Wednesday 24 November: Peppa Pig as the key to Boris Johnson’s vision for Britain’s future

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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671 thoughts on “Wednesday 24 November: Peppa Pig as the key to Boris Johnson’s vision for Britain’s future”

  4. Morning all

    Peppa Pig as the key to Boris Johnson’s vision for Britain’s future

    SIR – Boris Johnson’s embarrassing speech to the Confederation of British Industry is an example of his putting style before substance.

    It is clear that he and the Government are failing to “build back better”. He relies upon a cartoon pig to be his moral guide and inspiration, rather than decisively addressing real-world issues. This may have been his Miliband moment.

    Chris Sykes

    Thorner, West Yorkshire

    SIR – Quite frankly after this speech something needs to be done. I don’t think we can wait for the Ides of March.

    Roger Cousins

    Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire

    SIR – The Prime Minister’s speech to the CBI was an opportunity to defend his economic policy, which many dismiss as irresponsible “borrow, tax and spend”.

    Instead, we had bad jokes, motor car noises, fumbling delivery and a shocking lack of serious content. Tory MPs now have a duty to end a premiership which is descending into tragic farce.

    Francis Bown

    London E3

    SIR – Boris Johnson made an exceptionally good speech. It is a pity the BBC in its report on the 20-minute address concentrated on the 20 seconds he got his notes muddled up.

    Patrick Evershed

    London SW1

    SIR – The Prime Minister is right to point out that Peppa Pig, like Adele, Elton John and Harry Potter, is a success story for Britain. Our interest in industry doesn’t always have to be about cars and wind farms.

    Roger Foord

    Chorleywood, Hertfordshire

    SIR – Does the Prime Minister think that Peppa Pig is more important to the economy than real-life pig farmers, who are facing problems such as a shortage of workers in agriculture and meat processing due to Covid and Brexit?

    Bill Jolly

    Lancaster

    SIR – Boris Johnson compared himself to Moses in his “pig’s ear” of a speech. Moses parted the Red Sea, while the PM cannot even part his own hair.

    Jonathan Mann

    Gunnislake, Cornwall

    SIR – A PM who is human – fantastic. There’s hope for ordinary people yet.

    Chris Penney

    Wellington, Somerset

    SIR – My top tip for Boris Johnson is simple. Number your script pages.

    William Freeman

    East Molesey, Surrey

    SIR – The PM needs a good PA. I suggest Suzy Sheep. She can do anything.

    Lynda Davies

    Olney, Buckinghamshire

    1. ‘Morning, Epi. Another frustrated BTL poster who probably speaks for many:

      Carolyn Bates
      1 HR AGO
      If it has just been Peppa Pig, that would have been embarrassing enough, but when the Prime Minister also brought Moses into the speech, it was a step too far as business leaders looked on in disbelief. Had they seen his speech at Conference and COP26, they probably would have been prepared for the shambolic episode, but even so, it was a step too far even for a Prime Minister who has clearly lost the plot.
      My concern is that it has taken MPs this long to get their letters of no confidence in to Graham Brady and the 1922 Committee. Where on earth have they been for the last ten months?
      The cavalier manner in which Johnson has treated the Office he represents has been shocking as he has gone from one disastrous decision to the next and yet he has been allowed to continue until the country is now facing so many crises it is difficult to see how they can be dealt with in a satisfactory manner that will help the long-suffering British public get through the winter.
      Then when you look at immigration, social care, tax burdens, NI hikes and the cowardice that has been shown in dealing with Article 16 and the EU, that is bad enough, but when you add to that his authoritarian delight in regard to the Covid crisis and vaccine passports and mandates, then I fear it will only be a very short step before we have mandatory vaccination as in Austria.
      To those MPs who have yet to join their colleagues in getting their letters of no confidence into the 1922 Committee I would say, what are you waiting for?

  6. SIR – Jane Shilling (Comment, November 22) need not worry about her vintage Christmas pudding.

    We once ate one that was at least three years old. It tasted like fruit drowned in alcohol – heaven.

    An alternative, enjoyed in the hot sun of an Antipodean Christmas, is made by putting the alcohol-soaked fruit into a vanilla ice cream mix.

    Pamela Wheeler

    Shrewsbury

    1. Sounds good!
      Yesterday we reclaimed our Christmas pudding from the back of the pantry (aka bathroom cupboard) where it has been resting since October 2020. As Christmas was cancelled last year and none of the family came home, we did not open the big pudding. This year should be different. They may all be here. The pudding was examined and then poked with a knitting needle and refreshed with a liberal application of Watson’s Trawler Rum.

  7. Boris Johnson is not unwell and has not lost his grip, says No 10. 24 November 2021.

    Boris Johnson is physically well and has a full grasp on the prime ministership, Downing Street has said following his rambling speech to business leaders on Monday in which he lost his place for about 20 seconds.

    People who watched the speech Johnson gave to the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) conference were impressed with it, his spokesman argued, adding that cabinet ministers could speak freely if they had any concerns.

    The speech at the Port of Tyne, which included a vocal impression of a revving car engine and a section on the lessons for capitalism and officialdom presented by the children’s cartoon character Peppa Pig, prompted worries from a number of Tory MPs.

    Yes, physically but he’s losing it mentally. I wrote a post on November 16 after he made a speech at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet where he showed signs of delusions and incoherence.

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/nov/23/boris-johnson-is-not-unwell-and-has-not-lost-his-grip-says-no-10

    2. As full a grasp on the prime ministership as a pair of Marigolds slathered in Vaseline would enable.

      He is either losing the plot due to the pressure/stress of what he is being told to do or he is faking it so as to be removed from office before the proverbial hits the fan.

  8. News for our Scottish residents:

    “The Scottish Daily Record reports, “We have learned the NHS mobile phone app which presents the personal medical information in the form of a QR Code shares data with companies including Amazon, Microsoft, ServiceNow, Royal Mail and an AI facial recognition firm.”

    Users of the vaccine passport app were not informed their data would be shared, according to the report……

    2. If true, the Scottish government has knowingly and deliberately driven a coach and horses through the Data Protection Act. I don’t suppose that they will face trial, jointly and severally, and be sentenced to a few months in prison? No, I suppose not, as that is not how it works in a totalitarian fascist State where the police and the Justiciary are in the pocket of the ruling clique.

      1. Ironically, I recently read that the same Scottish Government has barred Police Scotland from using facial recognition software to track known criminals.

      1. When James Purnell reformed the BBC, so that it reflected the tastes of those under 35, rather than the crusty generation who are only fit to be imprisoned in care homes, who would gladly care for their life savings, this was just Phase One.

        Now that the PM has done to the CBI what CBBC has done to BBC4, may we all expect the level of public information to be set by Peppa Pig?

        Remember that today’s six-year-olds may be running the country one day.

        1. Sorry, Jeremy.

          By the time that today’s six year olds are adults, the Chinese will be running the country.

    3. YES I heard all about it from my eldest granddaughter endlessly some 15 years ago and my daughter cursed it endlessly

    5. In words

      ‘In the grand scheme of things I don’t think people will remember that speech.’

      – Jeremy Hunt speaking about Boris Johnson’s bizarre address to the CBI yesterday

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

      Oh yes we will

      1. Jeremy Hunt I’m certain I’ve got his surname correct 😎 HOPES people will not remember that speech.

    1. ‘ … is going to make a Thomas
      the Tank Engine speech.’

      Which role will he be portraying?
      … ‘The Fat Controller’?

      Good morning, Minty.

  16. Good morning all. After yesterday’s 2°, it’s even less cold this morning with a whole 4°C in the yard.Looks overcast and rather dull otherwise.

  19. Brits are the Stuffed Crust as the Government makes a meal of asylum

    Record numbers of migrants are arriving on our shores and being rewarded with free pizza – it’s clear that the rules are far too soft

    ALLISON PEARSON
    23 November 2021 • 7:00pm

    Sometimes, it’s the small details that reveal the scale of the problem. Last week, it was revealed that a Dover branch of Domino’s was forced to close after Border Force officers ordered 700 pizzas to feed migrants who had crossed the Channel. On November 10, some 703 migrants landed on the Kent coast. The next day, there were a record 1,185 arrivals. Total cost of pizza: £7,000. That was on top of 3,000 chicken shish kebabs ordered from takeaway places across the county. Then, oh joy, up trundled two burger vans, apparently ordered by Border Force after migrants complained that the kebabs had been “cold”. Will you scream or shall I? I know, let’s do a group scream at the ingratitude and iniquity of it all.

    A note on another £1,789 pizza order in October said: “Purchased by Clandestine Operational Response Team for use at Tug Haven, where we have migrants arriving on small boats.” Back in August 2020, Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, made Dan O’Mahoney the “Clandestine Channel Threat Commander”. The title sounded imposing, promisingly military. We were told Mr O’Mahoney was responsible for “making the Channel route unviable for small boat crossings” including stronger enforcement measures and “adopting interceptions at sea and the direct return of boats”. Terrific. As far as I can remember, there was no mention of authorising the purchase of several hundred Domino’s Stuffed Crusts.

    When news of the pizza purchase was leaked, a source said that, in future, Border Force would be making payments for migrants’ food in amounts of £500 and under. Because those would not have to be disclosed. Presumably, it has occurred to the Clandestine Channel Threat Commander that the public would not be amused to learn how much of their money is being lavished on fast food while veterans who sleep on our streets have to rely on soup kitchens for sustenance and, every day now, anxious people are calling their energy provider to check that their horrendous gas bill is correct. (It is.) There will be no Domino’s this winter for those families. They can’t afford it because they’re not asylum seekers; they just live here.

    Almost 25,000 economic migrants, or “asylum seekers”, have made that Channel crossing so far this year. And how many have been sent back? Five. Not 500, not 50. Five. It beggars belief.

    The broken asylum system costs more than £1 billion a year. The latest Home Office figures show that even before the recent arrivals, 125,000 cases were being considered. Of those, 5,900 were awaiting the outcome of a never-ending legal appeal (what Ms Patel calls “the merry-go-round”), with around 39,500 waiting to be deported. In 2013, some 47,000 failed asylum seekers and foreign criminals were deported. This dropped to a low of 8,000 last year. Mind you, that looks positively competent compared to 2021’s grand total of five. With the asylum process in meltdown and migrants being schooled to game the system, I think it’s becoming pretty clear that it is the British people who are, in a very real sense, the Stuffed Crust.

    What is astonishing, apart from the pizza bill, is that this serious threat to national security is presented as if it were merely a political embarrassment or an issue of migrant welfare. The Labour Party, which should be defending the interests of the poor who bear the brunt of immigration in the shape of overcrowded housing, schools and hospitals, is about as much use as a chocolate Santa in a smelting furnace. The Government may be all at sea (sadly not in a gunboat), but at least its stated aim is to deter economic migrants. Labour says it wants to create “safe routes”, that is to actually facilitate the traffic from France. This week, Shadow Home Secretary, Nick Ungoed-Thomas, accused Priti Patel of “dangerous incompetence” saying, “We’ve seen a 292 pc increase in people risking their lives in small boats crossing the Channel.”

    Seriously, that’s what Labour thinks is the danger here. Migrants risking their lives? What about the potential risk to British men, women and children posed by young guys from Iraq, Syria and Iran who destroy their documents deliberately to make it harder to challenge their status as refugees? Young guys who have probably seen that advert posted on Instagram by people-smugglers promising that if they convert to Christianity when they get to the UK they can win asylum “in the shortest possible time with the lowest possible cost”. They can even expect assistance, as The Telegraph has revealed, from gullible clergymen who christen wolves when they should be ministering to their flock.

    All I can say is the Home Office must have breathed a huge sigh of relief last week when a failed asylum seeker and Christian convert by the name of Emad Al Swealmeen blew himself up. Iraqi-born Swealmeen, who had his claim rejected in 2014 but still managed to be in the country seven years later, was just minutes away from causing carnage, either at the Remembrance Day service at Liverpool Cathedral or at a maternity hospital. It was possibly only a malfunctioning detonator, not border security or the asylum system, which kept scores of new mothers and babies safe. We should, I think, have been far more upset about that near-miss. Outraged, in fact, that a would-be mass murderer pulled the wool over the eyes of officials while spending money the UK so generously gave him on a cake-decorating course. Did they teach him to make bombe Alaska?

    It keeps on happening. In 2017, a bomb on a District Line train at Parsons Green injured 30 people. The bomber was Ahmed Hassan, an Iraqi asylum seeker who arrived in the UK in 2015 claiming to be under 18. At a 2016 immigration interview, Hassan told officials he had been in contact with Islamic State and was trained to kill. Despite this slightly worrying admission, while his asylum application was being processed, Hassan was placed in foster care.

    In 2020, three men enjoying a picnic in a park in Reading were stabbed to death by Khairi Saadallah, an asylum seeker from Libya who had avoided deportation from the UK five times using £107,000 in legal aid to do so. The Reading jihadist was a Christian convert – of course he was. Faking a faith is standard practice to persuade officials that you’ve “assimilated”.

    Need I go on? The safety of the public, which should be the Government’s priority, is put at risk every single day with thousands of unknowns scrambling onto the Kent coast. Undoubtedly, many will be decent people seeking a better life for themselves. But it only needs one member of Isis to cause devastation.

    The public seems to understand this better than their politicians. A new poll shows 77 per cent of Conservative voters think the UK’s approach to managing migrants crossing the Channel is too soft.

    Australia dealt with a similar crisis by processing migrant applications offshore in Papua New Guinea. It was a controversial, but highly effective deterrent. If the UK flew people who come ashore in Kent to the Falkland Islands, there would be no free pizza and you can bet we would soon see a drop in young men claiming they were refugees.

    The only way to stop the boats coming, according to Kevin Saunders, former chief immigration officer for the UK Border Force, is “to take all the people who have arrived in the UK to an offshore processing centre.” Asked why it had to be offshore, Mr Saunders said: “People will still come here because they know we are not going to be able to remove them from the United Kingdom when their asylum claim fails.”

    I believe that Ms Patel gets this. But the Home Secretary is hamstrung by politically correct civil servants and by a kind-hearted Prime Minister who lacks the stomach for a clash with a left-leaning media and a human-rights industry which will accuse him of “scapegoating” people seeking refuge from violence.

    Funny how little interest the human-rights industry has in the rights of humans here in the UK to not be bombed or stabbed by failed asylum seekers who should have been deported long ago. It is the very kindness and generosity of our system which makes us so vulnerable. During the chaotic retreat by the Western allies from Afhganistan, the British people were eager to take in interpreters and their families and other Afghans who were in danger because they had served our forces. Those loyal friends are now making their home here and the welcome has been warm. But we are not such fools as to offer safe haven to those who despise our way of life.

    Act now to protect your own people, Prime Minister. What do you say to those who think the Clandestine Operational Response Team should go on handing out pizza at public expense? Dough balls.

    1. A very good BTL response to AP’s excellent article:

      Paul Cornish
      11 HRS AGO
      Why do politicians only think in absolutes? Most of the Labour Party deem it impossible that any “refugee” could be lying about their origins and intentions. It’s almost as if they are possessed of a purity that us evil British white people simply cannot recognise.
      Fifty thousand Ugandan Asians were accepted by a Tory government when they were expelled by the odious Idi Amin. Total number of terrorist atrocities committed since-none.
      Thousands of Jews were taken as refugees after the Second World War after suffering unbelievably. Total numbers of terrorist atrocities committed since- none.
      Both of these groups realised how lucky they were to come to a civilised country so that they could live in peace and be free. They have integrated completely and contributed greatly. They are most welcome. There are other examples of groups that have been welcomed and assimilated perfectly well. Sikhs, Hindus etc.
      However, things have changed. Most of the present so called refugees come from Muslim countries and many actually despise our traditions, laws and culture. They have no intention of integrating and expect to be allowed to follow their own Islamic laws and traditions, often vile in nature. Most live in enclaves and have nothing in common with the indigenous population.
      Furthermore, a great many have malign intentions and openly despise British people and our laws, traditions and culture. However, they choose to stay. Total number of terrorist atrocities committed- dozens. There is no reason to suppose that this will change.
      It is beyond ridiculous to criticise people who are against this uncontrollable tidal wave of illegal immigration. This is not Islamophobia. It is common sense and rational to fear these people.

      1. It can also be said that these terrorists, murderers and rapisrts are never, ever turned over to the authorities by those who know them for what they are. Their families, friends, associates, and neighbours harbour and protect them. They all follow one guide, the q’ran.

        2. Notable that not one Muslim association has condemned the attempted bombing of a maternity hospital.

          NOT EVEN THE ASSOCIATION OF MUSLIM POLICE OFFICERS

    2. A very good BTL response to AP’s excellent article:

      Paul Cornish
      11 HRS AGO
      Why do politicians only think in absolutes? Most of the Labour Party deem it impossible that any “refugee” could be lying about their origins and intentions. It’s almost as if they are possessed of a purity that us evil British white people simply cannot recognise.
      Fifty thousand Ugandan Asians were accepted by a Tory government when they were expelled by the odious Idi Amin. Total number of terrorist atrocities committed since-none.
      Thousands of Jews were taken as refugees after the Second World War after suffering unbelievably. Total numbers of terrorist atrocities committed since- none.
      Both of these groups realised how lucky they were to come to a civilised country so that they could live in peace and be free. They have integrated completely and contributed greatly. They are most welcome. There are other examples of groups that have been welcomed and assimilated perfectly well. Sikhs, Hindus etc.
      However, things have changed. Most of the present so called refugees come from Muslim countries and many actually despise our traditions, laws and culture. They have no intention of integrating and expect to be allowed to follow their own Islamic laws and traditions, often vile in nature. Most live in enclaves and have nothing in common with the indigenous population.
      Furthermore, a great many have malign intentions and openly despise British people and our laws, traditions and culture. However, they choose to stay. Total number of terrorist atrocities committed- dozens. There is no reason to suppose that this will change.
      It is beyond ridiculous to criticise people who are against this uncontrollable tidal wave of illegal immigration. This is not Islamophobia. It is common sense and rational to fear these people.

    3. I have a high opinion of Allison Pearson’s views but she is missing the point here. The migrant’s are Elite policy, (since Labour would be no different) there is no intention of curtailing let alone stopping the flow! It is the most obvious manifestation of the hatred that they hold for the indigenous population!

    4. “Undoubtedly, many will be decent people seeking a better life for themselves.”. So what? Even if true that makes them economic migrants. Illegal economic migrants. Any burglar or shoplifter, bank robber, fraudster or jewellery shop robber could say the same thing, “I was just trying to make a better life for myself”.
      “...the British people were eager to take in interpreters and their families and other Afghans who were in danger because they had served our forces.”
      Oh really? Which British people? That should read “…the British people were eager to take in interpreters and their families and other Afghans who were in danger because they had betrayed their country.”. If you are going to be accurate. These people are all muslims from a savage uncivilised hell-hole, demonstrably untrustworthy and cut from the same cloth as those named.

    5. Please do not confuse Boris’s weakness for a kind heart. He’s not being very kind to struggling Britons, and I doubt the victim of the next terrorist attack by an “asylum-seeker” will be grateful for Boris’s “kindness.”

    1. If Boris Johnson is removed from office will she leave him immediately and move in with Squalid Jawdrop or will she choose Nadim Sahawi?

    1. This news was widely attacked on a twitter feed yesterday. No surprise at that happening.

    2. The last thing that the politicians want is to annoy Bill Gates and find an effective way of treating the disease.

      Everybody – both vaccinated gene-therapied and unvaccinated un gene-therapied must be able to see by now that the programme of jabbing everybody has proved to be a complete failure.

  22. Amaretto Liqueur

    Three ladies all have separate boyfriends named Leroy. One evening, while sharing a few drinks at the bar, one of the ladies suggests, “Let’s name our Leroys after a soda pop, because I’m tired of getting my Leroy mixed up with your Leroy, and her Leroy mixed up with your Leroy.”

    The other two ladies agree.

    The first lady speaks out, “Okay then, I’m gonna name my Leroy 7-Up because he has 7 inches and it’s always up!”

    The three ladies yuk it up at the first lady’s clever nickname.

    Then, the second lady says, “I’m gonna name my Leroy Mountain Dew because he can mount and do me any day of the week!”

    Again, the three ladies laugh out loud.

    The third lady then says, “I’m gonna name my Leroy Amaretto.”

    The other two ladies shout in unison, “Amaretto?! Ain’t that some kinda fancy liquor?”

    The third lady bursts out, “You got THAT right!”

    1. Good morning Tom

      In the version I heard (very many years ago!) the man was Winston, the girl was Liza and the drink was Cointreau!

  23. I posted this is response to a question on Quora just now. It is actually on topic for once, considering the PM’s vision for British culture is through an animated pig with an annoying voice:

    “How can a person become more connected with their heritage in adulthood?
    ————-
    I am indigenous, so my heritage is primarily in the place I was born and raised and still live.
    It is constantly being belittled by settler cultures, who say that it embodies “privilege” and therefore its institutions must be invaded and changed to reflect settler values. The indigenous people are called “racists” and made to feel like criminals.

    One example is morris dancing, which has long been associated with indigenous culture in my country, even though it has had a strange journey from ancient Islamic dancing in North Africa, through Spanish Catholicism, and then adapted in English towns and villages to the local robust style that makes them uniquely English.

    One tradition, from the fruit-growing counties of Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Shropshire, was an adaptation for workers there. A simpler style of dancing in kit decorated with strips of rag, they would go out on Boxing Day to demand money from passers-by through collection boxes. Often people would pay them to go away. There was little work for them after Christmas and the money was spent, so a top-up to see out the winter was very necessary. In order to disguise themselves from future employers, they would take soot from the chimneys and cover their faces with it.

    This tradition of dancing was revived in the 1980s and became popular with a modern generation, since the dances were easier to master, and it encouraged men and women to dance together in the same kit – something that appeals to the people of today. However, there are some sides that insist on maintaining the old tradition, out of respect for the old fruit-pickers, by blacking their faces whilst dancing.

    Last year, a notice came from the Joint Morris Organisation, which oversees the Morris Ring, the Morris Federation and Open Morris, stating that anyone dancing with their faces blacked would be thrown out of the movement and their sides denied public liability insurance. The reasoning was that it was imperative that there should be no disrespect for Black Lives Matter, an aggressive movement that gained dominance over our institutions, and which honours a violent American gangster who was murdered by an overzealous U.S. cop. The blacking of faces by English morris dancers is considered disrespectful, and the rights of these settlers take precedence over indigenous rights to their culture. I notice that one old traditionalist side, Silurian from Ledbury, no longer dances at the Three Kings beer festival after it was revived after Lockdown.

    To answer the question, sometimes it is necessary to make a stand for one’s own culture when under attack by those who wish to suppress it. It cuts both ways, but it should be done in a spirit of joy, rather than of malice.”

          1. The glorious leader, Mark Drakeford, has probably banned pit-head baths as a ‘non-essential’ facility on convid emergency rules.

  25. 341986+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    The hard core tory (ino) party before Country, must have a tory (ino) in number ten at ANY costs member / voters are certainly counting the costs now.

    Will their next move include purchase of a violin to accompany the destruction taking place.

    When a nation has to look to lab/lib as an alternative, that nation is in deep, deep sh!te.

    Wednesday 24 November: Peppa Pig as the key to Boris Johnson’s vision for Britain’s future

  26. There are plenty of reasons to loathe the current pope. Here’s an obituary of a splendid Englishman which some NoTTLers may find amusing and worthwhile despite his being my kinsman. Our mothers were cousins and the Festings were family friends of the Haggerstons for yonks before they converted to Rome.. Matthew was a couple of years behind me in St Cuthbert’s House at Ampleforth. From the time he took his ‘O’ levels it was obvious that he was going to become a very able historian – he knew so much more about the medieval papacy, warts an’ all, that he could embarrass any of the monks at the drop of a hat.

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

    Fra’ Matthew Festing, Grand Master of the Order of Malta who was toppled in a dispute over the place in the modern world of the ancient charitable order – obituary

    Festing, a good cook with a gift for making people laugh, was only the third Englishman to lead the order in its 950 years of existence

    By Telegraph Obituaries
    22 November 2021 • 8:42pm

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/obituaries/2021/11/22/TELEMMGLPICT000116502648_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqhQelLrTDvVmMF_2MRiRVvUidrhLnGaHHhR6FJ9N0-H0.jpeg?imwidth=680
    Pope Francis greets the Grand Master of the Sovereign Order of Malta, Fra’ Matthew Festing, during a private audience at the Vatican, June 2013 CREDIT: REUTERS/Maurizio Brambatti

    Fra’ Matthew Festing, who has died aged 71, was the 79th Prince and Grand Master of the Sovereign Military and Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes, and of Malta.

    The lay-led Order of Malta functions as a sovereign state and maintains formal diplomatic relations with 110 countries; established in the far-off days of the Crusades to protect and defend pilgrims to the Holy Land in particular, and the indigent and sick more generally, it now maintains a global humanitarian presence in the service of what it calls “our Lords the Poor”.

    Historically recruited from the noble Catholic families in Burke’s Peerage and the Almanach de Gotha (dispensations are occasionally granted to other worthy candidates) the order’s most senior professed members continue to live under vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Festing was only the third Englishman to lead the order in its 950 years of existence; Andrew Bertie was his immediate predecessor, and Hugh de Revel was elected in 1258. Festing would have served in office until death, had a bizarre turn of events not culminated in his resignation in 2017.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/obituaries/2021/11/22/TELEMMGLPICT000278542565_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqqVzuuqpFlyLIwiB6NTmJwfSVWeZ_vEN7c6bHu2jJnT8.jpeg?imwidth=680
    Festing: kind, avuncular and funny CREDIT: Antonello NUSCA/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images

    When he discovered that the Grand Chancellor of the order, Baron Albrecht von Boeselager, had overseen an aid project that had quietly distributed forbidden contraceptives, Festing dismissed him from his Sovereign Council, the order’s governing body. Boeselager, who denied knowing about the condom distribution scheme, appealed to Pope Francis, who instead asked Festing himself to resign, and Boeselager was reinstated shortly afterwards.

    Meanwhile, the Cardinal Protector of the order, Raymond Burke, who supported Festing in the controversy, was also removed from his role. Cardinal Angelo Becciu was appointed instead as the Pope’s Special Delegate to the order, with particular responsibility for its spiritual and moral life; he resigned last year and is presently being tried at the Vatican on charges including fraud and embezzlement.

    Such intrusions into the affairs of another sovereign body were regarded in some quarters as an over-reach of the papal prerogative. Observers wondered – some with approval and some with dismay – whether Pope Francis’s actions were a manifestation of some of the priorities of his papacy.

    It seemed that battle lines had been drawn over whether the Order of Malta should continue its many international charitable activities as an ancient institution founded on prayer and good works – retaining, alongside its recognised effectiveness, its distinctive ceremonies complete with robes, uniforms and swords – or instead be run as a more professionalised body in the style of a modern NGO.

    Festing, who had up to that point had defended robustly his order’s right to conduct its affairs independently of the Holy See, duly complied with the Pope’s request as a matter of religious obedience, and resigned, having led the Order of Malta for nearly a decade.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/obituaries/2021/11/22/TELEMMGLPICT000000866911_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqqVzuuqpFlyLIwiB6NTmJwfSVWeZ_vEN7c6bHu2jJnT8.jpeg?imwidth=680
    Pope Benedict XVI greeting the newly elected Grand Master of the Knights of Malta, Matthew Festing, in 2008 CREDIT: AFP PHOTO/OBSERVATORE ROMANO/getty

    Born in Northumberland on November 30 1949, Robert Matthew Festing was the youngest son of Field Marshal Sir Francis Festing, a convert to Catholicism whose last appointment was as Chief of the Imperial General Staff. Matthew’s mother, Mary Riddell, was from an old recusant family; one of his brothers is the portrait painter Andrew Festing.

    After following his father to Egypt and Singapore, Matthew Festing went to Ampleforth then read history at St John’s College, Cambridge, before being commissioned into the Grenadier Guards.

    Service in Northern Ireland and Belize followed, after which Festing became a professional art expert and Sotheby’s representative.

    He joined the Order of Malta in 1977, taking solemn vows in 1991; when in 1993 the order’s English presence was formally restored after 450 years’ abeyance, he was appointed Grand Prior. With grit and distinction, he led the order’s humanitarian efforts in the war-torn Balkans; on safer ground, he regularly served alongside the ranks of volunteers supporting the sick and disabled on pilgrimage to Lourdes.

    His expert knowledge of the work of the Order of Malta was prodigious; when Andrew Bertie died in 2008, Festing was swiftly elected to succeed him. The new Grand Master bade farewell to his auction house on becoming a reigning sovereign; it cannot have happened often, even at Sotheby’s.

    Moving into his new headquarters on the Via Condotti in Rome, between the Corso and the Spanish Steps, he remained the Englishman abroad: although his work took him all over the globe, he detested the unrelenting Italian heat. The coolness of the order’s summer palace on the Aventine Hill was only relative, and he continued to return to Northumberland for quiet recreation when he could.

    Bertie had embraced wholeheartedly the elegant if somewhat lonely austerity of the Palazzo Malta, with its genteel formality and meals served by footmen in livery. Despite Festing’s own keen sense of tradition, if there were no diplomatic guests to be entertained at dinner-time he was often to be found eating heartily in one of the local trattorie. He was a good cook himself, and his enormous frame and booming patrician voice sat comfortably with a kind and avuncular bonhomie. He had an immense capacity for making people laugh and for friendship.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/obituaries/2021/11/22/TELEMMGLPICT000278542563_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqqVzuuqpFlyLIwiB6NTmJwfSVWeZ_vEN7c6bHu2jJnT8.jpeg?imwidth=680
    Festing (2008): unfussy piety CREDIT: Antonello NUSCA/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images

    At the Vatican, the Grand Master of the Order of Malta ranks with the cardinals – the office had acquired all the trappings and privileges of monarchy by the end of the 17th century – nevertheless Festing discharged his duties with quiet and unfussy piety. He wore his Catholicism like an old jumper, and drew particular spiritual nourishment from the old Latin Mass, which Pope Francis has also now restricted.

    At the same time he delighted in the order’s Ruritanian customs and its many historic quirks; as the head of the oldest institution on earth to have diplomatic relations with the Holy See, he invariably occupied seat A1 at ceremonies in St Peter’s Square, to the chagrin of some prelates who felt that the honour should be theirs.

    Festing held the rank of colonel in the Territorials, was a Deputy Lieutenant of Northumberland, and was appointed OBE in 1998.

    After his resignation, Festing retired quietly to his parents’ home in his beloved Northumberland. Although saddened by the situation, he remained an active member of his order. He was attending the solemn profession of one of his brethren in Malta (the first knight to attain the order’s highest grade there since its displacement from the island by Napoleon in 1798) when he was suddenly taken ill.

    At the invitation of the Maltese government he will be buried in the historic Grand Masters’ crypt at St John’s Co-Cathedral in Valletta. There his mortal remains will join those of 11 of his distant predecessors.

    Fra’ Matthew Festing, born November 30 1949, died November 12 2021

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

    Jeffrey Hobbs
    12 HRS AGO
    I served with Matthew Festing in the Territorials in Newcastle and Northumberland during the 1980s. He was a company commander in our battalion (6RRF). Matthew had a very jolly, ‘hail fellow well met’ personality, and he was quite a character. I do not recall him speaking of his faith, but he did tell us that fifteen members of his family had been killed in the First World War. One of them was was last seen leading his men toward the enemy positions, with a sword in one hand and an umbrella in the other.

    Derek Johnson
    21 HRS AGO
    Unsurprising that Francis played a role in his demise. His is the worst Papacy in centuries.

    Cibirachka Boo
    11 HRS AGO
    Reply to Derek Johnson
    Absolutely right. He got rid of some fine Catholic academicians, theologians and bioethicists on the Pontifical Academy of Life true to the Magisterium, replacing them with the likes of Protestant, pro-abortion Nigel Biggar. And he is woke.

    NJ Ratnieks
    1 DAY AGO
    Matthew Festing sounds like an interesting and loyal man throughout his life, who observed his faith. His experience also makes one wonder about that old verity: “Is the Pope, Catholic?” Well, we do know that he’s woke.

    1. I’m a bit stuck at present – I don’t like referring to bears toilet habits and as the Pope patently isn’t a Catholic I need a new phrase – my only other choice was a rather tasteless one!

    2. R.I.P Matthew Festing.

      By chance i was in Malta when he arrived. Though humble and pious they still all arrived in a huge fleet of black limousines. I even got to ride in the one Matthew Festing travelled in, the following day.

      My apartment was the penthouse in St Ursula overlooking the Nunnery orphanage. A great pleasure to be awoken at 6am by the singing Nuns.

      Security was low key and unobtrusive but it was interesting to see all these men in black suits and dark glasses standing casually on every street corner.

      They even came to the apartment but only to eyeball me. They didn’t do a search.

      My balcony overlooked the front doors of the orphanage and i got a birds eye view of him being welcomed in. The atmosphere was electric. You could sense the excitement.

      It was an honour and a pleasure to be there at such a time as the joy was contagious.

      God bless.

      1. What fun

        The Maltese have long been very Catholic, much more so that we English Catholics

        Matthew knew that his office necessarily made him Un Grande Fromage in Malta and that he had to play up to that.

        He adored Catholic history and all its ramifications. In private, he said lots of sacrilegious things about the papacy and ‘modern’ teachings. He was bloody funny in private.

        R.I.P.

  27. Grieving brother of Bobbi-Anne McLeod pays emotional tribute as police hunting missing 18-year-old find a body and arrest two men on suspicion of murder. 24. November 2021.

    The brother of an 18-year-old girl, believed to have been murdered after she vanished on her way to meet her boyfriend, has remembered his sister as ‘beautiful and talented’.

    Bobbi-Anne McLeod was reported missing on Saturday in Plymouth after she failed to meet with friends. Police arrested two men, aged 24 and 26, on suspicion of her murder.

    The obvious suspects spring to mind, which is inevitable since the Police so often use deception to avoid reality!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10235443/Police-hunting-missing-teenager-Bobbi-Anne-Mcleod-18-womans-body-arrest-two-men.html

    2. Yes, so strange that the Police are so willing to reveal the name of any white indigenous male who is suspected of a crime, yet now….?

    4. In Plymouth, given the literacy and appearance of the brother, and his lack of cognisance in posting on social media instead of going to the police indicates it was drug related, probably revenge on him.

  29. “Nasa Dart spacecraft: Mission to smack Dimorphos asteroid launches”

    “Nasa’s Dart mission wants to see how difficult it would be to stop a huge space rock from colliding with Earth

    The spacecraft will crash into an object called Dimorphos to see how much its speed and path can be altered.

    If a chunk of cosmic debris measuring a few hundred metres across were to collide with our planet, it could unleash continent-wide devastation.”
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-59327293
    What could possibly go wrong?

    1. Just checked: Dimorphos is a satellite of another asteroid, 65803 Didymos. Why impact a body that is gravitationally bound to another object?

      1. The ‘moon’ of the satellite, if shifted, will effect a shift in the larger one purely by gravity.

        1. I understand that. Two bodies could be affected initially and then what? Could chaos theory tell us something about this planned event? I repeat your question: what could possibly go wrong?

    2. Don’t like to menton it, but if a chunk of rock a metre wide were to hit the earth we’d be toast. If one a ‘few hundred metres’ wide were to, it’s goodbye Vienna… Minsk, Moscow, Madrid, New York, Brussells (yay!) , Tokyo, Brisbane, Pretoria and Buenos Aires.

    3. Don’tlike to menton it, but if a chunk of rock a metre wide were to hit the earth we’d be toast. If one a ‘few hundred metres’ wide were to, it’s goodbye Vienna… Minsk, Moscow, Madrid, New York, Brussells (yay!) , Tokyo, Brisbane, Pretoria and Buenos Aires.

      1. I once worked with a diminutive colleague who was nicknamed “Sinex”.

        [Sinex: the little squirt that gets right up your nose.]

    3. Ummm…. no. Surely he’s just not that stupid.

      I shall forward to a chum of mine who is an expert.

    1. And just to think, when I was a lad the dietary advice was, “cut out the bread and spuds”.

      They were not wrong.

    2. Usually folk over eat – and drink, and use drugs – because they’re literally consuming a psychological problem.

      I am not saying that everyone overweight is mentally ill as its NOT a mental illness, but over consumption *is*.

      My problem was going from an 120 kilo boxer to getting a job and stopping training… but not stopping the calorie intake until it was too late and I became a 198 kilos. Now I’m 150 and dieting, oddly by eating consistently and back to training. Prior to lock up I was 143 kilos. If I can get back to that I’ll be very happy.

  32. #CovidGreeniacClownWorld

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/38d3196bb0688f8cb89d3d420172ca4f45b0ba7e37ce327cc986b6a704fcea87.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e94975ce4806a5f78ef719feb5cf06aa8f4af6b4f8fafcc2d23d747893e24528.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f4b617c2bd88b93136cf4a493854dc6a3197e2ce1f01580459c5f744dab9cacc.jpg

    Oops there goes the front door again……

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/64149867098faa4defcc8d04c8902a3147d75017487527bd4df15bc565d746a6.png

    1. The meme that we all laughed over about Corbyn holding a wreath for the dead terrorist was pretty funny too, but that Conservative councillor got his front door knocked in.

    1. I do wonder if the authoritarian governments are actually looking at what they’re doing and ask themselves ‘is this right?’

      Worryingly, I think they’re saying yes. That terrifies me.

      1. Since an English school thought it was all right for unvaccinated children to wear a yellow badge ….

        1. What really gets me about this is are the teachers that ignorant of history, and if so then what use are they as teachers? Have educational standards sunk that low.

          2. I’m not concerned about “some folk”, I’m concerned about teachers who should be a cut or two above “some folk”. Teachers, if that is what they purport to be, have no excuse for being that historically ignorant.

          4. A young woman from the next village worked behind the bar at a local pub. She had left school at 16 with no qualifications, was married at 18 and had two children before she was 21. A regular customer of the pub, a head teacher at a nearby primary school, then employed her as a teaching assistant. After a few years, she decided to embark on an easy-access teaching course. She repeatedly failed the very easy numeracy and literacy tests, eventually scraping through on the final permitted attempt. On completion of the course, she secured a job teaching a Year 6 class. I suspect the majority of her class were more intelligent and knowledgeable than she was. On the grapevine, I heard that many parents were removing their children in order for them to be taught by a proper teacher.

          8. It is. She got on the course with neither GCSEs (maybe a low grade pass in a practical subject or two), nor A Levels. I don’t recall the details but it was through some sort of special access arrangement for unqualified and unsuitable.

      2. I often ask myself who will be the first prime minister or president to say:

        “The vaccination programme has been a complete disaster and has done nothing to stop the spread the disease. We must now concentrate on treating the disease with ivermectin and any other effective medicines Big Pharma have been so keen to ban in order to slake their avaricious lust for money.”

        I ask myself the question but I fear that all the countries’ leaders are too deeply compromised ever to admit that they were wrong.

        1. I understand that Japan have just done so and that India and Mongolia did so last May, just after the death rate climbed steeply at the instigation of their respective vaccine programmes.

    3. In order to illustrate just how absurd it is for born men to compete in Women’s sporting events Zuby, who keeps very fit, self-identified as a woman and then easily broke the British Women’s weightlifting record.

      He is not only an engaging and amusing speaker but he also has a First Class degree in Computer Science from Oxford University.

    4. I’m honing the edge on my machete in readiness for the knock on the door by the stormtroopers.

  36. Right, that’s me about to log off and trek down to Basingstoke!

    Would have normally had daughter coming up here, but the DT still has the place cluttered to the gun’els with her Mum’s stuff that she is still trying to e-bay. At current rate of progress, two or three sales a week, it’ll take at least another year.

  37. I had a thought just now. That Carrion woman has a lot of the Meagain Markel about her, doesn’t she?

  38. Belgrade seeks to find “understanding” in Moscow during an upcoming meeting with President Vladimir Putin, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said on Tuesday, adding that the talks will involve discussion of a vital new gas deal.
    Serbia expects to increase its energy consumption to support its rapid economic growth, Vucic told journalist Vladimir Soloviev ahead of his upcoming visit to Moscow. The Balkan nation has already more than doubled its consumption, he added.

    Vucic said “that natural gas is the biggest issue for us in Serbia,” and steady and friendly relations with Russia, as well as Belgrade’s participation in the Turkish Stream gas pipeline project, are important to his government.

    I have a feeling the outcome will be to their liking.

    https://www.rt.com/russia/541101-serbia-russia-understanding-energy-crisis/

  39. Once a prime minister’s authority goes, the end can be swift and brutal
    Boris Johnson’s difficulty is not his many endearing eccentricities, it’s the litany of broken promises
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/11/23/prime-ministers-authority-goes-end-can-swift-brutal/

    BTL

    If there had been a credible alternative Boris Johnson would never have become leader of the Conservative Party in the first place. Now that Boris Johnson has proved himself to be totally incompetent there is still no credible alternative.

    When the SDP was set up by Woy Jenkins and Roy Rodgers, Bag Lady Shirley Williams and that too, too handsome Doctor Owen, they said that they would break the mould of British politics an sweep away the two party system. This crisis of leadership in both the Conservative and Labour Parties may finally bring about that aim because, even without PR, Conservative voters are so very deeply disillusioned that they would vote for any alternative if it were presented.

    2. Deep Joy,what do we have to look forward to……
      Grima Govetongue??
      The Mekon??
      Gawd help us……….

      1. Very perceptive words from King Lear:

        “……… when others are more wicked;
        Not being the worst stands in some rank of praise.        ”

        Indeed people voted for Johnson because he wasn’t Corbyn, they voted for May because she wasn’t Corbyn, for Cameron because he wasn’t Miliband or Brown, for Blair because he wasn’t Major and Major because he wasn’t Kinnock.

      2. Either of that pair (or anyone else from within the supine Cabinet) trying to strong-arm the population into surrender would likely burst the dam. The INO Tories need to be taught a lesson at the by-elections. The Country demanded Conservative policies and ideals at the last GE and ended up with a globalist stooge whose incoherent blathering is causing acute embarrassment and some fear in the Country. Get Johnson’s replacement wrong and it is possible that the Tory party will start to unravel.

  40. Just finished the audio-book version of Chips Channon’s Diaries – Vol 1. A simply appalling man – thus great to listen to!

    He makes BPAPM’s ghastly sister sound modest, self-effacing and diffident…!!

    1. Always a laugh to read about these posh people dishing the dirt. I enjoyed the book by Lady Trumpington. Very funny.

    2. Ugh no. Horrible man. Not interested in what passes for interesting episodes in his sordid little life.

      1. You are missing a treat. Of course he was horrible – but what he wrote was contemporary and it is rivetting!!

          1. Not if you are an insomniac with a prostate that makes you get up half a dozen times!!

            You are far too young, of course, to know about these male afflictions!

        1. Thanks, Rik. I watched that one yesterday. Shame it isn’t available in a more widespread format.

    1. Have tried, without success, the broccoli diet he advocates as means to extraordinarily young-looking appearance. Is it just possible his considerable wealth might have led him down alternative routes to look 30 years or so younger than he is?

        1. I was interested to see that in a very recent interview, Paul Macartney’s hair is now grey/white – instead of the ridiculous mid-brown that he used to die it. Perhaps his latest wife has told him not to be so daft!

          1. Tom Jones also threw away the dye bottle.

            One of my sisters and I started to go grey in our 40’s – my other sister never went grey and I don’t hink she used dye. My wife has not a single grey hair and neither did her mother. In fact my m-in-l used to add dyed streaks of grey into her hair to make it look as if she was going grey naturally. She dyed to look as if she didn’t dye!

  43. Good morning to all! Another gloomy day with the lights on. There was frost on the ground this morning the first time this winter. I am offended.

    Came across this video this morning and found what the psychologist talking to Nigel Forage had to say quite interesting and rather hopeful about the number required to gum up the system. Must look up the psychologist she is talking about.

    Psychologist reacts to Covid lockdown protests across Europe

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4PoPAsqSgU&t=56s

      1. It would be dangerous to have one on a ‘plane; as it would be on a ‘ship, a ‘submarine, ‘roller skates, a ‘dirigible or a ‘motorbike.

    1. Morning Plum. Yes. Nigel has lots of faults but he is the only leader that speaks and acts like one of us!

    2. I would back him, yes. He ain’t perfect, but he’s a giant among pygmies with the current mob.

      1. But not a leader; not a mixer; not a party man. Just a sensible but very self-centred individual.

        1. It is a tremendous shame that a man so lucid and charismatic is so incapable of working with others, so arrogant and so vain. He could have been an excellent minister – but just as Cicero was reported to be in Julius Caesar – he will never fall in behind another leader.

      2. He would need to join up with one of the Reform type parties and these parties would need to come together which I cannot see happening in the future. I don’t think he would be welcome. He might get a constituency that would get him appointed as an Independent but I think he can achieve more in the GBNews seat if he plays his cards well.

  50. Greetings Nottlers.
    This morning I received an email from Darren Mott, CEO of the CONservative party. naturally it is one of those ‘no-reply’ email addresses.
    It begins, “WE’RE DELIVERING WHAT YOU VOTED FOR IN 2019” – LIE. Topics he mentioned included ‘CUTTING TAXES FOR HARDWORKING PEOPLE’ (they have done the opposite)
    That really made me livid, and I am doing something I rarely do – replying to this outrageous lie via our MP. .
    A work in progress, already very long. I have covered the illegal migrants fiasco (numbers, costs, legal aid, never being removed etc), banning of proper cars, banning of gas boilers, lack of energy security and supply, the whole eco-agenda, continuing lack of proper GP access.
    Do any wise Nottlers have any other items to include?
    I know my email won’t be especially articulate but believe it reflects what most ordinary people, including Con voters in the ‘Red wall’ constituencies, are feeling.

    1. You might add:

      And signed on behalf of ‘x’ (x = number of people who upvote your efforts)

      1. Thumb quickly added!

        I call upticks “thumbs”.

        Years ago, in Spain, we went to a restaurant and sat in the garden for,lunch. It suddenly rained and we moved to a sheltered booth which a German couple were occupying eating in. We started nattering and we agreed that the resto was good value. We said that we gave it the “thumbs up”. The chap asked what we meant. We explained. He then said, “Ach so – when I am pleased I give something a “thumb”?”

        Hence the pyramids.

        A trivial tale anecdote but it passes the time this cold, grey, dreary morning.

        1. 341986+ up ticks,
          Afternoon N,
          I was long term UKIP member until the treachery struck via the party’s nEc & nige.

      2. Never been a conservative party member. I think they have my email from pre-Brexit referendum days when, if my vague memory serves me correctly, I emailed our (at the time, odious, eu-loving Quentin Davies) on the referendum issue.

    4. Does your ‘etc’ relating to illegals cover security aspect in not knowing who they are?

  51. Parliament building and police station burned down during protests in Solomon Islands. 25 November 2021.

    Police in Solomon Islands have used tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse hundreds of protesters, who allegedly burned down a building in the parliament precinct, a police station and a store in the nation’s capital of Honiara, amid reports of looting.

    The protesters marched on the parliamentary precinct in the east of Honiara, where they allegedly set fire to a leaf hut next to Parliament House where MPs and staffers go to smoke and eat lunch.

    Sigh! If only!

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/24/parliament-building-and-police-station-burned-down-during-protests-in-solomon-islands

  52. Timothy Winters
    Timothy Winters comes to school
    With eyes as wide as a football pool,
    Ears like bombs and teeth like splinters:
    A blitz of a boy is Timothy Winters.

    His belly is white, his neck is dark,
    And his hair is an exclamation mark.
    His clothes are enough to scare a crow
    And through his britches the blue winds blow.

    When teacher talks he won’t hear a word
    And he shoots down dead the arithmetic-bird,
    He licks the patterns off his plate
    And he’s not even heard of the Welfare State.

    Timothy Winters has bloody feet
    And he lives in a house on Suez Street,
    He sleeps in a sack on the kitchen floor
    And they say there aren’t boys like him any more.

    Old man Winters likes his beer
    And his missus ran off with a bombardier.
    Grandma sits in the grate with a gin
    And Timothy’s dosed with an aspirin.

    The Welfare Worker lies awake
    But the law’s as tricky as a ten-foot snake,
    So Timothy Winters drinks his cup
    And slowly goes on growing up.

    At Morning Prayers the Master helves
    For children less fortunate than ourselves,
    And the loudest response in the room is when
    Timothy Winters roars “Amen!”

    So come one angel, come on ten:
    Timothy Winters says “Amen
    Amen amen amen amen.”
    Timothy Winters, Lord.
    Amen!

    Charles Causley Follow
    (24 August 1917 – 4 November 2003) was a Cornish poet, schoolmaster and writer. His work is noted for its simplicity and directness and for its associations with folklore, especially when linked to his native Cornwall.

  53. How the BBC is crushing the climate debate. Spiked. 24 November 2021.

    The first was by Marianna Spring, the BBC’s ‘specialist disinformation reporter’. She asserted that criticism of environmentalism was being fuelled by right-wing conspiracy theorists who had switched ‘from Covid denial to climate denial’. And the second came from reporters Rachel Schraer and Kayleen Devlin, who are both part of the BBC’s ‘Reality Check’ team of fact-checkers. They claimed to have exposed ‘the truth behind the new climate-change denial’. Both articles are travesties of journalism.

    The BBC has already announced that it will not be treating Climate Change as an argument, which means that it will in effect be supporting Government Policy. This of course is a travesty of Public Broadcasting but it is one of the drawbacks of living in a Police State. We already know that the BEEB is an arm of the Globalists. We should expect nothing else!

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/11/24/how-the-bbc-is-crushing-the-climate-debate/

    1. OH puts the “news” on at 10pm. I listen with half an ear, but find the constant barrage of one-sided propaganda a big turn-off – in particular the covid “case” details and also David Shukman banging on about the “climate emergency”.

    3. The BBC are out right cowards, when any one (there must be thousands every week) complains about their constant agenda of adverse propaganda, they simply ignore any criticism.
      If they really believe in the unbending dedication to their own invented and converse policies they should change to to ‘pay the view’. But as cowards they don’t have the courage to do that.

      2. That’d be the reality check that suffered the same problem asmuch of the BBCs output in that it wasn’t properly researched and tried to tell half truths.

        It’s not about much these days.

    4. I wonder how many Norwegians, whilst deploring his actions, are now thinking that maybe Anders had a point?

    8. They are both thoroughly unattractive people, never mind being gay. I vote four cringes out of five. Five would be Herr Stormer and Boris.

  56. I am off for an hour, Third and final webinar from the Fitzwilliam about the Good in the Great Steppe expo. Back son.

  57. We should all stop saying that Boris Johnson is charming or endearing.

    It can be endearing and charming when a baby behaves like a baby and a child behaves like a child.

    But it is excruciating when an adolescent behaves like an adolescent and completely horrific when a man in his fifties behaves like a babyish, childish adolescent.

    2. I don’t believe he is. I think these are very adult behaviours – being unprepared, disorganised and not focussed.

      In Boris’ defence, he’s married, had a son, and lost his mother – those are only the personal issues. If that were me, I’d have declared war on France, nuked the EU and locked the country up indefinitely while banning garden gnomes.

      These are not excuses for his behaviour, merely that I understand it. However, for a man as bright as he is to go to a public meeting like that so unprepared is worrying. Either his team are incompetent or he isn’t holding them to account.

  58. Austria is leading Europe down a dark path. Spiked 24 November 2021.

    Austria is breaking new ground in Covid authoritarianism. This week the government announced that it would make vaccinations compulsory – with refusers facing fines that can eventually be converted into prison sentences. This is a wildly authoritarian move, and a dangerous blow to bodily autonomy.

    Over the past two years, liberal democracies the world over have introduced unprecedented curbs on liberty in response to Covid-19. The advent of several safe and effective vaccines was supposed to put an end to this nightmare. Vaccines are still, by far, our best means to overcome the crisis and restore our freedoms. But in Austria right now, freedom seems more distant than at any point in the pandemic.

    Well we all know the last Austrian to lead the World into disaster! Unfortunately this time there is no Churchill or Roosevelt though we have Vlad who is the last true Libertarian still on stage. We must all hope that he can hold off the Forces of Darkness and carry the Traditions and Treasures of Western Civilisation safely down the River of Time!

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/11/24/austria-is-leading-europe-down-a-dark-path/

      1. Hi Grizz. The truth is that these Mittel Europa countries have no real history of Freedom or Democracy. They are simply words and as soon as the opportunity strikes they discard them.

        1. reverting to type. A leopard and it’s DNA can’t change spots. Though if some lines are to be believed, the jabbie spikes can do just this.

          1. Certainly the thick and immoral politicians “running” this sh!t-show haven’t the first clue about the spike protein and what its effects could be. With evidence coming to light that the ‘spike’ is capable of entering human cells and interrupting the DNA repair process with the result that cancers may develop, I think that some of the “scientists” who developed the “vaccines” don’t understand either.

          2. Unfortunately, by the time these cancers appear, it will be too late. If significant numbers do develop cancers as a result of this damage, that truly will ‘overwhelm’ Saint NHS. Once upon a time it was thought that Thalidomide was safe, and that asbestos was harmless.

      2. Not really.

        The Aussies are sending some of their Abos who haven’t been vaccinated to camps.

        Camps, camps….it always ends in camps !!

      4. We found out in June that Moh has Teutonic DNA.

        We both had our DNA done , he bought it as a birthday present for me in March .. We had to send our samples of to Memphis .

        Mine is spot on … to a tee.. incredible .

        We have subsequently gone through all of his side of the family, probably 3 generations ago, great great grandparent !

    2. Force 100% of the populace to be jabbed and sit back and watch the infections take off to be followed by mass ADE cases that will swamp the country. Blindly following orders irrespective of the probable outcome is both unwise and immoral, especially when those orders originate with people who think they know best on medical matters but who have no understanding of the subject outside of funding it. Israel stands out as a beacon of how NOT to behave with its jabbing and early days bragging about their success. Austria slavishly following a Jewish lead down this disastrous path: you couldn’t make it up.

        1. I am becoming increasingly fatalistic. No leading politician will ever admit that the gene therapy jab campaign has been a failure. They will go on jabbing and when the evidence of disasters occurs they will at first ignore it and when It cannot be ignored they will say that the only solution is enforced jabbing of every one. And when even babies are jabbed they will want to jab the foetuses.

          2. A large control group i.e. the non-vaccinated was always going to be a problem to those implementing the “vaccine” programme. One early tactic was to try and rubbish innate/naturally achieved immunity and that the ‘spike’ provided an enhanced immunity. That hasn’t worked out too well for the perpetrators.Looks as though blunt force is now the order of the day.
            Read yesterday that 33% of London’s population hasn’t been jabbed. That’s a lot of people to assault and lock up.

          3. But that won’t stop the perlice – although they tend to leave most of that 33% well alone – for fear of being called slammerphobic.

          8. Strangely, Johnson has twice, at least, been less than praiseworthy about the “vaccine”. Some time back he claimed that the lockdown made the difference, not the jab. A week or so ago he openly stated that the “vaccine” didn’t stop infection and didn’t stop the spread. Not outright condemnation nor full endorsement. Is he frightened that the birds are coming home to roost and is positioning his defence?

      2. Up til now, there is no evidence of ADE – there is a small increase in excess mortality associated with a higher rate of vaccination, but that is probably accounted for with the strokes and heart attacks.

        What made my jaw drop, was the discovery that in Pfizer’s own official tests, at the 6 month check mark, 20 people had died in the jabbed group and only 14 in the unjabbed!
        Remember that the emergency licences were given at the 4 month mark.
        The total number of participants was around 44 000 if I remember correctly – so it’s small, but definitely on the wrong side.
        How can these jabs have been passed as safe, is…astonishing!

  59. Austria is leading Europe down a dark path. Spiked 24 November 2021.

    Austria is breaking new ground in Covid authoritarianism. This week the government announced that it would make vaccinations compulsory – with refusers facing fines that can eventually be converted into prison sentences. This is a wildly authoritarian move, and a dangerous blow to bodily autonomy.

    Over the past two years, liberal democracies the world over have introduced unprecedented curbs on liberty in response to Covid-19. The advent of several safe and effective vaccines was supposed to put an end to this nightmare. Vaccines are still, by far, our best means to overcome the crisis and restore our freedoms. But in Austria right now, freedom seems more distant than at any point in the pandemic.

    Well we all know the last Austrian to lead the World into disaster! Unfortunately this time there is no Churchill or Roosevelt though we have Vlad who is the last true Libertarian still on stage. We must all hope that he can hold off the Forces of Darkness and carry the Traditions and Treasures of Western Civilisation safely down the River of Time!

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/11/24/austria-is-leading-europe-down-a-dark-path/

      1. Interest free loans from people who wish her to use her influence on their behalf. Happens all the time.

      1. I wouldn’t just yet she’s currently second in line to succeed Joe Brandon. Kamala who is potentially the next POTUS must be very nervous….

  61. BBC DROPS Michael Vaughan from Ashes coverage after former England captain is accused of making ‘racist remark in 2009 towards a group of Asian players when he played for Yorkshire’
    The corporation gave the former England captain the boot for ‘editorial reasons’
    It ‘doesn’t believe it would be appropriate’ for him to cover sport ‘at the moment’
    Vaughan allegedly told players of Asian heritage ‘there are too many of you lot’
    He allegedly made remark to four players – one did not recall and he denies claim

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10238265/BBC-DROPS-Michael-Vaughan-Ashes-coverage.html

    I am beginning to fear that mixed race sport cause more problems than it solves.

          13. We seem to have digressed a long way from our point of departure on this thread, Gary Lineker who I would really like to duck and hold under for a very long time.

    3. What really pisses me off is that Vaughn has been effectively silenced- he has been allowed no chance to defend himself. However, from what little I know of him, he won’t stay silent for long.

      1. It is disgusting what’s being actively encouraged now. The vilification of any white person simply because of an accusation by someone other than white. This is completely unjust. I cop an quite imagine him saying there are too many of you lot” but in a joshing way. And this is supposed to have happened years ago. Was a protest made at the t8me ?

        The stupid laws that have been passed about hate crimes and racism in the U.K. are doing untold damage. I do hope that every white cricketer protests. They are probably all quaking in their boots remembering all the jokes they’ve told in the past. Whitey is compliant the mercy of anyone who wants to come up with an accusation of some sort.

        If only the authorities had paid as much attention to the rape victims of Rotherham, Rochdale, Oxford, etc. etc.

        2. Michael Vaughan knows a lot more than he is letting on about the filthy little Paki’s gambling debts which were a matter of concern around YCCC and came to the attention of the ECB years ago. The heat is being put on by the Paki’s creditors who are truly nasty people.

    6. I cannot imagine how any of these people would have coped in our dressing room at Very Old Scotians RFC in the late 60s and early 70s. Banter was robust. Sometimes it went a little beyond the pale and members had to step in to stop a couple beating the daylights out of each other. We were all the same colour, mostly the same religion, and mostly supported the same soccer teams (those that followed soccer). A black bloke joined the club. He was not treated differently and kid gloves were never in evidence. He was elected club captain three years running. (There may have been jokes about colour (some jokes were off-colour), just as there were jokes and banter (aka insults) about height, width and shape and anything else that came to mind. That was all.

    7. Oh for heavens sake how ridiculous. Yet the player who was complaining co-owns a cafe that is suspected of being a centre for prostitution and that’s apparently quite normal.

    8. Perhaps the main instigator in all this puerile nonsense can put his name forward for running Headingly cricket club he has maligned and see how many players he manages to gather.

    9. Yorkshire CC needs to go back to allowing only those born in Yorkshire to play for them.

      The problem could be the Bradford Tykes.

  62. I read something a couple of days ago but can’t find the link now or remember who it was by (it’s my age!). However, the gist was that:

    As a rule, raw natural material is generally rejected for patent approval by the USPTO. The Court ruled that as long as something occurs naturally it cannot be patented.

    As far as as I understand it the SARS-Cov-2 “virus” has been patented. Therefore, it is man made.

    2. Dr David Martin, a patents expert in the USA, has been publicising this fact for months. Look him up if you can, well worth. a listen

    3. “Regarding SARS-CoV-2, it remains unclear whether a patent has been filed
      that protects the virus and its related products and methods as broadly
      as the MERS patent. This new coronavirus emerged in late December 2019,
      and relevant patent publications will likely not be available before
      June 2021. Nevertheless, the massive extent of the outbreak may create
      permanent demand for SARS-CoV-2-related products and spark long-term
      interest in relevant intellectual property rights.”

  63. Visited brother. We couldn’t find his strawberry jam on Saturday and he bopped me one. He then threw a hissy fit at the blood. Today after calming down at the unscheduled visit he asks why I have a big plaster on my forehead.

    Made sure he was eating his dinners properly and getting his vegetables – comically he’ll often eat his greens but not the meat. Sometimes the other way around. His little flat is immaculate, but the warden in his complex tells me he often hoovers and dusts in the early hours.

    He does like my sausage rolls, so he has a tub of 24 with instructions how to cook them 6 at a time. Warqueen made him a tiramissu but he said he didn’t like fish and wouldn’t eat it so junior and I scoffed that in the car.

    He bashed Mongo on hte head a bit – as he confuses the patting and stroking with a bash and a push and the great beast endured it all. Junior is starting to understand what’s wrong with his uncle and that he’s not cruel just doesn’t understand.

    His brother though, his brother is struggling and wonders if he has done enough for his little brother.

    1. I think you have done enough .

      The situation you are in could get completely out of hand , has it become worse?

      I delivered a fresh loaf of bread and other bits and pieces to a sane happy educated elderly lady , she had requested a few things from the village shop. .

      She had a mental moment .. something I had never seen before .. she picked up a large chisel from her hallway chair and went for me … no ifs and buts.. I dropped everything and ran out of her large Victorian front door nearly tumbling down the front door steps and back to the car where Moh was waiting .

      I contacted our local GP practise and spoke to the doctor, several weeks later a similar incident happened , she had stripped off in town and was raging . Poor lady was sectioned , she was a wonderful clever kind woman before these incidents happened ..

      9 months afterwards she had a terrible fall and sustained head inuries, she never recovered .

      1. That’s very sad. I think I remember the incident you mentioned a while ago. It must have been quite a shock.

      2. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. There’s no intent, it’s simply action/response.

        Sorry to hear about your situation – if the mind cannot cope it does silly things. I know an elderly chap who sees giant spiders in the corner of his eye. He names them and has conversations with them.

    2. Whatever you do, by your reckoning it will never seem enough.
      You are doing your best in a very difficult situation. Is there anyone other than you and the warden involved in his supervision?

    1. When is Fauci going to be arrested for his crimes against humanity?
      What about the funding of the “gain of function” research?

    2. Peppa Pig and Boris Johnson have one great thing in common:

      They both lack all perspective!

  68. From John Ward:

    “Yesterday, a close Austrian friend explained the detail of what ‘mandatory vaccination’ will mean in her country. Do bear in mind that they are doing this in the context of these “vaccine” imposters being mixed and matched, having been developed under wartime conditions of extreme secrecy, with a flurry now of otherwise inexplicable deaths among the young, and with governments everywhere advancing increasingly infantile rationales. Rationales, in fact, for what is clearly a case of ignoring perfectly adequate management drugs while hyping the danger of a 99.86% non-fatal virus.

    Every unvaccinated Austrian will be sent a letter instructing them to attend an appointment for vaccination. The penalty for not responding positively will be €3,600, at which point they will receive another letter, and if that too is ignored, another €3,600 fine will be exacted. Those already double-jabbed will receive letters ordering them to get the booster, and the fine for non-compliance will be €1,400.

    So for the unvaxxed, it will cost almost €30,000 per annum to refuse to comply with a totally unnecessary demand to become a guinea pig for experimental gene manipulation to render them “safe” from a Coronavirus that – with the use of Ivermectin and zero vaccine – kills under 3 victims per thousand….most of whom were over 75 years old and/or had other pathogens.

    This is beyond insane: it is incredible in every sense of the word. But it seems like we the 1in8 are the conspiracy theorists.”

    PS I really would like to see a thorough independent clinical review of the use of Ivermectin and/ or HCQ in the treatment of Covid19- SARS 2.

  69. Is it my imagination, but have Witless, Unbalanced and the Vietnamese one been very quiet lately?

  70. What do Nottlers think of the Stella Creasey “ of allowed to bring a baby into the HoC” story?

    It strikes me that MPs with children should take them to a nursery/creche at their own expense like the rest of the population.

    1. Seeing as the house of common oiks have women only lists they should provide a creche on site. Or better still, hand the baby to the squeaker.

    2. Parliament is already packed with numerous tits a couple more really wouldn’t be noticeable….

    3. She shouldn’t. I took maternity leave, or left my children with carers (sole wage-earner). She’s just being a spoilt brat – the mother, I mean.

      1. And virtue-signalling. I expect she is one of those who will be “best friends” with the child.

    4. She’s Labour, virtue signalling hypocrite. At least she didn’t sling a tit the babies way and upset Mr Speaker with that sort of gesture, although I wouldn’t put it past her sort.

  71. Roman Abramovich takes early lead in High Court battle over claims he bought Chelsea under orders of Vladimir Putin. 24 November 2021.

    Roman Abramovich has claimed victory in the first stage of his High Court battle with HarperCollins over a book which said he bought Chelsea under orders of Vladimir Putin.

    The Russian is suing the publishing giant over “defamatory” allegations in “Putin’s People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and then Turned on the West.”

    I have to confess that since I first read this accusation I have racked my brains trying to figure out what Vlad was supposedly going to do with Chelsea! Was it to top the League? Win the European Cup? Get them to kneel to Manchester United? Or perhaps the author Belton just got Writers Block? A nasty affliction as I can attest and with the Agency’s Deadline to consider even worse! Guantanamo probably never looked closer! Of course the whole thing is as barmy as a CIA Group Therapy session. How the KGB Took Back Russia and then Turned on the West. With a title like that you could stop right there and use it to press flowers or start a fire in the morning. I’ve seen these books come and go over the last twenty years. The author gets a nice subsidy and guaranteed publication with a captive audience of thousands at Langley! Like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Das Kapital I have yet to meet anyone who has actually read a copy as opposed to talking about them.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/11/24/roman-abramovich-takes-early-lead-high-court-battle-claims-bought/

  72. OH turned on the telly as it was getting dark to see the starling return to his roosting box. Just as he did there was a lot of squawking and kerfuffle, as there was an intruder in the box. After a bit of stabbing and scuffling, peace resumed, and the intruder was evicted. They are very entertaining birds.

      1. Yes. The occupant of box no 8 is easily recognised as he has a lot of flecks on his head – they look white on the camera as it’s infra red. We call him “Sparkles” as he’s sparkly. The intruder had a much blacker face.

  74. At least 5 illegals die in a capsizing near Calais. This may make the French carry out their duty to stop dangerous crafts leaving their shores.

  75. 20 Migrants have drowned in the Channel today. I can’t read the whole story because it is the Telegraph. Can someone access it?

    3. More than 20 migrants die after boat capsizes in Channel near Calais. 24 November 2021.

      At least 20 migrants have died crossing the Channel from France when their boat sank off the port of Calais, authorities said, the deadliest single disaster on the intensively-used route.

      The French interior ministry said in a statement that French patrol vessels found corpses and people unconscious in the water after a fisherman sounded the alarm about the accident. Police then said in a statement that “over 20” people had died.

      Three helicopters and three boats have been deployed to take part in the search, local authorities said.
      French interior minister Gerald Darmanin wrote on Twitter that “many people” had died in the incident, adding that “the criminal nature of the smugglers who organise these crossings cannot be condemned enough”.

      The disaster, the worst single loss of life recorded in recent times from migrant crossings in the Channel, comes as tensions grow between London and Paris over the record numbers of people crossing, with Britain urging tougher action from France to stop them making the voyage.

      French prime minister Jean Castex said the shipwreck was a “tragedy”. “My thoughts are with the many missing and injured, victims of criminal smugglers who exploit their distress and injury,” he said.

      Natalie Elphicke, the MP for Dover, said: “This is an absolute tragedy. It underlines why saving lives at sea starts by stopping the boats entering the water in the first place.

      “As winter is approaching the seas will get rougher, the water colder, the risk of even more lives tragically being lost greater.

      “That’s why stopping these dangerous crossings is the humanitarian and right thing to do.”

      It comes as Channel migrant smugglers are maximising their profits by putting to sea with bigger boats that can carry up to 90 people amid concerns that France is still failing to take a tougher approach.

      A group of more than 40 migrants were pictured on Tuesday carrying a 30ft inflatable dinghy on the northern French coast near Wimereux as French police appeared to look on and do nothing.

      The migrants, including at least five children, were spotted going into the water in the early hours of the morning. Yards away was a French police car with at least two officers inside who appeared to do nothing despite the French Government vowing that forces would be in action “night and day” to stop the crossings.

      According to the French authorities, 31,500 people attempted to leave for Britain since the start of the year and 7,800 people have been rescued at sea, figures which doubled since August.

      Seven people have been confirmed dead or are still missing feared drowned after various incidents this year.
      Boris Johnson is coming under intense pressure to reduce the numbers crossing.

      According to British authorities, more than 25,000 people have now arrived illegally so far this year, already triple the figure recorded in 2020.

      The issue has added to growing post-Brexit tensions between Britain and France, with a row on fishing rights also still unresolved.

      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/11/24/20-migrants-die-boat-capsizes-channel-near-calais/

      1. Seems the French Authorities are worse than the people smugglers. If they cracked down hard the smugglers would soon be out of business.

        1. Evening Stephen. It could be stopped by a half dozen Nottlers with Belaying Pins and Sea Boots!

        2. “A group of more than 40 migrants were pictured on Tuesday carrying a 30ft inflatable dinghy on the northern French coast near Wimereux as French police appeared to look on and do nothing.”
          A nice cudgel for the government to hit the French over the head with.

        3. A good start would be to find out who is selling the dinghies and outboard motors, then cut off the supply.

    1. That’s handy for Toy boy Marcon a few ‘brownie points’ in the bank for him. He’ll be blaming the UK for encouraging them to cross. Such prizes can’t be ignored.

      1. Slight problem for him. His perlice stood on the beach and watched the boats being launched and did absolument rien. They could be said to be complicit.

  77. Cue the wailing and gnashing of teeth by the libtards demanding ever safer passage for the invaders
    Mystic Rik going for easy targets today

    2. Since Peppa Pig scrapped his bonkers idea of a bridge between Dumfries and Nor Ireland yesterday, he’ll be encouraged by Carrie Antoinette to splurge on a Calais/Dover pedestrian footway festooned with flowers such as advocated by the ghastly up-her-own-arse Lumley J over the Thames

          2. It does indeed, Phizz, it does indeed – it would be wonderful to see you wearing your jacket ‘in real life’ one day – but, unlike J Lumley, you are wholly self aware which makes all the difference.

            The Lumley’s lived near to us in East Retford, when I was young. My elder brother took Joanna out to dinner once or twice before deciding to marry his current (ghastly gossipy) wife. I used to go to parties and dance with J’s younger sister, Susannah who was even thicker than J but not so far up her own arse.

            A great fuss has been made about how ‘posh’ the Lumleys are and their noble role in ‘saving’ the Gurkhas. Overblown bollox. As soon as one walked in the front door, one knew that the Lumleys were not posh.- the house had a certain musty colonialist air about it. Her Dad was inoffensive Major. Lunches were not memorable or especially delicious.

            By campaigning for additional pensions and support for the Gurkhas choosing to retire in the UK, Joanna has made the regiment unviable in the long term to the great detriment of the Nepalese. I have been there and spoken with them.

            She’s a daft bint consumed by her own luvviedom and the world would be better without her nonsense.

          3. Thanks for the insight. Like a lot of actors i like, their politics stink.

            As to seeing me in the ‘real’ in my technicolour jacket all you need to do is accept the next lunch invitation about to wing its way to you. Though it will be lunchtime i will suffer the catcalls and stares for being overdressed, just for you. :@)

          2. Most importantly, of OUR money, not Boris’, Joanna’s, or the luvvies money…..the taxpayers’, ratepayers’ money…all for their absurd ego trip.

      1. That’ll cause a few car crashes. I’ve watched the first 2 and think I started episode 3 last night, late. It’s a bit like Lord of the Rings meets The Magnificent 7.

          1. Not sure whether I’m going to continue it. I’ll have a last look tonight and decide. Not keen on the 4 youngsters, one of whom is the ‘reborn saviour’. I just don’t like ’em. The lead lady’s ok, can’t remember her name, quite fanciable.

          2. Moraine Damodred played by Rosamund Pike.

            Have you seen the series of Richard Rahl? They had wall to wall dominatrix. I thought it was quite good but as usual they don’t pick up the contract after a couple of seasons.

          3. Nope, no idea. I’m waiting for the next, and supposedly last, series of ‘The Last Kingdom’, that’s more my cup of tea.

          5. A bit too Sword and Sorcery for me but I’ll have a look. What this Pundemic has done to folks’ viewing habits I don’t know.

          8. It’s terribly slow, Phizzee! The old man and I were propping our eyelids open! We’ve managed 3 episodes, but we’re still not entirely sure what it’s all about!

          9. Okay.

            I have found in the past that slow starts can have great endings.

            The Peter Hamilton books on space operas have notoriously slow starts as they have so much plot to get done early on but i do enjoy them.

            We will see. And thanks.

    4. Good evening, Rik

      You posted a video earlier today by Dr Vernon Coleman.

      I must say that I always find him to be reasonable but the MSM and the internet do not like him at all – even his wiki entry is hostile. To them he is just a subversive conspiracy theorist.

      Of course Christopher Booker suffered a tremendous amount of abuse for expressing his view and writing books to say that Man made Global Warming is a complete scam.

    2. That is the only movie I have ever seen in the cinema where the audience stayed in their seats all through the credits. No-one moved but sat in silence until the very end. A very moving experience.

      1. That happened to me in 1987. I went to see Louis Malle’s film, “Au Revoir les Enfants”. At the end, a completely silent audience walked slowly out of the cinema – many of us in tears. The silence was extraordinary.

        1. Ditto and as we all filed out, quite a few of us were in tears. It’s an extraordinary movie but I’ve never been able to make myself watch it again.

          1. There are two I can’t watch again, Schindler’s is one, the other is Sophie’s Choice.

          3. I feel the same way. I like to rewatch films for subtleties i may have missed but not those two.

            As a bit of a counterbalance to all that, have you seen ‘The Woman in Gold’?

          4. Me too – with ARLE…. Though I’ll try to do so when my beloved and favourite grand-daughter is here.

      1. I doubt that. As the article says, the Turks are becoming less and less religious. The same phenomenon has taken place in Iran. Islam has collapsed there thanks to the regime ramming their Islamic fundamentalism down the populations throat. With the Iranians there is the special and glaring hypocrisy that in Shia Islam, the clergy are not supposed to have anything to do with politics.

  80. Watch what they do – don’t listen to what they say….

    “The Washington Free Beacon reveals.

    Amid economic turmoil and calls to buy local in the United States, Vice President Kamala Harris dropped nearly $400 for a single pot at a boutique shop in Paris, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.

    Overseas last week on a four-day diplomatic trip to mend the U.S. relationship with France, Harris stopped in at E. Dehillerin, a pricey cookware shop outside the Louvre museum, where she dropped hundreds of dollars on various kitchen items. The big-ticket items in the haul were a $375 serving dish and $160 frying pan, the Parisian specialty store told the Free Beacon. The vice president rounded out her purchase with various smaller accessories, such as a porcelain cocotte and egg dish, a copper cleaner, and various wooden spoons.

    All together Harris spent 516 euros, which amounts to roughly 600 dollars at the current exchange rate. Reporters joined Harris in the store as she browsed but were kicked out before they could record details of her lavish purchase, according to C-SPAN video of the E. Dehillerin visit.

    So, while millions of Americans struggle to pay for their own Thanksgiving dinner, Harris is spending $400 at a fancy Louvre gift shop.

    Could there be a more appropriate symbol of the Democrats’ contemporary malaise?”

  81. Vaccine success rates must be revealed
    A full comparison of the different vaccines’ efficacy may help us understand why the EU has a higher rate of hospitalisations

    TELEGRAPH VIEW https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2021/11/23/vaccine-success-rates-must-revealed/

    I was surprised to see these BTL comments under the article.

    From Simon Reay : ‘Natural immunity is the only way to overcome an endemic virus. If we had done nothing last year when this COVID appeared it would have been all over by the summer via herd immunity. All the lockdowns, injections and protocols have only extended the outbreak. Having said that COVID has made a lot of people very very rich.’

    From Objective Reality : ‘…….. and it has made even more very very poor… and hundreds of thousands, if not millions of those prevented from receiving life saving therapeutics like ivermectin and hydroxychloraquine in favour of a harmful experimental gene therapy very very dead.’

    Is the tide turning? It seems to me that more and more people are becoming very deeply cynical about the gene therapy. You could almost say that the genie has come out of the bottle!

    I am not optimistic but I really do wish a leading politician would have the courage to say: “The vaccination programme which neither prevents a person getting Covid nor passing it on and may be very injurious has been not only a failure but a disaster.”

    1. As they progress to more and more extreme measures, it becomes less and less possible for any politician to say enough is enough.

      The one who said “vaccinated, recovered or dead” yesterday has today been railing that he wishes he could “drag people to the intensive care unit – what will it take to make them realise?”
      Does he mean, to see the vaccine victims?
      Or does he want to drag young, fit people there to see elderly covid patients?

    2. I think I’m going to have to give up and re-subscribe to the Telegraph. It may be a dreadful newspaper but the rest are worse.

  82. Whoops! The BBC has gone into deep mourning! It looks like an all-nighter! Accessed it at twenty to the hour and Jane Hill has got out her Sackcloth and Ashes! Her Girlfriend has probably drawn the curtains at their Mansion!

  83. Whoops! The BBC has gone into deep mourning! It looks like an all-nighter! Accessed it at twenty to the hour and Jane Hill has got out her Sackcloth and Ashes! Her Girlfriend has probably drawn the curtains at their Mansion!

  85. That’s me for this shyte day. Cold, grey and damp from dawn to night. More of the same tomorrow plus colder – then freezing Fri/Sat/Sun. May have to risk the CH – though we’ll prolly have power cuts.

    A brilliant lecture on the “Gold in the Great Steppe” exhibition – about the metallurgy and the science of working gold – 2,500 years ago. The Spanish Prof was outstanding. He was able to make intricate and complicated technology completely comprehensible to the ignorant viewer. And the bastard – completely fluent in English – was doing the talk in his THIRD language…. The MR and I were completely captivated for an hour.

    I hope to join you tomorrow – weather (and, hence, leccy) permitting.

    A demain.

    1. Look on the bright side. Plenty of windmills offshore Narfk so the geniuses in Whitehall believe that you will have plenty of leccy come what may.

      2. Hmm, Citroen, not so, the output from the Solar Power ‘Farms’ about to surround us, are all fed into a sub-station at Bramford – near us – and are then fed down the grid to power the current shithole of Londonistan – certainly NOT Norfolk or Suffolk.

    2. Have a great evening.

      I don’t know if you can stomach him but Michael Portillo’s great rail journeys was interesting. I particularly liked the episode where it was explained where the colour for the Imperial robes came from.

        1. I liked him better as a presenter than a politico.

          Strange though it may seem but i once say Nick Clegg host ‘Have i got news for you’ and he was captivating and charming.

          But then i also saw Harvey Weinstein on the Graham Norton Show and he was charm personified.

          Easy to see how they manage to get away with their crimes for so long.

        2. He does have an unusual style but i like that he can take the piss out of Diane Abbot without her realising he is doing so.

        3. Oh shurrup…you’re just jealous of his innate dress sense and panache which you could never replicate because the MR would forbid you. He went to the same college as Sos at Cantab which explains a lot.

  87. Nicked

    So a bunch of people in France decided to buy a boat in France and
    jump in on a French beach, subsequently lost control and contrived to be
    in waters under French jurisdiction, failed to be rescued by the French
    authorities and drowned.

    And this has exactly what to do with the British Government?

    Pah!

      1. Does that asumed intent give the French authorities the right to ignore the safety of a boat load of people in French waters?

        They could have been on Mr Rashids boat tour of the Calais coast for all it matters, their problem not a UK problem.

        1. I thought that was what I was implying. On top of everything these people were trying to gain entry to the UK illegally. It is not the UK’s problem. I was agreeing with Rik.

    3. Some clown on Richard Tice’s timeline is accusing him of having blood on his hands. Not much, except empty space, between that pair of ears.

    4. And the French police car with its lights on just watched the boat being carried down to the water.

    1. I’ve always liked him, but I’m not that sure about this video. Just as an example, his talking about Thomas Huxley’s estimate on the sustainability of fishing. In 1890 fish were still abundant, but not as abundant as 100 years before that and so on. What’s happened to fishing, post 1st World War then post 2nd World War is an almost incredibly huge increase in fishing fleet numbers, far better catching (and often destructive) technology and a far bigger demand for fish. Stocks are shockingly low and our ‘sustainable targets’ are crap, designed to just keep our heads above water. If you use a baseline, of say 1990 fish stocks as a target, then we’re still doing very badly. Go back 100 years more and we’re doing disastrously, or back further still and it’s seen that we have gutted our oceans.
      There’s an excellent book, written in 2007, about our historical fishing and its impact on worldwide fish stocks. ‘The Unnatural History of the Sea’.
      Highly recommended by me, I’ve bought 3 copies now and passed them to friends. Can’t find any new ones so I buy them 2nd hand (3 times the original price now) I might send JP a copy.

      1. As a boy in the late 1950’s I went deep sea fishing off Nova Scotia. One could drop a line and pull it straight back up and there would be cod attached. I suspect one could now fish all day and never get close to the size of fish I was catching.

        1. Cod fishing was viable until about 1990 when the factory trawlers arrived and the annual catch went from just over 100,000 tons to about 900,000 tons,
          They banned cod fishing in 1992 after the cod stocks collapsed, catches are still very limited.

          It must have been around 2000 that I did some work for the air force, a special friday lunchtime treat at the mess was the cod that they flew in that morning – probably the only fresh Canadian cod available in Ottawa at the time.

          Enjoy your memories, it is about all that we have left.

        2. There was a moratorium on cod fishing (even recreationally) up until very recently after the sudden collapse in 1992, a drop of 99% of stocks (recent historical stocks at that).

      2. Added to which there are at least 5 billion more humans on the planet than there were in 1890.

        A managed reduction in the size of the world’s population could easily be achieved if humans could restrain themselves to reproducing just one child each. Infant and childhood mortality would then introduce a gradual decline in numbers.

        Exponential growth of population on the other hand is likely to result in mass killings as regional populations go to war over scarce resources needed for survival.

        1. He also seemed a bit sceptical about overpopulation, another priority in my mind, but as he said, that’s an education and wealth (as well as bloody religion) matter.

        4. I thought the Covid vaccine gene therapy was an integral part of Bill Gates’s plan dramatically to reduce the world’s population.

    2. Listening to this, i think Jordan is ‘losing it’, quite possibly because of over exposure. His central argument may be valid but he is no longer lucid and any message is lost.

      Such a pity.

      1. Well, what you just wrote indicates that you are losing it, if anything. I found what he said perfectly comprehensible and that it made complete sense.

    3. Much as we may wish Korky, nothing of consequence is going to change…..until someone takes to arms

    4. The answer will be to bring them over in ferries, not shoot them down on the beaches. I feel that coming on.

    5. The answer will be to bring them over in ferries, not shoot them down on the beaches. I feel that coming on.

    7. If the boats were left to go from France to England with no support and all people over the age of 16 were returned to France on arrival the traffic would end immediately

          1. You would be returning them to France not killing them. Who are you to deprive those migrants the opportunity to grow up in a vibrant EU country?

    8. A similar problem over border control happening here.
      A benefit of covid has been that they closed the border between Canada and the US (cue lefties complaining that the refugees needed protection from trumpism).

      Along with the official borders being reopened, the idiot PM has let it be known that the illegal crossing points will now allow illegal migrants to cross into Canada where they will probably have rcmp officers helping the invaders carry their luggage across the boundary (no joke, that is what they did before covid).

      Trudeau doesn’t seem able to make his own decisions, he is probably following the same script as your lot and allowing / encouraging illegal immigration.

      1. Phizzee, I know you are only joking, but as someone who acts as 24/7/365 Carer for a wife with the Lewy Body Dementia version of Parkinson’s,(look it up) I hope you NEVER get your wish.

        1. I understand and i am sorry. I do try to stop posting in the evening as i often get into trouble.

    4. Austerity? What austerity. I’m calling next month Decadantember and sod the lot of ’em.

  92. Another rescue operation taking place at Sandettie close to the previous incident . Reports of people in the water. French and UK lifeboats at the scene. [GBNews]

    1. The original scene was ‘close to Calais’, so why are our RNLI boats in French waters, if not to bring them here?

      1. The UK lifeboat is there to assist in the rescue as conditions will be very difficult. The lifeboats should take them to the nearest port which will be in France. There is a possibility that it is a hoax emergency call but the GBNews reporter at Dover thought it was a genuine call out.

  93. Off topic
    Gawd how I hate typing on an iPad.
    Having had my fingerprints removed for security it’s an absolute bugger to post.

      2. Same for bank cashiers, their fingerprints quickly fade when they count those bank notes by hand.

        My wife worked in a bank, after a robbery the police wanted the staff to visit the police station for finger prints. None of the cashiers had prints worth recording.

        1. They probably were all addicted to cocaine by that time.

          Just the usual Daily Mail report……………sorry.

      1. I must have missed his post.

        After meeting him for a beer and he told me about the amount of truffles they harvest from the Oak forest he owns and sell for centimes i wanted to be his new best friend. No such luck !

        What is it with you guys that live in Châteaus?

        2. I think they are summer truffles which are delicious but they don’t fetch the astronomical price that the black ones do.
          Max is a very pleasant chap.

  95. Another Johnson failure.

    Freeports embody the low-tax Brexit dream. The Treasury can’t stand them

    The sad truth is that the Treasury always prioritises short-term costs over long-term opportunities

    EAMONN BUTLER

    It took the Treasury a few years to kill off the first wave of freeports created in the 1980s. Now, with the appetite for free-ports reinvigorated by Brexit, they are trying to strangle the idea at birth.

    That comes as no surprise to me. Mrs Thatcher endorsed freeports after a 1981 proposal by the Adam Smith Institute. We saw them as a way of demonstrating the power of free trade, low taxes and deregulation. Freeports would be treated largely as if they were foreign territory, allowing people to bring in goods from abroad, work on them – processing, assembling, packaging – and ship them out again without facing VAT paperwork and customs duties. There were already hundreds of freeports in other countries, generating business and jobs.

    Six UK freeports were designated in 1984. But the Treasury hated the idea. They cited EU regulations (although EU countries had their own freeports such as Hamburg and Cadiz). They would not concede on VAT or customs duties. Employment regulations were not eased. Each firm in the freeport area had to deal with the import-export paperwork instead of letting the freeport handle it centrally. Then the sites were chosen for political reasons (regional pride, unemployment) instead of where they made economic sense. In the end, the freeports experiment fizzled out. Most of its benefits had come, not from trade, but from grants, subsidies, and planning gain.

    After Brexit, Boris Johnson’s Government wanted to revive Britain’s historic role as a trading nation, and to roll back forty years’ worth of enterprise-sapping regulations. Freeports would bring in new jobs and show the world that Britain was back. The new Prime Minister said as much on the steps of Downing Street. Freeports would also become one of the few market-orientated approaches to boosting economic growth, from a government that has otherwise ratcheted up taxes and spending.

    The idea of reviving freeports had come from then-international trade secretary Liz Truss. She invited me and others to join a working group to push it forward. When I got there, I was pleased to see Rishi Sunak, who had recently published a think tank report extolling the virtues of freeports. I was less pleased to see ranks of Treasury civil servants, almost outnumbering those of us round the table. “They insisted on being here,” a trade official told me. This was now a joint Trade-Treasury project.

    I had the sinking feeling that – despite the support of the Prime Minister, the Trade Secretary, and the man who would become Chancellor – the freeports revival was already in its last throes. And so it proved. Oxbridge professors on the panel said freeports would only relocate jobs from one part of the UK to another. (Oxbridge economics says very little about entrepreneurship. It regards firms as a “given” rather than asking how and why new ones are generated. Hence the idea that jobs can only be moved around, not created.)

    The Treasury officials, meanwhile, complained of the complexity of changing the customs and VAT rules, hinting of fraud and tax avoidance. The number of freeports would be limited to 10 and politics, not economics, would decide where they were located. And they would have to focus on “high-tech” jobs (the politicians’ mantra) rather than what the market might produce. None of the people I suggested, who actually created or ran successful freeports around the world, were ever contacted. After one meeting, the freeports “working group” quietly expired.

    Recently there have been reports that ministers and businesses have said that Treasury is killing freeports with a lack of ambition on tax cuts and planning relaxation. This comes as the first freeport started operating in Teesside on Friday.

    The sad truth is that the Treasury always focuses more on the downsides (like potential revenue losses) than opportunities (like new trade and employment). And they hate concessions. Maybe the answer to that is to turn the whole country into a freeport. Business would boom. But the Treasury would eventually find a way to kill it

    Eamonn Butler is Director at the Adam Smith Institute

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/11/23/freeports-embody-low-tax-brexit-dream-treasury-cant-stand/

  96. Another Johnson failure.

    Freeports embody the low-tax Brexit dream. The Treasury can’t stand them

    The sad truth is that the Treasury always prioritises short-term costs over long-term opportunities

    EAMONN BUTLER

    It took the Treasury a few years to kill off the first wave of freeports created in the 1980s. Now, with the appetite for free-ports reinvigorated by Brexit, they are trying to strangle the idea at birth.

    That comes as no surprise to me. Mrs Thatcher endorsed freeports after a 1981 proposal by the Adam Smith Institute. We saw them as a way of demonstrating the power of free trade, low taxes and deregulation. Freeports would be treated largely as if they were foreign territory, allowing people to bring in goods from abroad, work on them – processing, assembling, packaging – and ship them out again without facing VAT paperwork and customs duties. There were already hundreds of freeports in other countries, generating business and jobs.

    Six UK freeports were designated in 1984. But the Treasury hated the idea. They cited EU regulations (although EU countries had their own freeports such as Hamburg and Cadiz). They would not concede on VAT or customs duties. Employment regulations were not eased. Each firm in the freeport area had to deal with the import-export paperwork instead of letting the freeport handle it centrally. Then the sites were chosen for political reasons (regional pride, unemployment) instead of where they made economic sense. In the end, the freeports experiment fizzled out. Most of its benefits had come, not from trade, but from grants, subsidies, and planning gain.

    After Brexit, Boris Johnson’s Government wanted to revive Britain’s historic role as a trading nation, and to roll back forty years’ worth of enterprise-sapping regulations. Freeports would bring in new jobs and show the world that Britain was back. The new Prime Minister said as much on the steps of Downing Street. Freeports would also become one of the few market-orientated approaches to boosting economic growth, from a government that has otherwise ratcheted up taxes and spending.

    The idea of reviving freeports had come from then-international trade secretary Liz Truss. She invited me and others to join a working group to push it forward. When I got there, I was pleased to see Rishi Sunak, who had recently published a think tank report extolling the virtues of freeports. I was less pleased to see ranks of Treasury civil servants, almost outnumbering those of us round the table. “They insisted on being here,” a trade official told me. This was now a joint Trade-Treasury project.

    I had the sinking feeling that – despite the support of the Prime Minister, the Trade Secretary, and the man who would become Chancellor – the freeports revival was already in its last throes. And so it proved. Oxbridge professors on the panel said freeports would only relocate jobs from one part of the UK to another. (Oxbridge economics says very little about entrepreneurship. It regards firms as a “given” rather than asking how and why new ones are generated. Hence the idea that jobs can only be moved around, not created.)

    The Treasury officials, meanwhile, complained of the complexity of changing the customs and VAT rules, hinting of fraud and tax avoidance. The number of freeports would be limited to 10 and politics, not economics, would decide where they were located. And they would have to focus on “high-tech” jobs (the politicians’ mantra) rather than what the market might produce. None of the people I suggested, who actually created or ran successful freeports around the world, were ever contacted. After one meeting, the freeports “working group” quietly expired.

    Recently there have been reports that ministers and businesses have said that Treasury is killing freeports with a lack of ambition on tax cuts and planning relaxation. This comes as the first freeport started operating in Teesside on Friday.

    The sad truth is that the Treasury always focuses more on the downsides (like potential revenue losses) than opportunities (like new trade and employment). And they hate concessions. Maybe the answer to that is to turn the whole country into a freeport. Business would boom. But the Treasury would eventually find a way to kill it

    Eamonn Butler is Director at the Adam Smith Institute

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/11/23/freeports-embody-low-tax-brexit-dream-treasury-cant-stand/

  97. Vaccines were never a route to eliminating Covid entirely

    Jabs are vital in reducing serious illness and death, but repeated infection is the only route to herd immunity

    SUNETRA GUPTA

    To understand the effects of vaccines, it is critical to distinguish between three things: their ability to block infection, to prevent clinical symptoms (which may require hospitalisation) and to protect against life-threatening illness.

    Different immune responses, such as antibodies and T-cells, work in different ways and result in different types of immunity. Focussing on a single immune response can distort our understanding of the epidemic process, especially as we are constrained by what we can easily measure. For example, the antibody studies conducted in the UK last year are likely to have significantly underestimated the degree of exposure to Covid-19 prior to lockdown, partly because antibodies wane rapidly and also because many people fended off infection without developing antibodies, as shown by recent studies on T-cells.

    While it is not that useful to speculate on whether one vaccine is better than another, we should recognise that infection-blocking immunity is temporary, while immunity against severe disease and death is likely durable. This is in line with our understanding of the transmission dynamics of other coronaviruses with which we exist without complaint because they do not cause a significant burden of serious disease.

    It is now widely agreed that Covid-19 is close to becoming endemic, in a way we enjoy with other seasonal coronaviruses, where the reduction in risk to vulnerable people is primarily achieved through the maintenance of high levels of infection-blocking immunity in the population (otherwise known as herd immunity) through regular infection. The vaccines that we currently employ appear to be highly effective in preventing life-threatening illness but do not meaningfully contribute to the maintenance of herd immunity.

    Now that we have protected the majority of the population – including those who did not need it – against severe disease and death from Covid-19, we should focus our attention on those who are vulnerable and yet remain unprotected. This applies to the global population of vulnerable people, especially those in poorer nations, rather than just your sceptical neighbour.

    It is also important to recognise that our long history of previous exposure to seasonal coronaviruses may well have protected many of us from severe Covid-19. It is my opinion that past exposure to related influenza strains helped to prevent Covid-19 reaching the scale of the influenza pandemic of 1918. Prior to 1918, influenza most likely died out completely within inter-pandemic periods. Since the previous influenza pandemic had occurred in 1890, most individuals under the age of 30 had no experience of it and they are the ones who died.

    Based on these principles, a shift in focus towards vaccines which prevent death but not necessarily infection is long overdue. Before vaccines, the only viable solution was to protect the vulnerable population through state-sanctioned shielding. The vaccines should have changed that, but instead we find ourselves trapped by the superannuated conviction that vaccines must block infection as well as disease.

    Sunetra Gupta is professor of theoretical epidemiology at the Department of Zoology, University of Oxford

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/11/24/vaccines-never-route-eliminating-covid-entirely/

  98. Good evening, dear NoTTLers!

    I have just read this brilliant piece, Part 1 of an essay by Paul Kingsnorth about what (ed) how the way COVID is being used and the way our societies are being taken over, and our freedom eroded, by a deliberate authoritarian menace.

    The author describes how and when the “vaccine moment” hit him – how the questions we’ve all asked about: “why?” and “what is going on?” have an answer, and it is not a nice one.

    “Covid is a revelation. It has lain bare splits in the social fabric that were always there but could be ignored in better times. It has revealed the compliance of the legacy media and the power of Silicon Valley to curate and control the public conversation. It has confirmed the sly dishonesty of political leaders, and their ultimate obeisance to corporate power. It has shown up ‘The Science’ for the compromised ideology it is.”

    A long essay but it is an excellent analysis, particularly of the part played by the UK Left. Well worth a read.

    https://paulkingsnorth.substack.com/p/the-vaccine-moment-part-one

    3. Brilliant essay well worth reading:

      “Most of all, it has revealed the authoritarian streak that lies beneath so many people, and which always emerges in fearful times. In the last month alone I have watched media commentators calling for censorship of their political opponents, philosophy professors justifying mass internment, and human rights lobby groups remaining silent about ‘vaccine passports.’ I have watched much of the political left transition openly into the authoritarian movement it probably always was, and countless ‘liberals’ campaigning against liberty. As freedom after freedom has been taken away, I have watched intellectual after intellectual justify it all. I have been reminded of what I always knew: cleverness has no relationship to wisdom”

  99. ZH Headline:

    Hyperinflation In Turkey: Wine Prices Up 15% In One Day, Chicken And Cheese Up 10%

  101. Evening, all. I rather think that the future that Boris is preparing for us won’t have any pigs of any description in it.

  102. 341986+ up ticks,

    To die escaping from a free country to a land that is trying its best to vote itself into being a governed dictatorship has got to be a very poor
    macabre joke.

    The Gods of political lunacy via lab/lib/con, politico’s / supporters are winning on a daily basis, these premature deaths are collateral damage as the two sides of the political mafia & supporting soldiers fight it out, with more setting out the numbers will rise.

    Murder Inc. fact or fiction ?

  103. 341986+ up ticks,

    No right minded person wants another dead by drowning as in this
    nasty incident, but all I can see coming from the political snake pit will be, put the boats on rail flatbeds & run them through the tunnel these
    politico’s / supporters / voters are determined with their pursuit of reset.

    1. Johnson should have stopped the boats coming months ago. If he had this would not happen. You cannnot trust the French to do anything as history shows.

      1. The French do seem to hate us. I remember reading Orwell’s ‘Down and Out in Paris and London’ where he observed that those beggars given largesse despised the givers more so than those who simply walked past ignoring their plight.

        1. I read that recently. Quite shocking.

          I also found it amusing that they could serve any old rubbish to the American guests because they hadn’t a clue about what fine dining was. Some things never change.

      2. 341986+ up ticks,

        Evening JN,
        On this issue you cannot trust the french,
        lab / libs / cons,ALL pro eu.

    1. A Morrison’s all butter muffin with Aldi blackcurrant conserve and Waitrose extra matured cheddar.

      1. BLT in a toasted Ciabatta roll.
        Thanksgiving tomorrow so roast chicken and all appropriate side dishes.

        1. I lived in the US for so long that T/Giving has become part and parcel. MH likes it too as he gets lots of spuds- he loves potatoes. I can take ’em or leave ’em.

          1. Even after all these years here in the US, I have a hard time coping with Thanksgiving and then a month later, Christmas!! Our daughter is hosting so all we have to do is be there tomorrow, with wine of course!

          2. I stopped doing turkey at Xmas because two turkeys in a month was overkill. Mind you, my son could have eaten an entire turkey on his own- he loves it.

  106. I see Bbc News at 10 is preaching again. This time about the Scottish Highlands, where they have culled deer so they can promote ‘rewilding’, which will eventually encourage ‘more mammals’. You really couldn’t make it up.

      3. Gawd. Fog on the Tyne is a tune I had hoped to forget. Now a bloody ear worm. Now’t to do with the actual Lindisfarne, a place of mystery and magic.

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