I had my 10 minutes of Radio 4 this morning. It was Caroline Lucas on Woman’s Hour. She believes that new houses should be built with heat pumps. I think they are about £10,000 a pop. Of course most of the houses built today have very small gardens, if any at all. So not only extra money for the pump but the cost will need to increase substantially to pay for the extra land needed. I also understand heat pumps are heavy on electricity which will mean expensive running costs. Funnily enough Emma Barnett didn’t ask Caroline about any of these things.
With which energy source do you DIG the caverns for heat pumps ?
… diesel of course
So in a time when the world is short of oil
she wants us to use a lot more this year.
On the premises that the energy used this year will be recouped over the next 30 years, if all goes to plan
Can all UK MPs before speaking say how much they stole from the public purse in 2009, like this “I, Vaizey, MP of Wantage in 2009 stole £74K and have paid back £100 so far. Once I have paid it all back I won’t have to say this full comment but will have to say I can not be trusted hence forth.”
WANTAGE MP Ed Vaizey has spent more than £74,000 of taxpayers’ money to pay for a second home in Oxfordshire since becoming an MP in 2005.
He (Vaizey) said those claims were “an error of judgement” and apologised.
BBC Parliament: Ed Vaizey – “…the BBC is not biased or impartial. And the people who claim it is have simply lost the argument.”
(refers to himself defending George Osborne’s Emergency Budget on Andrew O’neil show)
– when he says not biased or impartial does him mean the BBC are NOT “treating all rivals or disputants equally.”. A simple slip?
– BBC Parliament // House of Commons // 06Jul2017 // Ed Vaizey / Conservative / Wantage
FoxNews statement about the attack on their car
which killed the cameraman , the young Ukrainian fixer
and badly injured their British reporter
(one tweet says he’s lost a leg)
Mark Steyn correctly says that all lives matter
and that The Ukranians who died are not worth less points than foreign journalists.
Bad taste, I spot many anti-Fox twitter accounts trying to score-points against Fox .. “Oh they didn’t report the death of the fixer”
In all the cases I spotted so far they had reported on her death BEFORE the person had tweeted
although they did report the death of the cameraman a bit earlier.
Because they’re useful for hacking your way through jungles?
Pretty handy for chopping down nettles and brambles, where your neighbour’s ‘rewilding scheme’ is overflowing into your garden too, I’ll bet.
Ah, now you see, there’s your problem Nick Corrigan of ‘Media Academy Cymru which runs weapons prevention programme Braver Choices’, that’s not actually a machete, in fact, it’s absolutely nothing like one, it’s a fecking massive KNIFE, for killing people… which I guess it’s pretty well designed for, and why our young ‘friend’ bought it in the first place!
If he’d tried STABBING someone with a machete, he’d have found it quite difficult, as they’re cutting tools, for hacking undergrowth, not designed for stabbing people through the heart.
They’ll be trying to ban steak knives and carving knives next… oh, wait a mo, what about bread knives and veggie knives then?
Gold ring, or ring pull ?
“Starting next Monday, March 14, The Great British Treasure Hunt, a series I’ve been working on for the last couple of months, every night on ITV 4 at 8.00 pm.”
They appear to have dug up Spike Milligan to be the presenter
Nottingham Uni had offered to give Tony Sewell an honorary degree
but then changed their minds cos some think he is the wrong kind of black
“📢The author of a landmark government race report which found “no evidence” that Britain is institutionally racist has had his offer of an honorary degree revoked by Nottingham University.
Dr Tony Sewell was told by the university that he was a “subject of political controversy.” “
I came across the Nels Abbey guy, and his tweet.
He PRAISED Notts Uni for cancelling Tony Sewell
but a few mins later I spotted a tweet from him where he was OUTRAGED Beckett Uni had ditched an ethnic- Asian consultant for her repeated racist tweets against Calvin Robinson etc.
She claimed she’d sue Beckett
Nels did a long thread calling it an “important” case
.. Of course a few months later she quietly dropped it.
Politicians are deliberately creating an energy crisis, while all round there is plenty of petroleum and gas in the world for us to live comfortably and cheaply. Banning Russian oil and gas does not hurt Russia one whit. In fact, it gives them a better price for less oil sold. Its we who are hurt. So why is our PM punishing us. I dont remember invading Ukraine.
And by the way, there are plenty of other much more nasty wars, with more cruelty and more deaths, in progress around the world, where we are busy selling weapons to one belligerent or the other. I’m sure victims in these wars would be happy if the British government would stop weapon sales to their killers.
So now it is Ukraine Ukraine all the time with the same tune – Putin is bad Putin evil Putin ****.
Apart from Ukraine, there is an urge by politicians to keep people under a state of perpetual panic, so they are called upon to do something. The Climate Change hoax is a permanent panic button. John Kerry, the American Secretary of State is worried that a nuclear war, potential or real, might make people lose sight of the bigger danger of Climate Change. I wonder if senior politicians in DC are suffering from cognitive issues.
Looking at countries that used Ivermectin, their mortality rates are far lower then ours. Less then half.
These countries did not hurt their economies as much our government has done to ours. Too, we have destroyed a basic tenet of human society by stopping people to be gregarious for their own good.
There is something profoundly evil in a government that forcibly prevents people to say goodbye to a loved one, and does so for their good.
But all that is conveniently left unquestioned and unexamined, as a new panic is created, and blared out day after day, non-stop, unless it becomes embarrassing.
NOPE, my take home pay isn’t going up at all this year, and was frozen last two (rather stupidly working in the private sector and all).
My parents’ and the missus’ mother’s pensions aren’t keeping up with rising prices either, at current rates we might need to pool resources and buy a bigger home for all of us (which would be rather too cosy!), let alone any Ukrainian refugees – and we won’t get £350 a month to help out with OUR bills either!
1. What you never googled it, never spoke to a science teacher at school, and never saw a scientist portrayed on TV, or in a movie? I don’t believe you.
2. ‘Fewer than 2% of academic staff working in science, technology, engineering and maths are black according to new figures from UK universities’ – absolute drivel, there’s far, far more than that, and sadly, all too often through box ticking and quotas, rather than ability/exams, although to be fair, that might depend WHAT you consider ‘science, technology, engineering and maths’, what you consider ‘black’, and what you consider a ‘UK university’ – some people seem to have only the vaguest of notions.
3. ‘Pearce Jarrett is a machine learning engineer and founder of Gwaan, a motivational fitness app that uses AI technology.’ That’s not science, engineering maybe – just about (‘engineering’ is a VERY vague term here in the UK). Actually, it’s computing, which is a different skill set and knowledge base entirely.
Shocking right? Yes, and apparently it was all ‘cos racism.
“A black schoolgirl was strip-searched by police after being wrongly suspected of carrying cannabis.”
“A safeguarding report on the incident concluded it was unjustified and racism was “likely” to have been a factor.”
“Police were called to a school in Hackney at the end of 2020 by teachers, who told investigators they had been concerned the teenager had drugs in her possession because she smelt of cannabis.”
That would be a bit of a giveaway really.
“She was taken to the medical room and strip-searched by two female officers, while teachers remained outside.”
That doesn’t sound unreasonable to me, all things considered – she smelt of weed, and they thought she’d hidden some about her person, what else were they supposed to do?
“It said it was highly likely that “adultification bias” was a factor – where adults perceive black children as being older than they are because they see them as more “streetwise”.”
What? ‘Adultification’ sounds like a word someone has just made up.
Weed is legal, or it’s not. If it’s illegal and the police have fair reason to believe you’ve got some on your person, then they’re entitled to search you, (especially if you’re in a school!) simple as, race has nothing to do with it.
Ditto knives.
We (by which I mean the BBC) seem to be working towards being ‘black’ being a ‘get out of jail free card’.
Do we need quotas then based on colour? or just the quality of the candidate
—–
Brittney Griner: How can a US basketball star just vanish? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-60701050
She’s arguably the greatest female basketball player of all time – apparently, never heard of her
Yet more boasting by someone who – in all likelihood – makes no net contributions, or less, to UK society.
It’s not enough that taxpayers are paying for the education and health of her children, they (not this women) are also paying this women to take in refugees.
Those refugees will then be parasites on the taxpayer. This will include £10000 given to local councils for the benefit of the refugees, and so not available to British citizens.
Then the Govists will allow even more refugees to be housed in Government supported accommodation.
“this should be part of a much wider recalibration of Western policy”
“the crisis must be the starting point for the wholesale rebuilding of Western strength and unity”
“The US/Europe transatlantic alliance must be revived in full vigour. The UK should create the means, despite Brexit, of European cooperation on defence and foreign policy.”
“It is no coincidence that the two most prominent UK voices attempting to pin responsibility on NATO for Putin’s aggression were Farage and Corbyn. Fifteen years ago, both were fringe figures. But after that time Farage managed to turn the Conservative Party into a Brexit party, and the far left under Corbyn took control of Labour.
Similar elements are at play in the US politics, and the result has been an American policy which has been inconsistent, unpredictable, disconcerting for allies and encouraging for opponents.”
“All of them drove a simplistic narrative of people betrayed by elites; of easy solutions to complex problems; of exploiting grievances like immigration rather than dealing with them; of isolationist nationalism on the right and anti-Western rhetoric on the left.”
“Across the political spectrum, politicians should come together, as to his credit Keir Starmer is doing in the UK, so that Western policy pursues a consistent, clear and realistic path; where engagement with the world is seen as enlightened self-interest, and not globalist idealism.”
Judging by Blair’s claims on his “global institute”, he is more of a megalomaniac than Putin.
Thank goodness he (no longer) has an army at his disposal ….
Iraq was bad enough.
And just how did Farage manage to change Conservative Party?
Cameron and most of the Conservative party spokespeople led the charge against Brexit, and supported the corrupt campaign to keep UK in the EU.
I doubt that is truly her only long term penalty
A extraordinary quick trial with a £300 fine, seems a PR thing
It’s strange UK media just parroted it.
The same people moaning about us looking to by oil from the Saudis will be the very same people moaning about England going to the World Cup in Qatar won’t they
Spitfires have an unmistakeable engine growl, and as our village was in Bomb Alley, I guess that the Boys were well acquainted with the location and just hammered the Krauts every day!
I’m glad that the only sound of the Spitfires is heard in peacetime though – except when they do the Eastbourne Air Festival, when the average age is reduced to ‘retirement’ or thereabouts…;0)
While indoors, comes the unmistakable growl of a Merlin. A petulant angry searching growl of a predator. I have to be fast out of the chair and into the yard to see it. Or else its gone.
OMOTR is, allegedly, a Russian speaker well-versed in translating Pravda articles (propaganda?) for Western publication. Is she still so doing, I wonder?
If there’s one one thing we’ve learned to notice about our media, it’s that they enjoy a set of strict narratives and that they insist on fitting news events – whatever they may be on the ground – to fit those narratives. Our BBC is a fine exemplar of this tendency. I suppose such narratives are, to some extent, rather reassuring to the audience. Saving us from being overwhelmed by otherwise random or uncomfortable news.
Let’s just reappraise ourselves of the latest – and remarkably uniform across our media – set of narratives reguarding the Ukraine war.
1. This conflict is highly personalised – on the Russian side.
BBC: ‘Ukraine: Putin will search for a way to save face. By John Simpson. World Affairs editor‘; ‘Is there any justification for Putin’s war?‘ (Guardian)
I’m reminded of that rather recent significant expansion in the role of the character and person of the coach or manager in the media soap opera which is association football. Say, for instance, Liverpool score a goal and right away the commentator reflexively draws our attention to the notion that the goal will delight Jürgen Klopp, dismay Pep Guardiola, infuriate José Mourinho, threaten the job of Mauricio Pochettino, interest Sam Allardyce, or bring Harry Redknapp or Roy Hodgson out of retirement. Nevermind what the fans think. Have you noticed this? Are you paying attention? – as the American Jewish veteran comedian Jackie Mason used to ask of his audience.
Admittedly, Putin is unquestionably the leader of Russia. What he says goes. Which is more than one might confidently believe of Joe Biden or Boris Johnson in their respective governments. The former likely can’t recall when he last changed his incontinence pants and the latter takes his orders from her indoors.
Suffice to say – there’s something of an avoidance of personal responsibility on our Western side of the fence. But, it’s all good… however inept…
‘The Western response to Putin’s war has been remarkable. But it’s not enough.‘ (Atlantic Council – American think tank in the field of international affairs, favoring Atlanticism)
‘Are the sanctions on Russia enough to stop Putin’s war?‘ (CBS News)
2. One thing is for sure. No names, no responsibility for foreign affairs mistakes on our side, but Russia is led by the really bad guy.
‘U.S. Senate unanimously condemns Putin as war criminal‘ (Reuters)
‘Is It Time to Call Putin’s War in Ukraine Genocide?‘ (The New Yorker)
3. Russia is doing badly in the war.
‘Sobbing Russian soldiers say they heard their own air force bombing schools, hospitals and kindergartens and admit invasion was ‘terrible mistake’ after being taken prisoner in Ukraine‘ (Daily Mail); ‘Russia is ‘Bogged Down’ in War With Ukraine‘ (NBC); ‘Russian Prowess Questioned as Troops Bogged Down in Ukraine‘ (Bloomberg)
And yet… Russia… sorry, Putin… appears to be achieving his war aims – despite all our media narratives to the contrary: ‘Zelensky: We can’t join NATO‘ (Times); ‘Zelensky: Ukraine will never join NATO‘ (Telegraph)
Putin saving face, Mr John Simpson? Or the West attempting to save face?
Take the L, take the loss, learn the lessons and move on. That was my advice to the West when the shooting war first broke out. Will it take more than two weeks of Ukrainian death and destruction before the West has sufficiently saved face and accepted reality?
The liars at the BBC continue to turn a blind eye to Biden’s gaffes. His latest: 3 in 15 minutes!
It would be funny if it hadn’t brought us to the brink of WW3.
Biden was LOST today. He announced he had COVID. He confused his wife with Kamala. He confused HIMSELF with Kamala’s husband. Then he fumbled remembering the name of his UN Ambassador. All in under 15 minutes. This is BAD! He needs a COGNITIVE EXAM now!!
Andy – I had a little look at the gov website . It avoided inconveniences like insurance and being unable to get the guests out if need be or whether they upset the neighbours .
I know this practical stuff doesn’t accord with the emotional generosity expected by the MSM at the moment but I think it would be far better to send resources to the likes of Poland and help them car for their direct neighbours .
The Tory who made the mistake of saying that Ukrainians could get a job on farms a couple of weeks ago jumped the gun / RPG a bit but there is something in that-
– particularly since some big businesses are offering jobs to these legitimate refugees whilst the 3rd worlders in the hotels with destroyed identities plot with lawyers to scam the system ….
Send them to Ascension Island or give them a dinghy to go back to `war torn France …
Andy – we are quite away from Ukraine – there is no certainty even those who want to go back will . What if someone is putting them up for – say 18 months – but then needs to empty the property ?
The website doesn’t give guidance on this or much else . It does say that you won’t have to cook for them though ….
Elsewhere
Apparently the Iranian spy woman who was in – er – Iran- is now being released ….
So what sort of reception will the BBC – her former employer – give ?
1 why did it take so long ?
2 did nut nut pay the bribe ?
3 nut nut s fault
Will people who watch the MSM have days and days of the lady retelling her story ? A book deal – the film rights – which lovee gets the part ? That jungle show thing with Declan and tony ..?
Meanwhile the Russians and the Iranians are talking ‘nuclear ‘ again ….
Looking at this from another angle. The refugees – mostly of whom are female, are given leave to stay for 3 years.
Now, once they get used to the welfare and health benefits, how many will want to go home ? if they don’t, then (someone will say) it will be against their human rights if their fighting menfolk are not allowed to join them over here. This is the long term and bigger picture !
Some commentators have said in reality most refugees are wanting to stay close to the Ukraine border so they CAN go back, but our bleedin’ heart MPs and media, whip up the pleading sentiment of this, and if there is a surge of refugees over the next few weeks, we could potentially be looking at building another town the size of Birmingham to house all these immigrants – legal and not so legal. Has anyone thought of this ????
BRISSLES
A hypothesis. In the very unlikely event that I , as an 81 year old grave dodger, should in the years left to me, feel myself SO threatened by the woke/climate/covid/war nutters, that I need to escape from their insanity, is there a nation anywhere in the world who would welcome me with open arms, pay my expences including my healthcare and allow me to carry on my life as though I was still living in good old England?
Lenny Henry can’t play her, he’s signed up for Vladimir Putin. Dianne Abbot might work, but she’s the same biological gender, and we can’t have that.
One thing is for certain, there’s a lot of lolly to be made from this one.
We had around 120 heads of state or government. 38,000 accredited delegates. And there were countless tens of thousands more in the streets and parks and venues outside. It was a summit that many people predicted would fail. A summit that I fear some quietly wanted to fail. Yet it was a summit that proved the doubters and the cynics wrong. Because COP26 did not just succeed in keeping 1.5 alive. It succeeded in doing something no UN climate conference has ever done before by uniting the world in calling time on coal. In 25 previous COPs, all the way back to Berlin in 1995, not one delivered a mandate to remove so much as a single lump of coal from one power station boiler.
Ahead of his meetings with the country’s leaders, Boris told Laura Kuenessberg this morning that his trip to Saudi Arabia will involve discussing human rights concerns alongside asking for a dramatic increase in global oil supplies. The pressure comes after the country that could massively help alleviate the cost of living crisis executed 81 prisoners last weekend…
order-order.com
BBC WEB-SITE Watch #1 – er, you know you can trust the BBC, well maybe not
Don’t go here for the latest Covid information: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51768274 – it hasn’t been updated since Monday despite the deceptive ‘1 day ago’ timeline at top left. It cannot be trusted.
It seems this might be more reliable: https://www.gov.uk/coronavirus – you will need to scroll about three-quarters of the way down the page to UK Covid-19 Statistics.
Up2, even the gov.uk is being fiddled about with. The government no longer releases covid cases on a Saturday or Sunday – but instead they are lumping them all together on a Monday. Some days the figures don’t include Scotland’s, or Wales’ or even NI. Never mind, they just lump them together on the day when they finally come through (which might not be the next day) and it can be several days worth added all on one day. One day someone had the brilliant idea of adding in the cases numbers for people who have had covid more than once compromising all the previous data.
When I studied science emphasis was put on making sure how figures were collected didn’t change mid-way (through an experiment in my day but it should apply to a pandemic too). It would seem that everything that can be done to muddy the figures is being done re covid on the gov.uk website. Latest daily cases rates are difficult to find and are in grey to show they will be later corrected, and as for the case rates within a particular county, I can no longer find them.
Stew is much better at digging out information and I wonder Stew if you can do better than I can. What I am sure of is that both Stew and I are probably better at finding the data and indeed interpreting the data than any BBC hack.
Deborah, could it be that a Civil Servant (or two or three or four) is involved in trying to make the present Government ‘look bad’ ? I listened to most of TWatO today until switching off in protest and the Montacutie was constantly trying to make HMG ‘look bad’ over the release of Nazanin Zagari-Ratcliffe. Bringing on a ‘Human Rights’ campaigner to comment on the war in Ukraine was the last straw.
Waves of Negativity from the Knaves of Wegativity a.k.a. the BBC.
We don’t often find the leader of another country popping in to listen to the maiden speech of a British member of parliament. Yet that was the privilege afforded to Tulip Siddiq, after she was elected to represent the people of Hampstead and Kilburn in 2015.
Looking proudly on from the gallery was Sheikh Hasina Wazed, the prime minister of Bangladesh since 2009, under whose watch hundreds of political opponents have been “disappeared” – kidnapped by state security forces and ending up either dead or incarcerated with no recourse to justice.
Even if we are to take Siddiq at her word that she has no sway over Bangladeshi politics, what is preventing her from at least speaking out? My client may not be Siddiq’s constituent, but nor is he the constituent of Shabana Mahmood MP, who raised an official parliamentary question on the matter earlier this year.
If it is true that the price of the release of this foreign aid worker was £400 million in cancelled debt repayments will this enormous cost be deducted from the Foreign Aid budget?
If idiots like her choose to go to highly dangerous countries which are enemies of this country then they must accept the risk and the consequences. As for her husband he should be thoroughly ashamed of himself. I would never allow my wife to visit such a perilous place let alone work there.
It may seem hard hearted but I don’t think we should be paying even a fraction of the money to get her back. Paying rogue states like Iran ransoms will just result in more hostage taking if anyone is stupid enough to visit that country.
The msm are calling it a “slavery joke” I am sure those murdered, raped, disposessed or enslaved by Normans and Romans were not laughing.
John Cleese has his microphone taken away at South by Southwest festival for saying that Britain should get ‘reparations from Italy and France’ for Romans and Normans enslaving Britons
British comedian John Cleese in row with fellow comics over slave reparations
Monty Python icon had been at South by Southwest public event in Texas, USA
But he landed himself in hot water after joking about France and Italy owing Brits slave reparations for the Roman Empire and the Norman invasion of 1066
His microphone was eventually taken off him by American comic Dulcé Sloan
The very modest, very slim Dulcé Sloan
She opens with the N-word, cos she’s allowed to use it, and you white folks aren’t.
… https://youtu.be/walw2goY-f8
Quiz question
Which Kay said this today ? “I’m so pleased that you are safe and what a terrible journey you have had but hopefully you can start to build a new life in Dublin safe in the knowledge that the British people are completely behind you,”
Not the BBC – but PMQs – angee v Raab ….. angie goes on about the Iranian woman – Raab never mentioned – probably because she is still on Iranian ground and they could easily change their minds .
Labour on the moral high ground whilst nut nut has his begging bowl in the Middle East . At least he is making an effort
It doesn’t cover up for the failure of the political class over the last 20 -30- 40 years failing to plan for energy independence .
The globalists have been supreme …. Not learning lessons about the UK to be self sustaining on fuel and food .
I actually don’t think they’ll even learn to do that under current circumstance .
How are people going to adapt to a lot more of any ‘disposable ‘ income they might have being spent on fuel and food in the current years ?
Will they expect The State to subsidise everything for ever ? Just shaking the money tree whilst at the same time throwing money at their NHS and maybe more on defence ?
And what of people already on the rack ? Things are going to get tricky . Even when HMG gets the blame it still won’t stop the likes of inflation and interests going up .
I’ve gone through the pessimistic list . Maybe Ukraine can remain independent and produce food as it did . We are gonna need it ….and I didn’t even mention the virus …
Just back to PMQs
The labour strategy seems to be to pour as much poo on nut nut as possible – this time it was his association with dodgy rich Russians ( not the best look – culminating on putting a Russian spy in the Lords £ ) ….
Angee also tried to lecture on the ‘ security services ‘ which she and her boss – corbyn wanted to end … but rich for angee – and stupid ….
But there should be no surprise . It’s a real shame there is no real opposition ….
Lastly – the labour speaker dived in to criticise Raab for referring to ‘history ‘ – I thought he was having a bercow moment and should stick to being a speaker rather than an opposition MP – bet the BBC loved it ….
“Losing Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine would be a bitter, illegal and wholly unjust loss. But Vladimir Putin would have to start using far more serious weapons even than he has already, if he’s to come out on top. As things stand, in the third week of fighting, no-one can seriously doubt who the real winner in this war will be.”
no-one can seriously doubt who the real winner in this war will be?
So it’s the ukraine?
“You would as a member of the public… think why don’t they just close their stores… it’s very difficult to do so without some far reaching legal consequences.”
The Western brands unable to leave Russia
Marks and Spencer, Burger King, and hotel groups Marriott and Accor are restricted by complex franchise deals preventing them from withdrawing. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-60733389
M&S has 48 shops and Burger King has 800 restaurants still open, whilst Marriott and Accor have 28 and 57 hotels open respectively.
All about putting doubts in peoples minds, well its a start – like when the negative vibes are reported on Trump previously/constantly.
We have seen if, buts and maybes reporting many times by the likes of the bbc
Given The BBC efforts so far, that they are interviewing each other to arrive at the conclusion they are all doing a great job comes as little surprise.
I suspect Boris has agreed to give the Iranians billions in oil and gas contracts
whether that will get delivered AFTER Boris hands the money over is up to the Iranians and Russians influencing them.
The Biden administration had wanted to revive the Obama-Iran nuclear deal. Unfortunately, it was the Russians who were supposed to be mediating and helping to check Iran’s uranium enrichment. Bang goes that deal.
I guess if the Mullahs get too close to completing their atom bomb we will have to rely on the Israelis to knock it on the head.
To ensure the bBc are twice removed from the process they will be passing instructions through a sub contracted intermediary and from there on to Goon Central otherwise known as listed company CAPITA.
Thus removing the vile ***tards from direct involvement.
Perhaps we should be thinking of a tack that exposes Capita.
They are a part of the Licence Fee theft racket.
Equally the new tactics could be due to the volume of cancellations.
But the LF is the equivalent of heroin to the bBC .
What a appalling disgusting excuse for a leader cowardly Boris the bottler is in paying Iran £400 Million of our money to a regime which is our absolute sworn enemy and an ally of Russia for the release of a BAME woman.
Only 9 Months ago Baroness Whittaker gave a speech warning that the UAE is not a safe place for British nationals to visit with people being murdered in custody or imprisoned on false charges, and yet as the most of these people are White males they are of no interest what so ever to the cowardly useless incompetent Boris the Bottler, only the lives of BAME people are important.
Today as the bottler hauls his sorry ass around various despots of the Middle East begging them to allow more extraction of fossil fuels to prop up his sorry mess of a Green policy which supposedly now means we don’t have to rely on fossil fuels, there is one thing you can be certain of, that he won’t be asking any of these sheikhs Emirs and Kings to release any one of the White British Males held in appalling conditions there, because to Boris they might as well not exist.
But as far as I know she went there of her own free will when the risks to a UK passport holder in Iran were known. If people knowingly put themselves in danger is the British state obliged to get them freed ata cost £400 million each!?
£400 Million, perhaps you’d like to fund it because I certainly don’t want to, and this amount has been hanging around unpaid ever since the Iranian revolution happened back in 1978 for good reason. Every single UK government has refused to hand this money to the maniacs for good reason until bleeding heart Boris has just done so and for what? To free some Iranian woman who was tied up with the BBC, and with some kinf of spying.
He got no other concessions at all for that money that had been withheld from the Iranians for half a century so you tell me why that money should have been simply handed over?
This is a maverick fool doing dangerous things because he’s too stupid to know any better.
Me, you or anybody else for that matter knows what was agreed or not agreed regarding this deal and i dare say we will never find out..
But rest assured, there will be more to this than meets the eye….
There is another new Somerset story that the BBC probably aren’t reporting
Police encounter a man who thinks he has nothing wrong
And instead of explaining to him that trespass on railway property is different to private property and is not just an unarrestable civil offence
they quickly escalate to parva spray and then tazering him.
I don’t like the auditing guys who troll police, and it is a clip rather than a full vid which gives context
but the police look well out of order.
.. https://youtu.be/Kaa24bNV7Tw
No context is available
@AshPhillipsuk says its in my local area so I thought I’d highlight it by showing the video, I found it on YouTube.
This has really got me riled, I know we talk all the time about the bias of the BBC here, but when they have an article like this one about something you know inside out, it REALLY stands out!
I’m sure I’ve said before on here, I consider myself an engineer (it’s what my degree and post-degree qualifications/awards say, anyway), but the area I work in is on the borderline between science (that’s real science, of a chemistry nature) and engineering (that’s the graduate/academic sort, not the greasy nuts sort, although in the end it’s also about making and fixing things), in fact I’m a Chemical Engineer.
Not going to say any more about what I do, but this guy works in my area, I don’t know him personally, but I know quite a few like him. Twenty five years ago, when I was still a young postdoc I did a stint at what was then called the EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council), the EU moved a lot of that to Brussels, but after Brexit a lot has been moved back to the UK, and long story short, part of it is now this ‘UK Research and Innovation Agency’ (UKRIA?) mentioned in this article.
Okay, still with me? My gripes with this article are:
1. Racism is not ‘pervasive’ in science, that’s utter wokeist drivel, science is not, and never has been ‘racist’ (or ‘sexist’) there are PLENTY of BAME people working in scientific research PLENTY, I’ve known, worked with, and been friends with (still am in some cases) DOZENS and DOZENS of them. Admittedly, there are a lot more South Asian (Indian and Pakistani) and Oriental (Chinese, Malay, Taiwanese etc…) than Black, but there are plenty of Blacks too, both of Caribbean and African origin… I can think of two, I know very well personally, both very decent sorts, who would think this article insane by the way. To be honest, there are a disproportionately high number of BAME people in scientific research right now, and lots of people aren’t happy about the ‘tick box’ and ‘quota’ approach to recruitment that seems to be going on, but that’s another story.
2. What IS a ‘professor’ these days? Well, the simple answer is, not what it was when I was an undergraduate. In the mid-90s, SOME universities in this country (led by Oxford, by the way), decided that our academics weren’t being treated with enough ‘respect’ at conferences because OUR tradition in academia was for only the head of department (usually someone in their 60s, or older) to be called ‘Professor’, the other academic staff in the department were: Postdocs (Postdoctoral Researchers), Junior Lecturers, Lecturers, Senior Lecturers etc… The title of Professor was a largely honourary one, given to an academic towards the end of their career, who had served their time as head of department, and was heading into retirement, often with a ‘chair’ which gave them the right to come out of retirement to bore undergraduates, sleep through meetings, and get wheeled out for the annual ‘Christmas dinner’ booze up.
Anyway, the Americans had their own, different tradition, which was for ALL academics to be called ‘Professor’, and then to have ‘Junior Professors, ‘Tenured Professors’, ‘Senior Professors’ etc… Therefore, our academics (some of them anyway) thought they were getting short shrift and decided to change the rules, so ALL our academics were now called ‘Professor’ just like in the US. Once one university went with it, virtually all the others did, and now just about every UK university, even the technical colleges calling themselves ‘Universities’ have hundreds and hundreds of ‘Professors’.
My point? The title of ‘Professor’ means diddly squit these days, a lot of them don’t even have PhDs(!), and if you’ve ever wondered why the ‘Professors’ the BBC wheel out as ‘experts’ look about twelve, and don’t seem to know what they’re talking about… that’s why.
Prof. Mokaya is not ‘special’ because he’s a ‘Professor’, or because his name is ‘Mokaya’, or because he is ‘black’, when he puts an application for research funding in to UKRIA he’ll be competing against HUNDREDS of others for the same grant money, and at least half of them will be called Singh, Patel, or Wang, ‘Mokaya’ wouldn’t stand out particularly, honestly it wouldn’t, I wouldn’t have guessed it’s a ‘black’ name, sounds a bit Japanese to me, but that’s irrelevant anyway.
I’ve been tasked with sorting these kinds of applications, and soliciting the views of ‘peers’ to sift them for review board meetings – that’s mostly what I did at the EPSRC for about a year. It was a long time ago, the process MIGHT have changed, but I doubt it. We had a database of all the UK academics in STEM subjects, divided up into relevant areas, and three, or four with (we hoped) the right kind of knowledge, were randomly chosen to blind review each proposed research project. Their comments and ratings then decided which were shortlisted for the review meeting, where a panel of around a dozen relevant academics were gathered for a weekend of free dinners and got to put the applications in order – best to worst, then we looked at what each would cost, added them up from top downwards until we got to the total and those were the ones that got funded. There were all kinds of myths about the process in academia, but it really was very, very simple and we tried very hard to keep it impartial too.
The academics officially didn’t know who was proposing which project, and any who were applying for grants, or who had connections to any who were, weren’t invited on the panel – sometimes we had to bring in US, or European academics for that reason. As I recall, we went to great lengths to get a ‘balanced’ panel each time, with a mix of men and women, different ethnicities, and (more importantly) representatives from each of the different ‘factions’, rival institutions etc…
Projects didn’t get funding for a number of (rather obvious) reasons:
1. They were rubbish.
2. They were unfashionable subjects.
3. They were over-priced.
4. They were badly written, or put together.
5. Some greedy bastard had hogged all the money already (happened rather a lot, there is only a very limited budget for each area of research after all).
Gender, sexuality, race etc… never, ever came into it. In fact, EPSRC was the first place I worked with ‘positive discrimination’ in recruitment, so a very large percentage of the people working there were: female, gay, BAME, disabled etc… being young and naive at the time, I thought that was a good thing.
3. Prof. Mokaya is a Materials Chemist, same as my father. My dad is now in his late 70s and been retired nearly 20 years, but he has friends and ex-colleagues from all over the world thanks to his work. One of his staff, when I was a teenager (80s) was a Nigerian PhD in Materials Chemistry. Lazy bastard that one, and a liar as we all found out after he got caught (another story), but the point is he was black, African, and a Material Scientist 40 years ago, and not even ground breaking then, there were quite a few of them. One of my friends from Uni is a black Londoner, whose parents immigrated from the Caribbean in the 60s, he works in a similar area, and has done for coming up 30 years, and like many of us did some academic research before moving into the private sector. He is NOT a liar, and a cheat by the way… I know him very well, and he’s a good man, and popular in his field too (he earns way more than me, and could get a job anywhere he wanted in the world).
Sorry, I could go on and on, but really I can’t be bothered… this entire article is complete and utter bollox, and just yet another ‘is it cos I is black?’ piece with no justification what so ever. It really is complete PROPAGANDA, pure and simple, don’t believe a word of it!
The bBC does not actually provide a working link to the RSC investigation. This appears to be it
Missing Elements. Racial and ethnic inequalities in the chemical sciences.
The authors are Professor Robert Mokaya himself (which partly explains why the investigation ‘bears out Robert’s experience’) and Professor Marina Resmini, Chair, RSC Inclusion and Diversity Committee and Professor of Materials Chemistry at Queen Mary University. Robert Mokaya seems to have something to do with ‘Global Engagement’ and not is a ‘Professor of Materials Chemistry.’
Usual sleight of hand by the bBC.
Correction – he is described on the University of Nottingham site as Professor of Materials Chemistry here (but not in the report) and and Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Global Engagement.
Hang on someone at Nottingham Uni is race baity
And I mentioned above at 10:59pm they just took action against Tony Sewell cos he didn’t push the race-baity narrative.
I too was once a member of the Society and my question is what the hell is such a society doing reporting on racism in science? This country is going, perhaps already has ,mad. I’m sick to the back teeth of racism this and racism that. If folks don’t like living here bugger off and give us back our country.
Big Brother – back my exposure to academia the ‘quality ‘ of professors varied a lot in my field ( law ) I was lucky enough to have 3 or 4 profs who were the dogs’ bees in their subject area – always rolled onto TV for real expert advice / analysis ….
But there were others who were … less ….
As for race – tick box accusations about certain areas not having ‘enough ‘ of one sex or another – one race Or another – to me is just shallow points scoring …
… the danger with promoting people into key positions because of race or sex is very dangerous . We are seeing that in places like plod and – I think – the NHS … I won’t mention th variety of half wit coloured Labour MP wimmin …
You make a good point, Fed. Like you I was fortunate in being taught a specialist law subject by the only person ever to have qualified and been called as a Barrister in that subject. If I had a sum of money that I’m thinking of right now, it would be a start in compensation for every business that has let me down where there has been a ‘senior woman’ involved.
BBC Strictly Come Dancing contestant Stacey Dooley … will the BBC mention Stacey’s visit to home town Luton and meeting Anjem Choudary (Anjem backed the remain campaign)?
“What’s the solution? If Muslim people are in the wrong and they are committing crimes… you know, no one is above the law.” – Stacey Dooley
“If the law of the land is Islamic, we will respect the law of the land. If it’s not Islamic (the law) then the law of the land, and those who make them, can go to hell quite honestly.” – Anjem Choudary
“Oh my God!” – Stacey Dooley
“Because Allah says in the Koran Q33v1 ‘Fear Allah, and do not obey the disbelievers and the hypocrites. Is David Cameron a Muslim of a disbeliever? Guys?” – Anjem Choudary
“Disbeliever!” – mumbles crowd of 5 other Muslims
“So you (a Muslim) can’t obey him (UK Law). So he (David Cameron) can go to hell.” – Anjem Choudary
“Go put on some clothes.”
– Muslim women wearing black Burqa talks to Stacey, who is wearing a pretty summer dress
Almost every energy discussion on the various msm’s end up with the politicians saying nuclear power will give us the independence and allow us to supply our needs and they then mention these mini or small reactors, built by Rolls Royce I believe, and that we should get about ten of them on line.
Have we started building them yet?
Have we even ordered them yet?
They take, so we are told, about ten years to get up and running but our excellent politicians all stop dead when it comes to actually building them.
Why will they not commit to giving the go ahead now instead of continuously talking about them but doing nothing.
It will be about 2032 before they come on line if they start now.
We would be self sufficient for power had they ordered them when the conservatives were voted in.
What’s stopping them.
Cancel, or at least, put on hold HS2 and use that money to get going.
They just keep talking. I wonder if they will still be just talking in 2032.
*If they have actually started building them and I’m wrong then just ignore this but all I seem to hear is the lot of them just yapping on.
British regulators approved a Chinese-designed nuclear reactor that could be used at a plant in southeast England being developed by China General Nuclear Power Corp. The technology received design approval from the Office of Nuclear Regulation on Monday, following a process that started in 2017.7 Feb 2022
EG
I worry that the pressure to thrash the existing reactors will be the biggest danger here in neighbouring countries …
… it was one of the reasons I sniffed corruption when the krauts shut theres – with plenty of French ones nearby – an equal ‘threat ‘ when the wind blows …
Gas and oil could be rationed in the UK amid ‘crazy’ price increases, MPs warned
Doesn’t matter how much they are warned about anything, the Tory party leader Princess nut nut will not allow any deviation from her Islington friends far Left agenda and as this article tells as a consequence of Green lunacy the lights WILL go out this Winter, and people will freeze to death.
Lucy PevenseyDec 27, 20:55 Christmas 2024 From 01:58 Some of the most dishonest people I’ve met are in the press. People that know exactly what they…
JohnCDec 27, 20:24 Christmas 2024 Starmer pays tribute to brother who died on Boxing Day https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czjdw3vjy82o What a disgusting article : it uses the death…
JohnCDec 27, 20:15 Christmas 2024 Courage has gone out of broadcasting, says Grange Hill creator https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn08w15rr22o ‘The man behind the iconic soaps said gritty programming…
Eddy BoothDec 27, 19:29 Christmas 2024 Basically some hotel, in a no doubt well heeled rural Welsh village can’t get staff. And where exactly are the…
ScrobleneDec 27, 19:09 Christmas 2024 Beeboid sob story from Wales… https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cql50wg9p6wo When Senora O’Blene’s dad retired from the RAF, he immediately went on a catering…
Eddy BoothDec 27, 19:05 Christmas 2024 An update from the BBC on British army veteran, James Scott Rhys Anderson, captured during Ukraine’s *full scale invasion* of…
ScrobleneDec 27, 18:33 Christmas 2024 TTK is just copying what Gordon Brown did when he realised the game was up, and he was going to…
tomoDec 27, 18:00 Christmas 2024 I wonder how many are from the tip of the spear at locations in Eastern Europe? [img]https://i.ibb.co/7YPBTsB/chrome-e-Prex4-JHe-D.png[/img] https://x.com/juneslater17/status/1872205267125113238
First and good evening to all.
I am recommending Steyn from Ukraine.
I had my 10 minutes of Radio 4 this morning. It was Caroline Lucas on Woman’s Hour. She believes that new houses should be built with heat pumps. I think they are about £10,000 a pop. Of course most of the houses built today have very small gardens, if any at all. So not only extra money for the pump but the cost will need to increase substantially to pay for the extra land needed. I also understand heat pumps are heavy on electricity which will mean expensive running costs. Funnily enough Emma Barnett didn’t ask Caroline about any of these things.
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With which energy source do you DIG the caverns for heat pumps ?
… diesel of course
So in a time when the world is short of oil
she wants us to use a lot more this year.
On the premises that the energy used this year will be recouped over the next 30 years, if all goes to plan
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Can all UK MPs before speaking say how much they stole from the public purse in 2009, like this “I, Vaizey, MP of Wantage in 2009 stole £74K and have paid back £100 so far. Once I have paid it all back I won’t have to say this full comment but will have to say I can not be trusted hence forth.”
WANTAGE MP Ed Vaizey has spent more than £74,000 of taxpayers’ money to pay for a second home in Oxfordshire since becoming an MP in 2005.
He (Vaizey) said those claims were “an error of judgement” and apologised.
BBC Parliament: Ed Vaizey – “…the BBC is not biased or impartial. And the people who claim it is have simply lost the argument.”
(refers to himself defending George Osborne’s Emergency Budget on Andrew O’neil show)
– when he says not biased or impartial does him mean the BBC are NOT “treating all rivals or disputants equally.”. A simple slip?
– BBC Parliament // House of Commons // 06Jul2017 // Ed Vaizey / Conservative / Wantage
https://biasedbbc.org/blog/2017/07/26/mid-week-open-thread-119/comment-page-2/#comment-855602
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Theresa May always skipped the bad things …
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FoxNews statement about the attack on their car
which killed the cameraman , the young Ukrainian fixer
and badly injured their British reporter
(one tweet says he’s lost a leg)
Mark Steyn correctly says that all lives matter
and that The Ukranians who died are not worth less points than foreign journalists.
Bad taste, I spot many anti-Fox twitter accounts trying to score-points against Fox .. “Oh they didn’t report the death of the fixer”
In all the cases I spotted so far they had reported on her death BEFORE the person had tweeted
although they did report the death of the cameraman a bit earlier.
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‘Gucci bag murder: ‘Why are shops selling 15-inch machetes?”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-60680826
Because they’re useful for hacking your way through jungles?
Pretty handy for chopping down nettles and brambles, where your neighbour’s ‘rewilding scheme’ is overflowing into your garden too, I’ll bet.
Ah, now you see, there’s your problem Nick Corrigan of ‘Media Academy Cymru which runs weapons prevention programme Braver Choices’, that’s not actually a machete, in fact, it’s absolutely nothing like one, it’s a fecking massive KNIFE, for killing people… which I guess it’s pretty well designed for, and why our young ‘friend’ bought it in the first place!
If he’d tried STABBING someone with a machete, he’d have found it quite difficult, as they’re cutting tools, for hacking undergrowth, not designed for stabbing people through the heart.
They’ll be trying to ban steak knives and carving knives next… oh, wait a mo, what about bread knives and veggie knives then?
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Gold ring, or ring pull ?
“Starting next Monday, March 14, The Great British Treasure Hunt, a series I’ve been working on for the last couple of months, every night on ITV 4 at 8.00 pm.”
They appear to have dug up Spike Milligan to be the presenter
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Huhhlloowww!
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Nottingham Uni had offered to give Tony Sewell an honorary degree
but then changed their minds cos some think he is the wrong kind of black
“📢The author of a landmark government race report which found “no evidence” that Britain is institutionally racist has had his offer of an honorary degree revoked by Nottingham University.
Dr Tony Sewell was told by the university that he was a “subject of political controversy.” “
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I came across the Nels Abbey guy, and his tweet.
He PRAISED Notts Uni for cancelling Tony Sewell
but a few mins later I spotted a tweet from him where he was OUTRAGED Beckett Uni had ditched an ethnic- Asian consultant for her repeated racist tweets against Calvin Robinson etc.
She claimed she’d sue Beckett
Nels did a long thread calling it an “important” case
.. Of course a few months later she quietly dropped it.
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Notts Unix have a separate pray room for female Islamists! HA HA HA!
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Politicians are deliberately creating an energy crisis, while all round there is plenty of petroleum and gas in the world for us to live comfortably and cheaply. Banning Russian oil and gas does not hurt Russia one whit. In fact, it gives them a better price for less oil sold. Its we who are hurt. So why is our PM punishing us. I dont remember invading Ukraine.
And by the way, there are plenty of other much more nasty wars, with more cruelty and more deaths, in progress around the world, where we are busy selling weapons to one belligerent or the other. I’m sure victims in these wars would be happy if the British government would stop weapon sales to their killers.
So now it is Ukraine Ukraine all the time with the same tune – Putin is bad Putin evil Putin ****.
Apart from Ukraine, there is an urge by politicians to keep people under a state of perpetual panic, so they are called upon to do something. The Climate Change hoax is a permanent panic button. John Kerry, the American Secretary of State is worried that a nuclear war, potential or real, might make people lose sight of the bigger danger of Climate Change. I wonder if senior politicians in DC are suffering from cognitive issues.
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Looking at countries that used Ivermectin, their mortality rates are far lower then ours. Less then half.
These countries did not hurt their economies as much our government has done to ours. Too, we have destroyed a basic tenet of human society by stopping people to be gregarious for their own good.
There is something profoundly evil in a government that forcibly prevents people to say goodbye to a loved one, and does so for their good.
But all that is conveniently left unquestioned and unexamined, as a new panic is created, and blared out day after day, non-stop, unless it becomes embarrassing.
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Ah, but… Trump! Orange man, bad, don’t you know! (gnashing of teeth and wailing)
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Is it ‘cos I is black?
Cost of living: ‘My pay isn’t keeping up with rising prices’
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-60734392
NOPE, my take home pay isn’t going up at all this year, and was frozen last two (rather stupidly working in the private sector and all).
My parents’ and the missus’ mother’s pensions aren’t keeping up with rising prices either, at current rates we might need to pool resources and buy a bigger home for all of us (which would be rather too cosy!), let alone any Ukrainian refugees – and we won’t get £350 a month to help out with OUR bills either!
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‘I had no idea what it meant to be a scientist’
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/science-environment-60736708
Well:
1. What you never googled it, never spoke to a science teacher at school, and never saw a scientist portrayed on TV, or in a movie? I don’t believe you.
2. ‘Fewer than 2% of academic staff working in science, technology, engineering and maths are black according to new figures from UK universities’ – absolute drivel, there’s far, far more than that, and sadly, all too often through box ticking and quotas, rather than ability/exams, although to be fair, that might depend WHAT you consider ‘science, technology, engineering and maths’, what you consider ‘black’, and what you consider a ‘UK university’ – some people seem to have only the vaguest of notions.
3. ‘Pearce Jarrett is a machine learning engineer and founder of Gwaan, a motivational fitness app that uses AI technology.’ That’s not science, engineering maybe – just about (‘engineering’ is a VERY vague term here in the UK). Actually, it’s computing, which is a different skill set and knowledge base entirely.
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‘Is it ‘cos I is black?’ part three – the BBC going for a hatrick tonight.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-60757031
‘Met Police apologises for strip-search of Hackney schoolgirl’
Shocking right? Yes, and apparently it was all ‘cos racism.
“A black schoolgirl was strip-searched by police after being wrongly suspected of carrying cannabis.”
“A safeguarding report on the incident concluded it was unjustified and racism was “likely” to have been a factor.”
“Police were called to a school in Hackney at the end of 2020 by teachers, who told investigators they had been concerned the teenager had drugs in her possession because she smelt of cannabis.”
That would be a bit of a giveaway really.
“She was taken to the medical room and strip-searched by two female officers, while teachers remained outside.”
That doesn’t sound unreasonable to me, all things considered – she smelt of weed, and they thought she’d hidden some about her person, what else were they supposed to do?
“It said it was highly likely that “adultification bias” was a factor – where adults perceive black children as being older than they are because they see them as more “streetwise”.”
What? ‘Adultification’ sounds like a word someone has just made up.
Weed is legal, or it’s not. If it’s illegal and the police have fair reason to believe you’ve got some on your person, then they’re entitled to search you, (especially if you’re in a school!) simple as, race has nothing to do with it.
Ditto knives.
We (by which I mean the BBC) seem to be working towards being ‘black’ being a ‘get out of jail free card’.
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Royal Society of Chemistry report says racism ‘pervasive’
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-60708712
Do we need quotas then based on colour? or just the quality of the candidate
—–
Brittney Griner: How can a US basketball star just vanish?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-60701050
She’s arguably the greatest female basketball player of all time – apparently, never heard of her
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Heartwarming. Though have to feel a bit sorry for John.
BBC Typical Family News
35-year-old Mandi said welcoming more people into her busy home will mean “more love, more memories”.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-60737095?
Ukraine UK refugee hosting scheme: Mum-of-four opens home to refugees
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Yet more boasting by someone who – in all likelihood – makes no net contributions, or less, to UK society.
It’s not enough that taxpayers are paying for the education and health of her children, they (not this women) are also paying this women to take in refugees.
Those refugees will then be parasites on the taxpayer. This will include £10000 given to local councils for the benefit of the refugees, and so not available to British citizens.
Then the Govists will allow even more refugees to be housed in Government supported accommodation.
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It seems that it will be entertainment for the children who are bored.
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BBC Rare Photo News
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There’s online groups reporting the rare events.
https://mobile.twitter.com/theysayitsrare?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
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‘Blair’s’ essay to push the WEF narrative.
https://institute.global/tony-blair/immediate-challenge-ukraine-maximum-pressure-combined-structured-negotiation
“this should be part of a much wider recalibration of Western policy”
“the crisis must be the starting point for the wholesale rebuilding of Western strength and unity”
“The US/Europe transatlantic alliance must be revived in full vigour. The UK should create the means, despite Brexit, of European cooperation on defence and foreign policy.”
“It is no coincidence that the two most prominent UK voices attempting to pin responsibility on NATO for Putin’s aggression were Farage and Corbyn. Fifteen years ago, both were fringe figures. But after that time Farage managed to turn the Conservative Party into a Brexit party, and the far left under Corbyn took control of Labour.
Similar elements are at play in the US politics, and the result has been an American policy which has been inconsistent, unpredictable, disconcerting for allies and encouraging for opponents.”
“All of them drove a simplistic narrative of people betrayed by elites; of easy solutions to complex problems; of exploiting grievances like immigration rather than dealing with them; of isolationist nationalism on the right and anti-Western rhetoric on the left.”
“Across the political spectrum, politicians should come together, as to his credit Keir Starmer is doing in the UK, so that Western policy pursues a consistent, clear and realistic path; where engagement with the world is seen as enlightened self-interest, and not globalist idealism.”
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ti, we have been warned! Big time.
Blair wants his old job back.
And the BBC would love to see him there, leading Labour and back in no. 10 and will do everything in their power to bring it about.
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to paraphrase greta
HOW F***ING DARE HE
get away from me great satan
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Judging by Blair’s claims on his “global institute”, he is more of a megalomaniac than Putin.
Thank goodness he (no longer) has an army at his disposal ….
Iraq was bad enough.
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And just how did Farage manage to change Conservative Party?
Cameron and most of the Conservative party spokespeople led the charge against Brexit, and supported the corrupt campaign to keep UK in the EU.
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Has the bbc really thought this through?
Usually they avoid stories that raise awkward equivalencies.
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People got fined more here, for sitting on a park bench during lockdown …
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I doubt that is truly her only long term penalty
A extraordinary quick trial with a £300 fine, seems a PR thing
It’s strange UK media just parroted it.
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Norm has a point.
However, in the media bubble werld there is…
A) ‘News’
B) You are a right wing gammon for even whatabouting, racists!
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Guessing in Beeb 28Gate Central, this would fall under ‘B’?
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Sensationalist?
– seems way too mild for what they’re up to.
Thesaurus gives “fabrication” and “puffery”
scum
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Also seldom out of a BBC studio, when it suits.
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Guest Who – a 5 star post – right to the point – did the boy comrade Bryant declare any income from his appearance on RT ? I wonder …
If I recall – to – he put himself up as speaker when the traitor comrade Berkow got kicked out …imagine ..
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Some Russian stooges here have been questioning how those three prime ministers were able to travel to Kyiv by train.
Here’s part of the answer.
Ukraine’s wartime rail chief has to be faster than the Russians tracking him
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60755198
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What, in your world, is a ‘Russian stooge’?
Modern warfare is as messy as the old, but the rules of engagement are tighter.
And supply lines are used for supplies, often hard to tell IFF.
Or even the plane attacking.
Good job intel these days is better than the IJN code guys in Yamamoto’s day.
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Guest, the Spitfires have been out and about flying over Kent when weather permits. 🙂
That’s gotta have Putin quaking in his boots.
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It’s a fantastic sound, Up2!
Spitfires have an unmistakeable engine growl, and as our village was in Bomb Alley, I guess that the Boys were well acquainted with the location and just hammered the Krauts every day!
I’m glad that the only sound of the Spitfires is heard in peacetime though – except when they do the Eastbourne Air Festival, when the average age is reduced to ‘retirement’ or thereabouts…;0)
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Sound like ripping calico is the best description I’ve read.
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While indoors, comes the unmistakable growl of a Merlin. A petulant angry searching growl of a predator. I have to be fast out of the chair and into the yard to see it. Or else its gone.
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Tea , medals, counselling – if you look very closely you can see me waving from the cockpit – my favourite plane …thanks
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Tragic.
Sky got Beff.
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And Al Beeb got Our Marianna of the Rack.
OMOTR is, allegedly, a Russian speaker well-versed in translating Pravda articles (propaganda?) for Western publication. Is she still so doing, I wonder?
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If there’s one one thing we’ve learned to notice about our media, it’s that they enjoy a set of strict narratives and that they insist on fitting news events – whatever they may be on the ground – to fit those narratives. Our BBC is a fine exemplar of this tendency. I suppose such narratives are, to some extent, rather reassuring to the audience. Saving us from being overwhelmed by otherwise random or uncomfortable news.
Let’s just reappraise ourselves of the latest – and remarkably uniform across our media – set of narratives reguarding the Ukraine war.
1. This conflict is highly personalised – on the Russian side.
BBC: ‘Ukraine: Putin will search for a way to save face. By John Simpson. World Affairs editor‘; ‘Is there any justification for Putin’s war?‘ (Guardian)
I’m reminded of that rather recent significant expansion in the role of the character and person of the coach or manager in the media soap opera which is association football. Say, for instance, Liverpool score a goal and right away the commentator reflexively draws our attention to the notion that the goal will delight Jürgen Klopp, dismay Pep Guardiola, infuriate José Mourinho, threaten the job of Mauricio Pochettino, interest Sam Allardyce, or bring Harry Redknapp or Roy Hodgson out of retirement. Nevermind what the fans think. Have you noticed this? Are you paying attention? – as the American Jewish veteran comedian Jackie Mason used to ask of his audience.
Admittedly, Putin is unquestionably the leader of Russia. What he says goes. Which is more than one might confidently believe of Joe Biden or Boris Johnson in their respective governments. The former likely can’t recall when he last changed his incontinence pants and the latter takes his orders from her indoors.
Suffice to say – there’s something of an avoidance of personal responsibility on our Western side of the fence. But, it’s all good… however inept…
‘The Western response to Putin’s war has been remarkable. But it’s not enough.‘ (Atlantic Council – American think tank in the field of international affairs, favoring Atlanticism)
‘Are the sanctions on Russia enough to stop Putin’s war?‘ (CBS News)
2. One thing is for sure. No names, no responsibility for foreign affairs mistakes on our side, but Russia is led by the really bad guy.
‘U.S. Senate unanimously condemns Putin as war criminal‘ (Reuters)
‘Is It Time to Call Putin’s War in Ukraine Genocide?‘ (The New Yorker)
3. Russia is doing badly in the war.
‘Sobbing Russian soldiers say they heard their own air force bombing schools, hospitals and kindergartens and admit invasion was ‘terrible mistake’ after being taken prisoner in Ukraine‘ (Daily Mail); ‘Russia is ‘Bogged Down’ in War With Ukraine‘ (NBC); ‘Russian Prowess Questioned as Troops Bogged Down in Ukraine‘ (Bloomberg)
And yet… Russia… sorry, Putin… appears to be achieving his war aims – despite all our media narratives to the contrary: ‘Zelensky: We can’t join NATO‘ (Times); ‘Zelensky: Ukraine will never join NATO‘ (Telegraph)
Putin saving face, Mr John Simpson? Or the West attempting to save face?
Take the L, take the loss, learn the lessons and move on. That was my advice to the West when the shooting war first broke out. Will it take more than two weeks of Ukrainian death and destruction before the West has sufficiently saved face and accepted reality?
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https://ibb.co/FwdNS1D
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It says “First day at school for a Ukrainian refugee in South London”
..And the pic shows ONE white kid being stared at by load of black kids.
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Not in England, that’s not. Am guessing that it is East Africa or Eastern Africa.
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The liars at the BBC continue to turn a blind eye to Biden’s gaffes. His latest: 3 in 15 minutes!
It would be funny if it hadn’t brought us to the brink of WW3.
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Advertising brought to you by the ex British broadcasting corp
How can I offer a UK home to Ukrainian refugees?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/60735121
Imagine getting stuck with someone for years and year and years, suppose some will fall for it (and the £350 per month)
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Save £159 – stop paying the BBC and heat the house!
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Andy – I had a little look at the gov website . It avoided inconveniences like insurance and being unable to get the guests out if need be or whether they upset the neighbours .
I know this practical stuff doesn’t accord with the emotional generosity expected by the MSM at the moment but I think it would be far better to send resources to the likes of Poland and help them car for their direct neighbours .
The Tory who made the mistake of saying that Ukrainians could get a job on farms a couple of weeks ago jumped the gun / RPG a bit but there is something in that-
– particularly since some big businesses are offering jobs to these legitimate refugees whilst the 3rd worlders in the hotels with destroyed identities plot with lawyers to scam the system ….
Send them to Ascension Island or give them a dinghy to go back to `war torn France …
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Hello Fed
I’m wondering if the £350 per month – will end in a few years? then what the gullible householder is stuck with a massive expense
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Andy – we are quite away from Ukraine – there is no certainty even those who want to go back will . What if someone is putting them up for – say 18 months – but then needs to empty the property ?
The website doesn’t give guidance on this or much else . It does say that you won’t have to cook for them though ….
Elsewhere
Apparently the Iranian spy woman who was in – er – Iran- is now being released ….
So what sort of reception will the BBC – her former employer – give ?
1 why did it take so long ?
2 did nut nut pay the bribe ?
3 nut nut s fault
Will people who watch the MSM have days and days of the lady retelling her story ? A book deal – the film rights – which lovee gets the part ? That jungle show thing with Declan and tony ..?
Meanwhile the Russians and the Iranians are talking ‘nuclear ‘ again ….
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Looking at this from another angle. The refugees – mostly of whom are female, are given leave to stay for 3 years.
Now, once they get used to the welfare and health benefits, how many will want to go home ? if they don’t, then (someone will say) it will be against their human rights if their fighting menfolk are not allowed to join them over here. This is the long term and bigger picture !
Some commentators have said in reality most refugees are wanting to stay close to the Ukraine border so they CAN go back, but our bleedin’ heart MPs and media, whip up the pleading sentiment of this, and if there is a surge of refugees over the next few weeks, we could potentially be looking at building another town the size of Birmingham to house all these immigrants – legal and not so legal. Has anyone thought of this ????
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BRISSLES
A hypothesis. In the very unlikely event that I , as an 81 year old grave dodger, should in the years left to me, feel myself SO threatened by the woke/climate/covid/war nutters, that I need to escape from their insanity, is there a nation anywhere in the world who would welcome me with open arms, pay my expences including my healthcare and allow me to carry on my life as though I was still living in good old England?
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Lenny Henry can’t play her, he’s signed up for Vladimir Putin. Dianne Abbot might work, but she’s the same biological gender, and we can’t have that.
One thing is for certain, there’s a lot of lolly to be made from this one.
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We had around 120 heads of state or government. 38,000 accredited delegates. And there were countless tens of thousands more in the streets and parks and venues outside. It was a summit that many people predicted would fail. A summit that I fear some quietly wanted to fail. Yet it was a summit that proved the doubters and the cynics wrong. Because COP26 did not just succeed in keeping 1.5 alive. It succeeded in doing something no UN climate conference has ever done before by uniting the world in calling time on coal. In 25 previous COPs, all the way back to Berlin in 1995, not one delivered a mandate to remove so much as a single lump of coal from one power station boiler.
https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pms-statement-to-the-house-on-cop26-15-november-2021
Ahead of his meetings with the country’s leaders, Boris told Laura Kuenessberg this morning that his trip to Saudi Arabia will involve discussing human rights concerns alongside asking for a dramatic increase in global oil supplies. The pressure comes after the country that could massively help alleviate the cost of living crisis executed 81 prisoners last weekend…
order-order.com
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Maybe get Labour Peers back in? The awake ones?
https://tradingaswdr.blogspot.com/2022/03/tired-tony.html?
Maybe not.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-23514483
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Well it seems that ends do justify the means, after all!
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Biden gets fact-checked. Verdict: LIAR.
(and weirdo, some might say paedo)
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BBC WEB-SITE Watch #1 – er, you know you can trust the BBC, well maybe not
Don’t go here for the latest Covid information: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51768274 – it hasn’t been updated since Monday despite the deceptive ‘1 day ago’ timeline at top left. It cannot be trusted.
It seems this might be more reliable: https://www.gov.uk/coronavirus – you will need to scroll about three-quarters of the way down the page to UK Covid-19 Statistics.
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yes the BBC html gives the page edit time as “datePublished”:”2022-03-14 T18:56″
ie 7pm on Monday
Lawrence Gilder did publish Covid stats on Tuesday
but he then added caveats that the Scottish data is incomplete
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Up2, even the gov.uk is being fiddled about with. The government no longer releases covid cases on a Saturday or Sunday – but instead they are lumping them all together on a Monday. Some days the figures don’t include Scotland’s, or Wales’ or even NI. Never mind, they just lump them together on the day when they finally come through (which might not be the next day) and it can be several days worth added all on one day. One day someone had the brilliant idea of adding in the cases numbers for people who have had covid more than once compromising all the previous data.
When I studied science emphasis was put on making sure how figures were collected didn’t change mid-way (through an experiment in my day but it should apply to a pandemic too). It would seem that everything that can be done to muddy the figures is being done re covid on the gov.uk website. Latest daily cases rates are difficult to find and are in grey to show they will be later corrected, and as for the case rates within a particular county, I can no longer find them.
Stew is much better at digging out information and I wonder Stew if you can do better than I can. What I am sure of is that both Stew and I are probably better at finding the data and indeed interpreting the data than any BBC hack.
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Deborah, could it be that a Civil Servant (or two or three or four) is involved in trying to make the present Government ‘look bad’ ? I listened to most of TWatO today until switching off in protest and the Montacutie was constantly trying to make HMG ‘look bad’ over the release of Nazanin Zagari-Ratcliffe. Bringing on a ‘Human Rights’ campaigner to comment on the war in Ukraine was the last straw.
Waves of Negativity from the Knaves of Wegativity a.k.a. the BBC.
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Deborah
Scientifically I am as thick as two short planks but there’s nothing wrong with my nose which is detecting a strong stench of rat odour.
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At last Ratcliffe on her way back from IRAN, great news.
Looking at the article on the BBC all read is about the Labour MP Ms Siddiq (Ratcliffes MP)
She said this, she did that etc etc
Sod all about the efforts of the Government and negotiators…
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We don’t often find the leader of another country popping in to listen to the maiden speech of a British member of parliament. Yet that was the privilege afforded to Tulip Siddiq, after she was elected to represent the people of Hampstead and Kilburn in 2015.
Looking proudly on from the gallery was Sheikh Hasina Wazed, the prime minister of Bangladesh since 2009, under whose watch hundreds of political opponents have been “disappeared” – kidnapped by state security forces and ending up either dead or incarcerated with no recourse to justice.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/dec/04/tulip-siddiq-bangladesh-disappeared-abducted-prime-minister
Even if we are to take Siddiq at her word that she has no sway over Bangladeshi politics, what is preventing her from at least speaking out? My client may not be Siddiq’s constituent, but nor is he the constituent of Shabana Mahmood MP, who raised an official parliamentary question on the matter earlier this year.
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Tulip Siddiq Labour MP
Her mother’s elder sister is Sheikh Hasina Wazed PM of Bangladesh
The sisters father was Bangladesh’s Founding Father and first president, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman
Shahidul Alam was detained in #Bangladesh in August 2018 after posting a video to social media about student protests in #Dhaka.
He spent 102 days behind bars, and said he was beaten in custody, before being freed in November 2018.
..he’s still suing
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If it is true that the price of the release of this foreign aid worker was £400 million in cancelled debt repayments will this enormous cost be deducted from the Foreign Aid budget?
If idiots like her choose to go to highly dangerous countries which are enemies of this country then they must accept the risk and the consequences. As for her husband he should be thoroughly ashamed of himself. I would never allow my wife to visit such a perilous place let alone work there.
It may seem hard hearted but I don’t think we should be paying even a fraction of the money to get her back. Paying rogue states like Iran ransoms will just result in more hostage taking if anyone is stupid enough to visit that country.
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AT Last? It’s a terrible unconcionable deal that our useless incompetent cowardly leader has struck with an evil regime seeking to murder us all.
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“Infamy! Infamy! They’ve all got it in for me!” quoted Her Majesty’s democratically elected Government and the Prime Minister.
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Silenced for telling the truth ?
The msm are calling it a “slavery joke” I am sure those murdered, raped, disposessed or enslaved by Normans and Romans were not laughing.
John Cleese has his microphone taken away at South by Southwest festival for saying that Britain should get ‘reparations from Italy and France’ for Romans and Normans enslaving Britons
British comedian John Cleese in row with fellow comics over slave reparations
Monty Python icon had been at South by Southwest public event in Texas, USA
But he landed himself in hot water after joking about France and Italy owing Brits slave reparations for the Roman Empire and the Norman invasion of 1066
His microphone was eventually taken off him by American comic Dulcé Sloan
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10606743/John-Cleese-stuns-South-Southwest-crowd-jokes-historic-slave-reparations-Britain.html
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The very modest, very slim Dulcé Sloan
She opens with the N-word, cos she’s allowed to use it, and you white folks aren’t.
… https://youtu.be/walw2goY-f8
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Quiz question
Which Kay said this today ?
“I’m so pleased that you are safe and what a terrible journey you have had but hopefully you can start to build a new life in Dublin safe in the knowledge that the British people are completely behind you,”
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its the normal nonsensical crap that Kay ”broke the law”Burley would spout..
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Not the BBC – but PMQs – angee v Raab ….. angie goes on about the Iranian woman – Raab never mentioned – probably because she is still on Iranian ground and they could easily change their minds .
Labour on the moral high ground whilst nut nut has his begging bowl in the Middle East . At least he is making an effort
It doesn’t cover up for the failure of the political class over the last 20 -30- 40 years failing to plan for energy independence .
The globalists have been supreme …. Not learning lessons about the UK to be self sustaining on fuel and food .
I actually don’t think they’ll even learn to do that under current circumstance .
How are people going to adapt to a lot more of any ‘disposable ‘ income they might have being spent on fuel and food in the current years ?
Will they expect The State to subsidise everything for ever ? Just shaking the money tree whilst at the same time throwing money at their NHS and maybe more on defence ?
And what of people already on the rack ? Things are going to get tricky . Even when HMG gets the blame it still won’t stop the likes of inflation and interests going up .
I’ve gone through the pessimistic list . Maybe Ukraine can remain independent and produce food as it did . We are gonna need it ….and I didn’t even mention the virus …
Just back to PMQs
The labour strategy seems to be to pour as much poo on nut nut as possible – this time it was his association with dodgy rich Russians ( not the best look – culminating on putting a Russian spy in the Lords £ ) ….
Angee also tried to lecture on the ‘ security services ‘ which she and her boss – corbyn wanted to end … but rich for angee – and stupid ….
But there should be no surprise . It’s a real shame there is no real opposition ….
Lastly – the labour speaker dived in to criticise Raab for referring to ‘history ‘ – I thought he was having a bercow moment and should stick to being a speaker rather than an opposition MP – bet the BBC loved it ….
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Aren’t we lucky to have overpaid “World Affairs Editors” at the BBC to tell us the blindingly obvious?
“Ukraine: Putin will search for a way to save face” –
By John Simpson
Wow, really John – really?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60756993
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“Losing Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine would be a bitter, illegal and wholly unjust loss. But Vladimir Putin would have to start using far more serious weapons even than he has already, if he’s to come out on top. As things stand, in the third week of fighting, no-one can seriously doubt who the real winner in this war will be.”
no-one can seriously doubt who the real winner in this war will be?
So it’s the ukraine?
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Richard Kemp gives a succinct account of the likelihoods in the Express today without the need for superfluous opining and dubious padding.
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BBC News
“You would as a member of the public… think why don’t they just close their stores… it’s very difficult to do so without some far reaching legal consequences.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-60733389?
The Western brands unable to leave Russia
****
Actually interesting if coloured by The BBC clearly trying to get morons excited. And succeeding.
The comments on FB are from the usual brain donors. On the article, a few worthwhile.
I merely note that a brand very much still in Russia is The BBC. But that is of course different.
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Guest Who
The BBC in Russia? Well o’ course. It’s not known as the Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation fer nuffink yer know.
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The Western brands unable to leave Russia
Marks and Spencer, Burger King, and hotel groups Marriott and Accor are restricted by complex franchise deals preventing them from withdrawing.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-60733389
M&S has 48 shops and Burger King has 800 restaurants still open, whilst Marriott and Accor have 28 and 57 hotels open respectively.
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Fears Russia will not be able to pay its debts mount
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-60750642
A lot of if, buts and maybes in the “report”
All about putting doubts in peoples minds, well its a start – like when the negative vibes are reported on Trump previously/constantly.
We have seen if, buts and maybes reporting many times by the likes of the bbc
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https://isthebbcbiased.blogspot.com/2022/03/a-hae-ma-doots.html
Given The BBC efforts so far, that they are interviewing each other to arrive at the conclusion they are all doing a great job comes as little surprise.
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I suspect Boris has agreed to give the Iranians billions in oil and gas contracts
whether that will get delivered AFTER Boris hands the money over is up to the Iranians and Russians influencing them.
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The Biden administration had wanted to revive the Obama-Iran nuclear deal. Unfortunately, it was the Russians who were supposed to be mediating and helping to check Iran’s uranium enrichment. Bang goes that deal.
I guess if the Mullahs get too close to completing their atom bomb we will have to rely on the Israelis to knock it on the head.
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FedUp,
Just saw your threatening letter post.
To ensure the bBc are twice removed from the process they will be passing instructions through a sub contracted intermediary and from there on to Goon Central otherwise known as listed company CAPITA.
Thus removing the vile ***tards from direct involvement.
Perhaps we should be thinking of a tack that exposes Capita.
They are a part of the Licence Fee theft racket.
Equally the new tactics could be due to the volume of cancellations.
But the LF is the equivalent of heroin to the bBC .
They wont give it up without a battle.
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The Great British Treasure Hunt.
UnLike in the Detectorists series ( in my humble opinion , brilliant) we can be assured that Jim ,ll Fixit badges uncovered will be edited out.
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Here we sodding go..
BBC now suggesting that the Government was to blame for Ratcliffes extended incarceration in Iran jail for not paying Tank debt of £400 million..
Didn’t take long..
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What a appalling disgusting excuse for a leader cowardly Boris the bottler is in paying Iran £400 Million of our money to a regime which is our absolute sworn enemy and an ally of Russia for the release of a BAME woman.
Only 9 Months ago Baroness Whittaker gave a speech warning that the UAE is not a safe place for British nationals to visit with people being murdered in custody or imprisoned on false charges, and yet as the most of these people are White males they are of no interest what so ever to the cowardly useless incompetent Boris the Bottler, only the lives of BAME people are important.
https://detained-in-dubai.prowly.com/146992-the-uae-is-not-safe-for-british-nationals-baroness-whitaker
Today as the bottler hauls his sorry ass around various despots of the Middle East begging them to allow more extraction of fossil fuels to prop up his sorry mess of a Green policy which supposedly now means we don’t have to rely on fossil fuels, there is one thing you can be certain of, that he won’t be asking any of these sheikhs Emirs and Kings to release any one of the White British Males held in appalling conditions there, because to Boris they might as well not exist.
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Thoughtful… come on buddy..!!
She’s not just a BAME woman, she’s a human being with a daughter and family
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But as far as I know she went there of her own free will when the risks to a UK passport holder in Iran were known. If people knowingly put themselves in danger is the British state obliged to get them freed ata cost £400 million each!?
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Doublethinker..
Agree whole heartily but to infer because she is a BAME female we need to put a different perspective on it….
The reason she was there is because most of her close family still live there.
We should be venting our anger at the Iranian Government for taking advantage of the situation…F–king parasites
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And of course the White guys aren’t ?
£400 Million, perhaps you’d like to fund it because I certainly don’t want to, and this amount has been hanging around unpaid ever since the Iranian revolution happened back in 1978 for good reason. Every single UK government has refused to hand this money to the maniacs for good reason until bleeding heart Boris has just done so and for what? To free some Iranian woman who was tied up with the BBC, and with some kinf of spying.
He got no other concessions at all for that money that had been withheld from the Iranians for half a century so you tell me why that money should have been simply handed over?
This is a maverick fool doing dangerous things because he’s too stupid to know any better.
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Me, you or anybody else for that matter knows what was agreed or not agreed regarding this deal and i dare say we will never find out..
But rest assured, there will be more to this than meets the eye….
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Strangely at the start of the invasion Iran condemned Russia.
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“Life-sized plastic gorilla stolen from Frome home in dawn raid”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-60755371
Really ?
It’s the quality of the news your telly tax pays for . It will be garden gnomes next !
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There is another new Somerset story that the BBC probably aren’t reporting
Police encounter a man who thinks he has nothing wrong
And instead of explaining to him that trespass on railway property is different to private property and is not just an unarrestable civil offence
they quickly escalate to parva spray and then tazering him.
I don’t like the auditing guys who troll police, and it is a clip rather than a full vid which gives context
but the police look well out of order.
.. https://youtu.be/Kaa24bNV7Tw
No context is available
@AshPhillipsuk says
its in my local area so I thought I’d highlight it by showing the video, I found it on YouTube.
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There is also another video of cops gets bolshy with kids on a playing field
YouTube banned it
.. https://www.twitter.com/AshPhillipsuk/status/1503997035275603969
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Royal Society of Chemistry report says racism ‘pervasive’
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-60708712
This has really got me riled, I know we talk all the time about the bias of the BBC here, but when they have an article like this one about something you know inside out, it REALLY stands out!
I’m sure I’ve said before on here, I consider myself an engineer (it’s what my degree and post-degree qualifications/awards say, anyway), but the area I work in is on the borderline between science (that’s real science, of a chemistry nature) and engineering (that’s the graduate/academic sort, not the greasy nuts sort, although in the end it’s also about making and fixing things), in fact I’m a Chemical Engineer.
Not going to say any more about what I do, but this guy works in my area, I don’t know him personally, but I know quite a few like him. Twenty five years ago, when I was still a young postdoc I did a stint at what was then called the EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council), the EU moved a lot of that to Brussels, but after Brexit a lot has been moved back to the UK, and long story short, part of it is now this ‘UK Research and Innovation Agency’ (UKRIA?) mentioned in this article.
Okay, still with me? My gripes with this article are:
1. Racism is not ‘pervasive’ in science, that’s utter wokeist drivel, science is not, and never has been ‘racist’ (or ‘sexist’) there are PLENTY of BAME people working in scientific research PLENTY, I’ve known, worked with, and been friends with (still am in some cases) DOZENS and DOZENS of them. Admittedly, there are a lot more South Asian (Indian and Pakistani) and Oriental (Chinese, Malay, Taiwanese etc…) than Black, but there are plenty of Blacks too, both of Caribbean and African origin… I can think of two, I know very well personally, both very decent sorts, who would think this article insane by the way. To be honest, there are a disproportionately high number of BAME people in scientific research right now, and lots of people aren’t happy about the ‘tick box’ and ‘quota’ approach to recruitment that seems to be going on, but that’s another story.
2. What IS a ‘professor’ these days? Well, the simple answer is, not what it was when I was an undergraduate. In the mid-90s, SOME universities in this country (led by Oxford, by the way), decided that our academics weren’t being treated with enough ‘respect’ at conferences because OUR tradition in academia was for only the head of department (usually someone in their 60s, or older) to be called ‘Professor’, the other academic staff in the department were: Postdocs (Postdoctoral Researchers), Junior Lecturers, Lecturers, Senior Lecturers etc… The title of Professor was a largely honourary one, given to an academic towards the end of their career, who had served their time as head of department, and was heading into retirement, often with a ‘chair’ which gave them the right to come out of retirement to bore undergraduates, sleep through meetings, and get wheeled out for the annual ‘Christmas dinner’ booze up.
Anyway, the Americans had their own, different tradition, which was for ALL academics to be called ‘Professor’, and then to have ‘Junior Professors, ‘Tenured Professors’, ‘Senior Professors’ etc… Therefore, our academics (some of them anyway) thought they were getting short shrift and decided to change the rules, so ALL our academics were now called ‘Professor’ just like in the US. Once one university went with it, virtually all the others did, and now just about every UK university, even the technical colleges calling themselves ‘Universities’ have hundreds and hundreds of ‘Professors’.
My point? The title of ‘Professor’ means diddly squit these days, a lot of them don’t even have PhDs(!), and if you’ve ever wondered why the ‘Professors’ the BBC wheel out as ‘experts’ look about twelve, and don’t seem to know what they’re talking about… that’s why.
Prof. Mokaya is not ‘special’ because he’s a ‘Professor’, or because his name is ‘Mokaya’, or because he is ‘black’, when he puts an application for research funding in to UKRIA he’ll be competing against HUNDREDS of others for the same grant money, and at least half of them will be called Singh, Patel, or Wang, ‘Mokaya’ wouldn’t stand out particularly, honestly it wouldn’t, I wouldn’t have guessed it’s a ‘black’ name, sounds a bit Japanese to me, but that’s irrelevant anyway.
I’ve been tasked with sorting these kinds of applications, and soliciting the views of ‘peers’ to sift them for review board meetings – that’s mostly what I did at the EPSRC for about a year. It was a long time ago, the process MIGHT have changed, but I doubt it. We had a database of all the UK academics in STEM subjects, divided up into relevant areas, and three, or four with (we hoped) the right kind of knowledge, were randomly chosen to blind review each proposed research project. Their comments and ratings then decided which were shortlisted for the review meeting, where a panel of around a dozen relevant academics were gathered for a weekend of free dinners and got to put the applications in order – best to worst, then we looked at what each would cost, added them up from top downwards until we got to the total and those were the ones that got funded. There were all kinds of myths about the process in academia, but it really was very, very simple and we tried very hard to keep it impartial too.
The academics officially didn’t know who was proposing which project, and any who were applying for grants, or who had connections to any who were, weren’t invited on the panel – sometimes we had to bring in US, or European academics for that reason. As I recall, we went to great lengths to get a ‘balanced’ panel each time, with a mix of men and women, different ethnicities, and (more importantly) representatives from each of the different ‘factions’, rival institutions etc…
Projects didn’t get funding for a number of (rather obvious) reasons:
1. They were rubbish.
2. They were unfashionable subjects.
3. They were over-priced.
4. They were badly written, or put together.
5. Some greedy bastard had hogged all the money already (happened rather a lot, there is only a very limited budget for each area of research after all).
Gender, sexuality, race etc… never, ever came into it. In fact, EPSRC was the first place I worked with ‘positive discrimination’ in recruitment, so a very large percentage of the people working there were: female, gay, BAME, disabled etc… being young and naive at the time, I thought that was a good thing.
3. Prof. Mokaya is a Materials Chemist, same as my father. My dad is now in his late 70s and been retired nearly 20 years, but he has friends and ex-colleagues from all over the world thanks to his work. One of his staff, when I was a teenager (80s) was a Nigerian PhD in Materials Chemistry. Lazy bastard that one, and a liar as we all found out after he got caught (another story), but the point is he was black, African, and a Material Scientist 40 years ago, and not even ground breaking then, there were quite a few of them. One of my friends from Uni is a black Londoner, whose parents immigrated from the Caribbean in the 60s, he works in a similar area, and has done for coming up 30 years, and like many of us did some academic research before moving into the private sector. He is NOT a liar, and a cheat by the way… I know him very well, and he’s a good man, and popular in his field too (he earns way more than me, and could get a job anywhere he wanted in the world).
Sorry, I could go on and on, but really I can’t be bothered… this entire article is complete and utter bollox, and just yet another ‘is it cos I is black?’ piece with no justification what so ever. It really is complete PROPAGANDA, pure and simple, don’t believe a word of it!
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The bBC does not actually provide a working link to the RSC investigation. This appears to be it
Missing Elements. Racial and ethnic inequalities in the chemical sciences.
The authors are Professor Robert Mokaya himself (which partly explains why the investigation ‘bears out Robert’s experience’) and Professor Marina Resmini, Chair, RSC Inclusion and Diversity Committee and Professor of Materials Chemistry at Queen Mary University. Robert Mokaya seems to have something to do with ‘Global Engagement’ and not is a ‘Professor of Materials Chemistry.’
Usual sleight of hand by the bBC.
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Correction – he is described on the University of Nottingham site as Professor of Materials Chemistry here (but not in the report) and and Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Global Engagement.
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Hang on someone at Nottingham Uni is race baity
And I mentioned above at 10:59pm they just took action against Tony Sewell cos he didn’t push the race-baity narrative.
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I too was once a member of the Society and my question is what the hell is such a society doing reporting on racism in science? This country is going, perhaps already has ,mad. I’m sick to the back teeth of racism this and racism that. If folks don’t like living here bugger off and give us back our country.
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Big Brother – back my exposure to academia the ‘quality ‘ of professors varied a lot in my field ( law ) I was lucky enough to have 3 or 4 profs who were the dogs’ bees in their subject area – always rolled onto TV for real expert advice / analysis ….
But there were others who were … less ….
As for race – tick box accusations about certain areas not having ‘enough ‘ of one sex or another – one race Or another – to me is just shallow points scoring …
… the danger with promoting people into key positions because of race or sex is very dangerous . We are seeing that in places like plod and – I think – the NHS … I won’t mention th variety of half wit coloured Labour MP wimmin …
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You make a good point, Fed. Like you I was fortunate in being taught a specialist law subject by the only person ever to have qualified and been called as a Barrister in that subject. If I had a sum of money that I’m thinking of right now, it would be a start in compensation for every business that has let me down where there has been a ‘senior woman’ involved.
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Brent Crude chart
There was a peak, a recent fall
now hovering around $100/barrel
That’s for May delivery
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Stew,
No doubt the prices at the pumps will be down to about 1.25 – 1.30 as quickly as they shot up.
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It’s now $1.22 higher than Feb 14th
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Stacey Dooley investigates: ‘After my third husband died, they strapped a suicide bomb to me’
https://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/article/2a93b8de-7b51-40f0-a7b8-9ec53fe97db3
Coming to a UK town near you soon
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BBC Strictly Come Dancing contestant Stacey Dooley … will the BBC mention Stacey’s visit to home town Luton and meeting Anjem Choudary (Anjem backed the remain campaign)?
“What’s the solution? If Muslim people are in the wrong and they are committing crimes… you know, no one is above the law.” – Stacey Dooley
“If the law of the land is Islamic, we will respect the law of the land. If it’s not Islamic (the law) then the law of the land, and those who make them, can go to hell quite honestly.” – Anjem Choudary
“Oh my God!” – Stacey Dooley
“Because Allah says in the Koran Q33v1 ‘Fear Allah, and do not obey the disbelievers and the hypocrites. Is David Cameron a Muslim of a disbeliever? Guys?” – Anjem Choudary
“Disbeliever!” – mumbles crowd of 5 other Muslims
“So you (a Muslim) can’t obey him (UK Law). So he (David Cameron) can go to hell.” – Anjem Choudary
“Go put on some clothes.”
– Muslim women wearing black Burqa talks to Stacey, who is wearing a pretty summer dress
https://biasedbbc.org/blog/2018/08/27/start-the-week-open-thread-27-august-2018/comment-page-5/#comment-939644
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Almost every energy discussion on the various msm’s end up with the politicians saying nuclear power will give us the independence and allow us to supply our needs and they then mention these mini or small reactors, built by Rolls Royce I believe, and that we should get about ten of them on line.
Have we started building them yet?
Have we even ordered them yet?
They take, so we are told, about ten years to get up and running but our excellent politicians all stop dead when it comes to actually building them.
Why will they not commit to giving the go ahead now instead of continuously talking about them but doing nothing.
It will be about 2032 before they come on line if they start now.
We would be self sufficient for power had they ordered them when the conservatives were voted in.
What’s stopping them.
Cancel, or at least, put on hold HS2 and use that money to get going.
They just keep talking. I wonder if they will still be just talking in 2032.
*If they have actually started building them and I’m wrong then just ignore this but all I seem to hear is the lot of them just yapping on.
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British regulators approved a Chinese-designed nuclear reactor that could be used at a plant in southeast England being developed by China General Nuclear Power Corp. The technology received design approval from the Office of Nuclear Regulation on Monday, following a process that started in 2017.7 Feb 2022
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EG
I worry that the pressure to thrash the existing reactors will be the biggest danger here in neighbouring countries …
… it was one of the reasons I sniffed corruption when the krauts shut theres – with plenty of French ones nearby – an equal ‘threat ‘ when the wind blows …
As for UK new nuclear – 2040 2050 ….?
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The sheer crushing stupidity of the political classes is a perversely bizarre thing to behold.
#CCBGB, so that applies from Slick down to his twitterer.
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Guest Who
I know I shouldn’t laugh at this kind of comedy but I can’t help myself. Pass the tissues Mrs Wright.
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“What does the energy efficiency of a house have to do with the method of *energy generation * ? “
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Gas and oil could be rationed in the UK amid ‘crazy’ price increases, MPs warned
Doesn’t matter how much they are warned about anything, the Tory party leader Princess nut nut will not allow any deviation from her Islington friends far Left agenda and as this article tells as a consequence of Green lunacy the lights WILL go out this Winter, and people will freeze to death.
https://www.aol.co.uk/news/gas-oil-could-rationed-uk-173658660.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9kYXZpZGlja2UuY29tLzIwMjIvMDMvMTYvZ2FzLWFuZC1vaWwtY291bGQtYmUtcmF0aW9uZWQtaW4tdGhlLXVrLWFtaWQtY3JhenktcHJpY2UtaW5jcmVhc2VzLW1wcy13YXJuZWQv&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAEmLCkCv67crmaPgnjEnJJMu_f5IN8H_K9_SpsK16hEul2Jsw0ddLstlTOUNAwwb05tJSgtbDbuuFlXI9I6i_t-n9-QaWqIxyqVUDrtbqgV2zpaJ1LdoZzpj2PyJhInPFRskTa5JcTU-ZeugR_s6trFvqFU3chl1JUb_zlxvl3v9
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MPs to give back the £2K pay rise?
BBC to stop demanding £159 instead heat your home?
NHS £80K diversity managers to train as nurses?
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Bill is nothing if not a loyal Beeboid, but over a cuppa his actual journalism is often worth a glance.
https://tradingaswdr.blogspot.com/2022/03/rollercoaster.html
https://tradingaswdr.blogspot.com/2022/03/drumming-up-business.html
Or roughly the Newnight audience. Frankly check of audience figures to market rate talent rates would be illuminating.
Just not via FOI.
https://tradingaswdr.blogspot.com/2022/03/framing-question.html
I might ask how many spokesweasels they employ.
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Speaking of market rates.
https://tradingaswdr.blogspot.com/2022/03/naming-names.html
Ah well, promotions all round.
Luckily Of Color and of Color licences are about to see a better return.
https://tradingaswdr.blogspot.com/2022/03/miranda.html
And mor on market rate.
https://tradingaswdr.blogspot.com/2022/03/talent-show.html
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