253 Responses to Start the week 21st August 2023

  1. Flotsam says:

    I have a Scouser friend. He has been a lifelong Labour Party/Union man, a true Socialist. I asked him what he thought of the current Labour Party and Smarmer. Interestingly he said he was going to vote Green!

    I notice that Smarmer has jumped on the bandwagon again with the Letby non appearance for sentencing situation. There he is on TV, the hollow man of straw, saying that defendants should be compelled to appear for sentencing. Funny that, anyone might think he never had anything to do with the criminal justice system.

       20 likes

    • Fedup2 says:

      Flotsam – interesting that one of the comrades has fallen for Operation Green Crap – but I suppose wall to wall doom and gloom propaganda is bound to have an effect on various types .
      Fortunately for red labour – one party states like Liverpool need only worry about the Sinn Fein IRA vote ….

      As for the idea of compelling defendants to have to listen to victim statements – unless they ‘get off ‘ on them – why bother .

      The court is a game . If the defendent meant to sob uncontrollably to placate relatives and the public over the evil they’ve done ? No .

      Would it be better to move the court to the cell ? Whatever …

      For some reason this country is going to keep Letby alive on the tax payers dime for maybe 40 or 50 years – whereas a quick minute on the rope would save a lot of bother and expense .

      I guess letby will be a celebrity in the prison system wil lots of friends and enemies … someone will surely take a ‘cell picture ‘ to sell to the Mail on one of those mobile phones prisoners / prison officers are not meant to have …

      As for Starmer going for an easy ‘win’ – all need do is keep his mouth shut …

      BTW this time next week ULEZ will cover the whole of Londonistan – coming your way soon …..

         17 likes

      • Flotsam says:

        I thought the case of the Green converted Labour man interesting because Smarmer has come off the Green pedestal a bit recently. It’s partly because of the ULEZ influence on the lost by-election and Smarmer wishes to be as unaligned to any identifiable policies as possible. It’s also the case that Smarmer isn’t a true Socialist like Corbyn. There are indications that the next GE may not be the cake walk Smarmer wants it to be.

        Air quality in Scouse land may be a very difficult matter for the Greens. The shipping using the busy docks belch out enormous amounts of pollution, I’ve seen ships billowing out masses of black smoke. How controlling air quality will be done I don’t know. Going ULEZ for road transport will be like pi$$ing in the wind.

           11 likes

        • Fedup2 says:

          Flotsam – like Blair – starmer – is a barrister so has only 2 true beliefs – 1 himself 2- money . I’m obviously hoping for a chaotic hung parliament to temper what could be a truly loony left rad labour government which will tax anyone with any money even more than blue labour did .

          If the economy tanks a year later than I predicted the last thing anyone will be caring about is air quality and green crap – which surely must be recognised as a vote loser amongst grown ups now ….
          ….
          As for blue labour – just so so deserve oblivion – if sunak thinks pretending he hit his ‘promises ‘ will keep him in power he doesn’t deserve the green card …

             16 likes

  2. G says:

    Why can we not see the surface of the other side of the Moon?
    I imagine everybody here will be able to answer that question without any problem. Cos we cannot see through the Moon.

    I heard the item before the 0800 news on Toady this morning concerning Prostate Cancer detection by MRI. It is being suggested that this process is new. It is not. I had an MRI decades ago (at my suggestion) which resulted in much amusement from the consultant involved. Private clinics in London have been offering the MRI analyses’ equally, for decades. But there is a major problem with the MRI analysis for some. That could be ‘some’ or in fact, ‘many’ in practice.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/health-66507893

    I imagine the BBC, before reporting on this topic, would have ascertained any drawbacks or negative points on this ‘New’ process and included them in its reporting by their “Medical Expert”. But no, needless to say. Could that be a bias? I’m content to think of the following as a typical, ‘Bias by Omission’ typical of our Worlds Most Trusted Broadcaster or, pathetic, inadequately balanced reporting.

    When you are interviewed before a MRI, a questionnaire needs you to identify what illnesses you have had in the past or operations. Nothing is said. Then you glide seamlessly into the machine. I always request a full copy of any reports and/or results. I have done this since realising that overwhelmingly you cannot trust the medical profession when, in 1999, they sent me home with a bottle of Gaviscon after two or three heart/angina attacks resulting later, being rushed off for an extended stay in the Coronary Care Unit of the local hospital and Triple By-Pass shortly after. I kept that bottle of Gaviscon for years, unopened as a ‘fond’ memory. I digress.

    My MRI report disclosed the MRI machine could only see half of my prostate due to the “Artefact” obscuring the MRI. The idea is to eventually screen all men 50 – 75 and with blacks, from 45. But hey, what else normally happens to a large proportion of the population between 50 and 75? That’s right: hip replacements resulting in the “Artefact”. If like me, you’ve had both replaced, you are simply f**k*d as far as MRI’s and Prostrates are concerned. But, ‘Hey BBC, thanks for perhaps giving some listeners to your deceit, some short-lived hope until they discover the truth.

       15 likes

  3. TrickCyclist says:

    A joke by Lorna Rose Treen has been voted the funniest at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Oh my gosh, it’s so poor I won’t even repeat it here. Click on the link if you dare, the top ten are no better.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-66569215

    Even the Mekon was a funnier Treen than Lorna Rose.

       19 likes

    • Fedup2 says:

      Trick – I’d do the courtesy / good manners thing and thank you for putting up the link . But I suppose that sort of Christmas cracker humour would appeal to the woke kidults who look around to see if it is okay to ‘laugh ‘ ….

      Just think – that rich seem of music hall – working persons clubs – that raised now long dead comedians – is all just – gone …
      They were laughing then – they’re not laughing now …. ©️

         21 likes

    • Non Snowflake says:

      This is what happens when everything is infested by wokism. Every “joke” there is woeful, or should that be wokeful. Nothing edgy or controversial, no clever word play. If they were in christmas crackers I wouldn’t even read them out loud.

      I could reel off about 20 one-liners which are all funnier or cleverer than those.

         21 likes

    • MarkyMark says:

      THE JOKE

      The novel opens with Ludvik back in his hometown in Moravia for the first time in years, startled to recognize the woman cutting his hair, though neither acknowledges the other. He reflects on the joke that changed his life in the early 1950s over the next several chapters of flashback. Ludvik was a dashing, witty, and popular student who, like most of his friends, supported the still-young Communist regime. During their summer break, a girl in his class wrote to him about “optimistic young people filled through and through with the healthy spirit” of Marxism; he replied caustically, “Optimism is the opium of mankind! A healthy spirit stinks of stupidity! Long live Trotsky!”

      The girl, under pressure, shared the contents of the letter with others in the Party at school, who did not find it funny. Commissions were convened to investigate Ludvik, who remained defiant, culminating in a plenary session — led by his peer, Pavel Zemanek — in which he was unanimously expelled from the Party and from the college. At the wedding of his old friend Jaroslav, whom he had once encouraged to revive Moravian folk music under the Party banner, Ludvik found that his stance toward that revival had turned bitter.

      Having lost his student exemption, he was drafted into the Czech military where alleged subversives formed work brigades, and spent the next few years working in the mines at a labor camp in Ostrava.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Joke_(novel)

         12 likes

    • MarkyMark says:

      “Meet Achmed the Dead Terrorist” | Spark of Insanity | JEFF DUNHAM

      …………………..

      “It’s mindboggling how the legal system can send a guy who is obviously making a joke about Nazis to prison, but they cant seem to arrest actual Nazis”

         10 likes

    • chancygardner says:

      I read out the same article to my other half, who couldn’t believe how weak it was. Andrew Lawrence made pretty disparaging comments recently about this overpriced wokefest. He was spot on.

         7 likes

  4. G says:

    Pug,

    He’s aiming to become the Premier of Paki land, mark my words.

       3 likes

  5. Up2snuff says:

    TOADY Watch #2 – there are calls but not for the BBC’s ignorance to be improved

    The BBC are still obsessed with LaLetby and no doubt the BBC will add their voices to those calling for a regulatory body – not withstanding the recent failures of the Criminal Cases Review Commission, the Crown Prosecution Service and Liberty – for Hospital Managers to be part of a regulatory or professional body in the wake of the Letby Trial and verdict.

    I am astonished at the BBC’s ignorance: there is already a body for managemnt, whether within the NHS or not. It is called the Chartered Managment Institute. Back when I was a lad it wasn’t a Chartered body but HMQE2 must have confered that on the Institute when I wasn’t looking. I am hereby calling for OFCOM to regulate the BBC’s state of ignorance considerably better than they do at present.

       17 likes

    • MarkyMark says:

      Following the 2010 United Kingdom general election, the UK Government under the Cameron–Clegg coalition announced plans to curb public spending through the abolition of a large number of quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisations (quangos). This was styled in the national press as a “bonfire of the quangos”,[1] making reference to Girolamo Savonarola’s religiously inspired Bonfire of the Vanities (“falò delle vanità”).[2][unreliable source?]

      On 23 May 2010, Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne unveiled a £500 million plan to reduce the budget deficit by abolishing or merging many quangos. The cuts and closures received criticism in some quarters,[3] but was generally welcomed by the business community.[4] A decade later in 2021, the UK Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee claimed in a report that the reforms “failed to spark” and that the Cabinet Office has “not been enforcing the code for public appointments”.[5]

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_UK_quango_reforms

         5 likes

      • G says:

        MM,

        “…..the UK Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee claimed in a report that the reforms “failed to spark” and that the Cabinet Office has “not been enforcing the code for public appointments”.

        If I had the technical skill, I’d import here Richard Burton’s vocals to the ‘War of the Worlds’ by Jeff Wayne:

        With that rich voice: “Who would have believed…….”

           8 likes

        • Fedup2 says:

          Nut nuts mates – rishi s mates – all mates … truss … no mates – just corrupt honours — her goldfish is to get an OBE….

             10 likes

  6. MarkyMark says:

    “It’s sick and most of us are tired of it.”

    Douglas Murray Completely DISMANTLES BLM Race Hustler’s Narrative

    “Why don’t they ask for an apology from the African kings that sold them.”

       21 likes

  7. JohnC says:

    2014 – BBC lauding a female oil-minister and using it 100% for the feminist agenda:
    Nigeria’s growing number of female oil bosses
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-29127436

    “We are there not because we are women. We are there because of our competence as managers.”

    Yet as surveys make clear, women managers are still in the minority in the world’s oil and gas companies. Laura Manson-Smith, a consulting partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers, says the representation picture is dismal.’

    Roll on a few years and oh dear!. Any and all talk of her being a trailblazing woman who is as good as any man have strangely disappeared:

    Nigeria’s ex-oil minister Diezani Alison-Madueke charged with bribery in the UK
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-66582585

    ‘Nigeria’s former oil minister Diezani Alison-Madueke has been charged with bribery offences in the UK.’

    ‘She is suspected of accepting financial rewards for awarding multi-million dollar oil and gas contracts.’

       15 likes

  8. Guest Who says:

    Surkeer says a lot, usually every 5 minutes on twitter in lieu of thinking.

    What is unsurprising is The BBC ‘analysis’ appears to credulously copying and pasting it.

       9 likes

    • Guest Who says:

      And then of course there is #prasnews out of la-la land.

      #CCBGB

         10 likes

    • JohnC says:

      I could see 3 headlines referring to politicians on the UK politics page.

      1. The smarming over Starmer you just linked
      2. No backsliding on workers’ rights plans, says Labour’s Angela Rayner

      and finally one about a Tory:
      3.Nadine Dorries has ‘abandoned’ voters says council

      Two positive for Labour and one negative at the Tories.

      It happens all the time and it’s beyond ridiculous. OFCOM you are a disgrace.

         20 likes

    • Flotsam says:

      Neil Oliver described Starmer as being as empty as a cast off snakeskin.

      Pretty spot on I’d say

         18 likes

  9. Dickie says:

    Maoui fires:

       5 likes

    • tomo says:

         5 likes

      • kingkp says:

        Will people wake up to the existential threat they are now facing? They will murder billions to achieve their goal.
        “The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.”
        In the next few months you have a choice to make. Choose wisely.

           7 likes

      • Thoughtful says:

        Wouldn’t you think the evil Ex President Obama who was born in Hawaii and who owns a holiday home there would intervene to increase the paltry payments to the families affected?
        Each family receives something like $700 whilst the illegal aliens who cross the Southern Border are handed a $2200 bonus on registration.

        Obama doesn’t care about Hawaii though he demolished the local landmark and iconic landmark Magnum PI house to build a wall for his estate.

           17 likes

  10. Guest Who says:

    https://x.com/mwendling/status/1694040336647991632?s=61

    Wendy’s audience reach is as impressive as his impartiality.

       3 likes

  11. MarkyMark says:

    Today and World at One
    BBC Radio 4, Monday 8 October 2018
    Today and World at One both examined the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report which urges limiting temperature rises to no more than one and a half degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. On some (but not all) occasions we inadvertently referred to this as “1.5 per cent” rather than “1.5 degrees” in the course of our coverage. We apologise for the error.

    10/10/2018

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/helpandfeedback/corrections_clarifications/corrections_2018/

       4 likes

  12. BRISSLES says:

    Families resort to placing cameras in the rooms of their elderly relatives in care homes to check for possible abuse, so perhaps NHS Trusts should install cctv in neonatal units to check on staff which would reassure parents.

    Basically we’re stuffed at both ends of the age spectrum when it comes to care.

       14 likes