SOPPY SUNDAY

1. So... Thursday, Friday, Saturday... hmmm yes, it's Sunday again

2. This is my bucket... I might have spilled some.
Can you fill it up please?

3. Glencoe.

4. Bamboo Forest.

5. This is MY lily pad... you can't share it.

6. The long and the sort of it is... us!
What black paint? Ohhhh, THAT black paint.
We can explain.

7. It's tiring work eating all that grass. Need a little lie down sometimes.

8. Bluebell woods... Spring has sprung.

9. Anyone know what this is?

10. Caithness.

11. Now can we get in the car and go home?

12. Northern Lights in Iceland.

13. I'm ready for my close up, Mr de Mille!

14. My tail is bigger than me!

15. Skye.

16. Fleecy Dam...

17. St Abbs.

18. What better use for a hole in a tree...
 but can I get that to work? Nope.

19. True.

20. Nurse, I want my dinner now... They're all leaving.

Grateful thanks again to Panda Paws and Bugger le Panda.

FOTOS ON FRIDAY

That's right, bow before your new monarch, while he looks bored, and in the opposite direction. What a prat!

Lower, you commoner. Another monarch you serve, Cameron.

Sorry readers. It wasn't our  intention for you to choke with laughter.

Gideon promises to pay down the deficit by 3020, or 4020 or something...

Ah yes. There are numerous women in various different part of the country, who are lookalikes for this one. But it's OK, they aren't the same, because they have different names. What they have in common is that they all used to be Labour supporters, but now they are supporting the Ruth Davidson Party because Ruth is the only party utterly committed to the union.

Nice company to keep. Add the Ruth Davidson party.

Well, it wasn't them, was it?

Ah, the intelligentsia has arrived.

Has to be one or the other.

Better Together, huh?

...and Munguin's Republic.

Not gonna disagree with that!

Aye Jackie....

What's that you say Jackie? 13,000? Sure...

Well, you had to grow something for the poor, Dave.

You'd have thought they would have considered that before the belly ached about the one party state, or not?

Don't worry Dave. No one will ever say you were a great man.
We can imagine what they WILL say, but Munguin's granny reads this so... Mum's the word...

Aye, that's Jim, the shortest ever holder of the labour leadership..
And that's saying something!

Well, you never know Frankie, it's best to be prepared... and then there are these 13,000 520 jobs or whatever you believe... the MoD or Jackonomics.

OH, THE IRONY!

*Thanks to "Molly's Mum" on Twitter

YOU'LL NEVER WALK ALONE

I had intended to write something today about the outcome of the Hillsborough hearing.

That was until I read Mark Frankland's piece on it.

Now you'll know already that I'm a big fan of this guy, not only as a writer (his books are gripping reads, and available on Amazon) but as a food bank manager that goes just that step or two farther and provides for his clients more than just something to eat.

So I look forward to his posts, even if sometimes they make me angry, or sad, or just despairing of the United Kingdom and its foulness, and invariably make me cry.

It turns out that Mark was there that day in Hillsborough. At the match. 

Mark actually witnessed this stuff, and because he's Mark he got involved; wrote to his MP and ended up giving evidence to the court.

I'll not tell you more. 

It's a far better idea to read his own account, which you can do here (if you haven't already). He's a writer. He makes it real.

Suffice to say, I'm ashamed, once again, that we live in the kind of country where cover up by people at the very top is how we deal with incompetence and deceit in the very people we pay to competent and honest.

Any suggestion that leniency should be shown to people who put the football fans through this is, of course, beyond the pale in my opinion. Apparently the Daily Mail suggested that it may not serve the ends of justice for elderly men to be tried and possibly jailed for these crimes.

Nonsense.

We allow policemen and women to have a measure of power over us. We accept a similar, although different, situation for elected officials.  In return we have the right to expect them to behave as if they deserved that privilege.

When they fall short, we need them to be dealt with in the most severe fashion. 

Thatcher has form on covering up horrific crimes.

Of course it doesn't happen. When MPs and Lords stole money from the state in far larger amounts than any benefit scrounger, a few, a very few, hapless misfits that no one liked were thrown to the wolves and imprisoned for short periods; Hanningfield served as little as 9 days for the theft of thousands of pounds, before he was released to continue with his fiddling. 

I wonder how many DWP clients who've fiddled that kind of money could say the same.

At the same time people who stole from us to have their moats cleaned or their duck houses maintained, their wisteria removed or their hanging baskets watered, got off Scot free.

This though, was murder, by some other name. That's more serious than stealing a few million.

Senior police, no matter how old and frail need to be made to pay. Politicians compliant with orders from the top (Thatcher) to hush it up and blame the fans for crimes, including inventing preposterous stories about urinating on, and picking the pockets of, dead bodies, likewise. 

It's no good saying that speaking up would have ended their careers. So what? They were condoning murder, and we were paying them to do it!

Oh yes, just one final thought... what did they tell the Queen... these right honourable???? privy councillors? 

HYPOCRITES TO THE LEFT AND RIGHT, PART II

Kezia DugdaleVerified account‏@kezdugdale

Kezia Dugdale Retweeted Kevin Schofiel

d

Utterly heartless

Kezia Dugdale added,

Kevin Schofield @PolhomeEditor

BREAKING: MPs vote 294 to 276 against Lord Dubs' amendment calling on the Government to accept 3,000 unaccompanied child refugees.

So, Kezia's reaction to the Tory government's decision to overturn the Lords' amendment which would have allowed these children to come to their UK, was, quite reasonably "Utterly heartless".

Pity it doesn't quite fit with their attitude at the UK elections in May last year when they took a very Tory line on immigration.

Now Munguin's Republic understands that the UK can't accept every single person who is fleeing oppression, war, poverty and destitution or any combination thereof. 

(I mean it's not like Brits would ever have had to flee anything like that, is it? Ask the Highlanders, the Irish (Brits at the time) fleeing the famine, or the folks who had the audacity to not wish to change their religion every time the king changed his! Or more recently ask the economic migrants who, after the Second World War, decided that life in America, Australia, New Zealand, Canada or South Africa seemed a better bet for their family!)

As the UK felt obliged to involve itself enthusiastically in every single war that has caused these hardships, I think it should be equally enthusiastic about helping to deal with the tide of misery that they and their allies have left behind.

And throwing money at Turkey or Lebanon to continue to house these people in massive concentration camps simply won't cut it. Safer than a war zone they may be, but life is hell there too.

Olivia Humphreys ‎@OliviaDocmaker

We had the chance to save lives we helped endanger, and we chose not to - doesn't say much for us as a nation #3000children

7:59 AM - 26 Apr 2016

The kids in question, of courses, are not in Turkey or Lebanon. They are in France and in some cases their parents are in the UK. Who knows what horrors they face as children alone. Perhaps the Establishment should be more aware of that than most of us.

But we don't suggest that the UK do what rich countries are doing. The UK can't afford it, although they always have money for a war, which is strange or possibly even magical. Ask Harry Potter.

But surely, when it comes to children, they should pretend that they have hearts instead of cash registers, hard though that might be.

**********

Last year, clearly before she got her state-funded dresser (strange how the Tories don't seem to mind social security when it benefits them!), Mrs Cameron attended the Save the Children Gala (looking like she'd fallen out of the dressing up hamper...you begin to see why Dave got her someone to put on her clothes for her...total embarrassment). Instead of showing any interest in the children needing to be saved, the Daily Mail went into full blown slurping sycophant mode...

Maxi-mum style! Samantha Cameron dazzles in designer floor-length skirt as she attends the Save the Children Winter Gala (Dazzles as in hurts your eyes. Her lady in waiting has a little more class, although probably less money.)

• Samantha Cameron wore a vibrant printed skirt at Save the Children ball (yep we can see that!)
• 
  
• She attended Alice in Wonderland-themed night without husband David (Oh, hint hint. Marriage in trouble...remember it's the Daily Mail. Brainless readership with lots of lonely time to fill)
• 
  
• The 44-year-old mother-of-four dazzled in a daring designer outfit (Always get in the age, becasue that's REALLY NEWS, and the fact she's a mother of four and yet still able to go out for a night on the town! Lucky to have all those servants, huh?)

****************************************************************

IT'S WORLD PENGUIN DAY

And Finally

This is a beautiful story of the affection and devotion that is possible between man and bird.

A South American Magellanic penguin swims 5,000 miles each year to be reunited with the man who saved his life.

Retired bricklayer and part time fisherman Joao Pereira de Souza, 71, who lives in an island village just outside Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, found the tiny penguin, covered in oil and close to death, lying on rocks on his local beach in 2011.

Joao cleaned the oil off the penguin’s feathers and fed him a daily diet of fish to build his strength. He named him Dindim.

After a week, he tried to release the penguin back into the sea. But, the bird wouldn’t leave. ‘He stayed with me for 11 months and then, just after he changed his coat with new feathers, he disappeared,’ Joao recalls.

And, just a few months later, Dindim was back. He spotted the fisherman on the beach one day and followed him home.

For the past five years, Dindim has spent eight months of the year with Joao and is believed to spend the rest of the time breeding off the coast of Argentina and Chile.