I see my hero Peter Tatchell is tweeting a headline from the Pink News on how Britons “unanimously reject calls for bans on drag shows.  Tatchell thinks that those who oppose drag shows are “far right” and a tiny minority. I sense some fake news and a fake poll here. And I am right.

In these Russiaphobic times many will see this article as proof that I am a Putin apologist. I am not. The invasion of Ukraine was wrong, and I am sure that, while both sides have committed war crimes in this war, Ukraine as well as Russia, it is the latter whose sins are greater. But that is not a reason for Britain to supply depleted Uranium tank shells to Ukraine. Iraq and the Yugoslav wars show just how horrible these weapons are.

I am ordering a stack of Discovery apple trees to create a colonade along the path by the river. I am not sure how they will do in what is a flood meadow but I shall stake them firmly and see. The stakes I put up by the river with some oak saplings last year have survived even if the oaks have not. And the trees I have ordered are already 5 foot high so I hope they will flourish.  My orders were divided as my normal supplier had only nine trees left and so I had to use Beechwood Nurseries for the rest. Buyer beware: Beechwood are shysters!

The river Dee is still outside of its banks and I am still rather worried about the killer cows and thus on Saturday morning, for my second Rogue Bloggers for Woodlarks training walk, I opted for the most boring of walks: my house to the service station on the Wrexham ring road and back.

There is a photo out today of Ms Braverman laughing on a trip to Ruanda. With hindsight that might have been unwise as she claims to be tightening the UK’s immigration system. I shall believe that when I actually see it. However, there can be no excuses for the tweet below from the leading anti Brexit campaigner Steve Bray photoshopping the laughing minister in front of the entrance to Auschwitz.  He also removes from the origonal picture two laughing Rwandans either side of Ms Braverman. 

The Donald reckons he will be arrested over alledged payments to porn star Stormy Daniels on 21 March 2023. I discuss that case, the sad weaponisation opf the law in American politics and what it all means for the 2024 elections in this podcast.

My father and mother were in Oxford in the 1960s at a time when Sergeant Morse arrived in the City and when Oxfam was set up and they were – like Morse – almost, lifelong supporters. They paid over a monthly direct debit even when they could not afford it and would order Christmas presents from the third world via the Oxfam catalogue. But in his final years I finally persuaded Dad that sending his cash to an organisation which covered up for paedophiles in the field was not a good idea.  We discussed the bloated salaries of the administrative staff in Oxford and how Oxfam was now opining on areas well outside its original remit of fighting famine. He could not argue and one glorious day I answered a begging call for a Tom Winnifrith from the aggressive sales team at Oxfam, and, with the consent of my father, ( also called Tom) told them to bugger off and to stop the direct debit.