The Fox Covert

I don't really understand and it shows how desperate the Tories are. They know they are going to lose so they won't actually have to shoulder the responsibility of reintroducing National Service. They are trying to appeal to the older demographic, some of whom have misty eyed memories of what National Service in the 1950s was actually like. They consider it will appeal to the most right-wing jingoistic voter who has defected to Reform because they think the Tories haven't been fascist enough.

It would be a massive deterrent to other crooked big businessmen whose trading model is to bend the rules in their favour as much as possible. This is a cartoon I did of Dumpster when he got the first criminal charges. Trump gets the obligatory prison haircut!

I was surprised to see LRI near the bottom. I still have family in Leicester and three family members have needed treatment at LRI in recent years. As far as I can see the care was professional and excellent. The place is a bit of a rabbit warren, some of the buildings are old and parking is a pain but this is the same for most large city centre hospitals. Bristol is worse. Glenfield and the General have a much more relaxed out-of-city atmosphere on site.

This is so true. I once knew a Leeds supporter from Tunbridge Wells and had no connection with the city that I ever heard of. I think the only reason he supported them was because he was a seventies kid. Probably if he was a few years younger it would have been Liverpool. Ultimate plasticity!

Defo an upgrade on Faes.

I just looked at the other predicted (speculative?) winners from other clubs outside the hallowed 'Big 6'. It includes Wolves, Newcastle (twice) and our friends from the banks of the Trent (twice). It does not include Spuds or Arsenal. Will they still be Big 6 if they go another half a century, trophyless?

Huddlesfield?

I live in rural Somerset just over 20 miles from Brizzawl and although I have seen the comment about it being a copy-and-paste job I think it is largely fair and accurate. Bristol is a nightmare to drive through because of the traffic, once you are in the city expect London-slow-style point to point times. The ULEZ is a shambles because it is not based on anything logical like a inner ring road, because there isn't one. But the cameras are not a shambles and are everywhere, don't chance it, plan your journey otherwise you will get caught and fined. Parking is also a nightmare and despite the advice about not parking on corners people in Brizzawl do it all the time because parking is so difficult to find in most inner city areas. Honestly, I would park somewhere with a good service past Ashton Gate like Long Ashton and get the bus. I didn't know about the block of flats from Only Fools and Horses but I do remember it being ever so familiar. I saw the comment about bringing your camera and one thing that gets me every time I go through the city is the graffiti. There is even a shop in the city centre where people who do street art buy their cans. To me, living in an environment of un-graffitiable things like fields and hedges and old stone walls (and sheep and cows) the bottom end of the M32 looks like the Bronx and I always heave a sigh of relief once away from the city and on the M5 northbound.

In Somerset general waste collection was reduced from fortnightly to three-weekly collection last year. My elderly neighbour heats his house with a coal-fired back boiler and when he got coal from UK-based pits the quality was decent and there was not much ash. Then his coal came from Poland and that was not too bad either. Now it comes from Bolivia and it is such poor quality he fills his bin with ash in a week. He could hardly move the bin on collection day last week because it was so heavy. I told him he could put some of it in mine as mine was only quarter full, but it won't always be like that. He will not have gas because he thinks it is dangerous. A heat pump is a complete waste of time on an eighteenth century house designed to be heated with an open fire and built of random stone, however well insulated. He is in his seventies so I don't expect anything to change, except that council services will continue to decline.

Bristol is the most traffic-ridden city in the UK outside London and I hate the time it takes to get from Brizzawl A to Brizzawl B. Don't mind the people though because it is up with Glasgow and Birmingham among the most friendly cities in the UK. If you want a good laugh with a Bristolian follow The Professor of Bristolian on Facebook. Top bloke. Not sure whether he supports Bristol City or the Gas.

In 1961 there were two railways from Leicester to Rugby. Despite this being a link from a major city to the West Coast Main Line both this line and the Great Central were closed. Leicestershire has the lowest percentage of public transport use for travel to work in the UK and the lowest investment in public transport per head. There are just seven railway stations in the county. None of the lines are electrified, and only the line to Birmingham has anything like a suburban stopping service, with stations at Wigston South, Narborough and Hinckley.

By great chance, I will be in Leicester that weekend. I am sure this will be really interesting. Ned Newitt has written a previous book on Leicester, pictured below. It features the poorest districts in the city, which were progressively erased by slum clearance projects from the 1930s to the 1960s. My mum still lives in the county and this book was on her bookshelves for many months. Whenever she had visitors with previous family generations who had grown up in places like Wharf St and Sanvey Gate they would want to look through to see whether there were any photos of the street where their mum, gran, aunt or whatever used to live. Thanks for posting.

There has been a spate of break-ins, thefts and drug dealing in my neighbourhood recently. In rural Somerset! I bought a security camera which covers my car and the gateway to my house and I am amazed by the quality of the video you get for a fifty quid piece of kit from TP-Link. It connects to the household wifi and I can view the video on an app on my phone.

I was with a friend at the notorious cup tie at Luton in the eighties. Millwall's thugs really excelled themselves that night. Because it was midweek the other London sides were not playing and the hooligans were joined by the firms from Chelsea and West Ham. A sight I will never forget is a stout middle-aged woman in her fifties bawling at the plod and then starting to throw punches. It took about half a dozen plod to subdue her and drag her off. I wonder what her kids turned out like?

Quinn

The redevelopment plan could easily be reworked to include a new pub. The right type of pub could be a really good replacement for the Parcel Yard.

I actually like Craven Cottage and the Valley. Usually the home fans are very friendly. I liked the old Highbury but never liked the Spuds old ground or any of the new grounds. A friend is a West Ham fan and he still dislikes the London Stadium.

Crimea by Orlando Figes. Written before the present conflict in Ukraine, it is a detailed study of the Crimean war in the 1850s, where the British and the French collaborated to prop up the decaying Ottoman Empire against Russian aggression. Crimea became the epicentre of the conflict, because both Western nations feared Russia annexing the area which became modern Turkey and Romania, and moving on to dominate the Middle East and the Balkans. Some things never change, in particular the brutality of the Russian army which pillaged the countryside and indiscriminately murdered innocent civilians, and also treated its own armed forces as disposable cannon-fodder. Thousands of injured soldiers were abandoned and left for dead on the battlefield or even killed by their own unit. Many were picked up by the Allied armed forces and treated in their own field hospitals. There was however a Russian counterpart to Florence Nightingale, Daria Mikhailova, who treated injured Russian soldiers in the hospitals in Sevastopol. The men called her Dasha Sevastopolskaia and she became the only Russian woman of non-noble origin to be awarded the Gold Medal for Zeal by the Tsar.

Interesting post. I disagree with Benjamin Disraeli and agree with Nikolaus Pevsner on this one. The windows on the second floor look blank and should have multiple panes. Probably a squat sash with each sash frame divided vertically. Also the mansard roof on the third floor clashes with the neo-classical facade on the lower two floors. The grand staircase in the second shot looks great though. Very nicely proportioned. Thanks for posting.

The replacement for the Lewis's building is like a creation from Lego or Minecraft and is much worse than the building it replaced but it is still better than the brick-and-glass monstrosity on the right which looks like one of King Charles' word processors.

Loftus Road is one of those horrible grounds with an atmosphere which is not very football. I get a similar lack of vibe from that dump Palace play in.

I wonder if anyone has looked to see the w@nkstains on his laptop screen?

Just done a little bit of lunchtime research. The bridges in the foreground do not actually cross Braunstone Gate. I did not think they looked quite right, and my memory did not fail me. I have found a picture of the Braunstone Gate bowstring girder bridge viewed from street level. The map tells all. The location of the black and white photo is from the sidings just south of the twin bridges across the River Soar. The attached map shows the railway and the buildings in the correct place. I do remember the large square goods shed. You can also see the spire of St Margarets in the right background. I have also zoomed out on the map to show the edges of the urban development of Leicester. I think the map was probably dated about 1920 as the Braunstone estate had not yet been built, nor had the early council houses on Welford Road near the junction with Knighton Lane. I think the railway photo was probably 1950s as the open wagon in the foreground is all fabricated steel - earlier wagons were made of wood. I also zoomed in on Filbo. The Main stand and the Kop, both I believe built in the 1920s are not there. The only stand is a shallow curved affair where the Main stand was later built. The other three sides were probably open terraces. A bit of a shout out to the National Library of Scotland website, which is a fantastic resource if you want old maps.

9 deg outside and 16.5 deg inside most of the house, because the heating has not been on since early this morning when I got up. Home office is well insulated with dry lined outside walls and a false ceiling which is also insulated and is a comfortable 20 deg. The house is an eighteenth century cottage with thick stone walls and is double-glazed throughout. I have spent quite a lot of money to improve the heating and insulation but the kitchen, which is an outshut on the side of the house, is still rather chilly. I think the next step is probably more insulation in the kitchen roof and the best solution is probably Tyvek slab insulation between the rafters, which I could do myself.

Intelligent and balanced post from Clapham Fox. Hamas is an extremely dangerous organisation, funded by Russia and probably by other terrorist countries, and is a proscribed terrorist organisation in the UK. Its stated objective is the elimination of the Israeli state. The Gaza strip is mostly part of the historic area of Palestine under the UN partition plan which created the Israeli state after the Second World War. For the last fifteen years the government of Gaza has to all intents and purposes been Hamas, and it is not recognised by most countries in the world. No country should ever have to tolerate a terrorist state on its borders. I think the majority of Palestinians within Gaza are not particularly happy to be governed by Hamas, any more than Russians really want to be governed by Putin and the corrupt clique of siloviki terrorists around him. Israel will be supported by the majority of democratic countries but it should expressly state that its objectives are limited to making its borders safe and protecting its citizens. And that it has no interest in annexing Gaza and deporting the existing population to make space for Israeli people to live, and that it would be happy to live with a democratic state in Gaza. The crisis has been building up for at least the last fifteen years and Israel has no choice now but to eliminate the threat. But when Hamas is gone, if Israel has sent its army into Gaza it should withdraw and allow the installation of a protectorate in Gaza, under the supervision of the UN. Palestine has a large ethnic diaspora in many Western countries and the prospects for the establishment of a peaceful and democratic government, which is happy to live with its neighbours Israel and Egypt, are much greater than they ever were in the failed state of Afghanistan. Israel's action is also creating a refugee crisis. Israel, unlike Ukraine, is a wealthy First World country and it has the resources to provide financial assistance to countries which accept refugees from Gaza. It should also allow its security services to work with countries accepting refugees to help identify individuals closely associated with Hamas so that they aren't allowed to take their poison into a third country.