House is in uproar, or at the least slightly discumbobulated because we have trades in doing some jobs. There’s drop cloths all over the place and the sound of power tools, grating at the senses like dentists drills. We’ve even had to switch the heating on. In July? WTF?
Not much I can do outdoors as the rain is precluding any serious activity. Can’t get the meadow cut, the hives aren’t ready for inspection / cropping, so I’m sat twiddling my thumbs and trying not to watch the news without laughing. From all the hysteria over a bit of warm weather in the Med via Natwest losing a shedload of money over cancelling customers because they don’t like their politics, not to mention all the PC gender bumfluff.
Caught a look at the alarming UK weather reports the other day, then checked my three thermometers. Yup. Fifteen degrees Celsius. Raining on and off. Too wet to do a silage cut on the meadows. Borderline for hive inspections / honey cropping, and I’m not opening a hive while it’s raining.
Right, so what’s all the fuss about? If anything it’s cooler (and wetter) than average. Double checked Met Eirann. Nope. Wet and cool they say. So what’s the deal with the UK weather people and their red and black maps of doom? Personally I think someone’s dumped a truckload of hallucinogens in the London water supply, because what the south eastern UK media class is having a meltdown about just isn’t happening. At least not here in the wilder west of Ireland.
Agreed there are some places warmer than average, but nothing really out of the ordinary. Besides, here in the northern hemisphere this is Summer and nothing to get one’s panties in a bunch about. The ice caps aren’t melting, the global sea level isn’t rising precipitously. Even the number of tropical storms is lower than a century ago. So why this need to be in a permanent state of weather related panic?
As an aside; the current run of weather reminds me of the Summers of 1977-1983 when it was damper than average in the British Isles. After the drought of 1976 when I first got a motorcycle, those years were a significant disappointment weatherwise. I often got very wet and cold on my usual 20 mile plus commutes.
Yet the powers that be are still rambling on about how their ‘Net Zero’ policies will ‘save the planet’.
What are these people on? Perhaps they could benefit from getting out more? Oh noes! They can’t do that. Because didn’t you know that the countryside is waaaaaycist!
Which might come as a shock to all the birds and animals outside my window. Oh dearie, dearie me.
I was hoping for a dry day today so I could have a chat with one of my tractor owning neighbours. The usual drill is that I offer him the results of a meadow cut for silage. He cuts it for free and takes the silage away, which recompenses him for the diesel and wrapping plastic etc.
While it’s damp, Mrs S has suggested we go out and watch a movie. Specifically the one with the trailer below.
And here’s the man himself answering questions about the new ‘Underground railway’ whose avowed mission is to rescue children from abusers.
And the alphabet soup rainbow ‘community’ want us to give a free pass to the predators? Do these LGBTQ+ activists have no sense of right and wrong? Never mind the media attack dogs rabidly foaming at the mouth over this issue. Ordinary gay people think child predators are beyond the pale and are quietly walking away from ‘pride’ events over this issue.
To attack this film while defending ‘Minor attracted persons’ is evil, vile and indefensible. Children should be allowed to have a childhood, not be bought and sold like meat for the appetites of the morally bankrupt.
Like Wilberforce’s campaign against slavery in the late 18th / early 19th century, this is a public fight long overdue.
I have hive inspections and honey cropping to do but it’s just been too wet and chilly to safely open a hive for inspection. Was hoping to get a cut on my meadows done but I missed the window by a full day. And this is July. Summer.
While the media are bloviating about the ‘hottest day – evah’ the temperature locally remains around fourteen degrees and raining. There’s lots of nectar for my bees to collect, and I’m pleased to see the Rosebay Willowherb in full bloom. In BC, Rosebay Willowherb is called ‘Fireweed’, and nectar from it gives honey a lovely ‘kick’ akin to marinating chillies in your honey jar. I’m very partial to it myself. However, I’m left standing on my doorstep staring up the meadow at my hives by the inclement weather.
This is not to say that the sun does not break through the clouds occasionally, just not long enough to dry out the grass for cutting or to drive over and do my thing with the bees.
Mrs S has her car back and all is well in the house once more, although she does complain that she’s having difficulty with reading Douglas Murray’s ‘War on the West’ as it’s too damn depressing. My current reading list contains Orlando Figes ‘The story of Russia’, as I want a more studied view of who and what modern Russia is. At least before the crazy yankee administration try to blow them off the face of the earth.
You know, the more I read the mainstream and the more I dig, the stranger things seem. It’s like I’m looking at multiple images in a hall of distorting mirrors, all rotating to create a maze of unreality.
Reality has become politicised. Language too, so that an innocent use of a phrase becomes ‘thought crime’. Calling something by a biologically correct term can be ‘hate’, or merely disagreeing with an activist gets you labelled ‘denier’ or worse, and even at risk of arrest. WTF?
It’s not just me either. See Professor Matt Goodwin’s little exposition upon the difference between Academia, politics and the public. (Video removed by uploader then re-uploaded.)
Locally it seems, all my neighbours are into grow their own, as am I. Even my local mechanic. Mostly because grocery prices are through the roof and don’t look like coming down, but also because growing things is more relaxing than all the rage bait and misdirection in the media.
Locally everyone asks me about when my next crop of honey is due, and I’m just waiting for three clear dryish days to do my hive inspections and crop some honey and swap a few new frames into my boxes. Then I’ll sluice out the centrifuge and get it ready for work.
At a local food festival I had a chat with a guy who does commercial honey production in Cork, who told me he ran 250 hives, which rather puts my paltry four in the shade. However, I am self sufficient in honey with a few veg to take the edge of the grocery bills.
Hi ho. You do what you can and try to ignore all the mirror images that no longer seem to reflect reality.
Recently I was driving around and found myself heading to the wrong location. Then about an hour later while trolling around the Supermarket I had a sudden, almost trouser filling, sense of impending disaster. A sense of “F*ck!ng h#ll! I’m losing it!” zipped through my head. “Oh God! am I going senile?” I have the same anxiety as any other moderately self aware person, that some awful kind of brain rot will dampen the paper bag of my mind and let all of my marbles roll out.
For a while afterwards I let the fright run around in it’s hamster wheel until my inner grown up stopped it and gave my inner rodent something to stuff it’s cheeks with. At this point my panic subsided and I finished the chores, cooked supper and wondered what had set me off like that.
Upon careful reflection, I think it was the unremitting torrent of bad news we are force fed, from ‘wokeists’ being able to pressure employers and banks to shut down your life to their ugly offline behaviours being shoved in our faces. Then the possibility that our basic freedom of movement can be shut down at some mad ‘scientists’ demand, and that the failed policy of lockdowns will be imposed yet again to ‘save the planet’, which it won’t. We humans for the most part, cannot even save ourselves, and we think we can ‘save the planet’ oh my aching sides.
Now as someone who is capable of navigating legitimate areas of international money transfers at reasonable rates, the idea of being prevented from doing that by having banking services withheld because I don’t have the ‘correct’ views is truly horrifying. To have it happen to our immediate family for that reason doubly so. Our extended family is spread across the globe from here to the antipodes, and not being able to visit once in a while because we can’t pay for tickets through legitimate channels is a punishment not even extended to your average international criminal.
Once past the horror, my inner grown up quietly pointed out that these banks playing politics with people’s lives are being given a bit of a talking to on the quiet. Because if more and more people are to have banking services withdrawn for some transgression of the banks increasingly complex and warped ‘woke’ terms of service, then how can the victims of such an abuse pay their taxes? By barter? “Sorry I can’t afford my tax bill this year Mr Chancellor, but will you take two dozen chickens and a bag of spuds instead? And my shares in Anycompany Plc. The banks won’t let me pay you any money.” All right, there are other options, but as I don’t know much about all of them, I can’t really comment.
I know Credit Unions can handle a certain amount, but they are limited in the services they can provide, as can community banks. Peer to peer borrowing and offshore accounts are restricted to high net worth individuals, but there’s N26, bearer bonds, stocks and shares, and a whole slew of other ways of shifting money about if you’re savvy. The trouble is, they’re not as easily reported on as ‘normal’ banks, who can (and will) rat you out to the tax man if the fancy takes them, or the tax man comes sniffing around, looking for currency to filch.
Meanwhile, back on the topic; without mainline banking services all the tax mans convenient online services are closed to you. No mainstream bank account or credit card? Oh dear.
No wonder the UK Treasury is having several million kittens on the quiet. Otherwise useful cash cows are slipping out of the pasture and roaming wild where they can’t be readily milked. I mean, without the tax dollars how else can the Western powers keep spunking our hard earned on the lost cause of Fascist Ukraine? As I have pointed out several times, the only money governments have is from taxpayers, and without it all the vanity projects, cushy jobs and profitable speaking engagements disappear.
These thoughts calmed me further to the point where I felt able to discuss them with Mrs S. She told me she has been following the story as well. Because it’s not just Farage, but a whole slew of high net worth people slipping through the tax mans clutches because they are cut out of the mainstream retail banking system. Not just them but (So I have been told) their spouses and children. All because cash strapped Western banks are futilely chasing the rainbow dollar.
Mrs S was quite scathing. “These banks should be reminded that it was the taxpayer who bailed them out in the 2008 crash, and will no doubt be asked to stump up for the next one.” I count myself truly fortunate that I am married to such a woman. Not only does she ground me, but she’s clever enough to see the bullsh!t for herself, without any help from me.
On a final note, it would be highly ironic would it not, if the fallout from the banks pushing ‘woke’ triggered the next banking crisis, and when the banks go cap in hand to government yet again, there wasn’t enough taxpayer money to bail them out?
Ex-UN weapons inspector and one time US marine gives his take on the latest weaponry being sent to the trench warfare of Ukraine. I think he’s a bit more informed than the warmongering mainstream western press.
The West have been sending munitions and equipment past their ‘best use by date’? Worth a listen all the way through.
There is an old Russian folk tale about a wedding party heading from one village to the next. Beset by hungry packs of wolves one famine struck Winter they thought to placate them by throwing out a passenger every so often so that the wolves would devour them instead of attacking the sleigh.
One by one, each passenger was thrown out, killed and eaten by the massive wolf pack until there were only the drivers left.
The two drivers survived, but the villagers, having seen the drivers throw the last of the wedding party to the ravening wolf pack, forever after shunned the drivers for their behaviour, and no matter where they went, the story of their ruthless callousness followed them.
This old folk tale was presented as a news item in 1911 and has since passed into the axiom “Thrown to the wolves”. The latest iteration of which is yet another ‘grooming’ scandal in the dear old ‘Aunty Beeb’. This comes as no surprise, as it has long been rumoured that a high proportion of people who gravitate into the entertainment business “Like ’em young”. In a bid to keep the party going, every so often, like in the folk tale, one of their number will be thrown to the wolf pack of public outrage.
The only difference being that the accused isheterosexual this time. With an enterprising (and ‘crack addicted’ ) seventeen year old girl(?) selling him porn pics. Which I don’t think is as big a scandal as Schofield grooming a fifteen year old boy. If it is a girl who sold the pictures.
It’s funny you know because girls in their early to mid teens are often more sexually precocious than boys. Or at least they used to be. Anyone getting their dander up about it should be reminded of Bill Wyman of the Rolling Stones and his then fourteen year old girlfriend Mandy Smith. Or Samantha Fox of page 3 fame.
But this was in the days before social media and the whole gender thing. As an aside; in my very short tenure as a roadie, you rapidly got to know the crowd of under age girls hanging around, trying to look over 17 or 18. Fake ID, tight dresses, deep cleavage and skirts so short they were more like pelmets.
Although given that I remember what we older boys got up to with girls two years our junior back in the day when we were sixteen / seventeen, I don’t see the problem. The girls were willing and eager, and so were we. I think I even remember one of our deputy head girls at school becoming a trophy wife the moment she hit eighteen to a wealthy man well into his fourth decade. Out of the school gates and pregnant before her A-level results came in. Last I heard (over twenty five years ago) she was on her second marriage after widowhood with two strapping sons and a large country house.
In the early 20th century they had a term for this kind of relationship; a May to December marriage where civil war veterans got married to much younger women. The last of whom married her older partner in 1936 when she was 17 and died in 2012 aged 101.
In the words of that old rapscallion Mark Twain “age doesn’t matter if you don’t mind it.” Although personally I think a line should be firmly drawn somewhere so kids can have their childhood until the tyranny of hormones kicks in at puberty in the early to mid teens. Until then the grown ups should keep it firmly in their own undergarments Nabokov be damned..
To close; there’s an old joke about a ninety year old man about to marry a nineteen year old girl. As he is about to enter the church, a younger friend sidles up and diplomatically says; “You know, she’s only nineteen. What will happen to the weaker partner if one of you gets badly ill while having sex?”
The older man stopped for a moment, scratched his chin thoughtfully and replied; “Well, I have given the matter considerable thought and I’m inclined to be philosophical about it.” He pauses for a moment and then says ” I just hope she’s strong enough.”
Now you can throw me to the wolves. Just hope they don’t get food poisoning.
Post updated after Australasian contributor Ripper pointed it out that the gender of the ‘victim’ was uncertain. In these ‘enlightened’ times I really should have known better. Serves me right. But it did take me for a very happy half hour negotiating one of memory lanes shadier little side turnings.
A bit stormy outdoors first thing. One of our potted trees was pushed over, so I pulled it back into an upright position and added a bit of rock to stabilise the base. Checked my hives to find them all buzzing away merrily. Although I think most of the foragers were sitting just inside the entrance and complaining to the Queen about going out in this rough weather.
Not really outdoor weather, so; interesting question in the comments about who funds Stonewall, and ‘Mermaid’s, the people pushing the whole child abusive ‘trans’ agenda, and crazy ideas like men becoming pregnant. By way of anecdote I was a student in a predominantly female class a few decades ago, learning the niceties of advanced reproductive physiology, when the lecturer (A woman) wisecracked “If either of you boys get pregnant, let me know because I want to write the scientific paper.” Our lecturer, who is long retired and probably no longer with us thought it was rather funny, as did the girls. I found the remarks somewhat perplexing but let it go at that.
Considering who they represent and their official Charities commission figures, Stonewall do seem have rather more legal and political clout than other, much larger demographics. so I thought I’d have a bit of a dig around to find what is out in the wilds of the jolly old interweb.
Now the first bit of data of interest was from an FOIA request by the taxpayers alliance in 2017. 327 public sector donations ranging from four (Thousands) to seven figures (Millions) were found. The Treasury found this massive leakage from the public sector and told the donating departments to stop it. By 2023 the public sector donations (at least the ones we know about) had shrunk to just over 1.2 million GBP. However, Stonewall have also had money from the UK National Lottery and even directly from the Houses of Parliament, and that’s just the English public sector these grifters have their claws into. The Scottish Parliament set up a fund to give Stonewall a whopping seven millionpounds per annum from October 2021 to September 2023. Crikey! Nice work if you can get it eh?
Now that’s just the UK public sector. Stonewall are also now involved with the banks and other corporate entities, which puzzles me. Given that alphabet soup ‘community’ now enjoy the same rights as everybody else, what is the whole point of Stonewall etc? Why haven’t they looked at the modern tolerance of society and said “We’ve got the same rights as everyone else now. Job done. Okay folks, we can pack up, give the money back and take a nice holiday now.” Because forgive my ignorance, but so long as gays etc don’t commit public indecency or molest children, fine. Go for it kids. No-one is going to get in your way. Although I think a month devoted to their festivals is a bit much. Every other ‘community’ is lucky to get a day to celebrate themselves. Some of us don’t get a day at all.
But that is not enough for a certain mindset. They want it all and they want to rub everyone’s face in it too. Not content with achieving their stated objective of ‘equality’ for all (For an inverse value of ‘equality’), there is a faction within their well off little clique that wants everything. Not only that but they want to include rapists and child molesters in the protected classes.
Excuse my ‘bigotry’ chaps, but whose children are being groomed and abused for the child traffickers awfully warped sexual gratification? Yours? Don’t be daft, same sex relationships can’t have biological children. They can adopt or use a surrogate, but in the main it’s going to be the children of the majority who become the playthings of the perverts, and that’s what any civilised person would object to.
Yet they portray themselves as victims, hapless souls forever subject to the hateful abuse of raging mobs when the converse is more accurate. Neil Oliver has a few choice words on the matter of hatred.
For my part I’m off to a cooking show this weekend where I intend to mingle with cooks and food providers regardless of what they get up to in private. Might even have a stand there myself one day.
I’m finally going over to Linux because of a fried Windows hard drive. Frankly I’m sick of the monthly windoze ‘upgrades’ and insertions of unwanted bloatware. Cost? My time and a new hard drive costing under forty Euros. Pros? Fewer vulnerabilities and higher speed. Cons? A lack of experience with the platform on my part. But I can learn. Time to get my Linux reference books out of cold storage methinks.
Mrs S’s jalopy too has just had to have some major surgery with a concomitantly eyewatering bill. Clutch, brakes, electrics and alternator, the works. It still works out cheaper than buying a junker and running it into the deck, but not by much. However, the advice from our mechanic was to keep it for a few more years to amortise the cost rather than throw good money after bad by selling on. He pointed out that since we’re close neighbours, if his workmanship isn’t up to snuff, he wouldn’t be able to hold his head up. I like him, he keeps a neat workshop and all his work on my car has been top notch in keeping me ahead of the curve as far as possible repairs are concerned, so I’m inclined to trust him on this issue, although words will be served back to him piping hot and covered in barbecue sauce if he’s wrong. Never mind google reviews, locally if your word is no good, you’ll rapidly go out of business.
Talking about people deserving to go out of business, how about the UK banks? Effectively saying that if you don’t agree with everything they do and say they can refuse your business and deny you an essential service? Apparently this is in the attempt to attract more investment by getting a higher ESG rating. The more ‘woke’ they are, the higher their ESG rating, and supposedly this will attract more shareholders.
Now as a small to medium investor, I won’t touch companies with a high ESG rating with a proverbial bargepole. This is for purely commercial reasons. ‘Woke’ companies I find are not a good bet from a return on investment. Why? Because the whole idea of running a large business is to make a profit. Companies that don’t make decent profits can’t pay decent dividends, no matter their market ‘value’. It’s why I’d happily buy Amazon shares, as they actually have a product, whilst the Alphabet corporation or Meta only have money from governments and advertising revenue. There’s no way they can turn a decent profit.
Besides, in order to play the ‘woke’ game, said companies will take a hit on their share price when a large part of their customer base find out exactly what they’re doing and start voting with their feet, reducing their overall cashflow, which is no good for anyone involved, be that investors or customers. See Gillette and Anheuser-Busch.
If the money go round stops, so do staff and investor bonuses and because most banks assets are so often highly leveraged (For ‘leveraged’ read ‘inflated’) it’s a very short step to needing (yet) another bail out. That’s when customers get the third degree when trying to get their money out (I’ve experienced this for myself in Ireland), or even find a Policeman on the steps of the bank, demanding to know what they’re about to take out and why. This is because the banks are working on a knife edge of credit and can’t afford any kind of mass withdrawal, or the whole system will fall over.
Fortunately there is light at the end of the tunnel, and while it may be someone with a torch and more work, there are signs that the ‘woke’ edifice is beginning to collapse. Because ‘woke’ has to have the power to censor ordinary people’s views. However, a recent supreme court ruling, tying the hands of the US Administration with an injunction forbidding them to contact or put pressure on social media companies directly or through proxies, includes US banks.
Now if the banks can be dissuaded from policing people’s opinions and going back to being purely financial institutions, that will be a major victory in the cause of freedom. The transition from top down censorship, restrictions and lies to a more honest open forum where people can talk out their differences instead of just throwing abuse may be just what the world needs.
It might even help the banks rediscover their core function and make more money instead of wasting it on ‘woke’ and similar policies. How ironic would that be?
A few beaches from along the wild Atlantic way. Most are a little difficult to get to and have few facilities, which is probably why they’re mostly deserted, even on sunny late June days.
Some of my favourite places. Now I have a ‘pooter with a dead MBR to fix.
Re this business about Farage getting his bank accounts involuntarily closed by his bank. See what the Black Belt Barrister has to say about case law. What can of worms has been opened?
So the ‘Just stop oil’ mob are making demands of the alphabet soup group? Demanding that ‘pride’ events are cancelled or else? I’m sitting here giggling to myself at the possible outcomes, because knowing what I know about the alphabet soup mob, anyone getting in the way could well find the phrase “Well, I’ll be buggered” a little less rhetorical than they’d like.
The UK Police will be too busy doing the rainbow macarena on the sidelines to notice.
Mrs S is a constant provider of delight and surprise. As I hope I am to her. Today’s little surprise was that she, like I, am interested in the the writings of Douglas Murray. We rarely talk politics, so I had no idea.
She had come back from the library with a copy of “War on the West“, which is on my ‘must read’ list of books for this year. Which will be added to our own library at some stage.
On the topic of books, it has come to my attention that some utter slaphead, some complete wankarse, has deemed it necessary to put a ‘trigger warning’ on the audiobook versions of the Discworld novels written by the late, great Terry Pratchett (It’s behind a paywall so I won’t link to it). My immediate reaction was; how monomaniacally retarded, how emotionally stunted do you have to be to need ‘trigger warnings’ at all?
I must confess that I have read a lot of unpleasant books, full of insalubrious ideas, including the complete works of the notorious Marquis de Sade and Aleister Crowley. My reaction? “Well, that wasn’t very nice, but whatever floats the boat of consenting adults. Just don’t ask me to join in ’cause I won’t.” Did I regret reading their works? No, because one has to be exposed to the demons within the soul to know them for the impostors they are, and to send them packing with a flea, or other suitably unpleasant biting insect, in their metaphorical ear.
On the other hand, our demons and the way we handle them define us as humans. Not wishing to learn about the ‘dark’ side, as defined by some very ignorant and foolish people, leaves us vulnerable to evils worst excesses because we can’t recognise a line when we’re about to make the mistake of crossing it. The many and varied roads to hell being thickly paved with ‘good’ intentions. For a given value of ‘good’. Which is often so far from actual goodness that it flips straight to evil, because, as any fule kno, good can be mistaken for evil, especially when evil wears a smile and good is having a bad hair day .
Notwithstanding, I will leave you with an appropriate quote from the infamous Marquis;
“My manner of thinking, so you say, cannot be approved. Do you suppose I care? A poor fool indeed is he who adopts a manner of thinking for others! ”
The Bill Sticker Alternative 