Category Archives: Uncategorized

Sunday [11 to 15]

(1103) Nice time, elevenses. (1123)

 

15. Trooble at t’X platform


14. Moo corner


13. The rundown Royal Navy


12. Quite a few today on feminism


11. TPA promo in their newsletter

“Classic TPA research like the Quango Rich List revealed how 1,472 quangocrats had received over £100,000 in 2023-24, while Big Spending Projects Gone Wronguncovered billions of pounds of waste and years of delays to projects run by quangos. Elsewhere, Members of the Board exposed 285 quango board members sitting on more than one board and one person sitting on nine, while our Quango Database laid bare the true scale of the quango state.”

Sunday [6 to 10]

(0922) Morning all again. No Moo just now, hope she’s resting up. (0929)

 

10. Put the pieces together bit by bit


9. The iniquity of inheritance tax


8. What it’s about


7. Fluoride and aluminium


6. In case you missed DAD’s 1364:2

“Royal Grifty latest. King Charles US Trip to be over shadowed by Scandal at 10 Downing Street. Sir Keir Starmer’s former chief of staff Morgan McSweeney has been summoned to appear before the Foreign Affairs Committee next week amid the Lord Peter Mandelson vetting scandal.”

Sunday [1 to 5]

(0629) Morning all. Health update … I’m all right but dodged a bullet … it only reinforces all the precepts and practices which keep a person alive and stay away from those which run down and kill. Not particularly wonky but very, very careful all the same. Have a good Sunday. (0815)

 

5. How do you rate on these?


4. Steve at 1364

  • Detroit Thieves Destroy 75 Fire Hydrants in Just 48 Hours, Stealing $600 Metal Parts and Leaving Firefighters Without Water for Emergencies
  • CBS News Visits the Southern Border – Is Stunned to Find No One is There Anymore
  • Air Force Veteran Died in an ‘Accidental’ Drug Overdose Just Months After Agreeing to Testify Before Congress About Secret Government UFO Crash Retrieval Programs
  • US Military Build Up Detected In UAE’s Dhafra Air Base
  • Exchange Of Strikes: Russia Launched 666 Missiles And Drones At Ukraine, Ukraine Attacked The Urals
  • WHO Emergency Use Listing scheme is designed to override national vaccine approval processes while taking no responsibility
  • A daily ritual for heart health: Science says tea and chocolate are far more than just comfort food
  • Meta-Analysis Reports Associations Between Heavy Smartphone Use and Structural Brain Changes
  • Users claiming to be Iranian Intelligence Services are recruiting Britons on Telegram to cause chaos on London’s streets
  • Much more.

3. World Penguin Day


2. DAD at 1364

a) France. After five months, the Saint-Polycarpe church closed its doors this Friday, April 24. The unaccompanied minors had to return to the Chartreux camp, as no other solution was available….

b) France, Tomblaine (54): The nursing board has authorised healthcare workers to stop going to a certain neighborhood. A repeat offender, convicted and fined, continues to harass and threaten them.

c) USA. Here’s Why $96 Million Worth Of Electric Buses Sit Idle Across South Florida.

d) The EU. On April 17, the press revealed that the Élysée Palace is pressing the European Commission to revise the guidelines of the Digital Services Act (DSA) in order to broaden the definition of ‘disinformation’, particularly during election periods.

1. This was at Lord Toby’s site this morning

“We are about to witness an implosion in British politics with a real risk that we will reach entirely the wrong conclusion. Keir Starmer is already a lame duck Prime Minister but – like many who hold that office – he is stubborn and thus likely to stagger on until the untenability of his position is punched into him by his Parliamentary colleagues.

Starmer’s political obituary will read that he misled Parliament (or at best was economical with the truth), that he ran a No. 10 operation that was out of control and alienated many of his own MPs, that his judgement on the big decisions he was actually willing to take (few in number) was deeply flawed and that his unpopularity with the British public led his party to electoral oblivion….”

It’s quite possible to identify stances, reactions from pundits which identify their own predilections, their own refusal to see … and there is no fool like an old fool who flatly refuses to see. Such things are exacerbated by, for example, the M25 bubble, by northern city bubbles, by town and country.

Take, for example, GB News which project’s straight Reform sensibilities … no reality please, we’re staying in our Alex woman comfort zone … Rupert to these people is gauche, rough, rural … way too much reality. Or is seen as a closet Tory (landed).

Middle-class people, esp. southern women, vastly prefer a nicely nice style, nothing blunt trauma please … sleepwalking into a Reform govt which was anointed long ago by the deep state … kabuki theatre, melodrama, with Starmer blacker than black and Nige with the numbers, tailoring policy to suit the latest crisis and undercutting the main opposition to them … Restore.

And so the Old Britain sleepwalks to oblivion, hankering for an ex-Britain in which no one has the wherewithal to restore it. Unless something jolts the middling normies … something like the Falklands perhaps?

Saturday [11 till close of play]

(1533) Afternoon all. Situation’s this … had a bit of a turn earlier and am still in it. Blogging would be out, except the sshots are ready to load, so easy enough. That’s going to be it for today. Every so often, I’ll post a further item, till later. MMutR is aware and we are in phone contact.

 

24. How’s your eyesight?


23. Xer using moniker Lord Miles

“I paid £73 for a 1st class return train in England. The economy class was £20. Upon entering the train, I found out that neither outbound or return train had any 1st class carriages. Spoke to some supervisor or whatever at the ticket office and apparently they have removed 1st class carriages from the route I used. They offered me a refund on the difference between economy and 1st class with an apology. Fair enough.”


Commenter wrote: “You should use http://realtimetrains.co.uk next time to see if the train service has 1st class, which is very useful in and around London when trains with a 1st class section get put on routes where the 1st class is declassified (you get to sit in 1st class at no extra cost).”

Why would you do that in the first place? The sort of people in economy these days, from “guests” of the country to bratty kids. I did travel 1st everywhere a bit over three decades ago (if it was available) … in Europe too. Sometimes it was more pleasant to go through to economy.

22. Some dates in history

“John Jacob Astor IV, Benjamin Guggenheim, Isidor Straus, all opposed a central bank and the creation of the Federal Reserve, they were killed on the Titanic. The White Star Line’s RMS Olympic had had a major collision with HMS Hawke in 1911, sustaining damage to its left side, plus other minor damage. JP Morgan, who funded and built the Titanic, canceled his voyage at the last moment, as did his friend Milton Hershey, who later expanded his food empire.”

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to corroborate as much of that as you can.

At the 1910 meeting (Jeckyl Island) to set up the Fed, participants included:

  • Nelson Aldrich: Republican Senator and chairman of the National Monetary Commission.
  • Paul Warburg: Naturalized German banker representing Kuhn, Loeb & Co. who directed the proceedings.
  • Frank Vanderlip: President of the National City Bank of New York (Rockefeller-associated).
  • Henry Davison: Senior partner of J.P. Morgan Company.
  • Charles Norton: President of the First National Bank of New York.
  • A. Piatt Andrew: Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Department.
  • Benjamin Strong: Represented J.P. Morgan and became the first Governor of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (Note: Some sources list him, others focus on the key six above).
  • Arthur Shelton: Aldrich’s private secretary

21. Two conflicting reports

https://news.usni.org/2026/04/20/usni-news-fleet-and-marine-tracker-april-20-2026

Just hours after the United States reaffirmed its neutrality in the Falklands dispute, the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz has arrived in Argentine territorial waters at the personal request of President Milei. Milei has now issued an emergency decree for joint naval exercises with the US right off the Falklands coast.

20. Did I say last one?

… could not go past this:

19. Last I think for this evening


18. No new Moo up on X

… plus not up to it. Those of the praying kind might spare one if you can see your way clear.

17. What’s oncogenic when it’s at home?

It’s Vox, url in blogrolls.


16. This one was curious

Map of Britain, with heads of wolves all over it and caption … the whole country wants them to win. I’m out of touch with football so checked:


Also, Wolves were playing Spurs. Uh huh … understood. Spurs won 1 nil.

15. Chagos … it gets worse


14. Moo corner


13. Apparently she was badmouthing the Cross of St George


12. For your convenience


11. Poor Ireland

Sat Mat

 

“A man is released from jail after serving 12 years for a murder he didn’t commit. Determined to seek revenge on those responsible for his imprisonment, he at first shuts himself away in a deserted barge on the Thames Estuary where he is kept under police surveillance and hounded by pressmen after a story. Only a pathetic refugee girl is slowly able to get through to him.”

Wiki:

The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: “The story of The Long Memory is one of improbable if ingenious contrivance; one might have expected a fast and fairly exciting melodrama to have been made from it. The director, however, has chosen a slow, slightly portentous and fairly inflexible style with which to frame his events; he has spot-lighted characters and motivations and, by doing so, exposed them. For the truth is that the people are superficially and unconvincingly drawn, and further handicapped by some undistinguished acting. The attempt at a Quai des Brumes (1938) atmosphere barge setting, the outcasts’ shack, the love affair of the embittered man and the pathetic refugee – appears strained and unreal. Some good small-part acting (by Vida Hope, Thora Hird, Geoffrey Keen and Harold Lang) and the excellent location work in and around Gravesend are not enough to disguise a confected intrigue among wooden characters. There are obviously intelligent talents at work, but they are misapplied.”[13]

Screenonline wrote, “visually it is an extraordinary film, which makes exciting use of the desolate landscape around the Thames estuary” and which is “uncompromising in its treatment of human suffering and injustice.”[14]

Saturday [7 to 10]

(1108) Elevenses, folks. Cunning plan is that I must head off just after 1200, so there’s time for this post, I have to have lunch, shall throw in today’s first film and then catch you later. Had a quick look at MDave, Toods, other droppers … not sure I need re-run those just now. (1120)

 

10. The Jutes

Screenshot

9. Moo corner


8. Reza Pahlavi


7. Drug pushers

Second Mink de Ville song

 

This follows yesterday’s Venus of Avenue D and will conclude tomorrow with Just Your Friends.

Point of this mini-series is not that it’s the greatest music ever … it’s very good as far as this indefinable genre goes … but that it appeared when it did, written and sung by a gruff, asocial mess of a Latino … and yet it had/has a cult following on the Continent and in many corners of the UK … interesting.