Thursday 20 August: Muslims must counter the perverted dogmas that drove the Taliban to victory 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/2021/08/18/letters-muslims-must-counter-perverted-dogmas-drove-taliban/

775 thoughts on “Thursday 20 August: Muslims must counter the perverted dogmas that drove the Taliban to victory in Afghanistan”

    3. And bloody right too. There was none of that infernal technology in the seventh century (where that lot belong).

      There were no Kalashnikov AK-47s either, but, ho-hum.

  3. Nowhere to hide for Boris Johnson in Commons autopsy of Afghanistan failure. 19 August 2021.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/740b1a17b16cfdca08402a585742e36458801187782c98caeca3b422f0754d4e.jpg

    A Chamber packed with high emotion and anger over the fall of Kabul meant there was no room for any talk on how to move forward.

    Morning everyone. This debate had nothing to do with Afghanistan. How could it? That decision was taken elsewhere and is over and done with apart from the virtue signalling over the “refugees”. It was instead an exercise in the self-promotion of empty shirts. An attempt to add gravitas and credibility to people who possess neither; who grasped this moment in the media sun to posture as statesmen and leaders. Its truly vapid nature is exemplified by the Prime Ministers haircut, a publicity gimmick, a logo, that did he wish could be corrected with a comb in one minute. A carefully coiffeured chaotic peruke as fake as himself and his companions in this House of Hypocrites and Traitors!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/08/18/commons-debate-afghanistan-miserable-autopsy-agreement-concrete/

    3. “It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonored by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice. Ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government. Ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money.

      Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess?

      Ye have no more religion than my horse. Gold is your God. Which of you have not bartered your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth?

      Ye sordid prostitutes have you not defiled this sacred place, and turned the Lord’s temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral principles and wicked practices?

      Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation. You were deputed here by the people to get grievances redressed, are yourselves become the greatest grievance.

      Your country therefore calls upon me to cleanse this Augean stable, by putting a final period to your iniquitous proceedings in this House; and which by God’s help, and the strength he has given me, I am now come to do.

      I command ye therefore, upon the peril of your lives, to depart immediately out of this place.

      Go, get you out! Make haste! Ye venal slaves be gone! So! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors.

      In the name of God, go!”

      2. 336942+ up ticks,
        Anne,
        This feeling has been rife for decades but the majority STILL want more of the same as seen via the polling booth results.

    4. Richmal Crompton’s William Brown had the same haircut as Boris Johnson – endearing in child of 11 but horrible in an adult.

      When our boys were 4 or 5 years old they behaved like 4 or 5 year olds and we thought they were delightful. However if they behaved like 4 or 5 year olds after puberty we thought they were being odious.

      Same thing with most people who refuse to grow up.

    1. Well what difference does 48 hours matter? A splatted AfGaffi is a splatted AfGaffi; another couple of days baking hard onto the tarmac really doesn’t matter.
      Maybe they were trying to find the front door of the White House.

  6. Islington Wine Cellar more “literary virtue signalling” :

    SIR – The politico-military strategy of the West could clearly not match the ideological fervour of the Taliban fanatics. Instead of the Western nations wasting trillions of dollars in a forlorn physical campaign, just a fraction of that money would have been better spent exposing the toxic theology of the Taliban.

    Since the new regime in Kabul is a brazen offshoot of Deobandi and Wahhabi sectarianism (reliant on the toxic triad of non-Koranic sources, hadith, sharia and fatwas), these twisted manifestations of Islam could have been neutered over the past 20 years.

    Had Britain and America backed them, progressive Muslim intellectuals and scholars could have decisively countered the Taliban’s poisonous propaganda of female servitude, oppression of minorities and other non-Koranic doctrines.

    The thousands of manufactured hadith are just the reputed sayings of the Prophet Mohammed, compiled 300 years after his death. The so-called sharia is a concoction of medieval opinion masquerading as divine law. Fatwas are purely the personal views of clerics, not religious rulings.

    The pragmatic option for right-thinking Muslims around the world is to promote Koranic Islam through transcendent scriptural theology, highlighting the blatant flaws in the Taliban’s perverted dogmas and their draconian execution.

    Dr Taj Hargey
    Provost, Oxford Institute for British Islam
    Oxford

    SIR – The West may have a skewed perception that most Afghans are appalled at the departure of American and British forces and terrified of the Taliban.

    In 2000, when the Taliban were last in power, a small group hijacked an internal Afghan Airlines flight that eventually arrived at Stansted.

    Most of the passengers were typical Afghans, businessmen and families who had been going about their legitimate affairs within the country. Eventually the principal hijackers surrendered. The initial information was that the majority of those on board did not wish to return to Afghanistan. I was responsible for verifying this.

    Soon it became apparent to my team that there had been intimidation. A minority of the passengers had been involved with the hijackers and the others, terrorised during the hijacking, and still fearful, meekly confirmed the wish, expressed on their behalf, to stay.

    Once we arranged segregation, the balance shifted and the majority, including the crew, were keen to return home to Afghanistan. When their wishes had been independently confirmed, they left on a flight from Brize Norton. These typical Afghans evidently did not fear the Taliban and happily returned to their daily lives.

    This may be reflected in Afghanistan today. A significant minority – a metropolitan, Westernised elite – may rightly fear that their way of life will change and would leave if they could, but the majority of the population, particularly in the countryside, may feel unmoved and, free from the consequences of conflict, will get on with their lives.

    William Fleming
    Frimley, Surrey

    SIR – I’ll believe the Taliban’s assurances when people start clambering over barbed wire to get into Afghanistan.

    Keith Macpherson
    Clevedon, Somerset

    SIR – Well, goodbye Taiwan and Ukraine. Thanks, Mr President.

    David Wirrich
    Torquay, Devon

    SIR – How many of those criticising as inadequate the Government’s plans for accepting Afghan refugees are proposing to offer accommodation in their homes to refugees or to any of the 250,000 already homeless in Britain?

    Steve Davies
    Catbrook, Monmouthshire

    SIR – I am not sure what the Commons debate on Afghanistan achieved. However, it was refreshing to see the House packed with MPs, without social distancing and (mostly) maskless. I hope that this is a sign of a return to normality at Westminster and an example to the country at large.

    John Waine
    Nuneaton, Warwickshire

    SIR – Next time America invites us to join them invading another country, the prime minister in power should do what Harold Wilson did in 1967 and say: “No, we will not be joining you.”

    David Conway
    Theydon Bois, Essex

    SIR – Harold Macmillan may have given a general rule never to invade Afghanistan (Letters, August 17). He certainly had a memorable simile for the country: “Afghanistan rather resembles Clapham Junction. It is a useful place from where to go everywhere else, but nobody actually wants to stay there.”

    Patrick Williams
    Warehorne, Kent

    SIR – The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have been left “speechless” by the situation in Afghanistan (report, August 18). If only!

    Christina Daniels
    Market Harborough, Leicestershire

    Pension clawback

    SIR – You report that although average wage increases are at 7.4 per cent, pensioners are unlikely to benefit from the same rises.

    Cheap mortgages help the young and fuel the house-price boom, while the old suffer from low interest rates, low annuity rates and one of the lowest state pensions in Europe. Is this fair?

    Simon Davison
    Cardiff

    Leadership on Covid

    SIR – We have just arrived in France having shown our vaccination certificates at the border. No tests were needed as we are double-jabbed.

    To regain entry to the UK we will need to pay for a test in France before we travel and another after we arrive.

    Having been at the forefront of the global vaccination drive, our Government’s apparent lack of confidence in our vaccinations, and its inability to reap the economic benefits of a fully vaccinated workforce, suggest that the Conservative Party and the country might benefit from a refreshed leadership team.

    Robert Stratton-Brown
    Midhurst, West Sussex

    Taxation and rationing to stop climate change

    SIR – There is only one way to address the horrors of climate change (Letters, August 11). We must live far more simply and vastly reduce our carbon footprint.

    Current national statements of intent carry no enforceable commitment. The way forward is to establish the annual carbon footprint for every nation and every individual. Our world total of 50 billion tons per annum could be cut to one tenth of that through taxation and rationing. This would be a vast but viable course of action; it would be cheap and leave the poor untouched.

    The alternative could be the end of humans and many other species.

    William Chaytor
    Croft, North Yorkshire

    SIR – Until the ascension of the climate-warming thesis, civilisation was based around what was best for the human race – a light bulb that illuminated immediately; a car that could drive 700 miles without refuelling; instant heat in your home, throughout the house; a cosy coal fire for those long winter evenings; large windows to let in the light.

    All these benefits are being taken away. There are some who will never be able to afford expensive green alternatives. They will be back to heating their rooms with two-bar electric fires, and maybe burning old wood in the hearth to keep warm. Ice on the inside of the windows, anyone?

    David Henderson
    East Molesey, Surrey

    Driving licence crisis

    SIR – At least I am not the only person having problems with the DVLA (Letters, August 18).

    I reapplied for my licence in January and I am still waiting. As others have said, you cannot contact the DVLA by phone, email or chatline.

    I have written to both my MP and Grant Shapps, the Secretary of State for Transport. How many people have to complain before something is done?

    Sara Donovan
    West Wickham, Kent

    Olympic spectacle

    SIR – Squash should return to the Olympics (Letters, August 17). It would be a thrilling, elegant spectacle, combining precision, fitness and wile with sportsmanship. Just as long as the camera can actually see the ball …

    Graham Clifton
    Kingston upon Thames, Surrey

    Meddling with Puccini’s Madam Butterfly

    SIR – I was disappointed to see (report, August 18) that Welsh National Opera (WNO) has money to waste on peripheral and irrelevant activities such as a talk by a Left-wing academic on how Britain is still shaped by its past in relation to imperialism.

    Pinkerton, the leading male role in Puccini’s Madam Butterfly, is a lieutenant in the US navy, and the supporting male role (Sharpless) is the American consul in Nagasaki.

    This is not the first time that WNO has tinkered with this opera. In the late 1980s, when the libretto was still in copyright, the music publisher Ricordi threatened WNO with legal proceedings to ensure it followed the published libretto.

    I recall attending a farcical performance in Liverpool in which the final act was played twice, once with the Ricordi version and once with WNO’s revised version, with an interval between the two. Many people refused to stay for both versions.

    As Puccini died before completing the work, altering the final act in this way was arguably more justifiable than now using the opera “to take a swipe at the British Empire”, as the historian Dr Zareer Masani succinctly puts it.

    Ann O’Brien
    Leeds, West Yorkshire

    This beat clapping

    SIR – Years ago, at the Aldeburgh Festival, I went to a Rostropovich concert of Bach cello suites in a Suffolk church. Before the concert, the vicar reminded us we were in a house of God, so applause would be inappropriate (Letters, August 13).

    At the end, after a few moments of stillness, the audience stood as one in silent tribute to the great man. It said so much more than applause.

    Ann Warne
    Cheltenham, Gloucestershire

    First-class service

    SIR – If the Royal Mail discontinues Saturday deliveries, will its staff stop accepting first-class items on a Friday?

    Chris Barmby
    Tonbridge, Kent

  7. ‘Morning, Peeps.

    SIR – The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have been left “speechless” by the situation in Afghanistan (report, August 18). If only!

    Christina Daniels
    Market Harborough, Leicestershire

    Oh dear, this should have Ginge and Whinge consulting their legal team in the hope of shaming the writer and publisher of such a defamatory comment…

    A rare example of the Letters Editor displaying what may be a sense of humour?

    1. It certainly does Bill, despite the best efforts of those who infest the House of Clowns.

    2. It certainly does Bill, despite the best efforts of those who infest the House of Clowns.

  9. SIR – The politico-military strategy of the West could clearly not match the ideological fervour of the Taliban fanatics. Instead of the Western nations wasting trillions of dollars in a forlorn physical campaign, just a fraction of that money would have been better spent exposing the toxic theology of the Taliban.

    Since the new regime in Kabul is a brazen offshoot of Deobandi and Wahhabi sectarianism (reliant on the toxic triad of non-Koranic sources, hadith, sharia and fatwas), these twisted manifestations of Islam could have been neutered over the past 20 years.

    Had Britain and America backed them, progressive Muslim intellectuals and scholars could have decisively countered the Taliban’s poisonous propaganda of female servitude, oppression of minorities and other non-Koranic doctrines.

    The thousands of manufactured hadith are just the reputed sayings of the Prophet Mohammed, compiled 300 years after his death. The so-called sharia is a concoction of medieval opinion masquerading as divine law. Fatwas are purely the personal views of clerics, not religious rulings.

    The pragmatic option for right-thinking Muslims around the world is to promote Koranic Islam through transcendent scriptural theology, highlighting the blatant flaws in the Taliban’s perverted dogmas and their draconian execution.

    Dr Taj Hargey
    Provost, Oxford Institute for British Islam
    Oxford

    You ‘avin’ a larf, Dr Hargey?

      1. I’d take him more seriously when he arranges a march by 10,000 progressive Muslim intellectuals through the streets of London demanding an end to slammer terror and oppression.

    3. For a long time, with letters and articles in the DT, Mr Hargey presented himself as that almost mythical being, the moderate Muslim prepared to stand against the mad mullahs. It seems he’s slipping…

  11. Decadence and hubris have finally brought down the American Empire. 19 August 2021.

    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.

    The United States is indeed in disarray but it is still the richest and most powerful State on the planet. If history follows its invariable pattern the US will emerge from this chaos as a Militarised State. How quickly this might take place is unforeseeable but one suspects that given the level of political incompetence and internal rivalry four or five years is not an unreasonable scenario.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/08/18/witnessing-collapse-american-empire/b

    1. Just like they messsed up the arrangements after the WW2. The thought they could trust Stalin etc. They created the cold war.

      1. the corporates know exactly what they’re doing. Now it’s being applied to “Western world” removing deomcracy / political instruments

    2. There is extra irony in that the foundation of the USA was the result of a wish for religious freedom; a rejection of a homogenised European culture.

      1. What is it for? They must have had something in mind. Or are they run by the same breed of myopic lunatics that run the UK?

          1. They have been managing that for centuries. Would they destroy their captive hotel industry?

  13. 336942+ up ticks,
    Behold, a bloody great big black political pot calling out another bloody great big political black pot, it would be so enjoyable laughable but for the fact decent peoples WILL die due to the dangerously inept politico’s actions.

    Dt,
    Parliament holds Joe Biden in contempt over Afghanistan
    MPs and peers unite to condemn ‘dishonour’ of US president’s withdrawal and his criticism of Afghan troops left behind to face Taliban

    Heavy approaching chaff warning eyes back to the South East and potential troop movements.

      1. 336942+ up ticks,
        Morning Anne,
        A level playing field would be both johnson / biden joined by sucking each others thumbs in flight,titled
        …………….Dangerous, treacherous suckers.

  14. And … talking of intelligence.
    When it visits the theatre, apparently the covid virus not only knows when neurotic nellies are standing up or sitting down, it also know whether the masked seated ones are eating an ice cream or merely staring blankly at their phones.

  15. ‘Morning again.

    Interesting article. Personally I would modify the summary to ‘There’s a huge problem with the Government’.

    There’s a huge problem with the Government’s hydrogen strategy

    Hydrogen won’t just lead to higher energy bills, it could even increase greenhouse gas emissions

    ROSS CLARK
    18 August 2021 • 12:34pm

    If only someone drilling in the North Sea could accidentally tap into a vast and previously unknown source of naturally-occurring free hydrogen. Then we really would have a hydrogen strategy. But alas, the chances of that are next to nil. What is almost certain is that the hydrogen strategy announced by the government yesterday will lead to consumers paying much higher prices for energy – and could even increase greenhouse gas emissions.

    It is easy to see why the government is so fixated on hydrogen. Potentially, it offers a solution to some of the most hard-to-decarbonise parts of the economy: heavy goods vehicles, aviation, steel-production and home-heating. If we could swap gas boilers for hydrogen-powered ones it would obviate the need for all those heat pumps at £10,000 a time (plus another £10,000 or more to insulate older properties to make them suitable for heat pumps). With the government’s self-imposed net zero target of 2050 fast closing-in and the prospect of some very angry voters balking at the cost of decarbonising their homes, hydrogen could be a godsend – which is why the government wants to make all new domestic boilers hydrogen compatible by 2026.

    But hang on a minute. While burning hydrogen itself produces no greenhouse gas emissions, the hydrogen first needs to be manufactured – and that is where the problems lie. At the moment, all but a small fraction of hydrogen produced globally (which is mostly used in industrial processes) is produced from fossil fuels, producing large clouds of CO2. That, of course, defeats the object when you are trying to deliver green energy. That is why the government wants to underwrite £4 billion worth of private sector development into alternative methods of manufacturing hydrogen: either ‘green’ hydrogen, which is produced via electrolysis of water, or ‘blue’ hydrogen, which is produced from natural gas, but with carbon capture and storage used to try to grab the carbon emissions and pump them underground, where we might hope they will stay for ever after.

    While green hydrogen would be preferable, it is also far more expensive. Yesterday’s hydrogen strategy puts the current estimated cost of producing it at £197 per MWh. By contrast, the average gas-user in Britain is currently paying around £40 per MWh – and that is a retail price, including taxes and the cost of delivering the gas to your home. The cost of green hydrogen ought to come down – hopefully – as the technology is improved and scaled-up, yet the government’s hydrogen strategy is still working on the assumption that it will cost £71 per MWh (at current prices) even in 2050.

    That is why the strategy is also looking to blue hydrogen, the cost of producing which it currently puts at £62 per MWh. But there are two large flies in this ointment. Firstly, blue hydrogen is always necessarily going to be more expensive than natural gas – if you are going to manufacture a fuel from a fuel the end result cannot be cheaper than simply burning the source fuel. Add in the energy consumption of the carbon capture process itself and we are going to end up consuming significantly extra gas to produce the same energy.

    Secondly, the whole process might not even cut greenhouse gas emissions. A study by Cornell University published in the journal Energy Science and Engineering last week calculated that greenhouse gas emissions from blue hydrogen could be 20 percent higher than from simply burning gas – the main reason for this being fugitive methane emissions and increased gas consumption.

    This is before we even get to the tricky issue of whether captured carbon dioxide really can be relied upon to remain underground for eternity. If it leaks out it would defeat the object, and could even be dangerous if, as happened naturally from subterranean deposits of CO2 beneath Lake Nyos in Cameroon in 1986 – which bubbled up and killed 1746 people.

    Technology may advance, and hopefully it will, but there is nothing in the government’s hydrogen strategy to give any confidence that it will help us reach net zero emissions in just 29 years time – certainly not without imposing punitive costs on the economy.

    One of the many hostile comments:

    Martin McFly
    18 Aug 2021 1:31PM
    What I have noticed over the last year (and this is not just the UK but globally) is that we are being led by the most idiotic and ridiculous people the species can produce.

    These people are total morons, without exception and we genuinely need to start doing mandatory intelligence tests before allowing them anywhere near the controls of this country.

    At the end of the day we do not allow people to drive cars without a licence, why are we letting people run countries without a brain?

    Spot on, Martin McFly!

    1. It is easy to see why the government is so fixated on hydrogen.

      Yes it is! The bribes obviously match HS2 levels!

      1. 336942+ up ticks,
        Morning AS,
        Lest we forget, the tongue of the pillow whisperer is a force to behold.

    2. ‘Morning, Hugh.

      It is always encouraging to discover that there are other commentators (such as Marty McFly here) who share my thought patterns on the cretins who are in charge of this world.

      1. You/we are not alone! Reading the ‘comments’ on this subject suggests that similar views are widespread, but we won’t make any progress until the usual suspects – BBC, Grauniad etc – are silenced, so probably not in our lifetime. Meanwhile Fat Blair just chunters on with his growing list of ridiculous (and impossible) targets…

        ‘Morning Grizz.

    3. “Green hydrogen” is produced by electrolysing water. Water is abundant, so the problem is with the electricity and the storage of the hydrogen (and the by-product oxygen) so produced. The technology is benign, but the cost isn’t.

      At the moment, it is not cost-effective to divert electricity to hydrogen production, except when surplus electricity is being generated – for example on a sunny day in summer or during a stormy night. Then, it makes complete sense to electrolyse water and have some bottles of energy ready for future use when the sun stops shining and the wind stops blowing.

      As for cost, how much to build a zil lane railway over the Chilterns?

  18. The Taliban pledged to be ‘inclusive’ for one reason and one reason only – to troll the West

    A few tweets from political leaders won’t change what’s happening in Afghanistan, nor will it stop them laughing at our helpless impotence

    MICHAEL DEACON – PARLIAMENTARY SKETCHWRITER
    18 August 2021 • 7:00pm

    Journalists usually call this type of quote a marmalade-dropper. But this one was an outright plate-shatterer, a bowl-breaker, an upturner of the entire breakfast table. On Sky News yesterday morning, Kay Burley was asking General Sir Nick Carter about Afghanistan. And during the interview, the Chief of the Defence Staff made the following claim about the Taliban.

    “They want,” he said, “an Afghanistan that is inclusive for all.”

    Ms Burley did a double-take so sudden she almost gave herself whiplash.

    “Except women,” she retorted.

    Yet General Sir Nick stood his ground.

    “Well, again, I think we have to wait and see,” he said. “I think you have to listen to what they’re saying at the moment… I do think they have changed. I think they recognise that over the course of the last 20 years Afghanistan has evolved, and they recognise the fundamental role that women have played in that evolution…”
    https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1427899515282116612?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1427899515282116612%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.telegraph.co.uk%2Fcolumnists%2F2021%2F08%2F18%2Ftaliban-pledged-inclusive-one-reason-one-reason-troll-west%2F

    Those were his words. Now, I say the following in all due deference to General Sir Nick. After all, he knows a lot more about Afghanistan than I do. And I’m aware that the Taliban has indeed promised to form a government that is “open and inclusive”. In a televised press conference from Kabul on Tuesday, its official spokesman also claimed that women “are a very important part of our society” and that the Taliban “recognises the rights of women that Islam gives them”.

    So, as General Sir Nick recommends, I certainly am listening to what they’re saying at the moment. I do hope he will forgive me, however, if I politely venture to suggest that this horde of murderous, rifle-toting psychopaths might not necessarily be telling the truth. Indeed, if it doesn’t sound too dreadfully cynical of me, I might even suggest that they’re only saying all this stuff to make fun of us. To troll the West, to deride our liberal sensibilities and to emphasise our helpless impotence in the face of what they’ve just done and are about to do.

    I mean, come on. “Inclusive”? These people are laughing at us. It’s the language of parody. They’re sending up the UN Security Council’s pitiful plea for them to be “inclusive and representative”. The whole point of the Taliban is that they’re not “inclusive and representative”. Lovely though it would be to think that they’ve spent the past 18 years reading The Guardian and attending remote mountain seminars on intersectional feminism, I’m sorry to confess that I have my doubts. These people are no more likely to safeguard women’s rights than they are to hand out free subscriptions to Charlie Hebdo.

    So any such claim is patently their idea of a joke. God knows how they’ll try to mock us next. Perhaps a spokesman will solemnly announce that, like any responsible modern employer, the Taliban is a proud champion of diversity and, as a result, all terror cells will be required to undergo a course of unconscious bias training.

    “At the Taliban, we are passionate about investment in people, mental health awareness and dignity in the workplace,” the Taliban’s director of human resources will declare. “We therefore condemn all prejudice against infidel dogs, Zionist devils and dirty kaffir. In the newly inclusive Afghanistan, we are committed to ensuring that all heretics, heathens and hated unbelievers face no discrimination on their path to eternal hellfire.”

    After that, perhaps they’ll earnestly pledge that from now on any missile attacks they launch will be carbon neutral and reassure us that, if they acquire a hydrogen bomb, it will rely on eco-friendly green hydrogen, rather than the more contentious blue hydrogen, which a recent American study suggests may be up to 20 per cent more damaging to the environment than fossil gas. In addition, maybe they’ll promise that public executions will have full disability access, suicide bombers will be entitled to work from home and the logo of the Stonewall Workplace Equality Index will be proudly emblazoned on the side of every rocket launcher.

    None of that would be any more grotesque than their promise to be “inclusive”. And yet, if the Taliban want to carry on trolling the West in this manner, they doubtless can. After all, there’s nothing to stop them. So far, they appear to be curiously unfazed by Western leaders issuing strongly worded tweets about how “the world is watching”. The way things are going, I fear that not even an Early Day Motion signed by Jeremy Corbyn would be enough to deter them.

    Still, you never know. Perhaps my cynicism will prove to have been grossly unfounded. Perhaps the Taliban really have “changed”, and have come to value Western ideals of gender equality. Perhaps this Christmas’s big stocking-filler will be the Taliban Guide to Mindfulness.

    Just between ourselves, though, I’m not holding out much hope.

      1. Is he developing horrible sores and ulcers in his mouth by pressing his tongue too hard and too often against the inside of his cheek?

      2. My late father (KRRC) would be horrified by this uniformed wokeist and would no doubt be bombarding the DT with letters, most of which would be quite unprintable.

    3. Indeed, if it doesn’t sound too dreadfully cynical of me, I might even suggest that they’re only saying all this stuff to make fun of us.

      The Taliban have indeed, like all Muslims, learned the lingo of Cultural Marxism. After all what is Islamophobia but a parody of Anti-Semitism? Our so called leaders love this stuff, imitation being the finest form of flattery! This does not mean that we should demonise the new rulers of Afghanistan. They are going to create an Islamic State which is in accord with both their History and Religion. We should simply deal with it since we cannot change it The one we need to look out for is the European Caliphate! Eagerly aided and advanced by our elites.

    4. Indeed, if it doesn’t sound too dreadfully cynical of me, I might even suggest that they’re only saying all this stuff to make fun of us.

      The Taliban have indeed, like all Muslims, learned the lingo of Cultural Marxism. After all what is Islamophobia but a parody of Anti-Semitism? Our so called leaders love this stuff imitation being the finest form of flattery! This does not mean that we should demonise the new rulers of Afghanistan. They are going to create an Islamic State which is in accord with both their History and Religion. We should simply deal with it since we cannot change it The one we need to look out for is the European Caliphate! Eagerly aided and advanced by our elites.

    5. Indeed, if it doesn’t sound too dreadfully cynical of me, I might even suggest that they’re only saying all this stuff to make fun of us.

      The Taliban have indeed, like all Muslims, learned the lingo of Cultural Marxism. After all what is Islamophobia but a parody of Anti-Semitism? Our so called leaders love this stuff imitation being the finest form of flattery! This does not mean that we should demonise the new rulers of Afghanistan. They are going to create an Islamic State which is in accord with both their History and Religion. We should simply deal with it since we cannot change it The one we need to look out for is the European Caliphate! Eagerly aided and advanced by our elites.

    8. Excellent column, thanks for posting C1.

      On the radio overnight I heard that proposed funding of about £400m for Afghanistan from some world body or other has been cancelled in view of the Taliban Takeover. I wonder how long that will last when they revert to type and frighten the shit out of that organisation?

    9. Or perhaps the Taliban is practising that well-known islamic tactic of taqiyya and kitman. Islam doesn’t give women rights, does it?

  19. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ed2a1e2d9f20f7ee6acb54ee6677bf40880853e95d18750ba5f2a02f3669f6a9.png Even if “climate change” — as hysterically described by most commentators today — were a reality, it will not be changed by humans reducing their “carbon footprint” (another anthem of the mass hysteria).

    The planet will only be saved when humans stop breeding and increasing their self-imposed hegemony over all other life forms. Seven point nine billion (and rapidly increasing) members of one irresponsible species is what is killing off the planet. The sooner that you, and your idiotic ilk, finally comprehend this unassailable fact, then it will still be much too late to save the species and every other living entity in what was once a viable and thriving biodiversity.

      1. That’s much more polite than what I was about to type! William Chaytor seems to be, at best, extremely gullible!

        1. Indeed. Might struggle a bit imposing an “annual carbon footprint” on the Taliban, let alone the Chinese Communist Party or Jair Bolsonaro’s gangs. Who would stop Indian peasants lighting their stoves with holy cowpats?

    2. I have no objection to living more simply. The idiotic approach to “austerity” by build build building ever more prestigious railways and widening our roads to make lebensraum for even wider and taller Chelsea tractors cannot go on. Why cannot living simply but comfortably be made a virtue among the celeb-apeing classes?

      I do worry though that we are substituting commonsense with regulation, which oppresses the sensible and stops people doing the right thing, while the true culprits wlll always find legal ways to get round the regulations. So many examples, I cannot begin to list them all.

      I did drive through a red light the other day – one that was put up, paid for by my Council Tax without my consent, in a fairly quiet street. I was turning left and there was nobody about. Even so, that light only turns green when there is traffic coming straight at me, and clearly hasn’t been thought out by the well-remunerated experts that run the Highways Department at my expense.

      “Safeguarding” is another clear example that has deprived pretty well everyone now under 25 of benign engagement with adult society, while leaving them wide open to the foul influences of woke teachers, zealous religion and corporate trickery.

      And unlike many of the commenters here, I do think there are serious repercussions against the planet’s capacity to sustain life from nearly 8 billion aspiring and rapacious humans. Major decline in biodiversity has been going on since the 1970s, and if anything has been underestimated by the scientists.

      1. Who are these many commenters? My reading of the mood is that all are in accord about the damage that the species does to the environment but stop short at the climate change/fossil fuel hysteria.

        1. An attack on plastic pollution and waste would make more sense than forcing us all to change our heating systems and cars.

          1. Those changes would mean undoing the entire WEEE nonsense foisted on us by the EU. They mean unpicking the entire green agenda.

            The uproar from the Left would be horrific, even though it’s the necessary thing to do.

        2. Anyone that lumps in “Green Crap” (a phrase coined by George Osborne) with wokery, lumping environmentalists in with gender and race pushers, using the generic term “lefties” or “liberals”.

          I actually believe that humanity is disrupting the world’s climate, but argue that the worst consequence is not so much natural (since nature adapts, even if not terribly gently), but in terms of the effects on civilisations of mass migrations.

          I also argue that the remedies being proposed are not thought out properly and founded more on commercial expediency than on finding effective solutions, and measures now being proposed are all too often profoundly counterproductive, and spun on the stupid using effective PR and self-assurance.

          1. Anyone that lumps in “Green Crap” (a phrase coined by George Osborne) with wokery, lumping environmentalists in with gender and race pushers, using the generic term “lefties” or “liberals”.

            These few are not many.

            I actually believe that humanity is disrupting the world’s climate

            I don’t. The many on here don’t.

          2. King Canute showed that he could not reverse the tide. To think we can control the climate is sheer human arrogance. As the man who measured his measures put it:

            “But man, proud man,
            Dress’d in a little brief authority,
            Most ignorant of what he’s most assur’d—
            His glassy essence—like an angry ape
            Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
            As makes the angels weep …..”

          3. I actually believe know that burgeoning, unstoppable humanity is destroying the planet’s biodiversity (which is far worse than climate fluctuations). Its unfettered profligacy is also destroying the environment, and ensuring that there will be less and less capacity for safely disposing its ever-growing mountain of waste. This impacts upon the sources of food production and potable water required to sustain this ever-growing tsunami of people.

            This is the problem that ought to be worrying people but, as is the ingrained habit of the species, hiding its head in the sand in the hope that it will all go away is the most intellectual gambit it can think of.

          4. I agree in most parts, Grizzly. There are too many people – that’s modern medicine for you. We’ve got ahead of ourselves technologically.

            We do need to recycle, but this is an expensive, energy intensive approach and the last thing government wants is to actually make a difference. Many times water companies have asked to build reservoirs and each time refused under EU regulation. Now we’re free of that, we could. Will we? Not a chance. Big state is wedded to the Left wing idiocy

            On profligacy – let’s call it consumption – we need that for jobs. Jobs create wealth. Wealth creates value, value improves our standard of living.

          5. “On profligacy — let’s call it consumption — we need that for jobs. Jobs create wealth. Wealth creates value, value improves our standard of living.”

            No doubt; however, when the unregulated consumption of just one self-possessed species threatens all other life forms (as has been doing for some time now) then that particular selfish species’ own destruction is assured.

            When I was born, a mere 70 years ago, the population of the planet was 2·5 billion and even that was five times more than was healthy for the planet. Now it has more than tripled, within my microscopic lifespan. Mankind’s greed, unfettered idiocy and complete disregard for nature simply cannot go on. Without a balanced biodiversity we are doomed, and sooner than you think. That standard of living that we all hanker for will disappear in a puff of smoke.

          6. No, but it’s one of those hurrah statements where disagreement has you labelled as a bad person. Who’d a thought that facts, evidence and data would be required before decisions were made?

      2. The ‘free right (left for us) turn’ is the only good thing we should adopt from America.

      1. Life on a universal basic income to spend as you will. All consumption will be taxed.

        You are allocated a certain number of years to live, some of which you can trade on world markets giving you a shorter but much more comfortable life.

        Having babies reduces your allotted span. DNA tests will ascertain paternity so that there is equality between men and women.

    5. Tell you what Mr Chaytor, you do enough for all of us, so you first. What’s that? You can’t work? Oh, diddums. I’m sorry. The department for wasting time and making tea uses a lot of energy, so won’t be helping you. Your house? Ohh, loads of carbon there. No more of that.

      Oh, and taxes. Yes. Lots of taxes. In fact, at 150%. Ye, we’ll take your savings as well. You’re ill? From drinking polluted water? Shame, how awful. But no healthcare for you. Lots of carbon in healthcare.

      Stupid fecker. The end of humanity will come about because of people like you.

    6. Our “50 billion tons per annum” of what, William Chaytor? Charcoal? Diamonds? Coal? That is what carbon is.

      If you are talking about carbon dioxide (CO₂), a light, colourless, odourless gas compound, then how do you weigh that, let alone assume there are 50 billion tons of it being spewed all over the planet every year?

      Brain dead doesn’t even start to describe you.

  20. Nigel Farage on his GBNews programme last night identified a matter which may have been a blunder by Biden. the USA discovered a major source of lithium in Afghanistan. There is also a major source of copper which the Chinese are interested in. Lithium is a major requirement for EV vehicles and China is snapping up sources of Lithium throughout the world. Biden may have thrown away this Afghan source of lithium which may be needed by the USA in future. The Chinese will most probably negotiate with the Taliban to have access to the lithium.
    As NF said, China plans well into the future but USA Presidents only look forward 4 years to the next election.
    One bright spot is that it could slow production of EV cars in the UK and perhaps stymie our PM’s determination to ban production of petrol and diesel cars

    1. that deal [lithium, copper] was signed off between China and Taliban months ago. Demented Joe [rather Mil Ind Complex] priority was always Pakistan [nuclear power]

    2. What a tremendous shame it would be if we had to delay electric cars replacing ICE cars for another 100 years!

    3. You beat me to it, Clyde…the sooner the lithium runs out or becomes even more unaffordable, the better! Then we can concentrate on – I know – fossil fuels, they seem to work very well, and this country alone is sitting on shedloads of them.

      Drat, I forgot that the whole objective is to transfer the wealth of developed nations to the third world. Back to the drawing board…

  22. Good morning all. 10°C on a bright Derbyshire morning and I’ve an optician’s appointment at 10:30 so will be walking down to Cromford about 09:10ish.

    Looking at the news I’m tempted to hibernate.

  25. Off to the market. I have remembered that there is a slammer with a stall selling clothes. I’ll look out a burkha for the MR.

    A bientôt

    1. 336942+up ticks,
      O2O,
      May one ask Og, seeing as the whole of our society is under change with the peoples consent via the polling booth, this will surely change the school uniforms, which
      politico has the new type school uniforms franchise, mini
      burkas etc,etc, will it be a priti johnson enterprise ?

  27. New Zealand’s Zero Covid trap. Spiked 18 August 2021.

    Attempts to eradicate the virus are doomed to failure.

    Though I limit the amount of this stuff that I read to preserve my sanity that’s how it looks to me. In fact I suspect that all the policies and measures taken will eventually prove to be not only useless but actually counterproductive. That there is at present no way of stopping a Global Pandemic other than allowing it to run its course and allow the general population to acquire a natural immunity!

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/08/19/new-zealands-zero-covid-trap/

    4. Considering who is the complainer, I think this nonsense can be safely ignored. The only racist is the ghastly Megan creature.

  30. The plight of women helped justify war in Afghanistan. Now they have been abandoned. 19 August 2021.

    It was one of the worst phone calls I’ve ever received: a friend in Kabul calling on Sunday afternoon to say that armed men had just visited her house. Her voice was shaking to the extent that she sounded as if she was gasping for air. The men had intimidated her and left, and she had fled to a friend’s house to hide with her children. She didn’t know when they’d return, if they would find her, or when it would be possible to relocate again to somewhere farther away. I have never heard someone sound so scared.

    The program to help the women of Afghanistan was only ever a fig leaf to cover the occupation. It gained the US administration plaudits from abroad and support from Americas Women’s rights groups. It also helped to undermine the Afghan Governments credibility since it contravened both the Religion and Custom of the country.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/18/plight-women-justify-war-afghanistan-abandoned-taliban

    1. Don’t Afghan women have husbands who will protect them, or have they been abandoned .. I guess as we have witnessed thousands of Muslim men coming ashore courtesy of the RNLI and Border Force , we now know that their women are just surplus to requirements.

      How do we know that the people that Britain is going to rehome aren’t specialists in booby trap laying .

      So many ex British service men and probably many who are still in our armed forces will resent the presence of any groups of Afghan men and their families .. trust is key here .

      Years ago in this area , in case of suspicious Arab terrorist activity , the flower containers on the station were removed , and people in the villages surrounding the camps felt very nervous , there were even exercises for locals re potential major terrorist activity , like chemical warfare etc, fire brigade had a very complicated scrubbing down unit which appeared here ..

      This country is a hoist to its own petard , and the current government and opposition have short memories .. Tony Blair grins and counts his wadges of money , but he has blood on his hands and has imperilled us all .

  31. There has been much comment on Mr Chaytor’s ‘the end of the world is nigh’ letter. He’s quite restrained compare with this article from The Moonbat.

    Why is life on Earth still taking second place to fossil fuel companies?

    The human tragedy is that there is no connection between what we know and what we do. Almost everyone is now at least vaguely aware that we face the greatest catastrophe our species has ever confronted. Yet scarcely anyone alters their behaviour in response: above all, their driving, flying and consumption of meat and dairy.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/19/life-earth-second-place-fossil-fuel-climate-breakdown

      3. A very good morning to you, Minty

        Calls to mind yesterday’s quotation from Jack London for ashesthandust: “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.”

      1. In this case all green is is an desperate effort to rob people of their income to ensure poverty and an ever wider wealth gap.

    3. Do we? Surely the greatest catastrophe would be asteroids, or nuclear war?

      Yes, we will still eat meat and dairy foods. If you don’t want to, fine. However, I imagine you’re also fervently in support of massive uncontrolled immigration as well.

  32. An interesting development here in France.

    There is a virus doing the rounds that results in a very high fever, head ache, extremely sore joints and a cough plus extreme lethargy and in some cases respiratory problems, which an inhaler seems to deal with. I have heard of several cases all of whom have had Covid tests showing that it isn’t Covid but it presents very similarly. It also spreads easily and affects the vaccinated and unvaccinated equally. The medics/GPs state there is nothing to give and that patients should let it run its course, usually a few days and mostly less than a week.

    Covid cases and hospitalisations are rising and having had the vaccination doesn’t appear to do anything other than ameliorate the disease.

    What fun…

    1. Here, cases rising and hospitalisations falling.
      So, Delta variant is less virulent and/or vaccine is having the planned effect of reducing severity of symptoms.
      Politiciand still controlling (sic) the cases, not the hospitalisations – where it matters. Cases no longer correlated with hospitalisations.

      1. I’m told that the local hospitals are reopening wards/ICU rooms.
        They tend to put a few people in small rooms, rather than wards as we know them in the UK, usually only two to the room, with a shared loo with a basin but no shower or bath. There are communal showers.

      1. Whatever it is, it appears that masks, vaccinations, etc are doing little if anything to stop the spread.
        Just a thought, perhaps the vaccines have turbocharged the common cold.

          1. I don’t know.

            I thought it was to reduce/eliminate the chances of catching the thing being vaccinated against. If it is making less dangerous things more dangerous that’s a nasty unintended consequence.

        2. I think the combination of a population being isolated causes their immune systems to get lazy – they require a lot of energy to function, so the body stops them when not needed.

    3. I suffered something similar. Instead of a mad panic, I went to bed early and slept most of the weekend. After a lot of rest I felt better.

      1. That has been similar to the reports I’ve had. The ones who were in a panic were those older people with underlying conditions, and I can’t blame them, it must have come as a nasty shock after all the claims regarding the efficacy of the vaccines.

  33. Counting Brides

    A little boy was attending his first wedding. After the service, his cousin asks him: “How many women can a man marry?”

    “Sixteen!” replies the little boy.

    His cousin laughed and asked how he knew this.

    “Easy,” the little boy said. “All you have to do is add it up! 4 better, 4 worse, 4 richer, 4 poorer!”

    2. Here we have a law that requires a motor vehicle to leave a gap of over five feet when passing a cyclist. On a narrow road that would put the average car into a hedge on the opposite side. We also have cycle lanes that reduce the road to less than a car-width. The arrangement in the photo is odd but workable by comparison.

    3. I was there a week ago .. the traffic was hectic , and slow .. and cyclists just do what they want .

      Council is wasting so much money on lunatic ideas .. There are tractors and trailers full of hay stuck behind other traffic, and the lycra brigade pretend the road is their own .

      We need our cars around here , buses are as rare as hens teeth .

    4. Well, when there’s congestion on the road, tough.

      Although – with more seriousness, if there were more, wider cycles lanes I’d be much more comfortable walking in them – the pavements are atrocious.

    1. Every female recruit to the Information Desk at Norwich Airport was asked to make a Tannoy announcement for the attendance, at the desk, of that gentleman.

      1. Yo Mr Grizzle

        First heard it years ago, in the film American Pie

        I did not think, until then, that the Merkins did ‘subtle humour’

      2. “Mike Harleg, Jed Zvarted, and Lev Daroom de Baztard – please come to airport information”
        🙂

    2. Grattis på födelsefagen, Hugh. You’ve nearly caught me up! 😉 Hope it’s a good ‘un.

    11. Good Lord. Another August birthday. Well, November is a bit dark and depressing.
      Happy Birthday, HJ.

      1. Lots of birthdays in August and September – long, winter nights and Christmas celebrations 🙂

    12. How very kind of you, thanks. Super day…delightful lunch with friends at The George in Alfriston, even the sun came out!

  38. I missed it at the time. Perhaps someone here may recall? When the Russians left Afghanistan after being comprehensively beaten and suffering huge casualties, how many Afghan refugees then fled to Russia?

    Is it possible that our politicians, and intellectuals, and influencers, and liberals, and leader writers, and sob-sisters are just mugs and that we are even bigger mugs for allowing them to be in control of anything?

    3. When the USSR left Afghanistan it was on their terms and was a controlled withdrawal over many months.
      Gorbachov ordered them home because the USSR was broke and simply couldn’t afford to stay.
      The Government they left in charge lasted a further three years.

      1. Oh..and the second part of your question..
        There were no refugees because life went on as before.

  39. Umm… Muslims must counter the Taliban? Who.. what… Is the writer thick?

    The Taliban are Muslim fundamentalists. They’re just doing what Muslims do. Is the press so obsessed with perpetuating a fallacy that reality can’t possibly intrude? They’re barbaric savage nutters. Always will be whether they live in Afghan or Sheffield.

    3. He is actually being disingenuous and he knows it. I wonder if he is trying to pretends that Islam is a civilized and decent religion and that the Taliban are besmirching it. I quote: “There are several forms of lying to non-believers that are permitted under certain circumstances, the best known being taqiyya (the Shia name). These circumstances are typically those that advance the cause of Islam – in some cases by gaining the trust of non-believers in order to draw out their vulnerability and defeat them.”

      To my mind he is up to that or he is another Islamic scholar who lives in the West because he had to flee in fear of his life being snuffed out for teaching “Shirk”, idolatry the worst of sins in Islam. The “shirk” would be him setting him up as an authority of what was and is not Islam. Only Allah decides that, not a mere mortal and the Hadith etc that he condemns are regarded as authentic and thus 100% Islam. Although, it is true, that various schools recognize some Hadith as authentic and others false. But no school of Islam dismisses them as false teaching.

  40. The only trouble with the letter written by Dr Taj Hargey is that it is nonsense. To pretend that the Koran is the only source of knowledge in Islam is completely false. He claims that the teaching of the Taliban are: “reliant on the toxic triad of non-Koranic sources, hadith, sharia and fatwas), these twisted manifestations of Islam could have been neutered over the past 20 years.” I would suggest the Dr try saying that in any Islamic county, including “liberal” ones like Egypt and see how long he survives. I suspect that the Dr is teaching at Oxford for the simple reason that he would be quite dead by now for teaching, what in terms of Islam, are appalling blasphemies that call for his death. The reality is that the structure of Islam and its day to day functioning are not based on the Koran but on the Hadith, Sharia and fatwas. The Koran may be the source but it is the “font” so to speak, not the day to day text that people resort to in order to practice Islam. One reason for that is that the Koran is the Arabic of 1000 years ago and not even 10% of Muslims can read it. Highly convenient for the clerics who are in control!

    1. I had never thought about the Korans being written in a much older form of Arabic, thanks for that information.

      1. Your welcome. As I say above. To the average modern speaker of Arabic it is about as clear as Old English is to us. Thus my example of Beowolf as a comparison to the Koran for contemporary Arabic speakers. 0nly 20% of Muslims are Arabic speakers, I doubt that even 5% of them can understand the Arabic in the Koran. But you can’t update the Koran because being the literal, not metaphorical, word of Allah, it is blasphemy to tinker in any way with it. Tinkering also includes translating it into modern Arabic. It is that attitude that brings forth the criticism of Muslims that if you use a translation of the Koran, your observations are false, not valid, period. A wonderful escape card if you criticize the Koran!

        1. I tired to chew through beowolf it was rather hard, I had never read old English before the story is a good one but some things are lost in translation

      2. Your welcome. As I say above. To the average modern speaker of Arabic it is about as clear as Old English is to us. Thus my example of Beowolf as a comparison to the Koran for contemporary Arabic speakers. 0nly 20% of Muslims are Arabic speakers, I doubt that even 5% of them can understand the Arabic in the Koran. But you can’t update the Koran because being the literal, not metaphorical, word of Allah, it is blasphemy to tinker in any way with it. Tinkering also includes translating it into modern Arabic. It is that attitude that brings forth the criticism of Muslims that if you use a translation of the Koran, your observations are false, not valid, period. A wonderful escape card if you criticize the Koran!

      1. They do, like parrots! Doesn’t mean they understand it. Bit like you learning Beowolf in the original Old English. And actually very few people actually learn the Koran by heart. Most just learn a few Surahs (verses) that are used in everyday rituals and prayers. Other than that they haven’t a clue what the book is rattling on about. Now, bare in mind that it is in Ancient Arabic, archaic and difficult to understand. Arabs themselves have difficulty understanding it. But, on top of that, the majority of Muslims don’t speak Arabic, that’s 80% of them! So when you hear of a mob throwing a fit because a Koran has been desecrated, bare in mind that most of them haven’t a clue about what the thing contains. In short there attitude to the Koran is as idolatrous as the idolatry that Muslims are very quick to condemn and be outraged about.,

  42. Joe Biden insists there was no way to leave Afghanistan ‘without chaos ensuing’
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2021/08/19/joe-biden-insists-no-way-leave-afghanistan-without-chaos-ensuing/

    At the time of writing there are 457 BTL comments under this article and yet the Telegraph refuses to let us know which comments have received the most upvotes.

    The DT readers are clearly not expressing views that the DT wants them to express so they must be censored.

    1. I can’t read the cooments – any chance of sharing one or two of the better ones here?

      1. Most of the better ones have probably been censored! Some posters have complained that their posts have been taken down. This was the oldest post which attow (at the time of writing) had 211 upvotes:

        “Total disgrace, Afghanistan is now all set to become the Muslim terrorist state of choice, with a well equipped army courtesy of Uncle Jo. Quite how Biden thinks this will be a good thing for homeland security and World peace in general God alone knows. He is a shameful excuse of a leader of the free world.”

        and here’s another:

        This situation was caused by the global media campaign to get Trump, at any cost, possibly including the rigging of the presidential election ( it’s never been investigated).

        Now China has a free pass to take Taiwan, even Japan and ramp the repression up in Hong Kong!

        Russia has a golden opportunity to take Ukraine, knowing there will be no resistance!

        We have never been closer to WW3 since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis!

        That’s what happens when you let Journalists and airheads on social media loose!

        1. I read but I never post on the Telegraph. I have been shadow banned, probably because I made my opinions about Islam crystal clear and got a lot of support judging by the ‘upticks’ . Now, my posts appear but no one ever acknowledges them. I seem to have become invisible to others reading the comments.

          3. I was attacked by a “bot” (apparently) on NoTTL – and am unable to post on any discurse forum except this one.

          5. Bill, you are Cleared to post on my 4 Blogs ( I added you as a Trusted User so your acct. status is irrelevant ) they are as Follows :-
            1) The Coconut Whisperer https://disqus.com/home/forum/the-coconut-whisperer/
            2) The Sputniks Orbit https://disqus.com/home/forum/thesputniksorbit-blogspot-com/
            3) Club Zero 2020 https://disqus.com/home/forum/clubzero2020-blogspot-com/
            4) TGIOF-Blogspot https://disqus.com/home/forum/https-tgiof-blogspot-com/
            Any Nottler who wants to post on my blogs is either already added as a Trusted User or will be added upon request.

          6. What if you changed your name slightly, would that work? E.G. if you have a middle name using the initial letter so you were Bill C Thomas or some such thing. And use a different email to log on with from a different company so you appeared to the computer to be another person.

          7. I’d have to re-start – and, frankly, can’t be arsed. I have two e-mail addresses and both are “known”. So they always tell me that I already a member (or whatever it’s called).

          8. I once made a DT post which received about twenty upvotes in a couple of minutes. The post was not removed but the number of upvotes went down to about six and remained there.

            The DT clearly does not want ‘unacceptable’ posts to generate too much momentum.

          9. something to do with DT “fact checkers” being tsunamied with factual evidence that they all cited “mental health” problems

          10. Johnathan – is there anyway when you get that feeling you are shadow banned – of getting someone to check the same site, from a different comp on a different router/connection. They can check IP adresses of comp, router and everything I believe. YOU might be able to see your message on your comp, but, can other people?
            Something like J Redwoods “holding in moderation” WITHOUT that line being visible .to you. Nobody else would even know your post was there.
            Mate has same effect on his posts to another site.

          11. Thanks for that suggestion Walter. I do have access to another computer that I’m sure I can ask to use. So I will try that. Thanks again!

          12. Same thing happened to me. I could not see my own posts if I logged in to the Telegraph site as another user from another machine and used a different internet route, though they were visible to me. That is why I have not renewed my subscription, even with the ‘”85% off” offer… It’s a very sneaky way of operating. I think I upset the editor or some of her staff.

      2. here’s a few that go against the grain [latest ones – all times my Kenya local time so deduct 2 hours]: am sure the below won;t be there for long:

        Bryn Llewellyn 19 Aug 2021 1:11PM

        Only Afghans who worked for the British military should be allowed into the country and I would even consider sending them to a safe Muslim
        country. 20,000 Afghan refugees means more division and terrorism for Britain in the future. Our leaders are doing their level best to turn
        the country into an Islamic state

        Mrs Ingles 19 Aug 2021 1:08PM

        Utter disgrace! No one can understand why he did this in this manner. Only country benefitting massively is now China.Meanwhile he is busy lastnight telling US kids under 11 to wear masks till they get their vaccines soon! Line up line up! Left the UK in the lurch.Shameful indeed. It is about making a route via Karachi…. Belt and road etc.

        Barney Patterson 19 Aug 2021 1:05PM

        The US is finished. The charade of this demented old man leading the West is an even greater hoax than vaccines for children. Biden doesn’t even know what day of the week it is.

        Martin E Ridley 19 Aug 2021 1:03PM

        The BBC and Sky are on full woke alter. Let anyone into the UK

        Paul Stewart 19 Aug 2021 12:57PM

        Apparently ISIS have an enclave in Afghanistan but the Taliban don’t get on with them

        2. My Afghan dentist , I have been his patient for quite a number of years , he was educated and qualified in the UK.. Is cautious and careful and fearful , and has been for years.

          Old issues of conflict with the war lords will always remain, but now the much feared Taliban are part of the Devil’s armoury , and they are similar to the ghastly paintings that Hieronymus Bosch painted

          Bosch’s extreme portrayals of agony are more than just analogies—they reflect the horrors that humankind have committed and endured since biblical times.

          https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/04/how-hieronymus-boschs-hell-lives-on-today/479409/

        3. My Afghan dentist , I have been his patient for quite a number of years , he was educated and qualified in the UK.. Is cautious and careful and fearful , and has been for years.

          Old issues of conflict with the war lords will always remain, but now the much feared Taliban are part of the Devil’s armoury , and they are similar to the ghastly paintings that Hieronymus Bosch painted

          Bosch’s extreme portrayals of agony are more than just analogies—they reflect the horrors that humankind have committed and endured since biblical times.

          https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/04/how-hieronymus-boschs-hell-lives-on-today/479409/

      3. here’s a few that go against the grain [latest ones – all times my Kenya local time so deduct 2 hours]: am sure the below won;t be there for long:

        Bryn Llewellyn 19 Aug 2021 1:11PM

        Only Afghans who worked for the British military should be allowed into the country and I would even consider sending them to a safe Muslim
        country. 20,000 Afghan refugees means more division and terrorism for Britain in the future. Our leaders are doing their level best to turn
        the country into an Islamic state

        Mrs Ingles 19 Aug 2021 1:08PM

        Utter disgrace! No one can understand why he did this in this manner. Only country benefitting massively is now China.Meanwhile he is busy lastnight telling US kids under 11 to wear masks till they get their vaccines soon! Line up line up! Left the UK in the lurch.Shameful indeed. It is about making a route via Karachi…. Belt and road etc.

        Barney Patterson 19 Aug 2021 1:05PM

        The US is finished. The charade of this demented old man leading the West is an even greater hoax than vaccines for children. Biden doesn’t even know what day of the week it is.

        Martin E Ridley 19 Aug 2021 1:03PM

        The BBC and Sky are on full woke alter. Let anyone into the UK

        Paul Stewart 19 Aug 2021 12:57PM

        Apparently ISIS have an enclave in Afghanistan but the Taliban don’t get on with them

    2. Biden is correct – It was certain that there would be chaos ensuing as a result of his ill considered plan to leave Afghan.

  43. Putin Alarmed Over ‘Unprecedented’ Natural Disasters in Russia. 14 August 2021.

    President Vladimir Putin on Saturday said the scale of natural disasters that have hit Russia this year is “absolutely unprecedented” as local officials ask for Moscow’s help to tackle fires and floods.

    A former skeptic of man-made climate change, the Russian leader called on authorities to do everything possible to help Siberians affected by the region’s gigantic wildfires, as well as Russians living in the flood-hit south of the country.

    And we descend from our literary Tardis into a land where rationality still rules! Here there are no streams of hostiles crossing the Volga and demanding Free Food and Lodging. There is no mass take in of Aliens from another culture who would inevitably change the nature of the State itself. The National Religion is supported and nurtured. Children are not taught the details of sexual perversion in schools. It has powerful armed forces. Patriotism is a virtue! Its leader is a man of rare Wisdom and Ability.

    It reminds me of somewhere I used to live long ago!

    https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/08/14/putin-alarmed-over-unprecedented-natural-disasters-in-russia-a74788

    1. OK – so what’s he going to do about “climate change”? Attend Boris’ pointless conference?

    3. There are, apparently, 10,220,000 Muslims in Russia. Perhaps that makes them rather more realistic about what that implies for the safety of the country.

          1. But not yet at that critical mass where they demand, and tend to get, special treatment.

      1. They’re turning red quite nicely – we’ve been picking them for a month or so now. The big fat ones take a bit longer but we’ve had a couple off them.

          4. Showing your tomatoes – when all of ours are blighted! (See my post yesterday…)

          8. There are few whitefly on them but nothing more than that. I don’t spray them with anything. Have yours turned brown?

          9. Brown as an afghan…

            I sprayed with copper sulphate too. It appears to be pretty widespread in Norfolk (also daughter-in-law in L Newnton has it, too).

            Too much rain, drizzle and intermittent heat….ideal conditions for blight.

          10. The whole plants or the fruit only?
            Tomatoes are one of the few things I grow and I’ve never had any trouble with them. A green-fingered friend starts them off and I make a donation to HHH for them. This year they came from two friends, so I have more plants than usual.

          11. Both.

            I have grown tomatoes successfully since 1948. I always grow from seed. This years plants were fabulous – the best ever. Only the greenhouse ones are untouched.

            Just shows….

    2. Very good, what varieties have you got? Mine in the greenhouse have done well but are starting to wain now. Production peaked about 6 weeks ago.

      2. Brandy Boy – 3; Gardeners Delight -4; one each of Sungold, Honeycomb Ailsa Crag and Maskotka. All outside.

        1. I did 3 piccolo, 3 mini plum Marzanos and 2 Sungold. The first 2 varieties have done well and were from seed I got from bought tomatoes. The Sungold, bought as seeds, have turned into quite large fairly bland red tomatoes.

        2. My Gardener’s Delight is pretty pathetic; lots of minute fruits which don’t seem to want to ripen. I’ve had a good crop off the Alicante and the Shirley isn’t far behind. I am now achieving glut status and having to give toms away.

  45. 180,000 people go missing every year in Britain – my father was one of them. 19 August 2021.

    One day Lionel didn’t show up at the station. Nor the following day; nor, as it transpired, ever again. For a long time afterwards, I suppose he would have been counted simply as a missing person. Nobody appeared to know what had become of him, although since the police were never involved there can’t have been any suspicion of foul play. Even so, for a significant period, the official line was that he had possibly died. My mother and I later discovered that he had simply relocated, albeit with a somewhat grand flourish and — it later turned out — for the most pedestrian of reasons: another relationship. But where had he relocated to?

    Nobody seemed to know, and, despite attempts to find out over many long years, his whereabouts and newfound circumstances remained a mystery. His parents couldn’t be asked about it. One of them was dead and the other off the scene. The rest of his wider British family, who first arrived in the UK from Lithuania and Poland in the late 1800s, were now globally dispersed, mostly to South Africa. Today that would only be an email away, but in those days it might just as well have been Mars.

    I have long entertained the suspicion that many more people are murdered than is generally credited. I remember reading a poster many years ago in the Ben Nevis Youth Hostel written by a Canadian couple pleading for news of their son who had simply disappeared without explanation. The details made it clear that it could not have been voluntary. It is true as here that the majority do reappear but this narrative is replicated too many times for it to be accident or coincidence. There are among us modern day Thuggees capable of murder without detection.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/180000-people-go-missing-every-year-in-britain-my-father-was-one-of-them

    1. A colleague of OH lost his son in this way – they tried for years to find out what had happened to him but as far as I know they never got the truth.

      1. I was involved in the search for a friend of one of our children. Our youngest had suddenly lost contact with a former classmate. The worst was feared. It took a while. Then, after a bit of sleuthing on my part, we found her. She said “go away”.
        She was fine. She had wanted to change her life. It was drastic as it involved cutting off all ties, links, contacts and associations. No farewell messages. Just gone.
        Also, I know one of my classmates, Gordon Harkins, vanished. That was decades ago.
        So, it may be more common than we recognise.

    2. “There are among us modern day Thuggees capable of murder without detection.”
      Always look on the bright side of life, Minty.
      (I’ll get me scarf.)

    2. Apart from the jackboots, those are the colours I’m wearing today. As for the situation in OZ &NZ – they really do seem to have voted in the Stasi.

      2. 336942+ up ticks,
        Morning N,
        Following the United Kingdom lead but light years behind.

        The political overseers of Great Britain have been, especially these last three decades, in pursuit of destroying Great Britain as a successfully independent Country and succeeding.

        In many respects we are under sufferance from
        internal political forces & minions due to the 24/6/2016 result.

        1. He seems to be a follower of ogga. I had a go at banning him but it didn’t work. It seems you can only ban people after they have made a comment and this one is silent.

          2. Jules you can ban any poster whether they have posted on here or not, go to the Mod panel —-> Banned List ——> enter the shortened code , in this case its disqus_E9pgGp9Oli . What you cant do is ban their email & IP address or add a reason for banning

          4. The workings of the Disqus software system is one of the remaining mysteries of the universe, even the IT staff at Disqus HQ have no idea how it works albeit they are pretty skilled at mucking it up even further !

          5. I have a strong suspicion the spambot attacks are done by the Disqus IT staff. They trawl through unused accounts and then let them loose in batches. Who else has the time or competence to do that?

          6. Ah so Memsahib Jules , you speak with much wisdom! Just recently a Mod on the Coconut Whisper , my friend Rata from the USA who was my number 2 on my old News Channel on Disqus and who is now the owner of the blog ( I created it but transferred ownership to him last year ) had his name mysteriously removed from the Regular Mod List but it was Not removed from the Organization Admins list ( which is hidden from view of ordinary Mods who are not also Organization Admins ) . I am of course like him an Organization Admin with full power to appoint & remove regular mods so I re-added him back the the ordinary mods list . Rata was the one on my News Channel who discovered Sayeed Oday a former IT administrator of Disqus had been altering our moderation decisions by restoring posts & unbanning at least one poster we had banned on News, he left a trail clearly showing his name as having restored deleted posts from a hard left troublemaker . It gave the lie to Disqus’s claim not to interfere in moderation decisions & so I am convinced that certain IT folks at Disqus HQ do from time to time make unauthorized access into mod panels and alter things .

          7. What do you reckon about the spambots though? do you get these ongoing attacks on your channels?

          8. Yes we get them all the time especially at weekends when Disqus is closed till Monday California time . They fall into 3 groups – sexbot website links , general scam bot links probably aimed at hijacking a respondents IP & Email account details & nuisance attacks ( down voting or posting insults ) by multiple recently created accounts either on a single poster or on multiple posters

          10. Shabbat Shalom AA to you & family, it might well be that somebody at Disqus visited the mod panel on the Coconut & removed Rata as a mod & if they did they probably did not think of looking in the Organization Admins list . Not that it matters as it was easy to restore his mod status on the regular list & although he owns the blog its not via his regular Rata account but via the Coconut Whisperer account which I used to create the blog rather than my old Mahatma account and then turned over to him the Gmail account passwords for the Blogger & Disqus sections of the blog . Basically it means that he has the option to post as Rata or post as the Coconut Whisperer & Disqus cannot alter or delete that Coconut Whisperer Gmail account or the blog, all they could do is to remove the use of Disqus software if we were to misuse it by violating their rules on say pornography or race hatred, which will never happen.

          4. As P.G. Wodehouse pointed out Sir Roderick Glossop, the illustrious ‘nerve specialist’, was always on the look out for new patients and that Colney Hatch had its talent scouts everywhere.

          5. The Victorians also built a few in Hertfordshire close to St Albans . By coincidence one near London Colney.
            They have all been demolished and built over now, just when they were most needed.

      1. New Zealand already pioneered that pathway when Arden was elected for the 1st time. You can tell if a country is on a path to becoming a Globalist Fascist State very easily, the first Human Right they deny their Citizens is the Right to bear arms in their own self-defence, the UK is already well advanced down that pathway.

      2. https://www.theaustralian.com.au/breaking-news/police-crack-down-on…
        1 day ago · Would-be lockdown protesters have been told to air their grievances online and in the media rather than participate in more “freedom” rallies this weekend. Protests have been planned across Australia three weeks after an estimated 3500 marched through central Sydney calling for an end to coronavirus restrictions.

        or – in plain English – do it electronically so we can then have proof delivered to us – whereas if you go on the streets and wear a mask – there is a chance we won’t be able to recognise you !!!
        OBEY OBEY OBEY

        1. Australia and New Zealand are in lockdown, yet NZ permitted the Wallabies to fly to Auckland, yesterday, to play the All Blacks in the Bledisloe Cup.

      1. Just think of all those thousands people (like my self) who voted Conservative at the last election because they promised to stop illegal immigration. I have promised i will never vote for any politician again they are all habitual and pathological liars.
        That was bad enough and now all this shite.
        I will never forgive this useless bloated turd Boros as long a I live.

        1. Johnson also swore he would GET BREXIT DONE.

          (But just look at the Northern Ireland Protocol, the EU boats fishing in British waters, the financial sector and the continuing nonsense at borders.)

    2. At least the kid could pick a hell of a banjo we just get stuck with old joe whos only real talent is graft

          2. Or my Granny “Getting old isn’t for sissies” The saying I took away from her is “in the end it is far better to wear out than to rust out” A couple advil should fix you up!

    1. that picture was taken in’82 or 83 wasn’t it? I remember it as a cover to National Geographic

      1. They then published a photo of her 15 years later – and she had become a very old woman at 30.

          2. don’t forget china girl Feinstein! For a party that hates rich white people it seems to be lead by them!!!

  62. Afternoon all.

    Muslims must counter the perverted dogmas that drove the Taliban to victory in Afghanistan.

    This of course will never happen, the whole aim of this so called religion is to destroy everything they can about other cultures and our rather stupid successive governments are aiding and abetting by handing out free assistance. Has any one ever heard the slightest whisper of thanks from any one of them regarding all the life lines and huge favours they have all been dealt ?
    Off out again now.

    1. Funny how when one of our very own jihadis does some damage the “community” from which he/she came is not held responsible in any way.
      Quite the opposite. Immediately after the atrocities in London, at Kings Cross and elsewhere, armed police guards were put outside mosques.
      The “community” is never asked to pay reparations

      1. The fact that they say they want to “integrate” then do everything they can to change this country into the ****hole they came from shows me how stupid they are, If the place you leave is so bad – why move somewhere better, then turn THAT into what you left?? Also – integrate??/ Then stick the word Muslim or Islamic in front of everything they are involved with. They really are the ****.

        1. We don’t need people like that here , trust no one , they hate us ,

          They hate us so much , that they disrupt and threaten Christians , and do not accept our culture or way of life .

          Christian tolerance is being stretched to the extreme .

          3. And once they achieve “planet Islam” – whose culture do they destroy then? – They are stupid and deadly. – Fortunately I’m old, with no family – but I fear greatly for the young white of the world. They have no chance.

          4. At that point they blow up the world because as they say: “We love death more than life.”

  63. A puzzled pensioner (again) writes.

    I read that very large aircraft are leaving Kabul airport almost empty. WHY? They are not scheduled airliners that have to be at Point B by a given time in order to fly people from there to Point C. WHY could they not sit on the ground until full?

    Shakes head in bewilderment….

    2. Because the Taliban won’t let the women through? – – on radio this morn it was reported that even the UN people and vehicles couldn’t get within a mile because of the amount of people all around. No doubt they all want to come here.

      1. Some of the women are throwing their babies over the razor sharp fence for the soldiers to catch. One baby got caught on the top of the fence. The Taliban are in charge. It just needs a soldier to shoot a Taliban or vice versa for the situation to escalate dangerously.

  64. “The key difference between the Soviet withdrawal in 1989 and the US pull-out today is the completely disorganised and haphazard nature of the latter”, says independent American journalist Max Parry, referring to the messy evacuation of the embassy staff and the dispatch of an additional military contingent to the country to wrap up the withdrawal as soon as possible.

    Despite being bogged down in a protracted and exhausting standoff with the US-armed Mujahideen, the Soviets managed to carry out their drawdown “in an orderly, responsible fashion”, he points out.

    Nevertheless, the US and its allies tried to hinder the Soviet pull-out, according to the journalist. He explains that although the Geneva Accords stipulated the timetable for the Soviet evacuation, which Moscow adhered to, “the US actually violated the agreement in continuing to send arms to the jihadists”.

    “The Americans did everything to ensure that the pull-out either did not take place or, if it did, with huge losses for us”, recalled Colonel-General Boris Gromov, the last commander of the 40th Army in Afghanistan, in his 2019 interview with Sputnik. Nevertheless, the Soviet military prevented provocations and ensured safe a withdrawal through land routes, which was apparently more risky than the US aerial pull-out.
    Furthermore, in contrast to Washington, “the Soviet Army left intact a relatively stable government to preside over the country”, the journalist remarks. The pro-Soviet government of Mohammad Najibullah ruled the country and maintained armed resistance against the Mujahideen until April 1992. The Afghan insurgents took Kabul shortly after his resignation.

    1. And his head was separated from his body !
      I have to agree with you that the Russians pulled out in their usual brutal version of orderly & that the US withdrawal was chaotic, undignified & a stain on the honor of America that will take a long time to be forgotten around the world especially among America’s allies.

    2. Both America and Russia are no friends of ours as history shows you. In fact that how we have arrived at most of the nation states. These people that are trying to remove the nation state into an empire ( eg EU. USA China and Muslim. will fail.

    3. I recall a clip from one of the Gulf wars, where troops ( UK and USA ) were handing out supplies to the locals. The USA lorries had chaos behind theirs, everyone pushing and shoving, lots of noise . . .the UK lorry had – a quiet orderly queue of locals waiting their turn. I burst out laughing.

  65. Was the US pull out really a pull out, what sort of pull out involves leaving so fast that lots of equipment and people gets left behind?
    This is more like a Dunkirk style retreat.

  66. The knock on effect that will have lasting consequences

    MENTAL health support is available for veterans who are struggling to cope with news and images coming from Afghanistan.

    Dorset Healthcare, responsible for all mental health services in the county, is signposting support for anyone dealing with traumatic memories of serving in overseas operations in the wake of terror group the Taliban taking control of towns and cities across Afghanistan after western countries withdrew their troops.

    Dorset veterans are encouraged to access support through Op Courage: The Veterans Mental Health and Wellbeing Service, which brings together specialist NHS mental health services to give veterans and their families support.

    People due to leave the armed forces, who have just left or who finished serving years ago can all access help. They will speak to people who understand military life and are either from the armed forces community or are highly experienced in working with serving personnel, reservists, veterans and their families, and who will ensure the right type of specialist care, support and treatment is provided.

    READ MORE: Veteran trapped in Afghanistan says country has been ‘abandoned to wolves’
    Dorset Healthcare’s armed forces community and wellbeing team can provide further support by liaising with local organisations to assist with issues such as health, welfare, housing and employment, if they deem that necessary.

    Andy Gritt, clinical and operations manager for the veterans’ high intensity service in the south west, said: “It’s vitally important that ex-armed forces personnel are being well supported at all times but especially at the moment when current events are having an impact.

    “If you or someone you know is struggling with their mental health, expert help is available from Op Courage. You can contact the service directly or ask your GP, a charity or someone else, such as a family member or friend, to do this on your behalf.

    READ MORE: Weymouth Veterans Hub renovates café
    “Our community and wellbeing team is here for you too every step of the way. You are not alone. If you need help, please reach out for it.”

    For more information about Op Courage, visit https://www.nhs.uk/nhs-services/armed-forces-and-veterans-healthcare/veterans-nhs-mental-health-services/

    For details of the wider support available from Dorset Healthcare’s armed forces community health and wellbeing team, visit the Dorset Healthcare website.

  67. Beware…… Since leaving the EU duty is being applied to any orders made direct with (on landing in England.) EU firms… I have had to return my orders with Spain and Portugal for Sherry and Port

    1. My favourite Italian wine shop has stopped delivering to the UK. I went to the direct sales shop of a favourite Italian vineyard instead. They have a long list of countries to which they will send wine, from Ireland to Kazakhstan, but not GB.

    2. It is a failure of the French Gendarmerie to check the Green Passports of these unmasked silly cows on the beach & that goes for the Bikini clad blonde too as she is old enough to know to Steer clear of other angry cows lest she find herself impaled on the Horns of a dilemma !

  70. 336942+ up ticks,
    After solving one Gordian knot type problem is the pension to short or the week to long, I encountered another that has been around for decades.

    Why do the electorate still entertain the lab/lib/con mass uncontrolled immigration ( ongoing), paedophile umbrella ( ongoing) coalition in the polling booth at every given opportunity ?

    Is it spite, some form of revenge on the family, love & adoration
    for the eu ?

    2. 336942 + up ticks,
      R,
      We must try correcting the odious political situation before the grammar / spelling,whatever.

      The only two Os I have definitely lost should be found on the end of my weekly pension, but ain’t.

        1. 336942+ up ticks,
          G,
          R is a number is it not in brainwash speak ?
          Did I err somewhat ? in a rush finishing off an erection,
          of a corrugated roof that is, with a bleeding great big black cloud hovering with evil intentions.

    2. Every Western country is doing the same self harming thing well apart from those that get very bad press like Hungary

      1. 336942+ up ticks,
        Afternoon B3,

        Still begs the question in regards to the United Kingdom, WHY ?

  74. If the replacements kick off on a mass slaughter of UK whiteys, would the govt be able to rake in millions from death duties, taxes etc??

    1. If we were all slaughtered, who would the govt sell it it to in order to liquify their bonanza? The slaughterers (in theory) have no cash….

      1. What if they just wanted to own all the property? Put the replacements in – stop benefits – charge them rent – make them work.

        1. What would they do, what work? They don’t have the ‘expertise’ that we have, they don’t have a work ethic; we understand it is all going to be AI very shortly… they do not understand our land and climate for farming, they do not have a feel for this ancient land.

          I understand what you are saying, but I feel once poor old patient benighted whitey is gone, the geese that laid the wonderfully golden eggs would be well and truly cooked. The government that was so enraptured with its own ideology would have shot itself in the foot, followed swiftly by delivering a head shot, such would be the pain of realisation.

          1. TOTALLY agree with you PM. – There are reasons why jet engines are made where they are and by who. If the 3rd world of cheap wages was so industrious – all the worlds technologies would be coming from there. THIS is the pure destruction of a nation and culture – nothing else imho.

          2. I wonder if that is why great European civilisations fell..

            I am not too familiar with ancient history , but I suspect medieval empires fought hard and then modernised and the Moslems retreated to their homelands and were eventually rescued when oil was discovered and the Suez Canal was built

  76. Triple Lock Pension…………..Unaffordable
    Homes for veterans,,,,,,,,,,,,,,Unaffordable
    NHS services…………………..Unaffordable
    Training our own Dr’s………..Unaffordable
    Importing untold tens of thousands of Moslem gimmegrants afghan or otherwise who have never contributed and never will…………..No problem at all
    How do these smug virtue signalling swine look at themselves in the mirror
    Have they NO shame????

    1. They are all looking over their shoulders at the potential ethnic minority votes at the next election. On such votes elections are won or lost under the present voting system. In other words they don’t give a toss about the majority. The more the majority don’t vote the more important the fringe votes become. We are in a Catch 22 situation.

      1. 336942+ up ticks
        Afternoon S,

        ” The more the majority don’t vote the more important the fringe votes become. We are in a Catch 22 situation”

        The majority painted themselves into a corner time after time.

        Unlike the real UKIP that designed the escape door, only the majority screwed that up also.

        I repeat, join the dots of placement persons ,councils etc, nationwide and reveal a rather large mosque.

    2. BJ and pals have lied and lied, now selling this nation and culture down the river, in return for promised wealth and power. He will be thrown to the wolves once he has delivered. Who knows, he may even be forced to watch his new children be “shown the new life” by the replacements he has so willingly brought in.

    4. Hope you put a copy on JR’s site. You might be lucky – i’ve never been with anything like that. – apparently my post button goes to mod to bin.

  77. Gary linekar once tweeted that the world felt like a happier and kinder place when Joe Biden won the election.

    Stick to football dick head.

    2. How many World Cups and/or European Championships did England win when either Lineker or Beckham were in the team?

  78. Is Boris still keeping the security of Kabul airport in the family?:

    Turkey has long provided security for Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul as part of its contribution to the NATO mission in Afghanistan. But as the missions ends, with a NATO withdrawal occurring in parallel to the U.S. drawdown, Ankara is angling for concessions in exchange for continuing its management of the critical airport’s security matters.

    https://thediplomat.com/2021/06/will-turkey-keep-providing-security-for-the-afghan-capitals-airport/

    1. Turkey wants to stay at Kabul airport

      Although Turkey has served as part of a NATO mission in Afghanistan, it never deployed combat troops, Erdoğan recalled, underlining that its main objective was to contribute to the economic and social development of the central Asian country.

      “Thus, we never saw and used our soldiers there as a foreign power. After the withdrawal of the U.S., our aim was to contribute to the security of this country by ensuring the safety of the airport. This intention of ours still remains,” he stressed.

      The continued military presence of Turkey in Afghanistan will smooth the way for the new administration in the international arena, the president said. “The thing is to reach a consensus with Afghan officials. We can speak over different options. For example, we can resolve this issue through a bilateral agreement just like we did in Libya. This can be either Taliban or the current administration. We have friendship with all these people.”

      Turkey and Libya reached an agreement in late 2019 for the deployment of the Turkish troops to the latter in a bid to protect Tripoli from the attacks of rival groups led by General Khalifa Haftar.

      Erdoğan also mentioned his diplomatic contacts on Afghanistan. He said he will discuss the latest developments in this country with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

      https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/erdogan-says-turkey-still-willing-to-protect-kabul-airport-167189

    1. The ladies will not be all that impressed if it’s only that long – no shadow of a doubt!

  81. Well, I have just finished a book about the fall of Rome; and another about life in England in the Anglo-Saxon age.

    They make today’s events seem pretty small beer…

    So I feel – for a minute or two – more cheerful, or, perhaps, less despondent.

    1. “Climate change had an influence on the movement of the Anglo-Saxon invaders to Britain: in the centuries after 400 AD Europe’s average temperature was 1°C warmer than we have today, and in Britain grapes could be grown as far north as Tyneside. Warmer summers meant better crops and a rise in population in the countries of northern Europe.”
      1°C warmer than we have today, how did that slip through the woke lookouts?
      https://www.history.org.uk/primary/resource/3865/anglo-saxons-a-brief-history

  82. HAPPY HOUR – perhaps not…
    Have any NoTTlers unhappy memories when hearing certain music which strike a melancholy chord?
    I listen to Radio 3 and classic FM but often switch off when Rachmaninov is played however I’m gradually working my way through his Piano concertos and symphonies without too much blubbing….
    Recently I heard Pavarotti singing Nessun Dorma which is a definite no no, reminds me of the World Cup a year I would rather forget.

    1. Yes.
      This always makes me tear up. I’m doing it now.
      https://youtu.be/7O049oi2Dxw
      It makes me think of my beautiful friend, Elaine, who despite being married with two little boys ended it all in a car with vodka and pills. Still don’t know why. What kind of a friend was I when she needed help?

        1. Yes, I know… she was in a different country, but it doesn’t help.
          Just an old softy, me.

          1. No one knows why any one does it ..

            Some one delayed the trains last week here , by doing you know what , it was terrible, sirens everywhere , and all of us wondering what had happened .

          2. If they have to do it, better to do it quietly – not going with a bang, as it were.- but perhaps that was their aim – they didn’t want to live, so let’s upset other people.

          3. No I don’ believe they are capable of making decisions to hurt others. Their one aim is to escape from their own pain.

          4. Yes, the thoughts about others who will have to clear up the mess are squashed by their own desire not to be alive any more.

          5. Ugh.
            My sympathy to the driver. Imagine, someone being splatted on the front of your train.
            SWMBO used to work in road transport for Shell. They had a case of “suicide by truck”, where the poor bloody driver not only couldn’t do anything about it, but the suicider smiled up at him as they went under the truck… What a fucking selfish bastard, the poor truck driver was utterly crushed, never drove again.

          6. Second Son’s best mate jumped off a cliff last autumn. Apparently, he felt he “wasn’t good enough”. If you’d seen the number who turned up at the funeral, the poor lad was absolutely wrong.

          8. That is so useful, thank you Geoff.

            There always seems to be a problem with the railway crossing controls these days, the barriers get stuck!

            I think everything is controlled from somewhere else now.. The signal box and staff were removed a few years ago, such a shame really . They could always see what was what .

            Now , the traffic backs up for nearly half a mile sometiemes when things go wrong .

            I haven’t travelled on the train for years now .

          9. A quote from ‘The Deep Blue Sea’ when Hester tries to commit suicide. The doctor saves her in time and asks her ‘Why, when you have everything?’ Hester replies…’but you see it’s not enough’.

          13. If you find an answer, Conners, let me know.
            I’ll be troubled until I can check it out. I hate to let others down.
            How you keeping these days? Oscar OK too??

          14. I’m okay, thanks, Paul. Oscar has let me brush him (only gently and only for a short time) these last couple of days without even attempting to take my fingers off. That is real progress because the brush still has his teeth marks from the first time I tried!

          15. Exceellent!
            He obviously is responding to your love and respect. Good on you both.

      2. Perhaps she liked you so much that she didn’t want to burden you with her problems.

        I wish we had known the situation with a young woman we had seen at the weekend and who suddenly killed herself that week. She seemed so cheerful and full of enthusiasm. Could we have done anything? I doubt it, but it still haunts me.

          1. It’s worse, we were expecting her to be our daughter-in-law. Even our most curmudgeonly family loved her.

          3. Indeed.
            I know of more people who have killed themselves than I do people who have died of/with Covid. It’s one reason why I’m so sceptical of the whole thing.

        3. Same with my Aussie friend, who went to work, told neighbours she was going away for the weekend, then went to her office and killed herself – but sent me a goodbye email first.

          1. It’s an odd thing, I don’t regard it as an easy way out, I think it actually requires great courage.
            I only wish they also had the courage to seek help.

          2. Courage, perhaps. But I think it’s also rather selfish. No consideration for the poor buggers who find the body, at least. A former neighbour’s son was in this situation only a few weeks ago.

          3. That is also true.

            My cousin was the one who found her parents both times it happened. She was still under 18 the second time.
            She came to live with us.
            She had/has what is now known as PTSD.

          4. ‘Evening, Connors, being one who hopes for re-incarnation, although having been desperate and disconsolate on many occasions, I could not commit suicide because I believe that should I do that, I will only have to come back again, go through it all again in order to learn the lesson that life is teaching us.

    2. Madame Butterfly brings out the occasional blubber.
      Edit: But not from bad memories, I don’t think.

    3. Madame Butterfly brings out the occasional blubber.
      Edit: But not from bad memories, I don’t think.

    4. Purcell – Funeral Music for Queen Mary
      Walford Davies – Solemn Melody (esp played by military band)

      PS I also find it extremely difficult to sing “O God our help in ages past”, especially the fifth verse….

    5. I am having great difficulties with some music Plum.

      I sobbed my heart out in the car the other day when Classic FM played a bit of the New World Symphony , I was on my own dogs in their cage in the back of the car , and why did I howl… because , I am the only one Happy parrot copied .. I used to talk to him and whistle .. and the Largo from NWS was his thing , he could tunefully whistle that , as well as many other bits and pieces ,, Beethovens no 6 Pastoral first bit he also copied me .. I miss him so much , lost him after 36 years at the end of last August, I haven’t whistled anything since , and the house feels hollow when I am alone .

      In fact I am sobbing now just thinking about him, he died so suddenly..

      The Pearl Fishers Duet fills a spot in my soul, and Artie Shaw and Fleetwood Mac cheer me up.

      1. Poor parrot – he had a good life with you, though. You must miss him, as we miss all our dear departed pets from long ago, and not so long ago. None of them are forgotten.

        People too – my cousins all died before their time – 57, 60, and 61.

        Aunts, uncles, grandparents, inlaws most of them lived to a reasonable age.

        My mother reched 80, father died at 39.

      3. I’ve never seen Firstborn so upset when his old cat, Magnificat, died of old age.
        Magnificat was a real cat. Afraid of nowt. Took ages before wwe stopped looking for him as we came in, in his favourite place by the front door.

      4. Losing a beloved pet is a big trauma. I still occasionally blub because I miss Charlie (just over 17 years is a long time to live with a dog and it leaves a big hole), but then I look at Oscar and am grateful I’ve got him.

        2. I must be a heartless barsteward. In 50 years as an organist I’ve been to more funerals than most who are neither ordained nor a Funeral Director, and I’m rarely moved these days (not that there have been any church funerals here in the last 18 months). Perhaps I’m immune. Song for Guy is a pretty repetitive if OK piano riff, eventually overlaid by life is a terrible thing, ad infinitum. I have occasionally been known to play Mrs Dwight’s Funeral for a Friend, but I stopped before Love lies Bleeding. Then again, at the wedding of friends, I became bored with the photographer’s incessant nonsense, and struck up with the Muppet Show theme.

          Always Look on the Bright Side of Life is a popular request, though it’s best to avoid the version with “life’s a piece of shit”, as the mourners file solemnly out of the church. Prolly the weirdest request I ever had, was to play the theme from Star Wars as the coffin processed into the church. As an organ voluntary, it worked, better than I ever could have imagined. My only regret was that the bearers weren’t dressed as Imperial Stormtroopers…

          2. I’m having Apache and Telstar for MOH, who was a devoted Shadows fan (and a life-long atheist).

    7. Mozarts “Requiem” has been played in my home rather too often this last few years.
      Another one gone, another playing – with appropriate alcohol as gravøl, to send them off across the Styx.
      https://youtu.be/YaH3zI0bYkM

    8. I’d like “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen” at my funeral, sung by Fischer- Dieskau.

          1. My father’s favourite singer was Maria Callas.
            When he died in 1997, we couldn’t get her to sing at the funeral, but we did burn a CD with her singing on it. Best we could do. Hope he liked it. Had no complaints so far.

    9. Cavatina

      https://youtu.be/iFscYYRsNnQ

      Theme from The Deer Hunter

      The reviews speak for themse!ves.
      A long film that I watched at release at Odeon, Leicester Square.

      We stayed in our seats listening to John Williams interpretation of Cavatina after this very emotive and immersive film about the struggle of American deer hunting friends in dealing with the prospects of death during the perils of war.

      https://youtu.be/lOPkrCclKi0

        1. I’m afraid it does nothing for me.
          US war movies are far to optimistic, nothing like reality.

          1. A bit like what they’ve ‘achieved’ in Afghanistan. And the ‘leader of the free world’ has no regrets!
            Well, bully for him.

          2. I’d say “Fcuk him”, but then, I’m not civilised.
            The result of 10 years at public school.

    10. The Humming Chorus from Mme Butterfly.
      Partly because I know the story and partly because I can see my grandson (10 years ago now!) lying ‘asleep’ on her lap on the vast Covent Garden stage.

  83. Wail headline just now:

    “Health Secretary Sajid Javid insists Covid booster vaccine drive WILL go ahead in September but says he’s still waiting for advice from No 10’s top scientists”

    The “top scientists” are still in a back room tossing coins….

    2. No 10’s top scientists?

      We might as well depend on the fourth form of any deluded Comprehensive School – no brains, only bollux.

  84. I am off. Time for a drink or two. And to tear the MR way from her screen. She has been working at the computer all day.

    Cats agree – they want their dinner, even though I told them to go and catch it.

    A demain

  85. Joe Biden has been a monumental disaster

    At home and abroad, the most Left-wing White House in history is actively driving America’s decline

    NILE GARDINER

    The past few days have been among the most painful in over half a century for the United States on the international stage. The fall of Kabul to the Taliban following the US withdrawal from Afghanistan is a humiliation for the world’s superpower. It may take decades before America’s standing is restored, and faith in American leadership is fully revived.

    The fallout from Afghanistan will exceed even that which followed the end of the Vietnam War, not only in terms of the damage to America’s self-confidence but also the threat it will pose to its security. The Taliban will inevitably turn their country once again into a safe haven for al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups to strike against the US. Nato has also been undermined. The retreat from Afghanistan has weakened the alliance, and squandered nearly 20 years of collective effort by its 30 members.

    As commander in chief, Joe Biden carries ultimate responsibility for a decision that will haunt America for a generation or more. His legacy will be one of failure, exceedingly poor judgment and staggering incompetence. His advisers, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, must also shoulder some of the blame.

    Upon entering office, Biden’s team promised to “restore America’s credibility” following the supposed unpredictability of the Trump years. Instead they now look like a bunch of amateurs, outplayed by the Taliban, a movement frequently depicted as living in the Dark Ages. The handling of Afghanistan has been so bad that even Biden’s cheerleaders in the Left-wing US media, from CNN to The Washington Post, have loudly denounced him.

    Unfortunately, the Afghanistan debacle is not an aberration for the Biden presidency. It exemplifies the Biden approach. On practically every foreign policy front, the Democratic presidency is driving US decline.

    On a visit to London this past week, where I met with British officials and MPs, I was struck by the tremendous disillusionment expressed with the Biden administration, a sentiment shared by many of their counterparts in the European Union, especially in eastern and central Europe. As one senior British politician put it, Biden makes Barack Obama, whose own advisers famously boasted of America “leading from behind”, look like wartime leader FDR by comparison.

    From Biden’s disgraceful surrender to Moscow over the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, to his shameless appeasement of the Iranian regime in his doomed efforts to revive the flawed and failed nuclear deal, this is a president who kowtows to America’s enemies, while kicking US allies such as Israel and Poland. Even the special relationship is under threat as the White House puts a US-UK trade deal on ice while arrogantly lecturing Brexit Britain over the Northern Ireland Protocol.

    The key beneficiaries of Biden’s weak-kneed approach have been China and Russia, who are no doubt relishing the disarray in Washington and cheering the sight of US personnel fleeing the Afghan capital. Both Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping have grown stronger since Biden entered the Oval Office. They sense an opportunity in his weakness, and grow more assertive by the day.

    Biden’s presidency has been a monumental disaster at home, too. From its appalling handling of the massive border crisis to saddling the American people with trillions of dollars of additional debt, it has lost any real credibility. While undermining American power globally, the Biden-Harris administration, the most Left-wing in US history, has presided over a surge in illegal border crossings, with more than one million migrants entering the United States this year through the southern border with Mexico. The de facto open-borders approach of the Biden White House is so extreme that even the most socialist and liberal of European governments would dare not go down the same path.

    The tragedy in Afghanistan should and will be a wake-up call for America’s allies. Biden isn’t leading the free world. He is actively eroding it. It will be up to the next president to clean up the mess, and restore US leadership on the global stage.

    Nile Gardiner is the director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at The Heritage Foundation in Washington

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/08/19/joe-biden-has-monumental-disaster/

    That Biden is a senile old man who is doing great damage to the USA domestically is unarguable but I am confused. Much of the criticism of the withdrawal from Afghanistan appears to be coming from people who despise Western intervention anywhere in the world. And didn’t Trump start the process?

    As for ‘surrender to Moscow’ – what year is it? The Cold War is long past.

    1. He’s undone the good foreign policy work by the Trump administration in just a few months. Trump intended the withdrawal, but in an orderly fashion – not this rout.

      1. Trump could personally have found the cure for cancer and he would have been criticised for it.

      3. Biden is – by far – the worst POTUS in my lifetime; perhaps the worst ever.
        At a stroke, he has:

        Destroyed The USA as ‘Leader of the Western World’:
        Destroyed our ‘Special Relationship’;
        Destroyed NATO;
        Made United Nations meaningless;
        Destroyed Afghanistan;
        Condemned thousands of former Afghan troops and British advisors to death;
        Created a colossal new wave of international Islamic terrorism;
        Secured a mining deal for Lithium between China and the Taliban;
        Secured a perfect opportunity for China to take over Taiwan;
        Created a bad opportunity for aircraft-light HMS Queen Elizabeth to show face in Chinese waters …

        That’s Biden’s toxic American Pie.

    2. I agree … however:
      This article does make the assumption that Biden has some cognitive powers.

  86. Are the Western governments, especially ours, trawling the entirety of Islam to bring riff-raff to our beloved country? Asking for a friend.

    1. Yes, of course they are.
      It’s the religion of peace, they want peace in our time.

      {:-((

  88. Oh well…… time to get the dinner on! And we’ve got the Prom recording to watch later.

  89. Andrew Neil on GBNews with Nigel Farage. On form at home but looks as if he is in his dressing gown. Discussion now over but very powerful stuff on Biden.

  90. Here’s some good news NoTTlers

    Growing old can BOOST your brainpower!
    Key mental abilities including concentration and attention actually get better as you age, study finds.
    It is generally thought that advancing age leads to a decline in our brainpower.A new study suggests that key mental abilities actually get better with age.Concentration and attention may improve ‘because we practise them during life’
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-9909035/Key-mental-abilities-including-concentration-better-age-study-finds.html

        1. ” Growing old can BOOST your brainpower!
          Key mental abilities including concentration and attention actually get better as you age, study finds.”
          Not in senile Joe’s case !

        2. Geoff if you are not using your 2 m folding surveyor’s rod, could you send it to Bidens VP Ms. legs in the air Harris, she likes practicing her lip suction action on rods of all sizes & colours .

    4. I’ve read that three times and by the time I’ve got to the end I’ve forgotten what it’s about.

  96. On Topic – should we rephrase the title:
    Americans must counter the perverted dogmas that drove the Taliban to victory in Afghanistan.
    An army that is more interested in “diversity” than miltary prowess does not stand much of a chance.
    https://youtu.be/ZEnxmzqXJN8

  99. Our lads aren’t doing too badly then

    ROBERT CLARK
    19 August 2021 • 10:03am

    Amid the widespread panic, chaos, and looting of Afghanistan’s capital by murderous Taliban thugs, 900 British military personnel are undertaking a desperate airlift mission. The urgent evacuation of as many as 4,000 British citizens, as well as thousands of entitled Afghan civilians who were employed by the British over the last twenty years, is well underway.

    The soldiers, primarily drawn from Colchester-based 16 Air Assault Brigade, have been supporting efforts to secure Hamid Karzai International Airport, with patrols in its dusty surroundings, and helping to pick-up an estimated and pre-identified 6,000 British and Afghan civilians to evacuate.

    Approximately 1,200 people have now been evacuated since Sunday. Whilst other nation’s flights out of Kabul may appear (one German plane carried just seven evacuees, while an Australian Hercules aircraft departed with 26) the British effort is on track to successfully evacuate roughly 1,000 people per day over the coming weeks.

    These figures are doubly impressive given that this week saw only 600 British troops deployed in the first wave, the bulk from the 2nd Battalion the Parachute Regiment.

    In the guts of the airport, the troops, with remnants of the diplomatic staff, headed by the steadfast British ambassador Sir Laurie Bristow, are also assisting with the processing of visa documents, biometric details, and the administrative paperwork for the evacuating Afghans.

    Infantry soldiers, trained to conduct high intensity land warfare operations in complex terrain, are coming off mentally exhausting operations – including the extraction of civilians from the streets of Kabul – to help with this processing effort, before the air crew fly the civilians out under the cover of darkness due to the Taliban artillery now in Kabul.

    Whilst the military and remaining diplomatic effort are working incredibly hard, they have been let down by the hurried nature of this airlift deployment. In following America’s lead on this, Westminster has turned what should have been a simple operation into a fraught quagmire.

    Of all the singular events which will come to define Britain’s twenty year Afghan campaign, none will be remembered as much as the unnecessary and rushed US-led troop withdrawal. As was noted in The Telegraph yesterday, its consequences will live on for decades to come.

    But our men and women on the ground, making sure those at risk of Taliban vengeance are ushered to safety, are reminding us why Britain’s military is so well regarded around the world. They are acting with courage, humility and a quiet strength – and in doing so showing up the military leadership of countries which should be contributing more to the effort. May they return home safe in the knowledge that they’ve made us proud.

    Robert Clark is a Defence Policy Associate at the Henry Jackson Society. Prior to this he served in the British Army, including multiple combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

      2. It is worrying when you hear the small numbers of Paras involved against so many Taliban forces. Touch wood they all come home safely.

        1. 2 Para are one scary bunch of lads. I suspect they are enjoying themselves Viking in Kabul.

    3. Proof that Biden and his Secretary of Defence are clueless cowards and unfit for office.

      It would have been possible for an orderly exit of American and Afghan troops had Bagram Airport not been gifted prematurely to the Taliban by the incompetent in the White House. The British resolve and method shames the USA.

    4. Good for them. Let’s ensure that we all know of both American and Australian cowardice – a far cry from June 6th 1944.

  100. Evening, all. Have had a wasted day waiting in for the delivery of my new, and sorely needed, dishwasher. They have not even bothered to contact me to apologise. They’ll get a rocket tomorrow. As for the headline; whoever wrote that hasn’t read the koran and knows next to nothing about islam.

      1. They didn’t have Covid yesterday when they arranged the delivery (face to face in the shop). It was bad enough not giving me a time (any time between 09.00 and 17.00 – gee, thanks!). Not to turn up at all when I’ve been marking time at home all day is too much. I should have bought it from Argos – at least they delivered when they said they would last time I bought something from them.

        2. My friend Dianne ordered some ‘road pins’, fencing and cable ties around three weeks ago, for her Devon allotment. Allegedly, Tuffnells have ‘tried’ to deliver several times. But her Ring video doorbell tells a different story… So far, they haven’t tried.

          1. I have to say that I have entirely the opposite experience in Vale of Glamorgan, for my mother.
            SWift response, no problems with payment by bank transfer / card on the phone, “Oh, no problem, pay us afterwards” from fencing contractor Matt, white goods Kitchener & Thomas, plumber, sparky, local grocer ValleyView (even sent them champagne for Christmas, they supported Mother when I couldn’t get a delivery slot from anyone else).
            Small local traders are the tops!

          3. That’s the point. Local trader dependent on local business puts themselves out more than national traders that don’t give a shit.

          4. Um, this local trader didn’t put himself out at all, hence no delivery, no apology, no explanation!

          10. Paul, I totally agree re. local suppliers. I’m just rather pee’d orf that – having helped her to find a supplier of what she needed, three weeks from ordering, she’s no further forward. I have a similar issue going on at the moment with an eBay purchase.

          11. ARGH! Doesn’t that just jerk your chain?
            I’ll get pissed on your behalf… oh! Wait…

          15. Agreed. Will have to reduce consumption, or increase the input of moonshine… decisions, decisions.

        3. Our Number one son had a new fridge freezer delivered from Currys yesterday, it was a disaster, the front was all scratched but it was no bodies fault.

          1. Had a new washer dryer and fridge freezer from ao.com last year. The Bosch fridge freezer is fine, but the Candy washer/dryer has a socking great dent in it. Still – it works, but it’s not wi-fi connected as advertised…

          2. Thomas Tallis is long departed. I have a friend who now occupies his earlier position. St Mary at Hill, to be precise. I have no knowledge re. his liver…

    2. Give them some hassle, and reject it.
      Buy a replacement from someone else.
      Bastards.

      1. I’ve just been watching Rip orff Britain, that’s virtually what the three old dears said.

      2. Unfortunately, I paid for it cash. I’ll go elsewhere in future and I’ll make sure they know that.

          3. I always pay by credit card if I’m buying off the Internet. As I’ve dealt with them many times before, I thought it would be okay this time. Ah, well.

          7. Because if you have a problem like non-delivery or the seller running off with your money, you can put a stop on the card and don’t have to pay.

  102. When Khunts like Khant were permitting Trump blimps I used to object that no matter how much one hated the holder one had to respect the office.
    Biden has changed my mind.

    1. Dopey Joe would probably be blaming DT for everything, but he probably can’t remember who he was.

    3. I think your principle still holds; Biden cheated his way into the office, so he doesn’t count.

    2. And he can rejoin his old mate who used a stand in for the photo of his stretchered body when it was said he had committed suicide in jail.

    3. JFDI and shew the world what a bunch of twats they are, to believe all the stories of sex in all the lurid details.

    1. Might it be possible that the whole Biden debacle is deliberate and that the billionaires are destroying the world to take over?

    2. The man is a total imbecile and should be removed from office immediately, pending a new election.

      The Americans are allowing themselves to be led down the road to perdition.

  105. Good night all.

    A venison burger with lots of coleslaw & a whole wheat toasted bun, a long, chilled Brenda in a tall glass.
    Then a custard tart.

  106. I’ve been busy most of the day and I’m feeling very sleepy, i might have to pop orrff.

    It might have been the longer than usual Dog walk in Sherrard’s park wood near Old Welwyn. Just about a mile away from the White Hart Inn where Lord Byron’s body was held over night on it’s way to it final resting place. And apparently at the time his lover Lady Caroline lamb did not yet know he had died and was only a about 2 miles from the body where she lived at Brocket Hall.

        1. I replied to you last Thursday:
          Thursday 12 AugustL It’s time for an honest conversation about the purpose of exams
          Elf & Safety
          Elf & Safety
          Ready Eddy
          6 days ago
          Happy Friday Eddy. as a child I lived south of the river in Herne Hill until we left London for Essex & I don’t think I’ve ever been to Hendon. Naturally I am familiar with the Kindertransport story but not with Moshe Frei. Here in Israel there were several of those who were on the Kindertransport & as grown ups emigrated to Israel to be reunited with surviving family members.

          1. Oh right thanks, i didn’t see the reply.
            I think there is a family website where they al chip in on the story.

        1. Its unenforceable, we have a crazy Homosexual ( Nitzan Horowitz ) as Minister of Health in a coalition government that’s only commonality is their blind hatred of Netanyahu . I was listening today to Israel Radio – they were interviewing restaurant & shop owners, wedding hall, mall owners etc they all said its impossible to carry out such tests, they are not going to police the public, their customers. Today I was out buying groceries at my local mini-market, the wearing of a mask rule is enforced as it has been since the start of the Covid outbreak but nobody is going to stop customers demanding to see a vaccination certificate or demanding a test on the spot. I have a printed vaccination certificate in my wallet, never been asked to show it, not even the last time I went to the nearest supermarket – a good 20 minutes bus ride away , nor was I asked for it in the nearest mini-mall a 30 minute bus ride away where there are restaurants, shops & a post office parcel collection point ( that’s why I went there – to pick up a parcel )

        2. My immediate reaction, Sos, is to ask, “Can we trust the statistics?” All around the world, governments and Health Authorities are being encouraged to boost the figures to fear-inspiring levels which have subsequently been proved to be false.

          I don’t trust any of the mendacious bastards.

      2. Strangely there are not many birds visible in those woods, it’s quite close the the noisy A1 perhaps this is the reason. It’s a lovely walk though.

    2. These people are savages and should be treated accordingly; they have no culture, Maggie …

      1. I am certain no one in Government has given anything any thought ..

        If they are allowing Brigands access to the UK , as they have in the past , I really fear for the consequences . Then with a mixture of Sharia and Sunni Muslims and others , I suppose my over active imagination is running riot with anxiety .

        1. No improvements, Belle, thanks for asking. Now looking for money to pay for care. Equity release, it’s called.

    2. My reply on twatter:

      This impressionable girl doesn’t realise just what she is doing. She sees the Hijab as a fashion accessory and doesn’t realise that by keeping her legs bare and very visible she is inflaming sex urges in Muslim men.

    3. If a school girl came home wearing a hijab she should be sent to the kitchen to do the washing up and cooking and then do the laundry by hand and generally treated by the rest of the family in the way many Muslim women and girls are treated. She should expect to be treated in this way if that is how she wants to dress.

  110. Goodnight all Nottlers, bedtime music: Avalon Jazz Band – Bonjour Sourire (Henri Salvador)
    Bonjour Sourire”, composed by Jean Constantin, is a song from the French comedy film by the same title, directed by Claude Sautet in 1956, written by Jean Marsan, starring Henri Salvador, Annie Cordy and Louis de Funès.

    Vocals – Tatiana Eva-Marie, Violin – Adrien Chevalier, Guitar – Vinny Raniolo, Accordion – Albert Behar, Bass – Julian Smith
    Filmed by Sébastien Vergne at The Keep in Brooklyn.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWiM3yYRa4s&list=OLAK5uy_kwczIk9TqScmrrML0_wAEFschmTZ2uR1U

    1. Thanks Con, busy day yesterday so just catching up. A delightful lunch with old friends at The George in Alfriston, accompanied by some rare sunshine! Family gathering here on Sunday, after which I can set about starting the next 70 years…

  113. Joe Biden’s handling of Afghanistan threatens to plunge UK-US relations to lowest point in 25 years
    Mounting concern among diplomats, ministers and MPs over the health of the special relationship
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/08/19/joe-bidens-handling-afghanistan-threatens-plunge-uk-us-relations/

    With friends like Biden who need enemies? Or as Al Capone put it: I can look after my enemies but God protect me from my friends.

    A BTL comment on this headline:

    Virtually all the British MSM and the ‘British Powers That Be’ supported the senile and incompetent Biden in the election because they did not like Trump who was pro-British. They’ve got what they wanted and it serves them right.

    2. No such thing as “special relationship”. Yet more delusion by the UK politicians and press. There’s just the kissing of US butt.

  114. Did anyone see Rod Liddle on GB News this evening? He was his usual self but his flabber was completely ghasted by one of Dan Wootton’s panel, an extremely strident feminist Called Rebecca Reid whom he described as unbelievably thick!

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