Wednesday 3 April: Hope that JK Rowling’s fightback can spell the end of Scottish wokery

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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711 thoughts on “Wednesday 3 April: Hope that JK Rowling’s fightback can spell the end of Scottish wokery”

  2. Good morrow, gentlefolk. Today’s (recycled) story

    PROUD TO FART

    A little old guy goes to the doctor and says, “Doctor I have this problem with gas, but it really doesn’t bother me too much. They never smell and are always silent. As a matter of fact, I’ve farted at least 20 times since I’ve been here in your office. You didn’t know I was farting because they didn’t smell and are silent.”

    The doctor says, “I see. Take these pills and come back to see me next week.”

    The next week the guy goes back, “Doctor,” he says, “I don’t know what the hell you gave me, but now my farts, although still silent, they stink terribly.”

    “Good”, the doctor said. “Now that we’ve cleared up your sinuses, let’s work on your hearing.”

  3. Morning, all Y’all. Sunny, for the moment, but much snow forecast. Sweden E4 highway has been at a standstill since 5pm yesterday, apparently… Uff!

  4. Morning, all Y’all. Sunny, for the moment, but much snow forecast. Sweden E4 highway has been at a standstill since 5pm yesterday, apparently… Uff!

    1. Last night, I had a thought on this matter.
      My granddaughter is studying at Edinburgh university.
      We often buzz emails and texts back and forth.
      If I send her a funny or a comment about the prettily dressed eunuchs, does that communication become a criminal offence once it crosses the border?

      1. Probably, Anne. Almost anything becomes a criminal offence once it crosses the border.

        Oh, to be back in England!

      2. I’m not sure of this but I don’t think anything needs to ‘cross the border’. If you post anything on any forum that can be accessed by any sensitive soul in Scotland who is looking for a way to be offended, then MacPlod may come for you.

        It is all a legal absurdity

  7. Another communication from Nagsman

    (I think Sir Tom Jasper has posted something very similar if not identical at some stage in the past)

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

    A redneck with a bucket full of live fish was approached by a game warden as he started to drive his boat away from a lake.

    The game warden asked the man, “May I see your fishing license please?”

    “Naw, sir,” replied the redneck. “I don’t need none of them there papers. These here are my pet fish.”

    “Pet fish??”

    “Yep. Once a week, I bring these here fish o’mine down to the lake and let ’em swim ’round for a while. Then when I whistle, they swim right back into my net and I take ’em home.”

    “What a line of horse sh-t….you’re under arrest.”

    The redneck said, “It’s the truth, Mr. Gov’ment Man. I’ll show ya! We do this all the time!!”

    “WE do, now, do WE?” smirked the warden. “PROVE it!”

    The redneck released the fish into the lake and stood and waited. After a few minutes, the warden said, “Well?”

    “Well, WHUT?” said the redneck.

    The warden asked, “When are you going to call them back?”

    “Call who back?”

    “The FISH,” replied the warden!

    “Whut fish?” asked the redneck.

    MORAL OF THE STORY:

    We may not be as smart as some city slickers, but we ain’t as dumb as some government employees.

  8. Good Moaning.
    A news snippet from Snitchland.

    “More than 3,000 complaints have been made to Police Scotland under the SNP’s new hate crime laws since they came into force this week, it has been reported, following warnings that the force would be overwhelmed.

    Calum Steele, the former general secretary of the Scottish Police Federation, said he understood that around 3,800 cases had been lodged over the previous 24 hours.

    Although the force said the number of complaints was still being collated, BBC Scotland reported the extraordinary total since Monday. Critics had said the legislation would be “weaponised” by trans activists.”

  10. Hope that JK Rowling’s fightback can spell the end of Scottish wokery

    I doubt it, it’s not Rowling that they are after, but millions of the little people that will be afraid to say anything.
    It’s just another form of Nazism in my book and it will be waved through here when Labour to over the reins of the great reset.

    1. JKR herself has acknowledged that her money provides influence and safety.
      It will be the little people without that cushion they will go after.
      So much for socialism, comrade.
      Maybe the revamped Jenners will become Scotland very own GUM store, accessible only to the apparatchiks.

      1. Someone will get a well publicised prison term, that’s all they need to do.
        We all know the police and the judiciary are going to interpret this law on a one sided bases.

        1. “…We all know the police and the judiciary are…” totally bent and in thrall to the SNP.

    3. Bob3 (Good morning btw), J K Rowling has said that if any of the “little people” posts something which Plod does not like, then she will post the exact same words and both she and the little person will see Plod in court.

      1. ‘Morning Elsie
        Rowling is a far left open borders feminist you may get backup on a trans issue but if for example you posted
        “The small boats full of muzscum fighting men crossing the channel should be machine gunned”
        I suspect you’d be on your own………

        1. Well Rik, although that is true I would compare it to Hitler. He was responsible for cheap affordable cars and motorways (Volkswagens and Autobahns) which were good results but if you were Jewish it would have been wise to leave Germany as soon as you could. Similarly with J K Rowling; appreciate her fight against transgender nonsense but avoid letting her hear your views on Muslim fighting men crossing the channel.

    5. Thoughts are that Youzless considers the trans as useful idiots and that his intention is to bring in blasphemy laws through the back door. Yesterday he was whining about some graffiti near his home (reportedly on a council scheme two miles from his house) that was racialist in content.

      Of course he might just be playing his race card (again) as through his new law he has become an international laughing stock.

        1. I did suggest elsewhere that someone should check Youzless’ garage for empty paint tins. Regardless of what his mirror tells him in the morning, he’s not the brightest of bulbs. Sleekit as they come, but not clever.

    1. Had some good holidays at Chinon. In the wine cellars under the castle in patricular.

  13. Non-binary patient who wants a vagina and a penis sues health chiefs
    Canadian, 33, argues taxpayers should fund surgery in specialist clinic in Texas
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/04/02/non-binary-patient-who-wants-a-vagina-and-a-penis-sues-heal/

    A non-binary patient in Canada is seeking taxpayer-funded surgery to create a vagina while also keeping a functional penis.

    If a court rules in their favour, the patient, 33, from Ontario, will travel to a specialist clinic in Austin, Texas, for the procedure.

    The patient, referred to in court documents as KS, was born male but identifies as non-binary. They do not identify as one gender but “literally a mix”, according to court documents.

    They argue that forcing them to undergo binary surgery “could be considered an illegal act of conversion therapy as well as a violation of the Ontario Human Rights Code”.

    Rights group said decision was discriminatory
    Ontario’s Health Insurance Plan (OHIP) initially denied the request for the surgery in 2022 on the grounds that the procedure is experimental and is not performed in Canada.

    But KS complained to the province’s appeals board, which overturned the decision on the grounds that vaginoplasty shouldn’t inherently include a penectomy.

    LGBTQ rights group Egale Canada said the OHIP’s “interpretation (of a vaginoplasty) is exclusionary and discriminates against nonbinary people on the basis of their gender identity”.

    The decision prompted a counter-appeal and Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice is expected to issue a ruling in the coming months.

    It is unclear how much the surgery would cost, but the clinic, The Crane Center, told the National Post their surgeries range from £8,000 – £56,000.

    According to court documents, KS has suffered from gender dysphoria since they were a teenager. They are non-binary but are more “transfeminine” and use she/her pronouns.

    Transfeminine refers to people who were assigned male at birth but identify as more feminine than masculine, or tilt towards being female.

    KS’s doctor, an Ottawa endocrinologist, wrote a letter supporting the request for the surgery.

    “It is very important for (KS) to have a vagina for her personal interpretation of her gender expression but she also wishes to maintain her penis,” the doctor said.

    “(KS) is transfeminine but not completely on the ‘feminine’ end of the spectrum (and) for this reason it’s important for her to have a vagina while maintaining a penis.”

    Gender treatment ‘off the rails’
    Critics told the National Post the request illustrates “how far off the rails” gender-affirming treatment has gone.

    “Our public healthcare system is at the breaking point and really needs to focus on procedures that are medically necessary,” Pamela Buffone, founder of the parents’ group Canadian Gender Report, said.

    “The patient will not be physically healthier because of the operation, which is likely to result in complications and the need for corrective surgeries and further demands on the health system.”

    The goal with phallus-preserving vaginoplasty is to create a vagina that is “aesthetically pleasing” while “maintaining the original genital structure” of the penis, according to the Art Plastic Surgery clinic in New Jersey.

    A similar case last June saw the OHIP fund surgery for a civil servant, 41, who had a penis constructed without removing their vagina and uterus.

    This is so bonkers that I thought I would post the story in full.

    1. Whats a non- binary? It has to be male or female and I would tell it to get lost.

    2. Whats a non- binary? It has to be male or female and I would tell it to get lost.

    5. Why stick at one of each? Isn’t there a Hindu god with eight arms. What’s good enough for an octopus is good enough for us.

      I have this cuddly toy virus made of squidgy rubber I once used to enhance my physical beauty when playing Betsy in a mummer’s play (mammers’ play?). Surely we have the right to cover our entire body with penises (penes?) if we so desire and think it enhances our attractiveness on the beach.

  14. Good morning. From today’s DT.

    The value of second-hand electric cars has tumbled since the start of the year as Chinese manufacturers flood Britain with cheap new models.
    The average price of the 20 most popular used electric and hybrid vehicles fell 12pc in the three months to March compared with a year ago, according to research by the AA.
    Supply of new EVs has begun to exceed demand as interest in greener cars wanes amid heightened concerns about lengthy charging times and limited driving ranges.

    Soon you will have to pay people to take older ones away.

    1. Governments should not have paid out so much to introduce them. We know they cannot run anything.

      1. They should just leave it to the market other than incentivise the development of a basic charging infrastructure.

  17. Wordle 1,019 4/6

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

    Good morning, chums. I hope you all slept well.

    1. Good morning
      A slightly better result than my recent dire results…
      Wordle 1,019 3/6

      🟨⬜🟨⬜⬜
      ⬜🟨🟨🟩⬜
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

  18. Solar farms are taking us back to the dark ages

    Even green campaigners fear they are damaging the planet, consuming land that could be left to nature

    MATT RIDLEY
    3 April 2024 • 6:00am

    The actress and environmentalist Tracy Ward objects to plans to build a 2,000-acre solar farm, part of which would lie on the estate of her ex-husband the Duke of Beaufort in Gloucestershire: “Solar panels should be on roofs, along motorways, or industrial sites,” she says. “Be careful what the climate change fearmongering will lull us into accepting.”

    Spot on. While solar panels on roofs can (almost) make sense, huge solar farms are an environmental as well as economic mistake. The whole point of farmland is that it is already a solar farm, and a green one at that. It turns sunlight into food energy for people, insects, voles and birds. “The fact that some green campaigners would rather have low grade electricity than high quality British farm produce shows how bizarrely irrational environmentalism has become,” says Dr John Constable of the Renewable Energy Foundation.

    Ah, say solar-energy fans, but you can have both: you can graze sheep under the solar panels or allow weeds to flourish. This is nonsense: the whole point of solar panels is that they catch the sunlight – the clue is in the name – which plants would otherwise use to grow. On a normal summer’s day, perhaps 10 per cent of the sunlight might get missed by the solar panels and caught by the plants’ solar panels (leaves) instead. It’s a zero-sum game.

    It is debatable whether we need home-grown electricity more desperately than we need home-grown food these days: reliance on imports of both are increasing sharply. But you cannot currently make bread or lambs any other way than by using land; the same is not true of electricity.

    According to an estimate by the writer Robert Bryce, solar power needs around 200 times as much land as gas per unit of energy. Reducing the land we need for human civilisation is surely a vital ecological imperative. The more concentrated the production, the more land you spare for nature. Going back to using the landscape to provide energy, as they did in the Middle Ages (through wind, water and hay for horses), would be a disaster for nature.

    Britain currently vies with New Zealand each year to break the record for wheat yield: our combination of soil moisture and summer day length is ideal. But it’s right at the bottom of the heap for solar-power potential. Around 1-2 kilowatt-hours a day of “direct normal irradiation” falls on the average square metre in Britain. Most of Australia experiences 5-8 times as much. According to one study, it is not even clear that the energy generated by a typical solar farm in Europe north of the Alps is greater than what went into building it, let alone replacing it every 15 years.

    To match UK electricity demand from solar on a June afternoon could mean covering 5-10 per cent of the entire country with solar farms, but they would be useless at night and in winter. British solar output peaks at precisely the times we least need it: in the middle of the day in the middle of summer. It contributes the square root of sod all in December, and in spring and autumn it stops generating just when demand starts to peak in the evening.

    The more solar power we add to the grid, the bigger the evening ramp-up demand for gas. It is expensive to keep so much back-up ready. Batteries are unlikely to help much. If we relied on solar power, it would take many billions of pounds to install enough batteries to tide us over a single night, let alone a winter.

    Then there is the demand for materials. There is probably not enough silicon, silver or copper being mined and smelted in the world to build a solar farm big enough to supply Britain. The material demands of solar power are about six times greater than for gas, per megawatt of capacity (though half those of offshore wind).

    Much of this material comes from China, a significant vulnerability in terms of economic security and environmental damage. Solar’s fans are fond of saying that the cost of solar panels is falling fast, but solar panels account for just a quarter of the costs of a solar farm: the cost of the rest of the infrastructure, and the land, is rising.

    Planning guidance on solar farms needs to change fast to stop these duke-lucrative, subsidised eyesores gobbling up more of our green and pleasant land.

  19. Russia’s Oil Exports By Sea Hit New 2024 Record. 3 April 2024.

    Russia’s crude oil exports by sea reached the highest point yet this year in the last week of March, as weather conditions at Russia’s Pacific Port improved.

    Bloomberg tanker tracking data shows that four-week average seaborne crude exports in the period to March 31 reached their highest level since November.

    This is a neutral source so I suppose that it is accurate. One of the ironies of this sanctions program is that Russian oil is a necessity to the West hence the recent US strictures against the Ukies attacking Russian refineries.

    https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Russias-Oil-Exports-By-Sea-Hit-New-2024-Record.html

    1. I see Tobias Ellwood is on this list. I am not surprised. He must be the leader of the Globalist Cabal in the Tory Party.

  21. ‘Morning All

    Another clusterfluck from the Post Office………..

    Royal Mail is investigating problems with new barcoded stamps amid

    fears customers are wrongly being fined to receive letters, The

    Telegraph can reveal.

    Members of the public have complained that

    they are being hit with £5 penalties to collect post because Royal Mail

    has deemed the stamps on them to be counterfeit.

    The issue has emerged since the postal service switched entirely to a new barcoded system in July.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/consumer-affairs/royal-mail-investigating-barcode-stamps-customers-hit-fines/

    1. More significant is that Paula Vennells and other senior Post Office management knew that Fujitsu had a backdoor into Post Offices’ Horizon Systems even when denying its existence. Arguably they lied to Parliament. They really need to be in gaol.

      1. I once made a list of every Post Office executive and Government minister right up to Prime Minister since 1999 who are implicated in this. All need to be barred from office and sent to prison with the possible exception of Kevin Hollinrake, Kemi Badenoch and Rishi Sunak, who are the poor sods who have to sort it out.

        1. Jeremy, remember that Mr Keegan was one of the bosses of Fujitsu.

          Once he was replaced the Prime Minister parachuted his wife, Gillian Keegan, into

          a safe Conservative seat, and very soon after she was elected made her a Cabinet

          minister.

          One wonders the details about this transaction. Hmmmm?

        1. Don’t worry, we have really important laws to stop hurty words and that’s much more important.

    2. Yo Rik

      Fines are the most common type of sentence given by the courts.

      Only law courts can legally impose fines, although libraries and such like use the word

      Royal Mail is investigating problems with new barcoded stamps amid fears customers are wrongly being fined to receive letters,
      The Telegraph can reveal.

      If an ‘alleged’ offence has not been tried before a court, how can a fine be administered

      I suggest that anyone accused demands to be taken to court.

      Is it the sender, or receiver who carries the can.

      If it is the former, all subject mail must have been opened to trace the sender.

      If the latter their only involvement will have been to receive it

  23. Medley Time

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/415a0e24472fd4d9aa18438585d80b54926e6f1d2feb4d32e2988516780f9fb2.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/049e69237d07ecb992f2852cbf39f2dac2d51d3a9215a32ab5a33857999acf04.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b61c4fc0ccb35849c85846235b2795854be0339e06742b9dd4220d4068179042.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2f11a2846b0596b57128a9a885b7a176664582ce8c1bcf6bf4d3e289aafd20fd.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/dea1c05c37587897638f7853fe56addfb0b0ed86c7bbdefd42c0993f9f49c1e2.jpg

    http://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0f19f066a423cacc40a8085effbe2ad46d829d6252df208bbafcf046e5e653fd.jpg

    https://twitter.com/GBNEWS/status/1774486817213190454?s=20

    1. “Social Justice Warriors are not working class heroes. They are bourgeois arts graduates with no aptitude for science or business, who feel bitter at the large disparity between their high self-evaluation and their low prospects.”

      I would go further by saying that their aptitude for their chosen arts is equal to their ineptitude for science and business. In short they display no expertise or skill set in any form of human endeavour.

      1. Quote from previous:

        There seems to be no shortage of bad ideas in Westminster.
        They usually involve an unspecified cost to the people at large to
        provide an undisclosed benefit for the influential and well-connected.

      2. I had this discussion with a “Pride” attendee whilst waiting for a train at Birmingham New Street.

        I am all in favour that all people have universal rights and the starting point is that we are all equal under the law, and that there should be no unwarranted discrimination or favouritism on the grounds of identity group or faction. Looking at the LGBTQI etc alphabet, why was there no place for S in the scheme of things? Straights may be out of fashion right now, but surely they have the same rights as the rest of us. This person’s failure to recognise this defeats the premise that this movement has anything to do with social justice.

        1. I personally loathe the epithet “straight”, since it is a contrived term invented by and used by all manner of queers. I hate labels but if anyone insisted, then I am NORMAL (we may add an ‘N’ to their list).

          1. I take it you’re not conversant with the Major Gowan alternative alphabet, used when categorising cricket teams. N is used for something else, as is W.

            I cannot be considered N as in NORMAL, since I am already M for Morris Dancer.

  24. Nobody has a plan to stop the boats, but it’s Sunak who will pay the price. 3 April 2024.

    We have one great advantage over our continental neighbours in that we are an island, so the only way of getting here when other routes are blocked off is by boat. But stopping them needs a plan and no one seems to have one that works.

    This is of course quite intentional and is common to the entirety of the Political Elites. None of them have any intention of stopping Mass Immigration!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/02/nobody-has-a-plan-to-stop-the-boats-sunak-pay-the-price/

    1. And can anybody seriously think that Sunak gives a toss about whether he wins or loses the general election? He will be far happier in the USA and completely out of UK politics.

  25. Nobody is buying into the net zero madness

    There’s no consensus that climate policy needs to hurt the living standards of ordinary Britons

    JOHN REDWOOD
    2 April 2024 • 1:57pm

    Are consumers really ready for the magnitude of changes necessary for a green transition? Already, the vast ambition of net zero envisages most people switching their gas central heating to electricity and their petrol cars to bicycles and electric cars.

    The ultimate challenge will be the wholesale conversion of electricity from coal, oil and gas to renewables – all without a satisfying answer to the question of what to do when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow.

    So far, governments have concentrated on doing what should be the easier areas of transition. They have considerable influence and control over energy markets, and have increased their interventions in them. We’ve seen more subsidies, tax breaks, windfall taxes, regulations, managed prices and bans than ever in the quest to tip electricity generation towards wind and solar power away from fossil fuels. The energy industry has consented, or at least acquiesced, to these changes.

    The transition has not been without buffers. The electricity industry, which actively promotes renewable power, has been rolling out smart meters to an increasingly sceptical group of consumers who have so far resisted them. Still, they have charted plans for many more wind farms and solar arrays.

    More renewables means more grid space to handle the variability of output characteristic of wind and solar power, as well as to transfer power from offshore sources to the south of the country where most customers live. But the industry is well behind on increasing grid capacity, slowed by planning opposition to new pylons.

    Not all technological revolutions are popular. Take the digital boom, which succeeded because consumers loved the products and services associated with it. We have seen a near universal adoption of mobile phones. The majority of us have signed up readily to the internet and regularly post on social media, even allowing our personal data to be temporarily held by private companies like Amazon. Leading US tech firms have swept the globe with their products without the need for government subsidies, tax breaks, or exhortations.

    The green revolution has not fired the same enthusiasm. Battery electric cars are still a hard sell. Heat pumps with a £7500 subsidy do not fly off the shelves. Whilst many people do say global warming is a problem and something should be done about it, few think it sufficient of a problem that they need to to change their travel, heating and diet: a seven-country YouGov poll recently found that major government interventions of this kind were far more unpopular than small voluntary changes.

    The truth is there are determined minorities on both sides of the argument. One group says it is essential people are made to change to stop the rise in temperatures, wanting tougher tax rises and bans on fossil fuels. One group says it is all nonsense, with a variable climate affected by many things in addition to human carbon dioxide. They dislike the government interfering and don’t worry about an extra degree of warming. The majority in the middle would like policy to be gently pointing in a lower carbon direction, but not in a way that would worsen their living standards.

    If green prosperity is simply a convenient slogan, policymakers must be honest with voters about the consequences of net zero. Government astroturfing is no alternative for genuine consumer buy-in, nor can it paper over the myriad issues currently plaguing our renewable source alternatives. The real test of our energy transition hasn’t even begun.

    Sir John Redwood’s The $275 Trillion Green Revolution: Will Consumers Buy It? is out now

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

    Mr Richard Richards
    7 HRS AGO
    Reply to Nigel Robinson – view message
    Stop the Net Zero madness. £3trn and counting of our money, with no democratic legitimacy, to make us poorer, less free, and unable to move about. Petition here for a Referendum on Net Zero… https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/656782

    1. While I have signed, I have no doubt whatsoever that the government will bat it away, as it does anything else it doesn’t want to bother thinking about.

    2. Why weren’t there louder voices from the politicians opposing Net Zero when the likes of May and Johnson got going? And why didn’t somebody educate the king and his elder son about how essential and beneficial carbon dioxide is to our planet?

    1. What on Earth was the cyclist doing blocking a pedestrian crossing? He deserved a dunk.

    2. The various — seamlessly edited — camera angles used in that clip prove that it was a set-up piece of filming.

      1. But highly satisfying to those of us who have had our passage blocked by self-righteous lycra-clad dictators. And back to my original point, if they were afraid of immediate retribution from the drivers they bully, they wouldn’t act in such an aggressive way.

    1. They have no intention of stopping the boats. There are many things they could do if they wanted to. Those boats are arriving on the coast in vans. Why are they not stopping and searching? Who is supplying the outboard motors? What is happening to the boats when they do arrive? Are they sending them back to France?

    2. Sunak is certainly not a latter-day Francis Drake.

      I wonder if he’s ever heard of Drake, or his sterling naval efforts to ensure the continuity of the safety of the realm?

      He doesn’t come across as a latter-day Winston Churchill either.

    3. I blame it on him for not deploying the Royal Navy and the Royal Marines.

      1. 385333+ up ticks,

        Morning FM,
        I blame it once again on the majority voter
        returning the same odious type politico /party to power.

        1. For whom will you be voting in the coming election?

          I have had my vote, of which Blair robbed me, restored. But I cannot think of any party which deserves my wholeheartyed support.

          1. 1. Don’t vote for the Uniparty
            2. Vote Reform
            3. If no Reform candidate, vote for the person least likely to win.

            if you don’t vote, the Uniparty interprets that as you being content with their policies.

          2. Alternatively write a message on the ballot paper about what you dislike about the parties. Spoiled papers get looked at by the Returning Officer and the candidates (and also get counted).

          3. 385333+ up ticks,

            Morning R,

            As I have previously posted, if no suitable independent then NOTA will be replaced with
            Daisy the cow, never been known to let the peoples down via treachery,lies & deceit also very farmer friendly.

  28. Good day all, and the 77th,

    Dull and drizzly here at McPhee Towers this morning, wind in the West, 9℃ with 12℃ forecast.

    One man has probably done more than anyone else to draw together all the strands of truth about climate: Tom Nelson. His podcast series on YouTube is a gold mine of information on all aspects of climate from eminently qualified people. His Substack backs it up and he was the producer of Martin Durkin’s Climate the Movie: The Cold Truth.

    In this video he talks to the one man who has definitely done more than anyone else to expose the megalomaniacal intent of the Rockefeller family in its attempted global coup d’etat through climate change, pandemics and control of the United Nations: Dr Jakob Nordangård. We owe both of them an enormous debt for getting the truth out there.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bESReXX4iPQ

    Right at the end Nordangård comments that ‘ordinary’ people don’t buy the climate nonsense, they see through it. The people most susceptible to the propaganda are the ‘educated’ classes, those who have been to university and that it’s because they are ambitious and want to be a part of the establishment that they believe in what comes down to them from on high. Professor Richard Lindzen also made a comment along the same lines. Now we see why there was a drive to get 50% of school leavers into universities – so they could be brain-washed.

    Nordangård also has a book coming out about the ‘pandemic’ – featuring the Rockefeller Foundation. I wonder if he’ll turn his attention to the Rockefeller control of Western allopathic medicine since the early 20th century? That could be a really smelly can of worms.

    2. I came here to commet on this, Phizzee having kindly brought it to my attention.

      Extraordinary likeness! I never took much notice of how my everyday hairdo looks from the back, but see it on videos of me dancing a lot now. Exactly the same!

      All that is needed is to photoshop the dress into red from blue and the shoes from pink to black (I wear neither blue nor pastel pink) and it could quite literally have been me coming back from a milonga last night.

      (OK, OK, this morning. 🤣🤣)

      Who’s it by, do you know?

      1. Sadly not.
        It’s from an X-Tw@ter contact who posts rather nice pictures of attractive and elegant ladies in her Good Morning and Good Evening comments.

    2. £150 for the DT & self.
      2 x £25 for her and 1x £100 for me, so still can’t afford a replacement van!

  31. PhilosophiCat
    @Philosophi_Cat
    One thing that holds humanity back from producing exceptionally talented individuals is universal education.

    On the surface, this may seem counter-intuitive, because wouldn’t ensuring that everyone has access to basic K-12 education allow more talent to flourish? You would think so, but often no.

    Becoming a master at something requires specialisation from a young age. When you force kids to postpone pursuing their passions full time until they graduate from a state-approved curriculum, it’s often too late for many to become true masters.

    The years of their peak brain plasticity is wasted on learning crap they will never need, but that some bureaucrats decided is essential for all children to learn.

    For children who are gifted, universal schooling is a curse that too often is a limiting factor rather than a supportive one. Anything that is universalised is unlikely to be beneficial to people who are outliers.

    There are very few programs aimed at identifying and nurturing young talent and far too many programs aimed at “equality” of outcomes, which necessarily always means chopping down any tall poppies.
    —

    My children’s school allowed a great deal of freedom, and about 2% of the kids use it to pursue passions, reaching world level skills in a few cases. The rest used it to cheek the teachers, stop others from learning, bully and smoke pot.

    1. The Russians (under the old Soviet regime) used to talent spot individuals and then send them to specialist schools. A lot of the Intourist interpreters went through this route.

  32. The new Team GB flag trashes everything that’s iconic about the Union Jack
    Fashionable liberals are allergic to patriotism and think the whole idea of the Olympics is ‘elitist’
    Allison Pearson https://www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2024/04/03/the-team-gb-flag-rebrand-olympics/

    Have we descended into the sewers?

    BTL

    This is all part of the deliberate plan to destroy the West.

    They would not yet dare tamper with the French Tricolour, the Irish Green or the Scottish Saltire but the flags of St George and the United Kingdom’s Union Jack are the easiest prey for alien forces so this is the most logical place to start.

    Diversity has been used to weaken our resolve, dilute our national culture, libel our history, undermine the Christian ethical foundations of our Law and eradicate the spirit which once enabled Britain to be the most inventive and successful country in the world and win two world wars.

    Our flags are our symbols – I am surprised they did not come up with a clear white flag

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5e867fe0ad87268f6267ec73c3a86111408250a465f0082c8bbd34e187f641be.png

    1. I keep saying any commercial organisation that wants to use national symbols should licence their use with strict ‘brand guidelines’ on their use, and the royalties paid to the relevant body.

    1. They are not that bright mostly, their phenomenal success in life comes from having powerful backers. Imagine what kind of person would sit there listening to that guff and applauding it!

    2. Eternal life on offer?

      Schwab seems to be offering his disciples eternal life with a starter pack of at least 50 years in power with more to follow.

      Rather reminds me of John Donne’s sonnet: Death Be Not Proud which ends with the words “And Death shall be no more; Death thou shat die!”

      Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
      Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
      For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow
      Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
      From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
      Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
      And soonest our best men with thee do go,
      Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery.
      Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
      And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
      And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
      And better than thy stroke; why swell’st thou then?
      One short sleep past, we wake eternally
      And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

    3. The most significant influential POS on this planet. He leaves chairman Mao standing.
      I wonder who checks for fire arms as the audience arrives.

  34. Yo Mr T

    I am surprised they did not come up with a clear white flag

    The French got there first

    1. Perhaps these “charities” could ask themselves WHY Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and other slammer countries REFUSE to take these people in.

      1. The worst one is Saudi, with room for more than one million people due to the huge campsite at Mecca.

  37. Who is supplying the thousands of lifejackets? it’s obvious that the British and French governments are actively involved in the trafficking, as I doubt that smuggling gangs would care about lifejackets.

    1. Care4Calais or another charity. They should be arrested and charged for aiding and abetting people traffickers.

  38. A couple of years ago, they changed the international number plate recognition code from ‘GB’ to ‘UK’ to be confused with Ukraine who confusingly use ‘UA’ (not to confused with the United Arab Emirates, which uses ‘UAE’). This was done because ‘GB’ was considered insulting to those in Northern Ireland, which is not part of the island Great Britain, but GBA, GBG, GBJ, GBM and GBZ are still in use. ‘GBI’ or ‘GBU’ would have been tidier for Northern Ireland, but there you go.

    The British Olympic Team (which presumably includes those from Northern Ireland) is still referred to as “Team GB” by the media.

    1. I thought UK was mandated (by the EU) because it was “GB and NI” whereas UK is only the United Kingdoms of England and Scotland (and the Principality of Wales). That way NI is left out (and currently still attached to the EU).

    2. I was in a museum in San Francisco during a large earthquake and the concrete floor (and the building) rose and fell like waves rolling and crashing on a beach. Very exciting experience!

  41. As we splash along the lanes and farmers can’t get tractors onto the fields to plough – isn’t it GREAT to learn that hose-pipe bans will shortly be imposed?

    1. And with all this bloody rain, it’s difficult to understand who Thames Water have made such an absolute mess of everything.
      Hose pipe bans ?
      Can we have a competition on here known as Name The Knob ?
      As in, who came up with that one ?

    1. Whilst I was out running yesterday a woman looking at her phone nearly pushed the her pram into me as she joined the pavement I was running on.

  45. Morning all 🙂😊
    Weather not worthy of a mention.
    And goodonya JK, when you’ve finished perhaps you can sort out our own set of Dopey Wokies. And hopefully these Careers of Evil.
    One of her books.

      1. 385333+ up ticks,

        Morning AAL,

        Agreed, two wrongs do not make it right but, in this case one did cancel out the other in a rather positive manner.

        1. I do get it. It needs some canned laughter at the end, totally different vibe!

      1. 385333+ up ticks,

        R,
        Great minds, could also be we are today wearing the same dress.

  47. Pothole priority
    SIR – Perhaps National Highways, working with Wiltshire Council, could look at the state of the roads in Malmesbury, Wiltshire, before committing all their money to the Stonehenge tunnel.

    One main road, Abbey Row, is lethal. There are potholes inches deep that fill with water and drench pedestrians. Loose gravel is everywhere – a disaster waiting to happen for bikers, pedestrians and motorists.

    Ann Taylor
    Malmesbury, Wiltshire

    Stonehenge tunnel?

    Tunnel to disrupt the beautiful countryside , costing billions , another bad idea like HS2?

    The landscapes around Avebury and Stonehenge are of unparalleled archaeological richness and significance, and because of their World Heritage Site status any works undertaken within them come under the closest scrutiny in terms of their research considerations, and their planning, execution, post-excavation analysis and reporting. Over the years Wessex Archaeology has been deeply involved in all these areas of work.

    https://www.wessexarch.co.uk/our-work/stonehenge-and-avebury?gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjw_LOwBhBFEiwAmSEQAVvgrfNoew9nLouXg63_aZWUUpn6qG0-_qBFNTu2Wez28RuQAReN0BoCgG0QAvD_BwE

    For Gawds sake , the stones have stood forever . Britain is covered in ritualistic monuments , burial chambers , and wonderful history .. This is our visible heritage .. they have stood the test of time .. They are as solid as the Rock of Gibraltar .

    Heritage to me also means no tinkering with history , restore our flags , our religion , our own quirky rituals , our Easter, Christmas , St Georges day , literature, music , choirs , solemn music , saving our rivers , our countryside, our industry, buildings , keeping our infrastructure British , our industry British , stop selling off everything to bleeding foreigners . Our birth rite, yes?

    1. TB, as I posted previously:

      There seems to be no shortage of bad ideas in Westminster.
      They usually involve an unspecified cost to the people at large to
      provide an undisclosed benefit for the influential and well-connected.

      1. Spot on!

        When our son was at Plymouth University I always drove the ‘scenic’ route after leaving the M3. A six hours journey from home wasn’t so onerous taking that route. History and beautiful countryside was worth the effort of an extra hour or so’s driving. The M4/M5 route is tedious compared to the A303/A30.

    2. Amongst the options suggested for Stonehenge/Amesbury was a northern deviation for the A303 via Bulford and Larkhill. It was rejected on grounds of cost, believe it or not.

  48. Good morning dear Nottlers. Wednesdays for me means the must listen of the latest edition of The Weekly Sceptic podcast. Featuring Toby Young and Nick Dixon discussing news stories of the week. Their “Peak Woke” section is of particular note. Recommended. Anyone else a listener?

    1. Not yet AA, but might take a look. I do Irreverend podcast from time to time. That’s good too.

      1. Thanks for the recommendation James. I’ve just found their website, the accompanying image for the podcast looks like an update of old Napalm Death album covers. Excellent.

        1. A good podcast needs settling into for 45-mins or so. They do deliver, consistently.

      2. #me too. Keep meaning to support Jamie. Must get round to it. I had a genuine laugh out loud moment right at the end of last week’s episode.

    2. Yes i am midway through but can only listen on my way to and from work (or when at home).

      1. Hello again Kettle. Just got to your message here. I dip my toe into the Speccie comments a little but I don’t like the new set up. It’s like shouting into the void somewhat. I miss the banter and feedback greatly. I also miss informed interesting takes from commentators like your good self. I have noticed there’s a load of new names popping up who haven’t generally got much about them.

  49. 385333+up ticks,

    Morning FA,
    Past through my mind also, but the feel good factor is worth a great deal.

    1. ‘Past’ through your mind, did it? On its way to the Future? Or remaining in the Present?😉

      1. 385333+ up ticks,

        Afternoon G,
        Gimme a break will yer I’m under stress trying to feed two wood-burners.

  50. It is a golf day, and we had a day gardening yesterday .

    Strong breeze , overcast dull, but so green in the garden , soggy underfoot.

      1. Indeed – heartwarming. And he is related to the black who “runs” Radio 4.

    6. There seem to be more foreign individuals in charge in our institutions. Not necessarily a bad thing but I do feel uneasy that there are so many “foreign” MPs and ministers of state.

  52. Hmmm:

    According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the prevalence of autism among U.S. children has risen significantly in recent years.

    As Statista’s Felix Richter reports, while 6.7 in 1,000 children were diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in 2000, that number had risen to 27.6 in 1,000 children by 2020.

    This means that currently 1 in 36 children in the U.S. get diagnosed with ASD, up from 1 in 150 children 20 years ago.

    1. I wonder, if that has anything to do with having a Life Saving vaccination in 2020?

    2. There are likely to be many explanations for this. Undoubtedly one of them is that acquiring a ‘neurodiverse’ identity is the new way of justifying why you don’t sail through life, brilliant at everything and universally popular. It is important to remember that autism is a term that was used by Leo Kanner to describe a particular cluster of behavioural phenomena in children with substantial learning difficulties. It has since been embroidered and extended to include people who are a bit socially challenged and decide to self-diagnose but who avoid the name Asperger because of his association with the 3rd Reich.
      However, I don’t doubt that something very bad is going on – whether it be a result of mass artificial antigenic challenges, something toxic in the water or air, conditioning of the developing brain by exposure to too many screens or anything else that one can dream up. Unfortunately, the public health establishment is in denial because a) they can’t face any possibility that immunisation could play a role b) there is now an aggressive ‘able autists’ lobby that will pile in on them if they suggest that there is anything wrong with being autistic.

  53. ‘Goodbye diesel, hello electric’: Volvo has officially made its LAST diesel car.
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/cars/article-13264119/Volvo-diesel-car.html?ico=mol_desktop_home

    “Swedish brand confirms an XC90 SUV built on 26 March is its last ever diesel car
    Company will now accelerate transition to becoming an EV-ONLY maker in 2030”

    Diesel is already the cleanest and most practical fuel for cars and lorries and more research will make it even cleaner.

    Goodbye Volvo?

    1. Dare I mention:

      Hydraulic hybrid vehicles (HHVs) use a pressurized fluid power source, along with a conventional internal combustion engine (ICE), to achieve better fuel economy and reductions in harmful emissions.

      I know that the the possibility was about in the early 1960’s when I did my apprenticeship

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_hybrid_vehicle

    2. Dare I mention:

      Hydraulic hybrid vehicles (HHVs) use a pressurized fluid power source, along with a conventional internal combustion engine (ICE), to achieve better fuel economy and reductions in harmful emissions.

      I know that the the possibility was about in the early 1960’s when I did my apprenticeship

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_hybrid_vehicle

    3. A Swedish ‘brand’ but wholly owned by China (the Zhejiang Geely Holding Group).

    1. So a few of them get together, invest in some cannabis plants and bingo, you’ve got more drug pushers, more violence and more psychiatric cases. Wonderful.

  56. Wordle 1,019 5/6

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

    1. Wordle gods were nice to me today

      Wordle 1,019 3/6

      ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
      🟩🟩🟩🟩⬜
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

  57. Christianity’s decline has unleashed terrible new gods. 3 April 2024.

    Recognising Christianity’s cultural impact is the first step. The bigger task facing the West is living out these values in an age when they are increasingly under threat.

    The decline of Christianity is the story of the decline of the West. No society can survive that does not broadly share a world view. Islam will take over simply by virtue of being the only player. It will not share the views of its predecessor. Culture trumps all other values.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/03/christianity-decline-unleashed-terrible-new-gods/

    1. Quite. If you cut off the tree roots it will in time die.
      Cultural Christianity is just the period between cutting of the roots of belief and the tree falling.
      God forgive the likes of Dawkins because they didn’t know what they did but are now starting to be gripped by an appalling realisation.

    1. More to the point, we’re writing English and we didn’t have any written language before white man came.

  59. Phew!
    A brief pause in the weather allowed a start to made on reducing the logs dragged down from up the hill over the past two days into stacked firewood, but it’s started raining so it’s time for a mug of tea.

    And no, I did not cut any trees down, they’d already fallen over.

    1. There’s a very large one lying across a path on Shepherds Bush Green. LBHF council don’t appear minded to move it yet naturally they increased my council tax this year.

  60. I see there’s a furore about British aid workers being killed in Gaza.

    But if you go to give aid in a small region with lots of bombs, rockets and bullets flying around, what do you think might possibly happen?

    Exactly.

    There’s no outrage from me. If you want to go and try to help people, fine, carry on. I wouldn’t, especially in that area but that’s just me.But please, no shock and outrage when you deliberately place yourself in harm’s way and then actually get harmed.

      3. It made me wonder if these late ex-military chappies were trying to gather intel on the whereabouts of hostages and whether this has unleashed the fury against the Israelis action on this occasion?

        1. It wouldn’t surprise me if they were still in the military and sending back info on whereabouts of tunnels, Hamas chiefs and hostages

    2. Was any international aid provided to the families of the kidnapped/murdered and raped Israelis?

    3. It’s always a tragedy when the innocent die in conflict. That goes for the Palestinian civilians as well as anyone else.
      To whom should the anger be directed, those embroiled in it, or those who provoke & start it?

      And before the self-righteous come at me, answer this: what sanctions should have been imposed upon the WWII British government, for not moving civilians out of areas they know in advance to be targets of the Luftwaffe, because it would reveal we were reading their encrypted comms traffic?

      War is a pointless waste of everything, so best not start one (or follow a book that thinnens your skin & makes your trigger point hair-like).

    4. Our politicos and journos seem to be bloviating more about these few deaths than about the mass murder, rapes, bestialities, and hostage taking of Oct 7. One difference, I suppose, is that unlike on 7 Oct it is not all being cheered on by tens of 1000s of “innocent” Gazans.

    5. There could be a bit more to this.

      From another post on another site: Those of us who are fascinated by news management are interested to observe that, once the description, “humanitarian aid workers” is firmly embedded in the public mind, the fact that the three British men were all ex-soldiers, now plying their trade in the security industry, is revealed.

      It’s funny, that. From their photographs, they certainly didn’t look like ‘yer normal aid workers’. There’s a touch of the ‘chad’ about them. RIP.

      Edited to add: They weren’t just ex-soldiers, they were ex-SAS.

      1. I remember Israeli sources reporting that UN vehicles had been seen amongst the Hamas invasion force of October 7th.

        Would the Israeli military know not to hit white vehicles even bearing מטבח מרכזי בעולם ?

    6. There could be a bit more to this.

      From another post on another site: Those of us who are fascinated by news management are interested to observe that, once the description, “humanitarian aid workers” is firmly embedded in the public mind, the fact that the three British men were all ex-soldiers, now plying their trade in the security industry, is revealed.

      It’s funny, that. From their photographs, they certainly didn’t look like ‘yer normal aid workers’. There’s a touch of the ‘chad’ about them. RIP.

      1. Don’t remind me, i have to get my head round the lakh system when i go to India layer this year

  62. One would have thought with the numerous ethnicities now employed by the NHS that translators would no longer be required……?

  63. Good morrow, gentlefolk. This should have been today’s (recycled) facts
    GOOD MEDICAL ADVICE,

    1. F***ing once a week is good for your health, but its harmful if done every day.

    2. F***ing relaxes your mind & body.

    3. F***ing refreshes you.

    4. After F***ing don’t eat too much; go for more liquids.

    5. Try F***ing in bed cause it can save you valuable energy.

    6. F***ing can even reduce your cholesterol levels.

    So remember, Fasting is good for many aspects of health & may the good Lord cleanse your dirty mind.

    2. ,,,and don’t forget no 7

      7. When praying for a good F””” it is not necessary to be handcuffed.

  64. Good morrow, gentlefolk. This should have been today’s (recycled) facts
    GOOD MEDICAL ADVICE,

    1. F***ing once a week is good for your health, but its harmful if done every day.

    2. F***ing relaxes your mind & body.

    3. F***ing refreshes you.

    4. After F***ing don’t eat too much; go for more liquids.

    5. Try F***ing in bed cause it can save you valuable energy.

    6. F***ing can even reduce your cholesterol levels.

    So remember, Fasting is good for many aspects of health & may the good Lord cleanse your dirty mind.

  65. Pro-Palestinian medical activists block entrance to NHS England HQ

    Demonstrators call for scrapping of ties with Palantir Technologies over claims it provides the IDF with military tech

    Alex Barton
    3 April 2024 • 10:31am

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2024/04/03/TELEMMGLPICT000372554535_17121364001520_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bq9PikuTrmQO3f57XLkA28TG8HY4ZFrniSXaLtLcTAUTE.jpeg?imwidth=680
    NHS staff are demonstrating outside NHS England’s HQ in Waterloo
    Protesters outside NHS England’s HQ in Waterloo CREDIT: PA/Victoria Jones

    The group demonstrating outside Wellington House, Waterloo, claims the software company Palantir Technologies supplies the Israel Defence Forces with military technology.

    The protest comes amid the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, following the October 7 terror attack last year.

    Palantir was awarded a £330 million contract by NHS England in November last year to create a data management system called the Federated Data Platform.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2024/04/03/TELEMMGLPICT000372554656_17121372718890_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bqu-OikvdBRER69p9XrEwjPlKs8AANcM_8A0aUTGMz1Pg.jpeg?imwidth=960
    The Pro-Palestinian demonstrators want to see NHS England scrap its contract with Palantir Technologies CREDIT: PA/Victoria Jones

    The technology provided to NHS England gives real-time data on the number of beds which are occupied in hospitals and the size of waiting lists.

    Campaigners claim Palantir has provided AI powered military and surveillance technology to the Israeli government

    The company has also been accused of human rights abuses by Amnesty International.

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

    t o’brien
    2 MIN AGO
    Children’s fancy dress party..it’s half term

    1. Sack the lot of them. They, and their extended families, are part of the reason the NHS is failing the British taxpayers,

    2. They’ve dropped the communal brain cell. The profound ignorance that underpins this nonsense is astonishing. Human reasoning cut loose without recourse to knowledge and empirical evidence.

  66. There must be an election coming. Yesterday Trudeau gave out promises of six billion dollars for housing infrastructure. Well I hope so because at this rate of giving, we cannot afford to wait until next October.

    1. At least you have the prospect of something better on the horizon. We have no such luck here.

  67. Some strange coincidences before the shocking massacre by Hamas..

    Why was the music festival moved at the last minute from a place of safety to a place of danger?

    How did Hamas know the new location long in advance?

    Why were junior Israeli soldiers threatened with punishment for reporting unusual Hamas activities?

    Why were warnings from Egypt ignored?

    Why did it take the IDF five hours to get to the massacre?

    1. Ha Ha! Emm-eye-ess-ess-eye-ess-ess-eye-pee-pee-eye. Learnt at a very early age, though I can’t recalll how, when or why!

  70. I wonder if those strange coincidences before the shocking Hamas atrocity have a meaning?

    Namely that someone might have wanted an excuse to attack Gaza?

      1. I wonder if it’s possible that Netanyahu wanted to flatten Gaza and made a plan accordingly?

  71. Strange that in the obviously 100% authentic Kate video weeks ago, the flowering cherries were in bloom when they have only just started to bloom in London.

    1. I wouldn’t put too much emphasis on the blossom being out early. From the Natural History Museum’s web-site:-

      When do cherry blossoms bloom in the UK?
      Cherry blossom is a classic sign of spring, but exactly when cherry trees bloom in the UK varies depending on the location and the weather.

      Most of the common cherry trees planted in the UK blossom in April. Mild winters can result in the trees flowering earlier, sometimes in March, but in cooler years they might not do so until May. In London, and other particularly warm and sheltered locations, cherry trees can sometimes burst into flower as early as February.

      https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/cherry-trees-and-their-beautiful-blossom-uk.html
      Presumably even if the backdrop is blue screen, the producers of the video would have checked the time of blossoming.

      1. In Hyde Park the cherry trees are only just starting to flower now. They weren’t flowering when the video was supposedly made.

        1. Cherry trees have been blossoming here in Kent for the last few weeks. It varies from place to place.

        2. I live in north London and there are white blossomed cherry trees here that flower in February and have done for at least the last 25 years since I moved in to my current home. Along with my camellias they are the first flowering trees/shrubs. Japanese ornamental cherries flower later.

      2. My neighbour’s (ornamental) cherry has been out for weeks. My (fruiting) cherry is just coming out now.

  72. Russia’s friends beg EU to leave frozen assets alone. 3 April 2024.

    Countries sympathetic to Russia are demanding the EU drop any notion it might have about a wholesale confiscation of Moscow’s state assets.

    Representatives of China, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia are privately pushing the EU to continue resisting pressure from the U.S. and U.K. to seize more than €200 billion of Russian state assets it immobilized after February 2022’s invasion of Ukraine to help Kyiv’s reconstruction efforts, four officials with knowledge of the proceedings told POLITICO.

    “These countries are very skeptical about the idea,” said one of the officials, granted anonymity because the talks are so sensitive. The concern is, “this would create a precedent” ― in other words, these countries would fear they could be next to lose out.

    They don’t have to be sympathetic to Russia. Once you establish the principle of stealing other people’s deposits no one is safe. Worse is that it will actually prevent people buying Foreign Currencies and Bonds. It is no accident that since Russian assets were frozen that the interest rates on US and UK Treasury Bonds have risen significantly.

    https://www.politico.eu/article/russia-frozen-assets-europe-confiscation-china-saudi-arabia/

  73. Apparently, Getty Images might have doubts about the Kate video. Surprisingly a note has now been attached to the video they published.

    The new note, placed on Getty’s published version of the video, is.. “This handout clip was provided by a third-party organisation and may not adhere to Getty Images’ editorial policy.”

    1. We all know that the Kate Video is fake. It was clearly photographed in front of a blue screen and the background added later. This doesn’t make it sinister. I think that I have a pretty good idea about the circumstances but I also happen to think that people are allowed some privacy over personal matters.

      1. It’s more than the background surely? Why is her left eyebrow pointing upwards at 45% which in no way resembles reality? Only a completely AI production would do that.

        I don’t think Kate had anything to do with it at all.

        1. The blue screen is simply the most obvious. My reservations about the rest still apply.

          1. It would be interesting to hear your opinion about the circumstances. Isn’t it surprising that William and the children didn’t appear at the Windsor service?The children haven’t been seen for months. Some people think they might be out of the country.

          2. You are doing what the MSM is trying to do. To meddle in personal matters that have nothing to do with you or them! .

          3. If she had nothing to do with it then it isn’t a personal matter. I like Kate and have never said a word against her. The point is that as the picture and video are faked, how do we know the story hasn’t been faked too in order to cover up something else?

          4. Polly’s posts keep disappearing so I can’t answer them directly.
            I don’t think it’s a great surprise to learn that the royals’ media output is apparently edited to the nines. I’d stopped trusting them anyway, and this only confirms they are now on the same level as politicians.

            Clearly all lizards!

      1. A lot of people are worried that there might be something secret and serious being covered up.

          1. That depends on what’s happened. In any case, it’s not a good look for fake pictures and information to be published with the intention to mislead the public if that is what has occurred.

  74. There’s a full solar eclipse coming on Monday and panic mode has set in.

    Niagara Falls has declared a state of emergency just in case.

    Most schools are going to be closed for the day Good idea, don’t use it as a teaching opportunity whilst keeping them safe, just let the little ankle biters out on their own.

    Hotels are fully booked and charging higher than normal rates.

    All the way throughout new york state, roadside signs are warning of traffic delays on the big day.

    What’s the betting that it will rain.

  75. So if Getty added that note because they think the Kate video isn’t real, what does it mean?

  76. So if Getty added that note because they think the Kate video isn’t real, what does it mean?

  77. Naughty naughty

    Morning Wood.
    —————–
    So when you’re old and knackered and getting on a bit
    And things things don’t work quite as well
    So imagine the delight this morning when I awoke
    When my man thing had a very large swell

    “Quick, I said,” have a look at this
    I said to my missus with a smile
    She grinned with a glint in her eye and said
    “Well yes, it has been quite a while”

    So we heaved and we grunted and gave it a go
    And it all came flooding back
    When bugger me my back creaked and did pop
    And my mind went completely off track

    Well she started to laugh at the state I was in
    And decided she would get on top
    It’d been many a year and she wasn’t quite slim
    When my knee did twist and lock

    Well she grunted and heaved as her body did weave
    While I was pinned to the bed like a rock
    I heard a long lost cry of, “Oh God Oh my”
    As she jumped up and down on my cock

    She finished the deed with a glow on her face
    As I lay there not quite yet done
    “OK” she said, “it’s hand and knees
    “Now it’s your turn for some fun”

    Now my knee wouldn’t play as I tried to get up
    And I’d forgotten I wasn’t twenty one
    I fell on the floor and banged my head on the door
    She couldn’t stop laughing at what I’d done

    Now I thought to myself with out any doubt
    Should I awake with an erection again
    I’m not saying nowt, and I’ll give it a clout
    Just like I should’ve done then.

      1. Nothing wrong with minced rabbit. Though the downside is you need to take a shovel with you.

  82. Jonathan Agnew to step down as BBC Cricket Correspondent after 33 years
    ‘Aggers’, who turns 64 this week, is stepping down at time of flux for BBC cricket output
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cricket/2024/04/03/jonathan-agnew-to-step-down-as-bbc-cricket-correspondent-af/

    BTL

    The BBC and the Conservative Party are very similar in that both of them have abandoned their traditional supporters. They will both die as a result – but which will die first?

    2. Good grief! Our ‘lawn’ is a swamp! It’s been hissing down for 2 solid days! 😘

    3. I’ve cut ours three times this year, only taking a smidgen off and leaving 2 – 2.5 inches long on advice of our lawn care man.

      2. If you leave a bit of height to the grass it stands a better chance of surviving when it gets really hot. Creates its own shade.

    1. Looks more like an EV fire to me, so intense it melted the nearby car and shattered the house windows but without an explosion. I didn’t realise they had EV ambulances.

      1. London’s ambulance service already has 42 Ford Mustang Mach-E vehicles in its emergency fleet, but now it’s adding 12 bright, shiny all-electric ambulances designed by Ford for emissions-free first response – and the first full-service electric ambulances in the city.16 Jan 2024

        London gets Ford all-electric ambulances to go with … – Electrek

        There is already controversy over EV ambos. They don’t have the range. Are parked up not being used. All sorts of problems. On top of that you can still wait 24 hours for one to arrive even before they went electric.

        1. They can recharge by the admissions doors as they wait hours to offload patients while a bed becomes available…

          1. Do you honestly believe NHS management will have thought to put charging points there?

          2. Only those to accept debit/credit cards… Planning ahead, you see, for privatisation.

    3. Maybe not. The pictures show that the fire is in the engine compartment.
      Wouldn’t an ev battery be under the floor?

      There again, maybe it was a cheapo conversion that just replaced the engine with a battery or two. It was certainly a spectacular blaze, not quite a typical diesel leak.

      1. If you haven’t watched it Richard I recommend you view the video posted above. It shows cars exploding due to thermal runaway in Lithium Ion batteries used in vehicles, gas a leak of toxic gases and the inevitable explosion.

    5. Scary stuff but the video is misleading. If you look at the timer, it jumps ten minutes after the lady has been taken out.

    1. 385333+ up ticks,

      Afternoon JWE,

      Chatham Empire gone, but I think Chiswick is still going.

  86. When I go to uptick someone it usually takes me to a previous ‘uptickers’ profile. Anyone else got the same problem?

    2. Yes. I have to move the comment up the page a bit otherwise the names of those who’ve upticked already cover the uptick box.

    3. I find any problems with upticking or just looking to see the upticks can be solved by clicking ‘reply’ then ‘reply again

    1. Strange how most TV adverts feature black man/white woman/mixed race children, yet when it comes to criminals, the depiction is almost always of white men.

      1. Wait until you read about the new adaptation of the last “Wolf Hall” novel….. Bet you didn’t know that Jane Seymour’s sister was black.

  88. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/03/not-even-elon-can-stop-ev-disaster/

    Never was the old adage “don’t buy the prototype, buy the redesign” more appropriate. Motorists who bought an electric vehicle in the belief that it would hold its value better than a petrol or diesel must be feeling a little sore. According to the AA, the secondhand values of the 20 most popular electric and hybrid cars was down 12 per cent in the first quarter of this year compared with the first quarter of 2023. That is the drop in value of like-for-like cars, not what buyers can expect to lose in depreciation over the first year.

    In some cases the fall has been far greater. According to a recent survey by Cap Hpi, the value of a one year old Peugeot e-2008 with 10,000 miles on the clock fell 38.7 per cent between January and December 2023.

    The tide has turned for Tesla, too, as it runs out of well-off, eco-conscious motorists interested in buying its vehicles. In the three months to March it sold 386,810 vehicles, down from 422,875 in the same period in 2023. Tesla shares plunged seven per cent on the news – although given that the company’s market valuation is still nearly twice that of the world’s second most valuable carmaker, Toyota, no one should be confident of a rebound any time soon.

    I have nothing against electric cars, which have already found a niche as city cars for people with the good fortune to have private driveways. If battery technology develops to the point at which electric cars can travel 500 miles on a single charge and take 10 minutes to recharge they will start to sell themselves, without motorists being forced to buy them through government mandates. Indeed, that will be the point at which I will happily dump my diesel and go pure electric. But the promotion of electric cars over the past few years has been a triumph of hype over reality – which not even Elon Musk has been able to overcome.

    EVs have been pushed at us on a promise that they have been unable to fulfil. A surge in interest from wealthy people who like to show off their environmental credentials was mistaken for an inexorable market trend towards EVs. As it happens, the share of the market held by pure electric cars has stalled at around one in six.

    The result has been an awful lot of burned fingers – and not just among motorists. Western governments continue to try to subsidise their way to a native mass-market in EV battery production, when it is quite clear that China has cornered that market and it is not coming back. It isn’t big battery plants that Europe should be investing in, but research and development facilities where we can work on better battery technology. If successful, they can be licensed around the world.

    Unfortunately, Western policy on decarbonisation seems to be driven more by emotion than cold, hard reasoning. Much of it has been based on the fantasy that all you need to do is to set a few targets and affordable technology will magically appear in order to help you reach those targets – and that it will be the countries who are the fastest movers in setting targets who will benefit. Sadly, it has not quite worked out that way. China has been the biggest winner – and UK buyers of pricey electric cars among the biggest losers

    1. It can not be that good, EV manufacturers are reducing prices of their new vehicles by more than that.

      Well at least that’s the case over here with the big name manufacturers.

    2. If battery technology develops to the point at which electric cars can travel 500 miles on a single charge and take 10 minutes to recharge they will start to sell themselves, without motorists being forced to buy them through government mandates.

      This is of course the sticking point. If these cars and their technology were good ideas they would sell themselves.

  89. Had 3 letters from the hospital this morning

    1st one telling my cataract operation was on 28th March (posted 1st class 22nd March) and if I didn’t turn up I would go to the back of the queue. That was cancelled on 27th March by text a new date of 8th April. I had follow up appt for 15th April.

    2nd letter saying follow for 15th April cancelled and now 29th April.

    3rd letter saying follow up of 29th April cancelled snd now 22nd April.

    I phoned snd confirmed operation definitely 8th April and follow up confirmed for 22nd April.

    I marvel at the efficiency of the NHS.

      1. If I wasn’t confused before I was when I had all the letters opened.
        Luckily phoned, answered immediately, and confirmed the dates.

        1. Look out for tomorrow’s batch of letters cancelling what they have confirmed…

          2. Never forget, Alf, that the rest of the world is watching how you are treated by the NHS with undiluted envy!

    3. My cardio review showed i required a double dose of Ramipril. The medico told me to take two instead of one per day. As i am running out early i did a repeat prescription. Got a text this morning saying this was denied by the practice as i should have enough. Which i don’t.

      I replied with a very sarcastic message.

      Hope you get sorted soon.

      2. I’ve had similar problems.
        And tomorrow morning I have a treasured appointment on the phone with my GP. Who doesn’t seem to have a clue about my condition.

        1. Difficult to see the same GP twice. They give a cursory look at your notes and don’t know what has been going on before.
          A GP sent me for tests which i had done. If tests looked okay i would get a new prescription. Heard nothing for 2 months. Put in a complaint to the practice. They gave me an appointment with that same GP and the first thing he said was ‘what can i do for you?’
          More complaining is in order to the Practice managers… Now they are run as a business they don’t like complaints. Especially across social media/ Local groups.

          1. I have seen the same GP on each and every consultation for the past 12 years. He knows not just me but my medical history. He even rings me at home once a month to check my self-read blood pressure.

            It’s a bit like what it used to be like in the UK in the 1950s.

          2. It appears it is the same everywhere in the UK. Which means it is designed to be shit.

    4. It’s called the Tom Jones effect Alf.

      I had a letter re the cancellation of an appointment early last month. The alleged appointment was in September this year. I’ve never had notice of this appointment. I’m going to be washing my hair anyway.

    1. They ate them? I’d rather not and if you feed them to the big cats, you need a very big arena. The Romans used the Circus Maximus as the Colosseum was too small. The front rows of the audience would have been gobbled up too.

    1. Netanyahu – the man who quite possibly set up this grotesque disaster deliberately. After all, he is facing a corruption enquiry so a war would be a perfect diversion.

  94. BBC’s Wolf Hall returns with diverse cast of Tudor courtiers. 3 April 2024.

    The final adaptation of Dame Hilary’s novel sequence comes almost 10 years after the initial series and follows a far greater historical focus on the black population of Tudor England, particularly following Black Lives Matter protest in 2020.

    The Black Population of Tudor England? Did Henry VIII know?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/03/bbcs-wolf-hall-returns-diverse-cast-new-series/

    1. Next up: Roots,
      where all the slaves will be played by whites and all the slave owners by blacks.

      1. You can bet your last cent that if the situation was reversed their would have been far far more brutality.

        1. We are talking about an area of Africa that still practices FGM and breast binding.

    5. The Tudors might not be surprised by the phenomenon, since Europeans were definitely taught back then that the Devil is a liar. It’s his primary characteristic.

    6. Doesn’t go nearly far enough:

      Thomas Cromwell – Ye formerly Kanye West
      Lady Margaret Pole – Munroe Bergdorf
      Sir Rafe Sadler – Marcus Rashford
      Henry VIII – Lizzo

      Anything less will be racist, oppressive, white privileged, colonial & transphobic.

    7. “far greater historical focus” – will tell lies, in other words. They weren’t characters in the Wolf Hall narrative.

    8. Is Othello black? With the news that David Oyelowo will play Othello opposite Daniel Craig’s Iago and that the Metropolitan Opera is finally discontinuing the practice of blackface in productions of Otello, we may see a revival of this oft-asked question. What people mean when they ask if Othello is black is: What did Shakespeare mean when he called Othello black? Would we say Othello is black today?

      It’s an understandable question. Shakespeare’s writing mostly predates the transatlantic slave trade and the more modern obsession with biological classification, both of which gave rise to our contemporary ideas of race. When Shakespeare used the word “black” he was not exactly describing a race the way we would. He meant instead someone with darker skin than an Englishman at a time when Englishmen were very, very pale. Although Othello is a Moor, and although we often assume he is from Africa, he never names his birthplace in the play. In Shakespeare’s time, Moors could be from Africa, but they could also be from the Middle East, or even Spain.

      While the question is logical to me, as a reader, a director, and a lover of Shakespeare, it’s not the most interesting one. As language’s meaning evolves, so do these plays, even if their words remain exactly the same. To us today, the word “black” carries with it a specific cluster of associations informed by history, culture, stereotypes, and literature. Othello may have started in conversation with Shakespeare’s definition of blackness, but today, he speaks with ours.

      A much more interesting question, really, is: Why is Othello black? Why did Shakespeare write a domestic tragedy about jealousy, and make the husband a Moor? Is Othello’s race a canard, or is it the key to unlocking the play’s deeper meanings?

      Would you believe the answer to all of this might involve pirates?

      Before we hoist the Jolly Roger, we should consider more practical explanations for Shakespeare’s choice. In August of 1600, the ambassador of the King of Barbary—roughly, modern-day Morocco—came to London as the guest of Queen Elizabeth for a six-month residency at court. He was a celebrity, Katie Sisneros, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Minnesota focusing on representations of Turks in English popular literature, told me in an interview. “He would’ve had some sort of public parade. People who had never seen a Muslim, never seen a Moor, they probably saw their first Moor during that visit.” Something of the ambassador’s charisma and dashing good looks remain in this portrait of him painted in England at the time.

      We know from records that Shakespeare’s company performed at court while the ambassador—his full name was Abd el-Ouahed ben Messaoud ben Mohammed Anoun—was there, which means that Shakespeare may very well have acted in a play in front of him. (Of course it’s just as likely that one or both men had a cold and missed the show; that’s how nebulous Shakespeare scholarship can get.) Shakespeare likely began writing Othello the next year, and performed it for the first time in 1604.

      ADVERTISEMENT
      If we remember that Shakespeare was a human being and a good businessman, we get the most obvious answer to our question. The Bard had just met and performed for a Moor who was a superstar. England’s relationship to the Ottoman Empire and to Moors was a pressing issue. Moors were so hot right now back then. From there, we can imagine our inspired playwright casting about for a story about a Moor—Shakespeare’s plots were mostly unoriginal and adapted—and finding Giraldi Cinthio’s Hecatommithi, a short story collection modeled on the Decameron. Shakespeare takes two cups of Cinthio, mixes a few dashes of purloined “facts” about both Africa and Venice from recently translated books and, in a couple of years, he’s baked a play.

      Unfortunately for Shakespeare, in between Abd Anoun’s visit and Othello’s premiere, Queen Elizabeth died. King James had a much frostier relationship with the Ottomans than his predecessor did. “James tried to roll back the diplomatic advances that Elizabeth made,” Sisneros said. “He starts using ‘let’s have a new crusade’ language.”

      Sisneros told me that to much of Shakespeare’s audience, “all Moors were Turks, even though not all Turks were Moors.” Furthermore, while calling someone a Moor meant that they had dark skin, in the early 17th century, the term carried a religious meaning as well. “There was no word for Muslim at the time. They used Turk, Mosselman, Mohammedan, these are all synonyms.”

      Othello, then, may have appeared at the time as an ex-Muslim—he mentions his baptism within the play—who slowly reverts to behavior that is more stereotypically “Muslim.” The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice could be read as a nightmare about the impossibility of conversion and assimilation, meanings within the play that are less visible to us because we lack the original audience’s context.

      This is where piracy becomes important. If you were a British sailor working a trading ship at the time, you ran a real risk of being sacked by pirates, often Turks. If this happened, you were ransomed or, if no ransom was forthcoming, enslaved. Often, you would be offered your freedom if you converted to Islam, a process called turning Turk. To sweeten the deal, you could be promised land, a job, or even a wife. “If an English person is kidnapped, sold into slavery, converts for their freedom, returns to England—and this happened a lot—could they convert back?” asked Sisneros. “And if so, how could that conversion be trusted? It’s an extremely troubling question at the time.” Othello even uses this anxiety when breaking up a fight between his men, asking them, “Are we turned Turks? And to ourselves do that/ Which heaven hath forbid the Ottomites?”

      ADVERTISEMENT
      Similarly, many English feared that Muslim converts to Christianity were incapable of fully changing. Othello’s blackness, then, worked for the play’s original audience as a symbol of his “true” essence. Iago scrapes away the veneer of manners Othello has layered over this, revealing what Shakespeare’s audience would’ve thought was “real” all along. In the second half of the play, Othello begins having seizures and wild mood swings, and his vocabulary gets simpler. Othello himself echoes the idea that he’s “reverting” when he commits suicide, describing to the assembled Venetians how he wants to be remembered:

      And say besides that in Aleppo once,
      Where a malignant and a turbaned Turk
      Beat a Venetian and traduced the state,
      I took by th’ throat the circumsized dog
      And smote him—thus! Stabs Himself

      To understand how Othello helped Shakespeare tease out those questions, let’s first look at how Shakespeare used references to blackness. There are many (largely negative) uses of the word “black” throughout the play, and there are ways that characters reference Othello’s blackness without using the word. Brabantio, Desdemona’s father, enraged at his daughter’s elopement, accuses Othello, saying, “Damned as thou art, thou hast enchanted her,” because she never would’ve consented to run “to the sooty bosom/ of such a thing as thou.” “Sooty” refers to Othello’s skin color but, importantly, “damned” does too. Devils in Shakespeare’s time were thought to be black. Black skin was a sign of being a devil, capable of witchcraft. Later, Iago promises to turn Desdemona’s reputation as black as “pitch.”

      Complexion in Shakespeare’s time was a measurement of both beauty and virtue. According to Villanova Shakespeare scholar John-Paul Spiro, to be “fair” was to be both pale and virtuous, not synonymously, but simultaneously. Similarly, Spiro said, “if you look at the poetry, Black-means-ugly is all over the place. The Dark Lady in the sonnets, for example. Shakespeare can’t stop pointing out that she’s not supposed to be attractive because she’s ‘dark.’ In Much Ado About Nothing, Claudio says he’ll marry a woman he’s never met ‘tho she be an Ethiope,’ a word Shakespeare uses in other plays to mean both black and ugly.” Shakespeare was a product of his time, after all, and in his time men were publishing texts like Stephen Batman’s The Doome Warning All Men to Judgement, which describes “Ethiopes” as having “four eyes: and it is said that in Eripia be found” men that “are long necked, and mouthed as a crane.”

      All along, the play is asking what makes a person, what is identity, and how belonging to an identity group shapes who you are. These questions haunt us today, but they were important to Shakespeare’s audience as well. Moors weren’t the only converts, after all. The entire nation had recently “converted” to the Church of England. If, according to your new faith your goodness is never guaranteed, and if all Iago needs is two days to turn a noble convert and trusted military leader into a monster, imagine what he could do if left alone with you.

      https://slate.com/culture/2015/11/why-is-othello-black-understanding-why-shakespeare-made-his-hero-a-moor.html

      1. The writer makes some good points but like so many these days, seems unaware of the distinction between North Africans and Sub-Saharan Africans.

        1. Would the English have been aware of sub-Saharan muslims? They were not known for their seafaring skills c. 1600.
          I would imagine that the only ‘Moors’ they would see would be from North Africa.

          1. And North Africans are not black. Hence the need to specify and not just refer to them as African.

      2. Interesting article. Thank you.
        The villages along the southern and western coats of England knew about the Moors – in the form of Barbary pirates who would sack a village and carry off the inhabitants into slavery.

      3. I seem to recall that when the Elizabethans referred to “black eyes” they actually meant blue eyes, not shiners.

    9. Is Othello black? With the news that David Oyelowo will play Othello opposite Daniel Craig’s Iago and that the Metropolitan Opera is finally discontinuing the practice of blackface in productions of Otello, we may see a revival of this oft-asked question. What people mean when they ask if Othello is black is: What did Shakespeare mean when he called Othello black? Would we say Othello is black today?

      It’s an understandable question. Shakespeare’s writing mostly predates the transatlantic slave trade and the more modern obsession with biological classification, both of which gave rise to our contemporary ideas of race. When Shakespeare used the word “black” he was not exactly describing a race the way we would. He meant instead someone with darker skin than an Englishman at a time when Englishmen were very, very pale. Although Othello is a Moor, and although we often assume he is from Africa, he never names his birthplace in the play. In Shakespeare’s time, Moors could be from Africa, but they could also be from the Middle East, or even Spain.

      While the question is logical to me, as a reader, a director, and a lover of Shakespeare, it’s not the most interesting one. As language’s meaning evolves, so do these plays, even if their words remain exactly the same. To us today, the word “black” carries with it a specific cluster of associations informed by history, culture, stereotypes, and literature. Othello may have started in conversation with Shakespeare’s definition of blackness, but today, he speaks with ours.

      A much more interesting question, really, is: Why is Othello black? Why did Shakespeare write a domestic tragedy about jealousy, and make the husband a Moor? Is Othello’s race a canard, or is it the key to unlocking the play’s deeper meanings?

      Would you believe the answer to all of this might involve pirates?

      Before we hoist the Jolly Roger, we should consider more practical explanations for Shakespeare’s choice. In August of 1600, the ambassador of the King of Barbary—roughly, modern-day Morocco—came to London as the guest of Queen Elizabeth for a six-month residency at court. He was a celebrity, Katie Sisneros, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Minnesota focusing on representations of Turks in English popular literature, told me in an interview. “He would’ve had some sort of public parade. People who had never seen a Muslim, never seen a Moor, they probably saw their first Moor during that visit.” Something of the ambassador’s charisma and dashing good looks remain in this portrait of him painted in England at the time.

      We know from records that Shakespeare’s company performed at court while the ambassador—his full name was Abd el-Ouahed ben Messaoud ben Mohammed Anoun—was there, which means that Shakespeare may very well have acted in a play in front of him. (Of course it’s just as likely that one or both men had a cold and missed the show; that’s how nebulous Shakespeare scholarship can get.) Shakespeare likely began writing Othello the next year, and performed it for the first time in 1604.

      ADVERTISEMENT
      If we remember that Shakespeare was a human being and a good businessman, we get the most obvious answer to our question. The Bard had just met and performed for a Moor who was a superstar. England’s relationship to the Ottoman Empire and to Moors was a pressing issue. Moors were so hot right now back then. From there, we can imagine our inspired playwright casting about for a story about a Moor—Shakespeare’s plots were mostly unoriginal and adapted—and finding Giraldi Cinthio’s Hecatommithi, a short story collection modeled on the Decameron. Shakespeare takes two cups of Cinthio, mixes a few dashes of purloined “facts” about both Africa and Venice from recently translated books and, in a couple of years, he’s baked a play.

      Unfortunately for Shakespeare, in between Abd Anoun’s visit and Othello’s premiere, Queen Elizabeth died. King James had a much frostier relationship with the Ottomans than his predecessor did. “James tried to roll back the diplomatic advances that Elizabeth made,” Sisneros said. “He starts using ‘let’s have a new crusade’ language.”

      Sisneros told me that to much of Shakespeare’s audience, “all Moors were Turks, even though not all Turks were Moors.” Furthermore, while calling someone a Moor meant that they had dark skin, in the early 17th century, the term carried a religious meaning as well. “There was no word for Muslim at the time. They used Turk, Mosselman, Mohammedan, these are all synonyms.”

      Othello, then, may have appeared at the time as an ex-Muslim—he mentions his baptism within the play—who slowly reverts to behavior that is more stereotypically “Muslim.” The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice could be read as a nightmare about the impossibility of conversion and assimilation, meanings within the play that are less visible to us because we lack the original audience’s context.

      This is where piracy becomes important. If you were a British sailor working a trading ship at the time, you ran a real risk of being sacked by pirates, often Turks. If this happened, you were ransomed or, if no ransom was forthcoming, enslaved. Often, you would be offered your freedom if you converted to Islam, a process called turning Turk. To sweeten the deal, you could be promised land, a job, or even a wife. “If an English person is kidnapped, sold into slavery, converts for their freedom, returns to England—and this happened a lot—could they convert back?” asked Sisneros. “And if so, how could that conversion be trusted? It’s an extremely troubling question at the time.” Othello even uses this anxiety when breaking up a fight between his men, asking them, “Are we turned Turks? And to ourselves do that/ Which heaven hath forbid the Ottomites?”

      ADVERTISEMENT
      Similarly, many English feared that Muslim converts to Christianity were incapable of fully changing. Othello’s blackness, then, worked for the play’s original audience as a symbol of his “true” essence. Iago scrapes away the veneer of manners Othello has layered over this, revealing what Shakespeare’s audience would’ve thought was “real” all along. In the second half of the play, Othello begins having seizures and wild mood swings, and his vocabulary gets simpler. Othello himself echoes the idea that he’s “reverting” when he commits suicide, describing to the assembled Venetians how he wants to be remembered:

      And say besides that in Aleppo once,
      Where a malignant and a turbaned Turk
      Beat a Venetian and traduced the state,
      I took by th’ throat the circumsized dog
      And smote him—thus! Stabs Himself

      To understand how Othello helped Shakespeare tease out those questions, let’s first look at how Shakespeare used references to blackness. There are many (largely negative) uses of the word “black” throughout the play, and there are ways that characters reference Othello’s blackness without using the word. Brabantio, Desdemona’s father, enraged at his daughter’s elopement, accuses Othello, saying, “Damned as thou art, thou hast enchanted her,” because she never would’ve consented to run “to the sooty bosom/ of such a thing as thou.” “Sooty” refers to Othello’s skin color but, importantly, “damned” does too. Devils in Shakespeare’s time were thought to be black. Black skin was a sign of being a devil, capable of witchcraft. Later, Iago promises to turn Desdemona’s reputation as black as “pitch.”

      Complexion in Shakespeare’s time was a measurement of both beauty and virtue. According to Villanova Shakespeare scholar John-Paul Spiro, to be “fair” was to be both pale and virtuous, not synonymously, but simultaneously. Similarly, Spiro said, “if you look at the poetry, Black-means-ugly is all over the place. The Dark Lady in the sonnets, for example. Shakespeare can’t stop pointing out that she’s not supposed to be attractive because she’s ‘dark.’ In Much Ado About Nothing, Claudio says he’ll marry a woman he’s never met ‘tho she be an Ethiope,’ a word Shakespeare uses in other plays to mean both black and ugly.” Shakespeare was a product of his time, after all, and in his time men were publishing texts like Stephen Batman’s The Doome Warning All Men to Judgement, which describes “Ethiopes” as having “four eyes: and it is said that in Eripia be found” men that “are long necked, and mouthed as a crane.”

      All along, the play is asking what makes a person, what is identity, and how belonging to an identity group shapes who you are. These questions haunt us today, but they were important to Shakespeare’s audience as well. Moors weren’t the only converts, after all. The entire nation had recently “converted” to the Church of England. If, according to your new faith your goodness is never guaranteed, and if all Iago needs is two days to turn a noble convert and trusted military leader into a monster, imagine what he could do if left alone with you.

      https://slate.com/culture/2015/11/why-is-othello-black-understanding-why-shakespeare-made-his-hero-a-moor.html

    10. There is a difficult question to be asked about casting. Shakespeare (which, I have to admit, just about passed me by at school apart from M*****h) is about the human condition: personal, political, power. Surely anyone of any ethnicity can play any part?

      This is quite different from historical television/film drama, even if fictional, which attempts to portray Britain of the past as one in which people of obviously African or Asian ancestry can be seen wandering along market town high streets or supping pints in village pubs of the time.

    11. I thought we evil English sold them all as slaves to the Spanish? How can they be nobles in Henrician England?

    12. There might have been one or two servants. I believe Elizabeth I had a “black boy” as a page and there was a black trumpeter, I think. Hardly counts as a “population”, I would have thought.

  95. 385333+ up ticks,

    Keep to the same voting pattern and this will prove to be correct in a very short space of time via the dover daily invasion numbers

    .NHS waiting list could be two million longer than thought
    ONS survey finds 9.7m waiting for an appointment, with number waiting more than a year likely to be close to 1.35m

    And a zillion waiting at Calais.

      3. I’ve stopped. Already have a memory damaged by a statin. Google Dr Stephanie Seneff who has researched statins for over ten years. New born babies who have low cholesterol from the placenta have fatty deposits in their blood vessels.

    2. What could I possibly add to this splendidly intelligent chap’s irrebuttable and unarguable facts?

      2. A bit more information:-
        https://twitter.com/ActivePatriotUK/status/1775447566835998784

        Active Patriot
        @ActivePatriotUK
        ‘MIGRANTS’ STABBING EACH OTHER YESTERDAY AT HOTEL

        Pear Tree County Hotel Worcester home to illegal migrants since at least 2022 has been sealed off after a man was stabbed at the hotel yesterday afternoon

        A man has been arrested

        Again the mainstream media reports do NOT mention anything to do with migrants so it’s up to citizen journalists like myself
        @YorksRose_84
        and
        @Truthhurts101UK
        to go there TODAY and report what really happened and to let the public know the dangers that are hidden around them

        See you soon

      2. Tourism helps keep the wild life alive. It provides jobs and therefore the animals have monetary worth.
        Without tourist revenue, wildlife is merely a destroyer of people and crops and has no financial value.
        Leading to the slaughter by poachers making a fast buck.

        2. It does, anne, but at the same time it allows hunting of the older bull elephants with its accompanying trophies. Financially it benefits the locals (hopefully at least) and the elephants (not the old bulls obviously) and other wildlife. The poachers are total bastards and there should be a licensed season on hunting them, with trophies and all.

        3. The wild animals weren’t such a problem until the population explosion encroaching on their habitats. From 10’s of millions to 100’s of millions. The animal species regulate themselves better.

    1. When I used to drive down the A11/M11 to Stansted Airport there was a sign on the A11 stating “Stansted 12”. Three-and-a-half miles closer to the airport, on the M11, another sign read “Stansted 12”.

      I often wondered what the Highway Authority bods had been smoking on the day they erected those signs.

      1. Similar when you back up a computer.
        1. Time 20 minutes
        2. Time 11 minutes.
        3. Time 17 minutes.
        4. Time 14 minutes
        etc ……………………
        8.. Oh, choose a number. Any number.

      2. I used to drive past a sign that said 5 miles to the destination and a mile farther on it was 6 miles to the same place! They seem to have swapped the signs now so the distances are correct.

  101. A Braided Birdie Three!

    Wordle 1,019 3/6
    🟨🟨⬜⬜⬜
    🟨⬜⬜⬜🟩
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    1. Took me five today.

      Wordle 1,019 5/6

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

    2. Did it this morning but hit the pub at 5pm, the worst I could have done was 4 as there was only one more option.

      Wordle 1,019 3/6

      ⬜🟨🟨⬜⬜
      🟩🟩🟩🟩⬜
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

      1. I got it in three (having not done it for months) but don’t know how you paste up those little diagrams to boast about it?

        1. 1. Tick ‘share’ on your result.
          2. Press ‘show’ and ‘v’ simultaneously …

          1. Might be too much for my tiny mind but will maybe try tomorrow if circumstances are propitious

  102. BTL:

    Aelfwynn Erin
    2 HRS AGO
    Is there any other country on Earth whose taxpayer funded national broadcaster ethnically cleanses its native people from their own history and culture, the way the BBC does to native British people?

      1. The BTL comments are piling up – some people are even taking it seriously!

        BBC’s Wolf Hall returns with diverse cast of Tudor courtiers

        Conclusion of Dame Hilary Mantel’s novels casts historically white characters with actors of different ethnicities

        Craig Simpson
        3 April 2024 • 2:10pm
        *
        *
        ********************************
        Al Manzora
        11 MIN AGO
        The BBC perverts British history as a matter of principle – the principle that it hates British history as unfortunately it’s full of white people.

        alex neil
        12 MIN AGO
        Thomas Cromwell will be played by Dylan Mulvany.

        Aelfwynn Erin
        8 MIN AGO
        Reply to alex neil
        He’s playing Catherine Howard, who had her head cut off for being a floosie

        https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/03/bbcs-wolf-hall-returns-diverse-cast-new-series/

        1. It isn’t as though the Beeb hasn’t had a trial run; “The Tudors” was full of historical inaccuracies.

          1. And the film about Alan Turing breaking the Enigma code will be recast with the lead role played by the intellectual Diane Abbott.

    2. Canada’s CBC? Australia’s ABC? I’m sure they’ve all indulged in that sort of thing with abandon.

          1. I can’t remember asking when I was down under about the funding of the state broadcaster, but I got the impression there wasn’t a licence fee.

        2. Cbc get a grant of 1.6 billion each year. They whined about how tough it is and got a few hundred million more.
          The executives handed out many millions in bonuses to themselves, 600 at the pointy end were fired. The CEO was selected by Trudeau , she is an American who still lives in New York.

        3. I don’t know about under duress, but they’re publicly funded. Unless anyone knows better?

      2. Oh no, CBC are very much into the original indigenous, whitey not so much.

        Definitely no more than a liberal party publicity machine and Trudeau loves the first nations mob.

        1. I’d ask how they know that they’re indigenous. They were there when Europeans turned up, but who knows whom they might have displaced or killed? I hate the whole ‘first nations’ term with a passion. It’s just the Left treating them as pets.

  103. ‘Night All

    Scottish hate crime reporting…

    “Community Safety Minister Siobhian Brown said people were making “fake and vexatious complaints”.

    Stevie Wonder could have seen that coming!

    2. She is completely blind and deaf to how much offence Humza causes with his racist spite.

    3. Now she knows how the rest of the universe feels after listening to the SNP for nearly 20 years.

    4. They’re only fake and vexatious if they’re made by the wrong people…

  104. Latest on my wife. If easily bored don’t read on. The surgery appointment turned out to be with a nurse to take blood. My wife asked to see the duty doctor and was refused.
    She then phoned the cardiac unit and received a recorded message asking her to give details and they would call back.
    She then phoned the surgeon’s secretary and received an identical message.
    It is now 1735 and nobody called.
    She will go to the surgery tomorrow morning and demand to see her GP. Fingers crossed.
    I can’t say any more as my language would be unacceptable.

    1. You appear to have won the booby prize in the NHS Postcode Lottery.
      I hope things improve soon.

    3. Envy of the World.
      What is your hospital trust? They do seem to greatly vary in quality.

    4. DB,

      I thought your dearly beloved was due to have her valve ablation today?

      What on earth is going on .. our confidence in the NHS is diminishing daily .

      1. It was scheduled for the 8 April, Belle. Yesterday Mrs Delboy got a call from the anaesthetist to say that it was cancelled because Mrs D had stage 4 COPD. Mrs D has AF and a leaking heart valve (mitral?) and no quality of life. (This is from memory from Delboy’s post yesterday, Tuesday). Mrs D has been left high and dry with no further communication offered i.e. what to do next. This is appalling, this is what our nhs, the sacred cow, the envy of the world has come to, the nhs for which some people were banging their pots and pans every Monday at 7.30 4 years ago. It is a truly terrible state of affairs.

        1. Even with our decrepit health system, heart issues almost always get fixed instantly. It’s the inconvenient stuff such as knees and hips where treatment is drawn-out for years before you even get to se a specialist.

        2. I am so shocked to hear that news , M.
          Very shocked .

          The past few Covid jab years have put huge pressure on our bodies , and seemingly healthy people have been dealt a harsh handful of problems .

          1. I was shocked when I read Delboy’s account, and it is truly shocking that the nhs can so casually cancel a major, life-changing operation so casually, almost on a whim, it would seem, without examining or talking to the patient. There is no thought for how the patient may feel on receiving this devastating news. I really do feel that the hospital must be operating some age discriminating policy in this case. JonathanRackham was similarly shocked, he said he had had two operations whilst being diagnosed with Stage 4 COPD. I think this is a postcode issue – hasn’t there been some PR recently announcing you can now choose to be seen at whichever hospital you wish? I suppose when one looks into it and gets down to the nitty-gritty it will be found that there are certain criteria which require strict adherence.

      2. We heard yesterday that all recruitment is on ‘pause’ for three months.

        This despite my writing a successful business case for an additional eight staff that was approved in Feb.

        We are at the same time having to come up with ways to make cost savings. My suggestion was we say ‘s*d it’ and just close the clinics.

    5. Good God, Delboy! What a mess!
      Your poor wife, and yourself.
      I so hope it goes well for her: thinking of the both of you, trying to send positive vibes.

    8. Just a thought.
      “My lawyers have requested that you tell me who in the surgery is responsible, so that I can sue the correct person for medical negligence”

      1. It is intolerable that anyone should have to resort to threats, in order to see a doctor with whom you are registered. But I guess that is what the NHS responds to these days.

  105. That’s me for this miserably damp day. No gardening possible. Cats sulk.

    Have a jolly evening

    A demain.

    1. Without wishing to sound smug – oh, all right if you insist – because the weather has been so carp, we have done various irritating indoor jobs; small but persistent niggles are now sorted.

  106. Meloni’s Italy is doing what basket-case Britain could only dream of
    Having finally turned a corner, the Italians are slowly becoming the envy of Europe

    JEREMY WARNER

    Under Meloni Italy is benefitting from political certainty – something the UK is sorely missing CREDIT: FILIPPO ATTILI/CHIGI PALACE PRESS OFFICE/HANDOUT/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
    Here’s a remarkable fact: one of the strongest growing economies in the G7 since 2019, and by far the strongest growing of the major economies in Europe, is of all countries Italy.

    Still widely seen as one of Europe’s most sickly economies, and occasionally described as a complete basket case by Anglo-Saxon commentators, Italy was particularly badly hit by the pandemic and subsequent energy price shock, but has since been recovering fast – much faster in fact than all its major peers.

    Unlike all the others, moreover, Italy is enjoying strong per capita growth, the measure that really matters as a gauge of whether citizens are getting richer or not. After decades of stagnation, real GDP per head is nearly 5pc higher today than it was before the pandemic, far outstripping Germany, France, the UK and Spain.

    There has got to be some upside from the shrinking population that Italy’s very low birth rate has given rise to, and this is it. Again, unlike all the others, Italy has relatively low levels of net immigration, hard though it is to believe given the political noise that the migrant issue continues to generate there.

    I luvs her…

    1. Ah, Jeremy Warner, the bloke who’s never knowingly right. Some facts about Italy: very high debt to GDP; massive problem with illegal immigration (in spite of what Jeremy thinks); a system of laws and courts that makes it almost impossible to do business, certainly legally; a population that continues to emigrate, meaning Italy loses its brightest and best. Any of this sound familiar? Sounds just like the UK, right? We’re really not so different after all.

      1. Those things may be true but it has a clever and excellent PM with the right ideas and I suspect lots of cunning, and under her its two decades of lost growth seem to be ending.

        1. She got elected and did precisely nothing about the immigration issue. Or much else. She’s an empty suit.

    1. look below. !!!

      A better headline would be…91 year old woman cremated free of charge…….

  108. He must fancy you. Let’s face it..who wouldn’t.

    Just soaked sliced sweet apples in the Fig Armagnac residue from the figs you sent me. For an apple Croustarde.

      1. They were ex British Special Forces, some of the toughest and best-trained fighters known to man, working in Private Security in a foreign war zone. This is an internationally known euphemism. The only reason for the IDF to deliberately kill them would be a belief that they were working for the enemy and that this convoy was not what it claimed to be. It’s always very hard to tell with mercenaries. Hamas is known to use self-professed humanitarian organisations in cynical and murderous ways. I would hazard a guess that this is where the mistake to which Israel refers might lie – ie not an accidental bombing (it was clearly targetted with the usual accuracy) but false intelligence. If the intelligence was false.

        1. It does all seem very strange. What about the other four aid workers who were also killed – collateral damage?

          1. So many rumours, Peta, and those in support of Israel routinely suppressed. One being that a prominent Hamas operative had “hitched a lift” with the “aid workers”, or that Israeli intelligence was led to believe that to be the case. It is also interesting that the Israelis cite the night-time operation of this convoy as being a factor in their “mistake”,as it was unexpected and not as agreed. Who knows? I do, though, stand with Israel and blame Hamas and all who sail in it for all of this bloodshed. Release the hostages, surrender – even ask for safe passage to Qatar – and there would be an immediate ceasefire.

          2. You are preaching to the converted here opo! It does seem to be an uncharacteristically strange “mistake” for the IDF to make since those vehicles were targeted and hit separately. It will be interesting to see what the result of the IDF investigation reveals.

    2. I would not be at all surprised if it eventually turns out that Hamas betrayed them, knowing the propaganda value.

  111. Just listened to the Labour Party broadcast.
    Ten minutes of Baldrick slagging off the tories and then five minutes of Baldrick saying that labour will rescue the country, but not how.
    I can’t believe we have come to this in our lack of political sophistication.
    I no longer believe it matters who gets in, the children took over the nursery years ago; about the time they handed over the country to the EU to run and became area managers.

    1. About time the people woke up and elected some people with nous, I think you mean.

  112. Once Africa’s world-class city, Johannesburg is decaying before residents’ eyes
    The decline of the South African city suggests that May’s elections could see the ANC’s stranglehold on power end

    From the outside, Johannesburg does not look like it is doing well.

    Roads littered with potholes. Broken traffic lights not repaired for months. Rotting rubbish in the streets.

    But from the inside, the scale of the problems facing the biggest city in South Africa and the richest and most industrialised in the continent is even worse.

    From taps regularly running dry to daily four-hour power cuts – known locally as load shedding – life for many people in Jo’burg has declined dramatically.

    The decline of southern suburb Forest Hills is a case in point.

    Previously dominated by poorer white people, in recent decades it has become more mixed as black people sought to move out of the city’s apartheid-era townships.

    “Although never wealthy, things used to at least work [around here],” Stuart Marais, a longtime resident and local city councillor, told The Telegraph.

    “Traffic signals are regularly vandalised and are not repaired in under six to eight months. Grass is growing into our roads which haven’t been fixed for decades,” said the 63-year-old.

    “Broken cars lie around and many residents put their rubbish out onto the streets and it lies there rotting.”

    It was “far too dangerous” to walk around at night, he said. “The decay in this part of Johannesburg is massive.”

    Mr Marais says the blame lies squarely with the municipality, where the African National Congress hold the most seats.

    He said support for his party, the Democratic Alliance – the ANC’s main opposition – has “definitely been growing in Johannesburg” since the last national elections in 2019, something he attributed at least in part to the dire state of the city.

    Coupled with anger over long-standing corruption, poverty and unemployment, such grievances with the ANC are set to have a seismic effect on the country’s political landscape when the country goes to the polls again on May 29.

    Surveys indicate the party will lose its majority for the first time since the late Nelson Mandela brought it to power in 1994 following the collapse of apartheid.

    If that happens, it will be a huge moment for South Africa.

    Although the ANC would easily still be the biggest in parliament, it would be a hugely symbolic shift that speaks to the level of frustration with a party that was supposed to have lifted South Africa’s black majority out of poverty.

    The woes facing most of Johannesburg’s nearly six million residents show just how badly the party is failing.

    The city is the engine for South Africa’s economy, with luxury shops, world-class sports arenas, an international airport and first-class hospitals. In 2000, it was described as “a world-class African city”.

    Yet the legacy of apartheid is still there.

    Legacy of apartheid
    There has been lots of work to improve Soweto, the biggest black township in South Africa, but mainly black areas in the east of Johannesburg are still all but neglected.

    Outside the townships, there has been an explosion of informal shelters in the centre of “old” Johannesburg where illegal immigrants live in crowded, filthy conditions with no running water or official electricity supplies.

    Parts of the city have become no-go areas and deadly accidents are common. Last year, a fire broke out inside a building being squatted in, killing at least 77 people.

    Even in ordinary middle-class neighbourhoods, public areas are shabby, pavements are falling apart and some storm drains have trees growing out of them.

    “We are concerned the anger and frustration of residents will give way to violent protests unless something is done now,” said Neeshan Balton, who chairs the Johannesburg Crisis Alliance.

    The alliance was formed last year to try to fix some of the issues facing the city.

    It is made up of local residents, including infrastructure experts and business owners, who say the situation is so desperate that they will offer their services for free.

    “We wrote to President Cyril Ramaphosa last year and told him that residents, workers and businesses were confronted with potholed streets, leaking water pipes, overflowing sewers, malfunctioning traffic lights and lawlessness,” he said.

    “We also told him that daily electricity cuts were leaving businesses idle for hours, disrupting daily life and forcing residents to rely on ingenuity to navigate the chaos. This is still going on now, nothing has changed.”

    But Mr Balton said Africa’s richest city was plagued by “massive” disinvestment which aggravated unemployment and rendered the streets unsafe.

    The “dysfunction in the city is rooted in unstable political coalitions within the municipalities and neglected maintenance.“

    Mr Ramaphosa has not yet replied to the organisation’s letter, he said, “but we are going ahead and we are making some difference, at least in some areas of the city”.

    The magnitude of the problems facing Johannesburg has been highlighted recently by water shortages affecting both rich and poor parts of the city.

    Every day at least a quarter of Johannesburg’s supply is lost through leaks, according to reports.

    The sprawling city has more than 7,000 miles of underground water pipes, some more than 70 years old, and the majority need replacing. Only a third of the annual pipe replacement target is met.

    Including water theft and a free monthly allowance of 6,000 litres for every household, only about half of the city’s supply is actually paid for.

    Ferrial Adam, a prominent environmental activist, said this meant there was a massive shortage of funds available for maintenance of infrastructure.

    “More than half of the budget goes to contractors, and another third to staff, and only a little to actual maintenance, and some of that has been mismanaged.

    “We didn’t do sufficient maintenance for the last 10 years and now so much is falling apart.”

    Related Topics
    South Africa, Johannesburg, Africa

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/03/30/johannesburg-world-class-decay-anc/

    Remind you of anywhere else?

    1. “Legacy of apartheid”? It’s just the inevitable consequence of black majority rule.

      1. The liberal west was so heavily invested in the anti-apartheid movement that they cannot admit that anything that comes after apartheid could be worse.

    3. There a website at least 12 years old now. The Death of Johannesburg.
      Once a bustling Metropolis. Burnt out buildings broken windows. Drugs prostitution all other crimes. Now just another African tip.

    4. I didn’t think it mattered that the robots (traffic lights) didn’t work as it is too dangerous to stop at them anyway.

  113. Seems like Aggers (?) is retiring from the BBC, after 30+ years.
    I was at school with him.
    #claim to fame…

        1. I’m much better, thanks, Paul. The shingles rash on my forehead has subsided somewhat (scabs have dropped off and it is not so ruddy) so I have decided to take it easy and spend a bit of time in my workshop.

          1. Good plan! Take it easy, relax… Sigh
            Hope you didn’t have cornflakes for breakfast… ;-(

          2. I don’t eat any cereals or grains, Paul.

            And I never eat breakfast. One decent meal-or-fish-based meal every two days sustains me.

          4. There are numerous recipes on the ketoweb. All vile. I tried desperately with the cauliflower one but it turned out badly despite all the faff. Most are egg-white based.

          7. I don’t do well with regular bread because of too much gluten, perhaps, so I make my own rye sourdough. It certainly sits better in my belly than shop-bought stuff. Got a loaf at final proving this very moment, which I started this morning at 9am. My weakness is when I make pizza bases and I use pukka 00 flour My tummy complains but the pleasure of eating the pizza overcomes it.

          10. You do too. Your cooking photos show that you stray from the, pure, carnivore diet.

          11. Perhaps he’s reverting to the IQ of primitive sub Saharan African carnivores?

          12. Ah, but they have a truly diverse biowhotsit in the gut and colon and are very fit and healthy. So much so, that I recently heard a programme on the wireless wherein a prominent professor of (health and human biology? medicine? dietetics?) comparing their diet with the decadent west and testing their poo for microbiomes. This man was so impressed that he asked the chief if he might insert one of his turds into his own rectum to see whether it improved his own internal culture. I don’t know the result. I did not make this up, and it’s actually both interesting and rational.

          13. If you want your brains in your backside so you can talk out of your arse, be my guest, I’d rather not.
            }:-O

          17. I suffered no pain whatsoever. My brother had it four years ago and was in agony. I think I must have got off lightly.

          18. You seem to have done. I found it didn’t make me feel ill at all, but the pain was excruciating. I got through a lot of paracetamol- something I never normally use and haven’t done since then. It started in my right ear, then spread down that side. Once the rash appeared, I realised what it was and was able to get the anti viral tablets in time. My aunt wasn’t so lucky – she suffered from post-herpetic neuralgia for the rest of her life.

          19. I was outside the 72-hour limit before it was diagnosed so it was pointless being prescribed antivirals. It appears that my forehead and eyes were the only areas affected. No pain, so no analgesics required. All that is left is a rubescent area on the forehead. My eyes are back to normal and there is no post-herpetic pain or discomfort anywhere.

          21. I put it down to being fitter and healthier than most due to my sensible natural diet of lots of fish, meat, cheese, eggs and dairy.👍🏻

    3. Retiring as cricket correspondent at the end of this summer but carrying on as a TMS commentator for another four years.

    4. I liked him until I heard him agreeing wholeheartedly with a lunch interval rant, in India on a TMS, about English colonialism.

  114. 385333+ up ticks,

    May one ask,

    Has anyone heard from hancock of late ? not under the knife of a plastic dealing surgeon is he.

    3. Excellent, it reminds me of when we were told not to talk to strangers, let alone strange bloody perverts.

  116. The way that Uganda , Rhodesia , Kenya , the Sudan and Nigeria have decayed and the Congo, both bits , and everywhere else in that cesspit continent of corruption and evil.

  117. Oh dear.

    Best laid plans and all that.

    A

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/03/rspca-rescue-seals-threat-to-freshwater-fish-stocks-anglers/

    “Seals rescued by RSPCA swim 30 miles inland – and eat all the fish

    Angling Trust says rehabilitated animals are causing ‘unsustainable and damaging impact’ on river wildlife and must be released further out

    3 April 2024 • 2:51pm

    Rescue seals released by the RSPCA are failing to return to the sea and are killing fish, anglers have warned.

    At least five seals have been found living in waters around Peterborough, about 30 miles from the coast, two of which had been tagged following releases by the charity.

    The Angling Trust says the seals are causing “significant damage” to freshwater fish stocks in the area and it has written to the RSPCA to ask that it change the release location.

    The RSPCA routinely rescues seals that wash up on beaches or appear in inland waters and encourages the public to report sightings.

    It says that where possible, it releases rehabilitated wild animals back to where they were found as quickly as possible.

    The Angling Trust said that if the seals are left too long in inland waters, it could have “an unsustainable and damaging impact upon fish stocks, other freshwater wildlife and the biodiversity of freshwater ecosystems”.

    The Wash is home to several colonies of seals, which arrive in their thousands on Lincolnshire beaches during the winter months to breed.

    Opportunistic foragers, they are known to follow in the wake of fishing dredgers to chase an easy meal and have been found up to 27 miles in from the Lincolnshire coast.

    The Environment Agency has warned of reduced numbers of fish in the River Nene

    Stocks on the River Nene are particularly vulnerable to seal predation because the stretch of water had been historically straightened, leaving fish with nowhere to hide, said Mark Owen, the head of fisheries at the Angling Trust.

    The trust has also called on the Environment Agency, which recently warned of reduced numbers of fish in the River Nene, to ensure that seal releases at Sutton Bridge are suspended.

    “In spite of the efforts made by the RSPCA team at East Winch to map suitable tides and conditions for release, evidence suggests there are an increasing number of seals reintroduced at the Sutton Bridge site which are travelling into freshwater rather than their natural marine environment,” Jamie Cook, chief executive at the Angling Trust, said.

    “We have therefore asked the RSPCA to immediately cease reintroductions at the Sutton Bridge site to protect both the seals as well as the native freshwater fish and wildlife they are encountering.

    “We have no objection to the release of rehabilitated seals in line with government policy and have asked the team at East Winch to consider coastal release sites, which will assist the seals in orientating themselves back into their natural environment and colonies, rather than finding themselves trapped alone inland.”

    An RSPCA spokesman said: “We’re proud of the work we do in rehabilitating seals, and releasing them into the wild is an important and rewarding part of wildlife rehabilitation.

    “Discussions are ongoing with relevant partners about this location. We would welcome a discussion with the Angling Trust about helping wildlife thrive and their concerns.”

    1. Anne, I only wish as much concern were shown over humans arriving without papers in Dover than seals arriving “in their thousands on Lincolnshire beaches.”

    2. Put seals in an environment where they have abundant food and they eat it? Well, I never!

          2. You are lucky if it is just the opposition, all MPs act like performing seals over here. It is worrying that the whole liberal caucus goes along with the BS that Trudeau comes up with.

    4. They used to come up the Thames to Teddington weir quite regularly in the 60s and 70s. They might still be for all I know.

  119. Evening, all. Let’s hope that the fightback has begun. We need a Gates of Vienna moment (against wokery as well as submission).

    2. How is this “empowering”? Seriously how? Empowering for who? The BBC doesn’t really say or asks. Just is. Have a word that sounds intelligent and meaningful you clapping seals. What a waste of our money that lot are.

      1. Wearing a hijab empowers her to ram her Moslem identity in your face. It gives her the upper hand. Wipe the smirk off her face and who’d be the bad guy?

        1. Quite, Sue, and very well put. The smug arrogance of these idiotic women is incredible, when their avowed kin are being beaten up, raped and killed for not choosing to wear this fascistic uniform in countries which embrace their style of freedom and empowerment.

        2. There’s one place in the Middle East where women aren’t set upon by angry stone throwing mobs for choosing to not to wear the hijab. Wait for it… Israel!

          3. I made what turned out to be an outrageously inappropriate enquiry about the white cat you appear to share with Richardl and committed a couple of hate crimes in the process.

          5. Oi! Just be careful with insinuations about our pussies.

            I wish that we had a dog, life would be so much easier with a cog.

        3. I look forward to her equally joyful commentary if she ever decides to walk away from the religion. She could ask Ayaan Hirsi Ali for tips.

        4. Could you wear a large silver crucifix upon your breast at work and not get any adverse comments?

      2. They’re hardly going to say ‘It’s an isolating, divisive, anti social and bluntly racist garment that has no place in Britiain.’ are they?

        This is the BBC. The doublethink and cognitive dissonance is so hilarious it’s not funny any more.

  121. Mail to John Redwood’s Diary..

    Talking of magic money, Mr Redwood, did you ask John Major about his employment in the private equity fund Carlyle from 1998 where Tony Blair’s close friend George Soros was heavily invested in “buy out”?

    The same private equity fund to which Tony Blair sold 31% of Qinetiq in 2003 for peanuts with a magic $7.5 billion MoD contract dropped in at the last moment. At that time, John Major was European Chairman of the purchasing private equity fund where Soros was heavily invested.

    There was a parliamentary enquiry to find out why Qinetiq was sold so cheaply but unfortunately the enquiry didn’t know that Tony Blair’s close friend George Soros was the star private buy out client.

    I wonder how much Tony Blair and John Major made out of that, ranging from zero to many millions?

    The Qinetiq cut price sale with $7.5 billion of public money thrown in to boost the later floatation, imho, looks like the open door to extremely serious corruption going far back into the 1990s and thereby explaining the serious problems faced by Britain today.

      1. I think the sale of Qinetiq is probably one of Britain’s biggest frauds.

        1. There’s stiff competition. The current front runner for me would be net zero. Dozens o MPs are n the make there, not just a handful. The figures are staggering as well – millions a month.

    3. They screw the public & the taxpayer over again & again, as they perpetually treat us with utter contempt.

    4. They screw the public & the taxpayer over again & again, as they perpetually treat us with utter contempt.

    1. News is basically controlled here by the government, what we see is biased to what trudeau wants us to see. On top of cbc funding, the liberal government hands out another 800 million to trusted media (Rebel News doesn’t get a look at the money).
      Covid, truckers convoy, Israel reporting all follows the liberal line, the media do not question the PMs press releases.

      Oh and only another 15 billion promised by Trudeau today so I guess that an election will be coming up and the liberals fully supported by the media.

      1. I do feel for you over there. Why is he so popular? Is it because the vast majority are off their faces all the time?

  125. My favourite section of newspapers has always been the obituaries, where you can find out about the interesting lives of people not well-known outside of their professional environment. Today’s Telegraph includes the obit of Archie Bishop, a maritime lawyer who specialised in salvage claims.

    It included the following paragraph: “He also told how, in 1997, a Japanese tuna boat was struck by a falling cow. It transpired that some Russians had been disturbed while rustling Kobe beef cattle in northern Japan using a transport plane. They took off in a great hurry, but when the aircraft stalled, the pilot opened the rear door and livestock fell out, one of which entered the boat through the roof of the wheelhouse.”

    Real life is stranger than fiction – no-one would have concocted that for a fictional plot and had it accepted as credible.
    He seems to have been a very decent chap.
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2024/04/03/archie-bishop-merchant-navy-lloyds-of-london-salvage-law/

  126. It’s not just true of Scotland – Britain is no longer a free country

    Holyrood’s Hate Crime Act is a hateful law. But there is plenty of Westminster legislation that needlessly restrict free speech

    ELLA WHELAN • 3 April 2024 • 6:25pm

    The bizarre goings on north of the border have been amusing to watch. Scotland’s new Hate Crime Act played out like an April Fools with no end. Police Scotland have been inundated – about 60 reports an hour – with thousands complaining of alleged hate crimes committed by JK Rowling and the First Minister himself. Someone even made a complaint in Siobhian Brown’s name, Yousaf’s minister for victims and community, leading her to suggest that her government’s bill had caused “hysteria”.

    It’s easy to point the finger at attacks on freedom of speech going on elsewhere. Ireland is similarly in danger of becoming a basket case for free speech. But those of us in England and Wales shouldn’t get complacent.

    Given the slew of censorious legislation passed in the last few years, it was perhaps unwise for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to castigate his Scottish counterparts. He’s right that England has “a proud tradition of free speech”, but that tradition, fought for by the likes of Leveller Freeborn John, has always been contested. From the days of heresy and treason to modern concepts of “offence”, freedom of speech has never been absolute – in fact, it’s always been in peril.

    Scotland certainly didn’t invent the idea of making “hate” an aggravating factor in the criminal law. In 2022-2023, 145,214 offences were recorded by the police in England and Wales “where one or more of the centrally monitored hate crime strands were deemed to be a motivating factor” – a steady increase year on year.

    And we don’t just record hate crimes, but “non-crime hate incidents”. This tricky label is for those hate crimes where no criminal act has actually taken place – a means for snitches to get the police attention they require with nothing actually being done about it. More than 6,489 non-crime hate incidents were logged between June and November last year in England and Wales.

    When she was home secretary, a speech made by Amber Rudd was reported as a “hate crime incident” by a professor at Oxford University. Far from the legal maxim “everything which is not forbidden is allowed”, we now seem to live by the rule that everything you dislike can be illegal – if you complain loudly enough.

    Does Sunak know the laws on his own country’s statute books? After tweeting in celebration at the death of national treasure Captain Tom Moore, Joseph Kelly was arrested under Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 [Blair again…]. Under this legislation, expressing an opinion of a “grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character” can see you put behind bars. Sure, tweeting “burn auld fella, buuuuurn” wasn’t very nice, but should it be illegal?

    The Online Safety Act, passed last year, effectively appoints unaccountable Silicon Valley millionaires to decide what we are and aren’t allowed to say online. Worse still, it emboldens Ofcom to police what is acceptable discourse online. And I haven’t even got to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act, which bans protest that’s too “noisy”.

    A nation governed by freedom lovers we are not. In fact, politicians seem to spend most of their time searching out ways to limit and neuter open debate under the guise of public protection. Every so often one of our elected representatives suggests making misogyny a hate crime, a move that sounds nice and fluffy on the outside but only serves to further invite police intervention into our private lives and conversations.

    Likewise the Equality Act – much loved by keyboard warriors and workplace whingers – might claim to be a means to protect the vulnerable, but has been used as a justification for political censorship. Just take the gender wars – in which activists on both the trans and the gender-critical side use the legislation to cry You Can’t Say That. As a result, public debate becomes coarsened, febrile and oversensitive.

    JK Rowling’s challenge to the Scottish government has been admirable – sometimes it takes a woman with big balls and an even bigger purse to call the petty censor’s bluff. But our distrust in free speech – from censorious politicians to snitching citizens – won’t be changed overnight by celebrity intervention.

    Many think real freedom of speech, unfettered by legal restrictions or tech company oversight, would lead to bedlam – an orgy of hate crime and misinformation. I’m less misanthropic. The only way to fight bad speech – even hateful speech – is with more speech. We cannot ban hate – it is a necessary and sometimes powerful emotion.

    Scotland and Ireland have shown us what can happen when ordinary people get complacent about the necessity of free and open public debate. Let’s not make the same mistake.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/03/britain-no-longer-free-country/

    1. I’ve been shouting at the TV all day reminding them that the online harm bill is practically the same as the useless Scottish one.

      1. These says I only shout at the TV whilst trying to watch a film when the sodding producers have a soundtrack that drowns out the whispered dialogue…FFS!

    2. None of this legislation bans hate. It defines hate. It dictates what must be hated.

    3. “Far from the legal maxim “everything which is not forbidden is allowed”, we now seem to live by the rule that everything you dislike can be illegal – if you complain loudly enough.” That maxim went out when EU law (corpus juris) was made superior to English Common Law. Now everything is forbidden unless the state passes a law to allow you to do it (the Code Napoleon). The state now defines what you may do as well.

      1. And that is why we voted in our millions to leave the EU. Unfortunately the pigs were already on their hindlegs and enjoying the beds with sheets.

  127. Lest we forget: To reduce unemployment by 1 million requires the creation of 1,000 jobs a day every day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year for almost 3 years…..

    “The bulk of Alstom’s 1,200 blue-collar staff at Derby will run out of work in four to five months CREDIT: Joe Giddens/PA Wire
    Britain’s biggest train factory is preparing to lay off hundreds of staff after completing its final production run with no prospect of further work in sight. Managers at the Alstom plant in Derby have restarted a voluntary redundancy process that was paused in January amid optimism about new government contracts.

    Talks with the Department for Transport (DtF) have since stalled, and Alstom is now expecting to announce cuts among its 3,000-strong workforce.

    Onsite workers employed by suppliers are likely to lose their jobs, while the bulk of Alstom’s 1,200 blue-collar staff at Derby will run out of work once the testing and evaluation of completed trains ends in four or five months.

    Birmingham-based Solo Rail Solutions, which makes train interiors, seats and doors, went into administration last month and counts the Derby plant as one of its main customers.”

    1. Those poor workers. What’s the cause? A massive drop off in rail traffic? Why would that be? Fares are so reasonable and trains so efficient and the drivers never on strike.

      1. All very good points. (no pun intended before any one thinks I’ve gone off the rails again)….

      2. A massive drop off in rail traffic?

        Convid was very damaging. Large numbers of commuters put out of work or pretending to do so from home.

    2. Why are we importing people on the pretence that they’re much needed workers?

      1. Because if they told the truth (they are race replacements to destroy Western culture) the people really would wake up.

        1. Would they, though? So many seem to have been brainwashed into accepting this as our due, in view of the awful sins we are supposed to have committed in the distant past and the truly terrible transgression of “whiteness”

      2. Heaven, even Trudeau has seen the problems with that. Yesyerday, he was ranting on about too many temporary workers while conveniently forgetting who is responsible for bringing in a million newcomers a year.

  128. Regarding the women who tortured the monkeys. Do the same to them. One limb at a time. Keep them alive and conscious with massive doses of adrenaline through.

    Bury the still screaming remains alive with an air tube.

    4. We’re all well aware of the reality of this 14 year old fart in the car Prime Minister Sunak.

      1. 385333+ up ticks,

        Evening AAL,
        When it comes to reality this three party coalition majority voters, have been in a dream world these past four decades.

        The sunak is bad but looking back there is far worse.

        These parties are elected via the peoples choice.

    5. And you wonder why there were so few good April 1st jokes this year? Hard to beat this promise.

      1. 385333+ up ticks,

        Evening R,

        The wretch cameron could, he would raise him two pledges & a vow and beat him hands down.

    7. Give me a break, my crapometer’s needle is off the scale and my ribs are hurting. Must be an election year.

  136. Well, chums, I shall now wish you all a Good Night, sleep well, and I hope you all wake tomorrow refreshed.

  137. A ponder before bed time.
    Hamas must have committed the Oct.7th attack with the full expectation that Israel would react violently.
    Why then, did the attack go ahead?
    Was it to lure Israel into a trap?
    Israel had barely responded before the Hamas Propaganda Apparat began spewing out it’s version of events which makes me wonder how much advance warning of the attack the propagandists had.
    As time has progressed, news reports on the conflict are dominated by items that show Israel in the worst possible light and the victims of Oct.7th appear to have been forgotten.

    Yes, Gaza has received a HUGE amount of damage and many of the people of Gaza have been killed, but given Hamas’s propensity for using them as Human Shields, is the idea that Hamas are willing to sacrifice them as “Propaganda Units” so outlandish?
    Looking at the pro-Hamas marches round the world, that tactic appears to be paying dividends and Israel has walked into Hamas’s propaganda trap.

    I bid you all a good night.

    1. “is the idea that Hamas are willing to sacrifice them as “Propaganda Units” so outlandish?”

      Of course not. It wouldn’t even be regarded as a ‘sacrifice’, but as an obvious duty.

    2. The only word I disagree with in this accurate post, Bob, is “barely”. Israel had not responded at all – they were stunned – when the anti-Israel hatred started to spew out. Before those mutilated, desecrated bodies were even cold.

    3. Well ponder on this.

      Since October 7th, the whole world has turned against Israel. Even perennial support from the US is doubtful and most other countries have sided with Gaza and are refusing to sell arms to Israel.

      Then you have the civil unrest in most western countries with idiots screaming for hamas and attacking the basic ethical behaviour that made society work.

      The plot probably originated somewhere outside Gaza so who cares about a few tens of thousand lives sacrificed, it is just the way it is. All in all a reasonable price to pay for destroying the west.

    1. Shameful admission: I always used to sing it to my children and grandchildren, and it always made me cry

      1. That’s because it’s sad. Poor old Puff. It’s the same for my son’s Big Dog, Pandy and Pandybag. All sitting in his wardrobe now, when they used to be his life. Excuse me for a moment…i need a tissue…

  141. Destroying Hamas is in Britain’s interest. We should be backing Israel to achieve it

    Demands from the foreign policy elite for a ceasefire before the job is done give succour to our enemies

    DAVID FROST • 3 April 2024 • 7:07pm

    Most of us will hardly be able to imagine the bestial horror and extreme violence that engulfed the unfortunate inhabitants of the small kibbutz of Be’eri, near Gaza, on October 7. But there are survivors to tell of what happened. And if you heard, as I and a small number of House of Lords colleagues did while visiting Israel last week, a young woman describe the murder and kidnap of her family, in the blackened, twisted, burned-out wreck of a childhood home, you got a glimpse behind the awful statistics of that horrific day.

    I can only speak for myself in the conclusions I draw from that visit. But one point was obvious to me and, I think, to any visitor, if maybe less so to those who see only the awful images of the subsequent war in Gaza: the fact that Israelis now, once again, feel beleaguered and insecure in their own country.

    Israelis are well aware that polling shows that majorities in Gaza still support Hamas and the October 7 attacks. They believe that much of Palestinian opinion is unreconciled to Israel’s existence.

    They are in no doubt that the intention of Iran and its many proxies, including Hamas, is to destroy their country if they can – if not directly, then by trying to make it insecure and hard to live in (and let’s not forget that, even now, nearly 150,000 Israelis are still displaced from their homes because it’s too dangerous for them to return). That is why their state’s failure to protect them on October 7 came as such a shock and why the country remains in trauma while so many hostages are still in Gaza.

    But Israelis are also determined to remedy that situation – and rightly so. Benjamin Netanyahu may not be popular, but his policies are. Repeated Israeli concessions have failed to provide security: it’s obvious to us all now that the earlier withdrawal from south Lebanon and then Gaza just put heavily armed Iranian proxy forces on Israel’s borders.

    That is why there is now wide support for the defeat and destruction of Hamas, for the political resurrection of the Abraham Accords, especially the relationship with Saudi Arabia, and above all for the robust handling of Iran. Many Arab states in the region are also privately quite happy with those aims. Israel sees a reputation for military strength – the best reputation to have in a region like the Middle East – as the way to achieve them, and if that means temporary unpopularity, then so be it. As one Israeli said to us: “Israel is only ever popular when it’s Jews that are being killed.”

    These wider Israeli objectives surely ought to be British objectives, too. That is why those making British policy towards Israel need to be so careful in how they proceed. There has been a tendency to slip back to the UK foreign policy comfort zone, which is to view international relations as a matter of treaties, UN conventions and a rules-based international system which, when mechanically applied by lawyers, delivers the “correct” response for any situation; and to look down, self-righteously, on any country that doesn’t see it like we do.

    In this case, the system says the right response is a ceasefire and the full application of international humanitarian law. That shows one obvious problem with this process-based approach to foreign policy: “garbage in, garbage out”. If we focus entirely on Israeli application of international law, we will get the wrong answer.

    Israelis rightly point out that Hamas fighters sheltering behind civilians is a clear violation of the laws of war. So is taking hostages. So is building tunnels under churches and mosques. So is firing rockets from hospitals. What is Israel supposed to do: just let that happen? Instead, it is reacting in the only way possible, by doing everything it can to comply with international law itself, and accepting the losses that come with bitter urban fighting in which Hamas is quite happy for civilians to be casualties.

    The other problem with this approach is that it doesn’t actually offer a solution. A ceasefire would leave Hamas in being, able to reconstitute itself, and with no incentive to release hostages. There would be little real chance of moving on to reconstruction and the installation of some minimally capable, non-destructive administration in Gaza. And Israel’s enemies, notably Iran, would draw the conclusion that, in a crisis, Israel would be allowed to hit back, but would always be stopped by the West from fighting to a finish.

    We can’t allow this to happen. It’s a difficult case to make just at the moment, especially after the sad and distressing airstrike on World Central Kitchen aid workers, but Israel must not just be allowed, but enabled, to win this war. That’s because it’s in our own national interest that it does so. Our rivals around the world see international relations not in terms of law but of power. If Western countries don’t have the stomach to face down our enemies – and Islamist extremism, in the form of Hamas or anything else, is definitely our enemy – others will calibrate their actions accordingly.

    [OK so far but then Frosty slips.]

    At some point, Western policymakers need to show the moral clarity over Gaza that they showed, generally and until recently, over Ukraine. Too many people are too polite to draw the parallels, so I will. Ukraine and Israel were both attacked by a neighbour. Both are defending themselves. In both cases, it’s in our national interest that the aggressors lose.

    The main difference is in the achievability of the attacked country’s aims. In Ukraine, we have often claimed, quite casually at times, that the only solution is the outright military defeat of Russia and the downfall of the Putin regime – aims surely near-impossible to achieve. In Gaza, by contrast, Israel’s objectives are within reach. Hamas bit off more than it could chew and can be destroyed. Yet we call for a ceasefire before the job is done.

    The end of Hamas would be a real blow to Iran and its allies, and a real win for the West – if we can just let Israel finish the job, and begin the long and difficult process of reconstruction and deradicalisation. That’s why we should be backing Israel: because doing this is not just in Israel’s interests – but also in ours.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/03/destroying-hamas-uk-interest-back-israel/

    1. It’s odd how differently the Ukraine/Russian and the Israel/Hamas conflicts can be perceived in so many ways by so many people. MSM at its best.

    2. ……… the fact that Israelis now, once again, feel beleaguered and insecure in their own country.

      I feel the same about living in Britain.

  142. From the DT:

    ‘Beyond the comic set pieces, there’s a serious intent in how Shriver depicts society being hollowed out from within, and it’s clear that it is no imaginary world in her sights. “Things start falling apart because functionality no longer matters; all that matters is ideology. And that’s what we’re dealing with right now. You’re watching grand storied universities destroy themselves because they no longer believe in themselves, they don’t believe in the canon they’re supposed to be transferring to the next generation.” The students now have the power, she says. “It was bad enough that the universities had converted into supermarkets, which were offering products. But the administration and faculty are now terrified of their own student bodies.”

    Cancel culture, Shriver believes, “is getting worse… there’s nothing moderate about it. It’s aggressive, hostile, angry, deliberately disruptive, vengeful, perhaps vengeful above all… it’s about hunting people’s careers for sport.” The goal, she says, “is to utterly destroy you. And that is the appeal of this stuff – that satisfaction of destroying other people’s lives. And also, in doing so, you don’t have to take any responsibility for being a destructive force. You are the force of righteousness.”

    1. She’s right, but by supporting and voting for Biden she has colluded. All these cool people cling to the cool even when they know the destruction wrought.

  144. The Left has no problem with radicalisation when they’re the ones doing it

    Instead of vowing to combat the influence Andrew Tate has on boys, Labour should be looking at the effect The Guardian is having on girls

    MICHAEL DEACON

    COLUMNIST & ASSISTANT EDITOR • 3 April 2024 • 7:00pm

    For young people today, finding a partner of the opposite sex must be dreadfully hard. But this isn’t because of the pressure to look like an Instagram gym buff, or the horrors of dating apps, or the fact that no one under the age of 30 seems to drink alcohol any more.

    It’s because these days, young men and women have got absolutely nothing in common.

    Seriously. All of a sudden, they appear to have developed completely different values. It’s unprecedented. In the past, the two sexes tended to hold roughly similar views on politics. But research compiled over the past five years shows that in Britain – and indeed other Western countries – young women have become more progressive, while young men have become more conservative. And the resulting ideological gap is now staggeringly vast.

    Alice Evans, an academic at King’s College London, is writing a book on this phenomenon, entitled The Great Gender Divergence. She says it’s been caused by a variety of factors, including “social media bubbles” and “economic resentment”. Whatever the reasons for it, though, I think there is a vital point we’re in danger of missing. Which is that only one of the two sexes is strictly responsible.

    Recently, the Financial Times published some charts illustrating how the gulf between young men and women has grown in each Western country. And in every chart, there is an unmistakable pattern. The political views of young men haven’t actually altered all that much. Their drift to the Right has been really quite gentle.

    The political views of young women, however, have changed dramatically. Their move to the Left has been abrupt and profound. In truth, then, this cavernous ideological divide is almost entirely attributable to them.

    Which is curious. Because, whenever the divide is discussed by politicians and commentators, they make it sound as if the problem is young men. They fret endlessly about how young men today are being “radicalised” by nasty Right-wing YouTubers such as Andrew Tate, or horrid Right-wing politicians such as Donald Trump.

    Yet they never apply this word “radicalised” to young women. Why not? I suspect it’s because these politicians and commentators tend to be progressive themselves. Therefore, they see no problem with young women becoming drastically more progressive. In their view, the more progressive someone is, the better. So the fault lies entirely with young men, for failing to emulate young women’s lurch to the Left.

    Personally, though, I think this lurch Leftwards should alarm us all. The future of Western civilisation is already threatened by our collapsing birth rates. And this sudden ideological chasm between the sexes is only going to make the crisis worse. No one’s going to be forming couples at all any more, if, on every first date, the woman asks, “What do you think of Gramsci?”, and the man replies, “He’s the type of striker Man Utd are crying out for.”

    It’s a chilling thought. So clearly something must be done. Politicians must spend less time obsessing over the radicalisation of young men, and start paying attention to the radicalisation of young women, instead.

    As it happens, the Labour Party has announced that, when it’s in power, it will help to combat the influence that Andrew Tate has on boys. Surely it would make more sense to help combat the influence The Guardian has on girls.

    Otherwise, the only way young men are going to get a girlfriend is by frantically boning up on George Monbiot and Owen Jones. [I don’t think ‘boning up’ should be in the same sentence as those two…] And if that’s what the future has to hold, perhaps Western civilisation isn’t worth saving, after all.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2024/04/03/left-wing-radicalisation-guardian-andrew-tate-right-wing/

    1. Thirty years ago, when this kind of robust push-back might have saved the West, Neil Lyndon was sacked from the Times for saying it.
      Now that it’s too late, it’s allowed to be said.

      On the positive side for young conservative women, they are highly in demand…

    2. I really take umbrage at the use of the word ‘progressive’ as can see nothing in those who use the word that is progressive. To my mind they are regressive.

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