655 thoughts on “Thursday 26 September: By writing the Queen out of Parliament the Supreme Court has usurped a political role”

  2. Arthur Scargill has a letter in the DT this morning. A surprising and interesting letter. Worth reading and I would be grateful if someone were to post it here.

    1. SIR – I find it interesting that the leaders of the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats and the Scottish National Party are all calling for the resignation of the Prime Minister and the Attorney General on the grounds that they acted unlawfully in advising the Queen to prorogue Parliament. Are these party leaders also going to call for the resignation of Lord Burnett, the Lord Chief Justice; Sir Terence Etherton, the Master of the Rolls; and Dame Victoria Sharp, the President of the Queen’s Bench Division, who ruled that the Prime Minister acted legally?

      Arthur Scargill
      President, National Union of Mineworkers 1982-2002
      Barnsley, South Yorkshire

      Right on, Arthur. We’ll see you on the march.

      1. What a strange world – I find myself agreeing with Arthur Scargill, and loathing most of the Tories – who’d ‘ave thort it??

  3. Boris is being asked to tone down his language after his storming statement in the HoC last night. His opposition in the House last night were hurling abusive questions at him telling him that he had broken the law, lied, and asked about his private life. The Scottish SNP leader in the House was particulary offensive. Boris gave as good as he got and restated his objective to Leave the EU with or without a deal on terms that met all the terms of the Referendum result and he spelt them out. Boris came back fighting last night and it was good to see.

    1. SIR – I reckon the decision by the Supreme Court has just given Boris Johnson another million votes.

      Jonathan Arthur
      London SW7

    3. It’s just another effort to tar him with insults to demean their opponent. The real group inciting hatred and venom are the remainiacs.

      They know this so they have ot slur their enemy. It’s Left wingery 101.

      1. Geoffrey Cox et al. have stated that the SC created new law and that gave the Court the authority to deny Johnson his prorogation attempt. The High Court found in Johnson’s favour so in their interpretation no law existed that forbade his prorogation. If the SC is now capable of creating new law at will then how will any Government be able to govern as the electorate wishes? Big money challenges will rule: that way leads to chaos (as we are currently suffering)

        1. Remove the Supreme Court (and its members on £175,000 from its EU Masters) and return to the Law Lords and the Lord Chancellor.

    5. It certainly was, Clyde. For too long we have been denied robust leadership from Conservative leaders. Betrayal on this scale requires nothing less. The H of C snowflakes have become flabby, traitorous, politically-correct minnows and it is time to shake them out of their EU-induced procrastination.

      Edit: I heard just now Soames whining on Toady about Boris’ performance in the House yesterday. Churchill’s grandson (in case we had forgotten) needs to take a long hard look in the mirror, where he will see one of those who is directly responsible for this mess.

  4. SIR – Is it not time that the Queen could open Parliament without the embarrassment of personally having to read out the Speech?

    Robert Adams
    Chelmsford, Essex

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/opinion/2019/09/25/TELEMMGLPICT000147410154_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqJKshGvN1om7Aqkp8aAKZGV206ZC705r5ZExmQGWsJ7I.jpeg?imwidth=1240

    Queen Brenda Hale entering Parliament for the State Opening.

    With her supporting act, The Supremes
    https://youtu.be/0N1iH6Xd78U
    One of their Greatest Hits album, “There’s no stopping us now”

  6. Good morning, all. Nice, sunny day.

    MPs and the MSM don’t care for Johnson, do they?

    Still, one hopes England (without the odious Farrell) will beat the Yanks.

    2. They are about to fly a sphincter of stars from the sword and stick a blue and yellow beret on its head.

  8. From the rule of law, to the rule of lawyers
    PHILIP JOHNSTON – SEPTEMBER 2019 • 9:30PM

    Until 10 years ago, almost to the day, the most senior judges in the land sat in the House of Lords. Along with the government they formed an integral part of parliament, while maintaining their independence. No other country in the world had both its judiciary and its executive embedded within the legislature. The head of the judiciary, the Lord Chancellor, even sat in the Cabinet.

    All that changed when Tony Blair’s Labour government decided, for no obvious reason, to dismantle what had been a perfectly workable, if somewhat haphazard, constitutional settlement.

    But if the reason was not obvious, the consequences have subsequently become apparent. It manifestly shifted the balance of powers within the British system, establishing a European style constitutional court which sits uneasily within a common law jurisdiction without a written constitutional code.

    How far the centre of gravity has moved was apparent on Monday with the ruling of the Supreme Court to strike down an Order in Council, signed by the Queen, requiring the prorogation of parliament. Such an action would have been unthinkable just 10 years ago.

    As Geoffrey Cox, the Attorney General said in the Commons today, the court has made new law in this field, effectively arrogating power to itself while clipping the wings of the executive. Lord Sumption, until recently a Supreme Court judge, called the ruling “revolutionary”.

    It was never clear what Mr Blair thought he was up to when in 2003 he decided to change this age-old dispensation other than to bend the knee to the fetish of “modernisation”.

    The then Lord Chancellor, Lord Irvine, was not told of what amounted to an act of constitutional vandalism which included abolishing his 1400-year-old office. It had to be re-instituted, though not as head of the judiciary, when it was realised that dozens of statutes were linked to it.

    As Prof Anthony King wrote in The British Constitution (2007): “It was all exceedingly complicated, very hard to explain to foreigners and altogether quaint. But it seemed to work well enough…History was on the side of the existing arrangements”.

    But around the turn of the century, King observed a subtle linguistic change in political and legal discourse. Instead of talking about the “government” people increasingly spoke of the “executive” and counterposed this with the concept of “the judiciary”. People began to refer not to a “balance of powers” but a “separation of powers” along US lines.

    The case for a full separation, splitting off the judges from parliament, was reinforced by a European Court of Human Rights ruling McGonnell v UK (2000) which cast doubt on the legal validity of any judicial involvement in the passage of legislation.

    Lord Irvine resisted the pressure to change and was sacked. The government abolished the Law Lords and set up a Supreme Court physically removed from Parliament. A suitable base was found across the road from the Palace of Westminster in the Middlesex Guildhall.

    The Law Lords were not consulted and were initially sceptical of the change. But when the new body finally began work on Oct 1, 2009 – kitted out in sumptuous ceremonial gowns of gold and black, with the words Supreme Court on the back – it supercharged the judicial activism that was already a recent feature of the country’s political scene.

    It is clear that most MPs simply fail to understand how dramatic this change has been because they look at these things so much from a partisan perspective. Labour was thrilled to see the Supreme Court give Boris Johnson a bloody nose but its strictures will apply to them as well should they ever get into power.

    This innovation, together with the Human Rights Act and the supranational reach of the European Court of Justice, has tipped power away from the Crown and towards the courts and parliament. People may think that is a good thing but it is a change that has happened without any proper debate.

    Over the past 40 years, especially since the UK joined the EEC, judges had seen the waning influence of parliament and took it upon themselves to reinvigorate it. For centuries, the UK courts have advanced the cause of liberty; but the growing use of the judicial review and the rise of so-called judicial activism has blurred the boundaries that once separated the three interlocking pillars of our constitution – Parliament, the judiciary and the executive.

    Is this transformation into a fully fledged constitutional court, such as that in Germany, what we want? MPs are unlikely to want to unravel the current arrangements while they are seen to work in their favour. But questions of whether judges should be subject to greater scrutiny as happens in America will inevitably be raised.

    Labour politicians currently crowing about this week’s ruling may find they are less sanguine when the judges strike down their plans to seize empty homes or close down private schools. We are a country that is, properly, defined by the Rule of Law. But the rule of lawyers is another matter entirely, not least when there is no written constitution against which to assess their decisions.

    1. I think it’s much simpler than that explanation.

      Just call it….

      “The Rule of George”.

      Then everyone understands.

  9. An aged lawyer writes:

    Henry VI, part 2, Act 4, Scene 2…… Dick the Butcher:

    “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.”

  10. SIR – This judgment has left me angry and afraid. The Remainers in Parliament and elsewhere are conniving with a biased judiciary to prevent us from leaving the EU in any meaningful way.

    To feel safe, one has to have confidence that there is a basic level of fairness and honesty in the political system. I no longer feel safe.

    Valentine Guinness
    London W2

    1. It’s much more serious than Brexit. This is revolution, the stealing of power from the electorate.

      1. Indeed. The authority of Prime Minister has been usurped by Bercow, and the authority of the Queen has been usurped by Hale’s Eleven. Neither are elected, nor refined over many centuries of tradition,

  12. Dunno if this has already been posted.

    In defence of Geoffrey Cox
    Charles Day – Coffee House – 25 September 2019 – 12:39 PM

    Something ugly has come out of the Supreme Court’s decision to change the law and our constitution yesterday. Instead of basking magnanimously in the fact that they won, there have been wholly unwarranted calls from Remainers for ‘heads on plates’. The cry has gone out for the Attorney General, Geoffrey Cox, to publish his legal advice and to resign. The rather bizarre premise is presumably that in giving advice to the government that the prorogation was lawful, he somehow did something wrong. Let me be unequivocal – he did not, and the calls for his resignation are both vindictive and inappropriate.

    How can I be so sure? Well, what the bloodthirsty are forgetting is that the High Court on 11 September thought the prorogation of parliament was legal. Up until yesterday, that was the law. Any Attorney General who gave advice with which the High Court agreed, is justified and immune from criticism.

    But in this instance we can go further to vindicate this particular Attorney General. Because this was no ordinary High Court. The three judges sitting were the Lord Chief Justice, the Master of the Rolls and the President of the Queen’s Bench Division – three incredibly well respected lawyers, each with planet sized brains. More interestingly, constitutionally the Lord Chief Justice outranks each of the 11 members of the Supreme Court. It is true that the court he was sitting in, the High Court, is inferior to the Supreme Court. But it is worth reflecting that our top judge disagreed with the 11 Supreme Court judges.

    It would be a world beyond parody if the Attorney General were forced to resign because he agreed in law with the Lord Chief Justice. It would tempt the definition of satire if he were to be criticised for agreeing with the Master of the Rolls – one of the original ‘enemies of the people’.

    I am conscious that this entire issue is fracturing along referendum lines. But we simply can’t run the country this way – everything will break. The man who is being unfairly maligned is everything we should want in an Attorney General. Lawyers should not do things because they are popular, they should do them because they are right. Geoffrey Cox is the living embodiment of that principle. He was part of May’s government and he voted to implement the Withdrawal Agreement. When that failed, May tried to claim that a letter from the EU materially changed her deal. I remember eagerly awaiting Cox’s legal advice, which the PM agreed to publish. It is beyond reasonable doubt that he must have been under immense pressure to say that the letter altered the agreement. But he didn’t. He was not a politician saying what was needed to get the result he desired – he was a lawyer, saying what was true because it was true. The Master of the Rolls, who found with Miller on the Article 50 notification case and against Miller in the High Court this month – deserves similar praise.

    When one looks at the dark and lamentable catalogue of failure that has been the government law offices since Blair ‘reformed’ everything, Geoffrey Cox stands out as one of the best we’ve had. If we perversely seek to punish him now for agreeing with the High Court then we risk giving in to a base tribalism that can only lead to national self-harm.

      1. Haven’t got the concentration levels required to understand above nor work out what you mean by “base tribalism”. But these remainers just don’t seem to understand what’s coming their way. Do they not understand the level of violence that will administered to them when it kicks off? Our football culture, well the true fans is based on tribalism. Take away the CCTV and it’d kick off every Saturday. Great fun, and it was not like the violence and stabbings today.

  13. Why did Tone way back turn justice upside down ?

    Was it because his best friend thought that might be kinda handy ?

  15. There is only one law: there must be no Brexit

    The weight of the state is being used to crush the aspirations of the electorate
    Rod Liddle – 28 September 2019 – 9:00 AM

    You’re surprised? Really? What are you surprised by? The specifics — that 11 non-elected, mostly public-school-educated judges, and doubtlessly Remainers I’d guess, should put the final nail into the lid of Brexit? Yeah, sure — that knocked me for six. Never saw that coming. Or was it the generality that surprised you — we’re not getting Brexit after all? If it’s the latter, I don’t think there’s much hope for you.

    What seemed to me fairly plain on 24 June 2016 — that they, meaning our liberal establishment, would never let it happen — became an absolute certainty by the turn of this year. By January it was either no Brexit or Brexit in name only. And yet Leavers still clung on, like a spider will cling to the side of a bath as the hot water rises beneath it. ‘No deal is the default option! It’s the law!’ came the cry. I’m sorry, but have you not been watching? There is only one law. The law is there must be no Brexit. That is the whole of the law.

    Even as late as last week, in his kind review of my book The Great Betrayal: The True Story of Brexit, Harry Mount suggested I was jumping the gun, making a rash gamble, because surely, surely, we were going to leave. Quentin Letts, a Leaver, reckoned much the same. Again – have you not been watching, gents? Listen, when the newly elected leader of the Liberal Democrats, Jo Swinson, is able to tell the country that no matter how many times the people vote for Brexit, she would stop it, and be praised for her decisiveness and commitment to democracy instead of being pilloried, then I think we are in a different ballpark. The rules have changed — and there is only one law.

    And so those 11 judges join the pantheon of left-wing heroes alongside John Bercow, Philip Hammond, that intellectually stunted hypocrite John Major and, of course, Tony Blair — all people who, in normal times, the deranged left would like to see swinging from lampposts. But the liberal left has found itself part of the establishment, in its affluence, in its loathing of Brexit, in its epic contempt for the people — and so has used every possible means whatsoever to thwart the wishes of the electorate. It took big money, big business and unelected institutions, the BBC hammering away with its relentless propaganda in the background, the civil service working copiously behind the scenes — everything co-opted to prevent us leaving.

    This is not a conspiracy theory. It is not fake news. It is precisely what has happened. A liberal elite which cannot bear to be gainsaid has used every instrument available to it — lawyers (82 per cent pro-Remain), the BBC (probably 90 per cent pro-Remain) and, of course, parliament (75 per cent pro-Remain on 23 June 2016). And the ironies abound: it is the Leavers who were anti-democratic in wishing to bypass parliament, a verdict with which the justices happily concurred. A twisting of the truth until it was turned completely on its head.

    I did not agree with Boris Johnson proroguing parliament, but only for tactical reasons. It seemed to me a brutal and dangerous act, while not much could be gained from it, and it played into the hands of his opponents. Further, there was a deliberate deception in insisting that Brexit was nothing to do with the proroguing — nobody anywhere believed that, except the Queen. And yes, now Brenda has been dragged into the affair. But constitutionally it did not bother me much.

    There seemed to be two concepts of pristine sovereignty here brought face to face. The sovereignty of parliament on the one hand, and the sovereignty of that referendum vote on the other. Both have force, but for me the sovereignty of the referendum trumped the sovereignty of parliament on this unique issue. It didn’t for the likes of historian Lord Hennessy, who I heard on the World at One. What a wonderful day for democracy, he enthused — expressing precisely the same sentiments as that other great supporter of the UK, Guy Verhofstadt. Democracy for Hennessy and the rest of the liberal establishment resides in one place alone — wherever it can stop Brexit. Unelected judges — fine and dandy. Hennessy and the rest put their faith in parliament not for noble constitutional reasons, but because parliament, too, is determined to stop Brexit. Not mentioned by Hennessy, or any of the others, was that other sovereignty which had been transgressed. There is only one law.

    I don’t doubt that our judiciary is technically independent of the government and that this is a good thing. But the notion that their worships are above the political fray is a patent absurdity, today just as much (perhaps even more so) than it was when Jeremy Thorpe was exonerated from court, or ten years later when the operators of cross-channel ferries which killed hundreds also received absolution from charges of manslaughter. Back then the left and the liberals were in no doubt that whatever the technical and historical notions of a separation between the state and judiciary, it was perfectly evident that when push came to shove, the courts became supine servants of the ruling elite. Here’s the thing: they still are, you lefties. But the elite has changed.

    The process of denying Brexit began during the referendum campaign, in which the Remain side spent almost half as much again as the Leavers, an enormous majority of parliamentary support and the goodwill of the broadcast media, big business, civil service, academia, luvvies and popular music entertainers. Lies were told during that campaign, but the only ones which were the subject of howled complaint were those from the Leave side (the idiotic £350 million NHS bus, for example). The spin from the Remainer camp (such as on day one, on a poster from Britain Stronger in Europe, the remarkable claim that for every £1 the UK put into the EU, we got £10 back) got scarcely any publicity.

    After their shock at the result, the hardcore Remainers went into overdrive. First in the court case which insisted the decision should be taken away from the people and handed over to parliament (which was pro-Remain). Their worships happily concurred, again, with that perpetually busy and self-righteous businesswoman Gina Miller. At the same time the civil service was busy trying to obstruct Brexit by any means possible, while the House of Lords was dragged in to help.

    The Leave campaign was vilified not only for its lies but its alleged financial chicanery. The Electoral Commission instigated a prosecution into Arron Banks for his funding of the Leave campaign — he was exonerated this week and now intends to sue the EC. But the allegation against Banks was held by the hardcore Remainers as plain evidence that Brexit had been illegally sold to the electorate. And what part of that electorate? The thick, the northern, the uneducated, the racist and xenophobic. This was crucial for the Remainers, to be able to say that Brexit was not only fraudulently mis-sold but worse, sold to people who were at best simpletons and at worst possessed of unsavoury opinions Which Have No Place In a Modern Democracy. This helped assuage those Remainer MPs who had been forced, for a short while, to admit that they must respect the views of the electorate. Not any more. Now they could write those views off, because they were criminally embedded in the minds of people who were anti-democratic. They stopped saying ‘we respect the views of the public’ and decided they didn’t respect them at all. Meanwhile, our government, led by a Remainer, tried to negotiate with Europe without even having the option of a get-out ‘no-deal clause’, something denied to her by a Remainer cabinet.

    Never in our recent history has the weight of the state, of the liberal elite which controls the state, been used so brazenly and relentlessly to crush the aspirations of the electorate. Never before has there been such a concerted attempt to betray democracy. The staunch defenders of democracy who opposed prorogation, the Lib Dems, Labour and the Picts, are not quite so enamoured of the concept that they would want a general election. They want Boris Johnson to resign but will not put their own policies to the test because they know damn well the public is averse to them. Boris Johnson is imprisoned: in office (perhaps briefly) but not in power, unable to win any vote. Brexit is gone and the extension, now inevitable, will have a myriad of stipulations attached. Johnson can try to strike a deal with Nigel Farage’s Brexit party, but Farage will exact a heavy price (and rightly so). It is not even clear that, given their great love for democracy, the opposition parties will agree to a general election in November. They know that much of the public will reckon Johnson did as much as he possibly could, and that the Supreme Court verdict might even help him a little.

    A caretaker government? All we know is this. We are not getting Brexit. Has that finally sunk home? We are not getting Brexit. That is the law, the only law.

    1. Nigel Farage calling for Boris to resign probably hasn’t helped any negotiations for a deal between the two parties.

      2. Boris’s resignation serves one of two purposes only:

        1. To force an immediate general election.
        2. To exploit the Rebel Majority in Parliament’s failure to decide on a suitable successor, any more than they failed to agree to any positive counterproposal to May and Barnier’s Dreadful Capitulation.

        Boris does not have to take Farage’s advice, and I don’t think Farage will mind too much if Boris hangs tough. He will go in for the kill should Boris think he could get away with stitching up May/Barnier at the last minute.

      3. I begin to fear he finds his cosy seat in Brussels and his talk show too comfy and has lost track of the fundamental reason for the Brexit party’s existence. He is behaving rather stupidly if this is not the case.

    2. Boris can end this political sham by galvanising voters to protest for an election
      SHERELLE JACOBS – DAILY TELEGRAPH COLUMNIST – 26 SEPTEMBER 2019 • 6:00AM

      Could peaceful, targeted activism help the Government move the dial?

      Total corruption is a perfect circle. And so it goes that the judiciary’s apparently naked power-grab has lent a cloak of legitimacy to Parliament’s legalistic saboteurs. With the Commons back in session, emboldened Remainer MPs are more determined than ever to not only thwart Brexit but claim the scalp of Boris Johnson.

      To achieve this, they have started acting out British politics as if it were an American courtroom drama. Yesterday, they sucked on 
their pens and flapped their Post-it peppered papers while they 
cross-examined the Attorney General over his prorogation advice, soothingly suggesting that he is No 10’s “fall guy”.

      Judge Bercow, meanwhile, was on top form. Seemingly high on piety powdered from the ashes of British democracy, he trilled instructions over urgent questions and gloated about prorogation being “expunged”.

      But for all their confident theatre, Remainers are creakingly close to collapsing under the weight of their own contradictions. Last night, they called for Mr Johnson to resign but refused to sack him. They insist on a unity government but cannot unify behind the Leader of the Opposition. They revere parliamentary sovereignty, but fear an election. Contradiction is the ugly conjoined twin of Paradox – and the more blows the anti-democrats in the Commons land on Mr Johnson, the more his double-digit poll difference creeps up.

      Remainers are playing the despicable long game, of course. The ruthlessness of British politics is such that it doesn’t take long for a beleaguered hero to become a busted flush. MPs are banking that if they can paralyse Mr Johnson to such an extent that he fails to deliver Brexit on October 31, the fed-up Tory grass-roots will ditch him and his party for Nigel Farage, albeit with a heavy heart.

      Labour is thus utterly committed to sinking any chance of an election in the coming weeks. There are rumours that, after inviting MPs to bring down the Government through a no-confidence vote yesterday, the PM could try tabling a Bill for a general election, which would only need a majority of one. But, SNP “kingmakers” are likely to join Labour in scuppering it. (Although the former would do well in an early election, they want to maximise their chances of a second Scottish referendum via a Corbyn minority government.)

      There might yet be a solution to this squalid impasse. If Mr Johnson can prove that an extension will not affect his ratings and that, for every day that opposition parties block an election, the scale of a Leave victory will only surge, Remainer MPs may yet fold. Achieving this requires an extreme shift in strategy: having lost the legalistic guerrilla war, Mr Johnson must now open up a new battlefront beyond the walls of Parliament.

      The hazy heroism of “people versus Parliament” rhetoric is no substitute for a flesh-and-blood army of organised Brexiteers. A pact with Nigel Farage’s movement is the first step, and completely non-negotiable. This will enable the PM to combine the grass-roots force of the Brexit Party with the cut-throat tactics of Dominic Cummings’ Vote Leave. And, crucially, rather than letting rip at the “establishment stitch-up”, this new movement would concentrate specifically on agitating for an election.

      This democratic uprising would be nothing like the spittling histrionics of the Remainers who, following the prorogation of Parliament, vowed to “shut down the streets”. Instead, squadrons of activists would be quietly dispatched to Leave seats to organise a wave of peaceful demonstrations and petitions calling out local MPs who are blocking an election. As one Brexiteer politician put it to me, those with small majorities may well be spooked when the signatures outnumber their wafer-thin majorities.

      Some Remainers love nothing better than to luxuriate in self-elevating fantasies about brawling Brexiteers. But, if our PM is forced to request an extension, Vote Leave and the Brexit Party should organise a huge silent march to symbolise the ruling class bid to gag the people. And why not hold a mock election in protest against Parliament’s refusal to grant one? Such stunts are typically the last refuge of mangled political basket cases like the Congo, but this is, sadly, what our great nation has been reduced to.

      Remain MPs are hoping for mass Brexiteer disillusionment after October 31. They may yet rue this overconfident misreading, which caricatures Leave voters as alienated and confused. In fact, we are gripped and unwavering: the Brexit story is a cruise through the innards of the establishment in a glass-bottomed boat. Realising just how rotten the system is has only made ordinary people more determined for change.

      If anything can blast through the soundproofed smugness and tacky triple-basement totalitarianism of Remainer dead weight, it is the potential bombshell of Mr Johnson’s popularity being undented after an extension. If even this isn’t enough to get through to them, their eventual moment of reckoning with voters, when it finally comes, will be all the more sensational.

    5. There is little left wing or liberal about the present parliamentary majority opposition if “left wing” means being on the side of the people against an overbearing tyranny (and there is some projection coming from there) and “liberal” meant free and generous spirited.

    6. “Law,Finn show him law”
      No,Rod, I refuse to give up hope because denying Democracy only leads to one end,not a path I want to travel but by all the gods and none this member of the sullen lumpen proletariat will not surrender peacefully

  16. Minimum price for Alcohol ‘cuts drinking by half a pint a week’ in Scotland

    Seems to be more spin than substance as over the same period i England alcohol sales also fell

    The introduction of minimum pricing for alcohol in Scotland appears to have cut drinking, a study suggests.
    Since May 2018, the price of alcohol has had to be at least 50p per unit.

    The study published in the British Medical Journal looked at how much alcohol was bought in shops before and after the move up to the end of 2018.
    It found the amount purchased per person per week fell by 1.2 units – the equivalent of just over half a pint of beer or a measure of spirits.

    Figures can also be skewed by the exact period monitored

      1. There is no doubt a problem with alcohol among a small percentage of society but the idea you can achieve change by price is just silly

        Enforcement of the licencing laws might help as well. Most pubs happily sell drunks as long as they have money and can just about stand up. If the get beyond that they just throw them out onto the street where the police will just ignore them in the past when pubs had proper landlords they would stop serving someone was getting drunk and would see them on their way home

        1. “When pubs had proper landlords they would stop serving someone was getting drunk and would see them on their way home”. True, but that was in the days before doing so would earn a court case for racism, victimisation and assault or, more likely, a knife stuck in their stomach.

        2. Bill some drunks drink in pubs – most drunks drink in the house or a friend’s house. £3-£5 for a pint is a lot if you consume 6 pints a night & more at the weekend. 6 cans of lager for £6, Bottle of £5 wine, £13 bottle of spirits at the supermarket

          My grandfather was an alcoholic as was his son (died @ 56). As an 8 year old in the early 50s I was sent for a bottle of whisky to the off licence – £1 8shillings = some £40 today.

          In my then town there were 2 off licences, 1 hotel and a couple of pubs+3/4 social clubs.
          Today the same town, admittedly 50% bigger as roughly 25 off licences, approximately 8 pubs & 3 hotels – some have closed of late.

          Booze is cheaper & more easily bought 10 am till midnight – rather than 12 -2.30 & 5pm till 10pm. Nowadays you are never more than a stroll to get more.
          Relatives, former work colleagues……….. dying / strokes from early 40 upwards – well off or not so well off they eventually succumb.

    2. I had an email from Sainsbury yesterday. It told me what my three most popular purchases were. In first place was chicken thighs followed closely by lamb cutlets and rump steaks. They also added insult to injury by telling me what percentage of items by aisle. 25% in the drinks aisle ! I was buying for a friend for fucksake !

  17. I wonder why nobody in the media follows up those 2018 reports of……..

    “Millions to be spent to Stop Brexit”

  20. Countries with falling Populations (The main reason they are falling is the economies have failed) Interestingly most are EU countries or EU candidate countries

    When you look at the actual fact the EU is an economic disaster and far from improving most of the EU’s economies it is running them into the ground and the populations are fleeing to other EU countries causing problems for these countries and further damaging their own countries

    The only unknown is when will the EU fail ?

    https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/these-countries-have-the-fastest-shrinking-populations-in-the-world/ss-AAHR2MX?ocid=spartandhp#image=21

    Italy
    Portugal
    Hungary
    Japan
    Albania
    Greece
    Ukraine
    Serbia
    Romania
    Bulgaria
    Latvia
    Bosnia and Herzegovina
    Croatia
    Syria
    Nauru
    Lithuania
    Venezuela

  22. False Brexit Claims made by those wanting to Remain in the EU

    a) The referendum was advisory. FALSE. By default referendums are Advisory but the Prime Mister at the time made it quite clear that it was not advisory

    b) It was not clear as to how we would leave False. It was made quite clear we were choosing to REMAIN or to LEAVE the EU

    c) Brexit did not allow for us to leave without a deal. False. The position was perfectly clear. WE invoked article 50. That gave us two years to reach a deal or we left without a deal. Theresa May come back with a deal which was Rejected by parliament that should have meant moved to Leaving without a deal at the end of the 2 years

  23. If the LP won’t agree to a GE, perhaps every constituency in the land could call for a by-election.

    1. They can but the Constituencies can just stick two finger up to them just as the defecting MP’s have

  26. Since the Brexit vote it has become plain for all to see how the EU has corrupted all the high offices of state and all people in positions of authority and influence while using our money to do it, the EU corrupting roots go very deep and spread far and wide, worse than japanese knotweed.

    1. Morning B,
      The siren call of the GOLDEN TROUGH has certainly taken a grip, we are witnessing the fall out.

  27. ‘I’ve lost my babies. I’ve lost my friends. I just want to come home’: RICHARD PENDLEBURY tracks jihadi bride Shamima Begum to a new Syrian camp as she says she’s a changed woman (complete with lip gloss and nose stud). So do YOU have any sympathy?

    She is home. She is where she wanted to be. She should be happy

      1. Someone that is not phased by seeing someone beheaded is dangerous in my view even our emergency services find situations like that traumatic

          1. It’s patently obvious that Begum is decidedly not a decent person, and not the sort we want here. We have enough already.

          1. So was Britain, Spain and everywhere else in Europe – public beheadings, burnings, hanging drawing and quartering…….. all to keep the masses under control.

    2. Do I take it that wearing lip gloss and a nose stud is an adequate declaration of penance for mass torture and destruction of heritage?

  29. An elderly couple had dinner at another couple’s house, and after eating, the wives left the table and went into the kitchen.

    The two gentlemen were talking, and one said, ‘Last night we went out to a new restaurant and it was really great. I would recommend it very highly.’

    The other man said, ‘What is the name of the restaurant?’

    The first man thought and thought and finally said, ‘What’s the name of that flower you give to someone you love?

    You know, the one that’s red and has thorns.’
    ‘Do you mean a rose?’

    ‘Yes, that’s the one,’ replied the man. He then turned towards the kitchen and yelled, ‘Rose, what’s the name of that restaurant we went to last night?’

  30. As China’s Xi Ping might sing

    “Don’t cry for me Greta Thurnberg
    The truth is we never loved you”

    Beijing opens massive new airport…
    The long-term projection is that by 2025 it will handle 72 million travelers and by 2040 the hub hopes to see 100 million passengers per year, making it the busiest and largest in the world. To reach these numbers will require a planned for increase in runways from its current four to seven runways in total, eventually serving up to 620,000 flights annually.”

    More details here:

    https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/beijing-opens-its-massive-new-starfish-airport-set-be-worlds-largest-busiest

    1. Don’t tell Angular Murky cos she will be insanely jealous; Berlin’s new airport is nine years late and £4.4bn over budget.

  31. I found this quite interesting as an entirely rational account from a man I dislike as to why, despite being a frantic europhile the EU is unreformable.

    From: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/09/19/david-cameron-has-unwittingly-written-best-ever-case-brexit/

    The former PM expected diplomacy from the EU but found a bureaucratic Death Star incapable of reform

    If you voted for Brexit, your optimism might be wavering right now. I can propose just the remedy: David Cameron’s memoir. It is, unintentionally, the most convincing case for Brexit that you will ever read.

    For The Record was written as political tragedy, a 700-page apology to the nation for the former prime minister’s role in what he regards as a calamity.

    But it’s also a candid account of how he pursued an idea – that the EU can be reformed – and tested it to (his) destruction. We see him making allies, drafting strategies, threatening and begging – but his story ends in failure. He expected diplomacy, but encountered a bureaucratic Death Star whose hunger for power is matched only by its intransigence. From the former Remainer-in-Chief, it’s quite a story.

    Cameron started out a Eurosceptic, but one who thought that the irritations of the EU were a price worth paying for the general aims of solidarity and free trade. In opposition, he mocked politicians who “bang on about Europe” but in No 10 he soon found out why they did.

    Once inside its inner circle, he was exposed to the horrors. The directives, the stitch-ups, the knives always out for the City of London. He found Silvio Berlusconi advising a table of EU leaders to take a mistress in Brussels, because it was the only way to survive the late-night summits. The purpose of these meetings, he discovered, was to grind everyone into submission. Including, eventually, him.

    He found the EU to be “peacenik” on security, unable to respond to threats on its doorstep. He vetoed one of the eurozone bailout packages that threatened to suck in Britain, only to see the rules changed so the UK veto would not count. When the UK tried to go its own way, it “wasn’t simply a disagreement with the others, it was a heresy against the scripture”. He thought Angela Merkel nice, but unreliable. He refers to the “half-life of a Merkel promise”: the time taken between her making one and breaking it. In general, he found “Germany’s unfailing ability to get what it wants in the end.”

    Britain’s ability to get what it wants was, by contrast, pretty minimal. When the federalist Jean-Claude Juncker was put forward as European Commission president, Cameron was shocked to discover that just two of the 28 EU member states’ leaders wanted him.

    There is a touch of Mr Smith Goes to Washington about what happened next: why, he asks then, go along with this stitch-up? He stays up late drinking wine with fellow leaders, and they promise to back him in stopping Juncker. Then Merkel decides it’s not worth the fight, so they all support a massive decision that they all know to be wrong.

    Cameron goes home appalled. But as he was to find out, this is how things work. “‘Anyone who says that the EU is an organisation based on law and not politics has never seen it act under pressure,” he records. “Whenever there was pressure to transfer powers to Brussels, the lawyers always found a way, but when I wanted to take powers back, those same lawyers always opposed it.” It is a formula to trap democracies: use complex laws and regulation to suck powers in, but never give them back.

    So Brexit wasn’t – as is so often argued – about appeasing Tory backbenchers. In fact, Cameron rightly points out that it’s no bad thing. MPs meet constituents every week, and if the public mood changes (for example, more people thinking that EU membership has become intolerable) this gets fed back to the prime minister through the MPs. This is how a parliamentary democracy is supposed to work. His book shows him seeking to explain this, to an often baffled EU. So the renegotiation failed.

    So many of the disputes come from a basic difference in understanding. “Merkel and others just didn’t see free movement as immigration,” he admits. “If you’re from outside the EU, you’re a migrant.” So how was he going to negotiate a solution, if his counterparts could not understand the problem?

    Dealing with their officials, he says, was even worse. “To them, I was a dangerous heretic stamping on their sacred texts.” He records with amazement how the Germans (and others) saw the EU as the fount of democracy, where Brits only ever wanted a forum for economic co-operation.

    Had these been the memoirs of Nigel Farage, we might suspect that the author didn’t try too hard to win others around. But Cameron tried (and gave) everything. He once invited me to a dinner where he was talking tactics with Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister, about the urgent need to reform. In the book, he records how even Rutte abandoned him over Juncker’s appointment. But you can see why. Who wants to fight with the mighty EU? Cameron never quite explains why, after so many losses, he thought he might win.

    Or why he backed Remain. There is almost nothing in those 700 pages to explain why EU membership is a good thing. There is not a single example of anything emanating from Brussels that benefits Britain. So why does he start to talk about Britain’s future being in the EU and about it being a fundamental part of who we are as a country?

    He doesn’t offer a proper explanation himself. Perhaps his close friendship with George Osborne, an avid Remainer, swung him – in the way he thinks his friendship with Michael Gove and Boris Johnson ought to have swung them. It’s pretty hard to reconcile the calm, rational, patient author of the first 40 chapters of the book with that of the final seven chapters who talks about Brexiteers as careerists, villains and Islamophobes.

    But the great value of Cameron’s book is its candour. He recorded his thoughts once a month, wrote each chapter from the perspective of what he felt at the time, and has not twisted the facts to suit his final conclusion. He regards Brexit as a disaster, but those who read his book would be tempted to see it as liberation. A great democracy was being squeezed inside an unaccountable bureaucracy, and no one else in Europe wanted to risk their career by challenging it – or giving voters the chance to escape it. But Cameron did. He might, one day, come to see it as the greatest single service he did his country.

    1. Now – and apologies for replying to my own comment – I believe Cameron to be a coward and a cheat. I know he gave away this nation to pursue his own ends. I know that when he was trying to negotiate with leaders it was – as everyone who knows anything about the EU – pointless.

      Yet it is an insight into the necessary importance of voting to leave the EU. It is utterly, thoroughly, completely corrupt.

    2. It will only be a service to the country if we get what we voted for. Otherwise it will have been an exercise in tyranny.

      3. The Old Left have very much more integrity than the New Left.

        Just look at poor old Tony Benn’s miserable excuse of a son!

        The Old UK Left wing loyalist must be turning in his grave to observe the actions of the sub-human embodiment of faeces that he sired.

  33. Interesting comment from elsewhere

    Having reflected upon the events in Parliament yesterday,I have come to some conclusions.

    1.The Opposition parties went to the HoC fully expecting to humiliate and cow Johnson over the SC ruling.

    2.Geoffrey Cox performance shocked them to the core leaving them reeling.

    3.Johnson followed it up with a barnstorming statement of defiance.

    ..at
    this point,and in line with previous suspicions as to why MP’s are
    permanently on their phones or tablets in the chamber,Labour (Milne)
    sent messages to them to co-ordinate a campaign of faux emotion and
    tears in the name of Jo Cox.

    4.Johnson was not having any of this and swatted the whole false debacle aside with aplomb.

    5.These
    people need to realise that when they seek to humiliate..they have to
    expect push back…which they got in spades last night.

    You reap what you sow,therefore be man and women enough to suck it up.

    I have zero sympathy.

    1. I was glad to finally see some fight back aimed squarely at the treasonous windbags on the opposition benches. Geoffrey Cox was magnificent and Boris simply blew the Labour/Limp Dum charlatans away. They collapsed like a cheap deckchair and the snarling fishwife exhibition that followed must have put at least another couple of percentage points onto the Conservative poll lead.
      All done with wonderful delivery and correct use of English pronunciation, without a grating regional accent to be heard.

  34. Let Jo Cox rest in peace, you ghouls. Spiked. 26 September 2019.

    It increasingly feels like sections of the political class are losing the plot. We now have a situation in which they are betraying Brexit while also raining fury upon anyone who says the word ‘betrayal’. They are behaving like traitors to the democratic vote of 2016 that they promised to uphold, and yet they rage against any use of the word ‘traitor’. Not content with frustrating the will of the people, they now want to control what the people can say about it all. Anti-democracy and censorship – what a rotten road they have gone down.

    Then there’s the hypocrisy. They call us fascists, Nazis, racists, extremists, idiots, etc etc. They use pejorative language about Brexit supporters all the time. In then turning around and saying ‘How dare you call us traitors!’, they expose their shameless hypocrisy. Of course, they should feel free to continue insulting Brexiteers. Public debate should be a free, unfettered and testy zone. People should say what they want. But please, for reason’s sake, leave Jo Cox out of it.

    This is the sort of stuff you get prior to revolutions where reason vanishes under a flood of abuse and hatred though that in itself does not mean that Pitchforks and the Guillotine will make an appearance. We should particularly remember the recent Russian experience where the USSR simply collapsed from the masses lack of confidence in it. There were some minor military scuffles but nothing of significance. What we should watch out for is rapid economic decline; Hostile Foreign States and Carpetbaggers taking advantage of the situation. A wise person would take out some insurance against such events!

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2019/09/26/let-jo-cox-rest-in-peace-you-ghouls/

        2. We could crowd fund to buy his house from him. I’ll start it off with the euro groats i brought back from my hols. Given the exchange rate i make that tuppence ha’penny.

      2. Don’t be too keen Oberst, see Press report below:

        Demonstrators, taking to the streets for the 45th week of
        nationwide protests, sought refuge inside the capital’s
        Saint-Lazare station after police fired tear gas outside to
        disperse crowds
        Police in Paris arrested over 100 people on Saturday, according
        to official figures, and more than 7,000 officers have been
        deployed in the capital alone for Saturday’s rallies.
        Protesters set some vehicles and trash alight in parts of the
        city, as police blocked off areas including the Champs-Elysees.

        1. At least the French are revolting!
          ;-))
          The Brits will do nowt. Apart from moan, of course. World-beaters at that.

      3. My Aussie friend says I’ll be welcome any day – maybe this time round I won’t need a visa, either.

    2. Wot I writted:-

      Paula Sheriff and her ilk should realise that whatever abuse, be it name calling or threats of violence and murder, are not engendered by the Prime Minister’s words, but by their own actions in destroying British Democracy by not only seeking to thwart the outcome of the Referendum, but by twisting and mangling Parliamentary procedure to prevent the possibility of a so-called “No Deal” departure from the EU, but ultimately prevent any chance of leaving the EU at all.

      We need a General Election and we need one NOW!

    1. JRM …. I love the brilliant one-liners he attaches to many of his replies from the government bench.

      1. His polite but biting words contrast with the shouting of the screaming harridans and show them up for what they are.

        1. And what does thatchange. I’dbe willing to bet less than one vote.
          What is needed is some action, not endless verbal jousting to look clever, but serious action. So far, little in evidence.

  37. Watching all those Labour MPs in Parliament yesterday trying to imitate fishwives/dockers deeply-offended by “words” and “the threat of violence against women” (brexiteers are surely kittens next to their muslim postal-voting blocks?) … hmmm… I realise the vicarious pleasures that urchins of an earlier era used to get from tethered bears who’d been poked with a stick.

  39. Legalizing Polygamy Will ‘Guarantee’ Women’s Rights in Russia, Moscow’s Muslim Leader Says. Moscow Times. 30 minutes ago.

    “Legalizing polygamy would guarantee women’s rights,” Ildar Alyautdinov, the mufti of Moscow, was quoted as saying by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency Wednesday.

    Pointing to official data that shows women outnumbering men by 10 million in Russia, he stressed the importance of a “legislative-level protective mechanism for women to become full-fledged second wives.”

    The Russians are getting the treatment now are they! Polygamy is of course recognised as a reality (and by Social Security in particular) in the UK but in typical PC fashion is hypocritically ignored. The Russian who are overwhelmingly opposed to it can at least rest knowing that there is not the remotest chance of Vlad passing any such law!

    https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/09/26/legalizing-polygamy-will-guarantee-womens-rights-in-russia-moscows-muslim-leader-says-a67444

    2. Looks to the left….looks to the right…no help there. I know…i’ll have a tantrum or scream or something..quietly pushes microphone away.

  42. In church I heard a lady in the pew next to me saying a prayer.

    It was so sweet and sincere that I just have to share it with you.
    Dear Lord,
    These have been a tough few years.
    You have taken my favourite actor Patrick Swayze.
    My favourite musician Michael Jackson.
    My favourite Blues Singer Amy Winehouse.
    My favourite actress Elizabeth Taylor.
    And more recently, my favourite singer Whitney Houston.
    I just wanted you to know that my favourite politicians are
    Jeremy Corbyn, Jack McDonnell, Keith Starmer and…

    …I do love the 11 judges of the Supreme Court.

    The squeaker, John Bercow, ain’t bad

    1. Perhaps when the Illiberal Undems campaign they should wear a shirt that say “Bollox to democracy and the votes of 17.4 million people” – at least then they’d be telling the truth!

    2. I think you ought to consider doing away with your front door Bob – perhaps just a revolving one for when the Old Bill comes calling again????

    3. Ovaries. Check.
      Fallopian Tubes. Check

      Uterus. Check.
      Cervix. Check

      Vagina. Check
      Short hair, bumfluff moustache and beard. Check

      Yup. That’s a man. No doubt about it. That last bit is the clincher.

    4. 2020 GCSE algebra question:

      Using the LGTB Theorem of complete bollocks as formulated by, Wassockritese, calculate the following:

      If 2X = Whatever you feel like at this moment in the spacetime continuum, what is the value of X + Y?

      (Clue, there is no write(sic) answer)

  47. BTL@Speccie

    Lamia Old Fox • 19 hours ago • edited
    A strong friend and supporter of Gina Miller is Alan Rusbridger, the former Guardian editor who is now Principal of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford.

    In July LMH welcomed a number of new Visiting Fellows, including Lady Hale, president of the Supreme Court.

    What a delightfully cosy establishment they live in.

    1. Don’t forget that Brenda Hale also appeared on Celebrity Masterchef – such a woman of talent…..

      1. Simply because no one is interested in a job which took ten minutes. Once, I would have asked a neighbour who was a builder – but he left five years ago….

        1. Oh dear, what do others who are in the same situation do? You know, one day it may not be possible (let alone inadvisable as now) to go up onto your roof.

    1. I think you may be crediting a significant number of voters in those constituencies with intelligence – I fear you may be wrong on this occasion …..

      1. Ackshally, Stephen, I have given up completely. There is sod all I can do to make things work – so I am just ignoring it all – using it as an opportunity to make “jokes”.

        1. Unfortunately we don’t get the government/parliament that we deserve – we get the government/parliament that they deserve. :o(

        3. Had an email from my bank this morning. I thought you might understand the blather at the end.

          This information may be legally privileged. If you are not the recipient you may not copy, forward, disclose or use any part of it. If you have received this post in error, please delete it and all copies from your systems and notify the sender immediately by return email.
          Internet communications cannot be guaranteed to be timely, secure, error or virus free.

          The sender does not accept liability for any errors or omissions.

          My reply.

          Dear Sir,
          Fuckoff.
          Yours etc…

  51. My latest mail to Mr Redwood…………….

    Brits apparently have often named their parliaments, such as…..

    ”The Long Parliament”

    ”The Rump Parliament”

    ”The Cavalier Parliament”

    ”The Reformation Parliament”

    etc etc……..

    What should the present parliament be called ?

    I think it should be called……….

    ”The Soros Parliament”

    Polly

    1. It is “The Dead Parliament”

      As such it is unable to scrutinise or hold the executive to account.

      Professor of Law at Queen Mary University concurs with the Attorney General that this an apt description.

      Now that dead has been accepted as a legal term I suggest it encompasses the three legal terms:

      unlawful, void and without effect

      1. Yes.. but they probably have not viewed the evidence.

        In any case, my proposal explains why it’s ”dead” which of course is the whole idea behind bringing everything to a standstill.

        1. I saw the evidence approaching Felixstowe docks this morning on A12.

          Overhead sign says things change on 1st November – ensure you have the right paperwork.

  52. Good Morning, all

    SIR – The Supreme Court judgment involves a seismic change in the unwritten constitution, and arguably a challenge to it.

    The Supreme Court has arrogated to itself a right to strike down the Queen’s exercise of the prerogative of prorogation. It has sought to cover this power-grab by concentrating on the advice allegedly given to Her Majesty.

    It has worked hard to get around Article 9 of the Bill of Rights 1688 (and the equivalent provision in the Claim of Right 1689).

    That Article precludes the questioning of proceedings in Parliament, and the court held, wrongly in my view, that the act of prorogation is not such a proceeding.

    This ignores the concept of the monarch in Parliament: in proroguing Parliament, the Queen is acting as part of that Parliament and the prorogation is unavoidably a proceeding therein. If this be right, the proceedings before the Supreme Court were themselves unlawful.

    The Supreme Court has, on any sensible analysis, descended into politics. Whereas before it was, rightly, anathema to question the political orientation of judges, the public is now entitled to ask appropriate questions and to insist that appointments to the bench be made only after inquiries into such matters.

    Andrew Newcombe QC
    Bath, Somerset

    Newcombe is former Royal Marines. No particular background in Constitutional Law; mainly in planning law…..but I liked this opinion of him on the web…

    …His unique approach is described as “very old school – he cuts their throat and lets them bleed”.

    1. SIR – In his excellent treatise on the “activist” extension by the European Court of Justice of its treaty-based jurisdiction, Lord Neill of Bladen (not unrelated to me) wrote: “The reputation of any court is inextricably linked with the intellectual integrity of its decisions. The more its decisions are perceived to be … skewed by doctrinal or idiosyncratic policy considerations, the lower will be its public repute … This is damaging for any court, but disastrous for a Supreme Court.”

      When challenged, he responded: “A judge with a mission is a nuisance. A Supreme Court with a mission is a tyranny.”

      There is a serious risk that the silent majority who voted for Brexit will regard the Supreme Court’s defiance of the established norms of our unwritten constitution as evidencing the latest step in the denial of that majority’s expressed will.

      The risk must be that it will now see a Remain majority in Parliament that has done all it can to thwart Brexit being aided and abetted by the highest court in the land, whose decision it will see as having been “skewed by idiosyncratic policy considerations”. Whether or not that picture in the minds of the majority matches the reality is irrelevant. It will be the perception that will be crucial.

      Parliament is sitting again as a result of the Supreme Court’s decision, and many suspect that a majority of its members are intent on the creation of fresh barriers to Brexit.

      If that suspicion proves true, then the danger is that the silent majority who voted Leave in the referendum will come to believe that any further delay to Brexit will have been the direct and intended consequence of the Supreme Court’s decision.

      Meanwhile, given that the silent majority continues to be denied a fresh election, its voice will manifest itself in ways that none of us can predict.

      Robin Neill
      Bristol

      1. Thanks Citroen; two fine letters with which I could not agree more. And now that the Supreme Court has descended into political matters, they are fair game for the full media spotlight from now on. I sincerely hope that they will find life a little less cosy in their heavily-insulated ivory tower.

        2. People are getting too steamed up about this.

          Let’s just look at the facts:

          Those in receipt of EU Grants and Emoluments are required to give a legal undertaking to support
          the EU and refrain from any criticism.

          The exact wording of that undertaking now becomes relevant.

          It is a fair and reasonable question to the Justices as to whether and to what extent that legal undertaking affected their Judgement.

          From the Law Gazette-
          “Nine out of the eleven justices receive stipends of £175,000 or more from The EU.”

          It appears that they are just carrying out their legal undertaking to the EU “by supporting the EU and refraining from any criticism”?

      2. Given the connections between the EU and the 11 judges, the picture is unlikely not to match the reality.

    2. But if judges cannot be trusted to be impartial and we have to continually fight a war to balance out the judiciary then we may as well not have it and the whole point of being bloody British and holding justice at a higher standard than the manure of politics falls apart.

      1. ‘Morning, Wibbles, “… justice at a higher standard than the manure of politics falls apart.”

        Which effectively makes that same justice shïttier.

        1. That was the thinking behind their judgment, I reckon. Under Common Law, you can do anything unless there is a law to stop you (and there is no law to stop the prorogation of Parliament). Under EU law, on the other hand, you can’t do anything unless there’s a law to allow you to do it (and one specifically to allow prorogation doesn’t exist).

    1. You enter their court and they can make up a hitherto unknown crime and, then, find you guilty …. and no jury is required.

      1. Some scribes have written that the above gang, along with their action this week, represent tyranny. So very ECJ/EU.

    2. They do love their gaudy raiment. Enough gold braid on display to deck out all the admirals, generals and air marshals for a generation or two.

  54. SIR – I would be interested to learn how many of the 11 Supreme Court judges voted to remain in the EU.

    Graham Andrew
    Brunn am Gebirge, Austria

    Ten.
    […green bottles sitting on the wall,
    ten green bottles sitting on the wall
    and if one green bottle should accidentally fall….]

    Here’s a listing
    https://hat4uk.wordpress.com/2019/09/25/exclusive-why-this-supreme-court-was-never-going-to-find-bojos-proroguation-legal/

    I know that Carnwath comes from a family of five brothers, all Remainers.

    1. The end of impartial justice is surely the forerunner of the total collapse and end of Britain.

      1. Blair didn’t just pull a few bricks out of the wall, he very deliberately undermined the foundations of Britain in pursuit of his globalist/EU aims.

      1. ‘Morning, Johnny, and, after ensuring that we are out of the EU, by repealing the Article 50 Act 2018, and then the European Communites Act 1972, we also repeal Blaoir’s Act, which replaced the Law Lords and The Lord Chancellor with this tyrannical mob of the Supreme Court, subservient to the EU, and revert to the status quo.

    3. I especially liked this clip from that linked article “Lady Hale’s scathing summation of the decision to prorogue was light on precedent Law, and seemed in denial about several other instances of it being used – most notably by John Major, the hypocrite now ludicrously demanding that Boris Johnson apologise to the Queen.“

  56. Up late as usual. Just checked BBC News and the usual anti-Boris, anti-Brexit venom. Nothing to show the leavers’ point of view.
    Similar on the Guardian, who seem to be financed by the American Democratic Party these days,

    1. I’d go back to bed.
      Day off today, don’t know what to do. Mr C has gone of the the Political army of the WI to some fabric weaving place and I’m rattling around the house.
      Might go back to reading the SAS Survival Handbook.

  57. Bercow rebuking MPs for their boisterous behavior in the HoC last night calling the uproar divisive and toxic. He doesn’t realise he, by his biased decisions, is the cause of a good part of this toxicity. I hope he does go on 31 October 2019.

    3. Apparently he has, according to the Sultana, asked for meeting with the heads of the five families to discuss the use of inflammatory language.

  60. Dougjas Murray

    I was on Newsnight last night to comment on matters to do with Brexit

    and Trump, but it had by then become clear that language was the real

    issue once again. This is perhaps what

    becomes an issue in a society and Parliament absolutely riven by a lack

    of action. It was interesting to watch the resulting game play out in

    real time. MPs from all parties gathered on Newsnight to express their

    horror and outrage and affect real, serious concern that the term

    ‘humbug’ could have been used in such close proximity to Paula

    Sherriff’s furious intervention.

    Just one point that cannot be made often enough is that Her Majesty’s

    Opposition is currently led by a man who repeatedly stood for,

    entertained and honoured the murderers of British soldiers and other

    subjects. To my knowledge no MP on the government benches has ever stood

    up and honoured the murderer of Jo Cox. Nor would they ever have even

    dreamt of doing so. So a little perspective might be in order. But

    perspective is what is severely lacking at present.

    The former Newsnight journalist Paul Mason attempted to express shock

    about the language Boris Johnson had used and then presented nearly all

    of his political opponents as ‘fascists’. But it was something that

    Emily Maitlis said that interested me more. For in the discussion before

    mine Maitlis carried out a typically forthright interrogation of four

    MPs, each in turn. To the Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran (who happens

    to know

    something about domestic abuse) Maitlis asked whether Moran and other

    Liberal Democrat MPs were willing to ‘pull the trigger’ and call an

    election on the Prime Minister.

    https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2019/09/mps-and-the-offence-taking-game/

  65. In all the rows about the rows in the House of Commons the snowflakes are perhaps forgetting that there must surely have been far more serious arguments and disagreements in the past?
    Why else would the Government and Opposition be separated by two lines on the floor, two sword-lengths apart?

    1. That’s ‘istory init.That happened a long time ago (D.Abbot.) and no people of colour were involved.

    2. Afternoon HP,

      Been building from the mid 70s the sword play will be with us in a big way, currently the blade is in vogue.
      Politico approached, given a slap across the kisser with a wet kipper, and a time for a meet in Hyde Park.

    3. All the ‘hammed up’ faux outrage’ is deliberately deflecting attention away from the fact that untrustworthy elected representatives are effectively dictators in the illusion of democracy that is duplicitously called ‘Parliamentary Democracy’,

  66. A small personal rant.
    After coming back after a week away early in September we found an undated postcard from some company we had never heard off. the card, without preamble or explanation asked us to read our electricity meter and send the figure to them.
    So they wish us to do the work that they are paid to do by our electricity supplier.
    Our electricity supplier has now sent us a bill, based on an estimate. The date of the estimated reading is 6 September so it has taken 3 weeks for them to get the bill to us. They ask for the bill to be paid by the end of next week.
    The meter is outside the house in order that it can be read by the meter reader, who really ought to have a note of where it is.
    I feel another letter to their CEO coming on.

    1. I ignore any request to read my own meters & they send someone to read them. I know when they’ve been, because the invariably leave the cabinets unlocked.

    2. Receiving a postcard asking you to read your own meter sounds quite civilised compared to the automated telephone calls that we have been getting for 2 years INSTRUCTING us to read ours and go online to input the data. I automatically hang up the phone now when the woman’s recorded voice starts playing. They eventually send someone to read it as they have always done in the past.

      There were stories a year ago of pensioners falling and being hurt after trying to read some of their meters outside when they were not in the easy-to-reach positions that most are.

      2. In order to read my meter, which is high up on the wall in the kitchen, I have to climb on a chair and then stand on the electric cooker. This is necessary because you have to press a button to get the read-outs. It isn’t a feat I wish to repeat too often.

  67. I turned off the 8.10 interview with James Cleverley when the female interrupter, pushing the argument that to refer to parliamentarians, fairly in my view, as betrayers and capitulators, was inappropriate and unparliamentary language. Whenever Cleverly spoke, Husain interrupted with “let’s stick on this language”, I gave up at that point and turned the radio off.

      1. Yes. I deliberately imply some hostile bias against the interviewee based on gender, and reflecting on my own experiences with modern “emancipated” women, who are well represented in the BBC.

        It may not be so much Mishal Husain as the voice in the earpiece, a particularly biased female editor of the programme, Sarah Sands.

    4. I listened to Husain with increasing frustration. Cleverley wasn’t up to speed with his answers but Hussain kept interrupting him with aggressive repetitive questions. I felt her definition of Boris’s answer of “Humbug” to a particularly long deranged question from a female MP was wrong and offensive. I have forgotten what it was now but as far as I remember it wasn’t the definition I found in several dictionaries.

  68. How did that “£millions to stop Brexit” campaign work out is such an obvious Daily Mail or Daily Telegraph story line….

    …but not a peep !

  70. How very agreeable to watch George Ford – calm, in control etc – rather than the odious Farrell.

  71. I thought I was watching a third world parliament yesterday. What a total disgrace most of those MP’s are and as far as I am concerned they are unfit to govern

        1. I think it might have started when Blair did his farewells. The calibre of MPs over the last 20 years or so has been appalling.

          1. The calibre of MPs over the last 20 years or so has been appalling.

            Yes. There is an oddity about Civilisations in decline in that they seem unable to muster anyone with the energy to resist the oncoming end. Reformers do occur of course like Diocletian and Aurelian but it is always only a temporary pause!

          2. This isbecause the effluent are greedy, corrupt and self interested. The motivations of the arrogant and vicious wil always exceed those of the noble and honest.

        2. It resulted in two powerful rounds of applause from opposition MPs, which was were allowed by John Bercow despite clapping in the House of Commons being banned.

          I just lurve banana skins 😉

    2. They just rolled off the same one liners one after the other with no thought to the hypocrisy while taking the public for idiots

      1. Unfortunately at the next election some of the electorate will still vote for the same useless MP’s

        2. The whole shambles seems to have been purposefully scripted to make out Boris is the put upon, embattled Brexiteer, Hence many Leavers will be conned into voting for the traTories – sigh.

  72. And another thing. I bought a small item on eBay from someone in New Mexico. It is on its way.
    I received an email from the Royal Mail, as follows;

    “Dear N/A,
    We’ve been notified that an item has been posted to you from N/A in United States of America.
    Just to let you know, it’s likely there will be a customs charge to pay for this item, due to the declared value of it.
    We’ll let you know when it’s in the UK and confirm if any charges have been applied by Border Force, or if it’s been passed to Royal Mail for delivery without charge.
    See latest tracking information xxxx.
    Regards,
    Royal Mail”

    That is exactly what they wrote. My name is not N/A, so I have no idea what the means. The sender is not N/A either.
    The declared value will be what I paid for it, plus postage, a total of £22. So emails and an invoice for Duty of 20%, plus VAT on all of it. That would be £22 + Duty @ 20% = £26.40 + VAT @ 20% =£31.68. So, £31.68 – £22 = £9.68 Duty and VAT to be charged on a silk handkerchief.
    I will be pursued for this, indeed, the packet will not be delivered to me until I have paid up. They won’t be trying that on with Amazon, will they?

    By the way, when did Customs and Excise, HMRC, become Border Force? Are all employees of Border Force immigrants?

        1. Hi Em,

          I just set up a new account because this one got banned from so many sites over the last couple of weeks that I’m “too restricted” to engage!

          Just wanted to let you know!

          P.S. I’ll ping you with a comment from the new account here in a bit, just so you will know / see it.

          1. Received and understood.
            I’ll acknowledge.
            You must have been posting too much good stuff…..LOL

          4. LOL!!

            I’ll probably just use this one going forward… until I no longer can of course!!

            Wash… Rinse… Repeat!!

    2. And they’ll add a small charge for processing it all. It can work out very expensive to import things via Amazon or other suppliers.

      1. I buy loads of stuff from Bostick & Sullivans in Santa Fe, New Mexico and have never had any problems with Duty or indeed import restrictions.
        They do tell you beforehand “Some of our chemicals, especially ones used in wet plate collodion, are considered hazardous materials and must be shipped via UPS ground. If unsure, please feel free to call. (505) 474-0890. Our office hours are Mon-Fri, 9am-5pm (MDT)”

        Very nice people

        1. It may depend on the value.
          I will generally use Amazon.com for relatives in the US, and Amazon.co.uk for here. But we had to pay a lot of money for a present sent here from the US, i.e. £70 for duty and Royal Mail’s fee.

      3. Usually fine from China because the advent of Aliexpress and DHgate, plus Chinese Ebay and Amazon sellers, means that the volume of items from there is so great that ‘Border Force’ have given up trying.

    3. I did something similar recently. Royal Mail had the temerity to add a handling charge to all the other imposts mentioned above.

    4. You missed out the Royal Mail’s handling fee and the fact you have to go to your nearest mail delivery centre to collect it.
      I believe, though I have yet to try it, that, if you specify UPS, they will deliver the item to your door and will collect the duty payable on the doorstep.

      1. One of my favourites in that respect was a few years ago somone returned a disc to me by Royal Mail. Unfortunately they’d put it in a larger envelope than was needed. Instead of receiving the package I got a message saying that the postage was underpaid by 1p and that I would need to go to the ‘local’ office to collect it and hand over a £1 handling fee.

        Next day I drove the 15 miles to Morpeth, getting on for half a gallon of petrol each way, and went into the office. I got my package and gave the bloke behind the counter the £1 handling fee and the outstanding penny.

        He gave me a kindly smile and handed me the penny back, saying it didn’t matter about that.

        I was speechless.

        1. I’m reaching a point where I ask to see the package before handing over the money.
          If it is important I will pay up, if not important or if they refuse to let me see it, I tell them to stuff it.

    5. N/A = Not Applicable; they should have input the required details, but were obviously too lazy or incompetent to do so. Yes, they will refuse to deliver it until you have paid up.

  73. Ryanair urge UK pilots to transfer overseas or face job losses

    Ryanair has written to UK pilots asking them to take unpaid leave or transfer to other bases abroad, saying they could otherwise join the 9,000 job losses at Thomas Cook.
    The airline, which reported profits of €1bn (£886m) in May, told its pilots that a “significant surplus of pilots must be reduced” at UK bases including Stansted and Manchester, and that it was encouraging them to take up to 12 months of unpaid leave.

  74. England made an awful lot of errors in the second half. Eddie Jones will not be pleased.

    What an irony that it was Farrell who was flattened!!

    Going for a walk, now. TTFN

    2. Rule One. Only those countries who contribute get to vote and/or fill senior EU positions. So that’s all those Luxembourg and Belgian pols dealt with.

      1. Only she didn’t get the Visa, so gave birth prematurely in Dubai, for some reason at a private hospital. As the baby is likely to die anyway, she won’t be able to bring it here.

  77. EU’s Brexit chief Barnier reveals bloc ‘ready’ to engage – UK on brink of breakthrough

    MICHEL BARNIER hinted that the UK and EU could be on the brink of a Brexit deal despite the latest hurdles for Boris Johnson.

  78. BORIS JOHNSON has been blocked by MPs from having a Parliamentary recess to allow the Conservative Party to hold their annual conference.

          1. In her tweet, there’s another one which riles me – quite apart from the fact that it should be “accepted” instead of “excepted”, it should also be “have accepted” instead of “of accepted”. Probably stemming from the contraction “would’ve” in speech, which many poorly educated people write as “would of”.

          2. That drives me up the wall as well.
            It’s not as if it can’t be worked out that it’s wrong.
            No one says “I of done that” so why would they think it’s ‘ I would of done that” ??
            When some foreigners sneer that we can’t speak or write our own language, they’re not wrong.
            I blame Labour and the Left for ruining our education system. And the Tories for not stopping them.

    1. They’re acting like a bunch of children who have had too much sugar.

      Or is it another powdery white substance?

    3. “There was an Englishman, an African and an Arab….”

      Many a fine joke has started with similar wording.

      1. There was an Englishman, an Irishman, a Scotsman and a Jew.
        The Irishman hated Jews. The Englishman hated Jews but pretended that he didn’t. The Scotsman didn’t know what a Jew was. And the Jew laughed all the way to the bank.

    9. “I promised them that I would take them out of the EU and bring in controlled immigration. Some of them still believe me!”

      (Don’t take offence, it was meant to be humorous. We will know mid-October, if that Withdrawal Agreement without the backstop comes back, if the past 3 months have just been a time-wasting lie or not.)

  82. Oof

    “There
    once was a female MP who not only received death threats – people
    actually did try and kill her. She did not have emotional tantrums in
    Parliament. She fought her way up the political ladder without the
    benefit of women-only shortlists, she brushed aside the mysoginistic
    comments from both side of the chamber, and suceeded in doing more for
    women’s advancement thatn any modern-day ‘feminist’.

    But Margaret Thatcher was a Conservative. To the Left all the above doesn’t count because reasons.”

  83. As I suspected – message on Facebook:

    Your post goes against our Community Standards on hate
    speech

    No one else can see your post.

    We have these standards because we want discussions on
    Facebook to be respectful.

    Tom Hunn

    22 hrs

    The 2% trying to impose their perversions upon the 98%:
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6b6bc4949f9dded9248f17b0cc1e968ef96c2b4f7edb4df99d56830133491db1.jpg

    They don’t like it up ’em! (Not in this case, others, maybe)

  84. Brendan O’Neil nailing the hypocrites,again

    Rarely has there been such a flagrant
    display of hypocrisy and cant as there was in the House of Commons last
    night. Opposition MPs stood up one after the other to denounce Boris
    Johnson for his use of apparently toxic and dangerous words like
    ‘surrender’ and ‘sabotage’. Such language is polluting the public sphere
    and making life hell for politicians, they claimed.

    Their ostentatious offence-taking would
    be a tad more convincing if they had ever said anything about the bile
    heaped on Brexit voters these past three years.

    Where were these people when it became
    positively vogue to refer to lower middle-class Brexit blokes as
    ‘gammon’? Where were they when Brexit voters were being branded
    xenophobes, fascists, the facilitators of the most hateful period in
    Western Europe since the 1930s?

    Where were they when Lord Adonis compared
    seeking a clean Brexit to appeasing the Nazis, or when David Lammy said
    the ERG are as bad as Nazis? When asked to retract that comment, Lammy
    said that, if anything, his comment had not been ‘strong enough’. So the
    ERG are worse than Nazis? That was the mad implication. Boris has
    never, not once, said anything as toxic as that about his fellow human
    beings.

    Yes, that’s where these overnight
    smelling-salts offence-takers over Boris’s bad language were when
    incredibly toxic comments were being made about anyone who thinks we
    should leave the EU — they were making some of the comments.

    If you think Boris Johnson’s perfectly
    reasonable use of the phrase ‘surrender bill’ to describe the Benn Bill
    was an act of far-right provocation that will lead to violence and
    death, then you must have been really shocked when Brexiteers were being
    branded useless lumps of meat (gammon). And when the Guardian recently asked, in its review of Ian McEwan’s novel The Cockroach, if Brexit was dreamt up by ‘a cabal of nefarious, lie-spewing insects’.

    You weren’t shocked by any of that? Oh well, I guess hypocrisy is thy name.

    Perhaps the worst aspect of the cynical,
    concocted fury over the PM’s words was the deployment of the horrific
    murder of Jo Cox as part of the argument. I’ve seen some cynical things
    in politics in my time, but this felt like a new low. It was an attempt
    to brand Boris a fellow traveller of the deranged far-right lunatic who
    murdered Cox. That accusation in itself is more toxic than anything
    Boris said.

    This is an explicit effort to criminalise
    political opinion. To paint those who think that sections of the
    establishment are sabotaging Brexit as far-right ideologues. To depict
    anyone who says we should not surrender to the EU as the unwitting
    stirrer of fascistic violence on the streets.

    There is a low, borderline Stalinist aim
    in all this: to push certain ideas and beliefs beyond the pale; to brand
    one’s opponents not simply wrongheaded or ill-informed, but positively
    evil and dangerous. The suggestion that uttering the words ‘surrender’
    or ‘betrayal’ or ‘sabotage’ will unleash violence of the kind that was
    visited so horrifically upon Jo Cox is a straight-up attempt to stifle
    opinion and criminalise certain beliefs.

    I knew parliament was out of touch; I didn’t know it was this out of touch. Across the country there are people who feel betrayed
    by MPs who promised to enact the referendum result but are now refusing
    to do so. Imagine their fury, or their simple bewilderment, when they
    now hear those same MPs saying it is fascistic to accuse them of
    betrayal. They must hold this parliament in contempt. I know I
    increasingly do. I just hope ‘contempt’ hasn’t been added to their list
    of words that only fascists utter.

    1. If anybody is stirring up potential violence on the streets it’s those remainers who are killing off democracy because they don’t like the result. When there’s no point in voting and you have no recourse to the ballot box, what’s left but direct action?

  86. Cobyn trying to fix the Referendum he wants

    He will allow anyone into the UK. He will give the vote to 16 year old and to every one resident in the UK

      1. But does he care.
        If he gets what he wants, seeing through his ruse won’t matter.
        And neither will we.

  87. Roll up roll up get your 2020 calendars ‘ere. Beautiful enough to grace any home, finished in diamonteesque and goldish leaf…sort of. Only 15,000 left. Don’t miss out and look like skinflint. Impress your neighbours and show off to your friends… hang it in your porch to make the postman jealous of your exceedingly good taste. Buy one or Ndovu will trample you to death. Just kidding….but she will remember…….http://www.helpahedgehog.org/fundraising.php

    The cards are nice as well……..

    1. Thanks for the puff Phizzee! Got your order as well!

      As for the 15,000…… it is a limited edition of around 200, or however many I can sell by Christmas!

          1. Gainful employment innit. Can’t have them lounging around in leafs all day eating slugs and trombetti…

  88. I made it work! I had to copy file from folder to desktop to Disqus… In reverse order…

    Don’t you just love the SNP Government? Coming to England soon.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9a8c7413a0c693261e7fa0483753f988bc659a6939ff46a0dd5da8c945a33362.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/830b492e5a46715c7e45503743914218e1d4c167195b7b8d636e48fea7a8a902.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a9bb88056eba6f7fe40443fd6ae3172672b84b1c7fee7aeb0f07a5f13395d62d.jpg

      1. The polite answer of course is: “As for religion”
        “The NHS recognises in excess of 50 different religions. I haven’t tried all of them yet so how could I possibly know…?”

      1. No, just three pages abut sex. I don’t even know how to apply for a “Gender Recognition Certificate”.
        Would I have to sit a test – like for an Aircraft Recognition badge in the Boy Scouts?

        1. Probably! I hope you will treat this questionnaire with the contempt it deserves.

          They are deluded if they think people will give sensible answers to questions like those.

    4. I would bin that form without filling in anything. It has the classic boxes that say “tell us why” which they use to record future thought-crime.

      Even if you filled it in with humorous answers, and ticked every box, then the words “Independent Thinker” will be written on your file. They are the ones that will be rounded up in the first wave of “collections.”

      When it comes to information – never give anyone anything unless it is absolutely necessary. 🙂

    5. Possibly a touch of the Errol Flynn’s coming on;
      There is story that when required to fill in a form, he completed a couple of questions as below.

      Sex: occupation
      Occupation: sex

    6. Problems in Morningside.
      They can’t understand why their government is so interested in containers for coal and potatoes.

      1. I have just looked at the listing. It is 90 minutes long and it says “The story of the World War 2 fighter aircraft that became an international icon.” Subtitles available.

        So it might be new or an older one. It might be worth recording it and then looking at it on another day to see if it is one that has been on many times before. It does say it is in High Definition, so there might be some crystal clear shots of those fighters that are still around.

        2. Thanks. I discovered that my indoor staff had already foreseen my wish and had set it to record.

        3. It is the television premiere of the documentary that has been shown in cinemas and been issued as a DVD. It’s good. I’ve set it up to record.

  90. Good morning, all.

    Many of today’s newspapers carry reports that Brendan Cox, husband of murdered MP Jo Cox, felt sickened when he heard Boris Johnson mention her name in yesterday’s heated session of the HoC.

    Boris suggested that the best way to honour Jo Cox’s memory was “to get Brexit done”, however it was not Boris that brought up the subject, it was the Labour MP, Tracy Brabin, who now sits in the Parliamentary seat previously held by Cox and Brabin was clearly invoking her name in the hope of scoring cheap political points.

    Instead of getting exercised about ‘honouring Jo’s memory’, the hypocritical Brendan Cox ought to keep his mouth firmly shut. Seems to me, he would have done better to honour his late-wife by being faithful to her while she was still alive.

    But then perhaps I’m too old-fashioned and my views on sticking to one’s marriage vows are outdated.

    1. #SexPestCox sticks his head over the parapet every couple of months to see if his violent assaults against women have been forgotten yet
      Nope,every time he tweets we remind him we remember
      Fluck off back to your fake charities and bother the interns,you have no place in public life,ever

    2. Erm…

      Many of today’s newspapers carry reports that Brendan Cox, wife husband of murdered MP Jo Cox, felt sickened when he heard Boris Johnson mention her name in yesterday’s heated session of the HoC.

    3. I didn’t watch the scenes in Parliament, but according to the Beeb website report, it was Paula Sheriff who used Jo Cox first to score a cheap point agaibst Boris, followed by Tracy Brabin. Yet Boris is the one who gets all the criticism.

  91. DT Live

    Rachel Johnson says brother’s language was ‘reprehensible’

    Now Boris’s sluttish, scumbag sister sister has joined his onanist Judas brother in trying a Cain-like fratricide.

    3. She has a strangely warped view of Democracy, the EU election results, and the meaning of “Liberal” and “Democrat”.

    4. What a simpering, crawling, UK hating, undemocratic, illiberal, unpatriotic, treasonous surrender monkey this woman is. I’ve used a number of hurty words that our parliamentarians are having hissy fits over at the moment. Am I for the naughty step?

    5. An elderly puzzled pensioner writes:

      Who wrote this letter? The identity does not appear as far as I can see.

    6. “As you know, the UK Parliament has legislated to ensure that the Government cannot crash out of the EU without a deal.”

      Utter bollocks! The UK Parliament legislated, back in 2017, to ensure that the UK leaves the EU, with or without a deal, on 29th March, 2019. Read Hansard, you idiotic cow!

      2. The action of leaving is written into EU law and as we are all now well aware, EU law trumps UK law. I am not sure if the EU are in a position to unilaterally change that piece of legislation other than to grant an extension: I believe that the Prime Minister has to request an extension, hence the Benn Act.
        Asking for an extension allows the EU in granting the request to place onerous conditions on the UK. As this Act was, with Bercow’s connivance, pushed through in short order the usual scrutiny before assent was given could not have been made. Benn may have presented the EU with an open goal.

        1. Didn’t they say that no further extensions would be granted except for a General election or another referendum?

          1. Both of those would put Corbyn in a spin. Is there enough time for a GE before 31/10/2019? Who would set the questions for a referendum? If it’s the Government then would Johnson have the honour?

        2. There is no reason that we should not ask for the extension (if we really have to) subject to very onerous conditions of our own.
          We could say that would like the EU to give us an extension, but only if you give us £100 billion in gold by 30th October 2019.
          This is the same argument that the Remainers used about a “conditional” and “qualified” Brexit. We did not know what we were voting for, so we really could have Brexit and customs union tripe.

          1. I’m certain that I read that the Benn Act included the text of the request and it is not for Johnson to decide on. I’m open to correction on that point.

          3. Hide a demand for £100 Billion in gold in translation? Caroline Tracey is a linguist, perhaps she could help? It’s this off the wall thinking that makes the British a race apart (can I say that?).

  95. Not Brexit, but Trump.
    I was just reading yesterday’s Times over breakfast. Page 34.
    At the top of the page an eyecatching illustrated report on the Democrats intention to impeach Trump, apparently because he did something
    which normal people would consider both sensible and acceptable.
    Bottom of the page, a report on Trump’s speech to the UN. Whether you agree with it or not, it was superb. Hide it before anyone notices it.
    The Times could not resist commenting that he spoke quietly, probably didn’t write the speech himself, and the guy sitting next to him (octogenarian, like me) fell asleep.
    That speech should have been on the front page.
    When Boris and Donald are thrown out by the globalists, we will agree with Greta that it is time to leave the planet.

    1. It was definitely a good speech.

      As to “sensible and acceptable”, a lot of people here would disagree that asking a foreign head of state to try to dig up dirt on a possible rival in the next presidential election is in any way acceptable. And then ordering his Intelligence chief not to testify before Congress, even though he is legally required to do so.

      Trump could be a great president – if he accepted that being President is not the same as being an absolute ruler, but somehow he just can’t help himself. And the heads of state he most admires are absolute rulers – Putin, Kim, Xi, etc.

      1. I wouldn’t call it “digging up dirt,” exactly.

        “There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that. So whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it…It sounds horrible to me.”

        Considering that the Democrats tried to derail his presidency with accusations of collusion with Russia, based on a dossier compiled with help from Russian intelligence, that was unverified and ultimately discredited, Trump wanting to know about possible corruption by a former vice president is reasonable. He didn’t ask anyone to make stuff up, as the Democrats have done.

    4. That looks like a zucchina trombetta; according to my dictionary search, Trombetti is a not uncommon, Italian surname, Bill …

          1. Au contraire. The clean, unbitter flesh is very good for people with gut problems.

            I am surprised that a nurse should be so ignorant ….though, come to think of it…

    2. I thought he was heading for a heart attack last night. His blood pressure must have been sky high.

  98. With the totally bizarre perfornances in the HOC, the only sensible choice now is The Monster Raving Loony Party.

  100. A new BTL from the letters …

    William Wilson 26 Sep 2019 5:27PM
    In his famous “fight them on the beaches …” speech, every word that
    Churchill used was Anglo Saxon, except for “surrender” – and that’s
    French. In his context, Boris Johnson was right.

    2. I remember going to Paxos about 38 years ago with the current missus. We actually had a good time and I remember going frequently to Mongonissi Beach.

  102. Just how thick are some people?

    Who an earth hands over £10,000 to a total stranger ?

    Brian had promised Elspet a bright future – a wonderful marriage later in life and their own bungalow.
    But Brian was not real. He was a romance scammer, something Elspet did not realise until she had sent him £10,000.
    They had met on a dating website, she had been taken in over email, and the money – including life savings – is now in his hands and lost to her.
    Elspet had been convinced by his story of serving abroad in the military. She trusted him enough to believe that his friend, a diplomat, was bringing home his belongings but needed money for fares and courier fees. It was a lie.
    “You feel shame. You feel stupid and depressed,” said Elspet, aged 67.

    1. This happens time and again.
      A few years back, there was a spate of elderly (and not very well preserved) British women marrying virile young Gambians.
      Did they really, seriously think the toy boy was overcome by lust and longing for them?
      There is no cure for stupidity.

          2. Good call. I knew (not in the Biblical sense) a young chap by the name of Phillips. He was so full of Tosstesterone (sic) that they named a screw after him – The Phillips Screw – you’ve no doubt heard of it….

    2. How thick are some people.
      Quite a lot. They counted them in 2016 and there were about 16.1 million.

  103. Jacques Chirac is dead. Yet another life-long corrupt, womanising politician bites the dust.

    And tonight, a living life-long corrupt politician – is wasting everyone’s evening by making a great big speech about what a wonderful man Chirac was.

    I shall be elsewhere. And as the weather forecast is for 27ºC tomorrow and Saturday and Sunday…I’ll bid you good evening.

    (PS Apparently the English “American” full back was injured when he fell awkwardly – needless to say the pretty dreadful TV coverage had to shots of what actually happened. One wishes him well.)

  104. David Lammy has referred to the ERG as worse than Nazis. Strange not a squeak from the media or BBC over it and repeated it on National TV

  107. Today must be Apoplexy Day. So I will share. We received a letter from Scotland’s Census asking us to be among the handful of people from our area to test some questions for the 2021 Census.
    Here, hopefully are the sample questions;
    … or maybe not…

    2. Be very careful about ‘surveys’ and opinion polls; there is a possibility that they are used as a cover by certain government agencies. It would be interesting to see whether any other Nottlers have been picked ‘at random’.

      2. While the name and address is not requested, the form has a bar code and serial number. I have blanked it out in the scan.
        So, they can find us if they wish to. Just like voting counterfoils in elections, except when they use photocopies so they can bin the votes they don’t want.

  108. Has the Supreme Court handed Boris Johnson a Brexit escape route?
    Alexander Pelling-Bruce – Coffee House – 26 September 2019 – 2:26 PM

    The Supreme Court’s judgement is the latest constitutional perversion after the Benn act. But ironically it may assist the Government in achieving its objective of Britain leaving the EU by 31 October, without having to seek an extension to the Article 50 process.

    In paragraph 34, the Supreme Court states that its ‘proper function’ under our constitution is to give effect to the separation of powers (which justifies court intervention in relation to prorogation). Then, in what appears to be an innocuous sentence in paragraph 55, it says that it is to be “remember[ed] always that the actual task of governing is for the executive and not for Parliament or the courts.”

    Yet the Benn Act manifestly contradicts this principle. It dictates how the Government must conduct negotiations with a foreign body, the EU, to the extent of obliging the Prime Minister to write specifically worded letters and accept whatever extension it offers when certain conditions are not met. In the situation when the conditions are not met (i.e. if the House of Commons has not voted for a deal or approved exit without a deal), the Prime Minister then has no choice but to act as instructed, whether he wants to or not. At that point, in what sense is he governing? The Prime Minister becomes a mere puppet of Parliament, which to all intents and purposes is the governing body.

    The judgement also outlines another fundamental constitutional principle: Parliamentary accountability. In paragraph 46 it says:

    “Ministers are accountable to Parliament through such mechanisms as their duty to answer Parliamentary scrutiny of the delegated legislation which ministers make. By these means, the policies of the executive are subjected to consideration by the representatives of the electorate, the executive is required to report, explain, and defend its actions, and citizens are protected from the arbitrary exercise of executive power.”

    But if the legislature takes on the functions of the executive, without taking office, then to whom is it accountable for its policies? To whom does it report, explain, and defend its actions to? Itself? Which of its members speaks on its behalf?

    To show the absurdity of the current situation, suppose the Brexit select committee wanted to summon someone to scrutinise the effects of an extension to Article 50 to 31 January 2020 (or beyond). Who would it call? Perhaps it ought to call Hilary Benn, whose name is attributed to the Act that mandates the policy. But Hilary Benn happens to be the chairman of the committee. The Benn Act then arguably destroys the very principle of parliamentary accountability, which the Supreme Court cited as a cornerstone of the British constitution.

    If the Benn Act is unconstitutional, the next question to ask is whether the Court has the ability to rule that it violates constitutional norms and provide a legal remedy.

    Again, the answer lies in the present judgment. In discussing the justiciability of prerogative powers, paragraph 35 says that:

    “The [first] issue is whether a prerogative power exists, and if it does exist, its extent. The second is whether, granted that a prerogative power exists, and that it has been exercised within its limits, the exercise of the power is open to legal challenge on some other basis.”

    But there is no reason why this should not extend to virtually any claimed power – the courts can decide if the power exists, and if it does, what is its extent. This is one of the normal functions of a court. Why shouldn’t the power of parliament to enact laws be examined too and subject to scrutiny and analysis by the courts and its limits determined?

    The counter argument to this is that the Benn Act is a proceeding of Parliament so is protected from court scrutiny by Article IX of the Bill of Rights 1689 (which the Court ruled does not cover prorogation). Yet it could be argued that this Article, which is a significant part of our constitution, cannot be used as an instrument itself to destroy the constitution. By way of comparison, judges ruled that the Statute of Frauds 1677 itself could not be pleaded as a defence against accusation of fraud.

    If you maintain that Article IX is absolute, then it would mean that Parliament could legislate to abolish judicial review, open justice, the courts or even Parliament itself. This would do unlimited damage and destruction to the constitution, all without the courts having any say.

    Before this judgment, I believed the principle of parliamentary sovereignty meant that parliament could do this. Now I am not so sure; the Court has taken it upon itself, under the common law, to be the guardian of certain constitutional principles. It could be argued then that while it has a constitutional duty to supervise the exercise of prerogative power, it also has a duty to supervise the power of parliament.

    The sovereign was – before this ruling, at least – the ultimate limit on the use of prerogative power in the absence of statute. The Court in its judgment at paragraph 30 states that it expresses no view on the matter of whether the Queen was obliged to accept the advice to prorogue. Yet it then contradicts this by claiming that the Prime Minister was “the only person with power…to have regard to all relevant interests, including the interests of Parliament”.

    This reduces the monarch to a nodding dog, who simply acquiesces to wherever her ministers drive the nation and its institutions. The Court has usurped the role of the constitutional monarch and invented a novel role for itself, essentially transforming Britain into a democratic republic. If it rules against prorogation today, then is it to challenge the Royal Assent, by which bills become law, tomorrow? What if the Government were, in an exceptional case, to advise the Queen to refuse such assent?

    Before the Cooper-Letwin Act and the Benn Act, the House of Commons and the House of Lords were the checks on the unconstitutional power of the Crown in Parliament. The Government should now test whether the Court will apply with consistency the reasoning that it used to justify its new constitutional powers in relation to prorogation.

    If the matter of prorogation is now justiciable because the Court can protect Parliamentary sovereignty and accountability as part of the fundamental separation of powers, then why should the Court not also intervene when that principle is violated by a Parliament which presumes to usurp the executive by taking upon itself the actual task of governing?

    The way is now open for Boris Johnson to refuse to comply with the Benn Act on the legitimate ground that the Act is unconstitutional and that the courts (and ultimately the Supreme Court) will agree; and even if the Court won’t go so far as declaring it an actual nullity, then at least they will refuse to enforce it.

    Alexander Pelling-Bruce is a political researcher

    2. If the matter of prorogation is now justiciable because the Court can protect Parliamentary sovereignty and accountability as part of the fundamental separation of powers, then why should the Court not also intervene when that principle is violated by a Parliament which presumes to usurp the executive by taking upon itself the actual task of governing?

      Does the enactment of the Benn Bill effectively enable Parliament to usurp the executive powers of the Prime Minister?

      Has Gina realised the can of worms that she has opened with her successfull appeal to the Supreme Court?

  109. You may not want more reading, especially when it states the obvious, but I have heard Corbyn’s performance yesterday described as statesmanlike!

    Jeremy Corbyn is a busted flush, and his humiliated party is all too aware of it

    STEPHEN POLLARD

    Why else won’t the Labour Party call a vote of no confidence in the Government?

    In all the fuss over Boris Johnson’s language in the Commons on Wednesday night, it’s easy to overlook what else happened.

    Dragged back to Parliament from New York, the prime minister faced what seemed certain humiliation at the Despatch Box. The Labour benches were baying. Tory MPs would rather have been anywhere else. And yet Jeremy Corbyn’s response to the Prime Minister’s statement was so awful, so devoid of serious argument and so full of contradictions that it was the Conservative benches that ended up cheering for more, with Mr Corbyn humiliated.

    If the statement had stopped there, the story afterwards would not have been the PM’s language in response to a question about Jo Cox, but his utter destruction of Jeremy Corbyn. In other words, we learned once again on Wednesday night that Corbyn is a busted flush.

    Yesterday the Labour leader attempted to gain the moral high ground with a statement in the Commons condemning Mr Johnson’s language and behaviour as “well below the standard expected”. But the irony of this will not have been lost on his fellow Labour MPs, because they are well aware that Mr Corbyn is so toxic among voters that he now has the worst satisfaction ratings of any opposition leader since surveys began in 1977. According to Ipsos MORI, 76 per cent of voters say they are dissatisfied with the way he is doing his job as leader of the opposition, with only 16 per cent satisfied – which gives him a net satisfaction score of minus 60.

    Mr Corbyn is himself so below standard that the party has twice voted against the election that they have themselves demanded. They know that Labour would be taken to the cleaners and think their only chance is to hang on until after 31 October in the hope that Mr Johnson is unable to deliver Brexit and is punished by voters.

    That’s also why the Labour Party won’t call a vote of no confidence in the Government. The last thing they want is to bring the PM down because an election would almost certainly follow, given the other opposition parties’ refusal to countenance allowing Mr Corbyn to become PM in any circumstances. The Lib Dems and the SNP are plainly driven by self-interest in this – of course they are; this is politics – but they deserve some credit for their unwillingness to put a revolutionary socialist into power, even temporarily to carry out their desire to stop Brexit.

    Far more credit, indeed, than those so-called moderate Labour MPs who have spent the past four years tweeting and moaning about Mr Corbyn but are nonetheless still campaigning to make him Prime Minister.

    The likes of Richard Burgon, John McDonnell and Diane Abbott may be unfit to hold office but they are at least true to their convictions. They are hard core socialists who now have control of the Labour Party. But the moderates are craven careerists who are prepared to back policies and people they know would destroy Britain if it lets them stay on as MPs. No mainstream politician, for example, could regard Labour’s latest policy of seizing private property from those it dislikes – in this case, private schools – as anything other than totalitarian and frightening. But don’t hold your breath for a Labour MP to say that. None have or will, because they are now in election mode and are prepared to countenance anything – literally anything, it seems – if it enables them to keep their seats.

    Take Lucy Powell, formerly a decent, moderate sensible Labour MP who has in the past criticised her leader over his handling of anti-Semitism within the party. But that was then. When a group of Labour peers resigned the whip in July and the rest threatened to hold a vote of no-confidence in Mr Corbyn, Ms Powell responded by calling it “a deeply unhelpful and divisive move, coming in the week where all our attention should be facing outwards at a new Tory PM.”

    It is unfair to single Ms Powell out; every member of the Parliamentary Labour Party is equally culpable, campaigning to make an extremist prime minister.

    They have no principles. They have no red lines. They have no shame. And their leader has no idea. What a winning combination.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/09/26/jeremy-corbyn-busted-flush-humiliated-party-aware/

  110. Back for a lovely walk round the village lake. Pondered on how rugby has changed sine I first played it in 1954:

    So – © Ditsy remainiac telly bint – the new laws of rugby include:

    1 At a scrum, the scrum half puts the ball into the second or third row of his own side;
    2 At a line out, the ball is thrown to your own side – not down the middle;
    3. Forward passes are fine – you don’t want to interrupt the flow of play;
    4 Scrums must take two minutes before the ref is happy;
    5 With three refs, 10 cameras and the TMO – many mistakes still happen.

    1. But the good news is the vision of all the Referees is absolutely perfect. They can all see the Sun and that’s 93 million miles away….

          1. I was taught (in their exasperation – after weeks of trying the old techniques) by being thrown in to the Suez Canal well out of my depth.

            It worked.

          3. It felt like it!

            Ackshally from a jetty on the French Beach at Ismailia. TB will prolly know exactly where I mean.

            There was a club for French people working on the Canal de Suez – and Brits had membership.

  111. QT tonight…

    SUMMARY
    Fiona Bruce presents topical debate from the National Assembly for Wales in Cardiff. The panellists are Conservative Party Chairman James Cleverly, Shadow Solicitor General Nick Thomas-Symonds, Plaid Cymru leader Adam Price, Leader of the Brexit Party in the Welsh Assembly Mark Reckless, and businesswoman Gina Miller, one of the complainants against the Government’s decision to prorogue Parliament.

    1. Looked her up on Wiki. – ” the youngest of two children born to an English mother and Italian father, both of whom are the rapists “.
      Poor kid.

    2. What’s wrong with that? It follows on from the plan to destroy our country. I’m all for it. Cheaper to bribe a bent copper than a Judge or Politician. Erm….where am i going with this?…….

    4. Grizz’s BP has been on a flat line for years now, Rik.

      Nothing I hear in the news these days has any effect: I am inured to such routine daily idiocy in the news.

    6. If the powers that think that they control us want to have enforcement officers who are criminals and who are prepared to break the law, it makes you wonder why they didn’t bring this policy into effect already. Unless they were waiting for some big story in the news to distract attention from it. Hmm.

      With the upcoming attacks on our civil liberties, and the increasing arrests of those who speak out for democracy and morality, they could not expect honest people to enforce those abuses of the public.

  117. This just in – Labour MP Jess Philips reports that a man has been arrested trying to break in to her office.

    Was it that Labour luvvie, darling of the left and safeguarding champion of women Brendan Cock we ask?

  120. Try listening to the news on tv or radio, it appears to have gone completely mental, quite worrying really.
    Is this the final throws of the EU swamp.

  121. Night All

    https://media1.tenor.com/images/65eaa7b530a62981c7b3f512006993b1/tenor.gif?itemid=5972396

    https://media1.tenor.com/images/f3fbb9e760d01a3d5649179decf7751f/tenor.gif?itemid=10551704

    https://media1.tenor.com/images/9721947338d364a0ea498a6d7bd77f75/tenor.gif?itemid=7420680

    https://media1.tenor.com/images/4601d3c76b49a404b61d9d30847591e4/tenor.gif?itemid=11622651

    And Finally

    https://media1.tenor.com/images/482c96242ef87c68daf98ad1c0454e9c/tenor.gif?itemid=9315240

    2. Re # 2, Missy tries to do that to me occasionally, e.g. if I go to step outside when it’s raining.

    3. I had to “right click” with the mouse and pick “open link in new tab” but that last one with the ducklings was well worth the effort. 🙂

  122. Not been watching Parliament today, but just had a look at the update.
    There has been a hell of a lot of muck going on there today.
    Do we really have to stand for this stuff ? If I were Boris I would prorogue Parliament.

    2. The Radio 4 evening news is leading on this. The women started it off by raising the murder of the female MP and Boris’s brief answer to the rambling questions they asked last night. The MPs who openly want to stop Brexit and/ or who have been treacherously conniving with the EU leaders resent being called betrayers of the UK people. There are other more suitable adjectives which also describe their behaviour. The MPs have refused the request for a 3 day break to allow the Conservative Conference. That will increase the anger.

        1. Bill – I think it will not be missed. The open divisions in the party would have been exposed to public view. However the Remain MPS will be gloating. and Boris will continue his attack in the HoC.

      2. I wouldn’t worry too much.
        Any Conservative MPs who wishes to visit can easily do so. After all, a few days from the parliamentary sandpit isn’t going to alter matters.
        The conferences nowadays are merely big PR exercises; the members matter very little. Any serious thinking goes on at the fringe events, not the big hall set pieces.

  123. Breaking news Just in – Bercow has decreed that members of Parliament can only shout ‘Werther’s Original’ in the house in future, ‘Humbug’ is now banned forthwith

      1. …as is October 31st so the little pip-squeaker can continue in the ‘comfy’ chair and Brexit doesn’t happen.

    4. Boris should follow my example and refer to those trying to oppose Brexit as “Silly Sausages”.

    1. …and a lesson on how the ‘Democratic’ chair thing wishes to suppress any bad news.

      Yes, Lady, we see from this side of the Atlantic as well.

  125. Evening, all. The Connemara excelled himself today (have had to change riding day for various reasons until normal service is resumed). He was rhythmical, didn’t rush, softened over his back and did some really nice leg yields as well as shoulder in. Much better than last week when he wasn’t in his hackamore. He doesn’t like the Happy Mouth bit as much; he’s much tenser.

      1. Morning HL,
        I do beg to differ, the good she & past royals have done far outweighs anything considered bad.
        How about ALL who put the parties welfare before the countries, time & time again via the
        ballot booth, decade after decade.
        Our current standing has just not occurred of late it has been built on over the years since the mid 70s coinciding with the time the good ship eu golden trough hove into sight.

        1. I am talking about the current situation. She is a constitutional monarch, her role is inter alia to uphold our constitution and so-called freedoms, as Head of Parliament. What does she do to save “her” country from its current constitutional shambles? Nothing. She has a constitutional role that she most certainly is not fulfilling at present.

          Even her limited role in delivering the Queen’s Speech is worthless. She has broken her Coronation Oath several times…

          1. HL,
            Would you acknowledge that the continuing
            voting pattern over the years with the electorate seeing things getting worse time after time yet still supporting / voting in the keep in / keep out mode, regardless of the proven dire consequences that are now guaranteed?

          2. Electorates has been lied to / brainwashed into providing the Globalists with the ‘manufactured consent’, which they can then make the duplicitous claim that it was voted for ‘democratically’. Notwithstanding that the personnel making up the electorate is subject to continuous change. Even had voters not been brainwashed into providing the Globalists with ‘manufactured consent’, the Globalist dictators would be enacting their agenda’s including the UN Global compact for migration anyway. This is not an imposition unique to the UK , the Globalists are in fact, enacting their agenda, Globally.
            It is more than just a little bit suspect that you always deflect attention away from the Globalist complicity in creating the current global political situation by victim blaming the UK electorate.

          3. The electorate are going to get totally peed of
            with you saying they are brainwashed on a regular basis.

          4. It is more than just a little bit suspect that you always deflect attention away from the Globalist complicity in creating the current global political situation by victim blaming the UK electorate.

            QED.

          5. Yes, but TBH there often wasn’t an alternative that they knew about. The media made sure of that.

          6. HL,
            The media especially since over the eu dominant years have have become more odious by the day bought in many respects with our money via brussels.
            But with even a bent MsM it cannot conceal what the electorate can observe on the way to the ballot booth.
            IMHO, to much party before country, ongoing.
            The lab/lib/con coalition are eu assets.

  129. It seems to me, one of the few rational thinkers in these benighted times, that the solution to the impasse—between the 17·4 million sensible citizens of the UK who voted to leave the constraints and constrictions of the EUSSR, and the 16-and-a-bit millions who are educationally sub-normal if not certifiable—is to have a demographic shift in the country.

    By “the country” I mean, of course, England. [Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will do their own thing in any case so I cannot speak for them, nor would I wish to.]

    My proposal is that there is enough land in England for members of both camps. To achieve common sense, I recommend that England is split into two new countries (in a similar manner to the division of Czechoslovakia). The new northern and western country could be named “England”. The south-eastern country could be named “Tantrumland”.

    The land area comprising the traditional counties (I refuse to use Edward Nonce Heath’s abominations from 1974) of: Cambridgeshire, Cheshire, Cornwall, Cumberland, Derbyshire, Devon, Dorset, Durham, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Lancashire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Northamptonshire, Northumberland, Nottinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Rutland, Shropshire, Somerset, Staffordshire, Suffolk, Warwickshire, Westmorland, Wiltshire, Worcestershire and Yorkshire could announce a Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) and instigate three regional capitals at York, Norwich and Taunton. All Brexiteers living in the remaining counties, not on this list, could be airlifted to a better life.

    England could then immediately leave the EU and start trading with the world as a sovereign nation. H.M.The Queen would spend her time in her beloved residences of Sandringham and Balmoral (until, of course, the Jocks declare independence, re-join the EU, and kick her out).

    Greater London and the counties of: Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Essex, Hampshire, Hertfordshire, Kent, Middlesex, Surrey and Sussex could then be considered to be a renegade area and all Remainiacs living in other counties could be transported there. They may keep London as their capital or simply move it to Royal Tunbridge Wells, where most of the griping whingers reside.

    The idiots of Tantrumland could then rejoin the EU and find a way to fund their colossally expensive membership from their own pockets.

    A massive wall could then be constructed around the borders of Tantrumland to keep the Remainacs within from attempting to escape to a better life in England. Those thinking that this is not a good idea—i.e. those who cling to the notion that the south-east is where most of the country’s wealth is created—will be in for a shock, since those Brexiteers who will have been airlifted to England from Tantrumland are evidently the better brains who created the wealth in the first place.

    I commend this initiative to the forum. What’s not to like about it?

    2. Some Labour MP was on the radio claiming we had to leave with a deal and was denying that Article 50 clearly stated we had to leave at the end of 2 years if we had no deal. The EU only invented that it could be extended later on until then they had stated it could not be extended

    3. With all due respect, Grizz, Humbug! I’m perfectly happy in my bit of leafy Surrey, and you would be surprised how many of the locals here are Leavers, or former Remainers who have since seen the light. My alternative suggestion would be to severely restrict the number of access points to the M25, staff them with Border Force, build a wall along the entire central reservation, and declare the entire area within the same as a new country: Remania. It’s already unrecognisable as England. They can keep the City Airport, and the HS1 links to the tunnel. We’ll allow the Remanians to use Heathrow and Gatwick, but their Air Passenger Duty will be massively increased for the Remanians.

      A new English Parliament will be established. As far from London as possible. Carlisle will do nicely. It’s on the West Coast Main Line, and the M6, and Eddie has upgraded the airport. What’s not to like?

      3. Geoff, how dare you insult Grizzly?!?!? Humbug, indeed! With language like that I shall report you to MiddleLandExile and get you banned from this site. Oh, just a minute…

        :-))

      1. Oh!

        Gosh!

        Do you actually think that my post was a wind-up, designed to annoy people from Essex and suchlike places?

        OMG. Would I be such an agent provocateur?

        Whatever must you think of me? 🤣😉

    5. Tantrumland should be fully enclosed within the M25 (the City will have to be relocated to a safe place) and the 40′ high wall built 200 yards inside of the anti-clockwise lane. That would allow the good people from the land of the living to use the M25 without hindrance from the Eloi. Khan is a rabid Remainer and also demands more immigration; 16 million should satisfy even his appetite.

      1. If you’d included that rather large county in the north whose name starts with an N you’d have got one.

        1. It makes one wonder, is Grizz really one of those Southerners who thinks that Hadrian’s Wall really is the Border?

          1. I never tire of pointing out to them that the wall is entirely in England and that there’s almost 2,000 square miles of England on this side of it.

            And that 2,000 square miles voted Leave.

          3. Why-aye and listen up, youse two bonny lads, though but.

            I wrote down every county and copied them from my list, but somehow (I must have had a senior moment) I forgot to copy down that big county beginning with an ‘N’. It must’ve dropped on the proggy mat, man.

            Shit, shite, bugger and damn! :•(

      1. Maybe, John, but they don’t have black pudding, black peas, cow-heel, tripe and hotpot in East Sussex. :•)

    8. Grizz, IMHO you are wrong to criticise Remainers when there is a large group of twerps who are still lurking in the wings.
      Although I know a couple of them whom I count as friends, adult non-voters (abstainers) are the larvae in the UK woodpile.
      Lazy, selfish and ungrateful.

      1. Them twerps, Tim, are everywhere, in every nook and cranny like cockroaches.

        We need Rentokil urgently.

      1. It is decidedly odd that the areas of Scotland most involved in fishing, appear to have voted to Remain and thereby hand over all fishing to the EU countries

        1. As you can see, it didn’t turn out to be a simple North-South split. Remainers in the South are mainly in the Thames Valley area.

          1. I know that Aeneas, but what you don’t know is that every now and then I have a little wind-up of my southern friends to see how they will react when I tease them. Sometimes it works, other times it does not.

            I don’t hate southerners, in fact have a good number of friends there, but I can’t help being a tease (in the same way that some of them can’t help being a tease too). 😉

  133. Parliament has lost its sense of purpose

    TELEGRAPH VIEW

    Blackguard, pipsqueak, guttersnipe and hypocrite are among two dozen words deemed to be unparliamentary. Had any of them been used during Wednesday evening’s broohaha in the House of Commons, John Bercow, the Speaker, would have called the proceedings to order and demanded they be withdrawn.

    Yet he was happy to preside over a raucous, ranting rabble, some of whom accused the Prime Minister of being a bigot and a racist, accusations that today are somewhat more toxic and inflammatory than hooligan or squirt.

    When the Speaker is so obviously, almost wilfully, parti pris on the great issue dividing the nation it is hardly surprising that the chamber erupts in anger, both real and confected. Mr Bercow’s job is to keep order, but he failed to do so.

    Even though Opposition MPs were screaming abuse at Boris Johnson, calling him every name under the sun, it was, apparently, the Prime Minister’s refusal to be cowed or show contrition after the Supreme Court setback that was to blame. At least that was how it was reported on the television news. Impartial viewers, or even fair-minded people who don’t agree with him, might well have seen things differently.

    But should we be surprised given the circumstances that tempers boiled over in the Commons? After all, what is the chamber for if not to air the grievances of the nation and reflect the divisions that already exist?

    Nor has it always been a paragon of propriety. Denis Healey likened Sir Geoffrey Howe’s debating style to “being savaged by a dead sheep”. Michael Foot called Norman Tebbit “a semi-house trained polecat”. Benjamin Disraeli said of the Earl of Aberdeen that he plagued his colleagues with “the crabbed malice of a maundering witch”. Winston Churchill called Ramsay MacDonald “a boneless wonder”.

    Trading insults is nothing new to Parliament and neither is heated debate. What seems to mark out this current period is the sheer vituperation, the Twitter-era nastiness, the tribalism that brooks no cross-party friendships save among a few grown-ups. The Left are worse than the Conservatives in this regard. Mr Johnson used nothing like the intemperate language directed at him yet finds himself pilloried for allegedly insulting the memory of a murdered MP and playing to the mob.

    Equally noisome is the emotionalism that accompanies what is supposed to be level-headed discussion, women MPs on the verge of tears or older hands like Barry Sheerman almost apoplectic with fury (though not so unhinged that he cannot tweet out his splenetic attack on the Government just to whip up even greater antipathy among the public). Do these people demanding the country be “brought together” know how insulting it is to display Bollocks to Brexit slogans to the people who voted to leave the EU? Are they surprised they are angry to be told their vote doesn’t count?

    There is a distinct sense that Parliament is an institution is in crisis; but if that is so it is because the people in it seem not to understand its purpose. It is supposed to be the cockpit for national debate, somewhere to represent the interests of constituents on the great matters of the day.

    In the past MPs would make their living somewhere else but now being an MP has become a full-time occupation with a heavy load of constituency tasks more suited to a local councillor. Even the most junior backbenchers trail an entourage of advisers, researchers and interns in their wake. And yet their aggrandisement is in inverse proportion to the waning importance of their jobs as power has leached away from Westminster to Europe and other supra-national institutions.

    The standing of the Commons has not been helped either by the decision of two recent prime ministers, Tony Blair and David Cameron, to step down as MPs immediately on losing office, their peremptory departures emblematic of Parliament’s diminished status.

    Modern politicians seemingly find the cut and thrust of debate hard to take and no longer possess the rhetorical skills their predecessors would have had. It was noticeable on Wednesday that the anger grew because Mr Johnson got the better of Mr Corbyn and was far more adept at thinking on his feet. If anything, Labour MPs were frustrated by Mr Corbyn’s incompetence.

    A debating chamber is not supposed to be a place where statements are read out in the hope that a tortured soundbite will make it onto the news. What so many MPs denounced as the collapse in standards merely reflected their own inadequacies as debaters.

    One reason the House of Commons has lost its prestige is because people feel it is no longer in charge of the country. If Brexit can do anything, it is to give Parliament a renewed sense of purpose; but it needs MPs capable of living up to it.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2019/09/26/parliament-has-lost-sense-purpose/

  137. PARKING HERE UNTIL TODAY’S SITE IS READY

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/09/26/careful-wish-boris-every-chance-tories-would-lose-election/

    Be careful what you wish for, Boris. There’s every chance the Tories would lose an election
    LEO MCKINSTRY

    The question is:

    Does Boris really want Brexit?

    If he does he will make an electoral pact with Nigel Farage and win a general election with a large majority.

    If he does not then he will lose the general election and Brexit and the Conservative Party will be lost forever.

    My fear is that Boris does not care and will sell out Brexit, the people and his party and be happy to go down in history as just a bonking buffoon who failed in the country’s hour of need.

    Let us hope to God that I am wrong.

    1. I think the political classes are trying to get the electorate back in the liblabcon fold with all the rhetoric lately, The Brexit Party is not getting any coverage in the media, they are just playing the same old game they always have but with a bit more enthusiasm, a very dodgy soft brexit deal or nothing at all happening is on the cards.

    2. ‘ parking here until today’s site is ready ”
      You mean until today’s article or post is ready –
      not site ( standing in for Mr Viking;) .

Comments are closed.