"And once again I ask, what made you think there'd be a living in sheep?"

While most upland farmers still keep sheep on their land, the changes here have been mirrored across not just the Dales but the entire British farming industry. The shepherd's life has never been an easy one, but for many it's getting tougher and more difficult than ever to make a profit.People who work sheep know that it's some of the hardest farming there is. A former shepherd once told me that sheep are only ever trying to do one of three things: "Escape, or die, or escape and then immediately die."

Mark Knopfler put it better, frankly: 

.

Globally, lamb consumption is expected to grow by 15% between now and 2032, according to a report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the Food and Agriculture Organization. But changing tastes in the UK mean mutton, made from mature sheep, is no longer eaten in the same volume it was by previous generations and lamb has seemingly gone from a weekly staple to a meat more often eaten on special occasions, with "white meat" like chicken being increasingly chosen over lamb and beef.

And that't a pity, becase large parts of the country are suitable for nothing else and have, in fact been shaped by centuries of upland sheep farming. Of course, there are always those so shortsighted or blinded by spite they can applaud this:

Extremely tight margins mean growing numbers of younger people can't see a future in farming.And some welcome the decline in sheep farming. "Fewer sheep means less suffering […] a sheep's life in the wool and mutton industries belies our reputation as a nation of animal lovers," says Mimi Bekhechi, senior vice president at the UK's People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta).

But trust the BBC to see a posssible upide, thanks to their imported pets: 

But there is a ray of sunshine for the industry, according to Phil Stocker from the National Sheep Association. He believes the domestic market for sheep meat is going to keep driving forward, in large part thanks to demand from the increasing number of Muslim people in the UK.

.Sheep or Muslims, what a dilemma.

Those whom we trusted

Not exactly news ... most deep divers knew "of" it but maybe not the fine detail.

Issues of ethnicity

... which really do need sorting. This is an expanded version of yesterday's post at UHC, with added confusion.  First, some screenshots:

Let's sort "Britishness" first.  In one sense, Mahmoud is right ... the UK is a political construct, whereas Briton, Celt, Anglo-Saxon, Dane ... they're ethnicities. Mahmoud claims to be part of Westminster's political construct and as far as that theatre goes, it's what the Whitehall and Westmibster clowns say.

However, certain invading ethnicities are predatory and destructive to the others, and that is the aspect so many do not want to face up to, even in the society's death throes.

There's a bizarre unreality going on here. I know some ladies who are dead against this invading cult or religion but it contains a few ethnicities ... that is, people from various nations who themselves were swamped in the past by the predatory cult.

Yet they staunchly stick with a party, under Farage-Yusuf et al which, along with LibLabConGreenFabianUniparty are determined to try to "coexist" with the destructive cult.

Why on earth?  Why?  It's a sort of middle-class "respectability", a sort of nicely-nicely "embracing of the alligator as it eats you".  It's not sane.  It's a sort of wishful thinking, a hoping against hope, with no plan to escape it.

It's an inability to face reality.

Don't let govt or bureaucrats get their claws into anything vital

Most interesting:

Things work far better for us if no "planning" is involved whatever.

Disability Campaigners UNITE!

The fallout over Tourette syndrome (TS) activist John Davidson’s outbursts at the Baftas on Sunday continued after Jamie Foxx and Wendell Pierce expressed their dismay at the incident. Davidson attended the Baftas as I Swear, the film inspired by his life of dealing with hostility triggered by TS, was up for a number of awards. He was heard several times shouting during the ceremony, including using the N-word while actors Delroy Lindo and Michael B Jordan were on stage presenting the evening’s first prize.

A word they expect us to believe they've never heard in rap music or used themselves?

Foxx commented below a post about the incident on social media, saying, “Unacceptable” and “Nah he meant that shit”. Journalist Jemele Hill said on social media: “Black people are just supposed to be ok with being disrespected and dehumanised so that other people don’t feel bad”, and actor Wendell Pierce said: “It’s infuriating that the first reaction wasn’t complete and full throatted [sic] apologies to Delroy Lindo and Michael B Jordan. The insult to them takes priority. It doesn’t matter the reasoning for the racist slur.”

The black activists are going to be frothing about this for years to come, because they cannot stand the fact the Disability Card trumps the Race Card in this instance. 

Baftas host Alan Cumming made two announcements during the ceremony explaining the situation, saying: “Tourette syndrome is a disability, and the tics you’ve heard tonight are involuntary, which means the person who has Tourette syndrome has no control over their language. We apologise if you are offended tonight.”

It wasn't enough. It will never be enough.  

YMCA

Talk about ready-made blogpost ... first cabs in the morning queue usually come from the Antipodes evening or the North American previous evening ... most Brits and French are asleep.

There was a message from an Alabama friend, Toodles, who'd been reading unherdables' researcher IYE's thing on Donny and the song YMCA, which Iranian women have taken up en masse ... I like it.

Toods wrote:

James, I read the link IYE sent about Trump. Read the comments too. I have no idea if T is ‘you know’…or not. Always assumed he was straight. Never really thought about him doing anything as I don’t naturally picture people doing that kind of thing…..straight or curved!

Several people said because he plays YMCA it indicates T is the gay.  

Well who can say? Never entered my mind.

One thing about that song. It could be true and a sign by him hinting he is…never thought about it. Or…it could be that during his first run for president it was one of the few songs he could play where the artist or owner of the song prohibited him from playing it.

The man who is gay who wrote and performed the song with his posse is a Democrat. Nonetheless he said he was glad to have his song played and getting out there.. by T. 

Now it could  be a ruse and them making fun of us, or it could be the guy doesn’t care if T team uses it.  One must admit, gay or not, T is hilarious half dancing to it and really quite adorable doing it. The song is catchy too! 

What it has to do with trying to be and then running for president is kind of strange, I must admit. 

That is all I  have to say about it.

I replied:

As for me, Toods, the fact that hetero is so normal, standard, natural ... well so is eating chocolate but when it goes to excess ... hmmmmm.  I don't mean doing anything bad like a Warren Beatty or Errol Flynn ... just when it comes so naturally ... one does wonder if there's such a thing as too normal?

Donny surrounds himself with women but is it too much? I was for a brief time taken to some upper class gay parties and stayed in the kitchen with three or so others, inc. women.  I never saw "it" going on ... maybe after we left and went home.

With me, think it was that childhood trauma which put me off males getting physically close, plus faith, plus there are some truly horrible women out there ... demonrats for example.

The song ... don't like the overtones but the sight of all those Persian women dancing, across their population ... it's funny.

No Need To Elaborate, We All Know What You Mean

Nigel Farage has reported allegations of "family voting" at the Gorton and Denton by-election to Greater Manchester Police and the Electoral Commission. The Reform UK leader is urging an investigation into reports by independent election observers of "extremely high" levels of family voting. Family voting is where a family member is seen to be influencing somebody else's vote, for example by entering the polling booth with them.

*sighs* We aren't talking about people in general, we are talking about a particular demographic who are known for this. The MSM will never admit it, of course.

The Electoral Commission said it took the claims "very seriously" and would "carefully consider" the report. A statement from the organisation, which oversees elections in the UK, said: "We are in close contact with the returning officer and Greater Manchester Police to speedily and carefully review the concerns that have been raised and all the information available." 

Greater Manchester Police said in a statement: "We can confirm a report has been made. We are in the process of reviewing this report and will provide a further update in due course."

We all know that this isn't likely to prove fruitful too, don't we? After all, this was a concern even before polling cards were distributed, and instead of cracking down to ensure compliance with UK electoral regulations, the authorities did the usual thing of bending over backwards to accommodate their imported diversity:. 

I’m sorry but f*ck their culture and customs.
This was an election in England, not pakistan.
The compromised electoral commission are just another public institution unfit for purpose more scared of being labelled ‘islamophobes’ than upholding English electoral law. pic.twitter.com/ayCz6mE5Cr

— Cold957 (@cold957) February 27, 2026

The danger in depersonalising your online outlet

Paraphrasing the words of the legendary Don McLean:

A long, long time ago 

I can still remember how that lifestyle used to make me smile

And I knew if I had my chance 

That I could let those people dance

And maybe they'd be happy for a while

But February made me shiver

With every blogpost I'd deliver

Bad news on the doorstep

I couldn't take one more step...

Awoke at 0523 this morning and there was, in the inbox, a message from the Gulf of America, a quick look at X saw Amelia following me and I followed back, there was the subject of this post after that ... yet another govt minister resigning but then a Ggl Blgr panel said that I could not load a picture of all that unless I enabled cookies, which I had done.

Censorship is certainly what they'd like to have us accept as "normal" today ... and that leads to my next point, in the words of the legendary blogger Tom Paine ... that I, Jimbo, do tend to blog in a highly personalised manner, don't I?

Yes Tom, I do, because we're dealing with other humans, friendly, hostile or indifferent, coz it's better to keep things human to human, even though we use tech to reach one another.

Interestingly for me at least, a glance at Tom's link shows he very much writes now in a personalised way, I still do too but ... at UHC across the way, our subject matter is very much a news channel, with features thrown in to break the horror, shifting as much worldwide news as possible into as few column inches as possible ... a quite depersonalised way to blog.  Julia and Grandpa have their styles ... so does DAD, which brings me to monikers.

I am not remotely interested in tracking you ... I couldn't anyway with Ggl Blgr's newish comment system ... but I do ask, if you choose Anon or Unknown, that you humanise your comment to the point where we at least have some invented name to respond to in comments, that you are not a bot in other words.

Eventually, we do all come back to humans of good intent, versus spam, bots and trolls. We'd like to think we're dealing with someone adding to the info on the table, whether or not we agree on one particular point or another.

However, Wokery is right out, meaning the brainwashed.  Let me illustrate. There are people on X who are dyed-in-the-wool Reformers, whereas I'm a Restorer now ... what a bunfight before Gorton and Denton ... yet we still follow one another, even if deeply disagreeing over maybe 20% of what's going on.

In other words ... civil discussion, not hostile trollery.  Every site, every platform, needs to sort that question out.  Civil.  Civilised.

Did not read the fine print

Lord Toby's site has a writer reporting on a Telegraph report.

The Telegraph has the story.

The Green Party may be jubilant about its triumph in Gorton and Denton, but some voters are already expressing buyers’ remorse. Waqas Khan, 40, owns Al-Mecca Butchers on Stockport Road, where a “Vote Green” poster hangs in the shop window. He has lived in the constituency for almost 20 years. He and his family had previously been lifelong Labour voters, but all switched to the Greens on Thursday.

Until informed by the Telegraph, however, Khan was unaware of the Greens’ plans to legalise drugs and prostitution and to remove restrictions on pornography. “I checked the manifesto before, but I didn’t see that. It seems they hid those policies,” he says.

That's an interesting sidelight, except The Telegraph is behind a paywall, as are many articles at TDS itself.

Moving on, my dad was a builder and painter, fought in the war, North African shore, my mother was a nurse and eventually housekeeper but every spare penny was spent on a son who'd go on to throw around rugby balls on playing fields, study Latin and be in debating societies, for a bit of fun building in timber ... dwellings, fences, boats etc.

Which class was I?

There was also the little matter of constant travel over the decades, to the point I'm weary wi'it now.  Developed a taste for all-weather sailing and cricket.  Point is, whichever demographic I was with at the time, comfortably, I was never fully accepted by any demographic at all. Iffy accent which was sort of RP with southern hemisphere undertones ... my lineage goes back to either the Danes (Deira), Ethelred or Irish worker ... that side of t'family were southern but apparently went Ulster later and changed the surname to a more anglicised spelling.

So I'm bemused by those claiming to be "English" or "British" but there's no heritage in'em from these isles whatever.  I suspect that that's what did for Advance's "local man" in G&D (Little Pakistan so it now seems).

Also amusing (to me) is a lady from Suffolk and I, friends, mutual followers on X, who agree on maybe 80% of policies ... except she's comfortable, "herbaceous borders" loving, I'm north-eastern, displaced to the north-west for now, she's exactly the dyed-in-the-wool Reform advocate, blissfully unaware of its politburo, whilst as of last evening, I'm dyed-in-the-wool Restore (or johnnycomelately, whatever) ... what confirmed my shift further towards them being that the Electoral Commission, according to Mrs. Suffolk, has supposedly refused Rupert's application to become an official party, nasty "racist" man.

Civil war on the horizon? Devoutly hoped for by globopsychopaedo and they may get their wish, if the issue is not swamped by the one about to kick off in Persia ... I've just quoted our Steve over at UHC on that question.

Whither Britain and Ireland, stalwarts of these sceptr'd aisles (sic)?

Fagin Goes Hi-Tech

Gangs are recruiting children to go out to steal smartphones before they head to school, using Snapchat to offer rewards of up to £380 for the latest Apple iPhones, police have revealed. The Metropolitan police said they were deploying new resources including drones and Surron ebikes to chase suspects as they step up their fight against phone snatching.

‘Gotta pick a pocket or two’ needs upgrading - today’s artful dodgers ride e-bikes and don’t fear the beadle… 

Gangs are using Snapchat to advertise a menu of cash rewards for different models of stolen mobile phones, enticing children as young as 14 on bikes to act as thieves.

Well, of course they do, what did you think would happen when youth offenders were treated leniently? 

Once phones are stolen, child thieves message a “handler” on Snapchat to arrange a drop-off. Bonuses of an extra £100 are offered if 10 or more stolen phones are handed over in one drop. In one recent case, police said a teenager was heading out on a bike early in the morning to attack commuters around a main London transport hub before heading to school.

If only he'd show that much enthusiasm for lessons... 

Rowley said the courts could do more to help by stopping bailing repeat offenders. In one recent case, police said a group of 12 youths were arrested and charged with phone thefts. The next day some were bailed, and within 24 hours of their arrest they were suspected of being back stealing phones.

Which is why no doubtr so many of your officers can't be bothered anymore. 

The London mayor, Sadiq Khan, said his administration was pumping in an extra £4.5m for a new command centre.

Which won't be a success because it'll be infested with the sort of people who have these attitudes:  

An ad for Transport for London’s new ‘Act Like a Friend’ campaign has been banned for reinforcing negative stereotypes about black men.The Facebook ad, part of the campaign that encourages people to intervene safely if they witness sexual harassment or hate crime on the TfL network, showed a black male verbally harassing a young girl accompanied by a white male friend, who sat down close to the victim ‘boxing her in’. A viewer complained that the ad was irresponsible, harmful and offensive for perpetuating negative racial stereotypes about black teenage boys.

Whats that TS Elliot line again? Oh yes. "Humankind cannot bear very much reality"