Wed 11 May: This Government lacks the vision to get the country back on track

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411 thoughts on “Wed 11 May: This Government lacks the vision to get the country back on track

  1. Sorry, folks. For some reason, WordPress failed to include the Disqus comments section when I published today’s page. Strangely, although I was able to post a link to it, the WordPress dashboard doesn’t think it exists. So – here is a replacement page, which appears to have worked…

      1. Is that the 12 good men/lassies and true who sit in on jury trials in Scotland, Ped? Lol.

    1. Well done, Geoff. I was about to call you a Very Silly Sausage and tell you to go to the Naughty Step, but fortunately I refrained from swearing so hopefully I will not be cast out of NoTTLeland. Lol.

  2. Good morning, again. It is raining – gently but steadily. Won’t last, of course.

    1. Still raining gently but steadily, here, too. First wet day for weeks and weeks. 16th March was the last wet day here. Hope it gets into the water butts which are nearly running dry.

      Our nesting swift keeps looking out and decides to go back to bed.

      1. I am now doubly glad i made the effort to cut our grass on Monday afternoon it seems Thomas Shaveanacker was quite correct when he forecast this weather on Sunday morning.

        1. Yes – he’s right sometimes! Like a broken clock……… But Sunday lived up to its name and was glorious here, for the first outdoor fundraiser for nearly three years.

          1. We had a lovely day as well on Sunday a family Christening and a gathering in our son’s back garden he had to put some umbrellas up to give us shade.

      2. It’s because I started watering the garden yesterday. My Loderi King George is still droopy…

  3. Bon Jaw and Morning all, that’s a bit of a shame i had read most of the post on my Mobile, but i can never log in on it. I have now arrived and here and everything has vanished………..

    1. See under yesterday!!

      There ought to be a way of lifting all “today’s” stuff from, er, yesterday and putting it here. A sort of cut and paste job.

      I’ll go and have a lie down…

      1. 🎵”Yesterday all my troubles seemed so far away”.🎶……
        Put yer feet up Bill. When I awoke at 6:30 am I had a quick look on the nottlers page and thought it was Tuesday all over again. And despite all efforts I could not get onto todays page straight away.

      2. Just what I am about to do myself, Bill. Great minds, and all that. PS – do you have a date for your local Church fund-raiser? I have run out of your wonderful lemon curd (and the small jar which Annie gave me too).

  4. Repeating myself – with apologies – as I hadn’t noticed that the new page is now up and running. Shows how little notice I take of “The News” these days. I hadn’t realised that the vid of Sir Keir partying through the window was shot by Ivo Delingpole, son of James.

  5. What is Gove on about he wants people to vote on whether people can build out of concept extensions on their existing homes ? Often Bringing back the terracing effect.
    A few bungs here and there will fix it, it usually does the trick.
    The only good thing that might arise is the people who are most affected by the building work might at long last ‘get a voice’ on the matters. i.e. those who live in the vicinity and close proximity and have to put up with all the trucks, vans, dust dirt and noise created. While the disillusioned in their 3 bed semis are building their dream 5 bed dressing room mansions, with their must have full width dormers and of course must have Juliette balconies.

  6. This Government lacks the will vision to get the country back on track.

    Driven agenda controlled by outside influences has removed any thoughts of making life better for the demos. The globalists within all parties need to be weeded out: tough job with little left in the political sphere to work with but fewer politicos may not be such a bad idea.

    1. Johnson has the Great Reset telling him NOT to get UK back on track

      I pray for the day, when White Brits are accepted as people in UK

      1. When the entire administration is dedicated to destroying the UK in tax, debt and cultural genocide it cannot be an accident.

    2. This is why nothing ever is resolved, the government make certain promises to appeal to the public during an election, the ‘THEY’ put the government in their place and change the course back to the original agenda. the most obvious and classic example is the rubber boat invasion. It’s obviously something set up by the ‘THEY’ who obviously want this nation’s long established history, culture and social structure, brought to it’s knees.

    3. Apologies, but it’s not will to go forward – it’s an intention to drive us backward.

  7. Thailand’s kind-hearted Public Health Minister says he will offer
    households a million cannabis plants for free from next month. Anutin
    Charnvirakul’s generous gesture is to mark June 9, from when people will
    be legally permitted to grow cannabis plants in their own homes.

    However,
    it will have to be medical-grade cannabis only and can only be used for
    medicinal purposes. According to a Nation Thailand report, there will
    be no official registration required to grow the plant at home.
    “Medical Grade Only”
    Aye right,will officials be having a toke off each plant to check??

  8. It’s the righteous certainty that is so worrying…

    The Tories are going all out to shut down protest. Just Stop Oil activists like me will not be deterred

    We do what we do because it is right, not because it is legal. The Queen’s speech has only strengthened our resolve

    Anonymous – Tue 10 May 2022 18.03

    If your house was burning down and the emergency services were not answering your call, what would you do? Would you try to put out the fire yourself? This is what climate activists are currently doing, and what they will continue to do, whatever changes the government makes to legislation to curb protest.

    Despite politicians across the world committing to net zero, action is yet to follow rhetoric. Instead, nations continue to extract fossil fuels from the ground and burn them, releasing more carbon into the atmosphere contributing to extreme weather that will displace millions. Here in the UK, the government has approved new oil- and gasfields in the North Sea, despite hosting Cop26 just a few months ago and committing to decarbonising all sectors of the UK economy to meet its net zero target by 2050.

    Activists like me, who make up Just Stop Oil, have decided that if governments and businesses will not act to stop the burning of fossil fuels, they will. Some have targeted oil terminals, tankers and petrol stations in England and Scotland.

    Just Stop Oil supporters have been arrested more than 1,200 times since our campaign began at the beginning of April. Many will not be deterred by greater penalties as the government brings in new public order measures targeted against us. In today’s Queen speech, new measures included new criminal offences of locking on, and going equipped to lock on to other people, objects or buildings; interfering with key national infrastructure; and measures to make it illegal to obstruct major transport works. Fossil fuel infrastructure has been given more protection than people currently living in the global south, and future generations.

    They act not because it is legal, but because it is the right thing to do. It’s the difference between civil resistance and protest. They have tried writing to their MPs, writing petitions, and donating money to charities. It hasn’t worked. They don’t want to cause disruption but it’s 2022 and they can no longer stand by: they have chosen to step up.

    They are no longer asking the government to change; they are putting our bodies on the line with the intention of causing disruption to force change. Strengthening protest law will not stop the disruption. Instead our government faces locking up hundreds, maybe thousands of ordinary people.

    If that appears extreme, think about what António Guterres, the United Nations general secretary, said: “Climate activists are sometimes depicted as dangerous radicals. But the truly dangerous radicals are the countries that are increasing the production of fossil fuels. Investing in new fossil fuels infrastructure is moral and economic madness.”

    One year ago, Sir David King, the government’s former chief scientific adviser, said we have three to four years to determine the fate of humanity. In this scenario, isn’t inaction the criminal offence?

    The writer is a Just Stop Oil activist.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/may/10/just-stop-oil-activists-queens-speech-tories

    1. Lock the bustard up and throw away the key – sanctimonious little git!

      Edit: How come Rik-Redux gets the exotic Heidi upvoting while I just get Jennifer!??

    2. Go protest in China or India and I might have a smidgen of respect for you wrong thinking as you are as it is you’re just a useless virtue signalling tosser

    3. But it’s not right, is it? It’s just your opinion. Your ego. Everything around you is made from oil. I appreciate you are a child, but the reality is that what we’ve made from oil has led to the greatest advances in human history.

      Also, if we were to ‘step up’ you’d find yourself beaten up and left to die – and of course, as you’ve renounced anything made from oil… no medicines. You do not get your own way just because you want it. That’s just ego. How would you react if someone else decided that they were right and that we should use more oil?

      You can only change yourself. So here’s a challenge: go without anything made from oil . Stop intruding on our lives and live a life without oil yourself. Those glues you use? Made from oil. Those zip ties? Oil. Clothes? Oil. Paper? Books? Anaesthetics? Food? All made from oil. You’re just an egotistical, arrogant, hypocritical little fascist pretending he’s on a moral crusade of righteousness.

      1. Time to give this little gem another airing:

        “Greta’s Green Day

        One crisp winter morning in Sweden, a cute little girl named Greta woke up to a perfect world, one where there were no petroleum products ruining the earth. She tossed aside her cotton sheet and wool blanket and stepped out onto a dirt floor covered with willow bark that had been pulverised with rocks.

        “What’s this?” she asked.

        “Pulverised willow bark,” replied her fairy godmother.

        “What happened to the carpet?” she asked.

        “The carpet was nylon, which is made from Butadiene and hydrogen cyanide, both made from petroleum,” came the response.

        Greta smiled, acknowledging that adjustments are necessary to save the planet, and moved to the sink to brush her teeth where instead of a toothbrush, she found a willow, mangled on one end to expose wood fibre bristles.

        “Your old toothbrush?” noted her godmother, “Also nylon.”

        “Where’s the water?” asked Greta.

        “Down the road in the canal,” replied her godmother, ‘Just make sure you avoid water with cholera in it”

        “Why’s there no running water?” Greta asked, becoming a little peevish.

        “Well,” said her godmother, who happened to teach engineering at MIT, “Where do we begin?”

        There followed a long monologue about how sink valves need elastomer seats and how copper pipes contain copper, which has to be mined and how it’s impossible to make all-electric earth-moving equipment with no gear lubrication or tyres and how ore has to be smelted to make metal, and that’s tough to do, with only electricity as a source of heat, and, even if you use only electricity, the wires need insulation, which is petroleum-based, and though most of Sweden’s energy is produced in an environmentally friendly way because of hydro and nuclear, if you do a mass and energy balance around the whole system, you still need lots of petroleum products like lubricants and nylon and rubber for tyres and asphalt for filling potholes and wax and iPhone plastic and elastic to hold your underwear up while operating a copper smelting furnace and . . .

        “What’s for breakfast?” interjected Greta, whose head was hurting.

        “Fresh, range-fed chicken eggs,” replied her godmother. “raw.”

        “How so, raw?” inquired Greta.

        “Well, …

        . . .” And once again, Greta was told about the need for petroleum products like transformer oil and scores of petroleum products essential for producing metals for frying pans and in the end was educated about how you can’t have a petroleum-free world and then cook eggs. Unless you rip your front fence up and start a fire and carefully cook your egg in an orange peel like you do in Boy Scouts. Not that you can find oranges in Sweden anymore.

        “But I want poached eggs like my Aunt Tilda makes,” lamented Greta.

        “Tilda died this morning,” the godmother explained. “Bacterial pneumonia.”

        “What?!” interjected Greta. “No one dies of bacterial pneumonia! We have penicillin.”

        “Not anymore,” explained godmother “The production of penicillin requires chemical extraction using isobutyl acetate, which, if you know your organic chemistry, is petroleum-based. Lots of people are dying, which is problematic because there’s not any easy way of disposing of the bodies since backhoes need hydraulic oil and crematoriums can’t really burn many bodies using as fuel Swedish fences and furniture, which are rapidly disappearing – being used on the black market for roasting eggs and staying warm.”

        This represents only a fraction of Greta’s day, a day without microphones to exclaim into and a day without much food, and a day without carbon-fibre boats to sail in, but a day that will save the planet.

        Tune in tomorrow when Greta needs a root canal and learns how Novocain is synthesised.”

    4. That little sermon and the associated antisocial activity would be very fine if it were actually true. It is not. Carbon dioxide is not a problem. (If it were it might be worth considering the amount of vegetation we have destroyed around the planet.) Global warming may or not be real but why is it thought to be harmful? There are signs that the planet was warmer some time ago. There is also growing evidence that the planet may be cooling down. That may be more of a problem.

    5. Needs a good kicking. Bet this person has never done a useful day’s work in their miserable life.

    6. David King knows about as much about it as my cat.
      He’s playing politics.

  9. RT has sent me a headlines link. I cannot access the story as RT is blocked now.
    “Millions of UK homes face no heat this winter, power chief warns. Scottish Power’s CEO has warned that annual energy bills could reach £3000 in October, depriving 10 million homes of heat.”
    The price of electricity rises because of the increases in the cost of the fuel and resources used to generate the electricity, doesn’t it? In Scotland our electricity comes 87% from renewables and nuclear and these costs have not risen. The rest comes from fossil fuel, mainly gas*. (We’ll skip the questions why the price of North Sea gas should rise.). If the price of gas doubles that is only a fraction of the total cost and amounts to a 13% increase, not a 40% increase as we are told will happen.
    (Keep in mind that in Scotland we are told that our total energy requirement can be produced from renewables.)
    So given the horrific outcomes a 40% rise in the price of electricity will cause, why has the price rise of electricity not been capped at say, 10%?
    What is true is that the energy businesses will continue to achieve huge profits.

    * Approximately. Finding accurate figures is nigh impossible.
    https://fullfact.org/environment/scotland-renewable-energy/

    1. I suppose there’s an irony that energy subsidy is used to keep energy prices high… err, to provide a floor for wind energy on the market (as if it were sold in a free market with no subsidy, no one would buy it) also makes our bills high. We’re being made to pay high taxes to keep energy expensive.

    2. For the life of me i can not understand why electricity prices are rising unless of course as many suspect it is the usual political rip off to pay for all their mistakes. Number one being the cost of keeping thousands of illegal invaders. We now spend around a total of 26 billion on other people including foreign aide. And we get absolute nothing but trouble in return.

        1. ….and the less money there is flowing through and around the public’s hands and into the economy to keep businesses afloat. All we will be spending it on is energy.

      1. Electricity prices are going up because all of the free sunshine and wind is becoming more expensive.

    3. I can access the RT webistes on my iPhone at work but not at home, which tells me that it’s Talk Talk doing the blocking and not Apple?

      1. I’m on the EE network I think – I’ll check that. Thanks for the suggestion.

  10. At last! (Sob) The last rays of Freedom in a Stygian World of Lies and Repression beam out once more. Morning everyone.

  11. If you thought the Stop The Oil protestor a bit of a loony, read this:

    ‘People say they want me arrested’: the owners putting their pets on vegan diets


    Michelle Thomas has been a vegan for six years. Her two-year-old Hungarian vizsla, Loki, went vegan at 10 months, after a recommended two-month transition period.

    “Being vegan myself, what I was feeding my dogs was becoming increasingly troubling to me, as it went against the way I was living,” Thomas says. “So I started looking into whether I could safely feed my dog a plant-based diet.”

    Was it primarily an ethical decision? “Absolutely, it’s ethical,” she says. “And it’s also hugely environmental. We’re in a true planetary emergency, and we can no longer ignore the part that animal agriculture is playing in destroying the planet.”


    Dr Arielle Griffiths MRCVS, a veterinarian and the director of Just Be Kind Dog Food, offers nutritional advice and vegan dog food recommendations on her Just Be Kind website.

    Griffiths threw herself into the study of pet nutrition, and was surprised by what she found. “The more I looked at it, the more I realised that, just like humans, the more plants you add into the diet, the healthier the pet will be.”

    This flies in the face of conventional thinking, which is that a vegan diet is only potentially feasible for dogs, and wholly unsuitable for cats. “I think it’s important to recognise that while dogs theoretically can eat a vegetarian or vegan diet, cats are obligate carnivores, and we really do not recommend feeding them this because of the very serious health concerns that can result,” says Justine Shotton, the president of the British Veterinary Association.

    Griffiths disagrees, even when it comes to cats. “Cats are so unhealthy in this country, terribly unhealthy – obesity problems and allergy problems, and arthritis problems,” she says. “If cats were to go plant-based, we’d see a huge change in health in cats.” [Yeah, right missus! They’d all die!]


    Full article here: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2022/may/11/pets-vegan-food-diet-meat

    1. This is a true story , a few years old , but happened near here.

      Wealthy but alcoholic lady , quite young , owned a dog , which she adored ..

      Lady was not seen for a few days , in fact not for over a week , because no one saw her exercising her dog .. weather was in one of those rainy written off summers … remember those days more than a decade ago ?

      Dear lady could not be contacted , so police and relatives were summoned to enter the property.. She was dead , and her wonderful hungry dog had eaten her leg .

      I have no idea whether the dog was rehomed. ..

        1. A A Gill wrote an article about this sort of situation. The dog, if you die in its presence at home, will whine, jump up and down, paw at you, bark….. but nobody comes. Eventually the dog will get hungry, and still whine and bark for assistance but in the end it will give up and turn its attentions to your body and start chewing. Because in the final analysis, it’s a dog.

          1. If the owner loved the dog, I’m sure she would rather it ate her leg after she was dead than starved!

    2. It’s all quite true. Surely you have seen dogs and cats raiding your vegetable gardens, ripping leaves off trees for food and offering rats and mice nice pieces of plant life?

      1. Charlie used to eat my pea pods before I could harvest them. I’d be at one end putting them into a container and he’d be at the other, eating them.

    3. I saw an advert today for a bag in “vegan leather”. What? You mean PLASTIC, you prat!

  12. Raining here , and Moh playing golf .

    Here am I with some day time TV on .

    There have been several BBC progs about lonely people looking for love being lured into scamming traps .

    Women and men getting caught by Dating on line stuff.. they fall in love with an image and a life style … and unbelievable hard luck stories ..

    The images are stolen from Soshial media , and my word the depths of deceit is incredible .. and probably originating from a gang in Ghana. Nigeria ,Ukraine , or even Tower Hamlets .

    People have been scammed out of everything they own .

    Now, I am wondering as may some of you , where do these black /brown half brown migrants get their inflatable dinghy fares from . and their mobiles and designer shoes?

    I can guess… can’t you?

  13. As he turns 70, we look back at HRH The Prince of Wales’ 40-year commitment to championing environmental and sustainable causes.(3 years ago?)

    Over the past 40 years, HRH has actively championed, promoted and spearheaded causes that address important global challenges like climate change, deforestation and ocean pollution “The Prince has promoted sustainability to ensure that the natural assets upon which we all depend among other things soil, water, forests, a stable climate and fish stocks endure for future generations,” states his official website.

    His many initiatives and campaigns include Campaign for Wool – which drives awareness of the environmental benefits of wool – the Prince’s Rainforest Project, and The Prince’s Trust – the UK’s largest youth charity. It was this outstanding contribution to global environmental preservation and protection, and the Prince’s passionate vision for a better future for humanity, that led to him being awarded the 2017 GCC Global Leader of Change award.
    https://eco-age.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/gcc_prince_charles.jpg

    Another shiny bauble to add to the vast collections on his bedside tables. HRH Prince Charles (PoW) Prince of Woke.Greener than festering seaweed and wetter than transgender toilet floor. God ‘elp us when he accedes to the throne.

    1. He can put it alongside his Laurens van der Post books and his collection of homeopathic “medicines”….

    2. Asperger’s Syndrome is one of the disorders that is generally considered high functioning on the Autism spectrum. Individuals with Asperger’s Syndrome, known as Aspergians, suffer from a number of impairments, namely social, but also can have challenges with motor skills. For example, Aspergians have difficulty with communication in a variety of ways. They may have self-imposed rules or patterns that are usually very restrictive.

  14. Ceylon (Sri Lanka) seems to be making a complete horlicks of independence ….. Should its people be offered a referendum on rejoining the British Empire? (any retired colonial/HongKong administrators available?) … BTW there seems to have been absolutely no reflection along these lines on the BBC

    1. Morning Lewis. It’s history since independence from Britain is one of endemic corruption, Marxist ideology and attempted genocide relieved by Civil War and bankruptcy. Apart from that its been great!

    2. Morning Lewis. It’s history since independence from Britain is one of endemic corruption, Marxist ideology and attempted genocide relieved by Civil War and bankruptcy. Apart from that its been great!

  15. 352611+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Wed 11 May: This Government lacks the vision to get the country back on track

    May one beg to differ, the above should read

    The electorate lacks the vison & nerve to self analyse see “their party” in the light of truth then build an opposition to the lab/lib/con pro eu coalition.

    This government could NOT have been bettered in running a semi covert campaign
    of destruction backed all the way by the
    misguided herd showing allegiance to a political element that no longer exists, the Tory party.

    1. It’s fairer to say that most people are mind numbingly dim and don’t understand that the problems we suffer are entirely caused by the state machine for it’s own benefit and our impoverishment.

      Why people squeal for energy to be nationalised, for government to ‘do something’ I don’t know. Government’s the problem, not the solution!

      1. 352611+ up ticks,

        Afternoon W,
        The majority of the electorate I believe look upon a general election as some sort of jousting tournament with no mind of consequence, political shite shufflers.

    1. It’s not a challenge at all. Government has shown it not only doesn’t care, it’s actively wants us poorer.

      I’m still bewildered by the level of stupidity amongst folk who think the energy companies are making huge profits. Shell might be, but they’re not a UK company. Tax them and they pass the taxes on. It is government making energy expensive. Government deliberately wasting money on windmills rather than real energy generation. Government taxing energy.

        1. If that’s true, and I think it is approximately correct, the garages are being squeezed hugely, with fewer people driving to work.

          1. That’s why, BB2, we pay thruppence more to support our local garage, who also services our cars and does the necessary MOTs.

          2. It’s even worse than that for the retailer, as the credit card companies charge a % of the overall tansaction. Anything up to 3%, although it will be less than that for a garage.

  16. Tariq Ali’s Churchill biography is a Marxist insult to history

    The old soixante-huitard’s new book, ‘Winston Churchill: His Times, His Crimes’, sets ideological hang-ups above serious research

    SIMON HEFFER

    It is now customary for those writing books on Winston Churchill to answer the question: “Why another book on Winston Churchill?” Tariq Ali does so, and the answer appears to be: “Because this book is by Tariq Ali.”

    The author, our greatest living soixante-huitard, is not a historian or indeed a particularly good biographer, but a controversialist of the sort to be found in most of Britain’s saloon bars. Ali is too refined to frequent such places – he is found in salons, not saloons – but is entitled to goad the Churchill fan club by pointing out the failings of their hero. It has all, however, been done before.

    It started over half a century ago, in 1970, by Robert Rhodes James in his Churchill: A Study in Failure, which went through the card of Churchill’s misjudgments up to 1940. Inevitably, once the former prime minister became the incarnation of British defiance of Nazi Germany, his earlier mistakes were relegated in his personal story.

    Churchill himself was a ruthless self-publicist, and not above re-writing his own history, providing an authorised version for his admirers to soak up. Objectively, his main failures were the Dardanelles, the trigger-happy expedition to Russia in 1919 to fight the Bolsheviks, the 1925 decision (taken for him by the governor of the Bank of England, and which he did not begin to understand) to put Britain back on the Gold Standard, his prehistoric belief in the 1930s that Britain should deny greater self-government to India, and his blinkered support for Edward VIII. Ali kicks him for most of these: but so have several other biographers, far more conclusively and effectively.

    Ali seems to mount a class analysis of Churchill’s wickedness, but he never really succeeds. He has also jumped on the Black Lives Matter bandwagon, adherents of which daubed Churchill’s statue with graffiti accusing him of racism. As the term is now defined, Churchill was a racist. He unquestionably believed in the supremacy of European peoples, and those descended from them. There is much evidence, and Ali lip-smackingly quotes plenty of it. Again, other biographies have been down this road. When Churchill held these views, so did the overwhelming majority of his fellow Britons. Ali and those like him who see, or fail to see, historical context, have no notion that the past is a foreign country.

    Winston Churchill: His Times, His Crimes is padded out with largely irrelevant history about the working-class movement and anti-colonialism. Ali assigns responsibility to Churchill for many iniquities of the 20th century, such as kicking him for brutalities during the Mau-Mau rebellion. By the time the worst outrages happened, however, Churchill had retired. He certainly appointed Alan Lennox-Boyd, the derelict Colonial Secretary of the time, but Anthony Eden and Harold Macmillan re-appointed him.

    All this is of a piece in a book whose grasp of historical fact is so slapdash as to seem random. For example, Ali says that in a remark censored from the Chips Channon diaries, Rab Butler, referring to Churchill’s parentage, talked of “a half-breed American”. This surprised me, because I (as Channon’s editor) am one of a handful who have read the complete manuscript diaries, and the phrase does not appear. It does, however, appear in the diaries of Churchill’s secretary Jock Colville, with whom Ali has rather remarkably confused Channon.

    Seeking to associate Churchill with the alleged excesses of the British Army in the Second Boer War, Ali claims the then-leader of the Liberal Party, Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman, spoke of “barbarous” soldiers. He didn’t. He said the colonial authorities were using “methods of barbarism”, which they were in having concentration camps for Boer women and children: this is not remotely the same thing.

    Nor was Churchill first at the Admiralty then the Home Office. It was the other way round, and before that he was at the Board of Trade. Even Ali must admit that Churchill held the troops back from Tonypandy in 1910 during massive unrest among the South Wales miners – but he finds it harder to admit that Churchill reluctantly ordered them in because of widespread looting destroying the property and livelihoods of other working-class people in South Wales. Ali apparently cannot bear to correct a powerful, but baseless, socialist myth.

    Churchill was undeniably enthusiastic for war, and not just in 1914. But Ali’s suggestion that the centenary commemorations of the “Great” War (his quotation marks) amounted to a “Glorification” is ridiculous. Having witnessed and participated in some of them, I know they were nothing of the sort, and his attempt to criticise the adjective “Great” is just silly: he must know what it means in this context.

    If he read the archives – and he doesn’t: his book is based entirely on secondary sources of a monotone nature – he would know that Churchill had only collective responsibility for Asquith’s decision to declare war in 1914. If he read the magisterial speech by Sir Edward Grey, the Foreign Secretary, in the Commons on 3 August 1914, he would see an exact and truthful account of why we fought: it wasn’t to defend our Empire, which later vanished as a result.

    He quotes Alan Clark’s citation of the “Lions led by Donkeys” remarks about that war as being made by one German general to another. It wasn’t: Clark made up not the quote, but the attribution, and later admitted it. Ali didn’t need to search an archive or read a book to discover that: it’s a few keystrokes away on the internet.

    Further research would have revealed how horrified Churchill was by Haig’s plans for the Somme: he is on record as telling Maurice Hankey, the future cabinet secretary, so, just before the barrage started. Churchill wasn’t even in government, but is found guilty by association. Ali says that in 1918 “the political leaders of Britain, including Churchill, abandoned the cousin of George V [Nicholas II of Russia] to his fate”.

    That is a grotesque error. The decision was taken by the King himself, advised by his private secretary, Lord Stamfordham, which too is an indisputable matter of record. Lloyd George, by then prime minister, offered asylum to the Romanovs when people of Ali’s Marxist-Leninist cast of mind were preparing to shoot them, but he was overruled. And the stupid decision to return to the Gold Standard didn’t result in the economic crisis of 1929: it simply made the crisis worse when it came by other means.

    Churchill’s approval of British non-intervention in the Spanish Civil War was absolutely right, because taking sides would have made us vulnerable, and we had insufficient arms in 1936 to support any diplomacy. In any case, Churchill was not only not in office, but was actively ignored by the Baldwin administration: his views were irrelevant. Ali, lifting information from highly questionable and much-criticised work by Janam Mukherjee, thinks Churchill aggravated the Bengal famine in 1943, and therefore merits comparison with Mao and Stalin, two other famine-mongers. Again, serious archival work would have shown that a million tons of grain were sent to Bengal from August 1943 to late 1944, and would also have revealed orders from Churchill to see that the problem was addressed.

    Ali has been playing the same old tune since 1968 and, frankly, it’s getting boring. Churchill is but his latest target among those whose main sin was not to be a Marxist revolutionary. His book is not entirely worthless: it highlights genuine flaws in Churchill’s character and a number of obtuse acts. Ali is right to say the cult must be challenged, and that many of the former prime minister’s partisans are blinkered. There is a case to be made against Churchill – but it is best made with historical accuracy.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/what-to-read/tariq-alis-churchill-biography-marxist-insult-history/

    BTL:
    Steven Burston
    Ali, like so many of his political travellers can’t resist another chance to bash one of the heroes of the West, who ironically is one of the most prominent anti-fascists of them all. I wonder when Ali is going to look much more deeply into the overt racism of one Karl Marx.

    Incidentally, the return to the Gold Standard was not a disaster, but returning to the Gold Standard at the 1914 rate, after the pound had devalued considerably during WW1, was the real disaster, and that was a decision made by Montagu Norman, the governor of the Bank of England, rather than Churchill. Keynes was also wrong, as the constant lurch from boom to bust ever since has shown, although it did make funding warfare easier.

    Scipio Britannicus
    Churchill led our country and the world to defeat tyranny and to allow millions to live a life of freedom – sadly, some don’t deserve the freedom they take for granted and try and undermine.
    Why don’t you investigate the 100 million + innocents murdered by the Marxist claptrap you support Ali, Churchill is beyond you.

    Richard Atkinson
    If the UK hadn’t entered WWII, then who knows what the colonies would’ve looked like today. For better or worse it happened. In hindsight I think the author has more to thank Churchill for than he imagines.

    Henry Englefield
    Has Tariq Ali ever done a real day’s work in his life?

      1. Might be an idea to pick them off the shelves and drop them accidently on the floor.

        1. Probably not a good idea to make such statements, even ironically. Remarks posted on soshul meeja are admissible in court, or so I heard/read recently.

  17. How about this peeps……..
    email from Boreus to

    Me,

    We’ve announced our new legislative agenda – delivering on the priorities of people across the United Kingdom.

    The 38 bills announced yesterday help ease the cost of living, grow our economy and make our streets safer.

    We have been providing leadership in challenging times – leading the response to Putin’s invasion and protecting lives and livelihoods against Covid.

    And while we’re getting on with the job, Labour and the Lib Dems have nothing to say.

    They’re playing politics with no ideas of their own.

    The best way to support our plans in Parliament is by becoming a member.
    Yeah right……….

    1. I suspect it’s another type of invasion most Tory supporters are more concerned about.

      1. I see no intrinsic difference between our political parties at all. Whilst their manipulation carries on regardless of the circumstances, there seems to be an hereditary hate for the electorate who ever becomes ‘the powers that be’. After a general election we always end up with a minority dictatorship, the majority of the electorate voted against the incoming parity. That’s a problem with a three plus party system we are stuck with.

      1. We will be saying more and doing more to help..” Well, I can certainly believe the first part! Actually doing something however will be more of a problem.

        1. Agreed, as has always happened the political classes eff up everything they come into contact with.
          It makes no difference what their misdemeanors amount to. They keep their fake ‘jobs’ their expenses accounts, salaries and the their pensions.

    2. “The 38 bills announced yesterday help ease the cost of living, grow our economy and make our streets safer.”

      Politics has become a dismal race to pass as many pointless laws as possible

      The great clash of ideas has been replaced with the utopian belief that MPs can solve all of life’s problems

      PHILIP JOHNSTON

      The absence of the Queen from the State Opening of Parliament for understandable reasons was a shame given how committed she has been to her duties over the past 70 years. She has missed just two during her reign, both for pregnancies, and there have been two years without a Queen’s Speech when Parliament sat for more than 12 months, most recently during the Brexit crisis.

      Since her accession, Her Majesty has made the journey along the Mall to Westminster 65 times to read out a speech prepared for her by either a Conservative or Labour (and on one occasion a coalition) government. According to the Buckingham Palace website, she has given Royal Assent to approximately 4,000 Acts of Parliament, and these have spawned thousands more measures through secondary legislation known as statutory instruments.

      The Queen would have been forgiven over her long reign for shaking her head in disbelief at the legislative incontinence of her governments. Surely it is possible over the course of 70 years to reach a political consensus about the most effective way of dealing with crime or an acceptable approach to, say, planning. When the Prince of Wales, standing in for his mother, said Her Majesty’s Government would ensure that the police were able to make streets safer, has no administration ever thought of that before? How many Acts of Parliament has the monarch signed containing powers that are never properly used?

      Of course, politics is a disputatious affair and these differences manifest themselves in a desire to pass laws to make everyone conform to the worldview of the party that wins an election. Yet the great ideological clashes of the past, such as the involvement of the state in industrial production, have been largely settled (though a Corbyn-led Labour government would have reopened many of them).

      They have been replaced by a depressing paternalism where a government takes it upon itself to impose a utopian idea of how life should be, an unattainable perfection where no one gets hurt, no risks are taken, no one smokes, eats or drinks too much, no one thinks badly of other people or of what they believe – and certainly does not express it if they do – and where everything is equal and fair.

      Where, once, it was accepted that human nature was flawed and it was the job of government to make the best of a bad job but interfere as little as possible, it now considers its function to be transformative even if it means limiting the liberties of some people to appease more vocal critics, the hunting ban being one example among many.

      Ministers regard the number of Bills they champion as a sign of their political virility. Suggest that their department might actually stop regulating for a few years and they look at you as if you are mad: what are we here for otherwise, they ask? Good question in some cases.

      The annual requirement to find 20 or 30 Bills to put into the Speech becomes a frantic search for more things in which to interfere. If I could instigate just one reform, it would be to have a single Queen’s Speech per parliament which would announce the legislative programme necessary to implement the manifesto promises from the general election.

      Measures that become necessary for unexpected reasons would be brought forward with a vote of MPs but they would be in extremis, not for political posturing. Every major Bill should contain a “sunset clause” – an automatic self-destruct mechanism that means the legislation will expire after, say, five years unless explicitly reaffirmed by Parliament.

      This would allow MPs to revisit the measures to see if they have worked as intended. True, we have become much better at scrutinising legislation before it gets into Parliament, but not enough is done to keep track of how it is going until the complaints start pouring in.

      In theory, under reforms introduced by the Coalition, there is a “one in, two out” rule for legislation but it is by no means clear that this is being followed. What we need is a more balanced state that does not seek to run all our lives from the cradle to the grave. However, this is a difficult message to get across to a country that feels far more comfortable being looked after than looking after itself, as evinced by the pandemic experience.

      Moreover, there is a cost to excessive legislation. It is at least partly responsible for the waste of billions of pounds of public money over the years. Ministers trying to make an impression set out impossible ambitions; officials try to achieve them, usually through introducing new information technology and processes that are unsuited to the task; and a few years later the project collapses at vast cost to the taxpayer.

      Far too many laws are introduced for what this or that government – or, in the past, this or that EU policymaker – judges to be in our own best interests or to assuage the anger of a particular pressure group.

      Even Boris Johnson, who has inveighed mightily over the years against this tendency, cannot resist it. Yet we all conspire in creating a sense in government that its primary function is to throw an avuncular arm around the populace. When the first question ministers are asked about anything is, “What’s the government going to do about it?” it is difficult to break out of this attitude of mind.

      Yesterday’s Queen’s Speech announced another 38 major measures. Some are welcome but others are simply designed to appeal to a particular cohort of the electorate or in order to have something to say about “levelling up”. It was encouraging to see a predicted attack on second homeowners and some other nanny state proposals ditched; but do we really need to establish a regulator for football or have a policy on alfresco dining?

      As a classicist, Mr Johnson might be familiar with Zaleucus, known as the lawgiver, who ruled at Locri Epizefirii, one of the earliest Greek colonies in Italy, in around 660 BC. According to the historian Edward Gibbon, anyone who proposed a new law, or the alteration of one already existing, had to appear before the citizen’s council with a rope around his neck. If the council voted against the proposal, the instigator was immediately strangled. A bit drastic, perhaps, but then again…

      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/05/10/politics-has-become-dismal-race-pass-many-pointless-laws-possible/

      1. I think HMQ must have seen the speech and decided she’ not going to make a fool of herself and passed to gullible number 1 plonker.

      2. It’s funny that the state is appallingly slow to enact public facing services, yet when it gets something it wants, like a yet another tax hike or the moronic green agenda, it all flies through with the greatest alacrity.

      3. Excellent, i’m going to send that to the Tories they emailed me this morning, this is i believe what they don’t want to hear, but it’s true. Also it’s perfectly obvious that politicians have not much input in these bills, they are solely designed and put forward by the anonymous civil service who en mass hide behind their Whitehall windows and look down upon the populace with utter distain. But Phillip Johnston has really only confirmed what we already know. That the political classes are made up of pathological and habitual liars. Its all they have and all they achieve from the start of their careers whilst living off the tax payers, including their gold plated non con-tributary pensions, to the time they are carried off on a box.

  18. Back on form with a birdie three.
    Wordle 326 3/6

    🟨⬜⬜⬜🟩
    ⬜🟨🟨⬜🟩
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    1. Me too today – having failed miserably yesterday.

      Wordle 326 3/6

      ⬜⬜🟨🟨🟩
      🟨🟩⬜⬜🟩
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

        1. The green ones are the right letters in the right place. The yellow ones are the right letters in the wrong place. The grey boxes are the wrong letters.

        2. UK version: Green – mooslim, yellow – oriental, gray – gay. Underneath are several layers of black ones but they are never revealed.

  19. Oi Laffed

    “How many members of U2 does it take to change a lightbulb?
    Just Bono. He holds it in place and the world revolves around him.”

  20. So what about that Markle creature being touted as a future Democratic President?

    Only a Biden is dumb enough to suggest that.

    1. Nobody I know has any interest in the Markles………politically or otherwise!!

  21. Tory MP Jamie Wallis denies failing to stop and careless driving after late-night crash as he struggled with trans identity and aftermath of rape attack D Fail

    In a highly public statement released in March, Wallis revealed he had been raped and blackmailed, and was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). He also said he wants to transition to be a woman.

    https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2022/05/10/11/57630499-10800747-image-m-34_1652177409409.jpg

    ‘Ooooh, it was awful’. ‘I was all aquiver.’ ‘felt very ashamed and empty inside’. Banged against a wall and into a lamppost?

        1. With a newly acquired tool that needed testing, good to know the rape had all the traditional hallmarks, “Banged against a wall and a lampost.”

          No, it just felt like a lampost in your fundament.

          1. That was the traffic accident – the rape was much more enjoyable… apparently.

          2. I was just setting a scene, Ped. It’s fun to let one’s imagination run riot.

          3. It wouldn’t have been newly acquired – remember – women can have penises, too.

    1. Why do so many [as it seems from the news] ugly, overweight men want to transition?

        1. It is hard to understand though, why so many of them want to transition to become extremely plain middle aged women. I genuinely think they do not realise how such women are treated by many men, and when they experience it, they think it’s transphobia.

      1. They begin when they first realise that they are already títs and want to go the whole way – or is it the hole way?

    2. Apparently he has a doctorate in astrobiology from Cardiff University specialising in cometary panspermia. It’s enough to make one swell with pride!

    3. Perhaps he was trying to emulate a woman driver…

      (Takes VERY deep shelter against incoming…{:¬))…)

      1. That comment could get you a tactical nuclear bomb right on your wine supply 😢

      2. That comment could get you a tactical nuclear bomb righ on your wine supply 😢

  22. Meanwhile our blowhard, pudding-brained, Prime Minister is in Sweden to sign a defence pact which will oblige the UK to come to the aid of Sweden if Sweden is attacked by a foreign power.*
    Tomorrow our simpleton Prime Minister will travel to Finland to sign a defence pact which will oblige the UK to come to the aid of Finland if Finland is attacked by a foreign power*.
    (Apparently if the UK is attacked then Sweden and Finland will come to our aid. But I don’t think I will hold my breath on that one.)
    Elsewhere, NATO lurches around quite randomly. NATO countries are supplying war materiel by the bucket-load to the Ukraine. One slip by those countries closest, for example Poland, would inflate the whole thing into a NATO war. Of course, with Turkey sharing the Black Sea with Russia and the Ukraine there is scope for trouble there, and then some.
    As a member of NATO, having signed the treaty in 1949, the UK would be obliged to participate even if it gets us all killed.
    Had Mr Johnson paid some attention to history at any point, he might perhaps be aware that signing treaties is almost a guarantee of war. Left to their own devices it would seem sensible, perhaps even probable, that individual countries would go to great lengths to avoid war.
    The Treaty of London was signed in 1839 and it was the basis for our entry into WW1. The UK Prime Minister was Herbert Asquith who had not been born when that treaty was signed.
    The “Agreement of Mutual Assistance” between the UK and Poland was signed on 25 August 1939. We were at war with Germany the following week.

    *Looking at you, Russia.

    1. The imbecile is (as directed by his controllers) leading us into a global conflict. They need identifying removing.

    2. “Tell me Boris, just how many fronts do you think Britain could fight on simultaneously by the end of the first week of conflicts?”

      And as a supplementary question:
      “If France, Germany and the USA decide not to join in, do you think Britain will get to the end of a month of conflict with any service people and equipment still available to defend Britain itself?”

      1. Remember the late 50’s and early 60’s when Americans were inundated with adverts for ‘build and stock your own nuclear shelter’ a lot of people did!
        Maybe we should follow our own government directives from that time: stay indoors, hide in a protective area within your house and DIE.
        Why ho why do we get involved in other countries squabbles? we are unfortunately “an insignificant country on the edge of Europe” from a quote by the French; which sadly has now come true.

        1. If Russia actually did decide to attack Britain with conventional weapons which side do you think the French would surrender to?

          1. They would make a tactical withdrawal and exit NATO once again.
            Then when it’s all over, have a victory parade.

    3. The Triple Entente took us into WWI. France, Great Britain and Russia agreed that if any one of the three was attacked, the others would come to her defence. When a Serb attacked the Austro-Hungarian monarchy and the latter eventually responded, Serbia called on Russia for help and France and Great Britain pitched in to rescue “gallant little Serbia”. Then in the 1990s they turned on gallant little Serbia and now they’ve turned on Russia over not so gallant and not so little Ukraine. All to destroy the old European order.

      1. Yes. What can one say…? There are none of them with any sense, or prudence.

  23. Sorry …. but I laughed. See you in Hull.
    From the DM.

    “A man who strangled his girlfriend died of a heart attack as he buried her in their backyard, police in South Carolina said.

    Joseph McKinnon, 60, dug a hole in the couple’s Trenton yard before killing Patricia Dent, 65, Saturday morning.

    He then tied up her body and wrapped it in trash bags, according to Edgefield County cops.

    But moments after burying Dent in the backyard pit, McKinnon himself died of a heart attack.”

    1. On the whole we get a better class of person on NoTTL …. Or do I sound a bit snobbish …

      1. Certainly not.

        A NoTTLer would have his heart attack BEFORE strangling his wife.

    1. In 3 today but yesterday I lost my ball after 6 (and not a single green).

  24. Off out soon to collect a prescription and return rubbish phone. Husband home by 1.30 thank goodness, no procedure done and he’s all set for surgery tomorrow.
    Rain finally stopped and it’s brightening up.
    See you later.

    1. Is that yet ANOTHER rubbish phone…or the same one?

      Don’t forget the charger………………

    1. Not a mystery just par for the course given the inhabitants. Corruption is accepted and makes them feel at home. Now, about all those kids with their grandmas holed up in a steelworks. Odd place to seek shelter…

    2. Mr Tice needs to go and listen to the lotuseasters.com podcast where it is analysed in some detail.

  25. Seems I got religion earlier today: Bath Abbey appears to be flying the Flag of Ukraine. However, I thought for added poignancy they could have flown it upside to emphasise the distress. On the canal, judging by their number of offspring, the water fowl have converted to Catholicism…..
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6df6d7fe17435765180f2f30722bfc44a3f3cd32a58f1d9a20c9e477f548924a.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/fa63ead2e2a3fb9bd02202b9993b8251bddde3b41ac2aa6d2c62b2a39687679a.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/59d2012111b400b6defe70442f62d1d72f4fe1054d39963cc73345b455d4694b.jpg

          1. If this thread continues we will enter the realm of assorted curries with rice…..

    1. On the canal, judging by their number of offspring, the water fowl have converted to Catholicism….

      Because the CofE has gone up the Swanee?

    1. One of these idiots who consider doing things you consider to be ‘good deeds’ gets you political brownie points with the left…

    2. Since both those countries are almost certainly in better financial shape than we are, especially after such “Boris Triumphs” as Test & Trace; furlough; aid to Ukraine; Foreign Aid etc I am at a loss to see why we should be sending them aid? The man is a complete feckin idiot.

    3. What on earth do Sweden and Finland need our aid?

      Boris Johnson is a megalomaniac. He truly is insane.

    1. You would have thought the cameraman would have arranged to be nearer to the touchdown.

  26. Gosh – sudden burst of REAL rain. First we have seen for over a month. Won’t last, of course – I can see the glowing sky behind the clouds. Still – jolly useful for the vegetables – ad the garden generally.

    1. It has rained most of the day here in south Cambs. Collected grandson from school in Biggleswade, really wintry cold wind.

      1. Ditto here. There was a band of rain passing from SW to NE before the rain finally ended early this afternoon.
        An absolutely glorious afternoon & evening from about 3ish though.

    1. Another Frigin’ Five for me, sweetie … x
      Wordle 326 5/6

      ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
      🟨⬜🟨🟨⬜
      🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜
      🟨🟩⬜🟩🟩
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
      My new search word didn’t help at all …

    1. They should do what they do atTresco and have a chap going round on a bike to scare the birds. . They could use a tight rope walker.

  27. Phone returned no problem and the young 12 year old manager remembered me. Prescription collected and a very nice cabbie on the way home.
    Rain has stopped and now it’s quite warm after being chilly earlier. Hamburgers in crusty rolls tonight.
    Husband watching a Pink Panther movie and laughing so loud the neighbours will likely hear him.

      1. Husband has surgery tomorrow but is only in overnight so things are on the up.
        Thanks Andrew, it does seem to be getting better- fingers crossed.

  28. Just to add to the general misery that is the meeja – BBC Radio 3 is having bits all this week about “Mental Health Awareness Week”.

    There is an irony in this. The puerile level of drivel from ill educated and uninformed totty “presenters” is a likely generator of mental illness.
    I wish they would just play the sodding music. Without gushing comments.

    1. It’s afflicted the racing, too. All the presenters were wearing bits of green ribbon.

  29. NOT HAPPY HOUR …HELP NoTTlers

    Spent ages logging into Nottlers….
    ‘Not the Telegraph Letters’ takes me to the main letters page!

    Can a Nottler help with the link please..?

      1. Eventually …….I only have so much patience with computers!!

        I’m not computer savvy …it’s something I’m doing or not doing?

        1. Join the Club when it comes to IT Rage!

          I usually find that if you click on the red text “Not the Telegraph letters'” above the latest date page above in this case Wed 11th May it will take you to Geoff’s latest page…

          1. I went into Uncle Bill’s avatar/ comments, knowing that he would be ahead of himself …

          1. It started this morning when Geoffs link didn’t open the Wednesday page. Everyone just used yesterdays page until it sorted itself out!

          2. If it’s any consolation- everything here is going tits up. First my mobile and now MH’s bluetooth speaker and headphones are not working. It’s like gremlins come down at night and screw it all up.
            Technology is wonderful- when it works!!!

          3. LoL.Technology does my ‘ead in….

            Every time I turn on the computer it tells me to do something, really I don’t need all this crap……………..I’m not a friggin’ robot…yet!

          4. It is a real pain. My library in GA had automated check in and check out and the online catalogue. Last period of the day one time and I had two 5th grade classes, about 50 kids, waiting to check out their books and the system crashed. Aaaargggh! The kids had folders with their names and barcodes on so I grabbed some post it notes, wrote down the barcode numbers of the books they wanted to check out and stuck them on the folders. Next day when the system was up again, my volunteers entered all the info into the computers.
            I had a right old go at Media Services after that, I can tell you. It’s wonderful if and when it sodding works.

  30. Took the tour of the Roman Baths in Bath earlier today. Amongst the exhibits was the skeleton of a Christian (from Syria) (No. Rubber dinghies hadn’t been invented back then!)
    Couldn’t resist asking the guides whether the marks on the skeleton were from a lions’s teeth…….

      1. Au contraire it was a fascinating exposition of Roman building and plumbing although I didn’t spot any rusting tins of Vim!

          1. Well, that’s his job, being the barrel scraper.

            How do you think lawyers earn their corn?

        1. They used to have a larger than life very unflattering photo of me and a colleague scrubbing the temple steps – fortunately it got removed some years ago.

    1. It’s actually not a bad idea. They want to come here, so why not let the gimmigrants in then immediately sell them into slavery. No rights, just instant slaves.

  31. That’s me for this day of two parts. Rain all day until 4.30. Now bright and sunny and the same forecast for the next two days. Though with quite a strong breeze.

    All this Ukraine flag flying malarkey – total bollox. It is the same sort of virtue-signalling as “taking the knee”.

    Should Mr Putin have any chums visiting Bath today (see Stephen’s item below) I bet they will run quickly away should they spot that flag on the Abbey.

    Have a jolly evening.

    A demain

  32. Puzzle for Nottlers who like that sort of thing.

    We sometimes buy ready meal stuff when I am busy or out or whatever, That is my excuse.
    As you will have noticed Sainsbury’s is going downmarket and competing on price with ALDI etc.
    They may be employing cheaper marketing managers as well.
    Additionally, they have jumped on the Ukrainian bandwagon. Rather hurriedly.
    Can you spot the deliberate, or otherwise, mistake?

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/844f183753dfa4c771eda2f24653fb4b739a4d7a81f4b3f732b4a8e5538a9400.jpg

      1. The chicken is tasteless.
        I slice the top off, add cheese and ham with
        a spoonful of caramelised onion.

          1. Sainsbury’s is dry.
            If you are doing that to your Kiev you might also like a Schnitzel Milanese version.

          2. I like and have made some nice Chicken Cordon Bleu. Tastes really nice and goes well with many things.

          3. With a sharp dry white i hope. None of that coloured nonsense! And of course a simple green salad. :@)

          4. With roast turkey or chicken we like a dry red but, yes, a dry white with Cordon Bleu is good. Either a salad or steamed green veg of some sort.

          5. Haricot Almondine for the hot veg or Asparagus as it is.

            You could give cookery lessons to Plum ! >>>>>>>runs and hides.

          6. We love asparagus but also steamed spinach is nice. Also a spinach salad is nice.

          7. We should all be eating more spinach but i am not keen on the mouth feel of raw spinach. I do tend to add it to most curry though.

          8. Well yes, Sag Aloo is scrumptious. Done that with Lamb Jalfrezi and Chicken Tiki – a good combo.

          9. On principle, I won’t buy from socialist Sainsbury’s.

            The only thing they get right is the apostrophe in their name.

        1. Chicken always is tasteless. The worlds dullest meat, only good for conveying sauce to your mouth.

    1. What I only noticed today was that it seems that Odessa has now been changed to Odesa. What is it which brings about these changes?

      1. The ponces in the BBC attempting to adopt the “local approach”., a kind of appeasement. I am a wee bit surprised they call Edinburgh “Edinburgh” and not Dùn Èideann, except well, it is Scotland, so who cares… says Old Grumpy.

  33. 352611+ up ticks,

    My heart go’s out to you,

    Richard Braine Retweeted
    Meghan Maureen
    @Keggs719
    ·
    6h
    I just don’t understand how I can cook dinner, sew KKK hoods, homeschool, go to secret yoga QAnon meetings AND now make my own baby formula on top of it. Being a right wing extremist under the guise of “motherhood” is tough.

  34. Just looked at Amazon.co.uk for a pressie for Brother’s birthday.
    Wifi video doorbell looked like a good buy at £27.
    But… delivery £200!
    Gettifuh ya bassa, was my response.
    :-((

    1. As long as we tolerate black violence, it will continue and escalate. We resolve this by having a tougher criminal code. No more courts for them, found with a knife, you’re flogged – on the street, there and then. Do the same for anyone found with drugs. If they get uppity, shoot them. It’s long past time we stopped being nice.

    1. Britain is running out of time to escape the declining EU’s empire of red tape

      If the Conservatives don’t follow through on pledges to diverge, the Brexit vote will have been betrayed

      SHERELLE JACOBS

      Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has exposed the EU to be a geostrategic irrelevance. The one-dimensional nature of its power – based solely on economic clout and lacking in military prowess – has become glaring. Increasingly, eastern European states (and Scandinavia) are looking not to Germany and France for leadership, but to Britain and America. NATO has found a new purpose in the great battle between freedom and autocracy. The EU has struggled to find any sort of role at all.

      Brussels’ response has been to try to reinvent itself as a more wholesome kind of superpower. It was possible to see glimpses of this thinking in Emmanuel Macron’s speech yesterday to the European Parliament, in which he called for Brussels to pursue an “independent strategic agenda” focusing on defence, decarbonisation and food sovereignty. It isn’t likely to be any more successful than any of the other grand strategies for the rebirth of Europe that have come before it. But that won’t stop European politicians from wasting months debating finickity treaty changes and inane citizens initiatives, as the world around it burns.

      To some extent, Britain thankfully no longer has to concern itself with the EU’s existential woes. Remainers might pretend that we would have acted exactly as we have done towards Ukraine had we stayed within the bloc. But the truth is that Brexit has given impetus to the forging of nimble new alliances with similar-minded powers, as well as a refreshing clarity about the UK’s geopolitical interests.

      If only the same could be said about the UK’s economic relationship with the EU. As the “super seven” Brexit Bills set to be announced in today’s Queen’s Speech show, all these years after the referendum vote, the country is still shackled to regressive regulations that arose out of our EU membership. The idea is that, finally, the UK should diverge from Brussels’ standards in areas such as data privacy and gene therapy. Over-regulation is holding the country back not only in areas in which we are already successful – such as financial services – but in the industries of the future, too.

      The “red meat” announcement is suspiciously well timed. A cynic might wonder whether, instead of representing the start of a coherent strategy for taking advantage of new Brexit freedoms, it is instead thin gruel to buy the support of restive backbenchers for a few more months. The development is particularly suspect given the Tories’ risible track record. The Government is a red tape machine, having introduced a torrent of Covid and climate action regulations. Divergence from EU rules has been limited and erratic. It has ranged from symbolic acts, like talk of banning the import of hunting trophies, to legislation that actually increases red tape such as the Online Safety Bill which goes much further than Brussels on regulating tech firms.

      And Britain is running out of time to seize the initiative. With just two years until the next general election, this may be the Conservatives’ last chance to put the UK firmly on its new Brexit path before they are consigned to a potentially lengthy period in opposition. While it is unlikely that a Labour government would overturn the referendum result, it will hardly be galvanised to try to capitalise on a project that most of its MPs believe is a diabolical error. We might consequently find ourselves with a stillborn Brexit – officially out of the EU, but aligning with almost all of its rules.

      It should go without saying that this would be an unforgivable betrayal. The mediocrity of the ruling class would be appallingly exposed; the will of the British people scuppered by politicians too risk-averse to do anything with the new powers they have been gifted.

      But it would be an economic calamity, too. When it comes to the cutting-edge industries of the future, the EU is fast becoming irrelevant. None of the top 10 big tech firms are European. The region is falling behind on innovation, and ranks behind the US and China in spending on research and development. Breakthroughs in areas such as AI, robotics and quantum computing neither originate in Europe, nor do they get scaled-up on the Continent. Hamfisted EU rules are proving a liability: GDPR has been an epic disaster, stifling data innovation while consolidating the market advantage of the big tech firms. Scientifically spurious regulations are smothering the potential of European biotech companies.

      The bloc has adopted precisely the opposite model to the one it requires to meet the challenges of the modern world. Europe has historically thrived as a result of its openness to new ideas and its enthusiasm for trade. And yet the EU has abandoned innovation and free markets in favour of regulation and protectionism. Its vision these days is one of “strategic autonomy” rather than of adaptability and freedom. Its knee-jerk reaction to challenges is taxation and regulation – whether it’s carbon taxes, anti-coercion trade instruments, or big tech fines.

      This ought to be Britain’s moment. It could be a world leader in many of the industries in which the EU is floundering. The UK leads Europe in biotech discovery research and life-science start-up funding. It is charging ahead as one of the most advanced developers and users of AI, and is well placed to lead on international standard setting. But its efforts to move away from EU regulations on issues such as genetically modified organisms have become entangled in endless consultations. The Government’s AI strategy has fallen by the wayside since it vowed last year to build the most “pro-innovation system” in the world.

      The choice for the Government is simple. It can either accept regulatory alignment as Britain’s unavoidable fate or it can take a calculated risk and pursue its own post-Brexit path. This will take courage, not least to deal with the Northern Ireland Protocol disaster. But the Tories shouldn’t be so ready to embrace the path of least resistance: both the party and the nation will pay the price if it passes up its last chance to make something of Brexit.

      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/05/09/britain-running-time-escape-declining-eus-empire-red-tape/

      1. Accept regulatory alignment? The entire state machine is forcing it. At every level, they’re trying desperately to undo the Brexit vote.

        This is not me, but he is entirely right:

    2. Britain is running out of time to escape the declining EU’s empire of red tape

      If the Conservatives don’t follow through on pledges to diverge, the Brexit vote will have been betrayed

      SHERELLE JACOBS

      Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has exposed the EU to be a geostrategic irrelevance. The one-dimensional nature of its power – based solely on economic clout and lacking in military prowess – has become glaring. Increasingly, eastern European states (and Scandinavia) are looking not to Germany and France for leadership, but to Britain and America. NATO has found a new purpose in the great battle between freedom and autocracy. The EU has struggled to find any sort of role at all.

      Brussels’ response has been to try to reinvent itself as a more wholesome kind of superpower. It was possible to see glimpses of this thinking in Emmanuel Macron’s speech yesterday to the European Parliament, in which he called for Brussels to pursue an “independent strategic agenda” focusing on defence, decarbonisation and food sovereignty. It isn’t likely to be any more successful than any of the other grand strategies for the rebirth of Europe that have come before it. But that won’t stop European politicians from wasting months debating finickity treaty changes and inane citizens initiatives, as the world around it burns.

      To some extent, Britain thankfully no longer has to concern itself with the EU’s existential woes. Remainers might pretend that we would have acted exactly as we have done towards Ukraine had we stayed within the bloc. But the truth is that Brexit has given impetus to the forging of nimble new alliances with similar-minded powers, as well as a refreshing clarity about the UK’s geopolitical interests.

      If only the same could be said about the UK’s economic relationship with the EU. As the “super seven” Brexit Bills set to be announced in today’s Queen’s Speech show, all these years after the referendum vote, the country is still shackled to regressive regulations that arose out of our EU membership. The idea is that, finally, the UK should diverge from Brussels’ standards in areas such as data privacy and gene therapy. Over-regulation is holding the country back not only in areas in which we are already successful – such as financial services – but in the industries of the future, too.

      The “red meat” announcement is suspiciously well timed. A cynic might wonder whether, instead of representing the start of a coherent strategy for taking advantage of new Brexit freedoms, it is instead thin gruel to buy the support of restive backbenchers for a few more months. The development is particularly suspect given the Tories’ risible track record. The Government is a red tape machine, having introduced a torrent of Covid and climate action regulations. Divergence from EU rules has been limited and erratic. It has ranged from symbolic acts, like talk of banning the import of hunting trophies, to legislation that actually increases red tape such as the Online Safety Bill which goes much further than Brussels on regulating tech firms.

      And Britain is running out of time to seize the initiative. With just two years until the next general election, this may be the Conservatives’ last chance to put the UK firmly on its new Brexit path before they are consigned to a potentially lengthy period in opposition. While it is unlikely that a Labour government would overturn the referendum result, it will hardly be galvanised to try to capitalise on a project that most of its MPs believe is a diabolical error. We might consequently find ourselves with a stillborn Brexit – officially out of the EU, but aligning with almost all of its rules.

      It should go without saying that this would be an unforgivable betrayal. The mediocrity of the ruling class would be appallingly exposed; the will of the British people scuppered by politicians too risk-averse to do anything with the new powers they have been gifted.

      But it would be an economic calamity, too. When it comes to the cutting-edge industries of the future, the EU is fast becoming irrelevant. None of the top 10 big tech firms are European. The region is falling behind on innovation, and ranks behind the US and China in spending on research and development. Breakthroughs in areas such as AI, robotics and quantum computing neither originate in Europe, nor do they get scaled-up on the Continent. Hamfisted EU rules are proving a liability: GDPR has been an epic disaster, stifling data innovation while consolidating the market advantage of the big tech firms. Scientifically spurious regulations are smothering the potential of European biotech companies.

      The bloc has adopted precisely the opposite model to the one it requires to meet the challenges of the modern world. Europe has historically thrived as a result of its openness to new ideas and its enthusiasm for trade. And yet the EU has abandoned innovation and free markets in favour of regulation and protectionism. Its vision these days is one of “strategic autonomy” rather than of adaptability and freedom. Its knee-jerk reaction to challenges is taxation and regulation – whether it’s carbon taxes, anti-coercion trade instruments, or big tech fines.

      This ought to be Britain’s moment. It could be a world leader in many of the industries in which the EU is floundering. The UK leads Europe in biotech discovery research and life-science start-up funding. It is charging ahead as one of the most advanced developers and users of AI, and is well placed to lead on international standard setting. But its efforts to move away from EU regulations on issues such as genetically modified organisms have become entangled in endless consultations. The Government’s AI strategy has fallen by the wayside since it vowed last year to build the most “pro-innovation system” in the world.

      The choice for the Government is simple. It can either accept regulatory alignment as Britain’s unavoidable fate or it can take a calculated risk and pursue its own post-Brexit path. This will take courage, not least to deal with the Northern Ireland Protocol disaster. But the Tories shouldn’t be so ready to embrace the path of least resistance: both the party and the nation will pay the price if it passes up its last chance to make something of Brexit.

      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/05/09/britain-running-time-escape-declining-eus-empire-red-tape/

    3. The entire adminsitration wants us to be chained to the EU. They’ve no interest in leaving and want to overturn the Brexit vote in any means possible.

      The state has chosen the route it always does – having lost the democratic option, it chooses to undermine it using bureaucracy and deliberate malicious incompetence.

    4. Any intention to truly leave the EU would have been seized upon the minute the Cons had an 80 seat majority. The only person who seems really interested in a proper Brexit is Lord Frost. Boris is a mere puppet.

      1. 352611+ up ticks,
        Evening VW,
        Ex leader of the genuine UKIP one Gerard Batten told quite clearly the dangers in book form & rhetorically
        but to protect lab/lib/con coalition he & party were tagged as far right racist.

    1. Perhaps his electorate should self-identify as Councillors and outvote him on each and every issue?

    2. I have noticed that more and more LGBTQWERTistas have Double-Barrelled surnames.

    3. One of my friends said that on F/B there had been an announcement about lowering the age to enable the training of more HGV drivers and one comment remarked, “loads of people can’t tell whether they want to be a man or a woman – how are they going to cope with fourteen gears?”

  35. Wordle 326 6/6

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

    Only just, today.

  36. The Church of England’s Archbishops have admitted that they “got it wrong” by not prioritising rural parishes over city churches, as they announced new funding worth £3.6 billion.

    On Wednesday, the CofE revealed their plans for a multi-million-pound increase in spending over the next three years with the aim of growing new worshipping communities. However, crucially, officials said that “the core of the extra funding will be channelled into the revitalisation of parish and local ministry”.

    In an online press conference, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev Justin Welby, and the Archbishop of York, the Most Rev Stephen Cottrell, announced the plans and reiterated their commitment to rural church communities, saying that rural parishes “really matter”.

    Their comments come as the Church faces a crisis over safeguarding the future of the institution amidst dwindling church and congregant numbers, which have been further damaged by the pandemic.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/05/11/archbishops-admit-mistake-rural-parishes-church-england-announces/

    Excellent comment here
    Jo Mills
    59 MIN AGO
    Unbelievable…… perhaps if you spent less time virtue signalling and meddling in politics you might have noticed this 10 plus years ago when the rural communities had well and truly given up on you. There’s plenty to criticise about the Catholic Church but at least they have not deserted the parishes as these shameless fools have done.

    1. Once upon a time, virtually every parish had the means of supporting the incumbent by means lands or endowments.
      Over the years the Dioceses stripped away control of these benefices from the parish and taking control of the funding provided, often selling off glebe lands and buildings such as vicarages, robbed the parishes of the means of supporting their vicars and forcing the obscenity of “group parishes” onto the people.
      A pity the parishes can not take back control of what little remains.

    2. Save The Parish might have had something to do with this change of heart…I do not trust the current Church leadership, they may be offering us a Trojan horse.

  37. Desperate Zimbabweans are boiling used nappies to get high in a new drug craze as the country struggles to recover from its latest economic crisis.

    “They scrape [the nappies clean] and then boil them [with a small amount of water] and a thickish white stuff emerges, and this is then put into the bottom of jars and sold,” one user told The Telegraph in the Epworth suburb, a squalid settlement in Harare’s outskirts.

    Drug users said that the sodium polyacrylate — the absorbent part of a nappy — got them high enough to carry on with their grim daily lives with more confidence.

    Mirriam, a 23-year-old single mother, said that she took the nappy mixture to give her the courage to do sex work.

    “I only take a little so as to give me courage to do my work, because it’s not easy to sleep with anyone anytime, especially strangers, but I don’t have a choice because the father of my child ran away to South Africa and my parents chased me from home,” she says.

    According to reports, security forces are on high alert for an eventual outbreak of civil disobedience as the economic crisis in the country worsens.

    Emmerson Mnangagwa, has laced his recent speeches with threats against a potential uprising.

    In one speech at an event for Zimbabwe’s youth, Mr Mnangagwa said: “If you protest, we will arrest you. Make money.”

    One user called Isaac says that most people on the street cannot afford similar hits like a popular mixture of cough syrup mixed with alcohol and cannabis known locally as ‘Bronclear’.

    Strength to get through the day
    The nappy mixture “gives me a lot of strength when I am doing my job. I work as a part-time gardener for several homes and I earn US$5 per day (£4), which is not enough to care for my daughter and feed us,” said the 25-year-old.

    Users said another informal name on the street for the nappy mixture is called “Mutoriro”, which means “drunk to the last degree”.

    David Masamvi, a 43-year-old, said that for “20 Bond” (about two pence), he “will be plastered the whole day” and will “not even worry about food or women.”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/05/08/desperate-zimbabweans-boiling-nappies-get-high-new-drug-craze/

    Poor old Zim

    Ian Smith will be turning in his grave ..

        1. This is our old Empire when they have now gained independence.

          Piss-ups, breweries and corruption springs to mind.

      1. I remember having a “Baby Burco” to boil nappies for my kids and “nappy rash” was very rare

  38. Why the Seventies were the greatest decade to travel
    The second in our ‘greatest decade’ series looks to the 1970s – a time of revolutionary long-haul air travel and the cusp of ecotourism

    What a heady time the 1970s were for anyone involved in the travel business. The previous decade had already witnessed one major sea change as the popularity of package holidays, combined with a boom in hotel construction, made the Mediterranean an affordable destination for millions of sun-starved British holidaymakers for the first time. Overnight, even skiing became a mass market, and the arrival of the Boeing 747 was about to revolutionise long-haul travel.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/seventies-greatest-decade-travel/

    Some interesting comments.

    1. Couldn’t afford to go anywhere in the 60s & 70s. First time abroad was to France in 1981.

  39. The perfect amount of sleep to keep middle-aged brains healthy, revealed
    University of Cambridge scientists believe ‘too little or too much sleep’ more likely to cause cognitive problems in the long-term

    By
    Sarah Knapton,
    SCIENCE EDITOR
    11 May 2022 • 2:46pm https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/what-best-amount-sleep-hours-need-recommended-midlife/

    Sleep, Shakespeare informs us, is a remedy that “relieves the weary labourer and heals hurt minds”.

    It’s no secret that many of us struggle to get the recommended amount of sleep. Not getting the best amount of sleep can not only affect our mood and concentration but it can also induce anxiety, cause skin problems and even affect our weight.

    A study conducted by scientists at the University of Cambridge in April 2022 has found that the perfect dose of sleep is seven hours for people wanting to keep their minds healthy in middle age and beyond.

    Any more or any less is linked to poor mental performance, upending current NHS advice to get between seven and nine hours.

    What is the recommended amount of sleep in midlife?
    Researchers from the April 2022 study examined data from nearly half a million British adults, aged between 38 and 73 years, who took part in the UK Biobank project – an ongoing, long-term study that has monitored sleeping patterns, mental health and wellbeing, as well as cognitive performance.

    They found that both insufficient and excessive sleep were associated with slower processing speed as well as poorer visual attention, memory and problem-solving skills.

    Seven hours was also found to be the sweet spot for good mental health, with people experiencing more anxiety and depression and worse overall wellbeing if they slept for longer or shorter periods of time.

    Professor Barbara Sahakian, of the Department of Psychiatry at Cambridge, one of the study’s authors, said: “Getting a good night’s sleep is important at all stages of life, but particularly as we age.

    “Finding ways to improve sleep for older people could be crucial to helping them maintain good mental health and wellbeing and avoiding cognitive decline, particularly for patients with psychiatric disorders and dementias.”

    Researchers said one possible reason for insufficient sleep triggering cognitive decline could be a lack of slow-wave – “deep” – sleep, which plays an important role in consolidating memories.

    Why a healthy amount of sleep is so important as you age
    Problems with slow-wave sleep are also linked to the build-up of amyloid – a key protein which, when it misfolds, can cause tangles in the brain that are characteristic of some forms of dementia.

    Sleep keeps the brain healthy by removing waste products, so not getting enough may hamper the ability to get rid of toxins.

    Previous studies have also shown that interrupted sleep patterns are associated with increased inflammation, indicating a susceptibility to age-related diseases in older people.

    The team also studied brain scans for 40,000 people in the study and found clear differences in the structure of regions linked to processing and memory in those who got more or less than seven hours sleep.

    Professor Jianfeng Feng from Fudan University in China, who also collaborated in the research, said: “While we can’t say conclusively that too little or too much sleep causes cognitive problems, our analysis looking at individuals over a longer period of time appears to support this idea.

    “But the reasons why older people have poorer sleep appear to be complex, influenced by a combination of our genetic make-up and the structure of our brains.”

    ————————————————-

    Well actually , discussing sleep , pee problems are a problem for many… Moh is up and down all night .. Type 2 diabetes is not much fun .. neither are dogs who fidget around ..

    The research was published in the journal Nature Ageing.

    This article is kept updated with the latest information.

    1. I think I need slightly more than seven hours’ sleep for peak mental performance. It probably varies a bit from person to person.

    2. I expect the conclusion was that “more research is needed …” just so they can keep their funding flowing!

  40. Are all men like this? Trying to get MH’s overnight bag sorted for tomorrow. Put in his dressing gown, his book and told him I had done so. Then he says have I put in his dressing gown etc….
    Went upstairs and got him a clean tee shirt and socks and added them to the bag. Then, can I have a clean tee shirt etc. How about listening?
    I shall be so glad when this week is over.
    Sorry for moaning and thanks for putting up with me.

    1. Shirley, you remember reading “Men are from Mars and Women from Venice” back in the 80’s I think. So, yes, all men are like this….! I’d better disappear!! Thinking of you tomorrow and MH

  41. 352611+ up ticks,

    May one ask, what did the peoples really think was going to happen when post referendum the herd went directly back to supporting the lab/lib/con mass uncontrolled immigration, paedophile umbrella, pro eu
    coalition ?

    The herd not only backed the wrong horse as tn the pro eu coalition once but again,again,& again confirming insanity was / is rife within the electorate.

    In reality the electorate would come second in a popularity contest to a pint of cold piss.

    In supporting party’s that have mass imported paedophiles then covered up paedophiles actions for years they have made sure that thousands of kids enter adulthood mentally scarred.

    These party’s still receiving support / votes
    from the majority of the herd, really is sick & unbelievable via decent folk.

  42. 352611+ up ticks,

    May one ask, what did the peoples really think was going to happen when post referendum the herd went directly back to supporting the lab/lib/con mass uncontrolled immigration, paedophile umbrella, pro eu
    coalition ?

    The herd not only backed the wrong horse as tn the pro eu coalition once but again,again,& again confirming insanity was / is rife within the electorate.

    In reality the electorate would come second in a popularity contest to a pint of cold piss.

    In supporting party’s that have mass imported paedophiles then covered up paedophiles actions for years they have made sure that thousands of kids enter adulthood mentally scarred.

    These party’s still receiving support / votes
    from the majority of the herd, really is sick & unbelievable via decent folk.

  43. Goodnight Y’all. Cream crackered yet again and another early start.

    Thanks for putting up with all my whingeing.

  44. Evening, all. Been very wet here. Did a dressage test on the Connemara and he is much improved; today he was much more rhythmical – he has a tendency to rush and go in snatches – and when it came to the trot 20m circle and letting him stretch, he didn’t tank off as he usually does!

  45. Good night and God bless, fellow Nottlers.

    Having a spat with Avast Security.

Comments are closed.