Saturday 12 December: The EU engineered a Brexit trade deal failure to stop others leaving

Posted on by Geoff Graham

An unofficial place to discuss the Telegraph letters, established when the DT website turned off its comments facility (now reinstated, but not as good as ours),
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Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/12/12/letters-eu-engineered-brexit-trade-deal-failure-stop-others/

596 thoughts on “Saturday 12 December: The EU engineered a Brexit trade deal failure to stop others leaving”

  1. UK government ‘has underestimated takeup for Hong Kong resettlement scheme’. 12 December 2020.

    Hong Kong residents are likely to move to the UK faster than the British government has anticipated, and more should be done to prepare for their arrival, a new advocacy group has said.

    The Home Office has already said it expects nearly half a million people to take up the offer over its first three years, but HKB said the number could be more than 600,000.

    Around three-quarters of those planning a move hold university degrees and earn salaries well above the city’s average, so will be well positioned to contribute to the British economy. But few have family in Britain and only half have friends here, so they may need help settling and integrating. Three-quarters plan to travel with children, so schools need to be prepared for an influx of students, the group said.

    Morning everyone. Just how many vacancies are there in the tanking British Economy?

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/12/uk-government-underestimates-takeup-hong-kong-resettlement

    1. Will the ones belonging to the Chinese mafia have university degrees as well?
      Seriously, I am sure most of them will be an asset, however, we will still be taking the dinghy passengers, and we’re full up anyway.

        1. They might pull us in the right direction.
          If they are not 600000 Chinese government stooges that is. I can’t help feeling that if that were not the case, the Chinese government would not let them leave to form a nucleus of discontent abroad.
          Boris may just have sold us to the Chinese.

          1. I think Dodgy Dave and Little Osborne started that process, and by all accounts it has gone very well – for the Chinese, that is.

            ‘Morning, bb2.

    4. Just as when Blair opened up our doors to the A8 nations. They estimated about 300 would come and more than 3000 did.

        1. More so as they were discussing C-19 in 2019. Schwab may live his life out comfortably, Halfock will end up on a most wanted list and he hasn’t the spine to defend himself

    1. Doesn’t sound a bit like Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds nor Donald O’Connor, RFUWD. But I did detect a hint of “God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen” towards the end.

          1. Dankeschön or Dankeschoen. In German an Umlaut indicates a missing ‘e’ in the same way that an apostrophe in English indicates a missing letter/letters.

          2. I never knew that, Peddy. As Annie often says, “It’s amazing what one learns on this site”.

      1. I am wondering if Dick’s finest are investigating to uncover the source of these knives or whether the knives’ discovery is sufficient for the statistics? Community cohesion and all that bollocks.

  8. Good morning all from a dull Derbyshire.
    I’m just pondering that, had the clocks not been put back in October, this would have been 09:00.

    1. And tucked away in that is this:-

      According to the published data, six of the participants in the experiment died, two of whom received the vaccine and four of the control group were given placebo.

      As much as I distrust the vaccine, giving such a misleading slant to the story does no good at all.

  10. ‘Morning again.

    Today’s crop of Brexit letters:

    SIR – The EU is not our friend. It is attempting to engineer a Brexit failure to intimidate and threaten other countries into not leaving.

    Any compromise between our positions – any – will be a choice to accept a degree of humiliation and colonial control by the EU over us.

    My home is filled with goods made in China, which trades with the EU on World Trade Organisation terms. It can be a success for us, too.

    Keith Forsdick
    Looe, Cornwall

    SIR – Many years ago a thoughtful if pompous colleague exclaimed: “Young man, do you know why divorce is so expensive?” I replied: “No, sir.” He said: “Because it’s worth it!”

    In this case, I do hope it was.

    Richard Owen
    Lightwater, Surrey

    SIR – It’s a no-deal Brexit delivered by a no-clue Prime Minister.

    Mark Peaker
    Hong Kong

    SIR – What looked like the eternally insoluble problem of the Irish border was finally sorted out due in part to having “outside” impartial help. Let the EU and UK admit to needing such a pair of hands before it is too late.

    Meg Hall
    Northampton

    SIR – Even now, it would be a good idea to try to postpone Brexit, while we remain in the transition stage.

    Britain is facing at least two much more urgent issues: the large number of empty shops in what used to be flourishing high streets and the coronavirus. The virus is a worldwide problem, which calls for international co-operation. It cannot be solved if every nation adopts its own solution.

    Wolf Liebeschuetz
    Nottingham

    SIR – The EU demands a level playing field as part of the trade deal.

    For over 40 years the British have been the good Europeans, enforcing new regulations before most other EU nations, often to the detriment of our own businesses.

    I have lived and worked in two countries in Europe, and seen how their national interests are put before the wider European ones. Very often the national interests are supported not just by government financial aid, but also by procurement policies which favour home-grown over imports.

    Britain, by strictly following EU regulations, has allowed other nations in the bloc to profit at our expense.

    K G James
    Rodney Stoke, Somerset

    SIR – If the EU persists in its policy of disrupting trade with the UK (bearing in mind that the EU sells more to the UK than we sell to the EU), the inevitable result will be the collapse of the euro, because the EU will find it difficult to find alternative markets to fill the gap left by the loss of the UK market.

    Imre Lake
    London NW1

    1. Wolf Liebeschuetz should go back to Germany. He has too EU a mindset to fit in here. He just doesn’t understand that we have a long tradition of democracy; we voted to leave, so we expect to leave. The empty shops are because the loonies in charge have trashed the economy in their corona panic.

  11. Morning all

    SIR – The EU is not our friend. It is attempting to engineer a Brexit failure to intimidate and threaten other countries into not leaving.

    Any compromise between our positions – any – will be a choice to accept a degree of humiliation and colonial control by the EU over us.

    My home is filled with goods made in China, which trades with the EU on World Trade Organisation terms. It can be a success for us, too.

    Keith Forsdick

    Looe, Cornwall

    SIR – Many years ago a thoughtful if pompous colleague exclaimed: “Young man, do you know why divorce is so expensive?” I replied: “No, sir.” He said: “Because it’s worth it!”

    In this case, I do hope it was.

    Richard Owen

    Lightwater, Surrey

    1. SIR – It’s a no-deal Brexit delivered by a no-clue Prime Minister.

      Mark Peaker

      Hong Kong

      2. I would suggest that Mr. Peaker busies himself with events closer to home.
        But I would imagine he doesn’t fancy a spell in a Chinese chokey.

    2. Last night on the BBC Katya Adler stated that the EU were not willing to compromise because they thought that Boris would be back in Brussels within six months pleading.

      Now you know their thoughts.

  13. In response to Tom (NoToNanny) on a thread about poetry—in particular, Elegy Written In A Country Churchyard (Thomas Gray)—yesterday; Tom mentioned that he had remembered, verbatim, the words to that poem among many others. My reply is:

    As a child the second line (in Gray’s Elegy) used to confuse me. I would invariably (and erroneously) rhyme the last word, lea (meadow,) with the last word in the first line, day.

    The curfew tolls the knell of parting day.
    The lowing herd winds slowly o’er the lea.

    I have also long memorised a few poems: How They Brought The Good News From Ghent To Aix (Robert Browning), The Tyger (Robert Blake), and He Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven (William Butler Yeats), among others.

    1. Morning Grizzly

      I am certain everyone else has taken notice of your keen interest in the spoken word.

      If you were eighteen years old again , what career path would you have taken , would you have enjoyed modern university life for example?

      Would we be seeing a young Grizzly on University Challenge?

      1. Good morning, Maggie.

        Hindsight is a wonderful thing, isn’t it. I have long thought about how my life’s journey would have been different if I’d had the benefit of a better eduction and (more importantly) the influence, inspiration and mentoring of someone who really cared for my welfare, education and intellectual wellbeing.

        If I had been offered the opportunity to attend university, it would have been in the late 1960s and early 1970s, so not exactly in the modern era. As for career expectations, who knows? My thoughts would probably have been as different then as they are now. Again, having someone of stature readily available to help me channel my thoughts and skills into a productive and stimulating career path would have been an unimaginable boon.

        1. Aymen, Brother.
          A careers teacher who knew something about journalism or antiques restoration would have guided me towards more fulfilling jobs.

          2. I bet he wears fully-supportive Man Underwear brand (from Dressmann), a cross between briefs and shorts, sans front opening (for extra support).

          3. There are adverts on the box here for some that are made from bamboo ( onestep brand ). I wouldn’t wear any and go to China just in case there are hungry Pandas about.

          4. As do I, Grizz.
            Also pants made of bamboo fibres, from Felleskjøpet (farming coop shop – sell everthing from pants and trailers, to John Deere tractors the size of a house), printed in John Deere green & yellow, and tractor tyre prints across the butt.

          5. I was lusting after a John Deere ride-on lawnmower in the spring. It wasn’t the normal tractor type, it was more like a go-kart with levers to steer with rather than a steering wheel. I cost a packet but I bet it would be fun to mow with.

          6. We’re looking for a ride-om mower too, Grizz, one that can double as a garden tractor.

    2. The line that confused me was ‘Without a city wall’. Nobody ever explained it was old speak/poetic licence.

      3. There is a street in Alnwick called “Bondgate Without”. The “without” part signifies that it lies outside the historic walled area. There is also a “Bondgate Within”.
        Alnwick is very nice, but always hopelessly crowded.

        2. Remember, I’m a softie southern gal who thought a boy speaking Geordie was a refugee from the DP camp up the road.

      4. I think we were all mystified by the fact that a green hill without a city wall as the exception rather than the rule until Miss Smith explained that ‘without’ in that context meant ‘outside’ and the green hill was outside the city wall rather than inside it,

        I wonder what happened t Miss Smith. She was a prim, plain, middle-aged spinster – a piece of human flotsam who ended up teaching in a very shabby prep school in the 1950’s. The poor old thing was not very popular and not a very good teacher. I do hope that we boys were not cruel or nasty to her but we were certainly pretty indifferent to her.

        When the Beatles produced Eleanor Rigby I remember thinking it could have been about Miss Smith – unknown, unremembered and unloved.

        1. My second year English teacher was a Miss Smith. She was extremely fat and very, very spotty with little piggy eyes. We just sat there in shocked silence. Ghastly old battleaxe.

          1. Our RC primary school had a Miss Smith, a form teacher who was the epitome of the dried-up, late middle-aged spinster with a bad attitude and a view of the world completely at odds with what you might suppose to be the tolerant ethos of Christianity. On the first day of the new school year she would decide who were and were not her pets. If you weren’t in her good books, no amount of academic brilliance would persuade her to give you a good report.

            Her habit of interrogating the class on a Monday to see who hadn’t been to church on a Sunday was tolerated by the head but came to the notice of a young priest newly attached to the school. He took a dim view of this, opining that the New Testament didn’t demand compulsory attendance at church to prove Christian virtue. This was a bit too radical for the Birmingham RC diocese in 1968 so he soon found himself on missionary work in South America.

          2. I was taught in primary school by a Miss Wright. The archetypal spinster – thin, twin set, lisle stockings and hair in a bun. She kept order by the use of a ruler.

        2. Poor Miss Smith. What an epitaph: “Unknown, unremembered, unloved”. That’s really sad.

          1. Our Miss S (no, not Smith but her name was not a common one and she still has great-nieces and nephews living so I won’t name her) was also plain, and middle-aged. But I’m sure I’m not the only one who remembers her kindly. She pushed her bright youngsters to read widely and provided more advanced maths workbooks for those who had romped through the simple ones expected of under 10s. She taught a single classroom with 20 or so children between 5 and 10 and had infinite patience with the slow ones, no one was left to languish in a corner. Even the naughtier boys who delighted in trying to wind her up (she had a very slow fuse) learned things whether they wished to or not.

            She began to suffer from dementia not long after her retirement, I think that she genuinely missed teaching, and ended her days in a nursing home.

        3. Probably one of those ladies whose beloved had gone to the trenches and not returned.
          As I believed I mentioned t’other week, they formed the bulk of infant and junior school teachers fir decades.

        4. I played up maths teachers because I was bored and right little madam.
          Years later, I discovered the one I drove into banning me from the class had spent his youth fighting the Nazis in the Warsaw ghetto.
          From then on, I felt very guilty.

      5. Nobody ever explained…

        How sad, and neglectful. I remember our primary school teacher explaining it very clearly when I must have been about 5½. I remember her explaining it again the following year the next class of infants. I remember her explaining the meaning of “suffer the little children” too. I didn’t realise that her care to explain the meanings of words and phrases had been so unusual.

      6. You should have lived in Aberdeen a while. I was there in the 90s, and without, or outwith, was common parlance to mean “outside”, not just “lacking”.
        Proper use of that powerful English language, doncherno?
        Edit: Maybe Jennifer can confirm current usage?

        1. As I’ve already said, I was taught the meaning of that usage in my first year at school. I wouldn’t say that it’s in common parlance, but it’s still heard.

          I remember someone giving directions a year or two back and describing the place sought as “withoot the toon”

        2. One of my friends lived in Scotland as a child; she always uses outwith and I noticed Sue Macfarlane used it (although separated as out with) in a post today.

      1. You want to bring the Scottish melody more up-to-date and diverse? Patricia, Lady Scotland, would doubtless approve.

        1. Cultural appropriation!

          The act of taking or using things from a culture that is not your own, especially without showing that you understand or respect this culture:

    4. Most of the poetry I learned as a child consisted only of the first couple of first lines, such as “I remember, I remember the house where I was born. The little window where the sun came peeping through at dawn”, “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, close bosom friend of the ???? sun, conspiring with him to load and bless with fruit the ??? that round the ??? eves run” and “When I have fears that I may cease to be”.

      But there is one that I remember in it’s entirety:
      Mary had a little cow
      She milked it with a spanner
      The milk came out in shilling tins
      And little ones a tanner.

  14. Scientists warn against Christmas gatherings in UK despite relaxed rules. 12 December 2020.

    Scientists and government advisers have urged people to rethink Christmas plans and ignore the easing of Covid rules amid fears over rising cases and hospitalisations in parts of the UK.

    I had to go to hospital yesterday as my blood sugar level was spiking dangerously high. As always I kept my eyes open to see if reality conformed to the MSM message. There were no tests on anyone for coronavirus. Due to short staffing we were all crammed into one ward. Three of the patients had senile dementia (I wasn’t one of them) and apart from masks (universal) no attempt was made to distance anyone from anyone else. There was touching and face to face conversations with no sign of reticence. Reality versus government fantasy!

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/11/scientists-warn-against-christmas-gatherings-uk-despite-relaxed-rules-covid

    1. Trust all went well Araminta.

      What will the talking heads of scientists and government advisers dream up for the Chinese New Year? A trip to Davos?

      1. Davos has been moved ‘for COVID reasons’ to Singapore. No coincidence that it means that no-one can now turn up and protest at the event because it’s being now being held in an effective dictatorship half way around the world which won’t let any non-VIP foreigners into their ‘country’.

        This is all about controlling the narrative and silencing those who want to expose their plans and directly challenge them. Many of us saw how uncomfortable those people (IMHO) responsible for ‘The Great Reset’ and the COVID takeover were (e.g. Bill Gates) when challenged in interviews.

        1. EA, thanks for the heads up re the “change of venue” tac viz Davos, wasn’t aware. Then again, locally here [Kenya] you’re probably not aware that the “Build Back Better” paradigm was dressed up here as “Building Bridges Initiative [BBI] aka money for old politico families with immunity and got totally shafted by the population. Just as there’s been zero cases of any Covid.

          That said, agree re poor attempts to instill narrative control. Agree re “cat on a hot tin roof” analogy when those responsible for the Great Reset, Lockstep, Covid, patent ID060606, UN Agenda 2030 etc. are challenged The end game will I’m sure find there will be a Great Reset but it won’t include the instigators of the plan and it will finish them. They’re now in the open as is their agenda and they’ll find the old neoliberal globalist fake fiat money game is a busted flush. It’s outdated thinking and approach.

          They’ll find the rules are there are no rules, no matter how one tries to “control the narrative” as the septics are figuring out: either follow the Constitution or become a banana republic. Just as Johnson knows, he zig zags on Brexit, he’s done and forgets / ignores he and all others in HoC are there as our reps, as the agreement is between the people and the reigning Sovereign.

          The game’s changed, as have the rules of the road. The deception play they’re trying to implement is well known, and however they wish to portray it, the deception, slowly, is being played back on them, the difference being, no matter what’s posted here or elsewhere, people know, as humans, when snake oil sales people / politicos lie and try to shaft them for their own agenda, it gets easily noticed and the vengeance will be brutal. And it goes beyond the ballot box, and it’s NOT openly spoken about.

    2. Morning Minty ,

      Sorry to hear that you were in a precarious predicament, I hope you feel better this morning .

      Are you going to tell us which hospital, name and shame .

      1. Are you going to tell us which hospital, name and shame.

        Morning Belle. Certainly not. The only people who would suffer would be the people at the bottom!

    3. Where have all the doctors (especially) and nurses gone? They aren’t all ‘sick’ with COVID. When I was out for a walk yesterday, I passed by my (NHS) doctors’ surgery, and the were no patients waiting either in the waiting area OR outside, but to my astonishment, none of the lights were on in the consultation rooms, despite the blinds being drawn (you can still see if the lights are on) and it being a dull day outside.

      When I needed to go to the surgery, I only saw one member of staff (the nurse I was seeing) and one other patient (who happened to be a person I know). The surgery was eerily silent at what would normally be the busiest time of the day. The nurse admitted to me that doctors are NOT performing house calls.

      Reports from people I know who use local hospitals say that they are ‘very quiet’. Ambulance staff also appear to have enough time to sit and chat, both with patients and in their rig (I’ve seen them doing so for 30 minutes+), despite ‘being overwhelmed’ with calls.

      My NHS dentist also hasn’t been back at work despite being allowed to for regular care since late August. Has anyone else had similar issues? My parents private dentist (they had to go private because of the poor NHS ones in the area) has been working as normal (in terms of what services can be provided) since well before August.

      1. Been to local surgery twice this year. 2nd time was because they forgot something the first visit ( nobody else was in the waiting room 1st time – so they clearly weren’t overwhelmed ! . .2nd visit there was someelse there as I left. All I could hear was the women in the office talking and laughing. Clearly absolutely NOTHING to do – but getting paid for it anyway.

      2. The dentists have realised how badly they behaved according to the BDA. Appalling ethical failure with patients left floundering in pain and teeth pulled by hand at home. Doctors too with cancer patients put on hold even in the middle of treatment. Conduct that 30 years ago would mean referral to the General Medical Council.

        1. More hyprocrisy than hypocratic oath in my view – looking out for themeselves far more than for their patients. No suprise to me though, given I’ve worked alongside people in the NHS for nearly two decades as an engineer on project work.

    4. Morning all.
      For some time now i have been wondering exactly what a ‘scientist’ and an ‘expert’ is or actually are “when they are at home”.
      I don’t think i have ever seen so many of each species on my TV screen in my entire life.

      1. titles used as a marketing brand to attempt to convince viewers “the idiots are magicians”. Or put another way explaining how to tie shoelaces when wearing flip flops

        1. Talking of which and Doctors, I once did some work for a TV magician, he had a huge workshop at the bottom end of his garden and two full time members of staff within, inventing new tricks. Therefore was only the presenter. Just like that………

      2. I’ve been introduced as an expert in internet security. They called me ‘Dr’ in the article.

        I’ve a doctorate in psychology. I just happen to have a job working with comps.

      3. Remember the old saying – ex meaning “out of” and spurt being a “drip under pressure”!

      1. Our population was reducing to a sustainable level until Labour set about creating a voting block.

  16. I see that the US Supreme Court has rejected the attempt by Texas and some 17 (?) other states to remove electoral college votes from Biden supporting swing states. This Court case was heavily promoted on this forum as being the way Trump would retain the presidency. So where now for Trump?

    2. Good morning, Cochrane

      I think that I would be naive to think that Trump is totally innocent just as you would be naive to think that Biden is innocnt.

      I wonder how many death threats and/or bribes were used to get the result the MSM want?

      1. Believing anyone to be totally innocent is naive, but that’s not the issue.

        “I wonder how many death threats and/or bribes were used to get the result the MSM want?” Do you honestly believe that’s what’s going on?

      1. For about five or six weeks maybe.

        What is your next special moment? Are States going to cast their electoral college votes against the declared result? Are the senate and congress going to refuse to accept the college votes and reelect trump?

        It is just a pity that all of the overwhelming evidence presented here never made it to the courts. Sometimes what you want is not what you get. I wish I could say that the best candidate won but it is more a case of least worst candidate.

        Time to move onto your Gates rules the world twitter conspiracy, nothing like a factless campaign against a rich guy who is following in the footsteps of other American rich guy philanthropists.

        1. Technically, the electoral college electors can ignore the actual vote count and elect who they please, but sadly there are enough ‘old guard’ crony GoP people who hate Trump who will not do this, despite there being more (in number) red states than blue ones, including the swing states that ‘flipped’ at the election.

          There are already rumbling of a breakaway – on both sides of the political divide. China is getting what they wanted all along, and those big corporates who thought that they could control all this and the implications of the pandemic, Great Reset etc will be sorely mistaken.

          In my estimation, things now are as bad as they were prior to both World Wars – the difference is that we have far more and more deadly (one a far bigger scale and with much longer reprocussions for us and the planet) than at the start of both. Plus we have a media that is not doing their job and is mostly on the side of the corporates, China and the idiot hard left activists.

          Sadly, most people just don’t (want to) see it yet. Let’s hope the masses realise it before it’s too late to make a decent amount of difference to the outcome. Tick-tock…

          1. So socialist politician meets socialist with a lot of money , what is your point? We all know that political types are crooks.

        1. Er, no.

          Widespread corruption and intimidation.

          As to ”bureaucratic workers”, many came forward to sign affidavits and testify at hearings to that effect.

        2. It’s vastly more likely that the agenda is being bought by individuals who want to get rich.

          Those individuals give a lot of money to ensure their policies get through. They offers sincures, back handers and plain bribes to make and keep themselves rich. Those corrupt individuals push that policy and lo! Government is bought because it has too much power by virtue of size and scale.

          Big government gets ever bigger to push and promote an agenda set by people in the jobs those heads of department want. That policy filters down through the entire state machine.

  19. Footballers aren’t Marxists. They’re the perfect poster boys for capitalism. 12 December 2020.

    Whatever some Millwall fans may think of Black Lives Matter, they still shouldn’t have booed players for ‘taking the knee’. Here’s why.

    Now of course, none of us is telepathic. We can’t know for certain what the fans’ motive was. But even so, they were still wrong to boo the players. It’s absurd to accuse professional footballers of collaborating in some hard-Left plot to overthrow capitalism. Because professional footballers are capitalism’s ultimate poster boys. Its greatest champions. They do more than virtually anyone to promote it.

    Professional footballers, in short, are the embodiment of the capitalist dream. Which is why, when they “take the knee”, we can be reasonably sure they’re doing it solely to express their opposition to racism. They aren’t demanding to have their taxes doubled. They aren’t secretly conspiring to instal Richard Burgon in Downing Street.

    The footballer’s personal motivations or beliefs for kneeling don’t matter anymore than those of the thousands who saluted at the Nuremberg Rallies or marched through Red Square under Stalin. They, by their obeisance, approved the policies of those who led them and later implemented them.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/12/12/footballers-arent-marxists-perfect-poster-boys-capitalism/

    1. How low the Telegraph has sunk! Lecturing the working classes on when they should be allowed to boo. In its old Conservative, posh incarnation, it would never have done that.

      1. That is also why I find the sneering at Barbara Windsor so irritating. At its root is middle class snobbery.
        Just give people the opportunity to aspire to higher things and then leave them to make their decisions.

    2. “we can be reasonably sure they’re doing it solely to express their opposition to racism.”

      Really? Whoever wrote this is lying and certainly doesn’t speak for me. I am reasonably sure that they are doing it solely to express their support for racism.

    3. Araminta mng. The author doesn’t want to get to the nub of the overarching point in that footballers are merely pawns in a business model. The model [and other sports] are failing within the current matrix of the neoliberal variant of “capitalism”. Players have little choice, other than refuse to participate / play, than to follow the “rules” if they want to earn their coin

    5. I suggested here the other day that the BBC ought to superimpose the following message about what BLM actually is whenever people are televised ‘taking the knee’.

      The BLM is a Communist Political Organisation which wants to promote anarchy by abolishing the Police.

      The BBC admits that Ms French’s action and those of sportsmen and women are pieces of political propaganda which have nothing to do with promoting racial harmony and tolerance.

    7. Ref that last bullet, does it imply cooking, and is it OK for one to do the dishes whilst the other dries & puts away?

    8. Liberals are so depraved. And this is what they are teaching our children! There are two terms in the above filth that I didn’t/don’t know the meaning of.

        1. Does it really have some frightful other meaning? If so, then I shall change it.
          Anyway, Mr Datz, how would you know about such things?

      2. …and so is the BBC – earlier this morning R4 was trying to persuade the listener that a homosexual threesome is a good thing (Full Circle 05:45).

        Yuk! And before breakfast, too.

        1. virtual signalling doesn’t cost a penny for those that practice the art. They’ll be living on the ceiling, so listeners should be due a refund

  22. SIR – I find predictive text on a mobile is a real pain au chocolat.

    Peter Qualey
    Weldon, Northamptonshire

    1. It isn’t. Now that we’re gone, there is nobody to hold France’s delusions of power in check. If the Germans try, the French only have to shout “nazi!” at them.

      1. Once we’ve gone and taken our money with us, there will be a lot of infighting about who will make up the shortfall.

  24. SIR – Admiral Lord West and I sit on opposite sides of the House of Lords.

    Nonetheless, I agree with much of what he says (Comment, December 10) about the Royal Naval Reserve being stood down. Indeed, I was a junior minister (admittedly long ago) when we were re-equipping the RNR with new vessels. They are particularly effective in patrolling coastal waters and thus especially valuable as potential immigrants attempt to cross the English Channel.

    I very much hope that the present-day minister will reconsider this decision.

    Lord Trefgarne (Con)
    London SW1

    SIR – Admiral Lord West is quite correct to highlight the importance of reservists. The majority of Battle of Britain pilots were RAFVR.

    Jeremy MJ Havard
    Chichester, West Sussex

    Spot on…particularly the letter from Jeremy Havard. I am biased, of course, and proud of it.

    1. Admiral “Lord” West is a time-serving, leftard woke wanqueur who, while serving and then in the Liebour government, did SFA to protect the Royal Navy he now seeks to defend.

      2. Good morning Bill,

        Moh says exactly the same as you.

        He says that West is an utter bum licking wassock sitting happily on a fat pension .. and absolute turncoat

        Apols for being crude.

      3. Morning Bill and all Nottlers.

        IIRC, when the first flood of “gimmegrants” began to arrive in the uK, Admiral Lord West actually said that “they should be towed back to France or wherever, their dinghy punctured and left there”. Or words to that effect. However, I have tried a few times to find the proper quote in newspapers but cannot. He said we were perfectly entitled under international/maritime law to do this.

  25. SIR – Forty years ago I bought a small Victorian cottage (1840s). I have loft insulation and double-glazed windows; the walls are single brick. I would certainly oppose losing any internal space to insulate the walls and install larger radiators. Quite simply there is not the room.

    Many people who went for cavity wall insulation some years back experienced disaster; the same could happen with ill thought-out plans to add a layer to single-brick walls like mine. If this were forced on me, what would be the redecoration costs? Has the Climate Change Committee factored this into its estimates?

    Two years ago I had to replace my 12-year-old gas boiler, at a cost of £2,000. In his excellent piece on the CCC’s proposals, Ross Clark quotes an estimate of £8,000 for a hydrogen replacement. My new boiler fitted the original space. Would the CCC’s suggestion do the same, or must I rip out and replace my kitchen units?

    I was, but no longer am, an active Conservative Party member. Just about every policy it comes up with damages me.

    Elizabeth Balsom
    London SW15

    “Many” cavity wall disasters? Out of the millions so installed some did go wrong, but I’m willing to bet that it was a very low percentage. I am in our 4th house where insulation was installed without any problems at all, and the house I hope to move to in January also has it. If it had not then I would be arranging to get it done asap, as it is highly cost effective.

    1. On the continent, they tend to add the insulation round the outside of the house. It can lead to fearful problems with mould between the insulation and the walls if not done properly though.

    2. The people in politics have very little knowledge of practical realities. Remember Mr Gove telling us all not to use wood-burning stoves and to have our white goods repaired rather than replaced – both in the name of the environment.

      We have a deep freeze which works well – apart from the fact that the plastic seal insulating the door is no longer airtight and so the interior frosts up relatively quickly. The raw materials for a replacement seal would cost a few pennies but these things are not manufactured and cannot be bought. Apparently one can buy a completely new door with an airtight seal but this would cost well over half the cost of buying a completely new freezer. We are loth to scrap a working freezer and just have to accept that it must use more electricity than it should. What would Mr Gove suggest?

      We also have two wood-burning stoves and we have enough trees and hedges in our grounds to keep these fuelled indefinitely by coppicing. The wood-burners are both well designed and burn clean and so produce little smoke and a very low level of pollution. As we do not have mains gas we have oil-fired central heating but, having had our business destroyed by Covid, we are reluctant to spent literally thousands on changing our heating and electrical goods. Would Mr Gove like to give us the money to do these things

      Most people who works in the private sector are disgusted by the fact that the public sector not only is still be paid at the full rate but wants pay rises while many of those working in the private sector are going bankrupt. Being told what to do by ignorant idiots like Gove is not what many of us want.

      .

  26. Charles Moore today…

    Negotiations are the way each side works out what the other really wants. That is obvious. Slightly less obvious, but equally important, is the fact that they also force each side to work out what it wants.

    In most Brexit matters, Boris Johnson is guided by the principle that one should study Theresa May’s example – and then avoid it. Although she publicly stated early on that “No deal is better than a bad deal”, Mrs May accepted the framing and sequencing of negotiations which Brussels proposed. She did not know what she wanted. So the EU understood from the start that she did not mean what she said. A bad deal was therefore inevitable, and duly arrived. That is why she was forced from office.

    As foreign secretary, Boris watched these events unfold, and resigned. He then became party leader and Prime Minister. He got the first half of a Brexit deal, partly by insisting that no deal was a genuine possibility. He resoundingly won the ensuing general election by saying “Get Brexit done”. That victory was a year ago today, and tomorrow is the deadline for agreement – or lack of it – between Britain and the EU over the Brexit second half, our future trading relationship after we leave the single market and customs union on December 31.

    It is not credible that Boris will use the weekend of the anniversary of his victory to capitulate.

    Cynical though one must be about some of his promises, doubtful though one sometimes feels about his strength of purpose, such a surrender would not make sense. It would end his political career.

    I must admit that when the Prime Minister flew off for dinner with Ursula von der Leyen on Wednesday, I feared he was breaking his “Don’t do a Theresa” rule. It reminded me of her embarrassing dawn flight to Brussels three years ago to “seal a deal” that could not work. Boris has additionally promised to fly anywhere – Berlin, Paris – which might help. Are such journeys really necessary? It would be better if he stayed put and avoided getting into a compromising position alone in a room with any EU leader.

    His leading officials, Lord Frost and Oliver Lewis, are long-marchers from Vote Leave days. They know what they are doing. But so far, no harm has come of his journey. And he does, to be fair, have an interest in showing the wider world that he will not be the one to collapse the talks.

    Compared with the latter half of 2019, Boris is, on the European issue, in an oddly strong position today. Then, he had no reliable majority in a Parliament that was trying to usurp executive power. Most MPs opposed a genuine Brexit, but his party members, and the original decision of 17.4 million voters, supported it.

    He was in the tightest of corners. He got out of it with the Withdrawal Agreement which the EU – to many people’s surprise – granted him. It contained problems for the future relationship, notably about Northern Ireland, but it did the trick.

    Now, the Prime Minister has an 80-strong majority. His reputation may have been dented by erratic policy over Covid-19, but no one else within or outside his party is about to take over, and it is four years until the next general election.

    There has been more fuss about Ireland, and the Government’s threat to break international law to defend our customs territory; but this week, the clouds parted, revealing an Irish rainbow. The EU conceded on the Protocol: it will ensure that nearly 100 per cent of goods going from Great Britain to Northern Ireland will pay no tariffs. As it had secretly planned, the Government duly withdrew the relevant clauses from the UK Internal Market Bill.

    In the current negotiations, Boris enjoys what could almost be called a luxury. Of the three possibilities – a real deal, no deal, and the deal currently proposed by Michel Barnier – he would be happy with either of the first two. He would prefer the first, because a deal would bring more peace and less disruption than no deal at all, but he is content to accept the logic of no deal if a bad one is the alternative.

    The one thing he cannot say is that he will accept automatic EU control of any new trading rules which it may decide to make, and of our fish. As both sides agree, our decision to leave the EU is a decision to diverge, not converge. We haven’t got this far out only to go back in later.

    The EU negotiators, and especially the French, may have reckoned, as they hardened their positions ten days ago, that the fear of no deal would force Britain to back down at the last minute. If so, that was a psychological misreading.

    Perhaps I am being oversanguine, but I think the public see this. They think – and in essence, if not in detail – they are right, that the key decision has been made. They are irritated by delay. Literally years of scare stories about no deal may have depressed the spirits, but they have also vaccinated people against what might come.

    The problems are real, but not eternal. The preparations, though still not good enough, are better advanced. It is not going to be pleasant for us – or, indeed, for the French – if President Macron tries to coerce local officials in the Pas-de-Calais to impede our goods, but it is hardly going to rekindle our enthusiasm for EU membership.

    Most Conservative MPs see all this. Perhaps they cannot have their cake and eat it, but they know which side their political bread is buttered. Besides, they have not got the mechanism to reject no deal, even if they wanted to. It is what will happen if nothing else does.

    Politically, the situation reminds me of the miners’ strike in 1984-85. Appalling and prolonged though the contest was, the most dangerous bits for the Government were whenever it seemed to wobble on the principles at stake. It was a fight it just had to win. As in that struggle, Labour MPs today, under their fairly new leader, are visibly confused about which line to take.

    Even hard-line Remainers, after years of fighting talk, are now becoming retrospective and recriminatory. In a recent article in the Guardian, Lord Mandelson lamented “the price [we] in the pro-EU camp will pay for trying, in the years following 2016, to reverse the referendum decision rather than achieve the least damaging form of Brexit”. In other words, they lost quite a long time ago.

    What of EU leaders themselves? In the longer term, they would do better to be flexible. The United Kingdom, even outside, will remain a major market for the continentals. The sooner that can be maximised, you would have thought, the better. There are more intractable problems for them to consider – Covid, lack of growth, mutualised debt, quarrels with Poland and Hungary, threats from China.

    At present, however, the protectionist club seems to feel it must punish the British rebel. The mood is brittle, as if the EU fears that an independent Britain could actually succeed, thus exposing its own economic and governmental model. It is acting like an empire that grows old and starts losing colonies, rather than an internationalist model for more backward nations. Which only confirms we are right to leave altogether.

    Top BTL comment:

    David Matthews
    11 Dec 2020 9:51PM
    We have regained our sovereignty by leaving the EU on 31 January 2020. We do not want to lose it again under a trade deal just to avoid a traffic jam in Kent or to avoid some small price rises. We no longer want to be a colony of the EU Commission having their rules imposed on us. As a coastal state we want control of our waters and our fish. I think Charles gets this. I also think Boris gets this.

    * * * *

    I think Johnson has, for once, ‘got it’. We cannot expect to seize back control while still remaining shackled to the EU. The two positions are mutually exclusive.

    1. 327408+ up ticks,
      Morning HJ,
      I still see it all as an orchestrated semi re-entry missile campaign the wretch cameron as blast off, treacherous treaser intermediate & johnson as semi re-entry nosecone.

      A total severance first, waiting period, then deal was IMO
      the stance to take early post 24/6/2016.

      Maybe the final trip was to finalise his personal deal on an offer he cannot refuse.

    2. “….But so far, no harm has come of his journey. ”

      But what about Gove’s journey?

      Can the EU be trusted in Northern Ireland?

      What does Bill Cash think about it?

      1. We are coming close to having the option of transferring NI to Eire. There is no reason why those who wish to retain UK citizenship should not do so. We could then set about destroying Ireland for their vicious attacks on us over the last five years.

          1. I am in favour of an independent Scotland. I am not too frightened of the economic consequences if the country were to be sensibly run. (This has not happened in my lifetime.). However, the self-perpetuating SNP clique are a disaster from every perspective, not least their insane stated* desire to unite with the EU.
            (Austria is a decent and prosperous little country. It has no natural resources, unlike Scotland.)
            So, I’d just as soon stay a British citizen. Cut me. I have the Union Flag across my entire body like a stick of Blackpool Rock.

            *For a government of europhiles, one has to ask why there are now fewer pupils taking Higher French in Scotland than when I was at school.

    3. “….But so far, no harm has come of his journey. ”

      But what about Gove’s journey?

      Can the EU be trusted in Northern Ireland?

      What does Bill Cash think about it?

  27. Simon Heffer in today’s DT. If only he and Charles Moore were calling the shots!

    At some point soon, the Government will have to decide whether or not it wants a cultural life in this country based on the performing arts. It claims it does, and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport has promised £1.57 billion in support through its Culture Recovery Fund, £165 million of which has been released this week to help shore up great institutions such as the Royal Shakespeare Company, English National Opera and the National Theatre. The money is repayable, as it should be: but that does invite the question about what the Government intends to do to create the circumstances in which it might actually be paid back.

    We are at a stage where, despite the heroic attempts of actors, musicians and others to continue to provide the performing arts when and wherever the Government will allow them to do so, if the sector is not allowed to return to some form of “normal” quickly – and that means not just having live theatre or music, or indeed cinema, but allowing audiences of a size that will enable venues and performers to operate without risking bankruptcy – the consequences will be appalling.

    Not only will those who work in the arts be in penury, and all that that entails, but many will leave their respective professions never to return, and venues will darken and their lights never go on again. The long-term effects of the present strangulation of our cultural life are literally incalculable.

    A report this week from The Audience Agency shows how desperate young people, in particular, are to get back to live performances, and indicates what a massive financial injection to the sector they would make if they did. They have been using the extra time created by working from home, or not working at all, to experience culture more and more by digital means. The two most popular forms of entertainment in this way have been to watch a play, drama or musical online, or to watch a concert of popular music.

    TAA’s report showed that those aged under 24 were three times more likely to return to live venues than those over 65; and that 27 per cent of the under-24s had booked or organised a cultural outing in the next couple of months, compared with only eight per cent of the over-45s. But the threat of putting London into a Tier Three lockdown, which could happen next week, is likely to cause all the re-opening West End theatres, shut since March, to re-close. It makes planning on the part of impresarios a nightmare. So it is not only the Government’s message of fear that has successfully deterred many people in middle age and beyond from venturing back into live venues; it is also the constant uncertainty of whether those happy to book will find their event cancelled.

    It is no wonder the young are raring to go: they wish to get out and socialise with friends, meet people with common interests and are greedy to experience all life should have to offer. This is not just about providing them with a cultural life, or enriching and developing the cultural life they already have; the whole activity of going out with friends and attending public performances is often an important part of their psychological well-being and contributes, therefore, to the happiness of society. The encouragement by a constant parade of ministers, and the scientists who advise them for us all, to treat every other human being as a chemical weapon is starting to grate with every age group, but especially with the young.

    The government should encourage theatres, cinemas and concert venues to stay open – rather as they did in the Blitz – and start to educate people about risk. If you think getting Covid is likely to kill you (and let us remember that more than 99 per cent of those infected with it survive), then don’t go out to some live entertainment, or to the cinema. But almost all young people are not in that position. The arts need their patronage if they are to survive, recover and grow again, but in this way the performing arts can also act as a signpost for the rest of us.

    In the end, we must all, whatever our age, at some point take the risk of re-engaging with normal society in a normal way. Speaking for the older generation, the actor Peter Davison, who is 69, said this week that the Government’s lockdown restrictions meant that “the last years of these people’s lives are being stolen, when they’d much rather be taking the risk while they’re still compos mentis.”

    He added that every supposedly “vulnerable” person he’d met did not want to be locked away and protected by the Government. Davison and Linda Bassett, an actress who performed with him in the Christmas special of Call the Midwife, complained about having to rehearse in facemasks because of the BBC’s strict interpretation of health-and-safety guidelines, and actors being unable to interact with each other properly as a result.

    The Government has infantilised the country by denying people the right to choose what risks to take with their own health; it has taken to itself the duty of personal responsibility, which in a free and properly-run society must reside with the individual. It now has to hand that responsibility back, or face the collapse of large sectors of our society – and starting by liberating the arts, its performers and its audiences from this lethal stranglehold would be as good a way as any.

    Top BTL comnent:

    David Burdon
    11 Dec 2020 1:34PM
    The government has gone precautionary principle mad. According to the latest ONS weekly data, the average age of a Covid associated death is 83 years and 1 month. 90% of deaths occur in people aged more than 66 and 4 months. Therefore, the 84% of the population younger than this account for just 10% of Covid-associated deaths.

    Two-thirds of the population are younger than 53. Yet they account for just 2% of all Covid-associated deaths. Those younger than 47 account for almost 60% of the population but just 1% of Covid-associated deaths.

    In my town, we are closing virtually all the schools and self-isolating as if we have been struck by the plague. All the pubs, restaurants, hotels and coffee shops have been closed for more than 6 weeks. We have been in a state of lockdown or semi-lockdown for 8 and a half months. What good has it done? The only certainties are the damage to the economy and jobs, the damage to family life and the damage to non-Covid health.

    The government scientists cannot see the wood for the trees. The virus spreads regardless of masks, lockdowns or social distancing. Yet they insist on imprisoning the whole population.

    1. This Old’Un is also raring to go.
      I miss the spontaneity of life, be it a coffee and a chat with friends or splurging on a big night out at the opera.
      Even the Soviet system didn’t deprive its citizens of a cultural life.

      1. Morning Anne

        I miss things like that as well.
        I am easily entertained, and although we don’t have any grandchildren , I really do love a good Christmas Panto .

        There were some lovely concerts in country house grounds , take a picnic do’s , miss those, and also a visit to one of our local cinemas to watch a film . It isn’t quite the same sitting in the living room , we don’t have a huge TV.

        Selecting a film on Netflix usually starts a squabble, because one is spoilt for choice.

  28. https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2020/12/12/00/36742050-9044873-Britain_will_send_in_four_Royal_Navy_vessels_with_cannon_and_mac-a-1_1607732686342.jpg
    Britain will send in four Royal Navy vessels with cannon and machine guns to patrol the English Channel and Irish Sea to stop illegal fishing if a trade deal is not agreed with the EU
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9044873/Royal-Navy-vessels-dispatched-guard-Britains-fishing-waters-No-Deal-Brexit.html

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

    A bit of nostalgic trivia

    The names of the gunboats under Nelson in the English Channel in 1801:
    Cracker, Boxer, Flamer, Haughty, Attack, Plumper, Bruiser, Wolfe, Griper, Conflict, Archer, Vixen, Minx, Bold, Locust, Jackal, Constant, Monkey, Mariner, Mallard, Snipe, Charger, Ferreter

    [Source: An Englishman’s Commonplace Book by Roger Hudson (my big bruvver), a slim volume published last month by Slightly Foxed and full or the sort of interesting trivia that would amuse many NoTTLers. Ideal for when sitting on the lav. Available from a few good bookshops or directly from the publisher 020 7033 0258 9:30am to 5:30pm Monday to Friday]

    1. What are they called now?
      When the names are HMS Diversity, HMS Community Cohesion and HMS Black Lives Matter, the last Briton had better turn the lights out – actually, no need even for that, they’ll be going out soon enough when we’re relying on windmills!

        1. That is why we were finally allowed to join the Common Market – they needed ‘a whipping boy’ and someone to carry the can. Nobody else obeys the rules but the weak and feeble British must do.

      2. Good morning, Maggiebelle,

        You will remember from Sunday School that when Christ was recruiting the fishermen amongst his disciples he told them: “I will make you fishers of men”.

        Have we fully understood the message when the shoals we catch never become Christian but remain the adherents of a barbaric cult which despises Christ?

        1. Good morning Richard,

          I don’t have an answer for anything.

          How very strange though that the RN will be present to protect our fishing waters, yet no one gives an absolute damn about the invasion of our Kent and Sussex shores by Arab and African / Eastern European young men . People who will probably do us great harm .

          My Moh was serving in the RN during the Icelandic fishery squabbles . Those days were rather hairy , and quite nasty .

  29. Met warns Londoners rule breaches will have ‘very serious consequences’ as Tier 3 looms. 12 December 2020.

    Deputy Assistant Commissioner Matt Twist, the Met’s lead for Covid-19 operations, said: “I’m afraid the infection rates show not all of us are being careful enough. This isn’t just about keeping to the regulations, important though that is, it is about taking all the precautions we can in every aspect of our lives.

    “We do understand the temptation to enjoy the festive season – after a tough year we’d really like to do so ourselves, but right now we need to come together as a city and control the virus.

    “Our collective actions over the coming days and weeks will have very serious consequences and if we don’t change our behaviour now then people will die who could have otherwise lived – it’s that simple.”

    BELOW THE LINE.

    Carpe Jugulum 12 Dec 2020 2:30PM

    Are the ‘senior officers’ of the Met really so unspeakably dense? Let me give them one absolutely cast iron fact – If you are a healthy young male in London you are far more likely to be stabbed to death than you are likely to die from a SARS-CoV-2 infection. Shouldn’t the clowns be addressing those really serious consequences?

    Carpy’s comment is pretty well irrefutable. If it has a fault it is too narrow.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/coronavirus-news-london-tiers-covid-vaccine-tests-cases-deaths/#comments

      1. Yo Sue

        I’ve been personally interviewing a new regiment of Covid Marshalls who will be proud to serve under me.

        An inspiring (b)leader, Not

        I’ve been personally interviewing a new regiment of Covid Marshalls with whom I shall be proud to serve under

          7. We all do. Nice uniform, shiny boots, sharp colourful, purposeful badges. What’s not to positively adore?

          1. On my play list along with the Scottish Students Song Book favourites, Erika and Die Wacht Am Rhein.

      3. FFS ….apologies.

        Thank the good Lord we still
        have the right to post such
        comments, but for how long?

    3. So when will the Met arrest and charge Kay Burley, Beth Rigby and their Sly News colleagues for multiple infractions whilst on the razzle the other day, or are they not plebs (like BLM protestors, ahem, I mean vandals) and thus exempt from £10k fine like lockdown protestors? One rule for the rich, powerful elites and their useful idiots, one rule for the rest of us.

      1. I understand that Burley will be on full pay during her 6 month ‘suspension’.

        Nice work if you can get it.

    4. I wonder how many other very senior Met officers have very pertinent surnames – Dick, Twist and what else?

      1. Not me, but it reminded me of a two-mile long goods train I once watched on the Santa-Fe railway in the Mojave Desert. It had eleven tractive diesel units hitched together at the front pulling it at around 2mph.

        1. Ditto – while eating in a restaurant in Orlando Fla – next to a level crossing…. The train took about ten minutes to pass – it was so long.

          The resto was curious – it had wooden panels – which turned out to have come from the old Lloyds Building when it was knocked down and replaced with the hideous Richard Rogers monstrosity.

    4. Impressive. Now can they do a version with the last truck joining the spiral just before the first engine leaves?

      1. I thought that was what it was going to be! I do hate to see a job only half done 🙂
        Pretty cool though.

    5. Better not show that one to a couple of small boys I know – or they will want even more trucks for their trains.

      1. If this is true, it will probably be a mosque soon. What a nightmare, nobody wants to be swamped with a huge number of people with a completely alien culture.

  35. I wasn’t allowed to say anything until today, but it’s now done so…. I volunteered for the test phase of COVID-19 vaccine from Sputnink V. The vaccine is the one that has been developed in Russia. It is in 6 different stages and I received my first dose at 6:20 AM, and I wanted to let you all know that it is safe and I’m ok, with иo side effects whatsoeveя, and that I feelshκι я чувю себя немного стрно и я думю, что вытл осные уши. чувству себя немго страо. Comrades.

      1. I think that’s after Stage 6.

        And it’s not a narcissus complex, it’s the real thing!

    1. Boros Johnson never wanted to leave the EU and only did it so he could be PM.

      So as Boros is doing everything the billionaires want in other areas, is he playing a double game on Brexit and in league with the EU?

      If Boros brought about serious food shortages and a confrontation over fish, could it result in the UK remaining in the EU on worse terms than before, with Boros taking up a multi million non job in Seattle ?

      Just a thought !

          4. That’s what I like about this site: The Battle Of The Sexes continues in a good-humoured manner, without any strident nastiness.

    2. Good evening, Grizzly

      We are thinking of getting something like this when our current MTD tractor mower packs up The MTD is doing well but before that we had an expensive Countax which was over-hyped, over-priced, unreliable and always in need of repair.

      Please let us know how you get on with this one.

          1. Having read clydesider’s post, I realised it is what Phizzee wears to his orgies.

            To ensure he’s completed his rounds

      2. Hi Richard,

        We had a stupidly expensive John Deere walk-behind mulching mower in the churchyard. The good thing about Deere is you can always get parts for them. The bad thing is that the parts cost almost as much as the original machine…

        We use contractors now.

    5. Dangerous things. Mine is orange and has a seat belt.

      I thought they were having a laugh putting seat belt on a mower but then when the rollover bar kept catching on tree branches and trying to flip the machine over backwards, I realised that it needed to be worn.

    1. Patrick O’Flynn
      The political asymmetry of the Brexit talks
      12 December 2020, 8:00am

      You will doubtless have heard this argument many times: Britain will have to budge on the terms for a free trade deal with the EU eventually because there is a powerful asymmetry at work.

      The case runs thus: Though it is perfectly true that the EU runs a big trade surplus with the UK, it is also true that more than 40 per cent of our exports go to the EU, while the UK market constitutes a much smaller share of the overall exports of any individual member state.

      Therefore, in any trade Armageddon in which all exporting and importing between the UK and the EU ceased, we would have lost nearly half of our export markets (worth about 14 per cent of GDP), while they would have lost a smaller proportion of theirs (worth perhaps a couple of points off EU GDP).

      And while there won’t be a total collapse of trade under any circumstances, the broad ratio of lost sales is still likely to apply, meaning that proportionately the hit to the UK economy will be much greater than to countries in the EU. Ergo, when realism kicks in and the heady brew of Brexit euphoria subsides, Britain will have to accept whatever terms are on offer from mighty Brussels.

      Despite a series of countervailing factors, such as the ability of the UK to use substantial tariff revenues to cushion the blow, the ability of UK producers to increase their share of the home market, and the expansion of new overseas markets for Britain outside the EU, this analysis of trading asymmetry is not entirely without merit.

      It is probably a big reason why the technocrats of the European Commission simply refuse to believe that Britain really could reject the terms they have offered and go for a no-deal denouement to the transition period.

      But it misses another asymmetry that is very important indeed: political asymmetry. For the British Government is responding to the instruction of the British people to ‘take back control’ of their laws, borders and money from Brussels. And as the Labour Party and Liberal Democrats found out in the general election of a year ago, the public takes a very dim view of anyone seeking to wheedle out of that democratic imperative.

      The European Commission and the national leaders of the EU member states have no such popular instruction to ensure that Britain is kept enmeshed in the EU’s rules.

      This means that while any trade war could initially have more severe impacts in Britain than in EU states, the British public are much more likely to tolerate them and act to ameliorate them.

      One should certainly expect a powerful spontaneous move towards patriotic purchasing in the UK and the boycotting of European goods should we become subject to an economic punishment beating at the hands of Brussels for daring to break free. Boris Johnson will be able to wrap himself in the flag and use the Brexit mandate as political cover for any adjustment difficulties.

      But in Germany, say, or the Netherlands – two of the EU countries that export most to the UK – are domestic consumers going to deliberately shun British goods because of Britain’s decision to bail-out of the EU? That seems highly unlikely.

      And will the German public be content if the hardball attitude displayed towards Britain by a self-perpetuating European Commission elite results in a manufacturing recession and the loss of highly-paid jobs in their own back yard? Also unlikely.

      The pain threshold of national electorates across the EU is likely to be much lower than it will be in the UK. ‘Why are we starting this trade war with Britain?’ the voters will ask. National leaders will be pressed on whether they have been played by Michel Barnier and Ursula von der Leyen, with the precious integrity of the Brussels system having been elevated above the economic interests of the member states.

      Ever since the referendum, Brexiteers have predicted that the powerful industrial lobbies in Germany and elsewhere across the EU will at some point use their leverage and insist on Brussels showing flexibility in reaching a free trade deal with the UK. It hasn’t happened yet.

      But that is probably because the transition period has meant that trade friction has not yet been experienced. Barring some five-to-midnight miracle in Brussels, the friction begins on January 1.

      While the EU intends to bring in all its controls at once, the UK is going to be phasing its own in. The full set of new hurdles for EU exporters will not be in place until the end of June, though new ones will come on stream every few weeks throughout the first half of the year.

      One doesn’t have to go the full Corporal Jones (‘they don’t like it up ‘em, sir’) to see that some very searching questions are likely to be asked in the EU while all this is going on. Or to think it perfectly likely that that the EU side will end up blinking first once the trade war of 2021 really gets going.

      https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-political-asymmetry-of-the-brexit-talks

      2. It is important to remember how profit generation works. The UK is a profitable market for German cars. The costs of producing cars are allocated across the range. Current sales levels cover costs and generate profit. If sales drop 10% the entire profit generated is used to cover the cost of the missing 10%. (That is, the now reduced total revenue of 90% has to cover the costs of 100%.)
        Profits do not drop 10% when sales drop 10%. Profits may drop 50%. They may vanish entirely.
        Then the company cuts costs. This means cutting jobs. Jobs are one of the few easily controlled costs. Plant and machinery are pretty much fixed.
        So while it is true that we might lose proportionally more than the EU, if the EU loses vehicle sales in the UK, then factory workers in Germany and France will lose their jobs. Not an economic outcome, nor a political outcome that will be easily accepted

      3. Will your Barniers and von der Leyens be willing to cut their (people’s) noses off to spite their faces, I wouldn’t be surprised.
        Edited, for anne.

      4. I always understood that 80% of our trade was internal. Of the rest, 40% went to or, more importantly through the EU (the onward trade was still counted as trade with the EU, even though it didn’t stay in the EU). I have already been boycotting EU goods wherever possible.

      2. It’s gong to be cloudy tomorrow to obscure the biggest and brightest Geminids event for years (coinciding with a new moon).

        1. I’ve been seeing meteors this week when it hasn’t been cloudy. Must be the run up. Saw an amazing display of the Perseids when we were in the Peleponnese years ago. The girls were quite young and stunned by the number of shooting stars! Memorable stuff!

          2. I looked up the serial of that Meteor F.8. As you do.

            Which tells me that the Meteor above, WH283, was photographed in the markings of 56 Squadron at RAF Waterbeach. She was destroyed in a bizarre incident on 16 December 1953 when four Meteors were unable to land and all ran critically low fuel on the same flight. OK, not bizarre, but unusual to lose four aircraft at once.

            “With visibility down to a little as 100 yards on the Tuesday, Wednesday saw some improvements. With flying restricted to four aircraft per flight, it was going to be difficult. The Cathode Ray Direction Finding equipment (C.R.D.F.) was not working and so bearings needed to be obtained by VHF. Whilst the majority of aircraft were able to land using a Ground-Controlled Approach (G.C.A.) ‘A’ flight were not so lucky. Red Section were diverted to Duxford, but failed to achieve a landing. Being too low on fuel to continue on or try for a third time, the two aircraft climbed to 5,000 feet and the pilots, Flt/Lt. G. Hoppitt and F/O. R. Rimmington ejected. Fuel gauges at the time were reading as little as 20 Gallons. Both aircraft came down near to each other, no damage was caused to public property and both pilots were unhurt. Yellow section, also diverted to Duxford, where they attempted G.C.A. landings also, but unable to do so, the section leader, F/O. N. Weerasinghe suffered a broken neck and fractured skull after he force landed in a field. The fourth pilot, F/O. Martin, broke his back in two places after ejecting at only 700 feet. A court of enquiry ruled that three of the pilots had difficulty in jettisoning their canopies, and F/O. Martin, even though he managed to succeed, ejected at an all time low-level. It was well into the New Year before F/O. Weerasinghe regained consciousness, and all four aircraft, WA769, WH510, WA930 and WH283 were written off.”

            https://aviationtrails.wordpress.com/2018/12/16/raf-waterbeach-a-period-of-change-part-3

            Turns out there is a 56 Squadron Meteor at Duxford:

            https://www.hornby.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/ImageA1.jpg

    3. Saw these two planets getting closer last night. Hope the weather remains clear for the winter solstice, beautiful night last night, hoping for the same tonight when I can get my telescope ready.

    2. The new tv brainwashing ads clearly show who has Covid – they have green mist coming out of their mouths. I’m Ok – I’ve checked in the mirror.

    2. The police ignore shopfliters if it’s under £200, don’t they?

      Why do they do that, yet are happy to waste 20 minutes because someone hasn’t got a pointless face covering on their head?

    3. Four of them in an argument over a one person with out a face mask. And then more involved at the police station.

    4. What one never hears is whether the victims of this sort of police harassment ever DO anything about it.

      Likewise with the quiet, peaceful middle-class protesters beaten up by the Met Gestapo.

    2. Instead of harassing shoppers, the Met Perlice Farce could patrol the M25 and stop any vehicle leaving Lunnon without paying!

    3. How will it focus commuters minds at the next Mayorial election – as people living outside London, they can’t vote in that election. They WILL, with their employers, vote with their wallets and likely many will move their businesses to cheaper areas outside of London. Good for areas like mine in the Home Counties, not good for Londoners. Hopefully Boris will say No to bailing out Citizen Khan again. He never should’ve said yes the first time – it was only because he was pushed into the lockdowns (including by the DT) the first time that he did so.

      1. If you live within the M25, but work outside it , under tit-for -att you will have to pay £3.50 to go to work, or on holiday etc

        2. Perhaps, but the ‘M25 rule’ isn’t everywhere – much of the motorway doesn’t go through London but Hertfordshire, Bucks, Essex, Surrey and Kent so they won’t be affected unless they work in London itself (and they’ll have no vote), and Khan/GLA has no power outside its borders, which isn’t the M25.

      3. Nah!

        I saw Quo twice: Sheffield City Hall and Manchester Apollo. Loud, but nowhere near as loud at The Who at the New Bingley Hall, Stafford, in 1975. I was completely deaf and my ears were in pain for three days afterwards.

        The Who were, at the time, chasing Deep Purple for the title of world’s loudest band in the Guinness Book of Records. Leeds City Council clapped a 96dB limit on bands; a fact that had the mickey taken out of it in Mott the Hoople’s song The Golden Age of Rock and Roll, where they lambasted the “96 decibel freaks”.

        1. A three Yorkshireman:

          Call that loud?

          1st Southerner: “The Who were playing in Watford and we were deafened in Chorleywood”
          2nd Southerner “Tell me about it. It deafened me.”
          3rd Southerner ” My name’s Grizzly, I’m not a bloody Southerner, and get that damned Chorleywood process bread outta yer lugholes you soft git, no wonder yer deaf”

        1. Me!
          Blair, Brown, Soros, Gates, Vallance, Hancock, etc etc etc

          Oh….. sorreee, I read that as cords.

  45. Not only can the virus count, it can tell which stores are already full.

    I’ve just been to our shopping complex. It would appear that 2348 or some such number are allowed in but each store has a maximum, such as 1602, or 374, or 24 even though there is no way of telling how many are in any one part, what with connecting doors between stores, corridors, multiple exits and no turnstile or tallying equipment.

    Don’t the congenital bloody idiots who set these rules/numbers not realise how ridiculous they are?

    1. I think you meant to say ‘genital bloody idiots’ or dickheads as i prefer to think of them….

    4. It’s easy, each shop just needs 374 or whatever baskets, and then anyone who’s in the shop without a basket is asked to leave.

      1. 10/10 for humour and logical indeed; but impossible/improbable, because several of the shops are intermingled and who needs a basket in a hairdresser, or an optician, and should couples push two trolleys or carry two baskets?

        And what does one do about a family where two of the children are riding in the trolley (Gawd I hate that, filthy shoes where I might the next user,) and have two others in tow.

        And how do you control the baskets, colour coding, perhaps, tagging, possibly electric fences that force them to be dropped if leaving one shop’s area?

        {;-((

        1. 1 person, 1 basket.
          That’s how the Germans do it.
          It’s torture expecting them to share the EU with the French!

          3. Idiocy!
            Five times as many opportunities for cross-infection, if the virus is as long-lasting and virulent as suggested.

    1. No, but I have no intention of looking;
      that is worserer than quilting…..
      and the colours are crap!

  47. Biden’s first decision, he’ll resurrect Radiohead’s title:

    The US Presidential Band will in future play Hail to the Thief.

      1. I’ve been of the view that Biden/Democrats stole it from the first night. I doubt that Trump can overturn it, much as I might wish him to.

      2. If Trump were returned there would be widespread violence and destruction as the fascist hoodies took to the streets for nights of fury and destruction. We will have to put up with an old man of failing mind and the ruinous green agenda that will follow him.

          1. Capitulation to corruption is the way of the world. I have no doubt Trump won the election but the corrupt forces against him are too powerful. America will sink back into unemployment, denial of fossil fuels and the grand delusion of carbon pollution.

          2. Sorry, I don’t agree with you.

            This is a pivotal moment. If President Trump is removed by corruption, the results will affect everyone in the West.

            Consequently, President Trump will not give in. The Democrats stepped outside the constitution first, that entitles President Trump to do the same.

          3. I wish him well. But so many of the most powerful have made this happen. He wil just not walk away so it is far from over even if he leaves office.

          4. “The Democrats stepped outside the constitution first, that entitles President Trump to do the same.” A statement made repeatedly and never proved in Court. Your views would lead to civil war; for everyone’s sake just stop it.

        2. They’ll be widespread violence anyway. Noting that 99% of it is in Democrat stronghold cities and states, not Red ones. The reason being is that the idiots on the Hard Left who did actually vote for Biden (as opposed to those who didn’t but their ‘votes’ were ‘just there’ on election night) will be as disappointed with crony Establishment sleepy, creepy, corrupt Uncle Joe as they were with Trump. They want communism, Biden and the Dem top people want crony corporatism. They ain’t the same, and why AOC and her ‘squad’ are already agitating for MUCH more.

        4. Interesting view, The very first comment under CNN’s report of the SCOTUS decision is,

          “Cowards in black robes.
          When the left can steal an election in broad daylight, the country is lost.
          There is no longer a reason to debate ideas, as persuading others to join your cause is meaningless.
          Leaves only one option for patriots.”

          Looks like it’s the more extreme of Trump’s supporters who are the people threatening violence.

          https://twitter.com/wrjahnjr/status/1337575428651966467

          3. Seems a perfectly natural consequence of corruption.

            Why give in to cheating ? There is no reason to do so.

          4. Inevitable really when your life is stolen by thugs in masks viciously aggressive, mindlessly destructive almost like their KKK grandparents.

  48. Every time I read a BBC article my blood boils.

    “The three main sticking points are:
    The EU is worried the UK could give financial help to its own firms, or find other ways to give them an advantage it considers unfair
    Both sides are concerned about who will be allowed to fish in UK waters.
    They need to decide how any agreement they reach will be enforced.”

    It may be me but every line seems to ooze sympathy for the EU, rather than any support or optimism for the UK. Full of expressions such as “could” (be very bad for us) without any explanation as to why.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-32810887

    1. When PM on R4 covered this just now, they spoke to a lot of (surprisingly Anglophone) French fishermenschen.

      1. I suppose at least half of them wanted to insist that we take back our fisheries completely?

        1. You’re probably right, but however spiteful the poster might be, I suspect it was as much a figure of unpleasant speech as a deliberate attack on BM’s daughter.

          It is far too easy to post on social media without analysing all the why’s what’s and wherefore’s before pressing “post”

          2. His cartoons often show a pathos around situations rather than an aggressive political slant.

            His recent grandmother hugging the child is an excellent example of that.

  50. That’s me for today – a dreary, grey, foggy one. Not cold, though – which was a relief. Tomorrow is the same – but, on Monday, they say, it will be gloriously sunny. Bet it isn’t.

    Must go and get the MR a glass of something medicinal – and complimentary. This arvo she made a cushion cover AND, for the first time ever, inserted a zip – which works!! G & P impressed – another cushion to jump on!

    A demain.

      1. Not been too bad today.
        I even got a bit of work up the garden done shifting a few barrow loads of soil from a hump to fill in the depression between the shed & the wall.

  51. Just been watching my favourite Christmas film, It’s a wonderful life it got me thinking if someone could do that subtitle send up thingy with Trump as George Bailey, Mayor Giuliani as Clarence Oddbody and Biden as Mr Potter, and Sidney Powell as Violet the token crumpet,

  52. I see that kneeling, fist saluting Lewis is back behind the wheel this weekend………..my word he got over his positive test result covid virus quickly, or was he worried that the substitute who replaced him despite all the pit lane faffing simply did too well.

      1. No contest – whilst the engines are the same (wthin reason), the rest of the car certainly isn’t – the Williams is carp, hnece why they are always at the back.

        Last weeks great showing by Russell gave us a glimpse of whta he could do with a decent car, and if it weren’t for the pitlane foul-up by the crew and then the puncture (both no fault of him), the lad would’ve won…easily beating his much more experienced team mate who should know the car like the back of his hand.

        If Mercedes aren’t willing to dump Bottas for him, then Red Bull could come calling if they dump Albon and they don’t go for Perez.

        1. It is odd how the Media so
          quickly change their tune;
          it wasn’t so long ago that
          Bottas was being hailed as
          the greatest driver since
          Fangio et al.

        2. What a choice that would be for Russell – join Red Bull…. and be a teammate of Verstappen.

        3. Why not dump Hamilton instead? They’d still probably win with Russell and save a fortune in wages AND prove that Mercedes are head and shoulders above the rest.

          11. Actually alcohol has been a no-no for about 20 years. Doc’s orders. Got to the point where I don’t miss it.

        1. He had “a” virus, probably another variant of the Common Cold which the test picked up as C-19.

      2. I wonder if he is a relative of the Mr Robert Ellwood who partially ruined my life’s expectations.

    2. Tobias Ellwood MP. The man who doesn’t give a toss about the safety of our fishermen.

      Also, if we can send the Navy to patrol our waters why aren’t they patrolling the English channel against the invading dinghies?

    3. I wonder if Micron remembers this

      When France Pulled the Plug on a Crucial Part of NATO

      It was the first major crisis faced by the alliance, and it shook member nations deeply.

      Erin Blakemore

      The memo was brief—just a few hundred words. The memo was polite. But for

      President Lyndon Johnson and his NATO allies, it read like a slap in the face.

      “France is determined to regain on her whole territory the full exercise of her sovereignty,”

      wrote French President Charles de Gaulle. The country intended to stop putting its military forces at

      NATO’s disposal and intended to kick NATO military forces—and those of NATO members—off of its land.

      In short, de Gaulle had just done the unthinkable: pulled the plug on a crucial part of NATO.

      https://www.history.com/news/france-nato-withdrawal-charles-de-gaulle

    4. Neither China nor Russia are threatening to disrupt our trade. France is. We have done all we can, and more than we should have. The EU isn’t negotiating, it’s trying to control.

    6. Why are we even in NATO given the contempt most of its members appear to hold us in? I’m no fan of Putin and Russia, but nor to I consider Russia a natural enemy of the UK, so why is it in UK interests to have forces deployed to defend eastern European countries refusing us a FTA?

      1. Grandstanding, and the EU are happy to see us pay and put our troops lives on the line (in places like Africa). There is much talk by the ‘modern’ politician that we are no longer a great world power, no longer have an empire, but we still play as if we are a world leader. I too believe that we should be more like the Europeans, stand back and just watch others getting involved. How many times have I heard it said that in the new world order we are but a small insignificant island. I am more than happy to live in a backwater.

        1. Not only “we still play as if we are a world leader. ” – -our govt still PAYS as if we are.

      2. Hi AC,
        The United Kingdom’s strategy is to remain firmly allied with the USA. Within reason, the UK has to take the rough with the smooth.

        1. I’m perfectly happy being in a military alliance with the US (and Canada), so would like to see the UK have a bilateral treaty with the USA (just like the Australians).

      3. Do you understand what nato is all about its to stop dictatorships like the EU and thats why the EU do not like it.It is to stop Germany starting trouble again as with Russia and China.

        1. Thing is, Johnny, NATO can never oppose the EU. Over two-thirds of NATO countries are EU members already and four more have applied for EU membership. The EU has started building its “European Army” and that army will supersede NATO in the not too distant future.

          Britain not longer needs to be in NATO. We should increase defence spending hugely, to beef-up our pitifully small armed forces, and concentrate on our own defence. We should agree defence treaties with the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand but let’s stay out of European affairs. Europe was lost to the Germans, decades ago.

          1. I don’t often agree with you Duncan, but I do agree with your summary. What Germany failed to achieve in WWI and WW2 i.e. the economic domination of Europe, especially eastern Europe, has been achieved through the EU. The EU’s modern day ‘drang nach Osten’ will lead to conflict with Russia, whether over Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine or Georgia, it will happen and I don’t want British troops dying on behalf of the EU.

          2. It’s taken a long time, but congratulations, you’ve got there! The EU has achieved by economic means what Germany twice failed to do by force of arms.

          3. We should be all concerned about a Euro Army that will in the end be controlled by Germany.

        2. Yes I understand what NATO is and it was necessary in Cold War days. There is no longer a significant threat from the USSR and its allies and it would appear that most of NATOs members want to punish the UK for its vote in 2016, so I believe we need to realign our foreign policy and that includes defence as well as trade.

          1. But if there were no NATO, what would failed Labour party leader Jens Stoltenberg (aka Beaker) do that matches his sense of self-importance?

    7. Your link has vanished again TB,……… does Disqus have a new policy over Twitter links ?

  57. My dear son’s contribution for this evening…

    Buy a man a plane ticket, he will fly once.
    Push him out of the plane, he will fly for the rest of his life…

      1. All? ALL??
        We’re not like you…

        Not all Nottlers have big organs and an enormous repertoire of Carols:
        Smith, Jones, Brown, Thomas…

          1. I’m sorry T_B, mea culpa..

            I thought it was past your bedtime.
            Had I known you were still up, I would never have used such immoderate in-his-endos.
            Please accept my apologies.

            {;-((

        2. For what it’s worth, our Carol Service is virtual, tomorrow evening on Zoom. My input hasn’t been sought. Two choirs have been thrown under the bus, despite CofE regs saying they’re allowed. My upload speed is so low that I can’t join in, but frankly, I don’t care.

          I had my somewhat abandoned virtual organ delivered on Thursday. Need to spend a few hundred on completing it, but meanwhile, it’s a handy surface for displaying my Christmas Cards. Now that I don’t live across the road from a church with an organ, I’ll need it. They’ve taken my church keys, since I’m no longer Verger. This is the first time in 49 years that I’ve not had a key to my church to be able to practice. I’m not the happiest of bunnies…

          1. My elder brother has moved from his flat at Combe Down in Bath where he occasionally played the organ, in the large church, into a nursing home on the other side of the city.

            I am thinking of buying him a Hauptwerk virtual organ. Is that a sensible alternative? They do a wide range.

          3. So sorry, Geoff; that sounds utterly miserable. A good organist is a joy beyond compare. The ability to slither unsuitable tunes into an impromptu, unnoticed by most, is one before which I bow.

          4. A relation was a churchwarden and occasionally played the organ; on her retirement, they never asked for the organ keys, so she still has a set somewhere. Just in case.

          5. If it’s any comfort Geoff…our church has a Carol service (sort of) tomorrow. The choir is strictly limited to half a dozen, instead of our usual 50+ for this service, and the congregation’s seating is hugely distanced and will result in about 40-50 only, instead of 400 normally. Oh yes, and we are not allowed to sing, despite being masked. Just try and stop me…

          6. We are holding our ‘Sunday before-
            Christmas-Carol-Service’ outside,
            on the Church lawn.

            ‘If God is with us who can be against us?’

          7. Yo Boss
            again, I must read a lot more carefullierester

            I read “since I’m no longer Verger”

            As since I’m no longer a Vergin, which meant coming up to Christmas, you could have special status

          8. I trust that when the time comes for them to need a stand-in

            };-))

            you’ll tell them you can’t.

    1. Except that the UK fiddles its figures, using university/tertiary education to hide the real situation.

      I doubt that there is any other country in the EU that gets even close to our levels of students in that 16-24 age group that are still in “higher” education,

      2. I wonder, if Mr Bliar had an input to that.

        Primary Education in UK is so bad, that basic school leavers are
        Illiterate
        Innumerate
        Politically conditioned to Wokeism (was to the Left, until BLM)

  60. Good night all.

    Fillet of salmon with a chilli-tomato concasse & new potatoes. Suited the 2018 Chablis perfectly.

  62. Evening, all. Late again because I’ve been watching the racing. We all know the EU is desperate to stop others leaving. Once they see we can make a success of independence despite the worst efforts of the EU, there will be a rush for the exit.

  63. Apologies if already posted…An excellent piece by Janet Daley. Why, she even managed to work in references to Hitler and Mussolini, which will surely endear her to the EUSSR!

    * * * *

    By the time you read this, you may know whether we are leaving the EU without a trade deal. Or, then again, you may not. In fact, probably not. Trying to analyse the likelihood of this has become almost entirely a matter of semantics and psychological gaming.

    Was Boris Johnson’s broadcast warning of an imminent no-deal, and the blanket briefing by Downing Street that this was – really, really – the last, probably futile, attempt to reach agreement, just another eye-balling feint? Or was it an attempt to prove that we were still trying to be reasonable before we took the leap that everybody had decided was now inevitable? And was the EU threat to give up and walk away, for life or just for this Christmas?

    Who knows? We are in the realms of Kremlinology here. The EU actually does seem to believe that since words can mean whatever they choose them to mean, all that is required is enough ambiguity to save everybody’s face. Ursula von der Leyen’s statement last Friday was an almost perfect example of this. Having discovered to its surprise (seriously?) that the EU’s insistence that the UK comply with any future changes in regulation which the EU chooses to adopt, was considered by Britain to breach its sovereignty, she offered a clarification: the UK would not, in fact, “need to follow us every time” the EU alters its policies and standards. Then she added, “They would remain free – sovereign if you will – to decide what they want to do. We would simply set the conditions for access to our market.”

    Presumably she thought she was being helpful. Well, she used the word “sovereign” didn’t she? Even if it was with only a half-hearted acknowledgement of its significance and even less of its true meaning. Because what she said did not alter the dynamic at all. What this amounted to was the same threat as before: you can choose to deviate from any future rules we lay down – but it will be at the price of losing access to our market. Isn’t this more or less where we started? Except that now it isn’t an existential threat – just blackmail. The only point of this very subtle alteration seemed to be to make it sound less like vindictive punishment, which could conceivably permit the UK to justify accepting it (which is to say put an acceptable gloss on it).

    They obviously don’t get it. Do they understand what the word “sovereign” means? Note: it involves electing the people who make your laws. Did they think we were just spouting grandiose rhetoric which would evaporate under the pressure of mundane economic reality? It must be something like that – otherwise they could never have gone where they went. I remember writing many months ago that I could think of only three kinds of organisation which threatened people who wanted to leave: mafia families, secret societies and religious cults – and that the EU had elements of all three.

    This last performance was the mafia bit but it reversed the usual formula: they made us an offer we couldn’t accept – but which we would eventually have to accede to if we wanted life as we knew it to go on. So not only would our infernal British presumption be given its mortifying comeuppance but anybody else in the outfit who was thinking of trying something similar would be scared witless. To have any hope of understanding what is going on, it is essential to remember the founding premise of the EU: the elected governments of member states must be relegated in their authority to the unelected institutions that govern the bloc.

    This is not an unfortunate accident: it is fundamental. Nation states – or rather, their volatile, dangerously impressionable populations – cannot be trusted to behave in acceptable ways. Hitler was elected. Mussolini was facilitated into office by legitimate national procedures. Lesson: the peoples of Europe have disgraced themselves in the recent past. They may continue to participate in their own electoral processes but the benign oligarchy of Europe, held in place by structures designed by a wise establishment, will have over-arching power to keep them in check. The prosperity that results from such guaranteed peace and security will be distributed on the assumption of mutual consent.

    That was the idea. It didn’t necessarily work out – even within the ranks of consenting members. But the core beliefs remain unreconstructed. One of the most important – and least examined – of these is that competition between nation states is inherently wicked. Cooperation is the key to everything. This is what drives suspicion of Brexiting Britain’s intentions. We might do something to undercut our EU neighbours by say, lowering taxes, cutting business costs, reducing expensive requirements for employment protection, or simply selling our little hearts out in the world market.

    Yes indeed – that is what competition is. And it is at the heart of free market economics. It drives the genius of innovation, the courage of entrepreneurialism and it hugely benefits the consumer. It can even liberate the populations of developing countries as it has in much of Africa. But it is the “animal spirit” that is altogether too much like some of the wicked spirits that drove Europe’s twentieth century experience. Since it can encourage envy, unfairness and insecurity, it must be regarded as a potentially destructive force.

    That is why it must be replaced by “solidarity” which no one – particularly not a renegade former EU member – can be allowed to endanger. There are awkward contradictions, of course, when the elected national leaders must suppress their own inclinations and even the interests of their own electorates, in order to maintain the group objectives. However much Angela Merkel may regret the intransigence of Emmanuel Macron over fishing, she will not officially dissent – however much this might cost the German car industry.

    The ultimate tragedy may be that those very European states so determined not to repeat the tragic moral errors that led to the second World War could be about to commit the mistakes that led to the first one: a vainglorious, arrogant insistence that their own world mission cannot possibly be wrong.

    A couple of leading BTL comments:

    Clive Algebra
    12 Dec 2020 1:12PM
    Great article, sums up the mentality and dogma of EU. Her reference to past wars should not be ignored given the fishing debacle.

    Anthony Hopkin
    12 Dec 2020 1:32PM
    Bullseye, Ms. Daly. Very nicely stated. However, I don’t suppose that you will receive a Christmas card from the EUSSR. Let’s hope BJ sticks to his stated intentions.

    1. There is also a good piece by Tim Stanley – about the mealy mouthed meeja:

      “Kay Burley, the Sky News presenter, broke the Covid rules at her 60th birthday bash last week. She got caught, she’s off air for six months. It’s an embarrassment, but not just for her and the other Sky News journalists, including Beth Rigby, who attended the party. For a year, the broadcasters have hammered the Government for not locking down soon enough or hard enough. There has been hardly any balance in their coverage; the evisceration of private life or the destruction of the British economy has barely been considered. But if one of their own, a star in their firmament, can’t keep to these rules, could it be because the rules are inhuman and unreasonable? If so, perhaps it’s time for them to change how they cover the pandemic.

      Superficially, it’s been a good year for the broadcasters – the early press briefings were a ratings bonanza – but in moral terms it’s been a stinker, because most of their journalists did not do what they’re supposed to do. They ought to give us the facts and interrogate every perspective, even the less popular ones. Instead, they picked a narrative and stuck to it, as all the while, if Ms Burley is any guide, they broke the rules themselves.

      They jacked up the panic. We have been deluged with worst-case scenarios, anecdotes of deaths but few of collapsing firms, and reports of ultra-rare cases, such as children who have succumbed to the virus, presented as if they were common. (“The disease is determined to divide us,” said an ITV journalist, as if it had grown a brain and joined Twitter.) If the pandemic was an extinction-level event, then logic dictated that lockdown must be good and anyone sceptical of it was bad.

      When a debate is permitted, it is cast in binary terms – do we close shops or abandon the old? – and producers have repeated that old trick, popular with green policy or Brexit, of inviting on the most extreme pundits to represent the least politically correct side. People so nutty and charmless they make Piers Morgan seem measured and graceful.

      As for the broadcast journalists sent to quiz ministers, they only seemed to have two questions tattooed to the back of their hand: “Why don’t you lock down more?” or “Why are we risking lives by opening up so soon?” I can’t recall hearing the actual principle of lockdown being challenged. Nor do I remember the words: “What about Sweden?” or “What is the scientific evidence behind this measure?” or “Can business survive this?”

      When the economy went down the pan, the same broadcasters who had cheered the lockdown seemed genuinely surprised. The new question is “Why won’t you spend more money?”

      The broadcasters probably believe the normal job of reporting, and the critical thinking required to do it, has been suspended for a season, that what matters is “keeping people safe”, which would be why the press conferences are an echo chamber. The Government does something. The broadcasters demand an escalation. The Government feels obliged to try harder. For the first time in my career, I understand how governments already inclined to put up a fight can be goaded into a war by a media that we trust to be cynical and detached – because the broadcasters did not just endorse the lockdown, they were critical to its success. They even policed it. On one occasion, the BBC’s Stephen Nolan stood outside a petrol station in Belfast hectoring customers who didn’t wear masks. This is elite-level arrogance.

      I like Kay Burley. Such is her reputation for terrifying miscreants that whenever my best friend and I do something wrong, we put on our “Kay voice” and say “Are you going to apologise for that on this show?” She, along with her colleagues, has been hoist by her own petard; one of the newspapers even mapped out her night of shame like it was a murder spree. But shed no tears, for Kay is off on full pay, whereas the hairdresser in Yorkshire who refused to shut is to be fined £17,000, and the organisers of a funeral in Kettering £10,000. Not to speak of the Britons who, exercising their civil right to protest, have been thrown into the back of police vans. Those defiances, even if arguably injurious to health, are at least acts of conscience that reflect principle. They are not hypocrites. They did not say one thing and then do another.

      Ultimately, this is not about a few journalists’ hubris or error. It’s a warning of institutional decline. The coronavirus has tested all our institutions – health, police, politics – and most have failed because they long ago forgot what they are there to do. The same is true of the broadcasters. If they had a special remit in a time of pandemic it was, yes, to help us stay safe, but also to hand out accurate information and enable us to make decisions based upon our own judgment of the risks. Hysteria and breathless reporting of diktat without dissection is wrong.

      Lots of people will quietly break the rules this winter because some are simply unworkable. If an intelligent person like Ms Burley struggles to stick to them, perhaps the broadcasters need to ask what their rationale is and if they actually work.”

      1. Thanks Bill, good article. And never forget that Sly News and the BBC both referred to the Chinese Plague as “the killer virus” at the beginning. I suspect that this awful description was responsible for much of what followed.

      2. “On one occasion, the BBC’s Stephen Nolan stood outside a petrol station in Belfast hectoring customers who didn’t wear masks.”

        I saw that video. I didn’t realise it was Nolan. What a gobshite he is and always has been. A few years ago, on the Radio 5 Saturday night phone-in (the subject was House of Lords reform), Norman Tebbit reduced him to squeaking, gibbering incoherence by nothing more than reasonable argument. It was a masterly performance.

      3. “The coronavirus has tested all our institutions – health, police, politics – and most have failed because they long ago forgot what they are there to do.”
        Name an institution that hasn’t failed? Name any journalist employed by the BBC, who is actually doing the job of a journalist and not that of either a copyboy or a member of a Greek chorus?

    3. “When she comes to our table I shall ask her where she suggests I should stick this little piece of blue paper!”

    4. Oh, thank God.
      After the debacle of that last photo-op of all white children, I’ve found a few Bames to feature,
      It’s a shame they aren’t “14” year olds going on forty, but I can’t win ’em all.

  65. An interesting article by Douglas Murray in the Mail on Sunday about Mrs Merkel role in thwarting all chance of a sensible, rational and fair Brexit deal:

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-9047117/DOUGLAS-MURRAY-Merkel-gets-wrong-arrogance-boundless.html#newcomment

    DOUGLAS MURRAY: Authoritarian. Unyielding. Merkel gets it so wrong because her arrogance is boundless

    A BTL comment:

    It is ironic that Mutti – or ‘Mother’ Merkel – is childless as are Macron and May. On the other hand Boris Johnson has an indeterminate number of children!

  66. With the name that he has, Mr Ahmed should mind his back…

    A victory for freedom at Cambridge shows the woke mob can only win if we let them

    An organised majority at the university saw off an attempt by a tiny minority to undermine free speech

    JULIET SAMUEL

    My god, are these the people we’ve been afraid of all this time? Cambridge University academics, those well-known defenders of conservatism, have seen off an attempt by a tiny band of radicals to impose a policy of blanket censorship on campus. In the process, they have revealed that the “woke” activists are not, as they claim, a grassroots movement commanding overwhelming majority support, but a small sect of fanatics. This sect has been defeated, roundly, abjectly, in its own intellectual breeding ground.

    The argument began in March. Under pressure from the Cambridge student union, university authorities decided to introduce a new “statement on freedom of speech” that, in true Orwellian fashion, did the opposite of what its title suggested. It would have required that everyone on campus, scholars, speakers and students, “be respectful” of “differing opinions” and “diverse identities”. What this “respect” should entail was not defined, but it is clear that it would not mean respecting the “differing views” of Cambridge fellows like Noah Carl, who was fired last year for defending sceptical attitudes towards immigration and arguing for free scientific inquiry into genes and intelligence. The new policy, for example, listed various grounds on which the university could ban speakers, including the idea that they might threaten the “welfare” of anyone on campus, again without defining what this meant.

    Alarmed at the implications, a philosophy don called Arif Ahmed decided to take a professional risk. He was already on the advisory council of an outfit called the Free Speech Union (as am I), but he had not yet done anything to attract special attention from woke activists. Nonetheless, he set about gathering 25 signatures from fellow academics needed to force a vote on the matter. Doing so was not easy. Academics were afraid of being attacked by the same mob who had gotten Dr Carl fired. Eventually, however, he reached his target.

    He and his allies tabled amendments to the policy, replacing the demand for “respect” with a requirement for “tolerance”, deleting the list of reasons to ban speakers and replacing it with a commitment to allow all speakers so long as they didn’t break the law, libel or harass anyone. At this point, Cambridge could have decided to negotiate. It would have been a straightforward matter for the university council to endorse the uncontroversial idea of “tolerance” or else solicit the views of its faculty and students outside the coterie making the decisions. Instead, the council dug in.

    Months later, Cambridge finally staged the vote. The result, thought to be unprecedented in its 800-year history, was a monumental defeat for the university bigwigs. Out of nearly 1,700 academics who voted, just 162 supported the new policy. Over 200 voted for no change and 1,316 voted to introduce the tolerance policy proposed by Dr Ahmed. His allies ranged from radical feminists to Christian conservatives, libertarians and old-school Left-wingers worried about the free speech rights of university staff. If vice chancellors were MPs, then Cambridge’s Stephen Toope has just become the Michael Portillo of the academic world.

    Like Portillo in 1997, Professor Toope ought to be feeling thoroughly ridiculous. The strident woke activists, who argue that “speech is violence” or biology is “transphobic”, turn out to be a tiny minority even among the faculty of Britain’s most famously reformist academic institution. They have been winning battles to disinvite speakers and fire people not by broad-based support, but by convincing institutional elites of their power using aggression and intimidation. Like a chump, Cambridge’s top governing body fell for it.

    Thankfully, in this case, the university rulebook took the decision out of their hands. But that isn’t usually how it works. The usual playbook is for activists to bamboozle administrators and PR departments with petitions, threats and online pile-ons, frightening, guilt-tripping and shaming people into submission. Those who refuse, like Sophie Watson, a radical feminist Cambridge student who supported Dr Ahmed’s campaign, find that erstwhile friends “have simply stopped talking to me”, leaving her with “a sense of unease” on campus.

    This “unease” is a potent weapon. Rather than make their case in open argument, the enemies of free speech prefer to isolate their opponents, attacking their backgrounds and labelling them untouchable “bigots”. If their attacks seem beside the point under discussion, it is because they are not aiming at the point. They are aiming at the opaque levers of power wielded by corporate procedures and human resources departments.

    But the Cambridge vote gives reason for hope. The woke activists aren’t as powerful as they seem. They play on a sense of fear and people’s need to belong. But it turns out that they, in fact, are the aberration, the affront to decency and reasonableness, whose power comes only from our belief in it. What if universities, multinationals and public bodies, confronted with a demand to fire someone for questioning “white privilege”, debating colonial history or reading Right-wing newspapers, simply said “no”? Perhaps the sky wouldn’t fall in.

    The Free Speech Union has been trying to turn the tide of attacks on free expression, often by writing to public or corporate bodies to point out their obligations under their own codes of conduct or their legal duties to employees. Sometimes, you have to fight procedure with procedure, defining and enforcing the laws that protect our freedoms, especially when a person’s livelihood is at stake.

    Ultimately, however, the argument against “no platforming” and its ilk will be won by the very thing it tries to suppress: open debate. Most people don’t subscribe to gender or critical race theory or intersectionality or whatever other ideology these activists deploy. They understand the world is complex, that most “categories” of people have some good and some bad in them. Once our bureaucratic elites grasp that they are being petitioned by a tiny but noisy group of extremists, perhaps they will find the courage to withstand the assault. Our institutions are cowering before a paper tiger.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/12/11/victory-freedom-cambridge-shows-woke-mob-can-win-let/

    1. Edmund Burke: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

      There are currently a LOT of people around the world doing nothing. That’s how dictatorships or wars begin.

      The above was a very minor win in a huge war, bigger than WWII for significance. And I don’t mean against just wokeness, but also Leftism/socialism/communism, corporatism, technocracy, elitism (the worst elements of), cronyism, totalitarianism, and many other things that is against the freedom of the person, group, country, species.

      1. Precisely. It is reaching its climax in the USA at present. If Trump succumbs we are all lost.

        Edit: I must be right in my opinion because some troll has immediately downvoted my comment. Sad.

          1. Ta NtN. It is annoying to be comprehensively trolled by truly ignorant people. I particularly resent the responses by the four of them who assert that I am drunk as a remark to justify their biased opinions.

            Needless to say I am able to drink the lot of them under the table and remain sober. It is possibly a genetic predisposition inherited from my late father who was born in 1910 and drank like a fish and smoked like a chimney.

            I gave up smoking Gitanes at the age of thirty on advice from Barney Grimes, a partner in the practice of Darbourne & Darke for whom I worked in Richmond on Thames. A truly lovely man.

            My dad smoked Woodbines. Edit: in his later years I supplied him with Gold Leaf bought in Taunton where I had a project on site at Queens College and duty free Benson & Hedges and the rest.

          2. Have another couple of upvotes, Cor.

            BTW – from your description, your late father sounds like my kind of chap!
            :¬)

          3. You are correct. My dad was enlisted into the Royal Artillery.

            As far as I know he went to Durban and then to India on the P & O steamship Orion. (Later used to transport folk to Australia under the £10,00 pound schemes).

            I have photos of my dad, a fresh faced soldier at the start of the conflict and other photographs of him after a couple of years in Burma. The latter photos show a defiant but emaciated soldier with muscle loss and rotten teeth.

            You will know this truth Duncan, but many of the arseholes proclaiming their opinions on this forum are just ignorant cowards

  67. Merkel has ruined Europe , she has caused so much upheaval , uncertainty and calamity by embracing the Ottoman Empire.

    What she has done is unforgiveable.

    1. 327408+ up ticks,
      Evening TB,
      By the same token TB, our governance politico’s have not been to shabby over the last three decades in the anti UK treachery department.

      1. They all are, Bob. Fortunately, only the roof and the interior, according to Ecclesiastical Insurance. The rest tends to remain in place, ready to receive the dome and minarets…

  71. An interesting article by Douglas Murray in the Mail on Sunday about Mrs Merkel role in thwarting all chance of a sensible, rational and fair Brexit deal:

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-9047117/DOUGLAS-MURRAY-Merkel-gets-wrong-arrogance-boundless.html#newcomment

    DOUGLAS MURRAY: Authoritarian. Unyielding. Merkel gets it so wrong because her arrogance is boundless

    A BTL comment:

    It is ironic that Mutti – or ‘Mother’ Merkel – is childless as are Macron and May. On the other hand Boris Johnson has an indeterminate number of children!

    1. How ‘Frau Nein’ blocked a Brexit deal: Top British officials blame clergyman’s daughter Angela Merkel’s ‘Lutheran’ distaste for ‘libertine’ Boris Johnson
      Diplomats say ‘trust issue’ between Angela Merkel and Boris Johnson came to head during last week’s talks
      British negotiators tried to break the deadlock by proposing a ‘tariffs for freedom’ arrangement during talks
      Under the plan the UK would have effectively been released from the responsibility to follow EU rules
      In return, Britain would have to accept that duties would be slapped on British exports to the bloc
      And it was Ms Merkel who played the most quietly influential role in the EU’s flat dismissal of the idea

      https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9047055/Officials-say-Angela-Merkels-distaste-libertine-Boris-Johnson-blocked-Brexit-deal.html

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