Wednesday 24 April: For all the political wrangling, the Rwanda Bill will not achieve its aim

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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863 thoughts on “Wednesday 24 April: For all the political wrangling, the Rwanda Bill will not achieve its aim”

  3. Good morning, chums. I hope you all slept well. I actually got today’s Wordle in five. Hurrah!

    Wordle 1,040 5/6

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    1. It was quite a hard one today, as there are so many possible combinations.
      Wordle 1,040 4/6

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  4. Clashes at St George’s Day rally in central London. 24 April 2024.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/229cd775267724c078adb8684f05f0ea05d5e67d06b328833b0739013a327c7d.png

    Police in central London dealt with disorder ahead of a St George’s Day rally on Tuesday after a group of people forced their way through a cordon and shouted “England til’ I die”.

    The event was due to begin at 3pm, but the Metropolitan Police said there had been disturbances ahead of the organised gathering.

    Earlier on Tuesday afternoon, a Scotland Yard spokesman said: “Regrettably, officers are already dealing with disorder. There is an area allocated for this event in Richmond Terrace. This group went past it and continued up Whitehall.

    I’ve looked at the footage of this incident and it seems pretty obvious that the “disorder” was faked. The small group was small; there are only about eight people involved and there is already a larger presence behind the police so why bother? They are probably Antifa activists or even the police in Mufti. .

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/23/st-georges-day-protest-london-police-westminster/

    2. Remember the Monty Python boxing match?

      The police are vigorous and heroic when confronting a small opponent but do absolutely nothing against a formidable foe.

      https://www.google.com/search?q=Monty+Python+boxing+agains+little+girl&oq=Monty+Python+boxing+agains+little+girl&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIKCAEQABiABBiiBDIKCAIQABiABBiiBDIKCAMQABiiBBiJBdIBCTE1MzEwajBqN6gCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:e129f42a,vid:C6uaAEUXzNA,st:0

    3. They were kettled. There’s enough hand held footage knocking around to verify.

  5. Good morning all.
    Another beautiful but rather chilly start to the day.
    Blue sky with scattered cumulous cotton wool balls but still a chilly 0°C on the Yard Thermometer.

  7. France accused of ‘irresponsible’ actions after Channel migrants die. 24 April 2024.

    Forty-eight of the migrants were taken to the shore by France, but 58 remained on board after refusing to leave the boat and were allowed to continue their journey to Britain, escorted by a French navy ship.

    The French approach led to a backlash on Tuesday. Tim Loughton, a former minister and a member of the home affairs committee, said: “This is incredibly irresponsible behaviour by the French authorities on so many levels after another avoidable tragedy.”

    He said France should not have allowed such an overloaded dinghy to leave the beach and should have impounded it and brought all the migrants ashore when they discovered the tragedy at sea.

    “Why was the whole boat and passengers not impounded as a potential crime scene with dead bodies on board?” he asked.

    You couldn’t make this up! They are supposed to be stopping these people from illegally entering the UK and the PTB are complaining that it is not safe for them. It was Top Story on the BBC last night. You would have thought that it was a national tragedy.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/23/french-under-fire-over-death-crush-migrant-boat/

    1. 386398+ up ticks,

      Morning AS,

      Very viable shades of
      Corporate Murder being played out.

    2. It is beyond belief that the French Police are unable to arrest any of the people traffickers. Footage shows them in clear view on the beach. The police, who have guns, are bleating that the traffickers have sticks…

      1. Yet I am amazed that that the illegals are complaining about their accommodation on the Bibby Stockholm barge , moored at Portland .

        I would love to know what their previous accommodation experiences were like before they fled over here from France?

    3. As someone called Carter wisely said.. this will be easily solved by more funding and working closer with our French neighbours.
      Sir Starmer of Rotherham agrees.

      1. It’a Twatspeak for us having to shove more money their way. Funny how these lefties don’t have their own money to splurge on their myriad good causes. Funny how everyone else has to pay. Big gobs: empty pockets.

          1. I didn’t see that coming. Again,Mercer’s language is not clear. I don’t know exactly what he is on about. This isn’t Poetry Corner. I welcome an interpretation.

    5. Should have fired warning shots, then machinegunned the dinghy if it did not return forthwith..

  8. 386398+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Good men were there to greet Tommy Robinson on exit from the court Lord Pearson & Gerard Batten
    patriotic fruitcakes as judged and sent to the wall by a treacherous, misguided multitude.

    The lab/lib/con coalition party first, supporter / voters have certainly done a number on this nation.

    https://youtu.be/62GMfjytZRc?si=bB6Yens6EECNigEW

    1. 386398+ up ticks,

      O2O,
      The first action kneeler starmer will do, in my book, will be to take off the lab party overcoat ( burka) and lo & behold the islamic brotherhood will appear to finalise the end, game, set,& match.

  9. Good morning, all. Wet, cold and a gale blowing. That global boiling has a lot to answer for.

  10. Britain has just cemented its role as Europe’s leader in the battle against tyrants. 24 April 2024.

    As security minister and then secretary of state for defence, I saw the threats to our country at first hand: the dangers posed by a revanchist Russia, an aggressive Iran, an expansionist China, and terrorist groups that remain determined to cause us harm and establish bases in weak and vulnerable states.

    Our real enemies are here!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/23/britain-has-just-cemented-its-role-as-europes-leader-in-the/

  11. Not a good morning ,

    Dull chilly morning, the golfer will be away shortly .

    My newish Peugeot 2008 was garaged yesterday, car has a terrible rattle left side , mechanic ordered a new spring and whatever else is needed .

    Potholes and and lumpy drain holes , lumps and bumps in roads are widespread.

    Will return it to garage 12 miles away when the golfer returns this afternoon

    1. Send the bill to the Council TB you’ve got nothing to lose.
      They’ll do that if you parked somewhere for too long.

    2. Oh dear.
      Over the past few weeks, I’ve notice that the roads across to Staffordshire get noticeable worse after crossing the border just after Hartington.

      1. Ours are terrible round here, especially the lanes. It didn’t help that they were all dug up for full fibre installation over the last couple of years.

    3. SWMBOs little Pug has had two new springs – both the old ones broke at the ends.

  12. Good Morning Folks

    Cloudy start here

    Wordle 1,040 4/6

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    1. It was nice earlier, back to normal now.

      Wordle 1,040 4/6

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  13. Morning folks. Here’s an interesting BTL comment:

    Peter Davis
    18 HRS AGO
    “David Walker (September 28, 1796 – August 6, 1830) was an American abolitionist, writer, and anti-slavery activist. Though his father was enslaved, his mother was free; therefore, he was free as well (partus sequitur ventrem). He wrote an ‘Appeal in four articles’ in 1829, this is an excerpt from it.
    “The English are the best friends the coloured people have upon earth. Though they have oppressed us a little and have colonies now in the West Indies, which oppress us sorely.–Yet notwithstanding they (the English) have done one hundred times more for the melioration of our condition, than all the other nations of the earth put together. The blacks cannot but respect the English as a nation, notwithstanding they have treated us a little cruel.
    “There is no intelligent black man who knows any thing, but esteems a real Englishman, let him see him in what part of the world he will–for they are the greatest benefactors we have upon earth. We have here and there, in other nations, good friends. But as a nation, the English are our friends.”

    Oh dear, someone writing at the time of slavery and before it was banned in the West Indies, says how wonderful the English are, as compared the the race grifters and race baiters of today.”

    4. Presumably he spoke from experience (rather than the perspective of indoctrination).

  14. For all the political wrangling, the Rwanda Bill will not achieve its aim

    The Conservatives, after fourteen years in power are suddenly remembering that they are supposed to be right wing, must be an election coming.
    Increasing defence spending to 2.5% just proves that Trump was right again, as he has been all along.
    It won’t be nearly enough, especially if Labour gets in, it will all go on wokery.

    Rwanda has only ever been a stalling measure until the election.

    1. Bob, if you care to read the fine print, it actually says that Defence spending will be increased by 2030.

      That is not the next Government, but the one after.

      A lot could change in the next six years, and almost certainly will.

  15. Sad to see Sir Frank Field has died. One of the very few Labour MPs I’d have voted for as a personal vote.

    1. Agreed. I knew him briefly when he ran the Child Poverty Action Group in the 1960s. Always sensible and practical.

    2. He was the chap who was told to go and think the unthinkable by Blair with regard to the social services. He did so and was sacked.

      He was also a keen supporter of Brexit.

      More people like him are needed in politics and far fewer of the sordid chancers we now are cursed with.

      1. I would put Gove alongside Blair as one of the two individuals who has done the most to wreck Britain. Gove has been the executor behind most of what’s gone wrong with the Tories, and one of the worst things was neutering the selection of Tory MPs so that good people just didn’t reach the House of Commons any more.

    3. He was the chap who was told to go and think the unthinkable by Blair with regard to the social services. He did so and was sacked.

      He was also a keen supporter of Brexit.

      More people like him are needed in politics and far fewer of the sordid chancers we now are cursed with.

  16. We missed this on the BBC news, I wonder why?
    Could it be his religion?

    “A former senior advisor for the Obama administration was charged in a British court with child sex crime charges on Friday. Rahamim Shy, 46 years old, coordinated the U.S. Government’s strategy against terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda. Shy, 46, was arrested by Bedford Police in February and charged with arranging the commission of a child sex offense, possession of two category C indecent images of children, and possessing a prohibited image of a child”.

    1. Obama GOOD. Orange man BAD.
      That’s about it.
      News which does not fit the narrative gets suppressed.

        1. This is so. For all Obama is onside with the climate con, he bought a waterfront property in Martha’s Vineyard not long since. So he’s obviously not bothered about rising sea levels. Strangely enough the BBC and Sky have never mentioned this.

    2. Multiculturalism will never work – Sharia law and Islamic customs with regard to sexual matters are completely incompatible with civilised Western law systems.

      Either we surrender or we hold firm. I fear the MSM and the PTB have chosen the former.

  17. Sadiq Khan has said he would pay for shoplifted goods if he saw somebody stealing nappies from a supermarket.

    The Mayor of London said that seeing tags on baby products in response to people stealing them “upsets” him, adding that if he saw someone taking such items he would pay on their behalf.

    In an interview with The Big Issue magazine, Mr Khan was asked what he would do if he encountered someone shoplifting essentials such as baby food.

    The Labour mayor said: “That’s a situation that I’m afraid has increased in the last three years with the cost of living crisis.

    “What upsets me is the tags you have now, on nappies and baby foods, because of the issue that is in relation to somebody who is shoplifting.

    “In the hypothetical case, I suspect I’ll take my wallet out, and I would pay for it.”

    Accused rival of meals U-turn
    The mayor, who is seeking a third term in office, has pledged to end rough sleeping in the capital by 2030 “in partnership with a Labour government”.

    He has also said that if he were to win in next month’s local elections, he would ensure that school meals for all state primary school children remained free permanently.

    Mr Khan on Tuesday accused Susan Hall, his Tory rival, of making “a U-turn live on-air” over free school meals for all primary pupils.

    Asked on LBC if she would commit to the policy, Ms Hall said: “Yes I did, and I actually committed to it before Sadiq Khan did, so there’s no question.

    “I did, and that has been documented, I’ve agreed it’s going ahead for another year.”

    The Conservative mayoral candidate was reminded of comments she made earlier in April that universal free meals could be providing food for “millionaires’ children” and “there is no such thing as a free meal”.

    Ms Hall replied: “Nevertheless, I’ve said I’ll continue it and I will for another year.”

    In another heated exchange between the two rivals, Mr Khan called Ms Hall “the most dangerous candidate I have ever come across”.

    Third mayoral election
    He made the remark after she reiterated previous apologies about her use of social media, having liked posts calling Mr Khan a “traitor rat” and another post referring to him as the “mayor of Londonistan”.

    Asked whether he would feel safe in London if Ms Hall were to win the election, he said: “I fought three council elections. I’ve fought three parliamentary elections. This is my third mayoral election. The Tory candidate is the most dangerous candidate I fought against.”

    Ms Hall said that his claim was “outrageous”.

    A Susan Hall campaign source said: “Sadiq Khan does not deserve to win the historic third term he covets.

    “After eight years Sadiq Khan has done nothing but ignore Londoners, sitting back whilst violent crime soars by a third. He has hammered families with a £4,500-a-year tax, the Ulez, and is now plotting to hit Londoners with pay-per-mile.

    “He has been nothing but a failure and our great city deserves so much better.”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/04/24/sadiq-khan-would-pay-if-he-saw-somebody-shoplifting-nappies/

    People steal to finance their drug habits don’t they?

    Don’t parents buy Terry towelling nappies to put use for their babies anymore?

    2. Almost nobody used terry squares when my children were small! The real nappy mums (middle class organic food mums) bought expensive things with velcro fasteners and multiple layers built in. Everyone else used disposables.
      I had terry squares for my second baby because his skin was too sensitive for disposables, and thereafter I used them to save money. They dry far quicker than expensive terry nappy pants.

        1. I expect you are right. I used them for both my boys – now 58 and (would have been) 55. Harrington squares with muslin liners. They lasted for years. Even after daily soaking in buckets of Milton!

        2. They’re practical and not that much work if you have a washing machine and a good supply of disposable nappy liners.

      2. I had 2 dozen of them which did for both my daughters! First daughter was tiny so I had to buy the shaped Terry ones! Never used disposables unless we were travelling!

      1. Men, all over the UK, are queueing up to get a good bargain for their “man jamrags”.

    6. Who puts the money in his wallet? Wouldn’t be the tax-payers of old London Town, would it?

    1. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4e03cf1bd1aa4cf87dce5a89384b99a00673f5702aa7b13f2dcc001c65893a20.png People (Britons) routinely whinge when they see the Union Flag being flown upside down, either in reality or in cartoons.

      No one, though, seems to mind the fact that Britannia (the national personification of Britain as a helmeted female warrior) is — more often than not — depicted facing the wrong way round!

      The shape of Britannia is the shape of Britain [Head: Scotland. Shield: East Anglia. Heart: Yorkshire. Tits: Lancashire. Feet: Cornwall. Arsehole: Thames estuary. etc …].

      Show her in her proper position, facing West (i.e. to the left) you clowns!

      1. What prompted you, Grizz, to abandon your self professed God’s own county to live in Sweden.

        1. It must have been the herring, Alf. 🤣 I only ever lived in one corner of South Yorkshire for four years (1987–1991). I am Derbyshire born and bred (my father was from Yorkshire) and I lived in Nottinghamshire and Norfolk before decamping to Skåne.

          Yorkshire does have, though: the best countryside (North York Moors, Yorkshire Dales, Yorkshire Wolds, Pennines, a delightful coastline, etc); the prettiest women; the friendliest people; the best food; the best beer … What more would you want? 😉

          3. I spent most of my life, before moving to Brittany with my bride, living in the West of England.

            But when we went to stay with my second son who lives in Lancaster and we went to visit one of my closest friends who lives in Durham we loved the countryside through which we travelled.

          4. The UK is a delightful country with beautiful scenery everywhere. It has wonderful food, tradition and customs. It is only spoilt by the massive overpopulation that is currently destroying all that, especially the towns and cities that are being demolished and overrun by an unwanted invasion force.

            If it were at all possible to send videos of the country, of today, back to our forebears (of every generation from Homo erectus down to World War II) they would simply not believe what the modern generations have done to a beautiful country they all gave their lives for, to ensure “a better future” for those who are too imbecilic to comprehend how they are destroying it.

  20. Morning all just a quickie before we leave this dull grey chilly land.
    Rawanda bill will not achieve its aim.
    Of course it won’t, just a reminder that our useless politicians eff up everything single thing they come into contact with.

      2. Portugal HPB Rocha Brava, landed at Faro about three hour’s ago. Lovely and sunny here with a nice sea breeze.

    2. Politicians should start calling out the mess that Africa and other Muslim countries have got themselves into,

      Britain and Europe educated and built a better Africa, giving it railways , education , hospitals, roads , trade and many financial benefits as well as acting as mediator with regard to tribal wars and and the many conflicts warring tribes have inflicted on innocent good people , Nigeria and the Sudan , Zimbabwe , Uganda and others are prime examples .

      Now we are NOT hearing much criticism aimed at the post Mandela regime in South Africa which is hurting many people , murders rape , food shortages , mendacious financial deficiencies , and the infrastructure is being ruined by stealing and inefficient maintenance .

      Africans and those from Arab Muslim countries are now ruining us , by bankrupting us.

      Britain should halt the guilt trip , and deny strongly that colonisation has ruined Africa and Asia .

      Hindsight is a wonderful thing .

      Britain and Europe should have left them all alone in their mudhuts and squabbling tribal massacres a century plus ago .

      Not our problem .

      Get them all out of here , for goodness sake .

      1. I’m afraid that a very different narrative has established itself among young Africans.

        “Britain looted our countries (so we’re entitled to go to Britain and take what we can)”
        and
        “Britain looted, China builds”

        The looting-not-building narrative is a downright lie, as when the British left in the 60s they left behind them all the infrastructure needed to run a modern, twentieth century country at the time. Also, if Britain looted all their natural resources, it’s funny that they still have flourishing mining industries.

        1. The Chinese are doing the looting but the dictators have got new Mercs and Swiss bank accounts.

      2. British colonialism only lasted for about 150 years I read. And Africa has existed for many years before and many years after. Same with all the other countries. And the British tended to leave their colonies in a better state than they arrived in. And many of those ex colonies have gone on to be the most successful in the world.

        1. But why have African colonies gone back to being the same barbaric and primitive places they were before the colonists arrived.

          The British gave hope to Africa but when they left just look what happened in Rhodesia, South Africa and the Sudan.

          A few years after my father retired he returned to the Sudan for a visit and was entertained by some of the elders.: “The only thing you ever did wrong,” they said to him, “was to leave us.”

      2. We are staying at HPB Rocha Brava Portugal about 45 miles north of Faro airport. Lovely and sunny.

  21. The Telegraph has published one of its lists of attractive seaside villages today. I have visited 5/20 so far. I must try and see the others, except for the Scottish ones. I’m not risking the thought police north of the border.

  22. It has just started spotting with rain here. Yesterday’s nice weather was just a blip. 7 degrees.

  23. The Rwanda bill is and always has been a distraction, a “Look! A squirrel!” device.

    It’s primary purpose was always to try and draw attention away from the horrendous scale of legal immigration. We were blessed with 45,000 dinghy jockeys in 2022. That’s disregarding the number that have arrived here since. Are the Rwandans going to take 45,000 off our hands? 90.000 maybe?

    Of course they aren’t. If they take any at all it will be a few hundred.
    The whole thing has been a farce from start to finish, a political charade when what was needed was strong action.

    1. Well said, June. The bagel (in common with the French baton) is my favourite bread. When I was last in Leeds, in 2018, I enjoyed the most delicious bagel (and cappuccino) I have ever eaten in a branch of a local chain in that city — Bagel Nash — that was so good I would certainly return there the very next time I find myself in that neck of the UK’s greatest county.

      1. I miss New York bagels and lox with cream cheese at a Jewish Deli. Heaven!

  26. Talking of slavery (and what an excellent system it was) – we all know that there millions of slaves during the Roman epoch. Everyone who was anyone had a whole shedful of slaves.

    In a TV prog last evening (recorded) about the recent new finds at Pompeii, however, such people were called not “slaves” but “enslaved people”. Bewildered, I wondered whether I had missed some etymological novelty….

    2. Those slaves had the opportunity to become Roman citizens and were sometimes freed on the death of their master. I also found it interesting that African slaves on cotton plantations sometimes elected to stay after they were freed. There are a lot of lies told about slavery.

  27. Morning, all Y’all.
    Dull. Rain soon, I hope, to wash away the winter dust and give the vegetation a reason to become green…

  28. More nonsense brewing.
    The switchover from the US and dollar hegemony to an international, gold-backed digital currency as the reserve currency has been baked into the plan for years – it was mentioned in the WEF’s ‘you will own nothing’ presentation from 2015.
    So it’s just theatre that the US plans to “exclude” China from “international financial systems.” Everyone knows that BRICS are building their own systems. China has northwards of 30 000 tons of gold at the government’s/bank’s disposal and the whole world apart from the Anglosphere and western Europe is amassing gold. They who have the gold will make the rules!
    https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/u-s-takes-aim-at-chinese-banks-aiding-russia-war-effort-fcf76dcc?st=2hbnx4gcsgzpgve&reflink=article_copyURL_share

  29. I see the Khan says he will pay for shoplifted nappies. Very generous of him. May I suggest that all supermarkets do an immediate stocktake and send this virtue signalling villain the bill for the missing nappies?

    1. And for all shoplifted food as well. A man as big hearted as Khan wouldn’t want to see people starve. Mind you, he’d charge it all to expenses anyway.

    2. I suppose those slowly cooking lobsters, aka Londoners, will still be voting for the man.

      1. Very few Londoners have ever voted for him. That doesn’t stop him being appointed and reappointed. The powers that be will have their man regardless of what the people want. Apathy is the primary enabler.

        1. When you look at all the faces of current UK leaders (who have all attained high ranking positions at more or less the same time) I think you’d have to be stupid to not support some kind of rudimentary conspiracy theory. We notice. We won’t vote for it. Not bothered if someone achieves on their own merits but this is something else and nothing to do with meritocracy.. And the downward spiral suggests to me that tokenism is dangerous and does not work.

      1. I’ve just caught that Khan was referring to a situation if he saw someone getting collared he would personally pay. I don’t think it is a policy suggestion. Unlike the Clownworld of California.

        1. It’s made implicit that they should be let off. As a representative of law and order he is not at liberty to take this position. The problem of poverty should be addressed in fair and legitimate ways. His words will encourage more law breaking. Sanctioning criminality is the work of a third-rate mind which has no real awareness or context of the station to which he has been raised.

        2. Prior to paying, would he look at that ‘poor’ person’s income and expenditure to help them budget according their means and prioritise their spending to only cover essentials?

          1. He could build more housing and ditch the net zero frenzy which is ruining the livelihoods of poorer people. He supports high levels of immigration and that too results in poverty for UK citizens as we can no longer support infrastructure or benefits.

    1. Just look at the designs on the escutcheons (scratch-plate between the body and neck). The old one has a design of a sitar-player with his instrument surrounded by a wreath. The one being played by Harrison has a design of a daisy on it!

        1. From experience of friends who play such instruments, rooms full of the bloody things.

  32. True. But I doubt the photo of Mr Harrison is from the recording session of Norwegian Wood.

      1. Highly likely but speculation. You don’t know if the sitar in the photo belongs to Mr Harrison.

      2. Most professional musicians have several examples of the instruments they play – how many guitars do Eric Clapton and Mark Knopfler have and how many did the late great Chet Akins?

        I just play for fun and I have several guitars so I expect George had more than one sitar.

        2. My point is that if the sitar on the left is the one he actually played on the recorded version of Norwegian Wood, then they should have showed a photograph of him playing that sitar in the photo on the right.

  33. 38639 up ticks,

    Wednesday 24 April: For all the political wrangling, the Rwanda Bill will not achieve its aim

    ALL the “political wrangling” can be summed up in one word, chaff, shut-off the magnetic pull of welfare and you will have people smugglers queuing at soup kitchens, in the space of, overnight.

  34. Senior moment. Posted today’s comment on yesterday’s column.

    Good morning, all. Blue sky mottled with white/grey clouds or vice versa.

    Coincidence or something more sinister?

    Traditionally the symbolic star of the USA has five points, now, 17 cities and/or states are re-designing their flags with the eight point star. Whilst the latter represents ideas in many religions it is very much part of the Moon and star symbol of islam.

    The state of Minnesota decided in 2023 that a new flag was required. The original flag is intricate and depicted some history of the state. The new flag is bland with the eight point star prominent.

    Original flag of Minnesota.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/32470fb21a83c81a3b3f3d635dc135806b7ab3c76ef4d7be1e1ff669e270c35b.png

    Re-designed flag.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/841523027d85d86a04e6e966d407a9c875782536c3e7ff247257454a0a1b0ef8.png

    Discussion of what is happening is here

    The flag of St George on display yesterday has been deemed as being racist and elitist by ‘progressives, lefties etc. and to some police services as provocative, as witnessed yesterday in London. Meanwhile, the Palestinian flag and the associated chanting of hate and death gets a free pass.

  35. Good morrow, gentlefolk. Today’s (recycled) story late again, sorry
    STILL FUNNY!

    At St. Peter’s Catholic Church, they have weekly husbands’ marriage seminars.

    At the session last week, the priest asked Giuseppe, who said he was approaching his 50th wedding anniversary, to take a few minutes and share some insight into how he had managed to stay married to the same woman all these years.

    Giuseppe replied to the assembled husbands, ‘Wella, I’va tried to treat her nicea, spenda da money on her, but besta of all is, I tooka her to Italy for the 25th anniversary!’

    The priest responded, ‘Giuseppe, you are an amazing inspiration to all the husbands here! Please tell us what you are planning for your wife for your 50th anniversary?

    Giuseppe proudly replied, “I gonna go picka her up.”

    2. Were the ‘violent’ thugs the police, the pro St George demonstrators or determined, vicious agitators who had infiltrated their ranks?

    3. Household Cavalry horses which had thrown their riders. At least one soldier injured.

    4. Police and army horses are highly trained and very effective at managing crowds, as they are so big.

      1. The police horses are trained to manage crowds. The army horses are trained to charge the enemy and pull gun carriages!

  37. I have mentioned here before that Caroline’s closest friend in France, a nurse who was effectively compelled to have the Covid jabs against her will, is now home from hospital in palliative care. Her seven children have returned home – three from foreign lands – to be with her.

    She will go to heaven but those responsible for her imminent death must rot in Hell.

    This strong evidence of the link between covid vaccines and cancer can no longer be ignored
    Professor Angus Dalgleish : https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/this-strong-evidence-of-the-link-between-covid-vaccines-and-cancer-can-no-longer-be-ignored/

    BTL
    The Powers That Be are complicit in mass murder by allowing a chap who has stated that the world is vastly overpopulated to be in financial control of so much of the mendaciously labelled life saving injections.

  38. Employers who mandated the jibby-jabs legally liable for injuries rules Australian court
    https://www.westernstandard.news/…/australian…/52430

    At the place where I work, unjabbed people had their key passes deactivated, and had to ring the bell and do a test in front of a (hostile) witness, which was unfair and ridiculous pressure to get jabbed. But I suspect they would try to wriggle out of liability by saying that the sanctions were applied to those who did not share vaccination data with the employer, rather than those who were not vaxxed.

    1. I can guarantee that Sir Keir will finish off Jack Straw’s work and surrender Gibraltar & The Falklands.

      1. As 95% of Gibraltarians voted to stay in the EU we are not worried about their future.

        They voted.

        Within a few years they’ll get what they wanted.

    2. Tierra del Fuego (land of fire) is apparently home to a large number of settled, expat, Taffy Boyos.

        1. The real driver was to go somewhere they could preserve Welsh language and culture against encroaching Anglicisation. They got Espanolified instead.

  41. Happy Birthday Mr Z!

    Senates Passes $95 Billion Aid Bill For Ukraine, Israel And Taiwan, Forces Sale Of TikTok

  42. 386398+ up ticks

    War footing as Sunak ramps up defence spending
    Prime Minister says £75 billion in new funding will ‘show our enemies that we are resolute and determined’

    This must be seen as the most expensive protective door ever created, to shut it now whilst the much abused nations innocent indigenous are trapped within
    along with the odious foreign felons, that strongly smacks of the politico’s introducing the fox to the hen house.

    Making headway news,

    The forth reich construct is making great strides down the RESET road leave it to the electoral majority and the Jewish issue will be solved, along with many others.

    Anyone voicing an opposition view to the politico’s agenda can do so in person, they will, on arrival, be asked by a state employee, and in regards to the seriousness of contagious covid 19, be asked first to take a shower……..

    1. We wouldn’t have quite so many enemies if people like Sunak made better decisions.

      1. 386398+ up ticks,

        MorningPh,

        I do not believe sunak & ilk make decisions, they follow decisions made.

    1. Read it now, thanks. A cracker. Occam’s razor, applied at just the right pressure.

  45. This article is a delight and will cheer you up! https://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/conditions/ageing/middle-aged-older-women-healthy/

    Here’s a quote – the author is 77 herself:

    Recently, I went with my 90-year-old artist friend to buy her some new trousers. The sales girl looked at us and asked: “Are we having a nice day out, ladies? Off for a cup of tea and some cake?”

    My friend was calm but steely. “No. I’m going back to my studio to finish my painting for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition and Jan is off to write a Comment page for The Telegraph.”

    3. Sales girl… “Oh, i see. Well, you can’t have any trousers”.
      Feisty old besom… “Why not?”
      Sales girl… “This is a cake shop”.

      1. Crumbs!

        I wonder why we use a plural noun, trousers, for this garment while the French use a singular one, pantalon?

        1. And why do we say, ‘a pair of pants’ when referring to a single item? Always wondered that.

      1. Morning Richard. I do think you should have posted a health warning for Gentlemen of a certain age!

    1. What is the mad billionaire amateur scientist saying. Has he decided that photosynthesis is a problem caused by global warming or beef flatulence?

      1. Threat to the parasite class’s dreams of world domination, I think. Can’t have those peasants growing their own food!

  48. Good Morning to all: Overcast here in West Sussex and rather cold but actually quite nice.

    Some great remarks from Godfrey Bloom. Goes after one of the people high on my list of detestable people, Con Coughlin.

    I’ve Seen Alot Of Sh!t! And Have Never Seen The Country In Such A Sorry State

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5Fz1s_P7Js

    2. A ‘free independent press’ is something that disappeared a long time ago, Geoffrey. Take the now lamentable Daily Telegraph for instance. When I first started subscribing to it, around 35 years ago, It was the cream of the crop among British broadsheets. There were few photographs in it and the reporting, commentary and editing were of the highest standard.

      These days, since it was taken over by The Barclays brothers, it has become more Sun than The Sun, more Daily Mail than The Daily Mail and even more Beezer than The Beezer!

      Every bloody day this week, for example, there has been a prominent article on the family of the most overrated footballer England has yet produced (Beckham), together with his vacuous and similarly overrated wife (a member of a pop band who was seldom given a lead singing role), and their pampered talent-free tribe. Why can’t I open the paper each day and not be greeted by a photograph of the gurning face of that imbecilic vacant idiot and his gormless family?

      Beckham seems to have a Svengali-like hold over newspaper editors who clamour to include something about him each and every bloody day. He is football’s equivalent of cooking’s J Oliver, a similar air-headed clown who thinks he can cook but is only there because a cartel of equally vacuous people (mainly middle-aged women) think he is such a ‘cheeky chappie’ but overlook the fact that he has never invented an original dish but, instead, prefers to balls-up other people’s decent dishes.

      The modern, tabloid-standard press continue to push limited talent nonentities, like Beckham and Oliver, down our throats, ad infinitum, because they wish to reduce the entire population to similar simpering idiots in their image.

      If the hapless England football coach, Sven-Göran Eriksson, had dropped Beckham from his squad [instead of promoting him to captain (FFS!)] and replaced him with the infinitely more talented Paul Scholes in midfield, then moved Frank Lampard up front, The England team might have won a few competitions.

      Where can I find a newspaper to read that maintains its old-fashioned broadsheet ideals? I doubt such a thing still exists.

      1. If you find one please let me know. I cannot read the Telegraph any more or The Times.

      3. Beckham was a one trick pony. In an American football team he’d have been a kicker, coming on once a quarter or so to do his specialised thing, that’s all.

        A thousand upticks for the Oliver comment. He’s just a bloviating luvvie.

        1. One thing I have noticed about “slebs” is that they give their spawn ridiculous Christian names.

      4. Beckham was a one trick pony. In an American football team he’d have been a kicker, coming on once a quarter or so to do his specialised thing, that’s all.

        A thousand upticks for the Oliver comment. He’s just a bloviating luvvie.

      5. I have constantly made the point that David Beckham has never been in an England Team that has won an international competition.

      6. Other than the tattoos i think David Beckham is a good role model. He doesn’t do drugs or overindulge in alcohol. He is faithful to his wife. He cares for and supports his children. Quite rare attributes in this age.

        I just scroll past the Beckham articles to get to the Meghan stories. :@)

        1. Thanks, Jules.

          it’s come to something, though, when ranting is all we can do. The PTB are intent of controlling our ever-more miserable lives more and more while feeding us crap masquerading as ‘food’ and numbing our minds with the shit they put on radio and television and in the newspapers.

          Those of us who have always had the ability and intelligence to see though this insanity will continue to rant as long as we are permitted the breath to do so.

          1. I very seldom see any ‘news’ on telly now, even though we do still pay the telly tax – mainly so my OH can watch sports (currently snooker). I enjoy the views and rants on here – it keeps us reasonably sane.

    1. Extraordinary event. That they got so far away from Horse Guards – to Tower Bridge…

      1. It would have pumped out because the horse was galloping. Horses’ hearts can pump 7-10 gallons a minute even at rest. For fit racehorses galloping it can be as much as 65 gallons.

    3. Quite. They are horses trained to cope with all the sights and sounds the stupid crowd can throw at them.

    4. I was wondering the same thing. I don’t remember this ever happening before, but I expect we will be told eventually.

  52. The rain has stopped and the sun has come out so I am going to walk the dog.

      1. She gets two walks if it isn’t raining and as much time in the gardens as she wants. Lucky pooch!

  53. Have Londoners forgotten how to stand up to anti-Semites? 24 April 2024.

    There are some among the tens of thousands who march through London each week who genuinely seek peace in Gaza. There are others who march because they are anti-Semites. They hate Jews and want them eradicated. They sing songs about genocide and they brandish Swastikas and sport stickers celebrating the massacre of 1,200 Jewish men, women and children by Hamas terrorists on October 7th last year.

    They are the Londoners. Lol!

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/have-londoners-forgotten-how-to-stand-up-to-anti-semites/

    1. Nowadays, almost all in London seem to have come from the worst parts of the Middle East. When SWMBO and I lived there – Bow and Milwall – most residents were Jewish of whatever persuasion (fine people, which is why I stand with Israel) , now I suspect they are all gone.
      I still cannot understand how anybody can justify to themselves, let alone others, that “…songs about genocide and they brandish Swastikas and sport stickers celebrating the massacre of 1,200 Jewish men, women and children by Hamas terrorists on October 7th last year.” is OK under any circumstance, especially when a bloke is threatened with arrest when he wears his Jewish cap in the street (a brave act these days).
      Why is the Establishment so anti-Semitic? It’s got to the stage when I’m embarrassed to announce that I am English (when asked), I’m a Yorkshireman if anybody needs to know. And who could ever have thought the UK would descend so far – the UK that, within living memory took in Jewish refugees from Europe on the Kindertransport, for example? I worked with several (German & Hungarian – some of the cleverest people I know).
      Where does this end? Does anyone have kristallnacht in their calendar yet?

        1. So what you are saying Minty is that at some point in the future, GB will be known as the small island off Europe known as Ragna-Rockall ?

  54. Church of England’s £100m Slavery Reparations Based on Mistake, Says Historian
    By Will Jones
    extract from https://dailysceptic.org/todays-update/

    Last year, the Church of England declared that it had invested the equivalent of £440 million today in the slave trade between 1720 and 1740 and thus would be paying out £100 million in a programme of reparations. However, a historian of the period, Professor Richard Dale, has now said that this is based on a mistake: the church did not invest anywhere near such sums in the slave trade and did not profit from it. Charles Moore has written about the debacle in the Telegraph.

    But is the history contained in the [Church of England’s] report true? In a recent article in the Church Times, Prof. Richard Dale, a business historian of the famous “South Sea Bubble” of 1720, suggests it is not. I telephoned him to find out more.

    This is the fact that, in 1723 – three years after the South Sea Bubble had burst – Parliament passed a statute splitting the South Sea Company in two. One was the trading company. The other was the company which sold what was in effect Government debt, paying interest on annuities.

    The Commissioners’ report says that “anyone investing in the Company before 1740 was consciously investing in these [slave-trading] voyages”. Prof. Dale says the opposite was the case. Those buying the annuities were consciously not investing in slavery. The statute’s purpose was to make this possible by what is now called ‘ring-fencing’, preventing any financial or legal relationship between the trading and the annuities. This was done, it seems, because the trading (of which slaves formed a big part, but not the whole) was high-risk. The smash of 1720 had showed how toxic the mixture of Government debt with high risk could be.

    After the Act, [the Church of England’s] Queen Anne’s Bounty put all its money into the annuities – just the sort of lower but safer return you would expect a sober ecclesiastical organisation to seek. Once the split had taken place, it bought no shares in anything connected with slavery.

    Between 1720 and 1723, it is true, the Bounty did invest £14,000 (about £2.4 million today) in the unsplit company and so, for a time, could have profited from slavery. As it happened, however, it did not. When Parliament divided the South Sea Company in 1723, it split the Bounty’s shares equally, too. The Bounty sold off its trading company shares quite quickly but retained and greatly expanded its annuities.

    Will the woke ever get their history right?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/23/is-the-church-paying-reparations-on-a-false-premise/

    1. The Archpillock is not only determined to stamp out Christian faith he is also determined to bankrupt the Church of England.

  55. Church of England’s £100m Slavery Reparations Based on Mistake, Says Historian
    By Will Jones
    extract from https://dailysceptic.org/todays-update/

    Last year, the Church of England declared that it had invested the equivalent of £440 million today in the slave trade between 1720 and 1740 and thus would be paying out £100 million in a programme of reparations. However, a historian of the period, Professor Richard Dale, has now said that this is based on a mistake: the church did not invest anywhere near such sums in the slave trade and did not profit from it. Charles Moore has written about the debacle in the Telegraph.

    But is the history contained in the [Church of England’s] report true? In a recent article in the Church Times, Prof. Richard Dale, a business historian of the famous “South Sea Bubble” of 1720, suggests it is not. I telephoned him to find out more.

    This is the fact that, in 1723 – three years after the South Sea Bubble had burst – Parliament passed a statute splitting the South Sea Company in two. One was the trading company. The other was the company which sold what was in effect Government debt, paying interest on annuities.

    The Commissioners’ report says that “anyone investing in the Company before 1740 was consciously investing in these [slave-trading] voyages”. Prof. Dale says the opposite was the case. Those buying the annuities were consciously not investing in slavery. The statute’s purpose was to make this possible by what is now called ‘ring-fencing’, preventing any financial or legal relationship between the trading and the annuities. This was done, it seems, because the trading (of which slaves formed a big part, but not the whole) was high-risk. The smash of 1720 had showed how toxic the mixture of Government debt with high risk could be.

    After the Act, [the Church of England’s] Queen Anne’s Bounty put all its money into the annuities – just the sort of lower but safer return you would expect a sober ecclesiastical organisation to seek. Once the split had taken place, it bought no shares in anything connected with slavery.

    Between 1720 and 1723, it is true, the Bounty did invest £14,000 (about £2.4 million today) in the unsplit company and so, for a time, could have profited from slavery. As it happened, however, it did not. When Parliament divided the South Sea Company in 1723, it split the Bounty’s shares equally, too. The Bounty sold off its trading company shares quite quickly but retained and greatly expanded its annuities.

    Will the woke ever get their history right?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/23/is-the-church-paying-reparations-on-a-false-premise/

  56. The Rwanda Bill is probably just another scam to transfer money to friends and family of the thieving politicians who instigated and are implementing it. It will fail, but not before large numbers of politicians become very rich.

    The illegal immigrants CAME FROM FRANCE they should be RETURNED TO FRANCE, Shorter, quicker, cheaper – Simples really!

  57. Parallel Economy 24 April 2024.

    Nearly 1,400 companies, including many of the most internationally recognisable brands, have since February 2022 announced that they would cease or dial back their operations in Russia in protest of Moscow’s military aggression against Ukraine.

    But two years after the invasion, many of these companies’ products are still widely sold in Russia, in many cases in violation of Western-led sanctions, a months-long investigation by Al Jazeera has found.

    Aided by the Russian government’s legalisation of parallel imports, Russian businesses have established a network of alternative supply chains to import restricted goods through third countries.

    Good. I’m sorry. I am rooting for Vlad and Russia. I despise and fear the leaders of the West.

    https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/longform/2024/4/24/parallel-economy-how-russia-is-defying-the-wests-boycott

    1. I suspect that Russian exports are coming the other way, marked as produce of third countries.

      1. UK ‘helping Russia pay for its war on Ukraine’ via loophole on refined oil imports. 24 April 2024.

        The UK has been accused of “helping Russia pay for its war on Ukraine” by continuing to import record amounts of refined oil from countries processing Kremlin fossil fuels.

        Government data analysed by the environmental news site Desmog shows that imports of refined oil from India, China and Turkey amounted to £2.2bn in 2023, the same record value as the previous year, up from £434.2m in 2021.

        Russia is the largest crude oil supplier to India and China, while Turkey has become one of the biggest importers of Russian oil since the Kremlin launched its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

        https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/24/uk-helping-russia-pay-for-its-war-on-ukraine-via-loophole-on-refined-oil-imports

    2. I despise and fear the leaders of the West.

      All thinking people should fear their “leaders” but it goes much deeper down the hierarchical chain. At county and district council level the infiltration of Net Zero/Sustainability; actions to restrict travel via private vehicles; the idea of 15 minute cities being of benefit to all and sundry; failure to maintain infrastructure e.g. roads, pavements, drainage etc. has been remarkable.

      Then there’s the NHS pursuing people in the hope that uptake of the jab – the one that everyone knows doesn’t work, is inherently dangerous and for a disease that doesn’t exist – will continue.

      It’s frightening how the broad ideas at the top have leeched down the pyramid of power/authority and are appearing with fine detail all the way down.

      And as for London, the C40 mayor is presiding over the complete ruination of that once grand city. Londoners need to educate themselves about what Khan’s affiliation to the C40 project will mean for them. Food and clothing shortages, curtailment of travel, including flying and much more.

      2. Even in our nearest small town – in the meetings room we have used a couple of times as the Town Clerk is a member of the Swift Group – there is a series of “sustainability” posters on the wall including “twenty minute towns”.

    3. Sanctions never work in any country Minty, believe me I know, I grew up in Rhodesia where sanctions busting was big business. Rhodesia had far fewer natural resources and a much smaller economy than Russia does, and no coastline, yet still they didn’t work. I have had little respect for the leaders of the west ever since they brought the country down by other means, including with-holding arms, and handed it over to Robert Mugabe. Putin is cut from the same cloth as he was so my advice to you to to be very careful what you wish for.

      1. Putin and Mugabe have nothing in common. I’m surprised that you should say so Peta!

  58. Interesting article from Spiked ref Wikipedia fundraising. So sick of our good natures being taken advantage of by those who use us to fund their virtue signalling.

    How Wikipedia became Wokepedia
    The world’s most popular encyclopaedia has become a fundraising tool for social-justice propaganda.

    ANDREW ORLOWSKI
    23rd April 2024

    How Wikipedia became Wokepedia

    Want to read spiked ad-free? Become a spiked supporter.

    Last week, an old video of Katherine Maher, the new CEO of NPR, resurfaced online. It was filmed just after she stepped down as CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF), which raises funds for Wikipedia, the free online encyclopaedia.

    In this TED Talk from 2021, Maher complained that there are too many men involved in creating and maintaining Wikipedia’s articles. Apparently, too much of its content is in English, too. Even more strikingly, she explained how ‘our reverence for the truth might be a distraction that’s getting in the way of finding common ground and getting things done’. ‘I’m certain that the truth exists for you and probably for the person sitting next to you’, Maher told the audience, ‘But this may not be the same truth’.

    Maher’s admission that she doesn’t much care for the truth disturbed Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger, who said last week that he was shocked by the implications of the TED Talk. For years, Sanger has highlighted what he perceives to be an ideological bias at the ‘encyclopaedia anyone can edit’. Wikipedia has become Wokepedia, he claims.

    Speaking to Christopher Rufo, the conservative activist who unearthed the clips of Maher’s TED Talk, Sanger said he was also concerned by her connections to the so-called deep state. Her career has included roles at the US State Department, the Atlantic Council, the Council for Foreign Relations, the World Bank and even the conspiracy theorists’ favourite networking club, the World Economic Forum.

    Rufo and Sanger have good reason to be concerned about Wikipedia’s relationship to the deep state. Especially given the increasing role that states are taking in monitoring and restricting online content. Editor-in-chief of online magazine Unherd Freddie Sayers told parliament last week how his publication has been ‘demonetised’ on the whim of an operation called the Global Disinformation Index (GDI). Publishing gender-critical writers apparently caused the Unherd site to be flagged as promoting ‘disinformation’ and therefore deemed unsuitable to host advertising. The GDI counts both the US State Department and the UK’s Foreign Office among its funders. GDI co-founder Daniel Rogers even boasts on the organisation’s website that he worked ‘in the US intelligence community’.

    The use of organisations like GDI is a well-established intelligence practice. They create a chain of plausible deniability. NGOs, or pseudo-NGOs, like GDI often perform an adjudication function. State sponsors can argue that the decision, say, to declare Kathleen Stock’s gender-critical essays for Unherd ‘misinformation’ was taken by GDI, not the state itself. This allows governments to maintain a veneer of being pro-free speech, while still cracking down on ideas they deem harmful. These grey and nebulous relationships – and the burgeoning role played by the state and NGOs in information management – go largely unreported in the mainstream media today.

    In some ways, this is nothing new. Edward Bernays, the nephew of Sigmund Freud and the godfather of ‘public relations’, boasted of his work for governments in influencing public opinion by stealth since the 1920s. Indeed, why would governments give up on censorship and propaganda, especially in the ‘information age’?

    Where does Maher fit into all this? All we know is that during her two-year stint as WMF CEO, she proved to be a thoroughly modern NGO girlboss, seeking to crack down on the alleged ‘white male Westernised’ bias of Wikipedia. She closely conforms to the profile of many high-status globetrotters who flit effortlessly between top jobs in the public and private sectors, and at NGOs, without anyone being quite sure why. According to family folklore, her father was a spook, but we have no evidence to suggest that she is.

    Maher made woke activism an organisational goal of the WMF. Seeing as net assets grew by $16million to $255million at the end of 2023, it can certainly afford to fund a lot of political activity. Vast fundraising efforts targeted at Wikipedia users have generated a huge surplus, allowing the creation of an endowment. This is administered by the Tides Foundation, another major funder of social-justice causes. We’re talking about serious money here. WMF’s endowment is projected to hold $130.4million in cash assets this year.

    The Tides Foundation has also hatched a ‘Knowledge Equity Fund’, which has subsequently been transferred to the WMF itself. Recipients of this fund include ‘Data for Black Lives’, an organisation that was given $100,000 to ‘match racial-justice leaders with machine-learning research engineers to develop data-based machine-learning applications to drive change in the areas of climate, genetics and economic justice’.

    The WMF raises far more than it needs to. Donors may think that their money is helping to keep the lights on and the servers running at Wikipedia. But in reality, much of these funds is being spent on creating a vast bureaucratic NGO-flavoured apparatus, which now has the time and resources to donate to its favourite woke causes (as well as to pay its execs handsomely – back in 2021, Maher earned $600,000 in severance pay alone).

    None of this is to say that Wikipedia is controlled by the deep state. Paranoid fears that the online encyclopaedia has become another government propaganda outlet are surely overblown. After all, even if the WMF could be shown to be too close to government, it doesn’t actually employ the people who are responsible for writing Wikipedia articles. It doesn’t even pay them. In fact, their relationship has been frequently antagonistic. As one Wikipedia insider told me two years ago:

    ‘The sense of entitlement that comes from people [at the WMF], who know they can raise money easily from Wikipedia is astonishing. They don’t even feel they have to justify themselves. They’re woke people. They’re morally superior. But they don’t even write the content or check the content.’

    Although Wikipedia may have gone woke, it is probably not in the pocket of intelligence agencies. Still, it would be naive to imagine that the bosses at the Wikimedia Foundation aren’t at least trying to use Wikipedia as a tool to propagate their social-justice agenda. It is certainly not the bastion of collaboration and knowledge that it was designed to be. Indeed, by the former CEO’s own admission, ‘the truth’ is an obstacle to getting things done there.

    3. How Wikipedia became Wokepedia.

      Yes I noticed its changes to the text about the Indian Mutiny which looks as though it has been rewritten by the Indian Army.

      1. Over the years I’ve noticed a lot of glaring inaccuracies when I have looked up things about which I actually know quite a lot. What frightens me most is that its use is encouraged for school-children for educational purposes.

        2. Only look at W. for basic dates and info on systems and processes well out of the social sphere is my general rule. Definitely take it all with a big dose of salt. Anything to do with politics, philosophy or culture should be steered well clear of. It’s got more holes in it than a Swiss cheese.

          1. Same here, but I do find the glossaries at the bottom quite useful for further research.

        3. As it can be edited by people with a vested interest, you have to take a lot of it with a pinch of salt.

          1. Indeed, but taking it with a pinch of salt can only be done by people with the ability to think critically which means that most will take it verbatim.

    4. How Wikipedia became Wokepedia.

      Yes I noticed its changes to the text about the Indian Mutiny which looks as though it has been rewritten by the Indian Army.

    5. That whole idea that objective reality doesn’t exist is such a barmy concept. Physical matter is absolute and that’s an end of it. All the objects around me are what they are. Certainly my senses rely on certain conditions and function in a specific way and there may be a reality beyond the sphere of human senses. There could be a ghost standing next to me and I wouldn’t know. But the objects that I can perceive and interact with are not open to subjective identification.

  59. Wordle 1,040 4/6

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

    1. Some of us are lucky
      Wordle 1,040 3/6

      ⬜⬜🟨🟩🟨
      🟨⬜⬜⬜⬜
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

  60. Good Moaning – except that it darn well isn’t.
    Once again it is grey and cold.
    Ever since we moved house, MB has worked on the garden to turn it from a typical rented house grass patch and ill-kept shrubs and trees to somewhere that is delightful to potter round or sit with a drink. Or it would be if you fancied celebrating Spring by developing double pneumonia.
    I am now beginning to take this ghastly weather personally.

    2. Sympathies, Anne.
      We have quite a nice spring, so far, and in fact need and want rain (but not the cold weather that goes with it) as the winter’s dust is over everything, there’s still quite a bit of snow left that we want rid of, and the grass is a tasteful shade of beige…

    3. It was quite nice and sunny over the weekend when we were in Belper. Also yesterday was sunny. Today – cold and grey and a bit of drizzle. Just normal weather.

    4. Ah, dear Anne! I am sorry you are being drownded, but do like to start my morning with a snort of laughter. 🤣

      1. Our son, Henry, lives in Lancashire. I wonder if he is aware that Blackpool is rather limited in the comedic attractions it now offers:

        No wrecks and nobody drownded
        ‘Fact nothing to laugh at at all!

  61. G’day all and 77th,

    Late on parade this morning. Dreich start but clearing up nicely now. Wind still in the North and still chilly at 5℃ with no more than 9℃ later. No sign of anything warmer until well into next week.

    I wonder what thievery the Gruaniad editor is keeping quiet about this time?

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ba4af1d88a10388036b1df3038a27f40ae31a5bda028b02851d376611237e24c.png

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/23/guardian-editor-kept-quiet-labour-1997-tax-raid-on-pensions/

    We know the Reeves creature intends to re-impose the lifetime limit but it’s difficult to see what else they could do apart from imposing an annual growth limit as well. I’m sure some snot-gobbling little Marxist has thought of that one.

  62. If we feared the police in the past, it was for the right reasons. Not now.

    The authority of the police is now collapsing

    Two-tier law enforcement and the appeasement of the mob will inevitably destroy the public’s trust

    MADELINE GRANT, Parliamentary Sketchwriter • 23 April 2024 • 8:00pm

    Barely a week goes by without someone calling for the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police to resign. The cause this time? A video from the pro-Palestine protests in London on a Saturday earlier this month.

    A Jewish man, Gideon Falter, tried to walk through his own city and was told he’d be arrested, that his presence was “antagonising” the demonstrators, whom, as one officer revealingly observes, are greater in number. The message is clear – if you are numerous enough, behave obnoxiously enough and make enough noise, then the police will facilitate that, essentially because it’s easier. Those screaming “scum” at a member of a minority group and rehearsing the centuries-old blood libel trope of “baby-killers” – they are too complicated to deal with, so you kettle their intended targets instead.

    Gideon Falter is now being monstered, accused of seeking out the march to prove a point, which isn’t quite the winning argument his critics imagine. Firstly, why shouldn’t Jewish people be free to walk wherever they choose? Secondly, if Falter, a campaigner against anti-Semitism, were attempting to prove a point – that Jews’ safety cannot be guaranteed anywhere near these marches – then he has succeeded.

    The proof of the pudding is in the eating. If being “openly Jewish” in the vicinity is seen as a provocation, perhaps the marches aren’t so peaceful after all, perhaps – dare I say it – it isn’t just “Zionism” they are objecting to. Were a hijab-wearing woman ticked off for standing near an EDL march looking “openly Muslim”, these people would rightly be in uproar. The incident seems yet another example of David Baddiel’s observation that “Jews don’t count” as a minority.

    Eventually, it is Falter himself who is warned, told by a senior officer that he risks disturbing the peace. The concept of “breaching the peace” dates back to Anglo-Saxon times, sitting within the ancient boundaries of the common law. It therefore requires interpretation in the moment, or, put another way, more thoughtful policing than we presently have.

    Here, it is used because the people who were actually in danger of breaching the peace were too numerous. “Preventing violence” therefore means targeting the minority, whether Gideon Falter or Niyak Ghorbani, the Iranian dissident who attended a march with a sign reading “Hamas is terrorist”.

    This latest scandal not only bodes ill for the place of Jews in modern Britain, it helps to explain another long-running problem. Put simply, the authority of the police is collapsing. Recent polling has found a clear majority have no trust in the police, for the first time ever. This alone represents an existential crisis for forces, who have always been thought to operate on at least the theoretical principle of “policing by consent”.

    It feels somewhat surprising that it’s taken so long. Several factors have conspired almost concurrently to result in this collapse of trust, culminating in the anti-Israel marches. They have exposed the extent to which policing is no longer about protecting people from harm, but a short-term version of social peace, reactive rather than proactive. In this topsy-turvy value system, the groups most likely to be violent are appeased while those most likely to be attacked are hounded out of public spaces.

    But it goes broader than that. The protests that were allowed to proceed during lockdown gave clear evidence of two-tier law-enforcement; yes to Black Lives Matter, but no to the anti-lockdown marches, or the candlelit vigil following the murder of a young woman by a police officer. It’s visible in other ways, too, in the effective decriminalisation of certain offences like shoplifting, the fact that growing numbers of people would not even bother to report a theft because there seems little point. Yet should they find themselves on the receiving end of, say, a congestion charge ticket, they can expect to feel the full force of the law.

    Not all of this is the preserve of policing, but it gives a decidedly two-tier experience of public interactions with the state. And, as with blaming the man who is having “scum” shouted at him, it just doesn’t feel fair.

    Perhaps part of this breakdown is because personal relationships between police officers and the public have become far more remote; before the amalgamation of forces in the 1960s, you were more likely to know and see your local policeman making his daily rounds. This was not only positive for engagement between police and public, it provided an active link to the wider institution and gave police greater insight into what was happening on the ground. No surprise that much of it suffered in the decades that followed.

    All this is easy to say or write. While there are obvious structural issues – especially with the Met – I don’t envy the task of the ordinary men and women on the beat. They must police a complex, multi-racial, multicultural society, making difficult judgment calls that will invariably upset one group or another. They must uphold the right to protest, even when it drains their resources. They must police “crimes” they are poorly equipped for, dealing with nebulous concepts like “offence caused”, and, as we saw during lockdown, insanely complicated, ever-changing and poorly-drafted government rules.

    Nevertheless, they will pay a hefty price in public trust for surrendering their authority to the mob.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/23/metropolitan-police-gideon-falter-mob-rule/

    1. ‘Secondly, if Falter, a campaigner against anti-Semitism, were attempting to prove a point – that Jews’ safety cannot be guaranteed anywhere near these marches – then he has succeeded.’
      Campaigners often provoke incidents to draw attention to injustice. Rosa Parks comes to mind, no one blames her, indeed she is held up as an icon of the struggle for racial justice.

      1. And it’s rarely pointed out that though Parks made a perfectly valid point, she wasn’t the poor tired little seamstress of legend but by her own account was a gun-toting activist who set out to expose prejudice.

        1. She was merely a person “on the right side” of the “histories” of a like-minded class. Same as Mandela, same as many heroes having clay feet.

    2. The other point is that a load of indignant anti Palestinian drunks wearing St George crosses went out and caused trouble at an event in London. Whether you agree or disagree with the political narrative that they weren’t “patriotic” as described by one Westminster talking head, the fact remains that that is what the Police end up provoking if they fail in their basic duties of policing even handedly and without “fear or favour”.

      That’s a point completely missed by what is otherwise a decent article. Perhaps the police ought to have a word with themselves about “provoking a breach of the peace”…

    3. The police lost my trust when they became ‘the paramilitary wing of Stonewall’ (hat tip to Brendan O’Neill) with their rainbow-painted cars and lanyards.

    4. I don’t recall fearing the police when I was growing up. I respected them (we knew our local bobby by name).

  63. Good morning all,
    The invasion by these parasites is the biggest threat to civilised nations around the world. All encouraged by politicians in the pockets of the megalomaniacs of NWO. So many of them are ‘known to police and security services’, but allowed to roam the streets unhindered for fear of being labelled racist and causing harm to ‘community relations.’ As soon as one becomes ‘known’, they should immediately be incarcerated indefinitely in a high security facility, or, where that individual was not born here, deportation.
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b70b7612ac4c1ce9df4e75d109b3230f481e91e7134ebeef1c843b3ee205bb4a.jpg

    1. Why should their being born here make any difference? They don’t fit in. Our Jewish compatriots largely do and have contributed hugely to the life of the nation. Off with them. All of them.

      1. I agree that we don’t want them, but if they are born here, where should they be deported to? So many of them were born here to parents who were also born here.
        Our Jewish compatriots are, as you say, not a problem. (Just as they weren’t causing any problems in Germany or elsewhere in Europe when hitler came to power.

        1. That’s why they have several times more children than the old indigenous population are having.

          In effect by breeding they want to acquire the status of being the new indigenous population while opposing the rights and values of the current indigenous population.

          1. That’s true, but didn’t she have dual citizenship or something? Also, she was out of the country when her British citizenship was revoked.

          1. Ah, but it would need to be the ‘right sort’ of slammers….. They hate us, but they also hate the wrong types of slammer. Of course, we could ensure they are sent to the ‘wrong’ sort, sit back, and watch them kill each other. 🙂

  64. Britain today: how long have we got left? Every day, I think “can’t be long now, can’t get much worser”.

    The next day: much worser.

  65. Why is it that the greatest glimpses of the truth come out of Russia? Is there a lesson in that for our establishment?

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/fedd737499104a6e14f742bdfb3e0ff2c8e4e6728b73ffea250b42a95eeba8fb.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e695bf1d656217be2eb68077320a729fe228cbaddf06bdf342af936ddec5cbff.png

    Rand could have, perhaps should have, added “and both gangs have been sponsored by the US business and banking elites”.

    Two ends of the same stinking turd.

    1. Ayn Rand was a a massive intellect and a girl whose knowledge of the real world matches my own.

      Debunking the myth of the “far-Right”.

      Let this sink in. There is no “far-Right”, “extreme-Right” (or “hard-Right” come to that). This invented comical fiction is nothing more than an illusion, created by socialists, to distinguish themselves from their ideological enemies who they have chosen to label as “fascists”. The fact is, though, that both socialists and fascists are products of the far-Left wing of the spectrum of political ideology. Whilst the mobs of Antifa, and their ilk, are generally accepted to be liberals on the far-Left (which, indubitably, does exist), the exact same can be said of their ideological opposites, whom they have conveniently dubbed “fascists”.

      Those who revel in mob-handedness, ergo those who believe that the only way to enforce their own agendæ is by rioting in the name of ‘the People’, may exist in a number of different forms, creeds and calling, many of which are a polar opposite of others. No matter how much each of those groups hate, loathe, detest or simply name-call one another, the irrebuttable (irrefutable) fact is that they are all of a totalitarian bent and all come from the Left.

      Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin all despised capitalism; Hitler and Stalin even formed the Nazi-Soviet Pact to counter it. Their creeds of communism and fascism shared similar beliefs: both demanding totalitarian state control, subjugation of the Jews, and a complete loathing of individualism.

      On the true Right of the political pendulum is conservatism, which values the rights of the individual, encourages innovation and a hard work ethic, and values freedom. True conservatives and capitalists do not form gangs, march, and seek to terrorise those who do not espouse their beliefs. They are patriots who simply get on with working hard to better themselves, their families and their country.

      By all means allow the ragtag mobs of socialists, communists and fascists of the far-Left annihilate one another in their quest for liberal superiority. Just don’t let them refer to peaceful, innovative and entrepreneurial conservatives and capitalists as the “far-Right” or “fascists”. They are far from it.

      ©Grizzly. 2022.

      1. If the Right is the opposite of the Left, then the answer is:
        Left: Collectivist, someone else decides for you
        Right: Individualist, you decide for you.
        So… all those murdering bastards are, in fact, Left
        And the Fascistii were a version of the Left.

        1. Indeed you may borrow it. It is just part of a much longer essay I have written (and borrowed) on the topic. Here is another portion of it:

          The philosophy of Fascism was invented by Giovanni Gentile (see below), who was as far removed from a “far-Right” capitalist as it is possible to imagine.

          Dinesh D’Souza, of Prager University, explains succinctly what fascism really is and how the philosophy came about. He tells us:

          “He’s a fascist!”

          “For decades, this has been a favourite smear of the Left, aimed directly at those on the Right, or (erroneously and witlessly) at others on the Left who have an opposing point of view. Every American Republican president—for that matter, virtually every Republican—since the 1970s has been called a fascist; nowadays, this happens more than ever.

          This label is based on the notion — the false assumption — that fascism is a phenomenon of the political Right. The Left says it is, and —unfortunately — some self-styled ‘white supremacists’ and neo-Nazis witlessly embrace the label.

          But are they correct?

          To answer this question, we have to ask what fascism really means: What is its underlying ideology? Where does it even come from?

          These are not easy questions to answer. We know the name of the philosopher of Capitalism: Adam Smith. We know the name of the philosopher of Marxism: Karl Marx. But who’s the philosopher of Fascism?

          Yes—exactly. You don’t know? Don’t feel bad. Almost no one knows. This is not because he doesn’t exist, but because historians, most of whom are on the political Left, had to erase him from history in order to avoid confronting fascism’s actual beliefs. So, let me introduce him to you. His name is Giovanni Gentile.

          Born in 1875, he was one of the world’s most influential philosophers in the first half of the twentieth century. Gentile believed that there were two “diametrically opposed” types of democracy. One is liberal democracy, such as that of the United States, which Gentile dismisses as individualistic — too centred on liberty and personal rights — and therefore selfish. The other, the one Gentile recommends, is what he considered to be “true democracy” in which individuals willingly subordinate themselves to the state.

          Like his philosophical mentor, Karl Marx, Gentile wanted to create a community that resembles the family, a community where we are “all in this together.” It’s easy to see the attraction of this idea. Indeed, it remains a common rhetorical theme of the Left.

          For example, at the 1984 convention of the Democratic Party, the governor of New York, Mario Cuomo, likened America to an extended family where, through the government, people all take care of each other.

          Nothing’s changed. Twenty-eight years later, a slogan of the 2012 Democratic Party convention was, “The government is the only thing we all belong to.” They might as well have been quoting Gentile.

          Now, remember, Gentile was a man of the Left. He was a committed socialist. For Gentile, fascism is a form of socialism; indeed, its most workable form. While the socialism of Marx mobilises people on the basis of class; fascism mobilises people by appealing to their national identity as well as their class. Fascists are socialists with a national identity. German Fascists in the 1930s were called Nazis—basically a contraction of the term “national socialist.”

          For Gentile, all private action should be oriented to serve society; there is no distinction between the private interest and the public interest. Correctly understood, the two are identical. And who is the administrative arm of the society? It’s none other than the State. Consequently, to submit to society is to submit to the state; not just in economic matters, but in all matters. Since everything is political, the state gets to tell everyone how to think and what to do.

          It was another Italian, Benito Mussolini, fascist dictator of Italy from 1922 to 1943 who turned Gentile’s words into action. In his La Dottrina Del Fascismo, one of the doctrinal statements of early fascism, Mussolini wrote: “All is in the State and nothing human exists or has value outside the State.” He was merely paraphrasing Gentile.

          The Italian philosopher is now lost in obscurity; but his philosophy could not be more relevant because it closely parallels that of the modern Left. Gentile’s work speaks directly to progressives who champion the centralised State. Here in America, the Left has vastly expanded state control over the private sector, from healthcare to banking to education to energy. This state-directed capitalism is precisely what German and Italian fascists implemented in the 1930s.

          Leftists can’t acknowledge their man, Gentile, because that would undermine their attempt to bind conservatism to fascism. Conservatism wants small government so that individual liberty can flourish. The Left, like Gentile, wants the opposite: to place the resources of the individual and industry in the service of a centralised State. To acknowledge Gentile is to acknowledge that fascism bears a deep kinship to the ideology of today’s Left. So they will keep Gentile where they’ve got him: dead, buried and forgotten. But we should remember, or the ghost of fascism will continue to haunt us.”

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6bSsaVL6gA&frags=pl%2Cwn

          The last time I posted this on the forum, some other commentator attempted to rip apart Dinesh D’Souza’a theory because it didn’t fit in with their preconceptions of fascism.

          1. There is more:

            Being called “far-Right” is simply an absurdity.

            Being labelled ‘far-Right’ is preposterously idiotic. If you are on the Right of the political spectrum it means you shower, work, know the words to the national anthem, belong to a family, voted Brexit, eat meat, and prefer single-sex lavatories. Have I missed anything?

            Oh yes, I’ve missed a lot. It also means you love life, liberty, freedom and the pursuit of happiness. You are an independent, self-sufficient and self-reliant individualist who has aspirations and are innovative. You are a knowledgable, entrepreneurial, enterprising and hard-working individual who enjoys low taxation and small government. Moreover, your preference is a free-market economy, and you do not go in for mob-handedness, rioting and civil disorder. You expect these positive attributes to be encouraged and rewarded. Your self-esteem, your family, your locality and your country come first, and you are prepared to kill (and die) to defend them.

            In a nutshell, you are NORMAL.

            Therefore it logically follows that to be ridiculously labelled as being ‘far-Right’ means that you must be extremely free, extremely happy, extremely independent, extremely self-sufficient, extremely self-reliant and an extreme individualist; who is extremely aspirational, extremely innovative, extremely knowledgable, extremely entrepreneurial, extremely enterprising, extremely hard-working, and enjoys extremely low taxation and extremely small government, etc.

            If that is the case, then you may call me extremely ‘far-Right’ until the cows come home.

            Moreover, the curious expression “Right-wing populism” is a facile, puerile fallacy. Being on the so-called “Right” side of the political spectrum is as far removed from populism as it is possible to get. Populism = collectivism = socialism. Those on the polar opposite to the accepted “Left” believe in individualism, not populism.

          3. Thank you for that. At heart, wokism is confusing as it tries to dodge its fascistic persona, hence its frenzied desire to be seen as ‘kind’, which it is not. It red herrings this by accusations of ‘unkindness’ toward others who are innocent. But with every passing day the fascistic face of wokism becomes clearer. Your essay helped to crystallize what wokism is by pointing to its philosophical roots. An interesting read.

          4. Thank you for that. At heart, wokism is confusing as it tries to dodge its fascistic persona, hence its frenzied desire to be seen as ‘kind’, which it is not. It red herrings this by accusations of ‘unkindness’ toward others who are innocent. But with every passing day the fascistic face of wokism becomes clearer. Your essay helped to crystallize what wokism is by pointing to its philosophical roots. An interesting read.

  66. Why is it that the greatest glimpses of the truth come out of Russia? Is there a lesson in that for our establishment?

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/fedd737499104a6e14f742bdfb3e0ff2c8e4e6728b73ffea250b42a95eeba8fb.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e695bf1d656217be2eb68077320a729fe228cbaddf06bdf342af936ddec5cbff.png

    Rand could have, perhaps should have, added “and both gangs have been sponsored by the US business and banking elites”.

    Two ends of the same stinking turd.

  67. The Rwanda Bill’s aim is to deceive the British people (again) into thinking that the Tory government will try to stop illegal immigration. It will, of course, do no such thing. It obviously does not want to stop it, possibly to use to camouflage the record high ‘legal’ immigration they are inflicting on us.

    1. What is it so far? 5,000 in on boats since start of year or something. What’s that I hear? Howls of protest from the “loyal” Opposition about government failing in its basic duties? All I hear is bare wind while watching tumbleweed drift by.

      Doesn’t look to me like anyone at Westminster is much interested in stopping boats. I don’t know how long they can get away with playing, “here, look at these kittens instead.”

      1. They’re not. They’ve been bought and they’re doing their masters’ bidding.

    2. It would have been so easy to stop the boats from the outset, by taking them straight back to France.
      If that was the intention

    4. I think the Rwanda scheme is aimed primarily at the boats as being the most visible form of illegal immigration so the most visible form of “doing something” – a case of “look, there’s a squirrel” really. However, if the government said categorically that every single one of them landing in boats would be sent immediately to Rwanda and then did it, I suspect it would go a long way towards stopping them.

      1. Unfortunately these people have access to the internet as well and know that the whole scheme is a scam!

        1. I don’t know about “scam”, but they will certainly be aware that the Home Office and lawyers are determined that it isn’t going to work.

      2. A Royal Marine commander and some fast boats, drones and satellite surveillance would be the cheapest and quickest way to stop them Peta.

      3. End the freebies handed to these parasites – no more fully funded and heated accommodation, no more ‘on demand’ (No telephone queues and ‘all appointments gone for today’ malarky for them) free healthcare, no more handouts of any kind, and that includes UK taxpayer funded appeals. The flood would soon end.

        1. Indeed, just lock them up in basic camps where they are housed, fed and watered with access to basic healthcare, but not let out, while their applications for “asylum” are being processed.

          1. No need for us to supply medics – I’m sure there will be some doctors amongst them. After all, we’ve been told they are useful, well qualified and skilled, and will make such a good contribution to any skills shortages we have……

          3. No need to spend money on asylum applications either. Virtually none are genuine refugees, and at best they are illegal economic gimmegrants, with numerous dangerous ones amongst them who pose a real threat to national and individual safety.

    5. Stopping the supply chain of boat would be a start. The French must know where they are coming from and how they get from China to France, Who is supplying all these engines. You can’t hide such large items.

  68. The truth comes often from Russians because they have lived with the consequences of lies. I’m a huge Ayn Rand fan and have read all the “fiction” she ever wrote more than once, but must confess I did struggle with her essays!

    1. I struggle with the word “rightless”, I must say. Why not that ‘Man is the slave of the State without rights”?

      1. I’m not going to quibble over American usage in what is essentially an excellent quote.

        1. Even “rightless” – technically “rightsless” surely? Never understood American, me.

    2. Zelensky has banned the works of Mikhail Bulgakov author of The Master and Margarita, one of the greatest works of C20 literature.

      There is something very wrong with our support for Nazis in Ukraine. Russian writers such as Bulgakov have a biblical sense and awareness of good versus evil and are punished for exposing their political masters.

      1. I didn’t know that and in principle am anti banning books anyway. Do you know why he has banned Bulgakov? I’m simply not buying into the theory that Zelensky, his government, army and Ukrainians are all Nazis, especially as he himself is from a Russian-speaking Ukrainian Jewish family. I am aware that many Ukrainians did collaborate with the Nazis during WW2 but believe that was a case of the lesser of the evils, combined of course, with endemic anti-Semitism which still exists today as we are learning, because the Holodomor was still very fresh in the Ukrainian memory.

    1. I’m quite selective. As secretary/trustee of Help a Hedgehog Hospital I know where the money goes…. and most of my other donations go towards sponsoring orphans cared for by the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust in Kenya.

  70. Well, there’s lovely – not. A few flurries of snow….

    However – I remember that on 26 April 1985 we had three INCHES of snow here – the day the old village school was re-opened as the Village Hall.

    1. I live a lot further south than you do and I remember one year in the late 90s when the rescue helicopters were sent up to the Pyrénées in mid-May to rescue spring walkers snowed into refuge huts!

      1. I expect that was the year that the apple crop in the Etang de Marseillette was wiped out by an unexpected very sharp frost

        1. Quite possibly. It was a year or two after we moved here in Jan 1997 but I don’t remember exactly which year. The old-timer locals said it was rare, but it wasn’t the first time it had happened.

    4. No snow over here in the frozen north but not exactly summer,.
      Our golf course was scheduled to open for the season on Saturday so naturally most of last week was heavy rain and opening was delayed until Monday.

      Nothing like a bit of frost to delay things further.

    5. 1 June 1975 – snow in Uppingham.
      Date corrected.
      I sat in German class and watched it through the window.
      Explains my facility with German… not…

      1. That could have been the year it snowed in Shropshire in June as I was boarding a train to go to Worthing for an interview.

      1. Snow in Colchester as well.
        I remember it well as that was the day when I had a great ward showdown with lazy and spiteful staff members.
        At the end of it, one ran off the ward in tears and another went off sick for a week.

      2. 3rd June 1976 – Sun in Cambridge. And everywhere else. Imagine if we had a heatwave like that today….the global warming loonies would be beside themselves with happiness, claiming vindication for their catastrophising.

        1. My siblings tried to gaslight me into believing that recent summers have been hotter than ’76. It’s amazing how many people can be fooled when bombarded with propaganda. One sibling has now stopped watching mainstream television channels so there is hope. I refuse to be told that what I experienced first hand is not what happened.

          1. Father & I were working in the loft that summer. We had to be out by about 10 o’clock, as it got rather warm & stuffy.

          2. I spent that entire summer of 1976 in the higher latitudes of the Arctic Ocean! (Allegedly)

          4. I’m convinced that the peak temperature of July 2022 was indeed hotter than anything in 1976. I’m not denying that 1976 was hot but it was the prolonged drought which accompanied the heatwave that stands out for me.

          5. The peak temperature recorded on 19th July 2022 was at RAF Coningsby when three typhoon aircraft had just landed, blowing hot fumes at the thermometer.

          6. Yes, but several other weather stations on that day exceeded the previous record. Surely not all of them were rogue readings.

          7. They were all in urban heat islands – like the runway at Heathrow, and Kew Gardens.

          8. No no no no no! These are scientists! They are talking about the “GLOBAL AVERAGE” temperature. This has never, of course, been measured previously and is not reliably measurable now, but these absolute geniuses have managed to do it in order to prove their very lucrative point.

          9. No wonder they want to get rid of us with our inconvenient experience of what really happened!

        2. Actually following that snowy episode in 1975 occurred the first of the consecutive two hot summers, but for some reason it is 1976 that most people remember. The temperature rose to 100 F and I recall considering taking a little camp bed to sleep outside in the garden of the rented house where I was living at the time – I had a little garret room and the heat was suffocating. I think that was the summer of the sugar shortage.

          The loonies have to make it up as they go along, the weather just isn’t playing the same game. Warmest February, warmest March….. aye right, we’ve never had the heating on as much post-January as we have had this year.

    1. H’mmm …. now reimagine that picture with a flag of St. George and “Jerusalem” blaring out.

      1. Is this the promised end?

        Or image of that horror?

        [King Lear]

        How long have we got?

    2. Sadiq Khan recruited his OWN scrutiny board on policing so you can expect more of this if by some miracle he retains dictating his politically policed London.

      Does Politoons @UkPolitoons truly believe that Khan needs a miracle to retain dictating his politically policed London? I think it highly likely.

    2. Thanks for posting WS.

      This caught my eye in your link:

      Sir Andrew conducted the Last Night of the Proms several times, and in 1992, delighted Promenaders by singing the traditional conductor’s speech to a Gilbert and Sullivan tune.

      Here is his speech recorded at the last night of the PROMs in stereo sound only but comes over very well in high fidelity and may even have more impact should you listen to it without video.

      An emotional recording of a memory of an engaging conductor and the era of bygone BBC promenade concerts.

      https://youtu.be/cVIq0wgU4Bo?si=MRh9u2AfrpbGOowR

    3. Thanks for posting WS.

      This caught my eye in your link:

      Sir Andrew conducted the Last Night of the Proms several times, and in 1992, delighted Promenaders by singing the traditional conductor’s speech to a Gilbert and Sullivan tune.

      Here is his speech recorded at the last night of the PROMs in stereo sound only but comes over very well in high fidelity and may even have more impact should you listen to it without video.

      An emotional recording of a memory of an engaging conductor and the era of bygone BBC promenade concerts.

      https://youtu.be/cVIq0wgU4Bo?si=MRh9u2AfrpbGOowR

  74. Jeffrey Donaldson, ex-DUP leader, accused of rape and gross indecency with a child. 24 April 2024.

    During the eight minute hearing, the court heard Sir Jeffrey was charged with raping on an unknown date between January 1985 and January 1991. The charge states he “had unlawful sexual intercourse” with the alleged victim who “did not consent to it” or Sir Jeffrey was “being reckless as to whether the said person consented”

    Oh dear. Sounds a bit iffy. Is it political?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/24/jeffrey-donaldson-dup-leader-court-rape-and-sex-charges/

    1. So vague as to be meaningless, except for lighting a fire of outrage and besmirching his reputation.

    2. If he had blown up and maimed people, then that would be politically acceptable. Part of the struggle etc….
      Shades of Martin MacGuiness.

    3. I note that the charge was historical rape.
      Now is that the same as statutory rape where a statue is unable to give consent to having sexual intercourse with a human being?

    5. I appreciate how an actual rape is traumatic for the victim but I don’t fully understand how this particular incident cannot be narrowed down to a smaller timescale, although I do see it concerns a minor who may be struggling with a vague memory of the details. I guess it depends on how young the minor was at the time.

      On a related matter, I gather that Lady Donaldson also faces charges of aiding and abetting. Is there any legal difference between “aiding” and “abetting” or does the pairing constitute a single offence?

        1. Loosely speaking, aiding entails help whereas abetting is about encouragement or incitement. Thanks, Bill. Although they always seem to be expressed as a pair, can the accused be charged with one but without the other?

    6. Clearly the victim is no longer a child, but she took a long time to come forward with these allegations. It’s odd that his wife is allegedly involved as well, as though they were running a brothel.

  75. The Mail has a pearl-clutching article about some private messages sent between fire men about their female area manager

    “In one message sent in February last year Matthews reportedly said: ‘She does the square root of f*** all.
    In March 2023 he added: ‘I’ve got no loyalty to the lazy cow’ before sharing a cartoon GIF of someone being thrown under a bus.’ ”

    The Mail reports it as a case of terrible sexism for which the men must be punished. I don’t see ANYWHERE any concern about the performance of the area manager – who claims to have “26 years’ unblemished service.” Well clearly it wasn’t unblemished, was it, because people who had to work with her were very unhappy.
    26 years of D.E.I more like. Women and ethnic minorities who operate in this environment (usually academic or public sector)can have a completely unrealistic view of their own abilities because they’ve never competed on a level playing field.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13343983/Fire-chiefs-wanting-kill-female-colleagues.html

    1. Such comments and memes are distributed about every manager! Male, female, both genders, neither gender.

    2. Glenn Loury is good on pulling this type of thing apart. Glenn specifically addresses peoples perception of his skin colour, he dislikes that they want to turn it into a crutch of sorts. But his arguments could be used for any other characteristic.

      1. D.E.I. is the worst enemy of anyone who has a protected characteristic and is actually good at their job. Nobody will believe that you earned anything on merit if Didn’t Earn It is in operation.

    3. 26 years of saying and doing the ‘right’ thing doesn’t represent being good at the actual job.

  76. I have to say that to date I have been impressed with the treatment I am getting from my Surgery and the NHS in General. No problem getting appointments – and everyone is helpful – almost to the point of it being overwhelming at times.
    This morning I saw the other side.
    10.50 – appointment with the “Living Well Team” – supposed to be there to give the family support and the patient care.
    I get to the surgery – helpful receptionist does not know what or who my appointment is with. Wait 20 minutes whilst the find out.
    Eventually taken to a consulting room (son in tow) where the “Team” reside. Only there is no team – no OTs just one rather twitchy Doctor.
    Apart from the fact that we did get her to prescribe something for Richards eczema which is pretty bad at the moment the whole thing was a waste of their time and mine.
    If living well is to mean anything it surely has to encompass Meds reviews, Occupational Therapy etc.

    Next time it will be phone call so that won’t be any better.

    Such a missed opportunity.

    2. Same here. I have experienced the best and the worst.

      In addition to your son’s medication i find O’keefe’s skin repair cream helps calm the skin. Sainsbury’s sell it among other places. It absorbs easily and isn’t greasy.

      1. Bought mine on eBay and get the DN (District Nurse) to apply it when she changes my leg dressing.

    3. I am to have an elective surgical procedure some time later this year. I’m awaiting an appointment date. Yesterday I received a text message from my local NHS Trust to tell me I “have a new notification concerning an outstanding referral” on the patient hub. I signed in and there it was. Upon opening it, it was merely asking whether or not I wanted to continue with the appointment/procedure but it didn’t spell out what it was for. I’m guessing it meant the surgical procedure. I’ve been advised that the elective surgery will entail a 2 night stay at Lister Hospital, Stevenage, but this notification only mentioned the New QEII at Welwyn Garden City, now just a day patient treatment centre. Naturally, I’m still left guessing but, not wanting to cancel the elective surgery by mistake, I’ve agreed to continue with the “outstanding referral”, without knowing for sure what it is.

        1. The text message had no reply contacts. I’ll just wait and see what transpires. I suspect that as the New QEII is where the surgeon has his office, that was the given location. I suppose it’s possible he wants to do yet another pre-op assessment there.

    4. I had a letter today to say I’d have a telephone appointment with a chap from the RJAH about my shoulder. Fortunately, it’s a follow-up; the physio did poke, prod and manipulate when I saw her in person.

  77. I couldn’t agree with you more, can you imagine the pearl-clutching outrage though?!! Best bet would be a well-trained, well-organised vigilante group with a very strong Omerta 😁

  78. Afternoon Oberst. I don’t know anything meaningful about Donaldson or the politics of Northern Ireland but that is vague. It could be anything; a disgruntled employee. An IRA plant. Who knows, and we can have no confidence in the Police.

  79. Just the other day, I said calmly to my colleague, “I could kill D” and he laughed. D, now retired, wrote and maintained a large codebase that nobody else could work on, because it was such a nightmare, thereby ensuring that the company could never get rid of him. No kidding, this codebase includes 5000 line C++ functions. 5000 lines!!! (should not be more than about 100 max). He wrote a class with a Copy function that copies, not the data but the address in the memory where it is stored. All works fine until you exit the function where you copied the data object and you get a crash due to memory failure because the system tries to delete the contents of the memory location twice. Frankly, nobody who does that deserves to live!!

  80. There seems to be a huge efficiency gap between the actual medical teams and the ancillary services.
    However, we all agree that the phlebotomy clinic at CGH is a model department.

  81. Russian troops advance five miles after rotation error by Ukrainian forces. 24 April 2024.

    Over the weekend, Ukraine’s 115th Brigade was ordered to replace the 47th where they were defending the front line just east of Ocheretyne.

    But as the 47th were pulling back, Russian forces launched an attack that put them within striking distance of the newly fortified defensive lines between the frontline and a 20-mile-wide area of undefended land leading to the city of Pokrovsk, a key logistical hub for Kyiv’s defence of the Donbas.

    You have to wonder how much of this was accidentally on purpose. The Brigade responsible had been in the line for twelve months without a break. This army is worn out! Sunak and his pals can send them all the arms they like. If the men don’t want to fight they won’t. The PTB are like the chateau generals of WWI. They are not the ones doing the dying!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/04/24/russia-advances-5-miles-after-error-by-ukraine-forces/

  82. Back from a few days in North Norfolk and then East Essex.
    In the background of the photo of the carriage is the village of Weybourne situated on the longitude 0 degrees. In fact there is no land mass between the village and the North Sea so at times it got a bit fresh on the beach!
    A couple of shots of the steam railway that runs along that neck of the woods and finally a shot of the bow of a Thames sailing barge moored in Heybridge basin….

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/719ed4d8371910086b9d6bb1b73604d97a3af70aeb9b7099f69985844eae8966.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/db702ae1f6c566fca67e79fe6292e8362789935b87c245f2f3d1789a5376b085.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/00a850222ccb32fcd657737e3745d981ceab09529a604d195e33ff1bc76264a5.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a99b1fd964ece68a8ab86f36ab558a748081d38bb1454737c6dcb11d65d89f79.jpg

    1. My cousin by marriage, Jayne, was born on a wherry named Bramble and she is interested in the preservation of old sailing barges.

      The Norfolk wherrymen
      East Coast of England
      This collection of archive photos was contributed by Jayne Tracey whose father, James Forsythe, was one of the Founders of the Norfolk Wherry Trust which has kept ‘Albion’ afloat since they rescued her in 1949. ‘Albion’ is the last of the trading wherries, over 120 years old and still sailing. Jayne was born aboard the wherry ‘Bramble’ and spent much of her early life living aboard wherries..

      https://www.sailing-by.org.uk/norfolk-wherry/

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ac56f12088da2fb4e44c28bf5f1b04bb18b70e717bd97c30fa6519a06cd10049.png

        1. Do you remember the epic wherry trip in Arthur Ransome’s The Big Six?

          I love this series of 12 novels which I read as a child and which we read to our own children as we sailed around the Med.

          When I was a student at Norwich I kept my Enterprise sailing dinghy at Barton Broad and sailed to Horning and some of the places mentioned in Coot Club and The Big Six

          1. A fantastic series, I avidly read. Now, (complete with dust jackets) all 12 with my granddaughter in Tasmania.

          2. I hope your family is safe in Tasmania. I heard there are devils living there.😈

          5. I have seven of the twelve with their original dust covers and one which has lost its dust cover but I have had to make up the remaining 4 of the collection with paperback copies.

            I have just looked in my bookshelves and found a paperback called: Coots in the North and Other Stories
             by Arthur Ransome.

            This was first published in 1988 by Jonathan Cape and then in 1993 by Red Fox.

      2. Does the mast hinge down so it can go under bridges? I’m sure I read somewhere that they can do that.

        2. Like the funnel on the Salter’s steamer on the River Thames. That always fascinated me as a child

    2. Weybourne was one of my favourite regular walks (along the clifftop) when I lived in north Norfolk. The only thing that spoils the place is the fact that John Major has a summer house there.

    3. I don’t know who told you that the 0º longitude runs through Weybourne. It doesn’t even run through Norfolk.

      1. Probably a ‘normal for Norfolk’ local. The Greenwich meridian would be a very strange shape to run through Weybourne, which is actually 1.138 degrees East.

      1. Woodforde’s Wherry (O.G. 1039) is simply one of the tastiest bitter beers I’ve ever had the privilege of quaffing. My favourite from that brewery, though, was a short-lived best bitter called Phoenix (O.G. 1047). I was very sad when they stopped producing that wonderful pint.

        1. Adnams Extra (about 4.4%) was a wonderfully hoppy beer with that almost salty Southwold tang. It lasted for barely a decade, disappearing sometime in the mid-90s.

          1. Adnam’s make some delicious ales. A curiosity, though, is that they don’t seem to travel well. I found them exquisitely deliciously quaffable in Southwold, but getting progressively less so the further one travels afield.

            Two other short-lived but delicious best bitter ales were: Samuel Smith’s Museum Ale; and Wadworth’s Farmer’s Glory, both much missed.

  83. Good afternoon from the Anglo Saxon Kingdom of Mercia ( East Anglia anyway) and Helicon ( the home of Hesiod’s Muses ). I woke up this morning within a scented breeze. But ended up with no broadband since early this morning due to a cable coming down and an engineer required to fix it – taking 6 hours. I also had a less then successful dental appointment and something needs doing again.
    Anyway, hello, I’ve just got the Internet back and am having a nice cup of Earl Grey tea and listening to the birds in the garden.

  84. Jeremy Clarkson has exposed the lie at the heart of veganism
    Enjoying a good bacon sandwich, after all, is surely the highest form of pig worship? A beast that dies happy genuinely tastes better
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/23/jeremy-clarkson-has-exposed-the-lie-at-the-heart-of-veganis/

    My BTL

    Our neighbour in France, René, is a farmer.

    A couple of years ago he had a goose in his yard which was quite a friendly bird and we were surprised that the creature was being fattened up for the Christmas table.

    When we were in Libya in the 1950s my mother kept a turkey but when it came to the crunch in December she could not kill it. So in my sentimental English way I said to René: “How can you contemplate slaughtering that cheerful bird?”

    He replied: “We have nourished him – it is now his turn to nourish us.”

    2. Which reminds me, I have some freshly-minced fatty piggy meat (1,500g) in my fridge and in a couple of hours I shall combine it with 200g breadcrumbs, 450g cold water, and a 54g portion of a seasoning from a mix I made this morning (46g salt; 9g white pepper; 6g nutmeg; 6g mace; 6g ground coriander seeds; 6g parsley).

      I shall thoroughly combine them in my food processor and then stuff some hog’s casing with them later in my sausage stuffer.

    3. What I want to know is which genius managed to trick Muslims into avoiding pork and alcohol, thus preserving these products for decent folk.

    4. I think farmers have a different attitude towards the slaughter of animals for food. Non professionals such as your mother bonding with her turkey lose sight of the reason for keeping the bird.
      I remember one of my students who lived in the Pyrenees when asked about her weekend. A sweet young girl, she’d been helping her mother to kill chickens. Quite graphically she explained how it was done. Of the seven people in the class, three were as horrified as I was, the others began to argue with her stating that she was not killing them in the correct way, different systems were suggested.
      Another person, a vet, used to spend his day looking after sheep, inoculating them, curing their maladies. And then for supper he would enjoy his favourite dish, grilled lamb chops.
      Not everyone sees meat as something you get in a box in the supermarket.

      1. We used to keep hens when I was a child; when they came to the end, my father killed them, I plucked them and my mother drew them and cooked them. My brother, as usual, skived off with his mates until the meal was ready.

      1. What happened to young Albert Ramsbottom when he was wearing his Sunday best at ‘tzoo?

  86. I don’t actually read the telegraph but if I did I think I’d probably find it full of old news.

    1. You’d certainly find it full of glaring errors and opinions dressed up as ‘facts’. I can’t remember when it was that I last saw a graphic, printed in that rag, that didn’t have some obvious inaccuracy.

      1. There is a glaring error in the Spectator today.

        ‘Since resigning as prime minister in 2016, Cameron has been involved in numerous money-making ventures linked to China. These have included a $1 billion (£800,000) China-UK investment fund’

        Strangely the catastrophic run on the dollar has gone unreported elsewhere.

        1. When did a billion, which used to be a million million (1,000,000,000,000) become, a thousand million?

          The French call 1,000,000,000 a milliard.

          6. On the subject of Cameron his appointment as Foreign Secretary is as weird and sordid as Truss’s appointment of Hunt as chancellor.

            Are Soros, Gates and Schwab at the WEF responsible and, if so, what are they up to?

          8. I also call it a milliard. It was done to keep sucking up to the innumerate Yanks who prefer idiocy in both their insane versions of English and their maths.

          9. And their weights and measures. In a joint project for a satellite they didn’t bother checking what system is universally accepted but went ahead with their own. The entire project was an expensive failure.

          12. There are a number of decent independent breweries over there now. Breweries that properly use 100% malted barley and not bulked out with rice (as per the ersatz Yankee faux ‘Budweiser’).

          13. I also heard there are places in that vast country that you can buy real cheese and bread. Their supermarkets are a nightmare.

    2. What with the Internet and 24hr news everything is old news.
      Newspapers of this day need to feast on any information to gain attention,
      They engage in philosophising and bite at any red meat like lions around a ever decreasing pool of information. I still read the telegraph but not for the news. I like the information on books, travel, food, culture and funny stories .

        1. I search all places for funny stories to make one smile and enliven the mind, there is so little joy in the world so therefore one must exercise the mind to stop it becoming state and limited. As a muse from Helicon you can trust that’s correct 😁

        2. I think Isobel from the Speccie thinking Raynor can outwit anyone is a very funny story. 😄. And I said so, well Terpsi did. I think Isobel is a bit of a leftie

  88. I just read that Frank Field has died, I was genuinely sad to hear that.
    He was a principled, kind and good man, a Labour MP who stood head and shoulders over the miscreants that remain in that party. He was one of the very few Lefties ( as well as the German lady leftie MP who stood for Brexit ) that I had some time for.

      2. Yes indeed so. The one I’m thinking of is Gisela Stuart, who was the chairperson for leave .

    4. Genuinely good egg.
      He and Kate Hoey are Labour politicians who would have won my vote.

    1. The one standing on the nose of the plane on his own looks like he’s doing a pee. Filthy savage .

        1. As Donald Trump said, if you let people from shithole countries into your country then your country becomes a shithole country. I remember Khan taking umbrage to this saying Trump doesn’t speak for London. Trump spoke the truth Londonstan is a shithole that isn’t any longer our capital city .

          1. My only visits to London nowadays are to Kensington & Chelsea or Kings Cross/St Pancras. K&C still charms with its fashionable homes and shops while KC/StP has been tarted up in recent years, partly to make arrivals from Brussels & Paris look at it less askance. It’s no longer the shabby, seedy neighbourhood of notoriety. As for the rest of London, I can only go by the reports of others.

            While you understandably take a dim view of it, London will remain our capital city while it continues to be the seat of government, principle home of the head of state and a world renowned financial centre.

            Out of curiosity, where would you choose to be the capital of both England and the United Kingdom, although there might be a case for making different locations serve each of those purposes?

          3. York (capital of the Viking Danelaw) for me; though I do have a great love for certain other cities; Winchester being one, along with Lincoln, Chester, Norwich, Durham, Bath, Truro and Oxford.

          5. Indeed it is but there are some excellent shops and sumptuous restaurants and tea shops along it, most of which I have sampled while trudging up and down it.

          6. My favourite English cities are Bath, Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, Canterbury, Wells, Chichester, Winchester, York and Salisbury. I suspect I’d like Lincoln and Norwich as well but I’ve never been. My least favourite is Birmingham.

        2. They’d piss and crap on your dining table if they got the chance!

          Philip, last night I enjoyed perhaps the most delicious vodka martini (shaken, not stirred) I’ve ever had. I made it from a Finnish Koskenkorva vodka and an extra dry Noilly Prat vermouth. I do believe that the quality of the ingredients has a huge effect on the outcome.

          1. Perfect. The quality of the ingredients is paramount when making cocktails.

            I had a very nice one at Simpsons on the Strand but the best was at the Phoenicia, Malta. Not only did all the liquids, implements, shakers and glassware get chilled right down to frosty, he also began with washing the ice. Also it is traditional in Malta that when you order a cocktail it comes with nuts, crisps and caperberries. At the Phoenicia the cocktails came with bruschetta and canapes. Even though you would be spending between 10 and 20 euro for the drink the rest of it made it into a brunch.

            Were you celebrating something?

          2. No. I’d been on a shopping expedition to Ystad and decided to pop in to the Systembolaget (Nanny-State liquor store) to check out their extremely expensive and very limited selection of booze. The items I chose were the best available from a dismally poor selection. I must go back to Denmark, soon, to peruse the massive selection available in a much more sensible country.

          4. Our state owned liquor control board has 275 different brands / sizes of vodka on sale. It’s not all as bad as Sweden.

            About $50 for a 750ml bottle.

          5. The 700ml bottle of Koskenkorva vodka cost me SEK 239 (£17·66) and the 750ml bottle of Noilly Prat cost me SEK 159 (£11·75). [A 750ml bottle of Enzo Bartoli 2019 Barolo, bought as a gift, cost me SEK 229 (£16·92)].

          7. Thanks to the EU most spirits are sold at 37.5% by vol in the UK though Scotch Whisky and Irish Whiskey must have a mimimum of 40% by vol. However, the bars at the Houses of Parliament sell full-strength spirits because politicians are keen to grab whatever they can for themselves but prevent the plebs from having it.

            You can get Gin at so-called Dutyfree shops at airports at 47.5% by vol.

          8. I prefer Cinzano’s vermouth to those of Martini and Noilly Prat.

            (The latter has been pruriently called Oily Twat!)

          10. I shall certainly try Cinzano (or even Dubonnet) the next time I purchase a vermouth. I am not particularly a fan of the beverage per se but a little in a martini (vodka or gin) is essential to give the character of the cocktail.

          11. Are you much of a cider drinker, Grizz? Kopparberg is widely available in the UK but I wondered whether Sweden has a thriving craft cider scene.

          12. I’m certainly not, Stig. I’ve sampled the bilge called Kopparberg and found it utterly undrinkable. I don’t mind the odd glass of a decent English perry (properly made from perry pears) but I do not touch anything labelled as ‘pear cider’ which is a ridiculous concept as only cider apples can be use to make a proper cider.

            Part of my problem with cider stems from me getting drunk on the stuff as a teenager and the vile taste of it ‘coming back up’ remains strong in my memory.

            I’ve never had any such problems since I discovered the delights of good cask-conditioned draught English ale.

          13. My parents used to enjoy a glass of perry from time to time with their lunch. When I was a schoolboy the tuck shop used to sell Whiteway’s Cydrax and Peardrax.

            And there is a factory at Shepton Mallet which to produces stuff called Babycham: The genuine Champagne perry! which used to be widely advertised but seldom drunk by people of taste and discernment!.

            https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/81cc3b4f7f740114ad2ae888f1e9ece2a0f9f9eb6d167b6cf95e8a58285533d4.png

            https://www.google.com/search?q=Babysham+ad&oq=Babysham+ad&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIJCAEQABgKGIAEMgkIAhAAGAoYgAQyCQgDEAAYChiABDIJCAQQABgKGIAEMgkIBRAAGAoYgAQyCQgGEAAYChiABDINCAcQABiGAxiABBiKBTINCAgQABiGAxiABBiKBTINCAkQABiGAxiABBiKBdIBCDcyMDVqMGo3qAIAsAIA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:21b0c495,vid:u7RFYEe42VI,st:0

          14. I think they used the witty marketing expression “champagne perry” to denote the fact that it is of a pear derivation but with a mousse that is redolent of champers.

          15. That factory had a huge statue of the yellow bambi on the top. It was great to drive past. I wonder if it was an early inspiration for the execrable arts grifter Koons and his lucrative trash.

          16. I hold similar views about Strongbow. It just doesn’t have an apple flavour.

          17. Memories of Flensberg: watching every form of Swedish transport endangering their axles to get as much affordable boost home as could be crammed in or piled on.

          18. We just nip over on the ferry from Helsingborg to Helsinør (45 minutes) and simply fill a shopping bag or two. It’s not too far away so we can go whenever we feel like it.

          19. Mind thoroughly boggled. What on earth does washing the ice achieve? (Unless you’ve dropped it en route to the bar, of course.)

          20. Is it a visual aesthetic thing? You know how ice can look frosted? Washing helps to ensure a clear cube.

            Why do you rinse ice?

            [Q]uick-rinse your ice cubes so you don’t have any freezer frost in your drink. It’s also the water you drink from the refrigerator tap as well. Same thing, just liquid not frozen. Dissolved air and dissolved minerals cause the white cube as it freezes from the outside-in, concentrating to the center.17 Jan 2020

            https://bittershub.wordpress.com/2020/01/17/ice-cube-confidential-why-the-science-of-clean-clear-ice-matters-to-beverages-and-your-health/#:~:text=Also%2C%20quick%2Drinse%20your%20ice,in%2C%20concentrating%20to%20the%20center.

          21. The ice that is used to make up everything in Sweden’s Ice Hotel (where I have visited) is sourced from a nearby stream at certain times of the year when there is little dissolved oxygen present to cloud it with bubbles, it is as crystal-clear as glass. After ‘harvesting’ the blocks of ice, it is stored in a massive freezer until work can commence the following winter on rebuilding the hotel (work that is necessary every year for obvious reasons)

            They have also invented a sprayable frozen ice called ‘snice’ (compound of ‘snow’ and ‘ice’) which they emit from a spray gun to use as a ‘mortar’ to fuse the blocks together.

            The place is beyond astonishing. Our guide, a local female, informed everyone — in English — why the place has numerous fire alarms fixed to the ice walls everywhere you go. She said (failing to hide her amused cynicism), “Well, you are in Sweden.”

          22. The ice that is used to make up everything in Sweden’s Ice Hotel (where I have visited) is sourced from a nearby stream at certain times of the year when there is little dissolved oxygen present to cloud it with bubbles, it is as crystal-clear as glass. After ‘harvesting’ the blocks of ice, it is stored in a massive freezer until work can commence the following winter on rebuilding the hotel (work that is necessary every year for obvious reasons)

            They have also invented a sprayable frozen ice called ‘snice’ (compound of ‘snow’ and ‘ice’) which they emit from a spray gun to use as a ‘mortar’ to fuse the blocks together.

            The place is beyond astonishing. Our guide, a local female, informed everyone — in English — why the place has numerous fire alarms fixed to the ice walls everywhere you go. She said (failing to hide her amused cynicism), “Well, you are in Sweden.”

          25. Ice for drinks has to be made from heavily filtered water. Especially in countries where purification isn’t a guarantee. If the ice has been hanging around for any time in the ice machine/ bucket it, even for an hour, it will take on odours.

            For the most part it isn’t an issue but if you want perfection……………

            I don’t tend to wash my ice but in a Bar where i am paying £20 for a small drink i expect the best.

      2. He is an airline employee , it is cheaper to pay more than to install windshield washers.

  90. Mr Sunak replied: “Growth is returning, energy bills are coming down, wages are rising, and we’ve been able to do all these things.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/04/24/rishi-sunak-tax-cuts-on-table-despite-rise-defence-spending/

    Does he hear himself? He had absolutely no effect on any of those things. None. In fact, they’ve changed in spite of his arrogance. Energy is expensive because of his demented green agenda. Wages are rising only in the public sector. Growth is nowhere to be seen. Everyone is broke and struggling as everything costs more than it needs to because of energy taxes, green taxes and his moronic, spiteful, stupid corporation tax hike.

    He needs a slap, then another, and another until he learns that he is a gormless moron who is only useful as a dart board.

    2. And the new raised state pensions are being taxed because they are just over the threshold , which hasn’t been amended .

      There are families with good jobs that have to rely on foodbanks here in our village , cost of heating , what a chilly Springtime this is , cost of fuel to work has gone up , rate rises , basics are just a joke ..

      Some of the population are doing well, but people like builders , farmers , anyone who works for themself , and you know what , electricians have to pay a heck of a whack to keep up to date with their new editions and more up to date licences.

      How can private builders plan ahead and work to a schedule , yet huge housing estates are rising up on what were good fields growing crops .

      Shock absorber and internal bit on my car have come loose , pick the car up tomorrow . The car had developed a heck of a rattle .

      Yet all we hear on the news is nonsense .

      There seems to be so many issues that are not addressed , new A+E’s are full to capacity , yet there are not enough hospital beds on the main wards .

      Sore throats , ear problems even blood pressure , etc are now being referred to chemists shops where they can access our data and prescribe !!!

      Our local little chemist shop is under so much pressure , they dispense to the village and surrounding areas , and accessing prescribed tablets etc can be difficult , shortages of medication , and the monthly allocations for long term problems must be a nightmare .

      Britain is cursed , the sea is so calm , more boat people and areas that were rural now accommodating you know whats .

      My rant is nearly over , Ash dieback is decimating woodlands , the sound of chainsaws , the plight of those old noble trees is now decided , and areas of countryside are marked .. sawdust , piles of logs , those wood burners will benefit , but Ash dieback is caused by a virus which is spreading more quickly than ever before .

      Ash dieback is caused by a vascular wilt fungus. This is a fungus that affects the water transport system of trees, which is just beneath the bark. The fungus (formally known as Chalara fraxinea) produces small white mushroom-like growths (Hymenoscyphus pseudofraxineus) between July and October.

      Ash dieback will kill up to 80% of ash trees across the UK. At a cost of billions, the effects will be staggering. It will change the landscape forever and threaten many species which rely on ash.

      Ash dieback (Hymenoscyphus fraxineus) is a fungus which originated in Asia. It doesn’t cause much damage on its native hosts of the Manchurian ash (Fraxinus mandshurica) and the Chinese ash (Fraxinus chinensis) in its native range. However, its introduction to Europe about 30 years ago has devastated the European ash (Fraxinus excelsior) because our native ash species did not evolve with the fungus and this means it has no natural defence against it.

      https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/trees-woods-and-wildlife/tree-pests-and-diseases/key-tree-pests-and-diseases/ash-dieback/

      1. Do not trust the Woodland Trust. They are up to their necks in the great deception (and they know bugger all about trees – they have planted thousands of the things with enormous public subsidy and few have survived, as they are planted in unsuitable places and not looked after properly).

  92. Tesla to speed up rollout of cheaper electric cars
    Carmaker reported its biggest drop in sales in more than a decade
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/04/23/tesla-to-speed-up-roll-out-of-cheaper-electric-cars/

    BTL

    They say that Betamax was better than VHS but Betamax failed because nobody wanted that system.
    I wonder what the current going price is for a Betamax video recorder?

    What the buying public actually want will determine whether or not a product will succeed commercially.

    It’s hard to sell a cheetah to someone who wants a puppy.

    2. The far superior Betamax system, by Sony, failed because Philips, Toshiba and JVC (who had invented the system) had already put their faith (and cash) into the inferior VHS system, so they ganged together (with all other manufacturers) because they weren’t going to let Sony spoil their party.

      Sony wanted a monopoly on their Betamax system but JVC licensed VHS to other companies. This insularity by Sony lost them the battle.

      1. Exactly. But I wonder how much you would now have to pay for a second hand Betamax video recorder.

        1. About the same for a betamax machine as for a second hand VHS recorder. 8 track cassette players are also going at a premium.

          Best investment though would be a nice covid panic period respirator. About 25,000 were bought at a cost of $22,500 each and they are now being sold as scrap metal for $6. Who needs the free market when government can spend our money so wisely.

          1. To my surprise, the compact cassette has made a small comeback. If 8-track cassettes were also to be revived I would proverbially eat my hat.

          2. Have you ever tried fixing a video cassette which has got chewed up? I once had to do this to a recording of the Scottish Play and having cut out a bit and joining the two cut ends together with Scotch tape we went from Tomorrow straight to the last syllable of recorded time cutting out the creeping petty pace from day to day.

          3. Not a video cassette but I have joined together the snapped ends of a Musicassette using sticky tape, trying hard not to leave the sticky side exposed to the playback head and rollers. However, unlike videotape, Musicassette tape is played in both directions. Unless one is lucky enough to have a breakage during a silent passage, that means damaged playback on both ‘sides’.

          5. I bought a refurbished Pioneer cassette-player, a couple of years back, on eBay. I still have a big collection of audio cassettes from 50 years ago and I now play them in my workshop.

      3. Ahem
        Phillips manufactured their own “2000” system that was superior to both VHS and Betamax
        It was the film availability that won the battle

        1. Ahem,

          Indeed, Philips did bring out the V2000 system, but they later joined up with JVC and others with VHS.

          In 1972, Philips launched the world’s first home video cassette recorder, in the UK, the N1500. Its relatively bulky video cassettes could record 30 minutes or 45 minutes. Later one-hour tapes were also offered. As the competition came from Sony’s Betamax and the VHS group of manufacturers, Philips introduced the N1700 system which allowed double-length recording. For the first time, a 2-hour movie could fit onto one video cassette. In 1977, the company unveiled a special promotional film for this system in the UK, featuring comedy writer and presenter Denis Norden. The concept was quickly copied by the Japanese makers, whose tapes were significantly cheaper. Philips made one last attempt at a new standard for video recorders with the Video 2000 system, with tapes that could be used on both sides and had 8 hours of total recording time. As Philips only sold its systems on the PAL standard and in Europe, and the Japanese makers sold globally, the scale advantages of the Japanese proved insurmountable and Philips withdrew the V2000 system and joined the VHS Coalition.

      4. Ah, I got them the wrong way round in my previous post. I thought it was Sony who brought out the VHS. I know the rival made it very easy and cheap to get a VHS machine.

    4. Why not do what they did with printers, they virtually gave away the printer but the inks cost a fortune.
      They could do the same with electric cars, charge a fortune for the electric, tyres and road use

      1. They then had to make it more and more difficult for people to make compatible ink cartridges

    5. Here are the reasons why. the push for EVs has failed:

      https://youtu.be/kFViJnPghFQ?si=EjP_-khopDMWB8tX

      I bought my EV. as an emergemcy 12 volt power supply of up to 64kWh. It’s fused at 20 amps.

      I don’t use it as a replacement for my traded in diesel because the latter wasn’t going anywhere and couldn’t store off-peak energy at 11p/kWh.

    6. Don’t worry, Trudeau to the rescue. Numbnuts is blathering on about a big new Honda EV manufacturing plant in Ontario. We will now have VW, Stellantis and Honda making vehicles that don’t work in acanadian winter.

      Well it is a change from his road tour to defend his latest budget that has been receiving solidly negative reviews from the finance sector.

    7. I had a Betamax recorder. Quality was certainly better than VHS. They were, however, more expensive and Sony flooded the market with lots of cheap VHS machines.

      1. I doubt that it was Sony who flooded the market with VHS. Betamax was developed by Sony.

        Scrolling down, I see Grizz has told thevwhole story.

  93. The stabber at the Welsh school would appear to be a female pupil.

    Every day I become more convinced that society is rotten to the core.

    1. Black or Muslim? Actually I’ve thought about this and realised that the girl must be black – they’re the ones who have the stabbiest background whereas Muslims tend to explode.

      1. We shall know if they tell us nothing about ethnicity or religion.. If she is white and from a Christian background we shall be told soon enough.

      2. No idea.
        A quote from the DM

        Police are not looking for anyone else in relation to the emergency situation and warned people who had shared footage on social media to remove it ‘to avoid contempt of court and distressing those affected’.

          2. I looked up ethnicity in the area and there are next to no Muslims or blacks so if it turns out to be one of them it will be pretty damning.

  94. There is an article up at the Speccie about competitive dog owners.
    Not sheep dog competitions, or villiage competitions, I think crufts .
    A cousin I don’t have any contact with used to be a judge at crufts and show Huskies and later pomeranian puff balls. I always feel sorry for such dogs who are puffed poked at and have to be examined on stands and do clever tricks. I’m sure most of them preferred to run around in fields – but I do think certain dogs look better with their tails docked such as miniature schnauzers .

    1. Docking is an issue likely to divide people. Where do you stop? Some dogs have their ears cut right back.
      *I know there are good reasons for docking some dogs.

      My Chihuahua, Dolly is the daughter of a previous Crufts winner. He won best puppy. Kennel name is Veejim Deltaforce at Tarradona.

      3. Working dogs with thin tails are much better off having them docked so that they don’t get damaged.

        1. The JR slightly longer dock is supposed to be so that you can grab it reliably and pull it from burrows etc..

        2. I agree. But this is where the division comes in……….some people think dogs shouldn’t work.

          The usual suspects…..

          3. True. Spartie doesn’t think he should work.
            Supervising others is a different matter.

      4. My hairdresser (where I went this morning) has a new puppy – Tink – a bulldog/rottie cross – she’s very sweet and snuggled up with Nellie in the same bed. He’s always taken his dogs to work with him.

    3. Our boxer, Rumpole, had a docked tail. At the time all breeders of boxers had the tails docked.

  95. No10 says asylum returns deal with France ‘is not possible’ because the EU
    would force Britain to accept a quota of the bloc’s refugees in exchange.     D Fail

    We are still being controlled by the EUSSR Gauleiters. They should be told to **** off and keep their noses out of British politics.

  96. A plain Birdie Three!

    Wordle 1,040 3/6
    🟨🟨⬜🟩⬜
    🟩⬜🟨🟩🟨
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    2. Well done. Par for me.
      Wordle 1,040 4/6

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

  97. That’s me gone – early – for today. Miserable, cold, wet, horrible day. Again. More follows tomorrow.

    About to watch a Zoom lecture from Rome on the proposal to have an “Archaeological Park” on the Via Appia. Lot of opposition!

    So have a spiffing evening sticking pins in your least favourite politicians (or their images, if they are too far away).

    A demain.

    1. It would take all evening merely to decide which is my least favourite politician. There are so many candidates.

    3. Even sunny here most of the day. Very sunny at the moment and almost too warm in the dining room which faces due West.

      1. It’s been warm and sunny here all day! I’ve been in the garden with the twins, planting seeds and bulbs, playing swingball and football, hanging out washing and the boys had buckets of water to wash their trikes! It’s 20.5c in our bedroom with the Veluxes! Can’t believe it’s Scotland!

    1. If politicians vote for this, all of their family members between the ages of 18 and 64 should be sent to the front line.

  100. It appears that the girl stabber is in year 9 and that she used a butterfly knife.

    These are illegal in the UK.

    1. My money is on the perp being from a “community” that has at least one “protected characteristic” according to the laws that now prevail. I would go for one beginning with P and ending with Y, although any of the others also seem not unlikely. I think if it were someone from the indigenous rural community we would have been told by now.

    2. Is she black? Very few black people in Ammanford, but knife crime is very much their MO. Could be a gyppo I suppose but they tend not to go to school. Ropers tend to explode rather than stab and are almost always male.

      1. I think you’ll find that that demographic is increasing exponentially throughout the valleys, Squire. Maybe hasn’t reached the official figures yet.

      2. When they do “stab” they tend to “stab in the neck” – a euphemism for the attempted removal of a human head.

        1. A disturbing piece of information that the sometimes excellent sometimes not Sir Trevor Phillips provided was that the Black gang stabbings tended to be UP into the nethers (the bottom) – ie the stabbees (young teenagers for the most part, little kids) then needed stomas and colostomy bags

          I think the Pikeys (Gyppos) just drive in the knife wherever is easiest.

    3. The charge of attempted murder is interesting as pre planning is required although carrying a knife to school does show intent. I suspect that the staff members injured whilst breaking up the fight were not the actual targets of the perp.

      1. I didn’t see that, has the child (?? age of criminal responsibility,) been charged with attempted murder?
        If so, it might suggest that the perpetrator and victim have already had run-ins and the police/authorities were aware of problems.

        1. Year 9 is apparently equivalent to what we used to call the Fourth Form – ie 14 ish

          1. Since I posted I started looking into it more.
            10 is the minimum.
            The Bulger case must be the benchmark I suppose.

        2. From the DT… “Armed officers arrested a teenage girl on suspicion of attempted murder and took her away for questioning, while a blade was recovered from the scene.”

          1. Thank you.
            I’ve been watching the updates over this evening.
            The more I read, the more I suspect that my prejudices will be correct.

    4. I’ve just looked them up. They are indeed illegal and it is easy to see why, having much in common with a flick knife. But where does a 14 girl get hold of such a thing? Girls in their early teens do not generally have any interest in weapons and she would be unable to buy it either in a shop or online. I suspect she has an older brother.

        1. The website I saw was a government one which stated it was illegal to own, give away, buy or possess one.

    1. I think that is the point. There will be no one left to argue about the theft of their country. One of the most fecund agricultural land on the continent.

      1. The whole point of the great reset is to reduce the population, so a war is a bit of a short cut, I suppose

        1. Hmmm, let’s see. War, Famine, Conquest, Death. Pestilence makes five. Something is nagging on the periphery of consciousness here.

          1. Those were the five Household Cavalry horses that made a bid for it in London today.

          2. I thought this too, Bill. The black beauty and the white horse pouring blood were certainly evocative. As a life-long horsey person I do find it odd that there were five of these highly trained (and selected to be bombproof) creatures dumping their highly skilled riders at any one time. I wonder what really did cause this (I don’t believe the official version).

          3. A shower of roof materials dropping into a bucket next to them would make even the bombproof shy.

          5. That was what I read in the Metro (a statement from the CO of the Household Cavalry put out on X apparently).

          6. I still do find it odd that no less than five supposedly competent riders were “unseated” – and the obvious terror of the horses themselves (all that slamming into traffic, with which they will have been familiarised). We’re not talking young thoroughbreds here. Mind you, I suppose even horses have changed their tune these days, if we are to judge by their disgraceful aversion to rainbow crossings.

          7. Not all the riders were unseated, apparently. Some managed to calm their mounts. I don’t know how many were in the detachment, but horses exercise regularly through London; it keeps them fit and accustoms them to the traffic. They might have been fairly new remounts or inexperienced new riders.

          8. Five had removed their riders and ran amok. I would have imagined that novice horses would be ridden by decent riders and novice riders would be accompanied by old stagers. But maybe that is not the way these days.

          13. Conquest or Glory (Zelus) according to one source. Death, Famine and War were the others.

        1. A question. Why would one of the richest men in the world buy up most of the arable land in America not to grow food…………. The same man who also is not a medic or doctor in any way have so much influence in lab grown meat and Pharmacy………….

          1. Apparently his new selling point is that he is manufacturing “the only food that does not require photosynthesis”, whilst at the same time spraying the troposphere with sunlight deflecting chemicals. This is a monster, and he must be stopped.

          3. Quite – although I would say transforms or digests instead of the awful “removes”

          4. In the great scheme of things Gates, much as I hate him, isn’t as large a landholder in the USA as is presented.

          5. It is a deeper question. The land acquired by Bill Gates contained deep acquirers and water is in great demand in places such as California.

            Wherever you see conflict in the world the motivation is always a desire to either acquire on the cheap or else steal resources such as rare minerals, gold, silver, uranium, coal, gas, oil or last but far from least, water.

            The Africans in Niger have just booted Macron out of their country for the very reason that the French have been plundering their resources for a century and more and keeping the proceeds for themselves. This explains why little Macron is so angry with Russia who have sensibly stepped in to heal matters.

          6. There are quite a few African countries going through similar. The UK even has troops there. The Russians are supporting the locals and we and America are doing the same shit as we are doing in Ukraine. The Americans also have many Labs in those countries doing experiments that would be illegal on their home soil.

          7. I am quite sure that you are correct.

            Unfortunately the Americans are now so heavily invested in thousands of overseas adventures that nothing is left for the actual Americans. Hence the disorders at the borders, the inability to recruit young men into the military, the neglect of all of those things which would otherwise have soothed American sympathies.

            America is presently lost. The fraudulent regime of the dolt Biden has in reality disrupted just about every single sensible international and diplomatic connection that ever existed.

            The man Biden is an absolute corrupt fool and was always a charlatan and dangerous fool. God help us all should this “tattered coat upon a stick” get re-elected.

          8. I don’t normally give my support to billionaires. Why would they need it !
            I have learned over the years though that when someone is demonised i now look closer. Hilary Clinton says if Trump is elected it would be the death of democracy.
            That statement alone sounds alarm bells.

    2. So long as it’s not Brit or US troops in the body bags, the carnage will continue.

  102. I have just heard that liebour intend to go full USA when they get into power
    The fragrant Annalise Dodd is going to help small businesses thrive, but they have to be run by black or other ethnic minorities, white small businesses owners need not apply.
    Isn’t that racist and divisive?

    3. Labour in power especially with a huge majority will go full totalitarian net zero, close down free speech on the internet, get rid of hard currency, close down farming, inflict euthanasia on the elderly, impose mandatory vaccination, kick people out of their houses to make way for immigrants with large families, ban meat and diary products in favour of an insect based diet, ban private ownership of cars etc. basically fall into line with all the mad 2030 agenda that is being imposed all over the West

      But worst of all

      They will rejoin the EU

      3. I don’t think it will be quite that bad because, right from the off, there will be no money. Normally when Labour take over they inherit a reasonably sound economic picture but not this time!

      4. The elephant in the room is Ukraine. It is highly likely that we are witnessing the final gasp and death throes of the failing country formerly labelled Ukraine.

        Withdrawal of consular support for Ukrainian citizens in exile in the EU and UK is the death rattle of the Zelensky regime. You may expect Ukrainians in Europe and the UK to now seek refugee status in those countries rather than return to Ukraine and to be dressed up as soldiers and sent to the front line to be shot.

        The last gasps of the Zelensky regime are imminent and when Ukraine is defeated the collective western powers will have more than enough to think about than peddling their farcical Green New Deal. The situation will stop them in their tracks and those with any survival instincts will fuck off to the Bahamas with their ill gotten gains.

        I would of course rather that these clowns can already see the writing on the wall but then an education at Eton, Winchester and Oxford is evidently not all that it is cracked up to be, producing mere political pygmies and morons.

    5. https://www.takimag.com/article/why-small-businesses-hate-bidenomics/

      The latest Small Business Optimism Index from the National Federation of Independent Business could hardly be more depressing. It finds that the men and women who run our 33 million small businesses and hire more than half of American workers are in a somber mood. The survey finds that small-business confidence has reached its lowest point in 12 years.

      Amazingly, small company CEOs are even more fearful of the future today than during the COVID-19 pandemic, when most businesses were shuttered. The confidence numbers have decreased every year President Joe Biden has been in office. Here are the numbers, according to NFIB:

      March 2020 – 102.0
      March 2021 – 98.2
      March 2022 – 93.2
      March 2023 – 90.1
      March 2024 – 88.5

      Why are small-business owners feeling so dour even at a time when the GDP is growing? I asked that question to David Malpass, former World Bank president and U.S. Treasury undersecretary under former President Donald Trump. Malpass has observed all over the world what factors make small businesses successful and put their owners in a frame of mind to expand.

      “Neither Biden nor nearly any of his top officials have ever started or even worked for a small or medium-sized business.”
      “Smaller businesses are being crowded out by complex regulations and direct competition from the $35 trillion national debt,” Malpass concludes. “The Treasury borrowed $23 trillion in 2023 alone, much of it in the expensive short maturities needed by smaller businesses for working capital.”

      The NFIB data is merely a survey, and sometimes business owners and investors act differently than they say they will. But there is more real data on how small companies are expanding.

      The latest Federal Reserve data through March shows that commercial and industrial loans, a key resource for small business dynamism, fell over 5% in the last year in nominal terms, down over 8% after adjusting for inflation. Yikes. Without investment, it’s hard for businesses to grow.

      I asked Alfredo Ortiz, president and CEO of the Job Creators Network, which represents tens of thousands of small-business owners, what he sees in terms of the business climate.

      “Our members feel as though Biden has declared war on small businesses,” Ortiz says. He also mentioned they’re worried that a second Biden term would mean higher taxes, more regulations and a continuation of high prices.

      Meanwhile, the Biden administration seems frustrated and even indignant that more businesses aren’t supporting the White House program. But remember: neither Biden nor nearly any of his top officials have ever started or even worked for a small or medium-sized business. They don’t have any feel for how their own policies impact the nation’s employers.

      As an example, the Biden administration wants to put in serious jeopardy the franchise model where thousands of small entrepreneurs can start their own McDonald’s, Arby’s or retail store representing well-known and trusted brands. They want the parent companies to be on alert that they can be sued for violations of labor laws, EPA edicts or federal “diversity” requirements, or can be on the hook for lawsuits against their franchises.

      This could be the death of thousands of small, independent-owned franchises. The Labor Department wants small businesses to allow unions to run their stores.

      What is so sinister here is that the franchise model for opening new businesses is an almost entirely unique American model of business growth. Entrepreneurial immigrants can come into the country, pool money as a family, then own and operate a Popeyes or a clothing store.

      Biden also wants to nearly double the capital gains tax, which will scare away angel investors in small startup companies. If owners of a small or medium-sized business put the profits back into the company so it can expand, Biden would tax the “unrealized capital gains” on that investment.

      Meanwhile, Biden is happy to give a big head start in the form of billions of dollars of grants and low-interest loans for large corporations such as General Motors and chipmaker Intel so they can expand their operations on the taxpayers’ dime. These corporate welfare programs tilt the playing field in favor of the sharks, not the small-business minnows.

      It’s no wonder that men and women who put their life savings on the line to build their businesses from scratch feel they’re under assault. They are being taxed and regulated to death while too often inflation eats away their modest profits.

      No one in Washington is going to be “forgiving” their loans when the business conditions get rough and high interest rates make it tough to get emergency loans. There is no safety net — and no “too big to fail” aid package — for the heroes of our economy, who have become the punching bag of big government.

    6. Well, when BLM ran riot they didn’t discriminate. They burned down black businesses too and murdered black business owners. They destroy indiscriminately.

    7. All whites have white privilege (according to the left) and are therefore the new bourgeoisie regardless of (or lack of) status, education and bank account; blacks are the new proletariat in international Marxist terms and will be supported come what may by the Labour party. If you are white expect no assistance from Labour.

      1. I love Bob Dylan’s songs, but this one has been turned around 180°.

        “If you’re white black, you might as well not show up on the street
        Unless you want to draw the heat”

      2. All slave descendants from the West Indies have what I call slave privilege. If their enslaved ancestors had been dragged across the Sahara, they wouldn’t be here, as the men were all castrated. If their ancestors had never been enslaved, they would have been born in some third-world dump in Africa.
        As their ancestors were taken across the Atlantic, their immediate forbears were able to settle in the UK, thus offering them the opportunity to prosper as they would never have done in the West Indies.

        That is their Slave Privilege! Bear that in mind, Mr Lammy.

  103. I have just heard that liebour intend to go full USA when they get into power
    The fragrant Annalise Dodd is going to help small businesses thrive, but they have to be run by black or other ethnic minorities, white small businesses owners need not apply.
    Isn’t that racist and divisive?

  104. I have just heard that liebour intend to go full USA when they get into power
    The fragrant Annalise Dodd is going to help small businesses thrive, but they have to be run by black or other ethnic minorities, white small businesses owners need not apply.
    Isn’t that racist and divisive?

  105. It is said that the kingdom and London will fall if the five Household Cavalry horses left Hyde Park Barracks, Charles II is thought to have been the first to insist that the Hyde Park horses be protected after he was warned that the crown and the London itself would fall if they left.

    1. Seven of them ran amok today. The grey looked to be badly injured after running into a bus and a cab.

      1. A close up showed a gouged out injury on the left side of his chest, above his left leg, about a quarter to half an inch deep, poor thing, about the size of the palm of a hand. It seems the horses were spooked by construction work going on in the vicinity, building material suddenly being dropped from a height. All involved are doing all right, riders and horses.

        1. I didn’t look for a close up – injuries to the chest or near the leg can be horrendous and have fatal consequences.

          1. I didn’t look for it either – a close-up shot was presented on screen in the middle of the article I was reading.

  106. It is said that the kingdom and London will fall if the five Household Cavalry horses left Hyde Park Barracks, Charles II is thought to have been the first to insist that the Hyde Park horses be protected after he was warned that the crown and the London itself would fall if they left.

  107. Evening, all. Been a nice, sunny day here; I’ve managed to get some work done in the garden and some necessary printing done. I’m on the tower machine now (the printer won’t talk to the laptop), so although my typing on a proper keyboard will be faster, the machine itself is as slow as can be.

    The Rwanda bill is mere lip service to what the people want to try to fool them into believing that the government intends to do something about the problem it’s caused. I see Ca-moron of Greenswill has said that it’s impossible to get a deal about the immigrants with France. He’ll do everything to scotch any solution to punish us for not being taken in by his expensive propaganda leaflet and voting the wrong way.

    1. Yes, he’s been slagging us off in some tinpot dictatorship with few vowels on this subject, according to the DT.

    2. Work on the laptop, save it to the cloud (or email it to yourself if you don’t use cloud), open and print from the tower.

    3. I cleaned out our big desktop the other day and realised 4 cores weren’t enough. Found one of those energy efficient 24 core jobbies and ordered a quarter gig of ram. The wifi is also drawing ire, so that’s getting an upgrade directly into the bedrooms.

      Apparently the Warqueen’s laptop is ‘slow’ so she wants a new one too.

  109. Tommy Robinson and the truth about two-tier policing (Comment from today’s Coffee House)
    Stanley
    26 minutes ago edited
    There is two tier policing, you have admitted it it your article.

    You say there’s too many terrorist hate marchers for the police to deal with. Mob rule some would call it, and quite correctly.

    Why then are the small groups of privileged children in Just Stop Oil allowed to get away with mass disruption Scot free, with judges letting them off when the get to court. Yes I know some have had a slap on the wrist as well.

    No Ian, I’m sorry if you’re white working class “Far Right” the Met can muster the heavies to sort you out. Remember the miners strikes, and Poll Tax protests? Numbers didn’t matter then.
    Two tier policing in action.

    1. And never forget:
      the probability is that the judges are holding court over their friends children and their friends’ friends children.
      It would be interesting to see a diagram showing families, schools, universities and the judges.

      I would put very good money on there being significant interconnectivity.

      1. Precisely, the judges, magistrates and police are all Freemasons. They look after each other and sod the rest of us. They are brothers (and apparently sisters too).

      2. Thank goodness they didn’t bolt in Cardiff.
        I’m sure they did more than 20 mph.

  111. From the DT…
    And yet, today, in a small Committee room in the House of Lords, extraordinarily intrusive bank spying powers will be debated as they hurtle towards the statue book, smuggled in at the last minute to a 288 page Data Bill.

    As one crossbencher put it, “It feels as if this draconian clause is being hidden in the depths of a Bill that the Government perhaps felt would not generate much interest.”

    It certainly does, because this financial snoopers’ charter will affect every single one of us. For the people most at risk of surveillance, intrusion and false suspicion at the hands of algorithmic monitoring, this new system could make the Horizon scandal look like a mere cautionary tale for a far more widespread disaster of injustice to come.

    Fraudulent uses of taxpayers’ money must be dealt with – and the Government already has strong statutory powers to investigate the bank accounts of benefit fraud suspects – but now it is creating a nation of suspects and seeking powers to force banks, building societies and other organisations to repeatedly scan all of our accounts according to secret criteria. Banks must hand over unlimited types of information to the Department for Work and Pensions.

    Whilst every single one of us will have our accounts scanned, the targets are those linked to receipt of a benefit: including the 10 million Brits in receipt of the state pension, the 3 million people with long-term illness or disabilities, and the hundreds of thousands of carers making great sacrifices to look after elderly and disabled family members. These are the people who would most likely be the victims of being falsely accused, just as happened in the Post Office Scandal.

    The breathtaking new surveillance regime, which is not restricted to serious crime or even crime at all, will also target landlords who receive tenants’ housing benefits, and parents who are appointed to receive their disabled children’s benefits. All of their personal accounts, joint accounts – even the accounts of charities, trusts or companies they are named on – will be in the crosshairs of this unprecedented system of financial snooping.

    Perhaps the Government will attempt to window-dress these draconian powers with “safeguards” as they come under greater fire. But nothing would change the fact that, for the first time, the gateway to mass bank spying is being recklessly flung open with no regard for individual privacy.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/24/britain-has-learned-nothing-from-the-post-office-scandal/

    2. Like every other scheme before, it’s only the small fry that will ever get caught.

    3. I must admit that I’ve assumed for at least 30 years that my bank account was snooped on.

      2. #Metoo. Hence those cheeky little purchases from OPENLY far-right sources. Fuck’emall

    4. The banks probably sell your information to Google already, what does it matter that a malevolent government wants to just take your money.

      If it really worked for the common good, there could be a lot of fraudulent payments identified.

      1. The authorities have never been interested in reclaiming benefits claimed fraudulently. It was always considered too costly. As we have seen with the massive covid fraud payments. They can’t be bothered. Not their money after all.

        The only reason for these new rules is to give them the ability to snoop on everyone, not just crooks.

  112. Who said that Canada does not pull its weight with defense spending!

    The military have just received Sig Sauer P320 pistols that are replacing the obsolete WW2 era Browning Hi-Power pistols that have been standard issue until now.

    There might be no ammunition, guns, tanks, fighter jets, bombers, navy ships or anything else but boy wonder has finally allowed this massive investment in the military to go through.

    1. Both 9mm cartridge.
      The SIG is plastic, the Browning metal, but likely worn out.
      Me, I like Walther. much better gun.

        1. Never got on with Glock. I don’t like the wee trigger in the trigger safety, and there’s no way to decock it when you loaded it – without shooting it, of course. My Walther P99 has a decocking button on the slide. This is safer IMHO as it doesn’t rely only on you not being a klutz and putting your finger on to the trigger before you’re ready to fire, yet you can take the first shot double-action with the Walther. Doesn’t keep all the springs under tension, either.

  113. Good evening all! I’ve come so late to the feast tonight that I’m just not getting through all the conversation. I’m still inordinately interested in the Guardshorses escape and the tweenager stabbing in the valleys

    1. The stabbing girl was Year 9 so aged 13-14. The knife was apparently a butterfly knife which is an illegal knife in the UK. How did she come by it? I am assuming an older brother since girls in their early teens are hardly known for their interest in weapons.

      1. I suppose there is the possibility that she was not a she as we would know it. Isn’t that a far-Eastern style of knife?

        1. It is a ‘cool’ knife that is used for flashing around in your hand and doing tricks with. Have a look at a YouTube video if you’re interested. You can buy them legally if they are blunt, but they can then be sharpened.

          3. I suppose in this day and age it could be anything, Squire. But the teacher appears to have been the primary target. maybe she showed an offensive cartoon? Who knows?

          8. No photos, it was a transcript of pupils observing what was happening. I can’t recall it verbatim but in my memory I have it as being an attack on another girl. It’ll be in the newspapers soon I imagine.

          9. Yes, we’ll eventually find out something approximating to what actually happened and why.

          10. My eldest sister took my dad’s cherished jewelled tie-pin to her Secondary Girls’ School to show off. The tie pin was stolen by a more muscular girl and when my sister sought to retrieve it had a fight which resulted in her head being thrust down the toilet and flushed.

            The tie-pin was never retrieved. No knives were involved.

          12. My two unfortunate late sisters had the misfortune to be sent to Twerton Secondary School for Girls in Bath.

            My two equally unfortunate brothers, still with us, one older, the other younger, were unfortunate enough to be sent to the local Secondary School for Boys at Westhill in Bath.

            Remarkably, when I think back, I managed to scrape through the 11plus with an interview and attended the City of Bath Technical School and then went on to study for my first degree at the University of Sheffield and postgraduate Diploma at University College London.

            I enjoyed a long career in Architecture and achieved some nice stuff which future historians will eventually identify as my own work years after I have departed this world. This is the way it has always been and I would cite Nicholas Hawksmoor as a prime example.

          13. My eldest sister took my dad’s cherished jewelled tie-pin to her Secondary Girls’ School to show off. The tie pin was stolen by a more muscular girl and when my sister sought to retrieve it had a fight which resulted in her head being thrust down the toilet and flushed.

            The tie-pin was never retrieved. No knives were involved.

          15. Why would anyone take a knife to school if not to stab someone with it? Why would anyone take a knife to school would be the normal question, but not in this day and age.

          16. Oh quite. She definitely went to school intent on a bit of casual stabbing. As one does!

          17. Oh quite. She definitely went to school intent on a bit of casual stabbing. As one does!

          18. When I was at school I suspect every boy there had a penknife. Some were bigger than others.
            My “sharpener” of choice was one of my grandfather’s old cut throat razors.

          19. At prep school I had a sheath knife. Cubs and scouts often had them and no-one thought anything of it. Somehow we knew that we mustn’t stab people with them.

          22. There’s a world of difference between a penknife (I have several because I use them to sharpen my drawing pencils) and an attack weapon. When I was a child scouts used to have a sheath knife on their belt. I don’t recall mass stabbing attacks. Mind you, I don’t recall any effniks either.

          23. True
            My scout sheath knife was a stiletto, extremely sharp on both sides of the blade.
            One of our troop had his father’s Commando knife, now that really was a weapon!
            But nowhere near as sharp as my cut throat..

          24. I had one of those as well. I still have my Great Grandfather’s sword stick, the point of which is extremely sharp to this day. It would certainly go straight through a person with very little pressure at all.

          25. We have one of those here too, Squire. Also a genuine Samurai sword. I have hidden both.

          26. I have only dared take my sword stick out in public once. A respectable looking gentleman of my age is unlikely to be searched for an offensive weapon, but should I be unlucky I would be in a lot of trouble. It stays at home.

          27. People – especially teenage boys – being what they are, I have hidden these in places where no-one will find them. Even I can’t remember where 🙂 Our house is nowhere near as grand as yours (nor so well-maintained), but it sprawls and has plenty of no-go areas, which do prove useful

          28. A few years ago I bought a pump action shotgun, just for fun. My son thought it was wonderful as the noise it makes when you cycle the action sounds so menacing. Matt black too. Cheap as chips and useful on vermin.

          29. I’ve often fantasised about being threatened by a yob with a knife, or even a machete, while walking with such a weapon.

            I used to fence épée to a reasonable standard and would have enjoyed removing a couple of eyeballs.

          30. A schoolmate, Paul Romang, was wealthy enough to give a display of fencing with epee in our school hall. It seemed to me a couple of fat blokes dressed as ‘mummies’ lunging at each other in wired up suits attached to traffic lights and comprising bandages. The face guards were interesting too.

            Romang I believe went on to become a coach of an England fencing team. At school we called him the ‘human dustbin’ for the reason that he elected to return the dishes but ate every scrap and morsel left by the table before doing so.

          31. A schoolmate, Paul Romang, was wealthy enough to give a display of fencing with epee in our school hall. It seemed to me a couple of fat blokes dressed as ‘mummies’ lunging at each other in wired up suits attached to traffic lights and comprising bandages. The face guards were interesting too.

            Romang I believe went on to become a coach of an England fencing team. At school we called him the ‘human dustbin’ for the reason that he elected to return the dishes but ate every scrap and morsel left by the table before doing so.

          33. So do you take your epee with you in order to be always prepared for such an eventuality?

          34. My father had a ceremonial Gurkha Kukri given to him by a Nepalese student but it was stolen when the house was burgled.

          36. I inherited some very sharp cut throat razors. The sharpest and most attractive made in Solingen (Germany’s Sheffield).

            The others a set of seven marked by each day in the week.

            I am hesitant to sell on eBay given the current climate and lawlessness in the UK And the uselessness of our Police in enforcing the Law.

          37. Not only boys. My parents gave me a very pretty little penknife when I was about 11, with two blades either end, one bigger than the other and a mother of pearl handle for “sharpening things”! I still have it 🙂

          39. I had a rather nice little tartan one (Royal Stuart) that my grandmother gave me but I don’t know what happened to it. Now I have a miniature Swiss Army knife on my key ring but have to remember not to take it with me on a plane.

          40. I managed to give myself a nasty cut as a teenager when a Swiss Army knife closed unexpectedly. Since then I have preferred lock knives. These too are now illegal in a public place unless you can show you have a legitimate reason for carrying them. I quite often carry one walking in the countryside as they can be useful if I need to get through a gate which has been tied up with baler twine.

          41. We had sheath knives attached to our belts in the Boy Scouts, sharp blades with leather ring handles and used principally for carving initials in the bark of forest trees.

            How times have changed. I should have kept my late father’s ‘Cookery’ or Kukri which he obtained in Burma during WWII, presumably from a beloved Gurkha.

      2. “A balisong, also known as a butterfly knife, fan knife or Batangas knife, is a type of folding pocketknife that originated in the Philippines.”

        [Wiki]

        PS: I would describe it as a cleverly disguised lethal weapon.

        1. Batangas knife, is a type of folding pocketknife that originated in the Philippines.

    2. Brilliant. I’m not quite up there with his memories, but I can tell a tale or two, just at a personal level.

  115. Here’s an email sent round by Tommy Robinson;

    “THE POLICE DON’T CARE

    “Yesterday was a great victory over the Police State. You helped me to achieve that Tom by helping me pay for the elite ‘Kings Counsel’ barrister. It would have been very different outcome had I not had such expert legal representation!

    “Despite this historic victory, I have a nightmare situation still with the security of my family and my children. As I said on Sunday, four car loads of Muslim extremists visited a whole bunch of addresses relating to my family. They used drones to spy on my family and collect footage. This was a targeted, highly-organised surveillance operation directed at my family. Why would they be doing this, and on such a scale?
    The answer is obvious, to plan a violent attack.

    “It’s reckless to turn up mob handed with evil intentions to specific addresses without doing some form of due diligence beforehand. That’s what I am certain this Muslim gang was doing. I have contacted counter-terrorism police multiple times now, as well as Bedfordshire Police. They literally do not care!

    They haven’t checked out the registration plates of the vehicles (which we have), taken any statements, nothing. They do not give a damn if a terror attack is launched on me or my family. Please spare a moment to watch the video below, which is one of the phone calls I made to counter-terrorism police. When you listen to it, you will see how harrowing the situation is.

    “This is the brick wall of police indifference I am up against. Imagine tomorrow if the Islamist network behind this murdered my entire family? Would the police be held accountable? Of course they wouldn’t.
    Due to this dangerous situation, I am in the process of moving my entire family out of all the addresses that were targeted and getting them to safety.

    “If you can help me do this, I would really appreciate it. I need to do this urgently, as an attack could happen at any moment. I just need some help to be able to afford it, especially after having to pay for my legal defence at court yesterday. I you can help me, click here:
    Yours sincerely
    Tommy Robinson”

    1. It’s a disgrace that anyone should be in that position.
      Perhaps he and Salman Rushdie should link up.

          2. They are both threatened with death by Muslim fanatics and even though they might have differing opinions and beliefs they have a common enemy.

            The theory of my enemy’s enemy is my friend.

          5. I think I must be even more stupid than I previously suspected, sos. I can see they are both in it together, my point was that Rushdie is such an establishment snob that he would rather die than align himself with the pariah TR, because TR is just not, y’know, one of us.

            So what am I missing?

          1. I agree. But TR is poisonous to the leftist litteratti – hence a legit target for cruel and unusual punishment by the plod and tptb. My guess (ho ho) is that it is sheer social snobbery.

      1. I don’t really trust him either but if you are burgled or someone pinches your car off your drive they issue a crime number and not much else. Even though there are cameras everywhere including ANPR they say they haven’t the resources. In TR’s case i think they would be even less bothered.

      2. A court forced him to make his address public. Now ask yourself it what he describes is something Islamic fanatics would or would not do if they knew where he lived. And note that the police have not denied ignoring all this.

  116. My thoughts too but the local demographics from the 2021 census indicate very few ethnics in the locality.

  118. According to the latest Telegraph report.

    ‘A Year 9 girl had allegedly produced a butterfly knife and had used it to stab a fellow pupil in the stomach and stab two female members of staff.’

      1. But clear intent. She went to school with a knife for a reason. 14 year old girls don’t carry knives as a matter of course. They carry iPhones.

        1. Maybe we”ll see. Maybe we won’t though, because all sorts of things get hidden behind the cannot be reported because of this, that and the other, don;t they

          1. “I am aware that there is footage of the incident currently circulating on social media and would ask that this is removed to avoid contempt of court and distress to those affected.

            Which basically means “Please remove all independent views of this incident”

    2. Surely, if she’s really Year 9, calculated from being 5, she’s actually 4 years-old?

    3. Where did she get the knife from? Not the sort of knife you have in your kitchen drawer.

  119. That’s it for me, another day is done so, I wish you a goodnight and may God bless you all, Gentlefolk. Bis morgen früh.

    2. The loaf looks delicious. And very attractive. Well done!

      France would be proud of all those connections to one telegraph pole!

      1. Telephone, internet and power all through overhead cables. I’m surprised that the water doesn’t.

    3. One knife. One loaf. One block of strong cheddar. One jar of pickles. Backs into space under the stairs. Locks door. Turns out light.

      1. It is tempting, Phizz, but I try to watch my waistline. 2 slices of toast for breakfast and no lunch (maybe a nibble or two) until dinner.
        Post 5.30 pm it’s wine o’clock and who cares?

        1. I only eat once a day. Normally between noon and 1pm. Sometimes late night nibbles while reading.
          Bread, cheese and wine. Has all the nutrients the body needs. Tell me i’m wrong !

          Spectacular looking loaf. I’m a firm believer that you eat with your eyes first and that loaf is saying eat me.

          1. It’s as good as it looks, which is why I ration myself. G’night, got to help put a fishing buddy’s boat back in the water early doors.

    4. A big thick crust of that bread, covered thickly in pork dripping (and the gelatinous black bits) and salt.

      Utter bliss!

    1. If the parents want this it’s fine by us.

      However we think that the parents are unwise in approving of this.

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