Tuesday 18th August 2026

[refitman]

Morning all.

[gilsey]

Good morning.


It rained properly last night, the grass looks greener already.

[Frog222]

Good morning.
It rained properly last night, the grass looks greener already.

No proper rain yet here, just a westerly Force4, but at least it'll dry my firewood brrr!

[Frog222]

Now trying to imagine those millions of PIP and others on 'benefits' all 'cleaning the high streets' as the jobs market shrinks ...

[Frog222]

ALSO............... they have to be supervised, while the Mitie private prison has 350 empty places because they can't get staff .............

[Frog222]

A couple of weeks ago there was a short piece after WATO .

Experienced serious prison staff who had been recruited in Nigeria no longer wanted by Shabana Mahmood and the new immigration policies .....

A demanding job unsuited to just any warm body found by a jobcentre .

[Frog222]

Pity poor Putinlanders with fussy modern cars now queuing for very high-sulphur petrol which will kill their vehicles .

High-sulphur content recently pushed back to when it was made illegal some twenty years ago .......

[Sky'sGoneOut]

I see Reform rightfully got a lot of criticism about their benefit cut plans yesterday, not least from many of their own supporters who were too stupid to see it coming.

What's been little mentioned however is for all practical purposes their proposed cuts to PIP and Universal Credit are almost identical to those Starmer and his goons tried to push through. Take away all the nonsense about forcing the disabled to work in chain gangs filling potholes and what are you left with? Slashing PIP and the UC health element for all but those deemed the 'most in need'. It's already happening for new UC claimants after Starmer managed to force that bit through. Sick and disabled people nearly £5000 a year worse off as of April this year.

So spare me any hypocritical bleating from a Labour Party who only just halted the worst of those cuts in their tracks, cuts the likes of the Guardian still refer to as 'modest'.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

My Dad filled a bag with spuds from his garden for me to bring back with me. I decided to boil some to have with fish this evening. I prefer my spuds with the skin on so just chopped them into manageable chunks and chucked them in to boil as you do. Went to check on them after a 10 minute simmer and was confronted by bits of floating potato skin and a pan of watery slime. The flesh of the spuds had almost completely disintegrated. I've never seen anything like it. A total write off. Apart from the purple skin they seemed completely normal beforehand.

I won't be telling him though. Nobody should be telling their Dad that they grow shite spuds. Though in hindsight he did seem unusually eager to get rid of them.