Saturday 19 June: It’s surprising that the Tories are surprised by the Chesham by-election

Posted on by Geoff Graham

An unofficial place to discuss the Telegraph letters, established when the DT website turned off its comments facility (now reinstated, but not as good as ours),
Intelligent, polite, good-humoured debate is welcome, whether on or off topic. Differing opinions are encouraged, but rudeness or personal attacks on other posters will not be tolerated. Posts which – in the opinion of the moderators – make this a less than cordial environment, are likely to be removed, without prior warning.  Persistent offenders will be banned.

Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2021/06/18/letter-surprising-tories-surprised-chesham-by-election/

600 thoughts on “Saturday 19 June: It’s surprising that the Tories are surprised by the Chesham by-election”

    1. Here also, Bob. And Dotty, the chihuahua, hates the rain so she’ll have to go early for a wee.

  3. Rumours swirl that China’s top spycatcher has defected to the US. 19 June 2021.

    Rumours abounded on Friday night that China’s top spycatcher had defected to the US, amid a growing focus in Washington on the theory that Covid-19 escaped from a Wuhan laboratory.

    Dong Jingwei, vice minister of state security, was reported to have flown from Hong Kong to the US in February with his daughter. There was no confirmation of the rumoured development from either the US or China.

    Morning everyone. This report appears to be true. Though it’s not included here (for obvious reasons) Mr Dong has not defected to either the CIA or the FBI but to the much more obscure Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA), which has led to some considerable speculation that these organisations have been so penetrated by Chinese Intelligence that Dong considered them unsafe. As Intelligence Chief, Dong would of course be aware of any Biden and Son links which would place his life at risk, not from a vengeful Chinese State, but the primary Security Organisations of the United States!

    https://turcopolier.com/cia-is-scared-sh-ss-of-dias-chinese-defector/

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/18/rumours-swirl-chinas-top-spycatcher-has-defected-us/

      1. ‘Morning. Especially if tracked down, Bill, by the Pobbles who had no Toes.

  4. Italy at crisis point as Mediterranean migrant numbers surge nine-fold. 19 June 2021.

    Italy’s government is under huge pressure to staunch the arrivals of migrants from the coast of North Africa as the country recorded a nine-fold increase in the number of asylum seekers reaching its shores since 2019.

    There has been a sharp rise in the number of migrant boats reaching Sicily and the tiny island of Lampedusa in recent weeks. The arrival of 1,000 migrants on Lampedusa in the past week has overwhelmed the island’s reception centre.

    White European Christian Civilisation and all that we have known and loved will have disappeared within twenty years!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/18/italy-crisis-point-mediterranean-migrant-numbers-surge-nine/

    1. The only solution seems to be to shoot them as they approach Italian water. All other solutions have been tried and failed.
      That would deter all but the heavily armed, who could then joust with the Italian Navy in the gap between Sicily and the North African coast.

  5. Morning to the few up early and others as and when weekend priorities provide space to appear later.

    Comparison of BBC Self Awareness https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6970ae1facc59adbc97b8a33b433605798bd5d246184cdb0fa669dc60f747dae.jpg and Douglas Murray [eloquent as usual] re The Hatred Behind Stop Funding Hate https://unherd.com/2021/06/the-hatred-behind-stop-funding-hate/?tl_inbound=1&tl_groups%5B0%5D=18743&tl_period_type=3&mc_cid=d8b6ccf160&mc_eid=f8bf59e7dc

    BTL Comments

    Peter LR

    I’m doing my bit for GBNews. I don’t watch breakfast TV so instead I have GBNews on on mute in the other room to keep the ratings up.

    I have watched quite a bit and it is good to see Andrew Neil back in action with his forensic questioning of Rishi Sunak.

    Ethniciodo Rodenydo

    Maybe we could put together a list which we could update weekly

    Nick Gilbert

    Who is behind this organisation? Who funds it?

    Francis MacGabhann

    I cannot abide Andrew Neil, but I’m forced to admit he’s on the right side of this. I really hope this is the start of a serious, prolonged and committed fightback against the wokerati.

    Katharine Eyre

    In a similar vein: a while back I noticed a group on my FB feed called “Women Against Hate” (a friend had commented so that’s why I saw it). “Oh, okay”, I thought. “I’ll check that out, seeing as I am a) a woman and b) I consider myself to be against hate. It might be interesting”.

    It certainly was. These “women against hate” (or at least the commenting members) seemed like quite normal individuals as long as the posts were about “approved” issues such as diversity. Then along came a post about Boris Johnson’s new health regime to lose weight after his corona illness. I have never seen such hatred being spewed in such a concentrated or creative form. There were words on there I’ve never seen before, c—womble being the least of it.

    Revel in the irony at your leisure.

    Chris Wheatley

    I suspect that the people who are involved in Stop Funding Hate are actually sitting behind computers and, themselves, funding hate. Their hate is a Guardian-type hate, graduates who have ended in boring jobs with 2.4 kids and feel that the world has let them down.

    If you go back about 25 years when the newspapers were talking about yobbos and thugs spoiling football matches with their violence, the police infiltrated the groups involved and found that the violence was orchestrated by middle-class Guardian types who were doing it to get back at the world.

    Douglas McNeish

    I wonder if their creators have actually read 1984, or if they just stumbled upon the “nominative misdirections” because they share the same fundamental mindset as Big Brother.

    Norman Powers

    Simple heuristic – invert whatever title a left wing ground has given itself, and you’ll find the truth.

    Hope Not Hate -> Hate Not Hope

    Antifa -> Profa

    Black Lives Matter -> Black Lives Don’t Matter

    All these are more accurate descriptions of what these groups really believe in.

    Brendan O’Leary

    There’s no evidence that IKEA etc would lose sales by being targeted by SFH. Companies just take fright at the threat of “negative publicity”.

    The unprincipled worms who run these campaigns (“Sleeping Giants” is another such attack group, whose founders soon fell out and one started another innocuous sounding group, “Check My Ads”) get the rush of unaccountable power that they wouldn’t otherwise achieve in their lives without being admitted to SAGE.

    Even worse are their campaigns run against smaller businesses who don’t have the time or the clout to fight back.

  9. 334509+up ticks,
    Morning Each,
    The only lessons that are going to be learnt are by the senior overseers
    but seemingly the lab/lib/con mass uncontrolled
    immigration / paedophile umbrella coalition is still the voting pattern of choice,the odious game of tactical keep in / keep out, juggling three proven sh!te parties is still very much in play.

    As a bloke said yesterday in being interviewed on the radio ” it’s the best of the worst” triumphs, tells me many of the electorate are willing to accept graded sh!te as long as it has their party (ino) names on it.

    Summary,
    It is an odious lab/lib/con close shop political rotation crop allowing fresh blood to enter, ensuring currently that reset gets a firm grip on triggering actions of treachery.

    Saturday 19 June: It’s surprising that the Tories are surprised by the Chesham by-election

  10. Boris Johnson needs t o look no further than the NOTTLER pages to see why the Conservatives had a disastrous bye election result on Thursday. To discover who to blame he just needs to look in the mirror and the culprit will be staring him in the face.

    1. I’m certain that when Johnson looks into that mirror he has a self-satisfied smirk on his face. His, or should that be the WEF’s, Health Minister has done all that could be asked of him i.e. the public’s attention was focused on CV-19 whilst the waiting list was allowed to soar out of control and now MPs understand that they were lied to/played before the vote earlier this week.

      Why didn’t MPs have the real data to hand? Too indolent to do the research before a major vote? Totally disinterested in the effect lockdown is having on the people and services? Irrespective of data the Party must come first? Whatever their excuses non will wash away their failure to stand up for the People and Country.

      Many Twitter feeds out there quoting Johnson’s “…f***ing useless,” statement re Hancock. On the face of it i.e the impact he is having on the NHS, they are correct but the reality is that Hancock is doing exactly what his masters require of him and so he will be allowed to carry on without let or hindrance.

      1. If Hancock is truly useless, then Boris is culpable for not removing him and getting someone in who can fix things. I know! Dame Kate Bingham!
        Hancock and Patel then can both go and rot in Hull.

      2. If Hancock is truly useless, then Boris is culpable for not removing him and getting someone in who can fix things. I know! Dame Kate Bingham!
        Hancock and Patel then can both go and rot in Hull.

    2. I’m certain that when Johnson looks into that mirror he has a self-satisfied smirk on his face. His, or should that be the WEF’s, Health Minister has done all that could be asked of him i.e. the public’s attention was focused on CV-19 whilst the waiting list was allowed to soar out of control and now MPs understand that they were lied to/played before the vote earlier this week.

      Why didn’t MPs have the real data to hand? Too indolent to do the research before a major vote? Totally disinterested in the effect lockdown is having on the people and services? Irrespective of data the Party must come first? Whatever their excuses non will wash away their failure to stand up for the People and Country.

      Many Twitter feeds out there quoting Johnson’s “…f***ing useless,” statement re Hancock. On the face of it i.e the impact he is having on the NHS, they are correct but the reality is that Hancock is doing exactly what his masters require of him and so he will be allowed to carry on without let or hindrance.

  11. Good morning, all. Rained all night – still very wet outside, though the rain appears to have stopped.

  12. Morning all, I chuckle at the phrases red wall or blue wall. In essence they are both the same, people who although are considered to be in different parts of the country and have similar aspirations. They both feel supporting the Conservative party is best for them and probably the country as well, the difference between them is that for “Red Wall” voters this is a new experience, “Blue Wall” voters has had this feeling for a long time.
    Let’s hope neither wall crumbles into a pile of betrayal and disappointment, to my mind that is not yet beyond the realms of possibility.

    1. Removing the myth moniker soundbite of “wall”, convenient for MSM “mental programming” exposes what’s left of the dregs of political parties, many people would then wake up to the reality quickly.

    2. The “Wall” for voters marks those that are excluded – in other words, the working class, basically ignored and ridiculed by all parties. Who speaks for them? It sure isn’t Labour, nor Blue Labour.

    3. Thing is, newly Conservative voters are doing so because it’s a weak, soft Left, big state lump. The actual traditional Conservative voter is getting angry at the Labour policies they’re seeing.

  13. The weekend Witterings and abad day for 77 Bde: Two members were obviously in the equivalent of detention: Tracy Sully His Hon Jonathon van der Werff for exceeding their emotional quota:

    SIR – I live in the Chesham and Amersham constituency, and feel that it should not surprise an authoritarian Conservative government, luxuriating in the big state, ploughing a hideously expensive, unnecessary railway line through outstanding countryside, and planning to run roughshod over the Green Belt with identikit housing, that it loses a rock-solid seat – spectacularly.

    Charles Foster
    Chalfont St Peter, Buckinghamshire

    SIR – It’s not just Chesham. In the hi-tech villages of Cambridgeshire, we’ve just elected a Labour mayor. In these blue rural Tory seats, you have to look hard now to find a Conservative.

    Our little villages are crammed with mini-biotechs in water mills and nutty computer-geek start-ups in barns. But we’re getting a monstrous railway viaduct, the Great Wall of Cambridge, to bring containers from Felixstowe to the Midlands.

    Across the Oxford-Cambridge arc, the Government is driving massive over-development, shuttling cheap goodies from China to huge warehouses on vast new estates.

    But no political party is on our side. The Lib Dems and Labour also want this last-century railway. As political incumbents are mostly blue, it’s blue that will take the hit.

    Instead of tarring over south-east England from Heathrow to Cambridge, why not push skills north into places that will welcome the investment?

    E G Nisbet
    Hauxton, Cambridgeshire

    SIR – The latest by-election result is no surprise. Where I live, the government inspector has given approval to 100 homes to be built on the Green Belt, even though both councils involved (St Albans and Welwyn Hatfield) objected on no less than seven grounds, among them, Green Belt and heritage matters, impact on services, ecology, highways, character and appearance. The Tories carry on with their present planning doctrine at their peril.

    Claire Taylor
    Hatfield, Hertfordshire

    SIR – In 1962 the Tories had been in office for 11 years, when, in a by-election on the outskirts of the capital (Orpington), a Conservative majority of 16,000 was overturned and the Liberals won the seat by 8,000.

    Today, the Tories have been in office for 11 years. In a by-election on the outskirts of the capital (Chesham and Amersham) a Conservative majority of 16,000 has been overturned, giving the Lib Dems a majority of 8,000 votes.

    Two years after Orpington, the Tories were voted out of office for the next two Parliaments.

    Geoff Floyd
    Chippenham, Wiltshire

    SIR – Following the disastrous result (for the Conservatives) in the by-election, Amanda Milling, the party co-chairman, said: “Work starts now to show how it’s the Conservatives that can deliver on the people’s priorities”.

    What have they been doing until now?

    Christopher Wilton
    Petersfield, Hampshire

    Covid law criminals

    SIR – The delay to Freedom Day has caused misery (and expense) to many whose hopes and plans have been dashed. Others have angrily and
    deliberately chosen to break the law.

    It was a dreadful thing for the Government to cause previously respectable and law-abiding people to do. People are saying: “I don’t like this law. I won’t obey it.” We’ve got enough criminals in this country as it is.

    And for what? In order to inoculate more people as quickly as possible. But while other countries are reported to be injecting more than a million people a day, our average in the last four days has been 387,005; and deaths are numerically negligible.

    His Honour Jonathan van der Werff
    London SW1

    SIR – Sue Hardy (Letters, June 17) wants restrictions in force until her two 20-somethings are vaccinated. But ONS data give the rate of death from the virus for those aged 20 to 24 as 0.002 per cent and 0.003 per cent for those aged 25 to 29.

    Young people are more at risk of dying from something else and most will not die at all. This is no reason for keeping everyone under restrictions.

    John Murray
    Guildford, Surrey

    SIR – To address shortages of Pfizer vaccine, under-40s could be given the option of AstraZeneca instead. The Government, however, apparently has contempt for the public’s ability to take responsibility for their own risk management.

    Dr Jim Provan
    Reader in Biological Science
    Aberystwyth University

    SIR – In Parliament, MPs wear masks while sitting but take them off when standing up to speak. In pubs, people wear masks when standing up
    but take them off when they sit down.

    Diana Kimpton
    Cowes, Isle of Wight

    Moving on

    SIR – I combined several “significant life events” (Letters, June 16) 26 years ago, when I left my job, got married and emigrated to South America. It was the best thing I ever did.

    My father was in the Navy, so I had moved continually while growing up.

    Fourteen more moves later, we are back and are about to wave off a second child to live abroad.

    Far from being detrimental, moving brings many benefits.

    Lucy Beney
    Charlton Horethorne, Somerset

    Bank accounts frozen

    SIR – Our HSBC account for a junior rugby club has been frozen for lack of activity (Letters, June 10). The lack of activity was purely due to Covid.

    We were informed by letter that we could prevent the freezing if we made a transaction. We phoned HSBC and were advised that if we viewed our bank statement online, it would count as one. We did this, and so were surprised to get a letter some days later saying our account had been frozen.

    Although we have spoken several times to HSBC (a nightmare, as it takes 40 minutes or more to get through), we must wait until July 5 before anyone deals with our complaint. At first it said this was due to statutory requirements. Another clerk said it was because they were too busy. We were told first that freezing the account was regulatory, then that it was for fraud protection.

    Now that the lads are playing rugby again, we need access to the account. There is no doubt that HSBC’s service has declined.

    Brian Clare
    Tonbridge, Kent

    Anonymous attacks

    SIR – The decision by the Royal Academy of Arts to remove the work of Jess de Wahls from their gift shop (report, June 18) because of an opinion she put forward in 2019 about gender politics is, as the campaign group Sex Matters correctly says, “egregious and blatant belief discrimination”.

    Surely we should know who is behind this attack, or are complaints of this nature to remain anonymous?

    The problem with such campaigns against institutions, which cave in without public debate, is that they will encourage more activists to set out to silence anyone who does not adhere exactly to their ideology, especially if they can hide their identity. We should be very afraid of where this might lead.

    Power without responsibility is the beginning of the end of too many freedoms, one of the most important being freedom of speech.

    Robert Fox
    London W6

    Channel migration

    SIR – As a former Director (Ports) of the then UK Immigration Service, I requested my MP to ask Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, to state the strategic purpose of deploying Border Force cutters in mid-Channel, where they are not preventing or deterring illegal migration, but instead being used as taxis to bring migrants to the UK.

    The response was that they are “trying their best”. Meantime, they are not being used for their purpose – preventing the smuggling of drugs and other prohibited goods.

    It’s time the Government put in place a programme that must include criticising the French – to whom the UK has paid millions for the purpose – for failing to tackle illegal migration. Every time a life is lost or a person seriously injured, this should be highlighted as in large part caused by French failures.

    Peter Higgins
    West Wickham, Kent

    Doggies in the window

    SIR – What do dogs do all day (Letters, June 18)? In our village, pet dogs, no matter their size, keep watch through the front window.

    Out on her walk, our dog knows exactly where to linger to get the biggest reaction from each watching dog. Then, satisfied, she sits at home, raging at any dog that dares walk past our house.

    And so the day passes.

    Tracy Sully
    Tarves, Aberdeenshire

    Drystone walls as works of art in the landscape

    SIR – I disagree with the notion that Natural England should tell us what is beautiful. To instruct us to think that the farmed landscape is not beautiful but scrubland and bogs are (report, June 15) is just another way of trying to rewrite history.

    Forms of farmed and even industrial land have evolved over centuries and can be more pleasing to the senses than patches of scrub. The fact that they were made by man should be admired and even mean they are considered works of art – more so than a pile of bricks or an unmade bed. A drystone wall is a work of art at many levels.

    I’m supportive of diversity in nature but this includes the works of man. A balance must be achieved, and we should not simply follow pressure groups that seem to see only negativity in our past and in the progress of mankind.

    Major Patrick Wallace (retd)
    Acharacle, Argyll

    Illegal and ubiquitous, e-scooters are a menace

    SIR – In Bristol, transport chiefs hailed the e-scooter trial (Letters, June 14) as a success as part of their aim to get people out of cars and on to other modes of transport, thus saving “vast amounts of carbon”.

    But in my area, I have yet to see a single person on an e-scooter who appears to be commuting or otherwise using it as an alternative to the car for an essential journey. They are mostly ridden for fun by young men, either singly or in groups of up to six. Their principal enjoyment seems to be taunting the traffic stuck behind them.

    Frequently they have a passenger. I saw one woman riding with a child behind her, clinging on fearfully.

    Avon and Somerset Constabulary described the pilot as a “policing non-event”, which sums up the amount of rule-enforcement taking place.

    Meanwhile, privately owned e-scooters, already a menace despite being illegal, look set to be legalised, with the further recommendation that users need not have a driving licence. Will those taking these decisions also take responsibility for the ensuing accidents and deaths?

    V Bremner
    Bristol

    SIR – Walking along a public clifftop path in Suffolk, we had to avoid a middle-aged couple riding e-scooters. Later we saw a teenager riding one through a small village.

    What is the point of making something illegal when it is freely sold and there is no chance of enforcement?

    Mike Penberth
    Soham, Cambridgeshire

    SIR – Kerry Attwell Thomas (Letters, June 14) says e-scooters are useful to overcome the major problem with public transport, which is the first and last mile. What is wrong with using your legs?

    Lt Col Dale Hemming-Tayler
    Edith Weston, Rutland

    2. Patrick Wallace – a manmade thing of beauty is a rivetted truss girder bridge supporting a railway.
      Truly magnificant, they are, small or large. There are some fine examples around the centre of Manchester, for example, and a nice wee one in Bridge Street, Aberdeen.
      I’ll get me anorak…

    3. Was intrigued by part of John Murray’s comment which stated ‘Young people are more at risk of dying from something else and most will not die at all’.

      Can I have some of whatever they are taking?

    4. Work starts now to show how it’s the Conservatives that can deliver on the people’s priorities”.

      What have they been doing until now?

      Good point Mr Wilton, but the answer’s obvious: bugger all. Everything that should have been done, hasn’t been.

  16. Roos Clark’s DT piece in full:

    ROSS CLARK
    We commit to beating Covid-19 everywhere and building back better for all,” began the 14,000 words of guff which made up last week’s G7 communique. Those last two words are a blatant lie. There is no ‘for all’ about the society that our leaders are building in the wake of Covid. Rather it is one in which the gap between the powerful and people over whom they wield their power is growing wider than it has been for decades.

    As I write, the government is in talks with Uefa and Fifa to exempt 2500 VIPs and officials from the need to quarantine when they travel to Britain for the final of the Euros on 11 July. Uefa has threatened to take the final away from London and hold it in Budapest instead unless it wins an exemption. Will the
    government resist the demands of football’s great and good in favour of maintaining the integrity of a traffic light system for overseas travel which it insists is essential to prevent the importation of new variants of Covid? Like hell it will. You can bet the Prime Minister’s desire to be up there in Wembley’s royal box on 11 July rubbing shoulders with other leaders will trump any fear of new variants and any intent to apply consistent rules.

    Meanwhile, for the rest of us, it gets harder and harder to go on a foreign holiday, to meet up with family and friends who live abroad, or even to travel for work. Ministers seem to take positive delight in being tough, snatching away at whim the few little travel corridors we had been allowed and forcing arrivals from an ever-increasing number of countries to isolate at airport hotels at horrendous cost.

    Elite football is being used as an opium for the masses – we might be forbidden from travelling ourselves but, hey, isn’t it great that all these megastars have flown in from all over the world to play on our turf, and that we can watch them on telly?

    But the Euros are just the beginning. Just wait until the elite of the climate change lobby rolls into Glasgow for COP26 in November. The government has firmly rebuffed any suggestion that the event be held online – which, never mind Covid, would surely have some logic given the whole purpose of the event is supposed to be to try to cut global carbon emissions. Just watch as those red list rules melt away and the private jets start descending, disgorging
    campaigners who will then spend the next few days discussing how best to stop the rest of us flying or engaging in other energy-hungry activities.

    Their personal emissions will have been ‘offset’, of course – exploiting a device which could not be better designed to show up the hubris of the climate establishment. This is what people are telling the world’s poor when they buy carbon offsets: I get to buy my way out of my sin while you get a solar panel to recharge your mobile phone or some trees planted on land which you might otherwise have liked to farm. It only works, of course, if the world’s poor are happy to accept modest living standards in perpetuity and never aspire to live in the way that the likes of Al Gore or Mark Carney do. But that is a detail which doesn’t seem to bother the climate great and good.

    This is the world that is emerging from the pandemic: one which a global elite lives by different rules, which thinks nothing of gathering on a Cornish beach for a barbecue while the rest of us risk £10,000 fines for doing the same; which spews out emissions with impunity while lecturing the rest of us on how we need to curtail our lifestyles – and which all the while parrots platitudes about creating a more equal world. Sorry, but it stinks.

    1. This is why there should be civil disobedience all over the country.

      It is utterly nonsensical that you are supposed to wear a mask going to the pub but can take it off once you are sitting down, nonsensical that the waiting staff are supposed to wear a mask when they are scurrying around serving people, nonsensical that only 6 people can sit together …

      I’m sorry but what the hell is wrong with people that they stick rigidly to these crazy rules when all the pictures from the G7 show THEM doing nothing of the sort!

      The contempt and loathing for this government and the Tory party that I feel is limitless. Amersham and Chesham – serves them right albeit for many different reasons

    3. Stinks is a polite term. It isn’t covid. This you and us attitude has been growing hugely over the last 30 years. This is why the state – as a whole – must be starved and brought to heel. It is servant, not master.

      By all means, treat the servant well, but when it disobeys and thinks it acceptable to steal from us, we beat it and kick it out.

  17. 334509+ up ticks,
    Digging Up Our Green and Pleasant Land: Being Political Wing of Building Industry May Cost Tories Dearly

    No it won’t, DOVER is proving that on a daily basis and the NEW electorate have to be housed in an agreeable manner otherwise it will bring into disrepute the governance party name, in this case tory (ino)
    the current member / voters have obviously taken that on board along with thousands on immigrants on the run from countries with a freedom status.

    The damage done via the lab/lib/con coalition to these Isles over the last three decades alone has been proven acceptable by the polling booth, stats.

  18. We Are All Sinners (In extremely bad taste)

    In a small town in the middle of Georgia, there was a preacher.

    Every Sunday, he preached his sermon from memory.

    One Sunday, he stood at the pulpit and realised that he’d completely forgotten his sermon! So he decided to improvise.

    He looked out at his congregation and said, “Today’s sermon will be about sin. But first, before I start, I want all the thieves and extortionists to move to the left. In the middle, I want all the whores, whoremongers and pimps. To the right, I want all the dopers, pushers and smugglers.”

    Everybody got up and moved to their respective spot. After they had all settled, one man was still standing. So, the preacher said, “Son, why haven’t you moved?”

    The man said, “Pastor you haven’t called my sin.”

    “What is your sin?” the preacher asked.

    The man said, “Pastor, I am sexually attracted to little boys.”

    “Then, my son,” said the preacher, “come on up here in the pulpit with me!“

  19. Johnson-Putin summit possible if Russia ends ‘malign activity’, defence secretary says. 19 June 2021.

    A summit between Boris Johnson and Vladimir Putin might be possible if Russia’s president ceases “malign activity” against the UK and its allies, the defence secretary has signalled.

    But the senior minister told Sky News that Western powers would judge Moscow on what it does next before any warming of ties, which have been brought to a post-Cold War low by Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the Salisbury spy poisonings.

    Here’s Wallace signalling his presence to Boris with another nonstarter. The President of Russia and the Prime Minister of the UK do not have “summits” and since the UK is responsible for the Salisbury calumny even less so one would imagine. Wallace is on the list for retirement at the next cabinet reshuffle so one can see his motives. One doubts that gambits like this will save him!

    https://news.sky.com/story/johnson-putin-summit-possible-if-russia-ends-malign-activity-defence-secretary-says-12335892

    1. Morning Minty..maybe they don’t realise that it was the US who called for the meeting with Russia.Not the other way round!

    1. Too many TLAs to be meaningful, I’m afraid.
      But when the Delta variant gives symptoms akin to hay fever or a cold, WTF is anyone fussing about? Next, you all will be locked down in a non-office environment because Mrs Featherstonehaugh got a paper cut last week filing the committee minutes! (Scissors are better, BTW).

    2. Too many TLAs to be meaningful, I’m afraid.
      But when the Delta variant gives symptoms akin to hay fever or a cold, WTF is anyone fussing about? Next, you all will be locked down in a non-office environment because Mrs Featherstonehaugh got a paper cut last wek filing the committee minutes! (Scissors are better, BTW).

  21. The utter insanity of the Left.

    Is it just me, or is the Left so dementedly insane that it believes it has a Right [no pun intended] to dictate how we should all think and speak? To be specific: the Left wish to deprive the Right of freedom of speech—their foot-soldiers are now entrenched everywhere—but, at the same time, they do their utmost to retain freedom of speech (and thought, and expression) for themselves and their type.

    Freedom of speech is an essential right of man; the USA even have it in their constitution. But for the Left, especially in this country, it is a concept only available to those with a certain viewpoint. If you are on the Left and hold certain (idiotic) opinions, they you may say whatever you wish at any time of your choosing. If, though, you are on the Right, you must keep your counsel and keep your gob firmly shut.

    When, for heaven’s sake, are the Right going to muster their forces and fight back (and win!) against this invasive and entrenched malignancy?

    1. 334509+ up ticks,
      Morning BC,
      Sad to say not ALL the time the lab/lib/con/greens coalition have the unopposed shout.

    2. Our weakness is that we are too rational – we can’t believe that the lunatics can take over the asylum.
      Every time some student nonsense is reported in the Mail, loads of comments say “they’ll grow out of it” when all the evidence is that they won’t.

      60s/70s – student riots, tearing down traditions – the PM & Chancellor from that generation are Blair the destroyer and Brown.

      80s – students wearing little pink triangles proclaiming “why assume I’m heterosexual?” and sleeping outside the South African embassy to protest apartheid. – the PMs from that era are Cameron (gay “marriage”) and Johnson (BLM, XR), ably backed by Gove.

      Today, we’ve got students wanting to censor all opinions they don’t like – I dread to think what will happen if we don’t get our act together now.

      Most people don’t understand that the destruction is bought and paid for from abroad, and is roughly organised. An organised side will always beat a disorganised one.

      Lastly an interesting book on this subject is “Immoderate Greatness – Why Civilisations Fail” by William Ophuls. We are just living at the wrong time. Interestingly, he thinks the collapse of our civilisation will be on a world scale, because it is a world civilisation. I’m not so sure – I think some parts will collapse into tyranny more heavily than others.

      1. Sadly, England in particular has not been seriously invaded or occupied for nearly 1,000 years. We have become complaisant, lethargic and totally lost the ability to understand how fragile is the notion of freedom.

        1. The Elizabethans understood it. I think even people in 1940 understood it.
          What has changed since then? Free healthcare, free money…

    3. Morning Barney. Most of the “Right” i.e, Parliament and the Cabinet are fellow travellers if not actual supporters of these people. They are all united in their disdain of the White Working Class and will be quite happy to see them go. The end of Democracy. Mass Immigration. The loss of Free speech are all worthwhile sacrifices if they can bring this about!

    4. We defeated the Left in 1945. It is comical that it is our very decency and tolerance that allows these insane nutters to speak – and they use that to destroy those very freedoms.

      There will be a war soon, and the Left will wear their arm bands and march in lock step and I often wonder if the government will fight back or if they will all need removing and replacing with an actual government, then we will crush the petty scum – seriously, can you imagine some trans dolt presenting any threat in real life? Or if those green fanatics were faced with someone who *will* deck them? Oh they’re nasty and violent and have infiltrated our institutions but that won’t last when they actually attempt their demented coup.

  25. Exclusive: Stop using terms ‘boy’ and ‘girl’, Stonewall tells teachers
    Use the word ‘learner’ instead, says controversial LGBT charity as it urges schools to ditch all gendered language and gendered uniforms
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/18/exclusive-stop-using-terms-boy-girl-stonewall-tells-teachers/

    Teachers should drop the terms boys and girls in favour of “learners”, and mix up the sexes in PE classes, Stonewall has told schools.

    The controversial LGBT charity is urging teachers to ditch all gendered language and gendered uniforms and suggests that children should compete against the opposite sex in sport.

    A series of guidance documents state that uniform policies should “give the option to wear a skirt as well as the option to wear trousers”. One of Stonewall’s guides said that its work in primary schools was funded by the Government Equalities Office.

    Stonewall advises school staff that they should: “Avoid dividing learners by gender, whether in the classroom (you could divide them by their favourite colour, month of birth or something else) or through uniform, sports activities or other aspects of school life.”

    Trans pupils can use the lavatories, changing rooms and dorms on school trips that they feel most comfortable in, another booklet states.

    To be a member of the Stonewall School & College Champion schools, establishments have to pay a yearly fee, starting at £150 plus VAT for those with less than 100 pupils, and rising to £800 plus VAT for those with more than 2,000 learners.

    St Paul’s, the prestigious private school in London, is reportedly among the hundreds of primary and secondary schools that are members.

    Champions are then able to apply for a Bronze, Silver or Gold award to show how well they are following the “best practice”.

    Those wishing to win are directed to a guide which tells them that “it is unnecessary to say ‘boys and girls’ when referring to learners of all genders, you could instead say ‘learners'”.

    They are told that they should check their policies and remove any “unnecessarily gendered language. Instead of using ‘he’/‘she’, you could use ‘they'”.

    They should also teach primary school children to use “they/them” as a pronoun, it is said.

    Tanya Carter, a spokesman for the parents and teachers campaign group Safe Schools Alliance UK, said “It is shocking that cash-strapped schools are paying for misinformation from Stonewall that undermines basic safeguarding.”

    She said that sport should be “separated by sex for reasons of safety and fairness”, particularly in light of a recent Ofsted report that found sexual harassment was prevalent in schools.

    “Single sex sports are important to girls for reasons of privacy and dignity. This is necessary to increase girls’ participation,” Ms Carter said. “Girls’ participation in sports is essential to both physical and mental health.”

    It is unclear what process schools go through to get an award, but an investigation by The Telegraph recently revealed the lengthy process that public bodies and companies go through to be recognised on the charity’s equality leaderboard.

    The resources are also used by councils for Stonewall’s Children and Young People’s Services Programme. Local authorities across England, Scotland and Wales compete for a separate awards scheme requiring ‘best practice’ in their child provision.

    Stonewall’s advice to educators also includes that teachers should not use ‘boy, girl, boy, girl’ when lining pupils up and ditch phrases such as ‘man up’ and ‘don’t be such a girl’.

    Gendered language should also be avoided when discussing hair, make-up and piercings, it says.

    A Stonewall terminology exercise for children tests them on “transitioning” and “gender dysphoria”, a medical term for feeling a mismatch between birth sex and lived gender.

    A spokesman for the charity said it was “very proud of all of our work supporting schools to create supportive and inclusive environments which help everyone feel accepted for who they are”.

    They added that they are “confident that the advice that we give schools is robust” and “in line with the Department for Education’s guidance for schools in England, and the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s Equality Act Code of Practice”.

    A government Equalities Office spokesperson said: “Six organisations were awarded funding to deliver programmes tackling anti-homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying in schools across the country. The funding was a one-off payment for 2019-20.”

    This organisation is evil.

    2. Any school that was a member of stonewall should prepare to close as the withdrawing of many boys and girls will leave them unviable.

    3. Stonewall has a very profitable racket leaching off taxpayers. They will fight like cornered rats to keep the gravy train running.
      Nobody should send their child to a school that belongs to the Stonewall network!

    4. You know, I can’t be arsed to read drivel like this – why does anyone ever pay these tw@ts any attention at all?

    6. The Devil is hard at work in this magnificent country of ours .

      Evil people , “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

    8. Stonewall is given money by the government. This must stop.

      In addition, any and all of it’s nonsense must forever be refused. It infiltrates the ruddy scouts, for goodness sake.

      Having to ask why Junior is playing with girls toys is insulting.

    2. That this was built shows how absurd and back to front the world is. The criminal lauded, the public servant enforcing the law arrested.

  30. Good morning all. a dull Derbyshire at 10°C this morning.

    I picked up a book from the outside shelves of bookshop down the road some time ago and have begun reading in. Entitled “Self Help” by a Samuel Smiles, I was amazed at the (not so) common sense within it’s pages and looking it up found it was one of the influential books of the Victorian era.
    Many of it’s lessons could be applied today.

  33. Football Results . . . .[Kneeling Competition ]

    ENGLAND -0
    BLACK LIVES MATTER – 1

  34. Good morning, my friends

    A BTL comment I saw under one of today’s articles about the England Football team’s woeful performance:

    The sooner England is out of the competition the better.

    Unlike the NZ Haka which psyches the All Blacks up, kneeling before a match is a gesture of guilt and abasement which puts a team at great psychological disadvantage before the game even begins.

    The woke England cricketers have just suffered a humiliating defeat and for the first time in over 40 years the kneeling England Rugby team lost to Wales, Ireland and Scotland – all three in the same competition.

    Politics and sport do not mix well and Woke Politics is a total disaster.

    As I understand the rules (and I may be wrong) – there is still a chance that England can be eliminated without getting through to the next stage if the team loses heavily enough in the final match and the other result goes the right way. Their kneeling is a symbol for their being executed by a sword an not being knighted.

    1. And that’s before you even add in the psychological effect of being booed by their own supporters.

      1. And the fact that the stultifyingly boring Southgate will remain in post no matter what happens! Inspiring, no?

        2. Good morning, Sue.

          Let’s not lose sight of the unassailable fact that Southgate is simply the latest England team manager/coach installed by the not-fit-for-purpose FA. Members of the FA come and go but they are all eminently clubbable chaps who are selected to reign over the continuing misfortunes of the English national team.

          The FA have always been against entertainment and winning. This is why they never chose free spirit managers to lead the national team. Characters like Brian Clough, Jackie Charlton and others with a mind of their own (i.e. a winning mentality) were always though of as “not FA types”. Instead a lamentable procession of good ol’ (useless) boys such as Don Revie, Ron Greenwood, Graham Taylor, Howard Wilkinson, Peter Taylor, Sven-Göran Eriksson, Steve McClaren, Roy Hodgson and Sam Allardyce have been the “safe” bets.

          The only ones worth their salt were Bobby Robson, Terry Venables and, perhaps, Glenn Hoddle. Venables and Hoddle, however, were summarily despatched due to non-footballing reasons that the FA thought brought them into ‘disrepute’. An ‘errant’ manager being beyond the pale.

          This is also the reason why exceptional individual talents such as: Tony Currie, Alan Hudson, Stan Bowles, Rodney Marsh, Frank Worthington, and Matthew le Tissier (among others) were not selected since the FA though that, despite them all having a determined winning mindset, they were not ‘team players’. For this very same reason I fear for the longevity of Jack Grealish as an England player.

          It also has to be said that England only won the World Cup in 1966 since it was played on home soil, and an exceptional run of good fortune (Hurst’s second goal!) saw them win it.

          Every time a new tournament comes around, the over-excitable contingent in the British sports’ press tell us that we are in a ‘golden age’ in England and that this time will be the best opportunity of winning it for their wonderfully talented team led by their exceptional manager. The truth is that they are never anywhere close to being the ‘best team in the tournament’ — far from it — and that if they can’t summon up the ingenuity to beat Scotland’s seven-man defence, then what hope would they have of beating France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Holland, Sweden, Czechia, Italy …?

          Somewhere between slim and none .. hedging towards the none.

          1. FA’s still stuck in the memories of the long gone Empire but remember enough to ensure the system’s protected no matter what. As you pointed out, those worth their salt and talented individuals is strictly against the grain, as the FA know the old system would collapse and the members would be redundant and irrelevant. They don’t want that boat rocked hence as you say, the ongoing procession of useless “yes men” to protect their sinecure and perceived elite prestige

        3. They’ve painted themselves into a corner with the whole kneeling issue, where they appear unwilling to back down an inch over anything, and Southgate has identified himself with that issue!

      2. Wembley had to play very loud music over the PA system during the knee-bending to cover up the sound of booing.

      3. The supporters who booed were not afraid of geese and each goose in the England team was affected.

        1. Helpful hint.
          When we had geese, I found the best tactic was to look them in eye and tell them to ‘Bu88er off’.

    1. We all know what Biden will do. He’ll agree with the Chinese and likely send the bloke back.

  37. The deluded bumps gums again https://twitter.com/i/status/1405811823308427265 just had skype chat with my young nephew who’s been told he’s now eligible for jabs. I gave him all [via P mail] the real deal, Post ongoing pressure from my younger bro, and going through the real scam, his response, to me was, to put it bluntly https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/480701c0e0b12c88ca6ee3774bc8208ea19546a5d7950dcd0c8f5c56fd90e41b.gif now for the end game tuning in younger bro and read his fortune

    1. “The end is in sight”? Really, BPAPM? You said that a year ago – “One last heave”…

      Lying bastard.

      1. Am waiting for the long and way overdue horroscope reading, and younger bro knows it’ll be full on. Then again, that’s what uncles are for in relation to nephews

  38. If there is to be a revitalised Conservative Party – rather the pinko Libturds at present at the wheel – they need to stop leaping on band-wagons created by tiny minorities of tiny minorities.

    Scrap Hatch Esse Too-much; scrap the ban on fossil fuel vehicles; stop worshipping the NHS and create a REAL health system. Take on the slammers. Stop the illegal economic traffic….

    Grrr. (It is drizzling – so I share the cats irritation).

    1. Then beat them about the head with a newspaper. Keep beating them until the ink runs from blood.

  44. XR [and maybe Buy Large Mansions] book of tactics for confronting next weekend’s Protest Freedom march https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/732d66283968f5d52d90bc7c70f29334e77a27ddecbfbe8a75849eac0ff60bb4.jpg and a montage of recurring pests https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a2fbecbe348e87146d2a8b26537198ba78097d212b599905a17a2079c0e9a11d.jpg logging off, time for younger bro’s real life MOT. Thanks to all for sharing / posting, enjoy the rest of the day

    1. The MR instructs me to post her suggested title:

      “Five Realise That They Have Been Four All Along And So Take Up Competitive Bridge”

      (Not bad for a girl!!)

  45. I have quite enjoyed some of the discussions on GBNews which presents both views with which I agree and views with which I disagree.
    However I shall reserve my judgement until Andrew Neil’s channel has presented an alternative view to the the prescribed and compulsory orthodoxy on carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and climate change and has challenged the view that the science is settled.
    Any Nottlers agree?

    1. Anyone using the terms “The Science is Settled” or “Following the Science” with respect to the Wuhan Virus or “Global Warming/Climate Change/Climate EMERGENCY/{Insert latest fad here} are using them to give a false impression when, in actual fact, they are really following Scientific Opinions specially selected to support their own ideas & policies, with the counter opinions of any other scientists, including specialists in the particular field, ignored.

    2. A chap who designs satellites for, well, just about anything, a proper rocket scientist boffin type explodes when he hears that statement. He doesn’t believe in gravity, space, stars or climate change. What he does do is look at the information and data gather in both view points. Belief is for religions. Science never believes. It only ever questions.

    3. Was the Theory of Gravity settled by Newton’s work? No, as more and better observational data became available problems with Mercury’s orbit couldn’t be explained by Newton’s work. It took Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity to explain the anomaly with Mercury. Is that the end of the matter? Who can say? Real science evolves as the quantity and quality of evidence improves.

  46. Conspiracy theorists convinced PUTIN is camera-holding tourist in 1988 pic of Reagan meeting boy in Moscow. 19 June 2021.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8df1430ce658f06bdea50e82161333fef6ef355542c898d48d9b56c2d8760578.jpg

    In the 1988 photo, people speculate that a young Vladimir Putin is on the far left with the camera.

    I don’t know which Conspiracy Theorists these might be but Putin was 36 years old at the time of this photograph and based in East Germany.

    https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/worldnews/15317263/was-putin-in-1988-pete-souza-pic/

  48. Ibrahim Raisi has romped home in the Iranian Presidential election.
    If the US were stalling the JCPOA talks in the hope of a moderate they will be sadly disappointed.
    This guy is a hard-liner.

    1. 334509+ up ticks,
      Morning P,
      That is NOT achievable whilst a huge majority are supporting / voting for the lab/lib/con/green coalition.
      That is so glaringly obvious via the history of this coalition over the last three decades.

  50. Will Boris Johnson be one of the great prime ministers? 19 June 2021.

    Boris Johnson may have been unable to work his magic on the burghers of Chesham as he did on fellow G7 leaders last weekend at Carbis Bay. But as he approaches his second anniversary in power next month, it is worth asking whether he is on track to become one of the landmark prime ministers in British history.

    Most across the political spectrum deem it risible that a man so lacking in qualities and character could possibly be considered a landmark PM. Last month his former chief advisor, Dominic Cummings, who knows him better than most, dismissed him as ‘unfit for office’, while a widely-read profile, by Tom McTague in the Atlantic magazine, portrayed him as a hapless optimist, gaily spinning plates and yarns, but not spinning the durable yarn of a serious statesman.

    Since Johnson became prime minister in July 2019, the predominant narrative has been his gadfly mind, cavalier attention to detail, lies and half-truths, infidelity and indiscretions, inability to inspire trust or to think ahead beyond his next gaffe or frivolity.

    So that would be a no then? I have always suspected that when Boris finishes those Covid Pressers that he races upstairs to play on his Xbox!

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/will-boris-johnson-be-one-of-the-great-prime-ministers-

    1. 334509+ up ticks,
      Morning AS,
      I believe he leaves that to the green, pillow whispering squeez.

    2. A ‘landmark’ prime minister – yes.
      Great? His time is running out; I suspect a double whammy of Covid and Carrie Antoinette have drained him.

    3. You’re being too hard on him.
      I think BoJo and Sleepy Joe make a great team.

      1. The perfect candidates for Celebrity Mastermind

        Ms Abbotopotamus

        Double Lammy

        Boros

        Biden

        The question person could be one of the New Wave, Woke, Ali snackbar “comedians”

    2. Biddenden Gribble Bridge Rosé Sounds like an early morning activity statement about ‘you-know-who’.

  52. “In 1631 Barbary pirates raided Baltimore village in Ireland, taking 107 people, mostly women, into slavery in north Africa. Two women returned, after ransom was paid, the rest serving on galley ships and in harems. Thomas Davis’s The Sack of Baltimore describes the attack.”

    Where are the protesters?

    1. Come on, you know very well that truth and balance don’t interest them. They are motivated by a combination of hate, self-loathing, ignorant virtue-signalling attention-seeking and chips on their shoulders. Who of them cares that Africans enslaved more whites than the reverse?

    2. SHEEP
      —–By W.H. DAVIES

      When I was once in Baltimore
      A man came up to me and cried,
      ‘Come,I have eighteen hundred sheep,
      And we will sail on Tuesday’s tide’,

      ‘If you will sail with me, young man,
      I’ll pay you fifty shillings down;
      These eighteen hundred sheep I take
      From Baltimore to Glasgow.’

      He paid me fifty shillings down,
      I sailed with eighteen hundred sheep:
      We soon had cleared the harbour’s mouth,
      We soon were in the salt sea deep.

      The first night we were out at sea
      Those sheep were quiet in their mind,
      The second night they cried with fear—-
      They smelt no pastures in the wind.

      They sniffed, poor things, for green fields,
      They cried so loud I could not sleep:
      For fifty thousand shillings down
      I would not sail again with sheep.

    3. Er … to be sure … they’re still in a tent outside Tobruk cooking an Oirish stew tagine!

  53. Phew! That’s the day’s heavy work done.
    8′ of concrete laid for the wall I started last year. 3 x 16 shovel mixes into the Bellemix.
    Now I need a couple or three of bags of cement and another load of concrete blocks to extend the wall and then it’s dig the trench for the last bit of concrete to be laid.

      1. So long as it’s put ON the border and not 50odd miles south like most people seem to be suggesting.

  54. The Daily Human Stupidity.

    “I have defined the hundred per cent American as ninety-nine per cent an idiot.”

    George Bernard Shaw.

    1. “Good morning Liberal children –
      which window shall we open today?”

  62. Afternoon all, I was right when i told my mate yesterday “we might get some rain later” ! As he and his wife squelched their way around the Hatfield House craft fair. I haven’t heard from him since i hope he had a life jacket with him.

    A few home truths here as well

    Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber.
    Plato, ancient Greek Philosopher

    Politicians are the same all over.
    They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river.
    ~Nikita Khrushchev, Russian Soviet politician

    When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President; I’m beginning to believe it
    ~Quoted in ‘Clarence Darrow for the Defence’ by Irving Stone.

    Politicians are people who, when they see light at the end of the tunnel, go out and buy some more tunnel.
    ~John Quinton, American actor/writer

    Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich, by promising to protect each from the other.
    ~Oscar Ameringer, “the Mark Twain of American Socialism.”

    I offered my opponents a deal: “if they stop telling lies about me, I will stop telling the truth about them”.
    ~Adlai Stevenson, campaign speech, 1952..

    A politician is a fellow who will lay down your life for his country.
    ~Texas Guinan. 19th century American businessman

    I have come to the conclusion that politics is too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.
    ~Charles de Gaulle, French general & politician

    Instead of giving a politician the keys to the city, it might be better to change the locks.
    ~ Doug Larson (English middle-distance runner who won gold medals at the 1924 Olympic Games

    I am reminded of a joke: What happens if a politician drowns in a river? That is pollution.

    What happens if all of them drown? That is solution!!!
    I have come to the conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two are lawyers and three or more are the government.
    ~John Adams (1735 – 1826)

    Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Government.
    But then I repeat myself.
    Mark Twain (1835- 1910)

    I don’t make jokes. I just watch the Government and report the facts!
    ~ Will Rogers (1879- 1935)

    I contend that for a nation to try and tax itself into prosperity, is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.
    ~ Winston Churchill (1874 – 1965)

    A Government which robs Peter to pay Paul, can always depend on the support of Paul!
    ~ Will Rogers (1879- 1935)

    The problem we face today is because the people that work for a living are outnumbered by those who vote for a living.
    ~ George Bernard Shaw (1856- 1950)

    I don’t like political jokes, but a lot of them get elected!

    ————————————
    And finally as we all saw lots on men in skirts dancing in the streets of London yesterday and still no dancing allowed at a wedding.
    And as i predicted our kneeling nancy boy footballers could muster the verve to score a goal. I expect they have been told the possession is considered 9 tenths of the law, but it doesn’t score goals boys.

    1. I was oop narth in county Durham staying with my nephew who lives on disused but now residential farm land, a lovey spot. Out walking back from the Pub I alone decided to cross a stone wall and walk through a field of cows except one wasn’t a cow, it gave chase but being more athletic 20 years ago I dived head long over one of the adjoining walls. No harm done, I did received a round of applause but it was drowned out by all the laughter. And they were right, they told me so.

          1. When I was a young man, I nadgered my splod, As I nurked at the wogglers’ trade. Then suddenly I thought While trussing up my groats,I’d whirdle with a fair young maid.

          3. When I was a young man, I nadgered my splod, As I nurked at the wogglers’ trade. Then suddenly I thought While trussing up my groats,I’d whirdle with a fair young maid.

  66. UK and NATO disappointed by Russia’s Open Skies decision, Raab says. 19 June 2021

    British foreign minister Dominic Raab said on Friday the United Kingdom and its NATO allies were disappointed by Russia’s decision to leave the Open Skies arms control treaty.

    What is this? Say something stupid about Russia week? Donald Trump pulled out of the Open Skies Treaty (It allowed for photo reconnaisance flights over each others territories to confirm that Strategic Arms decisions are adhered to) Russia only reluctantly withdrew. This said it is no great loss. Satellite surveillance has improved immeasurably since it was first agreed and will replace it without difficulty.

    https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-nato-disappointed-by-russias-open-skies-decision-raab-says-2021-06-18/

    1. Trump pulled out in the knowledge that other NATO countries could still collate the info. and pass it on to the US.
      Yep..they really are that dumb!!

    1. I can’t down vote you as that’s just odd, but….no, thank you. Quite happy with the pleasant 20’c inside with a bit of rain and a light breeze outside.

    2. After about a week of sitting out side in shady places, bare feet shorts and Tee shirts i’m wearing a sweater, trousers and socks again. I have never seen rain like yesterdays, for hours it was bouncing 6 inches high off the roads.
      My sweet smelling climbing rose was absolutely battered and most of the petals are now on the ground.

      1. I put the heating on for half an hour yesterday evening to drive out the damp chill.

      2. It’s a grey day here, after yesterday’s rain – but we didn’t have quite such a downpour as you did.

        1. A Roasted plum 😉😍
          I’m just about to take our dog out in jeans wellies and a hooded jacket. (that’s only the dog) I expect the river will have burst its banks.

        2. Over here, there’s a government drive for skin cancer awareness. Yer average Weegie loves the sun, then burns up and gets føflekker (dark patches).
          So, suntan can be to die with.

      4. It was like that here, i think you are not very far from us. Oop north allegedly it was not too bad.

    3. Oh, yes? 16 here, drizzly rain, plenty midges. Fooey.
      Spent the morning assembling a brush cutter, but too wet this afternoon to want to use it. Another half-day with nothing useful done.

    4. Some years ago, each summer, we’d have “tropical nights” when the temperature never fell below 25C. I remember sleeping in the garden, ‘cos it was cooler. Now we have global warming, it’s bleedin’ freezing half the time. Haven’t had a “tropenatt” for some years now, and I seem to wear a cardie most of the summer.

  69. New Government approved building regs will require new dwellings to pass an air tightness test.

    Whilst this is good news for stopping viruses getting indoors it is not so good when the Government imposes an open window policy to let the pathogens out.

    It also spells the death knell for multiple glazed windows with trickle vents that will now become redundant.

    Following a public consultation on its Future Homes Standard (proposed changes to both Parts L (energy) and F (ventilation) of existing building regulations), the Ministry of Housing confirmed that:

    All new dwellings should have an air tightness test (effectively removing the existing sampling approach)

    Pulse technology, under Part L1a, is an accepted alternative method of air tightness testing, including for use in very air tight dwellings.

    https://www.theconstructionindex.co.uk/news/view/pulse-air-tightness-test-approved-for-use

      1. I am convinced that the rise in the number of asthma cases is due to the increasing draught-proofing of houses and lack of open fires. The air isn’t being changed.

        1. I also think the rise in allergies generally is due to people keeping their home anti-bacterially clean. A bit of dirt is healthy for the immune system.

    3. Sounds horrible, frankly.
      I live in a house that was constructed in a traditional way in the 1920s. The kitchen ceiling is just wooden slats nailed onto the beams of the floor above. There are small air gaps round the edge. The air passes from the kitchen up into the upper floor, part of which is a luggage space that goes to the roof, where the air escapes out ( I have installed insect netting, but did not stop the air flow).
      There is also a woodstove, which sucks air in via the badly fitting door and up the chimney.
      It does get a bit parky in winter when you’re not near the chimney, but it’s very airy and healthy.
      Having an airtight house would be bleughhh.

      Clearly an airtight house will not permit the construction of a chimney, so I assume this is another assualt on burning wood.

      1. It does sound horrible. The old part of our house has no roofing felt, just old slates, and on the odd occasion I have been up there (we have high ceilings) it is a delight to feel the house breathe as the slates lift gently according to the breeze.

      3. You certainly couldn’t install a gas aga.
        New ones need an air brick large enough to supply enough air to avoid incomplete combustion and the formation of poisonous gases!

    5. Lurching firs tone way then the other, unthinking.

      Government are morons. The administration more so.

  70. That’s another job jobbed.
    A stack of old railway mags dropped off at the Ecclesbourne Valley Railway’s shop.

  71. Here is a BTL comment by a chap called Joss Wynne Evans under a DT article:

    Reminds me of the story of the clitoris-licking frog. The lady saw a notice in the window of the local pet-shop advertising this for sale, and by the time she had distractedly collected her shopping from Tescos and was walking back home she summoned the courage to go into the shop and, going up to the counter, said ” I’ve come to ask about the frog.” The assistant smiled, “Bonjour, madame.”

  72. Hamlet is bisexual and having an affair with Rosencrantz, says Sir Ian McKellen D Telegaff:

    Raving woofter dreams of LGBT love affair in Danish bacon factory.

    Wetter than Wetwang, more Woke than Woking, more fun than Loose Bottom and Nether Wallop town twinning. Masks obligatory!

    1. Sir Ian McKellen………….he’s old enough to have been in the original. 🤩

    2. That’s a complete load of bollocks!

      As everyone knows, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead!

      2. Yes, died of AIDS – wouldn’t stop the likes of McKellen having an affair with either or both of them.

  73. The new far-Left revolutionaries want to extinguish free expression itself. Janet Daley19 June 2021.

    What kind of utopian society is this resurgent anti-capitalist lobby demanding? Or is this just anarchic trouble-making for the fun of it? It is, of course, utterly pernicious: an inverted parody of McCarthyism in which to be accused of holding, or being associated with, a forbidden opinion must be punished by ruin and internal exile.

    Perhaps this is the most sinister part: this is not just a campaign to suppress economic freedom. It is a demand that disagreement and debate itself be prohibited. But the whole progress of Western history has revolved around huge, mind-broadening philosophical arguments: Plato versus Aristotle, the Catholic Church versus the Protestant Reformation, democracy versus aristocratic rule and yes – collectivism versus individualism. The West now seems prepared to give up on what is probably its greatest gift to the world: reasoned disagreement. The idea that some views are too “toxic” to be heard, let alone rebutted, is to extinguish the very thing that has made it possible for even people who don’t know what they are talking about to have a voice. That really ought to give the Twitter warriors pause for thought.

    Yippee! Janet has finally figured out that the West has gone Marxist and there is someone behind the scenes manipulating all this!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/19/new-far-left-revolutionaries-want-extinguish-free-expression/

    1. Marx wouldn’t have approved of cancel culture, nor the stifling of debate at all.

      He’d have hated the modern Left because they’d have set about shutting him up. Comically, Marx lived in a far morelibertarian time than we did – his lot didn’t demand the burning of books, for example.

      The modern Left are reverting to type: the same psychotic nutters who ran Nazi party.

      1. That rules out ALL the Government Ministers

        Even if you add their IQ’s together

      2. Immigration should be based on IQ levels only, under 110 – no entry to the UK

      1. They’ll certainly be using knives, that you can guarantee. I doubt they’ve any surgical competence though.

    4. Surely we already have a functioning immigration system. We just need to apply it.

      Creating a new one, that isn’t needed isn’t going to magically prevent the illegal gimmigrants.

      The only thing that will is, well, will. The will to pervent these criminals getting here and if they do, by whatever means, removing them. Immediately.

      1. What happened to the law that “If you can’t support yourself with a certain length of time – off you go? ” – -Certainly NOT being applied. Effectively coming here from France they are NOT fleeing war – so should NOT be claiming asylum. It is very clear the govt is all behind the flooding of this country bey a culture that hates us and has openly said all non-believers should be slaughtered.

  75. Perhaps this was posted yesterday….but I didn’t see it….so there

    Exposed: How Border Force tries to cover up missions to pick up migrants in the Channel under the watchful eye of French ships in our waters illegally
    Border Force’s Seeker carried 30 migrants to Dover in the Channel on Thursday
    French Navy ship Abeille Liberte which was illegally in English waters at the time
    Abeille Liberte left a French port evening before, prior to starting a night watch
    It may even have escorted the rubber dinghy on its route from France to England
    No messages were made between Seeker and Abeille Liberte, as is customary

    https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2021/06/18/22/44405695-9702259-image-a-38_1624052475939.jpg

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9702259/Exposed-Border-Force-tries-cover-missions-pick-migrants-Channel.html

    4. Should be renamed “Finder” as that’s all it seems to do, or maybe “importer”

    5. If PP wants to stop the traffickers as she claims – then she should seize the French boats – THAT won’t happen.

  76. After watching the appalling Wendyball match last night I sent a text to my brothers and nephews (in Cornwall, Dubai and Manchester):

    “Just wasted 90 precious minutes of my life watching a tedious bore-draw at Wembley between Rochdale and Cowden-f***ing-beath!”

    [I now send my apologies to the staff, players, board and supporters of Rochdale FC and Cowdenbeath FC since I know that both clubs would have provided a much higher standard of Wendyball.]

    1. Did you mention the people in ealing 😉

      I dozed off half way through the second half. As I said earlier if you are a kneeler you’re getting off on the wrong foot in any sport by being servile and obsequious, they have about 80% possession and achieved absolutely nothing.

    1. Yesterday – after going on about Covid – the track played included the words “If we’re ever going to survive – we gotta put a lid on it” – I can’t see the BBC being defunded by scrapping the licencs fee while they broadcast the govt propaganda for them. Rather convenient that a few days after Bojo’s message – suddenly the scientists are saying Third wave on its way – cases up by 3 trillion % in a day. . . . . Forget July 19th,I think – – and there are PLENTY more variants to dream up yet.

      2. July 19th is my birthday……and my wedding anniversary……… so I don’t forget it.

          2. We had a wonderful day! It’ll be 24 years this time. All planned and done in six weeks. We had the hottest day of the year – there was no wet weather plan for our garden reception party.

      2. I think she is subversive.

        How comes she can NoTTL and watch GB News – while – apparently – slaving (if you’ll forgive the word) at the BBC???

    3. I fancied taking a world cruise. When I’d had enough jump overboard….so long and thanks for all the fish!

      1. That’s a very sad thought, Plum.
        🙁
        Don’t do that – we need smart unwoke folk to “build back better”.

        2. It sure beats spending the rest of your ‘life’ in a nursing home at £1,000 per week for someone to wipe your @rse…

          1. In the Vale of Glamorgan, you’re looking at £800 a week or so.
            I’m fully up to speed with this stuff, trying to sort out my Mother.
            A good one during the week was the Social Services lady telling me she’d have to sell her house to pay for care at home… It took a moment to cotton on – and the SS lady was wrong!
            Sigh.

    1. Because they don’t want to look threatening.

      Now, were you to stand on the pavement and read from the Bible – the SPG would turn up, masked and armed.

    2. It’s easier for them to smooch with the ‘gay boys’ and lick the árses of the butch ones.

  80. Blerdy ell…Hungary have drawn with France.
    That’s twice in two days where the white(majority) men have got a result against the black(majority) men.

    1. Watched last ten minutes of the match. Great to see joyous people rubbing shoulders (no bollox social distancing) and no effing masks.

    1. “Officials ‘deeply saddened by the mistake that was made’ after Morgyn Arnold, 14, not included in Shoreline yearbook picture”.
      But it wasn’t a “mistake” – some asshole actively deleted her from the picture!

      1. The “mistake” was to allow her to attend the school – but they’d dare not admit that.

          1. She should move to Vancouver, their idiot school board have decided that all streaming should be cancelled, every kid gets the same teaching, no matter an individuals ability.
            In appreciation of an earlier ban on streaming in languages, the school board announced that students will be able to participate fulsomely!

            So much for equality of opportunity where every kid gets an equal opportunity to stretch themselves.

  83. For the Hungarian goal … ”
    Attila Fiola steals in to score in an epic smash and grab. “. I didn’t know the game was held in London …

    2. Lionel Shriver on GB News the other night got it right.

      Give the Scots their referendum and then, if they vote to leave the UK, watch them suffer as they fall apart without the English taxpayers’ money to support them.

      The Scots should be very careful in what they wish for as many people in England would be happy to see them go if that is what they want.

    3. How dare she try to stop the free movement of citizens in the United Kingdom. Who does she think she is, God?

      1. Judging by the hordes that descended on London, it will make not a blind bit of difference.

        Were I to be living in Scotlandshire, and wished to visit my slammer cousin in Manchester – I could not do so. However, I could travel to Leeds with Mrs Murrell’s blessing – then get a train or bus to Manchester, in time for Friday bomb practice prayers.

        Forgive me for being impertinent, but I don’t think that she has really thought this through….(sarc)

        1. Does she ever think at all? Knee jerk, spiteful and baleful reactions are all she can do! She is a wicked little witch!

          3. But there are MILLIONS of them, Sue – that is the problem for nice, middle-class, property owning, hard working, tax paying Scots.

          4. Talking of tartan-clad and saltire-painted people – there was a black bloke in full highland dress wearing a saltire mask at Ascot today. Strange how nobody who interviewed him (he was part of a syndicate) mentioned cultural appropriation.

    4. I remember when my brother first came to visit us in Ottawa. We took him to see a football game. Instead of home and away fan sections everyone just mixed people were not afraid to wear their team colours openly and talked to each other in a civil manner.

      1. Football in Britain is rooted in the club, the tribe, the belonging, the history. It’s more than just a sporting event…

    5. It bordered on tribalism. Even on the pitch.

      But I bet silly floppy Dickie kept out of the way in London.

  85. Whoosh!!
    Firstborn just gave me some shine to try.
    70%!
    Oof, that’s heavy. But good, when diluted with tonic!

    1. My father brought some shine home from some one in his office about 55 years ago, i can still taste it.
      I remember in 1966 after the long rail journey through Germany from Belgium to Prague sitting in the station bar and being introduced to some thing called mislavitska (spl) by some local chaps it took my breath away and we were supposed to quickly swallow a shot of soda water after the first shot, it was almost impossible. I don’t think any one brought a bottle home as people do after a holiday.

      1. Learned to drink vodka in Azerbaijan. Revision in St Petersburg.
        Never pour you own, pour for everyone else. A (small) tumblerful.
        The cap never goes back on the bottle.
        Knock it back in one go, after toasting friendship, co-operation, beautiful girls, the host….
        Immediately follow the slug of spirit with a tumblerful of mineral water, to take away the bruning and maintain the hydration.
        You can go on like that all night! 🙂

  86. Never mind the result..look at the size of the crowd!!!

    Chaotic scenes played out at the Puskas Arena in Budapest on Saturday, as home nation Hungary went 1-0 ahead in front of 61,000 roaring fans in a vital Group F clash against world champions France.

    1. “…look at the size of the crowd!”

      BBC reports WHO’s reaction: “Disgraceful. They’ll all be dead by the end of the month.”

      1. I remember September last year and full stadiums in Belarus.
        They played the whole season with no restrictions.
        The result was 2811 deaths in a population of 9.5 Millions.

          1. .03 percent is not going to do much to cut back the old age pension bill is it?

            What would the average life span be in Hungary – about 2,000?

  87. Wally is needed to patrol the Dover Straits

    Wally the walrus causes havoc on Scilly Isles popping rubber dinghies with his tusks

    The Islands’ celebrity guest has been causing a rumpus among local boat owners

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2021/06/19/TELEMMGLPICT000261817147_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqXNwUN2A5fwT5zpgvYaSayfnP1V3BWbIdnWUqNY6MLgo.jpeg?imwidth=960

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/19/wally-walrus-causes-havoc-scilly-isles-popping-rubber-dinghies/

    1. I was just about to post this and I had a cut and paste with the same picture all ready to go but you beat me to it. Well done!

      Priti Patel needs to get a team of trained walruses sorted out.

    2. I was just about to post this and I had a cut and paste with the same picture all ready to go but you beat me to it. Well done!

      Priti Patel needs to get a team of trained walruses sorted out.

    3. I would bet diamonds that that young walrus never refers to himself as ‘Wally’.

    1. The Hungary France result could see the Germans heading home if Portugal win this convincingly.
      The Hungarians would only need a draw.

      1. Go Portugal! Go!

        (Not that I am either Jingoistic or especially anti-German.)

        The best result was in the year when a team which had not even qualified for the competition won it. Because of the conflict in the Balkans Denmark was brought into the competition in 1992 to replace one of the Balkan sides and ended up as the European Football champions.

        1. Possibly, but as Germany have spanked Portugal it’s moot.

          One of those win lose times for my prejudices.
          Lose Germany wins.
          Win Ronaldo loses.

    2. Keep the commentary coming, it helped me avoid the England Scotland bore fest after I saw the comments.

      2. I only have terrestrial TV.

        Some irrelevant trivia for you:

        I remember last year you and I were discussing England spin bowlers and Dominic Bess’s name came up. His best friend at Blundell’s was Jack Maunder who is the Exeter scrum half and played for England for about 2 minutes in Argentina. Bill Thomas disapproves of Ben Youngs, who is the Leicester scrum half, because his MR taught him at Gresham’s and he was virtually illiterate. Our Christo was also at Gresham’s and was briefly in Bill’s MR’s English class. Christo got top grades in all his English exams but is no good at rugby.

        (I thought you would be fascinated by this)

        1. I do not disapprove of Youngs because he was illiterate.

          I disapprove of him because he was (is) a completely useless scrum-half. In his long career he must have kicked away possession more times than anyone on the planet.

        2. I disapprove of Ben Youngs too. Danny Care has been the stand-out scrum half all season for the past three seasons. Sam Simmons has been the stand-out English No 8 but the little Aussie coach is blind to facts.

          3. He thinks he’s Warren Gatland and selects short plank thugs who have nothing to offer other than crash bang wallop and kick and chase.
            The Welsh choices in that arena are better than those available to England and have a little more to offer in the passing department.

    1. “May I speak to Grandma now?”
      “Hi Gran, I think he’s accepted, don’t forget we agreed to split the tax-free allowance”.

    2. Equity release is a better idea grandad, i’ll sort it out for you on Monday.

  90. Why would any true conservative vote for this soft-Left bunch of eco-extremist, Tory statists?

    Chesham and Amersham is a lesson for the Conservatives in what happens when they take their voters for granted

    DOUGLAS MURRAY
    19 June 2021 • 5:00pm

    Why would anyone vote Liberal Democrat? It is a question I have often mulled, despite being guilty of it once myself. My excuse is that I did it when I knew nothing about politics and simply thought that the name sounded about right. I was, in other words, a walking demonstration of why we need to raise the voting age.

    But I digress. The principal reason that people vote Liberal Democrat is because the party is neither of the other national parties. Not being either the Conservatives or Labour gives the Lib Dems a quite enviable flexibility. It can out-flank Labour to the Left on some issues. It can outflank the Conservatives to the Right on certain others. It can change its domestic and foreign policies at any given moment. And it can run contrary policies simultaneously, often contrastingly at a local level and at a national level. On paper, being a Liberal Democrat looks like it could be a lovely life. Though as their miniscule showing in Parliament reminds us, life is not lived on paper.

    Still, last week’s striking Lib Dem by-election victory shows that there is life in the third-party protest vote yet. And while few people saw the Liberal Democrat victory coming in Chesham and Amersham, they should have done. Firstly, because when a government has a strong majority, by-election voters can treat themselves to a third-party vote that they know will resound while not causing the whole country to tilt red.

    But there are a deeper set of issues at play here as well. It is a reminder that the Conservatives cannot take its natural voter base for granted, any more than Labour can theirs. Many of those shire Tories are asking: where is the red-meat for the blue voter?

    Most of the emissions of this Government are indistinguishable from the sort of interventionist, soft-Leftism that voters could (if they wanted to) get almost anywhere else. Every time a Conservative minister tries to do something Conservative (witness Priti Patel on borders), she seems to get no support from colleagues. Yet waffle on about carbon neutrality or building back better in a more non-binary, feminist manner (as Boris Johnson did at the G7) and there seems no party push-back at all. It is as though if you cut to the heart of the modern conservative party, all you get is a sort of sludgy green.

    And of a very curious type. There is a lot to be said for looking after our planet. But there is something very strange about a shade of green that waffles on about saving the world while giving every impression of wanting to concrete over some of the most beautiful parts of it.

    To be fair to the Government, there is a rationale to its planning reforms. It is struggling to close the supply-and-demand problem in the housing market. The asset bubble has made housing impossible for most young people in our country, and building more homes is the Government’s best chance of addressing what is a terrible problem. But travel around the South-East of England and there is one thing you will see in particular. Building. Everywhere our market towns are spilling out, our villages are spilling over, and people fear that places which once had identities of their own are becoming part of one great, ugly, southern conurbation.

    Those who complain about this are dismissed as Nimbys. But they are not. They are people who wonder whether building cannot be done more sensitively, with a greater emphasis on providing the infrastructure to support the increased population. Some even wonder why we need to have net immigration of around 300,000 a year (pre-pandemic) to provide almost exactly the same number of new dwelling places each year.

    Much of the same sentiment pours from those who complain about HS2, a folly that cuts a swathe through Tory England and whose only discernible attraction is that it will allow people to get out of Birmingham faster.

    These issues might be addressed. The Government might find a better way of providing new homes. It might scrap HS2 and spend the money on transport schemes that Conservative supporters might actually want to use. But even then, what reason would the voters of Amersham and Chesham, or indeed any part of middle-class South-East England have to vote for the Tories with any great enthusiasm?

    Where exactly is the conservatism in this Government? Aside from the odd bit of culture war material thrown to voters like a tiddler fish to a performing seal, it is hard to find anything. Is it especially conservative to seriously consider plans to make people pay tens of thousands of pounds for a new environmentally-friendly boiler, or give up their car because they cannot afford electric? All while forcing people into one of the most expensive rail and underground networks anywhere in the world? This is a sort of conservatism that you have to be exceptionally well-off to afford. A sort of Soho Farmhouse conservatism. One which you might aspire to be able to afford, but hardly gives anyone a leg-up on the way to getting there.

    Or on tax and spending, where the Conservatives have broken with the Thatcherite view that it is taxpayer’s money they are spending in such enormous quantities. Why would traditional Conservatives bother to turn up to vote, when all they are being sold is a different shade of the Left-wing mantra that every problem in life can be solved with a bit more public spending?

    On issue after issue, even on lockdown, the Conservative Government has taken the most interventionist path at every turn. It has pushed for safety-ism when it should have been pushing for dynamism. It has ignored the fears of small business owners and prioritised a few larger industries which were already in a better position to weather the Covid storm. And through all of this it has engaged in levels of borrowing that Jeremy Corbyn would find fiscally imprudent.

    Will the small businesses who have been juddered into a stop-start, promises-dashed policy for the last year forgive the Conservatives for 2020-2021? Will the shires forgive a Tory party that talks about the importance of green while destroying ancient forests to build HS2? Perhaps. At the next election the Conservatives will be able to threaten those same shires with the fact that matters would be worse under Labour. And they may well be right. But that is not a message of invitation. It is simply a threat.

    In such a situation the voters of Chesham and Amersham may be said to have spoken for much of England. Faced with two parties that take their voters for granted they lent their vote to a party which is grateful for any vote it can get and will say anything at all to get them. The people of Chesham and Amersham have used the Lib Dems as a useful tool. We shall see whether or not it cuts.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/19/would-true-conservative-vote-soft-left-bunch-eco-extremist-tory

    1. I was delighted by the result. Not because a useless Limp Dumb won – but because it gave BPAPM and his tyrannical gang a great big kick in the teeth.

      My fear is that they ignore the underlying threat which Mr Murray so clearly describes and dismiss it as a “one-off”, “typical mid-term protest”, “just a local issue”.

      The next by-election in a few weeks will be very interesting.

        1. The House of Commons – and those of us who wish for decent political debate – could do worse.

      2. I think the ‘government’ and their more dominant civil service are spending far too much time inventing and working on another massive pack of lies in the shape of reasons and excuses for all this shite they poured over everyone during the alleged ‘Pandemic’. After what we saw in London yesterday and the people traveling by rail and air into London for the Wendy ball, there’s bound to be a kiltie no score variant discovered by the end of the month.
        I am reliably informed that Tempers flared at the Hatfield Craft Fair when the local council ‘jobs worth’s’ descended on the whole set up and started throwing their over officious weight around on the invented issues of distancing and screening for the stall holders.
        And people still can’t dance with each other at a wedding but more than 1000 people were allowed to attend a muslim funeral. Not a copper in sight.

    2. The DT scribe cannot find it in himself to mention the other issue which leads onto greater housing demand in the UK, hordes of uninvited guests coming across from France in the dinghies.

      1. “Some even wonder why we need to have net immigration of around 300,000 a year (pre-pandemic) to provide almost exactly the same number of new dwelling places each year.”

    3. I did not buy my own house until I was 42 and it is in France rather than England. But both my boys own now have their own properties without having had help from their parents and they are in their mid-20s.

    4. 334509+ up ticks,
      Evening C,
      The application of more HOPE plasters on the lab/lib/con coalition political group is long past they do as a whole come across as enemas of the state & of decent peoples.

      The lab/lib/con really DO come across as graded sh!te there are many within the electorate that vote on that basis “the best of the worst” & ” the hold the nose brigade”

      They have alternately had the shout in governance &
      alternately over the last three decades came up as wreaking havoc, via treachery, neglection of mental health, mass importation of portental foreign criminals, mass paedophilic rape & abuse of children etc,etc.

      WHY are they STILL encouraged by being given carte blanche in the polling booth.

  91. Time for me to go and pour the MR a glass of medicine. We are having tortilla tonight – she has a fabulous recipe.

    A demain.

    1. I had some short dated chicken gudgeons at the start of the week, so on Monday I chucked them into a white sauce with a few other bits, including fresh mint & lemon balm from the garden and served them with pasta.

      I’ve just dished up the leftovers with rice. Quait naice!

      1. Stupid boy. A luscious, mouth-watering tortilla.

        Pizza?? You need to get out more!

          1. But it is the WAY they are mixed up. The MR’s way is infallible. Straight from a Spanish lady cook.

        1. Spanish tortilla and Mexican tortilla are quite different entities. Strange since Mexico has been populated by Spaniards ever since Cortez murdered off the Aztecs.

  92. Sent by Sonny Boy:

    https://capx.co/chesham-amersham-ignore-the-pundit-babble-and-focus-on-facts/

    “Chesham & Amersham: Ignore the ‘pundit babble’ and focus on facts

    Waking up yesterday morning in leafy Buckinghamshire I had 132 emails from residents and friends, and even more WhatsApp messages. I dared not check Facebook or Twitter. The Lib Dems had overturned a 16,000 majority and secured an 8,000-vote victory in true blue Buckinghamshire – how on earth had this happened?

    Naturally, Twitter is full of commentators pontificating. Lib Dems are crowing about their victory while still trying to make sense of it. But despite having no involvement in the campaign, it was Dominic Cummings who actually did the best job of explaining it with his plea to ignore the “pundit babble” and focus on facts.

    Well, here are the facts: we have excellent Conservative representatives working extremely hard for the constituency. I know because I have sat in countless meetings with them as a community representative. They are passionate about the area, fight for better funding and deal with impossible situations given to them by 10 Downing Street, not least High Speed 2.

    The fact none of these wonderful representatives were considered or picked as a candidate is your first fact. Instead we were “given” Peter Fleet. We never met him, he never attended any community meetings. Who was he? He claimed to be a local but had lived in Germany and Thailand for years. He knew nothing about High Speed 2. Then the penny dropped – despite knowing little about this enormous project, our candidate just wanted to ‘get HS2 done’. You could not have designed a worse message heading into a by-election like this.

    Just how big an issue Is HS2 in the constituency? For a project supported by the Conservatives in 2010, it didn’t seem to affect Dame Cheryl in 2015, 2017 or 2019. So why would it affect the constituency now and were there any warnings that CCHQ ought to have heeded?

    The reason Dame Cheryl hadn’t suffered from HS2 opposition is that she was herself among the doughtiest opponents of the line. She resigned as a minister to fight against HS2 and maintained her opposition to the end. She attended community meetings with HS2, including one just a few weeks before her untimely death. As the tributes after her death showed very clearly, she was loved by many and respected by most.

    By contrast, nobody knew Peter Fleet and he certainly wasn’t speaking our language. We had been fighting HS2 for almost 11 years, he wanted to get it done.

    Bear in mind too that until 2020, HS2 was a project on paper. Then, suddenly, construction started and much of the constituency was turned into a building site. HS2 Ltd continued the intransigent belligerent bullying we had all become so familiar with, but this time it wasn’t on paper, it was on our roads and in our woodlands and fields. Despite the huge controversy of the project, Andrew Stephenson, the minister in charge of HS2, did not even meet with our community representatives to discuss the situation. As for HS2 themselves, they didn`t care about impacts to our community, damage to the aquifer where we source our water nor impacts on our ancient woodlands, chalk streams and oak trees. Peter Fleet didn’t seem to care either.

    That brings us to our next important fact. Amersham Town Council had many excellent Conservative representatives who ignored HS2 until it was too late. The Local Anti-HS2 action group tried to get them to wake up to the local issues, they got involved too late and, lo and behold, the Lib Dems swept the Town Council.

    I had first-hand experience of all this as chairman of Hyde Heath Village Society, based in a sleepy Buckinghamshire village equidistant from Chesham and Amersham. I knew our wonderful Parish chairman was spending hours upon hours of his time helping exasperated local residents with the impact of High Speed 2. On the ground we knew it was a major issue and we knew local people were losing faith in the Conservative Party.

    By the time the top brass got wind of what was going on in it was far, far too late. A week before the election word got around that the party was in danger of losing one of its safest seats. You know things are getting desperate when little Hyde Heath gets a visit from both Michael Gove and George Eustice, then Rishi Sunak and Theresa May turn up in Chesham, followed by the PM himself.

    But we could already see people turning to the Lib Dems. Aside from their aggressive campaigning, Sarah Green was talking about holding HS2 to account. There are other issues, of course: local planning, protecting the green belt and cuts to public service cuts – but HS2 is a universal language in Buckinghamshire. If Peter Fleet’s campaign slogan had been “HS2, Where`s my Pitchfork?”, he would probably have won handily. Instead he followed the party line. That is your final and most telling fact about this by-election.

    We’re under no illusion that this emphatic defeat will do anything to change the Government’s mind on High Speed 2, regardless of the ridiculous and ever-increasing cost of the project.

    For all that Boris Johnson may want to build blue walls further north, there is an expensive blue high-speed line here in the south-east that we didn’t want and certainly don’t want to pay for. By all means send Buckinghamshire tax up north, but treat this election as a cautionary tale. There are 38 Conservatives constituencies affected by this project, construction will be starting in them soon and Ed Davey has just ordered some more orange bricks!”

    1. And throw in the collapse of the Labour Vote indicating that some of their supporters opted for a “Progressive Alliance” for good measure.

    2. The LibDems might be making the right noises over HS2 in Bucks. Here, in West Herts, the LibDems are building more and more and more flats, even tower blocks. Because they are already safely in, they don’t seem to bother about what people care about locally. “Oh it’s the Tory-led county council”.

      Sure. The Tories as local councillors would be even worse. And for Labour – forget it! What a dreadful state to be in.

      1. I think the limps are now in charge in Snorbens T. The dog a waste bins have all been removed and we have just had to pay to have our green garden waste removed fortnightly. I already compost most of ours.
        I understand also that a much loved local golf course is being lined up for development Aldwickbury Park GC. Another part of the green belt that is conveniently transposed into ‘brown field’ when its feasible and profitable.

        1. Do you pay council tax? If so, that covers bin collections. Ask the council why it is not performing a duty you pay it for and ask if they won’t provide a service despite taking the cash what options there are to not pay for council administration and pensions, as you don’t get anything from that either.

          1. Yes, and I know what you are saying, but this Limp who suggested the introduction of this charge is jumping on the band wagon of other local councils. If you don’t pay they wont take it away. Councillor Rowlands used covid as an excuse for the increase. We have some of the worse worn out and pot holed roads in the county but if you complain they refer complainants to the Hertfordshire count council. It seems they would rather some unfortunate person is badly injured or possibly dies before the take steps to make urgent repairs.

    3. Thanks, Anne. Very interesting. I await the “official” response from Stasi HQ.

    4. (I really AM going – I was just passing the PC on the way to the wine bottle).

      I suppose one answer would have been for the associates of the person who wrote this article to have proposed one of their “wonderful representatives” to stand as an Independent Conservative – for the established team to abandon the official candidate to his own devices, and work their socks off for the Indie Tory – who might – on what is said in the piece – have swept home. And that would have been an even bigger kick in the teeth for BPAPM etc.

      It may be the only route for proper Tories in the future that is coming going forward.

      1. Yeah, like I can see members of the CRG taking that route when restrictions get extended again in July. Not a hope in hell anything like that will happen by any of them over any issue.

        1. And there was me – uncharacteristically – trying to look on the bright side….{:¬((

          1. Looking on the bright side is an unintended consequence of too many or too few visits to the wine bottle.
            This comment is worthy of a politician, covers all angles but actually says nothing.
            I thank you and goodnight, you’ve been a wonderful audience.

  93. Good evening Nottlers!

    Do read this, from Frederica on Independence Daily. Grim, but the end is uplifting – KBO


    One often hears the term “I am in despair”. Usually uttered at a time of moderate to intense frustration when things are not going quite according to plan. I imagine that the word ‘despair’ has been used countless times over the last 16 months in reference to the varying levels of anger and frustration that people have been experiencing.

    So, having a great interest in semantics I decided to track down ‘despair’. A dictionary definition is: To give up; lose hope; total loss of hope

    My thesaurus offers: Hopelessness; dejection; depression; desperation; disheartenment; discouragement; despondency; defeatism; pessimism; resignedness; melancholy; misery; wretchedness; distress; anguish.

    That is quite a list, but it illustrates that real ‘despair’ is an extremely ‘low-mood’ level, not really a suitable word for mere ‘frustration’ and irritability caused by an inconvenience or petty annoyance .

    Over many months, I have been reading anecdotes of the experiences of people across the country (and probably from all walks of life and beliefs). I have become accustomed to hearing the truly awful levels of mental anguish that have been expressed by those who feel that life in the current political nightmare has become insupportable. Their feelings of anger, bewilderment and ‘despair’ have become a tsunami of grief across our Nation.

    Accounts of family division and disagreement have been rife. The causes of such division cover all aspects of this dreadful scourge of fear that has been visited upon us by the government. Fear of the consequences of an illness that has not much more severity than a very serious case of influenza. Many will have died an unpleasant death. But such is often the case with respiratory diseases just as it is quite usual for the extremely old and the very ill to be the first to succumb to such situations. Nature decides!

    Much of this division has been wholly engineered by government and their so-called ‘advisors’. The constant onslaught of psychological warfare has been deliberately waged in order to keep the whole population divided, imprisoned and fearful. ‘Divide and rule’ has definitely been governmental intent throughout this immeasurably devastating period in the history of this Country.

    The damage that has been done to the physical health and mental well being of the whole population is almost incalculable, not the least of which has been the insidious, creeping threat of governmental control over every aspect of our lives. Totalitarianism is a term that has often been used in respect of some far away land (most notably from behind the iron curtain in the days of the USSR). To find that such a situation has insinuated itself into Britain has been a body blow to those of us who have made every attempt to resist the ‘COVID Terror’. To find ourselves facing life under a system of ‘social credits’ is abhorrent. We are not animals. Animals are, largely, treated better than people in Britain and have more ‘rights’ it seems! Except in death, where the proposals for our futures seem little different.

    Those of us who realise what has been done in the land once called ‘Mother of the Free’ (in the song Land of Hope and Glory that many of us loved to hear and sing) have watched in horror and dismay the ‘acceptance’ and acquiescence of those who have been ‘indoctrinated’ through their State ‘Educashun’. An indoctrination that has left them without the historical knowledge or the common sense ability to question and enquire as to the actual truth of what is being said and done!

    The feelings of isolation and desolation (ie solitary misery, wretchedness) that some poor souls have endured during their solitary confinement during the last 6 months of government-inflicted ‘terror’ can only be guessed. The elderly, often living alone or confined in ‘Care Homes’, segregated from their loved ones, unable to touch their hands or see their faces, must have felt themselves without hope or encouragement. Abandoned as they have been by a government that purports to ‘care’ but has now thrown them to the wolves, and then to endure the accusative hatred of those who believe that it is those old souls who have demanded that everyone else be imprisoned in order to give them a chance to live a few more months or years.

    The same applies to those who have been virtually imprisoned in high rise cell blocks – often with small children. There are people with an unhappy relationship or abusive partners. They were not only condemned to live cheek by jowl day after day but they were also unable to obtain the help they might have expected in normal circumstances. Despair and desolation most assuredly applied to them.

    Children have been unable to mix with their peers; to play outside and meet each other; to attend school unmuzzled. Now they are facing the threat of unnecessary vaccination at the hands of a vicious, impolitic government.

    All those lives (and many more) have been blighted – perhaps forever – by the ‘power hungry’ machinations of politicians whose integrity (if ever they had any to begin with) has been eroded by that most beguiling of drugs, control and dominance over others. People who were powerless to fight back on their own behalf. To those with the predisposition, having others in your power brings out the worst of all traits inherent in the human psyche – cruelty!

    Thus the blatant (and openly admitted) use of psyops by government and its satellite agencies to instil fear and obedience in the whole population has been no less than an act of war by government against the people it was pledged to serve. The flagrant and shameful rolling out of vaccines that had not completed their full trial periods to use on a whole population has been an appalling measure. The fact that coercion is being applied and our freedoms withheld, along with the proposal to exclude those who will not submit from society, is an action only seen in the most cruel and authoritarian of regimes.

    The act of so doing will most probably be judged, ultimately, to be a crime against humanity.

    The restrictive and demoralising measures that have been visited upon the people of this Country have been taken with the express intention of creating uncertainty, obedience, fear and despair.

    Resilience worn and eroded with each new and difficult trial

    Hard to chart a fresh course through the slough of despond

    When the feet drag along through each mile

    Where is the strength to continue and overcome anguish and doubt

    To lift up the eyes to the heavens and remember what faith is about

    But…..we have it in our power to “shake off this yoke of enslavement” and remind those who would tyrannise over us that we are neither despairing nor despondent!

    1. Can we not bring a lawsuit (civil or otherwise) of Malfeasance in Public Office and inclide Impeachment of Johnson AND his cabinet.

      1. What’s the point? The same will happen wiht the next lot of morons.

        The state needs to be brought to taken to training classes, not slapped on the nose. It refuses to serve.

        1. Well, it’s worth a try and it might galvanise the odd Parties, Reform, Reclaim, For Britain to get their acts together as one and truly represent the indigenous British inhabitants of this sceptred Isle.

          I shall find their websites and spell out the need for this unity and what the main points of a manifesto must be – I shall publish on here, probably on Monday.

  95. Some of the Scottish fans helped to clear up the mess in Central London. [GB News]

    1. The man is an absolute p*litician. Self-interest always trumps altruism with those types.

    2. It’s also a pack of lies to suit his ego.

      There is nothing nationalist or populist about the current Conservative government.

    3. I don’t give a Flying Flamingo (© John Bercow) how he regards today’s Conservative party, Aeneas.

  97. I wonder if the increase in Covid cases is being enhanced by the G7 shenanigans. I notice on one of Whitty’s graphs the other day the west of Cornwall was one of the badly affected areas in England.

    1. If I recall correctly they had to replace lots of security people because of a positive test.

    3. So you’re saying, Herr Oberst (© Cathy Newman) that your son married Miss Piggy?

      :-))

      1. Small females with an amazing bass grunt and a squeal that would strip paint!

    1. I have an idea. Let the British government send people to build peace and prosperity, infrastructure and education, in dark and distant parts of the world. Oh hang on, they rejected colonialism, but they would be happy to live in UK on full benefits, education and health care.

  106. Evening, all. If the Tories are surprised by the result of the by-election, it’s because they are so out of touch with conservative voters. They live in a bubble where they only consort with like-minded people and never touch the real world.

    1. Why do they need to be in touch with their voters?

      Their voters are largely tribal and will vote Tory no matter what’s in the manifesto or who the leader is.

      The Tories have been liberals for more than 50 years. Stop expecting them to ‘conserve’.

      They may get spanked in a by-election but come the general election the tribal voters will be back and this safe Tory seat will once again be blue.

        1. It’s a by-election, an opportunity to show your displeasure without upsetting the general election apple-cart. We’ll see if this stays yellow at the next general election, my prediction is it’ll go back to blue.

  110. The by election defeat for the Tories was a protest vote against HS2 which is a “Hot issue ” in that area.

Comments are closed.