The Prime Minister likes to say that Partygate is a distraction and for once I agree with the man. Of course it is. The entire shemozzle takes attention away from more important matters such as the cost of living crisis. More importantly, it distracts us from the Government’s lack of ideas on how to improve the lives of ordinary folk.

Every day we seem to get new scandals but when you look past them, you find a government that is empty of ideas. It passes laws to punish its opponents and protect it from scrutiny, while doing absolutely nothing about that which threatens the well-being of the public.

The cabinet meeting earlier in the week was a case in point. It was one of those political events which reveals much more than it wanted to I am afraid. Bunter Johnson took the unusual step of briefing journalists beforehand about what he was going to tell ministers. He wanted his loyal yes-men and women to do ‘everything possible’ to help with living costs and explore ‘innovative ways’ to provide support.

What sort of nonsense was this? It made no sense but the intention was clear. Get away from Partygate and focus on the ‘things that matter’ – to Bunter at any rate. It was successful too in that It brought those things firmly into focus.

We are over a year into the inflationary surge which followed the Coronabug epidemic. But even before then, many experts were warning about what was coming. Lockdowns across the world had created a global supply chain crisis, with factories and ports closing or radically restricting capacity. At the same time, demand was proving completely unpredictable. People had lost the ability to spend on nights out in pubs or restaurants, so instead they were splashing out on things like sofas, playstations, fancy carpets etc. When supply is reduced and demand increases, you get inflation.

Most of us have been aware of this for a long time and yet it was only this week that our revered leader even bothered to ask his Cabinet to come up with ideas. But – and it was a big but – none of these ideas were allowed to cost any money. Johnson was clear that ministers restricted their proposals to ‘non-fiscal measures.’ In other words, they couldn’t offer any money to address a problem involving lack of money.

Yet it is not as if the Government does not pass any legislation.  Before the prorogation of Parliament a couple of days ago, a number of bills were rammed through in a desperate attempt to wrap them up without too much debate or scrutiny. The problem is that none of these bills are intended to help peoples’ lives. On the contrary nearly all of them are designed to silence or constrain the perceived ‘enemies’ of this shower of a government.

The Policing Bill was passed after it had been returned by the Lords who had tried to get it redrafted. This bill is designed to silence protests, even if there is only a single protester. That would include the anti-Brexit demonstrator who has irritated ministers outside Parliament for the last few years.

The bill hands police the power to impose punishing restrictions on demonstrations where the ‘volume’ might potentially alarm a single person or interfere with the work of a nearby organisation. So, that means the Government has handed police the ability to close any protest at any time. I wonder whether this will apply to the eco demonstrators holding the unfortunate public to ransom. Somehow I doubt it.

The Judicial Review bill was also hurriedly pushed through. This takes aim at one of the great mechanisms of British justice – the right of a citizen to take ministers to court. This was born from Johnson’s own frustration when the Supreme Court ruled his prorogation of parliament unlawful in 2019. The Justice Secretary at the time, Robert Buckland set up an Independent Review of Administrative Law in July 2020 to try and take on the judges. But that didn’t work and the subsequent report concluded that the judicial review was working well. The Government pushed ahead anyway, with legislation ring-fencing certain ministerial decisions from consideration by the High Court.

Meanwhile, the Elections Bill, which is currently ricocheting between the Lords and the Commons, takes aim at the Electoral Commission, an organisation that Number Ten has been trying to silence since it fined Vote Leave for overspending during the Brexit referendum.

This bill gives ministers the ability to control the watchdog. It does this by granting the Speaker’s committee, which includes secretaries of state, the power to issue guidance to the Commission – both on general strategy and specific cases. This is surely the action of a banana republic rather than a modern democracy.

The bills pushed through this week seem more like a revenge strategy against those who were insufficiently obsequious after the Brexit result – the Electoral Commission, the courts, even a solitary demonstrator standing outside Westminster. They are an attempt to insulate the government from challenge, either by protestors, or independent watchdogs, or the judiciary.

But when it comes to helping people, this government has nothing to say. There is no legislation. There are no late-night attempts to get something on the statute book. There is no ping-pong with the Lords. There’s no money, or attention or even policy. Just the pitiful sight of an inept Prime Minister asking the Cabinet to come up with some ideas that don’t cost anything.

So for once I have to admit that Bunter Johnson was right. Partygate is indeed a distraction. It has focused attention on his lying and lawbreaking, rather than the moral vacuum of his legislative agenda.

Elsewhere the general madness persists. Lancashire County Council – bless ‘em – are insisting that town and parish authorities test all their lampposts in case they are unable to take the strain of bunting at the Jubilee! No, that is not a belated April Fool joke. As the cost for inspecting each lamppost is £55, some councils are deciding to dispense with decorations altogether which is such a shame for ordinary folk. Surely everyone should be celebrating Queenie’s extraordinary reign. I am not by any means a royalist but this lady has been wonderful and deserves to be celebrated rather than have the celebrations muted by government desk jockeys.

Where will it all end?

It is now more than two years since working from home was actively encouraged by this idiotic government and it seems that the majority of civil servants are still doing it. (I must admit that my new passport arrived pretty quickly so presume some departments are still doing the job they are paid to do)

However, media reports (do we believe them any more?) insist that Whitehall offices are still largely unmanned so I suppose it was only a matter of time before the police decided they were entitled to a slice of this particular cake as well.

Having busied themselves over the past couple of years measuring suspect pizza slices, arresting sunbathers and people drinking tea in public places, raiding gyms and family barbecues, manhandling frightened women at the Sarah Everard vigil while simultaneously taking the knee to Black Lives Matter idiots and skateboarding with ‘eco-warriors,’ the Plod obviously feel they need some kind of reward for their zeal.

With hapless Met Commissioner Cressida Dickhead haggling over her thoroughly undeserved pay-off, these once respected uniform carriers appear to think there might be some sort of reward in it for them, too.

The newly elected president of the Police Superintendents’ Association, Paul Fotheringham, says that police officers should also be allowed to ‘work from home’ in future.

Not only that, but it should also be up to individual officers to determine when and where they report for duty.

Working From Home and choosing their own hours would ‘improve diversity’, he claimed with breathtaking piety.

Anyone living in twenty first century Britain must be more than accustomed to high ranking public servants spouting inanities but this takes the biscuit, even for the modern police. I wondered if it was a media wind up at first, but it did not take much research to discover that this was a direct quote.

Fotheringham also said that adopting flexible rostering would help more young women with children to rise through the ranks.

He went on: “The only way we will continue to be attractive as a career choice, whilst also bringing in people representing our communities, is to become more flexible and forward thinking when it comes to working patterns.

‘Obviously in terms of uniformed officers you are always going to need people available to deal with emergencies, but policing is about many different roles so the challenge for us in the future is to be much more flexible.”

Presumably, since modern coppers seem to spend most of their time patrolling the internet in search of ‘inappropriate’ comments and fashionable ‘hate crimes,’ they reckon they might just as well do it from their bedrooms rather than the local nick.

Fotheringham himself spent twenty eight years as a copper with Kent Constabulary, rising to the rank of Detective Chief Superintendent so one would expect him to know better.

I know little about Kent except that it is home to many of Britain’s most celebrated armed robbers. Most of them settled in the so-called Garden of England after starting life in South East London and making their way up the crime ladder at the expense of other people. So, given his background, you might assume Fotheringham would have some appreciation of frontline policing and its difficulties. Yet judging by his comments last weekend, we’re not talking Slipper of the Yard here.

More like slippers and pipe in front of reruns of Softly Softly or The Bill of an afternoon, with the occasional glance at an iPad. I know all we former cops like to make comparisons with how things were ‘in my day’ but how can policing be done by Zoom, even in this day and age?

We’re currently in the throes of a violent crime epidemic at a time when the police have withdrawn from the streets and refuse to investigate burglaries and car crime as being beneath them. Meanwhile our inept Home Secretary can’t find a replacement for Cressida Dickhead because there is not a senior copper in Britain considered capable of doing the job.

So I suppose if they do all start working from home, nobody will really notice?

How typical it was of our grandstanding Members of Parliament that the Chamber was packed when President Zelensky pleaded for more aid and arms to battle Vlad the Bad. They all cheered him heartily yet the very next day during the crucial debate when Defence Secretary Ben Wallace called for anti-aircraft missiles to be sent to Ukraine, there were only a handful of MPs present.

Five years ago I moved from leafy Gloucestershire down to the West Country and thought I had arrived in a more sensible and down to earth part of Britain. It is pretty too, particularly at this time of year when Spring flowers are blooming everywhere.

Yet only this week, St Blaise council in nearby Cornwall cut down thousands of daffodils in a children’s’ play area because they were afraid that the children would make themselves ill by eating the flowers.

This mass insanity will only come to an end when we all stand up to the hysterical and overpaid desk jockeys who are ruling and ruining so many lives to make themselves feel important

Having spent a large chunk of my life as a copper, I have always felt that people should be sent to prison as punishment, but it seems that I was quite wrong.

Modern liberals seem to think that the very idea of bad people being punished for their crimes is entirely wrong They want to excuse the killers, the rapists and the thugs who beat up frail pensioners because of their ‘mental health’ issues, their poverty-stricken childhoods or their drug problems.

It seems that in these enlightened times, actual victims of crime don’t matter – only the perpetrators who apparently need to be handled with kid gloves and given every consideration.

Two particular stories over the past week have made me shake my head in despair. First, a new report says prison officers in women’s jails must not shout at inmates in case it upsets or offends them. The report says officers must create a ‘more positive living environment’ for the convicts. Not only that, but they must no longer use loudspeaker systems or shout on the landing to get someone’s attention.

This report was compiled after visits to five women’s jails one of which was HMP Low Newton where triple killer Joanna Dennehy is serving a whole life sentence. Dennehy is the vicious serial killer who murdered three men and knifed two more – both of whom miraculously survived even though she did everything to ensure that they did not.

She even threatened to kill Rosemary West who was in the same prison, yet this is the kind of creature officers are being asked not to shout at and to treat with respect.

Another totally mad initiative is the new ‘Welcome to Prison’ plan which is being trialled in six jails where inmates are being offered the chance to take up yoga and meditation to relieve the stress of being banged up.

“Coming straight from court and being thrown into an induction wing is very stressful,” says Victoria Green from the Prison Phoenix Trust which is heading the initiative.

Of course it ruddy well is! It is supposed to be stressful dammit! God forbid that villains think they are in prison to be punished because they did something hellish – and you have to have done something pretty hellish these days to even be sent to jail.

Are these do-gooding prison reformers really so out of touch with reality that they think that if you speak softly to a killer or a rapist or teach them a few yoga positions they’re suddenly going to become decent human beings?

Of course they are not. The re-offending statistics prove that. A Prison Reform Trust report shows that reoffending rates currently stand at well over fifty percent.

As for rehabilitation schemes in jails, former prisons boss, Sir Martin Narey, says they don’t work and should be scrapped: “The things we did to prisoners, the courses we put them on, the involvement of charities made little or no difference,” he said recently.

Prison is supposed to be hard dammit. It is not supposed to be a glorified holiday resort where you can de-stress and people speak softly to you. Let’s face it, in this country at the moment the perpetrators of crime get more time, money and sympathy lavished on them than any of their victims.

Yes, I am sure that large swathes of the prison population suffer mental health problems but then so do their victims, very often for the rest of their lives. For every violent crime there is a victim, a wrecked life, a devastated family, none of whom know how to cope with the aftermath. Can you imagine how it must feel for parents whose child has been murdered to discover that the monster who did it is having yoga lessons in prison to de-stress?

And even worse, that whatever sentence he or she received, they will only serve half of it at most?

As a nation, Britain has to stop looking for excuses for people committing horrible crimes. Yes, they might have hard lives but so have millions of other people whose response hasn’t been to go out and murder and rape people.

The truth is I could not care one jot what happens to the paedophiles, the killers and the rapists. My sympathies are one hundred percent with their victims whose lives have been scarred forever by these unfeeling people.

Priti Patel talks tough but it really is time she got stuck in to the prison system and stopped these idiotic initiatives. It is the general public who need protection, not the unfeeling cretins who break the law.

Meanwhile the chief executive of NHS Providers, Chris Hopson tells us all that he agonises from his position of ‘white, male, middle-class privilege’ over how he can make our health service ‘an effective anti-racist organisation.’

He should be agonising over how to reduce the hospital waiting lists which currently stand at well over six million people and the number is still climbing.

 I am sure we would appreciate that more than listening to his guilty feelings. What a pathetic man he must be.

I still cannot profess to understand the thinking from either side on the war in Ukraine but like most people, I feel nothing but compassion for the desperate columns of Ukrainian refugees that we see every day on our television screens. Who knows what they have experienced over the past couple of weeks and I don’t think even they know where they are going? They just want safety for themselves and their families.

Nations to the west of Ukraine are welcoming the terrified, bedraggled masses with warm shelters and open arms. Poland has taken well over a million; Hungary around two hundred thousand and Romania, Slovakia and Moldova more than three hundred thousand between them.

Around a quarter of a million have already moved on to places such as Germany and France, and the EU is preparing to grant Ukrainians who flee the war the automatic right to stay and work throughout the twenty seven nations for up to three years.

And where does Britain stand in this league of compassion? The country that welcomed tens of thousands of Jewish children fleeing Nazi Germany; the country that prides itself on its record of human rights, and which likes to think of itself as one of the most compassionate democracies on the planet?

Huh!

Up until a day or two ago there was a sign – now removed – on a closed door in an unmanned outpost in Calais that said, ‘No Visas.’ Beneath it, was given a web link that took you to an online application form. Or even less charitably a directive to go to ‘Paris visa centre’ or the visa centre in Brussels. No addresses or directions were given. 

This is surely outrageous and a blot on anything vaguely humanitarian that remains in government departments such as the ruddy Home Office. How do these bumptious officials expect someone who has just travelled two thousand miles in the freezing cold with everything they own in a suitcase to download an online form? How many of them are carrying computers or even fancy cell phones?

The Home Office have also proudly announced a new visa centre in Lille, seventy miles from Calais, although it will not offer appointments or walk-in access, and its exact location will not be made public.

As of yesterday, this country had approved just seven hundred and sixty visas.

Mothers with babies in freezing cold wet nappies, grannies trying hard to keep walking or chldren frightened out of their wits – it is the same for everyone. If you do not have a visa, you do not get in.

Even to my cynical mind – and I have complained about the refugee problem before – this is bloody disgraceful. These are not young men with cell phones seeking fame and fortune in this soft country. These are genuine refugees, most of them women and children fleeing from brutal arial bombardment yet when they manage to reach what they think is safety, British desk drivers don’t even offer a cup of tea or a word of reassurance. In fact, they are not even present. All these unfortunates meet up with is a scrap of paper stuck to a wall and the prospect of a journeying all the way back, no matter how poor a state they may be in. Bunter Johnson and Priti Patel, together with the entire week-kneed bunch of cretins who make up the weakest and most ineffectual cabinet in British history should hang their heads in shame.

How can they justify sending exhausted families from pillar to post, making them walk through endless bureaucratic minefields when they are out of their minds with fear and grief, ripped from their lives, terrified for the fate of loved ones back home?

It is a disgrace and an abject failure of government.

We are blithely informed that the Home Office doesn’t want to risk letting in the wrong people and that I suppose is fair enough. Some bad people will doubtless try to get into Britain under false pretences but these are people fleeing from the horrors of war dammit. At times like this you have to offer help first and ask questions later.

And what about those ‘refugees’ – mostly young men – coming across the channel in ever increasing numbers? I would bet my trousers that few of them even have passports, let alone visas yet they seem to be welcomed with open arms.

But Patel’s failure in that department should not affect the plight of Ukrainians. If we had even a semi-competent Home Office, it would be able to rise to the occasion. Instead, Putin’s victims must all jump to the whims of desk jockeys in Whitehall (none of whom have even heard an angry shot) while the British public look on, utterly ashamed at the inadequacy of their government’s response.

Meanwhile our revered leader’s sanctions programme of which he seems so proud is becoming ever more ridiculous. I can vaguely see why ordinary Russians would be affected by the withdrawal of companies like McDonalds or Starbucks but now the Cardiff Philharmonic Orchestra is facing ridicule after removing the Russian composer Tchaikovsky from its forthcoming programme due to the war in Ukraine.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, which celebrates Russia’s defence against the invasion of Napoleon and is notable for featuring a volley of cannon fire, was due to be included in the orchestra’s Tchaikovsky concert at St David’s Hall on 18 March, but the entire programme has been abandoned due to events in Ukraine.

Cancelling a Tchaikovsky concert is so completely illogical that ordinary Russians will write it off as Vlad the Bad going overboard with his anti-western propaganda.

I am no expert on Tchaikovsky but do know that he spent a lot of time in Ukraine and incorporated a great deal of Ukrainian folk music and stories into his work.

And to confirm the fact that the world – or at least this little part of it – has completely lost its marbles as well as its honour – we had the news a few days ago that that complete blithering idiot, Gavin Williamson is to be knighted.

Williamson was indisputably, except perhaps by his mother the worst minister of his generation. Useless at defence – he told the Russians to shut up and go away which must have terrified them – and a complete disaster at education. He was ignominiously sacked from both jobs but somehow, he is worth this considerable honour.

I have heard it rumoured that as a former Chief Whip, he ‘knows where the skeletons are buried. and Bunter J is frightened of him, but this is difficult to believe. Yet short of sticking two fingers up to the country, Johnson could not have made his contempt for the British public more plain.

I really cannot get my head around the war in Ukraine and the western world’s reaction to it. Let’s face it, Russia, responding to years of deliberate humiliation, taunting and provocation, finally goes mad and invades a sovereign country. The mighty West hits back by – throwing them out of the Eurovision Song Contest.

That really is a bitter blow to Vlad the Bad I am sure but is it surprising? I don’t think so.

Over the past thirty years, Britain and America have steadily lost their diplomatic power to influence while at the same time shrivelled their armed might to a frightening degree.

And why the sudden turn around of attitudes to Ukraine? A few days before the Russian invasion – which caught me by surprise too – began there was a piece in a British newspaper describing Ukraine as a country where ‘oligarchs run media empires, with politicians and officials on the payroll.

The piece went on

‘The judicial system is a festering mess where arrests, prosecutions and verdicts are used as score-settlers between political and commercial rivals. 

Senior positions are bought and sold. Healthcare and education are plagued by kickbacks. The security service, the SBU, is infested with intrigue and sleaze – and penetrated by Russian agents of influence.’

The current mass media and political outrage against civilian casualties would surely be more convincing if the same politicians and reporters had bleated as loudly about the hundreds of civilian casualties, many of them inflicted by Ukrainian armed forces, in and near the breakaway regions in the country’s East.

A 2020 report by the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe said that between January 2017 and September 2020, there were 946 civilian casualties, of which 161 were fatalities. Among the casualties were 100 children (73 boys and 27 girls).

And the same political and media establishment had no compunction about supporting the NATO bombing of Belgrade in 1999 (with major civilian casualties); the crazy invasion of Iraq in 2003; and the almost forgotten NATO bombing of Libya, also with its toll of children killed in supposed ‘surgical strikes.’ 

Yes, Putin is a nutcase and needs to be stopped but western leaders seem incapable of making solid decisions. Sanctions won’t work and I speak from experience. Britain and the United Nations imposed punitive sanctions against little, land-locked Rhodesia and it merely did our businesses good because we had to make things ourselves – and we did.

Besides, China is the real threat, and that is a regime which makes Putin look like a nice guy. Yet we stay on friendly terms with the Chinese. When their despots come to London, they not only dine at Buckingham Palace, but the ineffectual and in this case, cowardly British police crush peaceful demonstrations of protest for fear that our tyrannical guests are offended. 

We continue to pretend Taiwan is not independent. We shun the Dalai Lama for the sake of trade with China. Is it precisely because we are so feeble in this struggle that we pretend to toughness in the supposed Cold War with Russia? I am all too afraid that it is.

But here we are again in a moralising frenzy. The BBC, which insisted on strict neutrality between Britain and Argentina in its coverage of the Falklands War flings itself into an ignorant and one-sided coverage of the Ukraine crisis. That idiot Clive Myrie who is presenting the evening news from a city he weirdly calls ‘Kyeeeev’, insists that Ukraine is a ‘European democracy.’ What planet does the man live on I wonder?

Meanwhile the Ginger Biscuit and his ambitious, actress wife have graciously let it be known from the luxury of their Californian mansion that they ‘stand with the people of Ukraine.’ Vlad the Bad must be shivering in his boots although I’m surprised that this weird pair have not instructed lawyers. That seems to be their first port of call these days. 

And to make the situation even more farcical, as the Russians advance inexorably on Kiev, the British security services are concentrating on political correctness gone mad. Britain’s spies are being urged to consider their white privilege and declare their pronouns as Europe descends into war. This comes from a leaked report on ‘improving diversity’ in the security services, written by Sir Stephen Lovegrove, the UK’s national security adviser. It also advises against using gendered terms like ‘manpower’ and even words like ‘strong’ and ‘grip’, which can ‘reinforce dominant cultural patterns.’ And there you have it: as Putin plays the strongman, our security bosses are saying ze and zir and advising against inappropriate usage of upsetting words like ‘strength.’

Britain is no longer the powerhouse it imagines it is I am afraid. Not only do we find ourselves in a much weaker position politically, socially and economically; we are also psychologically and I fear, morally less equipped to rise to the challenge.

Is it really any wonder Vlad the Bad thinks he can do whatever he wants? He looks at the West – not just the UK, but America too – and sees democracy weakened by weak leadership and trivial rivalries. I am sure he scoffs at western obsession with human rights, self-flagellation over climate change and the endless march of the woke brigade.

He saw what happened in Afghanistan and witnessed the transformation and not for the better of once great institutions – from the BBC to the Armed Forces. There is a weakness running through Britain that cannot be denied.

Here we are arguing about unisex toilets while teenage conscripts are dying for the sake of an old man’s ego. Yes, the man is mad but he is no fool. He has chosen his moment well. While we’ve been fighting a pointless culture war, he’s been preparing for the real thing. And now we must all dance to his tune.

For the Russians only respect strength and have contempt for those who seek to appease them. Vlad the Bad is a typical example of the Russian stereotype. If western powers are to convince him that they mean business, they need to get their acts together and get serious for a change.

Bunter Johnson and Sleepy Joe Biden are talking big but how can Putin and his generals take the west seriously if despite the somewhat feeble sanctions that have been imposed already, London is still awash with hot Russian money?

On a different tack, Hemingway’s wonderful novel, The Old Man and The Sea has always been one of my favourite stories and is a permanent fixture on my bookshelves. It is a story of one man’s struggle against the elements and is often viewed as a metaphor for life itself, but the book is the latest victim of modern wokery. Students in the Highlands and Islands University are being warned that it ‘contains graphic fishing scenes.’ Believe it or not, this particular university is in an area renowned for its fishing industry.

Is it any wonder that Vlad the Bad has no hesitation about throwing his weight around?

This Ukraine business puzzles me I am afraid. The Ukrainians themselves seem to get on with their lives taking only minimal precautions against the presumed – by Western leaders at any rate – invasion but the said western leaders grow ever more vituperative and certain about Vladimir Putin’s invasion plans. It is well over forty eight hours now since America’s intelligence people even gave us the exact hour when he was going to invade.

Is he ever going to do it? I don’t know but then I know very little about Putin. He is obviously a strong man – in sharp contrast to western leaders such as Sleepy Joe or Bunter Johnson – but I really cannot see what he would gain by such an invasion. Yes, he could conquer the country but then he would need to hold it and for years which he surely cannot afford to do.

In general, the West’s response to Russian aggression is nothing more than an embarrassment to us all. A threat of sanctions and a marginal reinforcement of troops along NATO’s boundary is hardly going to terrify or deter the monster that they assure us is Vladimir Putin. Especially, when this is accompanied by the palpable fear of Western leaders who worry about votes rather than people. It is an invitation to Putin to do exactly as he pleases with Ukraine. The clear message our leaders have sent is that we are not really with Ukraine at all. We are merely shouting out our displeasure, all of which Vlad the Bad will ignore and rightly so. Ukraine may fall and rather than stand shoulder to shoulder with Ukrainians, we will stand by. Mind you, both Britain and America are experiencing huge problems with their own borders so quite why they are making such a fuss about the borders of a corrupt and very distant state is difficult to understand.

I am writing a book on the history of Rhodesia – as it affected me – at the moment and you know while Putin is being demonised by the putrid western media, I can’t help remembering how the same media outlets demonised all white Rhodesians in those distant, but not forgotten days. No matter how hard most of we white Rhodesians tried to act in a civilised manner and no matter how hard we pleaded for understanding based on facts, we were regarded by much of the world as self-serving racists who had to be crushed.

This media-orchestrated nonsense has now spread to Europe and America where the white population are allowing their countries to fall apart around them while a privileged minority seem bent on destroying their western culture and the incredible heritage that has been built up over the past couple of successful millennia.

And you know it was not long ago that the same ranting media supported Tony Bair and George W Bush’s claims that Saddam Hussein was in possession of chemical weapons that he intended to use in countries – including Britain – other than Iraq. This induced some sort of mass hysteria, whipped up by the politicians and off the west went once again to war.

If I remember correctly, the one world leader who argued against a violent intervention in Iraq was Vladimir Putin yet he was ignored as knowing nothing. The resulting war caused more deaths and led to more suffering than poor old Saddam could ever have managed and it created an instability in that entire region that still goes on today.

During the election battle between Trump and Hilary Clinton, we had the Russian collusion allegations that were told to the American people by their own media. It seemed that Putin through cyber means had fixed the electoral system and was responsible for the maverick Trump defeating his democratic rival and Trump was therefore an illegitimate president – as stated by Clinton on numerous occasions.

Yet we now know that this story was not true and thanks to the recent Durham investigation whose report came out last week, we also know that Clinton and her supporters with the knowledge of both the FBI and CIA illegally hacked the communications systems, not only in Trump Towers but later on in the White House itself. Trump himself knew what was happening but when he tried to protest his innocence, was vilified as a habitual liar.

So I remain somewhat cynical about what is unfolding on the Ukraine border. Yes, Putin is being pilloried by politicians and the media as a war mongerer but is he really? Let’s ignore the rhetoric emanating from Washington and London. Both those governments have huge internal problems and are merely trying to distract the general public. That silly woman Liz Truss who inexplicably finds herself the British Foreign Secretary even though she confuses the Baltic and Black seas and doesn’t seem to know what cities are actually in Russia keeps sounding off about the dangers we all are facing.

Putin himself insists that Russia is threatened by the deployment of ballistic missiles in Ukraine and this sounds reasonable to me. What would sleepy Joe Biden or Bunter J do if they had a similar situation in neighbouring countries I wonder.

Anyway, Vlad the Bad doesn’t need to tremble in his boots as yet. Having watched the mighty American military machine, led by progressive generals, more interested in critical race theory and transgender rights defeated by pyjama clad rag heads in Afghanistan, he must be laughing gently to himself.

Putin – bless him – believes in only two genders and does not agree with same sex marriage. His armed forces are made up of tough well trained soldiers who do not have to attend diversity classes and certainly won’t be afraid of men attacking them in weird clothing.

I have met a few Russian hunters during my bush travels but I do not know them as a people but have been repeatedly told that they have no sense of humour. Yet after Sleepy Joe Biden’s confident forecast that the invasion of Ukraine would begin at three am on 16^th February, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova issued a statement asking that,

‘Bloomberg, The New York Times and The Sun media outlets… publish the schedule for our upcoming invasions for the year’ to help her ‘plan my vacation.’  She also said ‘this prediction will go down in history as the day of the failure of Western war propaganda. Humiliated and destroyed without firing a shot.’

Well said Ma’am. I am heartily fed up with dishonest and scheming politicians. Was Sleepy Joe trying to frighten Ukrainians or was he having another mental blackout?

Here, Boris Johnson, thanks mainly to his wife is waiting to hear if he will be criminally charged with breaking his own lockdown rules. If he is, he will face demands for his resignation and I cannot see him staying on for long. In the US Joe Biden is regarded as losing his marbles and considered one of – if not the most -incompetent presidents in American history. With illegal immigrants streaming through his southern border – as they are here in Britain – he is widely accused of paying more attention to Ukrainian sovereignty than his own. His popularity is at a record low.

Both these buffoons desperately needs a distraction from their own frailties. With the Coronabug losing some of its ability to scare us all, what better distraction than to start yet another war – possibly nuclear this time.

Sticking to Britain, a council has been accused of ‘hypocrisy’ after fining a couple hundreds of pounds for growing vegetables in their garden without planning permission.

After deciding to start a vegetable plot during the pandemic, Lee and Kirstie Lawes settled on an unfenced patch of lawn toward the rear of their property in Deeping St James, Lincolnshire.

At the same time, they had become fed up with repeatedly finding dog poo and cars parked on the grass, making it difficult to mow.

Having confirmed the land was part of the property through Land Registry records, the couple put up a fence and raised vegetable beds – wooden ones on paved ground too – in January 2020.

Mr Lawes said: ‘It was great – we ended up with so much produce we were able to give some to neighbours and left some out so that people could help themselves.

‘But a year on, we had a letter from the council saying we needed to pay £469 for a ‘change of use’ of the land.’

Officials from South Kesteven District Council told them part of their garden was classified as ‘informal open space’, which means the public must be able to access it freely for activities such as walking.

Mr Lawes added: ‘I accept they are following procedure but it’s the hypocrisy of it that I find frustrating.

The government is telling us to be more sustainable but when someone starts to ‘grow their own’, the council tells you to pay £469 for the privilege.

‘It would have been easier to extend our house onto the land.’

A spokesman for South Kesteven District Council said: ‘The land at the rear of these properties is classed as informal open space and the owner has not applied for planning permission to change that.

‘We have been advising them throughout on the lawful use of this land and continue to offer informal help while encouraging them to apply for planning permission, without which they might struggle to re-mortgage or sell the property.’

Where do they find these idiotic, box ticking desk jockeys I wonder?

I smiled when I read Germaine Greer’s 2015 comment about gender reassignment surgery a week or so ago.

‘I’ve asked my doctor to give me long ears and liver spots and I’m going to wear a brown coat but that won’t turn me into a cocker spaniel,’ she said and she was quite correct. Few thinking people can possibly believe that a man who has his undercarriage altered and wears a dress is a woman.

However that did not stop the more militant members of the trans lobby going ballistic and Greer went straight to the top of their hate list of TERFs – which I believe is what these fanatics label anyone who does not agree with their bonkers view. Apparently it stands for Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists. I suppose but am not entirely sure that there are people who feel trapped in the wrong body but they must be few and far between.

But if someone really wants to endure radical surgery and identify as a member of the opposite sex, that’s fine by me, but the totally intolerant ‘trans brigade’ seem determined to push the boundaries ever further and demonise anyone who dares to dissent.

For a few years they have been looking for new grounds for complaint so when Greer joked about turning into a cocker spaniel, she couldn’t possibly have anticipated what madness would come next.

Now we learn that one of our leading universities is demanding recognition for people who identify as cats.

Are there really such people? I have a friend who loves cats but surely even the most enthusiastic cat lover does not want to identify as one – or am I the one who is out of touch with reality?

Bristol University has just issued guidelines to staff on the correct pronouns to use when addressing those who define as ‘catgender’.

The list specifically refers to ‘xenic’ individuals who do not fit in to ‘the Western human

binary of gender alignments.’ This is gobbledygook of the worst kind and coming from

what is supposedly a place of learning. Where did they dig out the word xenic I wonder.

They go on to describe a catgender person as ‘someone who strongly indentifies with cats and may experience delusions relating to being a cat or other feline.’ And there is more. ‘For example, someone who is catgender may use nya/nyan pronouns.’ Apparently, nyan is Japanese for ‘meow.’

How many people at Bristol University, really do identify as cats? If there really are such people, should everyone pander to their silly illusions? I really do not think so.

But now that catgender individuals have been officially recognised, it can only be a matter of time before there are demands for them to be provided with scratching posts and balls of string to cope with the stress of lectures and exams.

And why stop at cats? If you take this policy to its logical conclusion, students should be able to define as whatever species they choose, complete with their own pronouns. At this rate, this idiotic centre of tertiary ‘learning’ (?) could soon resemble Noah’s Ark. They’ll be ripping out the urinals alongside the litter trays in the non-binary toilets and replacing them with lamp-posts for the convenience of students who define as dogs.

So if Germaine Greer does ever decide to become a cocker spaniel, she’ll be welcomed with open arms.

I give up. Thank the Lord, I did not go to university. Having to admit to having once been a British Bobby is difficult enough.

I don’t know much about the singer known as Adele but she too is at the centre of a trans row because at the recent Brit Award ceremony she dared to say she loved ‘being a woman and a female artist.’

This was in response to yet another ridiculous decision by politically correct organisers to dispense with male and female categories so as not to upset trans people, despite the fact it seems to have upset everyone else.

Predictably, the singer is another one now being called a TERF and hundreds of online idiots are yelling and screaming for her to be cancelled. Surely this nonsense has to stop or be stopped now. Why do we normal people allow trans activists to troll, abuse and cancel folk who dare to say they enjoy being a female artist ‑ or a female anything else for that matter? I am male and proud of it while all the ladies I know are equally proud of being female.

We are lucky we live in a society where trans people can live and be who they want but they have no moral right to be offended by others doing the same. 

I thought I’d seen it all in terms of self-indulgent film stars but this week actress Thandie Newton (or Thandiwe as she now calls herself again) took it to another level when, sobbing, she apologised for not being black enough.

No I am not having you on. This ridiculous woman who regrettably comes from my own country literally wept about the fact that with her light skin she had ‘stolen’ roles that should have gone to ‘darker skinned actresses.’

‘It has been very painful to have women who look like my mom feel like I’m not representing them. that I’m taking from them. taking their men, taking their work, taking their truth,’ she wailed with false tears running down her face.

If it was that painful, why did she do it? Could it perhaps be because she needed to get rich and famous before she found her principles?

On going back to her Zimbabwean name Thandiwe, this melodramatic idiot says dramatically: ‘I’m taking back what is mine.’

Sorry Girl, no one can take your name. You gave it up presumably because you thought, or were told, it was a barrier to you becoming a star. Now you need to stop the hysterics because you are fooling nobody and making Zimbabweans ashamed that you are one of ours.

Those who know me must have become used to the fact that over the past few months, I have been endlessly complaining that the world has gone mad and the so-called people in power seem to have collectively lost their marbles.

My sentiments have been fuelled by a daily trawl of the newspapers and while I have to admit that modern journalists rely on sensationalism rather than hard facts, I read one report last week that not only left me reeling in shock but also seething with anger.

It appears that a Romanian immigrant to this country, Dorinel Cojanu stabbed his former wife, Daniela with an eight-inch blade at their home in Watford in 2015. This was during an alcohol-fuelled rage and she suffered severe injuries necessitating almost four months in hospital and leaving her with permanent scars.

During his frenzied attack, Cojanu himself sustained deep cuts on two fingers of his right hand. They required immediate surgery but this did not take place because the attending police warned the hospital authorities that the arrested man was likely to be dangerous.

So it was that a scheduled operation at the Royal Free Hospital in north London was cancelled and another one was not planned elsewhere.

Cojanu – who was sentenced to eleven years inside for the attack but was released after only five sued the health service while he was in prison. He claimed that the failure to act left him with life-long injuries that restricted the use of his right hand.

NHS lawyers unsuccessfully argued that his ‘own criminal actions’ were to blame, with Mr Justice Ritchie ruling that the NHS had a ‘common duty of care to all residents.’ So this violent criminal and domestic abuser was awarded £8,500 in May last year but that was not enough for him. He appealed and the award was increased to £17,500. This is surely a perversion of natural justice.

In his judgement, Mr Ritchie said: “The claimant (Cojanu) did not need to prove how he was cut to win the civil action. He was injured before admission to prison.

‘At that time he was not convicted of anything. It matters not whether he had suffered the injury opening a tin of beans, in gang warfare or whilst attempting to murder his wife.

‘But the cause of the cut fingers has no relevance to the clinical negligence claim.

‘In my judgment the mechanism of how he cut his finger is incidental to the claim or collateral thereto.”

Cojanu was deported to Romania in June 2020 following his release and British pounds will go much further in his own country so he can afford to live as a relatively wealthy man. I suppose we should be grateful that he was one of the few criminals who has been deported by this inept government but where is the justice in this judgement?

Reacting to the judgement, Daniella – who still lives in Watford – told the media that she is disgusted and I confess I share that sentiment.

She added: “This man is a violent, domestic abuser who tried to kill me and he’s being rewarded while I haven’t received a single penny.

‘I was in hospital for almost four months and nearly didn’t make it. It’s disgraceful that he is being rewarded for an injury he caused to himself as he attacked me.”

While this violent thug revels in his ill-gotten gains, Daniella has to work as a cleaner while raising her three teenage children.

Is this how British justice works nowadays? If so, I feel ever more ashamed that I had anything to do with the system, even if it was only as a lowly police constable.

I have never been a fan of Joanna Lumley but she is generally regarded as a National Treasure ‑ bright, funny and absolutely fabulous. People listen to her when she talks sense and I was in full agreement when she broke a modern taboo last week.by telling GB News that the ‘mental illness bandwagon has got out of control.’

Of course it has dammit! Anyone who feels remotely sad these days claims mental health problems, but they are merely being human. We all feel sad and down at times but that does not mean we are clinically depressed or mentally ill yet so many people – encouraged by the formerly royal Biscuit and his wife blame their mental health for any dissatisfaction. They seem to take great satisfaction from being a ‘victim.’

I think most people in this country are worried and downhearted after two awful years and more to come but as the lovely – and that I will give her – Ms Lumley says, ‘that means you’re human. It doesn’t mean you’re clinically depressed.’ 

Believe me, sadness and depression are two totally different ballgames. I wouldn’t wish the latter on anyone. I have seen the results first hand with one of my closest and dearest relatives. Her depression ended in tragedy and I fear that the current fixation with mental health is leading to ever more tragedies.

On a lighter but as ridiculous note, I see that the Poison Dwarf of Scotland is spending three hundred thousand pounds of tax payers’ money in sawing off the bottom of two thousand school doors. This is supposed to increase the flow of air – normally very cold up there – and give added protection to pupils against the dreaded coronabug.

Would it not be easier and infinitely cheaper to use the hinges and open the doors?

As I said, the world has gone mad and the people in power are losing or have lost their ruddy marbles.

I have been berated by two of my readers lately for my long silence but with my family tragedy, an operation on my leg and a new book – Learning From Elephants and it is very good – coming out, I just haven’t had time to scribble on my blog.

However, here I am, raring to go and as irascible as ever.

After months – twenty two of them I believe – of hysterical and impractical lockdown measures that have caused huge problems in other fields of health while the authorities concentrated on the Coronabug, the threat appears to be receding and life is slowly – ever so slowly – returning to normal In the meantime, we are bombarded with reports that despite the panic, lockdowns were a complete waste of time which many of us have been saying from the start.

This is epitomised by the fact that the seat of governance, Number Ten Downing Street allowed and arranged numerous parties, all of which appeared to flout the regulations affecting the rest of the country. At least four and possibly more of these were attended by our ‘Revered Leader’ who despite numerous calls to resign and the mass resignation of many of his ‘advisors’ (what did they advise on I wonder – how to mix martinis?) refuses to do the honourable thing and go. He continues to bluster and posture but even he must know that he and his leadership are condemned not only to obscurity but a place in history that will not be pleasant reading for future generations.

I do not know who will succeed Bunter J and I won’t vote for Starmer and his rabble so I am torn between feeling total contempt and revulsion for our political ‘leaders’ and a complete despair for the future of this country.

Added to which, most of us are faced with enormous and largely unaffordable price increases while our very smooth Chancellor who seems to be revelling in the stories that abound about his boss refuses to add any further taxes to the giant conglomerates like Shell, who yesterday announced profits of two billion pounds for the last financial year. Yes, that is two BILLION – a staggering sun which should surely benefit this country enormously in extra taxes. But it won’t. Mr Sunak and his idiotic boss will continue to milk the little people and make all our lives difficult because that seems to have become the Conservative way. Look after the rich and the very rich while milking the poor.

My own sitting MP is that wastrel potentate, Geoffrey Cox so they had lost my vote already but looking out at the general devastation that exists, I cannot envisage ever voting Conservative again.

Come back Screaming Lord Such. I wonder if the Monster Raving Loony Party will be standing in Princetown. If so, they already have my vote.

My apologies for my long absence from these pages but a family tragedy has kept me away from my desk for the last few weeks. I have kept a vague eye on the news but confess that the current mass madness makes me wonder whether I am living in a real world or one thought up by LooneyTunes.

Let’s take the hysteria that seems to be spreading about climate change. In the nineteen seventires, alarmists in this country were yammering on about the coming of a new Ice Age. Then came two years of very hot summers and widespread drought. A labour minister called Denis Howell was put in charge of tackling the water shortage and in desperation is said to have imported a Red Indian medicine man to do a rain dance.

By the late 1980s we were being assured that it was just a matter of time before there would be African plains game sweeping majestically across the veldt outside places like Bourton on the Water or Milton Keynes. Global warming became the new orthodoxy but when temperatures defied predictions and actually fell for a few years, global warming somehow became ‘man-made climate change’ and founded a new religion.

Which is how we ended up with the current nonsense with a so-called Conservative Government which, when it comes to climate change and energy policy, seems to take its instructions from Greta Thunberg, Extinction Rebellion and a handful of those nutcases so often glued to the major roads in London.

And of course there is ‘the science’, cynical big business and the smug, self-serving environmental establishment, all of whom have a financial interest in pushing the green agenda down all our throats.

I am not in any way denying the fact that human activity has an influence on climate and the overall environment. Most people want to live in a cleaner world, which is why we go along with everything from weekly refuse collections and bizarre seven-bin recycling schemes to supporting campaigns against plastic waste. Unfortunately there are too many people in the world and the problems are going to get worse. We would do better by encouraging the spread of the Coronabug I am afraid.

But I just cannot understand why we are all being put under ever increasing pressure by an inept and apparently leaderless government to change all our ways and thus face an ever more uncertain future.

Why should Britain have to lead the word in decarbonisation, when this country is responsible for a mere one per cent of the world’s emissions. While we suffer in silence, countries like China are opening hundreds of coal-fired power stations with abandon? Will there be a single world leader at the forthcoming climate jamboree in Glasgow who has the nerve to confront the Chinese? I very much doubt it.

And it is not only China dammit! The rest of the world is either moving more slowly than this country or doing absolutely nothing other than paying lip service to ‘net zero.’ Somehow I do not think that will change after next week.

Why is a Tory Government determined to make us all feel colder and poorer? Why should we be punished to pay for a political vanity project based on dubious technology?

In 1983, the Labour MP Gerald Kaufman described his party’s election manifesto as the ‘longest suicide note in history.’ I am afraid that Bunter Johnson’s green manifesto is the longest economic suicide note in history.

And what on earth has happened to Bunter over recent months? His rapid metamorphosis from being a Tory sceptic with his feet firmly on the ground to a climate-change fanatic has been one of the most amazing political phenomena of modern times.

Not long ago, he was expressing sensibly cautious views about climate change in general. In a newspaper column from way back when, he wondered whether solar activity might not be a contributory factor to global warming. He confessed that he had an ‘open mind’ on the matter. In 2015, one of his columns was headlined: ‘I can’t stand this December heat, but it has nothing to do with global warming.’ 

Over the years he has publicly doubted the efficiency of wind power and advocated more nuclear power stations. He has also championed fracking for gas, which his benighted government has now comprehensively, and very stupidly scrapped.

We are not talking here about juvenile scribblings that can be easily disowned. The mature and grown-up Bunter J of the not too far distant past did not believe that climate change presented such an immediate danger that the economy had to be turned upside down and taxpayers required to fork out unlimited dollops of their hard earned cash.

The usual reason given for Mr Johnson’s sudden conversion to being the revolutionary hero of climate change and evangelist of higher taxes is the influence of his wife, Carrie, who is a definite eco-zealot herself. No doubt this is part of the explanation but I fear there is more to it than that. Bunter has an unquenchable love of drama and the big gesture to show how wonderful he is or imagines himself to be. He is not prepared to sit down with Chancellor Sunak, and go through the books, painstakingly, weighing up the pros and cons of reaching net zero in record time. 

Nor is he deflected by the argument that the UK, which produces a mere one per cent of the world’s carbon emissions, should cripple its economic future while other countries prosper and China is building hundreds of new coal-fired power stations. Something in his somewhat juvenile mindset makes him predisposed to grand gestures and earth shaking solutions – no matter who suffers.

For the time being, he gets away with it because the hikes in taxation which will have to pay for his revolution are some way off. Even the painful increases already announced have not yet happened. He is still seen as a pleasant and harmless buffoon who cracks good jokes and adds to the gaiety of the nation.

Conceivably he will continue to get away with it for a while.  He does not have a viable opposition to worry about nor is there any alternative Conservative Party to which voters can defect.

Yet Tory voters with Tory values haven’t gone away. When runaway tax increases hit home, and people find they can’t get mortgages on uninsulated houses and are forced to impoverish themselves with expensive and inefficient heat pumps – then hopefully there will be a political backlash.

Sooner or later there surely has to be a conservative uprising. Tory voters will demand authentic Tory policies. Someone promising to supply them will emerge although Bunter being the vacillating clown that he is may then decide that he has become a Tory again.

That might well take place when the old gleam reappears in his lecherous eye and he decides that the current Mrs J is doing his public image too much harm and no longer keeping his galloping libido in check.

I do not often encourage immorality, but roll on that day.