Morning, all Y'all.
Torrential rain last noght, woke me several times. Now everywhere is wet and shiny, the dust washed off, and the "lawn" is miraculously green again, hardly a tinge of beige left. Even the dry old Hydrangea has started lots of leaves that weren't there yesterday! The rest of the trees (birches, ash) are sprouting leaves like there's a race. Even wild daffodils are showing yellow.
I love this bit of spring.
Good morning all.
While the western media distracts people with stuff like Adolescence and slebs on fake space trips, the Chinese are bulk-buying gold and silver.
Good for them! As an owner of gold, I naturally welcome anything that makes it more expensive, but apart from that, so what? One thing is certain: no government in its right mind would link its currency to gold.
Oh well, stock up on the booze and nibbles and have chums round to the house.
(Anyone daft enough to install Alexa – switch the blood thing off; better still, take a hammer to it and then bin it.)
Steam heating was used well into the diesel age. Maybe even still now.
Even in locos.
Good Morning Folks,
Cold breezy start here.
Good morning, all. Sun and clouds.
Grey and drizzly here.
Morning all 🙂😊
A bright start but very windy and a tad nippy.
Eldest and family in Tenby blowing a gale there and hardly stopped raining since they arrived Monday afternoon.
British infrastructure is at the mercy of forgien powers.
Probably because our political idiots are being subjected to bribery and have no inbred resistance, let alone any responsibility towards the British taxpayers past and present.
Taking bungs in plain English.
Been a long time since I was in Tenby.
Parents had a holiday flat round the coast in Saundersfoot, up to the early 90s. Pleasant part of the world.
Yes Obs the rest of the family rented a four bed house. At Lydstep around 5 years ago. We had a lovely time. Lovely cliff to walks. Nice pubs and restaurants. Golf shooting car racing.
Tenby Links was the toughest course I’ve ever played. Number plays off single figures. But he won’t have time to play it.
Good Moaning.
It's a somewhat nippy Wednesday, so I thought I'd muck up your blood pressure to provide a bit of fun.
"Hashem Abedi should never have been in this country
15 April 2025, 11:40am
If there has been one constant in Hashem Abedi’s miserable life it has been the determined failure of the British state to protect its citizens from men like him. Abedi is accused of inflicting ‘life-threatening injuries’ on three prison officers in an attack at HMP Frankland on Saturday. Injuries are said to include ‘burns, scalds and stab wounds’, with Abedi reported to have scalded the guards with hot cooking oil and stabbed them with improvised weapons. Two men remain in hospital as of writing.
Abedi was jailed for a minimum of 55 years after being found guilty on 22 counts of murder for his role in the Manchester Arena attack. Hashem helped his brother Salman obtain the chemicals to produce triacetone triperoxide (TATP). Hashem and Salman fashioned prototypes of their bomb from oil cans and pizza sauce tins, cramming them with nails and screws to maximise casualties.
Although the finished product was assembled by Salman, sentencing judge Mr Justice Baker was ‘entirely satisfied’ that Salman was ‘only enabled to do so as a result of the extensive preparation work’ which had been conducted along with Hashem. Moreover, the TATP procured by Hashem was the explosive used to give the Arena bomb its deadly reach, which saw it kill 22 people, including children, attending an Ariana Grande concert. Salman was killed in the explosion, and off he popped to Paradise to collect his 72 virgins, while Hashem was arrested and later extradited from Libya.
Saturday was not Hashem’s first attack on prison service staff. In 2020, he and two other Islamist terrorists assaulted Paul Edwards, a 57-year-old guard at HMP Belmarsh. Edwards had scalp lacerations, a bruised rib cage, a bruised back, and long-term hearing damage in the ambush, which was described by a witness as a ‘vicious attack’ in which Abedi and his accomplices behaved ‘like a pack of animals’. Abedi was sentenced to a further three years and ten months. This raises an obvious question: why was a mass-murdering terrorist with a history of violence against prison staff allowed access to cooking oil and the means to heat it? As Mark Fairhurst of the Prison Officers’ Association says: ‘These prisoners need only receive their basic entitlements and we should concentrate on control and containment instead of attempting to appease them.’
This is only the latest example of the state failing to contain Hashem Abedi. The original sin goes back to 1993 when his parents Ramadan and Samia were allowed into the country as asylum seekers from Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya, where they claimed to face political repression. He and his wife eventually settled in Manchester, where they gave birth to six children, including Hashem, Salman, and their older brother Ismail. Then, in 2011, they moved back to Libya for two years.
Cynics among you might be thinking: ‘So much for the terrible repression they were facing there.’ But there’s actually a perfectly logical explanation: Ramadan was fighting in the Libyan civil war. The Saunders inquiry determined it to be ‘likely’ that he was a member of the February 17th Martyrs Brigade, an Islamist militia opposed to Gaddafi, and also ‘likely’ that his sons, then 16 (Salman) and 14 (Hashem) ‘had some involvement in fighting during the civil war’. It’s nice when families spend quality time together. We also know about Ramadan’s activities in Libya thanks to an interview in the Guardian in which a fellow Mancunian, who had also travelled back home to participate in the war, described bumping into Ramadan in the mountains and recognising him from Didsbury mosque. It truly is a small world.
The family returned to Manchester in 2013, but by the following year Salman and Hashem were back in Libya during the second round of the civil war. Thankfully, the Royal Navy was on hand to help evacuate them because, and I quote, ‘extremist militias were fighting in the area’. We wouldn’t want our moderate militias to get caught up with any extremist militias.
The public inquiry found that the brothers were ‘radicalised in Libya to a significant extent’, that they received ‘training or assistance in how to build a bomb’ there, and that their family held ‘significant responsibility’ for their radicalisation, including Ramadan, Samia and Ismail, each of whom had ‘held extremist views’ which ‘influenced’ Salman and Hashem’s worldviews. They were also influenced by Abdalraouf Abdallah, who fought in Libya, has been convicted of terrorism offences, and, as seems inevitable at this point, was from Manchester.
All of this, they missed. Salman was known to the security services, first being brought to their attention in 2010, 2013, 2014, on several occasions in 2015, and again in 2016. The Saunders inquiry decided there was ‘a significant missed opportunity to take action that might have prevented the attack’, and criticised a security services agent who assessed two key items of evidence, recognised the possibility of a national security risk, but failed to write up a report the same day. A breakdown in communication between spooks and counter-terror cops was also cited.
Hashem Abedi should never have been able to assault those prison officers because he should never have been allowed the privileges that let him do so.
He and his brother should never have been able to murder 22 people at a concert because the threat they posed should have been understood and acted upon sooner.
They should never have been rescued from Libya by the Royal Navy, and had they not, those 22 people would still be alive today.
They should never have been allowed to travel to Libya with their father and back again, because British Islamists who join paramilitaries overseas eventually come back to Britain with paramilitary training.
They should never have been born in this country because their parents should never have been granted asylum here.
This is a nation, not an Airbnb with a welfare state attached
This is a nation, not an Airbnb with a welfare state attached. The entry of asylum claimants should be tightly controlled, with lengthy and intrusive vetting processes, and applicants detained offshore while that work is taking place. The criteria for refugee status should be more stringent, and if that means genuine cases get turned away, that is an unfortunate side effect of enhancing security in the asylum system. Where applicants secure refugee status then prove dangerous, disruptive or unwilling to conform to British law or custom, they should be considered for return to their country of origin, and their dependents with them. If the Refugee Convention stands in the way of refoulement, a way will have to be found around it, or the convention withdrawn from entirely. Indefinite leave to remain and citizenship should be granted less frequently and after significantly longer waiting periods. We cannot be the world’s sofa bed, there whenever anyone needs a place to crash, and asking nothing of them in return.
The Abedi family have been a pox on this country and its rightful citizens. Border policy cannot be made with just one case in mind, but we could do worse than setting a ground rule that the likes of the Abedis should be kept as far away from this country as possible."
Put him in a box and weld it shut. Then leave him to die alone, lying in his own filth.
Yo Ol
or cut off his hands, certainy his left one, he will have trouble wiping his ass and others of his ilk will not go near himm
Very disturbing tale.
The author is naïve re allowing people such as these into the UK. What does he/she think of what's happening in Dover every day? The government, of both colours, have sat on this growing problem for years and done nothing to control it. Why is that?
Good morning everyone.
"SIR – Madeline Grant’s article on modern Birmingham (“The Birmingham I once loved is gone, replaced by rats, rubbish and rampant violence”, Comment, April 12) is deeply distressing.
In 1963 I trained as a teacher, married, and moved to Birmingham from Wiltshire. I was fortunate to find a job at Edgbaston High School, then a model of educational excellence. The city provided a plethora of inspiring artistic opportunities, and our students were proud of their alma mater.
Local politicians should put aside their differences in order to restore Birmingham’s excellence and nurture its youth.
Valerie Dagger Shipbourne, Kent"
Circumstances change, but in her retirement Mrs Dagger now lives in a village approximately 140 miles from Edgbaston.
The good and sensible rats leave the sinking ship; the stupid ones go down with it.
Fat floats.
I used to go regularly to the theatre in Birmingham in the seventies. I wouldn’t go near the place now.
Good morning, all. Overcast at 06:00, sunshine now breaking through.
Climate change, climate crisis, call it what you may, is continuing to divide people and ideas. Here we have, what I deem as preposterous, a doctor claiming that the fires 'raging' across Britain are due to climate change/crisis. In April? Certainly, here in N Essex, we had a dry spell with some clear sunny days but hardly the temperatures that would start wildfires. On a number of the days that the Sun was shining the wind/breeze kept the temperature down.
Interesting view from a Nobel Laureate in Quantum Physics. Clauser is attacked BTL for 'only' being a leading light in Quantum Physics and therefore not qualified to comment on climate science. Apparently, clear thinking and being able to see possible problems in other areas where physics plays a part is not allowed in the climate change arena. Clouds, Clauser discusses, are not well represented in the modelling of the climate. Odd?
The article contains a lot of invective against those chancers (we call them "entrepreneurs") making shedloads of money jumping on a bandwagon with quack solutions.
Precious little challenging the science of the actual problem of manifestations of climate change of sufficient scale and speed to destabilise civilisation and to threaten a global mass extinction of species brought on by over-exploitation by too many people.
It may well be true that many, if not most of the solutions are counter-productive to the point of ruining those economies that might otherwise have afforded to do some good. How much is contributed to global warming by electric cars caught up in a wildfire?
It may well also be true that efforts by the enlightened are completely swamped by those who don't give a damn, and gain supremacy by not giving a damn.
For my part, for as long as it continues to rain in England, I will pile up brushwood and garden waste to rot down into topsoil as my contribution to carbon capture.
I'm not sure that it is the "gullible millions" but a certain coterie, sizable I would grant, that has the power to influence and keep certain topics at the forefront for their fellows to chatter about endlessly and, like witchfinders, find any bumps or anomalies, as proof that what they believe, is true. What is unfortunate is these are the people that run things, including politics and newspapers so they have the means to reinforce their crackpot ideas amongst themselves, they are educated, which means they have no common sense and no real knowledge of the real world. In a catastrophe they are the first to die. As for the great unwashed, I don't think the vast majority, millions upon millions, in fact, give a damn other than that the above mentioned fuckwits are able to interfere in the lives of the ordinary citizen.
You can hardly read any article these days without some mention of "climate change"…..it's insidious and has permeated everything.
Why the gullible millions can’t see through the global warming hoax
SIR – Liz Truss’s article (“Trump is right: only bold, dramatic action can defeat the quangocracy”, Comment, April 15) demonstrates clearly why her premiership was such a failure.
She remains as she was then: confident but wrong.
John Cuningham
Cambridge
I think the editor left the 'T' out of your name, Johnny.
Ideally he should live in Scunthorpe
Yo mr G
Yo, Mr Effort.
or Lightwater, maybe?
What a fool. Must be an academic.
Harry Mount
The Odyssey is more real than we thought What was once seen as myth is increasingly understood as history
15 April 2025, 4:59am
From Spectator Life
Odysseus is back on his eternal journey to Ithaca – and he’s sailing towards your cinema screen. Ralph Fiennes is playing Odysseus in The Return, released last week. And Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey, starring Matt Damon as the cleverest of the Greeks at Troy, should be out next year.
I criss-crossed the Mediterranean for three years, in the wake of Odysseus, for a book – and I’m convinced The Odyssey is true. OK, the monsters, like man-eating Scylla and the one-eyed Cyclops, might not have existed. And you’d have to be a Zeus-fearing type to believe in the gods toying with Odysseus’s fate on Mount Olympus.
But the catastrophic storms that tossed Odysseus back and forth across the Med are certainly true. Just look at poor Mike Lynch, the tech billionaire tragically drowned with his daughter, friends and crew last summer, thanks to a monstrous waterspout. That was off the coast of Sicily, just a few miles from the legendary site of Charybdis – the deadly whirlpool Odysseus steered his ship away from.
I was battered by a Homeric storm, too, off the coast of Sicily near Ustica, the island of Aeolus, ruler of the winds. Aeolus gave Odysseus a sealed bag of winds. Odysseus’s stupid crew opened the bag, releasing the winds and blasting them away from Ithaca towards Sicily – just as the winds did to me at Ustica. So many of the places are exactly as Homer described them in The Iliad and The Odyssey. And they still have the same names. Ithaca is still called Ithaca.
Homer says the island’s two headlands ‘keep back the great waves raised by heavy winds without, but within the benched ships lie unmoored when they have reached the point of anchorage’. And so it was when I sailed into Vathy, Ithaca’s capital. Out at sea, the water was tossed up into white-crested breakers. Just as we turned into the main bay of Ithaca, the brisk westerly wind dropped.
A book has just come out, saying that the Bronze Age palace on Ithaca, only discovered 30 years ago, fits the description of Odysseus’s palace. In The Archaeological Evidence for the Palace of Odysseus on Ithaca, Professor Thanasis J. Papadopoulos convincingly refutes claims that the neighbouring islands of Lefkas and Kefalonia are Homeric Ithaca.
To believe in The Odyssey, you have to believe in The Iliad – and the Trojan War. When I got to Troy on Turkey’s western coast, I was convinced a war had taken place there, between a Greek tribe and a non-Greek tribe. Of the nine cities laid on top of each other in a vast archaeological sandwich, there are remnants of burnt earth and burnt weapons at around the time – 1200 BC – the Trojan War was supposed to have taken place. The mighty, sloping walls of Troy, as described by Homer, are still there.
And the supposed site of Troy was at a critical point on Mediterranean trade routes. The city commanded the entrance to what was then the most important waterway in the world, leading through the Dardanelles up the Bosphorus into the Black Sea. Homer’s battle scenes, too, are so realistic that they must have a kernel of truth. ‘The Iliad must have happened,’ Boris Johnson told me between my Mediterranean voyages. ‘That description of the Trojans attacking like birds is so chilling, it must be true.’
Boris was referring to the beginning of Book Three of The Iliad, where Homer described how the Trojans ‘advanced with cries and clamour, a clamour like birds, cranes in the sky, flying from the winter’s storm and unending rain, flowing towards the streams of the ocean, bringing the clamour of death and destruction to Pygmy tribes, bringing evil and strife at the break of day.’
And, if there was a war involving Greeks, then they had to make their return – or nostos (as in nostalgia – ‘pain in returning’). And there are plenty of stories of other disastrous nostoi from the Trojan War. Five and a half lines – and a few critical references – survive of a lost epic called the Nostoi – the returns, i.e. returns of the Greeks from Troy.
Like The Odyssey, the Nostoi tells of the trials and tribulations of various returning Greeks: Diomedes and Nestor, who get back home without incident; Menelaus, caught in a storm, loses much of his fleet and is delayed in Egypt for several years; Agamemnon is killed by Clytemnestra, his wife. The only one left to make it home and live into happy old age is Odysseus.
I’m not the first person to try to nail down Odysseus’s real-life route and work out who Homer really was. A group of ancient activists, the Euhemerists, thought the Greek myths were true. They’re named after Euhemerus, the 4th century BC Greek from Sicily who maintained you could strip the magic from the myths and produce historical fact. I’m proud to be a Euhemerist. Here’s hoping Ralph Fiennes and Matt Damon are so convincing that they’ll create a few more of us.
A weighty article about Troy.
I'll get me scales.
…and I'll raise you an avoirdupois…with double cream.
Have some peas!
A litre goes a long way.
Good morning Citroen .
Your comments are so interesting and relatable .
I am not an academic I wish I was, but in my much earlier teenage years I was fascinated by stories from the Iliad and Odyssey, probably because we were encouraged to read , read read !
A few years later in my later teens when I was training to be a nurse in the RN (QARNNS) , we were based at RNH Haslar , then in our second year we were dispatched to Malta , we were based at RNH Bighi which still stands near the entrance to Grand Harbour , Valetta , we also spent time at RAF Luqa and M'Tarfa .
I was fortunate to spend a year there with my class of student nurses . We all appreciate where we were , and the history of Malta .. this was my time there 1966/67 .
We explored Malta when off duty and appreciated the amazing history of the Island . The Maltese in those post war years were as they were before tourism and building blighted the island , all apparent in these days where a wonderful historic Island that breathed myths and tradition has now been ruined and diluted by money and greed .
A Roman Catholic island , Phoenician , Greek/ Roman /North African , the stories I heard , not only about the appalling conditions they all suffered during WW2 but previous years to that .
I verified that by dragging this off the Net
"While there's no direct historical link between Malta and the Trojan War, there's a tradition, rooted in ancient Greek literature and archaeological findings, that suggests a possible connection between Malta and Greek settlers, including possibly Trojan refugees. Specifically, Lycophron mentioned a group of Greek warriors settling in Malta after the Trojan War. However, archaeological evidence supporting this theory is limited, and the idea of a direct Trojan War connection is more of a literary tradition than a confirmed historical fact. "
"The Acts of the Apostles tells the story of how Paul of Tarsus was shipwrecked in Malta on his way from Caesarea Maritima to Rome, sent by Porcius Festus, procurator of Judea, to stand trial before the Emperor. Paul ministered in Malta for three months (Acts 28:1–11)."
Malta weather was great, sometimes erratic .. and our ward uniforms changed to white dresses in April /May when the whole of the Royal Navy based out there overnight changed into tropical rig .
White dresses for us and our white shoes which had to be blancoed
We witnessed what can only be called old fashioned .. a Tempest or 2 .. violent storm that ran through , the wind was wreckingly frightening , we use to have to take or wonderful fancy ward hats off and carry them in plastic bags .. the storm would rage through for maybe 30 mts or a couple of hours , and how many ships would have been wrecked in the old days ?
The cave system under Malta gave rise to stories of monsters and strange myths which must tie in with the Iliad .. perhaps?
Anyway my romantic senses and love of books came alive with the golden colour of Malta ( before the terrible present day ruination) the tolling bells , and colour of Saint's days celebrations and the constant crossing across the heart of the bus drivers , priests , fishermen and Maltese men who ferried us across the harbour by oar from Bighi to Valetta and the landing stage.
You giddy Harrogate Ladies' College schoolgirl. I don't write any of this stuff but merely copy 'n paste things that look interesting. I briefly had a girlfriend at HLC (parents lived in HK) and hitchhiked over from Ampleforth to chat her up. Forgotten her name.
Nice photograph, Belle. A pretty lass with a happy countenance.
A Very Pretty young lady!
You've not got any of the pics the RAF took of you & your colleagues sunbathing on the roof do you?
Classified. Not yet due for release under the 70 year rule. I've already asked. {:^))
When I was 10, my uncle and aunt gave me some money to buy a book while I was in London. I bought a beautifully illustrated copy of the Odyssey – I still have it. I love Homer's descriptions of the "wine-dark sea" and the trials and tribulations on that long journey home.
In 1997, just before our wedding, we spent two weeks on Kefalonia, and had a day trip to Ithaca, and lunch there.
Gosh, that must have been lovely ..
I loved those wonderful stories and illustrations as well, and when we thought we were moving years ago, gave away a pile of my lovely books , why because the family were not interested .. they want the here and now .. and I regret I had parted with my early informative early years romantic soul, and the stuff that led me me down many paths to satisfy my curiosity .
I don’t know what my sons will do with all our books – but I still have all my mother’s books as well……… when we bought this house 30 years ago, part of the attractions was all the room we had for bookshelves……. still there is the Canal Trust bookshop just down the hill – it’s huge…….. and they would be able to drop them off there for others to find the treasures.
I did Latin A level and failed it miserably…….but my friend Mary did Greek as well and Classics at university. She's recently completed a fine arts course and graduated again last September at the age of 77.
One of my hardest tasks was clearing out many of my childhood books.
Sons are too old and grandchildren would not be interested.
At least by giving them to a local charity which runs a bookshop and coffee house, I felt that many would land in the hands of those who really wanted and appreciated them.
Yo and Good Moaning from a sunny, but chilli C d S.
From a seaside village in Valencia. Very cold and windy and sunny max 16 degrees today. Easter cones late but the weather as bad as always.
Captain Sensible
16h
We have the wrong Yvette in charge. This one spent four years not smuggling a single person across the Channel. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3a2f60a08ca42089d04b55309f45483d871a872cf1c296480810d42ca3883e42.png
Red
Captain Sensible
16h
I think this Yvette and Rene managed to get a couple of British airman home once, but they were back a couple of weeks later. A bit like the other Yvette then.
Good Morning!
In LIB: Lithium Ion Battery, or Lithium Ion Bomb? we have a true tale of a cordless power tool. of the type most households have. exploding with such force that it wrote off a work boat. We explain why and what to look out for. Please read – it might save your life – and let us know if you have experience of LIBs exploding or catching fire.
In his short but powerful article, LUCY CONNOLLY DENIED ACCESS TO DAUGHTER AGAIN , Paul Sutton rages at the injustice perpetrated against Lucy Connolly by our corrupt and wokely biased judicial system, a decision, like all too many these days, that puts our country to shame. Please read and tell us what you think, and vote under the article on the case itself, and on the judiciary in general at the top of the Today page.
Energy watch 07.30: Demand: 32.46 GW. Total UK Production: 28.49 GW from: Hydrocarbons 14.7%; Wind 51.5%; Imports 12%; Biomass 3.4%; Nuclear 12.9%. Solar: 1.6%.
Captain Sensible
15h
“The more laws, the less justice” – Cicero. Parliament should be especially wary of passing laws that:
are vague;
are subjective;
are unenforceable;
reduce freedom of speech; and
provide opportunities for vexatious litigation.
Which it does in spades these days
The vaguer they are, the more enforceable they become by the State against the enemies of the State.
Appeasing rather than roundly condemning Vladimir Putin – a war criminal who heads a regime that bombs civilians and other non-military targets in Ukraine
as opposed to
Appeasing rather than roundly condemning Hamas – a war criminals who heads belong a regime that bombs civilians and other non-military targets in Israel
Waltzes in to say good morning, much cooler today .
After watching the original All Creatures Great and Small
I am now rereading the books, far more gentle times .
I would have rather been around in the 50s than now .
A lot of us remember the 50s very well.
From Oz to Japan to the UK
How "Green"
"Japan has no significant domestic coal production, having ended in 2002, and relies heavily on imports, bringing in over 210 million tons yearly, mainly from Australia and Indonesia. The UK imports coking coal from Japan for steel production because domestic mining, like the Cumbria mine, was blocked due to environmental concerns, with legal rulings against it in 2024. Japan's role is as a coal trade hub, not a producer."
Now about that highest quality coking coal under Cumbria………..
We are told that it's not suitable for the job. And what we're told is what I believe, so it is.
Well hopefully not. I get the impression that it is the Reform party but will do what the original Reform party promised to do but has now backed out of to become part of the blob. That is the new party will control illegals coming in and will do something about Islam it will also not block out supporters of Tommy Robinson and will be democratic in structure. But I would say that if we start out with a negative attitude then we can't expect anything positive to come out of it. Further, if you think it is "Same old same old." Then what would you do to make a party?
For a start, find people who do not – within a short time – fall viciously out with each other. And change their tune by the week.
I actually think that is the idea. Many people have come out of the woodwork who are gung ho but have been discouraged primarily by Farage. Steven Wolfe and Catherine Blaiklock spring to mind.
I see little difference in the new lot.
404408+ up ticks,
B,
18 year olds, with experience
we would be seeking people of the same ilk, you ask the impossible in politics,.
I would, in all fairness, point out that it is Farage that falls out with people. Not all and sundry falling out with each other. Farage cannot stand anyone getting as much prominence as him. When they do he destroys them. Catherine Blaiklock alleges that he is "controlled opposition". If you go down a list of his "achievements" her allegation becomes very believable. He has left in his wake chaos and destruction, not only of people but intentions he outright lied about and failed to achieve. That habit goes all the way through UKIP to the present Reform Party. He has poisoned the well and you can now see the results.
I think he's had to be ruthless to get where he is.
404408+ up ticks,
Morning JR,
Well penned , positive, much agreement from me.
I am hearing a great deal of
submit to what boils down to over the last four decades, a lab/lib/con infrastructure construct, submission being the short term, easy route option
I intend to join. Write saying what I expect from them and go from there. Doing nothing at all is, in my opinion, destructive in itself. I am not willing to give up on our country and sit and moan while it goes to wreck and ruin because people will do nothing but complain.
Well hopefully not. I get the impression that it is the Reform party but will do what the original Reform party promised to do but has now backed out of to become part of the blob. That is the new party will control illegals coming in and will do something about Islam it will also not block out supporters of Tommy Robinson and will be democratic in structure. But I would say that if we start out with a negative attitude then we can't expect anything positive to come out of it. Further, if you think it is "Same old same old." Then what would you do to make a party?
404408+ up ticks,
Morning BT,
Echos of the old tory (INO) party.
Ah – you mean the blue eco-freak limp dumbs – as is my "tory" MP.
What colour will this latest branch of The Corruption Party adopt for its rosettes?
We haven't had brown yet!
It's being started by Ben Habib with, eventually, Rupert Lowe. Do you think they are corrupt?
I’ve never come across any politician, at any level of politics, who is not corrupt.
The very fact that they invariably choose their cronies for top honours over more deserving ‘civilian’ candidates is all the proof you need.
Yawn.
I think they're tempting Providence to call it the Integrity Party – all it will take is for one of them to start crossing the road after the green man starts flashing and they'll be history……
Spot on. Tempting Providence. Just look at the misdemeanours committed by MPs for ALL persuasions in the last few years. Dozens of them.
As a matter of clarification
Ben Habib
@benhabib6
·
21h
There was much speculation yesterday about me having taken control of a political party: the Integrity Party.
I can confirm the speculation was correct. I do control that party.
I was not going to make any comment on the speculation. There is much to be done to get it fully operational, including, possibly, renaming it.
However, I have been bowled over by the support the party and I received yesterday.
We gained over 200 members and raised £6,000 without me even saying a word!
I am therefore compelled to thank you all for your support and encouragement.
Thank you!!
I will not be making any further public comment on the party until it is much more advanced but I can assure you it will stand without fear or favour for a proud, sovereign, independent and prosperous United Kingdom in all its parts and for all its people.
Please watch this space.
Is France too weak to stop the violent attacks on its prisons? 16 April 2025.
A wave of violence is sweeping France as gunmen attack the country’s prisons. In some cases, vehicles belonging to prison staff have been set alight and in other incidents bullets from AK47s were sprayed at the gates. In the eastern city of Nancy, a prison officer was threatened at his home.
You can see Europe and the UK disintegrating. All Vlad has to do is hang in there. Russia will probably be the last Christian European Nation State.
"The Supreme Court will issue a landmark ruling over whether transgender people can be legally defined as their preferred gender. Feminist campaign group For Women Scotland (FWS) has brought the case, arguing that sex-based protections should only apply to people who were born female. The dispute centres on whether or not somebody with a gender recognition certificate (GRC) acknowledging their gender as female should be treated as a woman under the 2010 Equality Act. FWS previously said that not tying the definition of sex to its “ordinary meaning” could have far-reaching consequences for sex-based rights, as well as “everyday single-sex services” like toilets and hospital wards. It could have a significant impact on how sex-based rights are applied through the Act across Scotland, England and Wales."
Mongo barked at a cat this morning. I'm fairly sure a window bowed outward.
You can tell when he's going to as it comes from somewhere deep underground and builds until released as a thunderclad of sound.
He then looks very embarrassed as if to say 'Terribly sorry, had to be done.'
You'll be telling us next that they don't have gavels.
Middle class could face higher energy bills than poor to fund net zero.
"Middle-class families could face higher energy bills than poorer households to fund the transition to net zero, the boss of Britain’s energy regulator has suggested. Jonathan Brearley, the chief executive of Ofgem, told an industry event on Tuesday that the regulator would launch a review of bills this summer that would look at whether to “do something related to income”.
He said: “We want to at least ask the question whether or not we can allocate costs more progressively.” Economists typically use the term progressive to mean people pay higher tax rates as their income increases. The proposal is likely to prove highly controversial as it would amount to a stealth income tax to fund net zero."
Which would be deeply unfair as energy is a product and thus should have the same price everywhere. If energy is too expensive then make it cheaper by abandoning the Left wing nonsense. All the desperate efforts to do in the market will fail. Government simply has to accept they are wrong and to be removed.
I was thinking about this. If i have to not use any gas or electricity in order not to have to continue to subsidising others, i am prepared to do it.
Two tier pricing to go with all the other two tier systems.
Bloody idiots. The thing that crucifies you when you have no money is the standing cost.
BREAKING NEWS
The Supreme Court has ruled that only people who are born female should be protected from discrimination as a woman under the Equality Act in a landmark ruling.
In handing down the judgment, Lord Reed has told the Supreme Court that a panel of five judges has unanimously allowed the appeal by For Women Scotland.
They didn't "hand down" the judgment. They GAVE it. Grrr (see beow)
But – for once – this fatuous court got it right. Expect the losers to go to the pretendy court in Strasbourg.
There'll be weeping and gnashing of lipsticked teeth.
I know one who's had his gonads chopped off. He still looks like a man in drag and still sounds like a man. Of course it only changes the voice if done before puberty, which is what used to happen to choir boys in the Sistine Chapel.
A tranny I used to know as a client when I was working had his Adam's apple removed surgically but his voice still didn't sound female. I don't know if he had the other bits removed. He used to totter in on high heels…….
The DT used to run a column in the magazine by a writer who changed from David to Diana Thomas and one of his final pieces was about having his male bits removed. I think they stopped it then.
A client? Were you a beautician before the days of Hedgehog Rescue?
Hardly! I was a JobCentre adviser trying to get the bloke into work.
Boy trebles. Castrato.
Well, hang on. It has said that being trans is also a 'protected characteristic' (it shouldn't be, it's a form of mental illness) but defining a woman as such is both moronic and a waste of time. If law needs to define the facts we really are doomed.
Show me a politician who isn't – potentially – corrupt.
That's a poor argument. Everybody is potentially corrupt. Its called "original sin", although the West has the wrong idea about that. But I will refrain from theology. The point is "potential corruption" is a leitmotif running through all Western thinking. It's depressing, always diving to the bottom and then expecting positives or, becoming so negative, nothing becomes achievable.
” Everybody is potentially corrupt” – but politicians, sniffing troughs, the more so.
I know I sound cynical – but I am – and, I think, these days, with reason.
Does anyone else do the DT puzzles? What have they done to the user interface, it is a complete and utter mess. Why change something that worked perfectly well?
If it ain't broke, break it. (Government policy, why should the Terriblegrapg be any different?)
I have included that aphorism in my snottograms to the puzzles editor.
I subscribe to the 'virtual paper' version of the online DT/ST. Some years ago I drew a blank 'Big X' grid on my home drawing board (an A0+) and I print off double-sided copies when needed. I use these to copy down all the DT Sod-You-Cow puzzles each day.
I can even fit in the 'Chain' version by colour-coding the squares where the lines fit. It works very well. I use two full sheets a week (I ignore those lower than 'Tough' level) and a bonus Tough sheet every four weeks.
Very good! But I’m not Katy, even the Supreme Court would agree with that!
Have you tried the Killer Sudoku? Takes a bit of getting into, but much more of a challenge.
[The number in the top RH corner of each sheet is the serial number that I include on each sheet since I started doing them. I have now compiled no fewer than 917 double-sided puzzle sheets since I started.]
[The number in the top RH corner of each sheet is the serial number that I include on each sheet since I started doing them. I have now compiled no fewer than 917 double-sided puzzle sheets since I started.]
I noticed that, possibly because I just msgd him. I'm hopeless at puzzles/games generally. Husband and daughter do Wordle/Spelling Bee daily, their numbers are quite staggering. I slope off and walk my dog…
Every so often, some bored 'pooter nerd mucks around with the puzzles. (Today, he appears to have been let loose on the comments.)
I send a zinger to the puzzles editor and, in fairness, I get a reply and the status quo ante is resumed.
What gets my goat is the settings are so poor that one or two clues end up on a second page. I, and possibly other cruciverbalists, kick up a stink and things go back to normal.
They make an error in stating that the price of gas is high. It isn't, not really. Gas is heavily taxed, so the 'sale' price used to set the subsidy is about twice the real cost.
That money is then given to unreliables in subsidy, making them look cheaper than they really are. On top of that are the ARs, CFD s and all sort of other nonsense.
We also don't stockpile gas nor frack, both of which would reduce the cost of gas. The end result is heavily weighting one side to raise it up and subsidising the other to bring it down. The simple truth is unreliables are horrifically expensive and would never be considered in a rational world. They persist solely because of high taxes, high energy costs and collossla subsidy.
I'd point folk toward David Turver's excellent substack for the real details.
Great response, wibbling. I don’t know Mr Turver but will shortly!
Don’t get me started…{:¬))
I know how these things work, I watch Law & Order
They castrated boys in the Sistine Chapel?
Jaw-dropping news, Our Susan!!
Have you listened to the recordings of Alessandro Moreschi? Bearing in mind that he died in 1922 therefore the recording quality isn't great, it really is a peculiar sounding voice?
Castrato. But I do love the counter tenor voice and they speak quite normally.
Yes, Andreas Scholl sings with both voices when he performs folk songs that include dialogue. His countertenor, at its best, was a contralto voice on a par with Kathleen Ferrier.
I was lucky enough to go to two concerts by him in Bristol, more than 20 years ago. I have several of his cds. Wonderful voice.
I first heard the counter tenor voice many years ago – a recording by Alfred Deller. And James Bowman was very good, too. I loved his Oberon in Britten’s Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Deller was the first countertenor I heard. I saw a production of Arteserces with all the female roles played by countertenors. It was interesting, shall we say?
Philippe Jaroussky also sings in a chest voice as well as countertenor.
All countertenors can, but many only develop their falsetto.
Isn't he the only castrato ever recorded?
He must have been knocking on a bit, so early recording and an ageing voice probably doesn't do him justice.
Yes, he was the last known castrato and the only one recorded.
It's fascinating to speculate. I sang a Farinelli role once and did a bit of research.
The best castrati singers developed physically t9 a certain point before castration. So they had the core strength and lung capacity of men, but the shorter vocal folds of women. Think female voices but with huge power behind them. I would have loved to hear one in its prime.
(I was cast because I have a powerful frame and voice, and the director wanted to move away from the standard 'early music' voices, which while beautiful in their way, use no vibrato and tend to be smaller.)
I see a government body [Home Affairs Ctte] last week ruled that there was no "Two Tier Policing" during the Southport riots [and presumably none elsewhere either?]. Luckily Alisson Pearson is on the case today – good article but we only have the printed version! To précis the article – the rejection of 2 tier policing is bolleaux!
Meanwhile the police have announced that they will take no further action against an MP who sent messages on a private WhatsApp group that included one suggesting a vicar be "burned on a bonfire". Meanwhile Lucy Connolly is still in prison and not able to qualify for Day Release?
MPs who deny two-tier policing exists are naive at best, anti-British at worst
Allison Pearson.
There is a reason some nicknames stick. That nasal knight who occupies the role of Prime Minister is “Two-Tier Keir” because if two sides indulge in poor behaviour, you just know he will support the side whose narrow political belief leads him to prefer one rather than treating both just the same. A brilliant Morten Morland cartoon from 2023 shows Starmer dressed in police uniform with the palm of his hand raised as if against an advancing mob. The caption has him saying: “STOP IT. SOME OF YOU!”
This perception of bias is hugely damaging because it fixes the PM in the popular imagination as a duplicitous hypocrite who arrived in No10 promising a “Government unburdened by doctrine, guided only by a determination to serve your interests”. Whose interests might they be? You may well find yourself asking that question after nine months of our far-Left Government playing ethnicminority favourites.
We can’t help noticing that No10 posts enthusiastically about every religious festival and tradition except what we might quietly call our own. The PM issued an effusive video about Eid Mubarak at the exact moment most families in the UK were marking Mother’s Day (no tribute for the love and care of millions of women who are the lynchpin of our society. Thanks, PM). While it was right and proper this week to highlight Vaisakhi, with Sikhs playing such a valuable, well-integrated role in British life, so far there has been a deafening silence about Palm Sunday and the start of Holy Week. The slight to millions of Christians is starting to feel deliberate. Don’t be too surprised this coming Easter weekend if Starmer pays tribute to the Haitian Vodou community, extolling the multicultural joys of ritual sacrifice and drinking goats’ blood, while blanking our Lord, the risen Christ.
People are not stupid; they can see what’s going on. Ray Connolly, a Conservative councillor and husband of Lucy Connolly, jailed for a hasty, horrible tweet after the Southport massacre of little girls, told me he went into a café in Northampton and got talking to a group of men who voted Labour at the general election. Ray was startled by the vehemence of their dislike for Starmer. When he asked why they hated Keir so much, back came the answer: “He’s not for the British.” It’s a simple, not particularly sophisticated sentiment, but it has the ring of truth, doesn’t it?
To its eternal, two-tier shame, Labour had already rejected a national inquiry into the mainly Pakistani-origin grooming gangs, the greatest scandal in our history no less. Last week, the Brummily gurning Jess Phillips announced the Government was even backtracking on its plan for inadequate local inquiries into those heinous crimes: an unconscionable betrayal of tens of thousands of white working-class girls by the MP for Birmingham Yardley who obscenely clings onto the title and perks of Minister for Women and Equalities. Starmer’s “government of service” has morphed into a government of self-service – do whatever it takes to prop up your Muslim vote. Two-tier Keir is not for the British; if it’s expedient, Labour will pander to the child rapists and sod the rest.
Everywhere we look, we see the warped, anti-British discrimination used to prop up multiculturalism. It is pretty dumbfounding that a report this week by the Home Affairs Select Committee into the policing of last summer’s riots, triggered by the Southport massacre, has just declared that it found “no evidence of two-tier policing”. In fact, it said such claims were “baseless”, “unsubstantiated” and “disgraceful”.
Funnily enough, those are the very words I would use about the committee’s laughable suggestion that our police, who increasingly see their job as defending so-called “protected characteristics” against white, straight Britons, are not guilty of two-tier policing. Just compare and contrast with the handling of the rioting in the Harehills area of Leeds last July (triggered by four children from a Roma family being taken into care)
We are seeing what one officer calls ‘different containment strategies for different groups’ when vehicles were set on fire and the police essentially ran away, leaving the mob to get on with it. But that was forgivable because immigrants are allowed to have a reason to feel upset, whereas Lucy Connolly, the white, middle-class wife of a Tory councillor who lost a child of her own, is not permitted any context or mercy for her rage and distress.
The Home Affairs committee says that “those participating in disorder” in the wake of Southport “were not policed more strongly because of their supposed political views but because they were throwing missiles, assaulting police officers and committing arson”. If you focus solely on the actual rioters, then they have a point. Quite rightly, the policing of physical violence and criminal damage was extremely robust, and lots of people were arrested to restore order.
What the report conveniently doesn’t mention is how peaceful protest (holding up a placard like sweet grandfather Peter Lynch, who later killed himself in jail) and social media commentary were treated as equivalent to the actual violence. Two-tier Keir was swift to promise harsh punishment for those feeding a “far-Right narrative” with “misinformation”. In practice, what “far-Right” often meant was people who simply didn’t believe the authorities when they insisted the unnamed killer had no links with terrorism and was actually a sweet choirboy born in Cardiff who had, quite inexplicably, happened on a Taylor Swift dance class and decided to butcher the infants taking part.
As we later found out, every chief constable in the country, the Prime Minister and his deputy Angela “it’s not terrorist-related” Rayner were the ones guilty of misinformation. Details about Axel Rudakubana possessing an al-Qaeda training manual, having enough ricin under his bed to kill 10,000 people and being known to the Prevent anti-terror group were deliberately withheld from the public – supposedly to comply with contempt of court law – with inflammatory consequences.
Whatever that cross-party committee of MPs may say, two-tier policing definitely occurred after Southport because inconsistent standards were applied to the manner in which people reacted. There was complete disregard for the proportionality principle, which is the application of good oldfashioned common sense and discretion. Fairness didn’t come into it; this was a message being sent by a censorious Starmer, and police chiefs willingly followed the PM’s lead using ludicrously subjective “hate” legislation to criminalise ordinary people who were deeply upset by the mass murder of innocent children and vented their horror on the internet. The aim was not justice; it was to smother criticism and distract attention from another embarrassing failure of multiculturalism.
One thing which I can exclusively reveal today is that according to a reliable police source, every police force in the country was on standby for a particular date on which ministers planned to finally release the truth about Rudakubana. Starmer would pick his moment to reveal the appalling terrorism details, which he would have known about within hours of the teenage murderer being arrested. In the event, the news about Rudakubana’s identity was postponed, such was the official nervousness, and, when it eventually broke, it got rather lost in the fuss around Rachel Reeves’s first Budget. But we should never forget that speculating about such details landed people in jail who were not so very far from the truth.
One other two-tier policing episode, curiously overlooked by the Home Affairs committee, was the officer in Stoke-on-Trent who, on August 3 last year, was caught on video telling Muslim demonstrators: “If there are any weapons or anything like that, then what I would do is discard them at the mosque. Don’t give anybody any reason to have any interaction with police, so if there are any weapons, get rid of them, and we won’t have to arrest anyone.”
Can you imagine any circumstances under which the police would advise white rioters to stash their weapons in a church? Me neither. What we are witnessing is what one senior officer I spoke to calls “different containment strategies for different groups”. Two-tier policing exists. For the Home Affairs Select Committee to conclude otherwise is baseless, unsubstantiated and disgraceful.
Two-tier Keir may prefer to acknowledge any religious festival that isn’t a Christian one because he is “not for the British”, but I am and I do. There is a green hill far away. Without a city wall. Where the dear Lord was crucified. Who died to save us all.
Whatever they try to do to us, the resurrection was and forever will be a love incident. Happy Easter.
Excellent – many thanks!
And yet Sir Keir and his government blithely carry on 'nothing to see here'. Seemingly little or no opposition in Parliament, to anything his government does or doesn't do. He must be very confident about his voter base, and that he and his government will be re-elected, perhaps even more than once. Good Morning, btw 🙂 x
Keir Starmer more closely resembles Pontius Pilate by the day.
Pilate was a competent administrator at least.
Pontius was a fair man who tried to avoid crucifying Christ.
I thought so too but am drawn to the account of Pilate given in Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel The Master and Margarita.
That vile creature Mrs Balls could have Mrs Connolly out this morning if she wished.
Agreed. Ma Balls' weird melding of her head into her neck without any visible joint reminds me of the tortoise in the opening credits of 'One Foot in the Grave' or perhaps 'E.T.'
What did anyone expect a hard Left 'committee' chock full of Labour nutters to say? They're hardly going to point out their own hypocrisy, risk their jobs and annoy their leader, are they?
It's obvious we have two tier policing, judiciary and jobs generally. The Left want this. They're not going to admit that. These are liars, thieves and cowards.
“A Communist system can be recognized by the fact that it spares the criminals and criminalizes the political opponent.”
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
I think they were stupid to come to this conclusion given what we all see and saw in those Harehills/Southport days, and subsequently with the Sentencing Council debacle. Their “nothing to see here” attitude is obviously nonsense and the public doesn’t like being lied to.
Who is acting on behalf of Lucy Connolly, anyone know? Is there a fund?
I believe her sick husband is/was a conservative councillor, of course they'll be treated like dirt by the judiciary
Whatsapp is a very nasty thing indeed. All these closed groups where people are unpleasant about others. It's taking over – any group of people with something in common are assumed to need a Whatsapp group now. Of course, the popular girls form their own exclusive, invitation only groups outside the main ones.
I refuse to join in with any of it, but goodness knows what is written about me behind my back.
And that's before you even get onto contact data being sold to the Israeli military, resulting in tens of thousands of people being flagged up as terrorists and therefore targets.
I find WhatsApp very useful for one of the associations of which I am a member. I can contact the membership without having to send lots of emails.
Everyone finds it useful, and that’s how they get sucked into it….! But human nature being what it is, these little closed groups very quickly turn toxic in my experience.
Haven’t had that experience yet.
splinter groups.
Only in the UK could the definition of a woman be considered worthy of court.
It's a basic, biological fact. The trans are mentally ill. A man in a dress remains a man, regardless of his nutcase fantasies.
I've always wondered what they believe defines the lived experience of a woman. What is it that they crave. If it's only make-up and frocks then they really have misunderstood womanhood. Of course they'll never experience the haemorrhaging accompanied by muscle pain but even that doesn't really capture the essence. There's a fragility that they just can't experience and it applies to the biggest and butchest girly compared to her male counterpart.
What is it that they crave?
Exhibitionism.
Some sort of attention, perhaps that they never had as a child. Or perhaps too much attention then, now associating it with love.
Self love.
That too, Bill 🙂
Power
They can never give birth.
I always regard that as being the ultimate proof that God must be a man.
Did you ever watch League of Gentlemen, Sue ….Babs, the taxi driver? Anyhow, many ladyboys in Asia, mostly catering for Western men.
"I've only been on the 'ormones eighteenth months and me nipples are like bullets".
Excellent. Favourite was Pauline. As if the BBC would produce anything like that now, more’s the pity.
Only in the UK could it have to go to court to get it sorted out!
Castrati
Indeed. Each individual is a castrato.
Snap!
Thank God that, for once, the court was right. All too often they take the woke route.
Ref the discussion below about new political parties. Mr Habib is a slammer. There are about 30 slammer MPs already. There is now an Islam Party. I worry that Habib may be a slammer sleeper or mole, playing the long game but with the same end in view as all other slammers.
Actually Ben Habib has never said anything about his religion or non and you will find nothing on the internet that says he is a Muslim. I have never heard him say anything about Islam at all, certainly nothing pro-Islamic.
The long game has been happening since 610 AD Bill.
CE, please! (Runs for cover.)
I won’t use that🤔 🤗😉
Promisingly, he went to Rugby but then read Natural Sciences at Robinson College, Cantab, which is known to accomodate all manner of reprobates of no fixed abode. He then joined Lehman Brothers before it went gurgle, gurgle down the drain. But I can assure you that the Lehman Brothers were anything but slammers.
Being Punjabi his father was most likely a Sikh.
I agree re Muslim MPs.
I am more inclined to think that Xia Yusef is a plant. He says the right things but Reform aren't doing anything. They can't campaign on charisma alone. People on the ground have to be able to say something when they go door knocking. Now is the time to get the message out.
Nandy opens door to scrapping retail tourist tax
Culture Secretary says she would be ‘happy to look at the evidence’ to support bringing back VAT-free shopping for overseas visitors
Nandy, for Heaven's sake do not do anything that helps the long-suffering residents of this country
Furriners will shop VAT free, whilst I bet she institutes an tax on using public loos for us.
I think, that all the 'boat people' will declare themselves 'tourists' to make their Benefit Money stretch further.
How about VAT free shopping for everyone? It’s an EU tax. We’re supposed to have left.
Eigen Values by David Turver is excellent.
Lord Hodge said that five Supreme Court justices had unanimously decided that ‘the terms woman and sex in the Equality Act refer to a 'biological woman and biological sex’.
It's a problematic day.. when Supreme Court justices bottle it and fail to follow progressive instructions.
That it even went to a judge to decide a biological fact is beyond me.
Judges are not there to determine biological facts. Their job is to make a legal judgement, which may or may not coincide with biology.
I may have missed it but where does he say he is a Muslim? It is also unfair to label him as a "slammer" when his mother was English and I see nothing about him that is Islamic in attitude or in his speech.
Having listened to that video over the last 10 minutes I can comfortably say he is not a Muslim. He says things about the religion that would get him killed if he were in Pakistan.
As I have said before – I am cynical. I believe there is a determined effort by slammers to turn Christian based Britain into an islamic state. They will do what is needed to achieve that end.
That his mother is English is irrelevant. David Adetayo Olusoga's mother is English – but he loathes the English.
Yes and look at the difference between the two. Ben is 100% English in his mentality.
Ex muslims or children of mixed marriages tend to keep quiet about islam for understandable reasons. The former are under a death sentence and the latter are assumed to be muslim by muslims.
So I wouldn't necessarily believe he was muslim unless I heard otherwise. In any case, he comes over as a decent fellow, though I don't know him personally.
The furstration and annoyance muslim engenders is because it refuses to adapt. it refuses to fit in. The muslim carries on their exact same attitudes whereever they go and those attitudes are not compatible at any level with British values. Then they demand special treatment for their refusal to integrate and vanish.
They're a worm in the apple.
That’s because the aim is submission. It does what it says on the tin.
Hi Bill. Not participating in NOTTLERS today. Feel rather off. But I watched Ben Habib for over an hour last night. When talking about Muslims he said ‘them’. When talking about Christians he said ‘us’. He did not come right out and say what he was specifically but he was not asked. I was watching Dan Wooten, god is that man camp!!!
I may have missed it but where does he say he is a Muslim? It is also unfair to label him as a "slammer" when his mother was English and I see nothing about him that is Islamic in attitude or in his speech.
Having listened to that video over the last 10 minutes I can comfortably say he is not a Muslim. He says things about the religion that would get him killed if he were in Pakistan.
Apology accepted x
Here is a very illuminating episode of Pallisades Gold Radio with Simon Hunt.
I had not realised that the US was so aggressively and actively ramping up tension with Iran. Guess there was just no space in the media to report that, because of Adolescence and the hen night needing so many column inches.
Simon Hunt thinks S will HTF in 2027-2028.
Here is a very illuminating episode of Pallisades Gold Radio with Simon Hunt.
I had not realised that the US was so aggressively and actively ramping up tension with Iran. Guess there was just no space in the media to report that, because of Adolescence and the hen night needing so many column inches.
Simon Hunt thinks S will HTF in 2027-2028.
A friend just returned from a short trip to a country on mainland Europe to visit her daughter, who lives in one country and works in another.
She brought back this piece of cheese, which was new to me. Quite delicious with a unique flavour characteristic. Any idea what it is (I know, of course)?
Honestly. Until I read your remarks I thought it was a photo of a really filthy toilet bowl!
It looks like half a soggy pie crust.
I really cannot imagine why this cheese is not more widely known outside the area in which it is produced.
It looks very like Gouda, but as you state it is new to you I suspect it can't be.
Is it Gjetost a cooked whey cheese from Norway.
It is a piece of Maasdam (aka 'Maasdammer') from the town of that name in the Netherlands.
Maasdam cheese (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈmaːzdɑm]) is an Emmental-style Dutch cheese. Made from cow's milk, it is aged for at least four weeks. It ripens faster than other cheeses made in the Netherlands. Maasdam has internal voids, or holes from the ripening process, and a smooth, yellow rind. Sometimes, it is waxed like Gouda. The cheese was created to compete with Swiss Emmentaler cheeses by being less expensive and quicker to produce. In the process of making a cheese with the same general components as Swiss cheeses, the Dutch ended up with a cheese that is nutty and sweet, but softer than Emmental, due to a higher moisture content.
The style was introduced in 1984 by the Baars company as the trademarked Leerdammer cheese, although it is now made by other Dutch companies under the name Maasdammer. That name was selected to honor the village of Maasdam in the province of South Holland.
Very interesting thanks.
The Things I Learn On NOTTL.
I’d never heard of it until yesterday.
Curses. No readundery.
or it could be the heel ( top piece) off an old shoe.
My aortic valve has a little black hole in the middle.
Presumably, with your meat only diet, you don't eat cheese yourself.
Where did you get the 'meat only diet' from? I've never claimed that.
I eat a high (animal) fat; medium protein; low carbohydrate; no sugardiet. This consists — in the main — of fatty meat, fish, seafood, eggs and dairy (which includes cheese).
I will eat the odd slice of a decent bread with some of this food on occasions (this comes under the low carb category).
Norwegian Gjetost?
Out to lunch shortly with the oldies from the office…….. back later.
From the Daily Sceptic:
“Achieving Net Zero in 25 years would need a “complete transformation” of the UK’s agricultural and food system that would in effect mean a diet devoid of beef, lamb and all dairy products, according to the latest work from the Government-funded UK FIRES. Look at the research that governing elites commission and read, not what they say. UK FIRES takes an absolute view of Net Zero and bases its work on existing technologies, not the pie in the sky inventions still to come and the whacky schemes that cannot reach economic scale. UK FIRES is an influential body since it takes a rare honest approach to Net Zero. Among the horrors outlined in its latest report is a future reliance on highly-processed food – industrial test-tube sludge in other words. Using labs to produce just 0.4% of the projected demand for meat in 2030 would involve a capacity “20 times that of the current pharmaceutical industry”, observe the authors……
The land currently occupied by productive and generational farmers would see “radical shifts”. The required changes to achieve absolute Net Zero emissions from food systems “would present many opportunities”, argues UK FIRES. There would be competition for “environmental services” and this presumably would include such “opportunities” as nature-destroying wind turbines and solar dead zone parks. Rewilding and carbon capture or sequestration are mentioned. Planning and support for land use “transformation” is said to be needed, and it is said to carry the promise of “large social and environmental benefits”. At this point, it might be observed what a grand start the current anti-farmer Labour Government has made by slapping a recent 20% death tax on small family farms that are passed onto the next generation, or not as the case may now be. That should help clear a bit of space for the new enclosing aristocracy, the subsidy-hunting windmill rentiers….”
Net Zero is Pie in the Sky. There'll be no pie on our plates, that's for sure.
Chris Morrison blogs on Net Zero, this may be one of his?
Net Zero is a political sham. Without it having been invented what on earth does anyone think the brain dead dickheads like Milliband would do each day, they couldn't do anything. So they spend their time dreaming up useless and meaningless activities. They are incapable of attending to real issues which need attention such as health, defence, education. The reason the NHS is in such a state is because no politician has either the experience or capability to address the issues. Politics exists as a grouping of the lowest common denominator.
It isn't a sham, but it has nothing to do with saving the planet and everything to do with enslaving its occupants.
Where are the chemicals going to come from if they don't want oil either. The pharmaceutical industry is a heavy user of polyethylene derivatives. Test tube sludge passed off as food won't be any different. How could it be? You need oil to make the test tube even before you've decided which chemicals it should contain.
Supreme Court Ruling:
"A Woman's A Woman for A' That"
Good moaning all.
Anyone rad/posted about the asylum seekers swap with France idea? Apparently the U.K. may be allowed to send back to France undocumented boat people in exchange for someone legitimately over there who has a family connection here.
Why would anyone in their right mind want to ‘swap’ one for another? We don’t need any more asylum seekers, legitimate or otherwise.
We need a moratorium on all immigration.
A CS told me we'd need to leave the ECHR to stop legal immigration, vw – which is approx 90% of the total number. We cannot leave it because it's embedded in the NI Agreement to ensure parity with the Republic. I agree with you, and if that's the solution we need to crack on with it. If it's not the solution, someone -a CS, a politician, a journo, anyone – should tell us what is.
Yet France is also signed up to the ECHR and does deport foreign criminals and swiftly at that, if they haven't already been shot at the crime scene. I'm afraid the excuses are lame. If there was the political will, it would be done.
In Germany, they are encouraged to go on to UK ‘because there are many black market jobs UK and benefits are easy to claim’. A DM reporter, Sue Reid, filmed them getting on the boats in France. The biggest of big questions then becomes ‘why doesn’t UK government return them to France’. And another one ‘why aren’t politicians all UK major parties jumping up and down and demanding repatriation, and actually doing something other than jump up and down and demanding repatriation’ and why isn’t every media outlet doing similarly.
That was the purpose of the Windsor agreement. The Eu wanted control over UK trade and Sunak was happy to give it away for headlines.
Headlines? Is that all, wibbling 🙂
If you can't see how that will work, I've a bridge to sell you.
The Left wing media keeps calling them asylum seekers. Why do they not then stop in France? They're welfare shoppers. The tide would stop if they were stripped to their pants, collar and chained by the dozen to a post with bacon rolls once a day and rain water to drink.
We need to get rid of all those not here legally, any legals who have committed crimes and stop any more coming.
We need a moratorium on all immigration. Just stop it.
As silly as I find it there are trans people who probably do suffer some form of mental illness but do find they are happier living as a man/woman. These are a small, quiet minority who don't make demands of others but just acceptance, or at least tolerance of their choices.
Being the hateful Right wing bigot I am, I can fully respect those people. They make no demand of me except acceptance of their choices and I'll accept anything other people do as long as it doens't affect me – that's the 'right wing libertarian in me.
For these people this ruling is probably quite scary as now they're facing going into mens changing rooms where they, mentally in the mindset of a woman feel uncomfortable.
I don't know the answer to that.
The problem the trans folk who are sincere and courteous in their choices is the loudmouth gobby wasters on the Left hijacked their lifestyle to suit their own spiteful society destroying, culture undermining Left wing agenda.
Just as FemiNazis have merely made life more difficult for women.
Well that got a bit cold, wet & windy!
Met step-son's girlfriend. She appears to have autism problems similar to those of my eldest daughter, but given their problems, if they get comfort out of being together, then fair enough.
Took him to Hanley where he did some clothes shopping and we had a bacon banjo & mug of tea each.
I'm a bit concerned about his physical health. We were walking into a rather cold wind as we headed back to the van and he appeared to be having trouble coping with it.
He then decided to veer off to the bus station rather than carry on to the van with me.
A bit of a wet drive back with intermittent showers on the way.
To be fair, Bob, I was having difficulty coping with walking into the strong wind. I cut the walk short and headed home.
You expect the BBC, the Guardian and the Mail to use this headline about the chap's name but I wonder what Reginald Dwight, Harry Webb and Maurice Joseph Micklewhite make of it being used by the Telegraph?
"King Charles, real name Charles Saxe-Coburg-Gotha…"
No, I can't see this trend catching on any time soon!
Not that I give a toss about the JWK – but I have noticed that the meeja always call him "King Charles" whereas his late mother was ALWAYS "The Queen".
Surely that's because whenever the meeja refers to 'The King' the GBP assumes that Elvis has been resurrected.
Elvis? Lost me there…{:¬))
Our current monarch's great grandfather. Do keep up!
I though that was King C Gillette
He was released from the Bastille, wasn’t he?
A close shave.
Even a dashing blade can get into a scrape sometimes
Interesting that the US media always referred to "The Queen", whereas others were always referred to along with the name of their country.
John Wayne, real name Marion Robert Morrison. John Denver, real name Henry John Deutschendorf, Jr. Bob Dylan, real name Robert Allen Zimmerman. There are so many. No, not going to become a trend.
I don't think Leonard Slye would have made it as a huge cowboy star, but Roy Rogers did.
Pretentiously yawns. Saw all this in January 1951. In Cairo Museum. Smug bastard!
I was a lot later there, but what surprised me was that one could get so close to the exhibits and that there were hardly any security guards to be seen.
The museum was practically empty, and very down at heel..
Getting close to exhibits is in general much more restricted than it used to be. As a much closer to home example, I remember as a child wandering through Stonehenge. Apart from my parents and grandparents, there was no-one else there. Dad had just parked on the verge and we tramped through the grass to get there.
I remember doing that one year, a group of us cycled down to the West Country via Stonehenge, similar lack of people and ability to wander around.
Now there is a hideous chain link fence which ruins any chance of even getting a decent picture.
We had a school trip to Stonehenge and and could walk around the stones and sit on the horizontal ones on the ground. It wasn't deserted but there was no problem or queuing to get in. No tunnel or visitors' centre as there was when we had a German friend staying who was keen to see them.
It didn't look as flashy in 1976 when we were there. We stood looking at the Tutankhamen gold for so long we were left behind from the rest of the visiting party. One of the museum guides wanted us to give him money to show us the exit.
That sounds all a bit overwhelming – much prefer to just see the artifacts as I have done in Cairo and also at an earlier exhibition when it was in Basel.
HG and I saw it in 1972 in London and it created a wish to see it in situ in Cairo, a dream we eventually achieved
It is fabulous….. the exhibition in Basel went to other places as well for several years. The canopic jars were fascinating, and other things like his chair and the animal beds. When we went to Cairo in 2007, some of those things were still out on exhibition elsewhere.
I don't know. I remember a 3D film exhibition wossname in London where they effectively showed the artefacts stashed around a mummy without actually having to unwrap it, and it was fabulous.
My mother was a bit embarrassed as apparently I kept reaching out to touch the amazing floating treasures. 🤣🤣
Scanning the mummies so they don’t have to unwrap them to see the artifacts buried with them is a good way of doing it. I meant the whole immersion show that this one appears to be.
Agree.
Message to mods: what is wrong with my comment just below? It's about Dorset farming.
I've approved both posts, and added your new monicker to 'Trusted Users'…
Maggie was having trouble getting in earlier on, before I went out to lunch. Not sure if she got it sorted.
They have a new museum now Bill. State of the art stuff.
Were I to be 30 years younger, I'd go there. Not now.
Sensible decision. They might think you are one of the exhibits.
Stupid boy!
He's not a Mummy!
Just an old fossil…
He does have a golden tongue though…
They have a new museum now Bill. State of the art stuff.
It would be cruel to laugh
Jolyon Outfoxed Again After Supreme Court ‘Woman’ Definition Loss
Jolyon is having a difficult time after the ruling of the Supreme Court that the meaning of woman in the Equality Act is a biological female. At 7 a.m. today the fox-killer told his dedicated Bluesky followers that the judgement would side with the Scottish government. He added that despite his optimism the Good Law Project had “backed an intervention so trans people were before the Supreme Court” which was rejected by the court. Another loss… https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b8b8dd43fe04a242c320f542204cb88426e0b51153b34a6341f50472609d8585.png
Since the judgement Jolyon has been struggling: “Having excluded all trans people from proceedings before it, the Supreme Court decides in favour of For Some Women Scotland… I’m genuinely stunned. I spoke to KCs at three leading sets of chambers with deep specialisations in equalities law. Each of them told me that For Women Scotland’s position was not even arguable.” Perhaps Jolyon should let consumers know who these expert KCs are… https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6f9575eb5cdebf08539fc12250b872dda102066f3e2d0af303def177ccd50d89.png
The new line is that because the Good Law Project failed to secure “representation” for trans activists in the case, the judges ruled against them. Outfoxed again…
Didn’t look like his work. I have a couple of books of his.
Jeff Taylor has a good take on the judgement. His line is that their Lairdships said it was their view as applied to the Equalities law as it was writ by parliament. With a quick one line amendment by parliament, all the wierdos on the planet could be included. Standby much wringing of hands by a leftie gov with a huge majority. The victory could be short lived.
Of course, it's the diversity. Again. The refusal to open a full inquiry into the abomination of muslim is disgusting.
Solar Energy Surge May Force Power Stations to Switch Off in Net Zero Farce
Red Ed’s net zero dream is crumbling under the weight of its own poster child – solar power. A new report by Britain’s National Energy System Operator (NESO) forecasts that a flood of solar energy from solar farms this summer could swamp the national grid and throw it off balance, warning they may have to tell power stations to switch off to maintain flexibility. An interesting use of the time of bizarre quango NESO…
The report says the grid needs a constant level of ‘flexible’ power sources to keep supply and demand balanced and avoid blackouts. If demand drops too low, NESO warns there may not be enough of these plants running, triggering a “negative reserve active power margin” notice where ‘inflexible’ power stations are told to disconnect from the grid. Head of policy at the Global Warming Policy Foundation Harry Wilkinson tells Guido:
“The GWPF has been warning about these kind of problems for many years, but Ed Miliband is ploughing on regardless. He must know that he’s creating an unsustainable and unstable grid. Renewables are milking the system while failing to generate energy when people really need it.”
Last year, bill payers forked out nearly £1 billion pounds to switch off wind farms when it was too windy. Ed’s green dream is running out of steam when the grid can’t even handle handle the energy overload…
16 April 2025 @ 12:17
****************************
cjaz99
2h
Solar power to grow crops and feed animals good. Solar power for electricity when it isn't needed (summer) or can't provide (winter) bad. How does Ed not get this?
Captain Sensible
2h
Maybe they should put someone in charge of electricity generation and distribution who understands it?
In the current climate anyone who did would be silly to do so, as they would not be able to do anything and would still be blamed.
Bring back the stocks. Set them on the field next to Wastemonster..
Bring black bags from Brum. Their contents are nicely ripe.
Rats and all!
Oh – those bin bags…. For a moment I thought you meant those on two legs.
Same difference.
Some are more re-cyclable than others.
Fortunately, my bin was emptied again today – the fourth time since the strike began.
A politician understanding anything? Ha! Politicians understand zilch, especially about reality. They exist in an artificial world and understand nothing other than the make believe world of Westminster.
I see it more as vanity. They think ministerial zeal and enthusiasm will overcome impracticalities. They see failings by previous administrations as a simple lack of will and determination to overcome obstacles, as too ready to listen to naysayers. When their goals are not achieved, they will not blame their own blindness to the impossibilities, but will conclude they were thwarted by opponents lurking within the system who were set on obstructing their noble intentions.
It's a version of toddlers thinking that if they cover their eyes, they become invisible.
Ed doesn’t grasp it because he’s more than a few sandwiches short of a picnic.
Spot on. In my day, the stuff was "displayed" very casually and one could touch some of the larger things. Yer natives were nowhere to be seen, of course. Only Europeans – and very few of them.
Same trip, we went by train to Luxor for a few days. At the Valley of the Kings main site, there were, perhaps, half a dozen other people.
That was more crowded on our visit, but still nowhere near as many as one might expect.
One year we went just after a terrorist incident and there were armed police everywhere.
We didn't cancel because I concluded, correctly, that security would be heightened everywhere.
Did you take a ride on a camel alongside the pyramids ?
No – after 2 years I'd seen enough of camels by then to be put right off! Smelly, dirty, aggressive animals.
Now there are installed in Westminster.
HG did.
We had hired a Coptic Christian tour guide.
Everything she showed us was brilliant and she shooed away "salesmen" and beggars.
At the end of the day she asked if we would be interested in a camel ride, HG said yes I declined.
The woman then drove us down a load of back streets and I was starting to wonder what the Hell was going on.
Eventually we stopped at a camel place and HG mounted up.
We were led a couple of hundred yards, turned a corner, and were presented with the best view of the pyramids that we had seen. I got some fantastic pictures.
When we eventually arrived back at the hotel the woman even refused to accept a tip!
One of the best days and the best guide that we ever had in Egypt, and we certainly had some good ones over the years.
We did the whole trip as independents, but we really fell on our feet when we found that guide.
Sounds great. Our guide took us to a huge mosque. We had lunch in a hotel overlooking the river. A memorable day, I’m not in denile.
Worst part of all our trips.
HG was suitably attired, no bare flesh apart from her face, hair covered.
Normally she follows me through crowds.
The stinking Muslim men poured out the mosque and we were surrounded, and a few rubbed themselves against her.
From then on whenever we've been in Muslim areas she has walked in front of me.
The Telegraph seems to just now started to display comments in a, oversized typeface. The actual article texts are fine.
Yes. I wondered if my laptop was playing up, but other sites are fine.
Bored Tellygraff Nerd strikes again.
Normally he sticks to mucking up printing the cryptic crossword.
It has stopped now. Apparently.
No, it hasn't.
Probably jinge at it.
I noticed that before I went out and thought it was just my laptop. It's annoying as half the comments go underneath the sidebar.
Afternoon, all. I have finally managed my lazy day; got up late, leisurely breakfast, made sure the Rayburn was going (more about the weather later), long soak in a hot bath (thanks to the Rayburn) and then after tea a walk that was severely curtailed due to the bitterly cold strong wind. Even wearing a fleece and a mac, I was frozen. I have put Charlie’s plastic bed in Winston’s crate in the hope it will help him settle. He’s trying it out for size now.
The whole country is at the mercy of foreign powers. The government is working for anybody but us and the EU still has us in its grip.
Apparently here are plenty of spare logs to keep you warm in Enfield.
And plenty of planks in Westminster.
If the EU still has us in its grip, it will be because those with the power have sought its embrace. The besotted keep returning to their tormenter.
Absolutely. Those in government are wedded to the superstate. They have done everything in their power to keep us in lockstep and avoid making any attempt to break away lest we succeed and show up the failed project.
Unfair to planks.
Not if they're very handy scaffold boards. Rope them all in.
The Frenchie should have replied:
"Bien sûr que je pue, j'essaie dur, tu viens de perdre le set 6-0."
"Of course I stink, I'm trying hard, you just lost the set 6-0."
There's bad losers and stinking bad losers!
Do the shake and vac and put the freshness back.
You brut.
Perhaps the French player was under instruction not to wash by her Napoleon.
Pit your army against her?
She may have been referring to the garlic?
She asked the umpire to get her opponent to wear deodorant, rather than breath freshener.
Garlic can emanate from your pores if you eat enough of it! Yummmmm……
Spring is the season for such emanations.
I love asparagus, but my pee smells worse than, … well I don't know, … let's guess:
Phizzee farts
It's weird what asparagus does to pee!
But not everyone gets the after-effects, which makes it even weirder
Interesting! The article keeps saying the odour is “unpleasant, foul, etc….” it’s certainly different but I don’t find it particularly unpleasant. It doesn’t last long anyway. I like asparagus and it’s packed with goodies too.
I suspect it is dependent on how acute one’s sense of smell is.
I find that the first pee when it becomes noticeable is also the strongest.
My sense of smell is quite good, I think. Roll on asparagus season! I don’t buy the imported stuff from Peru. The English crop is worth waiting for.
About 75% of people.
Peeple, surely?
The article suggests that many people just can’t smell the difference.
I wonder whether they don’t produce the odour at all or whether someone who can smell it would smell it on the non smeller’s urine.
I wouldn’t like to test that!
From my experience of working in India, curry certainly does. Riding in a lift is like being in an Indian Restaurant.
Today I saw a beautiful tiny firecrest, I heard a nightingale.
I saw two hares and heard two noisy donkeys .
Are you sure it was a firecrest? Someone else mentioned they'd seen this phenomenally rare bird a few weeks ago. It is very similar to the much commoner goldcrest in size, shape and weight but it is rarely seen.
The correct identification of such birds is crucial and many an experienced birdwatcher has fallen into the trap of misidentification.
We get both in our garden, and surprisingly the firecrest is the more frequent visitor.
Thanks for that Grizz, it was excellent and I'm going to look out for more BTO vids as a result!
I've only seen a goldcrest a couple of times – I was amazed at how actually tiny it was! I dont think it appears difficult to differentiate with a firecrest (that I've never seen) – their head markings are quite different.
What a lovely post! Thank you x
Wordle No. 1,397 3/6
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Wordle 16 Apr 2025
A virtuous Birdy Three?
And me!
Wordle 1,397 3/6
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Well done, Sue!
Well done, Sue.
My two start words continue to work yielding all five letters but for how much longer?
Wordle 1,397 3/6
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Well done, cori !
Not much longer!!!
Probably so. I am dreading the return of the infamous ‘LY’.
Boring par here…..
Wordle 1,397 4/6
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Yesterday I decided not to use my favourite starter word –
guess which one it was ☹ should have stuck with it !
Pale-faced perhaps, Audrey?
Pale-faced perhaps, Audrey?
Hmmmm Kitty that's a tough one – I can only assume it must be quite close to the correct word so I'll go with CORAL
Well done, par today.
Wordle 1,397 4/6
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It's time for tea and cake
Just back from tea and hotXbuns with a neighbour. Beautiful sunny afternoon but the wind is colder than a witch's …
tbf The clock ones got me.. because his fingers were covering up some of the squiggly thingys.
tbf The clock ones got me.. because his fingers were covering up some of the squiggly thingys.
"What colour were Pharaoh's white horses?"
She looks like Tulip from Bangladesh. About as clueless.
Depends… if you count Tibet and Mongolia as separate countries!
TBH, the guy in the left quadrant took all the humour out of the answers. Was it not meant to be funny?
Hello ,
I cannot sign in .
Hi Maggie. You’re back!
Hi Sue ,
I have lost all my followers , and my old Twitter account , now X . The idiots have wanted more email details .. I signed into Twitter when it first started years ago, I have lost my photos , contacts and friends .
My original email is a stoneage email, and no longer accessible , but I never ever had to log out of Twitter , or if I did it was easy to get back in .
I am so upset .. it has been a hard job even communicating with X.
The new X account has me as I am on F/B , but signed on my Google account , my proper name and photo .. I am furious .
I cant use it for obvious reasons .
Today has been a bad day, Moh played golf .. he was away for 7 hours , and I thought I was going to collapse , my IBS is being a b#####d and Moh gave me a blood test when he came home , thumb prick , sugar levels are high, I haven’t eaten anything apart from drinking 3 cups of tea , that’s it ..
You should be able to change your name on there now back to True-Belle. I used to use my real name on X but changed it to Ndovu some time ago.
Hope you are feeling better now.
I'm seeing the doctor tomorrow for persistent gastric reflux that I should have got seen to months or even years ago.
Hi Bob ,
Goodness , you managed to get an appointment with your quack .
We have the palaver of making an appointment on line and being triaged .. telling the symptoms on line .. before an appointment is made .. The patient isn't a whole anymore , just bit parts and one symptom .
I was at the surgery for a blood test and asked for one at reception.
This is why I drink so much, Belle.
This site uses two-factor authentication. A six-digit codenumber will be sent to your phone in the next 30 seconds……
Your call is important to us.
You are currently 987th in the queue, when you get to first place you will be cut off automatically, thank you for your patience.
Often if you clear the cookies for the site that'll help.
On firefox, left click on the padlock icon in the address bar and click clear cookies and site data.
You will have to sign in, BUT, all the stale/expired info on you will have been removed, so it shouldn't conflict.
Not sure on Chrome, but it's likely similar. If folk are interested I'll find out.
It's the same on Chrome and Edge – only downside is you have to re-sign in on all the sites you use. It certainly tests out your password retention!
I tried clearing the cookies from the DT and logged in again – but the comments are still unreadable as they are twice the size of the main text and extend under the side panel.
I have had huge problems with signing in , I lost the lot earlier this morning .
Oh good! You're back! Did you see my message to you on X?
You had to make a new account? Don't click on scam pop ups again!
Yeah yeah then what happened?
'Rolex ripper' gang swarmed and arrested by cops in Mayfair..
Then? Yakob Harket, 21, convicted of robbery.
However, Yanis Amri, 37, and Adel Mohamdi, 31, were convicted in their absence after they absconded.
Absconded back to their unsafe countries?
Nah – absconded back to their local mosque. In the East End.
Second thoughts.. probably a good outcome.. although Yakob Harket is out next month, the other two wrongs uns will be forced to try their luck elsewhere.
Second thoughts.. probably a good outcome.. although Yakob Harket is out next month, the other two wrongs uns will be forced to try their luck elsewhere.
They will be doing time when caught.
rejecting any alternative interpretations as 'incoherence and impracticable'.
'Even if you kill every last one of us another will be born tomorrow.' Screams activist.
If they're up for it.. that's worth testing. In the interests of science.
a landmark judgment that could have momentous implications.
Does that mean Eddie Izzard can be barred from the ladeeee's loo in Paddington Station?
Why would he want to go there, a glory hole in the men's would likely be more down his alley, allegedly…
Before we all get carried away, it is worth looking at what the Supreme Court did. It simply interpreted the terms “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act. It concluded that the words referred to biological sex and not acquired sex.
There is absolutely nothing to prevent Parliament from bringing forward a Bill to define the two words in a different way so as to satisfy (sorry!) the wishes of the trans folk.
As this government – like its predecessor – is both spineless and woke, don't be surprised if Cur Ikea Slammer and his pals pander to the vociferous minority mob (as they do with, for example, slammers).
And on that cheerful note, I bid you good evening.
But all of them never missed an opportunity to kiss an arsehole?
Is that Fabricant on the left?
Close
Fabricunt.
I think all Tories will breathe a massive sigh of relief……
I think all Tories will be fearing that they might be the first.
They’re right to be scared – those effing monsters might well eat them…….
Alive…
In at least one case, it would be an overwhelming experience.
The one on the right might not have kissed any, but I'm guessing that it's eaten a few
Encased in pastry and smothered with ketchup.
Sat on a few more like.
Shat on a few more like?
Never kissed anyone, I would have thought!
I would put money on them doing something of that "unnature".
One of the great disadvantages of not having a proper written constitution.
You may think that; I profoundly disagree. That is the joy of this forum – opposing views do not result in abuse.
Tell that to the bear, let alone me.
I have always been in favour of a written constitution. The old trick of changing the law after some poor litigant has established his point in a torturous journey to the House of Lords is something with which we are all familiar.
Most first world countries have a written constitution. French citizens will never be deported to the US. US citizens cannot be deprived of their citizenship. Here in Spain I have a long list of frustrated government legislation.
No need for abuse. The facts speak for themselves, but I know few Britons agree with me, beginning with fellow law students when I briefly studied law so many years ago. Gluttons for punishment. Should the British have had a written constitution the last sixty years would have been very different.
Blair and the wrecking crew would have changed it.
Rewritten it to favour socialism and then made it unchangeable.
No thanks.
Think about who would write the constitution.
Well the idea is that it would be a framework for government and civil rights designed and written many years ago by long dead forebears and so intricately worded that it would be immune to the attacks by Tony Blair and his ilk. It seems to work quite well in other countries although as naysayers will point out there is no panacea, and as with any system imperfections abound.
Since we don't have one and any such attempt to write one now would be disastrous, given who's in charge, perhaps it's better we don't have one.
Difficult to say. It would be a cross party project and have to approved by referendum. Future governments would have to work within its framework.
But yes, much better to have one already devised by founding fathers.
We know exactly how important referenda are to the PTB if they don’t like the result!
I remember I. 1975 sitting in a language school in Spain, listening to an English woman teaching English proudly explaining the civil rights we enjoyed in the UK, a veiled comparison to Franco’s Spain. And now so many years later the difference.
This land of such dear souls, this dear dear land,
Dear for her reputation through the world,
Is now leased out, I die pronouncing it,
Like to a tenement or pelting farm:
England, bound in with the triumphant sea
Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege
Of watery Neptune, is now bound in with shame,
With inky blots and rotten parchment bonds:
That England, that was wont to conquer others,
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.
If we had one now it would be so badly written it would enshrine slavery.
😖 put the mockers on it, Bill, why don’t you!
Be fair, that's his role in life.
Pity the MR, she lives with him…
Pessimist = realist = me. You ought to know that by now!
He's right, though.
Jeff Taylor elaborates on YT
To be fair, BT posted something similar almost as soon as the verdict/pronouncement/conclusion was issued
Must be confusing for Labour – support the trannies, or support those would like to toss all deviants off of tall buildings.
They are all too thick to be confused.
Depends where the votes are needed.
Must be confusing for Labour – support the trannies, or support those would like to toss all deviants off of tall buildings.
Indeed. And it's still a long way from excluding hairy drag 'artists' from infant schools or preventing the mutilation of pre-pubescent children by disciples of Mengele.
I was in B&Q the other day and some halfwit in an orange apron came up to me and asked me if I wanted decking? Luckily, I got the first punch in!…… I'll get me hi-vis jacket……
Gowon he was a kiwi and pronounced it dicking ……m
Get away!!
Go ‘n’ gut yer fush ‘n’ chupps.
Greetings and apologies to everyone. I am so very late to the feast today. As usual. Big love and hugs to all and sorry that I have not contributed much at all for a while
I thought it was originally Bishop Berkeley, although Knox did come up with the limerick;
There once was a man who said "God
Must think it exceedingly odd
If he finds that this tree
Continues to be
When there's no one about in the Quad."
Dear Sir,
Your astonishment's odd.
I am always about in the Quad.
And that's why the tree
Will continue to be
Since observed by
Yours faithfully,
God
I thought it was originally Bishop Berkeley, although Knox did come up with the limerick;
There once was a man who said "God
Must think it exceedingly odd
If he finds that this tree
Continues to be
When there's no one about in the Quad."
Dear Sir,
Your astonishment's odd.
I am always about in the Quad.
And that's why the tree
Will continue to be
Since observed by
Yours faithfully,
God
It is being said that Britain cannot have a trade deal with the USA until Starmer repeals our hate speech laws.
On the other hand the EU is not bothered, it might even be mandatory that we keep them.
President Trump is sensibly dividing the UK from the EU. Preferential trade agreements for the UK compared to the EU are part of the toolkit.
The EU and its remaining members are “up shit creek without a paddle” as we say. The bastards are collectively broke and relying on confiscated Russian assets to fund their inane interests in hapless Ukraine.
Merz aka Mr Blackrock is eyeing Ursula’s job and planning yet more centralised control of member country budgets and finances. The German fruitcakes say they intend to wage war with Russia. History lessons are required urgently.
As for Starmer I loathe this geek more than any other politician and cannot stand his whining pronouncements and twisted barefaced lies.
President Trump is sensibly dividing the UK from the EU. Preferential trade agreements for the UK compared to the EU are part of the toolkit.
The EU and its remaining members are “up shit creek without a paddle” as we say. The bastards are collectively broke and relying on confiscated Russian assets to fund their inane interests in hapless Ukraine.
Merz aka Mr Blackrock is eyeing Ursula’s job and planning yet more centralised control of member country budgets and finances. The German fruitcakes say they intend to wage war with Russia. History lessons are required urgently.
As for Starmer I loathe this geek more than any other politician and cannot stand his whining pronouncements and twisted barefaced lies.
Welcome home.
I believe that the number of followers increases exponentially when one is resurrected.
};-O
Labour MP & The Scottish secretary Ian Murray doubles-down..
Trans-exclusionary feminists, such as those who brought today’s supreme court ruling, should be expelled from the Labour Party.
What a cretinous buffoon!
Reinforcing defeat.
I always thought these anti women trans laws were just a way of introducing Islamic law
If hard line Islam ruled, how the Hell could one tell a tranny from a fanny from a granny, they're all bagged up and ready to bin.
Are we talking about Birmingham?
And any istan
"Trans-exclusionary feminists"
It still takes me a while with terms like that to decide which side is batting.
If it’s Ian Murray, you just know he’ll be horribly wrong! 🤦🏻♀️
In other words – normal people.
It would be no surprise to see normal people banned from the Labour Party. Mind you, why normal people should want to have any truck with Labour is beyond me.
One of our local councillors I've known for donkey's years is a decent sort of guy – and Labour.
We gave them the ability to ignore nonsense Left wing EU dictat that harmed this country. Why is this stupid, revolting moron ramming us ever closer to this preposterous, gormless, dangerous idiocy?
He's just another effing moron completely indifferent to public opinion but more than keen to jeopardise our countries future by following orders from his task masters the WEF.
If the UK were still an EU member and a Brexit referendum were held now, I'm certain the majority would vote for Remain. However, outside the EU, there are enough voters who would have voted Remain in the above scenario who would not vote Rejoin now because of not wanting to go through that bloody rigmarole all over again, despite not agreeing with or regretting the decision to leave 9 years ago. The churn since then of youngsters joining the electorate and older voters passing away will have swung sentiment towards the EU but not sufficiently towards Rejoin for the reason I gave.
Well….we've had a lovely day with our a little just over five years old grandson. He is such a clever little fella. So on the ball ⚽ literally I tried (knee prob) to have a kick around with him on a gated astro turf pitch, while nanny was at the eye clinic. He's an arsenal supporter but spurs won 12 – 3.😉😄 Returning home he helped me in the garden. He remembers so much from previous experiences. After lunch he asked for some paper. He sat and with his coloured felt tips spent 2 hours drawing.
I made him a super sonic paper plane. Something I learnt from my Rupert books around 65 plus years. I drew him a rainbow 🌈 and added Roy G Biv. I expect that he will remember that as well.
I'm off to bed now, bugger politics and a Jura will help goodnight Nottlers
Sounds like a great day – very similar to when we have our grandson (aged 7), although he's Man City and I'm Blackburn Rovers – guess who always wins??
Night, all Y'all.
Bis später.
Mahler's 4th just finished on BBC R3 so that's me off to bed.
Goodnight all.
I love it.
I didn't see my grand parents very often. But I'm making up for it while I'm still able.
His arsenal suporting maternal grand father bought him a good quality ball with arsenal printed on it.
He left in our garden earlier. I brought it in and told him that the neighbours had made a complaint about it. 😅😆😄 he gets the joke.
I am using Mozilla Firefox and the task bar suddenly changed from blue to brown when I put a picture on my desktop. I've looked at settings and color (sic) but can't find a way to change it from brown – I only get the choice of light or dark. Any suggestions?
Incidentally, I have just had an email from UKIP wishing me a Happy Easter. Makes a change from Starmer's anyone but Christian ethos.
On second thoughts, it's probably less to do with the fact I'm using Firefox and more to do with the fact that I'm stuck with crap Win10.
I wouldn't know how to change it. Mine's a light grey. There might be something in Settings.
I have looked in settings. I have a choice of light brown or dark brown!
Today has been an exceedingly stressful day for me and I am quite exhausted. But a lot has been achieved in terms of gardening, shopping, reviewing a plethora of emails, sorting out problems with a new gardener and a new window cleaner, a ZOOM lecture on an aspect of marriage in Charles Dickens' LITTLE DORRIT by an eminent Dickensian scholar, and finally a little unwinding by watching three episodes of the TV series "New Tricks".
So now I am off to bed. I wish you all Good Night; sleep well, and I hope to see you all early tomorrow morning, although I may decide to have a lie-in.
You are lucky to find a gardener!
Absolutely, Conners. It took some time, but hopefully once he and the new window cleaner (the old one retired) have settled in, I will be able to find a "little treasure" to do some regular house cleaning for me. Then at last I can begin to take things easy and let others make my older years less stressful.
That’s important, I find. I could do with a reliable gardener. The one decent one gave up and the others I’ve tried have been useless.
Yo Elsie
I have a very expensive gardener SWMBO
Goodnight, all.
Good morninng fellow folk people.
'Morning Wibbles.
Just checked that granddaughter's Airbus landed as scheduled at DOHA on her way to the far east to join a medical team as part of her post graduate medical doctorate training:
I noted that the Airbus climbed higher to 41,000 feet when it flew over the dodgy bits.
DOHA – Department Of Home Affairs?!?!?
Morning Elsie ,
I do hope you managed to find a gardener and window cleaner .. The later are a rare species . Our windows become dusty very quickly because we are close to fields that are being dressed and then drilled , and the clouds of dust that wafts over the miles to here from the tank ranges .
Department of Health Actually 😉
Wow, what can Doha offer her that the UK can't .but I guess one has to be quite specialised in the different diseases presented by the variety of ethnic communities that present problems in the medical world.
DOHA is a stop to change flights.
DOHA was just a transit stop on her trip to Vietnam and Thailand but she has messaged us this morning that her group has arrived safely in Ho Chi Minh.
Good morning all.
A dull and damp start after overnight rain but a tad less cold with a tad under 8½°C outside.
A trip to Crewe is on the cards. Luckily Stepson's neighbours are much more supportive than those he had in Derby.
I hope you find him OK.
Just had a phone call from him, he sounds ok.
That’s good.
Drive carefully, Bob. There's a lot of nutters on the roads.
And I echo Jules – hope he's in good shape.
Glad to hear that.
And kudos to you for supporting such a frustrating situation.
Why did I write Crewe when I meant Stoke?
I have no idea. I was wondering when he’d moved to Crewe.
Morning everyone.
Good morning all!
Damp and drizzly start this morning.
Good Morning, all
Blew a hooley during the night. Still windy but brightening.
https://www.thetimes.com/imageserver/image/%2F343dcf94-4f9d-4465-b9ec-534b1a53388d.jpg?crop=3026%2C2017%2C440%2C97&resize=750&format=webp
Windy but frightening – mad red Ed.
Is Mr Miliband a Net Zeroist?
Morning, all Y'all.
Torrential rain last noght, woke me several times. Now everywhere is wet and shiny, the dust washed off, and the "lawn" is miraculously green again, hardly a tinge of beige left. Even the dry old Hydrangea has started lots of leaves that weren't there yesterday! The rest of the trees (birches, ash) are sprouting leaves like there's a race. Even wild daffodils are showing yellow.
I love this bit of spring.
Good morning all.
While the western media distracts people with stuff like Adolescence and slebs on fake space trips, the Chinese are bulk-buying gold and silver.
https://thesilverindustry.substack.com/p/4490-banks-in-china-that-must-reserve?publication_id=1857579&post_id=161436727&isFreemail=true&r=28gmek&triedRedirect=true&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Good for them! As an owner of gold, I naturally welcome anything that makes it more expensive, but apart from that, so what? One thing is certain: no government in its right mind would link its currency to gold.
tick tock….
I'll take a seat.
I wish I liked popcorn.
Good morning, everyone.
Good morning. Chilly and damp.
Sunny here and forecast to be very windy.
Amateurish Grauniad cartoon but the theme is worthy https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/f53a86ea76bacdda742df8f039b9cd08afb58298/0_0_3035_1819/master/3035.jpg?width=980&dpr=2&s=none&crop=none
Blimey. Even the Grauniad is getting antsy.
Good morning, chums. And thanks, Geoff,, for today's new NoTTLe page.
Wordle 1,397 4/6
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Morning Elsie
Same here…
Wordle 1,397 4/6
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Good Morning All. 9C showers and sun.
Morning Johnny, cloudy but bright 8C
https://x.com/toadmeister/status/1912230313838923836
Oh well, stock up on the booze and nibbles and have chums round to the house.
(Anyone daft enough to install Alexa – switch the blood thing off; better still, take a hammer to it and then bin it.)
Not a chance, Toby.
Woman arrested after attacking man who was whipping donkey
Sanctuary vet resigns herself to being jailed or deported but says ‘It was worth it’
Good on her. Bastard! She should hit with a fist, not open hand. Chased the bastard offf, too!
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/04/15/donkey-handler-whipping-egypt-woman-vet-punches-chases-held/
Morning Oberst. She gives him a good going over there. A pleasure too watch.
The icing on the cake was her chasing the bastard down the road.
It was wonderful! Poor little donkey! Go, girl!
Precisely the type landing in their thousands on our shores.
We don't need schiites like that.
This is her sanctuary. https://goodkarmasanctuary.org/donate/
And that's me off to Stoke.
TTFN.
Yo B o K
To Stoke
the town or the fire?
Stoke the boiler?
In a diesel-electric?
😊
Steam heating was used well into the diesel age. Maybe even still now.
Even in locos.
Good Morning Folks,
Cold breezy start here.
Good morning, all. Sun and clouds.
Grey and drizzly here.
Morning all 🙂😊
A bright start but very windy and a tad nippy.
Eldest and family in Tenby blowing a gale there and hardly stopped raining since they arrived Monday afternoon.
British infrastructure is at the mercy of forgien powers.
Probably because our political idiots are being subjected to bribery and have no inbred resistance, let alone any responsibility towards the British taxpayers past and present.
Taking bungs in plain English.
Been a long time since I was in Tenby.
Parents had a holiday flat round the coast in Saundersfoot, up to the early 90s. Pleasant part of the world.
Yes Obs the rest of the family rented a four bed house. At Lydstep around 5 years ago. We had a lovely time. Lovely cliff to walks. Nice pubs and restaurants. Golf shooting car racing.
Tenby Links was the toughest course I’ve ever played. Number plays off single figures. But he won’t have time to play it.
Good Moaning.
It's a somewhat nippy Wednesday, so I thought I'd muck up your blood pressure to provide a bit of fun.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/hashem-abedi-should-never-have-been-in-this-country/
"Hashem Abedi should never have been in this country
15 April 2025, 11:40am
If there has been one constant in Hashem Abedi’s miserable life it has been the determined failure of the British state to protect its citizens from men like him. Abedi is accused of inflicting ‘life-threatening injuries’ on three prison officers in an attack at HMP Frankland on Saturday. Injuries are said to include ‘burns, scalds and stab wounds’, with Abedi reported to have scalded the guards with hot cooking oil and stabbed them with improvised weapons. Two men remain in hospital as of writing.
Abedi was jailed for a minimum of 55 years after being found guilty on 22 counts of murder for his role in the Manchester Arena attack. Hashem helped his brother Salman obtain the chemicals to produce triacetone triperoxide (TATP). Hashem and Salman fashioned prototypes of their bomb from oil cans and pizza sauce tins, cramming them with nails and screws to maximise casualties.
Although the finished product was assembled by Salman, sentencing judge Mr Justice Baker was ‘entirely satisfied’ that Salman was ‘only enabled to do so as a result of the extensive preparation work’ which had been conducted along with Hashem. Moreover, the TATP procured by Hashem was the explosive used to give the Arena bomb its deadly reach, which saw it kill 22 people, including children, attending an Ariana Grande concert. Salman was killed in the explosion, and off he popped to Paradise to collect his 72 virgins, while Hashem was arrested and later extradited from Libya.
Saturday was not Hashem’s first attack on prison service staff. In 2020, he and two other Islamist terrorists assaulted Paul Edwards, a 57-year-old guard at HMP Belmarsh. Edwards had scalp lacerations, a bruised rib cage, a bruised back, and long-term hearing damage in the ambush, which was described by a witness as a ‘vicious attack’ in which Abedi and his accomplices behaved ‘like a pack of animals’. Abedi was sentenced to a further three years and ten months. This raises an obvious question: why was a mass-murdering terrorist with a history of violence against prison staff allowed access to cooking oil and the means to heat it? As Mark Fairhurst of the Prison Officers’ Association says: ‘These prisoners need only receive their basic entitlements and we should concentrate on control and containment instead of attempting to appease them.’
This is only the latest example of the state failing to contain Hashem Abedi. The original sin goes back to 1993 when his parents Ramadan and Samia were allowed into the country as asylum seekers from Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya, where they claimed to face political repression. He and his wife eventually settled in Manchester, where they gave birth to six children, including Hashem, Salman, and their older brother Ismail. Then, in 2011, they moved back to Libya for two years.
Cynics among you might be thinking: ‘So much for the terrible repression they were facing there.’ But there’s actually a perfectly logical explanation: Ramadan was fighting in the Libyan civil war. The Saunders inquiry determined it to be ‘likely’ that he was a member of the February 17th Martyrs Brigade, an Islamist militia opposed to Gaddafi, and also ‘likely’ that his sons, then 16 (Salman) and 14 (Hashem) ‘had some involvement in fighting during the civil war’. It’s nice when families spend quality time together. We also know about Ramadan’s activities in Libya thanks to an interview in the Guardian in which a fellow Mancunian, who had also travelled back home to participate in the war, described bumping into Ramadan in the mountains and recognising him from Didsbury mosque. It truly is a small world.
The family returned to Manchester in 2013, but by the following year Salman and Hashem were back in Libya during the second round of the civil war. Thankfully, the Royal Navy was on hand to help evacuate them because, and I quote, ‘extremist militias were fighting in the area’. We wouldn’t want our moderate militias to get caught up with any extremist militias.
The public inquiry found that the brothers were ‘radicalised in Libya to a significant extent’, that they received ‘training or assistance in how to build a bomb’ there, and that their family held ‘significant responsibility’ for their radicalisation, including Ramadan, Samia and Ismail, each of whom had ‘held extremist views’ which ‘influenced’ Salman and Hashem’s worldviews. They were also influenced by Abdalraouf Abdallah, who fought in Libya, has been convicted of terrorism offences, and, as seems inevitable at this point, was from Manchester.
All of this, they missed. Salman was known to the security services, first being brought to their attention in 2010, 2013, 2014, on several occasions in 2015, and again in 2016. The Saunders inquiry decided there was ‘a significant missed opportunity to take action that might have prevented the attack’, and criticised a security services agent who assessed two key items of evidence, recognised the possibility of a national security risk, but failed to write up a report the same day. A breakdown in communication between spooks and counter-terror cops was also cited.
Hashem Abedi should never have been able to assault those prison officers because he should never have been allowed the privileges that let him do so.
He and his brother should never have been able to murder 22 people at a concert because the threat they posed should have been understood and acted upon sooner.
They should never have been rescued from Libya by the Royal Navy, and had they not, those 22 people would still be alive today.
They should never have been allowed to travel to Libya with their father and back again, because British Islamists who join paramilitaries overseas eventually come back to Britain with paramilitary training.
They should never have been born in this country because their parents should never have been granted asylum here.
This is a nation, not an Airbnb with a welfare state attached
This is a nation, not an Airbnb with a welfare state attached. The entry of asylum claimants should be tightly controlled, with lengthy and intrusive vetting processes, and applicants detained offshore while that work is taking place. The criteria for refugee status should be more stringent, and if that means genuine cases get turned away, that is an unfortunate side effect of enhancing security in the asylum system. Where applicants secure refugee status then prove dangerous, disruptive or unwilling to conform to British law or custom, they should be considered for return to their country of origin, and their dependents with them. If the Refugee Convention stands in the way of refoulement, a way will have to be found around it, or the convention withdrawn from entirely. Indefinite leave to remain and citizenship should be granted less frequently and after significantly longer waiting periods. We cannot be the world’s sofa bed, there whenever anyone needs a place to crash, and asking nothing of them in return.
The Abedi family have been a pox on this country and its rightful citizens. Border policy cannot be made with just one case in mind, but we could do worse than setting a ground rule that the likes of the Abedis should be kept as far away from this country as possible."
Put him in a box and weld it shut. Then leave him to die alone, lying in his own filth.
Yo Ol
or cut off his hands, certainy his left one, he will have trouble wiping his ass and others of his ilk will not go near himm
Very disturbing tale.
The author is naïve re allowing people such as these into the UK. What does he/she think of what's happening in Dover every day? The government, of both colours, have sat on this growing problem for years and done nothing to control it. Why is that?
Good morning everyone.
"SIR – Madeline Grant’s article on modern Birmingham (“The Birmingham I once loved is gone, replaced by rats, rubbish and rampant violence”, Comment, April 12) is deeply distressing.
In 1963 I trained as a teacher, married, and moved to Birmingham from Wiltshire. I was fortunate to find a job at Edgbaston High School, then a model of educational excellence. The city provided a plethora of inspiring artistic opportunities, and our students were proud of their alma mater.
Local politicians should put aside their differences in order to restore Birmingham’s excellence and nurture its youth.
Valerie Dagger
Shipbourne, Kent"
Circumstances change, but in her retirement Mrs Dagger now lives in a village approximately 140 miles from Edgbaston.
The good and sensible rats leave the sinking ship; the stupid ones go down with it.
Fat floats.
I used to go regularly to the theatre in Birmingham in the seventies. I wouldn’t go near the place now.
Good morning, all. Overcast at 06:00, sunshine now breaking through.
Climate change, climate crisis, call it what you may, is continuing to divide people and ideas. Here we have, what I deem as preposterous, a doctor claiming that the fires 'raging' across Britain are due to climate change/crisis. In April? Certainly, here in N Essex, we had a dry spell with some clear sunny days but hardly the temperatures that would start wildfires. On a number of the days that the Sun was shining the wind/breeze kept the temperature down.
https://x.com/Lyndonx/status/1912212550793494732
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e6f0516e7ccc4c028308d569def8a0f1ce9f384c74d8a37143f191f563f5c227.png
Interesting view from a Nobel Laureate in Quantum Physics. Clauser is attacked BTL for 'only' being a leading light in Quantum Physics and therefore not qualified to comment on climate science. Apparently, clear thinking and being able to see possible problems in other areas where physics plays a part is not allowed in the climate change arena. Clouds, Clauser discusses, are not well represented in the modelling of the climate. Odd?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvqIqy8dUvA
The 300 fires in Wales were probably in people's fireplaces and woodstoves to keep warm at this time of year.
Wasn't there a spate of fires in North Wales brought on in second homes owned by the English?
Advert: "Come Home To A Real Fire."
Scrawled underneath: "Buy A Holiday Cottage In Wales."
Why the gullible millions can’t see through the global warming hoax
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/why-the-gullible-millions-cant-see-through-the-global-warming-hoax/
I hope most of us here can see through it!
The article contains a lot of invective against those chancers (we call them "entrepreneurs") making shedloads of money jumping on a bandwagon with quack solutions.
Precious little challenging the science of the actual problem of manifestations of climate change of sufficient scale and speed to destabilise civilisation and to threaten a global mass extinction of species brought on by over-exploitation by too many people.
It may well be true that many, if not most of the solutions are counter-productive to the point of ruining those economies that might otherwise have afforded to do some good. How much is contributed to global warming by electric cars caught up in a wildfire?
It may well also be true that efforts by the enlightened are completely swamped by those who don't give a damn, and gain supremacy by not giving a damn.
For my part, for as long as it continues to rain in England, I will pile up brushwood and garden waste to rot down into topsoil as my contribution to carbon capture.
I'm not sure that it is the "gullible millions" but a certain coterie, sizable I would grant, that has the power to influence and keep certain topics at the forefront for their fellows to chatter about endlessly and, like witchfinders, find any bumps or anomalies, as proof that what they believe, is true. What is unfortunate is these are the people that run things, including politics and newspapers so they have the means to reinforce their crackpot ideas amongst themselves, they are educated, which means they have no common sense and no real knowledge of the real world. In a catastrophe they are the first to die. As for the great unwashed, I don't think the vast majority, millions upon millions, in fact, give a damn other than that the above mentioned fuckwits are able to interfere in the lives of the ordinary citizen.
You can hardly read any article these days without some mention of "climate change"…..it's insidious and has permeated everything.
Why the gullible millions can’t see through the global warming hoax
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/why-the-gullible-millions-cant-see-through-the-global-warming-hoax/
I hope most of us here can see through it!
Last night's Euromillions jackpot was less than the advertised estimate. If I'd won it, I'd have asked for my money back.
'Morning All
Midweek Medley
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https://scontent.fbrs4-2.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/487835565_10163090094641096_431311841018110728_n.jpg?stp=cp6_dst-jpg_p180x540_tt6&_nc_cat=110&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=127cfc&_nc_ohc=cYH72DIRKKkQ7kNvgFj5GXl&_nc_oc=AdmLnB6v1i3gZl3fI7QkYXT59jtomUgUZ_PbVaV_OEx6psf9iKijMKGZ1FpxScHT5Jwwf_0CoJGPgcTFI5z6a5xa&_nc_zt=23&_nc_ht=scontent.fbrs4-2.fna&_nc_gid=Uy7INtdGykRz_2EnWRRpBg&oh=00_AYGWxTMLT9EToae6PqI_09cLH0SPXsZcExqMQD-EKeTpHA&oe=67F33B8A
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https://m3.gab.com/media_attachments/a3/ee/a5/a3eea5dce07266a7634bc9a01458dc7d.jpg?width=568
Excellent, especially the cats!!
SIR – Liz Truss’s article (“Trump is right: only bold, dramatic action can defeat the quangocracy”, Comment, April 15) demonstrates clearly why her premiership was such a failure.
She remains as she was then: confident but wrong.
John Cuningham
Cambridge
I think the editor left the 'T' out of your name, Johnny.
Ideally he should live in Scunthorpe
Yo mr G
Yo, Mr Effort.
or Lightwater, maybe?
What a fool. Must be an academic.
Harry Mount
The Odyssey is more real than we thought
What was once seen as myth is increasingly understood as history
15 April 2025, 4:59am
From Spectator Life
Odysseus is back on his eternal journey to Ithaca – and he’s sailing towards your cinema screen. Ralph Fiennes is playing Odysseus in The Return, released last week. And Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey, starring Matt Damon as the cleverest of the Greeks at Troy, should be out next year.
I criss-crossed the Mediterranean for three years, in the wake of Odysseus, for a book – and I’m convinced The Odyssey is true. OK, the monsters, like man-eating Scylla and the one-eyed Cyclops, might not have existed. And you’d have to be a Zeus-fearing type to believe in the gods toying with Odysseus’s fate on Mount Olympus.
But the catastrophic storms that tossed Odysseus back and forth across the Med are certainly true. Just look at poor Mike Lynch, the tech billionaire tragically drowned with his daughter, friends and crew last summer, thanks to a monstrous waterspout. That was off the coast of Sicily, just a few miles from the legendary site of Charybdis – the deadly whirlpool Odysseus steered his ship away from.
I was battered by a Homeric storm, too, off the coast of Sicily near Ustica, the island of Aeolus, ruler of the winds. Aeolus gave Odysseus a sealed bag of winds. Odysseus’s stupid crew opened the bag, releasing the winds and blasting them away from Ithaca towards Sicily – just as the winds did to me at Ustica. So many of the places are exactly as Homer described them in The Iliad and The Odyssey. And they still have the same names. Ithaca is still called Ithaca.
Homer says the island’s two headlands ‘keep back the great waves raised by heavy winds without, but within the benched ships lie unmoored when they have reached the point of anchorage’. And so it was when I sailed into Vathy, Ithaca’s capital. Out at sea, the water was tossed up into white-crested breakers. Just as we turned into the main bay of Ithaca, the brisk westerly wind dropped.
A book has just come out, saying that the Bronze Age palace on Ithaca, only discovered 30 years ago, fits the description of Odysseus’s palace. In The Archaeological Evidence for the Palace of Odysseus on Ithaca, Professor Thanasis J. Papadopoulos convincingly refutes claims that the neighbouring islands of Lefkas and Kefalonia are Homeric Ithaca.
To believe in The Odyssey, you have to believe in The Iliad – and the Trojan War. When I got to Troy on Turkey’s western coast, I was convinced a war had taken place there, between a Greek tribe and a non-Greek tribe. Of the nine cities laid on top of each other in a vast archaeological sandwich, there are remnants of burnt earth and burnt weapons at around the time – 1200 BC – the Trojan War was supposed to have taken place. The mighty, sloping walls of Troy, as described by Homer, are still there.
And the supposed site of Troy was at a critical point on Mediterranean trade routes. The city commanded the entrance to what was then the most important waterway in the world, leading through the Dardanelles up the Bosphorus into the Black Sea. Homer’s battle scenes, too, are so realistic that they must have a kernel of truth. ‘The Iliad must have happened,’ Boris Johnson told me between my Mediterranean voyages. ‘That description of the Trojans attacking like birds is so chilling, it must be true.’
Boris was referring to the beginning of Book Three of The Iliad, where Homer described how the Trojans ‘advanced with cries and clamour, a clamour like birds, cranes in the sky, flying from the winter’s storm and unending rain, flowing towards the streams of the ocean, bringing the clamour of death and destruction to Pygmy tribes, bringing evil and strife at the break of day.’
And, if there was a war involving Greeks, then they had to make their return – or nostos (as in nostalgia – ‘pain in returning’). And there are plenty of stories of other disastrous nostoi from the Trojan War. Five and a half lines – and a few critical references – survive of a lost epic called the Nostoi – the returns, i.e. returns of the Greeks from Troy.
Like The Odyssey, the Nostoi tells of the trials and tribulations of various returning Greeks: Diomedes and Nestor, who get back home without incident; Menelaus, caught in a storm, loses much of his fleet and is delayed in Egypt for several years; Agamemnon is killed by Clytemnestra, his wife. The only one left to make it home and live into happy old age is Odysseus.
I’m not the first person to try to nail down Odysseus’s real-life route and work out who Homer really was. A group of ancient activists, the Euhemerists, thought the Greek myths were true. They’re named after Euhemerus, the 4th century BC Greek from Sicily who maintained you could strip the magic from the myths and produce historical fact. I’m proud to be a Euhemerist. Here’s hoping Ralph Fiennes and Matt Damon are so convincing that they’ll create a few more of us.
A weighty article about Troy.
I'll get me scales.
…and I'll raise you an avoirdupois…with double cream.
Have some peas!
A litre goes a long way.
Good morning Citroen .
Your comments are so interesting and relatable .
I am not an academic I wish I was, but in my much earlier teenage years I was fascinated by stories from the Iliad and Odyssey, probably because we were encouraged to read , read read !
A few years later in my later teens when I was training to be a nurse in the RN (QARNNS) , we were based at RNH Haslar , then in our second year we were dispatched to Malta , we were based at RNH Bighi which still stands near the entrance to Grand Harbour , Valetta , we also spent time at RAF Luqa and M'Tarfa .
I was fortunate to spend a year there with my class of student nurses . We all appreciate where we were , and the history of Malta .. this was my time there 1966/67 .
We explored Malta when off duty and appreciated the amazing history of the Island . The Maltese in those post war years were as they were before tourism and building blighted the island , all apparent in these days where a wonderful historic Island that breathed myths and tradition has now been ruined and diluted by money and greed .
A Roman Catholic island , Phoenician , Greek/ Roman /North African , the stories I heard , not only about the appalling conditions they all suffered during WW2 but previous years to that .
I verified that by dragging this off the Net
"While there's no direct historical link between Malta and the Trojan War, there's a tradition, rooted in ancient Greek literature and archaeological findings, that suggests a possible connection between Malta and Greek settlers, including possibly Trojan refugees. Specifically, Lycophron mentioned a group of Greek warriors settling in Malta after the Trojan War. However, archaeological evidence supporting this theory is limited, and the idea of a direct Trojan War connection is more of a literary tradition than a confirmed historical fact. "
"The Acts of the Apostles tells the story of how Paul of Tarsus was shipwrecked in Malta on his way from Caesarea Maritima to Rome, sent by Porcius Festus, procurator of Judea, to stand trial before the Emperor. Paul ministered in Malta for three months (Acts 28:1–11)."
Malta weather was great, sometimes erratic .. and our ward uniforms changed to white dresses in April /May when the whole of the Royal Navy based out there overnight changed into tropical rig .
White dresses for us and our white shoes which had to be blancoed
We witnessed what can only be called old fashioned .. a Tempest or 2 .. violent storm that ran through , the wind was wreckingly frightening , we use to have to take or wonderful fancy ward hats off and carry them in plastic bags .. the storm would rage through for maybe 30 mts or a couple of hours , and how many ships would have been wrecked in the old days ?
The cave system under Malta gave rise to stories of monsters and strange myths which must tie in with the Iliad .. perhaps?
Anyway my romantic senses and love of books came alive with the golden colour of Malta ( before the terrible present day ruination) the tolling bells , and colour of Saint's days celebrations and the constant crossing across the heart of the bus drivers , priests , fishermen and Maltese men who ferried us across the harbour by oar from Bighi to Valetta and the landing stage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villa_Bighi
You giddy Harrogate Ladies' College schoolgirl. I don't write any of this stuff but merely copy 'n paste things that look interesting. I briefly had a girlfriend at HLC (parents lived in HK) and hitchhiked over from Ampleforth to chat her up. Forgotten her name.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/24fb1879bfa82df38871f1f3811c9bc687b3eed48277c706b486f7ce31f1a0a4.jpg
Nice photograph, Belle. A pretty lass with a happy countenance.
A Very Pretty young lady!
You've not got any of the pics the RAF took of you & your colleagues sunbathing on the roof do you?
Classified. Not yet due for release under the 70 year rule. I've already asked. {:^))
When I was 10, my uncle and aunt gave me some money to buy a book while I was in London. I bought a beautifully illustrated copy of the Odyssey – I still have it. I love Homer's descriptions of the "wine-dark sea" and the trials and tribulations on that long journey home.
In 1997, just before our wedding, we spent two weeks on Kefalonia, and had a day trip to Ithaca, and lunch there.
Gosh, that must have been lovely ..
I loved those wonderful stories and illustrations as well, and when we thought we were moving years ago, gave away a pile of my lovely books , why because the family were not interested .. they want the here and now .. and I regret I had parted with my early informative early years romantic soul, and the stuff that led me me down many paths to satisfy my curiosity .
I don’t know what my sons will do with all our books – but I still have all my mother’s books as well……… when we bought this house 30 years ago, part of the attractions was all the room we had for bookshelves……. still there is the Canal Trust bookshop just down the hill – it’s huge…….. and they would be able to drop them off there for others to find the treasures.
I did Latin A level and failed it miserably…….but my friend Mary did Greek as well and Classics at university. She's recently completed a fine arts course and graduated again last September at the age of 77.
One of my hardest tasks was clearing out many of my childhood books.
Sons are too old and grandchildren would not be interested.
At least by giving them to a local charity which runs a bookshop and coffee house, I felt that many would land in the hands of those who really wanted and appreciated them.
Yo and Good Moaning from a sunny, but chilli C d S.
From a seaside village in Valencia. Very cold and windy and sunny max 16 degrees today. Easter cones late but the weather as bad as always.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e94093dd258baafa0c0b8f647dbd8359f29c99c6e6736596271c4f9ac6966ba1.png
Captain Sensible
16h
We have the wrong Yvette in charge. This one spent four years not smuggling a single person across the Channel.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3a2f60a08ca42089d04b55309f45483d871a872cf1c296480810d42ca3883e42.png
Red
Captain Sensible
16h
I think this Yvette and Rene managed to get a couple of British airman home once, but they were back a couple of weeks later. A bit like the other Yvette then.
Good Morning!
In LIB: Lithium Ion Battery, or Lithium Ion Bomb? we have a true tale of a cordless power tool. of the type most households have. exploding with such force that it wrote off a work boat. We explain why and what to look out for. Please read – it might save your life – and let us know if you have experience of LIBs exploding or catching fire.
In his short but powerful article, LUCY CONNOLLY DENIED ACCESS TO DAUGHTER AGAIN , Paul Sutton rages at the injustice perpetrated against Lucy Connolly by our corrupt and wokely biased judicial system, a decision, like all too many these days, that puts our country to shame. Please read and tell us what you think, and vote under the article on the case itself, and on the judiciary in general at the top of the Today page.
Energy watch 07.30: Demand: 32.46 GW. Total UK Production: 28.49 GW from: Hydrocarbons 14.7%; Wind 51.5%; Imports 12%; Biomass 3.4%; Nuclear 12.9%. Solar: 1.6%.
Captain Sensible
15h
“The more laws, the less justice” – Cicero. Parliament should be especially wary of passing laws that:
are vague;
are subjective;
are unenforceable;
reduce freedom of speech; and
provide opportunities for vexatious litigation.
Which it does in spades these days
The vaguer they are, the more enforceable they become by the State against the enemies of the State.
Appeasing rather than roundly condemning Vladimir Putin – a war criminal who heads a regime that bombs civilians and other non-military targets in Ukraine
as opposed to
Appeasing rather than roundly condemning Hamas –
awar criminals whoheadsbelong a regime that bombs civilians and other non-military targets in IsraelWaltzes in to say good morning, much cooler today .
After watching the original All Creatures Great and Small
I am now rereading the books, far more gentle times .
I would have rather been around in the 50s than now .
A lot of us remember the 50s very well.
From Oz to Japan to the UK
How "Green"
"Japan has no significant domestic coal production, having ended in 2002, and relies heavily on imports, bringing in over 210 million tons yearly, mainly from Australia and Indonesia. The UK imports coking coal from Japan for steel production because domestic mining, like the Cumbria mine, was blocked due to environmental concerns, with legal rulings against it in 2024. Japan's role is as a coal trade hub, not a producer."
Now about that highest quality coking coal under Cumbria………..
We are told that it's not suitable for the job. And what we're told is what I believe, so it is.
Black is white and up is down…
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/777c0a8a442913b452f6f7e7ba4314f3349ef1ddac3756e9a900c8b739a72244.png
It may be sunny and cloudy but, my goodness, it is decidedly chilly.
Yes, but there's some warmth in the wind, so got the clothes out to air.
It isn’t even sunny here.
Good morning all. Rain, sun and cloudy. Well, that's different!
Some will find this of interest
A NEW PARTY IS ON THE WAY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlaV1L7DlyQ
Nope. Same old same old.
My thoughts entirely, Bill.
As above to Bill Ober and, good morning!
Well hopefully not. I get the impression that it is the Reform party but will do what the original Reform party promised to do but has now backed out of to become part of the blob. That is the new party will control illegals coming in and will do something about Islam it will also not block out supporters of Tommy Robinson and will be democratic in structure. But I would say that if we start out with a negative attitude then we can't expect anything positive to come out of it. Further, if you think it is "Same old same old." Then what would you do to make a party?
For a start, find people who do not – within a short time – fall viciously out with each other. And change their tune by the week.
I actually think that is the idea. Many people have come out of the woodwork who are gung ho but have been discouraged primarily by Farage. Steven Wolfe and Catherine Blaiklock spring to mind.
I see little difference in the new lot.
404408+ up ticks,
B,
18 year olds, with experience
we would be seeking people of the same ilk, you ask the impossible in politics,.
I would, in all fairness, point out that it is Farage that falls out with people. Not all and sundry falling out with each other. Farage cannot stand anyone getting as much prominence as him. When they do he destroys them. Catherine Blaiklock alleges that he is "controlled opposition". If you go down a list of his "achievements" her allegation becomes very believable. He has left in his wake chaos and destruction, not only of people but intentions he outright lied about and failed to achieve. That habit goes all the way through UKIP to the present Reform Party. He has poisoned the well and you can now see the results.
I think he's had to be ruthless to get where he is.
404408+ up ticks,
Morning JR,
Well penned , positive, much agreement from me.
I am hearing a great deal of
submit to what boils down to over the last four decades, a lab/lib/con infrastructure construct, submission being the short term, easy route option
I intend to join. Write saying what I expect from them and go from there. Doing nothing at all is, in my opinion, destructive in itself. I am not willing to give up on our country and sit and moan while it goes to wreck and ruin because people will do nothing but complain.
Well hopefully not. I get the impression that it is the Reform party but will do what the original Reform party promised to do but has now backed out of to become part of the blob. That is the new party will control illegals coming in and will do something about Islam it will also not block out supporters of Tommy Robinson and will be democratic in structure. But I would say that if we start out with a negative attitude then we can't expect anything positive to come out of it. Further, if you think it is "Same old same old." Then what would you do to make a party?
404408+ up ticks,
Morning BT,
Echos of the old tory (INO) party.
Ah – you mean the blue eco-freak limp dumbs – as is my "tory" MP.
What colour will this latest branch of The Corruption Party adopt for its rosettes?
We haven't had brown yet!
It's being started by Ben Habib with, eventually, Rupert Lowe. Do you think they are corrupt?
I’ve never come across any politician, at any level of politics, who is not corrupt.
The very fact that they invariably choose their cronies for top honours over more deserving ‘civilian’ candidates is all the proof you need.
Yawn.
I think they're tempting Providence to call it the Integrity Party – all it will take is for one of them to start crossing the road after the green man starts flashing and they'll be history……
Spot on. Tempting Providence. Just look at the misdemeanours committed by MPs for ALL persuasions in the last few years. Dozens of them.
As a matter of clarification
Ben Habib
@benhabib6
·
21h
There was much speculation yesterday about me having taken control of a political party: the Integrity Party.
I can confirm the speculation was correct. I do control that party.
I was not going to make any comment on the speculation. There is much to be done to get it fully operational, including, possibly, renaming it.
However, I have been bowled over by the support the party and I received yesterday.
We gained over 200 members and raised £6,000 without me even saying a word!
I am therefore compelled to thank you all for your support and encouragement.
Thank you!!
I will not be making any further public comment on the party until it is much more advanced but I can assure you it will stand without fear or favour for a proud, sovereign, independent and prosperous United Kingdom in all its parts and for all its people.
Please watch this space.
Is France too weak to stop the violent attacks on its prisons? 16 April 2025.
A wave of violence is sweeping France as gunmen attack the country’s prisons. In some cases, vehicles belonging to prison staff have been set alight and in other incidents bullets from AK47s were sprayed at the gates. In the eastern city of Nancy, a prison officer was threatened at his home.
You can see Europe and the UK disintegrating. All Vlad has to do is hang in there. Russia will probably be the last Christian European Nation State.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/is-france-strong-enough-to-take-on-its-drug-cartels/
Nothing to do with slammers, of course.
404408+ up ticks,
Morning Each,
https://www.youtube.com/live/vY-eFUTkL68?si=KdA_bkHiE3Jn6PUd
Supreme Court to rule if trans women are women.
"The Supreme Court will issue a landmark ruling over whether transgender people can be legally defined as their preferred gender. Feminist campaign group For Women Scotland (FWS) has brought the case, arguing that sex-based protections should only apply to people who were born female. The dispute centres on whether or not somebody with a gender recognition certificate (GRC) acknowledging their gender as female should be treated as a woman under the 2010 Equality Act. FWS previously said that not tying the definition of sex to its “ordinary meaning” could have far-reaching consequences for sex-based rights, as well as “everyday single-sex services” like toilets and hospital wards. It could have a significant impact on how sex-based rights are applied through the Act across Scotland, England and Wales."
There are some very confused individuals around.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/04/16/supreme-court-rule-trans-women/
The country is in a mess when it takes a judge to confirm what the rest of us know. A trans woman is not a woman.
Absolutely. I really – I have no idea what sort of nonsense is being ponced about with.
A man in a dress is a man, in a dress. He is not a woman. Never, ever will be.
On average, there are 37 trillion sex linked cells in the human body.
No surgeon is that clever.
Courts in England and Wales do not "issue" judgments. Nor do they "hand them out". Judges give judgment. Grrrr.
https://lowres.cartooncollections.com/animals-talking_animals-talking_pets-pets-pet_owners-animals-CX302158_low.jpg
Mongo barked at a cat this morning. I'm fairly sure a window bowed outward.
You can tell when he's going to as it comes from somewhere deep underground and builds until released as a thunderclad of sound.
He then looks very embarrassed as if to say 'Terribly sorry, had to be done.'
You'll be telling us next that they don't have gavels.
Middle class could face higher energy bills than poor to fund net zero.
"Middle-class families could face higher energy bills than poorer households to fund the transition to net zero, the boss of Britain’s energy regulator has suggested. Jonathan Brearley, the chief executive of Ofgem, told an industry event on Tuesday that the regulator would launch a review of bills this summer that would look at whether to “do something related to income”.
He said: “We want to at least ask the question whether or not we can allocate costs more progressively.” Economists typically use the term progressive to mean people pay higher tax rates as their income increases. The proposal is likely to prove highly controversial as it would amount to a stealth income tax to fund net zero."
They never stop, do they.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/04/16/middle-class-could-face-higher-energy-bills-than-poor-to-fu/
More bureaucracy, oh goody!
Which would be deeply unfair as energy is a product and thus should have the same price everywhere. If energy is too expensive then make it cheaper by abandoning the Left wing nonsense. All the desperate efforts to do in the market will fail. Government simply has to accept they are wrong and to be removed.
I was thinking about this. If i have to not use any gas or electricity in order not to have to continue to subsidising others, i am prepared to do it.
Two tier pricing to go with all the other two tier systems.
Bloody idiots. The thing that crucifies you when you have no money is the standing cost.
BREAKING NEWS
The Supreme Court has ruled that only people who are born female should be protected from discrimination as a woman under the Equality Act in a landmark ruling.
In handing down the judgment, Lord Reed has told the Supreme Court that a panel of five judges has unanimously allowed the appeal by For Women Scotland.
They didn't "hand down" the judgment. They GAVE it. Grrr (see beow)
But – for once – this fatuous court got it right. Expect the losers to go to the pretendy court in Strasbourg.
Some common sense at last.
That's a kick in the gonads for transwimmin.
'For Women Scotland' https://images.cartoonstock.com/lowres/fashion-kilt-scottish-skirt-fashion-alternative-CX922721_low.jpg
There'll be weeping and gnashing of lipsticked teeth.
I know one who's had his gonads chopped off. He still looks like a man in drag and still sounds like a man. Of course it only changes the voice if done before puberty, which is what used to happen to choir boys in the Sistine Chapel.
A tranny I used to know as a client when I was working had his Adam's apple removed surgically but his voice still didn't sound female. I don't know if he had the other bits removed. He used to totter in on high heels…….
The DT used to run a column in the magazine by a writer who changed from David to Diana Thomas and one of his final pieces was about having his male bits removed. I think they stopped it then.
A client? Were you a beautician before the days of Hedgehog Rescue?
Hardly! I was a JobCentre adviser trying to get the bloke into work.
Boy trebles. Castrato.
Well, hang on. It has said that being trans is also a 'protected characteristic' (it shouldn't be, it's a form of mental illness) but defining a woman as such is both moronic and a waste of time. If law needs to define the facts we really are doomed.
Show me a politician who isn't – potentially – corrupt.
That's a poor argument. Everybody is potentially corrupt. Its called "original sin", although the West has the wrong idea about that. But I will refrain from theology. The point is "potential corruption" is a leitmotif running through all Western thinking. It's depressing, always diving to the bottom and then expecting positives or, becoming so negative, nothing becomes achievable.
” Everybody is potentially corrupt” – but politicians, sniffing troughs, the more so.
I know I sound cynical – but I am – and, I think, these days, with reason.
Does anyone else do the DT puzzles? What have they done to the user interface, it is a complete and utter mess. Why change something that worked perfectly well?
If it ain't broke, break it. (Government policy, why should the Terriblegrapg be any different?)
I have included that aphorism in my snottograms to the puzzles editor.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c80dc3ff9332dc82a26247fbfd0db0feae7f1f0aa69f048ede811edc32b55cf1.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/dd98618e3bd6336157e8361b88033cef33d1412e3ac4502a85ce40b2bf071d15.jpg Good afternoon, Katy.
I subscribe to the 'virtual paper' version of the online DT/ST. Some years ago I drew a blank 'Big X' grid on my home drawing board (an A0+) and I print off double-sided copies when needed. I use these to copy down all the DT Sod-You-Cow puzzles each day.
I can even fit in the 'Chain' version by colour-coding the squares where the lines fit. It works very well. I use two full sheets a week (I ignore those lower than 'Tough' level) and a bonus Tough sheet every four weeks.
Very good! But I’m not Katy, even the Supreme Court would agree with that!
Have you tried the Killer Sudoku? Takes a bit of getting into, but much more of a challenge.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a680b9196043aaa9f12053e6beadf8ee69a8acbb1b5e7f7b230a07289fa5a517.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7a0d54bcb182f0eba1d95a7b1d917c39f641d526c5f822e33a8f8ef554ac9a08.jpg Indeed I do. I do both the Killer and the Uncaged Killer, which are much more fun to do than the bog-standard puzzles.
[The number in the top RH corner of each sheet is the serial number that I include on each sheet since I started doing them. I have now compiled no fewer than 917 double-sided puzzle sheets since I started.]
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a680b9196043aaa9f12053e6beadf8ee69a8acbb1b5e7f7b230a07289fa5a517.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7a0d54bcb182f0eba1d95a7b1d917c39f641d526c5f822e33a8f8ef554ac9a08.jpg Indeed I do. I do both the Killer and the Uncaged Killer, which are much more fun to do than the bog-standard puzzles.
[The number in the top RH corner of each sheet is the serial number that I include on each sheet since I started doing them. I have now compiled no fewer than 917 double-sided puzzle sheets since I started.]
I noticed that, possibly because I just msgd him. I'm hopeless at puzzles/games generally. Husband and daughter do Wordle/Spelling Bee daily, their numbers are quite staggering. I slope off and walk my dog…
Every so often, some bored 'pooter nerd mucks around with the puzzles. (Today, he appears to have been let loose on the comments.)
I send a zinger to the puzzles editor and, in fairness, I get a reply and the status quo ante is resumed.
What gets my goat is the settings are so poor that one or two clues end up on a second page. I, and possibly other cruciverbalists, kick up a stink and things go back to normal.
"Complain"? It's what people do.
Heat or eat? Ask Starmer.
https://open.substack.com/pub/tarableu/p/electricity-in-uk-is-the-highest?r=10qzvs&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
They make an error in stating that the price of gas is high. It isn't, not really. Gas is heavily taxed, so the 'sale' price used to set the subsidy is about twice the real cost.
That money is then given to unreliables in subsidy, making them look cheaper than they really are. On top of that are the ARs, CFD s and all sort of other nonsense.
We also don't stockpile gas nor frack, both of which would reduce the cost of gas. The end result is heavily weighting one side to raise it up and subsidising the other to bring it down. The simple truth is unreliables are horrifically expensive and would never be considered in a rational world. They persist solely because of high taxes, high energy costs and collossla subsidy.
I'd point folk toward David Turver's excellent substack for the real details.
Great response, wibbling. I don’t know Mr Turver but will shortly!
Don’t get me started…{:¬))
I know how these things work, I watch Law & Order
They castrated boys in the Sistine Chapel?
Jaw-dropping news, Our Susan!!
Have you listened to the recordings of Alessandro Moreschi? Bearing in mind that he died in 1922 therefore the recording quality isn't great, it really is a peculiar sounding voice?
Castrato. But I do love the counter tenor voice and they speak quite normally.
Yes, Andreas Scholl sings with both voices when he performs folk songs that include dialogue. His countertenor, at its best, was a contralto voice on a par with Kathleen Ferrier.
I was lucky enough to go to two concerts by him in Bristol, more than 20 years ago. I have several of his cds. Wonderful voice.
I first heard the counter tenor voice many years ago – a recording by Alfred Deller. And James Bowman was very good, too. I loved his Oberon in Britten’s Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Deller was the first countertenor I heard. I saw a production of Arteserces with all the female roles played by countertenors. It was interesting, shall we say?
Philippe Jaroussky also sings in a chest voice as well as countertenor.
All countertenors can, but many only develop their falsetto.
Isn't he the only castrato ever recorded?
He must have been knocking on a bit, so early recording and an ageing voice probably doesn't do him justice.
Yes, he was the last known castrato and the only one recorded.
It's fascinating to speculate. I sang a Farinelli role once and did a bit of research.
The best castrati singers developed physically t9 a certain point before castration. So they had the core strength and lung capacity of men, but the shorter vocal folds of women. Think female voices but with huge power behind them. I would have loved to hear one in its prime.
(I was cast because I have a powerful frame and voice, and the director wanted to move away from the standard 'early music' voices, which while beautiful in their way, use no vibrato and tend to be smaller.)
I see a government body [Home Affairs Ctte] last week ruled that there was no "Two Tier Policing" during the Southport riots [and presumably none elsewhere either?]. Luckily Alisson Pearson is on the case today – good article but we only have the printed version! To précis the article – the rejection of 2 tier policing is bolleaux!
Meanwhile the police have announced that they will take no further action against an MP who sent messages on a private WhatsApp group that included one suggesting a vicar be "burned on a bonfire". Meanwhile Lucy Connolly is still in prison and not able to qualify for Day Release?
MPs who deny two-tier policing exists are naive at best, anti-British at worst
Allison Pearson.
There is a reason some nicknames stick. That nasal knight who occupies the role of Prime Minister is “Two-Tier Keir” because if two sides indulge in poor behaviour, you just know he will support the side whose narrow political belief leads him to prefer one rather than treating both just the same. A brilliant Morten Morland cartoon from 2023 shows Starmer dressed in police uniform with the palm of his hand raised as if against an advancing mob. The caption has him saying: “STOP IT. SOME OF YOU!”
This perception of bias is hugely damaging because it fixes the PM in the popular imagination as a duplicitous hypocrite who arrived in No10 promising a “Government unburdened by doctrine, guided only by a determination to serve your interests”. Whose interests might they be? You may well find yourself asking that question after nine months of our far-Left Government playing ethnicminority favourites.
We can’t help noticing that No10 posts enthusiastically about every religious festival and tradition except what we might quietly call our own. The PM issued an effusive video about Eid Mubarak at the exact moment most families in the UK were marking Mother’s Day (no tribute for the love and care of millions of women who are the lynchpin of our society. Thanks, PM). While it was right and proper this week to highlight Vaisakhi, with Sikhs playing such a valuable, well-integrated role in British life, so far there has been a deafening silence about Palm Sunday and the start of Holy Week. The slight to millions of Christians is starting to feel deliberate. Don’t be too surprised this coming Easter weekend if Starmer pays tribute to the Haitian Vodou community, extolling the multicultural joys of ritual sacrifice and drinking goats’ blood, while blanking our Lord, the risen Christ.
People are not stupid; they can see what’s going on. Ray Connolly, a Conservative councillor and husband of Lucy Connolly, jailed for a hasty, horrible tweet after the Southport massacre of little girls, told me he went into a café in Northampton and got talking to a group of men who voted Labour at the general election. Ray was startled by the vehemence of their dislike for Starmer. When he asked why they hated Keir so much, back came the answer: “He’s not for the British.” It’s a simple, not particularly sophisticated sentiment, but it has the ring of truth, doesn’t it?
To its eternal, two-tier shame, Labour had already rejected a national inquiry into the mainly Pakistani-origin grooming gangs, the greatest scandal in our history no less. Last week, the Brummily gurning Jess Phillips announced the Government was even backtracking on its plan for inadequate local inquiries into those heinous crimes: an unconscionable betrayal of tens of thousands of white working-class girls by the MP for Birmingham Yardley who obscenely clings onto the title and perks of Minister for Women and Equalities. Starmer’s “government of service” has morphed into a government of self-service – do whatever it takes to prop up your Muslim vote. Two-tier Keir is not for the British; if it’s expedient, Labour will pander to the child rapists and sod the rest.
Everywhere we look, we see the warped, anti-British discrimination used to prop up multiculturalism. It is pretty dumbfounding that a report this week by the Home Affairs Select Committee into the policing of last summer’s riots, triggered by the Southport massacre, has just declared that it found “no evidence of two-tier policing”. In fact, it said such claims were “baseless”, “unsubstantiated” and “disgraceful”.
Funnily enough, those are the very words I would use about the committee’s laughable suggestion that our police, who increasingly see their job as defending so-called “protected characteristics” against white, straight Britons, are not guilty of two-tier policing. Just compare and contrast with the handling of the rioting in the Harehills area of Leeds last July (triggered by four children from a Roma family being taken into care)
We are seeing what one officer calls ‘different containment strategies for different groups’ when vehicles were set on fire and the police essentially ran away, leaving the mob to get on with it. But that was forgivable because immigrants are allowed to have a reason to feel upset, whereas Lucy Connolly, the white, middle-class wife of a Tory councillor who lost a child of her own, is not permitted any context or mercy for her rage and distress.
The Home Affairs committee says that “those participating in disorder” in the wake of Southport “were not policed more strongly because of their supposed political views but because they were throwing missiles, assaulting police officers and committing arson”. If you focus solely on the actual rioters, then they have a point. Quite rightly, the policing of physical violence and criminal damage was extremely robust, and lots of people were arrested to restore order.
What the report conveniently doesn’t mention is how peaceful protest (holding up a placard like sweet grandfather Peter Lynch, who later killed himself in jail) and social media commentary were treated as equivalent to the actual violence. Two-tier Keir was swift to promise harsh punishment for those feeding a “far-Right narrative” with “misinformation”. In practice, what “far-Right” often meant was people who simply didn’t believe the authorities when they insisted the unnamed killer had no links with terrorism and was actually a sweet choirboy born in Cardiff who had, quite inexplicably, happened on a Taylor Swift dance class and decided to butcher the infants taking part.
As we later found out, every chief constable in the country, the Prime Minister and his deputy Angela “it’s not terrorist-related” Rayner were the ones guilty of misinformation. Details about Axel Rudakubana possessing an al-Qaeda training manual, having enough ricin under his bed to kill 10,000 people and being known to the Prevent anti-terror group were deliberately withheld from the public – supposedly to comply with contempt of court law – with inflammatory consequences.
Whatever that cross-party committee of MPs may say, two-tier policing definitely occurred after Southport because inconsistent standards were applied to the manner in which people reacted. There was complete disregard for the proportionality principle, which is the application of good oldfashioned common sense and discretion. Fairness didn’t come into it; this was a message being sent by a censorious Starmer, and police chiefs willingly followed the PM’s lead using ludicrously subjective “hate” legislation to criminalise ordinary people who were deeply upset by the mass murder of innocent children and vented their horror on the internet. The aim was not justice; it was to smother criticism and distract attention from another embarrassing failure of multiculturalism.
One thing which I can exclusively reveal today is that according to a reliable police source, every police force in the country was on standby for a particular date on which ministers planned to finally release the truth about Rudakubana. Starmer would pick his moment to reveal the appalling terrorism details, which he would have known about within hours of the teenage murderer being arrested. In the event, the news about Rudakubana’s identity was postponed, such was the official nervousness, and, when it eventually broke, it got rather lost in the fuss around Rachel Reeves’s first Budget. But we should never forget that speculating about such details landed people in jail who were not so very far from the truth.
One other two-tier policing episode, curiously overlooked by the Home Affairs committee, was the officer in Stoke-on-Trent who, on August 3 last year, was caught on video telling Muslim demonstrators: “If there are any weapons or anything like that, then what I would do is discard them at the mosque. Don’t give anybody any reason to have any interaction with police, so if there are any weapons, get rid of them, and we won’t have to arrest anyone.”
Can you imagine any circumstances under which the police would advise white rioters to stash their weapons in a church? Me neither. What we are witnessing is what one senior officer I spoke to calls “different containment strategies for different groups”. Two-tier policing exists. For the Home Affairs Select Committee to conclude otherwise is baseless, unsubstantiated and disgraceful.
Two-tier Keir may prefer to acknowledge any religious festival that isn’t a Christian one because he is “not for the British”, but I am and I do. There is a green hill far away. Without a city wall. Where the dear Lord was crucified. Who died to save us all.
Whatever they try to do to us, the resurrection was and forever will be a love incident. Happy Easter.
Excellent – many thanks!
And yet Sir Keir and his government blithely carry on 'nothing to see here'. Seemingly little or no opposition in Parliament, to anything his government does or doesn't do. He must be very confident about his voter base, and that he and his government will be re-elected, perhaps even more than once. Good Morning, btw 🙂 x
Keir Starmer more closely resembles Pontius Pilate by the day.
Pilate was a competent administrator at least.
Pontius was a fair man who tried to avoid crucifying Christ.
I thought so too but am drawn to the account of Pilate given in Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel The Master and Margarita.
That vile creature Mrs Balls could have Mrs Connolly out this morning if she wished.
Agreed. Ma Balls' weird melding of her head into her neck without any visible joint reminds me of the tortoise in the opening credits of 'One Foot in the Grave' or perhaps 'E.T.'
Tortoise https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/ace/standard/976/cpsprodpb/b282/live/8bd48750-5338-11ef-aebc-6de4d31bf5cd.jpg
Mrs Balls https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1cccf8777aeeec16d9163e3fb2150221b856bb611fb59de14b61bab4141e2be7.png
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ce/E.T._figure_at_Madame_Tussauds_London.jpg
What did anyone expect a hard Left 'committee' chock full of Labour nutters to say? They're hardly going to point out their own hypocrisy, risk their jobs and annoy their leader, are they?
It's obvious we have two tier policing, judiciary and jobs generally. The Left want this. They're not going to admit that. These are liars, thieves and cowards.
“A Communist system can be recognized by the fact that it spares the criminals and criminalizes the political opponent.”
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
I think they were stupid to come to this conclusion given what we all see and saw in those Harehills/Southport days, and subsequently with the Sentencing Council debacle. Their “nothing to see here” attitude is obviously nonsense and the public doesn’t like being lied to.
Who is acting on behalf of Lucy Connolly, anyone know? Is there a fund?
I believe her sick husband is/was a conservative councillor, of course they'll be treated like dirt by the judiciary
Whatsapp is a very nasty thing indeed. All these closed groups where people are unpleasant about others. It's taking over – any group of people with something in common are assumed to need a Whatsapp group now. Of course, the popular girls form their own exclusive, invitation only groups outside the main ones.
I refuse to join in with any of it, but goodness knows what is written about me behind my back.
And that's before you even get onto contact data being sold to the Israeli military, resulting in tens of thousands of people being flagged up as terrorists and therefore targets.
I find WhatsApp very useful for one of the associations of which I am a member. I can contact the membership without having to send lots of emails.
Everyone finds it useful, and that’s how they get sucked into it….! But human nature being what it is, these little closed groups very quickly turn toxic in my experience.
Haven’t had that experience yet.
splinter groups.
Only in the UK could the definition of a woman be considered worthy of court.
It's a basic, biological fact. The trans are mentally ill. A man in a dress remains a man, regardless of his nutcase fantasies.
I've always wondered what they believe defines the lived experience of a woman. What is it that they crave. If it's only make-up and frocks then they really have misunderstood womanhood. Of course they'll never experience the haemorrhaging accompanied by muscle pain but even that doesn't really capture the essence. There's a fragility that they just can't experience and it applies to the biggest and butchest girly compared to her male counterpart.
What is it that they crave?
Exhibitionism.
Some sort of attention, perhaps that they never had as a child. Or perhaps too much attention then, now associating it with love.
Self love.
That too, Bill 🙂
Power
They can never give birth.
I always regard that as being the ultimate proof that God must be a man.
Did you ever watch League of Gentlemen, Sue ….Babs, the taxi driver? Anyhow, many ladyboys in Asia, mostly catering for Western men.
"I've only been on the 'ormones eighteenth months and me nipples are like bullets".
Excellent. Favourite was Pauline. As if the BBC would produce anything like that now, more’s the pity.
Only in the UK could it have to go to court to get it sorted out!
Castrati
Indeed. Each individual is a castrato.
Snap!
Thank God that, for once, the court was right. All too often they take the woke route.
Thank God.
What has anything discussed in pubs or anywhere else, got to do with some of these preposterous people in wastemonster ?
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/lords-plot-rebellion-over-rayner-s-crackdown-on-free-speech-in-pubs/ar-AA1CYM0O?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=f7cd7cd47205445096019a979e53f14e&ei=26
Ref the discussion below about new political parties. Mr Habib is a slammer. There are about 30 slammer MPs already. There is now an Islam Party. I worry that Habib may be a slammer sleeper or mole, playing the long game but with the same end in view as all other slammers.
Actually Ben Habib has never said anything about his religion or non and you will find nothing on the internet that says he is a Muslim. I have never heard him say anything about Islam at all, certainly nothing pro-Islamic.
The long game has been happening since 610 AD Bill.
CE, please! (Runs for cover.)
I won’t use that🤔 🤗😉
Promisingly, he went to Rugby but then read Natural Sciences at Robinson College, Cantab, which is known to accomodate all manner of reprobates of no fixed abode. He then joined Lehman Brothers before it went gurgle, gurgle down the drain. But I can assure you that the Lehman Brothers were anything but slammers.
Being Punjabi his father was most likely a Sikh.
I agree re Muslim MPs.
I am more inclined to think that Xia Yusef is a plant. He says the right things but Reform aren't doing anything. They can't campaign on charisma alone. People on the ground have to be able to say something when they go door knocking. Now is the time to get the message out.
Nandy opens door to scrapping retail tourist tax
Culture Secretary says she would be ‘happy to look at the evidence’ to support bringing back VAT-free shopping for overseas visitors
Nandy, for Heaven's sake do not do anything that helps the long-suffering residents of this country
Furriners will shop VAT free, whilst I bet she institutes an tax on using public loos for us.
I think, that all the 'boat people' will declare themselves 'tourists' to make their Benefit Money stretch further.
https://nttl.blog/wednesday-16-april-too-much-british-infrastructure-is-at-the-mercy-of-foreign-powers/
How about VAT free shopping for everyone? It’s an EU tax. We’re supposed to have left.
Eigen Values by David Turver is excellent.
Lord Hodge said that five Supreme Court justices had unanimously decided that ‘the terms woman and sex in the Equality Act refer to a 'biological woman and biological sex’.
It's a problematic day.. when Supreme Court justices bottle it and fail to follow progressive instructions.
That it even went to a judge to decide a biological fact is beyond me.
Judges are not there to determine biological facts. Their job is to make a legal judgement, which may or may not coincide with biology.
Apologies to both Ken ♂︎ and Katy ♀︎.
I need to clean my specs!😬
Isn't KJ200 a Kate rather than a Katy?
I don’t know. She might be a Kathy?😊
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmdRdFmKWSo
I may have missed it but where does he say he is a Muslim? It is also unfair to label him as a "slammer" when his mother was English and I see nothing about him that is Islamic in attitude or in his speech.
Having listened to that video over the last 10 minutes I can comfortably say he is not a Muslim. He says things about the religion that would get him killed if he were in Pakistan.
As I have said before – I am cynical. I believe there is a determined effort by slammers to turn Christian based Britain into an islamic state. They will do what is needed to achieve that end.
That his mother is English is irrelevant. David Adetayo Olusoga's mother is English – but he loathes the English.
Yes and look at the difference between the two. Ben is 100% English in his mentality.
Ex muslims or children of mixed marriages tend to keep quiet about islam for understandable reasons. The former are under a death sentence and the latter are assumed to be muslim by muslims.
So I wouldn't necessarily believe he was muslim unless I heard otherwise. In any case, he comes over as a decent fellow, though I don't know him personally.
The furstration and annoyance muslim engenders is because it refuses to adapt. it refuses to fit in. The muslim carries on their exact same attitudes whereever they go and those attitudes are not compatible at any level with British values. Then they demand special treatment for their refusal to integrate and vanish.
They're a worm in the apple.
That’s because the aim is submission. It does what it says on the tin.
Hi Bill. Not participating in NOTTLERS today. Feel rather off. But I watched Ben Habib for over an hour last night. When talking about Muslims he said ‘them’. When talking about Christians he said ‘us’. He did not come right out and say what he was specifically but he was not asked. I was watching Dan Wooten, god is that man camp!!!
I may have missed it but where does he say he is a Muslim? It is also unfair to label him as a "slammer" when his mother was English and I see nothing about him that is Islamic in attitude or in his speech.
Having listened to that video over the last 10 minutes I can comfortably say he is not a Muslim. He says things about the religion that would get him killed if he were in Pakistan.
Apology accepted x
Here is a very illuminating episode of Pallisades Gold Radio with Simon Hunt.
I had not realised that the US was so aggressively and actively ramping up tension with Iran. Guess there was just no space in the media to report that, because of Adolescence and the hen night needing so many column inches.
Simon Hunt thinks S will HTF in 2027-2028.
He speaks so slowly that I watched it at 1.25 speed – but every word is interesting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2i-vnczWTps
Here is a very illuminating episode of Pallisades Gold Radio with Simon Hunt.
I had not realised that the US was so aggressively and actively ramping up tension with Iran. Guess there was just no space in the media to report that, because of Adolescence and the hen night needing so many column inches.
Simon Hunt thinks S will HTF in 2027-2028.
He speaks so slowly that I watched it at 1.25 speed – but every word is interesting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2i-vnczWTps
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6d68b65bb8fc6a68d3f1bcb8b47a9486ab8820ccd11cb388fa4125670dbd50b9.jpg Where's Philip?
A friend just returned from a short trip to a country on mainland Europe to visit her daughter, who lives in one country and works in another.
She brought back this piece of cheese, which was new to me. Quite delicious with a unique flavour characteristic. Any idea what it is (I know, of course)?
Honestly. Until I read your remarks I thought it was a photo of a really filthy toilet bowl!
It looks like half a soggy pie crust.
I really cannot imagine why this cheese is not more widely known outside the area in which it is produced.
Is it
mouserat trap?https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4c4411b03e5f871d841e95584f63b1a3d67f500877f8c66a78cfa85a04cd56d1.png Nah! I leave that to my neighbours.
"It's a rat trap, Judy; and we've been caught…"
It looks very like Gouda, but as you state it is new to you I suspect it can't be.
Is it Gjetost a cooked whey cheese from Norway.
It is a piece of Maasdam (aka 'Maasdammer') from the town of that name in the Netherlands.
Maasdam cheese (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈmaːzdɑm]) is an Emmental-style Dutch cheese. Made from cow's milk, it is aged for at least four weeks. It ripens faster than other cheeses made in the Netherlands. Maasdam has internal voids, or holes from the ripening process, and a smooth, yellow rind. Sometimes, it is waxed like Gouda. The cheese was created to compete with Swiss Emmentaler cheeses by being less expensive and quicker to produce. In the process of making a cheese with the same general components as Swiss cheeses, the Dutch ended up with a cheese that is nutty and sweet, but softer than Emmental, due to a higher moisture content.
The style was introduced in 1984 by the Baars company as the trademarked Leerdammer cheese, although it is now made by other Dutch companies under the name Maasdammer. That name was selected to honor the village of Maasdam in the province of South Holland.
Very interesting thanks.
The Things I Learn On NOTTL.
I’d never heard of it until yesterday.
Curses. No readundery.
or it could be the heel ( top piece) off an old shoe.
My aortic valve has a little black hole in the middle.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e1651076d87f79b19c0184f8d1d3ac10771784e6e3cba0bcbd072261a3d8675a.jpg On the topic of cheese, here is a superb chunk of Colston Bassett Stilton (the best) that I can buy anytime I want some, from an excellent delicatessen (Börge Olssons) in the beautiful nearby seaside town of Simrishamn, on the eastern Skåne coast.
https://www.borjeolssonsskafferi.se
Presumably, with your meat only diet, you don't eat cheese yourself.
Where did you get the 'meat only diet' from? I've never claimed that.
I eat a high (animal) fat; medium protein; low carbohydrate; no sugardiet. This consists — in the main — of fatty meat, fish, seafood, eggs and dairy (which includes cheese).
I will eat the odd slice of a decent bread with some of this food on occasions (this comes under the low carb category).
Norwegian Gjetost?
Out to lunch shortly with the oldies from the office…….. back later.
From the Daily Sceptic:
“Achieving Net Zero in 25 years would need a “complete transformation” of the UK’s agricultural and food system that would in effect mean a diet devoid of beef, lamb and all dairy products, according to the latest work from the Government-funded UK FIRES. Look at the research that governing elites commission and read, not what they say. UK FIRES takes an absolute view of Net Zero and bases its work on existing technologies, not the pie in the sky inventions still to come and the whacky schemes that cannot reach economic scale. UK FIRES is an influential body since it takes a rare honest approach to Net Zero. Among the horrors outlined in its latest report is a future reliance on highly-processed food – industrial test-tube sludge in other words. Using labs to produce just 0.4% of the projected demand for meat in 2030 would involve a capacity “20 times that of the current pharmaceutical industry”, observe the authors……
The land currently occupied by productive and generational farmers would see “radical shifts”. The required changes to achieve absolute Net Zero emissions from food systems “would present many opportunities”, argues UK FIRES. There would be competition for “environmental services” and this presumably would include such “opportunities” as nature-destroying wind turbines and solar dead zone parks. Rewilding and carbon capture or sequestration are mentioned. Planning and support for land use “transformation” is said to be needed, and it is said to carry the promise of “large social and environmental benefits”. At this point, it might be observed what a grand start the current anti-farmer Labour Government has made by slapping a recent 20% death tax on small family farms that are passed onto the next generation, or not as the case may now be. That should help clear a bit of space for the new enclosing aristocracy, the subsidy-hunting windmill rentiers….”
Net Zero is Pie in the Sky. There'll be no pie on our plates, that's for sure.
Chris Morrison blogs on Net Zero, this may be one of his?
Net Zero is a political sham. Without it having been invented what on earth does anyone think the brain dead dickheads like Milliband would do each day, they couldn't do anything. So they spend their time dreaming up useless and meaningless activities. They are incapable of attending to real issues which need attention such as health, defence, education. The reason the NHS is in such a state is because no politician has either the experience or capability to address the issues. Politics exists as a grouping of the lowest common denominator.
It isn't a sham, but it has nothing to do with saving the planet and everything to do with enslaving its occupants.
Where are the chemicals going to come from if they don't want oil either. The pharmaceutical industry is a heavy user of polyethylene derivatives. Test tube sludge passed off as food won't be any different. How could it be? You need oil to make the test tube even before you've decided which chemicals it should contain.
Supreme Court Ruling:
"A Woman's A Woman for A' That"
Good moaning all.
Anyone rad/posted about the asylum seekers swap with France idea? Apparently the U.K. may be allowed to send back to France undocumented boat people in exchange for someone legitimately over there who has a family connection here.
Why would anyone in their right mind want to ‘swap’ one for another? We don’t need any more asylum seekers, legitimate or otherwise.
We need a moratorium on all immigration.
A CS told me we'd need to leave the ECHR to stop legal immigration, vw – which is approx 90% of the total number. We cannot leave it because it's embedded in the NI Agreement to ensure parity with the Republic. I agree with you, and if that's the solution we need to crack on with it. If it's not the solution, someone -a CS, a politician, a journo, anyone – should tell us what is.
Yet France is also signed up to the ECHR and does deport foreign criminals and swiftly at that, if they haven't already been shot at the crime scene. I'm afraid the excuses are lame. If there was the political will, it would be done.
In Germany, they are encouraged to go on to UK ‘because there are many black market jobs UK and benefits are easy to claim’. A DM reporter, Sue Reid, filmed them getting on the boats in France. The biggest of big questions then becomes ‘why doesn’t UK government return them to France’. And another one ‘why aren’t politicians all UK major parties jumping up and down and demanding repatriation, and actually doing something other than jump up and down and demanding repatriation’ and why isn’t every media outlet doing similarly.
That was the purpose of the Windsor agreement. The Eu wanted control over UK trade and Sunak was happy to give it away for headlines.
Headlines? Is that all, wibbling 🙂
If you can't see how that will work, I've a bridge to sell you.
The Left wing media keeps calling them asylum seekers. Why do they not then stop in France? They're welfare shoppers. The tide would stop if they were stripped to their pants, collar and chained by the dozen to a post with bacon rolls once a day and rain water to drink.
We need to get rid of all those not here legally, any legals who have committed crimes and stop any more coming.
We need a moratorium on all immigration. Just stop it.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9aefd62d4ba59b0f282132a2ddc4584a1649fc23ba206076f0cca73bc4dc6500.png
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2d7bcb445d526f73ca769dcf0dfd8d8a785cec22bad484d7468443d4e854a225.png
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https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9aeb2715742c2b3d38ad3eb35f47a2031010b735bf9568b105188cfd82e249e0.png
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/28e9da7df61690ab6f65b5707569a8e085dbd7d43c8f688fbf0662e1ac052381.png
As silly as I find it there are trans people who probably do suffer some form of mental illness but do find they are happier living as a man/woman. These are a small, quiet minority who don't make demands of others but just acceptance, or at least tolerance of their choices.
Being the hateful Right wing bigot I am, I can fully respect those people. They make no demand of me except acceptance of their choices and I'll accept anything other people do as long as it doens't affect me – that's the 'right wing libertarian in me.
For these people this ruling is probably quite scary as now they're facing going into mens changing rooms where they, mentally in the mindset of a woman feel uncomfortable.
I don't know the answer to that.
The problem the trans folk who are sincere and courteous in their choices is the loudmouth gobby wasters on the Left hijacked their lifestyle to suit their own spiteful society destroying, culture undermining Left wing agenda.
Just as FemiNazis have merely made life more difficult for women.
Well that got a bit cold, wet & windy!
Met step-son's girlfriend. She appears to have autism problems similar to those of my eldest daughter, but given their problems, if they get comfort out of being together, then fair enough.
Took him to Hanley where he did some clothes shopping and we had a bacon banjo & mug of tea each.
I'm a bit concerned about his physical health. We were walking into a rather cold wind as we headed back to the van and he appeared to be having trouble coping with it.
He then decided to veer off to the bus station rather than carry on to the van with me.
A bit of a wet drive back with intermittent showers on the way.
To be fair, Bob, I was having difficulty coping with walking into the strong wind. I cut the walk short and headed home.
Tommy Robinson loses appeal over prison sentence
The far-Right activist, real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, is serving 18 months for contempt of court
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/04/16/tommy-robinson-loses-attempt-to-shorten-prison-sentence/
You expect the BBC, the Guardian and the Mail to use this headline about the chap's name but I wonder what Reginald Dwight, Harry Webb and Maurice Joseph Micklewhite make of it being used by the Telegraph?
"King Charles, real name Charles Saxe-Coburg-Gotha…"
No, I can't see this trend catching on any time soon!
Not that I give a toss about the JWK – but I have noticed that the meeja always call him "King Charles" whereas his late mother was ALWAYS "The Queen".
Surely that's because whenever the meeja refers to 'The King' the GBP assumes that Elvis has been resurrected.
Elvis? Lost me there…{:¬))
Our current monarch's great grandfather. Do keep up!
I though that was King C Gillette
He was released from the Bastille, wasn’t he?
A close shave.
Even a dashing blade can get into a scrape sometimes
He was quite Camp.
KC = King Creole.
https://youtu.be/xpHheWDih0A
Knock, Knock
See, they've forgotten him already.
Who's there?
Elvis.
Elvis who?
Hint: he's not in the building.
He went back to his home planet?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dT05AMPLJaY
Interesting that the US media always referred to "The Queen", whereas others were always referred to along with the name of their country.
John Wayne, real name Marion Robert Morrison. John Denver, real name Henry John Deutschendorf, Jr. Bob Dylan, real name Robert Allen Zimmerman. There are so many. No, not going to become a trend.
I don't think Leonard Slye would have made it as a huge cowboy star, but Roy Rogers did.
Alice Cooper; born Vincent Damon Furnier!
Now doubt Nigel will be quick to condemn this.
The
far-RightCommon Sense activist,Or Jim Muir?
Well, that's a surprise. Not.
Your only spostoo blow the bloody doors orff.
https://x.com/LozzaFox/status/1912468514612338997
Laurence has got one thing wrong. He says 'From this day forward you are no longer a woman'.
These 'trans-women' were never women in the first place.
Shirley? Shirley not!
A little good news. Let us hope it spreads.
https://x.com/JimFergusonUK/status/1912376407092859053
Food standards and health are two issues that may be up for negotiation as part of a US/UK trade deal.
The US wants to export its chlorinated chicken.
Tutankhamun: The Immersive Exhibition. 16 April 2025.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/bc33a86bdf1aee7c7a9dc713fad1e39f0685aed8b8c9e84bc95c379fa2f664b3.png
London is of course beyond my reach but if it were closer I might splash out.
https://feverup.com/m/282471?cp_landing=cta_hero&cp_landing_term=cta_hero&cp_landing_source=tutankhamunexperience&utm_source=google&utm_medium=ad&utm_campaign=282471_lon&utm_content=732810417036&utm_term=_&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI4snU4NPcjAMVrEgdCR1yejJLEAEYASAAEgK3pvD_BwE
Pretentiously yawns. Saw all this in January 1951. In Cairo Museum. Smug bastard!
I was a lot later there, but what surprised me was that one could get so close to the exhibits and that there were hardly any security guards to be seen.
The museum was practically empty, and very down at heel..
Getting close to exhibits is in general much more restricted than it used to be. As a much closer to home example, I remember as a child wandering through Stonehenge. Apart from my parents and grandparents, there was no-one else there. Dad had just parked on the verge and we tramped through the grass to get there.
I remember doing that one year, a group of us cycled down to the West Country via Stonehenge, similar lack of people and ability to wander around.
Now there is a hideous chain link fence which ruins any chance of even getting a decent picture.
We had a school trip to Stonehenge and and could walk around the stones and sit on the horizontal ones on the ground. It wasn't deserted but there was no problem or queuing to get in. No tunnel or visitors' centre as there was when we had a German friend staying who was keen to see them.
It didn't look as flashy in 1976 when we were there. We stood looking at the Tutankhamen gold for so long we were left behind from the rest of the visiting party. One of the museum guides wanted us to give him money to show us the exit.
That sounds all a bit overwhelming – much prefer to just see the artifacts as I have done in Cairo and also at an earlier exhibition when it was in Basel.
HG and I saw it in 1972 in London and it created a wish to see it in situ in Cairo, a dream we eventually achieved
It is fabulous….. the exhibition in Basel went to other places as well for several years. The canopic jars were fascinating, and other things like his chair and the animal beds. When we went to Cairo in 2007, some of those things were still out on exhibition elsewhere.
I don't know. I remember a 3D film exhibition wossname in London where they effectively showed the artefacts stashed around a mummy without actually having to unwrap it, and it was fabulous.
My mother was a bit embarrassed as apparently I kept reaching out to touch the amazing floating treasures. 🤣🤣
Scanning the mummies so they don’t have to unwrap them to see the artifacts buried with them is a good way of doing it. I meant the whole immersion show that this one appears to be.
Agree.
Message to mods: what is wrong with my comment just below? It's about Dorset farming.
Trying again.
Some good news. Let's hope it spreads.
https://x.com/JimFergusonUK/status/1912376407092859053
Hi PM(1),
I've approved both posts, and added your new monicker to 'Trusted Users'…
Maggie was having trouble getting in earlier on, before I went out to lunch. Not sure if she got it sorted.
They have a new museum now Bill. State of the art stuff.
Were I to be 30 years younger, I'd go there. Not now.
Sensible decision. They might think you are one of the exhibits.
Stupid boy!
He's not a Mummy!
Just an old fossil…
He does have a golden tongue though…
They have a new museum now Bill. State of the art stuff.
It would be cruel to laugh
Jolyon Outfoxed Again After Supreme Court ‘Woman’ Definition Loss
Jolyon is having a difficult time after the ruling of the Supreme Court that the meaning of woman in the Equality Act is a biological female. At 7 a.m. today the fox-killer told his dedicated Bluesky followers that the judgement would side with the Scottish government. He added that despite his optimism the Good Law Project had “backed an intervention so trans people were before the Supreme Court” which was rejected by the court. Another loss…
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b8b8dd43fe04a242c320f542204cb88426e0b51153b34a6341f50472609d8585.png
Since the judgement Jolyon has been struggling: “Having excluded all trans people from proceedings before it, the Supreme Court decides in favour of For Some Women Scotland… I’m genuinely stunned. I spoke to KCs at three leading sets of chambers with deep specialisations in equalities law. Each of them told me that For Women Scotland’s position was not even arguable.” Perhaps Jolyon should let consumers know who these expert KCs are…
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6f9575eb5cdebf08539fc12250b872dda102066f3e2d0af303def177ccd50d89.png
The new line is that because the Good Law Project failed to secure “representation” for trans activists in the case, the judges ruled against them. Outfoxed again…
16 April 2025 @ 11:14
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/572e76865e170f9bf3119db427a4c312a4e516b48e3d669aae7b06ea71fc76d2.png
You'd think his backers would get fed up with his losing hard Left woke cases.
Jollyoff is accusing judges of being transphobic. That's a hate crime. They should prosecute the fox killer.
He's so naff he goes hunting in a kimono!
https://markjonesantiques.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Snaffles-Tell-me-a-mans-a-foxhunter-2.jpg
Surtees?
No. Snaffles
Didn’t look like his work. I have a couple of books of his.
Jeff Taylor has a good take on the judgement. His line is that their Lairdships said it was their view as applied to the Equalities law as it was writ by parliament. With a quick one line amendment by parliament, all the wierdos on the planet could be included. Standby much wringing of hands by a leftie gov with a huge majority. The victory could be short lived.
Was the fox he marmalised a dog or a vixen?
Not sure; probably a trans-dog on a night out.
Not sure; probably a trans-dog on a night out.
I penned this at the time… https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/fa8899471c0d2dcfc2ee8c3bb2927fde27cc6b2321ee44181ca79446563de777.jpg
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14617611/Schoolgirl-drugged-repeatedly-raped-three-men-used-promise-cigarette-lure-car-spotting-outside-Asda.html
Of course, it's the diversity. Again. The refusal to open a full inquiry into the abomination of muslim is disgusting.
Solar Energy Surge May Force Power Stations to Switch Off in Net Zero Farce
Red Ed’s net zero dream is crumbling under the weight of its own poster child – solar power. A new report by Britain’s National Energy System Operator (NESO) forecasts that a flood of solar energy from solar farms this summer could swamp the national grid and throw it off balance, warning they may have to tell power stations to switch off to maintain flexibility. An interesting use of the time of bizarre quango NESO…
The report says the grid needs a constant level of ‘flexible’ power sources to keep supply and demand balanced and avoid blackouts. If demand drops too low, NESO warns there may not be enough of these plants running, triggering a “negative reserve active power margin” notice where ‘inflexible’ power stations are told to disconnect from the grid. Head of policy at the Global Warming Policy Foundation Harry Wilkinson tells Guido:
“The GWPF has been warning about these kind of problems for many years, but Ed Miliband is ploughing on regardless. He must know that he’s creating an unsustainable and unstable grid. Renewables are milking the system while failing to generate energy when people really need it.”
Last year, bill payers forked out nearly £1 billion pounds to switch off wind farms when it was too windy. Ed’s green dream is running out of steam when the grid can’t even handle handle the energy overload…
16 April 2025 @ 12:17
****************************
cjaz99
2h
Solar power to grow crops and feed animals good. Solar power for electricity when it isn't needed (summer) or can't provide (winter) bad. How does Ed not get this?
Captain Sensible
2h
Maybe they should put someone in charge of electricity generation and distribution who understands it?
In the current climate anyone who did would be silly to do so, as they would not be able to do anything and would still be blamed.
Bring back the stocks. Set them on the field next to Wastemonster..
Bring black bags from Brum. Their contents are nicely ripe.
Rats and all!
Oh – those bin bags…. For a moment I thought you meant those on two legs.
Same difference.
Some are more re-cyclable than others.
Fortunately, my bin was emptied again today – the fourth time since the strike began.
A politician understanding anything? Ha! Politicians understand zilch, especially about reality. They exist in an artificial world and understand nothing other than the make believe world of Westminster.
I see it more as vanity. They think ministerial zeal and enthusiasm will overcome impracticalities. They see failings by previous administrations as a simple lack of will and determination to overcome obstacles, as too ready to listen to naysayers. When their goals are not achieved, they will not blame their own blindness to the impossibilities, but will conclude they were thwarted by opponents lurking within the system who were set on obstructing their noble intentions.
It's a version of toddlers thinking that if they cover their eyes, they become invisible.
Ed doesn’t grasp it because he’s more than a few sandwiches short of a picnic.
Spot on. In my day, the stuff was "displayed" very casually and one could touch some of the larger things. Yer natives were nowhere to be seen, of course. Only Europeans – and very few of them.
Same trip, we went by train to Luxor for a few days. At the Valley of the Kings main site, there were, perhaps, half a dozen other people.
That was more crowded on our visit, but still nowhere near as many as one might expect.
One year we went just after a terrorist incident and there were armed police everywhere.
We didn't cancel because I concluded, correctly, that security would be heightened everywhere.
Did you take a ride on a camel alongside the pyramids ?
No – after 2 years I'd seen enough of camels by then to be put right off! Smelly, dirty, aggressive animals.
Now there are installed in Westminster.
HG did.
We had hired a Coptic Christian tour guide.
Everything she showed us was brilliant and she shooed away "salesmen" and beggars.
At the end of the day she asked if we would be interested in a camel ride, HG said yes I declined.
The woman then drove us down a load of back streets and I was starting to wonder what the Hell was going on.
Eventually we stopped at a camel place and HG mounted up.
We were led a couple of hundred yards, turned a corner, and were presented with the best view of the pyramids that we had seen. I got some fantastic pictures.
When we eventually arrived back at the hotel the woman even refused to accept a tip!
One of the best days and the best guide that we ever had in Egypt, and we certainly had some good ones over the years.
We did the whole trip as independents, but we really fell on our feet when we found that guide.
Sounds great. Our guide took us to a huge mosque. We had lunch in a hotel overlooking the river. A memorable day, I’m not in denile.
Worst part of all our trips.
HG was suitably attired, no bare flesh apart from her face, hair covered.
Normally she follows me through crowds.
The stinking Muslim men poured out the mosque and we were surrounded, and a few rubbed themselves against her.
From then on whenever we've been in Muslim areas she has walked in front of me.
Perhaps Poland will rescue us.
https://x.com/Inevitablewest/status/1912218030722920657
Resurrect 303 Squadron.
"Shut up! In Polish"…..
The Telegraph seems to just now started to display comments in a, oversized typeface. The actual article texts are fine.
Yes. I wondered if my laptop was playing up, but other sites are fine.
Bored Tellygraff Nerd strikes again.
Normally he sticks to mucking up printing the cryptic crossword.
It has stopped now. Apparently.
No, it hasn't.
Probably jinge at it.
I noticed that before I went out and thought it was just my laptop. It's annoying as half the comments go underneath the sidebar.
Afternoon, all. I have finally managed my lazy day; got up late, leisurely breakfast, made sure the Rayburn was going (more about the weather later), long soak in a hot bath (thanks to the Rayburn) and then after tea a walk that was severely curtailed due to the bitterly cold strong wind. Even wearing a fleece and a mac, I was frozen. I have put Charlie’s plastic bed in Winston’s crate in the hope it will help him settle. He’s trying it out for size now.
The whole country is at the mercy of foreign powers. The government is working for anybody but us and the EU still has us in its grip.
Apparently here are plenty of spare logs to keep you warm in Enfield.
And plenty of planks in Westminster.
If the EU still has us in its grip, it will be because those with the power have sought its embrace. The besotted keep returning to their tormenter.
Absolutely. Those in government are wedded to the superstate. They have done everything in their power to keep us in lockstep and avoid making any attempt to break away lest we succeed and show up the failed project.
Unfair to planks.
Not if they're very handy scaffold boards. Rope them all in.
There's been a hoo hah on the women's circuit where a Brit complained a French woman stank.
https://www.bbc.com/sport/tennis/articles/c4grz104wyxo
The Frenchie should have replied:
"Bien sûr que je pue, j'essaie dur, tu viens de perdre le set 6-0."
"Of course I stink, I'm trying hard, you just lost the set 6-0."
There's bad losers and stinking bad losers!
Do the shake and vac and put the freshness back.
You brut.
Perhaps the French player was under instruction not to wash by her Napoleon.
Pit your army against her?
She may have been referring to the garlic?
She asked the umpire to get her opponent to wear deodorant, rather than breath freshener.
Garlic can emanate from your pores if you eat enough of it! Yummmmm……
Spring is the season for such emanations.
I love asparagus, but my pee smells worse than, … well I don't know, … let's guess:
It's weird what asparagus does to pee!
But not everyone gets the after-effects, which makes it even weirder
Do you know what it is?
No.
But here’s a link:
https://www.verywellhealth.com/why-does-asparagus-make-your-pee-smell-8648192#:~:text=When%20the%20body%20digests%20asparagus%2C%20it%20creates%20sulfurous%20by%2Dproducts,for%20up%20to%2014%20hours.
Interesting! The article keeps saying the odour is “unpleasant, foul, etc….” it’s certainly different but I don’t find it particularly unpleasant. It doesn’t last long anyway. I like asparagus and it’s packed with goodies too.
I suspect it is dependent on how acute one’s sense of smell is.
I find that the first pee when it becomes noticeable is also the strongest.
My sense of smell is quite good, I think. Roll on asparagus season! I don’t buy the imported stuff from Peru. The English crop is worth waiting for.
About 75% of people.
Peeple, surely?
The article suggests that many people just can’t smell the difference.
I wonder whether they don’t produce the odour at all or whether someone who can smell it would smell it on the non smeller’s urine.
I wouldn’t like to test that!
From my experience of working in India, curry certainly does. Riding in a lift is like being in an Indian Restaurant.
Today I saw a beautiful tiny firecrest, I heard a nightingale.
I saw two hares and heard two noisy donkeys .
Are you sure it was a firecrest? Someone else mentioned they'd seen this phenomenally rare bird a few weeks ago. It is very similar to the much commoner goldcrest in size, shape and weight but it is rarely seen.
The correct identification of such birds is crucial and many an experienced birdwatcher has fallen into the trap of misidentification.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yofu093bPkw
We get both in our garden, and surprisingly the firecrest is the more frequent visitor.
Thanks for that Grizz, it was excellent and I'm going to look out for more BTO vids as a result!
I've only seen a goldcrest a couple of times – I was amazed at how actually tiny it was! I dont think it appears difficult to differentiate with a firecrest (that I've never seen) – their head markings are quite different.
What a lovely post! Thank you x
Wordle No. 1,397 3/6
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Wordle 16 Apr 2025
A virtuous Birdy Three?
And me!
Wordle 1,397 3/6
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Well done, Sue!
Well done, Sue.
My two start words continue to work yielding all five letters but for how much longer?
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Well done, cori !
Not much longer!!!
Probably so. I am dreading the return of the infamous ‘LY’.
Boring par here…..
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Yesterday I decided not to use my favourite starter word –
guess which one it was ☹ should have stuck with it !
Pale-faced perhaps, Audrey?
Pale-faced perhaps, Audrey?
Hmmmm Kitty that's a tough one – I can only assume it must be quite close to the correct word so I'll go withCORAL
Well done, par today.
Wordle 1,397 4/6
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It's time for tea and cake
Just back from tea and hotXbuns with a neighbour. Beautiful sunny afternoon but the wind is colder than a witch's …
Sounds wonderful
'Night All
One for Grizz
If these aren't staged the human race is in deep trouble
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxSSd9MSDF4
tbf The clock ones got me.. because his fingers were covering up some of the squiggly thingys.
tbf The clock ones got me.. because his fingers were covering up some of the squiggly thingys.
"What colour were Pharaoh's white horses?"
She looks like Tulip from Bangladesh. About as clueless.
Depends… if you count Tibet and Mongolia as separate countries!
TBH, the guy in the left quadrant took all the humour out of the answers. Was it not meant to be funny?
Hello ,
I cannot sign in .
Hi Maggie. You’re back!
Hi Sue ,
I have lost all my followers , and my old Twitter account , now X . The idiots have wanted more email details .. I signed into Twitter when it first started years ago, I have lost my photos , contacts and friends .
My original email is a stoneage email, and no longer accessible , but I never ever had to log out of Twitter , or if I did it was easy to get back in .
I am so upset .. it has been a hard job even communicating with X.
The new X account has me as I am on F/B , but signed on my Google account , my proper name and photo .. I am furious .
I cant use it for obvious reasons .
Today has been a bad day, Moh played golf .. he was away for 7 hours , and I thought I was going to collapse , my IBS is being a b#####d and Moh gave me a blood test when he came home , thumb prick , sugar levels are high, I haven’t eaten anything apart from drinking 3 cups of tea , that’s it ..
You should be able to change your name on there now back to True-Belle. I used to use my real name on X but changed it to Ndovu some time ago.
Hope you are feeling better now.
I'm seeing the doctor tomorrow for persistent gastric reflux that I should have got seen to months or even years ago.
Hi Bob ,
Goodness , you managed to get an appointment with your quack .
We have the palaver of making an appointment on line and being triaged .. telling the symptoms on line .. before an appointment is made .. The patient isn't a whole anymore , just bit parts and one symptom .
I was at the surgery for a blood test and asked for one at reception.
This is why I drink so much, Belle.
This site uses two-factor authentication. A six-digit codenumber will be sent to your phone in the next 30 seconds……
Your call is important to us.
You are currently 987th in the queue, when you get to first place you will be cut off automatically, thank you for your patience.
Often if you clear the cookies for the site that'll help.
On firefox, left click on the padlock icon in the address bar and click clear cookies and site data.
You will have to sign in, BUT, all the stale/expired info on you will have been removed, so it shouldn't conflict.
Not sure on Chrome, but it's likely similar. If folk are interested I'll find out.
It's the same on Chrome and Edge – only downside is you have to re-sign in on all the sites you use. It certainly tests out your password retention!
I tried clearing the cookies from the DT and logged in again – but the comments are still unreadable as they are twice the size of the main text and extend under the side panel.
I have had huge problems with signing in , I lost the lot earlier this morning .
Oh good! You're back! Did you see my message to you on X?
You had to make a new account? Don't click on scam pop ups again!
Yeah yeah then what happened?
'Rolex ripper' gang swarmed and arrested by cops in Mayfair..
Then? Yakob Harket, 21, convicted of robbery.
However, Yanis Amri, 37, and Adel Mohamdi, 31, were convicted in their absence after they absconded.
Absconded back to their unsafe countries?
Nah – absconded back to their local mosque. In the East End.
Second thoughts.. probably a good outcome.. although Yakob Harket is out next month, the other two wrongs uns will be forced to try their luck elsewhere.
Second thoughts.. probably a good outcome.. although Yakob Harket is out next month, the other two wrongs uns will be forced to try their luck elsewhere.
They will be doing time when caught.
rejecting any alternative interpretations as 'incoherence and impracticable'.
'Even if you kill every last one of us another will be born tomorrow.' Screams activist.
If they're up for it.. that's worth testing. In the interests of science.
a landmark judgment that could have momentous implications.
Does that mean Eddie Izzard can be barred from the ladeeee's loo in Paddington Station?
Why would he want to go there, a glory hole in the men's would likely be more down his alley, allegedly…
Before we all get carried away, it is worth looking at what the Supreme Court did. It simply interpreted the terms “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act. It concluded that the words referred to biological sex and not acquired sex.
There is absolutely nothing to prevent Parliament from bringing forward a Bill to define the two words in a different way so as to satisfy (sorry!) the wishes of the trans folk.
As this government – like its predecessor – is both spineless and woke, don't be surprised if Cur Ikea Slammer and his pals pander to the vociferous minority mob (as they do with, for example, slammers).
And on that cheerful note, I bid you good evening.
A demain.
Thank you for your morale-boosting observations, Eeyore
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/03598c7881149fe65bc87e8c6f4f76908c8e38b7627e5fe52c62b78783acf59c.png
But all of them never missed an opportunity to kiss an arsehole?
Is that Fabricant on the left?
Close
Fabricunt.
I think all Tories will breathe a massive sigh of relief……
I think all Tories will be fearing that they might be the first.
They’re right to be scared – those effing monsters might well eat them…….
Alive…
In at least one case, it would be an overwhelming experience.
The one on the right might not have kissed any, but I'm guessing that it's eaten a few
Encased in pastry and smothered with ketchup.
Sat on a few more like.
Shat on a few more like?
Never kissed anyone, I would have thought!
I would put money on them doing something of that "unnature".
One of the great disadvantages of not having a proper written constitution.
You may think that; I profoundly disagree. That is the joy of this forum – opposing views do not result in abuse.
Tell that to the bear, let alone me.
I have always been in favour of a written constitution. The old trick of changing the law after some poor litigant has established his point in a torturous journey to the House of Lords is something with which we are all familiar.
Most first world countries have a written constitution. French citizens will never be deported to the US. US citizens cannot be deprived of their citizenship. Here in Spain I have a long list of frustrated government legislation.
No need for abuse. The facts speak for themselves, but I know few Britons agree with me, beginning with fellow law students when I briefly studied law so many years ago. Gluttons for punishment. Should the British have had a written constitution the last sixty years would have been very different.
Blair and the wrecking crew would have changed it.
Rewritten it to favour socialism and then made it unchangeable.
No thanks.
Think about who would write the constitution.
Well the idea is that it would be a framework for government and civil rights designed and written many years ago by long dead forebears and so intricately worded that it would be immune to the attacks by Tony Blair and his ilk. It seems to work quite well in other countries although as naysayers will point out there is no panacea, and as with any system imperfections abound.
Since we don't have one and any such attempt to write one now would be disastrous, given who's in charge, perhaps it's better we don't have one.
Difficult to say. It would be a cross party project and have to approved by referendum. Future governments would have to work within its framework.
But yes, much better to have one already devised by founding fathers.
We know exactly how important referenda are to the PTB if they don’t like the result!
I remember I. 1975 sitting in a language school in Spain, listening to an English woman teaching English proudly explaining the civil rights we enjoyed in the UK, a veiled comparison to Franco’s Spain. And now so many years later the difference.
This land of such dear souls, this dear dear land,
Dear for her reputation through the world,
Is now leased out, I die pronouncing it,
Like to a tenement or pelting farm:
England, bound in with the triumphant sea
Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege
Of watery Neptune, is now bound in with shame,
With inky blots and rotten parchment bonds:
That England, that was wont to conquer others,
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.
If we had one now it would be so badly written it would enshrine slavery.
😖 put the mockers on it, Bill, why don’t you!
Be fair, that's his role in life.
Pity the MR, she lives with him…
Pessimist = realist = me. You ought to know that by now!
He's right, though.
Jeff Taylor elaborates on YT
To be fair, BT posted something similar almost as soon as the verdict/pronouncement/conclusion was issued
Must be confusing for Labour – support the trannies, or support those would like to toss all deviants off of tall buildings.
They are all too thick to be confused.
Depends where the votes are needed.
Must be confusing for Labour – support the trannies, or support those would like to toss all deviants off of tall buildings.
Indeed. And it's still a long way from excluding hairy drag 'artists' from infant schools or preventing the mutilation of pre-pubescent children by disciples of Mengele.
In front of the Alms Houses, Bournville …
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ae26fbcca8991f3673cde3a17e2d4f9f99000ca9c675c2ca859f4350f3ac2fe4.jpg
How very beautiful
All ex-lepers presumably.
https://youtu.be/i6c4Nupnup0
I was in B&Q the other day and some halfwit in an orange apron came up to me and asked me if I wanted decking? Luckily, I got the first punch in!…… I'll get me hi-vis jacket……
Gowon he was a kiwi and pronounced it dicking ……m
Get away!!
Go ‘n’ gut yer fush ‘n’ chupps.
Greetings and apologies to everyone. I am so very late to the feast today. As usual. Big love and hugs to all and sorry that I have not contributed much at all for a while
That was very funny – thanks for posting!
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2025/04/16/TELEMMGLPICT000420440160_17448227934720_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqqVzuuqpFlyLIwiB6NTmJwfSVWeZ_vEN7c6bHu2jJnT8.jpeg?imwidth=1280&imdensity=2
Very clever from Matt!
Monsignor Ronald Knox.
I thought it was originally Bishop Berkeley, although Knox did come up with the limerick;
There once was a man who said "God
Must think it exceedingly odd
If he finds that this tree
Continues to be
When there's no one about in the Quad."
Dear Sir,
Your astonishment's odd.
I am always about in the Quad.
And that's why the tree
Will continue to be
Since observed by
Yours faithfully,
God
I thought it was originally Bishop Berkeley, although Knox did come up with the limerick;
There once was a man who said "God
Must think it exceedingly odd
If he finds that this tree
Continues to be
When there's no one about in the Quad."
Dear Sir,
Your astonishment's odd.
I am always about in the Quad.
And that's why the tree
Will continue to be
Since observed by
Yours faithfully,
God
It is being said that Britain cannot have a trade deal with the USA until Starmer repeals our hate speech laws.
On the other hand the EU is not bothered, it might even be mandatory that we keep them.
President Trump is sensibly dividing the UK from the EU. Preferential trade agreements for the UK compared to the EU are part of the toolkit.
The EU and its remaining members are “up shit creek without a paddle” as we say. The bastards are collectively broke and relying on confiscated Russian assets to fund their inane interests in hapless Ukraine.
Merz aka Mr Blackrock is eyeing Ursula’s job and planning yet more centralised control of member country budgets and finances. The German fruitcakes say they intend to wage war with Russia. History lessons are required urgently.
As for Starmer I loathe this geek more than any other politician and cannot stand his whining pronouncements and twisted barefaced lies.
President Trump is sensibly dividing the UK from the EU. Preferential trade agreements for the UK compared to the EU are part of the toolkit.
The EU and its remaining members are “up shit creek without a paddle” as we say. The bastards are collectively broke and relying on confiscated Russian assets to fund their inane interests in hapless Ukraine.
Merz aka Mr Blackrock is eyeing Ursula’s job and planning yet more centralised control of member country budgets and finances. The German fruitcakes say they intend to wage war with Russia. History lessons are required urgently.
As for Starmer I loathe this geek more than any other politician and cannot stand his whining pronouncements and twisted barefaced lies.
Welcome home.
I believe that the number of followers increases exponentially when one is resurrected.
};-O
Labour MP & The Scottish secretary Ian Murray doubles-down..
Trans-exclusionary feminists, such as those who brought today’s supreme court ruling, should be expelled from the Labour Party.
What a cretinous buffoon!
Reinforcing defeat.
I always thought these anti women trans laws were just a way of introducing Islamic law
If hard line Islam ruled, how the Hell could one tell a tranny from a fanny from a granny, they're all bagged up and ready to bin.
Are we talking about Birmingham?
And any istan
"Trans-exclusionary feminists"
It still takes me a while with terms like that to decide which side is batting.
If it’s Ian Murray, you just know he’ll be horribly wrong! 🤦🏻♀️
In other words – normal people.
It would be no surprise to see normal people banned from the Labour Party. Mind you, why normal people should want to have any truck with Labour is beyond me.
One of our local councillors I've known for donkey's years is a decent sort of guy – and Labour.
What does he think about Starmer and co?
I haven’t asked him!
Hellooooooooooo
No posts for an hour
404408+ up ticks,
Pillow Ponder,
Lest we WANT to forget the tories (INO)
party, were a continuation of lab in regards to the governing parties.
https://x.com/Lord_Woodsy/status/1912559502454378674
Vindictive incompetent imbeciles.
They need locking up.
404408+ up ticks,
Evening Anne,
Complete agreement , then some.
Tomorrow's Letters page started at 16 April 2025 5:36pm BST
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/04/16/starmers-eu-net-zero-deal-to-drive-up-energy-bills/
We gave them the ability to ignore nonsense Left wing EU dictat that harmed this country. Why is this stupid, revolting moron ramming us ever closer to this preposterous, gormless, dangerous idiocy?
He's just another effing moron completely indifferent to public opinion but more than keen to jeopardise our countries future by following orders from his task masters the WEF.
If the UK were still an EU member and a Brexit referendum were held now, I'm certain the majority would vote for Remain. However, outside the EU, there are enough voters who would have voted Remain in the above scenario who would not vote Rejoin now because of not wanting to go through that bloody rigmarole all over again, despite not agreeing with or regretting the decision to leave 9 years ago. The churn since then of youngsters joining the electorate and older voters passing away will have swung sentiment towards the EU but not sufficiently towards Rejoin for the reason I gave.
Well….we've had a lovely day with our a little just over five years old grandson. He is such a clever little fella. So on the ball ⚽ literally I tried (knee prob) to have a kick around with him on a gated astro turf pitch, while nanny was at the eye clinic. He's an arsenal supporter but spurs won 12 – 3.😉😄 Returning home he helped me in the garden. He remembers so much from previous experiences. After lunch he asked for some paper. He sat and with his coloured felt tips spent 2 hours drawing.
I made him a super sonic paper plane. Something I learnt from my Rupert books around 65 plus years. I drew him a rainbow 🌈 and added Roy G Biv. I expect that he will remember that as well.
I'm off to bed now, bugger politics and a Jura will help goodnight Nottlers
Sounds like a great day – very similar to when we have our grandson (aged 7), although he's Man City and I'm Blackburn Rovers – guess who always wins??
Night, all Y'all.
Bis später.
Mahler's 4th just finished on BBC R3 so that's me off to bed.
Goodnight all.
I love it.
I didn't see my grand parents very often. But I'm making up for it while I'm still able.
His arsenal suporting maternal grand father bought him a good quality ball with arsenal printed on it.
He left in our garden earlier. I brought it in and told him that the neighbours had made a complaint about it. 😅😆😄 he gets the joke.
I am using Mozilla Firefox and the task bar suddenly changed from blue to brown when I put a picture on my desktop. I've looked at settings and color (sic) but can't find a way to change it from brown – I only get the choice of light or dark. Any suggestions?
Incidentally, I have just had an email from UKIP wishing me a Happy Easter. Makes a change from Starmer's anyone but Christian ethos.
On second thoughts, it's probably less to do with the fact I'm using Firefox and more to do with the fact that I'm stuck with crap Win10.
I wouldn't know how to change it. Mine's a light grey. There might be something in Settings.
I have looked in settings. I have a choice of light brown or dark brown!
Today has been an exceedingly stressful day for me and I am quite exhausted. But a lot has been achieved in terms of gardening, shopping, reviewing a plethora of emails, sorting out problems with a new gardener and a new window cleaner, a ZOOM lecture on an aspect of marriage in Charles Dickens' LITTLE DORRIT by an eminent Dickensian scholar, and finally a little unwinding by watching three episodes of the TV series "New Tricks".
So now I am off to bed. I wish you all Good Night; sleep well, and I hope to see you all early tomorrow morning, although I may decide to have a lie-in.
You are lucky to find a gardener!
Absolutely, Conners. It took some time, but hopefully once he and the new window cleaner (the old one retired) have settled in, I will be able to find a "little treasure" to do some regular house cleaning for me. Then at last I can begin to take things easy and let others make my older years less stressful.
That’s important, I find. I could do with a reliable gardener. The one decent one gave up and the others I’ve tried have been useless.
Yo Elsie
I have a very expensive gardenerSWMBO
Goodnight, all.
Good morninng fellow folk people.
'Morning Wibbles.
Just checked that granddaughter's Airbus landed as scheduled at DOHA on her way to the far east to join a medical team as part of her post graduate medical doctorate training:
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e40f772feee465330b6b5722bf787c94a3d24b043fc23ef9f79cc163a4a80e8e.jpg
Crikey, that's a dodgy direction to travel.
I noted that the Airbus climbed higher to 41,000 feet when it flew over the dodgy bits.
DOHA – Department Of Home Affairs?!?!?
Morning Elsie ,
I do hope you managed to find a gardener and window cleaner .. The later are a rare species . Our windows become dusty very quickly because we are close to fields that are being dressed and then drilled , and the clouds of dust that wafts over the miles to here from the tank ranges .
Department of Health Actually 😉
Wow, what can Doha offer her that the UK can't .but I guess one has to be quite specialised in the different diseases presented by the variety of ethnic communities that present problems in the medical world.
DOHA is a stop to change flights.
DOHA was just a transit stop on her trip to Vietnam and Thailand but she has messaged us this morning that her group has arrived safely in Ho Chi Minh.
Good morning, all – Thursday’s new page is here .
Good morning Geoff , and thank you .
Good morning Geoff and thank you.