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A good thread!!!
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It looks like Liz Truss was mentored in clothes-wearing by Margaret Curran of coat button fame.
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She seems to get more outlandish in her wear by the day.
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Pic 7: The stuff of nightmares!
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The kind that leave you unable to sleep for a week!
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Pic 23: do they still have Post Offices?
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Ha ha… There are a few left, but like banks… only a very few!
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Brilliant, thanks for this, needed the laugh.
Prof John at Talking up Scotland announced yesterday he’s giving up the blog he writes. It’s become too much for him and that’s understandable, but really saddened to lose his excellent debunking of the so called media, and their propaganda assault on Scotland.
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That is a great shame.
He writes soon superb posts.
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Ah, your whole post cheered me up no end, Tris. I’m not sure which one I liked best.
After reaffirming life with your blog yesterday, I hereby award your the Freeman Prize for Excellence in Public Service (no members of the House of Lords may be nominated or apply without a plausible explanation).
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Goodness. Munguin is over the moon now and strutting about like he’s won the lottery.
He’s also glad it cheered you up.
Lord knows we all need that at the moment.
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wee wummin “that Liz Truss is Foreign Secretary and she cannae even tell the difference tween the Baltic and Black Seas!”
2nd wee wummin “Aye that yin disnae ken her Ars fae er Elbe!”
“Why should you never break up with a goalie? Because he’s a keeper!”
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Boom Boom!! 🙂
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Liz Truss: I’m going to Mock-ba for peace talks. What should I wear?
Advisor: MOCK-BA !! Really. Where the f*cks that?
Liz Truss: Good idea, I’ll wear the fox hat.
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🙂 🙂
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Apparently Boris is unveiling HIS plan for freedom day
(no not snp victory of Indy 2 although he is working hard for it).
They even supposedly let Chris witty and Patrick Valance out
of the Tower of London to give him support or get sent back to
the tower.
Learn to live with Covid he calls it, I prefer learn to die with Covid
he is going to cut funding for saving lives, the issue is this just for
Tory areas, Ooops I meant England or is it UK wide.
How many of US are going to die for the Save Boris Campaign.
All will be revealed later by our masters, who of us will live or who will die
they are going to divide us into two lines.
Tory voting Areas in line one (and live) and others into line two and who
will learn to die with Covid.
You lot call Boris and his Brexit, ERG,NET ZERO Cohorts clowns and like
to take the pish…
These People are not for me funny any more, if ever they were(probably not )
They used the Technique of vilification and mockery back in the 1930s and looked
where that ended.
Boris and his ilk are not funny Ha ha they are dangerous and evil and need to be
confronted as such.
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No. I don’t think he’s funny.
Not in the least.
I’ve yet to see a doctor on social media, say that is is a good idea. The ones I know personally have said it’s madness. The virus will be allowed to run riot.
Sure we need to understand that Covid will be with us for a long time to come, and we need to see that by and large it is getting less severe as it mutates. That is a reasonable natural pattern for a virus, as I understand it.
But he is rushing like a bull at a red gate.
I don’t know if his medical officers have now approved this, but they have been immensely quiet about it thus far.
It seems to me that the hard right section of his parliamentary party (the ERG, led by Steve Baker since Marc Francois was forced to stand down) want this to happen. And as there are about 100 of them and he only has a majority of around 80… upsetting them is not an option or he’s out on his ear.
For many people it will be a great relief to be able to go about their lives with no restrictions. But for older, less well people, or people who have immuno-compromised family members and friends, it will be a nightmare.
What has amazed me throughout this is that the exact same people who were proudly boasting that we can take anything Johnnie Foreigner can throw at us… the Blitz, Dunkerque, great British values, etc, are the ones who, when asked to wear a mask, fall apart!
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The numbers have dropping like a stone here for some weeks now and, as a result, pretty much every restriction has now been lifted. All that remains is masks on public transport and in clinics. I guess these will be gone, too, when the graphs hit the bottom of the curve. I can imagine that by May or June there will be no mask rules at all.
It really does feel like the end is in sight.
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Are you still able to test? If you test positive do you have to isolate?
Let’s hope the end is in sight. There can be very few people who enjoy this.
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Forgot about that. It’s still 5 days self-isolation if you test positive but no need to isolate just because someone you had contact with tested positive.
There are still test centres all over the city but I supsect many of these will start closing down because the testing requirement for entry into a bar or restaurant or event is over.
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They are going to start charging for tests in England… I heard £20 for 6 tests!
So poorer people won’t be able to test before they go to see their gran… or their mate, who has a kid with cancer…
It will be good for some, but seriously life limiting for others.
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I second that, Niko (please don’t drop dead from the shock).
Boris is a truly nasty piece of work, and his nasty little pals are just as nasty, if not nastier (I’m looking at you, Priti Patel). No wonder Putin helps fund the Tories through his nasty little oligarch pals and their many money-laundering channels in the City. Still, the Tories have not exactly stayed bought, at least over the Ukraine situation.
I see that Putin is waving the ethnic oppression card as grounds for invading / annexing the Russian-speaking enclaves in eastern Ukraine. Maybe he thinks that people won’t notice that that’s precisely the strategy Hitler used over the Sudetenland – or he just doesn’t care, because he’s not talking to the likes of us, he’s talking to the Russian / Ukrainian equivalents of Trump’s MAGA guys and gals, the UK’s readers of the Express and the Mail, and in Scotland those who see nothing wrong with Nigel Farage, Jayda Fransen and Manky Jaikit Man.
Back then in the 1930s there was a convenient German-speaking party of the far right in the Sudetenland who were all too willing to sign up to Nazi ideology. Similarly, the local leaders putting the Russian-speakers onto buses for evacuation to Russia proper in the face of a putative Ukrainian fascist attack, unless they’re males of an age to serve as soldiers, is terrific for local propaganda purposes: fear and panic drive people to fight or flight, not cool-headed analysis. In that light, and given that sociopaths – I use the word loosely – have no scruples or morals, false flag operations are not just possible options in the playbook, they’re to be actively expected: if you can’t find a pretext, a casus belli, make one, and as heart-stopping as possible – shelling a kindergarten, maybe.
The propaganda from Moscow and in the Lukhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics – such good Soviet Empire names, those – is that Ukraine is ruled by fascists, which is particularly rich coming from Putin and his pals in Ukraine. (Ukraine is a far from perfect democracy, by the way; no one is denying that.) Naturally, that particular propaganda trope plays particularly well among an older generation steeped in not just the truth but the propaganda of the Great Patriotic War.
There, like here, like everywhere, the older generations are more small-c conservative – and in the former Soviet Empire, that means the same sort of delusional, rose-tinted hankering after the Soviet days as we find in the people who came up with the idea of Empire 2.0.
Also about the propaganda… regardless of who it was exactly who first said it way, way back when, it remains true that if you can get people to believe absurdities, you can get them to commit atrocities. At least the Ukraine situation is not being dismissed out of hand as unimportant by the Great British Regime and Meeja Machine, unlike the situation in September 1938, with Chamberlain’s dismissal of Hitler’s annexation of the Sudetenland as “a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing”.
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It seems that President Macron had some success a couple of weeks ago in finding some sort of common ground with Putin.
Then Truss went and made an ass of herself by knowing nothing about the geogrqaphy of Russia.
Macron in still working at trying to avoid bloodshed, but I fear that in the end there will be.
Naturally Britain will wish to be in there playing at being important.
I say send Truss in on a white steed ably assisted by Rees Mogg in full armour.
At a push they could be led by William Saxe Coburg.
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The UK’s loss of power is so obvious. Biden, Macron, Scholz have all had personal meetings and calls with Putin. All the UK got was two diplomatic gaffes in a row with someone who was not Putin.
Diplomatic disasters have become a thing for the UK. First, it was Theresa May not reading the mood of the room at a EU summit. Now, it’s Truss making a fool of herself. UK politics is so performative these days that nothing is ever done behind closed doors using old-fashioned diplomacy. My head still spins at the thought that Truss used the threat of global conflict to begin her campaign to become PM. Crazy times.
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Of course, the EU is a large, powerful and rich grouping, Leaders like Macron have a measure of respect, as did Merkel. Scholz is stepping into some big shoes but he has the economic might of Germany behind him.
Johnson can’t be respected by international leaders because he acts the buffoon all the time.
It’s all a joke to him. The rich boy who never really had to work.
He’s never serious about anything, and he’s always inadequately prepared for everything.
He seems to treat the job as a joke, as he has all his life, whether it was taking a lead in a school play and not learning lines, welcoming, or not welcoming working class students to Oxford, making up stories for newspapers, lying to his party leader about yet another sexual dalliance and abortion, telling the head of state lies to get an illegal prorogation of Parliament when he knew he would love a vote, signing international treaties and then breaking them… or talking about Greek mythology, Kermit the frog or Peppa Pig when he should be addressing real issues.
He can’t be trusted to know what he’s talking about, because that means reading up, which he never does, and he can’t be trusted not to lie though his backside because he is an habitual liar.
And for the most part, nor can his senior cabinet members. I’m desperately trying to think of one who had even the slightest gravitas.
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It’s such a shame, really. The UK of 6 years ago would have had something to offer to help solve the crisis. But today? Nobody is interested in what the UK has to say because it has no power or influence.
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That’s what they wanted… to make thier own decisions, be their own country.
I suppose it didn’t occur that, really, without the EU, and with a dodgy relationship with the USA, they were about as important as Andorra.
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Andorra, Tris? Really? I’d have gone for San Marino.
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Ahhh, Ed. Ever the republican! 🙂 (note small r)
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Putin is a violent wee thug along with his Kronies in the Kremlin.
The B/S story that they are having to attack Ukraine to stop NATO expansion is just an excuse to try and resurrect Greater Russia aka Soviet Union.
Their calculations that the West is at a weak point and thus unlikely to be able to stop them may well be correct but no matter what happens from now on,the whole world is going to see Putin for what he is.
He clearly now sees Europe as Russia’s play ground and am pretty sure that he has done a deal with China that it can have the Pacific,so long as they leave Russia alone as Hitler did with the Japanese.
Absolutely,straight out of Hitler’s play book for annexing the Sudetenland and we all know what happened after that.
Dark times ahead,and for what reason?
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If you don’t hear from me again you can assume that Putin reads your blog.
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Munguin will send food parcels, Bringiton, Siberia should reach you.
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Similarly, Bringiton, if you hear I’ve popped my clogs after being exposed to some sort of nerve agent, radioactive substance, or possibly ricin, you will immediately draw the correct conclusion.
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Munguin would have to have a word if Munguinites started to disappear en masse.
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I was just listening to my primary source of American news, MSNBC (I’ve finally found a way to get it without having to switch my VPN to the States – yay!), and there they were saying what I did in that comment above. Could it be that the American news media use this blog as a source of ideas? If so, shame on them for not properly crediting me! (I want residuals, so I do, lots and lots of lovely residuals, and the rest of you must surely be due some too.)
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Munguin wants his cut!
70% is his usual.
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35%. I’d settle for 52.5%.
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LOL!!!!
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Got to feel sorry for the Mogster living in a 17th century house. Would’ve thought he’d be able to afford a new one.
That wallpaper????? Certainly makes a statement, but not a good one.
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Frighteningly tasteless…
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He’s put up that wallpaper for a bet… has to be, no one in their right mind would decorate a room like that.
8 is brilliant – says it all in one image.
The guy on the bike in 14 is in for a hard landing – he’s already lost the swinging arm from the rear suspension…
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Probably got that Wallpaper from Carrie’s mate at a discount!!!
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Doesn’t look like he’s got a chain either.
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That room would induce a migraine. I would hate to see what the rest of the house is like.
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I wonder if the maids have to wear floor length dresses and white caps and the butler has a morning suit and winged collar.
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Into the Covid valley of Death The English Torys want to march
not sure I and want to follow…
Or as history shows with the Scots, Cymru, and Irish in
the front line
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Just been into central Edinburgh. Lots and lots of clackety suitcases coming in…
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a Cabinet meeting?
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Maybe they are trying to escape the Covid onslaught that is coming their way…
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“Tourists! Faaahsands of ’em…!”.
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Odd time to come on holiday to Scotland though…
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No 9 – When can we fit stopcocks on the gas and water we send south of the border and a big off-switch for the electricity cable.
It’s time we got some money for these commodities.
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I don;t see why the government of Scotland, which charges us for providing water, should supply it free of charge to privately owned profit making water companies.
I hope that doesn’t happen.
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Every day the DC cable between Hunterston and Anglesey delivers One GigaWatt to englandlan and they charge for sending it to their network.
Athird of the Gas being burnt in their CCGT stations comes from the St Clair field, West of Shetland and transported bt gas tanker without being landed in Scotland.
The uk government gives the oil companies a tax discount.
They’re picking our pockets and charging us for the theft.
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The Scottish oil seems to be to be the most mismanaged project ever.
Look at what Norway did by comparison.
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O/t and absolutely not funny : England to end free Covid testing not just for asymptomatic people but also if you have symptoms. Yes if you have symptoms you need to pay for a test to confirm.
And that means no Barnet consequentials so the devolved nations will either have to do the same OR find the money from another part of the fixed block grant.
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IN the next post there is a letter from Scotland Wales and Northern Ireland to Gove… It seems that the prime minister doesn’t bother communicating with the lesser countries’ leaders…
This is stupid on stilts. Yes, we need to wind it all down slowly, but this idiotic notion of trusting the great British people ‘s common sense has been proved before to be misguided.
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