It was either the current Reform v Advance war today or this piece on supermarkets. I'm a bit out of it myself, getting deliveries these days rather than hitting the aisles at these barns ... yet I assume the stock is the same, only at hyperinflated prices for delivery.
It is not known who was responsible for the graffiti. But one thing is clear: it comes after a period of growing activity on French soil by far-right British activists, some of whom have harassed and intimidated asylum seekers in the places where they sleep, or boasted of slashing dinghies to prevent crossings. And to many of those who work to support asylum seekers in northern France, that activity has been hothoused by the rightward shift of mainstream British politics.
Is this 'rightward shift' in the room with us?
“The reason why they’re coming out and doing this stuff is because they’re emboldened,” said Lachlan Macrae, of the group Calais Food Collective. He said his group had found water containers stabbed, or with soap poured in to render the water undrinkable.
Good. Though as a true British born person, I've never thought the water in France drinkable anyway - who goes there to drink anything other than the wine, anyway?
French groups supporting asylum seekers also say that water tanks, which they provide for asylum seekers who have difficulty accessing other sources of water, are being vandalised and damaged, making them unusable.
Brilliant idea! Why are these groups supporting illegals anyway? I mean, I can see the point in the French doing it, so they can shift their problems across la Manche to us, but the British 'charities'?
In November last year, the phenomenon kicked up a gear. Raise the Colours, the Birmingham-based anti-migrant group that has draped union jack and England flags on lamp-posts and street furniture across Britain, launched Operation Overlord, a series of trips to France to “stop the boats” which Daniel Thomas, a key figure in the organisation at the time, said was “for our grandfathers, for our families and above all for our children”.
They aren't wrong, and if the French and British governments were doing the job of securing borders we expect them to do, they woulldn't have to.
On Wednesday last week, France’s interior ministry issued a statement banning 10 unnamed far-right activists associated with Raise the Colours for “having carried out actions on French soil”.
It's nice to see someone try it!
So far in 2026, 520 people have crossed the Channel in nine boats, a significant number despite poor weather conditions that is likely to rise as the weather improves.
Never have I wished for an everlasting winter more...
In the light of the Lords' approval of this egregious bill:
... I added this below the birthday wishes to our fair lady:
"Fri 06:18: Housekeeping note: Julia has a post up here at 9 a.m. today. We also need to make a statement on the Lords' passing of the Digital ID bill yesterday. Tricky timing as Julia won't be around. I plan to make a statement tomorrow morning, Saturday, for readers, say at 7 a.m. and if I put it in scheduled today, say by our 7 a.m. or so, she'll be able to read it from our dashboard and either DM me or else go direct to my post and alter what needs altering. So that's coming up, readers."
The issue as far as any online adult in Britain goes:
Or going further ... the idea is also to sow division, dissonance and rancour between partners, allies, fellow onliners ... here's an example:
There's a lady on X, Sandy Tregent, we mutually follow, she and I mutually repost, e.g. on this:
And there's the dilemma. We can be onside on 8 out of 10 issues but disagree on the last two. Which do our foes direct all their energy to? Of course ... anything to split us and get this rancour going.
At her site, Lady Julia makes plain she does not police Anon comments but does have another method. At Unherdables, there's a quite workable system of at least adding a moniker to your comment. Your own invented moniker.
That works fine in both cases. However, at a site such as Orphans, you can see the issue.
We here also allow Anon but I add that you need to call yourself something somewhere in the text. There's a reason ... I'm the one getting the threatening letters from the platform and one of the stipulations is no anonymity. Fine ... if you self-identify with something you invent, we've complied.
However:
Following the Lords' vote, that is no longer enough at ANY site. They will push for govt issued "licencing" of our right to speak online. I can't speak for Julia but I flatly refuse to comply. That might lead to banning from any online commenting. So be it.
Remember, I'm only speaking for myself there. And of course, there are ways around it, whilst still technically complying. All that is future days at this stage.
At the same stage, we've been threatened with removal at Orphans. Julia at her place hasn't, I at Unherdables haven't but "we" at Orphans have. They do NOT like voices combining.
And that, readers, is where we are this Saturday morning.
Now that the political scene in the contemporary United States looks like an unending string of military PR coups for the Trumpian right at home and abroad, it’s appropriate that Paul Thomas Anderson’s spectacular, mysterious counterculture epic One Battle After Another – with Leonardo DiCaprio as a clueless, dishevelled ex-revolutionary – should consolidate its current position as one of the leading movies of this awards season: winning four Globes including best musical or comedy and best director for Paul Thomas Anderson – whose fluency, productivity and pure technique and ambition are arguably making him America’s pre-eminent film-maker.
And all those accolades mean nothing, if the potential audience says 'Yawn! Not another progressive wish-fulfillment snoozefest!' and goes to see something more worthy instead.
I used to smoke cigarettes. I used to smoke a great many cigarettes. But I had to stop. Not for health reasons, although there was more than enough warnings to go around about how truly dangerous smoking actually was. So, I smoked.
The reader may well ask ‘Why’? The answer is of course, truly simple: I was an addict. Some fifty-odd years ago, I was the Engineering Manager for an electrical construction company. A very successful company, but the word ‘successful’ meant long hours either in an office, or traveling sometimes thousands of miles to sort and supervise projects across Southern Africa.
The work was stressful, and, like any addict does, I told myself that the smoking helped me get my work done, helped me get back sometimes really late, where I’d miss my growing family times because the kids were already in bed by the time I got back: and my wife brought me my dinner after reheating it, because I was so late.
But times and nations change, and I foresaw that the South Africa I had lived in for sixteen years was going to change, and the black man’s vote was coming, because the Afrikaner Government was the target of Liberal Western pressure.
So, I made my plans, with my wife and young family, and came back to England. But before I had even made plans to sell our house, I knew I had to stop smoking. Why? Pure economics. I smoked 70 cigarettes a day, and spent the equivalent, in British money, of £7.50 for 500 smokes, but you must recall that that was 45 years ago. But to buy 500 smokes in England would then have cost £62.50: which I knew was, for me, out of reach, even with the salaries I was expecting,
The tax segment of the price which British smokers pay is important for a couple of reasons. The first is, as always, important because it funds a fair chunk of the Government’s spending plans. It is always a slightly alarming amount because the cash comes from a tax grab paid by an alarming number of people who seemingly either do not care, or actually ignore, what their addiction WILL do to them.
The second is that they don’t seem to understand that smoking DOES directly produce cancer in their lungs. True, not everybody who smokes gets cancer, but the vast majority of smokers are living on borrowed time. It is not an easy death: it is a painful, lingering, obscene death. Smoking in GB&NI costs, on average, around £16.45 for 20 cigarettes, with some brands cheaper, but some, so-called Premium brands charging as much as £20.00 for 20 smokes.
I accept that I stopped smoking for purely financial reasons, and once I had stopped by simply saying “NO MORE SMOKES”, after around three weeks I recovered my senses of smell and of taste; I’ve never looked back. You might think that when the average smoker realises that they are paying the Government somewhere around 85-90% in taxes of the £16.45 per 20 smokes they might just pause, and reflect that they could be doing something better than ensuring an early, painful death, as well as paying the Government the cash which will, unfortunately, help to pay for their final pain-ridden time on this Earth in an NHS hospital.
Have you, dear reader, ever stepped back from the service counter of the average Chemist’s premises, and taken a look at the INDUSTRY which purports to help you stop smoking? The ranks of pills, filters, patches, gum, lozenges, inhalers, or sprays, often combined with nicotine-free prescription medicines (varenicline, bupropion) for best results, plus vaping as a safer alternative to smoke, alongside distraction items like gum, water, or activities to manage cravings. They are probably not going to help you stop, but they are certainly making someone very rich.
Take it from one who stopped, in the ONLY way which really works. All it takes is will power; all it takes is a small but vital dose of that secret additive known, to the wise as COMMON SENSE.
A transgender man was raped within an hour of being admitted to an all-male ward of a secure psychiatric NHS hospital, a court heard. The biological female was earmarked immediately by other patients, with one alleged attacker shouting 'no Adam's apple, no Adam's apple,' prosecutors said.
The attacks allegedly took place on the Eden Ward secure psychiatric unit of Lambeth Hospital in south London on April 12, 2022.
The ward is for men with severe mental health problems, some of whom have been brought in by police having been sectioned under the Mental Health Act.
And yet, they still aren't as mad & incompetent as the people running the place! Or the prosecuting team, still referring to her as a male.
'The fact that (the complainant) is biologically female with female anatomy, if it was appropriate to transfer him to a male ward at all, the hospital ought to have provided one-to-one monitoring, but this did not happen as a result of staff shortages,' Ms Bex told the jury.
'He was therefore left unattended and without appropriate supervision.
And just in case the jury want to indulge in a little nullification on the basis the wrong people are on trial here:
'Whilst this may no doubt be of concern to you, or indeed anyone listening, the hospital is not on trial here; whether it has questions to answer is for a different type of enquiry.'
Yes, we've all seen how much use they are.
A former police officer who moved to Russia has had his citizenship revoked by the Home Office over 'national security'. Mark Bullen, originally from Bracknell in Berkshire, spent 11 years working for Hertfordshire Police, where he wrote a training handbook on Russian crime. Having been interested in the country's culture since he was a child, he moved there permanently in 2014.
British ex-pats all round the world, so what's wrong with this?
Mark later started working for the media team for Russian football club Zenit St Petersburg and lives with his four children in the city. However, ten years after leaving the UK, he was detained by police at Luton Airport on a visit home to see family. He was questioned for four hours under the Terrorism Act before being released without charge. Then, in October last year, Mr Bullen received a letter from the Home Office telling him his UK citizenship was being revoked on the grounds of national security. Mark said: 'For them to do this, without any evidence, is ridiculous.'
Rememmer this case when some squinty-eyed, thin-lipped rapidly blinking Prime Minister tells you he can do nothing about the monsters in our midst because of their 'human rights' to live here...
Under section 40 of the British Nationality Act 1981, the Home Secretary has the power to take away a person’s British citizenship if they consider it conducive to the public good.
The Home Office declined to comment.
It's pretty telling that they choose this man as a suitable target, isn't it?
