Wednesday 13 December: The Rwanda plan survives – but can it really change the Tories’ legacy?

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520 thoughts on “Wednesday 13 December: The Rwanda plan survives – but can it really change the Tories’ legacy?

  1. Good morrow, Gentlefolk. today’s story

    Price Rises Over the Years
    One day, three generations of prostitutes were discussing the price of blowjobs over the years.

    The daughter said that, nowadays, blowjobs cost about £50. Mama claimed that back in her day they were only about £25.

    Then Grandma piped up and declared,
    “In my day, during the Depression, we were just happy to get something warm in our bellies!”

  2. It is morally wrong to blindly adhere to net zero – we must abandon it before it’s too late

    At Cop28, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman was right to call out delusional Western leaders with their pie-in-the-sky nonsense

    ALLISON PEARSON • 12 December 2023 • 6:00pm

    [AP wastes 300 words lampooning Quality Street’s eco-wrapping and some blether from Cheryl Allen, Nestlé’s head of sustainability (sic). She then gets to the point.]

    It may seem a bit of a leap from Sustainability Cheryl to Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s Energy Minister, but please bear with me. The prince caused quite a kerfuffle at Cop28, that gathering in Dubai of the great and the green, when he refused to agree to a “phasedown/phase-out out” of oil, which delegates were expected to agree on by yesterday. (As I write, agreement still seems elusive. All 198 countries at the summit have to decide the final Cop28 deal and many are furious that the draft allowed countries to merely “consider reducing fossil fuel use”.)

    Addressing the putative phase-out of oil, the prince said coolly, “I assure you not a single person – I’m talking about governments – believes in that. I would like to put that challenge to all of those who…come out publicly saying we have to [phase down oil]. I’ll give you their name and number, call them and ask them how they are gonna do that. If they believe that this is the highest moral ground issue, fantastic. Let them do that themselves. And we will see how much they can deliver.”

    Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he? Saudi’s vast wealth does rather depend on oil not being phased out. Nonetheless, the prince’s defiant challenge to the Caroline Lucas, weave-your-own-hairshirt brigade was arresting, as was his attempt to call the industrialised West’s bluff on the practicalities of achieving net zero.

    Even more embarrassing for the global green “consensus” was the actual president of Cop28, Sultan Al Jaber, when he responded curtly to Mary Robinson, the chair of the Elders group and a former UN special envoy for climate change. “We’re in an absolute crisis that is hurting women and children more than anyone… and it’s because we have not yet committed to phasing out fossil fuel,” said Robinson. “That is the one decision that Cop28 can take and in many ways, because you’re head of ADNOC (United Arab Emirates’ state oil company), you could actually take it with more credibility.”

    Al Jaber replied: “I’m not in any way signing up to any discussion that is alarmist. There is no science out there that says that the phase-out of fossil fuel is what’s going to achieve 1.5C [limiting global warming to well below 2C]. Please help me,” the sultan continued, “show me the roadmap for a phase-out of fossil fuel that will allow for sustainable socio economic development, unless you want to take the world back into caves.” Put that in your renewable wind turbine and don’t smoke it!

    Al Jaber later softened his stance at a hastily arranged press conference. “I respect the science… I have repeatedly said that it is the science that has guided the principles or strategy as Cop28 president.” Still, his earlier remarks were extremely revealing, a sign of determined pushback from those countries who know we will need fossil fuels to maintain a certain standard of living for the foreseeable future and, what’s more, are increasingly prepared to say so. Plus, if Al Jaber is causing Al Gore to have a meltdown on Twitter (now X) then I reckon he must be doing something right.

    “Cop28 is on the verge of failure,” thundered Gore, the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for his work disseminating knowledge about man-made climate change. “The world desperately needs to phase out fossil fuels as quickly as possible, but this obsequious draft (agreement) reads as if OPEC dictated it… There are 24 hours left to show whose side the world is on: the side that wants to protect humanity’s future by kickstarting the orderly phase-out of fossil fuel or the side of the petrostates and the oil and gas companies that are fuelling the historic climate catastrophe.”

    I could devote a whole column to Gore’s putrid green double-standards. The former US vice president claims to live a carbon-neutral lifestyle “to the maximum extent possible”, although according to the National Center for Public Policy Research, Gore’s 10,000 square foot Tennessee mansion guzzles more electricity in 12 months than the average American family uses in 21 years (something Gore has disputed, claiming offsetting).

    But Hunt the Eco-hypocrite is like shooting fish in a barrel. Most of the climate-change preachers, who legislate privations on the masses, are happy to give up anything. So long as it’s not their private jet.

    What sticks in the craw is their claim that they alone are on the side of humanity. On the contrary, their project to save the planet spells a painful reduction in comfort and joy for millions. Politicians like Labour’s Ed Miliband who talk blithely about reaching the target of net zero by 2050 are either a) too thick to understand what’s involved or b) lying.

    Last week, I was lucky enough to interview Michael Kelly, emeritus professor of engineering at Cambridge University and fellow of the Royal Society, for the Planet Normal podcast. The transition from fossil fuels would, he said, be “the biggest engineering project undertaken in British history” – and we are nowhere near ready for what amounts to the Industrial Revolution on steroids.

    Prof Kelly has published a devastating, jaw-dropping paper called Achieving Net Zero: A Report from a Putative Delivery Agency. Because the British government has singularly failed to do a cost-benefit analysis of what it will take for the UK to be carbon neutral by 2050 (sound familiar?), Prof Kelly decided to imagine that he’d been appointed CEO of a new agency with the explicit goal of meeting that target.

    Among his horrifying conclusions: the cost of the UK reaching net zero by 2050 will comfortably exceed £3 trillion (at least £180,000 for every household), a workforce comparable to the entire NHS will be required for 30 years, including a doubling of the present number of electrical engineers. The country would effectively have to “go on a war footing and a command economy will be essential, as major cuts to other forms of expenditure, such as health, education and defence. will be needed”. The electricity supply will have to increase by about 67 per cent in order to maintain transport at today’s level. The national grid needs to be 2.7 times bigger in 2050 than it is currently if the UK economy as we know it now is to continue to function. That is eight times the rate at which new capacity has been added over the past 30 years, including all the renewables to date.

    Oh, and every home in the country will have to be rewired, plus all street distribution and local sub-stations. It has been estimated it will cost £700 billion to carry out this work, and we don’t have the manpower to do it. Without that spending, we will have to live with frequent circuit breaks, and suboptimal performance of domestic appliances. Folks, do your washing at 3am and buy a battery-powered torch for the blackouts.

    If this sounds mad it’s because it is mad. To use Prof Kelly’s starkest image, if we take the cost of HS2 now as being about £100 billion, then achieving net zero will require 36 HS2s or more than one a year until 2050. You may recall, we tried to deliver just one HS2. And failed.

    The struggle to reach agreement at Cop28 is a harbinger of growing international resistance to this folly. Now is the time for a complete rethink on net zero. It is morally wrong to stubbornly adhere to a goal which will cost trillions of pounds, and isn’t even achievable. Not in the timeframe. The damage to peoples’ lives from this misguided target will be incalculable, and civil unrest a likely consequence. We need to start again with proper cost-benefit analyses. Engineers of the calibre of Prof Kelly should be given the task of working out what is feasible with a longer horizon, and be free to express their honest view. The Climate Change Committee, which exerts a powerful hold over the thinking of clueless MPs, should be scrapped. Enough with the Green grandstanding.

    Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman was right to call out delusional Western leaders with their Just Stop Oil nonsense. (“Let them do that themselves. And we will see how much they can deliver.” Quite.) It would mean living without plastics, without appliances, without most clothing. Much of the twinkly joy of Christmas would be lost, along with the sparkly wrappers of Quality Street. I don’t want to live in that dreary, dark world, and nor do most people.

    At Cop28, there are many who are convinced that we face a climate catastrophe in the next few decades if net zero is not delivered. Well, I say we are certain to have an economic and societal catastrophe if we persist in trying to reach that goal by 2050. Humanity cannot bear it.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2023/12/12/cop28-failure-net-zero-aims-climate-change/

    1. Great article William
      One key word in that whole thing needs emphasis “Offsetting” the loons seeking to impose ruin on us plebs have no intention of it impinging on THEIR lifestyle one iota
      With their private jets(no tax on that jet fuel remember) private generators on their walled seafront estates their private farms to make sure of the finest meat and other produce for them while we eat bugs

      All justified with the other great scam “Carbon Credits” which is where the likes of Kerry have already made their billions.
      It’s a modern day religious cult complete with “Papal Indulgences”
      Edit
      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/755979aa17948d294d4465b6520299d2ff2aa9420f299640e2af728bec15ff38.jpg

    2. Great article William
      One key word in that whole thing needs emphasis “Offsetting” the loons seeking to impose ruin on us plebs have no intention of it impinging on THEIR lifestyle one iota
      With their private jets(no tax on that jet fuel remember) private generators on their walled seafront estates their private farms to make sure of the finest meat and other produce for them while we eat bugs

      All justified with the other great scam “Carbon Credits” which is where the likes of Kerry have already made their billions.
      It’s a modern day religious cult complete with “Papal Indulgences”
      Edit
      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/755979aa17948d294d4465b6520299d2ff2aa9420f299640e2af728bec15ff38.jpg

      1. It’s nothing but an annual junket for thousands at the expense of millions- let it fail – and cancel the next one.

    3. At Cop28, there are many who are convinced that we face a climate catastrophe in the next few decades…

      I’m intrigued to know what factors leading to a climate catastrophe are so convincing for the many? If it’s the “settled science” then it’s odds on that either the concern is deliberately fraudulent or the believers are ‘thick’ and have succumbed to the incessant propaganda. There is, of course, a possible third convincing factor and that is the involvement of the globalist billionaires.

      The comments made by Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s Energy Minister and Sultan Al Jaber, likely two extremely rich people (their wealth, at least initially, derived from oil), appear to indicate that they are not overly impressed by the argument for a forthcoming climate catastrophe. Why would that be the case?

      Al Jaber’s later uttering re “the science” is worrying but maybe he is using the age-old muslim taqiyya to conceal his true belief and to appease the ‘convinced’.

      A three pronged attack on the World’s population is being undertaken by CoP28, the WHO and globalist captured governments. We have a fight on our hands.

      1. SWMBO remarked today that if the case is so convincing, why the compulsion and excommunication of anyone who even dares to question it?

        1. Because they know the argument in favour will not sustain scrutiny? They know it’s a lie.

    4. It’s too simple a piece which takes no aim at the fraudulent ‘science’ underpinning the insanity.

      1. There’s no point. “climate change” isn’t about science. It’s about a tiny minority enforcing their view of how other people must live.

    5. Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman is a smart cookie. Did people see the video of the 12 year year old Indian kid protesting ‘Stop Fossil Fuels’?
      A lot of the delegates applauded her as she was led away and when all was quiet again the Prince said it was good to hear the opinions of youth “and let’s give her another round of applause!”
      It would be ironic if it’s the Oil States that finally show the state of the Emperor’s undress.

      Edited for finger f ups.

  3. SIR – Whenever I am summoned to the surgery to monitor a chronic condition, I am no longer seen by a doctor but instead by a “healthcare professional”. This is fine, but it does make me wonder who would want to be seen by a healthcare amateur.

    Richard Light
    Hitchin, Hertfordshire

    Come to NoTTlers!!! The only source of trustworthy advice, medical or in any other field.

    1. It makes me wonder what the hell are our GPs doing these days, – out golfing, abroad on holiday? What are they doing, whilst being paid for every patient on their books.

  4. SIR – I own a second home in Devon that is used by family and friends for at least 12 weeks of the year. They boost the local economy by using the many cafés, pubs, restaurants, shops and other services and facilities.

    Why should I pay double council tax (Letters, December 12) when I do not even have a vote in that area?

    Annie White
    Salisbury, Wiltshire

    Because the councillors like to have plenty of money to put into their pension fund and you can’t vote them out.

    1. Because an illegal immigrant would rather live there, so you need to sell up to Serco and let them rent it to us, bigot

  5. How the English invented champagne
    It all started with Hereford cider

    11 December 2023, 5:01am From Spectator Life

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/GettyImages-482398221.jpg
    Richard Attenborough and his wife Sheila Sim (Getty Images)

    Is champagne a wine region or a state of mind? The small bubbles have a way of getting into the bloodstream and the imagination, creating a slightly euphoric sensation which encourages pleasant chatter. But who put the sparkling genie in the bottle? Who pioneered the intricate process of secondary fermentation in a bottle strong enough to withstand six atmospheres of pressure and contains all those wonderful bubbles of CO2, about 20 million per bottle?

    In France, it is claimed that it was Dom Perignon (1638-1715), ‘Come quickly. I am tasting the stars,’ he is supposed to have said. Very romantic, a convenient sales pitch. The only problem is that the story is cobblers. Even eminent French wine historians now agree that there is no written evidence for it.

    Events in Hereford, Oxford, Somerset and London suggest a very different origin story. In the 1620s, strong dark green bottle glass, known as Verre Anglais, was invented by Huguenot glassmakers who had fled France. The onion shaped bottles had necks with a string lip for tying down the cork and a punt or kick in the bottom to make them stronger. In a legal judgment of 1662 given by the attorney general, four Huguenot glass makers made a sworn affidavit that Sir Kenelm Digby had invented this type of bottle while they were in his employ ‘neere thirty years earlier’.

    One cidermaker well-known to Sir Kenelm was a Hereford man, Lord Scudamore. In his 1631 to 1632 household accounts, he bought six dozen bottles from glass merchants in London and Gloucester and six dozen corks. He even has a ‘new lock for ye Sydar house door’ where he carried out his experiments in fermentation. After four years as Charles I’s ambassador in Paris, Scudamore returned and in 1639 he took six bottles of cider up to London. He also had a 14-inch-high cristallo glass flute made for drinking sparkling cider, engraved with the royal coat of arms on one side and his own on the other. This glass is now in the Museum of London.

    The glass looks very much like a champagne flute and yet, in 1639, Dom Perignon was only a one-year-old. So all the pioneering work – learning how to control the effervescence and the naughty little dregs was done in England by these cider makers with new-fangled tough dark bottles. Scudamore also had ‘rare contrived cellars’ with running water and he is credited with turning cider from ‘an unreguarded windy drinke fit only for Clownes and day labourers into a drink fit for Kings, Princes and Lords’. Sadly the civil war intervened and Scudamore’s lands in Herefordshire were sequestered.

    Another cider maker, Ralph Austen, an ardent parliamentarian from Leek, had a large walled garden on Queen Street in Oxford which contained the world’s first cider bottling factory. In 1653 he wrote:

    Cider maybe kept perfect a good many years, if being settled it be drawn into bottles and well stopt with corkes and hard wax melted thereon, and bound down with pack thread, and then sunke down into a well or poole, or buried in the ground, or sand laid in a cellar.

    Crucially, a note was printed in the margin of a book he published in 1657: ‘Put into each bottle a lump or two of hard sugar or sugar bruised’ – a crucial part of the champagne-making process. He was also on the right track.

    Next John Beale, fellow of the Royal Society and Vicar of Yeovil wrote many aphorisms on cider published in Pomona in John Evelyn’s Sylva. In a paper of 10 December 1662, John Beale mentions ‘A walnut of Sugar’ being added to every bottle of cider, something around 18g sugar per bottle which is spot on. The astronomer Sir Paul Neile uses a ‘nutmeg of Sugar’ playing on the safe side. Here you will find ‘Potgun Cider’ which flies around the house from the addition of too much sugar. Sir Paul also advises that bottling in the manner of cider ‘may doe good to French Wines also’. A crucial step forward. The first time that bottling with the addition of sugar has been articulated for French wine. This is 1663. Wine buffs take note: it is all about technique and méthode. Dom Perignon only enters Hautvillers Abbey in 1668.

    But did this cider fully sparkle? The key is in the word mantle, forming a vigorous head or froth. To mantle or not to mantle, that was the real question. In 1657, a letter from John Beale to Samuel Hartlib illustrates the point: ‘We will rather drinke pure water, than the water of rotteness, as we call all drinke that does not mantle vigorously.’

    So mantling cider was de rigueur by 1657 or as the French would say, mousse. Royalist youth wanted to put a bit of sparkle back into life under Puritan rule. John Beale’s letter continues: ‘Our Cider, if it bee brisky, will dance in the cup some good while after it is powred out. They will not drinke cider, if it be no soe busy, as thoroughly to wash their eyes whilst they drinke it.’

    Now enter Silas Taylor, a parliamentarian captain of horse, with a family estate near Hereford and one of Pepys’s spies in Harwich and a composer to boot. It is Silas Taylor’s 1663 descriptions of cider in a letter to the Royal Society which gives real colour to the sparkling debate.

    I have tasted of it, three years old, very pleasant, though dangerously strong. The colour of it, when fine, is of sparkling yellow, like Canary, of a good full body and oyly: the taste of it like the flavour or perfume of excellent peaches, very grateful to the palate and stomach.

    Excellent. But does it really sparkle? Silas Taylor then gives advice on how to bottle cider and the great care needed to get the timing right.

    This makes it drink, quick and lively; it comes into the glass not pale or troubled, but bright yellow, with a speedy vanishing nittiness (as the vinters call it) which evaporates with a Sparkling and whizzing noise.

    The Oz Clarke of his day… So sparkling cider was not only on par with wine at this time, it was streaks ahead. They even had wooden racks for storing bottles with the necks pointing downwards. My hypothesis is that the cidermakers passed their knowledge onto the London wine merchants who perked up their flat champagne wine. That knowledge slowly filtered back to France. Viva Lord Scudamore. Ruinart, the first French champagne house was not founded till 1729. Voila!

    WRITTEN BY
    James Crowden is a poet from Somerset and a former shepherd, cider maker and forester. He is the author of Cider Country: How an Ancient Craft Became a Way of Life.

    BTL:
    Union Jock
    I thought it was invented by African slaves in Jamaica and the idea stolen by the white colonialists.

    1. In his book ‘1000 years of annoying the French’ Stephen Clarke states that Dom Perignon was trying to kill the bubbles in Champaign because they kept bursting their thinner glass bottles. It was only the English invention of thicker glass bottles that allowed the production of Champaign!

      Morning folks (a few moments respite from full on grand-parenting!!)

      1. After reading Clarke’s excellent book, I bought a copy for my French teaching Francophile sister. She loved it!

    2. Grand Sommelier Olivier Krug says not to drink Champagne/sparkling wine from flutes but Pinot glasses.

      There is a gigantic limestone ring that passes through the Champagne region. Crosses the English channel and continues in an arc to Somerset and back across the channel. This is why we can make Champagne as good if not better than the frogs.

  6. Good Morning Folks,

    Cloudy start here, jury is out on today’s golf, awaiting a pitch inspection.

  7. The Rwanda plan survives – but can it really change the Tories’ legacy?

    Looks like the fake right of the party were only pretending.
    It looks like with the lack of a proper opposition party that the Conservatives have become a governing party and opposition in one.

  8. Good morning.

    Arnaud Bertrand
    @RnaudBertrand
    That’s very rare: Xi Jinping wrote an op-ed in a Vietnamese newspaper (Nhan Dan) ahead of his visit there.

    This is the translation in English: http://en.people.cn/n3/2023/1212/c90000-20108725.html

    Most important points is that he argues that Asia must show the way in “building a community with a shared future for mankind” and that, as “hegemonism, unilateralism and protectionism are on the rise”, “peace and development in the region are confronted with fairly grave challenges of instability and uncertainty.” Therefore Asian need to organize and “jointly act on the principles of amity, sincerity, mutual benefit and inclusiveness and promoting the Asian values of peace, cooperation, inclusiveness and integration”. He writes that “Asia’s future is in the hands of no one but Asians”.

    I am a bit more cynical about this “community with a shared future for mankind” and certainly life will not be as comfortable for us if the west regresses to a Chinese level of personal freedom or allows non-western interests to dictate our energy policy. Putting aside the resentments, gloating and political idealism around the shift of power, the next economic cycle may be dominated by commodities, which also doesn’t bode well for Europe. One of our most important commodities, the talent and inventiveness of our people is being trashed by our automaton government that seems to hate us.

    1. What a lot of abstract verbiage.
      A word salad to rival anything issued by an American academic.
      When rulers retreat into pseudo intellectualism (get me!) tyranny is stepping over the threshold.

      1. I think that’s fairly typical for a Chinese leader’s speech. They always seem to half say what they really mean, like the royal family.

    2. Interesting, it seems he’s saying ‘We’re taking Taiwan. Get involved and we’ll smack you one.’

      1. Perhaps that’s what he means by the Asian values of peace, cooperation, inclusiveness and integration.

        I would have thought that China only needs to wait and sooner or later Taiwan will vote themselves a one way ticket to joining the mother ship.

  9. And another one down….

    December 12 (King World News) – Peter Boockvar: When I saw the story late yesterday that Ford is cutting production of its EV powered F-150 truck by half in 2024 all I could think of was the massive amount of government incentivized construction spend on everything renewable, including multiple battery plants, that is being constructed not because the demand is there but only because of the tax/grant incentives to do so…

    1. SIR – In his report on Argentina (Business, December 11), Roger Bootle cites El Salvador as an example of a country that has made the conversion from a failing national currency to the US dollar. In fact, Argentina’s shadow economy has for many years used the US dollar alongside the peso. Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, is merely planning to get rid of the peso and the central bank that has been printing it into oblivion.

      Two years ago, President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador introduced a new hard currency, Bitcoin, to run alongside the US dollar and the Salvadorian peso. Now, many Salvadorians prefer Bitcoin because, unlike the other two currencies, it holds its value and can never be inflated. A flood of inward investment has succeeded in stimulating the economy and El Salvador has managed to pay off its dollar-denominated debt.

      Argentina’s new president, like the president of El Salvador, is a student of the Austrian school of economics – and a Bitcoin enthusiast.

      C M McNulty
      Oxhey, Hertfordshire

      1. Problem with another national currency is that it is arranged according to another government, not yours, with different requirements.
        Bitcoin might be an improvement, let’s see. If Bitcoin cannot be inflated (and I’d be delighted to see that proven), then politicians will hate it as it prevents them inflating their way out of yet another fcukup.

      2. Without a national central bank to fall back on, Argentina’s commercial banks will need to proceed with great caution. History suggest that this is no bad thing.

        1. Yes, it is – what you mean perhaps – is it is not currently a medium of exchange.

          Let’s say you go into M&S and there’s ‘britcoin’, the devalued, worthless, attempted enforced utterly state controlled currency showing a punnet of strawberries for 1,000,000,000,000 britcoin (on a salary of 50,000 brits). There’s Sterling, where it’s £25 because the state has utterly destroyed that trying to force the other… and bitcoin, at 0.25 – on a salary of 50,000 bitcoins?

          A currency the state cannot destroy. That does not change daily. That can be cryptographically tracked to it’s inception. That cannot be ‘created or destroyed’ Which currency would you use? The worthless, enforce britcon (sic), Sterling or bitcoin?

          1. Legally, it is not money though. If you hold some bitcoin and it turns out to be stolen, it’s handled as stolen goods, not money, which means you lose it.

    2. Good for the tourist industry and domestic producers who will be able to compete more effectively with imports. His next step needs to be stopping the excessive money-printing (inflation is everywhere and always caused by governments and central banks printing/creating too much money) then get the Argie-Peso backed by something meaningful.

      1. Odd how our own government continually blames wage demands for inflation….. you’d think they were lying to try to blame us for what is singularly their own fault.

  10. Good Moaning.
    Start the day with a brain teaser.
    To whom could these words apply?

    “It is one of 38 programmes the couple have supported this year, according to a newly published Impact Report.
    Other projects include Dinner Party Labs, which brings together young adults who are grieving to support one another, a baby bank and early years centre, and news organisations aimed at combating misinformation.”

    1. A Kartrashian and her latest squeeze
    2. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers
    3. Count and Countess of Montecito
    4. Ant and Dec

    As a helpful hint, the Labs are not soft greedy dogs.

    1. “The difference between treason and patriotism is only a matter of dates.”

      Morning Anne ..

      Oh yes , my porridge and Maca powder additive is an early morning mental lift !

      1. Morning, Belle.
        What is Maca powder? Sounds like something to dust in one’s socks when one has athlete’s foot…

      1. So did I but – 4 ran them close.

        It is completely beyond my comprehension as to why Ant and Dec, who seem to be so completely free of wit, humour or genuine talent of any sort, are so well liked by the public.

  11. To the title – can it change their legacy? I assume the DT means their legacy of plunder.

    Rather depends on how quickly the Rwandans can kick back money to Tory grandees.
    Not that I think they are cynical, or anything.

    A part ca – bonjour les amis!!

  12. Sunak faces down Rwanda rebels. 13 December 2023.

    Rishi Sunak faced down Tory rebels threatening his Rwanda deportation plan on Tuesday as he won his first parliamentary battle over the emergency legislation.

    The Bill passed the House of Commons by 313 votes to 269 after Tory migration hardliners backed away from their threats to vote it down. Not a single Conservative MP voted against the Bill.

    But the leaders of the five groups on the Tory Right described as the “five families” warned that they would try to defeat the Bill at the next reading unless it was significantly hardened in the coming weeks.

    Tell us another! Reform or Revolution. I don’t care which!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/12/12/rishi-sunak-faces-down-rwanda-bill-rebels/

    1. The buggers arrive at a rate of some 300? 3 000 a day. How many planes will that take – between 2 and 20 a day, to Rwanda, plus all the prison camps needed before they can be boarded – unless the buses will drive straight to the airport and the buggers pushed at bayonet point into the aircraft, manacled so they cannot wreck the thing before take-off…
      What impractical bollocks the whole idea is. They should be prevented, not deported. And if that means some drown, then the others might learn.

        1. We shouldn’t even let them in the ruddy country. Sail a gunboat out. If they don’t turn back, fire a warning shot. If they still refuse, open sodding fire.

          Stop them getting here completely. Pack the ones who are here in containers, sail them back to French beaches and get rid.

      1. If they do get control of one of the aircraft we could only hope they’d target the HoP on a Wednesday during PMQ.

    2. Folk know Rwanda only offered to take 300 welfare shoppers in total, don’t they? This ends when we leave the hated ECHR. The UK’s laws are based on freedom from, not freedom to. These napoleonic laws are an egregious assault on genuine freedoms.

  13. Good morning all,

    A grey drizzly dawn at McPhee Towers, wind in the Nor’-Nor’-West, holding 6℃ all day.

    I imagine that Michael Morris of Haverhill speaks for many of us here.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e050f1cc5303c9391f25293b1577eebd00c8ce230cffb00a20833c67950ff3f3.png

    There’s quite a bit to pull apart in that letter. Why the quandary, Michael? You’re not going to vote for the unConservatives or Labour; if you won’t vote for either of them why would you even entertain the thought of voting for any of the LibDumbs who are worse than either? That leaves candidates from the minor parties (although at the rate Reform is gaining support it may no longer be a minor party), an independent, spoiling the ballot paper with a message or not bothering to turn up at the polling station. Take your pick. It’s not really a quandary.

    The one good thing to come out of this will be that the unConservative party in its Blairite Cameronian iteration is finished. Whether the true conservatives among its MPs will leave or fight like a bag of ferrets over the corpse remains to be seen.

    Don’t hold your breath waiting for the ‘governing classes’ to realise anything. They hold us in contempt. You should by now have real difficulty with the expression ‘the governing classes’. I do.

      1. If it was, I didn’t see it. With Christmas coming up close and personal combined with feeling NVW (not very well) I don’t have time to read everything, all I can do is dip in and out here and there. A re-write is helpful.

        1. My recollection was that whoever posted it to Nottle was also going to send it to the DT.
          I may be mistaken.

          1. Thank you – it’s the coughing virus that seems to be the predominating winter virus doing the rounds this year, it is accompanied by fatigue and the usual symptoms that go along with these things. I’m into week 4 now and slowly recovering on a day-to-day basis. It was a ‘slow burner’ – a week of mildish symptoms before it got into gear.

            I hope you are recovering from your food poisoning episode, they are miserable things, and leave you feeling wrung out for a day or so. I remember thinking after my last food poisoning episode in Devon three years ago that I was just too old for that sort of thing!

          2. It’s certainly made me feel old! I feel as though I’ve slowed down and become decrepit 🙁 Hopefully I’ll be back to normal tomorrow to go racing.

          3. I’ve had more energy this evening. I couldn’t do anything much other than lie in bed the last couple of days.

      1. Who knows. But we know the answer to that – Starmer is the more dangerous because he has a veneer of respectable plausibility, as did Bliar. Corbyn didn’t hide any of his beliefs.

        Starmer is puppeteered by Bliar anyway. We all know that. Bliar and Brown will be ennobled by Kneeler and brought into government along with Mandelson. We can expect the re-emergence of Campbell in the propaganda department.

      2. Who knows. But we know the answer to that – Starmer is the more dangerous because he has a veneer of respectable plausibility, as did Bliar. Corbyn didn’t hide any of his beliefs.

        Starmer is puppeteered by Bliar anyway. We all know that. Bliar and Brown will be ennobled by Kneeler and brought into government along with Mandelson. We can expect the re-emergence of Campbell in the propaganda department.

    1. If Labour are destined to rule , their power base will be shifted .. why, because the Muslim faction of of the party will break away and create their own party , on the lines of a Muslim brotherhood political party .. probably led by Sadiq Khan .

      1. If muslim does actually become a political party forcing us ever further Left then there will be no hope. Continual tax rises to fund ever larger welfare transfers? A spiteful open borders policy? The racist and sexist sharons law, or whatever it is.

        The muslim threat is real and obvious and must be confronted. Why the state panders to this stone age cult is beyond me.

        1. Because the state is signed up to our destruction as a nation. Islam is its chosen tool. The state will get badly bitten.

    2. Good morning Fiscal Mc Phee

      You ask: “Whether the true conservatives among its MPs will leave or fight…..”

      Yesterday’s vote suggests to me that they have no fire in their bellies and are too slothful to do anything – they won’t leave and they won’t put up a fight – the are too gutless.

      “But what more oft in Nations grown corrupt,
      And by their vices brought to servitude,
      Than to love Bondage more than Liberty,
      Bondage with ease than strenuous liberty;”

      [John Milton: Samson Agonistes]

      I used to enjoy studying John Milton’s works with my Sixth Formers. Samson was betrayed by his wife Delilah, and imprisoned by the Philistines who tortured and blinded him in their temple. In Milton’s words Samson was “…eyeless in Gaza at the mill with slaves.” Both the slaves and the Philistines are still in Gaza.

  14. Good morning all,

    A grey drizzly dawn at McPhee Towers, wind in the Nor’-Nor’-West, holding 6℃ all day.

    I imagine that Michael Morris of Haverhill speaks for many of us here.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e050f1cc5303c9391f25293b1577eebd00c8ce230cffb00a20833c67950ff3f3.png

    There’s quite a bit to pull apart in that letter. Why the quandary, Michael? You’re not going to vote for the unConservatives or Labour; if you won’t vote for either of them why would you even entertain the thought of voting for any of the LibDumbs who are worse than either? That leaves candidates from the minor parties (although at the rate Reform is gaining support it may no longer be a minor party), an independent, spoiling the ballot paper with a message or not bothering to turn up at the polling station. Take your pick. It’s not really a quandary.

    The one good thing to come out of this will be that the unConservative party in its Blairite Cameronian iteration is finished. Whether the true conservatives among its MPs will leave or fight like a bag of ferrets over the corpse remains to be seen.

    Don’t hold your breath waiting for the ‘governing classes’ to realise anything. They hold us in contempt. You should by now have real difficulty with the expression ‘the governing classes’. I do.

    1. So that is what the emphasis on mental health is all about. I have puzzled about this for sometime, where it is all leading. Get as many as possible into the mental health net and then….. because the bottom line is, that I always use to solve a problem of this nature, that the government cares not one iota about us. Persuade a sector of the population it has a mental health problem, feed it drugs to make it better but actually make it worse and offer it MAID. At some time in the future it may well be enforced when the N*z*s really get going.

      1. I take this poster with a slight pinch of salt, but similar stories are coming out of Canada all the time, that MAID is being seen as an acceptable alternative “treatment” that solves other people’s problems and of course once you say you’re suicidal they’ve now got the proven best remedy for that, 100% success rate every time.

    1. True…

      Aquinas believed that Occam’s razor helped prove the existence of God. He suggested that the simplest theory about Earth’s creation was that God created it. His theory was that what is simplest is what adheres to nature, and that since the idea of God is naturally implanted in our minds, it is the simplest explanation.

      1. Someone should has asked Aquinas to then prove the existence of God – or would he say ‘Earth exists, therefore God exists. As God exists, so two does Earth.’?

        That is what’s known as a logical fallacy.

        1. A betting man says that if you don’t believe in God then you don’t believe he will punish you because he doesn’t exist. But if he does exist and you don’t believe in him he might punish you!

          Ergo: the safer bet is to believe in God’s existence to be on the safe side.

      2. and that since the idea of God is naturally implanted in our minds, it is the simplest explanation.

        Implanted perhaps, naturally, I don’t think so, Belle.

        1. Through our Anglo Saxon heritage and whatever other genes we have .. MAYBE we were fitted with a God slot .. and a creative bent .. one has only to admire our culture and the beauty of our arts and music and literature , which is not replicated elsewhere in Bongo bongo land or in more savage realms … unless of course .. tongue in cheek .. the beauty found in cultural greatness is a cloak for pure barbarity.. as we all know ?

    2. Give me a child until the age of seven and I will show you the man.

      I remember watching the BBC tv programmes which visited children every seven years to see how their formative years influenced their whole lives.

      This started in 1964 so the children would have been born in 1957 and so I am 11 years older than they are – as are the majority of Nottlers

  15. SIR – The reason Marks & Spencer pyjamas now have pockets (Letters, December 12) is that the work-from-homers are taking their children to school in them and need somewhere to stow their mobile phones.

    Philip Barber
    Havant, Hampshire

    Adult sons and I drove to across to Corfe Castle and then Swanage on Saturday evening to view the Christmas lights and catch a glimpse of the Christmas special steam train dressed up as the Polar Express..

    The weather was very iffy, we drove along nearly flooded roads , sudden downpours , Corfe Castle looked beautiful illuminated , and the village had made a great effort to look pretty with coloured lights .

    We were too late to see the arrival of the train in Norden , but when we reached Swanage , the train arrived , chuffing and puffing , and much to our surprise, a good hundred or so assorted parents and their excited young children got off the train , all of them wearing matching jim jams , dressing gowns or coats . I think Santa had been on board , giving out presents .

    Pyjamas are so different these days from the jim jam/ nightie material from my childhood … fabrics now are colourful and pretty .. I suppose people are used to the loosely fitted bottoms for relaxing in .

    ( Not us though, Moh sniffs at such idleness , and would you believe he has never ever worn a pair of jeans …. ever, yes , ever .)

    1. We went and picked up a Chinese takeaway from a less than salubrious part of Falkirk (I know!) on Saturday night and were astonished to find a young lady, hair immaculate, fake tan and wearing full makeup, in a pair of Ugg slippers, old fashioned fleecy pyjamas, with a long padded coat over the top waiting for her order! Phone glued to her ear, she seemed oblivious to the looks she drew from the other customers!

    2. Afraid my bottom is fairly loosely fitted – at least, by the wobbling, it needs tightening…
      (nearly wrote “screwed tighter”, fortunately I didn’t…)

    3. I haven’t worn pyjamas for many years but I wear a knee-length cotton nightshirt during the winter.

    4. I don’t think my OH has ever worn a pair of jeans either – not to my knowledge anyway. Cargo trousers with side pockets, yes but not denim jeans. Although he’s my second husband I have known him nearly 40 years……….

          1. Of course, I’m no longer 18. A lot of that stockiness, though, has disappeared within the past six months.

  16. Good morning, chums. I overslept this morning. Now for a quick look at Sir Jasper’s morning funny, a quick skim of 67 comments and then my morning Wordle. See you all later.

      1. Click on my avatar, Phil, and you will see my review of WONKA was made several days ago.

    1. Doesn’t really help, Joesph. What’s special about the Newcastle? Why shouldn’t ‘the child’ (was it a child?) talk about it? What terms did you disagree with?

      1. It’s like someone referring to “The 36th Engineer Regiment” when the common parlance is “Three Six Engineer”.
        If you are referring to one of HM’s ships, it’s either “The Newcastle,” leaving off the “HMS” or to “HMS Newcastle” leaving off the “the”.

    2. Nearly everybody does, I’m afraid.
      When I explain, I tell them to say the words that HMS represents, and it’s obviously clunky at best: The His majesty’s Ship… puh.

  17. 379467+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Wednesday 13 December: The Rwanda plan survives – but can it really change the Tories’ legacy?

    The labour odious cartel under the blair leadership stabbed the nation in the back
    repeatedly commencing 1997 followed by the
    tory party post Margaret Thatcher, morphing into the tory (ino) / WEF party, picking up the treacherous continuation baton.

    The lab/lib/con ARE the purveyors of mass
    uncontrolled / controlled immigration to continue to give these criminally insane political misfits support is surely to put one in the same class.

    1. The sudden rise of the WEF has led to far too many appalling policies spreading around the world. The continual restrictions on traffic, this moronic idea of ‘harmonised’ taxx policies, so companies have nowhere to go to avoid this globalised tax rate – which will never work. These 20 minute cities (You can spend 20 minutes getting out of your road in Soton, traffic is so bad) were stupid when our fools implemented them, but were clearly an instruction when Canada did the same.

      Then there’s the pollution of massive, uncontrolled criminal welfare shopping. I’ve always believed this was revenge for Brexit by the state.

      Why did Bailey wait until Truss’ budget before throwing the LDI bombshell out? Why didn’t he warn the Chancellor?

      There are so many problems, with such simple – but politically unpalatable – solutions it can only be malicious and deliberate engineering to do the country in.

      1. The WEF hasn’t just suddenly risen. They have stepped into the light now their ‘placemen’ are in power.

  18. The thing I didn’t realise about being a parent is that you can’t simply stay in bed all day. You still have to do the million things that need doing.

      1. That’s not my experience. Children are a constant concern (and delight) until they day you expire.

        1. This poem by A.E. Housman doesn’t just apply to courtship – it also applies to those to give their hearts away to their children.

          When I was one-and-twenty
          I heard a wise man say,
          “Give crowns and pounds and guineas
          But not your heart away;
          Give pearls away and rubies
          But keep your fancy free.”
          But I was one-and-twenty,
          No use to talk to me.

          When I was one-and-twenty
          I heard him say again,
          “The heart out of the bosom
          Was never given in vain;
          ’Tis paid with sighs a plenty
          And sold for endless rue.”
          And I am two-and-twenty,
          And oh, ’tis true, ’tis true.

      2. That’s not my experience. Children are a constant concern (and delight) until they day you expire.

      3. I was persuaded to leave at 16 – the hint was my mother getting the application forms for the RAF and presenting them to me

  19. Wordle 907 5/6
    Did today’s in five:

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

    1. 4 here, Elsie.

      Wordle 907 4/6

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

  20. 379467+ up ticks,

    Dt,

    Sunak faces down Rwanda rebels
    Not a single Tory MP votes against Bill, but groups on Right of party poised to change mind if legislation is not hardened up

    Notice one dominant factor, daily the boats keep coming, there is NO left / right of the party they are as one.

    First plane Rwanda bound, I wager will have
    75 % stand by seats, available.

    The odious political overseers lose a few
    via Heathrow but gain aplenty via Dover.

    1. Even those Conservative MPs we hoped were better than the Wets have shown that they are good for nothing by abstaining in the vote about Rwanda.

    2. Can I get one of those 75% available seats.

      Anywhere is better than here, at the moment.

      Remember, Reform is the lesser evil but I wish the vote-splitters would present a united front – we might get somewhere.

  21. The asylum seeker who died in a suspected suicide on the Bibby Stockholm migrant barge was today named as a doctor from Cameroon.

    Mickael Essouma, known as Mika, is thought to have taken his own life in a communal bathroom of the 506-person capacity vessel in Portland Port, Dorset.

    He was a medical researcher and doctor from Yaounde, Cameroon’s capital city.

    According to local volunteers who help the migrants, Mr Essouma’s mental health had been deteriorating in recent weeks while on the barge.

    There are claims that his cries for help and pleas for an emergency doctor’s appointment were ignored by security staff on board.

    Migrants said yesterday that Mr Essouma had hanged himself in the barge’s communal bathroom. They said he had been crying out for help and asked for an emergency doctors appointment but ‘didn’t get any assistance’.

    He later went back to his room where he was heard ‘screaming and punching the walls’ before security intervened and ‘told him to stop’.

    Heather Haddow, a volunteer with the Portland Global Friendship Group, knew Mr Essouma and described him as a ‘gentle and intelligent’.

    She said: ‘We knew him as Mika. I don’t know how old he was but he seemed quite young.

    ‘I knew he spent some time living on the streets in London before he came to the barge.

    ‘We were desperately trying to get him off the barge. His mental health had really been suffering for three or four weeks.

    ‘He seemed to have psychosis. Everything was scattered and it was hard to build up a picture of what he was saying.

    ‘He wasn’t someone who liked being in big groups, he needed space around him and that is why the barge was so inappropriate for him.’

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12858631/bibby-stockholm-asylum-seeker-suicide-named.html?ito=windows-widget-push-notification&ci=568846

    He was found dead at 6.20am yesterday.

    Another source said: ‘He was really calling out for help. He went to reception and asked for an emergency doctors appointment but they didn’t give him one. Eventually they gave him a number to call.

    READ MORE – Inside the Bibby Stockholm: Migrant shares footage praising the ‘good food and beds’ – but others call it a floating ‘prison’

    ‘He said he didn’t have a phone and asked for one in reception but they wouldn’t give him one. He went back to his room and was screaming and punching the walls and security just told him to stop.’

    I suspect that the security bods aren’t British, bet they are the sort who are recent migrants .

    1. Doesn’t wash i’m afraid. A doctor from Cameroon. Why didn’t he arrive by legal means? We need doctors.
      BTW Hanging isn’t always self inflicted.

      Good morning, Belle.

    2. My first thought when I read the first line was are there witch doctors in Cameroon, so I checked and well, yes, there are :-))!

      1. A mentally ill witch doctor…. that figures. I am sure a post could have been found for him within the nhs.

    3. Something does not add up here.
      Why would a person with his qualifications enter the UK illegally?

    4. Interesting.
      Your link goes straight to the Daily Mail front page and a search on your quoted headline brings up only two link that actually mention the deceased qualifications, Daily Mail and Daily Mirror, yet the Mail link again defaults to the front page and the Mirror link brings up “Page not found”.

    5. Doctor, eh? Educated man… he could have stayed home and docted there – why the risky undocumented immigration?
      Where are the qualification certificates? I’m sure he could have got employment as a medical assistant in hospital or GP surgery until his qualifications were assessed and agreed as suitable. That this wasn’t the case (and, God knows, the UK is crying out for qualified people in all walks) makes me think he was as much a doctor as I am a mermaid. Witchdoctor, perhaps.

    6. A polite request for all of my friends, colleagues and acquaintances, from this day forward to please refer to me as “Doctor”?

    7. There are claims that his cries for help and pleas for an emergency doctor’s appointment were ignored by security staff on board.

      Huh! Try the GP’s receptionists. Welcome to the UK.

  22. A Bitcoin economySIR – In his report on Argentina (Business, December 11),

    Roger Bootle cites El Salvador as an example of a country that has made

    the conversion from a failing national currency to the US dollar. In

    fact, Argentina’s shadow economy has for many years used the US dollar

    alongside the peso. Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, is merely

    planning to get rid of the peso and the central bank that has been

    printing it into oblivion.

    Two years ago, President Nayib Bukele

    of El Salvador introduced a new hard currency, Bitcoin, to run alongside

    the US dollar and the Salvadorian peso. Now, many Salvadorians prefer

    Bitcoin because, unlike the other two currencies, it holds its value and can never be inflated. A flood of inward investment has succeeded in

    stimulating the economy and El Salvador has managed to pay off its

    dollar-denominated debt.

    Argentina’s new president, like the

    president of El Salvador, is a student of the Austrian school of

    economics – and a Bitcoin enthusiast.

    C M McNulty
    Oxhey, Hertfordshire

    ‘it holds its value and can never be inflated?’ I must be missing something.

    1. The problem with Bitcoin is that you can’t use it to pay your utility bills and buy groceries and if you really want something valuable but effectively stripped of most practical use, shurley gold is better since it is at least a tangible asset?

  23. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c1c39ba35f3fa9775a6a3ccd0015b0b5c323dc5ede5b2ee715544260db0b46ad.png
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/12/12/sunak-has-passed-the-point-of-no-return/

    And enterprises of great pith and moment
    With this regard their currents turn awry,
    And lose the name of action

    [Hamlet]

    BTL

    Even those Conservative MPs we hoped were better than the Wets have shown that they are good for nothing by abstaining in the vote about Rwanda.

    Until yesterday I believed that the right of centre Conservative MPs should join Reform. At least this has shown the deluded Nigel Farage that there is nobody amongst the Conservative Party’s MPs with whom he should work in the future.

      1. Or against, depending which side wins.
        Either way, an abstention is acceptance of the result whichever way it goes.

          1. The creeps in question will doubtless say they were correct and the result was what they really wanted it to be.
            Lily-livered bastards the lot of them.

      1. Many … many … people are, Tom. The post was directed at people who are not interested in military marching bands (such as me).

    1. That’s an extremely good essay. Just one quibble. There is some doubt now as to whether Europeans introduced smallpox to North America. The tribal people did have disease prior to the arrival of European settlers. The point he makes about land being purchased not stolen is a good one. William Penn paid Chief Tamanend of the Delaware Nation for the land on which he built Philadelphia.

    1. Translation

      Good morning,

      I just signed the petition
      “NO to mandatory QR codes to circulate in public spaces in
      2024! “. This cause is close to my heart and I would like as many people as possible be aware and sign this petition.

        1. I do, Many others do also but not necessary all.

          It’s the same with Deutcshe, which I also can speak and be understood in. I can get by in Swedish, Norwegian, Danish and Spanish but I think translation into our easily understood and our best in the world, native language, always helps and gets rid of incorrect assumptions.

          1. I know our native language is the best in the world, but as this was a French petition and most members of this forum are fluent or better in French, it seemed a superfluous exercise to patronise people by translating it.

          2. No intention or intent to patronise – just a wish to help out, if necessary.

            Nobody was forced to read the translation.

  24. Drakeford jumps ship:

    “Mark Drakeford, the first minister of Wales, has announced his resignation.

    Drakeford, who has led the Welsh parliament for five years, told the Senedd on Wednesday that he would stand down with immediate effect, saying the “time has now come.” A leadership contest to find his successor will now be held.”

    There’s lovely, isn’t it?

    1. After the SNP leaderine standing down “with immediate effect”, it makes one wonder what

      investigation into Drakeford’s life is about to happen?

  25. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8a3f02e415a22b03dffb836d492268c286de933b76428a831962180290299650.jpg Look! I know full well that sweetmeats, such this freshly-baked mince pie, are verboten on my current diet but I thought … oh, sod it! I put plenty of suet in the mincemeat so that will count as my carnivore fix for the day!

    I must say that it is the tastiest mince pie I’ve ever eaten. My own recipe mincemeat and my own recipe shortcrust pastry. YUM!😋

  26. Ben Habib seems not to understand the principle of equidistance when it comes to territorial waters.

  27. I never for one moment thought, in 1973, that 50 years later Noddy Holder would be on BBC morning tv helping to make Christmas table decorations and joining in with a gentle exercise class.

  28. BTL @DTletters

    Brian Thorne
    4 HRS AGO
    Let me get this straight: people of whom we know nothing, who have no connection to this country and to whom we have no obligations whatsoever, decide to jump in a small boat or dinghy and chance their arm to get to what is known to them as Treasure Island?
    Once on these shores then instead of rounding these people up by gunpoint and into internment camps, then our pusillanimous politicians and authorities seem to think that some sort of ‘ International Law’ means we have to accommodate and feed them for their audacity, oh and give them our money?
    Even then, despite the fact we never wanted or even invited these people to our country, then we actually say we will process their claims!
    When rubberstamped and these undesirables have got their winning Lottery ticket, I.e British Passport, then they will be back and forth to their native country with their plunder while the taxpayers pay for the rest of their ( and our) lives.
    Hang on a minute?
    Let me get this straight: people of whom we know nothing, who have no connection……..
    No, I don’t believe it either.
    We must be mad!

    Martin Selves
    5 HRS AGO
    Nigel Farage is about to remind us of the Immigration crises. He will say it was a total betrayal of trust, and a deliberate act of ignoring the manifesto. The “tens of thousands” promised has become 1.2 million every year.
    The illegal traffic may be reduced dramatically by Rwanda, I am just curious about this now, but legal immigration is bringing with it a breakdown of community into ghettos, and the unmistakable rise of racial tension. We have within our Country many thousands who wish us harm. Personally I believe this is unforgivable, and Farage I am certain, will go much further and do something about it. He has the power to break the Conservative Party for a decade, but what will he do?
    The Party I have supported all my life, but never a member of, has brought us to the point of disintegration, a Country full of Woke, a Country sitting on decades of Gas but unwilling to even make a test drill, our Armed Forces a skeleton of what they were before, and a Green policy that 50% of the Country cannot afford or want. The interest on our National Debt costs us 12% of our GDP.
    Like many here, I have tried my best to tell my MP, and once I had her cornered in our Cul de sac for 5 minutes. She did not understand what I was talking about, and they all live in the Westminster Bubble that seems to be impenetrable. Talking seems to be all they want to do. Farage is going to burst that bubble, I hope so, and I hope he will start a Second Front. He led the Country towards Brexit, and I hope he leads our Government of whatever colour towards a “Normal Service”. What we have today is a stagnant mess. EDITED

    Frances Craddock
    5 HRS AGO
    Reply to Martin Selves
    I think you’ll find it’s more than 50% who don’t want the green policies

    Peter Bowman
    3 HRS AGO
    Reply to Martin Selves
    I notice on Steve Baker’s facebook page (High Wycombe. MP) mutterings from Muslims about what has he done for the Muslim vote.
    Interesting that they feel they should get special attention.

    1. Flodday, just off Skye, is an uninhabited island and would make an ideal internment campsite.

      Just feed them pork gruel once a day.

      1. We do too, I’ve even had them in the house, but I’ve not seen one this late in the year before.
        We have a couple of tree frogs sheltering behind door shutters at the moment, and they make one Hell of a racket for such a tiny creature.
        The salamander was in a place where I had snakes basking in the early summer. Not sure why they should like the location as we walk past there very frequently and I gather wood for the log burner daily.
        The ground here is very, very wet at the moment and the Dordogne has burst banks in a few places.

  29. I don’t like the guy’s approach to selection, but he is ideal for Japan because they rely on skill far more than brute force and so his tactics will change. They did well under his guidance last time. I hope they again do well with him, because they can play entertaining rugby.
    https://www.bbc.com/sport/rugby-union/67703042

  30. I said to my wife, I’ve been farting all day and they all smell exactly like the dinner you cooked me last night.

    Blimey she replied, how much of it did you eat?

    I said ‘none’.

    1. Now… how long will the scandal he’s running from be suppressed? Welsh communist… I reckon it’s theft of public money or something ‘Catholic priest’.

    2. Good riddance – but will his replacement sort about immediately undoing all the damage this nincompoop has done?

  31. Go green, go bankrupt? Spiked 13 December 2023.

    There is now a chance that the 2024 budget may indeed be ready this week. But the fiasco has nonetheless been deeply embarrassing for chancellor Olaf Scholz. The supreme court ruling has made a mockery of Scholz’s promise to spend billions on new ecological projects to support Germany’s flailing economy. Earlier this year, Scholz was claiming that Germany would experience an economic miracle fuelled by investment in new wind turbines, electricity grids, hydrogen power and subsidies for chip and battery production. That has now been exposed as just so much hot air.

    It’s never mentioned by either the German Government or the MSM but the American destruction of the Baltic Pipelines with the subsequent loss of cheap Russian Gas has had a devastating effect on the German economy.

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/12/13/go-green-go-bankrupt/

    1. The Greens have wrecked the German economy. Coal fired power stations were closed and mining ceased, nuclear was shut down or mothballed, offshore wind was cancelled and the German government sat back and watched the destruction of their pipeline.

      As in most countries following green energy policies we see the solar market has been a relative market contributor, though heavily subsidised, whereas wind has suffered tremendously – namely at the hands of inflated labour and input costs, project delays and supply constraints.

  32. 379467+ up ticks,

    Sir Patrick Vallance’s full pandemic diary to be kept secret
    Lawyers acting for the Government’s chief scientific adviser during lockdowns say publishing his diary in full would breach his human rights

    Surely with an issue of such magnitude concealing potential
    evidence you have to consider the victims kin human rights more so.

    It could hold the revealing key to the whole odious issue.

      1. 378467+ up ticks,

        Evening JN,

        Many of their victims cannot voice their opposition, these political serpents are no way considering the
        victims kinfolk.

    1. Open and transparent government. That’s what we like! They didn’t mind publishing the former PM’s diary. Although of course there were some messages missing – the crucial lot!

      They are shysters, liars and bar stewards, the lot of them.

    1. I keep the good quality ones. Also, you can always flatten them and put them under the bed. All you need is a roll of parcel tape to remake them.

      1. I have a load that I must flatten – keeping them for a hoped-for move back to East Anglia.

        I need to get a new Parcel-tape dispenser – Amazon/ebay?

      1. So does Spartie; he rips them up. Tissue boxes are for wimps, he likes the butch corrugated stuff.

        1. Don’t let him each too much or he will be pooing brickets. On second thoughts…do you have an open fire?

    2. Sadly I threw out or burnt most of my useful cardboard boxes last week and I need a conveniently-sized one – like a shoe box – to put my Christmas cards in until I have completed my IN/OUT list and can put them on the mantelpiece and on strings in the living room.

      You always find you need things which you have hoarded for years and have just finally thrown away.

    3. Oooh ….. who’s been ear wigging at the Dower House?
      Only yesterday, MB’s prezzie arrived in a big Jolly Useful Box. Better still the items were wedged in with lots more smaller Jolly Useful Boxes; all of of them in pristine condition!
      I have only tripped over it twice – so far.

  33. So the CoP 28 troughers have made the historic agreement to move away from fossil fuels. Strange, as I thought there were dates already marked in the diary for their demise but, I suppose, there has to be some headline arising from the jamboree.

    1. The more gullible a nation’s politicians are the more likely they are slavishly to follow CoP’s dictates.

      That does not bode well for us and does anyone seriously think our politicians will not cave in to the WHO?

      1. Not sure it is gulibility more sheer greed. They know they’ll get rewarded for agreeing with the narrative. It’s the trougher way on to the tax payer funded con circuit.

      2. The WHO power-grab seems more serious than the Cop-out28 nonsense., We know it’s nonsense, they know it’s nonsense but they all enjoy their annual beano at our expense. The WHO though seems to be an altogether more serious kettle of fish which will really impact on our freedoms.

  34. So the CoP 28 troughers have made the historic agreement to move away from fossil fuels. Strange, as I thought there were dates already marked in the diary for their demise but, I suppose, there has to be some headline arising from the jamboree.

  35. Bloody Hell,the bleakest Morgoth I have ever read

    I’ve seen young women working night shifts in packing warehouses

    reduced to tears because standing in safety boots for ten hours had

    caused them severe pain. Others broke down because they ‘‘Just didn’t

    want to be there’’ but they never had a choice because the economic

    model had to be serviced like an abusive pimp.

    Always the

    implicit promise was that, if you abided by the wishes of the economy,

    then you would in some way ‘‘advance’’ materially. Sure, the only shops

    you see these days on the High Streets are vape shops and

    money-laundering Turkish Hairdressers, but somewhere out there on the

    periphery, there’s a cardboard shitbox new-build with a convoluted

    40-year mortgage scheme attached to it that could be yours if you aren’t

    fired to make way for more ‘‘vibrancy’’ in the workplace.

    In Britain, at the end of 2023, it has been normalized that foreign men

    will be housed in luxurious hotels while our people wrap themselves up

    in soggy cardboard outside against its walls. Once more, the sanctified

    within the walls of the city and the native wargus outside. However,

    this isn’t entirely a council of despair.

    For years people have

    held to the view that no change was possible while people were as

    comfortable as they had become accustomed to under neoliberalism. We are

    a soft, decadent society that can no longer afford to be, and the

    phenomenon of the female TikTok rant is disillusionment manifesting. Not

    just with an economic system, but the moral codes and ideological

    diktats that swim alongside it. Suddenly, feminism seems like a big

    joke. Politically it’s already being mothballed to make way for

    transsexualism, culturally it lingers on pointlessly. The promise, of

    course, was that women could enter the workplace and, as always, advance

    materially. But if advancing materially now just means not drowning in

    debt and keeping the heating on then why bother?

    Anyone who has

    watched an advert or seen any corporate ESG-inspired sloganeering could

    quite rightly ask themselves: where the hell did white men go? The

    answer is of course that we were long ago cast out of the cultural

    citadel and reduced to the wargus stalking the wastelands. Witness now

    as the citadel gates open once more as our womenfolk are cast outside to

    join us

    https://morgoth.substack.com/p/hard-times-and-the-white-wargus
    I commend the whole thing to this house

    1. He’s not wrong though. I see university websites where white boys may as well have been erased. If they are in an image then they’ve got a diversity with them, usually in the dominant role.

      It’s putrid.

    2. Have never read him before but this sure echoes what I feel sometimes. There is so much wrong in the U.K. that I want to write to my MP about but where to start? And if I start something else pops into my mind. I feel very sad for my children and grandchildren.

      1. My MP is a useless non-Lib non-Dem horse who approves of all this carp. Fat chance she will do anything to oppose it.

    3. Bleak isn’t the word. It makes you angry. THIS is what I worked and served the Crown for? I don’t think so.

  36. Well, it’s turned into quite a pleasant afternoon today.
    So far I’ve got labels done for the 7 jars of Chunky Pineapple Chutney I did over the weekend, some tidying up done in the back of the van, including doing a wheel arch cover and re-potted the new Christmas tree.
    The tree came totally pot-bound in the 6″ plastic pot it had been planted in, so I had to cut the old pot away and then realised I did not have a suitable pot up the “garden”.
    New 12″ diameter pot bought yesterday and with the assistance of Graduate Son, it is now https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/73c78955586ab12c800654f21db030b9970da86257c29935452b87b7fd06f6fa.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8e1f6fe9c48e4016bb63eb91bd9da7fc2097313d48e783afffc5ef6bf692f1e8.jpg looking much happier and it should be at least three Christmases before it needs re-potting.

  37. Spartie’s American cousin? Phew!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/12/13/runaway-chihuahua-chased-by-cars-down-new-york-highway/

    “Runaway chihuahua chased by cars down New York highway

    Several cars tried to corner the dog which persistently outmanoeuvred the vehicles

    13 December 2023 • 11:45am

    tmg.video.placeholder.alt dJBzg9aMjrg

    A tiny chihuahua was shielded by cars as it was chased down a four-lane highway in New York after escaping from its owner.

    Footage shows the dog, known as Bean, running down the Staten Island expressway as drivers slowed down to try and direct it towards the exits.

    At one point in the video, a woman can be seen leaving her car and running down the highway on foot in pursuit of the dog.

    Katie Marie, whose dashcam captured the incident, said: “When I saw that dog, my instincts just kicked in and the only thing on my mind was to make sure that dog got to safety.”

    Ms Marie told local media that more than 20 cars helped in the “extremely wholesome” rescue mission which ultimately reunited Bean with his owners.

    Ms Marie added: “We just kept trying to keep the dog in the high occupancy vehicle (carpool) lane, trying to tire him out.

    “If it wasn’t for everyone there, it would have been a very different outcome.”

    Kaitlyn McGinley, another driver chasing Bean, told local media that she pulled her car over to the side of the road to help capture the dog which then ran under the car.

    She eventually found Bean’s owner through a local Facebook group and the dog was returned shortly.

    Bean reportedly ran away from home after it was frightened by a pitbull barking.

    Tee Richardson, Bean’s owner, said: “He is home and safe and that is all that matters.” “

  38. Jon Venables denied parole over concerns for safety of the public. 13 December 2023.

    The Parole Board said on Wednesday: “After considering the circumstances of his offending, the progress made while in custody and on licence, and the evidence presented in the dossier, the panel was not satisfied that release at this point would be safe for the protection of the public.

    Wow! A rare moment of sense in the system. Even without any sentimental blubber about the child it’s pretty obvious that he’s a wrong’un and should never be released.

    No comments allowed! Lol!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/12/13/jon-venables-james-bulger-murderer-denied-parole/

  39. The asylum seeker who is believed to have killed himself on the Bibby Stockholm was screaming ‘very loudly’ at 3am for 15 minutes, other men living on the vessel said today – as they shared their fears that more could take their own lives.

    Emergency services were called to the barge at just after 6am yesterday to what officers described as a ‘sudden death’. Richard Drax, Tory MP for South Dorset, later said he could ‘confirm that tragically there has been a suicide’.

    Today, two migrants described the man’s anguish in the hours before his tragic death. One told the BBC: ‘At 3am he was shouting and screaming very loudly. He was shouting for about 10 or 15 minutes then he went quiet.

    I reckon he was murdered!!

    Or coerced towards suicide ….

    1. Perhaps he went against a Muslim/Illegal immigrant/terrorist rule, and was executed to appear as suicide..

    2. It was reported that he hung himself.
      Reminds me of the Irishman who went to the docs with a multitude of bumps on his head – apparently he tried to hang himself with some bungee cord

      1. Human rights are only applied when it suits. They cared nothing for Peter Hichens human rights when the intelligence agency spied on him because he had a differing view to the official one. And this under a so called Conservative government. All trust is gone.

  40. Democrat lawfare at its finest.
    They really do HATE Trump.
    There is no way he can get a fair trial in any Democrat controlled area and guess where all the trials will be held.

    Won’t happen, but the very least that should happen is that no juror who is registered as either a Republican or Democrat supporter should be permitted to sit on any of the juries.

    https://www.standard.co.uk//comment/donald-trump-trial-republicans-us-president-election-b1126695.html?lid=jr0qyw1dy1ls

  41. They are now talking about having a Zambian as the new Welsh first minister.
    I’m sure he’s a nice chap, but I don#t go to Zambia and start expecting to be made Prime Minister, why are we supposed to welcome having foreigners in charge here?

  42. The Covid Inquiry is ignoring the one number that would blow lockdown out of the water

    This sham inquiry is achieving nothing apart from protecting reputations and lining lawyers pockets

    KAROL SIKORA
    13 December 2023 • 3:12pm

    The single most revealing exchange in the Covid Inquiry took place on Monday. Rishi Sunak highlighted a study that suggested more quality adjusted life years (QALYs) would be taken by the first lockdown than the virus itself. This was a significant admission, and one that we might have assumed KC Hugo Keith would want to explore further.

    Instead, he shut the Prime Minister down with unerring speed, stating that he was not interested in this approach – inaccurately labelling them as “quality life assurance models”.

    It was an astonishing sight. Here we have the most powerful person in the country, rightly raising the possibility that the cure was more harmful than the disease. Sunak, who to his credit was one of the more sceptical of restrictions in cabinet throughout, surely understood the significance of what he was saying. He brought the study to attention very deliberately. The bottom line in the cost-benefit analysis of the lockdown in the UK, published in 2020, was negative in every scenario.

    Quality-adjusted life years are exactly how the “success” of lockdown should be measured. This is not a fringe opinion– this measurement has been widely deployed to assess the value of various medical interventions in any resource-limited health system. Difficult decisions need to be taken and trade-offs made. To deny that is to deny reality.

    QALYs simply estimate how many years a certain intervention will save or take, including a calculation of the quality of that time. It’s not a perfect metric, but it’s the best we’ve got.

    This logic should have been applied to lockdown, however cruel or callous it may appear. On the whole, the lives and wellbeing of the young were sacrificed to protect the elderly, and not even particularly successfully when we consider the misery and suffering millions of older people endured.

    It is my estimate that more life-years will be lost from delays in cancer diagnosis and treatment alone than were taken by the virus, and this is just one tiny fraction of lockdown’s collateral damage. Honestly, I cannot understand how anybody in good faith can now argue that restrictions saved more life-years than they saved – it simply does not seem credible.

    We are faced with one of two disturbing truths about this so-called “inquiry”. Either its staff genuinely don’t understand the concept of a QALY analysis, in which case they should not hold the position they do. Or, perhaps worse, they are very deliberately steering the investigation’s discourse in order to come to a conclusion that would suit all involved.

    I suspect, sadly, it’s the latter. From day one, it has acted as a political witch-hunt with no desire to ask, never mind answer, the fundamental questions. The whole point of this circus is to ensure that we are better prepared for the next pandemic, if or when one arrives. We are painfully far away from achieving that.

    When a point of genuine significance is raised, by the Prime Minister no less, it is ushered away and out of sight. Worse still, Sunak was only referring to the first lockdown. Had that calculation been spread across the almost two years of disproportionate restrictions, the conclusion would be even more overwhelming.

    This sham inquiry is achieving nothing apart from protecting reputations and lining lawyers pockets. It is a genuine embarrassment. Sunak’s intervention should be the basis for an entire new inquiry, one which explores a proper cost-benefit analysis of those two dreadful years. I think we all know what conclusion it would come to.

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

    Nigel Henson
    1 HR AGO
    Hugo Keith is absolutely the worst kind of lead advocate for a public inquiry: biased, arrogant, rude, obsessed with trivial grandstanding and ‘gotcha’ questions, following his own dubious agenda and – most egregious of all – utterly uninterested in actually examining the evidence for the government’s Covid response. He thinks it’s all about him. Largely as a result this Inquiry is going to be worse than useless…

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/12/13/karol-sikora-covid-inquiry-qaly-lockdown-wrong/

    1. We see it, We know it and just wish for the sinning perpetrators to be brought to book and await our justice.

      Which will NOT be soft. At the very least, loss of job and pensions, otherwise long prison sentences and possibly death.

    2. Was going to comment the same about this dreadful KC. How did he get the gig? Shouldn’t he be gluing himself to a road instead of doing a proper important groen-up job?

    3. Oh you. Ms Sikora is confused. The whole point of the inquiry is to ensure that lockdown was justified and not used enough.

      1. Wibbling, it’s Professor Sikora.

        Unfortunately his knowledge and great expertise did not agree with the politicians’

        ideas about Covid, so he has been pointedly ignored by the media for the last few years.

      2. I agree with the second part of your comment.
        Prof Sikora is a he, and has been speaking out since “the off”
        He’s one of the least confused commentators on the whole farce, give him the respect he’s due.

  43. That’s me gone for today. Grey and wet most of the day. Not much better tomorrow. Caught a cold, too. Ugh. Were I my neighbour, I would have tested myself twice for covid (or worse!), be wearing a mask, slathered my hands in that ghastly chemical we were told to use or die, and have moved into the spare room. I am merely sitting by the fire reading a novel! I shall take a cold cure sachet when I go to bed.

    Market tomorrow – should I survive. Tesco and Morrisons are doing the 25% off booze…..

    Have a jolly evening. If you can…

    A demain.

    1. If you have a cold go to bed !

      My Aunt Mary called this morning instead of posting a card. Sensible lady. We asked after each others health. Turns out at 89 the only thing wrong with her is recently diagnosed asthma.

    1. Given that paedophilia is next on the list to be legalised i don’t expect bestiality will be long to follow.

        1. When you flood the country with men who see sex with children as normal we get this society. Not forgetting how the authorities colluded in the grooming and rape of tens of thousands of teenage British girls. Which is still happening.

          1. …and George (Grizzly) accuse me of not being ‘Modern’.

            If that’s being ‘Modern’.I’m happy to carry on being old-fashioned (The values where better and worth more).

        2. No one asked for this invasion. There are, certainly some nasty bitter Lefties desperate to do the nation down and pretend we’re some sort of backwater devil pit that flogs ‘the Darkies’ at every opportunity but the truth is we’re not.

          Blair wanted a voting bloc. The state loved this – an instant client state. Endless demands, never contributing it was an absolute green light for pointless legislation, regulation – look at all the lovely words forced on us now ‘diversity’ ‘inclusion’ which from the Lefty blue haired speaker mean the exact opposite of what the words are supposed to.

          The Left tried to make child rape acceptable by ‘reframing’ to minor attracted persons. Then the muslims got there first and mechanised the whole thing and *still* big fat state protects them. Why? Because they’re the ultimate customer.

          We have had our problems, no question. But through the late 80’s and 90’s there was a huge sense of growing up, that it didn’t matter. No one cared if you were gay – although try that now and you’ll be told not only must you care, you must celebrate the other being gay – if you don’t you’re a homophobe or something.

          Blair poured acid into this nation for political gain. The state kept the pour going and invented ways to cut the patient to deepen the wounds and leave long, open scars. We have gone backward socially, culturally and economically – we’re worse off in buying power than we were in 1950, apparently.

          Why? Does the state hate the public so much? Yes, it does. Nothing is enough, power is everything. Not to use it, simply to have it.

          1. Wibbles (and others) haven’t you seen the message yet?

            Diversity Iinclusiveness, Equality..
            B
            NOW you get the message -.B> DIE

            The same as FOAD.

    2. There is a documented mental condtion about loving farm animals. It’s very odd, I’ll admit.

    3. On the horn of a dilemma. As I often say, you don’t think the world can get any worse, then you see the next day’s news…

      1. I’ve carried Junior on my back before, but not in front of me. That said, I’ve never used him as a human shield in an irrational war against an enemy I hate simply for one attribute of his nation.

      1. Indeed they did. Although not nearly to the same extent.
        If you haven’t read it, I thoroughly recommend
        Killing Thatcher, by Rory Carroll,
        an excellent book, well researched and easy reading.
        I don’t recall seeing you on Nottle before: welcome.

    1. Mr Pursglove said there were no unaccompanied asylum seeking children in hotels now but 132 were ‘still missing’ and ‘we are working intensively’ with local authorities and police on the issue.

      Ms Thewliss told him: ‘You’re not doing a very good job of it if 132 out of 154 are still missing… you don’t care do you?’

      Mr Pursglove said that was a ‘pretty outrageous suggestion’.

      The committee heard that of those missing, 103 were now adults and 29 were still under 18.

      It’s just a bloody joke. I really think the country has gone for a Burton. Just wish my 2 kids would emigrate, but where?

          1. Indeed.
            When I was working in Tokyo, it was explained that the people who worked for our British bank had made themselves unemployable outside “our sphere”.
            The first time I worked there, I doubt I saw a single black person anywhere, and as a gaijin I was very limited in the places I could eat unless accompanied by a Japanese.
            It had changed markedly second time around, but there was still a general wariness of people like me.
            OK Phizzee open goal, fire away

          2. I worked offshore Japan for 6 or 7 months, Mt Fuji visible every day for 2 months on one job. One trip, several of us missed a chopper flight out causing a week’s stay over at Christmas in Tokyo. A weird place to say the least. They do Christmas big time. I remember the huge black Nationalist buses rolling along with speakers blaring out, presumably, saying let’s keep it this way. I also believe, or so I’ve heard, that Muslims are not welcome.

          3. If you get as drunk as a lord and make a fool of yourself, you are not to worry, it was the alcohol to blame. Ah so!

          4. I understand the Japanese have a certain enzyme in Their make up that makes them quickly and more susceptible to alcohol.

          5. I don’t criticise. If someone feels good about offering ‘personal services’ that’s up to them.

          6. The Shogun period was featured on TV recently (forget channel) when Japan was so insular that links with other countries were expressly prohibited and anyone attempting foreign trade would be shot.

      1. Mr Pursglove became a councillor for Wellingborough BC when just 18. He lived around the corner from me and canvassed our street.

          1. This was in 2007, about the time that Fat Gordy took over from The Enemy Of The People. There was no reason to dislike the fellow. The Conservatives had won back the council in 2003 after six years of Labour squandermania and strengthened their position in the election. Peter Bone had won the parliamentary seat from Labour two years earlier; Philip Hollobone did the same up the road in Kettering, and all three were staunchly anti-EU.

          2. Bone’s been nobbled and if the local recall petition succeeds, there’ll be a by-election at which a Labour schoolgirl calling herself Gen Kitchen might well win. She is one or both of these two people:

            https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/04a2190f4d5a82ecc55c91bc9b851ec9f8975b9a863e419827b487f3f7f66b7c.jpg
            https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/dca08dd608bb5d133bfefee1ea4538017f7176521806dd83cd6ccd34fc0c3b46.jpg
            https://sarcoma.org.uk/about-us/meet-the-team/genevieve-kitchen/

          3. Bone’s been nobbled and if the local recall petition succeeds, there’ll be a by-election at which a Labour schoolgirl calling herself Gen Kitchen might well win. She is one or both of these two people:

            https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/04a2190f4d5a82ecc55c91bc9b851ec9f8975b9a863e419827b487f3f7f66b7c.jpg
            https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/dca08dd608bb5d133bfefee1ea4538017f7176521806dd83cd6ccd34fc0c3b46.jpg
            https://sarcoma.org.uk/about-us/meet-the-team/genevieve-kitchen/

  44. Have we done Wordle today? (I see comments are loading normally again.)

    Wordle 907 4/6

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

    1. Par Four, me too!

      Wordle 907 4/6
      🟨⬜⬜🟨🟨
      🟨⬜⬜🟨🟩
      🟩⬜🟩🟩🟩
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    2. Me too.
      Wordle 907 4/6

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

  45. We’re watching Yorkshire Dales snd Lakes on 4 catch up. Stunning scenery, hill farming, canoeing on the fast running River Swale. Written snd commented on a Yorkshireman. Utterly stunning commentary and scenes. This is food for my towny heart. Recommend. Second attempt to post.

  46. Of course blacks can’t be racist. Everyone knows that only whitey is guilty of that.

    Boston’s woke Democrat Mayor Michelle Wu plans secret no WHITES Christmas party: Aide accidentally sent group email invite meant only for ‘electeds of color’
    Boston Mayor Michelle Wu planned a Christmas Holiday Party exclusively for ‘electeds of color’
    An aide to the mayor accidentally emailed the exclusive party to the whole city council chamber
    The move to host a racially segregated party sparked outrage, with one city councilor branding it ‘unfortunate and divisive’

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12859903/Boston-Democrat-Mayor-Michelle-Wu-christmas-party.html

    Honkies de matter?
    Feeling browned off?
    Nigger mind
    Clean off your whitewash and maybe you’ll feel
    Cocooned

  47. When I called Corbyn a Marxist on another group earlier someone came back saying that he is in fact a Keynesian, I said i didn’t realise that he was even from Africa

    1. My wife’s nana lived next door to John Maynard Keynes’ son in Brunswick Walk in Cambridge. Nana Palmer let rooms to actors performing at the Arts Theatre. Her visitors books contain many famous names.

      Nana also knew the Cambridge spies and told me that she believed it was better for the Russians to have the same technology as the Americans. She believed that there would otherwise be an imbalance and one country might otherwise dominate.

      I have always thought that those who experienced war and worked in war industries (she worked during the war at Cambridge Instrument Company) were much more highly attuned to world affairs than the average Joe.

  48. For anyone who likes a good champagne Sainsbury’s have their own Blancs de noir, white champagne from black grapes, on offer at £20 per bottle, buy 6 and get 25% off. Terrific champagne at £15 per bottle.

    1. A cheapskate adds his two cents worth:
      I can buy nearly three bottles of crémant de Bordeaux for the Sainsbury bargain price per bottle, and unless one really is a connoisseur, it’s far better value.
      I doubt that Joe Public could price range the two.

      1. I had the pleasure of selling three different champagnes in the 70s and have grown to like them. My preference is for Heidsieck Blue Top for normal, Perrier Jouët for elegance and also ran G.H. Mumm Cordon Rouge. I know a lot of people think it’s overrated but I enjoy champagne that include Pinot Meurnier as it gives it a slight biscuity taste.

          1. A tour of the region, sampling what’s available is one of life’s great pleasures.
            Based near Epernay we had a splendid stay there.
            A good friend of my wife knows the area extremely well and directed us to some very small producers who sold beautiful wines at a fraction of the price of the “big boy’s” best.

          2. Yes and they will be extremely good but cannot be produced in commercial quantities, thankfully.

          3. Reminds me of my time in Switzerland. The Fendant, to me at least as a very young man, was very tasty, but almost impossible to buy outside of the country. They just didn’t produce enough.

          4. We will, undoubtedly, have products produced regionally in this country that are not available outside small boundaries.

          5. Farm shops, although expensive, are good places to look for local products. Fruit and vegetables obviously but I’ve come across some excellent local cheeses and recently found flour made from wheat grown and milled on a farm just a few miles away.
            Bananas, a favourite of mine, not so much!😎

          6. Indeed. Some of the small Virginia wineries produce excellent wines, but tend to be expensive, even buying direct from their vineyards because they do not produce the quantities that the big boys in California do.

          7. I used to sell Paul Masson wines in the 80s. OK for quaffing but not much to them. Better than Blossom Hill in my opinion but nor much 😀. No doubt they bring pleasure to a lot of people.

          8. When we first moved to the US, Paul Masson and Gallo (hearty burgundy I think) were your average. I’m happy to say that things have greatly improved since the 80s!!

          9. We have America to thank for wine in Europe. I think it was in the 1850s that phylloxera destroyed the vines in Europe. To this day all European vines are grafted onto American rootstock.

          10. How does the price of US wines compare to European, S American, Australian and S African ones?

          11. How much do you want to pay?

            I just looked at the web site for a supermarket that we use is south carolina. A Californian cab sauvignon is normally $4 per bottle. Wrinklies normally get a ten percent discount on Tuesdays and then another ten percent for buying a six pack.

            You may be getting what you pay for, Bay Bridge is not a big name manufacturer.

          12. Sorry, talking of the wine, t’was time for me to have my evening vino, but we do have a source for French wines, providing we buy a case, we buy Merceau and Pouille Fuisse (sorry can’t spell! )Australian white wines are about $10, S African about the same. I can’t drink red wines much these days, a white chardonnay is my first choice, along with Pinot Grigio (cheers Lottie! RIP)

          13. Thanks, Jill, doesn’t sound like there’s a huge difference in prices. I’ve a few bottles of PG and will open one to drink to Ann this evening, cheers.

        1. My palate and “nose” are not up to telling the difference.
          I’ve had some superb Champagnes, Madame Taittinger was on the board of one of the companies I worked for and “her” champagne was excellent, but wasted one me. A very pleasant and down to earth individual, if one didn’t know who she was one would never have guessed. Name drop, name drop!
          I have a bottle of English Nyetimber which I will try on New Year’s eve.
          I will certainly enjoy it.

          1. If you enjoy it, it’s not wasted. I am not a wine snob and not afraid to say I enjoy a wine whatever the price.

          2. My palate and “nose” are not up to telling the difference.
            But I bet there are wines and beers that you prefer more than an others. That’s all I’m talking about.

      2. And that is the be all and end all of buying wine. A nice couple, local friends, left a bottle of Moët & Chandon in our letter box after discovering our recent marriage. I’m not enough of a connoisseur to tell the difference. Not saying it wasn’t appreciated.

        1. I’m very suspect of the word connoisseur. I like what I like regardless of price. I’ve tasted £100 bottles of wine that I don’t like and £5 bottles that I like. It’s all very subjective.

      3. Crémant de Loire (caves Samur) was something I stumbled on many years ago whilst on tour in the region and drank at my wedding and christening of first born. Excellent..

    2. 15 miles to the nearest Sainsbury’s. Will check out Morrisons fizz tomorrow, only 5 miles distant.

        1. Looks good, apparently I get 15% off tomorrow, my son, for his sins, works there. Might buy a couple for the two family Christmas events to come. @£15.30.

          I’ve got a £75 voucher to use as well.

    3. Sadly, I do not. I would choose a red or white wine every time over a glass of Champagne.

      And it makes your breath smell.

    4. Sadly, I do not. I would choose a red or white wine every time over a glass of Champagne.

      And it makes your breath smell.

    1. If the Arabs laid down their weapons there would be no more war.
      If the Jews laid down their weapons there would be no more Israel.

    1. Biden is and always was a vile little man, a compulsive liar and charlatan but with something of the Devil about him.

      In his tragic dotage Biden’s eyes are dead, his gait that of a demented old man and his imposition as POTUS an insult to the US taxpayers and his policies a blight on all humanity.

      Biden’s family is even more dysfunctional than our own ‘First’ family, the wretched Royals.

      The less said about the ‘First’ son of either the Biden or the Royal family the better.

    2. I don’t care for either but neither repulses me. To be honest, I know little about Biden other than that he seems to be a doddery old fool. I take little interest in US politics.

  49. My son in Swansea’s verdict on Drakeford’s resignation:
    “Sooner the jumped up little fascist is gone the better”

  50. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/12/13/tory-mp-defends-homeless-man-from-attackers/

    David Davis, a former minister, has said he stepped in to stop two men attacking a homeless man near Parliament.

    The Conservative MP for Haltemprice and Howden intervened after seeing a
    “spray of blood” as the attackers kicked the man’s head at around 11pm
    on Great Peter Street, Westminster, on Tuesday.

    The former Brexit secretary put himself between the victim and the pair before scuffling with one of them.Mr
    Davis, 74, let the rough sleeper, named Gareth, spend the night on his
    sofa at his Westminster flat and took him to St. Thomas’ hospital on
    Wednesday morning because he was still bleeding.

    1. I’m sure he helped, but I’d feel better about it all if a 3rd person was doing the telling of the tale.

    2. If the chap was kicked in the head and there was blood he should have taken him to hospital straight away. Davis could have ended up with a dead body on his sofa in the morning. Which would have taken a little explaining.

      1. “Now, sir, how do we account for that steak sized piece of flesh missing from the body’s right thigh?”

          1. It certainly did. I’m only just starting to get about again today. I have managed to take the dogs out round the block which is more than I could do for the last couple of days. I think I’ll give the ceilidh I’d planned to attend tonight a miss, though; I still feel a bit too fragile to be Stripping The Willow 🙂

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