Tuesday 6 July: How America sabotaged its own chance of success in Afghanistan

Posted on by Geoff Graham

An unofficial place to discuss the Telegraph letters, established when the DT website turned off its comments facility (now reinstated, but not as good as ours),
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Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2021/07/05/letters-america-sabotaged-chance-success-afghanistan/

664 thoughts on “Tuesday 6 July: How America sabotaged its own chance of success in Afghanistan”

    1. A film made just after WWII, when we had beggared ourselves fighting for freedom.
      (Ponders deeply)

  2. Priti Patel to reveal proposals for offshore centres for asylum seekers. 6 July 2021.

    Ministers are to reveal proposals for a suite of new laws paving the way for offshore centres for asylum seekers and criminal charges for migrants “knowingly” arriving in the UK without permission.

    The home secretary, Priti Patel, said it was part of her mission to crack down on “vile criminals” who run a flourishing smuggling operation across the channel. If the laws are passed, people-smuggling will attract tougher sentencing, up to life imprisonment.

    Morning everyone. There is of course not the remotest possibility of any of this happening! It is another deferment of responsibility until the PTB feel safe enough to tell you that the UK is now open to anyone who wishes to come!

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/jul/05/priti-patel-to-reveal-proposals-for-offshore-centres-for-asylum-seekers

    1. Best arrest the RNLI and border farce, then. They seem to be a vital part of the supply chain.

      1. As they re collaborating with criminal activity, real crimes, the they should consider their position, It is possible, although not likely, that a private prosecution could be brought. I’d send ten bob to crowdfund it.

        1. Recently the Sunday Times reported that passage to Britain was being openly advertised in Turkey at £10,000 per head.

          As our government states that we’ve received over 6,000 people this year, that’s over £60 million in the people smugglers’ hands.

          It would appear very likely that some of that has passed into the hands of rescuers and associated “charity workers”.

          2. I strongly suspect that cash is floating around the “charity workers” seeming that so many are very anxious that unlimited immigration should continue.

          5. using phrase “charity workers” is more than likely the cover story for Air BnB in Napier barracks – essential workers and all that

          6. “Lifeboat available for short term hire. Rates negotiable.”

            Edited

    2. 335151+ up ticks,
      Morning AS,
      The priti awful one has the electorate on her side any utterances of hers acts as a salve to them.
      Batley – spen showed that up only to well.
      The reset & replace is succeeding on the altar of treachery whereas in reality it should be the peoples
      reset ” round up and return”.

      1. Good Morning. Batley – Spen, Ogga, is a classic example of the voter asking, “Who else is there to vote for? Let’s go with the lesser of two evils.”

        Also, Minority Parties are dragging away the votes of those with independent minds and only succeeding in splitting the vote, thus ensuring tiny percentages for each of them.

        1. 335151+ up ticks,
          Morning NtN,
          That line of rhetoric will not wash anymore and has been out of date for quite a while.
          The lesser of two evils still equals evil.
          The batley / spen by election was fought purely on keep in / keep out basis nothing more.
          Likes of Anne Marie Waters laid out the teachers dangerous plight & the reasons behind it,did any of the
          main contenders ?
          As with UKIP under the Batten leadership a success story in the making showing it could be done but posing a threat to the close shop, triggering the treachery portrayed by the
          parties nec / nige.

          1. You may think it’s out of date but then you still castigate voters for the lib/lab/con coalition, while admitting that there is no alternative apart from NOTA.

          2. 335151+ up ticks,
            NtN,
            We in the real UKIP as in the 30000 mounting daily under the Gerard Batten leadership was giving it our best in trying to bring some semblance of sanity to an electorate that are seen to ALL intents and purposes to be trying to destroy a nation and in that pursuit having a great deal of success.

            I cannot see any benefit in supporting / voting for three proven sh!te parties on the basis of graded sh!te as in
            semi good sh!te, middling sh!te or genuine sh!te.
            The year run as shown by the Gerard Batten leadership of

            UKIP as was, shows it CAN be done.
            By the by DID the plight of the teacher at the batley – spen
            by election enter the minds of the electorate supporting the toxic trio ?

          3. To quote your own post re the ‘real UKIP’, “That line of rhetoric will not wash anymore and has been out of date for quite a while.”

          4. 335151+ up ticks,
            You are intentionally misquoting my post, I use “real UKIP”
            so as not to confuse it with the remnant remains of the genuine party.
            Also as a warning to any small party abuilding, beware of the lab/lib/con coalition & hard core member voters, in many cases the core member allegiance is first to the party before the country, for proof check the state of the nation currently
            ALL due to their repeated again & again, input.

          5. I’m pretty damn sure and believe the evidence of my own eyes that I said real UKIP AND put it in quotes.

            “Real UKIP” died out about 2016 and i is now old hat. I,.who was one of the 30,000 who paid my subs, can recognise that. Why can’t you? The possibility of a phoenix-like rise from the ashes is extremely slim given the current NEC.

          6. 335151+ up ticks,
            Afternoon NtN,
            IMO UKIP of 2016 was made up of multiple day trippers who promptly dispersed on getting the 24/6/2016 result and promptly returned to supporting & VOTING for the toxic trio.
            My posts of that era was to keep building on UKIP as a home guard but the electorate knew better “we” won now leave it to the tories (ino) need I say more.

            The 30000 in my post were under the Batten leadership, not farage, when Batten was building a credible party , in the black financially & members joining daily you could say rising from the ashes.
            When treachery via the party nec / farage took batten & UKIP down that terminated UKIPs credibility, 2019.

            Nearest party to the genuine UKIP party now is Anne Marie Waters
            but as we see via the batley – spen by election in is the usual voting pattern of party before Country damn the consequences.

          7. To quote your own post re the ‘real UKIP’, “That line of rhetoric will not wash anymore and has been out of date for quite a while.”

  5. The NHS hasn’t earned the George Cross. 6 July 2021.

    A significant proportion of the suffering during Covid was caused by the fact the NHS was not fit for purpose.

    This is blunt but truthful. The NHS do not deserve a George Cross, more crucifixion. It is a self-promoting, self-congratulatory, self- perpetuating monstrosity. They have turned me from a believer into someone who thinks it should not merely be privatised but abolished.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/06/nhs-hasnt-earned-george-cross/

    1. In reality applauding the NHS is like asking sheep to go baa baa to the knackers yard

  6. Morning all, overnight rain has cleared away to a sunny morning and 12 deg. Rain showers are forecast for later.
    How many here believe the buffoon is going to backslide on his “irreversible” relaxation of the Covid regulations. I fully expect by early October to be saying they are a shower of shites, here we go again, lockdown No 4 in all but name.

  7. Data driven decisions are based on a trend line.
    It looks as though the trend line has been compromised by the degree of dispersion in the data.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/501527092006d0cad7b73f07bed31ed5a0d349d98e1bdcbef189a4c08fc63ff9.jpg

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/heading-another-covid-u-turn-reasons-apprehensive/

    This is the point at which modelling must take over in making what Kier Starmer calls ‘balanced decisions’.

    Our history of model making hasn’t been that successful which means we must be guided by our gut feelings.

    Let’s get emotional!

    😀😁😂🤣😃😄😅😆😉😊😋😎😍😘😗😙😚☺️🙂🤗😇🤠🤡🤥🤓🤔😐😑😶🙄😏😣😥😮🤐😯😪😫😴😌😛😜😝🤤😒😓😔😕🙃🤑😲😷🤒🤕🤢🤧☹️🙁😖😞😟😤😢😭😦😧😨😩😬😰😱😳😵😡😠😈👿👹👺

    1. It’s a log scale. The lower end looks dramatic, but is a combination of normal “noise” that you can’t see at higher numbers because the vertical scale compressese the higher up you go. It doesn’t need modelling. Average daily deaths in the UK is about 920 per hundred thousand (for non-Covid years). This is about 1 600 a day, so to get the figues as low as those in March and later, there must have been a lot of over-croaking earlier. Thus, there will be a rise towards the daily average shortly.

    2. Put those deaths on a non-log scale with daily deaths from all causes and you’d need a microscope to see them.

  8. mng all, at least the opening letter salvo gets it about right:

    SIR – No one seems to believe that the British (and US) mission in Afghanistan was a victory, but General Lord Dannatt (Comment, July 2) overlooks key antecedents in his outline of the recent history of intervention in that country.

    Notably, the proto-Taliban mujahideen under Mohammed Omar were actively supported by the United States (and Pakistan), as they were fighting the Soviet Union, which occupied Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989. We see the consequences today.

    Professor Jeremy Ramsden
    University of Buckingham

    SIR – I’m afraid Lord Dannatt has drawn a false conclusion from our experience in Afghanistan.

    He is right, of course, that we should never have invaded Iraq and toppled Saddam Hussein – who, though vile, was a vital bulwark against Iran. The troops that were sent to Iraq in 2001 should have been combined with the army invading Afghanistan. That force would have crushed al-Qaeda and the Taliban throughout Afghanistan. It is doubtful that Osama bin Laden would have been able to escape.

    Once the US-UK coalition achieved victory, it should have withdrawn, making clear that, if there was any trouble, it would be back. History is replete with examples of foreigners hoping to change Afghanistan; all failed. A larger US occupying force would only have prolonged the agony.

    Sadly, Afghanistan does not thirst for liberal democracy. Brave soldiers should not be sacrificed relearning this truth.

    Gregory Shenkman
    London W8

    SIR – Lord Dannatt’s call for an Afghanistan inquiry must be heard. British forces did their duty splendidly, but the experts’ advice on both Iraq and Afghanistan was not to interfere.

    Their wisdom was confirmed by my findings while on sabbatical in Syria, when military action there was being discussed: “We have seen the effects of your ‘humanitarian intervention’ for democracy. Please tell your politicians to stay out of our country: they do not understand what works here.”

    Rev R C Paget
    Brenchley, Kent

    SIR – As Nato forces finally withdraw from Afghanistan, the alliance would do well to reflect on the words of the former coalition commander, the US general Dan McNeill, who told the then British ambassador in Kabul, Sherard Cowper-Coles: “To do this properly, Sherard, I need 500,000 men.”

    This figure represented the only realistic chance of achieving a successful outcome (“victory” being too misleading a word) in the conflict. But for Western democracies, with their small, professional armies and modest reserves, such manpower was – and remains – an impossible demand.

    It could be raised from within Nato – but the political and fiscal willpower (guided by public opinion) would simply not be there, due to the overt implication of casualties.

    Lt-Colonel W L Pender (retd)
    Salisbury, Wiltshire

    Vaccine slowdown

    SIR – I recall the Prime Minister talking about “ramping up” vaccinations to one million a day (Letters, July 3). Yet in June the total number of doses reported on the government dashboard was only 12.25 million, compared to 15.38 million in May. Why is this?

    Paul Fry
    Farnham, Surrey

    BMA mask pressure

    SIR – The British Medical Association is suggesting that face masks should continue into an undefined future. The association is not a learned society; it is the doctors’ trade union.

    We have learnt the hard way that the teaching unions’ outpourings neither reflect the views of many of their members, nor satisfy end users of their product. The parallels are obvious.

    Huw Baumgartner
    Bridell, Pembrokeshire

    Competing with China

    SIR – A new retail store has opened on the outskirts of our town. We found on offer household goods, stationery and garden furniture. We bought a garden parasol at an attractive price.

    Looking more closely, I found that most products were made in China. If you removed all the Chinese products, the shelves would be nearly empty.

    I feel sorry for the shops in the town having to put up with this competition, and I hope people realise what a hold Xi Jinping has not only on the Chinese people, but also on our population.

    I try to boycott Chinese products, but find it difficult, because the origin only becomes evident if you scrutinise the small print.

    Richard Colley
    Skipton, North Yorkshire

    Inheriting an earldom

    SIR – I enjoyed the obituary of the Earl of Lonsdale (July 3). However, the last paragraph was disturbing.

    The first-born son from the first marriage, conceived using a donor, is adopted. As the legitimate first-born son, he should inherit the earldom. To reject him in favour of the second son because he shares the late earl’s genes makes a mockery of legal adoption.

    Judy Tice
    Chedworth, Gloucestershire

    A nation for sale

    SIR – Morrisons is to follow many other British enterprises into foreign ownership (report, July 5). Why invade a country when you can buy it?

    Norman Hall
    Hinckley, Leicestershire

    GB badge diktat

    SIR – I am puzzled by the Government requiring UK-registered vehicles to display a UK badge instead of a GB one when abroad (report, July 5).

    By what right can the Government dictate how vehicles are decorated in countries where it has no jurisdiction?

    Dr Michael Blackmore
    Midhurst, West Sussex

    SIR – I lived in the Isle of Man for 15 years and proudly sported a GBM plate for Great Britain Isle of Man.

    As crown dependencies, the Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey cannot use UK on their plates. While part of Great Britain, they are not part of the UK.

    Tristram C Llewellyn Jones
    Church Stretton, Shropshire

    SIR – Will it be Team UK at the Olympics?

    Alan Chapman
    Wokingham, Berkshire

    The Queen toppled

    SIR – The Prime Minister can be too eager to please all and sundry with mealy-mouthed statements that won’t get him into trouble. An example is the Downing Street statement regarding the statue of the Queen in Winnipeg, pictured face-down in the gravel after being toppled by protesters. “Downing Street condemned the statue vandalism but expressed sympathy for Canada’s indigenous community” (report, July 3).

    If this had been followed with the news that our Government had arranged the removal of the statue to a safe place before its reinstatement or shipment back to Britain, not only would it have shown respect to the Canadians but more importantly it would have shown respect to our much-loved Sovereign.

    Colin Snow
    Huish Champflower, Somerset

    Ten days in isolation

    SIR – The delay to Freedom Day has been a disaster. A colleague was pinged by the NHS test and trace app on Wednesday for a supposed Covid contact the previous day although she was with her husband all day, had no conversational contact with anybody else and her husband was not pinged.

    She is asymptomatic, double-vaccinated, and has had two lateral flow tests and a PCR test – all negative. Yet she is required to self-isolate for 10 days, as a result of which her family summer holiday in the UK is cancelled.

    Last year I holidayed in Italy in August with just a travel locator form. This year double-vaccinated citizens travelling to a green-listed country during the school holidays in late July face a Covid pass or a PCR test, the ever-present threat of being pinged, the potential for sudden short-notice recall if there is a change to amber, two PCR tests on return and the prospect of six-hour queues at British airports.

    Dr Michael Clements
    Chipperfield, Hertfordshire

    Incredibly industrious

    SIR – Since everyone is now working “hard” or “incredibly hard” (Letters, July 5), it follows that when they take time off, it is always “well deserved”.

    Joseph Kerrigan
    London W13

    SIR – In Government pronouncements especially, people “work tirelessly” at all times. Quite an achievement, upsetting the laws of physiology.

    Bill Davidson
    Balderton, Nottinghamshire

    And is there bathing still at Grantchester?

    SIR – As a Cambridge resident of 85 years, I think that King’s College’s move to close down Grantchester Meadows for bathing, boating and barbeques (report, July 3) is very sad indeed, especially during this difficult and unprecedented time.

    I have dipped in the river Cam on sunny days over the years, and I still do – as do my friends and family. A wild swim certainly helps me get through the day.

    Last year, when Covid restrictions were eased, we did indeed see groups of young people congregating on the Meadows, playing loud music, having barbeques, jumping in the river and leaving a great deal of litter behind, which is unacceptable behaviour.

    But why penalise the rest of us, who mostly respect the natural habitat and don’t behave in this way? Most of the time the Meadows are a quiet and peaceful place to visit.

    The banks are surely not being damaged as much by people boating and bathing as they are by the cattle grazing and going down to drink.

    I urge King’s College to reconsider.

    Ann Browne
    Cambridge

    An ace representative of Britain at Wimbledon

    sir – We saw, on Saturday, a girl who was born in Toronto of a Chinese mother and a Romanian father play beautiful tennis and be described (and welcomed) as a Londoner.

    What a wonderful country we live in.

    Nicholas Franks
    Dorchester

    SIR – The BBC presentation of Wimbledon is perfect in all respects save one – the post-match interviews. The winning player, still throbbing with adrenaline, is asked to respond to banalities such as, “How pleased are you to be going into the fourth round?” or “Was it losing the second set that made you play better in the third?”

    The hapless interviewee, having been supplied with the answer, gropes for a sensible response. Let’s revert to earlier times and watch winner and loser walk off together.

    Alan Frost
    Bournemouth, Dorset

    1. sir – We saw, on Saturday, a girl who was born in Toronto of a Chinese mother and a Romanian father play beautiful tennis and be described (and welcomed) as a Londoner.

      What a wonderful country we live in.

      Yes. A country of Liars Mr Franks!

      1. The young lady in question wasn’t demanding the British tax payer fund her tennis. Blow it out your arse Mr Franks.

        Good morning, Minty.

    2. People getting ‘pinged’ for isolation, are the masters of their own demise. If we all removed these ‘Apps’ from our phones and refused to fill out the Stasi forms in Pubs and Restaurants, then the whole nonsense would just implode upon itself.

      If refused entry because of the absence of, or refusal to take part in, the ludicrous ‘Track and Trace’, the establishments demanding such identification would quickly realise that the loss of trade and income will fast put them out of business.

      1. Around here most pubs leave out a QR code at the entrance, but there is no compulsion, or check on whether you’ve used it.

        Because of the many gaps in reception locally, a lot of people don’t bother to carry mobile ‘phones with them.

        1. ‘Morning, Janet, I understand but if people made a conscious effort to remove the App and stop acting like stricken sheep,then, we might, just might, see the light of reality dawn upon the idiots, supposedly governing us.

          Widespread civil disobedience is our only way forward.

          1. anyone aware of this? https://www.vaxcontrolgroup.com/ Vax Contol Group is a longitudinal study of unvaccinated
            individuals to act as a control group compared to the “vaccinated”. No cost, unless you want to donate. No personal details.the QR code works also https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2e18fe0b3762790352fa2f64b416e21c91b86a261eb94e8459a9b7274dac4ff5.jpg not sure if in UK it’s a viable option to “pretend to conform while performing Agincourt salute” to the system

          3. none of this crap is used in Kenya, and couldn’t be enforced. Any attempts to do so would see political stomachs dragged through the streets

          4. What a good idea. Whilst not civil disobedience, perhaps the fear of lamp-posts and piano wire might achieve the objective.

          5. could manage the piano wire here. Street lights = WTF are they? Political stomachs being targeted today as they’d voted to approve 16% increase on VAT for cooking gas and locals are kicking off, quite a few more police visible outside political offices. FYI, 13kg gas is roughly about £14, so around £2.30 increase. Will go out shortly to the local bar which is next to local political clown’s office, grab a beer then start winding up the political stomach. Easy way is to put word out to locals if the clown Wanjiku [MCA=Member of County Assembly] sold his car [owned of course by the bank] then locals would be able to afford gas hike. Then sit back [with obligatory beer in hand] and watch it roll.

          6. Where i am in the South of England 12kg = £24.

            But then i suppose average earnings are higher.

          7. agree on that. About time to head out down the road and get the locals cranked up over the MCA, enjoy rest of the day

          9. mng. Enjoyable. MCA Wanjiku found his Usain Bolt legs once he had a crowd of around 20 outside his office. Guarantee he won’t be visible for the rest of the week. And the beer, for once, was chilled as the owner remembered to turn the fridge on

          10. It could work here though. AWK, plenty of lamp-posts in and around Westminster and I’m looking to get a monopoly on piano-wire.

          11. anyone aware of this? https://www.vaxcontrolgroup.com/ Vax Contol Group is a longitudinal study of unvaccinated
            individuals to act as a control group compared to the “vaccinated”. No cost, unless you want to donate. No personal details.the QR code works also https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2e18fe0b3762790352fa2f64b416e21c91b86a261eb94e8459a9b7274dac4ff5.jpg not sure if in UK it’s a viable option to “pretend to conform while performing Agincourt salute” to the system

          12. Why are apps (apprentices) in such demand now

            Did not Bliar wipe them out with his insistance that everyone leaving skule had to go to ‘Uni’ to get a worthless degree

            At least it kept unemployment figures down……………… for a bit

          14. My rate when I joined the RN was Art App

            Artificer Apprentice

            If peeps want to use it for another application, that is up to them!

          15. I believe Sparky was also an RAF Apprentice; though only a Boy Entrant, I effectively went through an initial 18 month apprenticeship followed by two years on-the-job and a further one year’s fitter’s course. But that is all by the by, as we are talking about the fad for modern English to change and bastardise many ‘old-fashioned’ words and daily use abbreviations which might confuse those of us who grew up using English as she is spoke!

      2. I haven’t scanned a QR code nor downloaded any trace apps. Nor do I put my name on the log sheet by the door.
        No pushback so far.

  9. 335151+ up ticks,
    Morning Each,
    Hear the ratchet click, lullaby rhetoric for the herd up until July 19th.

    In a nation once of electoral sanity & self respect and after the last three decades of pure politic sh!te tis the politico’s who should be heeding their rhetorical warnings “for their OWN safety”

    It’s now or never for freedom from Covid restrictions, says Boris Johnson
    Measures will end on July 19 as Government urges individuals to take responsibility for their own safety

    1. 335151 + up ticks,
      O2O,
      Tis the herd standing as still as statues Og
      as the DOVER invasion puts more ashore on a daily basis.
      ALL via the polling booth to keep an ersatz tory party in power over two other ersatz parties.
      That is one set of political statues that needed toppling yesterday.

  10. Mammoth journey ahead as elephants leave Kent zoo for the Kenyan savannah. 6 July 2021.

    The herd of 13, which includes three calves, were all but one born at Howletts Wild Animal Park, a private zoo near Canterbury. The mammoth mission to “rewild” the elephants is being carried out by the Aspinall Foundation, the Kenya Wildlife Service and Sheldrick Wildlife Trust.

    Although travel arrangements for the elephants are yet to be confirmed, the animals will probably travel fully conscious in transportation crates in a large aircraft, with help from South African specialists in elephant transportation. The elephants will spend time in the crates ahead of the journey, in order to get used to the spaces and reduce stress during the flight. They will be continuously monitored by a team of vets.

    A noble aim! Why can we not send their human counterparts to join them!

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/05/elephants-leave-kent-zoo-for-the-kenyan-savannah-aoe

    1. elephants to Tsavo. The worry is Carrie Antoinette plans to also travel, hopefully in a crate and dropped in Dadaab Somali idp camp. Any other “variants”, adopt Pinoche tactic and dump them in the med

    2. As soon as they get there, some gang of poachers eager to profit from the Free Global Market in China for body parts of endangered animals, will slaughter the herd and leave them for the plebs to sort out as they pocket their wads.

      And we think the Left is wicked!

      The same mentality applies for human returnees – going to Boko Haram areas in Africa, where black lives do not matter as much as they do here.

      2. Reminds me of when the circus came to a village – at the end of the performance they were due to move to the next village a few miles away. The owner told one of the workers to take the 11 elephants there. He questioned how he, on his own, could take them. The owner said “All you have to do is to lead the first elephant, the others will hold the tail of the one in front with their trunk” he added “Be careful when you cross the railway line, it’s an unmanned crossing”
        The lad set off leading the first elephant and sure enough all the others tagged onto the one in front with their trunks holding the tail. All went well until the railway crossing – they were nearly all across when a train came and hit the last one and killed it.
        The owner went mad – the lad said “we were lucky really, only one was killed”
        The owner shouted “Yes ,one killed but the other 10 had their arses ripped out”

        2. Good afternoon, that’s almost as bad as when the Human Cannonball told the Ringmaster that he was leaving the circus.
          The Ringmaster pleaded with him to stay, saying, “You can’t leave. Where will we find another man of your calibre?”

    5. Will they be keeping them in a compound or will they be releasing them into the wild to starve to death?

    6. Wonder if the elephants know anything about how to live in the wild? With hyenas, hippos, rhinos and all sorts of bitey things – and will they be afraid enough of people to not be poached within a week of arrival? How will they associate with other elephants?
      I fear it may well all end in tears. I hope not.

  11. Stupid boy! Posted this on yesterday’s page by mistake.

    Morning, All. Precipitation is definitely in sight here in N Essex.
    Read the letter appended to this tweet and listen to the podcast from an hour in. Scam? You be the judge.
    I do hope that this funeral director’s prediction for the coming Winter doesn’t come true.

    https://twitter.com/TJ0055/status/1412134757463478280

    1. Hmm, letters and written statements on twitter are too small to read and unlike .jpegs, have no way of increasing the font size. – I don’t have 1 hour and 1 minute to waste listening to what will probably turn out to left-wing wokery and jiggery-pokery.

      1. If you click on the above post and go to twitter, you can click on the text blocks and they open at a readable size.
        Interesting account of last year by a funeral director – allegedly.
        He mentions the temporary morgues thing.

    1. 335151+ up ticks,
      O2O,
      And WHEN the french disagree ( as already arranged) what then ?

      The ” deal” is the incoming Odessa line.

    2. This is all blowing smoke in the electorates eyes Oggy, though I do wonder if anyone believes it any longer!

      1. 335151+ up ticks,
        AS,
        Nobody but nobody can believe anymore the governance rhetoric and the governance politico’s don’t give a sh!te, DOVER points that out quite clearly.
        They, the politico’s KNOW the addictive strength of the electorate regarding the polling booth & the lab/lib/con coalition.

    3. Some bloke on the TV this morning said that over 6,000 illegal immigrants had arrived on our shores so far this year. Once accepted, as they all will be, their dependents will join them. In round numbers that will be an extra 80,000 people for us to support forever, at £10,000 per head per annum. Call it £1bn a year.

      1. Which is why, urgently benefits must be stopped. Start with child benefit. Then end housing benefit.

      2. 335151+ up ticks,
        Morning HP,
        They surely must be seen as being needed by the electorate
        judging by the returns over the decades of the lab/lib/con
        voting numbers.

        Tis strange to me that an indigenous people would judge it to be better for their children to grow up under a foreign influence, as those already here are added to on a daily basis
        via DOVER and over time their strength will be VERY telling.

      3. It’ll all go on Council Tax, so it’s nil cost for Government, and won’t cost you anything if you are a taxpayer, according to the official definition of “tax”.

    4. We already have perfectly valid immigration laws. As other, better men have said, activity is the state excuse for productivity, those laws just need to be enforced. These criminals need to be sent back. No papers? Fine. Go back to France.

    5. Why should the French agree?

      At the moment they can keep the good ones, and pass the scum onto us.

      1. Why do they get a say? The don’t! They really don’t! They’re the ones permitting and encouraging illegality! We shouldn’t be asking what they think, we should be taking them to international court!

    6. And if the French say “Non!” (A sure bet) perhaps the Border Force should ask the skippers of the inflatables whether they wish to proceed NE or SW but N ain’t an option……and escort them accordingly. It will only take a couple of instances and those seeking to make the crossing will surely think twice.

    7. And if the French say “Non!” (A sure bet) perhaps the Border Force should ask the skippers of the inflatables whether they wish to proceed NE or SW but N ain’t an option……and escort them accordingly. It will only take a couple of instances and those seeking to make the crossing will surely think twice.

    8. Think this through. Turning back the boats is impossible without a ruthlessness to the occupants, human rights lawyers and all the do-gooders and malcontents here that we don’t have.

      The only way is to round them up and immediately dump them in some inhospitable spot far from these shores, effectively sending them back to Go and encouraging would-be immigrants to stay in France. We’d still have to shoot those that get in our way.

      I doubt we’ll ever have the balls to tackle this illegal immigration and the massively-higher importation of cultures setting up separate colonies and destroying our way of life.

      1. 335151+ up ticks,
        Morning D,
        Sure fired way on two fronts that would succeed without doubt, no need to leave home turf, no expense incurred, money saved.
        Radically kick into touch the lab/lib/con coalition party via the polling booth / stop ALL welfare of peoples having escaped / are escaping from a free country.

      2. Stop picking ’em up. Instead warn them that they will be sunk unless the turn 180° and return. Id they don’t, then sink them. I guess it will only take one sinking for the message to get through and the tide to dry up.

        Bugger the screams from the MSM et al – we are protecting ourselves from invasion and give fair warning.

  13. Nordic countries endure heatwave as Lapland records hottest day since 1914. 6 July 2021.

    The latest figures came after Finland’s national meteorological institute registered its hottest temperature for June since records began in 1844.

    Kevo, in Lapland, recorded heat of 33.6C (92.5F) on Sunday, the hottest day since 1914 when authorities registered 34.7C (94.5F), said the STT news agency. Several parts of Sweden also reported record highs for June.

    Harry must be feeling the heat!

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/06/heatwave-hits-nordic-countries-lapland-temperature-

    3. Morning all..The best we’ve had this year is 31C but about 8 or 9 years ago we had 36C.
      Still,today is now 26C topping out at 29C later.
      Night-time temps are 17-19C.

    1. Forgive me, but even I noticed – there were absolutely no white people in that video – no, I tell a lie. A skinny bloke smoothed a shirt, but he could have been Chinese, as his head wasn’t shown.

  15. Back To The Nursery

    A frog goes into a bank and approaches the teller. He can see from her nameplate that the teller’s name is Patricia Whack. So he says, “Ms. Whack, I’d like to get a loan to buy a boat and go on a long vacation.”
    Patti looks at the frog in disbelief and asks how much he wants to borrow. The frog says $30,000. The teller asks his name and the frog says that his name is Kermit Jagger and that it’s OK, he knows the bank manager.
    Patti explains that $30,000 is a substantial amount of money and that he will need to secure some collateral against the loan. She asks if he has anything he can use as collateral.
    The frog says, “Sure. I have this.” And he produces a tiny pink porcelain elephant, about half an inch tall. It’s bright pink and perfectly formed.
    Very confused, Patti explains that she’ll have to consult with the manager; and disappears into a back office. She finds the manager and reports, “There’s a frog called Kermit Jagger out there who claims to know you, and he wants to borrow $30,000. And he wants to use this as collateral.” She holds up the tiny pink elephant. “I mean, what the heck is this?”
    So the bank manager looks back at her and says, “It’s a knick knack, Patti Whack. Give the frog a loan. His old man’s a Rolling Stone!“

  17. The only good news around here is that yesterday, the MR put the last piece in the jigsaw we began in January. A hellish puzzle made worse by the picture on the cover being so small that a magnifying glass was required. Not much fun. Funny – when we started G & P were small and used to run over the boards with the pieces on – and nick them. We found one piece on the stairs and another in Pickles’s box of treasures!

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4d7258abce600acc58d248bec3638e67cc6d990a91c8d8d8735249ecbe3a0cc0.jpg

    2. I bought the grandkids a jigsaw for Xmas – bad decision – by the end of the day they’d lost most of their fingers

    4. From a distance Mona looks as if she has dreadlocks. Perhaps that was the intention.

  18. Good Moaning.
    “Why Grantham?” was my immediate reaction.
    Richard Littlejohn gives us a much needed titter.

    “Hundreds of swingers defied social distancing regulations at the weekend to attend a four-day sex festival in a field near Grantham, in Lincolnshire.

    Why Grantham? It’s not the most exotic location. Grantham is the former home of Mrs Thatcher, for goodness sake.

    It’s hardly going loco in Acapulco. But with foreign travel still on hold, I suppose beggars can’t be choosers. (Stop giggling at the back, I said beggars.) Attractions included hot tubs and a mobile torture dungeon, presumably in the back of a bog-standard caravan. Try explaining that to the AA patrolman when you break down on the A1.

    Call me old-fashioned, but a festival of dogging in a field near Grantham isn’t my idea of a romantic weekend. But whatever floats your boat.

    I’ve been trying to imagine Howard and Hilda packing for the trip. Tea urn, thermal vests, gimp masks.

    ‘Have you remembered my nipple clamps, pet . . ?'”

  19. Good Moaning.
    “Why Grantham?” was my immediate reaction.
    Richard Littlejohn gives us a much needed titter.

    “Hundreds of swingers defied social distancing regulations at the weekend to attend a four-day sex festival in a field near Grantham, in Lincolnshire.

    Why Grantham? It’s not the most exotic location. Grantham is the former home of Mrs Thatcher, for goodness sake.

    It’s hardly going loco in Acapulco. But with foreign travel still on hold, I suppose beggars can’t be choosers. (Stop giggling at the back, I said beggars.) Attractions included hot tubs and a mobile torture dungeon, presumably in the back of a bog-standard caravan. Try explaining that to the AA patrolman when you break down on the A1.

    Call me old-fashioned, but a festival of dogging in a field near Grantham isn’t my idea of a romantic weekend. But whatever floats your boat.

    I’ve been trying to imagine Howard and Hilda packing for the trip. Tea urn, thermal vests, gimp masks.

    ‘Have you remembered my nipple clamps, pet . . ?'”

  20. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b139dadf338e4db4c1cbf8f9a5735a9da2ffc15bac826d51ffe1e0ca380674b5.jpg Ignore all the silly advice about hulling strawberries with teaspoons, potato peelers and sugar tongs (among many other preposterous instruments).

    Get yourself a small, inexpensive turning knife (used to sculpt vegetables into a myriad of ornate shapes: the Japanese are experts on this). This knife has a small curved blade with its cutting edge on the inside (concave) edge. Simply place the point of the knife alongside the hull and twist the fruit. The hull then pops out. Such a knife has a myriad of uses in a kitchen.

    1. If you play the guitar with a finger-picking style then your thumb nail is an excellent tool to use on strawberries.

        1. Good morning, Health and Efficiency

          Where are their punnets?

          Each of these players is using a plectrum rather than his fingernails!

      1. Glad Tisdag, Pud.

        My Swiss Navy Knife (impossibly rare) is also Victorinox. 🤣

          3. But them’s “Made in China”, me old China! That’s a rip-off more better labelled as a “Chinky Paddyfield Knife”. Mine says very clearly on the blade: Victorinox, Switzerland.

          6. Hi Grizz, sorry for the late reply, I was out for a while . That is a Swiss Army knife, not a Swiss Navy one. The one you have is the 91mm Climber, yours is very old model with economy scales ( handles ) without the customary tooth pick & tweezers in the scales & the Victorinox cross emblem which was printed on and not embossed like latter models has rubbed off ( I had that happen to me on a 40 year old 84mm Bantam with economy scales – I have still got it & replace its red scales with black ones with toothpick & tweezers ) its definitely a pre-1991 model as it has no parcel hook on the back along with the corkscrew & awl / reamer . The 91mm Climber is one of my favorite EDC ( Every Day Carry ) knives, I have 3 fitted with different colour Plus scales ( includes a pen in the scales ) & a pocket carry clip , I have another seen here, a model made for the Israeli market with decorative scales ( handles ) in my collection in pristine condition & another one that is in my EDC rotation plus one other collectable model with decorated scales . The Climber is IMO the best urban EDC knife thanks to the scissors but it is beaten out by the even more popular & useful 91mm Huntsman which has the addition of a wood saw making it the best urban & countryside combined EDC knife ( I have 4 of different colours in my EDC rotation & 2 collectable versions )
            The Israel market Climber version with Royal Blue scales. Israeli flag & the 6 branch Temple candelabra official symbol of the state of Israel . It differs from yours in having the parcel hook, tweezers & toothpick & embossed Victorinox Cross on the other handle .
            https://karlweiss.co.il/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/12.2-%D7%93%D7%92%D7%9C-%D7%99%D7%A9%D7%A8%D7%90%D7%9C.jpg

          7. My goodness, Pud. You are an encyclopaedia of Victorinox. I call mine a “Swiss Navy Knife” with tongue-in-cheek since (as you have already mentioned) the Swiss do not have a navy. 👍🏻😉

          8. I’ve been a Swiss Army aficionado since I was a child growing up in London & as a grumpy old git who doesn’t drink, smoke or take drugs, I have built up a nice little collection of Swiss Army knives over the years.

    1. The really interesting one for me is this one, which would appear to show that we will have had a huge backlog of elderly people just waiting for a disease to bring average levels back up to the more normal 10.5 to 11.5.
      The drop from that level to the under 10 would appear to coincide with the commencement of Blair’s open borders policies and the ensuing population increase, particularly younger people arriving.

      https://www.statista.com/statistics/281478/death-rate-united-kingdom-uk/

  23. Will Priti Patel’s new immigration proposals make a difference? I wouldn’t bet on it
    Perhaps Patel believes that by talking tough, this problem will go away. Yet the penalty which she wants to see is almost meaningless.

    Nigel Farage : https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/06/will-priti-patels-new-immigration-proposals-make-difference/

    “Because the fact is, whether we discuss legal or illegal immigration into the UK and the consequent massive increase in the UK population, it is extremely difficult to have a debate within the mainstream media about these issues. London-based metropolitan broadcasters continue to believe that the subject of immigration itself is unsavoury. Many of them would prefer to pretend that it isn’t happening or that it isn’t a problem. This suits the government perfectly well, of course, because it faces little scrutiny. Let us hope the arrival of GB News will change this, because this is an area of our lives which must be addressed as a matter of urgency.”

    Why has the Daily Telegraph become so mealy-mouthed and weak? The response of the DT is not to allow any comments under the Farage article.

    1. It’s not a lack of regulation that’s the problem, it’s a lack of enforcement – even, negative enforcement = encouragement.

    3. 335151+ up ticks,
      Morning R,
      In the priti awful office there is a bucket of rhetoric salve to be administered to the herd if they show signs of being restless.
      By the by is farage &
      lay legs farage one & the same ?

      1. I have two very specific bones to pick with Nigel Farage:

        i) Why did he stand down his Brexit Party candidates in the 2019 general election where remainer Conservative MPs were seeking re-election? He achieved no quid pro quo from Johnson who could at least have deselected all the remainers. The consequence is that we still have both Houses of Parliament stuffed with remainers and the EU misery will continue under the current pathetic prime minister and we shall probably rejoin it under even worse terms when Johnson is kicked out.

        ii) The border in the Irish Sea, the inability to take back complete control of fishing in British waters and no resolution for the financial industry! These three disasters should have been enough to show Farage that the deal was yet another weak capitulation to the EU. Why did Farage say the deal was acceptable – WTO terms would have been far better?

        The hubris of politicians and their inability to admit they were ever wrong is well known Farage could perhaps regain some of his lost credibility if he showed himself capable of admitting that he made very serious errors of judgement on these two cases.

        1. 335151+ up ticks,
          R,
          Look at it another way that is from viewing a nautical nige
          as in a coxswain for the tory (ino) party, and has been for decades then on reflection much clicks into place.

  24. 335151+ up ticks,
    I would say on the ratio of 48% / 52%
    ring any bells ?
    Dt,
    The terrifying truth is that millions do not want lockdown ever to end
    We’re entering the early stages of a new culture war pitting freedom-lovers against proponents of Zero Covid

    1. Good morning King Stephen.

      Have you seen the prices touted for ‘staycations’?

      You could rent your Barge out for £3000+ a week.

      I looked at barges and cruisers on the Broads and thought…’I only want to rent the damned thing, not buy it !

        1. Proper champagne? Or Shampagne?

          Did you coil that “line”, by the way?

          3. Pop down to Devizes wharf and you can see for yourself that both centre lines (one black and one blue) are perfectly coiled!

          4. Oh I couldn’t risk that – not with the plague rife and tens of thousands of new cases every day – the streets must be piled high with bodies.

        2. I would pay for that. I would make the others share the cost though. :@)

          £60 each for a couple of hours on the water with a bit of fizz sounds okay.

          You’re missing a trick.

          1. I’m about to do 3 separate one day trips for six to raise funds for a charity. £20 pp with a Prosecco, strawberries & cream afternoon tea….

    1. Our adversaries can’t quite believe their good fortune. Had they thought up ways to divide and impoverish America, to see its cities burned, and looted, to weaken its economy and currency, to erode the unity of its once-feared military, and to entrench the most effective critics of America in America—not in Beijing, Moscow, Pyongyang, or Tehran, but in corporate boardrooms, campuses, newsrooms, Hollywood, Wall Street, and the Pentagon—they could not have improved on what has happened in 2020-21, the era of our collective meltdown.

      UK Ditto!

    2. My brother, an Anglo-American citizen, used to live in San Francisco in the late 70s but escaped to Nevada and, when asked if he was buying potential beach-front property when California, aided by the San Andreas fault, slid into the Pacific, he gave his reasons as, “SF is full of Chinks and Faggots and anyway, Californians just hate each other.”

      Seems like a good reason to me.

    2. Good morning, Delboy. Sunny here. No, wait a minute…raining. No, hold on…sunny…er.

        1. Wasn’t his name Ioseb Besarionis dzе Jughashvili..he wasn’t even Russian.!

          9. He was a Marxist-Leninist bank robber who refused to speak Georgian and even Russianised his name to ‘man of steel’. He did all the things that Lenin dreamed of doing had he lived; in effect becoming Lenin’s representative on earth. He had many things in common with Lenin; including murdering his neighbours, stealing their land and lying about it, deploying a vast propaganda machine, hatred of Georgia and Ukraine, torturing and killing his opponents, anti-semitism, gloating with excitement every time yet more ‘Kulaks’ were strung up by his hired savages and having nightly meetings with his murder gang bosses to discuss who would get whacked the next day. Rather like the current incumbent in fact.

    1. Unfortunately, governments are going out of their way not to own the youth – the youth are being screwed by Covid policies and will surely come to realise how they have been shafted.

    2. Why does anyone take any notice of a “journalist”? Peston is not a scientist; he is not a doctor. His views are worth no more than any other ignorant arsehole in the pub.

  36. Under new laws to be put foreward by Priti Patel – ” The Border Forces are to get new powers to forcibly detain migrants at sea, board their
    vessels and return them to the country from which they came”
    How do they propose to board over-loaded inflatable dinghys and return them to France . . .?
    As usual . . all just talk from our Government

    1. Worked with a few of the guys who were on the Alpha. One had jumped from the helideck to the sea, and picked up. It gives me the creeps to watch the video of the platform burning up, even now. And the explosion when the riser ruptured… after tha, nobody got off.

    2. Basic offshore survival and helicopter underwater escape training courses (BOS-HUET) were immediately made tougher after that.

    1. I make that a bit less than ONE in THREE MILLION …. DON’T FRIGHTEN THE SHEEP

    2. You’ve triggered my OCD – I like the graphic – what is the source url?

  39. Top school will stop teaching To Kill A Mockingbird and Of Mice and Men in a bid to ‘decolonise’ the curriculum claiming the literary classics have a ‘dated’ approach to race and ‘white saviour motif’

    James Gillespie’s High School, Edinburgh wants to change its English curriculum
    Plans to scrap ‘outdated’ classic texts Of Mice and Men and To Kill a Mockingbird
    Teacher Allan Crosbie criticised their use of the N-word and ‘white saviour’ motif
    They would be replaced by modern novels representing ‘people of colour’
    But critics including Scottish Tories said the school should ‘educate, not dictate

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9757805/Top-school-stop-teaching-Kill-Mockingbird-Mice-Men.html?ito=push-notification&ci=288209&si=26738248&ai=9757805

    1. Why doesn’t the school go through all English Literature since ‘Beowulf’ and cancel anything which doesn’t agree with woke culture?

        1. Shakespeare down the pan followed by Dickens, Austen, the Brontes, Agatha Christie and her ten little ‘ns’ and particularly all the American authors and authoresses who dare to use the ‘N’ word in their descriptions and depictions of anything near slavery and the wood-pile railway.

          2. Wace, Laoman, Geoffrey of Monmouth, William Langland ….. God, I’m bloody pretentious.

          3. God you are pretentious ( :o) ) but would wokeness have felled those penmen as much as it would Chaucer?

        2. I would like to see the look on Sir Ian McKellan and Patrick Stewart’s faces when they axe Shakespeare.

          Though i like them both as actors they are on the woke bandwagon.

  40. Listening to a lot of the inane ‘advice’, yesterday, on which is the proper way to position a bog roll just reinforced my opinion of how anally-retentive many people are. Like putting the clotted cream or the jam first on a scone; there is not ‘proper’ way of doing anything … just a personal preference.

    Everyone is different and has a personal preference for most things in life; one man’s meat and all that. I think we would learn to live together much better if we didn’t continue to ram our way of doing things (and asserting that they are the only way) down people’s throats.

    I have always subscribed to the theory that having the sheets of the bog roll emerging at the back (i.e. nearer the wall) is the most æsthetically-pleasing and practical way to go. Many others disagree but … so what?

    I put the jam on my scones before the clotted cream but Devonians reject this as ‘improper’. They may squeal and rend their garments as much as they like, I shall carry on regardless. [I actually prefer fruit scones laden with nothing more than butter, but don’t tell them that!]

    You do things your way and I’ll do them my way but do not, under any circumstances, tell me that your preferred way is the only and correct way. To do so marks you down as priggish, anally-retentive and, quite frankly, a tedious bore.

    1. I don’t care one way or the other, but your comment is more than a bit rich coming from someone who is perpetually lecturing the rest of us on so many different subjects where it comes down to a matter of preference, yet you claiming that your way is the correct way..

          7. Lottie went of her own accord……. Peddy launched an unwarranted attack on Conway when he was down.

        2. How to speak (Merkin English vs English English)
          How to dress (when on TV – wear a tie)…
          Where to get your food from.
          ;-))
          It’s good to have an opinion!

          1. It certainly is good to have an opinion, Paul, but I don’t invariably have a personal pop at a chosen poster like one on here invariably does.

          2. You seem to think that I only take a pop at you.

            You don’t take criticism/difference of opinion kindly. If you want a personal pop, here:
            I think you are a boorish bully who takes great delight in telling everyone else that your way is the correct way.

          3. Yes I know. You’ve told me that over and over and over again, ad infinitum, ad nauseam, in your inimitable way as my personal stalker, over more years than I care to remember.

            You must enjoy reminding yourself of your self-importance.

            Over and out.

          4. Ha! I’ll speak as I choose, wear what I like and food comes from all sorts of places.

    2. Jam first. After the jam slid off the cream undercoat, I always put jam first. It’s an engineering thing, nothing to do with Devon & Cornwall!

      1. It would appear that you, the Cornish, and I, have worked out the engineering, yet the Devonians seem slow to learn.

        2. Cut scone in half. Using a spoon put jam one and using a different spoon put cream on the other. Then ram together !

    3. Our loo roll sits on the shelf, because I didn’t want it getting in the way of an open book.

      I’m all for doing what you want to, but there’s always being open to suggestions on improving – I’d keep using the hoover until it was full, but the wife likes it half empty so it picks up more. Which is a bit odd, as I do the hoovering.

      1. If you over-use a hoover bag it starts to blow out more dust. Mrs Wibbling is right. IMO

  41. A dose of common sense from Sherelle Jacobs

    The terrifying truth is that millions do not want lockdown ever to end
    We’re entering the early stages of a new culture war pitting freedom-lovers against proponents of Zero Covid

    In October 1958, the philosopher Isaiah Berlin gave a groundbreaking lecture at Oxford University on the subject of liberty. There were two kinds, he said. “Positive” liberty – in which freedom is usually only achieved through a collective, utopian quest – would always lead to tyranny, as epitomised by communism. The antidote, he contended, was for the West to champion “negative” liberty instead – the individual’s freedom to do what they want without interference.

    Some years later, however, Berlin wavered. By defining “negative” liberty as a person’s ability to do what they want (rather than what other people deemed by they ought to want) the scholar could not get around the paradox that, in certain circumstances, people may genuinely not wish to be free at all. They might adapt to unfree situations by no longer desiring their own autonomy. A society might even “liberate” itself from the terrors of freedom, with its daunting emphasis on personal responsibility.

    Freedom won the Cold War, of course, and for decades libertarians – myself included – have assumed that freedom was almost a basic instinct, a natural and universal desire, happily glossing over the basic conundrum that tortured Berlin. That was until Covid struck.

    Although I’m obviously elated that Boris Johnson intends to remove almost all restrictions on July 19, I can’t help feeling apprehensive, too. The Prime Minister’s stark statement yesterday that, if we do not reopen society in the next few week, then “we must ask ourselves – when will we be able to return to normal?” sends a clear message to every household in the land: it is now or never.

    But a depressing truth looms over Britain: many people do not seem to want restrictions to end. Millions have become attached to the gilded trappings of lockdown, from furlough to flexi-home working. With our every movement micromanaged by one metre signage and one-way arrows, our instincts for independent self-direction have shrivelled. And after nearly 18 months of relentless – and irresponsible – anti-Covid messaging, terror of the virus is still everywhere.

    In this context, a nasty culture war is brewing, a modern twist on the old feud between positive and negative liberty. In one camp are the freedom lovers who hope that we can “learn to live with the virus” and roll back the Covid state. In the other camp are those who believe that the Prime Minister’s new emphasis on the individual is dangerous; that he should be seeking to “liberate” society from risk and provide the ultimate “freedom” of living without the coronavirus by aiming for a Zero Covid utopia instead.

    Face masks look set to become the symbolic focal point for this ideological battle, as they become optional. What should have been a matter for personal choice, based on mutual respect, is gearing up to become a sort of tribal signal.With many scientists and commentators proclaiming that they will continue to wear one for the greater good, the dividing lines are clear: sceptic vs non-sceptic; rugged individualist vs cuddly communitarian; selfish vs caring. Individual liberty threatens to become fetishised as a daring danger to society – a selfish value in competition with health.
    Unless the Government makes the moral case for individual responsibility as we learn to live with Covid as an endemic disease, the righteous dismay of its critics could sway those half-looking for an excuse to flee back into lockdown should cases and hospitalisations rise seasonally in the autumn.

    This is nothing like 1945, when after the horrors of war, the country looked forward to repairing the damage and building a new Jerusalem. There seems to be a deep psychological craving to carry on the Covid emergency. Perhaps because this time the damage has been partly self-inflicted. Or perhaps because nobody has any energetic answers for the vast questions that now confront us. How do we salvage our wrecked education system? How do we deal with our dysfunctional new hypersocialist economy (in which the state now has a stake in millions of struggling companies in the form of Covid loans)?

    A return to normal is as frightening as it is exhilarating. Some of the young people who will soon be queueing for nightclubs will also end up queuing for the dole, as furlough winds down. Employees who have spent a year working over Zoom must now contend with pressure to return to the office.

    With hard times ahead, Johnson must stay resolute that this is the end of the Covid emergency, and the start of the Covid recovery. In particular, No 10 must hold its nerve against the Zero Covid campaign, which is organising against it. Scientists have already started to brief against the Government, branding the new Health Secretary Sajid Javid as “frightening”. and accusing ministers of “building ‘variant’ factories” in the population.

    As deaths remain low, they seem keen to shift their emphasis from scary graphs to warnings about mysterious long-term complications. Long Covid – a risk acknowledged by Chris Whitty in yesterday’s press conference – looks set to shift from a marginal story to a major talking point. Epidemiologists are taking to the airwaves with various stomach-churning scenarios – that Covid could turn out to be like mumps, with rare but life-threatening risks for children; that the infected may become more susceptible to diseases further down the line (as it proved with Parkinson’s among survivors of the Spanish flu).

    We should also be prepared to see unions swing behind Zero Covid in the coming weeks, in the name of health and safety. Several Unison branches and the train drivers’ union Aslef have already officially affiliated with the hard-Left Zero Covid Campaign. The vice president of the DVLA’s Public and Commercial Services Union, which went on strike in June and has threatened a new phase of “targeted and sustained industrial action” over Covid health and safety fears, is on the advisory board of the similarly pitched Zero Covid Coalition, convened by Diane Abbott and the Morning Star.

    We are starting to see now that commitment to the value of individual freedom, far from being robust as a coil spring, is fragile as glass. Berlin, who always suspected this was the case, warned more than 60 years ago that “principles are not less sacred because their duration cannot be guaranteed”. In other words, Freedom Day is just the beginning of the battle to remake the case for personal liberty and responsibility. Although many of us will shudder at the thought of another culture war, some things are worth fighting for.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/07/05/terrifying-truth-millions-do-not-want-lockdown-ever-end/

    1. The same argument applies to religion. Many people want to be told what to think and what to do, how to behave, in the name of God. Just substitute “covid” with “God” and see how it fits.

      1. Free will is at the heart of Christianity.
        Islam tells you what to do in detail, about every aspect of your life – what you are allowed to wear, eat etc.
        Christianity just tells you what pleases God, and leaves it up to you to decide how to apply that in your day to day life.

        1. “Free will is at the heart of Christianity.”
          Tell that to the Catholic Church.

    2. I said back in March 2020 (and was duly ignored by those who consider themselves better than me because they are paid more) that then was the time to decide what sort of society we wish to make for ourselves as soon as the emergency is over. Not wait until we are released and then start arguing about it when work is needed to be done quickly before the Chinese gain the competitive advantage.

      We should be opening up our further education colleges to train people back to fitness and to become more self-sufficient in expertise now we have left the EU and cannot rely on the Poles and the Germans doing everything for us. Instead we are closing them down.

      Why is this?

    3. Terror is everywhere because the state likes people to be frightened.

      Of course it’s fragile. The Left are smashing it apart with joyous abandon. Every rise in tax, every bill passed, every limitation imposed crushes us a step toward totalitarianism. The biggest problem is that the more the state does, the more people become dependent on it, the more the state does, the bigger it gets, the more it wants to do.

    4. Thank you Sherelle, however, you ask, “Or perhaps because nobody has any energetic answers for the vast questions that now confront us. How do we salvage our wrecked education system? How do we deal with our dysfunctional new hypersocialist economy (in which the state now has a stake in millions of struggling companies in the form of Covid loans)?”

      Many answers are available on:

      https://nttl.blog/

    5. Once upon a time in a land now far, far away, we had the liberty to do anything unless a law was passed to forbid it. Then Traitor Heath took us into the “common market” and poof! gradually it all disappeared through salami slicing and creeping corpus juris.

  42. Following on from the article by Sherrelle Jacobs and the video by Simon Webb about our forthcoming culture war…

    The young really are dangerously socialist

    The stereotype is true, and millennials do not seem to be abandoning the Left as they enter their 40s

    KRISTIAN NIEMIETZ

    Millennials were once portrayed as an apathetic generation. In the late 1990s, when the first millennials came of age, the Guardian writer Polly Toynbee described them as “airheads and know-nothings.”

    Over the past five or six years, however, the way this generation (those born between 1981 and 1996) is viewed has changed drastically. The rise of movements such as Black Lives Matter, Extinction Rebellion, and Momentum, and the way “woke” campus culture has spread to the corporate world and beyond, have turned perceptions upside down. Today, millennials are typically seen as an intensely politicised generation, and specifically as a generation which embraces radical Left-wing ideas. This is increasingly being extended to the first cohorts of the subsequent generation, “Generation Z” or the “Zoomers”.

    For more than a year, large parts of “normal” economic life have been suspended, and our “normal” economic policy debates have been suspended with it. The Covid economy is neither truly capitalist nor socialist; it is an ad-hoc emergency arrangement akin to a wartime economy. But as we return to normality, the pre-Covid ideological battles are going to return with a vengeance. Which makes it a good time to ask: how much truth is there to the stereotype of the “woke socialist millennial”? Is communist activist Ash Sarkar really “the voice of a generation”, as her publisher from Bloomsbury puts it? Or are we mistaking the loudest voices for the most typical ones?

    To look at the issue in a more systematic way, the Institute of Economic Affairs commissioned polling on the subject. My report “Left turn ahead?” sets out the findings, along with a summary of the evidence we already have from previous surveys.

    It turns out that there is a lot of truth to the stereotype of the woke socialist millennial/Zoomer. The overwhelming majority of young people really do express stridently anti-capitalist views across a broad range of issues. Seventy to 80 per cent believe that capitalism fuels climate change, racism, greed, materialism, and runaway housing costs. Similar proportions support nationalisations and rent controls. Young people associate “capitalism” primarily with exploitation, unfairness, corporations, and the rich, while associating “socialism” primarily with terms such as “workers”, “equal”, “public”, “fair”, “communal”, and, yes, “Jeremy Corbyn” (no, this is not over).

    Virtually nobody associates socialism with the erstwhile showcase of “21st century socialism”, Venezuela. On the contrary, 75 per cent agree with the statement that “socialism is a good idea, but it has failed in the past because it has been badly done (for example in Venezuela)” – the old cliché that “real” socialism has “never been tried”.

    None of this means that Britain is full of committed young Marxist-Leninists. We included several pro-capitalist statements on the same subjects as a control, and found that, while anti-capitalist statements always receive very high levels of approval, the pro-capitalist statements sometimes receive majority approval too. Large numbers of people simultaneously agree with an anti-capitalist and a pro-capitalist statement on the same subject, apparently without noticing the contradiction. This suggests that while socialist ideas are widespread, they are also thinly spread. For most young people, these are not necessarily deeply held convictions. Approval of socialist positions may often reflect familiarity: people express agreement with those arguments, because they’re au fait with them. Anti-capitalism has become a “default opinion” which comes naturally to young people.

    So all is not lost. Nonetheless, those of us who believe that capitalism is a lot better than its reputation, and socialism is massively overrated, need to recognise that there is a problem here.

    One of the main findings from my report is that it is no longer true that young people “grow out” of socialism as they get older, in the way some previous generations did. Socialist ideas are just as popular among people in their early 40s as among people in their late teens, or if anything, slightly more so. This is not a fleeting effect, and it will not go away on its own. The case for capitalism has to be made anew, and won anew.

    Dr Kristian Niemietz is head of political economy at the Institute of Economic Affairs

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/05/young-really-dangerously-socialist/

    1. problem is we don’t really have capitalism in most major western democracies. We have a twisted form of corporatism where the state is so big, so expensive that it defines what companies can do, or are buyers from or suppliers to big state.

      Kids don’t grow out of socialism because they see it everywhere around them: free cash from welfare, from kids, from massive state handouts, quangocrats, endless state funded charities to absolve the already monolithic tombstones to failure that are government departments.

      They get all the benefits of capitalism while crowing about government spending more – of other people’s money. Why should they grow out of it? They don’t understand the downside because the state ensures they never experience it.

    2. My observation is that single youngsters were majority Remainers. Mask advocates also tend to be Remainers. These young people may be ideologically ‘Scandinavians’, but they fail to note that Denmark has a permanent exemption from the euro, Sweden has never joined and Norway is not even in the EU. Plus, they all have small populations. In other words, they see social democracy in wealthy countries, but have no experience of GDR, Cuba, Romania etc.

    2. You have been reported to the ‘Wokestapo’ for your crass and insulting nationalistic propaganda.

      You will be taken away and forcibly re-educated!

      1. 335151+ up ticks,
        Afternoon P,
        My real education started after a gap week
        at 15, then never looked back.

  44. Good afternoon Nottlers all!
    I’ve not been around much since last Monday as our (nearly) son-in-law had a stroke while on a video call for work. Our daughter was here with the twins, and fortunately one of the girls on the call recognised the signs and called his boss who then phoned Vic. She dashed home and found him on the kitchen floor saying he was having a stroke. The emergency responder ( an off-duty consultant!) was there within 10 mins. and he was in the ICU within an hour. It was then touch and go for 2 days as they struggled to get his BP down and stop the bleed. As you can imagine it was a bit hellish. Vic and the boys moved in here and our other daughter came up from the farm with her younger child and stayed overnight, so we were all together.
    A week on, he is in the stroke unit, having physio, eating, drinking, talking and no catheter! I know you’ll be delighted to know that he is pooing as well! We are taking life a day at a time and just grateful for any little improvement, lucky break and small mercy. The fact that he is alive is miraculous and the rest will follow, I’m sure. They have so much to look forward to – their (twice postponed) wedding, their new home (September), Vic’s promotion at work and of course, the little boys futures.
    I shall keep you updated although Gran had forgotten how much “stuff” goes with 2 crawling 11 month olds, and how few hours there are in the day!

    3. A terrible shock for you all.

      I hope he continues to make good progress.

      His guardian angel must have been on duty that day.

    4. So sorry to hear this, Sue. What an awful shock for you all. I hope your son-in-law makes a good and speedy recovery. Take one day at a time and live in the moment. Take a few minutes out of each day for yourself to let the dust settle and do not disturb any settled dust… we will be thinking of you.

      1. Thank you pm! It was so much to take in so I deal with the practical things – food, washing, nappies, milk etc. I love the dust advice – have you read Phillip Pullman…? 😘

          1. His Dark Materials trilogy is definitely worth a read. “Dust” is an integral theme!

    6. what a nightmare! so glad he’s survived and doing well, though I guess it will be a long road back to full health. What a good job his colleague recognised the signs.

      1. Thanks Ndovu! Yes, he was caught very quickly indeed! The girl said to him “are you having a stroke?” and he got up and then fell! Amazingly lucky! 😄

    7. Well done, Sue. I’m sure we all wish him to continue his recovery and for you, the ability to KBO.

      The whole NoTTLer family is with you – and your son-in-law (prospective).

      1. Thank you NTN! He is a very determined man, and my daughter – well, she is my daughter!!😄

    8. Smart colleague. I’m glad the NHS (for all its many faults) came up trumps. Best wishes to you and your family. S

    10. Look on the bright side. He is doing well. He’ll recover fully. What a stroke of luck his colleague knew what she was on about.

      KBO.

      1. Thank you Beagly Bill! He has been incredibly fortunate (as you say, a stroke of luck!) and he is fit and healthy! Well, he was! Lots of positives and so much to aim for! 😘

    11. Best wishes for his continued recovery, Sue; perhaps the worst is over. Thank goodness for a clever colleague and a rapid response.

      1. Thank you Lacoste! We are so thankful everything clicked into place, and that his brain follows when the bleed dries up! 👍

    12. I hope the improvement continues and that you can all look forward to the happy events on the horizon. The fast response must have helped.

      1. It certainly did! They say the first 4 hours are crucial, so he was a very lucky chap! Thank you for your wishes!

    13. Wow that is scary and I hope he makes a full recovery; never postpone a wedding, cancel it or sign on the dotted line.

      1. Thanks tim5165! Your good wishes are very welcome! I’m afraid the lunatic Wee Nicky caused the postponements with her loopy lockdowns, but it’s another aim for his recovery!

    14. Very best wishes to you and your family, for a complete recovery and a joyful wedding. Followed by many years’ happiness to you all.

      1. Many thanks Hertslass! With all the warmth and love he has from everyone I’m sure he will get there, however long it takes! Vic is just back from the hospital and he’s been joking about a Stannah stairlift!!

    16. Goodness! What a nasty scare for all of you!
      It’s the lifesaver, the recognition of the stroke, as every second counts. Well done that lass, and that she took immediate action. Recovery takes a while, and he’ll find it very, very tiring. Plenty sleep and a low stress environment will help.
      Fingers crossed for y’all, Sue!

      1. Thank you Herr Oberst! It’s been quite a scary few days and no one can believe it happened! The girl was amazing and Simons boss was so calm when he phoned. The emergency responder being a surgeon was another plus as he was able to “insist” that they send a “diesel”! So blues and twos up the motorway to the hospital in under an hour from his collapse! Definitely someone looking after him!

    17. Oh Sue, I’ve only just seen this – had a busy day and not on Nottl much. Thank goodness for a rapid response. When my mum had a stroke she was with friends for coffee and they responded quickly and appropriately, which certainly saved her and made for a speedier recovery. Hoping all goes well and your SiL is soon fully recovered.

      1. Thank you Sue! Its very inspiring to get good news about recovery in others as it’s very early days and there seems to be so much to worry about! One day at a time is definitely the way forward! Your words are much appreciated! XXX

    18. I’ve been busy today and just popped in. So sorry to hear your news, but happy for you that the outcome is looking very much better than it might have been. Everything seems to have “clicked” together very well which is something to be pleased about. Best wishes.

      1. Thank you Horace! Every day will be different and the physio rehab will give some structure to his long days in hospital. Simon is a determined man and has a lot of things to fight for! Your message is very welcome and I’ve told him all about the Nottlers! 🙂

    20. What a nightmare! Thank goodness he got treatment quickly. Best wishes for a speedy recovery.

      1. Thank you so much, Conway! Much appreciated. Delighted to hear about Oscar and his remarkable progress in public! You must be so pleased with him, and him with you. A truly happy match and long may it last. x

    21. Good Grief.
      With good old hindsight, were there any signs?
      Best wishes to you all.

      1. Thank you anne! He’d had a metallic taste in his mouth but that was it! When Vic got to him he said his water had tasted funny! Poor man fell in the kitchen and ripped the door off the washing machine, then the paramedic/consultant put the canula in his arm and there was blood everywhere! When I went down to the house to get the travel cot for one of the twins it looked like a murder scene!

  45. The Daily Human Stupidity.

    “All the inane, meaningless noises people make that pass for intelligent conversation. They might as well be pigs grunting in the pen.”

    Norma Fox Mazer.

  46. BBC pay: Top stars including Huw Edwards and Fiona Bruce take wage cuts. 6 July 2021.

    Scott Mills has entered the BBC’s top 10 rich list and Naga Munchetty received last year’s biggest pay rise, as other highly-paid stars at the corporation took salary cuts.

    Gary Lineker remains the biggest earner with a salary of £1,360,000-1,364,999, although that is nearly £400,000 down on the previous year.

    Zoe Ball is second in the list. She volunteered to take a pay cut following an outcry over her salary last year, but still earns over £1 million for the Radio 2 breakfast show.

    Lineker was a millionaire before he ever spoke into a microphone, when did the BBC decide his dulcet tones were worth this obscene sum of cash? This money is extorted under the threat of Criminal Sanction from a captive audience that has no say in its use. This is the Socialist Reality where a cloistered Nomenklatura basks in unearned wealth while lecturing the peasants on their shortcomings!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/06/bbc-pay-naga-munchetty-receives-biggest-wage-rise-highly-paid/

      2. Now here’s the competition for the day. How many £20 notes in this picture? How long would they keep Lineker in gainful employment?

        1. Has Lineker ever had any sort of gainful employment? (And to clarify – I don’t regard kicking a football around, talking about others kicking a football around or helping to flog potato snacks as ‘gainful employment’.)

  48. Just been thinking again, if we have been told that we can return to normality and that face masks are no longer necessary, then to continue wearing one would mean that one is acting irrationally, abnormally, eccentrically, it means that some psychological damage must have occurred.
    Perhaps a sufferer could even sue the government for causing mental illness.

  49. Nigeria’s abduction epidemic and the silence of the west, 6 July 2021.

    Over 1,000 schoolchildren have now been kidnapped in Nigeria since December; around 200 of them are still missing. Yet the international condemnation has been muted. It all marks a stark contrast to the ‘Bring back our girls’ backlash that greeted the kidnapping by Boko Haram of 276 Chibok schoolgirls in 2014 that dominated headlines and garnered the world’s condemnation.

    The Silence of the West? You must be thinking of those “White Saviours” Mr Kunwar, We’ve got rid of them and their nasty “White Supremacy”. You need to write to David Lammy or Diane Abbott or perhaps Black Lives Matter. Just not in Africa!

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/nigeria-s-abduction-epidemic-and-the-silence-of-the-west

    1. Trainee slaves, no doubt. You can tell that from the uproar from the woke lefturds.

    2. As many nottlers will know (ie better than me), Nigeria is a large and populous country with a cultural split between the moist South (Christian etc) and the arid North (Muslim). What could possibly go wrong?

    3. There was a headline in Punch of Nigeria, saying something like “We killed the girls to give us strength”.
      I didn’t read it, and can’t read that stuff any more, it’s too disturbing.

  50. Health minister has a new date but he’s not leaning against the office door:

    August 16th 2021.

    4. Our PM is the one who set off the current increase in Delta Covid cases by delaying a restriction on passengers coming from India and by allowing participants and hangers-on from coming to the GM in Cornwall with no obvious Covid precautions. Then with the First minister in Scotland he allowed Scottish Football fans to come down to Wembley for the match with England. The results are there to be seen. Today, tomorrow and at the weekend Wembley will be full of fans roaring their support for the semi and Final games. Little wonder that they are forecasting a massive rise in cases. Fortunately the vaccines seem to be working and deaths are not high. In November, if the First minister and our PM allow the Climate Jamboree in Glasgow to go ahead the outcome may be different.
      Our PM and the First Minister are damned if they do and damned if they don’t when dealing with this lockdown. They are finding out the difficulty in trying to control natural events.

      1. “…rise in cases.”

        Positive test results. Strictly speaking, a case is a medical referral. The misuse of ‘case’ has been one of the worst aspects of the pandemic.

          1. Almost the entire media uses the term. Data on the sick, hospitalised and the dead is more valuable but fails the propaganda test.

        2. They have tried to continuously bamboozle people from the beginning.

          Is it Law or Advice…even the Police were unsure.

          Contradictory statements from different Ministers.

          Boris saying we will do this and then doesn’t.

          Misleading graphs and statistics…again done on purpose.

          Then we see them disregarding their own rules.

    1. Since I don’t wish to appear patronising, I don’t give money to Africa.

  54. I was thinking just now (quick, someone call a nurse!) about the big problem with electric vehicles is anxiety about running out of power and getting stranded somewhere.

    This is addressed by hybrid vehicles, but then the temptation is simply to run them on petrol and ignore the electric engine. Hybrids also require a full power alternative power unit. These face being banned by the authorities in 2030.

    Might a compromise solution be to have the fossil fuel power unit to be for emergencies only, in order to limp home when out of range, but not as good as the main electric power unit. These units could be much smaller, lighter and cheaper.

    A 1948 Citroen 2CV had a 375cc engine when it first came out, a top speed of 40mph and this spec is still adequate for emergency transport. It is rated at 9 horsepower, which translates to about 6kW.

    6kW generators are widely available. Could not one of these be incorporated into the engine bay with a fuel tank for 100 miles running at full power? Any more needed, and you pack a jerry can. That should either get you home, or to somewhere you can give it a proper charge.

    If they must go ahead with all-electric vehicles by 2030, could they not include a clause allowing the hybrid installation of a generator up to 6kW?

    1. Why not just put a diesel generator on a trailer and tow it around behind the car.

    2. What they really want is for you to stay at home until the cattle trucks are ready.

    3. Dont worry the world will have gone bust by then, if they carry on like this. The real world will overtake them soon.

      1. Why not just use a horse in the first instance – back to the future. The first horse box was invented to stage a betting coup; the horse was declared to run at a northern racecourse, but was still in its box in the south shortly before the race, so its odds lengthened as nobody reckoned it could hack there, race and win (even though racehorses were tough in those days with several four-mile heats being common). The horse was transported in a box pulled by other horses and romped home. Bets duly landed.

          2. On the holder the wrong way . . . should unwind clockwise – not anti-clockwise . . .stops unrolling

          3. Oh heck: don’t start that one.
            It gets as acrimonious as the cream/ jam thing on scones.

    1. It is an ethical issue for many older would-be parents. A trisomy 21 test can give the mother the possibility of aborting, or not.

      1. I recall 50 years or so ago when I was working as a nursing auxiliary in what was an old school asylum for the “ESN”, long before the introduction of care in the community. We would sometimes get Downs individuals whose parents had died or who were too old to look after their child. The poor sods were totally lost when they arrived.

        People tend to ignore the fact that while some higher capability Downs children are able to integrate, a lot aren’t and either way the child is unlikely ever to leave home and have an independent life and yet can still live to a reasonable age.
        It is very sad for all concerned, but as you say, it’s an ethical question.

  58. Good afternoon all from a soggy Stockbridge.
    Drove down from Hook Norton, leaving about 06:00 after a night disturbed by heavy rain on the van roof, Stopped off near Cholderton for a couple of extra hours kip and went for a walk afterwards. Or rather TRIED to go for a walk!
    20 odd paces from the van the first drops arrived.
    200 yards into the wood the heavens opened.and I fled back to the van arrived rather drenched.
    Meandered my way down here and I’m now sat in the van with the third heavy shower since getting hear beating on the roof!

    Undecided where to head for next, especially the way the weather is, but will be trundling on soon.
    TTFN All

    1. It has been 10 mins of sun and 10 mins of rain all day in South Hants.

      Tomorrow is supposed to be better though….

  59. The plot against religious education. 6 July 2021.

    In spite of denials, this is clearly intended as a classroom guide for teachers. Although lip service is paid to the idea that these terms are ‘contested’, it is explicitly declared that there is ‘no pretence of neutrality’ in the document, which adds: ‘responding to injustice doesn’t work from neutrality, but from understanding and a commitment to equality’.

    It states, for example, that the shameful complicity of Christians in slavery should be at the ‘top of the list’ for subjects to be studied and that the slave trade leaves a shameful stain on Christianity. All this without any attempt at balancing the long history of Christianity in ameliorating and abolishing slavery in this country, going back to St Anselm in the 12th century. In fact, it declares that later anti-slavery campaigners like John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, and evangelicals like William Wilberforce and John Newton should not be used to ‘sugar coat’ Christian history and values.

    This is of course Whitey Bashing disguised as virtue. Slavery is a pre-Christian, one might well say Pre-Civilisation institution. It certainly existed in the Neolithic Period. It also blossomed under Islam and its precursors and well into the modern period. Indeed it lasted longer in the Middle East than the West where it was only finally ended by the Royal Navy in the nineteenth Century.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-plot-against-religious-education

    1. It is certainly a during- and post-Christian one – done by blacks and Arabs.

    2. That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. And I suppose nothing will be said about slavery in relation to islam.

    3. Those anti-slavery people – weren’t they Christians? Wasn’t the message of Christianity that there were no such things as masters and slaves, but brothers and sisters? It was one reason why the Roman Empire (which relied on slaves) hated it so much.

  60. Good afternoon, Nottlers!

    Another piece from Independence Daily. They need contributors, to write a piece on something that they want to say. Any Nottlers would be welcomed.

    BREXIT or NOT?
    Written by Mary Curran.

    People keep peddling the myth that we’re out of the EU. A dangerous falsehood. The Government’s delivery of “Brexit” is a very cynical exercise, and reminds me of a story about Bliar as a schoolboy: told to get his hair cut 4 times per term, he had a haircut on 4 consecutive days. Cavalierly making a mockery of the whole thing.

    Similarly, the politicians may be able technically to say they got us out of the EU, as promised. But, they’ll say, “we never made any promises not to immediately tie Britain back into the same treaty obligations and alignment with the EU . And we never promised never to re join.”

    I wanted Brexit mainly for 3 reasons: Civil liberties. Immigration. Plus it’s never a good idea to put your whole destiny in someone else’s power.

    I wanted a complete return to English Common Law, rather than being in danger of arbitrary arrest, extradition, and long-term imprisonment, especially for one’s opinions; or of being at the complete mercy of the EU Public Prosecutor or diplomatically immune EU paramilitary police on our own soil.

    But the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (Chapter 3) prolongs this appalling arrangement, no change apart from a few minor tweaks. The amendment of the 2003 Extradition Act has not been done as was needed.

    So people have since 2015 still been extradited and kept imprisoned arbitrarily (although a Freedom of Information request is underway as to the numbers of people extradited from Britain to Europe; more about that later ). The excuse for this is that we need to cooperate with the EU over criminal justice. Indeed we do but never at the expense of our own due process. But then of course the motives of the politicians never was to maintain law and order except when it suited their agenda.

    One example is David Noakes who I believe was extradited to France since “Brexit,” and was rotting in jail there until recently. If we had Brexit as claimed, why was this?

    And Julian Assange. Incarcerated for years now pending extradition under an EU Arrest Warrant, initially to Sweden. Even though Sweden no longer wants him. Still in a high-security jail even though a key witness has admitted he lied.

    And of course on top of all this, the Covid tyranny. Brought in through deception and lies.

    Re Immigration: the Government have made a mockery of regaining control of borders and the dinghy arrivals, they have the power but not the will to control it.

    And re the UN Global Compact for Migration: this claims to give states power to dictate how many migrants they take but I’m sure that cunningly hidden behind reams of turgid legal agreements, that right is handed to the EU. Even if that were not so, our politicians have no will to prevent the enormous invasion which will I believe hit us at the same time as the coming fiscal meltdown.

    But isn’t all this academic: if the Great Reset happens, isn’t Brexit checkmated? The Great Reset means one-world government, no borders, a universal digital currency, universal tyranny shaping up to be worse even than any tyrannies in the past. No wonder that egregious patriot Teresa May looked remarkably breezy sometimes during her “leadership.” These politicians are totally cynical and laughing up their sleeves while they throw us to the wolves. Their motto must surely be never to give a sucker a break, and voters certainly are suckers if they keep voting mainstream.

    I shall leave the topic of trade to better-qualified persons than myself.

    But there is another myth that has been peddled lately by Brexiteers who should know better. No names mentioned. That is, that “one of Brexit’s biggest triumphs is the success of the vaccine rollout”.

    Excuse me: an experimental vaccine for which demand has been fraudulently created, which could have catastrophic unforeseen effects now, next year and in a generations time; peddled to a gullible population on false premises lies and fraud, without informed consent about the dangers and also the lack of accountability; and using undue influence. Such an experimental vaccine is not normally allowed unless there is an emergency or pandemic and provided no other effective remedies exist like Ivermectin.

    Many dead or with life-altering injuries. Yet they will doubtless forge ahead and vaccinate children too I have no doubt.

    And they call that a triumph?

    So in conclusion, we can’t say “Job Done.”

    ” KBO” would be more appropriate !!

    https://independencedaily.co.uk/brexit-or-not/?utm_source=mailpoet&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=INDEPENDENCE+Daily+Newsletter1

    1. “…and voters certainly are suckers if they keep voting mainstream.”

      This is because the politicians know that 99% of the public are irredeemably stupid and wiil continue, despite all this, to give them their votes. It is a win/win situation for politicians and a lose/lose situation for everyone else. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

      Ogga1 will, no doubt. add to this.

  61. Good afternoon, Nottlers!

    Another piece from Independence Daily. They need contributors, to write a piece on something that they want to say. Any Nottlers would be welcomed.

    BREXIT or NOT?
    Written by Mary Curran.

    People keep peddling the myth that we’re out of the EU. A dangerous falsehood. The Government’s delivery of “Brexit” is a very cynical exercise, and reminds me of a story about Bliar as a schoolboy: told to get his hair cut 4 times per term, he had a haircut on 4 consecutive days. Cavalierly making a mockery of the whole thing.

    Similarly, the politicians may be able technically to say they got us out of the EU, as promised. But, they’ll say, “we never made any promises not to immediately tie Britain back into the same treaty obligations and alignment with the EU . And we never promised never to re join.”

    I wanted Brexit mainly for 3 reasons: Civil liberties. Immigration. Plus it’s never a good idea to put your whole destiny in someone else’s power.

    I wanted a complete return to English Common Law, rather than being in danger of arbitrary arrest, extradition, and long-term imprisonment, especially for one’s opinions; or of being at the complete mercy of the EU Public Prosecutor or diplomatically immune EU paramilitary police on our own soil.

    But the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (Chapter 3) prolongs this appalling arrangement, no change apart from a few minor tweaks. The amendment of the 2003 Extradition Act has not been done as was needed.

    So people have since 2015 still been extradited and kept imprisoned arbitrarily (although a Freedom of Information request is underway as to the numbers of people extradited from Britain to Europe; more about that later ). The excuse for this is that we need to cooperate with the EU over criminal justice. Indeed we do but never at the expense of our own due process. But then of course the motives of the politicians never was to maintain law and order except when it suited their agenda.

    One example is David Noakes who I believe was extradited to France since “Brexit,” and was rotting in jail there until recently. If we had Brexit as claimed, why was this?

    And Julian Assange. Incarcerated for years now pending extradition under an EU Arrest Warrant, initially to Sweden. Even though Sweden no longer wants him. Still in a high-security jail even though a key witness has admitted he lied.

    And of course on top of all this, the Covid tyranny. Brought in through deception and lies.

    Re Immigration: the Government have made a mockery of regaining control of borders and the dinghy arrivals, they have the power but not the will to control it.

    And re the UN Global Compact for Migration: this claims to give states power to dictate how many migrants they take but I’m sure that cunningly hidden behind reams of turgid legal agreements, that right is handed to the EU. Even if that were not so, our politicians have no will to prevent the enormous invasion which will I believe hit us at the same time as the coming fiscal meltdown.

    But isn’t all this academic: if the Great Reset happens, isn’t Brexit checkmated? The Great Reset means one-world government, no borders, a universal digital currency, universal tyranny shaping up to be worse even than any tyrannies in the past. No wonder that egregious patriot Teresa May looked remarkably breezy sometimes during her “leadership.” These politicians are totally cynical and laughing up their sleeves while they throw us to the wolves. Their motto must surely be never to give a sucker a break, and voters certainly are suckers if they keep voting mainstream.

    I shall leave the topic of trade to better-qualified persons than myself.

    But there is another myth that has been peddled lately by Brexiteers who should know better. No names mentioned. That is, that “one of Brexit’s biggest triumphs is the success of the vaccine rollout”.

    Excuse me: an experimental vaccine for which demand has been fraudulently created, which could have catastrophic unforeseen effects now, next year and in a generations time; peddled to a gullible population on false premises lies and fraud, without informed consent about the dangers and also the lack of accountability; and using undue influence. Such an experimental vaccine is not normally allowed unless there is an emergency or pandemic and provided no other effective remedies exist like Ivermectin.

    Many dead or with life-altering injuries. Yet they will doubtless forge ahead and vaccinate children too I have no doubt.

    And they call that a triumph?

    So in conclusion, we can’t say “Job Done.”

    ” KBO” would be more appropriate !!

    https://independencedaily.co.uk/brexit-or-not/?utm_source=mailpoet&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=INDEPENDENCE+Daily+Newsletter1

    1. When the sweatin’ troop-train lay
      In a sidin’ through the day,
      Where the ’eat would make your bloomin’ eyebrows crawl…

      1. Tho’ I’ve belted you an’ flayed you,
        By the livin’ Gawd that made you,
        You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din!

  63. A Wimbledon commentator said tonight.. “The future of British Tennis has
    never been brighter..!”

    Wtf.. I’m 56, out of shape and not played Tennis for 20 years..

    I happened to pick up a cheap racket in Sports Direct this morning, waft
    it about a bit in the shop and due to the CCTV footage, I’m now ranked
    4th in the UK.

    :@)

  64. At first I was impressed when I met an old school friend and he said
    he’d gone on to develop a highly dangerous career in the oil and gas
    sector.

    I was less impressed however when I found out he was the night kiosk
    attendant at the Esso garage in Brixton.

    2. That looks like the time many civilian craft hazarded the trip to Dunkirk (under fire) and back to rescue as many soldiers as they could carry.

    3. Don’t believe a word of it.

      Why has she taken two years (and thousands of illegals) to do sod all?

      All mouth and shalwar khameez.

    5. Access to the UK’s asylum system should be based on need, not the ability to pay people smugglers.

      If that statement is to become fact then all those arriving via rubber dinghy or other unofficial routes across the Channel must be denied access to the asylum system. What exactly does the criterion “need” actually encompass? As far as I can tell their only “need” is to set foot on British soil and continue with whatever task they’ve been set. Modern clothes, trainers, smart phones etc: they do not look particularly “needy” do they?

      These masses of young men are clearly not organising the crossings nor paying the smugglers for that service. It’s almost certain that the bills are being paid by globalists, therefore there is no effort from the government to stop the influx.

      Patel is a windbag, puffed up by her own importance and totally useless as far as the electorate is concerned. If the indolent Johnson had any concerns over this problem he would have told Patel to either shape up or ship out. Instead he stands idly by doing nothing.

      1. “It’s almost certain that the bills are being paid by globalists…”
        Yes, I’ve been banging on about this until I got fed up. The clue is the mobile phones that they all have. Someone else must be paying those bills. How else would they be paid?
        It shouldn’t take our security services more than half an hour to check a few hundred phone accounts. Just as it would have been relatively simple to find the source all those shiny 4×4 trucks the ISIS terrorists were using to run around the Middle East. VIN numbers are the clue. That and the manufacturers’ badges.

    6. When the first rubber boatload are turned back, the occupants will throw the youngest and/or any pregnant woman overboard.
      There will be a death, outcry, and the whole damn importation exercise will start up even faster.

      1. I don’t agree, Sos, as I’ve said in an earlier post, we need to instruct Border Farce to start PROTECTING our coast line and the easiest way is to loud hail them, telling them to steer 180° or they will be sunk – first and last time of asking.

        Should they continue, no matter how many on board – sink them. They were warned.

        Damn the screams from the MSM et al, they were invading our territory and cared to ignore the warning.

        I doubt that there will be more than one (two) incidents before the information gets back and the flow dries up.

        Very effective but you have to have the chutzpah to carry it out

        1. Oh, and for those already here, we must be prepared, by leaving the ECHR and repealing the Human Rights Act, to set up a steady stream of deportations.

          Inform the deportees that, if they don’t provide an adequate means of National Identity, their deportation will consist of being dumped, at midnight, on a Somali beach wearing only your underclothes and nothing else.

    7. I don’t like the way that is phrased.
      It looks as though they are just going to let everyone in, because it’s not fair that some can pay people smugglers and others can’t.
      How about access to the UK is determined by how useful they will actually be in our society?

    8. When are you going to instruct Border Farce to tell them to turn round or be sunk?

    2. “Do you know, I believe we should all behave quite differently if we lived in a warm, sunnyclimate all the time. We shouldn’t be so withdrawn and shy and difficult.”

      1. Ptooiee.. Who is we?

        Have you watched Enchanted April?

        There is your answer, Shirley Valentine. :@)

      2. Like Nigeria, Sudan, Ethiopia, Congo, Rwanda… Hmm, choices, choices.

    5. “It’s over between us. Now I’ve encountered you without your briefs I’m not so keen”

  74. I had the pleasure of visiting MiL earlier this afternoon (she’s 95 and a Nursing Home resident). A week or two ago she ask me to post a birthday card she had written to an acquaintance who was about to celebrate his 101st Birthday. She tells me she received an acknowledgement from him today, “Written in beautiful handwriting and SWALK”!….

  76. Went into Blandford this afternoon , lovely market town , nice individual shops , atmosphere, Tesco Morrisons, M+S food store , that sort of thing , and a change instead of going into Weymouth and very easy to park .
    Visited their Tesco store , simple and straightforward, but the fields on the approach to Blandford from the Dorchester end , just off one of the roundabouts has a new housing estate under construction … same old same old red brick look .. boring , squashed in homes , in fields that grew barley , maize etc

    Our lovely Dorset market towns are expanding quickly , Wimborne is the same , as well as others, and the lorries and cars on our narrow roads increases more and more.

    Anyway , Moh and I arrived home just as the new window cleaner had finished the windows .. I sighed a sigh of relief and Moh smiled!

      1. Yep, I think he was relieved they were all sorted !

        Just the inside windows for me to do, the trouble with patio windows are the dogs noses , streaks , and flyspray on others !

        1. I asked my Windie his secret formula and he said a squirt of washing up liquid in a bucket of hot water, a squeegee sponge and a blade to scrape it off. No streaks.

          Why the flyspray?

          4. I expect she was; some people spray the windows with fly spray because that’s where the flies congregate and it kills them.

          1. I certainly don’t go behind the local equivalent of Tesco to see who’s working there…

            };-O

    3. The cars will soon be all electric, Mags – you’ll spot them easily, abandoned by the roadside….

    1. Children will one day be taught about how close England came to Euro 2020 glory, according to a Scottish MP.

      The SNP’s Brendan O’Hara made the joke in the House of Commons ahead of England’s crunch semi-final clash with Denmark at Wembley on Wednesday.
      …
      Mr O’Hara’s light-hearted remarks came as MPs considered the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill, which seeks to enable UK governments to call a general election at the time of their choosing.

      ‘Joke’ and ‘light-hearted remarks’. If it had been an English MP making ‘jokes’ or ‘light-hearted remarks’ about the Scots, it would be racist.

      2. Hmm, I wonder when we the Electorate and Paymasters of the current Miserable Persons might be allowed to call them to book, recall and fire our local MP and call a General Election – devoid of Postal Votes except in exceptional circumstances

    1. Interesting word Monomania it features frequently in Dostoevsky’s ‘Crime and Punishment’….

      1. If you say so.
        It’s one of those books I’ve “meant ” to read but then can’t be bothered.
        Lazy bastard that I am…

        1. It only has 208,000 words. You can read that in an afternoon.

          Of course the German version is 709,000,000. Might take a bit longer.

          If that is too much for you the French version is much shorter and you get to colour in the pictures.

        2. I could never get on with 19th century books by Russian authors. Just trying to cope with the names – let alone the slabs of text – was so off putting. Then I discovered audio books – and it was a revelation. Tolstoy, Turgenev and others suddenly came alive and made sense.

        3. I read it when I was at school. It beat doing PE. Thing is, as I grow older I tend to sympathise more with the father than the sons, and it’s a turnaround..

  79. UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said on Tuesday that the country’s vessels would keep the route through Crimean waters despite a recent incident involving the UK’s HMS Defender destroyer.

    “HMS Defender was taking the shortest and most direct route. It is an internationally recognised traffic route. We’ve got every right to conduct innocent passage through Ukrainian territorial waters, according to international law. That’s what we’ll continue to do”, Raab told a parliamentary committee.

    Well well well..things could get interesting.

    1. These people are idiots. When I was little the bouncers at dance halls were in the job because they liked fighting. I knew one personally and gave him a wide berth in general, in case he gave me a hug – we’d been at school together. Had I provoked him I’d have been minced.
      The route in question may be the shortest between Odessa and Georgia , but sailing a few extra miles would keep us well away as well as avoiding a congested sea lane.
      Raab is defending (see what I did there?) deliberate provocation of a very powerful country on its own turf, as it were. To no point whatsoever.

    2. Innocent passage…A Warship… even with the Helio stowed and a cover on the guns doesn’t really make innocent passage. It was meant to be provocative.

      I wonder what his excuse will be if they do open fire and we lose crew.

      This annoys me because when it was discovered that French and British warships were colluding in the people smuggling in the channel they switched off their transponders and phoned each other.

      Life is cheap.

      1. That is my view also. Biden had a word with Bojo in Cornwall. Being the US catspaw is very stupid.

  80. Evening, all. No Western powers have had any success in Afghanistan. They don’t play by our rules. Oscar news: he had his first “meet and greet” visit to the grooming parlour this morning. He behaved well (not that he was asked to do much, just sit and take a few biscuits nicely!). I’ll be taking him regularly (and feeding him treats) before D Day when he actually has to be trimmed and shampooed, to desensitise him. He has already walked into the crate in the waiting area and started investigating the toys! It was a longish walk, so he’s flat out now, snoozing in his bed beside me.

    1. Evening, Conwy – I see that China is going to “buy” Afghanistan – billions in loans etc. I wonder how they’ll get on with the Taliban – knowing how generous they are to their own slammer “rebels”…

      Good for Oscar. KBO – both of you.

      2. Thanks, Bill. It’s all we can do. It’s only just been four weeks, so I think we’re making progress.

      3. I shall be interested to see the world’s reaction to China’s deployment of military forces to put down the Towelheads.

      4. You would need about 400,000 troops to guard the border with Pakistan and enforce the peace. People’s Lib Army has 2.2 million on call. After the Chinese occupied Tibet, the army sourced their food locally; Major Famine did much of the dirty work.

      1. Yes, that seems to be the way to go. He wore Charlie’s coat again (very wet here) with no problems, so I didn’t have to towel him down, although I did manage to dry him off and keep my fingers yesterday 🙂

    3. Good to know, Connors, keep on with the training, grooming and getting to mix with other dogs and other people. It can only be rewarding to see the results getting better and better.

      1. He nearly had a stupid woman this morning. I told her he was a rescue dog and didn’t like being touched by strangers, but she would insist on touching his head. He warned her, but she just said, “oh, my dog does that”. Then she did it again and he was a bit stronger in his warning (he didn’t touch her, just made it plain he wasn’t having it) and she said, “where did that come from?” Well, you silly bint, it came from the fact that a) you ignored my warning that he didn’t like being touched by strangers and b) that when he made it plain the first time he wasn’t happy you ignored it and did it again! Some people! Trouble is, the dog would get the blame.

        1. You cannot find a cure for stupid. I have grown up with dogs and one of the first things I was taught, is to offer you hand with a clenched fist so that, if the dog doesn’t like your smell and decides to bite, he’s just going to roughen you knuckles rather than bite your fingers off. I certainly wouldn’t go for the head as starters.

    4. One of our local car washes also has a pet wash.

      You put the animal in the box and pay the money and switch on.
      Washed and dried apparently.
      I’ve never seen anyone using it!

        1. }:-))
          And AC Cobras

          It’s weird, just a glass fronted box with shower jets.

      2. I suspect it would only be used once – they’d never get the pet anywhere near it a second time.

        1. I would have thought so too, but it’s been there for quite a while, so perhaps some animals enjoy the experience.

          2. I accidentally laundered £20 this evening; I thought I’d emptied the pockets, but when I took the washing out, a £20 note came with it!

    5. Oh no, not another retreat from Kabul! They’ll get the Yanks up the Khyber.

  81. That’s me for today. An odd day – rain – bright sun – gales, rain ad inf. It is supposed to be better tomorrow – I hope it belongs to me.

    Have a jolly, sober evening.

    A demain.

  82. Well …. quelle bloody surprise.

    “Satanic killer who had been on anti-terror watchlist stabbed sisters in ‘pact with devil’”

      1. Yes, dear old google revealed at the weekend that he probably came from Ethiopia or Eritrea . His name may even have been misreported, because Fana Hagos is a name that is frequently found those countries, but less often in Swansea. Could be Orthodox. Possibly a student whose loan was not renewed.

  84. From the Spekkie: hence the laxity over flogging off Newport Wafer Fab to the heathen Chinee.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/matt-hancock-isn-t-the-only-politician-who-is-clueless-about-cyber-security

    “Matt Hancock isn’t the only politician who is clueless about cyber security

    It is widely acknowledged that Britain has some of the world’s finest cyber capabilities. GCHQ is a global leader in those dark arts, and its offshoot, the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), is making that expertise available to businesses and others in need of help with their digital defences.

    All the more shocking, then, that our political leaders seem so utterly clueless. They have pledged to make Britain the ‘safest place in the world to be online’, but instead are running around like stars in a digital age ‘Carry On’ movie.

    Exhibit number one is Matt Hancock. Whitehall has been busy sweeping ministerial offices in search of cameras of the type that caught the former Health Secretary’s kiss, seemingly unaware of the extent of the surveillance. Yet this was not a hidden device: it was a CCTV camera, a pretty obvious bulbous node in the ceiling, installed by a government contractor.

    Hancock claimed he didn’t know it was there, and we are still none-the-wiser as to who captured the pictures and how. The likelihood is that a disgruntled somebody with access to the feed downloaded it or filmed it on the screen with a mobile phone, but can we be sure it wasn’t hacked?

    The cameras used in the health department’s building are made by Hikvision, a Chinese company, with close links to the Chinese Communist party. Around 1.3 million of its cameras are being used in the UK by airports, councils, NHS trusts and government departments. This in spite of UK intelligence agencies pushing for curbs on the use of Chinese ‘smart cities’ technology (an umbrella term for surveillance tech), which they fear could be used by Beijing for espionage, surveillance or the collection of sensitive data.

    Hancock and Lord Bethell, a health minister in the Lords, have been accused of routinely using private email accounts for government business, but the practice is believed to be widespread – including in No 10, where Boris Johnson has refused to deny that he too uses a private account. Pressed in a BBC interview, justice secretary Robert Buckland agreed that communicating this way was a ‘huge security issue’ that could potentially allow hackers to gain access to government communication. Elizabeth Denham, the Information Commissioner, is said to be ‘looking carefully’ at the issue and considering further action.

    It has also been revealed that foreign secretary Dominic Raab’s mobile phone number could easily be found online – as could Boris Johnson’s as recently as April, having been available there for 15 years. For a sophisticated adversary, merely knowing a number can be enough for secretly inserting spyware to eavesdrop and plunder the contents of a smartphone.

    Perhaps ministers are not being properly advised by our cyber sleuths, though that seems unlikely. A more plausible explanation is that they have a separate agenda – that they are less concerned with hackers crouching over screens in some Moscow or Beijing cyber bunker than they are with evading legitimate democratic oversight of their activities.

    This would seem to be supported by the widespread use of encrypted messaging. WhatsApp has been widely adopted in Westminster (and is not as secure as some assume; it has been hacked), and Signal is catching on fast, giving ministers the added tool of self-destructing messages. More than a third of Johnson’s cabinet, including Rishi Sunak, Priti Patel, Michael Gove, Grant Shapps, Robert Jenrick, Gavin Williamson and the Prime Minister himself have reportedly downloaded the app, which allows the user to set messages to be wiped automatically after a chosen period of time.

    The government is facing a crowd-funded legal challenge from the campaigning groups Foxglove and The Citizens. They say the use of these apps could be in breach of the Public Records Act, since it makes it impossible for messages to be obtained later under freedom of information requests or on orders from a judge. Ministers are legally required to conduct government business through official channels so that records can be kept by civil servants and decisions scrutinised.

    Much hinges on the definition of ‘government business’, which is not always clear cut. It is also not clear who determines what this includes. This was much easier in the days of memos typed out in triplicate and phone calls made through clunky switchboards, with civil servants sitting at the ministerial elbow. Times and tech have moved on, but it is foolhardy to allow minsters to decide what is, or is not, official business.

    The most pressing concern is the pending public inquiry into the government’s handling of Covid-19 pandemic and the thorny issue of alleged cronyism in the handing out of billions of pounds of contracts with little or no due process. There is a real concern that the paper trail may have been muddied by the use of private accounts and messaging apps – indeed, that may well have been the intention.

    All of which will no doubt bring a wry smile to faces of Britain’s cyber adversaries. It will come as no comfort that an International Institute for Strategic Studies report recently suggested that China’s cyber capabilities might not be all they are cracked up to be. They don’t need to be – not when they are dealing with our hapless, scheming ministers, who seem intent on doing half the job for them.”

  85. The quotation from Hancock sums him up. Charles Moore is too polite to be critical of the ****.

    The NHS hasn’t earned the George Cross

    A significant proportion of the suffering during Covid was caused by the fact the NHS was not fit for purpose

    CHARLES MOORE

    It is interesting that the award of the George Cross to the National Health Service is being presented as the personal decision of the Queen. In formal terms, it is true, all such awards come from the head of state. It is also true, in this case, that the announcement of the award has been accompanied by a hand-written letter from the Queen. The note praises NHS staff “over more than seven decades” for “courage, compassion and dedication”. It makes no specific mention of Covid-19.

    However, such awards are not, constitutionally, Her Majesty’s personal decision. Unlike the Order of the Garter or the Order of Merit, whose memberships are in the direct gift of the Sovereign, the award of the George Cross is decided – like most medals and honours – “on advice”. That advice comes to her from the George Cross committee and the Prime Minister. It is therefore a political decision (though not, of course, a party one).

    When the Queen gave the George Cross to the Royal Ulster Constabulary, for example, it was a sort of retirement present – the force was being replaced – and it was at the suggestion of the then Northern Ireland secretary, Peter Mandelson. He was making a (justified) political move to calm disquiet about the changes.

    So one is not criticising the Queen’s personal judgment if one dissents from this particular award. It is the Government which has decided. Although it is easy to see why it wanted to act as it did, I think it was wrong to do so.

    It is certainly important to find ways of recognising the immense efforts of hundreds of thousands of NHS staff – and similar numbers of other workers in many walks of life – during the pandemic. I hope, for example, that there will be a campaign medal for all those who volunteered to help administer vaccinations. I hope particular recognition will be given to all those who died serving.

    But I do not think the NHS, as an institution, has an unblemished record in the history of the coronavirus. It is not, as a whole, a suitable recipient of a medal invented to recognise “acts of the greatest heroism or of the most conspicuous courage in circumstances of extreme danger”. For an outstanding nurse, doctor or paramedic, yes. For an entire, gigantic bureaucracy, no.

    In his resignation letter a couple of weeks ago, the former health secretary, Matt Hancock, wrote “The NHS is the best gift a nation has ever given itself”. Really? Better than the fighter pilots in 1940, or universal suffrage or the abolition of slavery? Better than the US Constitution? If the NHS is such a wonderful thing, why do almost no other advanced nations use the same model? And by the way, the word “gift” is an odd one to describe our single most expensive taxpayer-funded national entity.

    While welcoming the desire to thank every single person who helped others through this great crisis, we should not indulge a national illusion. A significant proportion of the suffering during Covid was caused by the fact the NHS was not, to use the jargon phrase of the age, “fit for purpose”.

    It was ill prepared and could not adapt quickly. It had shockingly poor relations with care homes. Outsiders had to rush in to solve procurement problems – an influx, which, in the case of the vaccines, made all the difference. “Protect the NHS” – the very slogan used to justify the lockdown – was itself the symptom of a serious problem. A health service should be there to protect the public, not the other way round.

    And today, as normal life gradually returns, millions of people, often with ailments unattended to for 18 months, are finding the NHS extremely hard to re-engage with. Large numbers of the frail and elderly have not been able to see a doctor. With many GP surgeries, it feels as if actual visits to actual doctors are becoming a thing of the past. The Covid experience makes the case for NHS reform, not for collective sainthood.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/06/nhs-hasnt-earned-george-cross/

    2. I’m not frail and not particularly elderly, but I have not been able to see a doctor (I don’t count holding the phone in one hand, clinging to furniture with the other and doing exercises “seeing a doctor”) since I had a fall in the garden last March. Even getting an X ray took months.

    3. Some years ago I went to the memorial service for a gentleman who I liked and respected.
      As a young soldier in WWII he had been lying sick in a hospital, when a German bomb landed nearby and failed to explode. He simply got up and defused the UXB. He was awarded the George Medal; I have often wondered, why not the George Cross?

        2. Nothing to do with rank. The George Cross is rarer and is for greater acts of gallantry than the wider-issued George Medal, with rank not being taken into account (other than indirectly, such as in bomb disposal where officers were more likely to be taking the risks).

        3. The GC is for civilians and ranks with the VC

          Servicefolk can only get the GV for doing thing way outside a military task

      2. Both are gallantry awards. The cross is the higher award and the medal the lower. In theory it is the degree of gallantry displayed that is the difference. In practice there is a lot of politics involved in who gets what.

        Now can somebody explain to me how the NHS has displayed gallantry throughout it’s history? Give it to the ftont line workers dealing with COVID-19 maybe but it is inappropriate for the entire NHS stretching back 70 odd years. The award is lowered by it’s use in this way.

  86. The quotation from Hancock sums him up. Charles Moore is too polite to be critical of the ****.

    The NHS hasn’t earned the George Cross

    A significant proportion of the suffering during Covid was caused by the fact the NHS was not fit for purpose

    CHARLES MOORE

    It is interesting that the award of the George Cross to the National Health Service is being presented as the personal decision of the Queen. In formal terms, it is true, all such awards come from the head of state. It is also true, in this case, that the announcement of the award has been accompanied by a hand-written letter from the Queen. The note praises NHS staff “over more than seven decades” for “courage, compassion and dedication”. It makes no specific mention of Covid-19.

    However, such awards are not, constitutionally, Her Majesty’s personal decision. Unlike the Order of the Garter or the Order of Merit, whose memberships are in the direct gift of the Sovereign, the award of the George Cross is decided – like most medals and honours – “on advice”. That advice comes to her from the George Cross committee and the Prime Minister. It is therefore a political decision (though not, of course, a party one).

    When the Queen gave the George Cross to the Royal Ulster Constabulary, for example, it was a sort of retirement present – the force was being replaced – and it was at the suggestion of the then Northern Ireland secretary, Peter Mandelson. He was making a (justified) political move to calm disquiet about the changes.

    So one is not criticising the Queen’s personal judgment if one dissents from this particular award. It is the Government which has decided. Although it is easy to see why it wanted to act as it did, I think it was wrong to do so.

    It is certainly important to find ways of recognising the immense efforts of hundreds of thousands of NHS staff – and similar numbers of other workers in many walks of life – during the pandemic. I hope, for example, that there will be a campaign medal for all those who volunteered to help administer vaccinations. I hope particular recognition will be given to all those who died serving.

    But I do not think the NHS, as an institution, has an unblemished record in the history of the coronavirus. It is not, as a whole, a suitable recipient of a medal invented to recognise “acts of the greatest heroism or of the most conspicuous courage in circumstances of extreme danger”. For an outstanding nurse, doctor or paramedic, yes. For an entire, gigantic bureaucracy, no.

    In his resignation letter a couple of weeks ago, the former health secretary, Matt Hancock, wrote “The NHS is the best gift a nation has ever given itself”. Really? Better than the fighter pilots in 1940, or universal suffrage or the abolition of slavery? Better than the US Constitution? If the NHS is such a wonderful thing, why do almost no other advanced nations use the same model? And by the way, the word “gift” is an odd one to describe our single most expensive taxpayer-funded national entity.

    While welcoming the desire to thank every single person who helped others through this great crisis, we should not indulge a national illusion. A significant proportion of the suffering during Covid was caused by the fact the NHS was not, to use the jargon phrase of the age, “fit for purpose”.

    It was ill prepared and could not adapt quickly. It had shockingly poor relations with care homes. Outsiders had to rush in to solve procurement problems – an influx, which, in the case of the vaccines, made all the difference. “Protect the NHS” – the very slogan used to justify the lockdown – was itself the symptom of a serious problem. A health service should be there to protect the public, not the other way round.

    And today, as normal life gradually returns, millions of people, often with ailments unattended to for 18 months, are finding the NHS extremely hard to re-engage with. Large numbers of the frail and elderly have not been able to see a doctor. With many GP surgeries, it feels as if actual visits to actual doctors are becoming a thing of the past. The Covid experience makes the case for NHS reform, not for collective sainthood.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/06/nhs-hasnt-earned-george-cross/

    1. Could the dog’s master train her to round up the illegal immigrants (most of whom are frightened of dogs) and chase them into a return boat about to set sail for France?

      1. As I’m coming down the flight single handed, it will take approx 20 minutes per lock, as each lock is left empty overnight and will need to be filled, and there are 16 locks in the flight. Note before I get to the flight there are 6 locks above and a further 7 below i.e. 29 in total.
        However, if it isn’t persisting it down with rain there may be a volunteer Lockie or two to assist (fingers crossed!)

          2. Thank you OLT! That’s kind of you! It has been quite a week but at least he is still with us and he is very enthusiastic about his physio.

      2. As I’m coming down the flight single handed, it will take approx 20 minutes per lock, as each lock is left empty overnight and will need to be filled, and there are 16 locks in the flight. Note before I get to the flight there are 6 locks above and a further 7 below i.e. 29 in total.
        However, if it isn’t persisting it down with rain there may be a volunteer Lockie or two to assist (fingers crossed!)

      1. Only if one has been a tiny bit naughty and doesn’t have to spend too much time in Purgatory….

    4. Night

      I misread your comment

      I thought, that you said ‘tacking’ ( a nautical expression) not tackling

      As a Sea Cadet in the late ’50’s we used to take a 14 ft Dinghy sailing down the canal in Coventry

      We lowered the sails and ‘stepped the mast’ every time we came to a bridge

      The same, when we returned to base

      1. On the Broads many boats have a device called a tabernacle for lowering the mast and you lower it by loosening the forestay. With practice you can ‘shoot’ a bridge lowering the mast with sail still rigged, carrying way and then raising it again as soon as you have got through and continue sailing. I kept a dinghy on Barton Broad when I was at UEA.

        https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/578d2d826e342f6a961ed6cb012dee54f383809b9d22402536a7b8597288a5ec.jpg

      2. On the Broads many boats have a device called a tabernacle for lowering the mast and you lower it by loosening the forestay. With practice you can ‘shoot’ a bridge lowering the mast with sail still rigged, carrying way and then raising it again as soon as you have got through and continue sailing. I kept a dinghy on Barton Broad when I was at UEA.

        https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/578d2d826e342f6a961ed6cb012dee54f383809b9d22402536a7b8597288a5ec.jpg

    5. Night

      I misread your comment

      I thought, that you said ‘tacking’ ( a nautical expression) not tackling

      As a Sea Cadet in the late ’50’s we used to take a 14 ft Dinghy sailing down the canal in Coventry

      We lowered the sails and ‘stepped the mast’ every time we came to a bridge

      The same, when we returned to base

    8. Please give a wave as you pass the resting place of my parents at St Michaels Little Bedwyn.

    9. Please give a wave as you pass the resting place of my parents at St Michaels Little Bedwyn.

      2. It seemed to me watching the football this evening that both Italy and Spain are much less diverse than the football teams in Northern Europe countries. Maybe it has something to do with global warming?

        1. Not sure the eastern European teams are anything other than white either.

        2. That and national pride & the fact that they didn’t have Tony Blair & Gordon Brown deliberately “Socially Reengineer ” the ethnic make up of their countries with the dregs of the 3rd world.

      3. It seemed to me watching the football this evening that both Italy and Spain are much less diverse than the football teams in Northern Europe countries. Maybe it has something to do with global warming?

    3. This is truly obscene.

      And Gary Lineker and Alan Shearer don’t even get to comment of half the Euro games as ITV broadcasts them! They should have their pay halved for a start and then greatly reduced

      Looking at the Spain Italy game this evening made me think that both of these teams look far more dynamic than England.

      1. If there were a real, true ‘pandemic’ there would be no need for bribery and coercion – people would be fighting to get to the front of the queue for their injection.

        1. Absolutely. Government has reviewed Covid status passports and they are not deemed mandatory “at this time”. (Reply to petition). They are utterly determined to keep it in hand just in case. I completely and utterly thoroughly loathe them.

          1. We have lost two friends* this week – we hadn’t seen them since August. We met and knew them in France over the eleven summers we were there, they are part and parcel of our French memories. We invited them for lunch (we meet halfway) our turn to pay as I said in my email. In response to an earlier email from me they sent me days in the week that they were available. I replied ‘Thursdays are absolutely fine by us, so when?’ I also attached an article about Midazolam and a transcript of Fuellmich’s submission to the German court for Crimes Against Humanity, aimed at the WHO. I have heard absolutely nothing from them, it is 12 days since I sent my return email – so I think we have been ‘dumped’.

            I loathe this government and in particular a special detestation for Johnson.

            *I have previously lost two friends of 45 years and 30 years – the friend of 45 years told me “I struggle to understand your attitude” (that is regarding the ‘vaccine’ – she couldn’t persuade me).

        1. If I had my way, they would be in peril – in peril of having their dinghy punctured under them!

        2. If I had my way, they would be in peril – in peril of having their dinghy punctured under them!

      4. They are deliberately putting their lives in peril, you wazzock.

      5. Having been a Shoreline Member of the RNLI for over 50 years I am now seriously considering cancelling my sub.

        It is a disgrace that the RNLI should get involved in woke politics.

    3. How do they keep tabs on them by releasing them into the community with instructions to report weekly/fortnightly and then wonder why they’ve absconded and disappeared to turn up 8 – 10 years later having worked and thrown away all ID to make it difficult to deport?

      Concentration camps are the only real solution but the wimps in government can’t/won’t do it.

    1. Goodness me , that Ray Conniff music takes me back to bottles of Blue Nun days , Chicken Marengo , followed by blackcurrant cheesecake.

      Sometimes it is nice to be nostalgic!

      3. Sorry I arrived late, I was enjoying the half grapefruit with a cherry on top.

    5. To be honest I prefer Charles Trenet’s original version and Tatiana Eva Marie singing it is a sheer delight. I enjoy many of Bobby Darin’s’ songs – such as Dream Lover and Things but his version of Beyond the Sea was, as they say, really canine.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5Za8pKGT2E

        1. Yes you did – but it had been posted here while you were not visiting us regularly and this was when we first discovered the most delicious tasty Tatiana. Needless to say, I am delighted that you are with us again every day now.

          1. Thank you Rastus my friend & I am pleased to be back with you & the Nottler Community on a regular basis having been a regular DT poster from 2010 till 2015, then a NTTL channel poster from 2015 & with its closure in 08/2019 a NTTL blog poster.

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