Wednesday 18 August: What can be salvaged from the betrayal of the mission of British forces in Afghanistan?

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2021/08/17/letters-can-salvaged-betrayal-mission-british-forces-afghanistan/

889 thoughts on “Wednesday 18 August: What can be salvaged from the betrayal of the mission of British forces in Afghanistan?”

    1. Such a tragedy that the Earl of Cromer (Rowland Baring)’s own bank went went up in a puff of smoke in 1995 after Nick Leeson engaged in some ‘over-ambitious’ futures trading. {:^))

      2. Cromer has an Earl? I know that it has a pier and is famous for its crabs(!), but an Earl? You can learn something every day on Nottle.😎

  2. The UK will always stand by those who have had the lights switched off on their liberties. Priti Patel. 18 August 2021

    That is the reason I am so passionate about reforming our approach to migration and asylum. We must have a system which prioritises the most in need so they can make their home here and be supported to integrate and thrive.

    Of course, we want to bring in highly educated people, add to our skills base and boost our economy. But the United Kingdom also has a proud history of offering sanctuary to those in need – and fundamentally saving lives. That is what is at stake here. We can and must act.

    Morning everyone. Afghanistan has of course a huge surplus of Doctors and Scientists wishing to emigrate but at least the UK Government have now abandoned the pretence of stopping mass migration. The opposite has become official policy!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/08/17/uk-will-always-stand-have-had-lights-switched-liberties/

    1. I note that yesterday we were hearing lots of reports on the news about the surplus of jobs that aren’t being filled.

      1. Morning Bob. So did I. The BBC only just stopped short of saying we need more immigrants to fill these posts!

          1. I thought they did it pretty well. They left the viewers to fill in the obvious conclusion and assume that it was their own idea!

          2. I thought they did it pretty well. They left the viewers to fill in the obvious conclusion and assume that it was their own idea!

        2. Won’t work. The Afghanis drive on the right wherever it suits them, particuarly the Taliban !

    1. An alternative view:

      “The decision to pullout was made by the last President. This dingbat’s job was to roll up and roll everyone out safely. In this he has failed miserably. This will have broad repercussions, humanitarian and strategic.

      But it is particularly hard watching the children, who are too young to know what or why, running along in the fear struck mob.

      Not my fault huh? Shame on you you old coot!

      And stop wearing bomber jackets and aviator sun glasses pretending to be some kind of woke top gun. You got your deferrals just like the rest of the neo-clowns responsible for this yet another sh*t show.

      You sir are a f**king national embarrassment.”

  5. I’m wondering if the Afghans are looking at the West and what is happening here and wondering how safe it is for them and their families, just look at New Zealand yesterday and the Irish injecting 12 years olds and upwards with experimental vaccines and France with their vaccine passports, the USA with a geriatric nutcase in charge, the UK with a blundering windbag in charge, nope far safer under Taliban rule, at least they know where they stand and nobody is going to come for them with a new immoral progressive woke culture.

    1. Islam is highly resistant to Cultural Marxism in fact most of its practitioners would be killed under Sharia Law.

      1. I’m beginning to think that Islam might be more of an ally in the future in the cause against these globalists

      2. So what you are saying Minty is there cannot be a Florence of Arabia to lead them…..?

        1. Morning Stephen. There is a space between Practice and Doctrine and Lawrence was after all an Englishman!

        2. Morning Stephen. There is a space between Practice and Doctrine and Lawrence was after all an Englishman!

  6. The state should not police private Snapchat groups. Spiked 18 August 2021.

    As has been previously argued on spiked, the words ‘grossly offensive’ essentially give carte blanche to judges to criminalise anything they think is unpleasant or hurtful. In the past, people have been sentenced for posting a video on YouTube of a pug doing a Nazi salute and for an Instagram post referring to a rap lyric containing the n-word. More recently, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has turned the screw further and has started to use Section 127 to police private communications between friends.

    We got a taste of this a couple of weeks ago, when the High Court cleared the way for the prosecution of a man who had put a tasteless video about the Grenfell disaster on a private WhatsApp group. It is now clear that this was not a one-off. Two people have since been given prison sentences for sharing an offensive video in private groups on Snapchat.

    The reality of the UK’s Police State!

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/08/17/the-state-should-not-police-private-snapchat-groups/

  7. mng all, here’s the woke side stepping efforts for today: “Edward Hill” gets it right:

    SIR – In 2009 I was an Army officer serving in Helmand province as a junior infantry commander. My team and I were out on patrol, fighting alongside our Afghan National Army colleagues, mentoring them and providing air, artillery and intelligence support.

    I, like many former colleagues, have watched with disillusionment the collapse of the entire Afghan state architecture for which I worked hard, lost friends and risked my life daily to support and develop.

    The betrayal that I am trying to process mentally is nothing compared with that felt by families who lost their beloved young men. It is nothing in comparison to the plight of the Afghan people, who now face life under an unfettered tyranny, whose brutality is unsurpassed in modern times.

    Talk by Taliban spokesmen of an amnesty for those connected with the former regime, and of a tolerant approach to girls’ education, among other things, is empty rhetoric. This factional conglomeration of fanatics will in reality exhibit the same cruelty and thuggish mob rule that we fought hard to eradicate for 20 years.

    I could forgive our tragic failure of foreign policy if there had been no alternative. But we blindly followed the US policy of total withdrawal when we were the second partner in a Nato coalition that could have continued at least to sustain the authority of the Afghan administration in cities.

    This opportunity is now lost, and with it was lost the intelligence infrastructure allowing our special forces to prevent the use of Afghan soil for international terrorist operations.

    At Sandhurst, I once heard a British infantry company commander recently returned from Helmand say something in a talk that stuck in my mind: that if we raised Afghanistan to the same developmental index as Bangladesh in 50 years, we would have achieved part of our aim.

    We had to provide an environment to educate a generation and erase the support base for the Taliban. If a junior commander could grasp this, and the size of our task, I find it hard to believe that the politicians who put him there could not.

    I implore the Government to try to salvage what little we can from this calamity. We must engage with key protagonists in the region – Pakistan, Iran, China and Russia. If there is a credible threat of consequences from these four powers should the Taliban fail to bar terrorist organisations from using its territory as a safe haven, then there is a small chance that some good can be salvaged from this defeat.

    Tom Kennedy
    Andover, Hampshire

    SIR – That Britain went to war for the Falkland Islands in 1982 changed the strategic thinking of the Soviet Union. The West’s precipitate abandonment of Afghanistan will change the strategic thinking of Russia, Iran and China – and not in a good way for us.

    Stephen Garner
    Colchester, Essex

    SIR – Since September 11 2001, the United States has spent more than $2  trillion on the war in Afghanistan. That’s $300 million per day, every day, for two decades – or $50,000 for each of Afghanistan’s 40 million people.

    Research by Brown University estimates losses in the Afghan security forces at 69,000. It puts the number of civilians and militants killed at about 51,000 each. More than 3,500 coalition soldiers have died since 2001 – about two-thirds of them Americans. More than 20,000 US soldiers have been injured.

    Now the Taliban are back in even greater force. Was it all worth it? Only a fool would believe that.

    Denis Kearney
    Lostwithiel, Cornwall

    SIR – President Joe Biden has just washed his hands of Afghanistan, leaving its people to terrorists, murderers and rapists.

    What will happen when President Vladimir Putin threatens Nato and Britain in future? Will Nato treaties be honoured? Can anyone trust the United States again?

    Michael K Thompson
    Cheadle Hulme, Cheshire

    SIR – Is Afghanistan this century’s faraway country of which we know little? Is President Biden the successor to Neville Chamberlain? Is appeasement of mass murderers always destined to end in failure?

    Andrew Berkinshaw-Smith
    Walton-on-Thames, Surrey

    SIR – It is shocking that the United States, by reputation the most powerful country in the world (not yet fully tested against China), cannot produce a credible world-class statesman and leader.

    Peter Williman
    Chatteris, Cambridgeshire

    SIR – Not being Donald Trump is insufficient qualification to be president of the United States.

    Edward Hill
    Chandlers Ford, Hampshire

    SIR – From all the desperate images of Afghans trying to flee their country, it is obvious that women and children don’t come first. And for all the faults of the West, migration heads to Christian democracies there.

    Simon McIlroy
    Croydon, Surrey

    SIR – In media coverage of the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, I have noticed the frequent use of the word medieval to describe their approach towards the rights of women and girls.

    As a medievalist, I feel the use of the word does the period a disservice. The Middle Ages were filled with violence and repression of women, and yet a number of them still achieved great things through informal education.

    If the medieval period is an insufficient comparator for what Afghan women and girls now face, their plight is very serious indeed.

    Sebastian Dows-Miller
    St Hilda’s College, Oxford

    New railway realities

    SIR – You report (Business, August 14) that Network Rail expects passenger volumes to settle at 60 per cent of pre-pandemic levels, leading to a £4 billion annual shortfall and cuts in services.

    What more justification is needed for halting the over-costly HS2 project?

    Jonathan Speakman-Brown
    Orpington, Kent

    Raising interest rates

    SIR – Jeremy Warner (Business, August 4) is spot on. Quantitative easing was an excellent short-term fix to the financial crisis, but the Government’s inability to end it quickly lulled the electorate into thinking that however big an economic shock, the personal impact would be minimal.

    The pandemic has exacerbated this, and ultra-low interest rates and quantitative easing have created property and stock-market bubbles.

    The only way to contain inflation will be higher interest rates, and a reduction in public expenditure.

    David Chubb
    Chelford, Cheshire

    Automated insincerity

    SIR – Not only are companies “experiencing an unusually high volume of calls” (Letters, August 10), but they also add mendaciously that “my call is important to them”.

    Patricia Manning
    Epping, Essex

    Instead of university

    SIR – As a holder of two university degrees and as a father of two, I will be encouraging my sons to look at the apprenticeship market at 18, rather than solely thinking of university (Comment, August 16).

    Degree-apprenticeships and similar schemes are starting up across the country. Given proper funding and tax incentives for participating businesses, they can be an alternative to university.

    The benefits should be evident. Apprentices reach the age of 21 without the debt of their university peers, but with years of professional experience.

    There is nothing wrong with a university education, but we must explore alternatives to allow young people true freedom of choice.

    Roland Johnson
    Stowe, Buckinghamshire

    Hot water

    SIR – The item about heat pumps (Analysis, August 14) makes no mention of their inability to heat the water to over 60C – which is what is needed to kill Legionella.

    Howard Gosling
    Sherborne, Dorset

    Cricketing honesty

    SIR – Joe Root, the England cricket captain, admits he got it wrong (report, August 17). Will the rest follow suit – cricketers and non-cricketers alike?

    Eddie Peart
    Rotherham, South Yorkshire

    Ending our dependence upon Chinese goods

    SIR – Charles Moore states in his usual eloquent manner that “China on the world stage cannot be trusted” (Comment, August 14). The response of the West, and Britain in particular, to China’s continuing transgressions against international law are deplorable, but utterly predictable.

    Our increasing dependence upon the massive import of cheap goods from China is obviously a major factor in this insouciance. This must immediately be curtailed. The Government should make it a priority, as part of its proposed policies of “building back better” and “levelling up”, to initiate and stimulate the manufacturing in Britain of the many essential products that we presently import from the Far East.

    Inevitably such home-produced goods would be more expensive, but surely this is a price worth paying for what will ultimately be a factor in safeguarding our future survival.

    Malcolm H Wheeler
    Bonvilston, Glamorgan

    SIR – It is reported that China will not reach peak coal-generated power until 2030 – around the time we are ceasing production of cars with internal combustion engines.

    This means that China will sell us electric vehicles manufactured using coal-generated power, having largely monopolised extraction of lithium (a vital element in battery production) around the world.

    Our commitment to green energy – powered by Chinese coal. A depressing paradox.

    David Empringham
    Ashorne, Warwickshire

    Met with months of silence from the DVLA

    SIR – Peter Bridgham at least obtained a reply from the DVLA (Letters, August 13). I applied for renewal of my licence in January, and because of an eye
    defect, an independent eye examination will be required. I have heard nothing further from the DVLA and no one answers the telephone; nor have I had a reply to emails or letters.

    I am continuing to drive, as permitted by the Road Traffic Act 1988, but this entitlement is limited to 12 months from the application.

    Bill Payne
    Ferring, West Sussex

    SIR – In December 2020 I sent my driving licence to the DVLA for renewal. In January I was told I would need to have an eye test prior to renewal – but due to the pandemic, tests were not being carried out.

    In early May I was advised to book an appointment at Specsavers. The test was carried out on May 24 and the results sent directly to the DVLA.

    To date I have received no correspondence from the DVLA and still await the return of my licence.

    Edward Smith
    Great Wakering, Essex

    1. Tom Kennedy is obviously a brave man, fighting in the frontline in the hell-hole that is Afghanistan takes a special kind of courage: something I have never been tested on and I am thankful for that. However, I believe his letter reveals an idealistic streak that is not matched by those who sent him and his brave men there. Mr Kennedy was a soldier ordered by politicians to go to Afghanistan and do their bidding. What the real reasons behind that bidding were only the responsible politicians know: I very much doubt that those political creatures hold the same ideals that Tom Kennedy expresses in his letter.

    2. My favourite:
      Not being Donald Trump is insufficient qualification to be president of the United States.

  10. Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, the Islamic State: western intervention is a catalogue of failure. 17 August 2021.

    The entire war is now seen as a terrible failure but its real significance is that it was just the first of four failed wars. The second was the eight-year Iraq war, from 2003 to 2011, which ended with Obama withdrawing US forces. The consequences were dire, with 288,000 deaths, most of them civilians, hundreds of thousands injured, and millions displaced.

    This is quite a modest analysis. They were not failures but strategic defeats. The forces that we opposed now walk the streets of Europe and the UK and will soon assume governance; all of which you could have read on Nottl anytime during the last five years!

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/17/afghanistan-iraq-libya-islamic-state-western-intervention-failure-taliban

  11. From our Welsh friends…

    This had to come sooner or later…The talk will not be about Japanese Imperialism but about British Imperialism . Woke Australian directoress.

    ‘Colonialism’ flap at the opera as Madam Butterfly is put under the microscope

    Ticketholders to new Welsh National Opera production to be offered talks on how Puccini’s classic tale raises issues of ‘imperialism’
    *
    *
    The lecture will be hosted by Prof Priyamvada Gopal of the University of Cambridge, who sparked a backlash in 2020 over an online message saying “White lives don’t matter. As white lives”.
    *
    *
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/08/17/phantoms-opera-madam-butterfly-re-examined-woke-imperialism/

    1. Gopal is a noted provocateur and racist. Anything said by her should be treated with disdain.

      2. A glittering example of the inappropriateness of the phrase “I may disagree with you but I’ll defend your right to say it.”

    2. Excellent idea. “Aida” next – with all those slaves – and Nabucco, of course…

      1. But what to do with Otello? – I know they could ‘take the knee’ before every performance….

    3. Opera has been voraciously eating itself for a while, egged on particularly by the younger generation of singers and directors. No amount of warnings has helped; they prefer to smash everything rather than preserve a complex beauty.

  14. 336916+ up ticks,
    Morning Each,
    The leading political dons are planning more of the same the take over is
    now going into full, in your face, overdrive, trains & boats & planes under the guise of good intentions.

    Every street must accommodate a horse dealer, local paedophiles will be to replace those that have been incarcerated and so it continues.

    Wednesday 18 August: What can be salvaged from the betrayal of the mission of British forces in Afghanistan?

    NOT a bloody thing only grief.

    Guaranteed women’s rights will be adhered to under sharia law , bollocks,
    it is no way operating in women’s favour in ENGLAND.

    In the main the electorate are refusing to acknowledge the fact that there are halal dumplings & porridge on the parliamentary canteen menu with
    additives in the pipeline.

    1. Nothing to stop them putting cheques / Postal Orders (do they still exist?) in the post c/o the President’s Office, Presidential Palace, Kabul…..

  17. What can be salvaged from the betrayal of the mission of British forces in Afghanistan?

    Maybe a historical perspective for the future? A realisation that unless you are willing to proceed with the ruthlessness of China in Tibet you simply cannot impose your culture on an opposing, hard-as-nails culture that has a belief in the afterlife.

    We have to stop being stupid.

  18. What can be salvaged from the betrayal of the mission of British forces in Afghanistan?

    Maybe a historical perspective for the future? A realisation that unless you are willing to proceed with the ruthlessness of China in Tibet you simply cannot impose your culture on an opposing, hard-as-nails culture that has a belief in the afterlife.

    We have to stop being stupid.

  19. Fate of woman paralysed by virus to be decided in Britain’s first Covid ‘end-of-life’ case

    Landmark hearing sees doctors treating patient left brain damaged and immobilised from neck down arguing for life support treatment to end

    “It is the first time a court has been asked to consider an end-of-life case as a result of Covid. I suspect therefore it is a case that will
    attract a lot of public attention.”

    Ms Gollop said relatives thought hospital bosses had made the Court of Protection application because they wished to “cover up” the
    consequences of that “negligent treatment”.

    Of, or with, Covid, is the question

    The cry of Save the NHS is still being shouted loudly, by the NHS

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/08/17/fate-woman-paralysed-covid-decided-britains-first-virus-end/

  20. Why is the UK Parliament being recalled? 18 August 2021.

    The UK Parliament is being recalled from its summer recess on Wednesday to debate the situation in Afghanistan.

    For those who can bear to watch it this will be a demonstration of sickening self-exculpation that would have shamed the Rump Parliament; though one has to say in defence of the latter, that they were in no wise the Cowards that will speak today. You will hear faux-condemnation and spurious support in equal proportions; mostly designed to disguise the fact that this same place supported the policies that collapsed the other day and cost the lives of better men.

    While listening one should also remember that not one of these creatures spoke up in support of Batley Man or condemned the attempted murder of the woman at Speakers Corner and all have sat quietly as the most basic freedoms that have blessed these islands for a thousand years were trashed. They are all, without exception, the most vile scum that have ever sat on the benches of the Commons.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-58228715

    1. MOH refers to the programme as Toady in Parliament. The only value of the programne is to show first hand what a bunch of useless tossers most politicians actually are. The most amusing thing is to watch some self important pratt wittering away then see when the camera switches to show the whole house that there is only one other MP there.

    2. 336916+ up ticks,
      AS,
      Old shaky willie could not have expressed it better.
      As an additive if I may, they are there via peoples consent and are an improvement on the last lot who were a political collection of sh!te, in saying that, that mob was a better grade of sh!te than the prior gang.

  21. Re the letters on the DVLA.

    Shatts – the “minister” of transport has been remarkably silent – considering he is instantly before the cameras (with trademark smirk) when there is bad news to impart.

    1. If he spent less time carefully arranging his red box(es) we might see some progress.

      What am I saying?! The longer he is kept away from making decisions on transport matters the better we shall all be.

      ‘Morning Bill.

  22. 336916+ up ticks,
    Do you spare any thoughts for the indigenous veterans gracing the pavement mattresses & loyal Gurkha’s seeking a fair deal ?

    Priti Patel calls on Europe to help take in Afghan refugees
    Home Secretary’s call, in article for The Telegraph, comes as UK offers 20,000 asylum places amid fears on Continent of new migrant crisis

  23. Good morning all. 11°C out in the yard on a fine Derbyshire morning with a light haze in the sky.

    BTL Comment on the Letters Page:-

    Robert Spowart
    18 Aug 2021 8:12AM
    Mr. Peter Williman has a short memory. Before the fraudulent election propelled Dementia Joe to the White House, America did have a credible and world class leader.

  25. ‘Morning, Peeps.

    Headline for article in today’s DT:

    “Personal data for a pint: Pub apps ask for too much information, customers warned
    Privacy watchdog says businesses must only collect personal data that is necessary, relevant and not excessive”

    Strangely, whenever I try to ‘sign in’ at one of these establishments I find it impossible to write both my name and my number with complete accuracy, even after all these years…

        1. I’m a radio ham; I have friends all over the world – none in this country, mind! 🙂

      4. The ancestral home of the former health minister, who was mobbed on a train yesterday and had his cap stolen.

    2. What is that information though? Name address and telephone number? What if you don’t want to provide that?

      What if someone contacts and, entirely by accident there’s exposure that the individual has another illness, such as HIV? That causes a panic and scare and the individual’s privacy is exposed.

      Bluntly, the only information the seller needs is the card or cash to pay. That’s it.

  26. 336916+ up ticks,
    On reflection there should be NO politico in power that has NOT got a family tree rooted back 200 years at least.

    We have a yank & a Ugandan showing US the future as they are
    orchestrating it.

  27. I understand that the BPAPM has agreed to take in 25,000 towel-heads. That will, inevitably, rise by ten times.

    They come from a place which is mountainous, cold, barren, inhospitable and very unwelcoming – so Scotland should be ideal for them.

    1. It’s already full of welfare dependent, drug addled aggressive England hating characters, so the perfect place for them.

    2. Yep, we’d just love to have them. I guessed 250,000 yesterday. Funny thing, many of our Tory politicians went to good schools where classics were taught. They should thus be aware of the story of the Tarpeian rock. Tarpeia betrayed Rome to the Sabines. The Sabines killed her as a reward.
      No one trusts a traitor. No one sensible rewards a traitor. No one invites a traitor to their home.
      The Afghans who helped us in Afghanistan are traitors. They were paid for their trouble. Why are we bringing them here?

      1. 50000 folk on the outskirts of Calais are even now contemplating adopting afghani Citizenship……

    4. They can continue to enjoy religious tribal warfare at the footie and I’m sure those Scots in skirts will drop their hemlines to those of the traditional dishdasha.

    5. They can continue to enjoy religious tribal warfare at the footie and I’m sure those Scots in skirts will drop their hemlines to those of the traditional dishdasha.

  28. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b3d62aa578dd4d918ec822023ebcc9b007c6f735a42b469c448946debf485a07.png The rot set in when the DVLC (Driver and Vehicle Licensing Centre) became bloated and over-important as the DVLA (Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority). It simply got too big for its boots and became filled with self-regard, in the same manner that most governmental departments do.

    I clearly recall the days, way back in the 1970s, when the DVLC was first initiated (at Swansea). Its centrality, taking over from countless inefficient local authorities, was a boon to all motorists and, especially, to police forces wishing to check up on legal car ownership (especially in cases of car theft). As soon as this Centre became an Authority, with all the concomitant bluster that brings, efficiency began to slide and it has been an ever-dwindling entity ever since.

    1. Well said, Grizz. So far my MP is indulging in a deafening silence in response to my requests for someone in government to get a grip on this lazy, incompetent shower – and to find out what has happened to my application to maintain and renew my licence categories…

    2. Well said, Grizz. So far my MP is indulging in a deafening silence in response to my requests for someone in government to get a grip on this lazy, incompetent shower – and to find out what has happened to my application to maintain and renew my licence categories…

    3. Last March I had to renew my licence and they required another photo. I sent in the application with the same photo. My new licence came back in 10 days

    4. I remember needing to get a new passport in 1984 as my existing one would expire while I was spending a year somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean. Even though I got onto the matter in good time I was warned that it was taking three months for passport renewals to be processed and so I had to drive from my parents’ home near Lymington, crossing the Severn Bridge to Swansea and spending six hours sitting in the office in Swansea waiting for the matter to be sorted out.

      If independent businesses ran like this they would soon be out of business.

      1. I needed a new passport in 2017. I applied on-line on a Monday, the new passport arrived the next Friday. Just lucky, I guess.

        1. I think it was a particular problem in the early 80’s which was eventually sorted out. I think my most recent passport was sent to me from the British Embassy in Paris.

          1. Passports are now all done in the UK, for security reasons.
            Mine was turned around within about 10 days in the spring this year, following electronic application via a website taht checks things like picture size, quality and so on.

        1. They don’t need to. They have no competition and a bottomless pit of money, extorted with menaces from taxpayers.

      3. I take it from that, Rastus, that there is/was also a Passport Office in Swansea, as well as the DVLC (DVLA)?

    5. I had my renewal notice in April, did the form online and received my new licence about three days later. Perhaps I was just lucky and found someone who was working.

      2. I took photocopies of just about every form and piece of paper possible. Sent the originals off; sit back and wait.
        Mainly because I wasn’t too keen on yet another government dept. knowing my email address.

        1. I didn’t send the old card back till the new one arrived. I have several email addresses- the one I use for the Government petitions is genuine enough for them but it’s not my personal one.

  29. The picture book fighting back against Russia’s LGBT+ propaganda la. 18 August 2021.

    A month after a Hungarian bookshop chain was fined for selling a children’s story about a day in the life of a child with same-sex parents, the same picture book has been published in Russia – but with an “18+” label on it in deference to the country’s so-called “gay propaganda” law.

    American author Lawrence Schimel and illustrator Elīna Brasliņa’s picture book tells about a morning and an evening in the lives of two children with same-sex parents. It is published as two titles in English – Early One Morning, about a young boy’s morning with his two mothers; and Bedtime, Not Playtime!, which follows a girl with two fathers at bedtime. The Russian translation, by Dmitriy Kuzmin, combines both books under the title Mothers, Fathers and Kids from Dusk till Dawn.

    Who would ever have thought that the last vestiges of Western Civilisation would be in Russia!

    https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/aug/17/picture-book-russia-lgbt-gay-propaganda-law-lawrence-schimel

  30. ‘Morning again.

    I can tell that Alison Pearson is less than impressed by the whining sound coming from Huw Edwards:

    Overpaid yet still unhappy? Huw do you think you are?
    Huw Edwards’s complaint about his salary – funded by our TV licence – is an embarrassment for both him and his BBC employers

    ALLISON PEARSON
    18 August 2021 • 5:00am

    Part of a newsreader’s job is to get the tone right for the occasion. What, then, can have possessed Huw Edwards, the presenter of the BBC’s News at Ten, to tell an interviewer that his “huge pay cut” had affected his attitude to his work?

    “It has angered me, to be honest,” Edwards told BBC Cymru, the Welsh language radio station, “not because I’m embarrassed about pay, especially because I took a huge cut years ago anyway. I don’t expect anyone to feel sorry for me. But if you do get a huge pay cut, it’s certainly going to affect you, your psychology and your attitude towards the work. Especially if you see co-workers getting large pay rises and you don’t quite understand why.”

    At the risk of inducing mass cardiac arrest, it should be pointed out that Huw’s wounding wage reduction took his licence payer-funded salary from £550,000-599,999 per annum to £425,000-429,999. In other words, he went from being outrageously overpaid to merely ludicrously overpaid.

    Even at his new, mortifying, just-about-rub-along-on-it rate, the newsreader still earns almost three times more than another public servant, the Prime Minister. He only agreed to a pay cut when the BBC disclosed the pay of its stars in 2017 and the corporation’s female presenters had a fit.

    Edwards said it was “a nightmare” and “very tedious” to have his earnings made public, and no one had a licence “to stick their nose into other people’s business”.

    Ah, but a licence is precisely what people have in Huw’s case. And the BBC is very much our business, what with each and every viewer being obliged to fund salaries which, whatever puffed-up presenters may think, they would seldom command on a commercial rival.

    What an embarrassment for the BBC, which pays Edwards a CEO’s salary. That’s the same Beeb which, not long ago, ended free licences for the over-75s, intimidating defaulters with the threat of “customer care visits for those who require further assistance”. How do you suppose those senior citizens feel hearing their main newsreader say he was demoralised to receive sums beyond their wildest imaginings for a not especially onerous occupation?

    I reckon Huw Edwards does a pleasant enough job, but his anchoring of elections and Royal occasions aren’t in the same league as David Dimbleby. Compared to the colourful newsreading legends of the past – Alastair Burnet, Richard Baker, Angela Rippon, Reginald “Hic!” Bosanquet – Huw is a greige blur. When he steps down, as he shortly threatens to, he will soon be forgotten.

    Funnily enough, over the weekend I was in Llanelli, where Edwards attended the Boys’ Grammar School and I spent a lot of my own childhood. The reduced annual salary which so angered the BBC anchor could buy four houses outright for four families in that town. Where I come from, they always say you can take the boy/girl out of South Wales, but you can’t take South Wales out of the boy/girl. In Huw Edwards’s case, they couldn’t be more wrong.

      1. ‘Morning, Hugh.

        I do get the feeling they don’t care about that. They will fill their boots then ride off into the sunset with our largesse.

    2. With Afgaf, Covid and Climate emergency, it’s a good time to sneak out the bad news, George.

    2. “I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The function of man is to live, not to exist.

      [Jack London]

    7. Oh dear! Another poor sod getting older!
      Still, Happy Birthday & I hope you have a good ‘un.

          1. Thank you, dear Conway! I had a few friends over in the evening, and the wine and conversation flowed freely. That’ll do me.

  33. A Take-Over

    A woman went into a pet store to buy her husband a pet. After looking around she realised that all the pets were too expensive. She went to the counter and questioned the clerk. “I wanted to buy my husband a pet, but all of yours are so expensive.”

    “Well”, said the clerk, “I have a huge bullfrog in the back for $50.00. Would you like to see it?”

    “$50.00 for a frog?” Asked the woman.

    The clerk said. “It’s a special frog, it gives blowjobs!”

    The woman did not particularly like giving head, so she thought this was a heck of a deal. She’d get her husband a gift he’d surely enjoy, and she’d never have to give head again.

    The woman decided to buy the frog. She took it home to her husband and explained the strange gift. Of course, the husband was a bit sceptical, but said he’d try it out for sure that night.

    The woman went to bed that night, relieved to know that she’d never have to give another blowjob. Around two in the morning, she woke up to hear pots and pans banging around in the kitchen. She got up to go see what was going on. When she got to the kitchen, she saw her husband and the frog, sitting at the kitchen table looking through cookbooks. “What are you two doing out here at this hour?” she asked.

    The husband looks up to her and says, “If I can teach this frog to cook, YOUR ARSE IS OUTTA HERE!”

  34. Women and children trying to escape Afghanistan will be escaping to Britain .. they want to escape the medieval Taliban and build a new life ..

    Where ? Will they integrate happily with the medieval Pakistani communities in our big towns and cities or the khat chewing Somalis .

    Women and children eh, will they be safe from Pakistani rapists , or even the Eastern European sex traffickers , will they be exploited by blacks who run around with drugs re county lines ..

    No , these women and children will be better off in their own country with their own people.

    Britain can’t even look after its own , and shows NO GRATITUDE to ex service men and women who are still suffering from PTSD .

    Pritti Patel is out of order ..

      2. Morning Hatman. Soon the Caliphate will stretch from the North Cape to the Sahel and from Gibraltar in the West to Pakistan. The United States is a busted flush. Israel will be alone. You’ve fought in Israel’s wars and as a Zionist and an old Mossad hand you must believe in the Greater Israel vision. You had better crack on. These people only want our women and goods. They want to exterminate you!

    2. Don’t understand a word they are singing, but beautiful girls, lovely music and endearing donkey with foal. Thanks, Hat.

      1. Thanks Elsie, they are singing in Georgian & the donkey is planning to come to the UK soon to provide the urban transport the latest wave of 3rd world migrants are used to back home!

  36. 336916+ up ticks,

    The johnson talks to biden on the blower ( the meeting of the Dons)

    The johnson speak, “so now you are telling me joe, the cat DID sit on the mat”

    1. 336916+ up ticks,
      Morning TB,
      She is the spokeswomen for the political criminally insane overseers.

  39. SIR – It is reported that China will not reach peak coal-generated power until 2030 – around the time we are ceasing production of cars with internal combustion engines.
    This means that China will sell us electric vehicles manufactured using coal-generated power, having largely monopolised extraction of lithium (a vital element in battery production) around the world.
    Our commitment to green energy – powered by Chinese coal. A depressing paradox.
    David Empringham
    Ashorne, Warwickshire
    Who to believe?
    https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/china-coalfired-power-plants-iea-clean-energy-b1858236.html
    https://www.nrdc.org/experts/alvin-lin/china-can-meet-energy-and-climate-goals-capping-coal-power

  40. The Taliban has access to US military aircraft. Now what happens? https://www.defensenews.com/air/2021/08/17/the-taliban-has-access-to-us-military-aircraft-now-what-happens/

    WASHINGTON — Once the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan’s airfield in Kandahar on Friday, it didn’t take long for photos to appear on social media showing Taliban fighters posing with military helicopters such as U.S.-made Black Hawks and Soviet-made Mi-17s.

    After the group took over Mazar-i-Sharif airport this weekend, more photos followed, this time of Taliban members standing next to an A-29 attack plane and MD-530 utility helicopter.

    Now, with Afghanistan under Taliban control, the question is no longer whether the organization will gain access to the Afghan air force’s inventory of U.S.-provided planes and helicopters, but what it plans to do with them — and what the U.S. military can do in response.

    The Afghan air force operated a total of 211 aircraft, with about 167 planes and helicopters available for use as of June 30, according to a July report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.

    So far, the Defense Department has not confirmed how many of those aircraft have been captured by the Taliban, how many of that sum are still operable and how many aircraft have been safely flown by Afghan air force pilots to relative safety in neighboring countries.
    During a briefing at the Pentagon on Monday, Maj. Gen. Hank Taylor, the Joint Staff deputy director for regional operations, said he had no information about whether the U.S. military would take steps to prevent aircraft or other military equipment from being captured or used by the Taliban.

    An Afghan A-29 pilot walks toward his aircaft on the flightline Sept. 10, 2017, at Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan. (Staff Sgt. Alexander W. Riedel/U.S. Air Force)
    https://www.armytimes.com/resizer/75pVvvNJYBOYvcmpjoWAr4A5_-A=/1200×0/filters:quality(100)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/mco/67NOFRK7MFBIVCODR43WOJ7UJE.jpg

    1. Well Maj. Gen Hank. Don’t you think you should get some? What does your boss say? What does his boss say? No, don’t tell me. It will probably include how nice his lunch was but now can’t answer any questions as his nanny told him it’s time for his afternoon sleepy poos.

        1. California learnt the lessons well.

          I’m just waiting for the next BIG tremor that causes Nevada to become beach-front.

      2. 336916+ up ticks,
        Morning AWK,
        My dad was forever saying “move along the bayonet please room for one more ” ( everso
        polite my dad) instead of being a bloody good engineer he did have a secret anchoring to be a bus conductor I believe.

  42. Back in a while but in the meantime I thought I would post this. And good morning to you all. It’s gloomy in West Sussex!
    Trump rips Biden’s Afghan actions: ‘Our country has never been so humiliated’; ‘blows Vietnam away’
    Trump said scenes of terrified Afghans clinging to departing aircraft ‘blows the helicopters in Vietnam away’
    https://video.foxnews.com/v/6268391410001#sp=show-clips

  43. No mention yet that the cut-off point is Sept 11th.
    After that,any foreign soldier will be regarded as an invader.

    1. Facebook spokesman: we are committed to the rights of everyone under Woke rules*

      *Anyone who disagrees with me or who I think is better than me through looks, popularity, money or personality is an enemy of the people and should be treated accordingly.

    1. Reminds me of the cartoon where two butterflies are flitting about overhead while one censorious caterpillar says to another: “That’s the trouble with the older generation – all they ever think about is sex!”

  49. I am sure that the British people’s response to the genuine needs of the refugees from Afghanistan would be far warmer and more welcoming if the government had not been so complicit in the illegal immigration of those who are not genuine refugees at all.

    I fear that the ‘woke’ government’s excesses in being over-generous to those who deserve no generosity have, in effect, reduced our natural propensity for hospitality and tolerance.

      1. Where’s a passing fox when you need one?
        Put them in a black bag and it’ll be ripped open in nanoseconds.

      2. Where’s a passing fox when you need one?
        Put them in a black bag and it’ll be ripped open in nanoseconds.

  51. My heart goes out to all the families that lost their Son’s to a useless extension of the military industrial complex.

          1. we have fed it kings ransoms over the last 75 years and all it has done is perpetuate it’s self. Perhaps being complacent isn’t the path we should follow. Have you ever read Gen Smedley Butlers War is a racket?

          1. We have tried to constrain it with our votes that hasn’t worked as both sides of our political spectrum are ears deep in the hog trough of military appropriations, when our democratic system fails to heed the masses what follows?

          2. Civil disobedience, leading to civil war.

            Maybe now is the time to invest in step-ladders and piano-wire. I’m sure Washington DC has many lamp-posts available.

          4. I really do not wish for war, I am a student of history and this civil war will be most uncivil, the population against the government, brother against brother and the millennial city dwelling shits don’t understand the world of pain instore for them, cut off access to the cities and they will die. We as a nation failed to heed or founding fathers warnings

    2. Eh? There was no conscription, just loads of volunteers who believed govt propaganda, and were rewarded.

      1. Yes while our military is voluntary at this point in time doesn’t mean they should be laid upon the altar to be sacrificed for a nation that was so corrupt it will ALWAYS be a shambles. Warfighter are for warfare, next time governments your or mine gets into a “Police action” send cops or the stinking UN not OUR soldiers: Europe and America SUCK at nation building.

    2. ….. a Taliban fighter..?

      His life must be in danger, now that the Taliban has ‘won’

      or

      does it mean ‘ a Taliban member/soldier/etc?

      Could have been written by DT Telly Subbies

    5. Now let’s find a British or American army officer from a modest background who speaks pashto and arabic.
      Or urdu and arabic.
      Pres Trump gave the Taliban a chance, Pres Biden gave them the whole caboodle.

    6. That’s fine, but I thought we didn’t allow guns in the UK, or is Bradford a special case?

  53. Time to ponder.

    What’s the betting the million Afghanis about to arrive get their driving licences in a trice? Without the trouble of a test.

    4. I’ve had the impression for a few years that up to 45 percent of drivers on our roads have never taken or passed a test in the UK.

        1. Now then, now then……..I didn’t say that Plum, but as you mention it especially in excessively large go anywhere 4x4s. 🤩😎

        1. According to local customs. She’d be a grandmother by now if she had been born in Kabul.

      1. One is a world renowned expert on fictional climate change & Swedish meat balls and is the poster girl for IKEA’s Flat packs and the other a feminist twatter who pissed off the Pakistani Taliban so they shot her but unfortunately missed any vital organ which enabled her to get free NHS treatment & a free scholarship & degree in Feminist propaganda at Oxford where she set up a fund to help the down trodden Gnomes of Zurich manage her money for her.

    2. Will it soon be discovered that the free charging points for EVs installed at Tesco’s carparks by Volkswagen are using electricity from Chinese coal-fuelled power stations?

  56. Biden and Merkel must confront Putin’s imperial ambitions in Ukraine. 18 August 2021.

    Russian President Vladimir Putin is often portrayed in the international media as a master manipulator whose KGB training allows him to routinely outmaneuver opponents and remain three steps ahead of the competition. The reality may be somewhat more prosaic. While Putin clearly punches above his weight on the international stage, much of his success in reviving Russia’s status over the past two decades has been due to a far more down-to-earth combination of bribery, opportunism, and old-fashioned aggression.

    The most obvious example of Putin’s limitations as a strategic thinker has been his disastrous handling of Ukraine. When he first took power at the turn of the millennium, Russia and Ukraine were so deeply intertwined that the boundaries between the two countries often appeared blurred.

    Is this a joke? Merkel and Biden will both probably be gone by Christmas and Vlad’s handling of Ukraine has been masterly. He has with the minimum use of force prevented the West from capitalising on their Ukraine putsch and dragging the country into both the EU and NATO. Who could have done better?

    https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/biden-and-merkel-must-confront-putins-imperial-ambitions-in-ukraine/

    1. After 17 years, Putin increased Russia’s budget 22-fold, military spending 30-fold, GDP 12-fold (Russia jumped from 36th place in the world in terms of GDP to 6th place);
      Increased gold and foreign exchange reserves 48-fold!
      Returned 256 mineral deposits to the Russian jurisdiction (it is left to return 3!);
      Disrupted the most “liberal” production-sharing agreement in history – the PSA (explanation below);
      Nationalised 65% of the oil industry and 95% of the gas and many other industries;
      Raised industry and agriculture (Russia has been ranked 2nd-3rd in the world in terms of grain exports for 5 years in a row, overtaking the US, which is now in 4th place);
      Increased average salaries in the public sector 18.5-fold in 12 years, and average pensions 14-fold.
      Well, quite a trifle: Putin (it was precisely him) reduced the extinction of the Russian population from 1.5 million people a year in 1999 to 21,000 in 2011, i.e. 71.5-fold.
      In addition, Putin:

      Canceled the Khasavyurt Accord – thus he defended the integrity of Russia;
      Made known the NGO-5th column and banned deputies from having accounts abroad;
      Defended Syria;
      Stopped the war in Chechnya.
      Putin’s cancellation of the Production Sharing Agreement (PSA) is a great achievement! The PSA is an agreement under which America plundered Russia since the 90s and in return Yeltsin was given loans. Putin fought for its abolition for almost 4 years with the help of numerous successive amendments. So the abolition of the PSA caused incredible hatred in America for Putin, as he took away from them the unhindered plunder of Russia. Hence the hatred of Putin, but unfortunately not everyone knows about it.

      And these are old figures.

    2. The boundary is blurred ’cause it’s the same bleedin’ country! Vlad tells the truth. ‘Twas not he but Empress Catherine II who conquered.

      1. am watching HoC coverage, it’s a motley crew of Woke flower pot men, wimmin and a few trans genders no doubt hiding behind a muzzle. Am surprised such empathy didn’t extend to wearing the burqa

        1. After sharing whats app messages with one of my best mates, we agreed it was best that we both turned the TV off.

          2. There is something extremely suspicious about all this, they were all reading from a similar script from que cards.
            Except for Starmer his such a divot.

          4. The whole, display was grossly over the top and totally unnecessary it was all arranged to try and justify further completely further and completely unnecessary immigration to the UK. Let’s face it, they could have all gone to Pakistan on the bus, they have masses more room than we do, it would be so much easier and better for the carbon footprint and global environment.

  58. Read and enjoy your elevenses:

    Part of a newsreader’s job is to get the tone right for the occasion. What, then, can have possessed Huw Edwards, the presenter of the BBC’s News at Ten, to tell an interviewer that his “huge pay cut” had affected his attitude to his work?

    “It has angered me, to be honest,” Edwards told BBC Cymru, the Welsh language radio station, “not because I’m embarrassed about pay, especially because I took a huge cut years ago anyway. I don’t expect anyone to feel sorry for me. But if you do get a huge pay cut, it’s certainly going to affect you, your psychology and your attitude towards the work. Especially if you see co-workers getting large pay rises and you don’t quite understand why.”

    At the risk of inducing mass cardiac arrest, it should be pointed out that Huw’s wounding wage reduction took his licence payer-funded salary from £550,000-599,999 per annum to £425,000-429,999. In other words, he went from being outrageously overpaid to merely ludicrously overpaid.

    Even at his new, mortifying, just-about-rub-along-on-it rate, the newsreader still earns almost three times more than another public servant, the Prime Minister. He only agreed to a pay cut when the BBC disclosed the pay of its stars in 2017 and the corporation’s female presenters had a fit.

    Edwards said it was “a nightmare” and “very tedious” to have his earnings made public, and no one had a licence “to stick their nose into other people’s business”.

    Ah, but a licence is precisely what people have in Huw’s case. And the BBC is very much our business, what with each and every viewer being obliged to fund salaries which, whatever puffed-up presenters may think, they would seldom command on a commercial rival.

    What an embarrassment for the BBC, which pays Edwards a CEO’s salary. That’s the same Beeb which, not long ago, ended free licences for the over-75s, intimidating defaulters with the threat of “customer care visits for those who require further assistance”. How do you suppose those senior citizens feel hearing their main newsreader say he was demoralised to receive sums beyond their wildest imaginings for a not especially onerous occupation?

    I reckon Huw Edwards does a pleasant enough job, but his anchoring of elections and Royal occasions aren’t in the same league as David Dimbleby. Compared to the colourful newsreading legends of the past – Alastair Burnet, Richard Baker, Angela Rippon, Reginald “Hic!” Bosanquet – Huw is a greige blur. When he steps down, as he shortly threatens to, he will soon be forgotten.

    Funnily enough, over the weekend I was in Llanelli, where Edwards attended the Boys’ Grammar School and I spent a lot of my own childhood. The reduced annual salary which so angered the BBC anchor could buy four houses outright for four families in that town. Where I come from, they always say you can take the boy/girl out of South Wales, but you can’t take South Wales out of the boy/girl. In Huw Edwards’s case, they couldn’t be more wrong.

    You can read Allison Pearson’s column every Tuesday and listen to Allison with fellow columnist Liam Halligan on The Telegraph’s Planet Normal podcast, featuring news and views from beyond the bubble, on the audio player above or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your preferred podcast app

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2021/08/18/overpaid-yet-still-unhappy-huw-do-think/

    1. The fact that he is Welsh is no defence against the charge that he is a grubby little man.

    3. I agree, they don’t. The problem isn’t his pay. It is the fact we have no choice over paying it. Same for all other public servants. When a head of department achieves absolutely nothing year after decade and takes home 200-250K – same for a council manager – that’s disgusting. After all, they have a force backed fixed budget. No product, no risks, no marketing. We have no choice but to pay them. If they think managing the division of that is worth 200K then they’ve another thing coming.

      https://www.expressandstar.com/news/politics/2018/04/12/revealed-the-council-bosses-getting-paid-more-than-the-prime-minister/

  59. Morning all,
    My word those tossérs with verbal diarrhoea we have to pay for in Westminster are absolutely and grossly pathetic.
    Why should British tax payers support a load of people from another country because they are too lazy to put their own houses in order ?
    Think of the state of our own natation would have been in if our parents and grandparents hadn’t bothered after WW2
    Why is there a debate with out any representation from the British public, lets have petition and they must support the result of it.
    Mecca has enough room for around one million muslims with all mod cons. Saudi Arabia is a very rich islamic state perhaps they should all go there.
    The government are always ranting about climate change and carbon emissions, how can it be beneficial to allow thousands of people from a warm climate come to northern Europe. It is obscenely gross hypocrisy. Where will they all live in the UK with out releasing millions of tons of carbon ???
    This has probably been prearranged and is nothing more than a further attempt to push global diversity without permission.
    Patel issued this statement almost identical to part of the letter i recently had from my own MP.

    The United Kingdom has a proud record of helping those fleeing persecution, oppression or tyranny fro a round the world.

    Suspiciously as if they already knew this was going to happen…………

    1. Morning to you.

      Have you read The Decline of the English Village by Robin Page ?

      When The Decline of an English Village was first published in 1974, its appearance was greeted with immediate critical acclaim. As a young writer, born into declining village life, Robin Page’s message simultaneously struck a chord and sounded a warning.

      Now, after forty-five years, it reappears with a new and updated introduction, in which political activist Robin Page exposes greed, political ineptitude, and social and environmental indifference as the driving forces behind the deterioration of village life and the communities around it.

      Robin Page transports readers back to a time when villages were founded on the value of community, and when people still worked the land in the traditional sense. He reflects and ruminates on his own experiences of rural life, raising sensitive topics, such as the intensification of farming, over-population, and environmental degradation in some of England’s most beloved places. Robin shares his concern for the alarming loss of wildlife in England, and offers his own perspective on what he perceives to be the most pressing issues. His passion for English tradition, reflected through his involvement with the Countryside Restoration Trust, radiates from within the pages of this book, along with his enthusiasm for preserving the countryside and its wildlife.

      Throughout his life, Robin has observed dramatic changes in the way people live their lives. It’s in this book that he reiterates the tragedy behind a countryside increasingly misused and abused in the name of urbanisation and industrialisation.

      https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-decline-of-an-english-village/robin-page/9781846893094

          1. Robin Page lives just down the road from us, about three minutes away. I ‘got done’ for speeding outside his farmhouse 30 odd years ago. The one and only time. I was doing 38 mph. The policeman who accosted me said, “ducklings wander around here”. It was January 2nd…. In all my years here (40) I have never see ducklings, chickens or hens there. I was slowing down at that point anyway because I was coming up to a T junction. Where I was actually caught with the speed gun was further back up the road (deffo not a duckling habitat) about a quarter of a mile away from where he jumped out of the hedge at me (all 6’6″ of him dressed in black leathers). He was fortunate I didn’t run him over, he scared me. I had two small boys in the back. I was probably listening to Uncle Bill on the JY prog at the time. It was that time of day.

          3. Oh, sorry, the policeman! I often see a curly-headed Robin Page ambling down the footpath though.

          6. Too right, rather than too right wing (the strike through of ‘wing’ hasn’t come out in my notifications, so maybe not in yours either).

      2. Morning TB
        I’ve heard of it, my good lady is a volunteer at our local library i’ll put an order in.
        Our village has a very long history going back to well before BC.
        Some times I bump into people who have been here that long……… 😏
        I now have 4 books unfinished on my bed side table I need a change.
        And now time for another coffee.
        Back in ten. 😉

          1. How’;s it going Conners i see your back in the saddle. I’ve only ridden a horse once, that was all day when I lived in South Africa. I could hardly walk for two days after.

          2. It’s going okay, thanks Eddy. Oscar is mellowing (I’ve managed to brush him without him taking my fingers off for two days running), I am slowly working my way through clearing out things that are no longer needed and my medical practice has finally got its finger out and sent the medical certificate to the registrar, so tomorrow I have the formal telephone call to register the death (despite my having already sent all the necessary details to them by email and rung them up to let them know and answered their questions about it). Third time lucky, eh?

          3. I really feel for you in such desperate times I can’t really imagine how I would cope. But today I fixed a difficult kitchen problem for and old golfing friend and took our trusty Lab with me and on the way home for a walk in Sherrard’s Park woods near Old Welwyn. It’s quite remarkable how she remembers the way around all the footpaths.

  60. Report of comment by Toy Boy:

    Europe must come up with a “robust” response to tackle increased migration flows from Afghanistan, French President Emmanuel Macron has said.
    In a pre-recorded televised address on Monday evening, Macron warned that “the destabilisation of Afghanistan also risks leading to irregular migratory flows towards Europe”.
    “We must anticipate and protect ourselves against major irregular migratory flows that would endanger those who use them and feed trafficking of all kinds.”
    “Europe alone cannot bear the consequences of the current situation,” he said.

    Funny – he’s changed his tune. Doesn’t like them up him, perhaps…

      1. Of course – but as the UK has made this lunatic promise to take them without passports, as I said yesterday, they can just get on a plane or ferry and not waste their money on traffickers.

        1. While British people who have the temerity to reenter their own country from most places abroad have to pay to stay in a prison facility.

          1. As well as pay eye-watering sums for pointless tests and fill in convoluted “locator forms” and have more tests.

      3. For two years now the yellow vests’ have been giving him a lot of un-televised stick.

    3. Just demand the pass sanitaire, or whatever it’s called and that’s problem solved. They won’t of course and nor will anyone at Dover. Rules aren’t for the important people or their pet primitives.

    4. And the one country not panicking is the US..that far-away country responsible for this debacle.

    5. His government is breaking international law. I imagine he’s thinking ‘how can I palm all these off on to the UK as I’m a lazy French Lefty.

    6. That statement was almost a pre-emption of Boros’s, but forgive me I have the feeling all of this Taliban invasion etc was pre-planned. Probably in Cornwall earlier this year.

  63. Priti Patel immediately dismisses calls from Tory MPs to DOUBLE Afghan refugee intake to 40,000

    She knows it will just annoy the ‘Far right’ if she says yes – and she has plans for ten times that number anyway!

    1. I should have read further:

      ‘We’ll take 25,000 refugees’: Boris Johnson announces thousands fleeing Afghanistan will be given the right to live in UK under new scheme… with 5,000 expected in the first year

      …and he has missed a nought off the figure too. The first 5,000 will be here within a month – if not earlier.

    2. 1,000 a day Priti says at the moment but if that is by air it all depends on how the Taliban are processing travellers through checkin:

      https://youtu.be/VT1XYWFExgo

      I haven’t seen any promotions yet for Ta!ibair flights from Kabul airport.

          3. Plus an additional uptick for the second pun – I guess it might have been a stretch too far to aim for three….

          6. The firm to which I was articled in 1959 acted for Cyril Lord.

            Not many people know that

          14. Of course,……… having the old nappy changed.
            I have to leave the room now when our grand children are changed on a change mat on the floor.

          15. Ah yes! Joyful isn’t it? And the ghastly stick-on nappies…which don’t! And they leak!
            Give me a proper terry nappy and a decent sized pin any day! Although with the twins I’d be at it all day!

          16. I remember one occasion when my wife was out and the three boys were very young, I stood one in the (he’s just turned 31) bath told him to hang onto the taps and showered him off with the attachment. Much easy way of dealing with it. 🤗

          19. I don’t have to now but i still would.
            The two latest GC’s are 18 months now, it wont be long before potty training starts.

          20. My granddaughter (who was doing well with the potty) weed on the kitchen floor, then pooed and then sat on the dog! When my daughter asked her why she’d done it, Lucy said “I’m a doggy, Mummy. Woof woof!”

        2. Nice try Eeyore deflecting attention from flying equines….

          “As the Quran has it, Prophet Muhammad took a night trip to heaven aboard a trusty winged pony-horse-mule-ish creature called Buraq. It’s an episode that’s inspired Islamic art ever since, because few artists can resist a theologically sound reason to draw a winged horse.”

          4. That is supposed to have happened from the temple mount hence why the mosque there is so important. Of course nothing of the sort happened. Mohammad never went anywhere near Jerusalem in his life, But having a mosque on top of the most sacred site for Jerusalem is a fine example of Islamic supremacy grinding Jewish faces into the dust. I think the Israelis should claim the entirety of Jerusalem and then demolish the Al Aqsa mosque.

      2. part of peace deal with Trump was keeping all Embassies open and not targetted. So presume UK Amb’s still busy processing visas. And all opium fields remain open for trade with US as part of peace deal. Another issue MSM / political talking heads ignoring

      1. “If you have been in a country or territory on the red list in the last 10 days you will only be allowed to enter the UK if you are a British or Irish National, or you have residence rights in the UK.“

        1. The world, apparently,has just been given “residence rights” in the UK – which will mean – entitled to everything – on the taxpayer.

          1. Long queues at Heathrow for returning Brits, lots of questions and test and quarantine. A Fast-Track system for anyone not holding a UK passport (or any passport at all, come to that).

        2. I blame Putin’s Russia…..I decided to add Putin’s name in compliance with The Express.

    4. How about an exchange scheme:

      One extra genuine Afghan refugee in exchange for three illegals already here being expelled?

      1. Nice idea – pity we all know it won’t work. The illegals would just be back within a week.

        1. Good for Zodiac and Avon – the manufacturers of rubber dinghies. I wonder how many government ministers have invested in these companies?

    5. It will be 20000 now plus all the family members later, meaning upwards of 100k and all the breeding potential. Asking for a friend, has Saudi offered help.

    6. It will be 20000 now plus all the family members later, meaning upwards of 100k and all the breeding potential. Asking for a friend, has Saudi offered help.

  65. Classic: James Woods – @RealJamesWoods

    “Our current President is holed up in a basement; won’t answer any questions from the press.

    Our last President is banned from social media and silenced.

    Our only news source on Afghanistan is from the Taliban, who hold press conferences and have an uncensored Twitter account. “

    2. “Our current President is holed up in a basement; won’t answer any questions from the press.
      Any sign of my GP in that basement ??

      1. I’m still trying to get medication sorted out with my GP that the Radiotherapy Dept of my hospital prescribed. It has been a month now and if it weren’t for my pharmacist I would be in hospital seriously ill. Contact with my GP has been zero despite the fact he is supposed to sign off on the prescription. I am not impressed with the GP system at all. Covid has shown them up to be monumental slackers and incompetent. Even the people at the hospital, who have been excellent, don’t have a good word to say about GPs. So it isn’t just my surgery, it seems to be most of them. Really telling that the hospital staff think them useless.

        1. I am in exactly the same position I was in Hospital over night after a visit to A&E they prescribed me with extra medication i had nearly run out of others I sent my renewal prescription to our GP surgery a doctor signed it and the pharmacy rang me to query it. It seemed that the GP had not looked at the copy of the letter sent from Cardiology from the hospital. And i have heard nothing more. It could have been a danger to life if I had not had my wits about me.
          My current impression of the NHS is they are setting up the public to seek private medical insurance. There is no way the NHS can survive with so many none paying users. There must be millions of people now who have never paid a penny into to the NHS coffers.

          1. I try to buy what I can on the internet and contribute that way. But some of the medication is so expensive there is no way I can pay it. I don’t mind paying in principle but they need to get a realistic handle on the cost of these medications if they want people to pay. But having lived in the USA for 40 years, insurance is second nature to me, for health so I’m accustomed to it. Only concern for me about that is what would they do for people with pre-existing medical conditions? In the USA it is almost impossible to get insurance if you are in that boat.

          2. I try to buy what I can on the internet and contribute that way. But some of the medication is so expensive there is no way I can pay it. I don’t mind paying in principle but they need to get a realistic handle on the cost of these medications if they want people to pay. But having lived in the USA for 40 years, insurance is second nature to me, for health so I’m accustomed to it. Only concern for me about that is what would they do for people with pre-existing medical conditions? In the USA it is almost impossible to get insurance if you are in that boat.

          3. Not only can the world get here and get NHS for free – they get translators too – so THEIR appt times take up multiple times ours – meaning ours get rushed or cut altogether.

          1. Thanks Bill. I will do that. I just went another round with the practice about the medication, so I will give it another couple of days to see how that pans out and then go for it. There conduct horrifies me. I’m mentally intact and I really wonder how old and infirm people are fairing with this behaviour on the part of GPs. It is so irresponsible. Much of their behaviour strikes me as callous.

        3. Join the club. I’ve been trying to get to see a doctor since March. The best I’ve managed is a couple of telephone conversations.

    3. Such a great emphasis on how stupid and useless the worlds political classes are. I think i’d rather have Vlad in charge of my country at the moment.
      Apparently Muz Abbott is on TV now.

  66. 336916+ up ticks,
    These political overseers supported / voted in via the polling booth, giving them carte blanche to continue their orchestrated mass uncontrolled immigration as has been in place for decades have now gone into overdrive.

    When granddads axe head / shaft has been replaced can it still be considered to be granddads axe?

    Apply the same to a Country,

    When major figures / members in councils are replaced & English is the second language in council chambers, and the parliamentary canteen menu is 100% halal will the WARNING finally get through ?

    https://twitter.com/DaveAtherton20/status/1427551717072252949

    1. 336916+ up ticks,
      O2O,
      The politico’s could really be seen as building some sort of internal army that they believe would be beholding to them, my belief is that I do not believe they, the politico’s
      can retain the bowler hat atop of the head under the arm
      Og.

  67. Well – I’m off out to meet a couple of friends for lunch. Fed up with today’s news – it never gets any better does it?

    I might be gone for some time.

    1. #MeToo. Got tickets for a tour of the Portsmouth Gin Distillery. Not sure i will be able to find my way out.

        1. It’s at Fort Cumberland. Smack bang in the middle of muslim territory. Should be okay though, they have barbed wire fences.

    2. Actually that’s a point how TF are our pointless useless government going to make sure all the 20 thousand plus of islamic gimmigrants are double jabbed. The areas in the UK where people were refusing were very strongly muslim.

      1. no one here in Kenya’s been jabbed. Partially due to [a] no virus hence no vaccines and [b] WB money already diverted into Uhuru’s inner cadre

        2. I don’t suppose any one would have been In Afghanistan either. It might just prove embarrassing for our politicians if none of these people have had covid.
          I was at junior school in the 50s with a young (we were about 9 years old) lad who came from Kenya. His name was Philip Hunkin.
          I’ve have tried to track down a few people from way back, but it’s not as easy as one might expect.
          I spent two years in SA, JHB and PE the guy I went with stayed for 35 years. Unfortunately he died earlier this year in Oxford he suffered with mesothelioma, I believe he spent some time in the mining industry in Zimbabwe.

      2. no one here in Kenya’s been jabbed. Partially due to [a] no virus hence no vaccines and [b] WB money already diverted into Uhuru’s inner cadre

  70. The HOC is boring now.I was hoping someone would explode (not literally) with some home truths but alas it is now just points scoring and virtue signalling.

    1. Tom Tugenhadt was decent enough, the rest is all pure moral waffle about crisis / refugees, neither of which exist, the usual illusion that presumably makes those in HoC feel better

      1. I can’t believe nobody has mentioned Sept 11th.
        All foreign forces must be out by then or they are fair game.
        The way some are talking ,these evacuations are open-ended.
        I think they’re in for a shock.

  71. Just heard comment on local beeb radio – suddenly the 20’000 has become 20’000 ” Afghan Women and Children ” – beeb ramping up the sympathy? – – just like the fear of Covid?
    Next there will be tearful “callers” saying we should take in any woman and child – and presumably the children will be 6ft bearded and in nappies?

      1. But we need 100’000 lorry drivers – just imagine 100’000 of our favourite culture on our roads – all in 40 ton lorries – what could go wrong?

      2. She is so wrong you would have to be in the same country to ‘abandon people’ we are not in the same country and they have plenty of other places where they can go and live that share their culture language and religion. She has done absolutely nothing since she has been in her cosy well paid job. And now she wants to inflict thousands more people onto the hard working tax payers of the UK, who have no means of support, absolutely nothing in common with our way of life, social structure, culture, history and our general religious background, she is not fit for purpose.

      3. Couple of weeks ago heard Asians on Radio about the grooming gang victims – – The only thing said was that the agencies should have done more to protect them . . NOTHING about the rapists committing the crime – – they see NOTHING wrong in what they do.

      4. Couple of weeks ago heard Asians on Radio about the grooming gang victims – – The only thing said was that the agencies should have done more to protect them . . NOTHING about the rapists committing the crime – – they see NOTHING wrong in what they do.

  73. Meanwhile Russia and China are meeting with The Taliban and signing deals for trade and rebuilding the country!

      1. Russia have agreed to rebuild/refurbish oil wells in the north of the country.
        The oil infrastructure was originally built by the USSR during their time there.

      2. China has got permission to open copper mines in central Afghanistan.
        It is believed to be the largest source of copper in the World.

  74. I know far too many people with time on their hands. This particular chap is supposed to be soliciting 5 days a week.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9d4f602ef578892e8b0c6a1c40f0ebbf56c3289a2fc0b45806dd1a7ecbde5edf.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/894a789416860ff54c17a689490b0eed7ca9f5f30810e8535d6b776d8fef9f6e.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f647b31113deda8e880c2b2a6501cc4e3312b984ff7dc44121e9a1147925f188.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/43a4013e6f04723fd1e7eedc23efa9e4907e07ba39b0a90bc2773384e85ec9b7.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4a87c58a00096e5375c66a67ac8345889ec6fb44cc82713f8cbbe13b3304840c.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d5b58918e3ee850067ab16364e120675a36e3434b664743cb25dff12278cff9b.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/42d5bfba4791638e0c9ac9898aae3e56e38e68077e7252135188fc55ac6ace69.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b1d8451d0b4864b5b5fff9a80dadde216e6204441cbce1ce7919269fbee137d3.jpg

    1. After being seated in the committee room and reading the title, Diane asked where the three ladies were.

          1. Sorry pet! Having the twins all day has turned my brain to fudge (at least I think it’s fudge…!)

  75. I know far too many people with time on their hands. This particular chap is supposed to be soliciting 5 days a week.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9d4f602ef578892e8b0c6a1c40f0ebbf56c3289a2fc0b45806dd1a7ecbde5edf.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/894a789416860ff54c17a689490b0eed7ca9f5f30810e8535d6b776d8fef9f6e.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f647b31113deda8e880c2b2a6501cc4e3312b984ff7dc44121e9a1147925f188.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/43a4013e6f04723fd1e7eedc23efa9e4907e07ba39b0a90bc2773384e85ec9b7.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4a87c58a00096e5375c66a67ac8345889ec6fb44cc82713f8cbbe13b3304840c.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d5b58918e3ee850067ab16364e120675a36e3434b664743cb25dff12278cff9b.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/42d5bfba4791638e0c9ac9898aae3e56e38e68077e7252135188fc55ac6ace69.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b1d8451d0b4864b5b5fff9a80dadde216e6204441cbce1ce7919269fbee137d3.jpg

  76. No need to worry about where the 20k++++++ are going to live – all celebrities and multi millionaire football players will be saying they’ll take a family in – just like last time.

      2. Councils via contractors appear to be allowing building new homes on every conceivably vacant plot of land at the moment.
        Because of this I am even more convinced that what is going on now has long been planned.

          2. Are they building refugee flats in villages? I thought up til now the development in villages was for the white flight.

          3. I must have misread your post. I thought you meant they were building lots of housing in (ie expanding) villages. Yes, it’s mainly white flight, but even here, in the sticks, there are increasingly plenty of tinted faces.

          4. Not far from where I live they are already eyeing up a couple of golf courses for housing developments .

      3. An appalling state of affairs when our country, and those councils, are heavily in debt.

        1. Remember, all those in the dinghies are men. So, multiple wives, multiple kids each – ( 3 families – 3 x 5 bedroom houses ) multiply 600 in one day by at least 10 each man – all needing a house, benefits, water, power, kids education, NHS and ( time consuming ) translators. All making more waste and sewage. All paid for by us. No need to work, just laugh at whitey slaves working and paying taxes to keep the replacements warm and dry. Why work? Everyhing supplied free.

      4. A Lesson In Democracy

        A black kid asks his dad, “Dad, what’s democracy?”
        (Wait…the kid doesn’t know his Dad…let’s start again…)

        A black kid asks his mom, “Mama, what’s a democracy?”
        “Well, son, that’s when whites work every day so we can get all our benefits!”

        “But mama, don’t the white people get pissed off about that?”
        “Sure, they do but that’s called racism!”

  77. Hahaha…”Journalists should be able to speak truth to power”…Jeremy Hunt.
    One name..Julian Assange.

  78. I have just received this email


    Dearest

    I am Miss Ann William from Ivory Coast. Please, I want you to assist me in investing a total amount of (5.3 million Dollars) which I inherited from my late parents,i will like you to help me get this fund invested while I continue my education in your country. I will give you more details as soon as I hear from you.

    Best Wishes

    Miss Ann William

    Really ……….😉🥱

    4. Do you think that anneallan and Uncle Bill might be trying their hand at running a joint scam?

  79. H’mmmm …. I’m not sure Andrew Plebgate Mitchell is quite making the case for British success in AgGaff:

    “I first visited Afghanistan in June 2008 as the shadow development minister together with a former editor of The Telegraph to witness first-hand the exceptional work carried out in extraordinary circumstances by British soldiers and development experts. I recall the stark example of asymmetric warfare – a single Afghan fighter in flowing robes and flip flops, armed only with a Kalashnikov, able to pin down a Company of modern, Western, heavily armed infantry…..”

    4. in flowing robes and flip flops
      I thought he was astute enough the recognise Plebs, but I doubt if the tosser had the guts to point out their social status compared to his.

    5. Didn’t anyone tell Mitchell that British soldiers were ordered not to fire on the enemy?

  80. just got mail stating Macron has decreed the construction of an enormous immigration processing centre in Marseille. He has also decreed the mass import of
    teachers of Koranic Arabic from Tunisia who will be imposed on state schools.Have asked for link to validate this. Anyone in France hearing this info?

  81. Didn’t reprisals take place against German civilians at the end of WW2?
    What exactly do these airheads expect!

    2. The French Government have never revealed how many “Collaborators” were murdered by their heroic countryman at the end of WWII.

  82. Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Russia, and China are likely betting the Taliban will control the country in the not distant future and will provide political recognition and an economic footing in exchange for the Taliban eliminating the Islamic State, al-Qaida, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Tehreek-e-Taliban, and the East Turkestan Islamic Movement.

    https://thediplomat.com/2021/08/can-uzbekistan-and-pakistan-help-stabilize-afghanistan/

    Trump’s peace deal with the unrecognisable people with turbans in Doha looks to have been a smart move for the Afghan people who can now look forward to the elimination of Islamic influence in the whole region.

    The scene has now been set for Afghan nationals to return to their native country and enjoy the fruits of their country’s natural resources of oil reserves, rare earths, copper and poppies with the bonus of sitting on prime trade routes.

    An opportunity not to be sniffed at!

  83. Breaking News – Macron has banned all Frenchmen from farting in our general direction without an ID vaxx passport

  84. These MPs weren’t as concerned when Christians and Jews were targeted in Syria by the organizations the West were bankrolling!

      1. Yep..noticed it since the start.
        You also get it in blogs about what is happening in Britain…..but they all toe the line!

      2. I’m waiting for the honest . . We must – – carry on ensuring all MPs are OK with their nose in the trough – – and no immigrants end up living near us.

        1. agree that would never happen [accepting David Lammy’s not yet spoken]. I was more hoping to hear “we will shoot them on the beches, at the airports, the landing grounds….”

  85. The HOC benches are emptying.They’ve signalled their virtue…time for a glass of subsidised wine in the bar.

          2. Afternoon Poppie’s Mum. He is indeed a Giant Troll! He’s always in the News spouting propaganda!

  86. At last..a voice of sanity…

    Austria’s interior minister said that Vienna does not plan to accept more refugees after the Taliban seized power in Kabul. Austrian officials proposed setting up deportation sites around Afghanistan instead.
    “Illegal migration that comes through a dozen safe countries, and where migrants simply choose the country of their destination, must be stopped,” Austrian Interior Minister Karl Nehammer told the German newspaper Die Welt on Wednesday.

    2. Austrians have not yet had time to forget the brutal murder of a teenage white girl by a group of Afghan men.

  87. ‘Afternoon All

    Well colour me virtuous………..

    https://twitter.com/AQuantumCat1/status/1427922562751901700

    Or to put it another way “Will suck Moslem cock for votes”

    Already in all too many constituencies election is impossible without the Mosque block vote that holds the balance of power

    See Steve Baker and many others for details……

    http://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/19e5cec423724a2e3f9cf00d4483ad1459e672857c1b35572a64a8b0a1f66f9f.jpg
    Edit
    70’sGirly agrees
    https://twitter.com/70s_70sgirl/status/1428007099213271047?s=21

  88. Mr Symonds doesn’t recognise the Taliban yet David Davis live now on Sly News “we have to liaise and negotiate with the Afghan Government”

    2. He’s thinking – I can get another level in there. nearly 1300 passengers. – that would take a lot of nuts.

  92. The more i hear from the HOC the mor it really is an East V West battle so choose your side and hunker down.
    I chose mine years ago. I’m anti-US and pro Russia.

    2. No suprise there . Have you lived and worked in Russia or the East. ? ( I think not.)

      1. When was the last time you were in Russia Johnny?
        Lots of ordinary Russians own holiday cottages here on the lake.
        I mix with them regularly.

  93. Here is a note of where Afghan refugees are currently. Will those in Pakistan and Iran breathe a sigh of relief and move back, because they only left because the were Taliban supporters? Or is the opposite the case, that they did not support the Taliban and so ran away. If the latter they will now realise that they can never go back to Afghanistan. They will likely decide to move to somewhere more congenial that Pakistan. Hmmm? Bradford, Rotherham, Swindon? A difficult choice.

    https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/25559.jpeg

        1. it’s what they’re collectively known as in the aid world. Same as WFP = What Food Problem / What’s For Pudding? IRC = Idiots Running in Circles, UNOCHA = Universally Negligent Often Causing Havoc Abroad. Staff in these outfits hate it so always good to remind them

    2. Haha..love it. The US goes in..fucks up the country.
      They have 2000 asylum seekers while Europe bears the brunt.
      Dear old Europe will never learn.

    3. By a strange coincidence, I’ve lived in or near all three of those towns.

      It’s not a difficult choice, they’re all crap. Stay in Islamabad, the weather’s nicer.

    1. To be closely followed by Discus’s implementation requiring confirmation registration using the user’s personal government digital certificate.

  95. The ever excellent Douglas Murray:

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-is-the-bbc-burying-this-detail-about-a-homophobic-attack-in-birmingham-

    Why did the BBC bury this detail about a homophobic attack?

    In the last decade or so, a sinister group of individuals from a range of organisations have spent their energies trying to rein in the free press. Specifically they try to stop the reporting of stories that might portray any follower of Islam in a negative light. So, for instance, when someone goes full ‘Allahu Akbar’ during an attack, the press is likely to report the fact and conclude that the attacker might have been inspired by a certain religion.

    At which point the army of anti-media mujahideen get to work to complain to Ofcom, Ipso and whatever other regulators they can find. In time, their work has an effect. If every story about Islam causes editors to receive a blizzard of complaints then soon they start to wonder whether it wouldn’t be easier to cover some other story. Just too much hassle, etc, etc.

    In the best case scenarios, it means that readers have to read between the lines of the story to work out what is really going on. Or read an awfully long way down to find out facts – such as the identities of the attackers – that ought to be quite near the top.

    When people wonder why there is so little coverage of the so-called ‘grooming gang’ cases that keep going on, this is one reason. If you focus on details about the perpetrators’ background – or what religious views they may or may not have – you could get reported on. This has repercussions, as the complainants know will be the case, and as they want to be the case.

    In the best case scenarios it means that readers have to read between the lines of the story to work out what is really going on

    Does a BBC report from yesterday provide a good example of the fruits of their labours? The story, which in any case didn’t get much coverage, is headlined:

    ‘Men hurt in homophobic attack at Birmingham’s Gay Village’.

    The article relates a very unpleasant attack on a gay couple outside a gay bar in Birmingham. The men, both in their 30s, had homophobic abuse hurled at them by a group of four men who then got out of a black SUV and assaulted them. Among other things, the attackers used bottles to attack the couple, and managed to knock one of them unconscious before driving off.

    What or who might be the cause of this? Could it be another case of the fabled post-Brexit hate-crime wave in which the British Leave-voting public was meant to have engaged in an orgy of abuse against all minority groups? Or could it be caused by something else?

    You have to read an awfully long way down the BBC’s story – indeed to the third paragraph from the end – to find any relevant facts about the assailants. There we learn that ‘detectives said the men in the car were described as being of Middle Eastern or Asian appearance’. Which may mean a little, or may mean a lot. But it is, surely, a relevant fact.

    I would expect that if a racist attack occurred on a black couple, for instance, then we would all want to know from the top of the story exactly what sort of person had carried out the attack. There are many reasons for this, not least that if the police want to catch the perpetrators then the media should help. They should make sure the public are informed so that they can assist the police in any way they can.

    Can the successes of the anti-media mujahideen be seen in stories like this? A gay couple are hospitalised in the UK’s second largest city and the national broadcaster can’t even bring itself to say what needs to be said at the top of the story: which is that the couple were attacked by men of ‘Middle Eastern or Asian appearance’.

    That, right there, is the story. That is how it should be reported. But the press and media in the UK have been cowed by pressure groups and made to fear writing up their own reports in the accurate fashion they would have done just a few years ago.

    A small point, perhaps. But one that in the long term has clear repercussions on the way in which the public absorb facts and understand what is happening in their own country.

    1. If the attack was in Birmingham surely the vehicle reg was picked up on cctv? – – or deliberately NOT.

    2. In the best case scenarios it means that readers have to read between the lines of the story to work out what is really going on.

      Nottlers!

    3. In the best case scenarios it means that readers have to read between the lines of the story to work out what is really going on.

      Nottlers!

    4. This bashful approach by the MSM to reporting any physical description of the perpetrators of violent outrages can have the opposite effect to that which they hope to achieve.

      Last week in the initial report of the mad man who murdered several people in Plymouth no physical details of him were given. I am sure I was not alone in thinking, incorrectly on this occasion, that he was probably of ‘middle eastern or Asian’ appearance.

    5. I automatically assumed that the crime was motivated by the same religion whose adherents have hurled gays off tall buildings in the not too distant past.

  97. I fear for tax-payers in the UK. You’re going to have to dig deeper than ever before.

  101. Its hard to listen to some of these speeches.They simply don’t understand.
    20 years ago the US came blustering in,flags flying,bugles blaring (as they do)
    The Taliban couldn’t compete so they retired to the hills and conducted a war of attrition as they had done for centuries.
    All they had to do was wait,and wait they did.
    In Western society money always plays an important part and so it proved. How long could they continue to pour billions into holding the cities (the Taliban never lost control of the open countryside)
    And so it came to pass…the US/NATO lost interest and today we see the result
    The Taliban are back in control.No doubt the West will be scheming another foray and the outcome will be the same.
    I won’t quote Einstein..i don’t need to.

  103. High-tech American hardware left behind in Afghanistan by withdrawing troops will be used by not just the Taliban, but Washington’s adversaries across the world, former president Donald Trump has said in a fiery new interview.
    Speaking to Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News on Wednesday, the Republican firebrand slammed President Joe Biden’s decision to pull all US forces out of the troubled Central Asian nation, describing the ensuing scenes of chaos in Kabul as one of America’s “most humiliating” moments.

    Tens of thousands of US citizens and Afghans who helped coalition forces could now, Trump claimed, be effectively held hostage by the Taliban. Worse still, sensitive military technologies left behind during the evacuation could quickly fall into the wrong hands, he alleged. Under his alternative plan to wind down America’s presence in Afghanistan, Trump said, “the people come out first, and then I was going to take all of the military equipment.”

    FFS..America are struggling to catch up with Russian missile technology!

    3. The mistake she makes is right in the first photo when she accepts islam and the headscarf.

    2. Is it just me, or are Davey’s cartoons utter carp? Blower isn’t much better. Bring back Bob Moran, I say, and Adams was a great loss to the DT.

      1. Davey is like the curate’s egg, good in parts. Blower is similar.

        Bob Moran is a great loss, cancelled for political incorrectness.

        Adams was my favourite, but since he joined the Standard he’s had his wings clipped, in my view.
        Matt is still the king of pocket cartoons.

        I offered to write captions for Adams if he did pocket cartoons and I still think (big headedly) that we would have made a good team. All I wanted in payment was the signed original of anything that was published.
        There are a few Nottlers who won the DT Caption competition, Stig was a regular winner.

  110. Felix Kuehn is the co-author of the book “An enemy we created”. I met him a few years ago. He lived for a number of years in Kandahar under the protection of Mullah Omar. He could not believe the ignorance, of those sent to administer the various provinces in Afghanistan during the occupation, about the internal power struggles of the Afghanis.

    Perhaps D Trump had the right approach after all in negotiating with the Taliban.

    The following is a synopsis of what Felix and his co-author wrote a few years back.

    “There is a widespread belief that the Taliban and al-Qaeda are in many respects synonymous, that their ideology and objectives are closely intertwined and that they have made common cause against the West for decades. Such opinions have been stridently supported by politicians, media pundits and senior military figures, yet they have hardly ever been scrutinised. This is all the more surprising given that the West’s present entanglement in Afghanistan is commonly predicated on the need to defeat the Taliban in order to forestall further terrorist attacks worldwide. The relationship between the two groups and the individuals who established them is undeniably complex, and has remained so for many years. Links between the Taliban and al-Qaeda were retained in the face of a shared enemy following the invasion of Afghanistan after the September 11 attacks, an adversary that was selected by al-Qaeda rather than by the Taliban, and which led the latter to become entangled in a war that was not of its choosing. This book is the first to examine in detail the relationship from the Taliban’s perspective based on Arabic, Dari and Pashtu sources, drawing on the authors’ many years experience in southern Afghanistan, the Taliban’s heartland. They also interviewed Taliban decision-makers, field commanders and ordinary fighters while immersing themselves in Kandahar’s society. Van Linschoten and Kuehn’s forensic examination of the evolution of the two groups allows the background and historical context that informed their respective ideologies to come to the fore. The story of those individuals who were to become their key decision-makers, and the relationships among all those involved, from the mid-1990s onwards, reveal how complex the interactions were between the Taliban and al-Qaeda and how they frequently diverged rather than converged. An Enemy We Created concludes that there is room to engage the Taliban on the issues of renouncing al-Qaeda and guaranteeing that Afghanistan will deny sanctuary to international terrorists. Yet the insurgency is changing, and it could soon be too late to find a political solution. The authors contend that certain aspects of the campaign, especially night raids and attempts to fragment and decapitate the Taliban, are transforming the resistance, creating more opportunities for al-Qaeda and helping it to attain its goals.“

  111. We discovered at lunchtime that all 24 of our outdoor tomato plants have blight. In 70 years of gardening, I have never had this happen. Must be to do with this unseasonably wet “summer” caused by global warming. When compared with today’s headlines, it is nothing – but it is very sad to see. They were such fine, healthy plants..

    Oh well – there is always next year…

      1. We normally make 30 lbs of “tomata” which will last a year. Lucky to have half a dozen jars this year.

        1. Our friends usually grow their own toms but have had the same problem this year. Usually give lots away to neighbours but have only enough for themselves.

        1. It’s been fine for most of the summer but we are making up for it these past few weeks. We’ve had torrential rain for three days, though nowhere near the 6″ in one day up in northern Sweden (Gävle) today.

    6. I think there is a lot of it about this year. I saw tomato vines in someone else’s garden where they had removed all the leaves, leaving just the tomatoes on the vine to ripen.

      Ours are miraculously unblighted so far.

    7. I missed this post of yours yesterday – sorry to hear that – did they just keel over suddenly?
      It’s been fairly dry here lately – cloudy & cool, but little rain for the last couple of weeks.

          1. Nah, it’s nowt to do with him. I bet Paul will get it. There will be another one in October.

          1. I studied metallurgy at technical college in the early 1970s. I’ve forgotten most of it, especially about the austenitic and martensitic varieties. I do recall BS 4340 for bog-standard mild steel.

          3. I have used cast iron on several projects, ni-resist and spheroidal graphite which have quite different properties to grey iron. You can only learn the rudiments at college but a few visits to foundries, the Lion Foundry in Kirkintilloch and Jays in Norwich teaches you more.

            I use Grade 316 stainless steel in restaurant kitchens for hygiene.

            We were taught metallurgy and concrete technology by the late Geoffrey Tattersall at the University of Sheffield. He had run British Steel Special Steels Division and also the Cement and Concrete Association.

          4. I wasn’t aware of the classifications 304 and 316 for stainless steel until they were mentioned in this thread. I only knew about 18/8 (18% chromium, 8% nickel) and 18/10 versions (hence my ‘joke’ about today’s date, which fell flat!).

            50 years away from the subject, which I was taught on a fabrication and welding technician’s course at Chesterfield College of Technology between 1967 and 1972, is a lot to catch up on. I did know, at the time, the various carbon contents of every type for steel from wrought iron through to cast iron. I’d struggle to recall any of that now though.

        2. 304 – cheaper grade of stainless, not so good at resisting salt. 316 better, but if the wet salt is warmed, it’ll crack & pit.

          3. 304 is what Americans use for seawater piping & wonder why it cracks when the sun comes out.
            316 is what Europeans use. More expensive, but doesn’t crack& pit so easily.

          1. Today’s date is 18/8. 18/10 comes in October. I didn’t initially bring up the BS numbers.

          2. Ahhhh… forgive my slowness, haven’t had alcohol yet.
            They are also AISI numbers…
            I’ll get me coat.

  114. CIGS (or whatever title he has nowadays) Carter – never fails to impress..(sarc)

    “General Sir Nick suggested the Taliban wanted an ‘inclusive’ country – despite their record of oppressing women and enforcing a brutal version of Sharia law.

    Responding to Sky News presenter Kay Burley referring to the militants as ‘the enemy’, he said: ‘You need to be careful when talking about the enemy.

    ‘What the Taliban are is a disparate collection of tribespeople, as President Karzai put to me only yesterday, they are country boys.

    ‘And the plain fact is they happen to live by a code of honour and a standard, it’s called Pashtunwali.

    ‘It has honour at the heart of what they do… they don’t like corrupt governance or governance that is self-serving and they want an Afghanistan that is inclusive for all.’

    ‘Except women?’ Burley interjected, to which he responded: ‘We have to wait and see… you have to listen to what they are saying at the moment.

    ‘I do think they have changed and recognise Afghanistan has evolved and the fundamental role women have played in that evolution.

    ‘And yes, they undoubtedly will say they want to respect women’s rights under Islamic law and that will be a Sharia law, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they won’t allow them to be involved in government, education and medicine.

    ‘So I think we need to be patient and give them the space to show they can step up to the plate.'”

  116. Time for me to go – to build a mud hut for the flearidden ragheads flooding in by RAF jet.

    Market day tomorrow – thank God. Might make feel briefly cheerful.

    A demain.

  119. I’m Reproducing this from the Tele because it just about sums up the mess we are in

    Decadence and hubris have finally brought down the American Empire
    The US is in retreat on all fronts, and its incompetent politicians are incapable of reversing the decline

    No empire is eternal: all eventually fall amid hubris and humiliation. The heart-wrenching, humanitarian calamity that is the botched Afghan retreat is merely the latest sign that the American era is ending: Washington is no longer the world’s policeman, and an unsettling future of clashes between expansionist, authoritarian regional powers beckons.

    It is a far cry from the late 1980s-early 1990s, when America’s global clout peaked. The Reagan rebirth, the tearing down of the Berlin Wall, the termination of communism and its gulags, the rise of Silicon Valley and the invention of the internet, the liberation of Kuwait: these were the anni mirabiles of the US hegemon, the glory days of Pax Americana, bookending humanity’s most turbulent century.

    Hollywood held its head high, and everybody wanted to be like America, vote like America and consume like America, or so it seemed. The creation of the single market in 1992 was Europe’s attempt at imitating the US; the same year, China’s Jiang Zemin announced his epoch-defining “socialist market economy”.

    Yet all of this, far from representing a settled consensus on the meaning of the good life and how to achieve it, was a cruel aberration, the high watermark of the American idea. Everything went wrong after that. Paradoxically, 9/11 itself didn’t take down the American empire: it awoke a sleeping giant and triggered a groundswell of patriotism, and a different branching history might have seen a massive but relatively short retaliation, with the prompt killing of Bin Laden. Instead, we had to wait a decade until OBL’s execution in Pakistan (his harbouring by a supposed ally itself proof of America’s waning power) and the world suffered a long-term, half-hearted and ultimately catastrophically counter-productive attempt at remodelling the Middle East.

    Twenty years on, America’s global plan lies in ruins, its elites confounded on almost every issue, the stupidity and incompetence on display over the Afghan withdrawal confirming that they don’t understand the rest of the world, and aren’t fit to govern their own country, let alone the globe. Blinded by a simplistic universalism, they no longer understand religion, tribalism, history, national differences or why countries want to govern themselves.

    Wherever one looks, America’s blueprint has failed. Take Washington’s support for a United States of Europe with its army, constitution and “eurodollar”. Brexit signalled the beginning of the end of that dystopian construct: others will leave the EU, because of the coming migration crisis – tens of millions will seek to move from Africa and the Middle East, and there will be toxic attempts at “distributing” migrants across the bloc – or because of a populist uprising or economic implosion.

    In the Middle East, every country or territory touched by America is in chaos. Afghanistan is back in the hands of the Taliban. Iraq is a nightmare, Syria was the scene of monstrous killings as the West looked on and Libya is a calamity. The Clinton-backed Israel-Palestine peace plan failed: the Gaza withdrawal merely emboldened anti-Semitic Hamas terrorists. Biden’s administration is still sucking up to Iran’s two-faced regime. Does it not see that it is intent on going nuclear and destroying Israel? As for the Gulf States, largely US protectorates, what will their fate be when demand for oil collapses as a result of net zero? The Middle East’s woes have only just begun.

    America’s retreat is equally spectacular in Asia. China has become rich and powerful thanks to capitalism, in itself one of the great triumphs of American ideological expansionism. But its population is not clamouring for democracy. Beijing’s crackdown on entrepreneurs and other sources of independent power demonstrates its lethal seriousness, and its intent to return to its own imperial past.

    China can no longer be contained: it has grabbed Hong Kong, and will eventually turn to Taiwan. What then? Will America be dragged into a nuclear World War III, also involving another of America’s few imperial success stories, Japan? Will that be how everything comes tumbling down? Or will Washington walk away? And what about India and Pakistan?

    It’s a mess: Pax Americana has achieved nothing of any significance bar saving Kuwait and ending conflicts in Yugoslavia over the past 30 years. America’s internal problems are immense: its constitution is broken, its predilection for second-rate gerontocrats such as Biden unrivalled. Racked with self-doubt, its elites in the grip of a bizarre “awakening” centred around a nihilistic, ungrateful self-loathing, it no longer has values to sell, neither capitalism nor democracy nor the American dream. How can people who live in terror of “micro-aggressions” find it in themselves to defeat real evils? As to the public, it doesn’t want to know about the rest of the world: how, under such circumstances, can the US empire not be in terminal decline?

    Could America’s interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq have succeeded? As a Hayekian who believes it is a Fatal Conceit that governments can successfully centrally plan the world, I used to rightly be a sceptic. But the shock of 9/11 led me, wrongly, to believe that, just for once, a full-on imperialistic invasion might work, and liberal democracy and capitalism would spread across the region. The argument was simple: America did it in Japan with General MacArthur, turning a very different society into a democracy, and in Germany, so why not in Iraq? It would have required a massive number of ground troops, far more than were ever deployed, a total takeover of society, and decades of occupation and would probably have failed anyway.

    I have learnt my lesson: in practice, America should never attempt state building. Change must be spontaneous and organic, or it is unsustainable. Yes, threats such as Al-Qaeda or now Iran should be tackled vigorously, and humanitarian interventions to prevent genocides are a must, but full-on liberal imperialism inevitably backfires.

    The West has lost control: there will be mass population movements, currency wars and battles over natural resources. The American empire at least believed in freedom and democracy; what replaces it won’t even pretend to be liberal.

    1. I was pretty depressed before I read that! I do believe that Iran getting the bomb is probably the most ignored but biggest threat to world peace. I suspect Israel will execute a cunning plan devastating attack long before the mullahs finish polishing their plutonium.

    2. I was pretty depressed before I read that! I do believe that Iran getting the bomb is probably the most ignored but biggest threat to world peace. I suspect Israel will execute a cunning plan devastating attack long before the mullahs finish polishing their plutonium.

    1. Has any one Cabinet member opining on a major issue told the truth? Over this disastrous CV-19 period only a select few of the Cabinet appear to have been wheeled out to make statements. Where have the remainder been hiding? Are they not in the know of what the PM and his close cabal are up to or are they not sufficiently trusted to not make a gaff when addressing the press and public? This group of charlatans are the very worst I can recall.

      1. 336916+ up ticks,
        Evening KtK,
        They really ought to be the best of being the worst they have been building on it for the last three decades.
        If another GE is allowed it is going to be an impossible task methinks selecting the best of the worst.

        1. I wouldn’t know, I’ve never watched children’s cartoons!
          Doesn’t look like a cow to me!

          5. I liked Carwash the Cat… 😉
            Especially the way his eyes came off with his spectacles! 😀

          6. I don’t remember that..

            I had some Scottish friends visit for a bonfire night party. After a few drinks we got to talking about favourite children’s programs from childhood.

            Roobarb and Custard. The Clangers. Wacky races. Mr Ben. etc.

            He hadn’t heard of any of them.

  123. Sigh,Camps…it always ends in camps……….

    The master plan for the new hub includes dedicated onsite services,

    including catering that is tailored to be delivered alongside strong

    infection control and prevention measures. The first stage of the hub

    will provide 500 beds, with a second stage doubling capacity a short

    time later. It is also designed with the ability to increase to up to

    3000 beds as part of a scalable build if a larger facility is determined

    to be required at any point.

    The new hub will also be designed

    with relocatable cabins so that it can be utilised for alternative and

    future needs, including ongoing quarantine arrangements, crisis

    accommodation and other emergencies.

    https://www.vic.gov.au/victorian-quarantine-hub

    1. WTF?
      Should we be more worried about the UK government increasing the prison capacity by 100 000? Please someone tell me there’s a rational explanation for the new prison that is unfortunately situated next door to a crematorium?

      EDIT:
      The slogan for the Australian one is “Protecting the community from COVID-19 with a purpose-built quarantine facility.”

      Now, I’m not saying that the Victoria government are Nazis, but Goering would be green with envy that he didn’t think of that particular spin.

      1. Barnes hospital (I used to pass twice a day on the train in 1980-1) is separated from the cemetary by a wall.
        Just saying.

  126. Just went up in my estimation:
    GB News’ Simon McCoy erupts into laughter at Prince Harry and Meghan’s Afghanistan statement
    https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/gb-news-simon-mccoy-laughs-harry-meghan-markle-afghanistan-b951316.html

    “They cited the statement ahead of the GB News interview with royal biographer named Angela Levin on Wednesday.
    Kirsty said: “Now, Harry and Meghan have broken their silence to say they are speechless about the situation in Afghanistan.”
    To which, Mr McCoy failed to cover his amusement and giggled on air before apologising.
    He said: “Sorry, only they would break their silence to tell us they are speechless.”

    1. I’m with McCoy.
      “only they would break their silence to tell us they are speechless”
      :-D)

  128. Sad news. I liked his humour.
    Comedian Sean Lock has died of cancer at the age of 58.
    The TV star, known for his surreal content and deadpan style, was a team captain on Jimmy Carr’s Channel 4 comedy panel show 8 Out Of 10 Cats and spin-off 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown. He also wrote and starred in the popular BBC sitcom 15 Storeys High.
    A statement from his agent Off The Kerb Productions said: “It is with great sadness that we have to announce the death of Sean Lock. He died at home from cancer, surrounded by his family.
    “Sean was one of Britain’s finest comedians, his boundless creativity, lightning wit and the absurdist brilliance of his work, marked him out as a unique voice in British comedy.
    “Sean was also a cherished husband and father to three children. Sean will be sorely missed by all that knew him.
    https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/comedian-sean-lock-dies-b951192.html

    1. And a pithy BTL Comment:

      ”
      Drowsapp123

      “Afghanistan finally liberated from a regime that imposes mandatory face coverings, destroys statues, and promotes the genital mutilation of children”...

  130. Evening, all. Nothing can be salvaged from the omnishambles that successive governments have made of Afghanistan. In my local rag it said Telford was making ready to welcome the Taliban Afghan refugees. We’re doomed. On a personal note, I’ve got a lot of tidying up bits done today (more stuff to the charity shop, dealt with some odds and ends at the undertakers, booked Oscar in to the groomers – he let me brush him a little bit today – and handed in MOH’s blue badge). Rode a dressage test on Coolio; he did well considering it was designed for a full size (60m x 20m) arena with all the letters (AKVESHCMRBPF) and ours is only 40m x 20m (AKEHCMBF). Not to mention that he isn’t put together right for dressage. Still, he tries and that’s worth a lot. Felt very pleased we’d accomplished it (Novice 23).

      1. Yes. I posted a photo here a while ago and he had his name above the door of his stable.

          6. What a handsome chap, Conway! He’s lovely!
            Glad you’ve had a happy time today, and good for Oscar behaving himself when brushing him! I’ve just spent quarter of an hour with a fine wire brush, removing sticky willies from our daughters mad Cockapoo! He hates it and isn’t very well trained!

          7. Well it wasn’t all good news about Oscar; I came home to a small flood in the kitchen, despite having sent him out for a wee before I left him. I suspect he spent the time he should have been employed in emptying his bladder shouting his head off. What are “sticky willies”? Cleavers (aka goose grass)?

          8. Just had to google that! Yes! Definitely goose grass – the Northumbrian and Scottish word is sticky willy and I had no idea it was a cleavers! You certainly learn stuff on Nottle!
            Harry, the Cockapoo, barks like crazy and although he was trained early on, it seems to have gone by the wayside. Unfortunately, he sets our Labrador off, and if the twins are asleep I want to shoot them both! The cats rush upstairs like loonies and the babies wake up! However, Simon was moved yesterday to a new stroke rehab unit in Stirling and is really doing well with walking and use of his left hand.

          12. I didn’t know that you too are having problems.

            Unfortunately I cannot recommend any course of action other than, stick in there, girl, just KBO and it’ll come right in the end.

          13. Thank you NTN! I know it will! The fact that Simon was saved by a very quick thinking colleague and a brilliant first response medic was a miracle. Things don’t look so bleak now, and we just get on with the chaos!

    4. Well done, Connors. Isn’t that called a menage?

      I can’t remember the Mneumonic for those letters but my Grandson used to do that in South Wales and he was quite good at it when he was about 13-14. Unfortunately they grow up and become self-opinionated little gits, are estranged from their family and think it’s all that family’s fault.

      C’est la vie; so glad that you’re getting it all together and Oscar is coming along too. KBO, troop.

      1. A manège. A ménage is a household 🙂 The mnemonic that I know (there are others) is: All King (Victor) Edward’s (Strong) Horses Can Manage (Really) Big (Puissance) Fences. The words in brackets refer to the extra letters in a 60m x 20m arena.

    1. This is why the EU – a fascist organisation – is desperate to shut down internet memes. Because they’re funny and mock the morons so easily!

      It’s called wit, Lefties! We’ve got it because we can laugh at ourselves. You bunch of Lefty nutters can’t!

    2. …and there are so many of them.

      Maybe enough to cause a tremor big enough to get California sliding into the Pacific.

    1. Strange that they live in a country where they can do that, yet can’t call a trans man what he is – a biological man.

      Anyone else see that as absurd?

          1. She should be thanked for covering up that: “Half sunk .. shattered visage
            And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command”

            Ozymaydias (with apols to PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY).

      1. Labour are brainwashed, Tories aren’t.

        But that may be to do with lack of brains to wash…

  135. The great British pub is good for your health

    You form useful habits when drinking within a solicitous community, but they can be unlearnt swiftly in the seclusion of self-isolation

    ROWAN PELLING

    I was at a dear friend’s wedding on Monday and found myself shedding tears at the toasts. It wasn’t just the celebration of deep love that stirred me as glasses were raised aloft around flower-strewn tables at a pub in Stoke Newington. There was something hugely cathartic about the return to convivial drinking. It was only at that moment I recognised how much I’d missed the public act of sharing emotions over a glass of the landlord’s finest nectar. Few things wither the soul more swiftly than the relentless act of drinking on your own, without any form of social mediation – lacking a kind friend or host or publican to say, “Take it easy,” or, “Shall I get you a glass of water?”

    So I wasn’t surprised to learn alcohol-related deaths rose in Scotland over the course of the pandemic by 17 per cent to the highest in a decade. In May, the ONS posted similar findings for England and Wales, with a 19.6 per cent increase in deaths from booze over the previous year. When forced into isolation, a habit can easily spiral into addiction. Benign peer pressure and friendly nudges are often all that stands between us and the slow slide into sozzled dereliction. If I had a fiver for everyone who told me their drinking habits had soared out of control over lockdown, I’d be sitting on a tidy nest egg.

    The problem with solo drinking is that it’s the easiest thing in the world to keep draining an opened bottle into your glass. The social checks and balances just aren’t there to stop you. Contrast that with going out to a pub or wine bar, where the acts of deliberating, queuing, ordering, paying and transporting beverages all slow down the pace of consumption. I’ve noticed that in a group of merrymakers there tends to be one person who acts as a kind of drinking cox, setting a civilised pace of glugging for their companions. If you’re a solo customer sitting at the bar, a good publican will take over that role.

    My parents ran a country pub and I saw how assiduously they tried to ensure that people were happy, rather than headed for oblivion. Confiscating car keys and arranging lifts home were all part of the service. My father had been an alcoholic and became a teetotaller, so he took more care than most to make sure others didn’t succumb. We almost never drank alcohol in the cottage attached to our pub; my parents wanted my siblings and me to see booze as a communal experience with peer-supervised boundaries.

    In fact, it’s entirely due to my parents that I now think one of the greatest pleasures of tippling in bars is delayed gratification. Few pleasures equal that of sitting in a pub’s inglenook awaiting that first sip of Ghost Ship, Guinness, Highland Park, Rioja, or whatever treat you’ve been yearning for all day long. Although practising the noble art of nursing your drink – savouring its full complex flavour, rather than glugging it down – comes quite high on the list. You form useful habits when drinking within a solicitous community, but they can be unlearnt swiftly in seclusion.

    The fact is, alcohol is a social drug, intended for festive or ceremonial use. It came into being to help amplify upbeat experiences – not to numb your feelings as you isolate at home. I can’t possibly prove what I’m about to assert, but I honestly believe, glass-for-glass, cheerful social boozing does less damage to your vital organs than imbibing alone. I might even start a campaign for responsible drinking dens to be awarded NHS certificates of excellence.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/08/18/great-british-pub-good-health/

    BTL:
    Henry Threepwood III
    The pub is an essential, even crucial part of the British social fabric. Many are also architectural and historical gems The indifference over the huge numbers of closures in recent years is tragic. Use them or lose them.

    Cheap supermarket off-sales killed the pub. Time was when drinking at home was a shameful vice for all but the well-heeled with their ‘respectable’ wine merchants.

    CAMRA’s been banging on about ‘modest social drinking’ for years but it’s hard to persuade the growing army of health freaks that we need more pubs in order to control public drinking.

      1. It just grew, taller and taller, son planted a few seeds , and my goodness , where the energy comes from to grow to that height comes from, goodness only knows.

          1. Son bought some assorted seeds , I think one of them must have been a Russian Giant , but ours is so huge , it can’t be .. We are sure it grows about 6 inches every few days !

          6. I took that photo in Uganda. The Batwa people are dirt -poor but they cultivated this one.

          9. My tomato plants are doing quite well – I might take a photo tomorrow…. I haven’t bought any for a month now.

          11. Mine seemed to do okay. Can’t remember any names but i planted red and yellow cherry tomatoes which gave me about 5lbs of fruit and also some big beefy tomatoes which have now only just fruited. No blight here.

            The apple tree was a disaster that got so badly infested with blackfly that i grubbed it out. I tried to save it but it went beyond.

            Strawberries gave good fruit early on and then decided to invade the rest of the garden ! I’m thinking of giving up on secateurs and using a blow torch instead.

            My Pride of Madeira also started out well and now it has no pride in itself at all. I’m thinking of just letting things go and see what survives.

      1. The stem is so strong and thick , it is almost as strong as a ships mast , it is unbelieveable .. There are a couple of thin canes to support it , but thats about it .

      2. The stem is so strong and thick , it is almost as strong as a ships mast , it is unbelieveable .. There are a couple of thin canes to support it , but thats about it .

        1. Yes that is looking Southwest , when it blows it certainly blows , but trees do help .

          I felt brave enough to put me in , 5’3 there abouts , and my lock down figure !

          1. If you wore 3 inch heels you would be my height. Though i would also be wearing 1 inch heels so i could still lean down to give you a big kiss ! :@)

            You look fine Maggie. Lose the beer gut though>>>>>>>>>>>>exits room rapidly>>>.

          2. At least I can look up to you.

            I have apparently shrunk during lockdown and have reached a grand old 5′ 1.5″ (the .5 is important).

          6. Oh dear, Moh was saying that the other day about himself, sadly I have expanded somewhat , and it is always so difficult to reduce weight the older one becomes!

  139. Good night all.

    Leftover veg curry for supper. Missy went crazy over the yoghurt.

  141. Councils ready to support Afghan refugees
    18 AUGUST 2021 BY MARK SMULIAN

    Councils across the country have said they will welcome Afghan refugees to their area, but some have called for more support from the government to help them do so.

    Matters have become urgent following the Taliban’s recent seizure of power in Kabul, with particularly concerns for those who worked with British forces during the conflict.

    The Home Office today announced a resettlement scheme for Afghan refugees, which will aim to support 5,000 refugees within the first year and up to 20,000 in the long term. The department said it will provide funding for local authorities for the costs of dealing with refugees for their first year, including education and health funding.

    For the second to fifth years after a refugee’s arrival, tapered funding will be provided to local authorities, while education and health funding will flow through their normal per capita routes.

    There is also an exceptional cases fund which local authorities can use to assist the most vulnerable refugees.

    Afghans resettled in the UK will be assigned a local authority caseworker funded by central government, who will support them for their first year, the Home Office said.

    Home secretary Priti Patel said: “I want to ensure that as a nation we do everything possible to provide support to the most vulnerable fleeing Afghanistan so they can start a new life in safety in the UK, away from the tyranny and oppression they now face.”

    1. Glad the govt, Home Office and others are providing the finance needed – the taxpayer has had enough loaded onto them (sarc)

    2. Having to pay £270 from my pension(s) each month to the Freemasons at Braintree District Council, presumably to top up their pensions, I am left wondering what the hell are they doing with it.

      Rubbish collections, tick, maintaining roads and overgrown verges, nowt, providing care for the elderly, nowt, ensuring the provision of dental services, nowt, ensuring the provision of doctor consultations, nowt, repairing dangerous potholes in road surfaces, nowt, causing farmers tractors and massive machinery to wheel wash rather than spreading flinty mud all over the roads, nowt.

      This country under faux Tories is becoming an absolute shithole. I urge everyone never to vote for Tories, Labour, Liberals and Green candidates ever again.

      1. We desperately need an alternative party for which we might vote. Yes, there are ‘Reclaim’, ‘Reform’ and ‘For Britain’ but all they will succeed in doing, as separate parties, is split the votes and allow more of the same to continue on their ruinous path.

        Can’t you three parties see that NOW is the time to compromise and unite as one forceful party to get the UK back on track?

        1. Regretfully, these parties are showcases for the top folk’s egos, Tom, not attempts to fix the broken politics in the UK. So, if they merge, then someone is going to have to be second fiddle, and their overweening pride prevents that.
          I wish it were different.

      2. The way things are going there will be a reduction in taxpayers , so what will they do then.

        We are really entering into a terrible state where basic services are threadbare , none one cares, and once upon a time one knew all the major facilitators on the County council, everyone is faceless and nameless now .

        That is a very major reset , because even parish councils find it difficult to access even the planners for site visits etc .

        Hearsay is , when consultations arrive and arise , planners who move around from great connurbations to rural , have no empathy with local problems , take for example increased traffic through villages etc , their comment is , well if you were in a big city , you would soon have something to moan about !

      1. You are most welcome Elsie, good music of all genres ( except Rap, Techno-Funk, Arabic & Turkish ) is one of my pleasures in life & I like sharing it with other folks who appreciate it on here!

  147. Can any of our American or Canadian chums on here explain what Joe Biden used as an angry response…The five day rule…?

  153. South African Secession Movement Gains Momentumhttps://www.amren.com/blog/2021/08/south-african-secession-movement-gains-momentum/

      1. Ramaphosa’s got bigger problems than Western Cape and Western Cape residents are well armed. That said, I do agree with your final point

  154. posting verbatim from an Aus contact connected to Brit military, former intel officer:

    “British evacuation commander in Kabul Vice Admiral Ben Key has been locked out of all negotiations between the US CENTCOM staff and Taliban commanders in Kabul. The 82nd Airborne were all set to do an opposed jump into Bagram Airbase which is easily defendable and which would have assured arriving and departing aircraft safe approaches and departures. The decision to cancel the operational jump to secure Bagram was made by CENTCOM acting alone, based on White House instructions. This allows only arrivals and departures from Kabul International Airport which is undependable threatened and is totally surrounded by Taliban who are also running checkpoints throughout the city.

    The British military are forced to make up their own rules on the spot because they have been totally cut off from any US negotiations with the Taliban. US military commanders and British commanders have been having heated words in front of their troops. The OC of Brit 2 Para had a ‘stand up’ with the CO 2 star of the 82nd Airborne and the US General was shouted down by a VERY irate 2 Para Major, and the general’s mother’s linage was called into question. 2 Para are taking it on themselves to do street patrols to safe houses to collect Brit, Afghan staffers and any foreign nationals they come across and escort them to the airport. 2 Para are engaging in ‘snatches’ across the perimeter wire as well, by just threatening and pushing past Taliban and then surrounding and escorting refugees past the Taliban check points and into the airport.Several Taliban have challenged 2 Para patrols on escort duty away from the airport, and shots were fired by 2 Para. Hostility is arising between 2 Para and US 82nd Airborne military, especially around the Northern Gate to the Airport. US 82nd soldiers and NCOs want to join 2 Para on their escort patrols, but 82nd Airborne Officers are preventing this from happening. The lack of all
    communications from 82nd Officers is causing tensions to rise around the Northern Gate.

    The main problem is that the Taliban control all access to the Airport approaches and foreign and Afghans can’t get past unless they are escorted by 2 Para. Because the CENTCOM refuses to communicate with any allies on the ground results in wasted flights leaving almost empty. The British Evacuation Commander Vice Admiral Ben Key, asked that any spare space on aircraft be allocated to Brit and Afghans, yet the Luftwaffe and the RAAF left with lots of space left aboard and there was no communications between the Germans or Australians back to the Brits before these aircraft left … in the German case EMPTY and in the Australian case just a c-130 just a third full. Local foreign national military commanders managing this operation need to get sacked and replaced by competent officers. Currently only the Brits seem to have a handle on the situation but Vice Admiral Ben Key and 2 Para are operating in an information vacuum, thanks to CENTCOM’s policy of ‘no talkies’. The White House decision to cut and run was enacted on 5 July whilst Gen Miller was still in command of Bagram Airbase.

    The Taliban certainly knew the plan as the looters arrived BEFORE the Afghans knew when they turned up for work on the Monday morning and found that the US had all disappeared.”

    The solar plexus punch https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/bryan-preston/2021/08/18/the-general-who-recommended-abandoning-bagram-air-base-has-already-left-afghanistan-hm-n1470790

    1. What a surprise. 2Para sorting the problem in their own way.
      Airborne Initiative, I believe it’s called. Good lads, all of them.
      :-D)

      1. mng obl. Indeed, if the above gets out into wider MSM there’ll be a D Notice slapped immediately. It puts into context all the waffle yday in HoC

      1. giving the “emotive perspective” not the real context, as expected. Posted the latest Tucker clip above, it’ll resonate as same concerns over illegal economic gimmegrants Stateside as in UK. The mask is slipping further

        1. Good thing Firstborn received his AR his week, and took it for testing and sighting-in yesterday…

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