It’s not a struggle!

I’m working hard to avoid seeing the Neatflix series about a killer kid. Unfortunately, lots of others seem to be doing their best to erode my uniqueness by not watching it either. Incel or gencel – genetically celibate through being too repulsive for any self-respecting female to want anything to do with them?

Safe bet?

The speculators reckon that there’s a 50:50 chance that Freebie Reeves, our wonderful Chancellor, will be back with more tax rises in the autumn.
    But what are their odds that she’ll still be in the job then?

Stranger than fiction

What has the government really been doing with the Winter Fuel Allowances grabbed off pensioners? Three of the allowances were awarded to a Labour MP, who put her pet dog on her Parliamentary expenses.
    As Little John of the Daily Disaster tells us, you couldn’t make it up.

Strange Reticence

Hundreds of thousands of people are being forced into poverty by the government’s tax grabs and welfare cuts, we are being told. But no one ever quotes the numbers that constitute poverty, either as a weekly or annual income.
    I wonder what the reason for that is. Could it be that a lot of the ‘poverty’ is relative, and for every person in dire straits, there are thousands unable to afford holidays abroad and the like?

Just fantasy

Freebie Reeves is claiming that the world is in a state of flux; or all fluxed up; and that’s why the wheels have come off her financial plans.
    And yet she’s promising families will be £500 better off by the end of the current Parliament. Which has to be almost twice as big a lie as Edstone Miliband’s £300 quid off energy bills.

Yecch!

Is there a more stoopid TV advert than the one with the upside down mouth in the middle of a forehead? Whatever it’s for, I’m not buying!

Zedmed lives!

But only in the trailers for current T.J. Hooker episodes. The Legend channel has not been bothered about updating.

Not us, Gov.

Should we all hang our heads in shame at having a government which is okay with the use of slave labour in the manufacture of Chinese solar stuff? Or can the 80% of the electorate who didn’t vote Labour just chant, “Told you so!” at regular intervals?

Today’s Other Question

This war in Ukraine that President Trump was going to stop a month ago. What’s the word on that?

Just not true

The Miliband claim that solar panels installed here will cut our carbon dioxide emissions sufficiently to balance the ones from China when the panels were made is a black lie. Nothing we do here makes even a small dent in China’s emissions.

Not a mate

It doesn’t look like Ukraine is going to get much of a deal from Trump. He’s working hard to give Putin everything he wants. Meanwhile, Trump is after Ukraine’s minerals, power plants, oil & gas, and everything else he can get his germans on.

Today’s Question

Shampoo that helps with dandruff, read the title to the article. Helps it to do what? Flourish?

Let down

There was a disappointing lack of panther cartoon graphics to go with the closing credits of Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978). Did they run out of cash suddenly?

Not the full monty

Amazon Spring Deals become so much less impressive when you realize that spring goes on for 3 months but the deals last for just a week.

Seems fair

I have been advised that letters about what will happen to the old state  pension next month can include the information: ‘Age addition of 25p per week will be payable from your 80th Birthday’.
    This ‘bonus’ was introduced in 1971 and represented 4% of the pension rate then, which means it should be £7 now.
    The fact that it is still being paid at the same antique rate to certain Oldies is now seen as nothing more than the government sticking up two fingers at them.
    Maybe our MPs, who have just received a generous pay rise, should be required to spend some time on the 1971 salary and expenses regime to find out how funny the joke is.

Gone Guy

I note that the curiously named Adrian Zmed (Zedmed to us Brits) seems to have been binned from series 5 of T.J. Hooker, leaving pool old T.J sidekickless.
    And in episode 2, T.J.’s ex-cop dad turned up to be shot dead right at the end!

Latin explained

I knew that sic transit gloria mundi means get the sick note to me by Monday. I was delighted to learn that honi soit qui mal y pense means I honestly think I’m going to be sick.

What do we make of this?

There’s this advert about people getting in trouble over paying for their home. Featuring a woman of colour in what’s predominantly a white nation.
    Is this woke DEI garbage? Or is the message that incomers are more likely to get into financial trouble? Either way, it’s a signal that maybe this firm is one to be avoided.

Overhaul seriously overdue

There doesn’t seem to be any danger of the government fixing the broke judicial system.
    Whilst we have judges who are prepared to have killers dragged to their court to hear the sentence after a guilty verdict, there are others who abuse human rights laws shamelessly by making up their own version of what came out of Parliament.
    And then there are the ones who don’t know basic facts of life like difference between Iraq and Iran.

More fantasies

Our government is claiming it will save £5 billion by fixing the broken welfare system. One in-depth scrutiny of the plan has concluded that £160 million at the most is on offer, and another came to the conclusion that scroungers gaming the system would prevent any savings at all!

The Chancellor’s Spring Statement

"It’s not my fault the economy has been trashed. Everyone else is to blame.
    "And stop bloody going on about my freebie addiction. It’s not as if I’m the only one doing it."

Really?

Save time, money and the environment, the advert read. How much saving is a battery powered lawnmower instead of one using petrol going to do?
    Whatever happened to honesty in advertising?
    Or has it been put on hold for the duration of the bogus climate emergency?
    I suspect the latter if we’re still getting those TV ads for smart meters featuring an Albert Einstein cartoon. His image is supposed to be really tightly controlled. That’s just not credible.

Something to avoid

Apparently, the glass screens used to build showers can explode spontaneously! In the middle of the night, which is bad enough, and also whilst someone is using the shower, which is infinitely worse.
    But it’s not something a place with plastic shower curtains has to worry about.

Not exactly value for money

The Leader of the House of Commons, I read, used to be a political old-timer with some standing, and the examples confirmed this; all people I’d heard of.
    The present incumbent is just one of Ed Milipede’s groupies, which just illustrates the net zero level of talent on offer by the current Labour lot.

Watch out!

After grabbing Ukraine’s rare minerals, President Trump’s next target is the nation’s power stations.
    Maybe the bloke in charge of Heathrow airport should start to become worried about his collection of them!

They don’t get it

I’ve just read that a GenZ (whatever that is) ‘worker’ wanted a day off, instead of taking annual leave, to get a tattoo. She claimed it was a medical appointment and vital to her mental ’elf!
    Do skivers learn which button to push at school now?
p.s. If there’s a mess and you can’t be bothered to clear it up, just announce that it would be ‘too triggering’ and walk away.

Mug Mob

What sort of people are Labour activists? Fools and scroungers if they think that fool Milipede is doing the best job in the Cabinet, and Smarmer and Reeves have the lowest approval ratings.
    Mainly because they’ve been confronted with the realities of real life and they’re floundering, which the likes of Milipede and Labour activists aren’t in their non-reality bubble.
    Spend the most of other people’s money on stuff of no value and become a Labour hero. Sheesh!

Fantasy factory

Our wonderful Chancellor says she wants to move more money to the front line of public services by getting rid of dead wood.
    Redundancy pay for the corpses eats up all the cash ‘saved’.
    Nothing much ends up on the front line.

Buck-passing

The first lesson we can learn from the Heathrow shutdown is that the buck will be in constant motion. The head of the National Grid reckons that any of the three substations which are connected to the airport can keep the place running.
    The boss of the airport reckons that all the computers had to be safely shut down and safely rebooted, and that’s why the place went dark.
    It was a totally unexpected emergency and there was no plan for dealing with it. And, as with the Chinese plague, all the experts are claiming that they are right.

Just a thought

When it comes to getting rid of the dead wood in the civil service, maybe they should start with the people who let official credit cards to be used to blow £675 million on things like nights out during junkets abroad, DJ equipment, shoes costing more than 2 grand per pair and coffee pods in bulk instead of low-value goods and services.

All about the dosh

It’s interesting that the ‘experts’ who were seen as the Chinese plague gurus are still claiming that the modified coronavirus didn’t escape from the laboratory in Wuhan. Not wanting to upset the Chinese and lose out on research grants?

So much for inclusion

This obsession with creating groups of young people; millennials, GenX, GenZ, etc.; is making rather a mockery of the claims by social manipulators that they are building a cohesive society.

Keep on trying!

The private space firm Intuitive Machines doesn’t seem to be having much success with the legs of its lunar landers. Last year’s vehicle, IM-1 called Odysseus, managed to break one of the legs and tipped over at a 30 degree angle.
    Despite this setback, all the instruments continued to work for the planned week of the mission. And then the Sun set and the vehicle wasn’t built to survive a 2-week lunar night.
    This month’s effort with IM-2 called Athena, managed to tip over onto its side leaving 2 legs up in the air and had to be declared done with right away.
    Maybe next time?

More ‘all talk’

The government says, ‘lessons will be learned’ from an investigation of the power failure which shut down Heathrow airport.
    A nation laughs scornfully, knowing they never are.

Worser and Worser

News media revealing the scams of those benefiting from Motability is just bringing more and more to light. Things like cars being used as minicabs and people rent them to neighbours.
    Is the government going to do anything about this gross abuse of taxpayers’ money?
    Or is the Labour party just not bovvered?

Social comment?

Crossword clue: bodily part commonly pierced (7)
Is that a comment on the people who have the job done to their earlobes? That they are common?

Idle hands

Do the works of William Shakespeare need to be decolonized? They were written long before the British went forth into the world to civilize it. And make a few bob out of the process.
    What would be a much better idea would be to dewonkize The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.

Don’t come back

Nice to see that crazy American who had to make a video of her wombat-harassing activities did the Australians a favour: she deported herself, saving them the bother.

Bottle Job

That’s the verdict on Labour’s ‘reforms’ of the broken welfare system. Despite all the posturing from our prime minister, his Work & Pension Secretary assured her party that she is not interested in being tough.
    Which explains why her cuts have been described as a flea-bite. 8% now dropping to 5% at the end of the decade as the bloat continues.
    No pain for cheating skivers. It’s the Labour way.

Endemic Defect?

Two-Kier Justice is still due to begin next month, which raises the question of why our prime minister hasn’t sacked his Justice Secretary in favour of someone who will take on the wonks of the Sentencing Council.
    Could it be that there is no one in the Labour party who gets the concept of equal justice for all?

Different drain

Abolishing the QANGO Public Health England will cost the nation £800 million in redundancy payments.
    Which means that there won’t be a boost of cash going to front line NHS staff.
    Benefit to us taxpayers is always a lost cause when the government is involved.

More Two-Tier justice

The Home Office has been shamed into cancelling the fine imposed on the couple who had a Sudanese stowaway in the bike rack of their camper van.
    But the penalty has not been cancelled, which is gittish.
    And there are no penalties being slapped on the Customs bods who checked the van over and failed to spot the stowaway.

One Domino

I suppose it’s a start that the Tory leader has realized that the net zero by 2050 is unachievable and just a fantasy. Shame she’s not pointing out every time she’s on the subject that nothing done here has any measurable effect on the global climate and there’s no need to do anything.
    But there are all those global warming swindlers with their hands out, demanding our dosh. And a Labour government letting them get away with it.

Parp-Parp

Little John of the Daily Disaster strikes again revealing that we as a nation are handing out 50-grand sports cars to chancers with mobility issues.
    Motability is the name of the outfit which is handing out the cars, which are used for such essential purposes as mini-cabs and getaway cars.

Opacity, not transparency

It’s a legitimate question. Why does the Speaker of the House of Commons, whose job is to process about and decide who gets to make a speech in the chamber, need an advisor on overseas territories?
    Even if the advisor is a nice old bloke from Gibraltar who gave Hoyle lots of freebies when he was junketing there.
    Not a question to which an answer is likely to be forthcoming anytime soon.

More two-tier justice

A couple were fined £1,500 for not noticing that a migrant had hidden himself in a bike rack on the exterior of the camper van. No fines for the customs officers and other officials who failed to spot the invader.
    No fines for the Border Force for the thousands of migrants they import after the French had escorted them half way across the Channel.
    The word ‘justice’ in is need of cancellation as there doesn’t seem to be much available any more.

Worth a try

Good luck to Lord Norton of Louth for his attempt to prevent prime ministers like Beer from awarding peerages to cronies and stooges. Persons of merit only, his Lordship would prefer.
    Same with the rest of us.

Future uncertain

The noises coming out of the White House suggest that President Trump’s idea of a peace plan for Ukraine is to divide the country’s assets up between America and Russia.
    Not exactly encouraging for anyone else hoping to make a deal with him.

Get on with it!

The story of the return to Earth of the stranded NASA astronauts in a SpaceX Dragon capsule has to be the immense amount of time spent faffing about instead of parking the recovery ship next to the capsule and hauling it aboard.

Goes with the territory

Should we be outraged that Speaker Hoyle isn’t a good guy after we had to put up with a decade of Berko the Peerageless? Or should we just shrug our shoulders and write him off as another Labour grabber?

The Loud Me Culture

Someone was complaining that cutting benefits would put him in a care home and he’d end up costing the taxpayer more than he gets now. Which ignores the hundreds or thousands on the other side of the equation.
    If they get less, the nation can afford to give the odd person in the complainant’s position special treatment. Even if they can’t see the big picture.

Interesting Viewpoint

According to one commentator, the Farage Party, Reform UK, has a lot in common with Labour as a political party in that its membership doesn't include enough people who know how to do the business of government to be able to form a government which can offer good sense, efficiency & value for money.
    Mr. Smarmer’s mob seem to be very good at talking about all the things they’re going to do but they keep expecting the public to hold their breath for a couple of years, and keep on paying more and more tax, before they’re likely to see any changes.
    Probably for the worse, the cynics add.

Acid Test

Offered by Little John of the Daily Disaster: if Beer Smarmer and his Health Minister, Smug Streeting, are serious about getting rid of useless QANGO bodies, they will close down the UK Health Security Agency as well as PH England.
    If they don’t, that will be a sign that they are all talk and not actually going to slim down the burrocrats, with the result that the crew of PHE will end up in other QANGOs.

Wrong word!

Was it unexpected that our economy shrank in January? Of course, it wasn’t. With this sorry Labour lot in charge, growth would have been unexpected.

Musk Manages

I see the Musk Dragon capsule got to the International Space Station okay, and the launcher was steered back to the rig that captures it for recycling.
    The big question now for the two American astronauts who went for an 8-day jaunt and found themselves doing a 9-month marathon is the weather. Will it be okay for them to head back home tomorrow? [Written on Tuesday]
    Still, if you’ve been stuck in space for all that time, an extra day won’t be too much of a burden.

Mine’s bigger than yours

President Trump shows how tough he is by sticking tariffs on the European Union. The EU shows how tough it is by sticking a 50% tariff on bourbon whisky. Trump then makes a mockery of the game by threatening to stick a 200% tariff on EU wines, especially Champagne.

How to avoid making decisions

First, hold lots of consultations. And then hold lots of consultations about doing consultations. That’s how our wonderful government is putting off doing anything much.
    Which might not be such a bad thing in view of the way our wonderful Chancellor is doing things and wrecking the economy.

Hypocrisy on steroids

How do you save the planet from climate change? Hold the UN’s 30th Conference of the Parties at the back of beyond in Brazil and hack a 4-lane superhighway for the 50,000 useless lumps who will be going to COP30 through what was protected Amazon forest.
    The people who lived along the route are now displaced and minus their living, and not at all happy about the posturing.

A man with a plan

That bloke Musk is going to be a busy bee. As well as driving waste out of the government machine in the United States, he hopes to put one of his robots on Mars at the end of next year and he has ambitions to send humans there in 2029!

Yeah, Right

What official bodies desperately need is an alternative to the ‘Our thoughts are with’ tired old cliché. The spokesperson who uses it may well be genuine enough but to most people, their cliché and insincerity alarms go off simultaneously and loudly.

Why Not?

If a nasty, cold winter encourages an early onset of the hay fever season, and a particularly bad one is forecast for this year, why not encourage global warming and see if that fixes the problem?
    Worth a try. Especially with the electricity shortages that this insane government is hell-bent on creating with its crazy net zero policies.

Biscuit Barrel Stuff

Trigger warnings about ‘depictions of murder’ on a touring production of Agatha Christie’s Murder On The Orient Express? They’re either having a laugh or the people running the show are beyond redemption.

Wrong, Beer

Out posturing prime minister’s QANGO cull should have started with the Sentencing Council, which makes a mockery of the judicial pledge to right to all manner of people. In other words, no special treatment if you’re not white, British and, worst of all in the eyes of the woke, male.

Nowhere near inflation

As reported on last Christmas Eve, a 100 gm bar of Cadbury’s Bourneville dark chocolate shot up in price from £1.35 to £1.50. There’s been another rip-off this month; up to £1.69. 11% for the first rip, now up 25% based on the older price.

Truth bomb

Our wonderful prime minister is declaring war on quangos, is he? Will he start by abolishing the 27 that he has created since taking over the job?

Not that much

The six billion quid that the Work & Pensions Sec. is hoping to save amounts to just less than 2% of the Welfare bill and is probably well within the margin of error for calculating it.
    That bill is also expected to be another £66 billion higher at the end of the decade. Cosmetic, or what.

They’re Okay

Does it really matter that America’s four top tech blokes have ‘lost’ a combined couple of hundred billion dollars through share price crashes? It’s not as if they’ll be wondering where their next meal is coming from, and what goes down goes back up again in due course.
    But it looks like the tech quartet will have to wait for their president to stop having fun and games with tariffs before there’s any hope of recovery.

Spot On

That’s the observation that the punishment should fit the crime, not the criminal, as the woke wonks of the Sentencing Council are trying to inflict on us.

Turn about

“How many poor people are you planning to kill with your welfare cuts, Prime Minister?” That’s what Labour would be asking in Opposition. So it’s only fair to ask them the same question when they’re confronted with the realities of being the government.

Desperation Move?

It has been suggested that if America won’t let Ukraine join NATO, then maybe they could become a member of the British Commonwealth to give them some allies.
    There are precedents for admitting countries which had nothing to do with the British Empire. Not that the rest of the Commonwealth would be that keen about putting boots on the ground to protect Ukraine. Especially the spivs with their hands out for bogus slavery reparations.

Even more evil intent

This week’s assault on the farming industry is cutting off its subsidies. I don’t remember seeing anything about that in the Labour election manifesto. But then again, one hell of a lot was left out of that piece of fiction.

Another setback

The illegal ban on recruiting white males into the RAF has left the service short of Top Gun pilots and made a mockery of our wonderful PM’s promise to put jets in the sky over Ukraine.
    One does get the impression that there is vastly more illegal stuff going on in the public sector than in the whole rest of the civilian population put together.

What was that about?

Will we ever get an explanation for why a cargo ship rammed into the side of a tanker, which was at anchor off the Yorkshire coast? It sounds like a deliberate assault on our coastline by one of our eastern enemies if the tanker is polluting everywhere with jet fuel.
    Unless everyone on the tanker had been celebrating someone’s birthday and the entire crew was in a drunken stupor. But then again, what are the chances of the collision via random chance rather than a deliberate assault?

Political ‘reality’

A KC has told the PM that his attempts to make copyright theft okay in the UK conflict with international law in the form of the Berne Convention, which established that copyright exists as soon as something is written down or otherwise recorded.
    Mr. Smarmer is trying to pretend that as the Convention doesn’t mention A.I. specificially, it’s okay for him to ignore it. Even though the Convention was formulated in 1886, when A.I. didn’t exist.
    So much for the lawyer’s grasp on reality.

Secret reality

It took a 2-year campaign by members of the Press to expose a secret College of Policing protocol that required police officers to report contacts with journalists as well as known criminals, suspects and extremists.
    That protocol has now been cancelled and the CoP is no longer allowed to pretend that journalists are a danger to the police and enemies of society.
    And trust in the people in charge of things like the police has been damaged further.

TV versus reality

In every episode of T.J. Hooker, there are vehicles of one sort or another going up in flames. More than enough to keep TV news channels hopping with glee if it ever happened here. But we’re Once in a Blue Moonland compared to American TV.

Fantasy Politics

Some of Reform UK’s members want a shadow cabinet or a spokesperson for every key issue. President Farage has told them it’s impossible to have a full shadow cabinet with only five members (or 4 after Rupert Lowe got the chop).
    But what about the mouthpieces alternative? Nothing much on offer about that.

Complete the thought

Spotted in a newspaper being recycled: Donald Trump ordering Palestinian refugees to go to Jordan. Maybe he should have gone a bit further and ordered Israel to unoccupy the bits of Jordan that it has grabbed to give the refugees somewhere to go to.

How to be unhelpful to the max

A Daily Mail reader reported that when he phoned a nearby college to ask about its course on basic computer skills for oldies, he was told he’d have to apply online.
    Would that be after using a time machine to ask his future self how to do it?

Mute button at the ready

FIFA is keen to stick an NFL/CFL style half-time show into the next World Cup final for the sake of selling it to Americans TV viewers as the event will be spread from Mexico to Canada.
    Not a popular idea with the players, who are already moaning about all the delays of video refs in a sport which is supposed to be free-flowing, not episodic like the rugby variant played across the Atlantic.

Evolution in action

In the fantastic future, you won’t have to wait to middle age before you can have your Big Life Crisis. The unsettling effect of being exposed to social media is dragging the crisis to younger and younger ages. And this won’t be helped by the government’s assaults on the Safer Phones Bill, which are making it a joke.

With Gritted Teeth?

How much of a strain was it for the Six Million Dollar Man to keep a smile going whilst having to listen to Sonny Bono crooning appallingly during one of his episodes?

An ally we don’t need

The PM of the south of Ireland thinks a good way to be mates with out wonderful PM is to offer to help him to unpick Brexit by stealth. Smarmer’s bound to jump at that. Groan!
    Beer is also reported to be ready and willing to let Chinese spies and the mob who persecute those who escaped from Hong Kong have a free hand here in pursuit of a trade deal with China. And there will be more tax rises in next month’s Spring Statement. Groan again!

Cause & Effect

According to some bunch of experts, 75% of the UK population will be obese by 2050. Which should give the government of the day a large incentive to chuck out illegal and unwanted migrants to leave a bit of room for every else!

More export fodder

Starting with the exhibitionist who was clambering about on Big Ben’s home in London waving a Palestinian flag. And continuing with the yobs who painted their slogan on the Trump golf course in Scotland. Not because we approve of Trump but because we don’t need so many yobs.

Just lame

One of our wonderful courts has ruled that we can send a criminal back to where he came from; Jamaica; as having a criminal record would prevent him from getting a job.
    Shame we can’t make the judge give the criminal board and lodging instead of expecting the taxpayer to fork out.

Great life

The Speaker of the House of Commons is getting a lot of unwelcome publicity after some rotten person did some checking up and found he’d blown a quarter of a million pounds of our money on jaunts around the world. Doing what? Apparently, his over-pompous and peerageless predecessor, the unloved Bercow, took a decade to run up a bill of similar size.

Not all bad!

Reform UK might have the hump with suspended MP Rupert Lowe but he is on our side if he thinks illegals should be dumped on a remote Scottish island and left to feed the midges.

Propaganda everywhere

The rubbish that comes out of universities takes all the biscuits in the tin, these days. There are professors who want global warming swindle propaganda in every lesson in schools.
    Also decolonization by pretending no one from Britain ever achieved anything, it was all done by foreigners and particularly non-white ones.
    Judy Vance is a tool and a half but he was 100% right about the enemies we have to worry about being the ones within.

Philosophy Corner

1. A winner is just a loser who tried one more time.
2. A loser is often a winner who tried one time too many.
    Take your pick.

Really Misleading

‘Keeping bathtime flowing’ read the slogan on the van. Someone called a plumber? No, on the driver’s door was ‘British Gas’ and the slogan ‘here to solve’.
    And to think, someone was actually paid to come up with that.

Never-ending cycle

If everyone in the UK gave up eating dairy and meat, it would have no measurable effect on the global climate, and we’d just have the control freaks yelling at us to give up something else to Save The Planet a bit more.

Terrific Explanation

Footballers constantly spitting on the pitch ensure that it’s well lubricated for those who want to do a slide after scoring a goal.
    Okay, that works!

Absolute non-event

How serious is the ongoing spat between Reform UK MPs? It’s a storm in an eggcup which the news meeja are trying to pretend is a tropical storm as big as the one currently battering bits of Australia. It will all be spent history by the next general election.

Ignorance or intent?

Apparently, President Zelenskiy announced ages ago that he won’t be wearing a suit until the war with Russia is over. If the bozos in charge of the USA don’t know that, and their minions don’t know it either, they’re a bunch of useless lumps. And if they do know and they’re ignoring it, they’re a bunch of nasty bastards.

Get Real

“If you find the following programme offensive and/or discriminatory, you need to grow up, get a life and stop being a far-Left woke wimp.”
    That’s what they should be saying before episodes of long-lasting 20th century TV shows.

Pass

There was a lengthy and pious plug for heat pumps on what was supposed to be the BBC lunchtime news yesterday. Why get one at vast expense and be very afraid to leave a door open?
    To reduce your carbon footprint.
    And what will this actually achieve?
    Bugger all as far as the global (or your local) climate is concerned. And we weren’t told, of course, that the heat pump has a big control pot in a cupboard. Something that looks like it has 1,001 ways to go wrong and need costly repairs on top of an annual servicing.
    If electricity is ever made affordable to ‘working people’, e.g. by binning Edstone and his Nett Zero, some electric radiators and timers looks a much more reliable way of heating a home than a clunking heat pump.

Easy Target

This week’s nickname for Rachel Thieves is ‘The Chancer of the Exchequer’. No doubt there will be something equally cute along next week.

Temporary Relief?

Yesterday was the first day of the year when it actually felt warm outside! Not that the Mansion cat was impressed.
    She went out for a while but she was soon back indoors again, doing her Sphinx impression on her favourite stretch of window sill.
    She got some courage in the afternoon, however, and disappeared for a couple of hours. And after stocking up with some grub, she was off again. Stuck indoors in the evening when the rain arrived.

Helpful suggestion

Stephen Glover of the Daily Mail suggested that next time President Zelenskiy has to interact with Trump, he does it with interpreters there in the name of preventing misunderstanding.
    This would also serve to slow down Trump if he slips back into bully mode.

A set up

Was the Trump/Vance violent assault on President Zelenskiy spontaneous? Not if there was a stooge journalist hovering with the job of asking why Zelenskiy wasn’t wearing a suit as the trigger for the whole disgraceful display.
    Politicians – don’t trust them. Ever.

Looks can deceive

Is the weather wonderful? It certainly looked bright and cheery with the Sun shining down from a lightly clouded sky yesterday. But the Mansion cat wasn’t convinced. She preferred to look out at the sunlit scene from her favourite indoor window sill.

No Disaster

After the alarmists had their moment of panic, NASA and the European Space Agency have reduced the odds of the asteroid 2024 YR4 hitting the Earth down from 3% to 0.001-2%. We can all relax. But have a moment of regret that some kindly deity didn’t arrange for the asteroid to smash onto Putin’s Black Sea palace!

An Explanation

Was Trump having a Biden moment when he accused Ukraine of starting the war with Russia? Trump seems to be having quite a lot of them now that he’s back in the White House.
    Either that, or he just can’t be bothered to pay attention.
    Or maybe a bit of both.

He has form for it

If some tinpot international court rules that Ukraine is rightfully part of Greater Russia, will our wonderful prime minister do a Chagos-style sell-out on President Zelenskiy?

Pull the other one

‘Is this new proof that Jim Morrison DID fake his own death?’ read the headline. To which the answer is nah!
    Could the sometime front man of The Doors be alive and working as a maintenance man in Syracuse at the grand old age of 83? Yeah, sure.

Just a suggestion

What the world needs is a lot more charientism anywhere politics rears its ugly head. That’s insults disguised as jests.

Incomplete Obliteration

Little John of the Daily Disaster came up with an interesting point. Lord Nelson’s portrait has been stuck in a cupboard at the Palace of Westminster and pictures of the likes of Home Sec. Pixie Balls-Cooper are replacing our famous ancestors.
    In the real world, pubs are still being called The Nelson with a picture of the admiral on the sign. Little John can’t imagine a pub being named after Pixie. Me neither.

Not sold on it

Okay, the series is called Bergerac and it’s set on Jersey, but what does it have to do with the series we remember, and which is being repeated around it?
    They might as well have called it Kojak. There’s about the same amount of connection with the original.

Just what we need

The leader of the Conservative party and the leader of Labour in a competition to be the more boring and the better at spouting lots and lots of words without actually saying anything.
    Plenty of exercise for the finger that lands on the TV remote control’s mute button when we see either of them spouting.

Ingenuity pump to maximum

Reporter: “Mr. President, do you still think President Zelenskiy is taking us into World War Three?”
Trump (with a big sarky smile): “Did I say that?”

Repeat, Pause, Repeat

“This is a once in a generational [insert cliché],” quoth the prime minister.
    “If only it were,” sighs his audience.

Long slog

It took the UK 61 years to pay off our bill to the United States after 6 years of World War II. Is that 30 and a half years of payments in store for Ukraine to do the same for their war with Russia if it’s ever called off?
    Let us hope the minerals last out if Trump stops being a wise guy and gets on with making a decent deal.

Groan!

The Chinese plague laboratory in Wuhan has discovered another coronavirus strain in bats. If it can jump species to humans, it will kill 33% of those infected. Let us hope the Chinese now have some biosecurity measures in place in Wuhan or we’re in for another terrible time.

Regal Collateral Damage

King Charles seems to be stuck in the middle of a campaign to cancel the state visit offered to President Trump before Trump and Vance did their mad-dog attack on President Zelenskiy.
    But delaying it with a boot into the long grass seems more likely than calling it off completely. Maybe until the golfing weather is bad.
    Something that won’t improve Trump’s mood any is the way President Zelenskiy was received enthusiastically here by the European leaders, and he also got to spend an hour with King Charles at Sandringham without needing a letter of invitation delivered by Beer Smarmer.

Editing our literary heritage

Kids are abandoning reading books in favour of listening to audiobooks? Well, that’s it for spelling. And eventually, everything not audioed will become inaccessible.

Another con job

Our wonderful prime minister is claiming that he’s going to increase spending on the Defence of the UK. But he’s not denying that the cash he plans to hand to Mauritius during the Chagos Islands betrayal will come out of the Defence budget rather than going on anything of benefit to the UK.
    More smoke and mirrors.

Just so you know

Correspondents are requested not to refer to the Chancellor as Rachel from Accounts as it’s an insult to every competent person working in an accounts department.

Fair’s Square

If, in the future, Europe will have to stop freeloading on America for its Defence against Russia, then it’s only right that the rest of the world should have to stop freeloading on the UK via foreign aid.
    How absolutely amazing that our wonderful prime minister has actually realized this.

Brilliant idea

Instead of the government & local authorities doing their job and creating effective flood defences, the plan now is to release beavers at strategic points to build green dams to deal with a local flooding problem.
    And if there is any flooding, it’s the fault of the beavers, not the politicians!

A spot of confusion

Beer Smarmer’s plan to boost defence spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2027 has been dismissed in the newspapers as a ‘pathetic sap’ to appease President Trump.
    But don’t they mean a pathetic ‘sop’ delivered by a pathetic sap? The vowel makes all the difference.

Well, that was unexpected

Is President Trump getting so desperate for something totally outrageous to do that he had to resort to picking a fight with President Zelenskiy of Ukraine during a televised do at the White House?
    Definitely a master class in The Art of Avoiding a Deal!

Shot in the foot

In these hard times, the charity Macmillan Cancer Support has had to sack a quarter of its staff and cancel a hardship scheme. But, as noted previously, it can still find £100K to offer as the salary for a head of diversity crap.
    The charity is now even worse off as subscribers are giving up in disgust and diverting their generosity elsewhere after finding that their donations will be wasted.

Zero social responsibility

Is there something about becoming a Labour local councillor that switches part of the brain off?
    That’s the obvious conclusion to be drawn from the police telling councillors to call off a meeting about one of their mad, anti-social schemes because the local police farce couldn’t guarantee their safety from outraged CTax-payers objecting to a totally mad scam drawn up by mentally challenged councillors.