Tuesday 27 July: The chief effect of pinging seems to be destruction of small businesses

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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

Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2021/07/26/letters-chief-effect-pinging-seems-destruction-small-businesses/

619 thoughts on “Tuesday 27 July: The chief effect of pinging seems to be destruction of small businesses”

  1. Superspreading Lies. 27 July 2021.

    Again, in a world of lies, we are left to guess about these things. It is hard to know if any of these people believe what they are saying to one another. The sociopath the Biden administration has for a press secretary says so many insane things in her press briefings, you half expect someone to throw a net over her. All we can know for sure is it is all lies, and they are trying to cover for some other lies.

    Morning everyone. It is lines like this which always bring home to me that I am not really the equal of professional writers. Try as I might I can never conjure up these figures of speech that illuminate the page and enlighten the reader.

    The authors main theme is a match for his imagination. We are in a World of Lies. Literally nothing can be believed uncritically. Nottl itself is just one small reaction to it. We exist to try to wheedle the Truth from a mess of Misinformation and Deceit.

    Though Lies have always been used in the Political Sphere they have never to my knowledge existed in such profusion in the West as they now do. The old Soviet Union was a match for us but no other that I can think of. At times it appears the Elites Lie for no discernible purpose. It just comes naturally to them. To say the first thing that crosses their minds and if anyone picks up on it so what?

    What is the cause of this collapse in Probity? Well almost certainly a great part is the Decline of Christianity which provided not just religious consolation but a moral cage that constrained Rich and Poor, Great and Small for centuries. It provided the Measure of all Men. You might exceed the bounds of it. Ignore it even, but it would place you Beyond the Pale. You would be distrusted. It would taint everything you touched. You would be an Outcast!

    No longer! Liars flock together as Birds of a Feather!

    There is also of course the adoption by the Elites of Cultural Marxism . This Pernicious Doctrine which relies on Social Envy for its existence must always require the suspension of any critical faculties in its followers and consequently Lies in its defence and propagation. While it exists Truth cannot!

    https://www.takimag.com/article/superspreading-lies/

  2. Morning All

    Start with some cats,they’ve been building up……

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/834a81b2c72f4c83af30db19f0c6bef72a7c8eed860061ca0a216bce49556092.gif

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1350b8e480d6906fae8869b78d274f41d1d0e475672e38a6e9e05fc288bf6ed3.gif

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0c1abd47c42f9824ef71d008750c8f9c99dafc6e170b1c5aeddd290c70762432.jpg
    I’ve begun to notice a majority of cats appearing in tv ads are Gingers,perhaps Willum should send out some piccies of Gus and Pickles and launch their media career……..

  4. On Topic:
    One of the effects of pinging and the general policy of isolating regardless of how sick the last person you encountered who was in proximity of someone else who tested positive after being close to someone who pinged (etc. etc.) is that essential services are running dangerously low on manpower.
    Someone with a modicum of common sense has to take charge. Please.

  7. Yesterday’s Telegraph. Could there be rebellion against the narrative in the air? Or maybe another reporter on the way to the Gulag.

    More than half of ‘Covid hospitalisations’ are patients who only tested positive after admission, leaked data reveal.
    The figures suggest vast numbers are being classed as hospitalised by Covid when they were admitted with other ailments, with the virus picked up by routine testing.
    Experts said it meant the national statistics, published daily on the government website and frequently referred to by ministers, may far overstate the levels of pressures on the NHS.
    The leaked data – covering all NHS trusts in England – show that, as of last Thursday, just 44 per cent of patients classed as being hospitalised with Covid had tested positive by the time they were admitted.
    The majority of cases were not detected until patients underwent standard Covid tests, carried out on everyone admitted to hospital for any reason.
    Overall, 56 per cent of Covid hospitalisations fell into this category, the data, seen by The Telegraph, show.
    Crucially, this group does not distinguish between those admitted because of severe illness, later found to be caused by the virus, and those in hospital for different reasons who might otherwise never have known that they had picked it up.
    Last month, health officials instructed NHS trusts to provide “a breakdown of the current stock of Covid patients”, splitting it into those who were in hospital primarily because of the virus and those there for other reasons. So far, NHS England has failed to publish this data.
    However, the patterns shown in the leaked figures – with the vast majority of hospital Covid cases being diagnosed after admission, in some cases weeks later – suggest it includes large numbers likely to have been admitted for other reasons.
    The breakdown of daily Covid hospital diagnoses shows that of more than 780 hospitalisations dated last Thursday, 44 per cent involved people who tested positive in the 14 days before hospital entry.
    A further 43 per cent were made within two days of admission, with 13 per cent made in the days and weeks that followed, including those likely to have caught the virus in hospital.
    Experts said the high number of cases being detected belatedly – at a time when PCR tests were widely available – suggested many such patients had been admitted for other reasons.
    Prof Carl Heneghan, director of the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at the University of Oxford, said: “This data is incredibly important, and it should be published on an ongoing basis.
    “When people hear about hospitalisations with Covid, they will assume that Covid is the likely cause, but this data shows something quite different – this is about Covid being detected after tests were looking for it.”
    Prof Heneghan urged the Government to publish clearer data, including whether or not the virus was the primary cause of hospital admission.
    “This needs to be fixed as a matter of urgency,” he said, adding that the published data could lead the public “towards false conclusions”, exaggerating the true levels of pressures on hospitals.
    Sir Graham Brady, the chairman of the 1922 committee of Tory MPs, said: “Nearly 18 months into the Covid crisis, it is absurd that data breaking down hospital admissions still isn’t publicly available on a regular basis.
    “Counting all patients who test positive as Covid hospitalisations is inevitably misleading and gives a false picture of the continuing health impact of the virus.”
    Greg Clark, the chairman of Commons science and technology select committee, on Monday night said he would write to Sajid Javid, the Health Secretary, asking him to publish the breakdown on a regular basis following The Telegraph’s disclosure.
    “If hospitalisations from Covid are a key determinant of how concerned we should be, and how quickly restrictions should be lifted, it’s important that the data is not presented in a way that could lead to the wrong conclusions being drawn,” he said.
    “While some of these people may be being admitted due to Covid, we currently do not know how many. And for those who are not, there is a big distinction between people who are admitted because of Covid and those are in for something else but have Covid in such a mild form that it was not the cause of their hospitalisation.”
    The leaked statistics come from NHS daily situation reports, collected by all hospital trusts in England.
    One NHS data expert said the published statistics distorted the true picture, saying: “It creates an impression that all these people are going into hospital with Covid, and that simply is not the case. People are worried and scared and not really understanding the true picture – that is what I find despicable.”
    An NHS spokesman said: “Many patients are admitted to hospital because of their Covid symptoms and complications, which are then confirmed with a post-admission Covid test, and for others they may initially be presymptomatic or asymptomatic.”
    The Telegraph, yesterday.

    1. It is easier to spell “lies” than “proper… pooperga … propogander …”

    1. No. That can’t be right. They have discovered that CoViD is a cure for flu. So now they will be injecting us with CoViD so we don’t die of flu and then they will give us another vaccine so that we don’t die of that one.
      It’s obvious.

      1. LIM, you’ve struck a rich vein of current government logic. You could go far, if you decided to.

  9. A few laffs

    http://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f70cf2171fe79bddfce53449b704204b709c8f624fbf65a46cc6c284f6d2f96d.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/48fa9e4a76de59dacdf593e477d19bd3c74081ec2c9a7d5558bf7bf54e58c556.jpg

    http://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e735b0dafb798b1764739fc5d447eae623c1f3ab0f5752c9e4bd76f8c5b73604.jpg

    https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/080/237/240/original/183631a0d81825d7.jpeg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/102cbc3528a62473703d34531a8a12b463afcb36ffe08bafcce9b59c28e521e8.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/83c855788959dcd29d8a4d371610855e6208207d80bd24a00f47859121eba959.jpg

  10. ‘Terms like “birthing parent” deny our biology’. Spiked. 27 July 2021.

    Milli Hill is a journalist, feminist writer and founder of the Positive Birth Movement. Last year, she was dropped by a pregnancy charity and subjected to a campaign of online abuse because she criticised gender-neutral language. spiked caught up with her to find out more.

    Another Feminist hoist by her own petard. Perhaps instead of reading Germaine Greer she should have ruminated on the truism that all revolutions devour their own children!

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/07/27/terms-like-birthing-parent-deny-our-biology/

    1. Yes. I marvel that the LGBs don’t realise that the Ts will annihilate the other categories. If you are a lesbian not attracted to a man who has had himself castrated, and taken a load of hormones, then you must be transphobic. If anyone can be anything they say then the very category homo-sexual – attracted to the same sex – must be false in that it seeks to impose categories and everyone is the same anyway.
      Edit : I alredy saw as a teenager confronted with Greer, Dworkins and others that if you insisted that all sexual (stereotypical) roles were nothing but arbitrary social impositions then you would eventually say that women were the same as men. And therefore th eprotections wheich they were quite understandably fighting for would be lost by their own underlying arguments.
      It has come round to hit them in the arse.

  12. Freed burglars to wear 24-hour tags under Prime Minister’s crime crackdown. 27 July 2021.

    His new plan, which will be announced alongside Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, will also see the introduction of a named police officer in every neighbourhood in England and Wales. And it proposes the creation of league tables for 101 and 999 (crime reporting and prevention) performance.

    Mr Johnson said: “When I first stood on the steps of Downing Street as Prime Minister, I promised to back the police and make people safer, because we cannot level up the country when crime hits the poorest hardest and draws the most vulnerable into violence.

    Crime Crackdown? League tables?” This is just meaningless waffle. The government cannot even prevent people sailing into the country across the Channel! How could they prevent a burglary! A crime that has been ignored for at least ten years!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/07/26/freed-burglars-wear-24-hour-tags-prime-ministers-crime-crackdown/

    2. 24-hour tracking first for burglars; no-one will object to that. Then for paedophiles – think of the children! Then for the children (if it saves just one child from abduction . . .). Then all of us, “for our own safety”.

    3. A majority of our population already carry an ankle tag equivalent in their pockets or handbags; voluntarily.

  13. A Drink On The House

    This guy goes into a bar and asks the bartender for five shots of whisky. As soon as the bartender pours the whisky the guy starts slamming all five shots down.

    The bar tender says “Wow! You really slammed those down!”

    To which the guy replies: “Well, if you had what I have, you’d drink fast too.”

    “What do you have?” asks the bar tender.

    “About fifty cents!”

  14. Morning all

    SIR – My son, who has worked hard for years to acquire three pubs serving excellent food and good wines, has been hit by the dreaded ping.

    Two pings have closed two of his establishments for the necessary period. Unlike the past, when he could save his staff on furlough and get help from various agencies, this time there is no furlough and no help available.

    His overheads, rent, insurances, wages all continue and he must pay towards the debts that are left over from the last lockdowns. He may be able to reopen when the ping expires but he may receive another ping.

    What is the purpose in pinging?

    It seems to have been brought into existence solely to destroy small businesses that serve local needs.

    His Honour Lord Parmoor

    Wheeler End, Buckinghamshire

    SIR – I wish readers would stop comparing a vaccine passport to a driving licence (Letters, July 24). Road users take on trust that when I get behind the wheel of my car I have the relevant qualification to do so. When I enter a garage for fuel or take my car to be repaired I am not asked to show my driving licence to prove that I can drive.

    James Hough

    Horley, Surrey

    SIR – The Government holds two contradictory positions. On the one hand, it says that even the double-vaccinated must isolate if found to be in contact with a Covid case. On the other hand, it says that only the double-vaccinated with vaccine passports may in future enter certain locations.

    The double-vaccinated either present a risk of passing on infection or they do not. The Government cannot have it both ways.

    Iwan Price-Evans

    Croydon, Surrey

    SIR – I attended a major public event where proof of Covid vaccination was required as a condition of entry. Due to uncertain internet availability I downloaded the QR code from the NHS app to my mobile phone.

    Entry involved presenting the QR code, but it was not scanned, so it could have been my code, someone else’s or that of a can of baked beans.

    Unless venues can validate codes, they become pointless bureaucracy, of which the less scrupulous will easily take advantage.

    Paul Saunders

    Thame, Oxfordshire

    SIR – I thank your Science Editor Sarah Knapton for a succinct assessment of data on what is really happening regarding Covid.

    Why does anyone believe the outrageous models proposed by various eminent scientists?

    Phil Drewett

    Torquay, Devon

    SIR – What colour cover will our Covid passports have and can we be assured they will be printed in Britain?

    Simon Olley

    Kemsing, Kent

  16. Morning again

    Migrants from France

    SIR – Britain keeps paying France to stop migrants embarking for its shores, but France claims that this is too difficult, as it involves patrolling hundreds of miles of coastline.

    A quick look at the map shows that this is disingenuous. The shortest crossing is clearly from Calais, at 22 miles. Leaving from Boulogne increases this to 30 miles, while embarking from Gravelines, east of Calais, increases it to 36 miles.

    It is unlikely that migrants will risk a much longer boat journey. The French authorities therefore only need to concentrate on about 40 miles of coast. Boats are being obtained and made ready in and around Calais, and these activities must be easy to spot.

    Robert Duffield

    Tenby, Pembrokeshire

  17. Morning again

    Migrants from France

    SIR – Britain keeps paying France to stop migrants embarking for its shores, but France claims that this is too difficult, as it involves patrolling hundreds of miles of coastline.

    A quick look at the map shows that this is disingenuous. The shortest crossing is clearly from Calais, at 22 miles. Leaving from Boulogne increases this to 30 miles, while embarking from Gravelines, east of Calais, increases it to 36 miles.

    It is unlikely that migrants will risk a much longer boat journey. The French authorities therefore only need to concentrate on about 40 miles of coast. Boats are being obtained and made ready in and around Calais, and these activities must be easy to spot.

    Robert Duffield

    Tenby, Pembrokeshire

  18. You can be stabbed for criticising Islam? Spiked 27 July 2021.

    The hush, so far, in relation to this attack is a depressing sign of the times. Our society seems incapable of speaking honestly and frankly about Islamic extremism. And this assault, at this point, appears to be such an act. Consider, also, the failure of many of the candidates in the Batley and Spen by-election to stand up for the Batley Grammar schoolteacher, who was hounded into hiding simply for displaying an image of Muhammad during a classroom discussion of blasphemy and offence. In fact, barely any politicians or institutions, including the teaching unions, were willing to give a full-throated defence of the teacher. Every time there is an outburst of worrying Islamist activity, those in the opinion-forming set just stare at their feet. ‘Make it go away’ is their attitude.

    “Our Society?” It’s not been our society for a long time. The great mass of the indigenous population have been side lined and ignored for at least the last twenty years. Not only that, but indoctrinated and lied to on a scale that really defies description. Even with this I doubt that any Ordinary Brit supports this attack, it is the product of a completely alien mindset!

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/07/26/you-can-be-stabbed-for-criticising-islam/

    1. The Mosque Block Postal Vote is the difference between election or not in all too many constituencies……..
      Our politicians may as well wear a sign around their necks
      “Will suck moslem cock for votes”
      See Steve Baker and many others for more details

    2. In the UK it will soon be a crime not to have a bullseye on your chest over your heart for the convenience of Islamic & Black knife wielders ! To deny them a vital aiming point on ones body is to deny them their basic human rights to freely practice their religion ( in the case of Islam ) & pan-African cultural practices & heritage ( in the case of Blacks ). Do not be selfish, show your consideration & community spirit and help the savages newcomers integrate more easily in British society! ( sarcasm )

  19. The slow lane

    SIR – I drove along the Thames through a village with a 20 mph speed limit (Letters, July 26) and got overtaken by a car towing a boat.

    I felt a bit silly.

    Lady Lampl

    Helston, Cornwall

    2. During a driving test, I was overtaken by a man on a bicycle (it was on a hill). I failed.

    1. Morning, all Y’all.
      Lots rain overnight – lovely and cool, a decent zed, and cool this morning, too. Just right for heavy-duty roofing!

      1. We’re due rain today. Looks like I may have to delay my concreting job.

        1. Raining again now.
          Looks like the solution lies in paint and a brush.
          I hate painting.

    2. Morning, all Y’all.
      Lots rain overnight – lovely and cool, a decent zed, and cool this morning, too. Just right for heavy-duty roofing!

  22. Unable to sleep, I watched a match in the Olympic Rugby Sevens in the middle of the night, Fiji vs GB. Anyone like to guess the result?

    2. Fiji are superb Sevens players. The GB team of relative amateurs are way behind. So, finger in the air, Fiji by 30?

  23. 335902+ up ticks,

    Tuesday 27 July: The chief effect of pinging seems to be destruction of small businesses

    More like the pinging chief is in effect via repress,reset,replace
    dismantling the United Kingdom piecemeal.

    Our country is master of its own mass uncontrolled immigration destiny, this is the result of the electorate insistence in giving the mass uncontrolled immigration carte blanche again,again,& again the result of which is coming to fruition via DOVER.

    https://twitter.com/Stan_VoWales/status/1419525660473708547

    1. What we are going through now was all broadcast to the world at the last big Davos conference, we are in the revolutionary change that the great and the good wanted.

      1. 335902+ up ticks,
        Morning B3,
        It was broadcast to the world as a take on reset at davos,
        but its content make up, construction, had been given
        piecemeal carte blanche over decades via the voting pattern.

  24. Tory biosurveillance fantasy is chilling and farcical in equal measure

    A doomed political gamble on dystopian apps as a way out of the pandemic is a devastating blow to personal privacy

    SHERELLE JACOBS
    DAILY TELEGRAPH COLUMNIST
    26 July 2021 • 9:30pm

    In The Last Question by Isaac Asimov – perhaps the greatest science fiction tale ever written – humanity goes extinct by transforming itself into big data. A world driven by limitless technological progress is tortured by its inability to answer one final question: how to save the planet from “heat death” destruction? One by one, humans upload their brains to their machinic overlord, Multivac (a sort of giant Google), until it has enough “information” to rescue the universe. By this time, however, there are no humans left to enjoy the benefits.

    Asimov was being hopelessly optimistic, of course. If the UK’s attempt to build a big data biosurveillance state to “beat” Covid is anything to go by, even after sucking up all of our brains, a Multivac of our making would still fail in its endeavour of saving humanity. The Government’s app obsession – from Test and Trace, and vaccine passports to, perhaps soon, an app to control obesity – is chilling and farcical in equal measure.

    Dominic Cummings may not have succeeded in his dream of keeping Britain in lockdown so he could mastermind our transformation into a Taiwan-style techno-dystopia. Yet his spirit lives on in No 10, as the Tories put their bets on technology as a final route out of the pandemic, and then as a way to nudge us into good health. In his determination to end the Government’s slavish devotion to “the science” and reopen the economy, Boris Johnson seems to have fallen into another slavish devotion, this time to tech.

    In reality, Britain does not have the legal means nor the technological capability to build the kind of biosurveillance state that might genuinely control Covid. Instead, the Government will only be able to simulate the impression of one, powered by junk data, and which many people will learn to evade.

    But this doesn’t make the situation any more reassuring. The consequences of the Tories’ doomed digital dystopianism could be just as alarming as any successful version of tech totalitarianism. We are in for a rollercoaster ride of social paralysis and inept policymaking. We are also heading for the death of privacy as a minority of elites become immensely wealthy.

    If you think this is far-fetched, consider how suddenly and totally our economy has already found itself at the mercy of pointless technology. A pingdemic is bringing the economy to its knees, as the test-and-trace app demands that thousands self-isolate. It should be clear by now that track and trace apps will remain wildly inaccurate for as long as they are voluntary and run on backwards bluetooth technology. Yet, instead of binning the app, No 10 is doubling down. Its plan to release the UK from pingdemic misery merely involves tweaking the algorithm to take vaccinations into account.

    The Government’s obsession with vaccine passports is similarly absurd. Apart from the fact that some double-jabbed people are unable to download proof of vaccination on the NHS app due to administrative error, and venues will accept printouts, leaving massive scope for forgery, the basic thinking is idiotic. Locking the unvaccinated out of society is not an efficient way to isolate cases when the double jabbed can still catch and spread the virus.

    It is bad enough that No 10’s commitment to dumb technology is paralysing the country, and will soon divide it. Chillingly, a lucrative techno-surveillance industry is waiting in the wings to feed off the mayhem.

    It has somehow slipped under the radar that the UK track and trace app functions via Google and Apple technology, which in future they may be able to monetise. If they do, they will join a boom in “snooper startups” – apps that promise to make the new normal run more smoothly, but which, in exchange, hoover up and then potentially sell on our information. While employers turn to HR apps that track which members of staff have been vaccinated, pubs have found that customers order more booze when they can skip the bar queue and use apps to order to their table.

    A toxic new synergy between the state and private sector heralds big possibilities for both. The need to verify vaccine passports at events could yield profitable opportunities for biometric companies. Boris Johnson’s new pet project to “protect the NHS” – an obesity-busting app that tracks supermarket purchases – hints at further scope for data sharing between the state and private firms. It hardly seeks to matter to either of them that that app, too, is unlikely to work. It will only create an incentive for customers to stack up on healthy food in the shops while indulging in unhealthy takeaways beyond the app’s notice.

    Still, both the corporate world and the public sector have always been deluded about the worth of the data they are trading in.

    In recent years, packaged personal information has started to function as a form of elite money, a bit like modern fine art dealing. As with modern art, though, most of it is garbage. Nonetheless, enough people have bought into the myth that the incomplete, often junk, big data being traded can be harnessed to do things like control viruses and manipulate consumer behaviour. As the bubble gets ever bigger, companies and governments will seek to find ever more creative and insidious ways to spy on us.

    What will be the political consequences of all this? The biosurveillance state has been dubbed a possible poll tax moment for the Tories. It could be bigger than that, though – perhaps an existential crisis for the Right, just like the fall of communism was for the Left. A war is brewing between Tory centrists and libertarians. But the latter also face a showdown with the grim realities of technology capitalism. The exploitation of labour for profit has been the making of the West’s middle class and pulled much of the world out of poverty. The mining of personal data whiffs of feudalism.

    There was a twist in the Asimov story I neglected to mention. After Multivac reaches its final state of supreme knowledge as the universe collapses around it, the tale ends with the words: “Let there be light!” While it’s a provocative cliffhanger, I’ve always thought it raises what is perhaps the real Last Question. Is technology taking us forwards or backwards?

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

    Pete Smith
    26 Jul 2021 9:42PM
    “Tory biosurveillance fantasy is chilling and farcical in equal measure”

    This is not a Tory policy, it is global. Boris ‘build back gender neutral’ Johnson is merely implementing it here.

    NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Monday morning that all city workers will need to provide proof that they are fully vaccinated or consent to weekly tests.

    LA County has decided to reinstate the indoor mask mandate regardless of the vaccination status of individuals.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/07/26/tory-biosurveillance-fantasy-chilling

    1. Is technology taking us forwards or backwards?

      We are descending into the Pit!

      1. ‘Afternoon, Minty, since we have already descended downwards into the pit, take heart – the only way is up.

        I dreamt last night that I was organising the British people to take-over and force our own ‘Great Reset.

        I can remember cutting the electricity, taking over the BBC, all printing presses, the City of London, and every police station.

  25. ‘Anita Rani has suggested that she may have missed out on a place in the Strictly Come Dancing final because of her skin colour.

    The Countryfile and Woman’s Hour presenter was eliminated in the semi-final of the 2015 series, after losing a dance-off to Katie Derham.

    “I still find myself wondering whether I would have got into the final if I didn’t have a brown face,” she said. Ms Rani said similar thoughts had occurred to her over the years as a television presenter” ‘

    Q – ‘Is it coz I’z black?’

    A – ‘No luv, it’s cos you’re a crap dancer.’

    1. Is that the contest won by a middle aged white male?
      Which is the greater handicap in these Woke times?

      1. SIR — BBC Countryfile presenter, Anita Rani, has suggested that she didn’t make the Strictly Come Dancing final in 2015 (report, July 27) because she has a brown face.

        Strange then that having a ‘brown face’ didn’t prevent Louis Smith from winning the same competition just three years earlier.

        [Or the Guyanese-born Indian cricketer, Mark Ramprakash (who played for Middlesex and England), nine years earlier in 2006]

        1. To which you could also add Alesha Dixon and Ore Oduba who both won, and the following who finished 2nd or joint 2nd – Denise Lewis, Colin Jackson, Chelsea Healey, Natalie Gumede, Frankie Bridge and Karim Zeroual – not a complete list, but enough to make a nonsense of Anita Rani’s claims?

          1. The BBC is sick to its core. I would disband it. Sack everyone employed by it. Start up a replacement. Install Sue Edison as Directoress-Generaless. And not employ anyone with Pinko sympathies. 👍🏻

        2. To which you could also add Alesha Dixon and Ore Oduba who both won, and the following who finished 2nd or joint 2nd – Denise Lewis, Colin Jackson, Chelsea Healey, Natalie Gumede, Frankie Bridge and Karim Zeroual – not a complete list, but enough to make a nonsense of Anita Rani’s claims?

        3. Equally strange that having a ‘brown face’ didn’t prevent her landing a top presenters job with the same BBC.

          Dozy bint.

          1. I discovered on Saturday that Floella Benjamin (ex Blue Peter presenter) is now a Baroness. What for? Skin tone, probably.

    2. ‘Morning Iffy!

      Those questioners are chronically unable take reponsibility for their own shortcomings.

    3. ‘Morning Iffy!

      Those questioners are chronically unable take reponsibility for their own shortcomings.

    5. Yet she hasn’t suggested that being a BBC presenter might be because of her skin colour?

  26. 335902+ up ticks,
    🎵,
    It’s the same the whole world over,

    I can say in ALL honesty the decent peoples of the United Kingdom are in complete agreement, leaving aside a multitude of the electorate.

    https://youtu.be/EJEc4nW45T8

    1. That this Considerable Charlatan and Fakemonger is still listened too by the MSM shows how dire the situation is!

      1. Quite – why anyone listens to that utter feckwit given the performance of his various models and his track record is utterly beyond me!

        1. I can only assume he has an inexhaustible supply of compromising photos, emails, phone recordings and, of course, Westminster CCTV videos.
          You know the sort of thing, Bozza naming Guy Gibson’s dog or Gove writing billet doux to a woman.

  31. Good Moaning: once again, I selflessly read this stuff so you don’t have to.
    Just one question crossed my mind; did this latest romp involve women with their own teeth?

    “Wayne Rooney tells police there was a bid to BLACKMAIL him over pictures of him asleep in room with three 21-year-old women as video emerges of the star walking with them to £60-a-night hotel”

    1. Actually, they are there to build a bridge, but the contractors failed to deliver the girders; covid, you know… So the chaps will just hang on till the bits arrive….

      I’ll get me rivetter.

  33. RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: On the Thin Blue Line? Not exactly… Following a series of unedifying scandals, the police are facing a collapse in confidence

    Here’s another one of those columns I don’t know whether to file under Call Me Old-Fashioned, Mind How You Go, or Makes You Proud To Be British.

    But this photograph of a copper on duty in Downing Street stopped me in my tracks at the weekend. It’s what’s known in the trade as an ‘Oi, Doris!’ moment. As in: ‘Oi, Doris, have you seen the state of this?’

    The heavily tattooed firearms officer is leaning over a racing car parked outside No 10. His ample stomach precedes him. Not exactly the Thin Blue Line. I haven’t identified him, for good reason. I’ve been on a police weapons course and have nothing but admiration for those officers willing to carry a gun on our behalf.

    When the bullets start flying, these guys run towards the sound of gunfire, not away from it. Clearly, this chap is a braver man than I am, Gunga Din. So I hope he doesn’t take this personally.

    https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2021/07/26/21/45922069-9828031-image-m-78_1627332781649.jpg
    *
    *
    *
    *
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-9828031/RICHARD-LITTLEJOHN-Blue-Line-Not-exactly-Police-facing-collapse-confidence.html

    1. Who knew tatts were so fattening? He’d be a great advert for Boris’ anti-fat app.

    3. What’s known as “A large Police presence”.

      Or was it The Presence Of Large Police?

  34. Found this just now:
    “Big Tech is partnering with the hard left ADL (Anti-Defamation League) to share a database that will flag you across all social media on the web if they don’t agree with your politics.”
    Apparently to counter Far-Right terrorism… hmm…
    See https://youtu.be/dyfertqiF_w – about 20 minutes.

    1. Exposes his mindset though, doesn’t it? I imagine most statist think like this. You will obey until we tell you otherwise. Very Napoleonic.

      It is a fundamental reversal of how Britain as a culture operates. We are free. State cannot tell us what not to do, only show the punishments for not doing as we want to.

      Look at taxation (hobby horse!) the state considers whatever you ern to be it’s by right. You are permitted to keep some of your own money. Avoidance and evasion are morally bad. Yet, given an antagonist, abusive government tax avoidance is a necessary and vital act. Tax evasion is, arguably becoming essential. The state is a thief. An abusive thug no better than a burglar. It takes our money, it levies high taxes all to punish and force people into a specific way of behaving. A state acceptable way of behaving.

      1. It seems to think it can disable right clicking in my browser. Who the damned feck do they think they are to control what I can and cannot do?

        1. It’s their site. People are too used to helping themselves to anything on the internet.

    1. Just wait for a combination of trade unions luddites and ‘Uman Roits plonkers to scuttle that bright idea.

    3. Nice idea, won’t work. The welfare classes are the ones who litter. They won’t stop doing that until they can’t any more.

      When the text said ‘beating crime’ I thought Finally! They’re going to beat criminals with bamboo cane but no. Another pointless initiative, no doubt backed up with masses of tax payers money.

      Stop wasting it. Instead of being nice to these scum, flog them. 50 lashes a day for 6 months. When they’re a gibbering wreck that knows only pain society will have been served.

  40. “The chief effect of pinging seems to be destruction of small businesses”

    I would suggest more accurately this should read,

    “The chief REASON of pinging IS the destruction of small businesses”

    1. No – the intention of the app was to allow people to realise when they were around people who may be infected and to take action around that.

      However… the idiotic, gormless enforcement of that isolation by software of all things, followed up with statist diktat. How far has human civilisation regressed that people willingly obey a mobile telephone app rather than taking responsibility for their own actions?

      1. Exactly – the app does NOT legally require you to isolate, it merely advises you to. But just about everyone, especially the media, choose to ignore that fact.

        1. Ah, but if you’re a good person you will quarantine yourself. Only selfish granny-killers ignore the alert.

        1. Fear will always work as a method of controlling people. What’s surprising is how many people so eagerly gave up their basic freedoms to big state to ‘protect’ them.

          I think the vitriol pushed on those who questioned was driven by the exposure of abject cowardice in the fearful. They saw how pathetic they were and it scared them and, as humans are stupid, aided by the media, they turned that fear into anger.

  41. As I mentioned last week I am concerned about the RNLI’s behaviour in helping illegal immigrants come into Britain and wrote to them. Here is the reply I have just received. I have replied to their reply saying:

    Saving lives at sea is one thing – getting involved in the illegal activity of people smuggling is another.

    Might I suggest that when saving these people’s lives the RNLI takes them back to France rather than actively helping them to get into Britain illegally by dropping them in the UK?

    Dear Mr Tracey

    Thank you for your email about our lifesaving work in the Channel.

    We are incredibly proud of the humanitarian work our volunteer lifeboat crews do to rescue vulnerable people in distress. As a Lifesaving charity our primary role is to save lives at sea without judgement. The immigration issue is one managed by Border Force and the immigration service, and the RNLI aspect is coordinated by the HM Coastguard and Irish Coast Guard.

    HM Coastguard and the Irish Coast Guard can request any of our l

    ifeboats to launch to an incident. Our lifeboats operate under international maritime law, which states we are permitted and indeed obligated to enter the waters of other territories for search and rescue purposes. Where we believe there is a risk to life at sea, we will always launch. We are not border control and, once a rescue is complete, we hand over responsibility for casualties to UK Border Force and/or the police.

    Our charity exists to save lives at sea. Our mission is to save everyone. When we respond to a ‘shout’, we don’t judge a casualty on what circumstances have brought them into that situation – be it an unwise decision, engine failure, a change in the weather or an inflatable blown out to sea. Our crews rescue anyone who is at risk of drowning, and they go home after a shout secure in the knowledge that without their help, the person they rescued may not have been able to go home to their own family. That is why they do what they do, they have done so since the RNLI was founded in 1824 and this will always be our ethos.

    The RNLI is not expected to be part of the wider immigration or border protection policies of the many jurisdictions that we operate in. That is the responsibility of government. Questions about border controls, immigration and the legality of right to remain are questions for our respective governments, they are not matters for the RNLI. If you do have any comments regarding government policy in respect of immigration, then please do contact the Home Office direct. The contact details can be found on their website – https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/immigration-enforcement/about/complaints-procedure.

    In closing, I would like to thank you for taking the time to share your feedback and I confirm I have logged your email as a formal complaint.

    Yours sincerely

    Alison Murphy | Supporter Experience Manager

    RNLI, West Quay Road, Poole, Dorset, BH15 1HZ
    Tel: 01202 663085 | http://www.rnli.org

        1. They lost my support after this incident: Spring, 2018.

          “Two RNLI volunteers have been sacked and four fellow crewmen have quit over a dispute surrounding mugs adorned with images of naked women.

          The men from the Whitby station in North Yorkshire exchanged jokey Christmas gifts, which included a mug with a picture of a naked woman on it and one of the crew’s faces superimposed onto the model’s head.

          But a female superior found the mugs in a cupboard and Joe Winspear and his colleague Ben Laws were dismissed.”

          2. I wonder what is the truth, that item along with balance and context that seems irrelevant to most media articles. From an internet search I suspect that in this case a minor issue – having a highly inappropriate image in a work/public space – that a quick apology could have sorted became a toxic pissing contest due to their subsequent attitude and behaviour, including some rather inflammatory posts on social media (yes, that again).

    3. Brilliant.
      May I suggest you ask them how many people they have rescued from the LGBT community and when they tell you they do not collect such stats you might berate them for some phobia or other. Are their boats rainbow 🌈 coloured?
      No?
      How on earth are diverse refugees supposed to feel welcome?

    4. They won’t worry about not getting any money from you. My father was a local treasurer for a while. They’ve always been flush with money, thanks mostly to legacies, and have some £750m in assets.

      1. Those legacies are drying up fast. I have changed my Will and dumped the RNLI and i know of others who have done the same.

        The RNLI just like the RSPCA have moved away from their core objectives. Much like the BBC.

        1. My RAFA had a talk from some RSPCA girls (who were looking for donations). When they asked if there were any questions, i wanted to know how much their CEO was paid. They said they wouldn’t answer “political questions”. I pointed out it was financial, not political, and if they were seeking donations it was only right that potential donors knew where their money was going and how it was spent. They didn’t like it.

      2. Indeed, but at least one isn’t actively contributing to the people smuggling.

    5. I respect their attitude and, as a volunteer organisation their ethos. However… the approach must be to take them back to France, regardless of where they are found. If they’re English – unlikely – then by all means, get passage back to the UK. Otherwise… shove off. Tow them to Frogland.

    6. Yo mr t

      As an aside, I just came across an old video tape recording that Ii made of the 1992 Remembrance Day Parade In Dinard!

    7. I have a problem with the illegals being called casualties. They set off deliberately. They are well enough to climb aboard a BF boat. They do everything of their own accord. I see NO casualities, THEY ARE FREELOADING FOREIGNERS…..NOTHING ELSE.

      1. Someone employed to ensure that Supporters have the wool pulled over their eyes.

    1. Dead White Male. Worse still, probably a Christian.
      Move along; nothing to see here.

    2. The Telegraph makes a huge affort to post obituaries for war veterans, so let us please be patient.

      1. The obits and the letters are the best parts of the D.T. And the vets ones are frequently astonishing and, often, moving.

    3. I see he received Medals from Russia. Did he get any recognition from the British Government?

      R.I.P. A brave man.

    4. One of my uncles was involved in those convoys and had similar experiences, but what on earth is a “Royal Navy engagement officer for Wales”??

      2. What’s the porpoise of a Royal Navy engagement officer for Whales? Does he have a seal in his office that cost the tax payer a few squid

    5. One of my uncles was involved in those convoys and had similar experiences, but what on earth is a “Royal Navy engagement officer for Wales”??

    6. One of my uncles was involved in those convoys and had similar experiences, but what on earth is a “Royal Navy engagement officer for Wales”??

  44. The Daily Human Stupidity.

    “It is the classic fallacy of our time that a moron passing through a university and decorated with a Ph.D. will thereby cease to be a moron.”

    H L Mencken.

    1. I remember sitting down to a masters course lecture on network security and intrusion and almost laughing at how facile it was.

      University used to teach people how to think – well, except me, who spent it chasing after a woman. Now people who don’t do the work teach people who’ll never be able to do it their way of doing it.

      We have a simple test here – we ask someone to add a user account with root permissions to a website. It’s a rubbish test that’s deliberately easy. We’re looking for creativity and track covering, not the ability to do it. Two recent graduates with double firsts bash away for an hour and can’t even work the port scanner. We hired a kid who runs a Steam server for his mates to game on.

  45. ‘Morning, all. This from today’s DT Letters:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0dfbbfdf846651802b743eb9dfffdc2f44dcbcdd5a2e3f94e920ee572430b9bc.png

    It’s a curious thing that the Government’s anti-obesity drive – with its proposed rewards for the compliant and punishment for those who remain stubbornly overweight – is being led by the fattest, most unfit slob to occupy the office of Prime Minister since the days of Lord North, who ‘filled’ that position from 1770 to 1782 and, like the present incumbent, was generally reckoned to be as much use as a one-legged man at an arse-kicking party.

    1. Why always coming back to Boris’ own body?

      It’s like criticising Teresa May’s clothes, or Cameron’s hair. It isn’t ‘who they are’.

      What bothers me isn’t the idea, although weight is a personal matter and nothing to do with the state. The annoyance the state has is that the overweight are more vulnerable health wise, thus the state wants to reduce them to save it money. It isn’t about the individual. It’s all about forcing the public to serve the state.

      1. While I take your point, I think the way a person in the public eye presents himself is an indication of the way he sees himself – and, thus, how he formulates his ideas and (for an MP) his policies.

        Treason May frequently looked a fright. I often thought that her hideous clothes were selected by a “personal shopper” who loathed her but convinced her they were just the ticket, She was bossy and had no plans for anything except to keep us in the EUSSR…..

        Cameron tried to be blokeish. Doesn’t work. I don’t want a “pal” as PM.

        Johnson is fat and dishevelled. He has not the remotest idea of what being Prime Minister means.

        1. So when I rock up to a swanky banking do looking much like Boris does – as no suit ever works on me – does that reflect who I am? I’ve no time for this appearances make the man. It’s irrelevant.

          1. Each to their own.

            I just believe in dressing appropriately to the occasion.. I wear torn 30 year old cords for messy garden work, but a jacket and tie for a funeral.

          2. Wen to my Father’s in a t shirt and trousers. Mainly because my interview suit was in Southampton and I was in deepest Norfolk. Nowhere can rent a suit for a 6’4 and 4′ wide bloke on short notice.

            Again, it simply doesn’t matter what Boris wears. He’s out running. It’s trivialities that deflect from what his government does.

          3. “What his government does“? It destroys the country, that’s what it does.

          4. I am pretty scruffy unless occasion demands me to look smarter and then I like to think I scrub up all right.

            I know that you wear the same sized clothes as you did when you were 21 but I have put on a pound or two over the years. Christo is getting married next year but I very much doubt if I can still fit into my morning clothes so I hope that I shall not have to give too much dosh to the Moses Brothers.

          5. I had to visit the Treasury during Labour’s tenure of office. None of the senior male staff were wearing a tie. It didn’t matter just like “There’s no money left….”

        2. Perhaps Mrs May thought she was following the example of Margaret Thatcher, who certainly did employ a personal wardrobe adviser. Hence out with the frumpy pussy bows and in with a much more sleek and professional version of that lady’s style. The Queen has Angela Kelly, personal dressmaker and wardrobe adviser. Ms Kelly clearly does understand her client and has the right instinct for what looks right on her?

    2. But obese people cost little or nothing to the health budget. The cost of their treatment is offset by the savings in their dying earlier. This is even more true of smokers, whose treatment costs less than the savings from dying earlier.

      I’ve not seen anything on the costs to the benefits system. They certainly cost more pre-pension, but will also cost less post-pension from dying earlier.

      But I suspect money isn’t the main issue in the government’s actions. The prime drivers are probably their needs to be seen doing something and control people that offend them.

      1. It is yet another aspect of the woke, green, eco-freakery being imposed upon us by Carrion and her gang.

      2. From past experience with distant relatives, they linger on for many years, with many unable to work and receiving all manner of benefits: housing, higher rate mobility and higher rate care, which soon add up. As you say, what is needed is a proper cost-benefit analysis.

  46. Wow! Just watched GB come back from 21 -0 down at half time in the Rugby 7’s.! They went on to win 26 – 21! What a match, and the captain was taken out by USA in the first half! 😄👏

    1. I just went to read the write-up in the DT but gave up when I saw the lead image was a player kneeling in supplication to the Marxist BLM lot.

      I thought the IOC had banned these gestures?

    2. South Africa losing to Argentina was good, Argentina down to 5 players by the end. South Africans seem to have plenty of ‘weaponised’, past shoulder length razor wire dreadlocks to flick and shove in the faces of the Argies.

    2. I fear our own authoritarian government vastly more than I do the Chinese one.

    1. Have the PTB’s intelligence units discerned a shift in the attitude of many of the people and has this led to the acceleration in the oppressive measures being deployed?

      Could another, or additional even, reason be that the sick “double vaccinated” people are experiencing the onset of ADE and are not suffering from the “Delta” variant? ADE has long been forecast by many of the independent experts, mostly dismissed by the bought and paid for government “experts”, and would surface when another virus triggers the spike proteins. Is the “Delta” variant, with symptoms mirroring a summer cold, that trigger?
      Whatever is happening will bring about very bad times for many, “vaccinated” or not.

        1. Antibody-dependent enhancement. Some antibodies may be ineffective and can even assist a pathogen in entering a cell.

        2. Apologies, Phizzee, I did explain this to OB a few days ago. WS has dug me out of the hole.

      2. On the phone a few minutes ago with a staunch vaxxer who used to give me hell months ago because she believed the govt and me being unjabbed. Now completely changed her tune, Now realises the ” xxx dead within 28 days of a positive result” is worded to instill fear into those who don’t read it properly. As she now says “wait for the next cons – they will be along shortly”. Another convert to reality.

  50. Illegal boat arrivals erode trust in democracy. 27 July 2021.

    That is wrong. There is a legitimate argument to be had about whether this country needs large or small numbers of immigrants. What is surely not legitimate is to let mass illegal immigration happen while proclaiming that we must have tough border controls. That erodes trust in democracy.

    What Democracy would that be! It is already extinct. The UK is a judicious Police State that maintains this fiction for public control purposes.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/27/illegal-boat-arrivals-erode-trust-democracy/

    1. We don’t need immigrants. It’s time we worked and paid our dues instead of taking advantage of other countries, screwing parts of the country and destroying our children’s futures in the process.

      1. 335902+ up ticks,
        Morning D,
        If there was any feelings towards Children / Country why do the herd put the parties welfare / standing first as proven by the voting pattern these last three decades ?

    2. There is no argument or debate to be had. We need no immigrants whatsoever for many decades.

    3. 335902+ up ticks,
      Morning AS,
      Controlled immigration was always a policy of the REAL UKIP the party contested and kicked into touch
      time & again by the lab/lib/con close shop coalition
      member / voters, finally laid to rest due to the Batten
      success in leadership by treachery most foul via nec / nige input.

      Misguided peoples power either intentionally / unintentionally got us into our present odious position as a nation, either they repent via any voting opportunities or try appeasing the political overseers
      and continue being in pursuit of a bunch of very short term carrots.

  51. Biden met Iraqi PM Mustaf an-Amitofitewif at the White House and agreed to retain US troops in Iraq to train his army.😉

    3. Iraqi PM Must have an ami (french friend) to fight the wife.

      Have I pronounced that correctly?

    1. I thought it was the ‘before’ picture of Adele! Then I read the headline!!😱

    2. Not another generation of the ghastly, self-indulgent, self-absorbed Johnsons…..

      Gawd help us.

    5. Fatty Johnson.

      They can say the hour glass figure is coming back in fashion but i won’t believe it until i see size 16’s on the catwalks.

    6. No wonder that Grizzly couldn’t find any malt loaves in the shops. Poor young lady should look for a suitable health spa.

    7. No wonder that Grizzly couldn’t find any malt loaves in the shops. Poor young lady should look for a suitable health spa.

  53. Unesco is a politicised, anti-British basket case – their opinions are an insult

    Whether it’s castigating Liverpool or leaving Venice to the commercial sharks, the UN body is making absurd, prejudiced decisions

    SIMON HEFFER

    The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation was formed in 1945 to promote peace and security through international co-operation in education, science and culture. Given the conflicts raging around the world, and the insecurities inflicted on much of it by China, Russia, Islamic extremism, narco-terrorism and other apparently inoperable cancers, it can’t be said to be doing a particularly good job.

    Yet it has a huge establishment to service its 193 member states and its 11 associate members: 53 field offices, 199 national commissions, 2,200 employees and an annual budget of $535 million. For all its idealistic protestation of doing good works it is not universally admired. At different times in the past Britain and America have opted out and refused to pay their subscriptions; America left again in December 2018, on the same day as Israel, angry over Unesco’s attitude towards the Palestinian question. The issue embodied a problem many Western countries long ago identified with the organisation: that it provides a vehicle for Third World countries to gang up with each other against the supposedly imperialist, capitalist West.

    Unesco tends to permeate the consciousness of the British public through its designation of “World Heritage Sites”; and it permeated it again last week when it removed this designation from the waterfront at Liverpool. It is also threatening to do the same to Stonehenge. Liverpool’s offence has been to allow Everton Football Club permission to build a new stadium on derelict land, thereby encroaching on the vista of the waterfront. Stonehenge is under threat because of the prospect of building a road tunnel under it.

    The Liverpool decision was taken during a secret ballot in a meeting in China. Although Liverpudlians and many around Britain were affronted, or nonplussed, world peace and security remained unaffected. Apparently no official Unesco delegation has been to Liverpool for a decade, which makes one think the designation was removed for reasons unconnected with the deterioration of “heritage”. Such capriciousness is familiar in Unesco: despite the obvious dangers to Venice, one of the world’s most extensive heritage sites, the organisation decided not to list it as being in danger simply because huge cruise ships are now banned from docking there.

    Those who have been to Liverpool in the last decade know that the waterfront, with its historic buildings (including the Cunard and Liver Buildings), is in remarkable shape, looking even better than when Unesco’s people last saw it. Those of us who remember the city before the Thatcher government took hold of this historic area nearly 40 years ago might be forgiven for being amazed that much of it is still standing, never mind that it looks so impressive. The conservation work has been remarkable, and if new buildings either fill in gaps on the waterfront or add to its backdrop, then that is the nature of human affairs.

    The architects’ plans for the new Everton stadium show a handsome, modern but aesthetically satisfactory building. It is also one that is going to regenerate a run-down area of the city, and Everton FC have promised to give £55 million for the preservation and conservation of historic buildings near their new stadium. For Unesco to find any of this objectionable suggests a warped view of heritage and a complete incomprehension of how cities function and evolve – and, incidentally, contempt for the people who stand to benefit from the planned developments.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f93f3c40c6c24ccb480b97513e95701d5809d29e3b07b226a30e12f5a783f374.jpg
    An artist’s impression of the proposed Everton FC stadium in Liverpool. CREDIT: PA

    Joanne Anderson, Liverpool’s mayor, expressed her outrage at the decision by asking whether there was scope to appeal. She shouldn’t bother even if there is. Liverpool is a city of such cultural heritage, especially in its superb architecture, that it requires no endorsement from Unesco or anyone else: the loss of this designation is an irrelevance that says more about Unesco than it does about Liverpool. It further devalues the accolade that Unesco is withdrawing, an accolade that was becoming questionable even before this attempt at an insult to the city. What it comes down to is that Unesco expects decayed areas of Liverpool to be preserved in order not to allow encroachments on the range of historic buildings nearby; which is preposterous.

    Britain needs no lectures or rebukes from any international organisation about the preservation of its heritage. That was not the case half a century ago, when many Georgian and Victorian town centres were wrecked and replaced by charmless (and often badly-built) contemporary buildings, rather a lot of which were either falling down or have been pulled down. That wholesale destruction of our heritage – and Britain was not the only offender – caused public revulsion; the increased listing of buildings around the country largely put an end to the destruction of much of our past.

    Perhaps the most famous World Heritage Site in the British Isles is Canterbury Cathedral: we hardly need Unesco to tell us it is special and must be preserved and, as with Liverpool, if the designation were to be removed – and who, now, would say it won’t be? – Canterbury would remain a place both of pilgrimage and of tourism. The same is true of Liverpool: as locals were quick to point out, most tourists who go to the city do so because of The Beatles or one of the great football teams there, not because a group of people from far-away countries, who for the most part have not been to the city, had specially “designated” it.

    The next target for Unesco’s wrath is Stonehenge. A shallow cut-and-cover road tunnel is deemed to put the site at risk, perhaps destroying important archaeological artefacts. Those are serious reservations, but they have been raised by a vigorous action group in the area, and as such it hardly matters what Unesco thinks. It is for Parliament to hold to account an apparently moronic Transport Secretary for accepting this cheap option for a tunnel rather than boring one more deeply and at a greater length.

    This is in fact an ideal moment for Britain to learn to live without Unesco, and to ensure that politicians engage in the thought processes and proper debate that would reach the conclusion that the proposed tunnel isn’t good enough. Stonehenges are not ten-a-penny, but if its designation were revoked, it would not alter the fact that this great prehistoric monument would still draw visitors from all over the world irrespective of what Unesco thought of it.

    What happened in Liverpool seems to confirm that any deference shown to Unesco is ill-deserved. The organisation has become steadily more political and, in doing so, more reckless, often allowing ideology and ignorance to supplant fact. Liverpool will come to no harm without the organisation’s label. But what the Government needs to show through its actions is that the country’s heritage does not need to be policed by a multinational body, and that it can best encourage tourism to, and appreciation of, heritage sites by raising the profile of those sites through the Department for Culture. And the controversy over Stonehenge is an ideal moment to show that it is capable of doing that.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/art/architecture/unesco-politicised-anti-british-basket-case-opinions-insult/

    Some of the newer buildings on the waterfront at Liverpool are certainly not in keeping with its history. Stonehenge doesn’t need a tunnel; instead, the whole area needs a proper by-pass.

    1. Wonderful Grizz! I have had a jar of malt extract in the cupboard (think Roo!) for about 10 years since I thought I’d make a loaf! Wonder if it’s still OK?

      2. My jar was 5 years old. It is high-sugar so it doesn’t go off.

        Recipe:

        150ml hot black tea.
        2 tbsps black treacle.
        175g malt extract.
        85g muscovado sugar.
        90g currants.
        90g sultanas.
        90g raisins.
        30g candied citrus peel. [300g dried fruit total: use whatever mixture suits your taste]
        2 large eggs, beaten.
        250g plain flour.
        1 tsp baking powder.
        ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda.

        Heat oven to 150ºC/130ºC fan/Gas Mk 2. Line the base and ends of a 2 lb loaf tin with buttered greaseproof paper.

        Pour the hot tea into a large mixing bowl with the malt, treacle, sugar and dried fruit. Stir well. Add the eggs and mix in well.

        Tip in the flour, baking powder and bicarb. Mix well then pour into the prepared tin. Bake for one hour until firm and well risen.
        Check that the centre is baked, if not continue for 5 minutes at a time until it is. Allow to cool in the tin.

        Remove from the pan. Wrap and keep in a cake tin for up to five days. Slice and spread thickly with decent butter.

    2. We can get Soreen in Canada but they seem to make special undersized loads for the export market.

      1. I like the squidginess. Wouldn’t say no to trying a slice of Grizz’s creation, though (even though I’m low-carbing!).

    4. I have a problem with Soreen – once started I want to have another slice and another and . . .

  56. Had a hygienist appointment this morning. Was unable to get on the main road as it was being tarmac’d. Only for the fourth time in four years.

    They are supposed to leave access to the cul de sac.

    Big boss man said everyone had received a leaflet telling of the disruption. I said yes i had got the leaflet but he was endangering the residents as nothing could get through. Also the leaflet didn’t say there would be no access at all.

    There are a lot of elderly residents in my road.

    He got very red in the face and i thought he was going to start shouting and swearing. Instead he got his phone out and shouted into that.

    Four big lorries had to back up in three different directions. Then had to do it all again an hour later.

    Then i noticed some other neighbours having similar conversations with him.

    What he had clearly done was plan the work for the cheapest/quickest option. It ended up causing more time to him in the end.

    1. Hi Phizzee. I was in Morrisons this morning and they had some Turbot on the fishmongers stall. I was tempted but this is the first time I have even seen it. What does it taste like?

      1. I remember having Turbot for breakfast on the train going to London in the days when they served proper meals! It’s a nice firm white fish and it was a great breakfast!

        1. Afternoon Ndovu. These look farmed and were complete. I didn’t want to buy one (or perhaps two) and let them go to waste. I’ll try them next time.

          1. Farmed? I wonder where. I never buy Basa since I found out they are farmed in muddy rivers in VietNam.

          2. You have reminded me of a tv program that said some fish and chip shops were, unknowingly, selling farmed fish from Vietnam. Looks like cod but can have a pinkish tinge to it – – and is MUCH cheaper for the supplier, who makes a massive profit.

      3. It is utterly delicious. If you like cod, haddock, brill, halibut and pollack, you will adore turbot.

      4. It’s delicious, good firm, white flesh, but don’t buy it from a supermarket, where it can be up to 14 days old. Ge it from Pesky Fish (Google it). I had by first order from them last week – filleted brill – and it was fantastic, so fresh.

        1. Fish for Thought are quite good too [although I prefer the actual fish rather than some of their pre-made recipes] – lovely whole Brill last weekend.

          1. What a bleedin’ coincidence! I’ve just been on their website for the first time, looking for shellfish, in particular crabs and lobsters.

          2. Do you not have a decent fishmonger nearby?

            We are very fortunate in Fakenham to have Willy Weston’s van every market day. He has fresh, local fish.

          3. There is a fish stall on the twice-weekly market, but I’ve never bought from them.

  57. Raining hard now – for the first time since 11th July…….. we certainly needed a drop.

  58. Egypt nationalises Suez canal – archive, 1956. 27 July 2021.

    President Nasser announced last night that the Egyptian Government had decided to nationalise the Suez Canal company and to use the income from the canal of $100m a year to build the Aswan high dam. Last week the United States and Britain withdrew their offers of money for the dam.

    Britain is the largest single shareholder in the Suez Canal company, owning seven-sixteenths of the total. The company’s 99-year concession was due to expire in thirteen years, after which the canal would have reverted to Egypt. President Nasser said shareholders would be paid in accordance with the last closing prices on the Paris bourse.

    This of course was the incident that made Britain’s decline explicit and its transformation into an American glove puppet inevitable. Oddly enough we were ill-served by our leaders then, particularly with Eden who was even more spineless than the present inhabitants of Westminster!

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/27/egypt-nationalises-suez-canal-nasser-1956

    1. Exemplified by Dean Rusk placing his US Navy force between the British invasion fleet and Egypt. The action of a true friend.

      I personally would have carried on and see if the US Navy would dare fire upon a British Fleet, intent upon securing its rightful investment but Eden was one of the original wets.

  59. Egypt nationalises Suez canal – archive, 1956. 27 July 2021.

    President Nasser announced last night that the Egyptian Government had decided to nationalise the Suez Canal company and to use the income from the canal of $100m a year to build the Aswan high dam. Last week the United States and Britain withdrew their offers of money for the dam.

    Britain is the largest single shareholder in the Suez Canal company, owning seven-sixteenths of the total. The company’s 99-year concession was due to expire in thirteen years, after which the canal would have reverted to Egypt. President Nasser said shareholders would be paid in accordance with the last closing prices on the Paris bourse.

    This of course was the incident that made Britain’s decline explicit and its transformation into an American glove puppet inevitable. Oddly enough we were ill-served by our leaders then, particularly with Eden who was even more spineless than the present inhabitants of Westminster!

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/27/egypt-nationalises-suez-canal-nasser-1956

  60. 335902+ up ticks,
    Courtesy of primarily, the man that came from the bog ( b liar) quickly given substance with the tory ( ino) party & lib /dems forming a coalition

    The three monkeys are surely under extreme pressure within the
    polling booths NOT helped by the reported findings on sexual abuse
    within lambeth children council homes, one 15 year old reporting her marriage that was performed with a child guardian in attendance.

    Help relieve the stress on the polling booth monkeys by continuing the same voting pattern, lab/lib/con, then it is only a matter of time.

    UK Ethnic Minority Population Has Doubled to 13m, Over One-Fifth of General Pop: Report

    1. 335902+ up ticks,
      O2O,
      Listen up Og,
      We really could not be leaving a more odious legacy,
      it was old kneel starmer who was Attorney General
      I believe with lab in power at the time and neglect of the issue was rampant, yet another council at fault.

      These parties / Councils are in place via PEOPLES CONSENT.

      https://youtu.be/vY0mua-ggco

  61. The MSM waking up to Boris’s bullshit?

    Net Zero by 2050 is dead in the water. So what’s plan B?

    The truth is, the sacrifices being demanded of us in the name of Net Zero are incompatible with democracy. And the PM knows it

    FRASER MYERS
    27 July 2021 • 1:13pm

    Boris Johnson has always tried to take a ‘cakeist’ position on Net Zero. We can drastically cut carbon emissions while boosting living standards, he claims. But the truth is, the sacrifices being demanded of us in the name of Net Zero are incompatible with democracy, and the PM knows it.

    Just look at the anguish the gas boiler ban is causing to the government. Johnson has now conceded that the ban will have to be pushed back from 2030 to 2035. It will have to be some other prime minister’s problem.

    The boiler ban was a key plank of the government’s Net Zero strategy. Gas boilers were to be replaced with heat pumps. These heat pumps are not what anyone could call a reasonable alternative to boilers. While a boiler can heat your house fairly quickly at the flick of a switch, a heat pump can take around 24 hours to heat your home to between 17 to 19 degrees celsius – i.e., not-quite room temperature.

    For the pleasure of living in your not-quite warm house, you will have to fork out around £10,000 for the unit and installation. Then, according to the Climate Change Committee (CCC), you can expect to spend an additional £100 per year on your energy bills.

    If you want to own a heat pump and have a house that’s more than lukewarm, you’ll need lots of extra insulation. This means yet more tens of thousands of pounds in renovation costs. The Energy Technologies Institute estimates that a ‘deep retrofit’ could cost as much as building a home from scratch. This is not money that any ordinary person has down the back of the sofa – or that the taxpayer can reasonably cover for millions of households.

    Getting used to this reduced lifestyle ‘will take an attitudinal shift’, says Chris Stark, CEO of the CCC. This is quite the understatement. It means abandoning what was once a completely normal expectation in a developed country: having a warm home in winter.

    In our Net Zero future, we can also forget having a stable and affordable supply of electricity. Boris says he wants to make the UK the ‘Saudi Arabia of wind power’. But we should be wary of green energy experiments. Places like California that have rushed to swap nuclear and fossil fuels with renewable energy are regularly faced with rolling blackouts. Since Germany embarked on its Energiewende (energy transition), its electricity prices are now among the highest in the world, though, ironically, this hasn’t done much to lower CO2 emissions.

    Net Zero is easily the largest national project the UK has embarked on since the Second World War. But even as politicians boast about it on the world stage, parading their harsh ‘targets’ at every opportunity, they have tried to downplay its significance to the public. It’s just a tax rise here, a subsidy there, maybe a bit less meat-eating or not rinsing the plate before loading it into the dishwasher. Technology will take care of the rest, anyway, they say.

    But when the public really finds out what Net Zero means, will they tolerate it? The gilets jaunes protests in France were the most significant public revolt since 1968. They were sparked by an eco-tax. This tax didn’t affect the metropolitan liberals who dreamt it up. They were baffled that anyone would stand in the way of carbon neutrality. But they had to reverse course. This tax was but a drop in the ocean compared to Net Zero.

    All of this is why a Deutsche Bank analyst has, provocatively, suggested that a period of ‘eco-dictatorship’ may be necessary to get to Net Zero. Governments may struggle to stay in power, or may have to deal with civil unrest if they preside over such a drastic reduction in living standards.

    Perhaps the most likely outcome is that Net Zero simply doesn’t happen, as the bigger sacrifices get shunted into the long grass for the next government to impose. But if the government and its technocrats truly believe that climate change poses an existential threat, shouldn’t they at least have a Plan B?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/27/net-zero-2050-dead-water-plan-b/

    2. Maybe Plan B is to get as many people as possible to die from toxic Covid jabs and then the demand for power will be considerably reduced.

    3. “not compatible with democracy”

      I think they know that, and it’s factored into the plan. Goodbye, democracy.

  62. And Nicola’s chosen pronoun would be…???

    Civil servants to be asked to include pronouns in email sign-offs

    Scottish Government backing proposals to ask 8,000 workers to take a ‘pronoun pledge’ under transgender inclusivity plans

    By Daniel Sanderson, SCOTTISH CORRESPONDENT
    26 July 2021 • 9:01pm

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/politics/2021/07/26/TELEMMGLPICT000265697931_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqpVlberWd9EgFPZtcLiMQf0Rf_Wk3V23H2268P_XkPxc.jpeg?imwidth=680
    Leslie Evans gives evidence at Holyrood

    Comments written by workers expressing concerns were dismissed as ‘disappointing’ by Leslie Evans, Scotland’s top civil servant CREDIT: Jeff J Mitchell
    Thousands of civil servants are to be encouraged to add pronouns to their email sign-offs under plans for a transgender inclusivity drive, despite a backlash from staff.

    The Scottish Government is backing proposals that would ask its 8,000 workers to take a “pronoun pledge” under which they would add terms reflecting their gender identity, such as she/her or he/him, to signatures at the bottom of every work email.

    Some people who class themselves as non-binary prefer pronouns such as they/them, while others prefer “non standard” terms such as “zie” or “zir”, which civil servants would be free to use.
    *
    *
    *
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/07/26/scottish-civil-servants-asked-include-pronouns-email-sign-offs/?li_source=LI&l

    3. This is Nikeliars long term adviser! She should have been sacked over the dodgy pursuit of Alex Salmond, which cost the few and long suffering Scottish taxpayer several million squids!

    5. ” “The Scottish Government is making progress towards our ambition to be a
      world leading, diverse employer where people can be themselves at work,
      with a workforce that reflects the diversity of the people of Scotland.”.

      1264 drug deaths last year …. but just concentrate on the krapp ….

    6. I think it is most impressive that Mrs Murrell’s pretendy government is concentrating on things which are – be definition – of the utmost importance to the survival of his (sic) country.

      If only BPAPM would follow its lead.

    7. When (and why) did it become popular to start to spell the female name, Lesley, in the traditional male manner?

        1. I suspect Alphatwat would be the pronoun of choice for an organisation’s Head of Diversity

      1. They are rotters, aren’t they…we could have had hours and hours of innocent fun

    11. Can’t be doing with this pronoun nonsense that some folk seem to obsess over these days and since I’ve never met a woman who has Duncan for a first name, it would seem quite unnecessary to further define my sex.

      (Of course, not being one for undue formality, should an employee of the Scottish Government – or any other stranger – wish to address me directly, then “sir” would be acceptable)

    12. My useless social worker put her preferred pronoun at the bottom of her emails. I’d rather she were good at her job and had given me all the information I needed instead.

  63. 335902+ up ticks,
    The covona pushing team will be taking a much needed break, as flu WILL be making a comeback,

    Live Coronavirus latest news: Pandemic behind us by October, says Sage member

    2. Probably there is also a link to any dealings that they have had with the Clinton Foundation & any of the multitude of Soros funded NGO’s & activist groups.

  65. Ross Clark
    How many Covid hospitalisations are caused by Covid?
    27 July 2021, 12:11pm

    How many people have been taken into hospital and are dying with Covid, and how many have been admitted to hospital and died because of the virus has been one of the fundamental questions of the pandemic. We have been bombarded with daily statistics which have never attempted to put this into context.

    An overall Covid death toll of 129,000 – by the government’s count – means little without knowing who has been dying. Statistics relating to the age profiles of the dead and their medical histories have cropped up from time to time – showing that those who have died are, on average, over 80 and that many suffered from serious and often multiple pre-existing conditions. But these statistics have slipped out of the day-to-day conversation.

    Today, however, comes leaked data which puts an interesting light on data for hospitalisations. Statistics from NHS trusts shows that only 44 percent of patients who have been counted as ‘Covid’ patients had tested positive for the infection before they were admitted to hospital. The other 56 per cent only tested positive after admission to hospital either in a PCR test to confirm suspected Covid, routine screening – or they were only diagnosed later in their hospital stay.

    There is still a lot of context missing from the figures. They don’t tell us, for example, how many people had Covid as a contributing factor in their admission. And they don’t distinguish between a patient who fell off their bicycle and was found to be infected with Covid, or one who went into hospital with a lung condition which had been caused or made worse by previously undiagnosed Covid. Nevertheless, these figures do highlight the problem of continuously feeding the public a daily digest of statistics which have not been telling us the whole story.

    With new Covid infections having fallen over the past week, a lot more people suddenly seem to want to question the daily figures. The same arguments that were used by those trying to allay fears about rising infections earlier in the year – that recorded infections are partly a product of the number of tests being performed, for example, and that the number of tests has fallen now schools have broken up – are now being employed by people who don’t seem to want to believe that cases are really falling.

    One lesson for the next pandemic is not to roll out daily statistics of cases, hospitalisations and deaths without contextualising those figures. Knowing how many people are seriously ill with the disease, how many are dying from it, means nothing without knowing who those people are. Covid has killed in large numbers – but the act of simply feeding us a figure for people who have died while infected with a virus could equally be used to make out that an innocuous strain of the common cold was a deadly disease.

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

    Cunlow • an hour ago
    A court in Lisbon has ruled that only 0.9% of deaths (152 out of 17,000 January 2020 to April 2021) previously described as Covid deaths in Portugal can actually be attributed to Covid. I suspect a similar conclusion would be reached here, and everywhere else for that matter.

  66. Just popped in for a short time. Sorry I missed your BD Delboy I hope you had a great day. Your only a few days younger than one of my B i L’s.
    Conners, I hope everything works out well for you in theses trying times you seem to have a lot on your shoulders from experience of past problems with my own parents and in-laws I don’t envy your difficult tasks and decision making. Good luck with it all.

    To the rest of you do not catch Norovirus or anything like it it’s knocked both me and my good lady for 6.
    It’s up set my Afib for the thrd time this year twice after the Jabs, this time with dizzy spells and my BP was the lowest I have every seen on the monitor. Heart rate highest. Determined not to go into Hospital. But i’m getting there, feet up, plenty of tea and old TV.
    Slayders 😉😏

    2. Sending all good wishes Eddy, to you and your good lady! Take it easy and be kind to yourselves!

    3. Take care, Eddy.
      If you need a raised BP, some of the tales of govt incompetence & waste should do the trick.

    4. Eddy sorry to hear of your illness & those of your Memsahib, I wish you both a speedy recovery to good health & strength . I have had enough illness of my own over the last year & mostly longstanding health problems that have all flared up together and are age related .

      1. One day there will sadly & inevitably be a deceasement amongst this merry band of keyboard addicts; whilst I hope that you (Mr Hatman) will thrive for several more decades, I just wanted to mention that I have noticed a surprising number of your much-appreciated music videos seem to involve young and good looking artistes. Great for the circulation!

    5. Take it easy, both of you, and get back to your previous (I don’t say “old”) selves. KBO!

    6. Just look after yourselves. Concentrated on the two of you and don’t worry about anything else.

  67. Annabel Denham
    Covid has revealed the limits of the big state
    27 July 2021, 11:55am

    When Rishi Sunak turned on the spending taps last March, a triumphant Jeremy Corbyn said he had been proved ‘right’. History would be written by the losers.

    In the 16 months since, government spending on the pandemic has swelled to an eye-watering £372 billion. Wages have been nationalised, along with the railways. Individuals have radically altered their behaviour to shield a state institution. Many now hold the view that coronavirus demonstrates government can borrow and spend a large amount of money quickly and wisely — and that it can therefore continue to do so.

    But two new reports from the Commons Public Accounts Committee decisively debunk that myth. The picture is one of hastily-approved public procurement causing ‘unacceptably high’ levels of waste; of write-off costs associated with loan schemes, estimated at £26 billion; and of decision-makers putting speed before value for money.

    The Committee said it remained ‘seriously concerned’ that despite spending £10 billion on personal protective equipment supplies, the stockpile ‘is not fit for purpose.’ Of 32 billion items of PPE ordered by the Department of Health and Social Care (as of May 2021), 11 billion had been distributed, 12.6 billion were held in the UK as central stock, and 8.4 billion on order from other parts of the world had still not arrived on our soil.

    The stockpile is costing the Department of Health and Social Care about £6.7 million a week to store. In May there were a colossal 10,000 shipping containers that had yet to be unpacked. These figures dwarf most people’s conception of money. And while the Committee zoned in on the procurement of PPE, the waste doesn’t stop there. Remember the millions of pounds spent on contact-tracing technology that experts repeatedly warned wouldn’t work?

    Far from vindicating the socialists, this pandemic has been a poor advertisement for an activist state. There has been an absence of transparency and accountability. Government ministers have repeatedly failed to predict the predictable — from the surge in cases following Eat Out to Help Out (which cost £810 million) to the pingdemonium that currently threatens to push back the overall recovery in GDP (at a cost of £4 billion in lost output per month).

    Meanwhile, with breathtaking nimbleness and speed, private enterprise has achieved remarkable feats — not just in creating the vaccines that will rid us of this pestilence but keeping supermarket shelves stacked, redeploying factories to manufacture ventilators, or simply adapting to stay afloat.

    The Public Accounts Committee has laid bare the shortcomings of state interference, however, its proposals are unexceptional. They build on basic principles that should already be good practice and will lead to bland civil service documents that few will read. What good can a ‘report on progress in improving the quality of impact assessments’ actually achieve?

    The Committee is right that government cannot wait for an inquiry before learning lessons from this crisis, but only because these reviews usually take years to complete and often deliver more catharsis than clarity. It would be fantastical to believe an inquiry could conclude before the pandemic has passed: the Grenfell Inquiry has already taken nearly four years and its scope has been widened to include accusations of racism in local authority housing allocation. The Inquiry into Hyponatraemia-related Deaths was set up in 2004 and wasn’t completed until 2018. Ministers and civil servants cannot possibly devote time to gathering documents and giving evidence before coronavirus ends — nor should we want them to.

    In the end, the reports will probably accomplish little — even though the findings are damning. No taxpayer wants to hear that they’ll be footing the Covid bill for decades to come. They ought to trigger a fundamental rethink of how government operates in a crisis and catalyse a reduction in public spending. Is the furlough scheme adequately targeted? Does it need to run to the end of September? As the wealth-creating part of the economy shrinks, is now really the time for increases in public sector pay? Should the Universal Credit uplift be made permanent, or would a one-off payment of, say, £500 be preferable?

    Instead, the Committee reports will just be a stick for the left to beat ministers with — and the irony will be lost on them that it was the abandonment of the small state ideology, however necessary it may have been in some instances, that led to this colossal waste.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/covid-has-revealed-the-limits-of-the-big-state

  68. Done It!
    Got the last bit of concreting done for the Shed Terrace Wall.
    5 mixes of concrete, 16 shovelfuls of ballast and four of cement to each and I had lass than a couple of shovelfuls of mix left.
    Now sat relaxing after a cold bath and a mug of tea.

    Plan doing a bit of tidying up tomorrow after a run into Matlock and I need to order ½ton of building sand and another couple of bags of cement so I can get the block laying done.

    I also plan doing a bit more wall building extending a couple of walls I began began building some years ago, over twenty in one case, so will need more ballast!!
    Still, it keeps me fit and stops me getting bored!

      2. You’ll have to wait.
        It’s bloody raining. Had just sent my last post when the DT told me so i had to dive out and get what I’d done covered up.

    2. Don’t fancy nipping down to London do you? It seems that the locals don’t like the mounds at marble arch.

  69. OT….
    Can someone explain to this ex-pat, what that ‘mound’ at the Marble Arch is for?? Somewhere I believe I read, it was supposed to attract tourists to London….really! !

      1. Maybe. I have seen muslim children smashing glass bottles in grassy areas where families and children with their pets like to relax.

        1. Shame you can’t film it and pass it on. If any of their lot get cut they would only say we did it – and blame Islamophobia. We will be paying for their treatment anyway.

          1. I was shocked to see it given all the other children used that patch. Seems silly i know. this was in Walthamstow.

          2. My grandmother was born in Walthamstow……..I expect it’s changed a bit since then.

          3. My grandmother was born in Walthamstow……..I expect it’s changed a bit since then.

    6. It’s a new one on me. I’d no idea it was there but apparently,the Marble Arch Mound takes inspiration from the history and diversity of the area, whilst offering a new perspective of the future. Designed by ‘world renowned’ architects MVRDV which – according to their Wiki page – “is an architectural practice known for their innovative and experimental designs, with a willingness for risk-taking and irony, which made them internationally known quite fast.” However, I think there’s a typo on the page – instead of ‘risk-taking’, it should read ‘piss-taking’.

      Can’t wait to hear our resident architect “corrimobile’s” views on this …
      ;¬)

        1. “Announcing its opening, Westminster council leader Rachael Robathan said: ”It is really important we do everything we can to encourage people to come back to the centre of our city and support businesses, the hospitality sector and our cultural institutions.”
          HA! HA! HA!
          Such bollox!

          4. He’s a wazzock OMT.
            The nomenclature might be wrong but my view isn’t.

            I speak from personal experience of the man.

          8. I only have a vague recollection but he rings a bit of a bell.

            I don’t think he taught me, but then again few maths masters managed to either!

          12. Indeed he did, SAS I believe.

            Although having known him reasonably well, I was very surprised to find he was fit enough, let alone tough enough.

          14. no, but he was educated at Merchant Taylors’ and held a commission in the army.
            May I assume that I am not the only person to be irritated by the use of Lord/Lady followed by a christian name when journalists are referring to a life peer?

          17. no, but he was educated at Merchant Taylors’ and held a commission in the army.
            May I assume that I am not the only person to be irritated by the use of Lord/Lady followed by a christian name when journalists are referring to a life peer?

      2. Based on the traditional concept of a hangman’s mound or hill. Tyburn Tree was nearby.
        One of my great great great uncles was walking in London in the early 19th century, when he encountered an enormous throng of people who were waiting to watch a public hanging. He turned around and fled the area immediately, not because he was squeamish, but because such events attracted all sorts of rogues and pickpockets.

      3. As tom5165 notes, Marble Arch is near the site of the Tyburn Tree, subsequently replaced by a gibbett.

        Apart from its extreme ugliness the ‘architect’ is promoting the mound as an observation platform. The reference to a gibbett mound is tenuous because at that date there will have been a wooden platform a few steps off the ground.

        Observation wheels are common but were preceded by wooden framed towers ascent of which gave views over London. A view of London from one such was discovered in an apple barrel in the States and showed the Thames pre-embankment with its tributaries (which are now underground) with intricately drawn details of buildings and even flames arising from a fire in the distance. The observation tower would have been at least 200 feet in height.

        I consider these sorts of insensitive ‘installations’ to be as crass as the Reichstag wrapped in silver cloth or Tracey Emin’s Unmade Bed.

        A society which has lost all sense of beauty and falls for this heap of dung has lost all sense of propriety.

          1. I find it and many modern buildings in its vicinity rebarbative. I was shocked to see the monstrosities on Seymour Street when last in the area, about two years ago.

            I had designed a lot of joinery and art metalwork for the fit out of a new restaurant in Old Quebec Street, in part of the Cumberland Hotel site, called Chourangi (A Taste of Calcutta) to be run by the celebrity chef Jolly. I am not even sure that it has yet opened on account of the stupid and restrictive lockdown measures.

    7. Just some Paddy had a truck-full of spoil to get rid of. “Tip it dere, Seamus.” Sorted.

    8. It looks like a hobbit house but without the attractive rounded features.

      There is (was?) A ski hill out in Blackwell, if they want something to climb up then take the short trip out to suburbia.

  70. This is from the DT online headline about women’s gymnastics….”Team GB snatch bronze”

    Bit unfortunate, in my opinion…{:¬))

  72. Just travelled to my local garden centre for a coffee and browse. Coffee shop shut and few staff around because most staff have been pinged.

    FFS. Who’d have thought that just one positive test, probably a false positive, from just one customer would practically close the place for a week or 2? Does anyone in government think these things through?

    So, people, if you’re thinking of going out anywhere then spend a few moments checking it’s still open.

    2. I am staggered that nobody seems to have thought this through, about what might happen with a lot of people being pinged. Surely it wouldn’t take much thought? Ah, yes, but the PTB in the UK don’t do thought, do they?

      1. They need smarti fones to keep in touch with their drug dealer and to view porn.
        I have two smarti fones, and they are fairly useless.

  73. That’s odd the BBC’s front page coverage of the Lambeth Council’s Care Home Sex abuse inquiry fails to mention which political party has been in ‘charge’ throughout the decades of abuse. Surely some mistake?

      2. “In a follow up to our good news story, scientists have now confirmed that the light at the end of the tunnel may cause blindness and severe skin damage.”

      4. Oddly enough, I am usually unable to read many things posted here – but this one was very clear to my pore old eyes.

        Anyway, now that kindly young NoTTers have deciphered it for you, I hope you share my enjoyment.

    2. In a follow up to our good news story scientists have now confirmed that the light at the end of the tunnel may cause blindness and severe skin damage

      2. The light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of a fast approaching train!

  75. Well I’ve just caught few minutes of the depositions in Washington about the “Insurrection” last year. The general consensus by the officers charged with defending the Capitol building is that it was the Mongol Horde descending on peace loving policemen with the intention of rape, pillage and bloody murder.

    1. I am not even bothering, the whole thing will be stage managed to highlight the correct evidence leading to the correct result.

  76. With being laid up, radio on local beeb station all day, can;t get decent reception on anything else – it is gobsmacking how biased the bbc phone in progs are. Send a text in pointing out the blatantly false claims the govt make – totally ignored – it is way past laughable.
    The country being actively invaded with govt approval – – NOTHING – – few people go to Tokyo – mentioned every 5 minutes.

  77. LSE students demand university bans all private school students, eradicates free market economist Friedrich Hayek from the curriculum, no platforms speakers and introduces minority quotas for staff
    LSE Class War demanded LSE becomes ‘gradually’ free from privately educated
    The students, which a source said was just a handful, released a list of demands
    They said bosses must eradicate a student society to economist Friedrich Hayek
    LSE Class War also backed move to no platform speakers who visited institution
    But their claims were met with an immediate backlash from MPs and other pupils

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9830109/LSE-students-demand-university-bans-private-school-students.html#newcomment

    When I left UEA my girlfriend at the time was at LSE. She had been to a fairly ‘posh’ girls’ school in Malvern and the club at LSE with the largest membership was, believe it or not, the Conservative Club!

    2. LSE, is that the place, Richard where all the toilet rolls in all the lavatories had a notice above them that read, “Sociology Degrees, please tear off?“

  78. A mate has just texted me to say the Triumph Tiger Cub he has been rebuilding is now on two wheels – needs a chain guard and a bit of wiring – and done. Engine runs ok. It should only take a mile to stop from 30 – – drum brakes and no discs.

          1. We had a cloudburst just as I was about to walk up to collect my car (it needed some work done to get it through its MoT). Needless to say, I went later when it had dried off.

          1. Going to Côte for lunch on Thursday with a friend for the first time since March ’20.
            That means Turkish barber tomorrow for ‘the works’, so that means guaranteed rain on both days.

          2. Went to Cote in Gloucester yesterday with friends – the lunchtime & early evening menu has been replaced with a Prix Fixe and price is somewhat increased but still reasonable. Menu much the same as last month but asparagus and poached egg which I had last month has gone. Yesterday had whitebait, followed by chicken fillet with mushroom sauce and gratin potatoes. All good. The sea bass we had last month was still on this time.

          3. I note they’ve done away with the monthly specials – no lobster :–(.
            I shall probably have what you had; everything else leaves me cold.

          4. Whitebait & sea bass were both good. It was very quiet in there yesterday – a contrast with last month when it was packed out (both Mondays) and they were rushed off their feet.

          5. Have a good lunch and enjoy the day! We had a ‘Cote at Home’ seafood platter for Charles’s 80th birthday. It was very good, and mostly I would recommend but not the lobster which had all the texture and flavour of cotton wool! As it was accompanied by prawns, scallops, and crab (which were excellent) we didn’t go hungry but it was a disappointment that the lobster was so uninspiring. It was also accompanied with a chocolate fondant dessert which was delicious.

            We had a very short, sharp shower here this evening, just enough to dampen the ground but there were very dark clouds marching across the sky in a northerly direction most of the afternoon.

          6. I never got round to having a Côte at Home, although I was often tempted. I hope most of the old staff, with whom I was in good stead, are still there. I don’t want to go through the hassle of breaking in a crowd of newbies.

            Finally raining when I went to bed at 22.30.

  80. YOUR DAILY BETRAYAL – Tuesday 27th July 2021 – The covid emperors are nekkid
    Posted by Vivian Evans |

    There’s now too much evidence that the covid data have been corrupted from the start. This article gives some pretty damning indications that SAGE aims to keep people ignorant and worried by misuse of data.

    https://independencedaily.co.uk/your-daily-betrayal-tuesday-27th-july-2021-the-covid-emperors-are-nekkid/?utm_source=mailpoet&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=INDEPENDENCE+Daily+Newsletter1

    Doubly worrying is a BTL comment which I set out in full. If it is still going through parliament, we are getting close to revolution time: EDITED APPARENTLY THE EMAIL FROM FLYER IS OUT OF DATE (see OBERST’S POST BELOW).The Bill was enacted in 2020 – provisions in the Act are time limited for two years and not all the provisions came into force immediately (although a first statutory instrument bringing some of the delayed provisions into force was issued soon after). Measures can also be suspended and reactivated later. It will also be possible to extend or end the provisions of the Act, depending on the scientific evidence.I am about to disappear for a while and haven’t checked what the status is of the various provisions.

    flyer on July 27, 2021 at 12:19 pm
    The latest proposed coronavirus bills from Parliament.

    EDITED: CONTENT DELETED – IT IS CONFUSING ENOUGH AS IT IS…

    1. Fits in nicely with my comment of – – where are all the replacements going to go? – – – remove us – inject – show newcomer their new house.

      1. Their job is to complete the depopulation. After they have been billeted with the population.

        The traditional way to deter invaders was with boiling vats of oil.

          2. Here, more complex. Either a formal language school qualification (Bergenstest), or take an online test.
            Also, there’s a quiz at semi-moronic level abot Norwegiam history and culture.

          4. Mnuh!
            There’s a fee involved, and I’m from Yorkshire… with Scottish roots.

    3. This is from March 2020! Jeremy Corbyn comments.
      The bill has a two-year sunset clause and the Government has described the powers as “temporary and proportionate”. The bill’s powers include:

      emergency registration of health professionals and social workers;
      provision of indemnity insurance for health workers and compensation schemes for health service volunteers;
      amendments to mental health legislation, to allow certain functions relating to the detention and treatment of patients to be satisfied by fewer doctors’ opinions or certifications;
      closure of educational establishments, powers to force educational and childcare providers to remain open, and the relaxing of staff-child ratios in educational settings;
      detention of those suspected of being infected with Covid-19, for the purposes of screening and assessment;
      restrictions on public gatherings, the movement of transport, and the closure of ports and airports;
      reforms to death management processes, including the registering of deaths and the transport and disposal of dead bodies; and
      postponement of local and mayoral elections, which had been planned in May 2020.
      The Labour Party has expressed general support for the bill. However, Jeremy Corbyn, Leader of the Opposition, has stated that the continued enforcement of the bill’s powers should be subject to a vote in the House of Commons every six months.

      On 24 March 2020, the second reading of the bill is scheduled to take place in the House of Lords. The remaining stages are due to be completed on 25 March 2020.

      1. Oh whoops! – Normally flyer is on the ball and I didn’t check – mea culpa!

        1. Had me going there, you did!
          Any idea what the status of this is? Did it get passed?

          1. I think there would have been outcry if it had been. Edited yes it was, but I haven’t checked in what form compared to the original Bill. See my edit above.

            I should have thought about it a bit more… :o(

          2. Everryone too busy pi$$ing themselves whilst cowering under the bed to make a fuss.

    4. Thanks, HL. I seem to have lost touch with Independence Daily. Viv/Colliemum (who I met at a UKIP conference some years ago) rarely disappoints…

    2. “But he married an American “actress” of with a dubious past….and remained a frog.”

    11. A Little Girl’s Fairy Tale

      This is the Fairy Tale that should have been read to all little girls

      Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, a beautiful, independent, self-assured princess, happened upon a frog, as she sat contemplating ecological issues on the bank of an unpolluted pond in a verdant meadow near her castle

      The frog hopped into the princess’ lap and said, “Elegant lady, I was once a handsome prince until an evil witch cast a spell upon me. However, one kiss from you and I shall turn back into the dapper young prince that I am and then, my sweet, we can marry and set up housekeeping in your castle, with my mother, where you can:

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/eb58f123aa320362573d2291d18a49afbbf8b744507bd8b026302654e33ab36d.jpg

      Prepare my meals
      Clean my clothes
      Bear my children and
      Forever feel grateful and happy so doing.”

      That night, as the princess dined sumptuously on lightly sautéed frog legs, seasoned in a white wine and onion cream sauce, she chuckled and thought to herself,

      “I don’t fuckin’ think so.”

    1. It will be a yellow star on a white background, in keeping with one of their nicknames

      1. 335902+ up ticks,
        S,
        Sad to say many would accept a star if they thought it would protect, even until the carrot was devoured.

    2. Who would have thought that our freedom lay in the hands of bloody football supporters. If they attend matches in great numbers, the government will know they have a green light to proceed 100%….

          2. It’s a disgrace and I wonder why English Heritage don’t kick up merry Hell.

            Although it has the slight advantage of keeping the rest path free.

        2. The virus appears to affect some populations (aka ‘ethnicities’) disproportionately; one hypothesis is that covid was part of a Chinese germ warfare project, but it escaped before a vaccine had been developed. As the CCP is intimately linked with the Iranian oil mullahs, Israel had an incentive to get their citizens vaccinated ASAP.

      2. 335902+ up ticks,
        Evening S,
        Sad to say they already know they have carte blanche via the polling booth this has been established every General Election.

    1. We have known this for the last year. Brady is all mouth and trousers. He could have led a revolt against the draconian powers and the ghastly government…but didn’t.

  84. 335902 + up ticks,
    700 more hit the mentally scarred children trail courtesy of the poling booth regarding Lambeth council, we on a country wide count must surely be winning worldwide in the PIE paedophile stakes, for this the mass uncontrolled immigration lab/lib/con coalition member / voters must receive ALL credit.

  85. 335902+ up ticks,

    The twat speaketh, govals on par with goebbels saying to hitler many of the herd are refusing to take a shower

    Live Coronavirus latest news: Michael Gove brands those who refuse vaccine ‘selfish’

    2. That’s nothing, according to Biden, unvaccinated people are killing people!

      2. Let’s hope it has that effect on Johnson, Carrion, Gove, Fergusson and many, many more, too many to mention.

    3. Try ‘careful’, Gove.

      Try ‘sceptical/cynical/analytical’, Gove.

      Try being sensible, Gove – an alternate theory for you but it might just work with a bit of piano-wire.

  86. That’s me for this day. Very useful rain this afternoon – and more expected tomorrow. Bloody horse-flies are abundant: I hope a drink with neutralise their bites.

    I’ll see you on Wednesday, DV.

    A demain.

          1. Depends on whether they are over the jumps (Aintree) or on the flat (Ascot) 🙂 Glorious Goodwood this week.

  88. This is a good’un…

    Want to go to New Zealand? Your best hope is to join Islamic State

    Jihadi brides can travel freely to New Zealand, while law abiding Kiwis remain imprisoned on the island

    BENEDICT SPENCE
    27 July 2021 • 4:14pm

    How does one get into a country pursuing an aggressive anti-Covid policy?

    This is a question that has befuddled many a mind this past year or so, as denizens of Western democracies – so used to the idea of borders being essentially theoretical – have juggled pursuing their own cosmopolitanism with preventing the spread of the virus.

    In the UK, we have allowed people in and out – just about. But New Zealand and Australia have stamped out travel altogether, closing their borders for the forseeable future.

    The pair have garnered great praise across the world for this tactic from various media outlets and politicians concerned that their own rulers aren’t authoritarian enough. But the approach has thrown up all manner of issues for expatriates, eager to return home to visit loved ones. So much so that some have had to resort to some pretty eccentric ploys to get themselves back home.

    Take young Suhayra Aden, who has been able to circumvent New Zealand’s closed border policy by virtue of being a member of an international terrorist organisation.

    “But hang on,” I hear you ask, “isn’t an affiliate of an international terrorist organisation one of the last people you’d want to make an exception for? Didn’t stopping such people used to be… sort of, y’know, the core aim of border security?” One might think so, but then these are strange times. Aden, as you might have gathered, is one of the famous “IS brides” — women from Western countries who left to pursue the dream of a caliphate utopia in Iraq and Syria. She was captured by Turkish security forces attempting to flee utopia some time later, and the Turks, not unreasonably, decided they didn’t want her.

    This is where it gets a bit tricky. Aden is a dual Australian-New Zealander, but spent most of her life in the former. Australia, though, decided straight off the bat that it didn’t want her either, and revoked her citizenship. New Zealand has said it will take her and her two young children.

    There are many good arguments against revoking the citizenship of people accused of being terrorists. Personally, I don’t like the idea of dumping wicked people on other countries to deal with. But it does take the biscuit somewhat when law-abiding citizens, who dutifully stayed home when told, took tests when told, quarantined when told, forewent contact with friends and family when told, and basically gave up on humanity when told, all in the name of stopping a virus, must continue to put up with endless restrictions, whilst a woman who knowingly went to join a terrorist organisation aiming to stamp humanity out elsewhere is airlifted from the hellhole she dug for herself.

    Sooner or later, if the rights of those with questionable motives are held aloft whilst millions have their basic liberty to visit their families curtailed, there will come a point when the millions ask what those governing them really offer. Obviously, the majority of these are unlikely to want to replace creeping authoritarianism with public executions and mandatory beards (even in woke hipster oases) but the erosion of trust between governments and governed cannot continue indefinitely. If a dangerous traveller like Suhayra Aden deserves to have her legal rights restored, her fellow Kiwis — the non-dangerous travellers — deserve theirs, too.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/27/want-go-new-zealand-best-hope-join-isis/

    2. “How does one get into a country pursuing an aggressive anti-Covid policy?”
      Why would you want to?

  90. Evening, all. For a “Conservative” government, this one seems to show no appreciation whatsoever of the importance of SMEs for the economy (nor, indeed, of the importance of a sound economy and a sensible tax regime).

  92. There is no let up.

    The CDC in the US has decided to backtrack on its guidance from two months ago and kindly ask that even fully vaccinated Americans resume wearing masks indoors, including in school and at the gym, due to the “highly transmissible” delta variant. FFS Masks are clinically proven to be useless (except as a soft petri dish for the wearer). Any rational person would come to the conclusion that those in charge wish to prolong this insanity.

      1. Sorry I should have been more specific – no Let up refers to the unspeakables in charge.

    2. LISTEN TO THE SCIENCE!

      “The Science” says…

      Particle filtration effectiveness:
      Penetration of cloth masks by particles was almost 97% and medical masks 44%.

      Conclusions:
      The [Scientific] results caution against the use of cloth masks….Moisture retention, reuse of cloth masks and poor filtration may result in increased risk of infection….cloth masks should not be recommended for HCWs*, particularly in high-risk situations, and guidelines need to be updated.

      US National Library of Medicine – National Institutes of Health

      https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4420971/?fbclid=IwAR0VXF8NdjsNnNzBAmYVjPN_Pt8xROn1wN89ILPYqHPu0Txr6hqzZ631yXs

      *HCW = Health Care Workers

      1. If you cannot wear these masks to remove asbestos they wil not protect you from any virus.

  93. I feel sick,sick at heart…..

    “Speaking shortly after the

    inquiry’s report was published, Claire Holland, Lambeth council leader,

    said: “The council was responsible for their care and protection but

    failed, with profound consequences. The council is deeply sorry for

    their experiences.

    “The extent and scale of the horrendous abuse, which took place over many decades, remains deeply shocking.

    “The

    council failed to acknowledge concerns when they arose, often failed to

    believe children when they disclosed abuse and then failed to take

    effective action.

    “That so many

    children and adults were not believed compounded their experiences and

    caused further pain and distress with lifelong impacts.

    “Lambeth

    Council fully accepts the recommendations from this inquiry and will

    continue to strive to improve the care we provide to children and young

    people.

    “The council recognises

    that there is much more to be done as part of its improvement journey

    and that we can never be complacent.”

    https://www.itv.com/news/london/2021-07-27/children-in-care-of-lambeth-council-subjected-to-decades-sexual-abuse
    “Improvement Journey” would that include criminal prosecutions,long jail sentences,sackings and loss of pensions??
    No,thought not

    2. BBC R4 6pm news: “…[the report] also partly blames the Labour council’s battle against the Conservative government in the 1980s over the amount of funding it received for distracting it from the role of child protection. ‘Children were pawns in a toxic power game,’ the enquiry concluded.”

    3. Bonuses all round at public expense as usual.

      Didn’t that Haringey Social Services director responsible for the death of Rikki Neave (or was it Victoria Climbie or Peter Connolly or Daniel Pelke?) where the SS ordered the child to be in the custody of the mother despite the father’s protestations that she was psychotic, simply for feminist reasons, get away with a £600,000 compensation payout by order of the courts?

    1. Illegal SAGE, or whatever they call themselves? If Twatter can ban Trump, why can’t they block these obvious trolls? [Rhetorical]

      1. Easy day today.
        Run into Matlock to collect my repaired glasses then, weather permitting, a bit of a tidy up and I MAY get 1 mix of mortar done and 5 or 6 blocks laid.

  98. About to sign off, but must recommend a series I’m watching on Amazon. Billy Bob Thornton in ‘Goliath’. A disgraced drunken (I sympathise) lawyer fighting a nasty defence contract company being defended by the giant legal firm he co-founded. Gritty and amusing.

      1. I watched it. A s good if not a better (coincidentally drunken) author in my opinion was Malcolm Lowry. ‘Under the Volcano’ remains a masterpiece.

  100. It’ll take more than one hard-headed Aussie, Nigel. It needs an army of dedicated personnel with attitude.

    Boris and Priti seem unable to get a grip on the migrant crisis. Time to bring in Tony Abbott

    Whatever the liberal elite claims, the electorate really cares about this. It matters a lot

    NIGEL FARAGE

    When it comes to political campaigns, one of the many faults of which I am guilty is that I tend to be too far ahead of the pack. In the late spring and early summer of 2020, I spent a considerable amount of time investigating illegal Channel crossings. I soon concluded that the sheer volume of people arriving on British soil was so great that a crisis was inevitable. A year on, and it seems the mainstream media has caught up with me.

    The coverage I generated last year did achieve a certain amount of traction but, I must admit, its impact was more limited than I had hoped. The media, Tory backbenchers and large sections of the population were repeatedly assured by the Home Secretary, Priti Patel, that solutions were close at hand and they chose to believe her. This was unfortunate, because illegal immigration is a practical problem which has serious consequences for our nation’s security, its infrastructure and its finances. It is quite simply untenable for Britain to continue to allow tens of thousands of people to turn up uninvited having left the safety of France.

    Since taking up her post in July 2019, Patel’s rhetoric has been ramped up every time she has addressed this issue publicly. (“Patel vows to turn back all migrants’ boats from France” is perhaps the most effective tabloid headline that she has gained, in August 2020). However, I think her luck is running out. Millions of Brexit voters who expected British borders to be secure after leaving the EU can see that the opposite is the case. Our borders are being breached daily with such ease that is it hard to accept the idea that the government has anything approaching a firm grip on the situation. Whatever the liberal elite claims, the electorate really cares about this. It matters a lot.

    Some months ago, I predicted that the number of those illegally crossing the Channel in 2021 would hit 20,000. I am pleased to see that this figure now has mainstream media acceptance. Regrettably, though, I now feel duty bound to go further. My research suggests that 30,000 people will arrive on our shores this year unless something fundamental changes immediately.

    I say this because the boats transporting the immigrants are getting bigger, with 35-foot vessels capable of carrying 70-plus people now being unexceptional. I have even heard on the grapevine that new boats up to 50-foot long may soon be deployed by the people smugglers who run these operations. At this rate, the Channel will soon resemble the scenes witnessed in 2015, when vast numbers crossed the Mediterranean in response to Angela Merkel’s call for Germany to accept those seeking asylum with the words “We can do this!”

    Last week, as a reaction to the worsening predicament, Ms Patel agreed to give a further £54m of British taxpayers’ cash to the French government in order to prevent more crossings. Talk about throwing good money after bad. It may be true that the French will use some of these funds to recruit more gendarmes to patrol the Dover Straits, but the gangmasters will simply move further westwards. We should expect to hear of landings at Eastbourne as often as we hear of them at Dover in the near future.

    All of this spells trouble for Boris Johnson. I am as certain as I can be that the cross-Channel migrant emergency will become the biggest non-Covid story of the summer. Voters’ growing anger at the impotence of the government will start to be felt. One way that Johnson might see off a potential dent in his popularity would be to turn to the former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who is already on the books as a government adviser on trade. Abbott showed true steel when his own country faced a similar situation in 2012 by returning illegal vessels to Indonesia. If Johnson has any sense, he will call Abbott into Number 10 Downing Street immediately and give him an active role in dealing with this crisis.

    Over the weekend, for the first time since the 2019 general election, it came to light that Johnson’s weak grip on events has led to an average slippage in the polls of 5 per cent. He will know as well as anybody that a government which overpromises and underdelivers will always be found out. I would suggest that one way of improving things would be to tackle the problems in the Channel. Does Johnson agree, or is he going to carry on ducking this very pressing problem?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/27/boris-priti-seem-unable-get-grip-migrant-crisis-time-bring-tony/

    1. That is a pretty good speech from Nigel. Much more coherent than …*fill in name here*. What’s next?
      Answer…Fuck all.

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