Confess I was always soft on Riley, Wolseley, Rover … old marques, even if the first is an extended Mini. Buy one? Of course, even if the turning indicator had to be switched off manually … especially (partly) because of that.
But note this, from Penseivat 👇🏻
I had a Riley Elf in the mid 60s, after having a Mini. Basically, the same badly designed car, only with a slightly larger boot (it would have been more practical as a hatchback). Mine had a tendency to eat fanbelts, which either indicated the fanbelts from the main dealer were rubbish, or their tension guides were wrong (my wife’s nylon stocking being used in one occasion to allow us to continue the journey, very slowly).Made a further mistake by swapping it for a Renault 4. Long story about that car. Please don’t show a video of how good they were, because they weren’t.
My approach is to sit it to one side and see what corroboration appears, it being a serious charge.
4. DAD at 964
a. Bayrou on immigration: “Why do you think that the entire West is struck by these issues? It is a questioning of everything that we are, we Westerners…..”
b. Bogdan Świeczkowski, Pres of the Polish Constitutional Tribunal … has accused Tusk, his cabinet, and several high-ranking members of parlmt and judiciary of acting as a criminal organization…..
c. When is a Refugee not a Refugee? When they are Palestinians, according to critics of Trump’s plan for Gaza.
Highlights for us outside the USA, inc for Toodles and me:
Loud cheering for DJT, much booing for Taylor Swift, forecast result on its head, pity for the Chief’s QB who seems a good Christian MAGA. I’ll add more here as and when … it’s 0502 just now.
For Toodles and me, the QB was an ex Alabama college player, Jalen Hurts. I’d tweeted, just into the game that I had not a clue about the teams but liked the team in green more … the underdog Eagles.
There were many American tweets saying it was Eagles vs the NFL … shall go take a look now.
1. Steve at 964
Four: Trump news … Noem and FEMA … FBI leak on ICE … more….
Three: Congress Spent Over $500 Billion in Expired Programs Last Year … Hegseth … Sacks … Wikileaks … much more…..
Two: Uke sit-rep … Trump Putin talk … more…..
One: Ban mRNA Injections in US … federal lands for oil and gas drilling … RFK Jnr. … Gaza plan alienating Arabs … more…..
Which team and I betting on? Neither. Which supporting? Quite like the green colour. Plus they seem underdogs. There’s apparently some singer there too pretending to be a virgin.
17. In a slight bind
… in that I’d like to run some memes and other lighter things late in the day but just scoured Gab and X and it’s pretty humourless. Worse would be starting Monday with all the gruesome fayre. There are two immediate issues I’ve material on … South Africa, where the ANC has gone full payback on the Boer, and Ireland, where the first “Palestinians” are about to be dumped.
With the Afrikaners, it’s complex. The Boer is the farmer and cropper, husbander … the ANC does nothing but steal and kill. Yet many Boers are asking DJT to help them stay there on their farms, not seek asylum in the States. How?
Going back to Chuckles’s days, he and haiku were in Kwazulu Natal, where I was given to ustd that Rorke’s Drift is now long forgotten. However, apparently the crime stats are almost as bad, e.g. in Durban. Maybe it’s the Oz factor but, though the steppe and hills seem wonderful down there … I can see why they’d love the land itself … just how they can stand being swamped is beyond me. Then again, I could never ustd the Raj in India. And after having almost been kidnapped in Egypt, I can’t ustd wanting to go there.
We had friends, my parents did, who were in the diamond biz in SA … never u’stood, me, what all the world-fuss was about. Also Rhodesia and Kenya. Had a think about the apartheid thing … just didn’t feel strongly one way or the other, when young … feel more strongly now.
I can’t see how the Boers can stay there much longer … do they want their families tortured and slaughtered? As for North Africa and the Arab lands … no thanks. I’m thinking the Boers would feel more at home in Queensland, more their type of people, not down south … Sydney and Melbourne sound like they’ve fallen, like London, Brummieland and Bradford. Manchester now too.
Anyway, enough of that.
16. Steve at 964
War Room snippets – interesting conversations…
a. Harvard Kimo Gandall: The Epitome Of Post-Modern Western Ideals … To Spite God
b. Professor Wax: “We Are Degrading And Debasing The Institutions Of Western Civilization.”
c. Harvard Law’s Sam Delmer Gives Assessment Of Campus Political Climate
d. Ambassador Carla Sands On Greenland’s Interest In US Involvement
15. Anomalies continue
14. Not in praise of mops
13. Steve at 964
Hearts of Oak: The Week According to .. Karli Bonne
Also over there … DoGE meltdown and Border Force results thus far..
(0915) Cunning plan, laze & gem, is to run some sort of Sunday type music next, there’ll be a filum later, jazz around 1530, we resume hostilities around 1700. (0949)
11. IYE url can be accessed in the sidebar just now (0942)
For those struggling with this … may I suggest clicking on the day in green in the sidebar, then the url? Two clicks. ☺️
10. On the subject of dates being important to individuals
… as well as to an entire country … the dates February 9th to 23rd are important to me … or at least were in the past. That fortnight contains many bdays, inc. my own, which I do not celebrate for various reasons, not least age.
There were best friends of old, two girls in there, plus Valentine’s, plus the Russian sphere Day of Men as it has become, formerly day of the armed forces, on Feb 23rd. Then a gap until March 8th’s Day of Women.
It used to be pretty packed, this fortnight, less so now … Valentine’s has dropped off my list for one. Why not celebrating the bday? No qualms about my age … what is … is … but thing was … it always brought on bad news and there’s some poised right now in ‘25 to descend like a sword of Damocles … it’s uncanny how it always seemed to wait until around now. Last time I had a birthday party was my 49th … I avoid them like the plague … ditto with funerals. Occasionally I used to go to weddings but not now.
By the way, it’s not today, I assure you, not till later in the fortnight.
9. Saw this on Quora
In The Band’s song The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, Virgil mentions May 10th but Richmond actually fell on April 2nd. So why was Old Dixie driven down on May 10th?
In my most polite, humble, tactful & respectful way, I’d like to say that, in the lyrics, Virgil was just stating facts, like him & his family starving in the winter of 1865, & that the C.S.A. Capital of Richmond, Virginia had already fallen over a month previous to him mentioning May 10th, which was a most important date to him.
Why, you may ask? Well, I’d like to point out thatthe10th of May 1865 was a very important date in the Chronology of the American Civil War because that’s the day the (Southern) Confederate States Government ceased to function or exist due to the capture of its President, Jefferson Davis & the subsequent dissolution of that same Confederate government.
At that point, almost all existing organized resistance ceased & the Southern Cause was Lost. It was seen as the final nail in the coffin, so to speak, so that day proved to be historically most significant,…and therefore, it was “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.”
Also, to greatly add to its importance, especially in Virgil’s mind, May 10th, 1865 was also the same day U.S.A. President Andrew Johnson declared the virtual end to organized hostilities between the North & South, formally ending the American Civil War.
At that date, It was also proclaimed that the belligerent rights of the rebels was at an end & that any rebels found fighting after that date were to be viewed as guerrillas, bush-wackers and/or outlaws, to be dealt with accordingly.
It’s been said that almost all the bells in the country were ringing, whether joyfully or sorrowfully, after the war weary people of America read and/or heard those announcements & proclamations, respectively, of the fall of the C.S.A. government & the formal end of the Civil War on May 10th, 1865.”
… had this among other things … think she’d been to a Vaxx oppression conference or whatever:
”In a funny way, the Saturday experience was worse. Adding to the aura of infirmity and hardship was something else: identity, stripped or unrecognised; people who’ve been labelled, shunned and, above all, excluded. Ironic, is it not? The nonpersons in the eyes of the political establishment and media elite that Orwell predicted in 1949; the only group not allowed its own community leader.”
Very similar mood to mine in Sun 7 in the last part.
7. “Religion”, incorporating Now and Next
Firstly, from inside the biblical Christian world:
“Our leaders think they can avoid addressing in the national forum systemic issues of public order arising from dangerous ideologies. Better – easier, at any rate – to leave such matters for local police and courts to deal with piecemeal.
Yet history will show that ideas, especially in religion, can result in blood and fire. In the sixteenth century Protestant bishops were burned alive outside Balliol College, and hangmen tore the guts out of Catholic priests at Tyburn.
Today we face the challenge of Islamic extremism.”
The danger is in drawing the conclusions our hardwired modern mindset demands, formed from observation from a distance of religious fanaticism … which can obscure why so many over two millennia, from scholars and other learned people, down to the lowliest Joan of Arc have adopted that position, view, in for example the hymn Amazing Grace.
There is most certainly something in there just as regenerating as a family … not an intellectual thing but more a reordering of the inner person, which has been attested countless times over the millennia and the tale is always the same. It’s a bit like the reordering of things in the U.S. just now which has had repercussions all over the world, which has briught back a feelgood factor in “decent” people, unbrainwashed.
The degree of opposition to that simple reordering … well you can see it in the demonrats and RINOs, in the slightly older than teenage female hysteria and spotty herbert, wispy bearded violence … up to the crooks at the top. It’s the calm restating of unpalatable truths … which make it easy to see that this Paula person is a wrong ‘un.
In centuries past, the synod level miscreants, the priestly class, the Wolseys, the Cromwells have kept the common man in thrall, in fear of hellfire unless paying indulgences and thus the burnings and torture have gone on and on … the examples of horror Rolf mentioned, just as with the deathcult, the murder, rape and mistreatment … which are so far from the Amazing Grace tale as to almost be on another planet. So far from tea with the vicar of a Sunday of yesteryear.
But in this modern day, with almost zero kudos in admitting a simple faith … in fact quite a bit of being shunned, plus tolerated and “humoured” by one’s own friends … why on earth would anyone put himself through that, isolating himself? Could it be that there is a kernel of truth in it? In the final analysis?
And there it is … there’s the rub and why it never dies, despite severe oppression and repression, ostracism … not unlike freedom itself really, not unlike family, joy, jollity, bonhomie … they’re nice, they lead to a feeling of safety, stability, the proper ordering of priorities, people treating others honestly and fairly, people liking the results of hard work.
Unlike the demonrat, RINO, Wokeleft sinisterati vision … which is always, always has resulted in societal division and destruction.
6. DAD drop at 964
a) A total of 110 deaths, 341 injuries and an explosion in cocaine seizures: drug trafficking continues to grow in France, as shown in 2024.
b) …but the good people of Bordeaux have found a way of stopping the drug dealing – noise ! There were about twenty of them, this Tuesday, February 4th at nightfall, to express their fed-upness.
c) We will soon be able to find yellow mealworm larvae powder on our plates. This is what the European Commission validated on January 20, 2025. A measure that should take effect on February 10.
d) That kind M. Macron has given six Mirage Jets to (The) Ukraine – how long will they last ?
5. A pundit would be derelict in his duty
… if he dd not comment on punditry from time to time. When doing your rounds, not all opinions are equal and simply experience and cynicism eventually lead to recognising a good ‘un and a nowhere or wishful. Wishfuls are fine if aligned with pro-people policy but to get to the nitty gritty, you watch out for pundits being fed good copy by those in the game … pundits such as Amuse, Publius, Cynical Publius:
“It’s great to see Americans finally systematically dismantling the Deep State. But the Deep State has many, many components and tools, some of which most people are not even aware of. I want to talk about one of those hidden components now. One of the more pernicious components of the Deep State—and something that will be very hard to defeat—is the pro bono programs of “BigLaw” firms. To see what I mean, Google the name of your favorite BigLaw firm and the words “pro bono.” You’ll soon discover that there are literally armies of highly-paid, highly-educated lawyers litigating all of the left’s favorite causes, from abortion, to deprivation of gun rights, to mutilating of children’s genitalia, to protecting illegal aliens, to you name it. When you see that some Obama-appointed federal district court judge in some insanely liberal district enjoined some Trump 2.0 initiative, invariably pro bono BigLaw lawyers are involved. (Personal anecdote: I went to law school right out of the Army and joined a BigLaw firm. After I joined, my firm proudly trumpeted that they had served as pro bono counsel for Gitmo terrorists. You know—the same terrorists who had been trying to kill me a few years earlier.) The Latin words “pro bono” mean “for good,” with an implication—in the legal context—of “for free.” And therein lies the Achilles’ heel of leftist pro bono law—it’s not “free,” not really. That “free” work is actually funded by paying clients. BigLaw first year associates bill out at around $850 an hour these days, with senior associates and partners often approaching and sometimes over $2,000 per hour. Those outrageous fees are what fund leftist pro bono litigation—ultimately it is PAYING CLIENTS who pay to promote these leftist causes. So how do we fix this? Big clients of BigLaw firms need to ask what sorts of pro bono projects these firms are involved in, and if the answer is the usual array of neo-Marxist causes, then the big client needs to take their big business and big legal fees elsewhere to a BigLaw firm not enmeshed in protecting the Deep State. The Bill Ackmans and Elon Musks of the world need to start asking these questions, and before long these firms will see what their leftist advocacy is doing to their bottom line, and necessary change will occur. But awareness is the key, hence this post.”
“Another avenue here is stockholder advocacy steering boards of directors to move their legal business to law firms not engaged in leftist causes.”
Robert Francis Cooke:
“Shareholder lawsuits for waste of corporate assets in paying legal fees that include a markup to cover the pro bono. Sounds like some MAGA lawyers could make some nice class action fees. Corporations won’t move their business- just have to negotiate fees excluding the pro bono markup. It will end fast.”
David Herrick:
“Excellent point, but the problem is that many of the legal departments at Big Law’s clients are equally woke, so I kind of doubt they will rise up in unison to demand that the firms stop subsidizing woke pro bono work. Even clients one would think should be anti-woke promote DEI.”
Mike Davis (DJT’s govt lawyer):
“The temporary-restraining order by DC U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols against the President’s USAID personnel decisions is truly lawless and dangerous. (The President cannot order U.S. officials overseas to come home within 30 days? Seriously? Judges actually think they have that power?) Nichols proves even former Clarence Thomas clerks who go DC big-law are unreliable picks for the federal bench.”
