The second event happened in the cab on the way home, because Jacqueline had reached the point of being too fatigued to safely drive me, but still accompanied me. We were talking about the care I had enjoyed, and how the NHS would be totally incapacitated by the policies of Farage and Lowe. Our taxi driver was curious and tentatively sought our opinion. He told us that he has many people as passengers who are strong supporters of the far-right parties. He then added, “What these people don’t realise is that they are the ones who’re going to pay the price for what Farage wants, and there’s no way you can persuade them Farage is out to screw them.”
It’s in the taxi driver union contract, always provide deep and meaningful commentary to foreign correspondents (source, PJ O’Rourke).
So that’s another career for Spud then.
A cabbie who’s anti-Farage and anti-Lowe?
I had one of those last week in the back of my imagination.
Oh, very good! You win this thread!
Not to take away from your fine joke, but there’s a high proportion of the ‘stani contingent in taxi driving, and a low proportion of Reform/Restore support in the ‘stani contingent.
My experience of the ‘stani community is they’ll agree with pretty well anything you say. They’re only interested in trying to ingratiate themselves with you, so it isn’t actually a conversation.
“Yes, yes yes my friend.”
Agreed.
As if the NHS isn’t incapacitated already. My immediate circle aren’t rich by any means, just oldies who have held down a decent job all of their lives and saved sensibly. Quite a few have had to have operations, have looked at what the NHS has to offer and then paid to go private. This is by no means cheap and takes a big chunk out of your reserves, you pay for the NHS but if you want prompt service you have to pay twice. I can remember waiting lists being in the news and a topic of discussion in the 1980s. The reason always given by those on the left is that it’s underfunded, it wasn’t true then and it isn’t now.
Having said all that, my local surgery is very well run and provides excellent service. That, I think is part of the problem with public opinion, bits of the NHS are very good and you don’t have to worry about cost.
Well, clearly some staff have too much spare time on their hands, because they just caught some trying to access the medical records of the little boy thrown into the croc pit!
My sister recently made a number of visits to an elderly relative in hospital. She’s just signed up for medical insurance.
My granddaughter recently have birth in our local NHS Trust hospital where, in order to save money, midwives were made redundant and replaced with agency maternity nursing assistants. In this hot weather, at least a third are either failing to turn up, or claiming sickness due to heat stroke. The ward is in chaos, with regular midwives overworked and stressed, having to work longer shifts. Complaints to hospital management are referred to HR or the nurses union. She couldn’t get out of that place, with her baby, fast enough.
Meanwhile useless managers get CBEs or other awards and moved to another trust.
My local surgery likes to send me links to heath surveys. Some of these are single questions. When you complete them the chances are you get sent another survey link to rate the “consultation” you have just had. So they get a tick in the box for an appointment and another for customer engagement.
GP Surgeries are not part of the NHS. They are all independant contractors who are paid by the NHS. That is likely the difference you are seeing.
Yeah, but they’re paid by the number of patients on their books, not by output. So there’s an incentive to stuff the books and do as little work as possible, hence gatekeeper receptionists and online booking forms only accessible during office hours. Also why some are absolute shitholes, because they have no incentive to be anything else.
Go to Specsavers next door and get treated like royalty.
A lot depends on the culture of the practice (the one I remember from childhood pre-dated the NHS so its standards remained high for all the time I lived there); standards at my local surgery have declined since the former senior partner retired and it merged with another one in the next town. None of the GPs work a five-day week. It can take an hour for the telephone to be answered. The receptionist is both helpful and efficient, rather than a gatekeeper, so I walk round anytime and ask her I get a message to phone them.
Interestingly a “private practice” GP has set up in the same street as the NHS surgery in the next town – one wonders if it thinks the quality of NHS provision will lead people to knock on its door?
File under “conversation that only took place in Professor Kartoffel’s fevered imagination”
Amazing that every single one of these reported conversations involves people who agree 100% with him.
He takes “yeah mate, whatever” as 100% agreeing with him.
Anyone who describes Farage as far right can be summarily dismissed as a fool.
He’s not far right enough for my cleaner. She’s a Rupert Lowe sort of woman…….
I wouldn’t even describe Lowe as far right. Just right.
“What these people don’t realise is that they are the ones who’re going to pay the price for what labour, the tories, the dum libs and hypnotits want, and there’s no way you can persuade them that labour, the tories, the dum libs and hypnotits are out to screw them.”
TFTFY
Has there ever been a more puffed-up and less self-aware person outside the pages of Wodehouse?
Roderick Spud?
Excellent.
It’s why I refer to him as Lord Spudcup.
Having got very used to the question, “Are you allergic to anything?” over the last few days, I modified my response. Having made clear that, in medical terms, I’m allergic to nothing, I then added, “But I am to Nigel Farage”, which seemed to be quite popular with an NHS audience, where my estimate is that at least 70% of my carers, of whatever grade they might have been, would be in the category subject to deliberate abuse from both Reform and Rupert Lowe’s Restore Party.
Maybe euthanasia on the NHS isn’t such a bad idea after all.
His medical notes should be annotated: Refer to Gynaecology, this one’s a cunt.
Quick Doctor, come and look at this. Its the biggest one I’ve ever seen!
“So now he’s a foreign correspondent, is he?”
Reporting from NHS hospitals, definitely!
Alternatively, fuck, fuck. fuck the NHS.
David Frost would seem to agree with me.
https://archive.ph/gX2b2
I’d probably say based on recent utterances Restore is being rejected by the Far Right as well – given the Conservatives are in his fevered head part of the ‘Far Right’ as well then I think we can safely dismiss him as a loon and move on
Yarp. Saw that. Some of the people who backed Restore after deciding Nigel Farage is a filthy moderate are now unhappy with Rupert Lowe for not wanting to deport every single brown person.
Partly this is because Restore does have a Nazi problem. Let’s be honest. There’s former BNP and other fringe types trying to use Lowe’s vehicle as their own. That’s not Rupert’s fault, but they’re the same type of people who made UKIP unelectable after Farage left. Nick Griffin encouraging people to join Restore isn’t very helpful to Restore.
They’re not very interesting tho (except to the media) because they’re losers. I’m interested in the other people who are criticising Lowe and Farage from the right.
The ongoing preference cascade. (Apologies if this descriptor is overused, let me know if you have a better way to describe what’s happening). I think a substantial portion of the *mainstream* rightwing vote is now racing ahead of the positions Reform and Restore have staked out. People have less patience than ever, and are angrier than I’ve ever hitherto seen outside of a pub fight. The British public would like to see people strung up now, in real life and not Minecraft. That’s why Farage – master Overton Window shifter – has found that window accelerating faster than even he could have anticipated.
Not because they’ve been radicalised by Farage or Lowe, but because they’ve been radicalised by the British government. The petty, feminine tyranny of a government that acts like an emotionally abusive mother.
Interesting times. I expect to see openly racist “far right” governments in Europe by the end of this decade. Or civil wars and oceans of blood. Either or.
Like I’ve said before, you have a very strange idea of the BNP. Most of the membership of the BNP were basically the same people now supporting Reform. Sure parties have extremists. I lot of us would think a large portion of the Tory parliamentary party were extremists. hardly moderates.
I actually think the perverts who rule us are the extremists.
BiS – I don’t think I do. The BNP was always a magnet for lunatics, fruitcakes, and closet cases LARPing as Oswald Moseley.
Even a stopped clock, but nobody keeps a stopped clock on the wall, because it’s no use to man nor beast. All these people do is make racism uncool.
But how many BNP members did you actually know? There was an active BNP member I used to chat with whilst dogwalking in an Ilford park. Time when BNP were getting elected in East London locals. He was neither lunatic nor fruitcake nor LARPing as Oswald Moseley. Like many people round there he’d seen half the houses in his street bought by Pakistanis & the area become increasingly Pakistani. Go round there now it looks like a suburb of Islamabad.
He was saying then what many people are saying now. Griffin was prosecuted & acquitted for telling the truth. BNP were victims of a campaign to discredit them. The BBC featured prominently.
Which bit of democracy don’t you like?
Regrettably I think you’re right about the civil wars and oceans of blood, Steve.
I wonder if the British Army will fire on British people – really fire on them, not half-arsed like ‘Bloody Sunday’ but as a serious effort to repress them?
Probably depends on how many agents provocateurs can infiltrate the crowds and what harm they can do to squaddies.
Of course, if Tommy Atkins refuses there are a few million fighting age males with no particular love for this country or its people who could be quickly deputised.
I wonder if the British Army will fire on British people
Well, they did. Under Cromwell.
But if you are thinking squaddies will shoot at protesters or something, nah. I wouldn’t worry about that. The authorities should fear a Yeltsin on the tank moment if it comes to that. Most of our boys are good lads, and can be reasoned with. Blood is thicker than Lammy.
Oliver’s army is too small to even be properly called an army these days anyway. Can’t control 90 million plus pissed off people with 75,000 regular troops, most of whom earn supermarket shelf stacker money. As for giving weapons to the rapefugees, that would be a courageous decision, minister.
You do have at least one regiment of foreigners (Gurkhas).
So if you run short of white Brits to join the infantry and hire foreigners from the former empire, I suppose they’d be willing to mow down you Brits to keep their jobs.
Interested
Do you’re think they’re depraved enough to unleash ISIS Death squads on the indigenous population while they keep the troops in barracks? Because I certainly do!
I think you are spot on Steve about the public opinion (on the Right at least) moving far faster than the politicians can keep up. Its interesting how things have changed. If you’d have said 5 years ago that a mainstream party (leading in the polls no less) would soon be proposing cutting foreign citizens off from the State teat and literally rounding loads of illegals up and sending them home I’d have said you were bonkers. And the fact that this party can suggest this, and it just gets reported by the BBC. There’s very little kickback against it, 5 years ago the usual suspects would have been trying to get Reform et al arrested. Now, crickets. The shifting of the Overton Window has been massive.
France – 2021, ban on the hijab for girls under eighteen in public spaces, and in 2023, a ban on abayas in classrooms.
Switzerland – banned new minarets in 2009 referendum, and a face covering ban rooted in 2021
Netherlands: partial ban on the burqa law passed in 2019, prohibiting face-covering clothing in schools, public transport, hospitals, and government buildings.
Germany – March this year Mertz says 80 percent of the 1m Syrians currently staying in Germany should return home, even if well integrated and working, as doctors
Spain – February this year criminalised full-face veils.
Sweden – May this year says it will abandon the term ‘Islamophobia’.
There’s a small but significant trend here.
I’ve said before, I think we need to be looking at Test Acts.
Force Limp Dick Khan to pick a side.
It might even force His Maj the K to pick a side. Or at least change sides.
Test acts don’t work on people who practice taqiyya. I don’t think they work on modern day white people who don’t believe in God either. What fear have they of lying under oath?
So, crucifixion.
Simpler test – everyone has to be filmed eating a bacon sandwich while drinking a pint of beer, with a couple of busty blondes on each arm. Pass that test and you’re in!
Brilliant!
Can we have Tebbit’s cricket test as well, just for shits and giggles?
You see, Steve, Brilliant British Bullish Brilliance Beating Bastards.
We can do it, after all!
I’d have to take that test 57 times
Denmark is now looking at banning the call to prayer.
I can hardly believe it was legal in the first place.
Denmark, not Germany so it is legal until someone passes a law to ban it. That is the country where ChristianX announced he was going to wear a Star of David on his arm whenever he went out in public, in response to the Nazi demand that Jews wear a Star of David, and the Nazis didn’t know what to do next
Yeah. Where I live, at the start of hari raya, or eid, or ramadan, or whatever (I really don’t care), this year, at about 5.30 in the morning, some nearby mohammedan let out of his window a three-second blast of ‘alluhu akbar’, then switched off his boom box.
Next year, there’ll be two or more of the fuckers because who dares wins.
They need putting back in their box.
We need them to be put back in their box.
It would be a shame if some mohammedans kept getting a whiff of frying bacon every day during their pointless fasting.
Party members – or what the frogs call militants – are always more extreme than the elected members. Goes for all parties, left or right.
The petty, feminine tyranny of a government that acts like an emotionally abusive mother.
Oh, perfectly put.
The libtards would say that was already the case. Centrists are having to adopt “far right” policies just to stay politically alive. The EU just adopted a policy of deportation to African camps for failed asylum seekers (70%). That’s the legislature, whether the executive and individual countries carry it out is a different matter.
But the EU Parliament voting to the right of Farage is quite something. The debate highlights are amazing, with libtard chants of “shame on you” drowned out with “send them back”! All conducted in English, which is peculiarly splendid in itself but also means British people can see how far out of line their own traitor-government is, and how milquetoast the opposition parties actually are.
Having mandateless communists running the ship of state toward the rocks is going to speed things up here. The summer has only just got going, and isn’t it hot . . .
I was going to say that’s a reason to rejoin then, but of course instead of sending them back, they’ll send ’em here. Which they already do.
But the EU Parliament voting to the right of Farage is quite something. The debate highlights are amazing, with libtard chants of “shame on you” drowned out with “send them back”! All conducted in English, which is peculiarly splendid in itself but also means British people can see how far out of line their own traitor-government is, and how milquetoast the opposition parties actually are.
I did not know that, so went looking for it and found this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkxAlKdClyE
What’s doubly interesting are the YT comments. Normally on YT the comments are broadly sympathetic to the person or entity posting the vid.
But this YT post is from the Groan, and the posters are fisting the Groan.
Makes you glad to be alive!
Shit, does all of this mean we have to rejoin the EU?!
(OMDB).
Meanwhile, in Africa:
Leaders of di anti-migrant movements and some civic society groups wey include di March and March tok say di 30 June deadline for undocumented foreign nationals to leave South Africa no dey change.
For one news conference on Wednesday, 24 June ahead of di deadline, Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma, leader of di March and March movement clear am say no be dem choose di date, but na South Africans wey wan see di kontri take shape.
Ngobese-Zuma also clear am say dem no dey plan to shutdown di kontri for dat day, and dia target no be only black foreigners, but any foreign nationals wey dey live for dia kontri illegally.
As she dey ansa questions from tori pipo on wetin go happun on di day, di March and March movement leader say di demonstration dey expected to dey peaceful, as she reject accusations say di protest dey promote violence against foreigners.
Ngobese-Zuma plus oda representatives from di several civil organisations repeat am say di demonstration na to put pressure on di govment to compulsory immigration laws, secure di borders and address wetin organisers describe as illegal immigration crisis.
“Di 30 June deadline no eva dey about violence. E no eva dey about shutting down di kontri. E no eva dey about harming anybodi. All we dey ask na for illegal immigrants to leave our kontri and for govment to enforce di laws wey already dey exist,” she tok.
WTF was that?
BBC News
Pidgin page 🙂 It’s a real thing:
https://www.bbc.com/pidgin/articles/cd0m7yn94nno
What a cultural delight that is. The level of understanding possible is depthless.
(according to a Pidgin translator)
Wow:
Although I’m not sure about her understanding of international politics; it doesn’t look like she has ever been to Britain:
From the Wikipedia page for her organisation, March and March:
It seems they’re planning a mass demonstration on Tuesday against any “undocumented immigrants” who are still in the country then. This they claim will be “peaceful” and not “promote violence against foreigners”.
It probably will not promote violence against foreigners because since Isandlwana most foreigners have realised that it isn’t a good idea to pick a fight with Zulus.
The thing about Farage is he wants to stop us bringing in engineers and docto…
Oh.
A Saudi doctor has been convicted of charges including murder over the car-ramming attack on a Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg in 2024 that left six people dead.
I’d forgotten about this. Gives you a nice warm feeling inside.
Say what you like about the USSR, they were in many ways deluded but they were in othger ways very serious men.
☝️
The Somali pirate problem was dealt with in a similarly effective manner.
They had a militant religion comparable to Islam, called Marxist-Leninism, so they thought that anything was justified in the service of their religion.
Anything is justified if your people are being kidnapped by murderous savages.
I was making a general point in response to your last sentence; I view the murder of Skripal as less justified.
He loves hum some Socratic dialogue, doesn’t he?
Its all made up of course. His Pakistani driver didn’t speak English and wouldn’t care what the passengers were saying if he did.
Richie endorses this Farage is out to screw them. See his response 7.17pm
Nearly word for word from this: HEALTH – The British National Party (BNP)
Richie and the far right, never knowingly far away.