring was unnecessary.

    2. Morning Bill ,

      The chap was a family friend according to the news .
      The father of a six-month-old girl watched helplessly as his newborn daughter’s pram was crushed against a wall by a car driven by a close friend who had joined him on a New Year’s break.

      Tragic Sophia Kelemen died in hospital from her injuries following the incident on the ground floor of a multi-storey car park in Tenby, Pembrokeshire.

      The baby’s aunt Adriana revealed that the driver was a close friend of the baby’s parents Alex and Betty Keleman.

      https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14256293/father-six-month-old-baby-girl-watched-helplessly-killed-holiday.html

    1. Who knows. I still think an explosion at Davos and flaming torches in Westminster would achieve a more positive outcome as long as there’s swift action to prevent a certain community stepping in to the breach. That’s always the danger in creating a political vacuum. Witness Iran, Iraq, Libya etc. Egypt avoided it because they still have an effective military force. We don’t.

  36. Good morning all .

    Cold sunny morning 4c.. no rain no snow !

    A good drying wind , duvet covers dried on the washing line yesterday, towels etc I hope will dry today.

    1. 399745+ up ticks,

      Morning TB,

      We are fast approaching the point where
      " you're nicked copper "will be the order of the day.

    2. One thing that should be remembered is that when there were Muslim demonstrations on Remembrance Day Sir Mark Rowley stated

      that he couldn't arrest any Muslim extremists until Parliament gave a comprehensive definition of extremism.

      But surely riotous assembly, threatening behaviour, and actions likely to cause a breach of the peace are already defined in law?

      Just because they were and are being committed by a religious minority doesn't give them carte blanche to commit those

      crimes, and to claim so is just plain ridiculous (or plain cowardly).

      Now you will all understand Sir Mark Rowley's character !!

          1. I didn't know that, Sue. Surgery told me years ago I needed to go on meds to reduce my cholesterol level, otherwise consequences could be severe. This was a couple of decades ago. Far as I know, I'm still here…lemme just check…yes, appear to be intact…

          2. The human brain is made of cholesterol. The reduce your cholesterol lobby just say oh but that’s different.

          3. Thanks, Sue. What my husband refers to as ‘The Bint Lobby’. Nurses have told him lots of guff over the years, usually involving prescribing a lot of different/more of the same meds. I drove him to hospital for twisted foot – dr there said ankles swollen, to come off one particular med. When we got home, he turned out his meds, I hit the roof, 13 or 14 tabs daily, I think several different meds all prescribed by various Nurses incl Diabetes one. Since then, he’s changed his diet, now on Carnivore (meat, eggs, dairy in all their forms) lost weight, gained energy – and no meds. He says best thing he ever did (NB he was diagnosed Type 2, not Type 1 which is quite different). GP was very interested, but doubt he’ll pass on to other patients – prescription tabs earn surgeries income, after all. NB: I am not recommending this diet to/for anyone – if interested, do some research, consult your own doctors, before you take any action re your diet/general health.

    4. When looking at pictures of senior military officers in totalitarian dictatorships such as North Korea, Soviet Russia, etc. I've always been struck by how big their caps were, in contrast to military officers in democracies such as the US and UK, and speculated on a possible correlation between the two. Now I know that one shouldn't necessarily judge by appearances, but my correlation about 'big cap = dictatorial tendencies' does seem to be endorsed by the photo in the tweet above.

      2. Spot on. The more democratic the country, the smaller the hat disk. In the UK and US, many military hats have no disk, being berets, and sidecaps.
        It's a correlation I have used in over 50 years.

      1. "As me nan would say after mere fleeting glance of Jimmy Savile.."
        "He's a nonce."
        Micky Flanagan

      2. Don't know what is going on. My comment is now heading True Belle's posting. Second time this has happened today.

    9. Mark Rowley never talked any sense – and his brother, Anthony, only once said something remotely coherent when he said "Heigh Ho!"

      A frog he would a-wooing go
      "Heigh-ho!" Said Rowley
      A frog he would a-wooing go
      Whether his mother would let him or no
      With a Rowley, Powley, Gammon, and Spinach
      "Heigh-ho!" Said Anthony Rowley

  38. What is sad to me is that is what London should look like for Christmas. But now Christmas means little, not even on a par with Ramadan as we throw our Christian heritage away. “2000 years for nothing unless we wake up.

  40. Farage Pledges to Launch Rape Gangs Inquiry Himself After Starmer’s ‘Far-Right’ Smear

    186 days have passed since Labour was elected. 186 days without a full public inquiry into rape gangs across Britain…

    The row over Keir Starmer claiming that politicians are “calling for inquiries because they want to jump on a bandwagon of the far-Right” is showing no signs of abating. The Times, which first reported on the rape gangs, calls today in its leader for a new national inquiry into the scandal and cover-up. Meanwhile Nigel Farage is currently doing a phone-in on LBC, where he pledges to launch one himself if the government fails to:

    “If the government will not hold a full public inquiry… we at Reform will do it. I will have no difficulty raising the money to do this. We will appoint independent judges and experts and we will have this out in public… I won’t have the statutory powers, but I think this would garner such massive public support that anybody who was asked to appear who didn’t appear would look terrible.”

    Farage says “we’ve got a few weeks but not much more than that” and gives the government until the end of January to launch one:

    “I promise you I can raise the money for it today… The government will know that when I say something I mean it.”

    Not getting any easier for Labour…

    7 January 2025 @ 09:38

    1. I'm no longer as certain about Farage as I was, following Habib's comments re funding which Farage & Tice have taken from Reform (and apparently also from UKIP). And here he is, talking about raising money, again.

  41. It's all kicking off on Vine this morning a raging debate on the government's inability to face the facts on the 'diversity' grooming gangs.
    Avoiding a much needed further enquiry in to the actions taken or more likely not taken.

    1. Vine – more yap than a butcher's dog, sorry to say Eddy. My belief is nothing will change, may go out of the MSM for a while, but it won't go away.

        1. Not always, sometimes they are necessary to make the insulted reflect on what caused the insult to be applied.

          1. I can understand the reasoning there, but that response will only happen with people who are very mature and secure in themselves. With the great majority of people (especially politicians?) that isn't the case and is far more likely to make then put up their defences more strongly.

      4. He was paraphrasing Katie Hopkins response to Simon Danszak.

        The more insults piled onto these grifters the better.

      5. Unnecessary, but accurate. Eid Davey spent his GE24 campaign clowning around like a demented 'It's a Knockout' competitor. So much easier than facing questions about his abject failure during the Post Office Horizon scandal.

  43. Today's post from Matt Goodwin is informative. Here's a couple of extracts:
    "Based on freedom of information requests that were painstakingly submitted to dozens of police authorities across the country, many of which were sitting on lots of information but refusing to release it, the findings, compiled by the Centre for Migration Control, make for grim reading.

    Look away now if you are of the ‘diversity is our strength’ mindset. Here are the key findings which underline what is really happening on Britain’s streets:

    Foreign nationals in Britain are more than three times as likely to be arrested for sexual offences as British citizens

    More than 9,000 foreign nationals were arrested for sexual offences in the first 10 months of last year across England and Wales

    The 9,055 foreign national arrests for sex offences works out at a rate of 164.6 per 100,000 of the population, compared with 48 per 100,000 for British people.

    In London, foreign nationals account for two-thirds (67%) of all sex offence arrests.

    Foreigners are 3.5 times as likely to be arrested for sex offences as British suspects

    For all crimes, foreign nationals were arrested at twice the rate of Brits

    Overall, more than 131,000 foreign nationals were arrested in the first ten months of last year

    While foreigners make up 9 per cent of the population, they account for 16.1 per cent of the total number of arrests

    Albanians were the most likely to be arrested, followed by Afghans, Iraqis, Algerians and Somalians. There were 48 nationalities with a higher arrest rate per 1,000 of their populations than British suspects.

    Once weighted for their respective populations, Albanians had the highest arrest rate at 209.8 arrests per 1,000 of their population followed by Afghans (106.9), Iraqis (92.9), Algerians (72.7), Moroccans (70) and Somalis (64.6). The rate for British suspects was just 12."

    "As many studies in other European nations have similarly found, in Britain immigrants are significantly more likely to be arrested for all crimes and are especially more likely to commit crimes of a sexual nature."

    Full text at https://www.mattgoodwin.org/p/mass-immigration-is-making-you-less

    As the saying goes: import the Third World, become the Third World.

    1. What an absolute catastrophic mess our useless political classes have made of our once safe and efficient nation.
      Everything they come into contact with they have effed it up. Everything.

    2. ………..and yet very few convictions include a deportation order once the sentence is completed.

    3. I seem to remember that the Albanians were famous for being lawless before Communism. Evidently Communism simply was an interval in that gangsterism and they have picked up in their lawless behaviour in the post communist era. So, I assume that being thieves and pimps is their traditional culture.

      1. I have been led to understand that the Albanian Mafia are the people whom the Sicilian Mafia are afraid of.

      1. How are you measuring “top” – quantity of people? Because that’s the only thing that I can see that makes them “top”.

        1. "Once weighted for their respective populations, Albanians had the highest arrest rate at 209.8 arrests per 1,000 of their population followed by Afghans (106.9), Iraqis (92.9), Algerians (72.7), Moroccans (70) and Somalis (64.6)."

  44. Today's post from Matt Goodwin is informative. Here's a couple of extracts:
    "Based on freedom of information requests that were painstakingly submitted to dozens of police authorities across the country, many of which were sitting on lots of information but refusing to release it, the findings, compiled by the Centre for Migration Control, make for grim reading.

    Look away now if you are of the ‘diversity is our strength’ mindset. Here are the key findings which underline what is really happening on Britain’s streets:

    Foreign nationals in Britain are more than three times as likely to be arrested for sexual offences as British citizens

    More than 9,000 foreign nationals were arrested for sexual offences in the first 10 months of last year across England and Wales

    The 9,055 foreign national arrests for sex offences works out at a rate of 164.6 per 100,000 of the population, compared with 48 per 100,000 for British people.

    In London, foreign nationals account for two-thirds (67%) of all sex offence arrests.

    Foreigners are 3.5 times as likely to be arrested for sex offences as British suspects

    For all crimes, foreign nationals were arrested at twice the rate of Brits

    Overall, more than 131,000 foreign nationals were arrested in the first ten months of last year

    While foreigners make up 9 per cent of the population, they account for 16.1 per cent of the total number of arrests

    Albanians were the most likely to be arrested, followed by Afghans, Iraqis, Algerians and Somalians. There were 48 nationalities with a higher arrest rate per 1,000 of their populations than British suspects.

    Once weighted for their respective populations, Albanians had the highest arrest rate at 209.8 arrests per 1,000 of their population followed by Afghans (106.9), Iraqis (92.9), Algerians (72.7), Moroccans (70) and Somalis (64.6). The rate for British suspects was just 12."

    "As many studies in other European nations have similarly found, in Britain immigrants are significantly more likely to be arrested for all crimes and are especially more likely to commit crimes of a sexual nature."

    Full text at https://www.mattgoodwin.org/p/mass-immigration-is-making-you-less

    As the saying goes: import the Third World, become the Third World.

  45. Archbishop Who Called EU ‘Greatest Dream of Humans Since Roman Empire’ Finally Steps Down

    Today is holy Brexit-basher Justin Welby’s last day as Archbishop of Canterbury after he resigned in the wake of a CofE child abuse scandal. You might think he would spend it in quiet reflection…

    As it turns out today is the feast of Epiphany and Welby’s 69th birthday, which has given Welby an excuse to host a day of celebratory events as a “thank you from and celebration” for friends and staff at his official residence. Lunch in the Great Hall, afternoon tea in the Guard Room, and then an “intimate evening gathering” and dinner…

    Welby will then lay down his crozier and cease to be in post. Guido, for one, will miss the Archbishop and remembers his top hits fondly:

    *Called the EU “the greatest dream realised for human beings since the fall of the Western Roman Empire.”

    *Linked Brexit to Trump and fascism.

    *Hired numerous staffers from the Labour Party.

    *Made comparisons of the Rwanda plan to the Nazis and called it “ungodly.“

    *Likened the climate threat to the Nazis and later apologised for doing so.

    *Entered talks with MPs to chair a “citizens’ assembly” to stop no deal.

    *Complained that the Brexit deal would “create a disastrous precedent” in 2020.

    Somehow Guido thinks this isn’t the last time we’ll be hearing from Welby…

    6 January 2025 @ 17:21

    1. Of course not. There will be his memoirs; the several volumes of his "sermons". A TV series – "My Journey through Christendom". His column in the Grauniad…. The end is listless…

          3. No, but he is openly cretinous.

            He can thank his lucky stars that it is 2025 and not 1170.

        2. We used to have a 'cole ole', it was usually bunged up with black stuff and nutty slack. Bit like the Reverend Dickie!

      3. Great ending to your remarks Bill. Quite amusing and true. To much of Welby could render you catatonic.

    2. Good riddance. For the damage he's caused to the Anglican Church he might as well be an agent of Satan himself!

    3. We might hear from him, but fewer people will listen when he is no longer in the role of ABoC.

      1. Alex Phillips. She is a recent "convert" to Tommy Robinson but an ardent supporter of Farage. She must be having kittens right now about the present kerfuffle. Has she said anything yet?

    6. I was rather shocked when Jacob Rees Mogg described him on GB News as a 'good and holy man.'

      Maybe the Achpillock was a secret agent committed to driving Anglicans into the Church of Rome?

    7. Trouble is, what will his replacement be like? It's too much to hope that whoever it is will be committed to Christianity and the Church of England.

    1. That woman, sorry don't know her name, the Labour apologist. So typical of the left, infuriating to the point you want to string her up. Utter disgrace without any sense of moral conscience at all. I'm convinced that if you are an older person and still defending this liberal crap, then you are a psychopath or something very close to it.

        1. That's her name is it? Seen her several times. A moral coward if ever there was one.

        4. An extremely annoying old bat.

          She looks like the sort of aged aunt one had to be nice to at Christmas when she came for a long stay.

      2. And no more releasing rapists early from prison to make room for soshul meeja transgressors.

    1. Well now you understand where this nation is heading.

      And the vast majority of voters don't care.

      1. Quite honestly I don't think the majority are that aware. They don't go hunting on the internet but sit being fed nonsense by the BBC and the MSM in general. They are like frogs in the water while the heat is being turned up slowly to boil them. Surely you know some people just like that?

        1. We know a number just like that.

          Unfortunately polite suggestions that they get out of the boiling water are met with indifference.

  49. We watched last night on BBC Iplayer a film called "The Courier" based on the Greville Wynne story. It wasn't bad – though I remain unconvinced that Wynne was an "innocent businessman"…

    What was truly shocking about the film, however, was the COMPLETE absence of any diverse faces. We were so appalled that we continued watching to the very end just in case someone slipped in during the last few frames. Nope. Not one. A real missed opportunity…

    1. It was admitted in full view that Wynne was operating for MI6

      Wiki:
      Greville Maynard Wynne (19 March 1919[1] – 28 February 1990) was a British engineer and businessman recruited by MI6 because of his frequent travel to Eastern Europe. He acted as a courier to transport top-secret information to London from the Soviet agent Oleg Penkovsky.

      Wynne and Penkovsky were both arrested by the KGB in November 1962, when some of the information their endeavours produced was of assistance to the West during the Cuban Missile Crisis. They were convicted of espionage. Penkovsky was executed the following year and Wynne was sentenced to eight years imprisonment. He was detained at Lubyanka prison. Struggling with deteriorating health, he was released in 1964 in exchange for the Soviet spy Konon Molody.

      P.S.
      I thought he was a double for Alan Whicker
      https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/5f/Greville_Wynne.jpg

      Greville Wynne
      https://www.shutterstock.com/editorial/image-editorial/M2TeQcx5O0D4Y8x7MDkxOA==/alan-whicker-cbe-born-2-august-1925-440nw-1407914a.jpg

    2. Did you notice that in my Christmas from Moscow post? All white apart from two lovely young women who, I would guess were from one of the Eastern nations of Russia. It really is nice seeing nothing but European faces celebrating something European without the black tents and badly dressed Pakistani's making a point dressed for the North West Frontier. It's actually relaxing.

  51. There should be a phrase to describe a leftie Labour MP doing a Ueee and hoping no one notices..

    Former Labour MP Simon Danczuk proudly asserts/crows on X..
    "As the local MP, I campaigned strongly to have the Rochdale rape gang deported back to Pakistan."

    Hang on a minute says Katie Hopkins. You tried to get me arrested in 2015 you sniveling little cretin.
    Rochdale Labour's Simon Danczuk demand Police investigate Twitter comments by newspaper columnist Katie Hopkins suggesting men of Pakistani origin in Rochdale were sex abusers.

    4. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ecf9a97b404ba78719c7fb0851bc90cadf39e4cb0266e9c6bd6421f5d954aac4.png https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3017708/Katie-Hopkins-reported-police-inciting-racial-hatred-tweets-linking-Pakistani-men-Rochdale-child-sex-abuse.html

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2102c142d83109ffe0f4a8f229665e939136482fc29f4a0d028601b36bc2bd88.png https://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/katie-hopkins-questioned-police-inciting-6188487

  52. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ec5b3ce29c0a17e5473d7c881b0b63ce75a5200f27bfbb98d242b586b777aac1.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/837c92711933358f988be3d12a434f2164f71a0f3dd5099d7ac67355103c4a1a.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/83d53f5ed1c3ea9f26b097ca97e9aa332cfbbdc26b386ccdf2e9d018a638ee11.jpg Good morning, NoTTLers.

    I speak to you, today, as the latest member of the NoTTLe marmalade cat contingent (well, if you can't beat them — join them).

    I give you Findus (don't ask!) a six-year old former tom 😉who became homeless when my 'mother-in-law' died last autumn. He remained in his erstwhile home for a while but can no longer stay there after the house is out up for sale.

    He now has a new home and is excitedly exploring every nook and cranny.🐈

      1. That was my first reaction. Apparently it is a fairly common pet name, akin to 'Tiddles'.

      1. Thanks, Katy. He'll be confined to barracks for the winter but the birds are safe, he'll not be able to unlock the cage door.😉

    1. Take your pick.. sniveling little cretin or commie marxist nonce.
      This will escalate & escalate.

      1. I hope so, to a point where there will have to be a national inquiry. Hiwever, we all know what it will say.

        “There are pockets where CSE went on and certain authorities did not act as they should have. Measures have now been put in place to rectify the situation. Lessons will be learnt and we will make sure this never happens again”.

    2. "I don't think that [jumping on the far right bandwagon?] was what the Prime Minister was saying" – well it's what he is reported as saying! If you can stomach the nauseating delivery and half truths, it's around 3:10 that he starts on the "far right" bit and TR! And it's hard not to think that the most important thing they want to protect is themselves and their majorities!
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvyMZpv9v1I

    4. What a wretch! I wish that one day, one of these interviewers would stand up lean over and yell right in the waffles face. "Answer the fucking question asshole."

    5. Can't get the sound on this one, Johnny – perhaps a good thing when I see the journalist and the politico.

  55. G & P send greetings – or they would, were they not both deeply asleep! Let him find his feet slowly and get used to you in his own time.

    PS – suggest he loses some weight! A meat only diet…??

    1. F returns those greetings. He is a very friendly cat and is quite used to me as I've visited him fairly often over the past few months. The first night here he slept (hid) on a chair under the conservatory table, but is now a lot more confident and is enjoying sniffing in every new corner he comes across.

        1. Thanks. He is very friendly but he's split his time between being been an outdoor cat (and top mouser) at his previous home and an indoor cat (at night).

          I am wary about letting him out, until he is fully acclimatised to his new surroundings, due to the closeness of a fairly busy road.

          2. No, and the configuration of the doors in this house will not permit one. He is used to going out when he requests it and he always comes running when called. He invariably spends the night indoors.

          3. Sounds like a keeper…not many of those about these days….seriously, a lovely cat. What’s his name, again?

  56. G & P send greetings – or they would, were they not both deeply asleep! Let him find his feet slowly and get used to you in his own time.

    PS – suggest he loses some weight! A meat only diet…??

    1. Really is amazing how blind these people are and, consequentially, how stupid.

    2. Jonas Gahr Støre is a Starmer Mk 2. Nobody likes him, he's utterly useless (couldn't even be a draught-excluder), and lacks any form of personality.

    2. I think we are all aware what party runs those towns. And I think we are all bright enough to understand it is why Labour doesn't want any enquires or investigations into these matters.
      What I would like to see is a round up of all responsible, including police and politicians and jail time for them all.

      1. Seconded, but as soon as other issues arise, the caravan will move on. We mustn't forget, as appears to have happened with eg Anne Cryer's reports.

  60. Just met some Jehovah's Witnesses at the door as I was putting a skillsaw in the car.
    Can't stop I said, just off to do God's work.
    They looked confused but smiled anyway.

  62. Congratulations on becoming a member of staff, Grizz! He looks like a very lovely cat and I hope you’ll all be very happy! Findus has a beautiful face!

  68. Senior US Sources Slam Labour’s “Insane” Threat To Cut Off Intelligence and Defence Cooperation Because of Musk and Trump

    An interesting report landed from Newsnight‘s urbane Nick Watt last night (incidentally, he is one of the only remaining reasons to watch the programme). Watt said:

    “This is not over. There is absolute horror at the highest levels of the Government as the incendiary language we have seen from Elon Musk. And there’s going to be, as I understand it, a hard headed assessment. Is this just the view of Elon Musk or is it the view of the wider administration and the incoming President Donald Trump? If it’s the latter then there may well be some very serious questions about the nature of our ongoing security partnership with the United States… can you have that level of sharing everything if this sort of stuff is endorsed by the next President of the United States?”

    This snarky UK briefing, from a Labour political appointee, tallies with numerous conversations Guido had in the past 24 hours. Multiple US defence and intelligence sources who are either in or close to the Trump camp tell Guido “this is insane, the UK has no idea what it is playing at” with such threats, and claim that they have also been considering the future of the vital partnership in recent weeks because of the “statements of Starmer, Lammy and Mandelson and the deterioration of the relationship”. Guido can disclose that over the past few weeks top Trump appointees have raised Labour’s words on President elect Trump in internal meetings discussing the intelligence and security relationship, as well as Starmer’s ambassadorial appointment. Is Labour risking the UK’s most vital intelligence and security partnership because of their set of whinging lefty talking points?

    The UK-US security partnership runs at the deepest possible level, as both states are the key players in Five Eyes, NATO and bilateral channels. That said, the US’s armed forces, nuclear umbrella and signals and human intelligence is unmatched – the UK is a partner, but in many respects a junior one. A senior UK defence source tells Guido “the mood music is very negative” at the political level ahead of the inauguration and that while there have as yet been no changes in the day-to-day relationship, “anything could happen” if the political relationship continues to sour. Will Labour’s band of Trump haters be forced to eat their words on Musk and Trump to maintain the special security relationship?

    7 January 2025 @ 10:33

        1. "I wouldn't exactly call it rape; more like an 'assault with a friendly weapon'?"

          [James Coburn character in Waterhole #3.]

    3. What better way to force the UK back into the EU than destroy our relationship with the USA?

    4. Yet another reason to remove this "government" ASAP. Don';t know about the rest of you but I would actively encourage the USA to go after this government and destroy its ability to govern, they are totally unfit. Simple actually. The Americans are the biggest investor in the UK.

      The USA is the biggest source of FDI flowing into the UK. Financial services made up 36% of US FDI, and professional, scientific and technical services also proved popular
      https://www.irwinmitchell.com/news-and-insights/in-focus/discover-the-uks-top-overseas-investors

        1. Here's a good Kipple for Tommy:

          "If you can tell the truth when all men doubt you!"

    5. Yet another reason to remove this "government" ASAP. Don';t know about the rest of you but I would actively encourage the USA to go after this government and destroy its ability to govern, they are totally unfit. Simple actually. The Americans are the biggest investor in the UK.

      The USA is the biggest source of FDI flowing into the UK. Financial services made up 36% of US FDI, and professional, scientific and technical services also proved popular
      https://www.irwinmitchell.com/news-and-insights/in-focus/discover-the-uks-top-overseas-investors

    6. Yet another reason to remove this "government" ASAP. Don';t know about the rest of you but I would actively encourage the USA to go after this government and destroy its ability to govern, they are totally unfit. Simple actually. The Americans are the biggest investor in the UK.

      The USA is the biggest source of FDI flowing into the UK. Financial services made up 36% of US FDI, and professional, scientific and technical services also proved popular
      https://www.irwinmitchell.com/news-and-insights/in-focus/discover-the-uks-top-overseas-investors

    7. Excellent. Best news all year to date.
      It'll be a security issue that brings this govt down. Just like Suez.
      Chagos Islands could be spark.

    9. European Intelligence is of poorer quality than the United States. We would be in big trouble without them.

  69. I wonder what proportion of those "British" subjects were second generation members of those 6 countries and how many of the "British" were also Muslims.
    For example, is the Southport stabber categorised as " British Christian", because that was certainly the initial narrative.

    Edit from Stockport

  70. I wonder what proportion of those "British" subjects were second generation members of those 6 countries and how many of the "British" were also Muslims.
    For example, is the Southport stabber categorised as " British Christian", because that was certainly the initial narrative.

    Edit from Stockport

  71. S*d a national inquiry.
    Trump & Musk to bring down Labour govt with;
    SWIFT sanctions. tariffs. Visa sanctions. Energy embargo.

      1. Well, you know he is an expert in that and so is Starmer if you believe the rumors.

    2. Yes…look at him and tell yourself…weasel, weasel….(why Starmer brought him in from the wilderness btw)

        1. They are indeed, very intelligent – know you by your scent/smell straightaway, fight to the death. Very handsome beasts, as are stoats.

          1. A friend of mine had a ferret to which he was devoted. The ferret spend much his time in my friend's pockets. He loved being stroked on the top of his head by my friend's index finger.

          2. It’s always a surprise the connections made between man and animals. Once met a chap, out walking, wearing a flat cap..took it off, budgerigar fast asleep but woke up and started talking to him 🦜😂

  73. I know you were being provocative but there are many who hold that view sincerely, almost as though we should be punished for the past.

  75. Swiss Burqa Ban Begins

    TUESDAY, JAN 07, 2025 – 08:30 AM
    Via http://ArmstrongEconomics.com ,

    Switzerland enacted a law at the start of the year that prohibits anyone from wearing burqa coverings in public.
    The Swiss people voted in favour of the ban four years ago but were met with backlash from the current government who called the ruling racist.

    Yet, Swiss law requires the government to adhere to referendums and the government was overpowered by the people.

    Swiss People’s Party (SVP) introduced the initial legislation, and while they did not directly call out Islam, they called full facial coverings a form of “soft extremism"

    Amnesty International called the ban “a dangerous policy that violates women’s rights, including to freedom of expression and religion.”
    It is astounding that women’s rights are considered just in this manner.
    Switzerland is not the first or last nation to ban burqas.
    Belgium and France were the first nations in Europe to implement bans back in 2011, followed by Bulgaria in 2016.
    China and Austria implemented bans in 2017, Denmark in 2018, and Sri Lanka in 2019.

    People may dress as they wish in places of worship, but it is now forbidden in public places.

    1. Notably there are also laws ensuring the referendum result must be upheld and not avoided in intent or accident – if we had the same such democracy – or just, democracy – then the civil service and government would almost all be in jail for their malignant abuse of Brexit.

    2. There were (are) laws against covering your face in public, for good reasons.

      Which is why I object to Waitrose demanding I remove my motorbike helmet when there is a woman with a full face covering shopping next to me. If you remember, the security guy told me it was different – for some reason.

      1. That is at the very heart of two tier law enforcement.

        Some face coverings are more acceptable than others!

        1. Is the burqa an expression of modesty or of arrogance in Switzerland?

          It may even be classed as a hostile military uniform – a statement of contempt against the host culture.

          I expect a diplomatic tit-for-tat, with all Islamic nations banning yodelling in public…. the call to prayer? Oh rats!

          1. Wearing the burka or hijab in Western countries is a hate crime.
            It is saying to the citizens of that country, "I am NOT part of you. I am different and hold your Western society and beliefs in contempt."

          2. Maybe Muslims should look at their faith from first principles, more than literal extraction from scripture, written for a different people in a different age?

            For a woman to be modestly dressed for me, and perhaps in my culture where I live and when I live, is to shun ostentation and false decoration and imposed fashion, but to be comfortable in one’s skin and how this presents to the surroundings in all simple elegance. It is not to live in fear of a reaction from one’s peers, from men, or from anyone, but have the courage to be to others as she is to God, and can look God in the eye and be joyful.

            Sometimes it is best to be as one arrives in the world, and amongst naturists, it is bad form to wear any clothing at all other than the courtesy of a towel to sit on and perhaps some sandals if it is hazardous underfoot. This is modesty taken minimalist!

          5. It's a political statement. I'm deliberately different and eventually my lot will take over.

          7. I used to do a nifty Call to Prayer when I was a postman in Dorking. There was a sweet spot on the Goodwins estate an old postie told me that could get all the dogs in the neighbourhood going. I found it, but then I was called up to the postmaster’s office because someone had rung in about it.

      2. I chose the path of least resistance and had a helmet that hinged up revealing my lovely visage.

        2. I don’t mind having the visor up,but as I have a full helmet it doesn’t reveal much.

    3. Long live the Demos.

      I remember a referendum in Switzerland in 1975 I think it was. It concerned whether to repatriate the Spanish and Italian migrant workers. A good majority voted no. They were doing all sorts of jobs, but primarily they were doing the 'dirty' ones.

      1. I have no problem with foreigners coming here to work but it is clearly not the case in some communities. They are coming for the welfare.

        1. A lot of the Spanish workers in Switzerland were actually political refugees in the sense that Franco would probably have imprisoned them, or worse, if they went home. Oddly enough, Franco died later that year and the celebrations went on for quite a while, but I don't remember that many going home.

  76. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/01/06/tommy-robinson-interview-jordan-peterson-musk-farage-reform/

    The reality is that Robinson, 42, the founder of the English Defence League and former member of the British National Party, is serving an 18-month sentence for
    contempt of court for repeating a false claim about a Syrian teenage refugee, who was attacked by another teenager at school.

    These days we don't know that. It may be true. Much of the time the state just wants to silence those it disagrees with .

    "…He has in the past described Islam as a “disease” and “a threat to our way of life”, subsequently dismissing the religion as “backward and fascist”…."

    Which it is as muslim regularly murders British citizens – the latest being the murder of children. Over Christmas in Germany. They want to silence any dissent and debate over their heinous actions.

    He [Peterson] followed that with a second podcast, on Aug 16, called Crime and Punishment, in which Robinson was described as “a British journalist and activist who first became an establishment target after reporting on the grooming gangs in Luton”.

    This is true, and thus started the witch hunt for Robinson throughout the state They wanted to keep the rape of thousands of children by pakistani muslim paedophiles quiet. Robinson kept raising it, so the state attacked him.

    Is Robinson a political prisoner? Yes, and no. He was found guilty of contempt of court. Was that process fairly followed? There's arguments it wasn't but, without the legal knowledge I don't know. It's clear the state hates him. More, they fear him. They desperately label him. Not knowing the man I cannot comment on his character, but he had embarrassed big government and done more to help thousands of children being raped by pakistani muslims than most anyone else.

    That said, I think Farage is right to distance himself because of the contempt of court element, and Reform's ethos has to be wider than just massive uncontrolled gimmigration. Yes, the problem underpins much of the UK's problems but it's one of many. Here's one where I don't think Musk understands the problem well enough and is shouting rather than thinking.

    1. Robinson is being kept in isolation 'for his own safety' …Ok..speaks Truth to Power. Certain politicians/journalists need to get out more – trying living in one of the areas Robinson talks about – I was raised there.

      1. Then surely they can see how this impinges upon his Human Rights, can't they? Cruel and Unusual Punishment. What about the much touted right to family life? I suppose that none of the usual safeguards apply to poor Tommy, nor poor Peter Lynch (RIP), nor, indeed, any of the other Starmerfuhrer political prisoners rushed through the hoppity courts to unjust incarceration.

        1. I still can’t really understand why more politicians/tv presenters/journalists aren’t speaking out (although Daubney has just interviewed a girl who reduced him to tears). I’m suspicious of the possible reasons. Just watching Trump press conf, two weeks to go….

    2. If a court is itself contemptible by not giving fair and impartial judgements then does it not deserve to be held in contempt?

    3. "serving an 18-month sentence for
      contempt of court for repeating a false claim about a Syrian teenage refugee,"
      Bollocks the 130 million odd people who have watched "Silenced" know he was telling nothing but the utter truth his crime is actually exposing the corrupt government cover up

      1. And the bias of the judiciary. The descent of our country into a tin-pot dictatorship, to coin a relevant cliche.

  77. This is one of the more sensible articles on the subject. I know there is outright hostility to Farage from some on this forum but he has a difficult task to keep Reform credible and not betray or compromise its message by getting close to people who could be damaging for its reputation – a large part of the country is still sensitive about racial and cultural matters. He should allow other parties to continue to make mistakes that benefit Reform.

    I do think he could have handled the TR affair better by simply distancing himself discretely but as Flynn points out, BNP and EDL links in the past could have been very damaging. He was certainly correct to refuse Musk's money

    This Musk-Farage split won't stop Reform

    Those in the Labour or Tory camps breathing a sigh of relief ought to think again

    Patrick O'Flynn
    Sunday 5th January 2025, 3:51pm GMT

    So it turns out that the richest man in the world does not do deference – who would have thought it?

    After several days of distance growing between Elon Musk and Nigel Farage over matters ranging from Tommy Robinson to the calibration of social media opinions about British politics more generally, their transatlantic love-in appears to be over.

    Musk wanted Reform to get behind the idea of Robinson being a "political prisoner" and campaign at full tilt on his behalf, while Farage calmly set out the facts of Robinson's incarceration for contempt of court and declared that the party would not be getting involved with him.

    In a single post on X early this afternoon, Musk pulled the plug by suggesting: "The Reform Party needs a new leader. Farage doesn't have what it takes."

    Hence, there will be no $100m cheque for Reform treasurer Nick Candy and almost certainly no donation at all. Because Farage, who remains the effective majority stakeholder in Reform as well as party leader, isn't going anywhere.

    An hour before his anti-Farage post, Musk also quoted approvingly a newspaper article by Tory leader Kemi Badenoch calling for a full public inquiry into grooming gangs. Perhaps that was intended as a horse's head on the bed warning for Farage to toe the Elon line. If so, then it didn't work.

    Some figures in the political establishment will no doubt be breathing a sigh of relief that Musk's immense financial resources are suddenly off-limits for Farage. Others may even think that Farage could end up being ousted as Reform leader or having his political project become hamstrung because of the multi-billionaire's sudden hostility to him.

    Neither of those responses would be soundly based, in my view. For a start, Reform's profile and popularity have risen so far and so fast over recent months that it is most unlikely to run short of funds to compete with the Tories or Labour. Clearly Musk's massive monetary muscle would have further helped it, but Farage has run previous successful political campaigns on a relative shoestring anyway

    Second, much of the benefit of the Musk association for Reform lay in it being seen to break bread with such a zeitgeisty figure while other British political parties were out in the cold. That PR win has already been banked. Refusing to turn Reform into a wholly-owned subsidiary of Musk may even end up adding to Farage's political authority.

    Farage will still be a guest at the inauguration of Donald Trump later this month and still has extensive contacts in his embryonic new administration. The Trump connection with Farage is far more long-lasting and thus almost certainly far more robust than the one with Musk ever was.

    Finally, for Reform supporters and the Reform-curious parts of the British electorate more generally, there is a judgement to be reached about which figure is reading our political currents of opinion more astutely: an American-based tycoon or an established British figure with a track record of achievement as an insurgent.

    Throughout his time as UKIP leader, Farage maintained a rule that nobody could join the party who had previously been a member of ethno-nationalist parties or movements such as the BNP or the EDL. While this was harsh on some public-spirited people who came to regret their past associations with those outfits, the rule was crucial in broadening the appeal of UKIP. Without it, the party could have been successfully pigeonholed by establishment opponents as "far Right". It would never have won the 2014 European elections or been able to exert sufficient pressure on David Cameron to force a referendum on EU membership.

    Indeed, Farage left UKIP and set up the Brexit Party at the end of 2018 precisely because Robinson was being invited into the fold by one of his successors as leader, Gerrard Batten. He could see that this would scupper UKIP's prospects were there to be another round of European elections in 2019, which did indeed end up taking place.

    In those elections, UKIP limped in with a 3.2 per cent vote share and zero seats, while the Brexit Party won with a 30.5 per cent vote share and 29 seats, hastening the end of Theresa May's premiership.

    So when it comes to the question as to who is best-placed to discern the outer limits of an "art of the possible" strategy for the radical right in Britain, Farage surely beats Musk by a country mile. And any establishment figures tempted to believe that this is the beginning of the end of the Farage project are only kidding themselves.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/01/05/the-musk-farage-split-wont-end-reform-insurgency

    1. The problem is that he has to be the centre of attention so he can't keep his trap shut. He actually had no reason to speak at all because Tommy Robinson has no interest in joining Reform. But Nigel must pontificate as though he was Lord of all he surveys. And, frankly, I think he is an appalling class snob. Don't know about the rest of you but his cap and red corduroys have not slipped past me. But he holds Tommy Robinson in the same regard as Starmer does, lower class, nothing to say, cannon fodder that dares to speak. Just who does he think he is? The downstairs staff trying to be upstairs. My God! But at the end of it all it's all facade. I bet he doesn't know how to pass the port.

        1. I don't need to. It is a matter of observation and Farage gives off all the signals. Ever since I joined UKIP and he was in charge I have doubted him. He sabotages all those who he sees as a threat. It is a pattern with him.

          1. Where would we be without him? While he's certainly made mistakes, he's rattled the establishment's cage and driven them mad.

            Too many people want a saviour. It's not Farage but he's started something. Let's hope there's no going back and the establishment doesn't reassume control.

          2. Her started something, yes, leaving wreckage in his wake. Destroyed UKIP for nothing but spite, he had left too, so it was gratuitous . But now he is saying he would do nothing about deportations. Claims it is impossible and now wrings his hands declaring that we should make some sort of rapprochement with Islam. He is clapped out and should give the lead to others. Ben Habib and Rupert Lowe would do fine. In fact, I think that Ben Habib would do better. He is not 'marmite' everyone likes him and listens to him. But please remember we have 4+ years. It is unwise to think that Farage is the only game in town. I'm convinced that Tommy Robinson, by then, if he isn't murdered, will be kingmaker because he is becoming an icon. a person that embodies an idea. Such people are very rare but command the hights when they appear. You may think I'm exaggerating but I don't think so.

          3. A rapprochement? When? I found articles in which he's critical of Islam, saying that it doesn't share 'British values' (whatever those are) and another in which he claims British Muslims 'are just as concerned, if not more, by the threat of Islamist extremism'. That could be naivety or a cunning attempt to split Islam in this country.

            And I didn't say 'Farage is the only game in town'. It's just that none of the other parties have the guts, even if they had the inclination, to deal with the UK's problems head-on.

            https://news.sky.com/story/nigel-farage-called-out-for-blanket-accusation-as-he-says-growing-number-of-muslims-loathe-british-values-13143302
            https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/nigel-farage-is-right-to-talk-about-british-muslims/

            I probably wouldn't want to be in the same room as Farage for too long because he's a bit loud. I hope there's someone better out there but right now I can't see him (or her).

          4. I posted a video on here, yesterday or the day before where he says it’s pointless to do mass deportations or tackle Islam. Search around and you will find it.

          5. IMO it's essential both to do mass deportations and to tackle Islam. He may be saying that initially just so as not to put off some people.

          6. IMO it's essential both to do mass deportations and to tackle Islam. He may be saying that initially just so as not to put off some people.

          7. Would that be the Paul Thorpe video in which Farage talks of the way ‘Robinson earns a living’? Very badly put, I agree, yet Thorpe precedes that by saying that association with Robinson could be ‘toxic’.

            I regard Farage more with sadness than anger because he is sometimes so tactless but he has a difficult course to steer. One false step and the small progress made will be lost and the establishment will crush him, Reform, even Brexit. It’s all very well railing against his shortcomings but where is the big figure to take over the cause?

        2. I don't need to. It is a matter of observation and Farage gives off all the signals. Ever since I joined UKIP and he was in charge I have doubted him. He sabotages all those who he sees as a threat. It is a pattern with him.

      2. A man doesn't have to be "one of us" to make sense sometimes. He may be a rough diamond, but he is our rough diamond and has as much right to speak his mind as any subject of the King.

        TR, because of his past associations that may also rule Jeremy Corbyn out of the mainstream for opposite reasons (TR supports ethnonationalism, whereas Corbyn was vilified famously by his successor for opposing it in Israel); both are destined to campaign as brave independents, each with a substantial following. Galloway is another, so is Martin Bell, and also Dr Richard Taylor, campaigning for better management of the NHS in Worcestershire. So, it may be said, is Donald Trump, whose attachment to the GOP is grudging at best.

      3. There are rumours around finance, regarding both Farage and Tice. Be interesting to see if they firm up, or just gossip.

      5. If Starmer has a problem with "the downstairs class trying to be upstairs" what the heck are "scoom" (to quote Rayner) like Reeves and Rayner and Lammy (among others) doing lording it around in his cabinet?

  78. This is one of the more sensible articles on the subject. I know there is outright hostility to Farage from some on this forum but he has a difficult task to keep Reform credible and not betray or compromise its message by getting close to people who could be damaging for its reputation – a large part of the country is still sensitive about racial and cultural matters. He should allow other parties to continue to make mistakes that benefit Reform.

    I do think he could have handled the TR affair better by simply distancing himself discretely but as Flynn points out, BNP and EDL links in the past could have been very damaging. He was certainly correct to refuse Musk's money

    This Musk-Farage split won't stop Reform

    Those in the Labour or Tory camps breathing a sigh of relief ought to think again

    Patrick O'Flynn
    Sunday 5th January 2025, 3:51pm GMT

    So it turns out that the richest man in the world does not do deference – who would have thought it?

    After several days of distance growing between Elon Musk and Nigel Farage over matters ranging from Tommy Robinson to the calibration of social media opinions about British politics more generally, their transatlantic love-in appears to be over.

    Musk wanted Reform to get behind the idea of Robinson being a "political prisoner" and campaign at full tilt on his behalf, while Farage calmly set out the facts of Robinson's incarceration for contempt of court and declared that the party would not be getting involved with him.

    In a single post on X early this afternoon, Musk pulled the plug by suggesting: "The Reform Party needs a new leader. Farage doesn't have what it takes."

    Hence, there will be no $100m cheque for Reform treasurer Nick Candy and almost certainly no donation at all. Because Farage, who remains the effective majority stakeholder in Reform as well as party leader, isn't going anywhere.

    An hour before his anti-Farage post, Musk also quoted approvingly a newspaper article by Tory leader Kemi Badenoch calling for a full public inquiry into grooming gangs. Perhaps that was intended as a horse's head on the bed warning for Farage to toe the Elon line. If so, then it didn't work.

    Some figures in the political establishment will no doubt be breathing a sigh of relief that Musk's immense financial resources are suddenly off-limits for Farage. Others may even think that Farage could end up being ousted as Reform leader or having his political project become hamstrung because of the multi-billionaire's sudden hostility to him.

    Neither of those responses would be soundly based, in my view. For a start, Reform's profile and popularity have risen so far and so fast over recent months that it is most unlikely to run short of funds to compete with the Tories or Labour. Clearly Musk's massive monetary muscle would have further helped it, but Farage has run previous successful political campaigns on a relative shoestring anyway

    Second, much of the benefit of the Musk association for Reform lay in it being seen to break bread with such a zeitgeisty figure while other British political parties were out in the cold. That PR win has already been banked. Refusing to turn Reform into a wholly-owned subsidiary of Musk may even end up adding to Farage's political authority.

    Farage will still be a guest at the inauguration of Donald Trump later this month and still has extensive contacts in his embryonic new administration. The Trump connection with Farage is far more long-lasting and thus almost certainly far more robust than the one with Musk ever was.

    Finally, for Reform supporters and the Reform-curious parts of the British electorate more generally, there is a judgement to be reached about which figure is reading our political currents of opinion more astutely: an American-based tycoon or an established British figure with a track record of achievement as an insurgent.

    Throughout his time as UKIP leader, Farage maintained a rule that nobody could join the party who had previously been a member of ethno-nationalist parties or movements such as the BNP or the EDL. While this was harsh on some public-spirited people who came to regret their past associations with those outfits, the rule was crucial in broadening the appeal of UKIP. Without it, the party could have been successfully pigeonholed by establishment opponents as "far Right". It would never have won the 2014 European elections or been able to exert sufficient pressure on David Cameron to force a referendum on EU membership.

    Indeed, Farage left UKIP and set up the Brexit Party at the end of 2018 precisely because Robinson was being invited into the fold by one of his successors as leader, Gerrard Batten. He could see that this would scupper UKIP's prospects were there to be another round of European elections in 2019, which did indeed end up taking place.

    In those elections, UKIP limped in with a 3.2 per cent vote share and zero seats, while the Brexit Party won with a 30.5 per cent vote share and 29 seats, hastening the end of Theresa May's premiership.

    So when it comes to the question as to who is best-placed to discern the outer limits of an "art of the possible" strategy for the radical right in Britain, Farage surely beats Musk by a country mile. And any establishment figures tempted to believe that this is the beginning of the end of the Farage project are only kidding themselves.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/01/05/the-musk-farage-split-wont-end-reform-insurgency

  79. Nigel Farage did not need to welcome Tommy Robinson into the Reform Party but he should have expressed outrage at the way in which the PTB and the MSM have treated Tommy.

    Why did Farage side with the Establishment?

    1. Very good question, Rastus. Possibly because he sees TR as a threat to his agenda. Imo, TR is the real deal, Farage is raising funds for whatever his latest campaign is.

    2. At one of Tommy’s rallies, he asked for a show of hands as to who voted Reform. Most people there put their hands up. Does Farage not know or care about that one way support?

      1. Doesn't like it. Not the right sort of supporters. Racist bigots (like the people who worked and campaigned for him while he led UKIP and whom he vilified once he'd left).

    3. See my remark above to William, Rastus. I remember that Tommy openly appealed to his followers to back Reform, vote for them, and this is how Farage rewards him.

    1. Age 96. The language of the news reports is predictably hysterical. Farrrrrrrrr…….rite.

      1. Although not one I would regard as a role model, at least he brought certain subjects into the mainstream.
        As you say: RIP.

    1. On the early BBC News (spit!) this morning they said that the earthquake occurred in the Japanese Region of Tibet. I thought "Hang on!" and quickly switched on BBC Sounds on my iPhone (it runs about 10 seconds behind the radio) to check what was said. The BBC changed it to the Chinese region of Tibet later when I listened to the headlines at 1 PM. Did anybody else pick that up?

      2. Shigatse is actually very close to the border of China and India. It is the first major town after you cross the Tibetan Nepalese border. Which demonstrates why the Indians are worried about Chinese encroachment. It’s the seat of the Panchen Lama, the second person in importance after the Dalai Lama. It is believed that the Chinese murdered the Panchen Lama.

    1. There's a nasty pus-filled boil on this country's arse and it will come to a head in the quite near future I think.

      1. I think many have missed one of the main points the "scientists" are trying to make that early people were opportunists and ate what was easiest to obtain and that the analysis of the available tools confirms the usage.
        I suspect early hominids were carrion eaters as much as they might have been hunters.

          2. Yes, that would be the sensible solution – if you have the brains and the physiology…

          3. They definitely ate whatever they could hunt and kill. They didn't have their minds addled by munching on vegetation, in the same manner that clearly affects modern humans.

          4. They definitely ate whatever they could hunt and kill. They didn't have their minds addled by munching on vegetation, in the same manner that clearly affects modern humans.

        2. They will certainly have eaten whatever was available. If our 'civilisation' fell apart tomorrow the cows, horses and farm animals would disappear very quickly. Dogs and cats wouldn't last long and then deer hunting would become very popular. Seasonal fruit and nuts would be foraged for.

          A few months later the depleted population would be eating anything their stomachs could keep down, including each other.

    3. As evidenced by all those early cave drawings of people preparing a nice bowl of salad. 🙂

      Edit – nice image above, thanks Rik-Redux!

      1. When painting, what do people concentrate on?
        Their triumphs.
        Eating a salad isn't a great achievement; catching and killing a large animal is.

        There aren't many cave paintings featuring fires, yet arguably fire was hugely important to primitive people.

      2. Gathering the greens and berries was women's work. There wasn't any shouting and dancing when the girls brought in the spinach leaves.

      1. Read on re what people paint and why.

        You don't see paintings of them scavenging carcases of things other predators have killed either.

    6. Let’s face it everything about that period is guess work at best and any report will depend who’s paying the researchers’.

      1. That too!
        I recall the absolute certainty that some of our lecturers preached when I was studying Arch & Anth over 50 years ago.
        Time and time again newer research showed they were actually wrong.
        As new scientific techniques are developed they can generally confirm or rebut what we know. The science is never settled, contrary to what many believe.

  86. Ah! Got home from a shopping run to Matlock and it began snowing!
    Currently turned to a nasty sleety drizzle at the moment though.

    2. I've now had four starts on gardening today, each time it's started to rain within 20-30 minutes, that foul combination of very cold, blowing drizzle and proper raindrops that gets under protective clothing and soaks the gloves and trousers.
      Dispiriting.

        1. Not getting our rightful covering of snow, so that I'm not even tempted to venture out?

  87. Yippee! It's the 7th of January, practically midwinter, and my solar panels are currently exporting 4.5 kiloWatts to the Grid. Think of all that lovely money coming in, not going out </sarc>. My two batteries were charged overnight at about 7.5pence/kWh.

    To offset that bit of cheer, tomorrow (my 84th birthday) I shall attend the funeral of a cousin who is just a little younger than I. It's a burial, so I hope the weather will be as nice as it is right now.

      1. The first funeral I ever remember was after my grandmother died on 30th December 1962. That funeral was in early January 1963, when I was 22. If I recall correctly, we stood around the grave as the snowflakes fell. That decided me that when my time comes I shall be cremated (indoors) not put in a hole in the ground.

        1. I wasn't allowed to go to my grandmother's funeral in 1955, nor my father's in 1953. I'd probably go for cremation, rather than burial.

        2. The crematorium service will be indoors, but the actual cremation will no doubt take place anonymously at a later date. Then the ashes will be put in a hole in the ground (or whatever is decided for them).

          I remember my mother's funeral – after the service in Regent's Park we had to travel some miles to the actual cemetery in Gunnersbury, for the burial. The vicar and the mourners went by one route, but my father, brother and I went with the hearse by another slightly longer route, but which passed outside our family home. Unfortunately there was a huge traffic jam three quarters of the way down our route, and there were no mobiles in those days. So the vicar and the mourners were standing by the hole for over an hour wondering what had happened to the body…

          1. My mother's ashes were put into a box and stayed with the undertaker for nearly a year while I decided what to do with them. Eventually they were interred in her mother's grave and we had a short church service then.

          2. I've still got my brother's ashes at home. As we are thinking of moving to what is hopefully going to be our forever home, I shall bury his ashes there.

          4. Yes – she died in September 1989. We had a short service in the church we used to attend (now closed) and then another, even shorter at the crem. It took me a long time to decide what to do with her ashes, but the undertaker said there was no rush. Eventually, the following August (on a very hot day) we had a mini service, just close family, and burial in my grandmother's grave.

  88. I do hope our government are going to sue the EU mafia for all the proven flood damage. Probably caused by banning our land owners from dredging rivers to increase the flow of the rainwater into the sea.

      1. It might bring a stand still to the current Dopey Wokies wanting to build 1.5 million new homes.

      2. And cutting down mature trees along with grubbing up hedgerows to make way for large estates of little boxes built on farmland.

    1. I'm sorry to read that, but there must be an element of relief and release.

      Remember all the good times.

      1. Looking back at the demise of various family members, bearing in mind we neither want our loved ones to die nor to suffer, a fatal heart attack would be the way to go ( both an uncle and my father in law went this way and ‘were dead before they hit the ground’). It is a shock to those left behind but neither us nor those we have lost have to suffer them deteriorating over weeks or months.

        2. It's difficult to find anything positive in the whole business, Eric, but there is one thing that I read recently that might apply: at least you didn't die first, leaving Mrs Bee with all the sorrow and mental anguish of being bereaved. She avoided that – thank God, but it all sits on your shoulders.
          If you forgive me for being crass.

          1. I agree. It’s something we spoke about many years ago. Neither of us wanted to go first thus leaving the other to endure the grief. We were very much in tune with one another and could count on the fingers of one hand the number of disagreements/arguments in the 41 years we had known one another.

    6. So sorry to read that Eric. As sos says – remember the good times, and she's no longer suffering.

    12. Oh, man, Eric. I'm so sorry, that's awful.
      My condolences.
      I'm not sure I can conceive of anything worse happening.

    16. Heartfelt condolences.
      As I am sure you are aware, traditionally in apiculture a beekeeper should tell the hive(s) whenever there is a bereavement in the family, and of course nttl is always buzzing throughout the day.
      Some people say that the bees already know, but nevertheless it's a courtesy.

    17. Oh dear.
      Condolences sounds so trite and distant, but you have ours.
      How absolutely awful. I am so sorry.

    18. I am so sorry, eric. My condolences. Try to remember the good times among all the sadness.

  90. 399745+ up ticks,

    Dt,
    Live Limit migration from ‘alien cultures with medieval attitudes’, Jenrick suggests,

    " Limit ? surely we should be looking at NET ZERO, one must ask ones self why would one want to be giving succour to alien creatures and their odious alien culture to start with ?

    1. Jenrick = bandwagon jumper = wanqueur. He was in the last govt and did (and said) sod all.

  91. NASA is tracking an anomaly – not in space but underground.

    The recent Northern Lights have been observed to have been moving further South.
    This could be the portent of a major shift in the movement of the Earth's Magnetic core and it is this South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA) that is involved in a way that confounds scientific theories:

    https://www.sciencealert.com/nasa-is-watching-a-vast-growing-anomaly-in-earths-magnetic-field

    What we can be pretty sure about however is that the SAA is not an anthropogenic phenomenon and whilst it is likely to have a profound influence on our global climate the latter cannot be prevented by pursuing net zero.

    The current incidences of earthquakes on planet Earth is just another indicator of changes in our core values.

    1. The theory is there is a major flip every 12000 years and a minor one every 6000 years. We are due a major flip.

      1. Much further apart than that, Mir.
        Wikipedia, but it sounds like I remember it being taught.

        "Reversal occurrences are statistically random. There have been at least 183 reversals over the last 83 million years (on average once every ~450,000 years). The latest, the Brunhes–Matuyama reversal, occurred 780,000 years ago with widely varying estimates of how quickly it happened. Other sources estimate that the time that it takes for a reversal to complete is on average around 7,000 years for the four most recent reversals. Clement (2004) suggests that this duration is dependent on latitude, with shorter durations at low latitudes and longer durations at mid and high latitudes. The duration of a full reversal varies between 2,000 and 12,000 years."

          1. The magnetic North Pole has certainly been whizzing around for quite a few years, maybe it’s the precursor to the whole human race ‘going West’!

    3. "The recent Northern Lights have been observed to have been moving further South."

      Have the Southern Lights (Aurora australis) been observed to have been moving further North?

        1. And Lo, a Starmer appeared hovering over No 10 and at least three Wise Men (and many more) buggered off to more hospitable climes….

      2. That's an interesting question Griz. Are they moving North? Would really like to know.

    4. Well, I can vouch for the reality of changes in our core values – what used to be considered disgusting and perverted now seems to be accepted in some circles.

  92. NASA is tracking an anomaly – not in space but underground.

    The recent Northern Lights have been observed to have been moving further South.
    This could be the portent of a major shift in the movement of the Earth's Magnetic core and it is this South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA) that is involved in a way that confounds scientific theories:

    https://www.sciencealert.com/nasa-is-watching-a-vast-growing-anomaly-in-earths-magnetic-field

    What we can be pretty sure about however is that the SAA is not an anthropogenic phenomenon and whilst it is likely to have a profound influence on our global climate the latter cannot be prevented by pursuing net zero.

    The current incidences of earthquakes on planet Earth is just another indicator of changes in our core values.

      1. I suspect, Ndovu, that even if we have a GE '25 and Conservatives were to win (I know, I know, bear with me)…nothing would change vis a vis tax rises. Almost as though it's a concerted plan to stop us voting..hmmm…

      2. What ever hgher tax hikes will do is further stall the economy creating recession. Labour are utterly spiteful. 'We haven't raised taxes'.. except those that hit the lower earner most.

  95. Patrick O’Flynn
    Keir Starmer is dangerously out of touch
    7 January 2025, 2:43pm

    The refusal of western elites to admit the failings of multiculturalism, and their ongoing molly-coddling of minority vested interests, is giving birth to white identity politics. That’s the troubling big picture takeout from recent events across the West – the Trump landslide, England’s summer riots, the reluctant dribbling out of statistics showing some foreign national groups are vastly over-represented in criminality (including sex crimes) and now the clamour for a specific public inquiry into rape gangs formed by Pakistani heritage men.

    A long-running and concerted attempt by the political class to sustain a framework that depicted minority groups always as victims and never as victimisers has run its course. The reality that some ethnic minority cohorts have been very difficult neighbours for deprived working-class English communities can no long be suppressed.

    But there are astute political leaders who are canny setters of winning dividing lines and then there is Keir Starmer. Twice in a row Starmer has sought to pillory white working-class people – and anyone else angry about shocking atrocities – as ‘far right’.

    He did this first when rioting occurred following the slaughter of young girls in Southport. Naturally he was correct to condemn the rioters, but his failure to acknowledge the righteous anger of many others was tone deaf. And his failure to deliver similarly robust condemnations of ethnic minority perpetrators of the summer violence gave rise to the nickname ‘Two Tier Keir’.

    Now Starmer has used the same ‘far right’ terminology in a bid to discredit anyone who thinks there should be an inquiry into the mass rapes of vulnerable girls in at least 50 English towns by networks of men from Pakistani backgrounds.

    Apparently, we are reprehensible for ‘jumping on a far-right bandwagon’. In doubling down on this analysis, the Prime Minister is showing that his summer response to the post-Southport furore cannot be put down to a solitary bad day at the office. His chosen dividing line really is between the establishment elite with its reductive reasoning on race on the one hand and majoritarian, reality-based opinion on the other.

    As Tory leader Kemi Badenoch was quick to point out: ‘Starmer is applying Labour smear tactics from 20 years ago and thinks they will work today. He is a man of the past with no answers for today’s problems, let alone tomorrow’s.’

    Starmer’s bete noire Elon Musk was even more direct, concluding: ‘What an insane thing to say!’ The real reason Starmer is blocking a public inquiry into the rape gangs, argued Musk, was that ‘it would repeatedly show how Starmer ignored the pleas of vast numbers of little girls and their parents.’ That is no doubt an overstating of the case. But the idea that senior government figures do not want a record of the cover-ups engaged in and blind eyes turned by Labour-run local authorities is hardly far-fetched.

    A more subtle and less robotic left-of-centre politician – Tony Blair for instance, or even Jack Straw – would be shoring up our race relations right now by reassuring people that the political system will respond to wrongdoing without fear or favour.

    Straw of course was one of the first Labour figures to face the wrath of the woke left on the grooming gang issue when he observed back in 2011 that white girls were viewed as ‘easy meat’ by some men of Pakistani origin.

    ‘There is a specific problem which involves Pakistani heritage men…who target vulnerable young white girls. We need to get the Pakistani community to think much more clearly about why this is going on and to be more open,’ added Straw.

    The then Labour leader Ed Miliband warned him: ‘We’ve got to be careful about generalisations about particular communities… we find sexual crimes committed by people of all backgrounds.’

    Those failed politics of deflection barely worked in 2011 and certainly won’t work now. And yet Starmer is sticking to them, attempting to present a row between Musk and his ministers as a more pressing outrage than the actual mass atrocities committed against young girls from highly vulnerable backgrounds, including in many cases care homes.

    Leaders who set their dividing lines in unsustainable places get washed away at the first opportunity offered to the electorate. The freakish thing about Starmer is that although he is doomed by his ineptitude and tunnel vision, he can still lead a march of the zombies for another four years. Race relations in Britain will not be a pretty picture by the end of that.

    1. Why don't these journalists say it as it really is.

      Mainly MUSLIM men of Pakistani heritage.

    1. 399745+ up ticks,

      Afternoon JR,
      We clash amicably hopefully on the truth as I see it, my fault posted then scrolled,sorry.

      1. No biggie ogga. I think we both know we are in the right. Now the next thing that needs to happen is for Farage to be sued into the stratosphere. The arrogant pissant.

          1. Actually yes. Ants just do their thing. This is outright evil. Malicious falsehoods because he thinks his ego and self pride will win. What is happening here is Farage revealing why so many of us believe he is not fit to lead Reform or become PM. You can fool some…

    2. Perhaps apologies will be forthcoming, johnathan, somehow doubt it from NF…just added to my doubts about him.

      1. This is a test of character – will Nigel Farage pass it or fail it?

        If he lied deliberately in order to smear Tommy Robinson then his political career should not survive this lie.

        If he sincerely believed he was telling the truth and his lie is pointed out to him then he must apologise fulsomely just as he expects Kemi Badenoch to apologise to him. If he cannot do this it should be all over for him.

        Jordan Peterson's 8th Rule for Life is

        "Tell the truth – or, at least, don't lie."

        1. Whichever way, Rastus – I think he has to speak, I hope soon. Jordan Peterson always food for thought – perhaps you saw his interview with Tommy Robinson?

        2. Whichever way, Rastus – I think he has to speak, I hope soon. Jordan Peterson always food for thought – perhaps you saw his interview with Tommy Robinson?

      2. This is a test of character – will Nigel Farage pass it or fail it?

        If he lied deliberately in order to smear Tommy Robinson then his political career should not survive this lie.

        If he sincerely believed he was telling the truth and his lie is pointed out to him then he must apologise fulsomely just as he expects Kemi Badenoch to apologise to him. If he cannot do this it should be all over for him.

        Jordan Peterson's 8th Rule for Life is

        "Tell the truth – or, at least, don't lie."

    3. If Nigel Farage is incapable of apologising about his lies about TR's violence against women then is he capable of being prime minister?

      1. Being incapable of apologising for lies is almost a condition of employment for putative prime ministers. Not that Farage has the slightest hope of achieving the highest political office in the land.

    4. I'm aghast at how badly Farage is playing this.
      Reminds me of Johnson accusing Farage voters of ruining his 'Conservative' dream.

    1. I for one, didn't find it a difficult read, ogga1….not one bit surprised. Very pleased she took the time and trouble to post.

    4. Hmmm,
      Green grass here. Well really a dormant dull green but visible grass never the less.

      Maybe it is from all of the hot air bs that the cbc have been spouting about trudeaus maybe imminent departure.

  100. I have the feeling that this is the year when the counter attack against Islam begins in earnest. The grooming gang scandals being the start. I'm sure most people have noticed that most of the avoidance waffling has stopped and people just outright say rape gangs and Pakistani Muslims. Just go back 6 months and that would have been unthinkable.
    If the Pakistanis want to bury their dead, ship them back to Pakistan.

    3. It's a process, and has a sequence of events.
      The UK is out of sync.
      You need lots more outrages.. some more Muslim over reach.
      Germany 1st. Then Ireland.

    4. Even BTL in the Tellygraff, you can now type "Pakistani" and "rape".
      "Pervert" is still verboten.

    5. I do hope so. We need to cleanse the country of islam and its adherents. I was only thinking this morning how many muslim words are now in general use; burka, hijab, niqab, haram, dhimmi, jizya, jihad(i), sharia, ummah, caliphate, koran, fatwah … I'm sure people can add more.

  101. This pretty much sums up how I feel.

    The story behind the song is a true one. It was written by Felix Pappalardi and his wife Gail Collins. They were members of the American group Mountain but also collaborated with Jack Bruce on some Cream songs and some of his solo stuff. There is an ironic end to the story. Felix and Gail had an open marriage. One day, he came home from a girlfriend in the early morning and Gail shot him in the neck with a gun he had previously given her. Originally charged with manslaughter, she pleaded guilty to the reckless discharge of a firearm and got 4 years but was out in about 2.

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

    1. I saw Felix Pappalardi with Mountain at Newcastle City Hall in1972. They were either with Quiver, or the Flying Buritto Brothers! They were fabulous and years later saw Leslie West in Glasgow.

      1. I looked for you in the Jane Austen celebrations in Bath…

        There seemed to be hundreds of people in fancy dress: I expect you eschewed it.

    1. Excellent! And I thought I was doing well with a birdie!

      Wordle 1,298 3/6

      🟨🟨🟨⬜⬜
      🟨🟩🟨⬜⬜
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

        1. If you each found the same word, why are your coloured squares not in the same position in each grid?

          (Baffled, Norfolk).

          1. Green equals a correct letter in the correct square.
            Yellow is a correct letter in the wrong square.
            They have started with different words.

          4. I tried – tried several, indeed – and was completely bewildered. I concentrate on simpler puzzles, such as The Times cryptic….

    4. Ah well, at least I got there in the end
      Wordle 1,298 5/6

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

    1. Ah – but that’s an archive image! And the lady was someone else’s wife, I believe, with whom you frolicked/cavorted…

      1. No it's my very own photograph. (Pride)
        'someone else's wife, I believe, with whom you frolicked/cavorted"…(Prejudice)

    3. Very smart. Methinks the lady's shoes aren't quite right, though 🙂 You could have nicked those boots off me!

  105. "Eight major hospitals have declared critical incidents within the past 24 hours as “exceptionally high demands” of seasonal flu pile pressure on A&E departments, with one advising there could be 50-hour waits for care."

    Envy of the World, eh?

    1. It's all those old people, going out to shelter in communal areas, pubs/libraries etc, just to keep warm, having lost their WFA .
      They catch and pass on 'flu, covid etc. and go to hospital to die, where at least it's still warm for them.

      All part of Labour's great reset.
      /sarc

        2. Last time I was in hospital (it was late winter), it was tropical! I had to push some of the blankets off the bed. Part of me thought, "this is surely incubating bugs".

          1. I went for a CT scan a few weeks ago and the nurse trying to fit a cannula kept rubbing the back of my hand as it started going from purple to white. She asked me, “What’s all this about?”. I said it’s bloody freezing in here.

      2. I take D3, K2 & C from October to March. I give them all a break in the summer – but I did have a minor cold last summer.
        Flu – I've had twice in my life – Christmas 1972 & March 1984. Memorable because it was horrible.
        I didn't take any vitamins in those days but I was young.

        1. Two consultants, one origin West Indies the other Middle Eastern, advised me to take D3 all year round as sun never strong enough to improve your immune system. I pay £23 for 1,000 capsules, 5,000 iu. natursupps.co.uk . 2.3p per capsule Big Pharma make nothing.

          1. I use 4,000 iu ones from Amazon. Can’t remember how much they are but not much. I did have have two trips in 2024 to hot, sunny places. Not that I sunbathe and I did use sunscreen or I burn to a cinder.

        2. Two consultants, one origin West Indies the other Middle Eastern, advised me to take D3 all year round as sun never strong enough to improve your immune system. I pay £23 for 1,000 capsules, 5,000 iu. natursupps.co.uk . 2.3p per capsule Big Pharma make nothing.

      1. Nor me. But I did enjoy (whisper it quietly) the Beeb production of Pride & Prejudice which was repeated recently. It is quite a sophisticated story and "tolerably well acted I suppose"….

      2. Nor me. But I did enjoy (whisper it quietly) the Beeb production of Pride & Prejudice which was repeated recently. It is quite a sophisticated story and "tolerably well acted I suppose"….

  109. POLL: Musk More Popular Than Starmer With Brits

    The UK media has always couched its coverage of Elon Musk with reminders that he is supposedly particularly unpopular in the UK. Not true when the full figures are borne out…

    New polling from Freshwater Strategy, which interviewed 1,207 UK voters between 4-6 of this month, shows that the world’s richest man is more popular among Brits than their own Prime Minister. 25% of voters view Musk favourably versus 47% unfavourably, compared to Starmer’s 22% favourable and whopping 58% unfavourable. Pitting a -22 point approval rating against -38…

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9ce566f925b3450b38f6e15486618313ed99cce40b435e89f746b815aa08275b.png
    Reeves is also low at -30 points. All political figures polled for have a net negative rating. Hilariously, Musk is more popular than Starmer even among those Labour voters who now say they won’t vote for the party again. Starmer has the lowest rating of all at -44…

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ba5f9941b04a3b57c398c458d7595263f73d214ddf578684dfbff52c12055f6b.png
    That even beats Donald Trump in unfavourability. There’s a reason people say Starmer’s start has been the worst of any Labour PM in history…

    7 January 2025 @ 15:34

    1. No surprise there then. The only real surprise is the somebody actually approves of this fake human.

    2. I filled in a questionnaire because I was looking at PhD opportunities. One of the questions was about studying abroad (I wouldn't consider it). The next question was, would you be less likely or more likely (with intermediate shades) to study in America now that Donald Trump has been elected President. I took great delight in clicking the "Extremely more likely" box!

  110. Reminds me of Philip Larkin's poem Talking in Bed:

    Talking in bed ought to be easiest,
    Lying together there goes back so far,
    An emblem of two people being honest.
    Yet more and more time passes silently.
    Outside, the wind's incomplete unrest
    Builds and disperses clouds in the sky,
    And dark towns heap up on the horizon.
    None of this cares for us. Nothing shows why
    At this unique distance from isolation
    It becomes still more difficult to find
    Words at once true and kind,
    Or not untrue and not unkind.

  111. The stabbings continue.
    They've renamed sword dancing:
    doing the Khan Khan.

    A teenage boy has been stabbed to death on a bus in Woolwich.

    Police were called at 2.28pm on Tuesday to reports of a stabbing on a Route 472 bus on Woolwich Church Road near the junction with the A205 South Circular Road.

    Paramedics treated a 14-year-old boy at the scene who had received stab wound injuries, but he died shortly after medics arrived.

    https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/teenage-boy-stabbed-woolwich-bus-b1203445.html?lid=lu2lpapm6ysm&utm_medium=email&utm_source=braze&utm_campaign=News_email_2025-01-07&utm_term=ES_News_Daily_CDP&empar=a5a4791040899364e61ef9f1d5449150a9c0012b4e500bdb121b158033542c2a

    1. The Met would respond but they are busy trying to extradite Americans for saying naughty things on X??

      1. Isn't today Tuesday?
        Have you seen a different version of the article, I got it from my daily ES newsletter.

        1. Silly me – I googled Woolwich+ news – and an item came up yesterday.

          Different stabbing, of course. I expect they call it "One a Day Woolwich".

    4. In North London there are Blue Plaques on buildings commemorating famous folk who once lived there

      In South London there are lots of Yellow signboards displayed by the Police asking: "Did you see this murder"….

        1. Don't bother to ring, even if it was today, if it was done by anyone with a deep suntan.

    5. In North London there are Blue Plaques on buildings commemorating famous folk who once lived there

      In South London there are lots of Yellow signboards displayed by the Police asking: "Did you see this murder"….

    7. How many kids have to die to slake the hard Left's demented thirst? How many before they accept the problem?

    8. The last time we were in Woolwich was around 10 years ago for a tall ship trip. It was like a foreign country then, we couldn't get out quickly enough. Another famous part of our capital city ruined by useless politicians.
      Lee Rigby was murdered there in 2013.

    3. A few years ago I went to the cinema to watch a film about some Jane Austen novel. When it ended, I asked some chums who had accompanied me why they hadn't shown a man coming out of the lake. They all laughed – it apparently wasn't the novel with Mr D'Arcy in it.

  114. Freedom bar lowered once more..

    Steve Jamieson CEO of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists (RCSLT) in big big trouble for following Tommy Robinson on X.

  118. That's me for today. Nice and sunny though cold all day. Clear sky = Venus brilliant. Colder tonight. Cloudy tomorrow and colder. Sunny Thursday and Friday.

    Have a spiffing evening.

    A demain.

  120. Utter, complete madness.

    https://order-order.com/2025/01/07/uk-shelled-out-new-record-in-renewable-subsides-last-year/

    Ed Conway on how Net Zero policies are deindustrialising Britain…

    … the shift from fossil fuel energy to low-carbon energy has unequivocally pushed bills up. How could it not? For most of the past two decades wind turbines were far more expensive than fossil fuels. So a complex cocktail of charges — renewables obligations, feed-in tariffs, contracts for difference, emissions trading schemes — were bolted on top of wholesale energy prices to tax polluters and subsidise green schemes. In Germany all those costs were passed on to domestic customers; here in the UK they are shared with heavy industry, which, by the way, is part of the reason Britain is deindustrialising faster than every other developed economy.

    1. They’re not exactly sharing costs with heavy industry, we are all lumbered with the extra costs.

    1. Reeves ‘on verge of breaking her own fiscal rules’ as borrowing costs surge
      Key moments
      Updated 11 minutes ago

          3. So now she is not bothering whether she gets caught or not? I can't see her not lying – it's hard to give up the habits of a lifetime.

    1. Books are zero-rated so if every independent school were to publish a set of exclusive textbooks each year, priced at say, £30,000 the set, what would the starmerists do?

      1. Put VAT on books to align us with the EU. It's something that's been thought about (albeit fought as a "tax on learning" – now no longer a defence, surely?) before.

    1. Assuming that's Starmite on the end (you either loathe him or loathe him) fingers crossed!

      1. One key difference: you can loathe Marmite but still respect those who claim to like it.

  126. "…there's a real danger – not just for race relations and democratic discourse but actually for getting to the nub of how you protect women and girls – of making this something else, something other, something outside, something imported, something mediaeval. If only it were that simple…welcome to the patriarchy, it is everywhere, it's not about migration."

    Shami Chakrabati summarising a short discussion on PM. Unsurprisingly, she twice invoked the Catholic church, desperate as she was to avoid the racial aspect of it. Ben Habib was good but wasn't allowed to respond to Chakrabati's sign-off. Evan Davis performed verbal contortions to keep it even-handed.

    It seems few in the media will dare to ask why the victims were almost exclusively white girls.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0026ndc from 33:45 to 42:00. Don't listen if you have a heart condition.

    2. The false equivalence is galling. Yes there is a problem with paedophiles in the church but when was a Catholic priest found to have abducted a ten year old girl at the school gates and nailed her tongue to a table while his mates ritually sodomised her? In the modern era that level of savagery is unique to Islam.

      1. The instances of child abuse in the Catholic Church and the Church of England were those of individual priests, not organised rape gangs such as the Pakistani Muslims. Part of the scandal was that Bishops of both denominations chose to cover up the offences and move the perpetrators to a different parish or position within the Church.

        1. "move the perpetrators to a different parish or position within the Church."

          Hence the missionary position?

          Edited.

  127. Ooops again
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-14256551/Archaeologists-tools-africa-site-dubbed-cradle-humankind.html

    Researchers at the City University of New York said the sharpened rock allowed them to peel and cut fruits and vegetables and slice the flesh of hippos.

    The tools are known as the Oldowan tool kit, which previously only spanned from 1.7 million years to 2.9 million years ago.

    Lead archaeologist Tom Plummer suggested that the tools found paved the way for everything that followed.

    'In terms of technology, I think the Oldowan technology is the most important technological innovation that ever happened in human history,' Plummer told CBS News.

    'It allowed hominins to access a whole array of foods that they never had access to before, fueling body and brain size increases.'

    2. "Archaeologists find 3MILLION-year-old tools at site dubbed 'the cradle of humankind'"

      There's no tool like an old tool.

      1. I was going to bring up Starmer's name in association with 'tools', but then I thought that would be an ad hominin too far.

    3. How do they explain Europeans progressing from sharpened rock to hardened steel while tribal people in the Americas and elsewhere remained Stone Age?

      2. Can’t be eating plants, thus allowing them the extra time to develop new technology, surely not.
        };-O

      3. Old King Coal, a cold climate and a need to keep warm. Doesn't account for N America though.

        1. Ethos. The Indian tribes moved around a lot, following their food source. Why improve when you're lifestyle doesn't need you to? Theirs was an almost post scarcity society.

  128. Prevening, all. We have had all the seasons in one day today! On my walk with Kadi, my neighbour and I were remarking on what a lovely, sunny day it was and how the sunshine lifted our spirits. It was mild, too. When we'd finished chatting and went our separate ways to go home, we suffered two sharp hail squalls, followed by a blizzard of large, wet snowflakes! By the time I'd got home it had turned to rain and then later the sun came out and the sky was blue again! You're never short of anything to talk about in the UK!

    Labour is ideologically unable to make the necessary reforms to render the NHS efficient and effective. It would mean making it leaner, less bureaucratic and putting the patient first, as well as stopping those not entitled through contributions from accessing anything without being billed for the services they are about to use.

  130. We have an air raid warning tomorrow, about midday. Sirens and phone warnings. Exciting!
    Otherwise, I'm feeling low. Maybe someone close to me has died? I dunno, but I've been feeling close to tears all day, and have no idea why. Hope it's just because I've run out of wine… 🙁 Hope all Y'all are doing good.

    1. We had one of those last year – I turned the alerts off on my phone. But we were on a train so I heard them all going off.

    2. Bugger me Oberst, I've run out of wine as well – it's that time of year isnt it? – I'm nervously eying the Bayley's and Amoretto and wondering if I can get away with it with the wife circling like some evil Valkyrie!
      Cheer up buddy – life's a pile of shite but it beats the hell out of the alternative!! Prost! (sinks another Amoretto, bleurgh…)

      1. :-))))

        PS I think you ought to add another G to your monika to bring it bang up to date!

        1. Yes but if I did that I'd have to admit that me and mine caused Coronavirus – and I'm not ready for that (yet).

      2. :-))))

        PS I think you ought to add another G to your monika to bring it bang up to date!

      1. Suddenly the box was empty… I'm not proud, box wine at Weegie prices I can afford …

  131. Heads must be exploding all over Grauniadaland
    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/07/meta-facebook-instagram-threads-mark-zuckerberg-remove-fact-checkers-recommend-political-content
    If Musk and Trump do nothing else, the release of "Free Speech" leaving correction to others might be their best contribution.

    And YES, I do agree re the:- attributed to Mark Twain: “A Lie Can Travel Halfway Around the World Before the Truth Puts On its Shoes”

    But better the lie can be stated so that the truth can refute it.

    1. Bit I can't understand is that Farcebook employed 15% of it's entire company to do nothing but censor posts. OK, some will be developers working on technical improvements to word scanning and image processing but still.

  132. Perhaps it was ericthebee's post earlier today?
    Always sad, given the background he's been posting over the weeks.

    1. That’s the third death I’ve heard since last evening.
      A good friend and former work colleague died yesterday mor after a long illness and this morning our granddaughter’s boy friend’s grandfather died yesterday and finally ericthebee’s wife.
      Worst start to a new year I can remember.

      1. It's a natural, sad reaction then – don't beat yourself up. It's because you care and you're a softie.

      2. There was an article recently, suggesting that one reason so many go at this time of the year is that they want one last time with family and friends and then give up the ghost.
        If it's correct, be pleased for them, that they held on for the last smiles.

  134. A glimpse into the future, around February 2025.. Tuesday afternoon.

    One place Trump said he wouldn't invade was UK. But he did say he would use 'economic force' to try and make it the 51st state.

    He repeated his argument that the country is economically & security dependent on the United States. The U.S. is UK's biggest trading partner and closest ally.

    Trump also revealed he's spoken to Rupert Lowe & Tommy Robinson.. oh and Nigel and encouraged them to run for prime minister once Labour & Sir Keir Starmer are forced to step down.

    'I have so many great friends in UK. One of them is the great one Rupert Lowe. I said, run for Prime Minister. You'll win it up. It'll take two seconds,' he said.

    1. We are over 16 trillion in debt – with an economy of about 2.8. A quarter of all government spending – NOT just tax – goes on paying debt interest. Interest, not the capital. Government then borrows more to pay off the interest.

      The worst economic enemies we have sit in Westminster. They are making us poorer deliberately, out of spite because we said no.

      2. No, Phizzee. Can't have that. I wouldn't wish that on anyone, ever. I despite politicians but that's very personal and not right. Please, change it.

    3. Perhaps Jess, just perhaps you've caused this problem for yourself. After all, we've said for 30 years we wanted gimmigration to stop. We've said no more multiple times. You keep insulting us by mocking our reasons and calling us racists.

      When pakistani muslim paedophiles systematically raped thousands of children around the country under your party's watch the only person who said no was assaulted by your government. All so you could keep the gimmigrant voting block you'd put so much effort – and our money – into.

      You're bleating about feeling unsafe – but the only groups who have actually ever raped, murdered, stabbed another are your beloved diversity. You forced these rabid dogs on our country by deliberately ramming violent religious savages, criminals and vicious wasters on us. It's how we feel every day in our cities and the immigrant ghettos where you dumped this sewage. Imagine how those children felt when dozens of paki muslims raped them over and over again. Be thankful you only feel afraid now. We've had to suffer it for decades.

      You and the rest of the vermin infesting parliament did this. Live with it.

    2. Young girls in her constituency were fucked via vagina and anus at the same time on a regular basis. Often with men queuing up the stairs.

          2. Are you suggesting she's so well used she's loose and it would be louche to point it out?

      2. He really is showing them up for the utter cowards they are regarding the muslim vote. And there was me thinking we lived in England. As opposed to a suburb of Pakistan. Which BTW we are actually funding.

    4. You snivelling cretin

      Words to use in future when referring to, well, snivelling cretins. “YSC”.

  138. Lethal too, I’ve seen one a few years ago, catch and kill a hare just a few feet away from me…hare was flattened down with stoat doing it’s dance, ready to strike. They also kill a lot of birds.

  141. If all 3 million that signed the petition said the same things how do you think plod would react…………..

      1. There'll be a lot of us to accommodate, Conners. And our houses will be needed for the new masters.

    2. They'd probably join in! Only joking….

      The harsh reality is that the views expressed on here are a minority compared with the mainstream and we should never forget that.

      We have to continue to fight on, but it wont ever be easy……

      1. The views expressed here are not the FUCKING minority. They are censored in paid for media.

        Sorry

        1. Of course the views expressed here are the FUCKING minority – doesnt mean to say they are not 100% valid!!

          It's important that people who hold the same views as us realise just how many other people in this country think differently and, therefore, appreciate the challenge that lies ahead of us.

    3. 3 million people would be arrested and their lives destroyed. It only works when those 3 million are together. Then the 100,000 plod in the country can't do a thing about it. That's what needs to happen. Not this very polite, middle class, thoroughly decent, law abiding attitude.

  142. Thought for the day:

    Does Elon Musk actually write the tweets himself, or does he employ a lot of minions with carte blanche to be as rude as they like?

    If the latter, where do I apply?

    1. I would certainly hope so.

      If not, I'm slipping; but that said, I'm sure I could muster up help from Nottle

      2. I do believe this man who is purportedly to believed a half trillion dollars does do his own tweets.

          2. Are you aware of how many spads need to actually move his elbow when wheeled in front of the cameras?

            Well let me tell you. Fewer than Biden. Dead bodies are easier to manipulate.

      1. One of the Lotus Eaters. Used to be Sargon of Arkad (if that’s the way you spell it!) Stood for EU parliament, which is when he got into trouble with the Beeb etc for a spat with Philips where he said “I wouldn’t even rape her”.

  145. Jess was brought up in the black Cuntree. Now she's havin' to liv it !

    I make no apologies. I had the misfortune to live in Birmingham for five years.

    The road i lived in is now a total no go area.

    Take a look.

    1. My first house as a little terraced one in Selly Oak. 1989. Opposite a tiny former church, converted to a mosque. Men and boys only. Even then it made me uncomfortable.

  146. She should understand that her party was in No.10 from 1997 to 2010 and, in that time, moved Heaven&Earth to prevent the People from being made aware of the extent of the Rape Gang Scandal.
    The People have found out and are ANGRY. A National Independent Enquiry is needed.

    1. A firing squad is what is required. Those Pakistani rapes are happening right now. Tonight.

      1. If I ruled the world ANY groomer rapist caught from this instant would be shot.
        That edict alone would send thousands of the bastards straight back to Pakirapististan.

        1. Too quick. Flogging, flay, castrate then hang until they suffocate – none of this nice neck breaking. Folk could place bets on if they'd die from blood loss or suffocation.

  147. I think he loses it with the sort of comment like he makes to Ed Davey below – dont get me wrong, I think Davey is a prat but…..

    I used to be a huge fan of Musk but I'm increasingly feeling that he is an absolute power-mad nutcase……

    1. That may be true, but Davey really needs to be humiliated, and if Musk does so, who am I to complain about how he does it?

  149. Back in the day when the grooming gangs were going about their business unhindered by our public services and not getting any media coverage.
    The police were coming under extreme scrutiny for being institutionally racist.
    Well they were I suppose, as it all turns out.
    But not in the way anyone imagined

    1. We knew. But a succession of Met Commissioners were Woke graduates. Now we have Rowley saying we will extradite people like Musk.

      Perhaps someone should take Rowley to lunch and explain to the wanker that when our government set up extradition treaties with America it was one way only.

  150. Correct, but as I keep saying:
    Why aren't those exposed suing him for defamation/libel?
    Perhaps because they cannot defend their comments and what he's writing is true?

    1. I listened to that and I wonder whether TR is cracking up under the regime of solitary confinement.
      He really doesn't sound well.
      Poor sod.

      1. I think he is very angry. After all Farage is putting Tommy’s children in danger. Which is just another illustration of why Farage is unfit.

    2. Bullseye, Tommy. The lies have not gone unnoticed and Farage risks killing his party. Maybe that's what he wants. See also Tommy's ex wife on the mendaciousness and cruelty of these statements from Farage. Wind your neck in Nigel and stop telling lies, before you destroy all credibility of what was our only hope.

      2. Surprised? That's the intention of the powers-taht-be – to break him properly.

  154. His ex-wife has said similar. just imagine the strain that Tommy's circs must put upon him – then this.

  155. Consider releasing Tommy Robinson from solitary confinement in prison

    Review his case and provide a more reasonable sanction given there was no criminal act

    The nature of his incarceration has come to global attention. There is growing sympathy for the work that Robinson has done to bring issues, that are of immense public interest, to light. The government should review his case as a matter of urgency and why he needs to be in solitary confinement in a maximum security unit. They should explain why the nature of his incarceration is justified and why it is not evidence of a two tier system of justice or form of censorship.

    Click this link to sign the petition:
    https://petition.parliament.uk/sponsors/148653969/verify?token=QkSXwNBs5rJEDT5rUDDh

  157. Resorted to reinforced Spanish wine from Jerez. Had a contract down there mid 1990s, fabulous place and really good wines…
    I've been a lucky man. God has smiled upon me, that's for sure.
    Grew up in Northern Nigeria – and Leicestershire at school.
    Fabulous wife, who tolerated my working away from home – a LOT. Married 43 years.
    Two great sons – mostly brought up by SWMBO, so really good men. Proud to fcuk over the both of them – independent, thoughtful, caring, decisive… all the things I'd like to be. Oh, yes: Good looking (I missed out there, too).
    Had contracts/work in Sicily, Jerez, Azerbaijan, and many visits to China, Middle East – and the last 27 years in Norway.

  158. There's something really weird going on here – Musk, Farage, Lowe, Robinson all knocking lumps out of each other – if one was a conspiracy theorist (perish the thought!) one would conclude that there is an external agency stirring up all this trouble……..

  160. Thanks

    Your signature has been added to this petition as a supporter.
    What next?

    This petition needs 5 supporters to go live.

    When it goes live, we'll email you a link so you can start sharing it.

        1. A bean
          A bean
          A half bean
          A half bean
          A bean
          A bean.

          Alternatively, a bean, a bean, half a bean, a bean and a half and a bean.

      2. I remember seeing an Army joke about how different regiments and corps would answer that question. I can only remember a bit – if anyone else remembers it would you send it?

        Q. How many beans make five?

        Infantry officer: Shouts SIX! – Confident but wrong

        PT Instructor: Five and five more

        Quartermaster: Five blankets!

        Signals Officer: Depending on the earthing and the stratospheric conditions at the time, about 5.01763

        And so it went for about ten answers

        1. How many beans make five? A simple question, but it depends on who you ask.

          An Infantry Officer will do a recce, observe the beans, do an estimate, consult his TAM and eventually say, five;. Slow, but accurate.

          A Gunners Officer will say, between four and six; which is how he fires his guns and is neither Hic nor Ubique.

          A Royal Signals Officer will say, that depends on the ionosphere and transmission losses, we'll do some path profile analysis and get back to you.

          An Intelligence Officer will not understand the question.

          A Loggie Officer will count them and say, five blankets.

          A REME Officer will say, Four point nine-eights which is close enough for engineering purposes.

          A Cavalry Officer will immediately say, SIX! Flamboyant, decisive but wrong.

    3. I got that too – I can’t believe that it has not got 5 supporters. I’m waiting for a reply from the person who sent it to me to explain. I thought that by the time I sent it, the supporters would have been there (I’m sure they are; perhaps something has just not been updated).

  161. I like the Spanish wines (yes, I know) from Jerez.
    Subtle, varied – and strong!

        1. I’ll play safe and call it fortified wine.

          But that includes Buckfast tonic – the choice of winos everywhere….

          2. Throughout the North of England, particularly in Blackpool, where hope goes to die, and dont call me…….

        1. We don't care, nothing you can do about it, we don't work for you, you don't own us, we're going to keep wrecking the place. Two fingers.

          As expected.

          Lock them in, burn it down.

  163. I've had enough for today i had to walk to the barbers get my hair cut and walk to the cash machine and back to pay him my legs are aching and i have to collect my little grandson from school tomorrow afternoon. I need sleep.
    Good night all. 🥱😴
    I have just sent a reply email to Kemi and told her what I think of politics and politicians. Nothing personal of course just in general. Pointed out that I am extremely saddened to think that they cannot see the damage they are all doing to our nation.

    2. Glad to have the purpose of your visit to the barbers clarified, Eddy And good on yer for the rest.

    3. She won't care.

      I posted on Low Status Opinion's substack – which I should send him some money for – that Westminster remind me of William Golding's Lord of the Flies. A bunch of cruel, petty children hurting one another who as soon as they can, blame everyone else for their actions.

      The lot of them disgust me. They are corrupt, venal, arrogant, ignorant, vile, incestuous effluent. Contempt isn't strong enough. I viserally hate them all.

      https://lowstatus.substack.com/p/lies-of-inquiry (because his work deserves a wider audience)

  169. If I drink or eat cheese late at night I don't sleep.

    Well, it's really because I'm fat, but I pretend it's cheese and drink.

    1. Bit unfair on cows. Cow poo is really good for soil. It's an amazing fertilizer that helps plants grow.

      The BBC on the other hand would rather destroy plants, fields and probably cows in it's demented obsession with the tax scam of 'climate change'.

  172. Has anyone scrutinised where the NSPCC were when the grooming gangs were flourishing unhindered?

    1. They were busy getting Social Services to remove children from dangerous heterosexual biological parents who voted Leave and Reform.

    2. I gather that there are hundreds of unwanted babies in Vietnam , Thailand , Philippines due to Europeans travelling to those countries for easy sex with innocent native girls .

      I think sexual abuse is rampant everywhere , we can stop it here in the UK.

      Deport the filth who are abusing women , children and babies .

      No ifs or buts, just get rid of them .

      Ban sharia law , no face coverings and stop the cruel slaughter for the meat trade .

      We don't want yelling from the mosques either , no more building of mosques , no more hiding places for abusers, no more multi marriages ..

      Emphasise this .. We are a Christian country , we don't have to get on our knees every few hours to pray,we are a busy people , we know who our God is , and we don't require stone age misogynists ruining the lives of innocents.

  173. “I do not want to live in a country where so many people are priced out of heating their homes in the winter, or having to choose between sitting in a freezing cold flat and putting food on their table.” These are the words of Rachel Reeves when she sat on the opposition benches in 2018.

    Fast-forward seven years, and her decision to axe the winter fuel payment for 10 million pensioners has left scores of retirees shivering at the start of 2025.

    Charities have warned that Labour’s “chilling” policy has resulted in pensioners being admitted to hospital with pneumonia, and there were fears that the weekend’s cold snap would pose a danger to life as temperatures were tipped to plummet to as low as -10C.

    Simon Francis, of the End Fuel Poverty Coalition, said the Chancellor had forgotten about the concerns of adults living in “Dickensian conditions”.

    He said: “When the Chancellor made the remarks in 2018, average energy bills were £700 less than they are today. Even then around three million households were in fuel poverty.

    “Ms Reeves has forgotten the concerns of her constituents or she does not care about the very real health dangers of people living in cold damp homes.”

    Retirees on full state pension now worse off than those receiving pension credit

    The NHS recommends heating homes to at least 18C and warns that colder temperatures can increase the likelihood of heart attacks and respiratory illnesses.

    Around half of older people who have lost the winter fuel payment are going to bed earlier to avoid heating their home, according to a survey by the charity Independent Age.

    Meanwhile, others have started skipping meals as they weigh up whether to save energy for heating or cooking.

    Reform UK leader Nigel Farage told The Telegraph: “The cold weather will give millions a dilemma – to heat or not heat, that will be the question.”

    It is the exact scenario Ms Reeves described in the House of Commons in 2018, when she claimed “I do not want to live in a country” where such realities come to pass.

    Stark difference between then and now
    At the Labour conference in 2022, the soon-to-be-Chancellor tugged at the heartstrings with her tale of meeting an elderly constituency member struggling with the cold.

    “When I reached out to shake her hand, it was purple and freezing cold,” she said.

    “Already back then, she was afraid to put the heating on, struggling to get by on the small pension that she had built up through a lifetime of work.

    “As energy bills and inflation rise even higher, I often think of her. That is the stark reality facing people all around our country today.”

    All Comments 1.81k

    NEWEST
    All Comments
    Someone is typing
    Comment by Two Together.

    TT

    Two Together
    1 min ago
    This government, not least Rachel from Complaints (she never was Accounts), is the most cruel since Henry VIII sat in the throne. Their cruelty to pensioners is sadistic to the point many would consider it amoral and depraved.

    Comment by paul beaumont.

    pb

    paul beaumont
    4 min ago
    My bathroom this morning 9.6°C.

    Living Room 14.6°C. Now 20.1 °C after turning CH on at 1545 today. Today's gas/electricity at 2110 is £9.50.

    That's without washing machine, tumble drier.

    The public are being scammed by the power companies and HMG is complicit.

    It's all about the profit.

    Comment by Brendan Foreman.

    BF

    Brendan Foreman
    8 min ago
    There’s a good question in all that for tomorrow’s PMQs

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/retirement/why-rachel-reeves-should-leave-britain-in-her-words/

    1. No, Paul, the public are being scammed by the GOVERNMENT and its net zero policies. Look at your electricity bill and you'll see how much TAX you are forced to pay to subsidise inefficient renewables.

    2. No, they're bloody NOT being scammed by power companies, you half witted oaf! Two thirds of your bill is tax and subsidy for unrelaibles. Read it, you berk!

      This cretinous goverment are not complicit, they are responsible. It's their taxes that are making energy expensive. Their policies. Their ideology. It is all down to the damned government. Every last wretched penny.

      Although Milioaf will be pleased. Yet another person looking the wrong way – exactly as government wants – and letting him get away with his ruinous policies.

    4. “I do not want to live in a country where so many people are priced out of heating their homes in the winter, or having to choose between sitting in a freezing cold flat and putting food on their table.”

      So said Reeves. What she was thinking was, “no, I want to live in a country other than Britain, which I will do once Ihave got my cushy job in the EU.”

  175. Top civil servants tasked with taking away pensioners’ winter fuel payments raked in annual bonuses of up to £14,000, figures show.

    Nearly £12m of taxpayers’ money was paid in bonuses to over 80,000 Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) staff last year.

    This included 91 top-ranking officials who netted an average performance-related payment of £7,250, with the highest payout reaching £14,000.

    In total, £634,685 was paid to high-ranking DWP staff – enough to pay for 3,000 pensioners’ energy bill support.

    Sir Peter Schofield KCB, the department’s permanent secretary, received performance-related pay of between £10,000 and £15,000 last year, in addition to a salary of between £195,000 and £200,000.

    Some £11.2m in bonuses was paid to 82,526 junior DWP staff, with the average payment of £150 and the largest at £214, according to data revealed through a Freedom of Information request by The Daily Mail. The £11.9m total was enough to pay for nearly 60,000 pensioners’ winter fuel payments.

    Elliot Keck, of the TaxPayers’ Alliance campaign group, told The Telegraph: “These bonuses for bumbling bureaucrats are wildly unjustified given the catastrophic levels of fraud and error on DWP’s watch.

    “While taxpayers face a budget of horrors, civil servants can sit comfortably knowing they have the pay, pensions and perks that the rest of the country can only dream of.

    “Labour should put a stop to these rewards for failure and ensure that any future bonuses are based on a genuine improvement in results.”

    Rachel Reeves stripped winter fuel payments – worth up to £300 – from 10 million retirees this year. Labour has admitted the move will push as many as 100,000 pensioners into poverty by 2026.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/tax/14k-bonuses-civil-servants-stripped-pensioners-winter-fuel/

    .

    1. Why do they get a bonus for doing their job? They have no risk. No product. No costs. They do nothing to get paid. It just happens. If they foul up – and they always do – they are not sacked. There are no consequences for their default incompetence and stupidity.

      Already grossly overpaid the idea of a 'bonus' is an insulting joke. These are not the CEOs of Tesco. They're serial meeters who achieve nothing, who do nothing. Who, when they went on strike no one noticed for weeks.

      2. I wouldn't say they do "nothing". Quite often they manage to gold plate legislation that makes our lives a lot worse.

    1. I heard a woman at church say, "I had the 'flu after Christmas and it was quite bad, but we'd had our 'flu jabs so without that it would have been worse, probably". Hmm.

    2. I took up tap dancing after I had our first daughter, and had visions of being as brilliant as that! I know it’s not the same but I loved the noise and the flying feet! Anyway, I loved it and still have a bit of a double time step to the ‘Red red Robin’ now and again! My darling old man used to mutter ‘Roly Polies’ but I danced on….

  179. Apparently I’ve been informed that this is a standard reply when petitions are quite new. I know of at least 20 people who have signed.

  180. A trip to Kingston upon Hull tomorrow.
    So it's me off to bed now.
    Goodnight all.

    1. With that, good night all. The Warqueen's in her pyjamas, Junior's abed (but still awake. He's reading The Return of the King to Mongo. Oscar is puddling about in the water bowl, Lucy is already sat on the bed – she's a good hot water bottle.

        1. What a silly question ! He loves it of course !

          Dolly prefers Hello magazine. Lightweight !

  184. Finally, this. I listened to it when driving across the Highlands between Aberdeen and Inverness, back in 1990, when I was a site surveyor for the building of a production platform at Ardersier. I was away from SWMBO except for every 4 to 6 weekend, and it was bloody hard being away from my beloved. Sinead was on the radio, and the memory of the combo of her voice, the utterly fabulous scenery and loneliness, still makes me cry even now.
    Unfortunately, Sinead is no longer with us, poor lass.
    https://youtu.be/0-EF60neguk?si=mKilrg50JP-h8hQu

      1. Indeed, but when I first heard it I was strongly moved by it as sung by Sinead, so that's the version I turn to.

    1. Another split party (can it be pure coincidence?) will wipe out any progress against TPTB, WEF, WHO, and the UK will return to EU totalitarianism.

    2. I don’t even know why Katie is so vilified to be on everyone’s banned list. She seems unremarkable (in the nicest sense) to me. I know she lost a libel battle but that’s surely not enough to be cancelled?

      But there is a pattern. It’s easy to cow the moderately well-off by law fare; if you have nothing to lose, or are super-wealthy, you can weather it. But the majority of us cannot. Which is why Katy and TR are to be supported because they have both gone through it. There may be others.

  188. The DT closed comments very sharpish on Allison Pearson's piece. She didn't hold back.
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/01/07/elon-musk-has-ripped-cloak-of-deceit-off-britain-scandal/
    You know, as the debate over Musk’s “interference” rages and Labour sees the edifice of diversity politics crashing around their ears, and Starmer looks more inhuman by the day, it’s easy to forget what this is about. Why it matters so very much. Over the weekend, I made myself read the sentencing remarks of His Honour Judge Peter Rook after the trial of Akhtar Dogar, Anjum Dogar, Kamar Jamil, Mohammed Karrar and Basam Karrar. My God. In paragraph after paragraph, the judge outlines what those Pakistani-heritage brutes did to their victims. Less like sexual abuse than the kind of atrocities you encounter only in wartime. “Years of sheer torture .. great brutality.. robbed of their adolescence… torment and distress.. apart from using her for your own sexual gratification you coerced her into providing sex to vast numbers of strangers. Up to four or five men would be invited to addresses so they could have sex with her. Customers would become angry. Strangers would burn her with cigarettes. Slapped. She said the men had a ‘pack mentality’. Grabbing her by the ponytail and forcing her head down onto his penis. Drink and drugs to make them more malleable. One inserted a hairbrush into her vagina. She suffers from self-loathing. Nightmares, panic attacks,………….

  191. That's me done for this cold, miserable, unpredictable weather laden day. I've stoked the Rayburn, so now I'm about to fill my hot water bottles and turn in. Goodnight and sleep well, everybody.

      1. And me. Sleep well, chums, and I'll see you all later this morning (Wednesday the 8th).

  192. I have completely lost track of time. It feels like a Thursday to me as it’s my fourth working day here; but it’s only Wednesday, of course.

  193. No good can't sleep last straw for me was the Alison Pearson article I'm not a suscriber so hadn't read it until I found this open link
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/27510001bba33d67
    Can't express what I'm feeling an old rage reawakened it didn't end well for me last time but it ended a damn sight worse for those subjects of my ire just as well i'm old tired sick and lacking in resources at the moment i would see the world burn…………

    1. Morning Rik.

      Alison's powerful piece should be the entire Front Page of today's Telegraph. It is a shameful condemnation of the lack of political courage, by all the main parties over decades, who did not address the issue but also actively suppressed the horrendous news.

      The Telegraph has closed comments on the piece which is I think more powerful than Zola's "J'accuse!" – Dreyfus Affair.

  194. phew! It’s OK everyone. We have got the Muslim rape gangs off the front pages and are after the SAS being nasty to the RoPers instead. Suck on that, evil hWitey.

  195. also. Labour pandering to its efnik vote. Very very very minor – unless you are in tower hamlets, for example.

    ”ANGELA RAYNER has suggested the Government could water down or scrap voter ID rules before the next election.
    The Deputy Prime Minister told MPS yesterday that she would “look at” the requirements around photo identification, which were introduced by the Tories in 2023.
    Her remarks will add to speculation that Labour is to axe the rules, which were introduced to help tackle electoral fraud. Ms Rayner suggested voter ID was disenfranchising some voters and questioned whether it was necessary because fraud rates are low.
    “The one thing I would say is that in all of the reports that we’ve had in the past, in terms of electoral fraud [it] is very, very, very, very minor,” she told a Commons committee. “And, therefore, we want to enfranchise people into exercising their vote and we’ll look at voter ID as part of that.”
    She made the comments when asked how ministers planned to tackle foreign funding of political parties. The question, from Labour MP Joe Powell, appeared to be a reference to reports that Elon Musk could give a sizeable donation to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.
    Ms Rayner said there needed to be more “transparency in the process of where donations come from” before talking about the impact of voter ID.
    Asked when she would like to see changes to the rules around elections, she said: “I would want to do that as soon as possible. Certainly before the next general election, so people are very clear and have confidence in our electoral system and in the transparency and [so] that people can exercise their right to vote.
    “I get frustrated that people feel disconnected from politics and politicians. I want people to be engaged in that process and have confidence in our political system and that’s what we’ll be hoping to achieve.”
    Labour did not pledge to scrap voter ID in its manifesto but did say that it would “address the inconsistencies” within the Tory rules.
    The document suggested the party would expand the types of ID allowed, with ministers having since expanded the rules to include veteran cards.
    The Institute for Public Policy Research, a think tank with Labour links, recently called for the “removal or relaxation” of voter ID rules.”

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