Sunday 20 June: The Tories have misjudged the mood in their southern heartlands

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/2021/06/19/letters-tories-have-misjudged-mood-southern-heartlands/

688 thoughts on “Sunday 20 June: The Tories have misjudged the mood in their southern heartlands”

  1. Good Morning Folks,

    Cloudy wet and chilly start here, summer has been and gone quicker than our freedoms.

  2. Now even this North Korean warns we’re being brainwashed!. Peter Hitchens. 20 June 2021.

    Yeonmi Park fled from the Hermit Kingdom when she was just 13, and endured horrible things during her escape. Eventually, she reached South Korea. But she thought she had truly begun a new life when, in 2016, she transferred to Columbia University in New York City, one of America’s finest colleges.

    Almost immediately she met the new, sweet and sticky marshmallow totalitarianism which has taken over so many Western seats of learning. A staff member ticked her off when she revealed that she enjoyed classics such as the books of Jane Austen.

    After encountering the new requirement for the use of gender-neutral pronouns, she concluded ‘Even North Korea is not this nuts… North Korea was pretty crazy, but not this crazy.’

    She came to fear that making a fuss would affect her grades and her degree. Eventually, she learned to keep quiet, as people do when they try to live under intolerant regimes, and let the drivel wash over her.

    Morning everyone. She could of course join Nottl!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9704389/PETER-HITCHENS-North-Korean-warns-brainwashed.html

    1. I wouldn’t say that we were being brainwashed but we certainly are being conditioned to accept and comply and stay silent.

  3. Morning all. Trying (and failing so far) to post an MP4 file (this one: ). Will try later

    2. Morning. Disqus doesn’t accept mp4 files. Email it to me (address in my profile) and I’ll try and host it on the WordPress platform on which the site now lives.

      1. Thanks Geoff. Looked at your Profile and could only find (guessing) geoff.graham@disqus_N… (I’m not showing the rest for obvious reasons). If this is not correct I’m out of options. Can’t even find it in WordPress For Dummies book.

        EDIT – just found your email address (I looked at Full Profile by mistake) and will email you the MP4 file. Sorry!

  4. Catastrophe stalks Afghanistan as the US and UK dash for the exit. 20 June 2021.

    Most Americans will welcome this accelerated end to an unpopular war. Yet it spells catastrophe for Afghans who pinned their hopes and their country’s future on western support in fighting Taliban and Islamist terrorism and who believed the nation-building promises made by George W Bush and others.

    Would that be the Weapons of Mass Destruction George W Bush? The only people who supported the American and British presence were the Kabul Political Elites who benefited from it! Without the support of the Afghan people it was always doomed to failure. It’s fifty years since Vietnam, one wonders how many more times the United States will continue the same failed policies before they finally twig that it’s not working?

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/20/catastrophe-stalks-afghanistan-as-the-us-and-uk-dash-for-the-exit

    1. The traditional war policy of the United States, which they used successfully in WW1 & WW2, was to wait to see who was going to win & then enter the war on the victorious side! Since the end of WW2 they have deviated from this policy & so far apart from the brief Grenada conflict, they have lost every other conflict they have entered & in doing so lost so many lives, so much blood & treasure lost , messed up so much of the Mid-East & North Africa & made even more enemies especially when they abandon their allies such as the South Vietnamese & now the non-Taliban Afghans, the Kurds & the moderate Sunnis & Christians in Syria & Lebanon.

      1. Morning Hatman. I agree. What sensible person would want them as an Ally? They are useless!

        1. Right now the hand of George Soros can clearly be seen directing US foreign policy in a return to the insane Obama-Iran nuclear deal & the withdrawal of US military assets that are protecting its few remaining Sunni friends & redeploying those forces to the South China sea to confront China in an arms race that the US has already lost due to the neglect of that theatre of operations under Bill Clinton, George Bush & then the willful sabotage of US military strength under Hussein Obama. Trump made an unsuccessful attempt to revive US military strength but the poisonous progressive seeds planted by the Soros-Obama cabal in the US military & intelligence services bore fruit & have resulted in a US military full of low IQ minorities & LGBTQ friendly policies to the detriment of morale & with the failure of Congress to pass the budgets needed to equip the US military to deal with China’s 2 decade long military expansion it seems that as American power wanes vis a vis China, Bidens re-orienting US military might to the Pacific will be too little too late .

          2. This why the US military is increasing producing political Commissars as officers such as Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the 5th columnist who attempted to frame Pres. Donald Trump & has produced in its ranks traitors such as Sgt. “Bowe” Bergdahl & the infamous Bradley ( Chelsea ) Manning !

      2. Please do not overlook that with their successful invasion of Grenada:

        The US attacked in force, after the arrival of the Coca Cola concession and the CNN reporters

        After their successful withdrawal, UK sent out 19 policemen to look after the place

        1. GM & happy Sunday OLT. Fortunately for the Grenadian’s that was before Tony Blair turned the police force into a union affiliate of the Labour party where promotion ceased to be based on merit & became one based on gender, race, sexual deviance & political correctness!

    2. Morning, Araminta.
      Almost completely off-topic, but ref your post last night about scalp problems, we have an old bottle of turbocharged anti-dandruff shampoo that’s really effective. First application – itching gone. Second – most dandruff gone. Finally, I’m down to Head ‘n Shoulders and all’s well.
      When I’m home (later today), I’ll look it out for you. Only available from the pharmacist, IIRC.

          2. Huh. Call that warm? Due to global warming, I’m wearing a cardie this morning, and it’s a few days to midsummer. I’ll have to get me puffer jacket if this heatwave continues much longer.
            ;-))

          4. Good morning, the only time I usually hear this song is at the end of Genesis ‘Seconds Out’ 😉

    3. Never understood why we fought the Islamists in Afghan istan and then brought them back here and gave them a free house.

  5. Catastrophe stalks Afghanistan as the US and UK dash for the exit. 20 June 2021.

    Most Americans will welcome this accelerated end to an unpopular war. Yet it spells catastrophe for Afghans who pinned their hopes and their country’s future on western support in fighting Taliban and Islamist terrorism and who believed the nation-building promises made by George W Bush and others.

    Would that be the Weapons of Mass Destruction George W Bush? The only people who supported the American and British presence were the Kabul Political Elites who benefited from it! Without the support of the Afghan people it was always doomed to failure. It’s fifty years since Vietnam, one wonders how many more times the United States will continue the same failed policies before they finally twig that it’s not working?

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/20/catastrophe-stalks-afghanistan-as-the-us-and-uk-dash-for-the-exit

  6. Rant for Today. This time, it’s an exchange between me and Roy `Eastwood, who runs ECAS, the main British parts supplier for the Citroen 2CV. I need to identify a rusty panel to replace for the MoT.

    “Dear Roy

    I’ve been a customer of yours for many years, but I am really struggling with the new website interface. It is loading up all sorts of Google malware, cookies, analyticals, javascripts and dripfeeding information with just a couple of items on a page before having to scroll down and down. It is quite unusable and much much worse than the old website, where I could browse easily and find what i wanted. I am after a couple of panels, and used to be able to see a drawing of the car with all the panels showing on the drawing, so I could quickly find the right part. With the new website, I gave up with a headache after scrolling down more than a dozen individual panels.

    Can I order your print catalogue, the yellow one, where I can see everything clearly without a fight?

    ————–

    I made the catalogue 25 years ago, we’ve had 2 systems of internet software outdated themselves since I first had a website about 2001, the last one was being used (in later years) to send spam emails from. Persons expect to use a website now on all manner of different viewing devices and the site needs to know how to adapt itself to those devices, therefore analysis. For most customers the new site is more easy to use and our sales from its pages suggest that too.

    We remain at your service by telephone – preferably landline since cell ‘phones provide such intermittent voice service. We will not be making a new catalogue unless some new (fictional) owner of the business decided to make one if we ever retire.

    best regards,
    Roy Eastwood.

    —————

    Thanks for the offer to talk me through what you have over the phone when I do my next session of sorting out the car for the MoT.

    I will always lament the passing of the old site where I could browse happily to the limits of my fading memory and pick up all sorts of impulse buys. I scroll on past a page, and forget what I was looking at and have to scroll back and all the time it is recommending things I do not want or need and not letting me see the things I do want or need. It is driving me crazy! Yes, there are lots of pretty pictures and the blank space is very stylish, but this load on bandwidth does make scrolling laggy.

    I did find a very dog-eared and stained copy of an old catalogue with some of the pages missing, so I suppose I will have to go back to referring to that when I ring you up. Sometimes I need to compare what is available. Usually, yours is the best option, but I like to confirm this. Occasionally, Burton produces an improvement, and I did once find a rubber car mat manufacturer that did something that’s long been out of stock with you. I often like to dip into your website to see if you’ve caught up with them yet.

    I have come to loathe “most customers” and regard them with some hostility! It is why I have driven a 2CV for nearly 40 years. Most customers scrap their SUVs as soon as they are out of warranty and can afford to keep buying new. Most of us will be sitting at home in future though. If we cannot walk somewhere, properly socially-distanced and politically-vetted, then tough!

    Best wishes
    Jeremy Morfey”

    2. Morning JM, please don’t think I am doubting you in any way but I have just looked at the website you mentioned and can see nothing inordinately bad about it.
      Could it be better on some devices than others, I am using an iPad and the Safari browser. I attach a screen shot for you to compare what I see to what you see. These days on PC’s especially an ad blocker seems essential. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/428f17bc52be68fb8a96f4f383da7c35526b26c9b2a0f470843143919246e0e8.png

      1. It’s certainly very pretty and the items well-described, but note on your screenshot, all we see are two items on a whole page – a front left wing and a front right wing. Before, one could see twenty, and an easy clickable link to see the whole picture. Also must we see all variants of one particular item before it allows us on to the next? Some websites make you scroll individually over every colour variant.

        It is a dripfeed mentality that has taken over the entire internet (including even this site) whereby one is only allowed to see what’s immediately in front, and all else is obscured lest it be “confusing”. It is like lecturers who cover over a screen presentation everything except what they are speaking of right now. It takes a very long time of heavy scrolling not to see what one can take in within a second of one sheet of A4, or thumbing through a book, and not even young memories are up to remembering if it’s all there, or where to find it again, especially if it’s been shuffled by the web designer, because that sort of thing is “cool” and “edgy”.

        People are not expected to drive safely by only being allowed to see through the windscreen what’s immediately in front, and having no idea of any likely hazard fifty yards away. Driving in fog is actually extremely dangerous and tiring.

        Can this really be an improvement, or progress?

        1. My screenshot only had space for the 2 items but in practice several items were available for viewing if I scrolled down the page.
          The point I was trying to make was would the web site present itself in a better way on a different device assuming you had one. Just wondering.
          And yes I agree, not all change is for the better. Good luck in you MOT.

          1. All I have that supports the browsers I am allowed to use these days is a 12-year-old Macbook Pro. My Nokia 1100 mobile phone has a nifty line in classic melodies in 8-bit, but is not really up to rendering smart websites.

            I have an Evesham Micro from 1999 with a proper dedicated monitor, but it only runs Windows 98 and I doubt can even go online these days even if it didn’t go bang when I fired it up.

        2. My only gripe with the site is the mouseover menu. Such a menu should ‘lock’ when you click on the menu entry. That prevents the cack handed from losing the menu entry when you move off the top nav to the sub navs.

          I agree there’s not a high density of content, but a scroll doesn’t take long as the items are loaded ‘in page’ rather than ‘on scroll’. Have you tried using the filters on the left panel? The search is surprisingly nippy as well. I entered ‘panel’

          I do understand though. I went to my default gym trousers supplier and their site – and name – has changed in the four years since I went to them. I can’t identify the ones I bought before so I mailed them and asked them to do the leg work.

    3. We’ve had the tank for over 7 years. It was a trusty Volvo XC something.

      One day it went into the garage and the chap found a fault in some weird part I don’t understand and it was rendered scrap due to the computer thingy.

      Regarding websites – I have an adblocker, pihole, ghostery and usually javascript enabled: the number of sites that cannot function without javascript is ludicrous and lazy, poor programming.

  7. An Obituary printed in the London Times

    Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense, who has been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was, since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape. He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as:

    • Knowing when to come in out of the rain;
    • Why the early bird gets the worm;
    • Life isn’t always fair; and
    • Maybe it was my fault.
    Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don’t spend more than you can earn) and reliable strategies (adults, not children, are in charge).

    His health began to deteriorate rapidly when well-intentioned but overbearing regulations were set in place.

    Reports of a 6-year-old boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate; teens suspended from school for using mouthwash after lunch; and a teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student, only worsened his condition.

    Common Sense lost ground when parents attacked teachers for doing the job that they themselves had failed to do in disciplining their unruly children.

    It declined even further when schools were required to get parental consent to administer sun lotion or an aspirin to a student; but could not inform parents when a student became pregnant and wanted to have an abortion.

    Common Sense lost the will to live as the churches became businesses; and criminals received better treatment than their victims.

    Common Sense took a beating when you couldn’t defend yourself from a burglar in your own home and the burglar could sue you for assault.

    Common Sense finally gave up the will to live, after a woman failed to realise that a steaming cup of coffee was hot. She spilled a little in her lap, and was promptly awarded a huge settlement.

    Common Sense was preceded in death, by his parents, Truth and Trust, by his wife, Discretion, by his daughter, Responsibility, and by his son, Reason.

    He is survived by his 4 stepbrothers;

    • I Know My Rights
    • I Want It Now
    • Someone Else Is To Blame
    • I’m A Victim
    Not many attended his funeral because so few realized he was gone. If you still remember him, pass this on. If not, join the majority and do nothing.

    2. Now I shall do as promised last night;

      1. Find the e-mail addresses of Laurence Fox, Nigel Farage and Ann Marie Waters
      2. Draft and send ideas for the policies and manifesto of the proposed new party
      3. Publish that draft here on NTTL on Monday.

      I shall have my head down most of the day, so I probably shan’t be around until this evening.

      1. Is Farage still involved with a party? I have written to Reform. Tice is a sensible chap but he is being ignored by the media. There needs to be a way to get the message out there.

        1. I thought Farage was leading Reform. The e-mail address of this Tice fellow might help. What is his position?

          1. Richard Tice leads Reform. I just went on their website and to their contacts. https://reformparty.uk/ I asked when there would be a public meeting but they just sent me a longish email on what they stand for.
            That is OK, but I like to meet people to get an idea of them.
            I also wrote to Fox (https://reclaimparty.co.uk/) and have been invited to a meeting in Batley. It is on Thursday. I might go but it is 3 hours away from London.

            matthew.patten@reclaimparty.co.uk

            info@reformparty.uk

          2. Thank you LIM, I shall follow those site addresses but it is more an e-mail that I can be sure will be brought to a leader’s notice.

          3. I can’t help with that yet. If I get involved with either one I will let you know

          4. Richard Tice leads Reform. I just went on their website and to their contacts. https://reformparty.uk/ I asked when there would be a public meeting but they just sent me a longish email on what they stand for.
            That is OK, but I like to meet people to get an idea of them.
            I also wrote to Fox (https://reclaimparty.co.uk/) and have been invited to a meeting in Batley. It is on Thursday. I might go but it is 3 hours away from London.

            matthew.patten@reclaimparty.co.uk

            info@reformparty.uk

    3. I’m having trouble finding the e-mail addresses for Laurence Fox, Nigel Farage and Ann Marie Waters.

      Does anyone have them, please, and is willing to share?

    1. Under the rules of racing, though, the LD would have been disqualified as he wouldn’t be deemed to have jumped the fence.

  10. It is true that is difficult to have intelligent discussion in an environment where my truth is equal to your truth and you cannot deny my experience, no matter how absurd on its face.
    Add to that the intimation that you will not be marked well for work and comments that challenge this new orthodoxy and people find ways to justify the lies they are forced to tell. Rather than think themselves cowards they develop the conviction that it is all correct and OK – it is far easier to join them than to beat them.
    This process is also called brainwashing.

    1. This is why so much effort is spent by the Left in demonising their opponents.

      If you can rubbish the messenger, you can destroy the message. Having to argue on an equal footing is terrifying to them. Hitler had the same tactics. So did Stalin. Mao just killed his political enemies.

      That said, so did the other two. The Left’s ‘cancel culture’ is much the same: desperate character assassination. They haven’t changed.

  11. It’s just not the Southern Heartlands which the Tories have misjudged. The dictatorial attitude over the people with their banning of fossil fuel cars, their stopping gas supplies to homes with no satisfactory reason, their massive overspending on dealing with Covid 19 and their encouragement of the boat people invading the UK illegally from France, all have made many of us very angry. Unfortunately Boris Johnson has shown himself unfit to be Prime Minister. The Tories are losing votes and will not recover them if they continue as they intend.

      1. Yeah right, just like Cameron was useless because of Clegg. Face it, these Tories over the last eleven years have just been bloody awful wholesale. Barely a competent cabinet minister in the whole eleven years and zero competent PMs.

        1. They have, but the common denomenator is a socialist and arrogant administration.

          The treasury is wedded to it’s own big state, high tax goals. Councils are staffed by lazy, greedy nincompoops. No amount of money will be enough to slake it’s appalling thirst for tax payers cash because it is inherently inefficient.

          Until that changes and the state is starved of other people’s money no amount of deck chair rearranging will matter. Under the Conservatives the decline is slower. Under Labour, torrential.

          The solution is cutting taxes and, more importantly, the power and scale of the state.

          1. Again the state doesn’t spend “other people’s money”.

            There’s nothing socialist about any of our main parties. Socialism is an economic position. We favour economic liberalisation. That’s the complete opposite of socialism.

            Big state has been a thing forever. Thatcher moaned about the same thing then massively increased the size of the civil service. Councils have always been patchy at best. Less than 20% of council funding comes from taxpayers.

            Cutting taxes usually would be a good idea, but atm it’s not until we see the effect all this furlough money has on the economy when people are back working and spending normally. After all one of the functions of taxation is demand management.

          2. Well, the state does. It doesn’t make anything, so it spends other people’s money.

            True, but big government does not want to reduce legislation. It likes adding to it.

            Why then has my council tax increased every single year? It is now higher than three of my next highest bills. That’s offensive.

            This confusion is prevalent because people don’t understand economics. Furloug cash is simply returning people’s money to them. Not cutting taxes, especially when you want to raise revenue is idiotic. You encourage people to spend by giving them more money. Thus: tax cuts. You cannot do that in any other way. The government, in contrast has made products *more* expensive.

            No. No no and no again. The only purpose of taxation is to provide essential services. Thinking it should be used to control the economy is utterly wrong and amply demonstrates the problem in statist thinking.

          3. The state makes money, Pounds Sterling. They can create an infinite amount of these. Every penny the national government spends it creates. It doesn’t recycle taxes. It doesn’t borrow to spend. It creates. Exactly the same way commercial banks don’t lend out savers’ monies. Every single loan a bank makes the money for the loan is created.

            Council tax increased because you voted for it. You voted to cut the central government grants to councils. So with less money coming from CG, more has to come from taxpayers, but even so more than 80% of council funds are CG grants.

            Revenue is meaningless except to accountants. People have had money to spend, they have had full wages or 80% wages maybe or maybe not topped up by employers, and far fewer costs without travel to work and expensive lunches. Much of the places they would spend it in however were closed.

            Taxation has three purposes and none of them relate to ‘providing essential services’.

            The first and most important purpose of taxation is simply to create an economy based on the currency. You can’t pay UK taxes in gold, dollars or euros, you can only pay them in pounds sterling, so you need to work for pounds and shops need to sell goods for pounds etc. This ensures we don’t have a barter economy or a multiple currency economy.

            The second purpose of tax is to remove purchasing power from the economy for the effect on inflation.

            The third purpose of tax is to change people’s behaviour.

            That is the entire purposes of taxation. The only taxation that gets ‘recycled’ is local taxation. The only tax you pay that really goes towards services is council tax. Councils are limited by income, the central government is not, it can print whatever it needs as long as what it needs can be bought for pounds.

            When have I ever said taxation can be used to ‘control the economy’? All I have said about taxation is we tax wrongly, and we are not honest about why we tax which is why you along with many others totally believe the propaganda that the government is revenue constrained. It absolutely isn’t. The GFC and the pandemic response should have shown you that.

  12. Mng all, latest power cut abated, for now. Some decent reading & BTL from off grauniad : Eugenics, The Fourth Industrial Revolution and the Clash of Two Systems https://off-guardian.org/2021/06/19/eugenics-the-fourth-industrial-revolution-and-the-clash-of-two-systems/ and India’s lockdown may already have killed more people than “Covid”, and it will only get worse https://off-guardian.org/2021/06/18/indias-lockdown-may-already-have-killed-more-people-than-covid-and-it-will-only-get-worse/

  13. Toady’s woke jottings:

    SIR – There is little doubt that the relaxation of planning laws, along with the HS2 white elephant project, cost the Conservatives the Chesham and Amersham by-election.

    Communities throughout the route have seen property, woodlands and habitats destroyed, just so that an elite few can cut half an hour off their train journeys. The billions earmarked for this scheme would have been much better spent on upgrading existing lines and reopening some of those closed under Beeching.

    This Conservative defeat may not be the last.

    Jim Sokol
    Minehead, Somerset

    SIR – The Conservatives have paid the price for pursuing the cripplingly expensive vanity project that is HS2.

    Everywhere on the route, communities are being blighted by noisy, intrusive construction that will continue for years to come.

    People in northern Red Wall communities don’t see anything positive about HS2 either, because its completion is so far away and its benefits so unclear.

    It was a Labour idea which the Conservatives had many opportunities to cull. But they failed to do so – and now the chickens are coming home to roost.

    Paul Blundell
    Byfield, Northamptonshire

    SIR – Will the Liberal Democrats take the hint and make the cancellation of this costly, harmful project a national policy – or will Boris Johnson beat them to it?

    Rob Lowe
    Daventry, Northamptonshire

    SIR – I wonder how many former Conservative voters in Chesham and Amersham voted Lib Dem because they were thoroughly fed up with the Government’s over-the-top Covid laws and wanted to retaliate by taking a Tory scalp.

    I have voted Conservative for 45 years – but if I lived there I would have voted Lib Dem as well. Good luck to ’em.

    Peter Holt
    Wellington, Shropshire

    SIR – Labour stopped listening to the people and lost to the Conservatives.

    It seems very likely that this Conservative Government is now being punished over its handling of the pandemic, and its inaction over illegal cross-Channel migration. It too has stopped listening to the people, and indeed many of its own MPs.

    Perhaps the Government thinks it has time (and seats) to spare. But that is no excuse for taking voters for granted.

    David Rammell
    Everton, Hampshire

    SIR – Given that we appear to have pseudo Lib Dems and Greens running the country at the moment, perhaps the constituents of Chesham and Amersham thought they might just as well vote for the real thing.

    Keith Chambers
    Brockenhurst, Hampshire

    Endless lockdown

    SIR – What is going on?

    On June 23 last year the average number of daily Covid-19 deaths in the previous week was 59, with 353 hospital admissions. On that day the Government announced that restrictions on our freedoms would be eased on July 4.

    This year the average number of daily Covid-19 deaths in the first week of June was seven, with 144 hospital admissions.

    In contrast to last year, those at high risk have been vaccinated. Yet at the beginning of the week, the Government announced its intention to continue restricting our freedom for at least another five weeks.

    Where is the logic? Will restrictions ever end? This disease is endemic. We should stop testing asymptomatic people, accept that “zero Covid” is not achievable and get on with our lives.

    Dr Geoffrey Maidment
    Farnham Royal, Buckinghamshire

    SIR – The Government will surely have carried out a cost-benefit analysis of extending the Covid restrictions.

    When may we expect it to be published?

    Professor John Keown
    Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown University
    Washington DC, United States

    SIR – I work for a local charity that helps families with children who have life-threatening illnesses.

    On July 7 we were due to have a party to celebrate 10 years of our respite house in Basingstoke. This has had to be cancelled due to the continuing restrictions.

    At the end of July we hold “Christmas in July”, a grand party for families whose kids might not make it to Christmas. This will be held on Ascot racecourse with around 500 attending – families and children. It is now under threat. An enormous amount of effort goes into planning it. Costs are involved. We need to get our freedom back so that events such as ours can go ahead.

    Duncan Rayner
    Sunningdale, Berkshire

    Heating older homes

    SIR – The letter (June 13) from Jacqueline Davies in praise of heat pumps contains two important words: “new house”.

    Our home was built in 1960. While we have explored the possibility of installing heat pumps, for such an old house the cost is prohibitive. The upheaval required would render the whole operation pointless, and it would be unlikely to match the gas heating we have at the moment. Also, given that we are over 65, we won’t recover the outlay.

    Heat pumps are clearly most suitable for new homes that have been designed for such installations.

    David Leathart
    Watton, Norfolk

    Accent anxiety

    SIR – East End accents being considered “less intelligent” (report, June 13) is nothing new.

    My mother came down from Newcastle to Hounslow to train as a nurse in the 1920s. She learnt very quickly that if you were born north of Watford or in the East End you were regarded as plain dumb.

    Sadly, in her early years, she tried to hide her accent in order to fit in with her southern friends. It was only when she was in her late 80s, not long before she died, that she met someone who asked her if she was a Geordie and her whole face lit up as she happily confirmed that she was.

    Sue Duff
    Thames Ditton, Surrey

    NI border solutions

    SIR – Daniel Hannan is right.

    We hear endlessly that the Northern Ireland Protocol is designed to protect the Good Friday Agreement and prevent a “hard border” between Northern Ireland and the Republic.

    But a “hard border” is just an emotive description of what would be a perfectly normal border between two sovereign states. These exist all over the world, with technology bridging the gap between oversight of goods in transit and legal obligations. It was what we had years ago (without the modern technology) when lorries underwent customs checks in Newry, a few miles north of the actual border on the Belfast-Dublin road.

    For goodness’ sake, let us get our sausages and, more importantly, our cancer medications, which are at risk because of the single-minded intransigence of Brussels bureaucrats.

    Richard Gordon
    Killinchy, Co Down

    SIR – Patrick Miller (Letters, June 14) could hardly be more wrong when he says “no details” emerged about how the border issue within the island of Ireland might be solved by technology.

    The solutions were there for the taking, well aired, and endorsed by the European Parliament itself in its “Smart Border 2.0” paper. They included automatic number plate recognition (known to anyone using a hire car in Europe, ironically); already existing Authorised Economic Operator systems; and electronic pre-submission of documents, which WTO rules oblige the EU to provide.

    Indeed, before the train crash of Leo Varadkar’s premiership, the former Taoiseach Enda Kenny had got his people working on all of these solutions – which his successor stopped dead. Quite why Mr Varadkar played white-cat-in-lap to Michel Barnier’s head of Spectre is beyond me, but he’s got plenty of time now to think it through now after tanking in the last Irish general election.

    Rob White
    London N3

    Luxury litter

    SIR – At home in Staffordshire, the lane which runs past our cottage is often festooned with fast-food detritus.

    How refreshing, then, to be holidaying in the Cotswolds where, on a walk to the local farm shop, we came upon an abandoned box of Veuve Clicquot on the verge.

    Michael Pearson
    Tatenhill Common, Staffordshire

    The town near Glasgow – but never of it

    SIR – I doubt if Andrew Neil would be any more happy than myself to read that he “grew up on the edge of Glasgow”. In fact he grew up in Paisley, the largest town (though without city status) in Scotland, and distinct from Glasgow.

    Paisley was important from early medieval times, and especially so with the foundation by Walter FitzAlan – founder also of the royal Stewart dynasty – of Paisley Abbey, which owned vast lands and wealth in south-west Scotland in pre-Reformation times. It also achieved great importance with textile manufacturing early in the Industrial Revolution (Paisley shawls, Paisley pattern) and was the world’s leading producer of cotton sewing thread (Coats and Clark families) until the late 20th century. These and a few other families went by the name of “Paisley Buddies”.

    Dugald Barr
    London W8

    Birds aflutter with the sound of chamber music

    SIR – I have found that birds are very responsive to music created by humans (Letters, June 13).

    Until recently, my amateur string quartet was not permitted to perform indoors, so we played chamber music in a friend’s garden. Not only did the house sparrows come close and chatter loudly in competition (or accompaniment), but a solitary robin would also sit on top of a conifer, seeming to imitate certain phrases.

    By contrast, our budgie, Noddy, was a fierce critic of my piano playing and would peck the edges of my music, covering the keyboard in confetti.

    Janet Newis
    Sidcup, Kent

    SIR – Every year my grandmother opened her garden and grounds at Langham Hall; and every year Toby, a black Labrador belonging to Sir Alfred Munnings, came up from Dedham and sang to order. It was the highlight for me and my siblings.

    Drusilla Fraser
    Inverness

    SIR – In the 1950s we had a dog, Kneehigh, who, when he heard Doris Day singing Secret Love, would hide under the table and howl like a banshee.

    My late father’s look over the top of his glasses suggested that he sympathised.

    Anne Lawler
    Portrane, Co Dublin, Ireland

    SIR – In the 1940s, when our family radio was a wooden flat-topped box, the cat that had adopted our family appeared every day for the lunchtime classical concert and sat on top of it until the end. He must have liked the vibes. It would have been a cosy, too, with the heat from the valves.

    Enid Hope
    Slough, Berkshire

    SIR – When my children were learning to play the recorder, the cat would leap up and try to bat the instruments from their mouths.

    Daphne Clarke
    Richmond, North Yorkshire

    1. The whole point of HS2 was to open up the Chilterns to developers. Any local opposition could easily be put down with a howling campaign against “Green Crap Nimbies” and linked up with the woke fascists.

      1. Perhaps that is what Boris meant with his ‘levelling up’.. Cut off the head and the feet.

      2. I have a theory that after HS2 is complete, Birmingham Airport will be offered to those in the South East as an alternative to Heathrow expansion.

    2. If people think the Lib Dems will fight to end HS2 then they’re very, very much mistaken. As an EU project and under that loathesome body’s guidance HS2 is a sacred cow for the Lib Dems.

      Communists love their train sets.

          1. In the eyes of the electorate (the only ones that matter), clearly so.
            Doesn’t float my boat, but then I don’t have a vote there.

          3. ogga1’s right on that point. It’s the level of root and branch change. Current entities will play all their cards to hold on to what they fear losing – command and control and perceived sense of entitlement, at all levels

          4. People seem to like it.
            Don’t understand why, but then, there’s a lot I don’t understand.
            On a brighter note, the utterly incompetent and arrogant Green party “minister” in the Oslo council has been removed, due to:
            – Budget overrun (already, digging has barely started) of a new water supply tunnel to Oslo
            – Grotesque and repeated amounts of uncontrolled overtime worked, and very many Arbeidstilsynet (HSE Executive) non-conformances from Government agency
            – Complete arrogance in responding to legitimate concerns.
            Excellent news! The whole coucil executive couldn’t tolerate this criticism, so they all resigned – WGAF?

  16. I’m not so sure about ‘amateurish’. GB News just bagged a historic win for the silent majority
    Rod Liddle
    Sunday June 20 2021, 12.01am, The Sunday Times

    A lot of my former BBC chums seem terribly pleased that the GB News channel got off to a rather bumpy start. Ghastly and amateurish, seemed to be the verdict. But then, GB News does not have an annual budget of £4 billion, as far as I am aware. Nor has it, so far, fraudulently acquired an interview with a member of the royal family or created a programme in which a pallid paedophile makes children’s dreams come true by having them sit on his knee for a bit.

    I haven’t seen much of the channel, but I was on the effervescent Dan Wootton’s show on Monday (television is for appearing on, not for watching, dahling) and quite enjoyed myself in a debate with a charming Corbynista, despite being six sheets to the wind (it was 11pm, for God’s sake) and not being able to hear what the chap was saying. Idiocies, I assumed.

    It was the BBC, though, that enabled GB News — and Times Radio and talkRADIO — to spring into existence: the craving among the public for a news channel that was unbiased, or at least biased in a different direction. TalkRADIO, which is owned by the same company as The Sunday Times, is the fastest-growing radio station in Europe, and my guess is that Andrew Neil’s project will do just fine among people who have tired of the BBC’s ingrained, institutional and unashamed liberal bias: that is, roughly two thirds of the country.

    The BBC, understandably, would like GB News to be strangled at birth. It is not alone. The far-left campaigning organisation Stop Funding Hate (SFH), set up by a bunch of white middle-class ex-NGO staffers, had been busy contacting companies telling them not to advertise on the channel long before its launch last week. In other words, SFH detected “hate” before a single word had been broadcast. How?

    SFH is a repulsive, monomaniacal and bullying organisation, which persecutes any media outlets that do not share its deluded view of the world. Nonetheless it has, in the past, had a lot of success. This is down to the craven and supine nature of our biggest corporations, all of which will drop to their knees in a nanosecond if it means they can parade their right-on credentials to consumers who, frankly, couldn’t give a monkey’s or may actively dislike this grandstanding and virtue-signalling.

    The notion that any of these companies really care about SFH’s imbecilic agenda is risible. One of the first companies to succumb over GB News was Ikea. I find being dragged around this hideous emporium of generic flat-pack chipboard Scandi tat a crime against humanity — almost as big an evil as the inevitable loss of several fingers while putting its awful furniture together with a broken Allen key. But we might add that this is a company that exploited political prisoners in East Germany in the 1980s, shoved horsemeat in its godawful meatballs and is perfectly happy to open stores in Riyadh and Shanghai. Do Saudi Arabia and China accord with your corporate values of togetherness, inclusivity, LGBT rights, universal happiness and unicorn tears, you disingenuous Swedish hobgoblins?

    Still, rather wonderfully, after SFH had trumpeted its successes, one by one the companies that had agreed not to advertise with GB News gradually resiled, beginning with Ikea. Ha. The Swedes said the decision had been taken too quickly and added that it did not want to “polarise” customers. No, I bet you don’t.

    But there’s no polarisation, Sven, my friend. One national newspaper commissioned a poll that showed 93 per cent of respondents would boycott companies that refused to advertise with GB News for political reasons. Boycott Ikea! Every living man’s dream.

    Moneysupermarket, Bosch and Vodafone have also, um, restated their positions and will not be boycotting GB News, having explained to the public that they were a bit confused initially.

    This is excellent news and a testament to Neil’s take-no-prisoners approach to corporate virtue-signalling. And it may mean that the tide is finally turning against these authoritarians of the woke left. The hideous Stonewall has seen its contracts with government departments, private firms and universities stripped back. Now Stop Funding Hate is seeing its bullying coming to nothing. In both cases, a win for the silent majority.

    Row over future of jobs

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/%2Fmethode%2Fsundaytimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2F9bf790ac-d111-11eb-8a5e-31fa624156c6.jpg?crop=1500%2C1000%2C0%2C0&resize=1022

    Labour’s long goodbye election
    The Chesham and Amersham result is a fascinating example of how political allegiances are shifting, rapidly. The Conservatives can sweep home in Hartlepool but get well and truly stuffed in the Chilterns. The HS2 development will not have helped the Tories, mind.

    But have a look at the Labour vote. Natasa Pantelic polled just 622 votes and lost her deposit, easily beaten even by the Green Party candidate. In 2017 Labour polled more than 11,000, and it still managed more than 7,000 in 2019.

    I have trawled back through the past 45 years of by-elections and cannot find a Labour candidate who came close to such a dismal haul. I suspect it’s the lowest since rationing. So Labour has lost the working class but at the same time holds even less appeal for the affluent than it did when Magic Grandpa was in charge. Remarkable.

    It has transformed into a party solely for millennial metropolitans and a handful of middle-aged hipsters. Unless it can cobble together some sort of coalition with the Lib Dems, the woker-than-thou Greens and the gingerish hordes north of Berwick, it will never see power again.

    China has animal cruelty sewn up
    Let’s drop in briefly on the Naval Medical University in Shanghai, where scientists are hard at work stitching rats together. They take a male rat and a female rat, join them with stitches and staples to create one hermaphroditic creature and see if it will give birth.

    Turns out it will. Thank you, China, for your pioneering approach to animal welfare. The more bestial a regime is to humans, the more bestial it is to animals.

    A case of identity
    I’m grateful to a reader who forwarded to me a notification he had been sent by the National Education Union, of which he is a member.

    It is an invitation from which he is excluded, as it’s for local black NEU members. The union adds, as a postscript: “The NEU uses Black in a political context to encompass all members who self-identify as Black, Asian and any other minority ethnic groups who do not identify as white.”

    My advice was: go along, mate, and tell them you self-identify as a dervish. Whirling or static — your choice.

    1. It is truly sad that in the 21st century the Nazi’s still reign. Only they parade now as virtue signallers, the holier than thou, the progressive, Left. Promoting racism, division, intolerance and bigotry, one whinging group at a time.

      The stop funding hate group are typical of this sort. Fascists, we used to call them. People who absolutely cannot tolerate any other view but their own.

      The really sad thing? They think they’re the good guys!

      1. I was divorced by an adulterous Methodist, so I know all about the need to maintain the moral high ground by dragging a victim through the mud.

  18. 334553+ up ticks,
    Morning Each,

    Sunday 20 June: The Tories have misjudged the mood in their southern heartlands

    “Misjudged” is a gentle approach, herd soothing rhetorical camouflage
    for what in fact is the tory (ino).

    The tories (ino) although along with the lab / libs have been a coalition for the last thirty years, the tories (ino) blatantly since may introduced
    the nine month delay, the tories were having NO MORE upperty actions from the peoples ( 24/6/2016) and took the road to treachery against peoples & Country BIG TIME.

    The reset is getting into its stride, DOVER intake picking up, literally,
    the lost by-election will be ploughed over the only one that would have a political nuclear reaction is if ( and sorely needed ) Anne Marie Waters was to win the Batley – Spen by – election 1 July, I would take that to be the peoples reset triggered.

    By the by,
    The burco chap is joining labour that is one boiler that urgently needs getting shot of.

    1. I took on someone on the Spectator the other day who refused to believe that the Conservative > Lib Dem swing in Chesham & Amersham had anything to do with planning or HS2. He said the only evidence he (and presumably the Conservative Party) was prepared to accept was that provided by focus groups and private polling, and that a 16,000 majority for one party being turned into an 8,000 majority for another was not proper evidence of political intent.

      1. Which rather explains why the country is going down the crapper.

        But, sometimes such people are there to present the government line. To entrench the statist attitude.

    1. It was a long time coming, but inevitable. Bercow is a natural cellmate to Starmer, and really they belong in the same party. You’d have to wish the Labour Party a great deal of ill will to imagine that either’s presence is helpful to them.

      1. 334553+ up ticks,
        Morning JM,
        Lest we forget they are a segment of the lab/lib/con coalition
        and as such are equals.
        The lab (ino) just ahead of the tories (ino) in the odious
        politico’s stakes, burko, teflon tone, neil starmer they’ll
        take some beating.

        Even so, johnson and his wrecking crew have the shout and are doing a grand job of demolition, the supporting cast, the electorate are still supporting the close shop coalition and will continue to do so right up to entering the mosque.

    2. Morning Ogga1, it is not very often you see a rat joining a sinking ship.

    3. Let’s not lose sight of the fact that his much taller, fragrant wife has been a long-time Pinko.

      1. A rare beast indeed, Mrs Bercow – a libertarian pinko with a sense of fun!

  20. I’m not a religious or spiritual person but sometimes rare events have caused me to wonder, what if…
    It’s the Summer Solstice tomorrow, due at 4:32 am BST – Greenwich Royal Observatory. What if we are entering a period of revelations that bring the corrupt edifice in government tumbling down? Has JHB started the ball rolling?

    If only I believed in…

    https://twitter.com/JuliaHB1/status/1406380316311252992

    https://twitter.com/Mark_J_Harper/status/1406307422294134786

    1. If this was illegal, why isn’t Cur Ikea Slammer being prosecuted? Or at the very least isshooed with a “massive” fine..?

    2. If this was illegal, why isn’t Cur Ikea Slammer being prosecuted? Or at the very least isshooed with a “massive” fine..?

  21. ‘Morning All

    #CovidClownWorld

    http://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ce0f89424cbc3a335c9614bb193d618147a7a8db679583d2251bf61b385ef35c.png

    Whitty Ferguson Handcock……

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6658f8a5373c8bca2f014a00d16d041fe30bf53a6e432ff00019059a46c96b74.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/90da062b81a31050d8f8906e05aaf1bf2fa1c97cbc7818fd9523ac3ba4061d22.jpg

    https://twitter.com/spenthomf/status/1405824445575479305?s=20

    https://twitter.com/Lukewearechange/status/1405167537420046338?s=20

      1. That image has a strong whiff of BS about it, though I am quite ready to believe in Rainer Fuellmich’s whistleblower.

  22. Sterling – ow I have the ball, I have the ball, mustn’t look at the ball, mustn’t look at the ball, must look at where i’m going, oops I run straight into a defender, I’ve lost the ball, pull a gurney face quick and shout, why are the rest of the team standing with their hands on their hips, why weren’t they moving into space so I could pass to them?

    1. Wonder why the Mail continues to refer to this grovelling to Marxism as ‘anti-racist’?

      1. they have to use woke phrases like the rest of UK MSM. It’s all part of the Psy Op game of attrition / indoctrination [follows the Goebbels mantra tell a lie often enough and people will believe it]

        1. they’ve, like all others in MSM racket have taken the King’s shilling. In this case our money to pursue their agenda in order to remain in the “good books of Govt”

      3. Because the Daily Mail, like the Conservative party (and every other echelon of the British establishment), has been infiltrated and taken over by the malign forces of the Left.

        And they achieved all this, stealthily, over a protracted period of time whilst the Right sat with both thumbs up its arse!

    2. Racism is a recent construct. It has been devised by those opposed to Western civilisation.
      The daft (daft=cognitive dissonance) BBC have a story on their website about some bloke that played for Scotland in the Year Dot. Apparently contemporaneous reporting mentioned “colour” only in relation to his boots, not his skin.

      https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-57520338

      1. it’s a basic technique of “white liberals” to use the mantra divide and rule and relieve them [white liberals] of their own guilt

  25. Good morning from a drying out Derbyshire.
    Heavy rain through the small hours has ceased and it’s a cool and dull 8°C in the yard today.

    1. The above quote needs context (you have to listen to the clip to get it), however, I can’t help wondering if the doctors are using excuses to get out of giving the vaccine that they aren’t themselves totally sure about.

    1. Why do Yanks categorise people as to whether they are ‘smart’ or ‘dumb’?

      I can’t see any sensible connection between whether one is clean, tidy and presentable, or is mute (unable to speak).

        1. They took proper English with them when they first entered that continent. The problem is that they all listened to a retard called Noah Webster who produced a dictionary with simplified (hah!) pronunciations and spellings of time-honoured and formerly decent English words.

          Like sheep they all followed his idiotic advice.

          1. There should be ‘English’ and ‘American’. As it is, Microsoft used to wail and whine that the additional cost of Windows in the UK was the cost of translation. A while back someone went through all the complete lack of effort to translate and then repeated the question.

            Microsoft didn’t bother answering, so the final comment was simply ‘price gouging’.

          2. I would image similar conversations about language development took place amongst the Saxons who remained in their Germanic homelands, rather than venturing to that strange island off Europe’s western shores.
            “And, worse still …. they’ve stopped using three genders for their nouns ….”

      2. I can see that this makes you angry (English), Grizzly. However, you are far from mad (American).

      3. I remember thinking Milton’s zeugma “blind mouths” in Milton’s Lycidas was very effective. It ascribed the metaphorical use of the word blind with the mouth which speaks rather than sees as the eyes are expected to do. In other words people without understanding speak nonsense and display their ignorance.

        Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold
        A sheep-hook, or have learn’d aught else the least
        That to the faithful herdman’s art belongs!
        What recks it them? What need they? They are sped;
        And when they list their lean and flashy songs
        Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw,
        The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed,
        But, swoll’n with wind and the rank mist they draw,
        Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread;
        Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw
        Daily devours apace, and nothing said,
        But that two-handed engine at the door
        Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more”.

        In our first season aboard Mianda we met by chance one of my former star pupils on the beach at St Mawes where he and his family were on holiday. Lycidas was one of the poems we had studied and he was able to declaim the whole poem by heart as he had learnt it as a schoolboy because he had such a love of Milton’s language.
        He invited Caroline, me and our two boys to supper with him, his wife and his children who were the same age as ours. We had a marvellous evening and reignited a debate we had had in class about the complicity of Gertrude in Hamlet’s father’s murder. The words ‘that incestuous, that adulterate beast‘ implied that Gertrude had started an affair with Claudius while Hamlet’s father was still alive but, to borrow a phrase from our Queen, opinions on the matter can differ. We also played the guitar together as I had taught him some finger-picking accompaniments to various songs when he was a pupil at Allhallows.

        Andrew, my former pupil, is now a criminal lawyer, a Q.C. and the chairman of the Bar Council. Even when he was a schoolboy it was difficult to get the better of him in a debate.

      4. My brother’s severely autistic and manages to dress himself well enough – 32 combs of the hair precisely.

        Yet to judge him on his appearance or his manner would be wrong, as he is so much more than that – as we all are.

    2. It happens to be a fact that Blacks as a group have the lowest IQ of any racial group in the world ( followed by the Arabs ) , most in Africa being sub-80 IQ & I expect that despite 175 years of emancipation in the USA & western education the average of IQ of Black Americans is still around the 80-85 level

        1. Mandela, just like his pal Arafat, validate the Shakespearean line ” the evil that men do lives after them ” ( from Julius Caesar, spoken by Marc Antony)

          1. unfortunately Amercians of Coloured Persuasion” are still stuck in the Roots [tv show] mode harping on about injustices, aside Obama, none of them will allowed remotely near controlling anything

          2. Obama was half white & half Kenyan and not the descendant’s of slaves and is the real life “Manchurian Candidate” operated by his mentor & controller George Soros.

          3. Brought up by his white mother and her white parents.
            I wonder how he’d have fared in his father’s native Kenya?

          4. Brought up principally by his Kenyan father in Indonesia and indoctrinated in radical Islam at a state school in Indonesia. His mother a radical drug taking hippie barely looked after him before her death & his white grandparents were dirt poor yet miraculously despite his poor high school grades & drug taking, he was selected to be mentored by a Black Marxist and he got into Harvard on a full scholarship & there again by a miracle he graduated after yet another Marxist radical professor, a former terrorist, personally mentored him & was by all accounts his homosexual lover.

          5. Interesting.
            I thought Hippy Dippy Ma had a Indonesian husband/significant other after his father returned to herd goats.
            Talk about an obscure history.

          7. And you have to be careful with your pronunciation with the words that follow: The good is oft interred in their bones

          9. Old Honitonians?

            Former pupils of Allhallows are called Old Honitonians or OHs as the school was originally in Honiton before moving to Lyme Regis in the 1930’s

      2. Give over. That’s simply not true – if you believe it to be, present facts.

        There’s a difference of education and raw intelligence. Yes, education promotes the intelligence but to suggest they’re all literally morons is wrong.

        People – regardless of skin colour – should be treated as you find them, not tarred disparagingly based on blatant racism. Stop it. If you’re not better than that you shouldn’t be here.

        1. Sorry wibbling but there have been a number of scientific studies over the years concerning genetically inherited IQ by race & Black Africans are at the bottom of the IQ level. Of course there are Blacks with high intelligence but proportionally very few & no amount of free education or immoral reverse discrimination will close that gap. Intelligence cannot be “Learned” it is inherited. It is the proverbial elephant in the room that progressives deliberately hide when they force the false notions of inequality & discrimination being behind Blacks not doing well & failing as a group to integrate successfully into modern Western society. As the old saying goes ” you cannot make a silk purse out of a sows ear “

    1. Six million pounds just to hold a warehouse empty for four years?
      Some crony is going to be laughing all the way to the bank!

      I do not read too much into it, as such things must surely be part of normal planning, as well as a marvellous way to pass the moolah to friends.

  30. Morning everyone.

    Breaking news: Our central heating has just come on! It’s set at 20 all year round and the rads are now warm!

    1. Happy Sunday vw, sorry that you are enjoying the benefits of English summer! I wont tell you that its a sunny 28’C by me in Tel Aviv at 13:20PM

      1. Good day, Hatman. Maybe it is warm in Tel Aviv – but at least we don’t have hourly rockets coming in!

        1. Nor do we at the moment Bill – touch wood ( touches head ) but don’t worry its only a matter of time before a member of your local sharia patrol catches you with a bottle of plonk & then its a public flogging for you!

  31. Morning everyone.

    Breaking news: Our central heating has just come on! It’s set at 20 all year round and the rads are now warm!

  32. Todays Ponder

    How long will it be, before Jury members are coerced into “Taking The Knee”, before the trial of a BAME can go ahead

    1. it’s a level further up OLT, how long before jury members take the knee before starting the trial of a White person?

    2. it’s a level further up OLT, how long before jury members take the knee before starting the trial of a White person?

    4. It’s nice that you think trials will continue. I am pretty sure we are bound to imitate whatever stupidity the US invents.
      California law defines petty theft as the theft of any property with a value of $950 or less. … However, if the property has a value of $50 or less, the prosecutor can charge the offense as an infraction, so long as the offender has had no other theft-related conviction.

      California Laws on Petty Theft, Grand Theft, and Shoplifting
      https://www.criminaldefenselawyer.com/resources/criminal-defense/crime-penalties/petty-theft-california-penalties-defense

    5. Actually, kneeling started long ago. In 1953, aged 12 and in an all-boys’ school, I performed as a Bridesmaid (with newspaper stuffed down the front of my pink dress by the sixth-formers) in Gilbert & Sullivan’s ‘Trial by Jury’, first performed in 1875 to an opera parody Gilbert had written in 1868. Here is a quote from the libretto about the trial of Edwin (definitely White) for Breach of Promise of Marriage :

      [Enter Counsel for Plaintiff. He takes his place in front row of Counsel’s seats
      RECIT — COUNSEL
      Swear thou the jury!
      USHER. Kneel, Jurymen, oh, kneel!
      [All the Jury kneel in the Jury-box, and so are hidden from audience].
      USHER. Oh, will you swear by yonder skies,
      Whatever question may arise,
      ‘Twixt rich and poor, ‘twixt low and high,
      That you will well and truly try?
      JURY (raising their hands, which alone are visible)
      To all of this we make reply
      By the dull slate of yonder sky:
      That we will well and truly try.
      We’ll try.
      (All rise with the last note)

  33. Nick Robinson standing in for Andrew Marr this morning.
    Star performer was Andy Burnham, Mayor of Manchester. He is writing to Nicola Sturgeon complaining about her restrictions on Scots travelling to Manchester. She had not consulted him about this matter. AB looks like a future worthy Labour leader and possibly PM.

    1. Burnham is toxic, a light weight Mandelson. It would be exactly his agenda to try and head up Labour which is already being consigned to history. then again, I presume it was BBC

      1. “Burnham is toxic: a light weight Mandelson.”

        Does he wander into Manchester fish ‘n’ chip shops and ask for “some of that guacamole” on his chips?

      2. He’s a better person than Mandelson. He came over well on the Marr Show. He put lightweight Ed Davey in the shade. He has a sense of humour.

    4. Its a shame that Grigori Rasputin is dead as he & Jeremy Corbyn would make a great team to lead a new revitalized multi-racial sharia compliant Labour

    1. Why is there always plenty of cash sloshing about to fund the green fanatics but never enough to, oh, I don’t know: return illegal gimmigrants?

  36. Top btl comment on the DT article about John Bercow joining Labour:-

    ‘Carl Sanderson, 19 Jun 2021 7:59PM
    This is the first time I’ve heard of a rat joining a sinking ship’

    2. When ‘diminutive’ Bercow first read Carl Sanderson’s comment, he was not Happy.

      Oh? Well which one is he then?

    3. I saw and upticked that BTL comment and added my own: The final nail in Labour’s coffin?

    1. Maybe their efforts can be redirected to Dover & the other beaches where illegals land, I’m sure it will cause the invaders to turn around & head back to North Africa !

  38. The BBC has sparked a discrimination row after only allowing people from
    ethnic minorities to apply for a trainee position. The broadcaster is
    advertising a one-year, £17,810 trainee production management assistant
    role with its Science Unit in Glasgow, but the position is ‘only open to
    black, Asian and ethnically diverse candidates’.

    3. But it is not against the law! Who were the idiots responsible for making the LGBT exception?
      They should be rooted out and exiled to the Congo, or any other country like central London.

      1. Happy Sunday Ped. Lets face it the advert should simply have read: Only anti-British low IQ demented 3rd world scum of the earth need apply

          1. Yes, there was some cr*p around!
            I was confusing it with Ham M’Bongo Thompson, in the Beano.

          2. Yes, there was some cr*p around!
            I was confusing it with Ham M’Bongo Thompson, in the Beano.

    4. As I have before, that includes must include Whitey who are a mixture of

      Angle,Saxon, Viking, Frog(Norman), Dutch, Germanic, BAME, Scots, Oirish, Swedish, etc

      If they want a Person of Colour, they should state that and wait for Whitey only adverts to appear

      You Must NOT have One way Racial Equality, alyhough that is what BLMwants

      1. Waiting for someone to test the boundaries because they have one great grandfather who was black, and the BBC will then have to draw up some apartheid style regulations.

        2. Yes: for how many generations does a black person stay black or a white person stay white? Obummer was half white, and considered himself black; as do many, if not most ,of those whose skin indicate that gene.

          Sorry to bring the ubiquitous undesirable up, but Meagain considers herself black (except on her CV when applying for a job), although her mother looks part-black only, and Meagain could easily be more white (or “caucasian” as she puts it) than black. Is M going to insist that Archie is black, because M insists she is black?

      2. If mixed race can apply, I’ll find someone who is 99% white and 1% black and see how far she gets.

    5. As I have before, that includes must include Whitey who are a mixture of

      Angle,Saxon, Viking, Frog(Norman), Dutch, Germanic, BAME, Scots, Oirish, Swedish, etc

      If they want a Person of Colour, they should state that and wait for Whitey only adverts to appear

      You Must NOT have One way Racial Equality, alyhough that is what BLMwants

    7. I’m “ethnically diverse”; I have Welsh, Anglo-Saxon, Viking and Dutch ancestors.

  39. It’s a bit early in the day to be exercising the corkscrew or the bottle opener but when you read more nonsense like this…

    St Paul’s Girls’ School to rename role of ‘head girl’ because of its ‘binary connotations’

    The role of head girl at one of Britain’s leading girls’ schools will be renamed because it is seen as “too binary”.

    St Paul’s Girls’ School in Hammersmith, which charges pupils £26,000-per-year, is to rename the position to head of school after pupils asked for it to be given a more inclusive title.

    Helen Semple, the deputy head of the school, gave a training session in April during which it was claimed that there are at least 150 different gender identities. The session, which was called ‘Beyond the Binary: Understanding how to be inclusive for all gender identities’, welcomed Emma Cusdin, a transgender woman whose company Global Butterflies “helps companies create trans inclusive working environments”.

    “The LGBTQI world is an amazing rainbow of positivity and labels. We love labels. We love terminology, we love flags, we love parties,” Ms Cusdin reportedly said at the meeting. “Young people are finding amazing ways to self-identify. At the last count, we stopped counting at 150 gender identities that people are self-identifying [as]. We did a little quiz in terms of what the 150 are – I know about 30, in terms of what the definitions are.”

    Parents should not be “afraid to ask” their children about unfamiliar terminology surrounding gender and often “haven’t had access” to the same education around gender issues as school staff, Ms Cusdin added.

    Alumni of the school’s Old Paulina Community include Kate Bingham, the head of the UK’s Vaccine Task Force, and the television presenter Susanna Reid. The school has denied the suggestion it should also change the name of the school on account of its use of the term ‘girls’. In a statement given to The Times, high mistress Sarah Fletcher said that “reasoned and respectful discussion” was crucial to the development of the school’s pupils.

    “We have never, and would never, encourage a student to ‘be’ anything in relation to their identity. We want our students to be happy as themselves,” she said. “Our focus is on providing a respectful, kind, safe and non-judgmental environment in which our students are free to explore their own identity. Young people are talking about gender identity and our role as a school is to equip the staff with an understanding that supports students’ ability to reach out to them for support and navigate this safely.”

    A spokesman for St. Paul’s Girls’ School said: “It was the suggestion of our senior students that we change the name from ‘Head Girl’ to ‘Head of School’ as more modern, age appropriate and inclusive. In doing so, we are returning to our roots. From our very foundation in 1904 and for decades afterwards, the senior student was called ‘Head of the School’, so in making the change, we are confirming, not denying, our ethos and traditions.”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/19/st-pauls-girls-school-rename-role-head-girl-binary-connotations/

    Here are two of the named:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/294f477c17a1a9b5675ea5450c75565b6679e6e00ad360df1d0f9b26525413e0.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/cc1a3d26e16a3d45d31a9e7288b7f45be250479b697894996f9848042b8332b8.jpg
    https://globalbutterflies.com/emma-cusdin/

    Global Butterflies, FFS…

    1. So… The ‘head teacher person’ is under the control of the Head of School….

      I love it, in RN Language The Head is the toilet

      Goes back to the days of sail,when you sat of a plank (not Berk Ow) dangling from ropes at the front (head) of ship to do their business
      (the wind is blowing the ship forward by its’ sails, therefore also the crap, whick does not strike the ships side.)

      1. A late aunt of mine in London used to speak sneeringly about her snobby neighbors bright but lacking in common sense son, who went to a private school, as ” the Head Boy of the Girls school “

    4. H’mm …. remind me how much parents have to brass up to have their offspring that menstruate brainwashed.

    5. Looking at the Global Butterflies website you link to, it is obvious that there is a HUGE amount of money to be made from the Alphabet Soup Industry!

    6. Helen Semple, the deputy head of the school, gave a training session in April during which it was claimed that there are at least 150 different gender identities

      Poppycock*

      What there actually are in this country are about 68 million different people all of whom have a variety of different tastes and preferences.

      *One other variety of poppy is available

    7. Helen Semple, the deputy head of the school, gave a training session in April during which it was claimed that there are at least 150 different gender identities

      Poppycock*

      What there actually are in this country are about 68 million different people all of whom have a variety of different tastes and preferences.

      *One other variety of poppy is available

      1. Berk Ow, the epitome of ‘the small man” in every sense of the description

      2. Anything at all to remain on the gravy train. Poisonous little dwarf. No honour, no principles and zero integrity. His wife is a tart that slept with his cousin.

        Godawful people.

      1. Apologies – my post is badly phrased [now amended] – The Observer meant the Tory party’s woes and so did I!

      1. Yo Elfuns

        A piss pot is a useful item.

        We had to use one, with a more politesterer name, at home every night as we only had an outside Cludge and that was 1961

    5. For at least 5 nanoseconds, MB and I felt sorry for Sir Kneeler.
      A mug of coffee restored us to our natural evil selves.

  41. Cutting the hedge earlier this morning I found the shears were blunt……@#$&!…
    DIY.. job using folded foil to sharpen the blades did a satisfactory job!
    As a child I remember an odd job man called around and did useful jobs for a small fee!

    ..

      1. He was a dear old boy with a white beard…I thought he was Father Christmas!
        He had a small dog called Santa always begging for biscuits…..

        1. Small dog always begging for biscuits – shades of Phizzee before he got Dolly… :o)

      1. Fold a length of foil several times into a thick strip …

        Chop it using the top half of the blades….

    4. Afternoon Plum – we had a man who came round on a bicycle and I think he had a grinder on his bike to sharpen knives, shears etc. We also had “onion johnnies” with strings of onions hanging on their bicycles.

      1. We also had a tinker who would rivet pots and pans that had sprung a leak – make do and mend.

    2. 334553+ up ticks,
      O2O,
      Only two options at Batley-Spen
      For Britain OR for appeasement ( the LLC coalition)
      the people’s choice.

    3. Good chap Calvin Robinson. He was on GB News a couple of days ago and spoke a lot of good sense.

  43. Now I have done as promised last night;

    1. Find the e-mail addresses of Laurence Fox, Nigel Farage and Ann Marie Waters
    2. Draft and send ideas for the policies and manifesto of the proposed new party
    3. Publish that draft here on NTTL:

    I address this to the leaders of the Reform Party, Reclaim and For Britain.

    Whilst I and many others support most, if not all of your stated ideology, policies and proposals, there is a common attitude that individually none of this parties stand a chance of getting a representative into Parliament, much less into Government because, as 3 separate parties, all you will succeed in doing is to split the vote and allow the Lib/Lab/Con cabal to continue dominating Government and continue with their left-wing wokery tyranny that is currently ruining the country.

    May I therefore, suggest that you all meet, discuss your differences, identify compromises and move forward together as one party with a name that gets you to the top of the ballot paper? With the exception of For Britain, Reclaim and Reform currently look like ‘also-rans’. I suggest, ABILITY, but I leave the final choice to you.

    Policies and Manifesto

    Policies
    These are the areas where you will have to sell your ideas to the voters. I will leave the administration ideas and policies* for you to discuss among yourselves, which moves us onto

    The Manifesto

    I think these are the things that voter will wish to see in what should be a highly publicised** manifesto:

    National Sovereignty
    This will involve tearing up the abysmal Withdrawal Agreement and trading with the EU on WTO rules. At a stroke the ‘Border’ in the Irish Sea is removed and free trade with Northern Ireland becomes the ‘norm’. We get ALL our fisheries back and the EU has NO control over the City or Banking and no need for the false carbon reduction targets.

    Controlled Immigration
    Many promises have been made about limiting immigration – none of which have been kept, despite paying millions to France the Dover Immigrants keep coming, ably assisted by our Border Farce. The only way out of this is to leave the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), repeal the Human Rights Act and then we may proceed with the forced deportation of criminal (illegal) immigrants. Thus reducing the population by many millions and obviating the need to continue building on the green belt.

    Reform of Parliament
    The boundary commission needs to identify how to reduce the MPs in the Commons to about 450 (reduced population). The devolved Assemblies and the Scottish Pretendy Parliament must be dissolved and both responsibility AND accountability, vested with the various Secretaries of State and their Civil Servants. The Lords must be reduced to the hereditaries only, as they have the long-term interest of the country at heart. While including the Law Lords as the highest Court of Appeal, the Supreme Court will be dissolved and its current powers returned to the existing Courts of Appeal and the Law Lords.

    Reform of the NHS
    The NHS, via its top-heavy administration and lots of tiddly little ‘Trusts’, has been allowed to run riot with Ministers awarding contracts rather than the NHS purchasing section. I smell corruption. The Medical and Surgical side seem to run OK but the GPs and their surgeries must be brought under full NHS control as employees.

    I leave you to ponder all the above in the hope that we voters might have a party, other than Lib/Lab/Con, with a meaningful manifesto that gives the voter all they wish to vote for.

    Do we have such an ABILITY?

    With best intentions,
    NoToNanny (but real name)

    *Your policies should encompass the ways and means to offer and achieve the manifesto promises.
    **I understand that publicising the manifesto aims, will allow other parties to nick the best ideas but many are promises already made by them and subsequently abandoned – you should ridicule their attempts to revive their failed promises.

    1. You need to add to that the right to bear arms! It is the only guarantor that government will be responsible to the people & not to the rich & powerful and foreign governments!

      1. Sent already, Hat, and I doubt that the voters will relish the idea of hand-guns (and others) running free among a population that already contains druggies, stabbers and other completely nasty idiots.

        Shades of Gun Fight at the Batley Corral!

        1. Even in the USA those with criminal records & mental health issues are not permitted to own firearms as is the case here in Israel where we have further restrictions on hand gun ownership which is not a right but a privilege for those who meet the stringent qualifications . IMO all tax paying citizens over 18 who have no criminal record or mental health problems should be permitted to own & carry a pistol & a rifle after a background check & basic training in the use of a firearm at an authorized firing range ( that’s how its done here in Israel ) . 99% of all firearms crimes committed are with illegal or stolen weapons & the authorities often deliberately include suicide by a legally owned firearm as a gun crime to pervert the statistics.

          1. That’s as maybe, hat, and that’s the USA and Israel.

            I spent 10 years in HM Forces and had to use a Lee Enfield .303 and a Bren, LMG. There are plenty enough ‘Neds’ with guns already and we daily see the results from that. No thank you. I can see many gun fights at the local Mosques, especially if we get a party and a government, willing to stand up to ALL these sucking bar stewards.

          2. Only armed people are free people NTN , unarmed people are lambs to the slaughter. I have a great deal of experience with a wide variety of automatic firearms from my 3 years in the IDF , combat in 2 wars as an infantry reservist & many years of annual active reserve duty up to age 45. I don’t currently own a firearm as its quite a lengthy procedure & quite frankly I don’t at my age & low crime location need one but I do carry a pocket knife as I have done ever since I was a schoolboy in London & unlike the UK there are no legal limits on blade length or type of knife that can be carried.

        2. Seems to work okay in Switzerland (as do local referendums). There are a lot of (legal) shooters out there who are not best pleased by legislation that leaves all the guns in the hands of criminals. We are in the stupid position of having to send our Olympic shooting team abroad to practise while blek on blek shootings continue apace.

    2. 334553+ up ticks,
      Morning NtN,
      Fox Waters most definitely, farage most definitely NOT.

      His odious knife play regarding 30000 UKIP members
      showed his true colours.

        1. 334553+ up ticks,
          Afternoon NtN,
          Brexit party ( farage from blaiklock) split real UKIP vote, stood down a good % of its candidates with farage in pro johnson mode.

          Brexit renamed Reform, more farage, then a tice take over he
          who once believed we should ALL join the tory (ino) party and change it from the inside.

          While changing the tory (ino) party from the inside the mosque building program will be well complete and a good % of the congregation via the tory (ino) overseeing the intake daily at DOVER, in place.

          See Anne Marie Waters take on the islamic ideology followers
          if peoples want change they will certainly get it via For Britain.

          1. I’ll just go with whoever – I just want to get these idiots to look at each and think, “Could we, will we?”

          2. 334553 + up ticks,
            Evening Ntn,
            In regards to lab/lib/con member / voters the hope patches
            will be in play, hope tory beats lab / lab beats tory / libs beat lab/con other issues will be of no consequence.

            The perfect opportunity at Batley – Spen for the peoples to show their supposed anger

            It really will be a gauge on feelings and decent peoples are running out of time, rapid.

          3. At the moment, Ogga, too many vote-splitters. They need to amalgamate for success.

          4. 334553+ uo ticks,
            Ntn,
            Should be looked at via who is best qualified to deal with the current outstanding issues one main one being the dangers of islamic ideology, then vote accordingly.
            There are many that avoid that issue like Andy Capp round a labour exchange, farage is one.

      2. I do not share your venomous hatred of Nigel Farage but I certainly think he has feet of clay. I find him personally amusing and an excellent speaker but he has also proved very disappointing when the crunch comes.

        My principal disappointments in him are :

        i) Why did he withdraw Brexit Party candidates from seats held by remainer Conservative MPs. He demanded no quid pro pro and his surrender on this issue has ensured that even with its large majority there are too many remainers in the party determined to undermine Brexit and subject Britain to EU bondage;

        ii) When Boris Johnson announced his pathetic deal surrendering to the EU’s demands for a border in the Irish Sea, getting no assurances on financial services and betraying our fishing industry why didn’t Farage explode with anger as he should have done at Boris Johnson’s gross Brexit betrayal . Instead Nige humbly said the deal was OK. And now that the full horrors of the deal are being experienced why has Farage not admitted that he was wrong in not condemning the surrender deal before he had examined it properly?

        iii) Having done an excellent job in exposing the shambles of illegal immigrants still arriving in great numbers and being given luxury accommodation and other benefits why has Farage withdrawn from the fray having actually made no difference to the stopping of this unfettered flood

        In another post here today I have quoted from the poet, John Milton. His descriptions of Satan’s arguments in the debating chamber of Hell’s Pandemonium apply very aptly to Mr Farage:

        SEMBLANCE OF WORTH – NOT SUBSTANCE

        1. 334553+ up ticks,
          Afternoon R,
          I do believe “venomous hatred” a tad strong well founded
          dislike more like.

          Many peoples will NOT have it that he stabbed 30000 UKIP members rhetorically in the back, because when he openly turned rogue & went pro tory (ino) it suited them.

          He is a part of the problem in that he will create the illusion he is revealing facts that have been doing the circuit for years
          when ALL the time he is pro governance, as the stand down regarding brexit / johnson has shown us.

    3. “…responsibility AND accountability…” Might that include possible criminal charges, followed by prison?

    4. I’d like to remind you, Tom, that in 2015 UKIP had a fully costed and independently verified manifesto which set out how it would pay for what it proposed. There doesn’t seem to have been anything comparable since.

      2. I think, Connors, that the British Electorate is in many ways, beginning to wake up to the enormity of the current situation.

  44. Hope this is not a repeat, but for me Littlejohn is spot on here:

    RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Boris and Carrie are displaying certain traits associated with another famous couple.… I give you The Markles of Downing Street
    By RICHARD LITTLEJOHN FOR THE DAILY MAIL

    PUBLISHED: 07:42, 18 June 2021 | UPDATED: 07:40, 20 June 2021

    There’s an expression to describe what’s happened to Boris’s brains since he hooked up with Carrie Symonds.

    Unfortunately, it’s not suitable for a family newspaper but I’m sure some of you can work it out for yourselves.

    Suffice it to say that since BoJo fell under the spell of the current Mrs Johnson he’s undergone a remarkable transformation. The man who used to review high-powered gas-guzzlers for a men’s magazine now wants to get rid of them altogether in the next decade.

    Someone who railed against political correctness has come over all Greta Thunberg and lumbered Britain with the most draconian decarbonisation targets in the developed world.

    His off-colour jokes and hatred of political correctness have given way to modern sensibilities. He even backs England footballers taking the knee, for heaven’s sake, something he would have ridiculed remorselessly not so long ago.

    Boris, a clever wordsmith skilled at cutting through cant, has recently resorted to spouting woke gobbledegook, babbling on at the G7 about building back ‘in a more gender-neutral and perhaps a more feminine way’.

    Nurse!

    Boris and Carrie (can we stop calling her the First Lady — we’ve got one of those and she’s called the Queen) are also displaying certain traits associated with another famous couple.

    For instance, parading their baybee while protecting his privacy and lecturing the rest of us about climate change while travelling by private jet.

    Once upon a time, devil-may-care Boris would have got away with it. No one could have accused him of hypocrisy.

    Today, under the influence of his not exactly blushing bride, not so much. Who does all this sound like? Can’t wait for Carrie’s children’s book.

    Laydees and gennulmen, I give you The Markles of Downing Street.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-9699981/RICHARD-LITTLEJOHN-Boris-Carrie-Markles-Downing-Street.html

  45. Priti Patel axes unconscious bias training for Border Force officers. 20 June 2021.

    All Border Force officers have been offered “unconscious bias” training despite controversy over whether it has any positive effect, The Telegraph can disclose.

    Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, has ordered the Home Office to scrap the courses for staff after it emerged that Border Force and UK Visas and Immigration, two of the department’s agencies, offered training intended to alert people to hidden prejudices they may harbour.

    Spending records show Border Force paid £32,510 last year to Challenge Consultancy, a diversity firm that previously said Peter Pan character Captain Hook represented a “sinister” message on disability.

    Well they weren’t conscious that they had them so they won’t mind keeping them. Lol!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/06/19/exclusive-priti-patel-axes-unconscious-bias-training-border/

    2. As i have said more times than the count of raindrops on Friday. Everything politicians and the civil service come into contact with they Eff up, big time.

  46. An hour well spent!
    First rearranging the stuff in the storage container, then shifting all the late Mother in Law’s stuff the DT had piled in the kitchen into there.
    I can actually mover about in the kitchen now!!!

  47. The Hungarian uprising against the woke West. Spiked.20 June 2021.

    I talk to Gergely and Sanyi, two of the guys milling around the banner. They tell me why they think it’s right to take a stand against the Anglo-American gesture of taking the knee. Sanyi tells me, ‘We are not like them, we are a proud people who refuse to bend ourselves to anyone’. Standing near us is Orsolya, who says the ritual of taking the knee has nothing to do with being against racism. ‘It is a new form of piety. It makes us sick.’

    Almost everyone I talk to tells me that we Hungarians have decided to take a stand against all this crap. They are still angry that when they booed the Irish for taking the knee in a recent game, the Western press denounced them as racist. They feel that they are continually lectured by the Western media as if they are colonial subjects. And they are not having it anymore.

    I’ve never met Gergely and Sanyi but I feel that they would fit on Nottl with little difficulty! They are of course right about the MSM that gives Orban pretty much the same treatment as Putin, and for the same reason. Neither bends the knee to Cultural Marxism!

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/06/20/the-hungarian-uprising-against-the-woke-west/

    1. They are quite right about the paternalistic stance taken by Brussels towards the Eastern European countries. “We sophisticated Westerners know better than you unreconstructed peasants…” etc

          1. Following Hancock’s Parliamentary appearance last week, when he mooted witholding NHS care from the unvaxxed’, he’s far more than a wally. The Hague awaits such behaviour.

    2. There is a map of his recent travels, he deserves an MBE everyone else seems to have one.

      2. Unfortunately Anne, they’d probably catch him, kill him and have a barbecue on Dover beach.

  49. G’day all, I been in the kitchen since 9 am preparing and cooking Mary Berry’s slow roast leg of (Welsh, isn’t it) lamb with ratatouille for our families late lunch, it takes around 5 hours to cook. With more than twice the veggies she has included. As pop’s and grandad, my treat to them all. I expect they will drink all the beer and a lot of the wine as well. 😍🤩🥰🤗 Shame as we had planned we couldn’t eat out side. Bloody pommy weather. It’s warmer in Perth in the middle of winter than it is here now.
    Oh Well Copyalayders. 🤠

      1. I thoroughly recommended that recipe but i doubled the veg and reduced to amount of stock It was delicious.

  50. Damn interweb is off. They might fix it by Wednesday. Problem is, with home office, internet is key.
    So, back to office tomorrow.

  51. Well I’ve been to Morrisons and it was only when I got to the payout that I realised I hadn’t put my mask on! No one said anything, and so far as I am aware, even gave me a glance.

    1. The staff don’t have a choice and are probably secretly hoping that more people rebel so their management decides to bin the masks.

      Afternoon, Minty.

    2. We still have door minders here, it is actually quite pleasant to receive a friendly greeting and the chance of a little chat.

      Two weeks without a covid case in or area but still no chance of a haircut or eating inside. This weeks excuse for no relaxation in the rules has been the number of UK cases of the delta (formerly known as Indian) bug.

      1. I’ve never worn them, Johnny. They’re useless. but good for brainwashing of the thickest.

    4. We’ve never succumbed to the face-nappy mentality, here in Sweden. People go about their daily business as normal unmasked. You get the (very) odd person walking about a supermarket wearing one, but they are very rare down here in Skåne.

      1. Could it be, George, that the Swedish inhabitants of Skåne are not the brightest crayons in the box?

        1. Skåne to the Swedes, Tom, is a bit like how Newfoundland is to Canadians, Queensland to Australians, and Norfolk to the English.

          You know, all nudge-nudge, wink-wink.

  52. Some great comments on the DT letters at the moment.

    Someone suggested that by stopping legal aid for illegal immigrants refugee claims, the extraneous claims would be stopped. Some are pushing back and claiming that the lawyers are acting in an altruistic way, the lack of money would not have any effect.

    Their position is so laughable that I am wondering if Phizzee is writing under a pseudonym.

    1. Not guilty yer ‘onour.

      Only a genuine asylum seeker should benefit from legal aid.

      The hordes coming across the channel are economic migrants.

      1. that is what I expected any DT reader to say, maybe it is a Guardian reader making the comments.

      2. Genuine asylum seekers should not need Legal Aid. They will have documentation of some kind to support their claim. No one leaves home without something, whether it is a passport, identity card, video club card, library card, utility bill, credit card or a photo of themselves standing in front of Saddam Hussein’s statue.

        1. With you there, Horace. They might need legal aid for other reasons like contesting the decision. (especially if they are a Syrian Christian).

      3. …and how many of those genuine ‘Asylum’ seekers enter the UK as the FIRST safe country?

  54. Caroline was chatting to Françoise, our lovely GP, after church today. She told Caroline that she has not lost a single patient to Covid but that four of her patients who have had the vaccine have died. She advises me most strongly not to have the vaccine if I can avoid it and says it would be unwise given the medicines I am on.

    1. That’s quite shocking. I wonder how typical her experience is, and whether the vaccinated patients who died were all frail.

    2. It is not wise to take a vaccine or drug that has not had full clinical trails. I remember thalidamide.

    3. Thank you for that, Richard, I’m in agreement with that but Best Beloved has had both and I worry for our future.

    3. Lost (mainly) on me , Philip, but I think I understand the Wendyball thing – bunch of silly gurls, innit’?

    2. I once took a really dim bird out for a night out on the town. On the ‘bus back home we were sitting behind a chap who had really bad dandruff.

      I said to her, “It looks like he could do with some Head & Shoulders.”

      She looked at me puzzled and open mouthed before asking, “What’s ‘Shoulders’?”

  58. For anyone who hasn’t got round to opting out of sharing your medical records with all and sundry, here is a very quick and easy online opt out form – it takes about two minutes. They sent a security code to my email address, my previous opt-out from 2014 was still recorded. I confirmed my choice and it was done.

    https://your-data-matters.service.nhs.uk/

    2. I think they have the most enormous bloody cheek when you request your own medical records and they charge you £50.

        1. I requested mine from my GP surgery and the admin cost was £50.

          It was an interesting read for several reasons.

          1. 3 concussions leading to 2 hospital stays before the age of 10. The first one being when i was in a highchair.

          2. I have lived in 3 different cities and none of those records were available to my GP after i had registered in said cities.

      2. That is a bloody cheek, I can get a print out from my doctor of my medical records for free, last time I needed one was about 6 years ago when I had a private operation to remove a growth in my bowels which fortunately was benign

      3. I have put mine on a spreadsheet together with the medication I’m on and its current availability. So, screw your £50.00, NHS,I bet mine is more comprehensive than your’s. Read it and weep!

  59. Summer solstice 2021: everything you need to know about the longest day of the year

    AAAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

    IT IS NOT THE LONGEST DAY: Summer Solstice lasts for 24 hours, but just has the most daylight time.

    Some othe days are longer that 24 hours, but only if a Leap Second needs to be added, to maintain UTC Coordinated Universal Time

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leap_second

  60. Are all the little spiders that live inside wing mirrors the same species?

    1. The principal driver behind lowering the age of consent down to 11 or 12 is not actually the Muslims ( at least not yet ) it is of course Peter Tatchell & friends in the Labour party & lowering the voting age to 16 represents a clear & present danger to Western civilization as it will empower hordes of hard left indoctrinated teens to vote for whatever party promises them a meal ticket for life without any effort in earning the benefits they crave.

        1. Once the Muslims have enough political power in Parliament, English Law will be amended to incorporate child marriage at 6 ( the age the prophet married Ayesha ) & will allow 4 wives plus sex with animals as permitted in Islam

    2. That is the idea. It blows the voting at 16 notion out of the water.
      After all, teenagers are now incarcerated in education factories until 18.

      1. After all, teenagers are now incarcerated in education factories until 18.
        After all, teenagers are now incarcerated in indoctrination factories until 18.
        there that’s fixed it for you!

        2. But as a lot of them cannot read or do sums, when they finally leave school, all the words and age talk is way outside their
          comprehension (which is above their heads too)

      2. Did you read Douglas Murray yesterday?

        “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.”

        2. I ALWAYS read Douglas Murray. I even buy and read his books.
          The other must read is Rod Liddle. And Ross Clarke.

  62. Phew …. having walked the doggie equivalent of a foot dragging teenager round the fields I am now relaxing over a cuppa.
    Looking at the pictures of the Queen at Ascot, MB and I think she looks more relaxed than she’s appeared for some time.
    We suspect that the last year or two of the DoE’s life were not a particularly pleasant time for everyone – including Prince Philip himself.
    Plus, we think she’s made definite decisions over Ginge and Whinge.

    1. Hopefully removing the titles of the Duke & Duchess of Hollyweird & making them commoners like us would be an object lesson to Miss Gold Digger & the Prince of Woke.

    2. Cats firmly asleep in porch. They refuse all offers of tree climbing, mousing, mole catching, treats…warm stoves.

    3. The Mail has a story today on Charlie changing the Letters Patent to exclude Harry’s children from being entitled Prince and Princess.

      1. A very courageous decision, I thought. It will also protect the chlidren a little, as without titles they won’t be so valuable as assets to be exploited.
        Also, there will be no pressure for the UK to pay for life long security for them.

        But some people will always say unjustly that Charles did it because he is a racist. I hope this will not make him even keener to suck up to minorities.

          1. Hal wasn’t paying attention. He was too busy flying helios and playing Naked Pool.

          5. Alan Bennett wrote a short book about when the RF were reduced to the common people…can’t remember the name.

          6. Alan Bennett wrote a short book about when the RF were reduced to the common people…can’t remember the name.

          7. Alan Bennett wrote a short book about when the RF were reduced to the common people…can’t remember the name.

        2. Racist? Archie is at most 1/4 black. He is at least 3/4 white. So how would that be racist? Oh, I see: so if someone is 1/20 black and identifies as black that is racism…or where does it stop?

          1. The idiots are out there on twit saying that the RF drove Meghan out….I know, I know….

        1. Definitely , just like the UK’s 3 inch blade knife law for honest White taxpayers prevents Blacks & Muslims running amok with 10 inch butchers knives.

          1. I hear and understand all you say, Hat, but at 77 years of age, my goal is to get a party in power that is not Lib/Lab/Con with a manifesto that will appeal to (what I think is) the sensible majority of voters.

            To introduce a concept as alien as gun law, will deprive us of that majority vote. That may be an idea 10 years down the road.

            Let’s get rid of the wokery, Common Purpose, the Green scam and the World Economic Forum first, and then try to get a sensible government in place.

          2. It is not an alien concept, quite the opposite , it is part of British history that the ordinary citizenry has the right to bear arms, this predates the Norman conquest & was made law in the middle ages that citizens of all classes must keep & maintain arms, it is only post-WW2 that evil politicians including John Major & Tony Blair working on behalf of the EU wiped that right off the statutes. They did their job well & wiped out the collective memory of the British people & turned a once free & proud people into timid sheep. IMO the British people took the collective kneel long ago when successive pro-EU governments took away their right to armed self defense & flooded the UK with some of the worse low IQ violent scum the 3rd world has to offer !
            Historical Bases of the Right To Keep and Bear Arms, by David T. Hardy,[*] Partner in the Law Firm Sando & Hardy
            https://guncite.com/journals/senrpt/senhardy.html

  64. The BBC is wicked. It leads with a story of mass deaths in Brazil but dares not mention the remedy. Beyond my comprehension.

  65. Highly dangerous rampant plague in UK leaves 6 dead yesterday. Lockdown restrictions continue indefinitely.

    Highly dangerous rampant plague in yer France leaves 46 dead yesterday. Most restrictions lifted.

    Funny that.

      1. Many, of course, are recorded as covid deaths. The dead bame may have known someone who had the disease….

    3. Rampant plague kills about 20 per day in Canada. They are so scared that we cannot even visit all other provinces, let alone pop across the border..

      Who cares that drug overdose deaths are way higher than previous years.

      1. To say nothing of cancer, suicide, pneumonia, falling off ladders, traffic accidents etc etc

  66. The Daily Human Stupidity.

    “For at least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols”

    Aldous Huxley.

    1. 334553+ up ticks,
      O2O,
      The way the lab/lib/con coalition members / voters are shaping England will lap the cloggies by a good ten year.

  69. Here’s a queer thing: GB News on Freeview runs several seconds behind GB News on Sky. I’d have thought it would be the other way round, what with satellite delay and all.

          4. Don’t get me started on hearing aids… I have tried lots – all quite useless.

  70. British F-35s to launch operation against Islamic State targets https://www.israeldefense.co.il/en/node/50476
    The planes from the 617th Squadron of the Royal Air Force will operate from the aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth to help prevent the terrorist organization from regaining a foothold in Iraq
    USN F-35B fighters on the deck of the aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth in May. Photo: REUTERS/Bart Biesemans
    https://www.israeldefense.co.il/sites/default/files/styles/full_article_image/public/_Uploads/dbsArticles/2021-05-28T110417Z_996285183_RC2HON9IRT6N_RTRMADP_3_NATO-BRITAIN-ASIA.jpg?itok=bZo6PqQZ

      2. Very ordinary.
        Châteaux sosraboc has far more wildlife and interesting wild plants (ok weeds) in the grounds.
        And it looks better too.

          1. Only the one germinated and it’s looking very sorry for itself even though I’ve been watering it carefully.

            I may plant it out and see if it does better. Fortunately the melons and other squashes are going crazy.

            Will a single plant produce fruits?

          2. Probably – it may also cross-fertilise with courgettes etc and produce interesting variants (to use a very topical word!)

          4. In 2019 two of our Laure plants crossed with my mate Henri’s courgettes and we had normal shaped trombettis but with bright green, stripy skin!

      3. Windows like cathedrals? Regency Gothic, more like. Don’t most windows in England open out (because we traditionally don’t have external shutters)?

    4. Luvvie jets around the world enjoying everything that nature has to offer the he lectures us.

    5. And Royal family favourite, let us not forget! They are in it up to their necks!

    6. Humans are animals and as such are part of the natural world you silly old duffer.

      Looks like Demented Attenborough has read Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus and believed that as the origins of the human race.

      1. I have to disagree with you. Humans were a part of the natural world when they still retained the ability to regulate their numbers.

        Since the human population began to escalate, exponentially, and is now out of control, the most damaging consequence of this is the mass extinction of innumerable other species of plant and animal, all so very necessary for biodiversity and a necessary balance of nature. The ridiculous overpopulation of one utterly stupid and selfish organism will ultimately (and very soon) cause the extinction of the human species (a ‘race’ is a sub-division of a species, which we, collectively, are).

        The human species may well have evolved into the cleverest species to have ever inhabited this planet. Unfortunately, cleverness is not an indication of intelligence. Intelligent species do not exceed the natural numbers that their environment will support. They do not routinely destroy, trash, pollute and ruin their environment. They do not invent, manufacture and use weapons of mass destruction. They do not concoct irrational means of mind control such as politics and religion, in order to dominate and control others of their species.

        In a nutshell, Attenborough is palpably and provably correct.

        1. We are the only species that practises contraception 😀

          Yes the population has exploded, you can blame world peace, greater longevity, lower infant mortality, charity, welfare states, and so on. That doesn’t make us any less natural, we aren’t exactly alien to Earth.

          Other species do often exceed their natural numbers, but nature bites back. Excess animals starve, or disease strikes, or some other form of disaster that culls numbers. Just because it’s not as in your face as human overpopulation don’t think it doesn’t happen.

          I can’t comment on the religious and political affiliations of animals as nobody I know can converse with them. Some have well defined societies but how much is down to intelligence and how much is instinctual who knows. Strength seems to be the way animals dominate each other in general.

  72. Hamilton beaten again in the Grand Prix. Perhaps his pre-race routine needs looking at.

    1. Youngest came round for Father’s Day. I mentioned the generation thing and told her she was showing signs of it as well with the generation of her children being not all she expects.
      I told her of the changes I have seen in my lifetime, some good but a great deal more not so good. She asked for an example and I told her of the Falkland invasion and how Lord Carrington resigned because of it but today we have a PM with deceit and cover up over the decorating bill, just one small example, and Cabinet members complicate in the Covid lockdown scandal. No honour or integrity on show in today’s government.
      Enjoy the painting Plum, you have every reason to weep for what was and what we have become.

      1. I find myself looking back rather than forward, maybe it’s an age thing.
        We had the best… growing up in the 60’s/70’s…..before technology turned us into robots…!

        Peace and Love brother…..

  74. Evening, all. The Tories have been misjudging the mood of the electorate for decades. It’s my belief that they are only in power because Labour are so awful and the voters are too nervous to vote for something really different.

    1. Good evening, Conwy and Oscar

      Dead right. Trouble is – there are not any proper alternatives. People stay at home. Looking at the regional and local elections today in yer France (round one) turnout is about 50% if that. Yer voter just thinks “Same old same old” and carries on with the petanque.

      1. Bill, I’m desperately trying to drum up support, provided that we can get, ‘For Britain, ‘he Reclaim Party’ and ‘Reform‘ to compromise, work together and produce a viable, alternative party worth voting for.

          1. ‘Tis all we can do in the face of the current Wokery, Common Purpose, adherence to BLM, Antifa and Extinction Rebellion.

            Not to mention giving Muslims and Pikeys a free ride with regard to law enforcement. It’s time Britain woke up!

      1. Not even if there was an amalgamation of ‘For Britain, ‘The Reclaim Party’ and ‘ Reform’?

        Would that give you an incentive to vote?

          1. Quite, that also, Plum, is my concern – if they lose sight of the objective (our freedom) and start in-fighting amongst themselves to become the ultimate ‘Power’. Then we have bad news.

      3. Spoil your ballot paper, Plum. Votes for women were so hard earned you should always exercise your franchise.

    3. Johnson is a lucky son of a *******, following Treasonous and having Corbyn and Sir Cur opposite you in the HoC, he could not fail to look good to the public.

    4. Evening Conway. It’s all stitched up. There’s no real difference between the parties and they ensure between them that no other gets to change things.

      2. Party A comes up with policy. Party B says this is terrible for the country, awful, they’d never do that. Party B gets elected. Party B steals party A’s policy then says it’s their own, it’s fabulous, it’s just what we need, you’d only get this under party B.

        This has gone on for years now.

        1. Hence the Cons stole policies from UKIP’s manifesto while decrying UKIP as nasty, fascist, racists.

          1. They did, and then didn’t carry it out. I don’t vote for the 3 main parties. Just an independent, when one turns up.

          2. They have all stolen policies from each other. Boris has enacted about 50% of the Corbyn manifesto. That’s the real problem. Mostly just the colour of their ties and who they favour most changes, nothing else, everything else is just trying not to upset the status quo too much.
            We need the entire fiscal side of the economy ripped up and started anew in a totally different way. We won’t ever get offered that, at least not in the lifetime of anyone currently living. We’ll go on lurching from crisis to crisis ramming sticking plasters over them as best we can instead just as we have done for about 50 years now.

    5. Hence the reason, Connors, that I’m advocating “For Britain, The Reform Party and Reclaim” get together, stop splitting the vote and become a viable, electoral party that the majority of voters could support at the ballot box.

      My God, it could work, provided they get their manifesto together.

      Add your vote and help us. – Please, see my earlier post.

    6. Something really different is never offered. We can have neoliberals that think the poor deserve to be poor, we can have neoliberals that try to do something about the poor, or we can have neoliberals that say they care about the poor but care about the environment more so if that makes the poor suffer more so what.

      Those are literally the three main choices at every election.

      And yes the opposition is awful. Bacon Millipede, followed by seventies relic, followed by charismaless Blairclone.

  75. Well, I must go. Can’t stay here enjoying myself when there are tables to be laid – and instructions to be given to Cook.

    Have a jolly evening in front of the fire.

    A demain.

        1. Everywhere you go – those horrible blue masks on the ground. And how many in landfill? On their way to the sea?

      2. I would make them clean graffiti off with their tongues and noses.

        I’d make them eat their litter.

        1. …and then birch them in public so that they may not begin to sit down – little, ignorant, twats.

          1. I have long held the view that such birchings should be held at half time at football matches and the criminals left sobbing at the exits so that fans can verbally abuse them and see what they themselves would suffer if they did similarly.

          3. A pair of sadistic callous bastards, but we both know that the outcome would be an improvement in behavioural standards…

      1. Not wishing to accuse you of being one yourself, Tom, but the plural of “ignoramus” is “ignorami”.

        LOL.

        1. Thank you Elsie, my last Latin lesson was 63 years ago and it’s now more than a little rusty.

    1. I can’t believe people are still mouthing that “there’s a pandemic on, you know” nonsense. When will they see that we’re being had?

  79. Another job jobbed.
    I’d notices a bit of tree down up the road, not quite in the road, but close enough to be caught by a passing HGV and bounced out of the verge, so I went up and got rid of it.
    An ash sapling, 5″ at the but end and I got 8 x 4′ and 1 x 6′ lengths out of it.

    1. How many of the 170,000 NHS staff were taken off front-line duty because of certain ethnic people being “more susceptible” to covid?

    2. I think this was stupid emotive stuff from an amateur politician. Surely it would make more sense to say that the NHS shouldn’t be relying on expensive agency staff?
      Highly skilled jobs are an international market place and cutting the NHS off from that would appear to be pretty stupid. The idea might have some merit if it was part of an attempt to improve working conditions (it is well known that jobs that offer to get you a visa have rubbish pay and conditions, because they know people from the third world will accept that).

      1. Who, Stefanovic? His tweet is stupid. Calling people heroes for dong their jobs and sucking up to foreigners.

        I know what I would feel if a foreign country where I am working said they didn’t want foreign workers…fine, in that case I will take my highly marketable skills elsewhere…they are not doing Britain a favour by working here, they are doing themselves a favour and will go where pay and conditions are best.

          1. Ah sorry, I’ve only just seen the Major part. What a scumbag he turned out to be!

    5. It certainly needs reforming from what it is today, compared to what it was at its inception.

    1. That must be the most ridiculous waste of time and effort to illustrate, what?

      Man’s gullibility.

    1. I like it, Hatman. What does PMJ stand for? I am assuming that J stands for Jazz.

      EDIT: I see that it stands for Post Modern Jukebox.

    1. Interesting article, and yes, I had many of the same experiences.
      Not all countries are as bad as her home country – France is much more relaxed, I think.

      When you are filling in the form to return to the UK, and they ask if they can contact you by phone, tick “No” (unfortunately there is not a “Fk off” option).
      When they ask you for a reason, just say you don’t use your phone except in emergencies.
      They will still call you – I got called four or five times.
      DON’T PICK THESE CALLS UP!
      You’ve already told them not to call you.
      I read someone on the internet saying that when they picked one such call up, they were blamed for not having picked all the others up, as though that was “evidence” that they had broken the rules.
      Of course, they can still send someone – my son got a personal visit at home after he entered the UK. But why make it easier for them?

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