Wednesday 30 March: There can be no lasting peace while Russia’s murderous regime stands

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here.

617 thoughts on “Wednesday 30 March: There can be no lasting peace while Russia’s murderous regime stands”

  1. ‘Morning Geoff and Peeps,

    SIR – I would not insult a male patient, or myself, by asking if he was pregnant prior to any scans.

    I would not ask a male taking hormones in order to grow breasts if he was pregnant.

    None have uterine anatomy, so they cannot be pregnant. This mad wokeness must stop.

    Dr Nigel Barrett
    London SW17

    Quite right too, Dr B. Someone in the NHS must have taken leave of their senses.

    1. ‘Morning, Hugh, “Someone Many in the NHS must have taken leave of their senses.”

  3. SIR – We should not dwell too long on the matter of defeat, expressed in the excellent Channel 4 programme Falklands War: The Untold Story.

    It is worth remembering that at the time of the surrender I had three fully manned, fully armed and pretty angry companies of Gurkhas on the high ground above Port Stanley.

    The question of defeat never crossed our minds.

    Brigadier David Morgan (retd)
    Ilminster, Somerset

    I’ll bet those Gurkhas were disappointed as well as angry!

  5. SIR – The schools White Paper proposes that schools should provide a minimum of 32.5 hours of schooling per week. Unfortunately, this figure represents the time that children should be in school, and includes registration, assemblies, breaks, lunchtimes and extra-curricular activities at the end of the day.

    At the moment, primary school children are expected to have 20 hours of subject lessons per week, with secondary school students having 25. Only if these figures are increased and students are able to spend more time on English, maths and other national curriculum subjects will the loss of education during the pandemic be made up.

    David S Ainsworth
    Manchester

    Coincidentally it was only yesterday evening when Mrs HJ and I were discussing what those hours actually included. We should have known better than to conclude that they were purely teaching time. Silly us!

    1. If they’re at school they are pupils not students.
      When we were at school the day started at 9 am and finished at 4.15 pm.
      Now we see secondary school children on their way home at 3 pm.

      1. When I was at school the daily routine was like this:

        0730 Get Up
        0815 Breakfast
        0845 Chapel Service (Lesson read by school prefect, praye by school chaplain and a hymn or a psalm)
        0900 – 1100 Classes
        1100 – 1120 Break
        1120 – 1300 Classes
        1300 Lunch
        1400 – 1530 Classes
        1600 Games. (School matches on Wednesday and Saturday) Tuesdays Activiities & Clubs) Thursday CCF
        1745 High Tea
        1815 -1915 Quiet Hour – if you stayed in your house you had to do school work or read. However the following activities were freely available (and properly supervised by staff where necessary) swimming pool (summer Term), gym, squash courts, fives courts, music school, art school carpentry workshops, metal workshops, pottery workshops, theatre (For play rehearsals), Chapel (For Choir practice), tennis courts, (summer), cricket nets (summer), fencing, badminton (and probably other things I have forgotten.)
        1915 – 2045 First prep.
        2045 House meeting followed by cocoa and biscuits and general fagging (Cleaning baths, sweeping floors, dusting scrubbing and mopping etc.) for the boys in their first year at school.
        2130 Bed for the Juniors.
        2130 – 2200 Second Prep.
        2230 Bed.

        And don’t forget compulsory chapel on Sundays and evening prep!

        And in the Sixth Form as well as our three “A” level subjects we had to study subsidiary subjects such as art appreciation, music appreciation, scripture, playreading and work for the Use of English and General Paper exams. Those who aspired to go to Oxbrige had to arrnage classes for the obligatory Latin Unseen Paer.

      2. When I was at school the daily routine was like this:

        0730 Get Up
        0815 Breakfast
        0845 Chapel Service (Lesson read by school prefect, praye by school chaplain and a hymn or a psalm)
        0900 – 1100 Classes
        1100 – 1120 Break
        1120 – 1300 Classes
        1300 Lunch
        1400 – 1530 Classes
        1600 Games. (School matches on Wednesday and Saturday) Tuesdays Activiities & Clubs) Thursday CCF
        1745 High Tea
        1815 -1915 Quiet Hour – if you stayed in your house you had to do school work or read. However the following activities were freely available (and properly supervised by staff where necessary) swimming pool (summer Term), gym, squash courts, fives courts, music school, art school carpentry workshops, metal workshops, pottery workshops, theatre (For play rehearsals), Chapel (For Choir practice), tennis courts, (summer), cricket nets (summer), fencing, badminton (and probably other things I have forgotten.)
        1915 – 2045 First prep.
        2045 House meeting followed by cocoa and biscuits and general fagging (Cleaning baths, sweeping floors, dusting scrubbing and mopping etc.) for the boys in their first year at school.
        2130 Bed for the Juniors.
        2130 – 2200 Second Prep.
        2230 Bed.

        And don’t forget compulsory chapel on Sundays and evening prep!

        And in the Sixth Form as well as our three “A” level subjects we had to study subsidiary subjects such as art appreciation, music appreciation, scripture, playreading and work for the Use of English and General Paper exams. Those who aspired to go to Oxbrige had to arrnage classes for the obligatory Latin Unseen Paer.

  6. SIR – The schools White Paper proposes that schools should provide a minimum of 32.5 hours of schooling per week. Unfortunately, this figure represents the time that children should be in school, and includes registration, assemblies, breaks, lunchtimes and extra-curricular activities at the end of the day.

    At the moment, primary school children are expected to have 20 hours of subject lessons per week, with secondary school students having 25. Only if these figures are increased and students are able to spend more time on English, maths and other national curriculum subjects will the loss of education during the pandemic be made up.

    David S Ainsworth
    Manchester

    Coincidentally it was only yesterday evening when Mrs HJ and I were discussing what those hours actually included. We should have know better than to conclude that they were purely teaching time. Silly us!

  7. There can be no lasting peace while Russia’s murderous regime stands

    If Russia’s murderous regime fell why would there be peace?

    1. In a few years, the Royal Family will be invited to the coronation of Czar Vlad the first (or whatever)… And since they have always been close to the pre-revolution Russian royals, sharing some ancestry with them, they will accept.

      1. Not that close. Tsar Nicholas and his family were refused sanctuary in the UK in case it stirred up revolution here. However, it is not completely unlikely that Putin may be seeking to restore the Tsars, but not for himself, but for Russia. There are indeed relatives around with some claim to be Tsar (or maybe Tsarina).

    2. In a few years, the Royal Family will be invited to the coronation of Czar Vlad the first (or whatever)… And since they have always been close to the pre-revolution Russian royals, sharing some ancestry with them, they will accept.

  8. SIR – It was good to see Christopher Pratt raising awareness of the fact that the removal of landlines could have implications for national security (Letters, March 21). Given current and possible future world events, it is not unreasonable to consider that a hostile state could target infrastructure such as the National Grid.

    My MP recently forwarded my concerns to Openreach about the lack of a comprehensive back-up plan in the event of a major power failure. Openreach replied at length about everything other than this main issue, which was conspicuous by its absence.

    Glen Ballard
    Wokingham, Berkshire

    SIR – In the 1960s, when the gas industry switched the whole nation from coal gas to natural gas, there was a commitment to maintain all services to all customers at no cost to the customer. That involved converting every single gas-burning appliance or, if necessary, replacing it with a new appliance suitable for natural gas.

    BT is undertaking a similar exercise in changing the basic infrastructure and should be obliged to follow the gas industry’s example of ensuring that all services using that infrastructure are maintained after the conversion, at no cost to the customer.

    Graham Hoyle
    Shipley, West Yorkshire

    Dream on, Graham Hoyle; BT may be a service industry but that is the last thing it feels the need to provide.

  9. Got four letters in two today was feeling a bit confident, then took a further four goes to get the fifth,

    1. Similar.
      Wordle 284 6/6

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

  10. Article in today’s DT:

    Explorer and abolitionist David Livingstone condemned by council for ‘links to slavery’
    The fate of his monument, which stands next to Glasgow Cathedral, now hangs in the balance along with other ‘problematic’ city statues

    By
    Daniel Sanderson,
    SCOTTISH CORRESPONDENT
    29 March 2022 • 8:46pm

    The explorer David Livingstone has been accused in an official Glasgow Council report of having benefited from slavery, despite being an influential abolitionist widely seen as having helped to end the trade…

    * * *

    You can guess the rest. Here we go again.

    3. Livingstone, about whom I joked yesterday, gave his life to Africa, in missionary work and in fighting slavery.

  11. Going to be out for much of today – Best Beloved has two hospital appointments today – well spaced apart – so the blue badge needs wielding and I must accompany it.

    Until much later.

      1. Thank you, Elsie, all sorted with 99.9% of those inside the horsepiddle gagged with masks. I received many looks askance but what do I care for virtue-signallers?

  12. COMMENT
    The maternity report that proves the NHS is not a national treasure – it’s a national disgrace

    Contrary to its humanitarian branding, the NHS is a Stalinist organisation with a culture of institutionalised bullying

    ALLISON PEARSON
    29 March 2022 • 7:00pm

    What will it take for this country to extract itself from a frankly abusive, co-dependent relationship with the bullying, sometimes downright dangerous NHS? How about 300 dead or damaged babies? Is that dark and dismaying enough to make us question whether our health service really is “the envy of the world”?

    Three hundred is the heartrending number of infants who either died or were left with brain damage due to cruel or wilfully wrongheaded care at Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital Trust (SaTH) between 2000 and 2019, according to a report by senior midwife Donna Ockendon, which is published on Wednesday. Think of it. Three hundred tiny boys and girls with perfect fingers and perfect toes; the movie of their marvellous life to come playing behind their softly fluttering baby eyelids. Three hundred longed-for daughters and sons, their birthdays – and their death days – never to be forgotten. “My twins would have been doing GCSEs this year,” said one mother.

    At least 12 women perished in that same trust, thanks to an obsession with “normal births”, and because there was pressure within the NHS to reduce caesarean rates. Costs, you know. By 2002, SaTH had the lowest C-section rate in the country, for which it was actually praised by the Commons Health Select Committee – but babies were dying.

    Kamaljit Uppal pleaded for a caesarean because her baby was breech. A doctor told her to get on with delivering. Only when the baby was firmly stuck, with two legs protruding, was his mother finally allowed to go to the operating theatre. Kamaljit has two pieces of paper among her most precious possessions; one is her son Manpreet’s birth certificate, the other a death certificate. Both are dated April 2003. The time on them is just two hours apart. Our NHS did that to Manpreet and his mother.

    It wasn’t just in Shropshire either, although the lying NHS will lie to the public and say that it was. (An expert panel is currently looking into another “baby death scandal” at East Kent Hospitals. There will be more to come.) We know how this goes, don’t we? A few bad apples, sincere apologies, won’t happen again, lessons to be learnt. But they knew. There were maternity units that had bad reports from the Care Quality Commisison, the NHS regulator, because their C-sections stats were “too high”. Penalised for putting safety first.

    They knew. At SaTH, the C-section rate was eight to 12 per cent lower than the UK average of about 30 per cent, but mortality rates in the trust’s maternity and neonatal services were running at least 10 per cent higher than at equivalent hospitals. In April 2017, the then Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt ordered an independent review into 23 cases of newborn, infant and mother deaths at SaTH. A year later, when the inquiry was widened because 16 more grieving families had come forward, Simon Wright, the trust’s chief executive, said: “To suggest that there are more cases which have not been revealed when this is simply untrue is irresponsible and scaremongering. This will cause unnecessary anxiety among women going through one of the most important times of their life, and I would like to assure them that our maternity services are a safe environment with dedicated, caring staff.”

    Scaremongering? There, ladies and gentlemen, you have the arrogant, disgustingly complacent tone of the senior NHS apparatchik. I mean, how dare mums who have lost perfectly healthy babies and husbands who have lost their beloved wives challenge the sacred health service before which we must all bow down?

    If hundreds of babies were dying or having their skulls fractured during painfully drawn-out labours, well, at least they were doing so in Wright’s “safe environment”. The local clinical commissioning group, which ordered its own review of SaTH maternity services in 2013, also concluded, astonishingly, that they were “safe and of good quality”. Whenever possible, the NHS prefers to mark its own homework.

    The NHS groupthink about “natural birth” had its origins in the Active Birth Movement, which began in the 1980s as a reaction to the over-medicalisation of childbirth. The movement had a point. An earlier NHS policy, called Active Management, was intended to standardise labour to a maximum of 12 hours per woman. To achieve that, interventions became routine – induction of labour via amniotomy (breaking the waters), and a syntocinon drip to speed up contractions.

    But the idealism of the earth mothers soon hardened into ideology. They harked back to a time when women were “last firmly in control of birth – in the 17th century”. No one seemed concerned by the dire survival rate for mothers and babies in the centuries before obstetrics.

    I have no doubt that brainwashed midwives played a major role in the tragedy at SaTH. The “Wait and See” campaign by the Royal College of Midwives advised that C-sections “shouldn’t be the first choice – they should be the last”. Let mum get on with it and if, after 24 hours, baby was showing signs of distress, drag the poor mite out with high forceps and ventouse suction, leaving mum partially incontinent and baby with a head as pointy as a dunce’s cap. If you were lucky, that is. Three hundred, they were not lucky.

    My daughter could easily have been among them. I had both my babies in the era those SaTH deaths were taking place. My first birth plan was in tatters from the minute they decided to induce me. Instead of Mozart playing, there was a drip in my arm which caused contractions like giant waves smashing against the shore. After 25 hours of that, a registrar popped in, took one look at my cervix, which was about as dilated as a Polo mint, and said, “Let’s get this baby out!”

    She weighed 9lb 10oz and, with her daddy’s brainy cranium, there was no way that little Miss was coming out the front door. At almost any other time in history, we would have died, baby and I. Thank God for UCH, which is a great London teaching hospital and not an outfit in Shropshire where, according to one witness, “the CEO ran the place like a fiefdom free of quality standards”.

    So, no silly regrets for me about missing out on a “meaningful experience” as preached to middle-class mummies by the National Childbirth Trust. Although I do remember feeling like a failure at one post-natal mother and baby class where north London’s crochet-your-own-placenta crew made their disapproval plain of the surgery that had just delivered me a living daughter.

    I was blessed, too, in Humphrey, the consultant with the stripey bow tie, who told me, when I was expecting my second, that I should go for an elective C-section. “If you were a 16-year-old girl with childbearing hips, pushing out baby would be a doddle. But you are 38 years old, with a small pelvis, and carrying a baby who is quite likely to go over 10lb.”

    He’d probably be disciplined for such heresy now, but it was brilliant advice. Women are starting their families later and later; babies are heavier. Of course a vaginal delivery is ideal, but only if it works for the individual mum and baby concerned.

    The question I have is this, how could the worst maternity scandal in the history of the NHS possibly go on for 19 years? Contrary to its humanitarian branding, the NHS is a Stalinist organisation with a culture of institutionalised bullying. Whistleblowers, says one medic, are “treated like dissidents in an authoritarian regime”. Only the bravest dare to whistle. The complaints process is designed to make patients give up. In 2018/19, the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman upheld just 2.4 per cent of complaints.

    That the evil at SaTH was ever unmasked is almost entirely down to the heroic persistence of Rhiannon Davies and her husband, Richard Stanton. The couple fought tooth and nail to establish the truth about the death in 2009 of their baby Kate Stanton-Davies. After the original NHS England investigation into Kate’s death was found “not fit for purpose”, a second one discovered that changes had been made to Kate’s clinical notes after her death. This is the NHS we all pay for, tampering with evidence to hide the appalling neglect which caused the avoidable death of Kate Stanton-Davies and hundreds of babies like her.

    In her report, Donna Ockenden praises Rhiannon and Richard and another bereaved couple, Kayleigh and Colin Griffiths. “The parents’ unrelenting commitment to ensuring their daughters’ lives were not lost in vain continues to be remarkable… In a void described as ‘incomprehensible pain’, they undertook their own investigations to […] insist upon meaningful change in maternity services that could save other lives.”

    That change must be real and start today. An apology is not enough. There is no apology that will suffice for causing death or lifelong damage to 300 babies. Sajid Javid, the Health Secretary, must take steps to ensure that those who conspired in the cover-up at SaTH for almost two decades are arrested. A charge of corporate manslaughter should be looked into. Medical staff who failed to offer timely surgery to distressed mothers must never work again. And any mother who wants a C-section must be allowed to have one. Let that be the living legacy of the 300.

    Shockingly, the OECD has ranked the UK 27th out of 38 for infant mortality, and 20th for maternal mortality. We must cease to be in thrall to the idolisation of an institution which ended 300 precious lives before they had begun. The NHS is not a national treasure – it’s a national disgrace.

    * * *

    Well said Allison, it certainly is!

    2. My godson and his mother suffered under another NHS group. At 39, with her first baby she was classed apparently as a ‘geriatric pregnancy’. She should have had a caesarian, but none was offered. A long labour resulted, in the course of which the baby got trapped and was without oxygen for 20minutes. After emergency resuscitation and whole body cooling for a week, he seemed to have come through ok, and physically is fine. Now 12 and a happy boy, but the brain issues that gradually became apparent mean that he now is at a special school since he can’t handle normal education… The NHS were sued in a desultory manner, but the case went on for years and has gradually faded into the background. Just what the NHS wanted…

      1. Armies of NHS lawyers and each trust has its own legal department to beat the spirit out of all but the most determined.
        All paid for out of your and my pockets; money taken with menaces.

    3. Every single thing in this country is going backward. It really is a boot stamping on a human face.

    4. It does not really matter how bad the medical staff are, they don’t get struck off and be relegated to flipping burgers in MacD. One foreign doctor killed a young man because he did not know what drug he was administering.
      A maternity department doctor pulled off a baby’s head in a botched delivery (even I know that a breech baby requires a Caesarian section). Worse, the C-section had to be performed to remove the head from the mother’s womb. The head was then sewn back on to the body and presented to the mother.
      The doctor was cleared by the tribunal for an immediate return to work at the maternity unit.
      Do not make the mistake of thinking that the General Medical Council works for patients any more than does the BMA – they would better be described as medical trade unions.

      As regards the beheaded baby this is what the GMC lawyer said at the tribunal which was attended by the mother;
      Lawyer for the General Medical Council Charles Garside QC said: “Dr Laxman allegedly delivered the legs, torso and arms successfully but whilst trying to deliver the head, it got stuck in the cervix.”. The operation was fairly successful but the patient died.

      https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/aug/23/german-gp-ubani-watchdog-findings
      https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/6457754/doctor-who-decapitated-a-baby-during-botched-birth-is-cleared-to-return-to-work/

  14. Better late than never I suppose?

    Police face inquiry for failing to prosecute pair whose false sex abuse claims fuelled VIP witchhunt

    Men made untrue allegations against a string of high-profile figures during the Metropolitan Police’s Operation Midland paedophile probe

    By
    Martin Evans,
    CRIME CORRESPONDENT
    29 March 2022 • 9:00pm

    Scotland Yard’s failure to investigate two men who made false child sex abuse allegations during the disastrous Operation Midland investigation has been referred to the police watchdog.

    The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) has confirmed it will look into why two false complainants, known only as A and B, were not investigated and prosecuted.

    The pair came forward during the Metropolitan Police’s VIP paedophile investigation and made false allegations against a string of high-profile figures.

    Their allegations supported lies that had been told to police by the convicted fantasist, Carl Beech, who was later jailed for perverting the course of justice.

    Sir Richard Henriques, a former High Court judge who reviewed Operation Midland in 2016, recommended that A and B should also be investigated for perverting the course of justice but the Met failed to do so.

    Formal complaints

    Some of those falsely accused by the pair, including Harvey Proctor, the former Tory MP, and the family of the late Lord Janner, lodged formal complaints over the Met’s failure to pursue the pair.

    The matter was initially looked at by an outside police force but the IOPC has now confirmed it is to carry out its own investigation.

    Sal Naseem, the IOPC regional director, said: “Our investigation follows the referral of complaints from two individuals who were adversely affected by the allegations made by witnesses A and B.

    “We have reviewed a report from Merseyside Police, who previously investigated a similar complaint and finalised its report in June 2021, but have decided it is still necessary to investigate these complaints.

    “Given the significant shortcomings in Operation Midland, as identified by Sir Richard’s review, it is important for those affected to understand what steps were taken by MPS, following the recommendation that offences of perverting the course of justice be considered for witnesses A and B.”

    Daniel Janner QC, Lord Janner’s son said: “Given the outrageous and false allegations made against my late father by A and B, this is a much delayed but much welcome development.”

    The MPS referred a complaint to the IOPC in August 2021 and a second in March 2022.

    In July 2019 following an investigation by Northumbria police, Beech was convicted of 12 counts of perverting the course of justice for making false allegations which were investigated under Operation Midland.

  15. 70,000 civil servants to go, vows Treasury minister.

    Government spending has soared to a “high-water mark”, with a Treasury minister promising to slash the number of civil servants by as much as 70,000 and paving the way for future cuts.

    Promises. Promises. 70.000 is of course a mere bagatelle. In a more serious age linked to reality, instead of Net-Zero and Russia, the Government of the day would be engaged in a Root and Branch reform of a bloated system that is not merely corrupt but by its nature uncontrollable. The axing of whole ministries would not go amiss. The Home Office currently employs 472,000 people and yet I can remember when that number was not above a thousand. None of this is going to happen of course. It is now beyond the capabilities of the system to reform itself. We must wait for its collapse under some as yet unforeseen crisis!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/03/29/number-civil-servants-will-slashed-70000-treasury-minister-vows/

    1. The 70,000 will be transferred.

      A New Government Department, with Minister will be formed

      Ministry of Relocation and Redundancy of Snivel Servants MRRSS

      The Serpents will be mainly of BAME heritage, as they will then be able to cliam that they are wage slaves, whilst Whitey is
      resting in his palace in Surbiton.

      A further Ministry will have to be initiated, to check the work of MRRSS

    2. The 70,000 will be transferred.

      A New Government Department, with Minister will be formed

      Ministry of Relocation and Redundancy of Snivel Servants MRRSS

      The Serpents will be mainly of BAME heritage, as they will then be able to cliam that they are wage slaves, whilst Whitey is
      resting in his palace in Surbiton.

      A further Ministry will have to be initiated, to check the work of MRRSS

    4. Those blighters that carved out an Empire ran India in the 19th century with about 100,000 people, more than half of them in the military.

      1. The Victorians ran a quarter of the globe with the same number of desk pilots as C21 Colchester Borough Council.

    5. Undoubtedly a whole new bloated departmental team, complete with diversity managers, will need to be appointed to oversee the cuts. A further sub-department will be set up to monitor its net-zero contribution. After pretending to look deeply into the proposed cuts, and by which time Joe public will have long forgotten the proposed cuts, the conclusion will be that it is impossible.

    1. Bu88er …. that’s today’s ear worm.
      Daaah …. dah dah dah dah dah … dahdah ….

  19. Good morning, all. Grey and chilly.

    Good address by the Dean of Windsor at Prince Philip’s “do”, yesterday. I bet he has said that he did NOT want the cretinous Welmeaning to do it.

      1. Yes, thank you. The tablet that was prescribed, and which I took as soon as I returned home, made everything go back to normal within half an hour.

  20. Good morning all.
    A somewhat dull start today, clear but overcast and at least it’s dry with a still slightly chilly 3°C outside.

    1. 6.0C here at present (9am, an hour before which no one should present themselves…!)

    2. 6.0C here at present (9am, an hour before which no one should present themselves…!)

  22. 351736+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Wednesday 30 March: There can be no lasting peace while Russia’s murderous regime stands

    IMO they the Russians are crude & lacking finesse so unlike the United Kingdoms ruling political overseers and their “modus operandi” much more acceptable to the herd, party membership, voters, but just as lethal

    Last four decades has seen the escalation in mass uncontrolled immigration resulting children running the paedophile gauntlet from the cradle to their teens,
    murderous knife play, multiple deaths via terrorist actions, plus a never ending stream of political lies,
    deceit & treachery.

    Unbelievably the majority of the electorate enter the polling booth and call for more of the same via party first & foremost, holding ones nasal passages & voting for the best of the worst this voting pattern has had resounding success in bringing the Country to it’s knee & on it’s way down down to both, following the path of national destruction.

    1. I simply had nothing to say about todays letter other than it is the usual hypocrisy and, what these fools don’t realize is the letter proves exactly what the Russians have been saying all along. This war was a provocation by the West for that very purpose, regime change and the subjection of Russia so that the West could run roughshod over it, install a puppet regime, plunder the place and reduce it to another decedent ruin like the rest of the West.
      I have yet to read in any of the MSM about the broken promises that the West made to Russia when Gorbachev was in power. That Russia kept scrupulously to that deal. Kept scrupulously to the deal with regard to gas. And restrained itself for years while the Russian speaking people of Ukraine were marginalized, persecuted and murdered. To call Putin a “bloodthirsty tyrant” besides being a lie is testimony to the Wests inability to be honest, even now, about its aims in Russia. Aims that it has had for years but now blames Putin for its deceit.

      1. Yo Bill

        Just remember to look after you “R’s”

        With a Prostate problem, you cannot afford to be Prostrate for too long

          1. ….. or leaks”

            (Has the time come to talk of shoes and ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings?)

  24. Some things that struck me about the beeboid “coverage” of the Abbey Memorial Service.

    First, that odd little Welsh chap seemed not to know quite what was happening.

    Secondly, no one had the faintest idea who the foreign “Royals” were. Richard Dimbleby would have known every detail, down to their shoe size.

    Thirdly, in the row occupied by BPAPM, Fishi, Priti Awful, Untrussworthy and Brandon Lewis – there was another bloke. Again, they didn’t know who he was.

    Fourthly, subtitles. I could quite understand that keeping up with a live, unscripted conversation will mean that the S/T are a bit behind. But the order of service was printed weeks ago and the S/T should have appeared as the words were spoken.

    Good to see both Welmeaning and the Midwife sidelined.

    1. I was appalled to see Boris yet again with his jacket undone and his tie flapping about. Why the hell can’t he get a jacket that covers his fat belly. Total lack of respect for the Queen and disrespect to Prince Philip whose life was being honoured.
      That man has no class, no dignity and no brains.

        1. The Americans I knew dressed appropriately for formal events. Boris is a lout.

          2. I agree Ann. Americans get a lot of unfair stick from the British. I think the media here places far to much emphasis on the sort of people that the Americans themselves regard as “trash”. But then, I suppose, the ordinary middle class is of no interest since they don’t spend time burning things down. I think most people who make negative remarks about them would be surprised at how civilized, they are.

          4. I’m not sure about 1941 to be frank. They put conditions on us designed to ruin us and would not have joined if it were not for Pearl Harbour. They would have been quite content to have us overrun by the Germans.

          5. They were supplying Germany with fuel. Who were our enemy at the time. Bit like now really.

          6. The only reason the Japanese declared war on America was because America was starving them of fuel oil.

          7. Eh?? Do you know what the Nipponese were doing in mainland China, which is why there was some form of oil embargo?

          8. Not all Americans. There were some who joined the RCAF (at risk of losing their nationality) to fight for freedom before the USA entered the fray.

          12. Did you find having an English accent helped in the snobbery stakes? Not to suggest that you should behave like a snob but that Americans who were snobs were ‘wrong footed’ by an English accent.

          13. Quite often it did. The only time it got me nowhere was with the traffic cop in NC who pulled me over for speeding. And I had the temerity to argue with him.
            Also, being a teacher means my voice carries and so I had no trouble returning things to shops;-))

          16. He is a slob.

            Since his antecedents come from the same general part of the world he should have been Christened like the Yugoslavian Serb leader in the Balkans called Milošević whose Christian name was Slobadan.

      2. And he hadn’t bothered to attempt to control his hair. Fat slob. At least he left Carrion at home.

      3. It is very unwise to think that Etonians are gentlemen. Many (but not all) of them are nouveau riche chancers with dubious ancestry whose wealth was founded on criminal activity.

        Having said that, my best friend throughout my childhood who was my best man when I married is a splendid chap and he went to Eton. His father was a barrister and his family were successful engineers during the Industrial Revolution.

        My parents decided that I would be happier in a school like Blundell’s so they sent me there. At the time it was fairly brutal with fagging and beatings by prefects as well as beatings from the housemaster and the headmaster. I received six of the best at one time or another from all of these but, like Kipling’s Elephant’s Child, I survived it!

        1. You survived it but it was child abuse. I don’t think you would have wanted your own sons to be treated that way.

    2. I was particularly pleased to see Queen Margrethe at the service. Great personality and a fascinating individual, extremely popular in Denmark. Took a quick look this morning and her popularity is over 80%. But I recognized most of them and if I can, then a BBC commentator certainly should.

    1. Caroline and I have a friend in the village with a thick beard who was a naval captain. Our priest was highly delighted when I referred to him as Le Capitaine Haddock.

      Another fictitious Haddock whom I liked was Albert Haddock who appeared in A.P. Herbert’s Uncommon Law. Haddock was a professional litigant who went to court just for fun rather than for financial gain. In one case he brought and action against the Inland Revue for living off immoral earning when it took income tax from a prostitute.

  26. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3d4ef982db8e14d1a02e521148af9548848b8175f9c6cded6d12522dbca62a0c.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/efbfb4d0879a6f8ee02d622803c1dd8255b6c6ac7b45f9600fac38e6c5c078db.jpg
    Photograph 1: taken yesterday, showing my snowdrops still going strong (along with the snowflakes, crocuses, dwarf irises, hyacinths, spring squill and glory-of-the-snow).
    Photograph 2: taken today, showing 4″ of overnight snow, which is more than the sum total that fell over the entire autumn/winter period.
    Bloody global warming!

    3. Snowdrops and crocuses are long gone over here – daffodils have been lovely but are mostly now gone over too.

      No snow to speak of this winter.

    4. Good afternoon, my friend

      That’s not just mystifying it is myth defying weather for you!

      1. Hej, min god vän!

        We had a “white Easter” in 2018 (on April 1), that was “the beast from the east”. Not so cold now but weather patterns here can be weird.

          2. Hmm. Where do I start….???

            (Not really. I had a wonderful hound for 15½ years.)

  30. Tory MP comes out as trans. 30 march 2022.

    The perpetrator was sentenced to two years and nine months in prison. In September Wallis ‘hooked up’ with someone met online, who raped them when he refused to wear a condom, saying that this incident was the cause of the widely-reported car crash. The MP says that PTSD was the reason for fleeing the scene and apologises for the accident.

    With syntax as garbled as his sexuality!

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/tory-mp-comes-out-as-trans

    2. Well I never had a particularly high opinion of Tory MPs but this does seem to be a new low, judging by by the paragraph above.

    4. He was driving at the same time?
      Is that as big a crime as glancing at your phone?

  31. NoTTL ‘6th Birthday Lunch”

    Morning all. Just had Garlands on the phone. She has major IT problems (her computer doesn’t work, and is also poorly at present). She was organising lunch for a few Nottlers, this Friday, 1st April, in Surrey. Apparently, the pub wants to know our menu choices in advance, which is a bit of a nuisance. Since G can’t easily access all of her emails, and therefore isn’t quite certain who is attending, can those who are, please confirm by email today to mail@g**ffr*ygr*h*m.co.uk (my name – replace the asterisks with vowels), with your choice from this menu.

    Thanks.

      1. Geoff said it seems to have gone down hill. We should go back to the Mill at Elstead.

    4. I hope all goes well – I won’t be coming but it would be good to have some feedback from those who do – and a photo or two!

    5. Lunch Update: the only responses I’ve had so far are from ‘drop outs’ due to health issues. There’s also a general feeling that a celebratory lunch so soon after issy’s death would be in bad taste. So I’ve made an executive decision to postpone Friday’s lunch to a future date, and possibly a different venue.

    6. We would love to meet any fellow Nottlers who are passing this way when they visit France. Our e-mail address can be found on our website which can be found easily by using google.

    7. Looks good Geoff, but unfortunately it’s a bit of a long way from where we live. Perhaps there could be regional lunches.
      Love to see some photos though.

      1. Advertise the area or venue you are prepared to travel to and see if you get any takers. Normally a drink first. See if you want to have lunch another time.

        1. I’ll have a word with Herts Lass she lives fairly close to where I am.
          I need to get well first though.

  32. Was moral campaigner Mary Whitehouse ahead of her time?
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-60556060

    Mary Whitehouse was firmly allied with the right wing of the Conservative Party, but pornography brought out the Marxist in her as she astutely diagnosed that big business and exploitation (she used the term “sexploitation”), not freedom of expression, was driving the industry. She often said, “Pornography is the dirty face of capitalism”.

    In 1974 she wrote: “The young today are more pressurised and exploited than ever before. I’m fighting for their right not to be exploited.”

    Mary also warned against technology becoming out of control, while addressing a computer industry technology conference in Rome in November 1975.

    Although I enjoyed the 60’s/70’s Mary Whitehouse was spot on…

    1. Pornography is simply a market. It reflects our world. It has – in some areas – become more degrading to women.

      It isn’t going to go away though. It is incredibly highly regulated, which, obviously forces a lot of it underground on ‘alternative’ sites where the participants are not protected.

      Can we ban it and legislate sex out of the economy? Not for a second – although advertisers are trying by replacing every white marriage (comically the only ones that actually work as statistically black men walk out on marriages).

      The bigger problem is everyone looks to ‘government’ to ‘do something’, and government is incompetent, stupid, lazy and moronic. No one thinks ‘this is actually my duty as a parent’ because duty and responsibility are dirty words these days. Porn isn’t the problem. People are. People just want something to blame.

      1. The Sun’s Page Three Girls was not nearly as bad as the DM’s current obsession with breasts and low cut dresses with all nipples blacked out.

    1. It seems that the German government is expanding this to include not just gas but all forms of energy.
      Surprise, surprise….!

      2. I am not a biologist or a surgeon but I would have thought that it was more practical for a man who wants to trans to have a willioscopy than for a woman who wants to become a man to grow a willy or have one transplanted?

        Imagine, when Bill Gates has made enough money out of Covid gene therapy he can open a string of clinics for ‘transing’ people of all genders and sexes. Those who want their willies and other appendages amputated can then have them given immediately to those who want to acquire them. Doubtless, just as I used to carry an organ donor card when I lived in Britain the NHS can also set up the sort of schemes they have for kidneys, hearts and other organs so that a register of compatible willies can be established. In fact it might become very chic and fashionable to have black men with white willies and white men with black willies.

    3. Dear life. A weak man refusing to take responsiblity for his actions. Whatever happened to dignity, pride in overcoming adversity. No, just run away.

      He’s not strong, he’s weak.

      2. Ignorance is strength. Evil is good. MSM News is Fake News. Covid is more deadly than cancer. Ukraine is completely innocent.

    4. I’m genuinely bored with this rubbish. Men in frocks looking ridiculous. Why can’t they just wear men’s suits and pretend they are butch lesbians?

        1. Well to be more detailed in my attitude to this. I don’t care if someone wants to look like a fool, it’s their business. What I object to is the politicisation of this nonsense and the pretence that it is “brave” to be a weirdo. There was a transsexual who worked at the Museum of Anthropology in Berkeley that I actually used to talk to but he dressed in women’s suits, went about his business and made no demands of anyone. In other words he behaved like a normal individual.

          My objection is to the demands that their behaviour, no matter how absurd or unfair to women, be respected. That is where I drew the line and it is that I am bored with. I believe that most of these people are actually men that hate women and wish to see them nullified altogether. Why would you, as a man, participate in a sport where you know you are going to crush your female opponents? At the very least you do not respect women to do that, it is a manifestation of contempt. And why such terms as “people with wombs” or “people who menstruate”. Or the insistence that they have the right to use facilities, not only gyms, but even services such as places where women have pubic hair removed if they are not an attempt to reduce and nullify women. These sort of men are sick and many of them, I’m convinced, are predators.

    6. “An investigation by BuzzFeed in January 2020 found that Wallis had been a co-owner of a ‘sugar daddy’ dating website, “which offered students financial relationships with wealthy ‘sponsors'”. Although Wallis initially denied links to the company, Buzzfeed found that he had been a director and shareholder of the site’s parent company. The Labour MP Jess Phillips called for Wallis to be removed. Since the 2019 election, Wallis has quit as director of at least seven companies.”

  36. The rouble’s astonishing recovery. 30 March 2022.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5ba7ec61919069ae83926df51c39ed0056592ba85ebd8aef2f81223f44f2b740.png

    But then is the economic war being waged against Russia making any greater progress? True, Muscovites can no longer get a Big Mac, and western-made luxury goods have disappeared from the shelves. Yet look at the dollar’s march against the rouble and it is starting to look like a convoy of Russian armoured vehicles. For the first few days, the rouble sank inexorably as sanctions kicked in. On the day before Putin marched in on Ukraine, a rouble was worth $0.012. By 8 March it had plummeted by nearly half, to $0.007. But then? The rouble has steadily advanced back almost to where it was before the invasion.

    Well we’ve got a great collection of boats that we have thieved off innocent people.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-rouble-rebounds-have-sanctions-failed-

  37. Risky laugh….

    One evening a man was at home watching TV and eating peanuts.

    He’d toss them in the air, and then catch them in his mouth In the middle of catching one, his wife asked him a question – and as he turned to answer her, a peanut fell in his ear. He tried and tried to dig it out but succeeded in only pushing it in deeper. He called his wife for assistance, and after hours of trying they became worried and decided to go to the hospital.

    As they were ready to go out the door, their daughter came home with her date. After being informed of the problem, their daughter’s date said he could get the peanut out..

    The young man told the father to sit down, then proceeded to shove two fingers up the father’s nose and told him to blow hard. When the father blew, the peanut flew out of his ear. The mother and daughter jumped and yelled for joy. The young man insisted that it was nothing.

    Once he was gone, the mother turned to the father and said, ‘That’s so wonderful! Isn’t he smart? What do you think he’s going to be when he grows older?’

    The father replied, ‘From the smell of his fingers, our son-in-law.

    2. Talking of peanuts….little Sarah went to her Mum and said “Little Johnny’s willie is like a peanut” Mum said “Very small?” “No” said Sarah “Salty”

    3. Talking of peanuts….little Sarah went to her Mum and said “Little Johnny’s willie is like a peanut” Mum said “Very small?” “No” said Sarah “Salty”

    1. Oh shut up you pratt Boris. People deserve to be represented by someone who has got their act together, not someone who’s splurging their private crimes , sexual preferences and health problems all over Twit.

    3. So is this MP male, female or ‘don’t know’? Does he/she/it have time to represent his/her/their constituents and actually do the job?

      1. On a related topic the Telegaffe today has an article about the national cycling [omnium] championships in Derby this Saturday. A considerable array of top female cyclists, including Laura Kennny, will be present. Also present, subject to final approval, might be one Emily Bridges – arguably Britain’s Lia Thomas. There are a few key differences however – while Thomas was a good male swimmer but certainly not in the elite group [ranked 554th!], Bridges was a national junior champion and last month won a bronze medal in the men’s team pursuit in the British universities championships – a much higher standard performance as a male, although results in men’s [as opposed to juniors] events were not so good! If Bridges beats Kenny there may well be an outcry, and rightly so in my view. I do have some sympathy for both sides in this case, but surely women’s sport needs to be fair and at present it shows little sign of being so.
        https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cycling/60911823

        1. Oddly enough, I hope the bloke is allowed to enter and then wins easily.
          It is only by such clear transvesties (neologism for tranny and travesty) that something sensible will be done about it.

          1. You wish. We live in strange times where most things are upside down. No national organisation would dare to be critical of a bloke winning a girls’ race.

            The only effective sanction would be for ALL the women to boycott (girlcott?) all events in which a bloke is taking part.

          2. Unfortunately that only works if ALL of them do AND the sporting bodies don’t then take it out on the women who organised the boycott.
            It’s a bit of a Mexican standoff.

        2. If Bridges went through puberty as a male, then clearly he/she is going to be physically stronger than most females. These people seem to be intent on wrecking women’s sport for no other reason than that they are allowed to do so.

    4. Can anyone imagine Winston (or Mrs Thatcher) making ANY public comment about this sort of thing?

      Neither can I.

    1. Have some respect… she squeals. Oh my skies, the hypocrisy!

      He is in my space – when you started having a go at him! Great Scott, it’s beyond parody!

    2. Have some respect… she squeals. Oh my skies, the hypocrisy!

      He is in my space – when you started having a go at him! Great Scott, it’s beyond parody!

  40. This ought to worry everyone, including those who don’t own any cryptocurrency yet
    https://investorplace.com/2022/03/crypto-news-an-eu-vote-on-thursday-could-make-holding-crypto-difficult/

    The EU may be banning independent crypto wallets like Ledger. Ledger is essentially a little thumb drive with some fancy software and a little screen/buttons where you can enter a password. You store your crypto currency on it.

    With a Ledger or similar wallet, you can carry your crypto around in your pocket, just as you do with your cash. You can make financial transactions that shock, horror, aren’t visible to the authorities! Just as you do with cash at the moment.
    This is what the EU may ban.

    Sure, they say it’s all about fighting crime, but the effect on ordinary people is that your crypto would have to be stored by law in a wallet to which the government or big corporations have the key.
    This is EXTREMELY sinister, and like all the huge changes in this coup, it’s going unnoticed.

    1. Having your crypto in a wallet or on a key ledger is the safest option. It is always in your possession.

      After making my money i withdrew most of mine and have left £300 over 5 assets on the Kraken platform which the EU have no jurisdiction over.

      In my mind they have no jurisdiction in any case. We have left haven’t we?

        1. Most of what the EU does is pure Great Reset policy, so it will certainly follow for the UK if passed in the EU, I should think.
          Democracy is over.

      2. I’ve had a Ledger device for some time now. I no longer really use crypto, and there’s only a couple of hundred left in there. Possibly I should get it out…The Ledger device is actually French…

  41. WHO demands end to ALL time limits on abortions: Agency says laws preventing termination at any point risk violating rights of ‘women, girls or other pregnant persons’
    Health organisation claims laws preventing abortion at any point violate rights
    One of its ‘external experts’ claims womb shouldn’t be used as its an ’emotional’ word
    Tory MP described abortion up to birth as ‘unacceptable’ and ‘truly shocking’
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10655905/WHO-demands-end-time-limits-abortions.html

    Words fail me. Where will this end? Why do they want to create Hellish Nightmare on earth?

    In view of some of the many accounts we have read in the MSM of appalling and brutal murders of children practised by some ethnic minorities it would not surprise me if the WHO were thinking of adding an addendum to this policy.

    “In view of ethnic inclusivity we are now saying that ‘post natal abortion’ is now acceptable for up to five years after birthing.”

    Just imagine:

    “We were expecting the baby to arrive in three weeks time so we planned the abortion for next week. The baby arrived prematurely and this would have ruined our plans had not the wonderful WHO suggested their new post-natal abortion rules.”

    1. They’ve clearly been planning this for some time as a means to reduce the world population. Contraception is one thing – legalised murder of the unborn is quite another.

      1. It’s what I always expected once abortion was legalised; the thin end of the wedge. The same will happen with legalised euthanasia.

        1. The very elderly and frail are already sent on their way by the withdrawal of food and drink and heavy sedation.

    2. Perhaps, if we extend the abortion laws to cover ” One Year Post Natal”, if you do not like the
      Skin Colour

      Hair Colour
      Eye Pupil Colour
      Sex/Gender/whatever is currently Woke
      manners
      Amount of crying
      Amount of your time ‘it’ takes up
      It is a ‘poorly’
      Stops you going out and having fun
      etc of the Baby
      You just kill it, legally
      That law will then be advance to 2,3,…….18 years old.
      Then, the governement will input their killings

      One World WEF

    3. Abortion up to age 16. We could solve the hooligan problem. Shoplifting – abort! Carrying a knife – abort! Rowdyism – abort!

    4. One cannot help wondering who, apart from women and girls, are ‘other pregnant persons’?

      1. Women pretending to be men. I think there are far fewer of those than men pretending to be women.

    5. That reminds me of the Two Ronnies sketch. A case of Life following Art.

    6. There is already a hideous trade in organs from aborted babies. Clearly, this will be far more lucrative if the child is “aborted” at 9 months.
      In order to harvest the organs so that they can be used for the desired purposes, I have read that they kill the baby after harvesting the organs. It is born, and then organs are harvested and it is killed.
      The West is not a civilised society

      2. I have read that is happening in Ukraine, the ‘harvesting’ of children’s organs, sanitised by calling it ‘child trafficking’. 8 million children go missing every year in the world.

    8. That is beyond doubt the most depressing news I’ve read in a very long time. It is bad enough that around 250,000 abortions are ‘performed’ each year in the UK, without adding near term massacres…….

  42. I always phone my gas and elec meter readings in every quarter using the phone keypad. The Scottish power reading went in with no probs, but every time I attempt the British Gas service this time, it wants my birth date, which I don’t think they’ve ever had. I enter it, and then it transfers me to a call centre with 45minute waiting time. I suspect this is because they want to throw some PR stuff at me attempting to make me get a ‘smart’ meter.
    So, they aren’t going to get paid…

    1. Morning all.
      I get an email from our supplier each month and take the readings and send them in, they also have tried several times to get us to have a smart meter installed. I don’t always send the reading when they ask for them, as it makes no difference either way. But I wonder how much it would cost them to send some one to read the meters as I do around 12 times each year. I think I have earned a considerable discount don’t you ?
      A few years ago our water supplier almost insisted we had a water meter installed. I simply asked if it was compulsory and they seem to take offence and I didn’t hear anything from them until I sent letters and asked what had happened. Eventually they installed one and our cost were almost halved. My guess was that after i told them there were now only two of us living at the 4 bed property they must have realised the meter installation was not going to be cost effective. The first attempted ended up with a leak but it’s been working okay for about 18 months.

    2. We are Scottish Power customers. We pay quarterly. Their invoice asks for the bill to be paid by a certain date. If you process a BACS payment that morning they will receive the money on the payment date, often within two hours. However you will automatically receive a payment reminder. This is because their system does not credit your account until the day after payment is received. I complained and they sent me written confirmation of this. (Of course, the date of the invoice is clearly several days before it was posted so you do not receive the invoice until there are around ten days, or less, left of the 14 day “notice period”.)

      1. I always pay the bills on line the day, every quarter that their posted bill arrives. I am quite happy with that normally, and it’s quite fun having a folder of them dating back 40+ years. I’ll be able to sell them to a museum at some point!

      2. Ditto, but I am forced to pay monthly (I used to pay quarterly when it was in MOH’s name). It annoys me that although I’ve paid I still get a reminder that I need to pay.

    2. Surely the possible answers are ‘satisfied’ and ‘dissatisfied’?

  44. Good morning. While the Telegraph proses on about Putin and war crimes, a long way away in Arabia, a war promoted by the Obama regime and supplied by both the US and the UK has finally just been ended after tens of thousands of casualties. It has been a stain on us and a disgrace wished upon us by the grubby people who purport to lead the “free” world. When the Telegraph calls for action, it might like to considfer this and the dozen or so other terrible conflicts promoted by the West over the last decades. I am sick to the back teeth with this hypocrisy and…yes, this evil.

    https://21stcenturywire.com/2022/03/29/breaking-saudi-coalition-announces-cessation-of-military-operations-in-yemen/

    2. You can see the man wondering if his career is going to be over when he starts speaking….!
      It was a good answer though.

  47. Crikey. It was 6.0C here at 9am. It’s now gone down to 4.7C. And only yesterday I was sitting outside with my top off attempting to accumulate Vitamin D in my droopy manbreasts…

  48. Crikey. It was 6.0C here at 9am. It’s now gone down to 4.7C. And only yesterday I was sitting outside with my top off attempting to accumulate Vitamin D in my droopy manbreasts…

  49. 351936+ up ticks,

    Over 3,000 Illegal Migrants Land in March, with Nearly 400 Arriving on Monday Alone

    Its is now as plain as day the agenda of these lab/lib/con coalition is totally anti English / GB.
    What are the feelings of the hard core lab/lib/con coalition current members, are they in denial regarding their past support & voting actions ?

        2. We all pay council taxes Ellie.
          I thought of asking my local council to send me a copy and list of everything they use our money for…………

      1. All approved. They may look like men but most are either pretendy men or assorted delusional multi-gendered persons. You must now report for gender re-education camp.

    6. The solution is simple: sack them. Referism, recall and direct democracy would swiftly put an end to this sort of nonsense.

      Failing that, find their addresses and simply hang them. It really is reaching that point.

        2. Not really the sort of thing one would wear to the shops. Well, Bill Thomas might but you know what he’s like.

          2. When I visited Fakenham, there was a garage somewhere near there where the chap had a load of tanks with strange sub-aqua creatures, but no tropical fish. I wonder whether it’s still there? Would have been in the early 2000s.

      3. He also thinks the West is full of degenerates. I suspect that many of us would agree with him.

        2. I certainly do. In fact, in my travels, I have not seen a more degenerate society, unfortunately.

    2. As he’s been accused of war crimes will he become the middle east ambassador now ?

  52. OT – I would just like to thank those very kind and generous NoTTLers who arranged s surprise get-well present for me. Just arrived – and much appreciated. Especially the gloves.

    2. Not that i am going to enjoy hyperinflation and not being able to heat my home…Putin has played a blinder. He has shafted them up the ass. They WILL go to war over this.

      1. Third time’s the charm??
        Why did Saddam and Gaddafi really have to go??
        Both proposed trading in oil in other than the petrodollar
        Gold dinar anyone……….

        1. I imagine because they were risking the secrets of the West. We put them in, after all.

        1. Any more than we are now? The best thing Putin could do is sabotage all the debt and hostage the resources the state will soon realise we cannot exist without.

          Once our economy – and entire society – is in chaos, crippled by massive public debt, inadequate infrastructure, rampant crime, endless looting and rioting finally the normal people can reclaim it from the vermin, expel the wasters, stop the gimmigrant tide and when Boris squeals for help when I club him in the face plod won’t protect him.

          He will do himself in, and I hate them all for doing so much obviously avoidable damage.

          1. I think, Wibbling, that if we went to war, it would end up as nuclear, that is what I’m referring to. Would rather not die slowly from radiation poisoning.

      3. I don’t know how they (our lot) didn’t see this coming. This does beg a certain question. Is Putin in on it with them (our lot) to bring us down? We have been promised (almost with glee) food shortages by Biden. But if he (Putin) was bombing US military installations and bioweaponry labs in Ukraine then…..?

        1. I don’t think that Putin is in on it. The “problem” with Putin is that he is a nationalist who believes in the uniqueness of “Holy Mother Russia” and therefore rejects all globalist ambitions.

      4. I don’t know how they (our lot) didn’t see this coming. This does beg a certain question. Is Putin in on it with them (our lot) to bring us down? We have been promised (almost with glee) food shortages by Biden. But if he (Putin) was bombing US military installations and bioweaponry labs in Ukraine then…..?

      1. If the currency is linked to gold directly then it cannot be inflated away. Governments can keep borrowing at incredible rates and at no cost to themselves – only the value of future generations.

        Governments love having a meaningless currency. The losers are those needing that currency to pay bills.

        https://going-postal.com/2021/11/inflation-on-the-rise/

  55. Gas update!

    British gas seem to have got their phone meter reading going again. My reading has been submitted successfully, with no call centre involved.

  56. You have had a rest: Groaners are back!

    Q: What is Mozart doing right now?
    A: Decomposing.

    Q: What’s the difference between a cat and a complex sentence?
    A: A cat has claws at the end of its paws and a complex sentence has a pause at the end of its clause.

    A sailor drops anchor in a port and heads into the nearest pub.
    Everyone in the pub is whispering and pointing at him because of his odd shaped body; he has a very muscular body,
    but a very tiny head on his shoulders.
    As he orders his drink, he tells the bartender, “I’ll explain. I get this in every port and town I visit.
    I caught a mermaid and she granted me three wishes if I would release her back into the sea.
    So I told her I wanted a yacht and, sure enough, she came through for me.
    Next, I asked for a million bucks and now I am set for life.
    Last of all, I asked her if I could have sex with her and her response was,
    ‘I don’t know how you can make love to me with your type of body.’ So I asked her, ‘How about a little head?'”

    Bob goes to see his friend Pete. He finds Pete in his barn dancing naked around his John Deere.
    “What are you doing!” asks Bob. Pete stops dancing & says,

    “My wife has been ignoring me lately so I talked to my psychiatrist and he said I needed to do some thing sexy to a tractor.”

      1. Doesn’t look like it. The cowards. I’m sure they have something similar to Hansard though.

        1. Their Covid restrictions are so Draconian that it wouldn’t surprise me if numbers were severely restricted.
          Clearly it gets televised.

  61. Yet another blood test. Nurse had trouble finding a vein. When she did, nothing came out. Then she got me in the back of the hand and it trickled out slowly. I think this means yet more hospital visits for venosections. Blast.

      1. Thanks. It is tiresome. Just employed a gardener to tart up the place in time for summer. That will cheer me when i can sit in the sun.

          1. I have peripheral arterial disease coupled with polycythaemia. Not a good combination. Blockages and thickening of the blood. They performed an angioplasty and used balloons to open up an artery which made walking less painful but there is still a blockage which the Consultant said they would only operate on if i was in danger of losing the leg. Lucky me.

            The Doctor is so concerned they gave me an appointment for BP and meds review in two weeks. (now one week)

            I have written to my MP about the shoddy non-service. I did get a response from her co-ordinator of policy from the House of Commons. Probably be too late for me but if they can improve the service others will get the benefit.

  62. Been a nice sunny day up to now, been sawing logs but it’s now SNOWING
    Edit – 3.30 clear blue sky now

    3. Just been sawing wood whilt sitting in the sofa… been a tiring day, so it has.

    1. Immediately after the announcement, the Russian ruble, after opening at 95, shot up in value against the dollar before hitting a three-week high peaking at 110, before settling down to 103 just before close. Experts believe this may be the beginning of a steady climb in value for the Russian currency as it may now officially achieve the status of a reserve currency – held perpetually in foreign banks in order to settle rolling purchases of major commodities, especially oil and gas. Meanwhile, the US dollar will steadily decline in comparative value as a result of shrinking demand.

      They are getting serious now!

      1. It’s about time the US got taken down a peg or two.
        People forget how much debt we incurred from the ‘lease loan’ they burdened us with after WWII; it took many years and the loss of the Empire before it was finally paid off.

        1. We only recently finished paying it off while the aggressor Germany got rebuilt for free. We would have been better off losing the war.

          1. Yes and the ill-informed still go on about the ‘special relationship’ !
            The only relationship we had was purely fiscal, keep paying.

        2. Actually Andrew, giving up the Empire was one of the preconditions the Americans imposed in order to help us in WWII. They wanted that market which, at the time, was closed to them.

        3. Actually Andrew, giving up the Empire was one of the preconditions the Americans imposed in order to help us in WWII. They wanted that market which, at the time, was closed to them.

      2. I hope that Putin succeeds. I think with the way that the USA is going a unipolar world is not good for any of us anymore, if it ever was. A weakened America would be a good thing. My only concern is out of this mess that a coalition can be formed against China, which is the real threat. Not just a threat to the West but to everyone. And, incidentally, let us not forget that the reason for Communist China’s success is the foolish decision of the Americans rapprochement with China in 1972. Which many people, including myself, knew to be a disastrous decision out of which no good could come. I knew, not because I was politically brilliant at that young age, but because my brother and I joined the Tibet Society in the early 1960’s and thus learned right from Chinas victims just what this regime was capable of. I even learnt, from the Tibetans at the time, that the Chinese had their documents with America signed in a hall that was named after a great Chinese victory against its enemies. A subtle hint that did not escape the Chinese population but passed the Americans right by. The Tibetans understood perfectly well what the symbolism of that was as did the Chinese people.

      3. (The ruble) after opening at 95, shot up in value against the dollar before hitting a three-week high peaking at 110

        If it moves from 95 to the dollar to 110 to the dollar, it (the ruble) has spent the day going DOWN in value.

        BTW, I think the Ruble has been getting less weak against the dollar for about 2 wweeks now.

  64. Yesterday the Warqueen comes out of her office, undoes her top button, splashes out the hair and looks at me coquettishly.

    She extends an arm, draws me to her and purrs “Show me why I married you…”

    I lift her up, carry her downstairs, rub her shoulders, kiss her neck, her ears…. reach to the fridge and ….

    dish up a huge bowl of tiramissu.

      1. Nah, I do any ironing – so there’s never any. Unlike my insane mother I’m not ironing pillow cases.

        2. I iron pillow cases. And sheets. And duvet covers. For me, one of life’s little luxuries is lying in bed on smooth, uncreased sheets and settling down with a nicely ironed pillow against my face. The visual presentation is also more attractive ( not me, the bed). I also iron tea towels because they fit more easily in the drawer when ironed and seem to last longer on the towel rail before needing to be washed.

  65. Germany close to gas rationing as it activates emergency fuel plan. 30 March 2022.

    Germany moved closer to gas rationing on Wednesday, after activating an emergency plan designed to help it cope with any disruption in supplies from Russia.

    Amid fears of a looming showdown with Vladimir Putin over gas flows, Germany’s economy minister, Robert Habeck, convened a crisis team and warned consumers and businesses to reduce consumption, telling them “every kilowatt hour counts”.

    Europe’s largest economy is also one of the EU members most reliant on supplies from Kremlin-controlled reserves, making it particularly vulnerable if the taps are turned off.

    The European Union has pledged to slash its use of Russian gas by two-thirds before the end of the year but there are concerns that the Kremlin could pre-empt the plan.

    Diesel is also being shipped to Europe from the US for the first time since no one can remember! Probably WWII!

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/mar/30/germany-close-to-gas-rationing-as-it-activates-emergency-fuel-plan

    1. Note also that German money goes to Italy, Spain and Greece with which they buy German goods.

      No, no one else understands it either.

      However if Germany goes, so do they.

      There’s a cruel irony that my Remoaniac, anti Brexit, complaining Lefty green europhiliac zealots have to root for Russia to destroy a country to keep their demented dreams alive.

    2. Yes. The Americans supplied the fuel which killed British soldiers. That is our ‘Special relationship’ right there.

  66. Is it just me or do these things happen to other people too?
    I had a bag of opened Maltesers which I had put in a placky bag. Just picked the bag up and have spent the last 10 minutes picking up Maltesers from the kitchen floor! The bag had split- grrr.
    Someone or something is out to get me….

          1. I am mistress of restraint! (And if you believe that, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.)

          1. It’s not for lack of wanting to do it- it’s the fact that we are both not fully well and there have been so many appointments etc to schedule, it gets left. It’s actually not that bad so maybe tomorrow I’ll do it.
            Waiting for MH to get back from the hospital- bet he’s exhausted, he left at 9.15. Last time around I went with him but it’s not allowed now.

          2. Holy smoke.
            Firstly, why ever aren’t you allowed to accompany him?
            Secondly, what a bloody long day.
            You will both have earned your evening drinks and nibbles.

          3. In 2017 I went and spent most of the day with him on the ward. Not allowed now because of guess what? I can go with him to doc appointments but not when he’s being treated.
            It makes it all very tiring and we have gone from people who could stay up to the wee hours, to sleepy heads who are tucked up usually 11 at the latest.

          4. Keep your spirits up. I know what you are going through. I’m expecting more tests more delays more hanging around endlessly. So i know what it’s like.

    3. Sods law Ann. I always use scissors on that sort of package otherwise you are inviting trouble, be it Maltesers or jelly babies. Actually all packaging now a days is hard enough for a person without physical problems. God knows how it must be for someone with arthritis. Always keep close at hand a pair of scissors, a Stanley knife, and a hammer!

      1. I’ve seen that ad. It just seems unfair- homicidal shopping carts and exploding Malteser packets. I could ask what next but I won’t!!

    1. If Michael Vaughan can be readmitted to the BBC, it’s time for the Telegraph to bury the hatchet with JB.

    3. These, they’re theirs there. Something that will drive a non-native speaker nuts.

    4. Talking of homophones, puns and spellings I rather liked the homophonic pun I made up about the global warming fantasy which was nicely illustrated by Grizzly’s photo of his sunny garden yesterday which is covered by four inches of snow today.

      I described is as both mystifying and myth defying!

        1. Good evening, Phil

          My pun reminds me of the girl with a lisp who went to the Orgy of the Gods and was ravaged by the Norse God of Thunder.

          Afterwards the Norse deity said : “I am Thor.”
          To which the girl replied: “Tho am I but I’m thatisthied.”

        2. Good evening, Phil

          My pun reminds me of the girl with a lisp who went to the Orgy of the Gods and was ravaged by the Norse God of Thunder.

          Afterwards the Norse deity said : “I am Thor.”
          To which the girl replied: “Tho am I but I’m thatisthied.”

        3. Good evening, Phil

          My pun reminds me of the girl with a lisp who went to the Orgy of the Gods and was ravaged by the Norse God of Thunder.

          Afterwards the Norse deity said : “I am Thor.”
          To which the girl replied: “Tho am I but I’m thatisthied.”

  69. Here endeth my whinging. I even opened a pack of 10 bottles of water without mishap.

    1. Opening a box of coke cans i managed to stab one of them. Icky sticky mess. I just put the whole box in the shower.

      2. Good for cleaning rusted objects. Don’t drink it Pip. In North Africa it is how we would clean off Roman coins we would find.

  70. Putin’s war sends inflation soaring in Germany and Spain. 30 March 2022.

    Inflation in Germany and Spain has soared to new highs as soaring energy prices sparked by the Ukraine war send shockwaves through the eurozone.

    Consumer prices in Germany climbed at the fastest pace since reunification, up 7.6pc in March compared with a year earlier in figures comparable with the rest of the eurozone.

    It was significantly higher than the 6.8pc increase expected by economists, underscoring how economic expectations are struggling to keep pace with geopolitical developments.

    Despite the title this is mostly due to the gross mismanagement during the covid epidemic. “Putin’s War” is barely five weeks old so it can hardly have had any effect on inflation. There will be some feed through later due to the sanctions which will hit the West harder than Russia itself.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/03/30/inflation-hits-almost-10pc-spain-war-sends-prices-surging/?li_source=LI&li_medium=liftigniter-rhr

    1. As things worsen, I’m looking forward to the disparate elements that make up the EU flying apart.

      1. It’s interesting that the EU have fallen out with Algeria, who now refuses to sell gas to the EU.

        Remarkable timing !

          1. The ultimate irony will be the EU imploding just as the Ukraine is offered membership.
            Smiles all round.

        2. Well that’s good. I believe we enjoy a very good relationship with Algeria. So all the better for us.

          2. Is it really? We are rather slow on the uptake with the Commonwealth in my opinion. We should be busy making it more than just a club.

        3. That’s a bit unreasonable of Algeria – half their own citizens live in the EU!

      2. Evening Johnathan. In my role as the Nostradamus of Nottle I suspect that they will fly apart quite spectacularly. Ukraine will probably turn out to be just the preface to a much larger conflict!

        1. I assume you are not talking about a military conflict? So what do you have in mind?

          2. Yes, I think that is already shaping up. And as I said, the end of a unipolar world is in the process of being born and your observation would be part of that. I know I lived in the USA for 40 years but as I grow more objective through time about the place, I do not think, on the whole, its influence has been good. I would grant it is better than many alternatives But its power has been built on almost continuous conflict, a willingness to use violence rather than diplomacy because, for them, living on their big island, the world is largely an abstraction for anything other than vacations. So swat at foreign problems as if they were annoying flies. It was evident in news broadcasts where major event could be happening elsewhere but not get a mention at all on the TV news.

    1. Hang on a mo. I’ve not wanted the illegal criminal migrants here from day one. None of us do. Border farce and the RNLI are forcing them on us. We are not being given a choice here. The gimmigration bill – not that we needed another one – is simply gold plating previous ones to allow those with papers to come here, so the next bunch of illegal criminal migrants will fill in a form on landing and go straight into a council house and start raping and murdering their neighbours and stealing their property err… general practice as lawyers doctors and engineers .

      1. 351736+up ticks+,

        Evening W,
        Hang on a mo though tell me what makes you or any of the others so special that they are listened to by the respective politico’s / party’s who are quite clearly following their own anti United Kingdom agenda.

        This p0litical tripe has been re-allected alternately
        decade after decade, the three MASS UNCONTROLLED IMMIGRATION COALITION party’s that is, the close shop.

  72. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/03/30/woke-virtue-signalling-threatens-unite-left-right/?li_source=LI&li_medium=liftigniter-rhr

    Sorry, Annabel, the cheap pork and beef in the supermarkets is not due to virtue signalling, but is caused by the high price of cereals to feed the animals;

    the Sunday Times points out that many farms are going out of beef and pork, and even selling their breeding stock.

    In about eighteen months time the prices of imported beef and pork will be sky high because there will be no home produced available.

    Great news for the lefty greenies, for the rest of us, not so much !

    1. Oh look, another point from the WEF’s You Will Own Nothing presentation happening purely by chance!

    2. At that point I suggest we start eating the green tyrants. Maybe a dose of what they deserve will do them good.

    1. Mongo is a good boy and he knows it.

      He (and Junior) have taken to sliding up and down the hallway on the rug now there’s nothing in it. Unfortunately, the hall is about 6 metres long. He is about a metre long. To get up speed, he needs about 3 metres.

      So most of the time, he comes flying on his side into the kitchen, paws waving like a loon, grinning like an oaf.

      2. Oscar knows he’s a good boy, too. I tell him often enough 🙂 Come to that, Coolio knows it, too. He was really good this afternoon when doing shoulder in.

          3. That made me burst out laughing, thanks. I wonder if the doggies get to see the videos. They do know they are being watched.

    1. There was a photo where a young girl asked to be made ‘pretty’ and the replies were really positive, saying, simply, that she was already.

      We’re trapped in a godawful society of vain, egotistical, broken people. Not narcissists (as that has a specific term, one Mail readers don’t understand!) but sheer me me me me me-ness. Until the cycle is broken and words like duty, responsibility, dignity and integrity are more important than instragram… we’re doomed.

  80. That’s me for this cold, wet day. Cats livid. Better tomorrow – well, sunny, so THEY say. But cold and strong winds.

    Will venture to the market to start hoarding. Have a jolly evening – we will watch Mrs Whitehouse – for a larf.

    A demain.

  81. A thought for the day.
    I generally use the expression “the” Ukraine rather than just Ukraine. I wonder how many other people do similarly?
    It might suggest that if most people do, that there was an area called the Ukraine rather than a country called Ukraine.

    1. Apparently we’re not doing enough to help the Ukraine soldiers… That’s bullshit, I went outside at 8pm yesterday and clapped.

      1. You dirty so-and-so! Haven’t you any respect for others?

        Oh, sorry – you clapped .

      2. You dirty so-and-so! Haven’t you any respect for others?

        Oh, sorry – you clapped .

    2. Aye, it’s a bit like Britain being called ‘The Britain’. I think it’s because of how we think about ‘The US’ and so on.

    4. It is like “the Midlands”. The Ukraine has never been a country it has really only dressed up as one since the break-up of the Soviet Union.

  83. For your viewing diary:

    Thatcher & Reagan: A Very Special Relationship

    Presented by Charles Moore

    Sundays 3rd and 10th April
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00165j4
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0016dvf

    If it were anyone other than CM, we could expect it to be a hatchet job. As it is, the BBC is beginning to show signs of a move away from the left-leaning position it’s held for so long but there must have been some squealing from the die-hards over this one!

      1. That would have been quite a ride out. Two experts.
        Reagan was such a good horseman that the secret service protection team had to recruit their best riders to be able to protect him when he was riding. Her Majesty could well have been a better horsewoman.

    2. Reagan didn’t do a bad job with Canadian PM Mulroney either.

      To think that Reagan was dismissed as a lightweight actor when he was elected.

      1. That’s how he was presented by the MSM though. I was very apolitical at the beginning of his presidency, but liked him much more during his 2nd term.

      2. I liked the way he dealt with the air traffic controllers when they went on strike. Masterly.

    3. Beg to differ: ‘Presented by Baron Moore of Etchingham’. First print the title, then you can switch to first name + surname.
      Like Lord Hannan, Moore is now bought&paid for.

    1. For moment I read that as :
      Why axing landmines is a betrayal of the most vulnerable.

      1. I must admit that I also read it as landmines and wondered what the Daily Mail had invented this time.

        2. Keep naggin’em; Rome wasn’t built in a day, sweetie X

          Its working, sweetie! … x

    3. The bloody full 6 for me!
      Wordle 284 6/6

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

      1. I’m new to this. It is quite intoxicating though.
        Wordle 284 5/6

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

    4. I think they deliberately devise words that can have more than six variations with the change of one letter

        1. The first word is more vital usually, but today was barking, with one letter missing. Going to work backwards through the alphabet next time.

      4. Haven’t I heard that before, somewhere? No, can’t possibly have done otherwise……….

      1. There has been a lot of bad news on Nottle plus her being ill and then having to put up with wannafight’s huge mood swings when he can’t play golf or his idiotic football team losing.

    3. If TB also writes as Maggie something, I saw one of her BTL comments on the Telegraph letters page. It was warning an 81 year old lady to be careful if she has china disease.

    4. If TB also writes as Maggie something, I saw one of her BTL comments on the Telegraph letters page. It was warning an 81 year old lady to be careful if she has china disease.

  88. Never rains, eh.
    SWMBO was called by her mother just now. Her sister-in-law’s mother has been sent home to spend her last days at home, and will likely croak a year after SWMBOs brother croaked. April in that household isn’t going to be viewed with much enthusiasm in future years. I feel for the daughter – she’s only young. That’ll be hard for her, poor lass.

      1. I don’t much like the S-i-L, but the daughter has been picked on a lot throughout her life, and I feel for her. Poor lass, life’s not been too good recently.

    3. No, but it does pour Oberst , and it sounds like you need your umbrella handy at the moment. Take care.

  89. Latest Breaking News – Putin agrees to a three week ceasefire in Ukraine so that the West can observe the traditional lockdown over the Easter period.

    1. It’s appalling capacity planning. The public sector simply doesn’t think of the big picture. It’s all design by committee.

      1. They are planning on the assumption that people will not be arriving by car. I worked in a new built office in about 2000 where the car park was deliberately too small for this reason. The office was right by the motorway and miles from the station.

  91. Have others seen the Tory ‘levelling up’ posters? A series of public spending wonks that should have been driven by demand side reform, such as the incredibly simple tax cuts.

    Other than that, the usual state waste of more debt. The frantic ways these fools use to disguise the basics of their job is laughable.

  93. Evening, all. The writer of the headline letter clearly has forgotten about the deposing of strong men like Saddam Hussein and Gaddafi and the chaos that ensued. Stop advocating meddling! We are best off out of it all. Here it has been a foul day; dull, wet and thoroughly miserable. The garden lights (solar powered) are barely alight. Good job we aren’t relying on solar power for our energy needs – oh, wait!

    1. Evening Conners- I think I may be saying goodnight before you tonight. A very long day although the weather was OK.
      Hope you and Oscar are well. See you tomorrow…
      Sweet dreams to you both.

      1. Thank you, Ann. Wednesdays are busy for me (church then riding). We’re both fine, thanks. Sleep well. Hope all went well with the medical stuff.

  96. How about trying Blair and Clinton for their war crimes ? These two murderous regimes have been bombing Serbian cities for 10 weeks killing thousands.

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