(0725) Still dark out there … thinking the days haven’t lengthened much in the morning … have in the evening though. (1040)

 

10. Taking a break from it all

My dad died so long ago, my mum later remarried a nice chap, all was good but … my mum was absolutely the very best mum in the whole wide world, able and quick but … but but but … she could (cough) be a handful at times, as I am … and … er … well, my stepdad had a charity run … genuine thing … taking care of war widows … everyone understood it was above board but still a necessary break for a couple hours a week.

Now, we do this real world thing here at Unherdables … you, me … but we do need a break … mine are MMutR (I’m about to phone), Toodles, Isilme, and a bevy of Xers such as this one:

Etcetera etcetera. All right, I just replied to today’s:

Not sure she does irony:

Storm? Her irony perhaps? Maybe the Starmer biz? Maybe a real, weather type storm? Best check today:

Hmmmm, can’t see anything major there … let’s try tomorrow’s:

Ah … right. Still “normal”, give or take a Gates sky. However, North Yorks gets it far worse than we do as a rule. Still … whole thing this item was a lovely break, her life nothing like ours out here in online political mayhem land … hers a nice haven from the storm. Toodles was writing about the table top they’re reversing, also about the grandchildren …. that’s wunnerful … so easy on the mind. Must write to Isilme.

9. In a similar vein … Now and Next

PMQs yesterday

8. One abridged piece from TDS this morning

There Has Been a Failure Here

“Yesterday morning’s news conference, billed as an ‘Address to the Nation’ by Sir Keir Starmer, was extraordinary.

First, a bit of context for foreign readers. As you are probably aware, on July 29th 2024, a boy just shy of his 18th birthday went on a knife-wielding rampage at a summer Taylor Swift-themed event for kids in the town of Southport, killing three little girls. This sparked days of civil disturbances across the country, chiefly targeted at mosques and ‘asylum-seeker hotels’, partly driven by rumours that the attack had been carried out by an Islamist terrorist and asylum-seeker.

In that initial period, the British regime does what it now customarily does in such situations by insisting that the attack was “not terrorism related”, and allowing only a tiny bit of information to trickle out about the perpetrator – that he was “Welsh” and a “quiet choirboy“; his name was not made public.

Everybody sensed that there was something fishy about this (it is interesting how official lies or half-truths seem to be accompanied by a veneer of falsity that one can almost smell), and sure enough we later learned that although it was strictly true that the suspect had been born in Wales he was in fact of Rwandan parentage, and that although he may at one stage have been a ‘choirboy’ he had in his possession an Al-Qaeda training manual and had been manufacturing ricin in his bedroom.

Now, the trickle of information has become a flood …

… The fault for this, in fairness, lies across the political spectrum and it is an issue that has been afflicting British governance for a very long time (at least since the days of the Iraq War). But we now I think seem to have entered a new era of cynicism, in which the mutual contempt between governing and governed is becoming naked: we know they’re concealing the truth; they know we know it; all that matters whenever there is a flare-up of public emotion is keeping a lid on the truth for long enough to allow the outrage to simmer down so that we can muddle through to the next crisis.”

The British way is not the American, with Donny storming in with EOs. Nope, it’s more a case of our reading the local rag, seeing an item on big changes … yeah yeah … but noting certain jawdropping details casually mentioned … then start the bureaucratic letters, in the stroke of a civil service pen changing all the rules, with the rejoinder to await more letters.

So, on the surface, there appears to be nothing happening at all … in reality, behind the scenes, there’s total war going on … one slip and one is gone. I’ve an analogy.

Many decades ago, on a visit to the Melbourne Cricket Ground, Derek Underwood was bowling to one of the freescoring Oz players, forget who. The Outer, where I was, was raucous, imbibed shall we say, bored, wanting action.

I was glued to the action because there was a battle royal going on … deceptive flight, thrust, parry, neither daring to make an error, the fieldsmen glued to the action, tense, ready … the crowd? Raucous, wanting “action”.

For two overs (a bowler’s spell), nothing had happened … meaning no one on the field had scored a run (in baseball, homer I suppose, touchdown in Am football). The blades of grass growing were more exciting to the eye, plus Mr. C. Gull strutting around.

That’s where we are in real life this morning, with a horror bill being introduced tomorrow in parlmt. It would mean not a lot to our American cousins, with their own issues, but here it will ruin many in this land, esp. coupled with letters already sent out, I have the first here in my in-tray. My phone just pinged from the other room … checked … “Hello, we’ve rolled over …”. Yep … for how much longer, pray tell.

Where I sit in the “sun”room here, finishing the porridge, looking out, fluffy rugs about on the floor, everything in its place, warm, coffee about to be poured … it almost makes a person silently scream … coz everything is deliriously fine about one, everything within reach, well fed, I just turned the bedding washing over on the line … yet it’s like a terminal cancer diagnosis … it’s now just a question of time … unless something can be done.

7. Some sort of op ed

Was thinking whether to mention this or stay shtum … but ustd it’s best to let readers know. On the surface, were you to come to our humble abode and surrounds, it’s bizarrely calm and quiet. For now, just now. Our perimeter defences are good, on the surface, but as MMutR points out … and he listed various vulnerabilities … ok, any professional could breach it easily but your average joe, not so much.

There was a tradesman yesterday … came into a flat some distance from here along our labyrinthine rabbit warren and he was lost … I came out and directed him, so did my neighbour. Suits us and our surroundings outside are strangely built, where various historical elements from different eras have come together … not salubrious, let us say.

Suits us … with various hubbies and other guys, of which I’m the elder statesman by a lot but a cagey bstd too, am violent under attack as they are, their women well defended and feeling safe … they’ve mentioned it. There’s a nice mood in the localised area, not one you’d have any reason to want to visit though … and clearly the army of fighting age males don’t find it fun, as it goes nowhere.

In my own abode … warm, still in the black, good food, clean … needs renovating and yet it fulfils all human needs, everything in its place … it’s almost bizarre in its seemingly disorganised, highly organised way … everything works.

Why mention all this? Well, it is in stark contrast to the DAD drop below, to the things we’re bringing to these “pages” … which looks like some sort of apocalyptic prequel, as in the WW1 “phony war” before it started. To the village idiot and to young people of the MSM, to many elderly … safe as houses, all well, friendly folk.

Into this has come govt mail, letters, in bits and pieces, changing everything, putting impossible onuses on people, inc. me … and the upshot, the reality, is that all this is going to end from March … I could well find my semi-idyllic life shut down … nay, it IS happening, not maybe. Unherdables is not like other sites, even including NOWP … should I stop, it stops too because it’s part of a complex set up we have.

In short, even though it’s a blogging idyll … the Railway Child of primroses on railway cutting banks … and it is genuinely so, not just some facade projected from a hellhole or Room 101 … it is also the most dependent on li’l ole me being present, otherwise it vanishes … just like that. The blgr blogs you see still not stolen … they go on and on … check blogrolls … ex bloggers are still there, even WP blogs … not Unherdables though I’m afraid I must say.

While it’s the least vulnerable site we have, technically, in the tavern complex … it’s also the one first to snuff it should something happen to me, personally … and it is due to happen, in slow motion. Chance it won’t …. possible, esp. if some of you fine people put in a genuine prayer for Unherdables, Nourishing, for us, me … miracles do occur imho … point of this rambling op ed though is that … just as you saw ONO stolen last year in the blink of an eye, snuffed out just like that … exactly the same can happen at HQ … all gone in the blink of an eye.

Implications for you, the patron-reader? I’d bookmark anything at HQ now, make a start on it anyway, not the HQ url per se but by you going back through slowly over the next few days, weeks, copying and pasting anything for yourself which you deem worthwhile … there’s some time left but not a lot … I’d say the Troubles start late Feb/early March, certainly by April … parallelling those in Starmerland as well.

In short, should my dealings with gummint go the way, say, they are with farmers, those with jobs, with pensions (remember Gordo), then HQ and I will be disappeared from blogging … it’s best to mentally prepare for this … in my case, with plans B, C, D ready to roll. I’d say look to your own microworld first, your family, things, plans … just be ready, ok? Maybe we’ll find a way around it all, maybe we won’t. Stay calm, be stoic.

6. DAD writes at 947, and gruesome it is too

”The wages of drugs is death.

The nighttime machine-gunning began on January 11, at the expense of a shisha bar in Avanne-Aveney, in the suburbs of Besançon. On January 15, the facade of a barber shop located in the city center (…) was shot at about fifteen times. On Saturday, January 18 in Besançon…..”