Monday 6 September: Hiking tax rates is counterproductive as it creates disincentives to work

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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

Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here.

700 thoughts on “Monday 6 September: Hiking tax rates is counterproductive as it creates disincentives to work”

  3. Influence operation by pro-Russian trolls ‘infiltrate comments on UK news sites. 6 September 2021.

    Reader comments sections of prominent western news websites have been infiltrated by pro-Russian trolls seeking to manipulate the picture of public opinion, researchers believe.

    Comments are often posted early on and receive an unusually high number of up-votes on sites that allow other readers to like and dislike, according to the Foreign Office-backed Open Source Communications Analytics Research (Oscar) programme at Cardiff University.

    Morning everyone. How shocking! Whatever are things coming too! The next thing they will be posting pictures of Vladimir Putin. Thankfully we don’t have anyone like that on Nottl! Lol!

    https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/russia-west-fox-news-dominic-raab-nato-b953816.html

    2. They don’t say which way the votes go though. I imagine there are a vast farm of Russian trolls merrily posting away on the BBC, guardian and independent websites – and huff post while I remember – endorsing their demented nonsense while the missive writers giggle and chortle at the madness they’re writing.

      Maybe that’s where the foreign aid budget goes?

      1. Morning Wibbles. Actually they go the opposite way in the Mail to what is described here. A single post in support of the official narrative will recieve a massive injection of votes that ensures it occupies the “Best” spot. Occasionally, if the article is really sensitive a single post will be allowed with a suitable number of upvotes and no further posts will be allowed!

    1. I sympathise with people struggling to do their best when psychologically vulnerable, but she was quite clearly going to be out of her depth as an MP and should never have been selected for a safe seat with a foregone conclusion. But she is queer (her words), vegan and Punjabi, so that’s alright then.

      If she can’t do the job she should resign.

      2. 338567+ up ticks,
        Morning D,
        The pay, perks, & cut of scams dictates that very few if any resign.

        1. Unusually, she promised shortly after election to donate the excess of her salary over £35,000 to local charities. No mention of expenses or any confirmation that she has indeed done that.

      3. Dear lord alive. It’s like the quango bingo. This is why she is unfit for office. She sees herself as a collection of labels – much as lefties do everyone else.

    2. I sympathise with people struggling to do their best when psychologically vulnerable, but she was quite clearly going to be out of her depth as an MP and should never have been selected for a safe seat with a foregone conclusion. But she is queer (her words), vegan and Punjabi, so that’s alright then.

      If she can’t do the job she should resign.

    3. Punjabi father abandoned family, never had a proper job before politics (hate crime project worker but fired for spreading misinformation), identifies as ‘queer’ (Wiki), campaigns for trans rights, doesn’t want criminals returned to Jamaica, in favour of pulling down statues of white men – no wonder she has PTSD – Positive Trotski Shít Distributer syndrome.

      No mention of the real problems in lifr: https://www.careinternational.org.uk/sites/default/files/Nadia-comic-strip-04.jpg

  7. Being a self-hating Brit is a privilege. Just ask Hilary Mantel

    Pro-EU luvvies like the Booker-prize winning novelist have specialised in petulant remarks that only alienate people more

    TOM SLATER
    5 September 2021 • 2:30pm

    I’m not usually one to dabble in conspiracy theories, but I’m starting to wonder if pro-EU luvvies might be Vote Leave plants. Hear me out. What else could explain the regularity with which actors, authors, comedians and other celebs – those who transitioned seamlessly from being prominent smug Remainers to prominent smug Remoaners – say dumb things that send voters in the opposite direction. The Leave campaign must have got to them, paid them off early. Classic Dom, etc.

    Remember Bob Geldof making chase and putting two fingers up to that pro-Brexit flotilla on the Thames during the referendum campaign? Because nothing says ‘we’re not metropolitan elitists’ like a millionaire jeering at hard-up fishermen from the top deck of a yacht. The People’s Vote campaign after the referendum offered this on steroids – with Steve Coogan, Hugh Grant and that bald bloke from Mock the Week posing as tribunes of the democratic masses. Had they ever got that second referendum, Leave would have won again by a Kim Jong-un-style landslide.

    But my favourite of this ilk has got to be those celebs who vow to leave the UK because we’ve left the EU – or because ‘Boris’s Britain’ is an unbearable cesspit full of dull food and dull-minded locals. Wolf Hall author Hilary Mantel is the latest to reach for her Rimowa suitcases. In an interview with la Repubblica, she says she plans to move to Ireland, where her grandparents are originally from, so she can ‘become European again’ – something Brexit of course hasn’t taken away from her. She says she is ‘ashamed to live in a country that has elected a government headed by Boris Johnson’, and is also dismayed by the persistence of the monarchy.

    Mantel’s not the only pro-EU celebrity to consider leaving. Emma Thompson became a citizen of Venice shortly after Brexit Day in February 2020. She seemed to have a problem with the UK even before Remain lost, branding ours a ‘cake-filled misery-laden grey old island’ during the referendum campaign. As it turned out, she quietly moved back to live among we Battenberg-munching clods just days after she left, while Covid was ripping through Italy in early March. TV chef turned self-righteous food crusader Jamie Oliver also said in 2016 that he would be ‘done’ with Britain if Boris became prime minister – though he is, regrettably, still here.

    Tell me these people aren’t sleeper agents. I didn’t vote for Boris Johnson, but if anything nearly swayed me it was the knowledge that doing so might upset Jamie Oliver. Many Leave voters and Boris supporters, I’m sure, were radicalised by the unbearable smugness of these people. They are caricatures of themselves, who bristle at being painted as snobby cosmopolitans who dislike their fellow countrymen, only to go out of their way to live up to that stereotype.

    Most people have neither the money nor the inclination to emigrate for no other reason than a few elections haven’t gone their way. Not so with these self-styled asylum seekers from Brexit Britain, who apparently see having to share a country with people who disagree with them as an unconscionable infringement on their human rights. That so many of these threats to leave end up being empty underlines the petulance of it all even more. Mantel’s comments remind us what a privilege it is to hate your own country.

    Comments are now closed

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/09/05/self-hating-brit-privilege-just-ask-hilary-mantel/

    1. “I didn’t vote for Boris Johnson, but if anything nearly swayed me it was the knowledge that doing so might upset Jamie Oliver.”

      Love it. Perfectly rational decision. However hard he tries to speak Estuary, Jamie Oliver is definitely no longer an Essex Boy.

      1. Oliver has always been a twat. He was lucky to get his first break (an air-headed Channel 4 producer thought he looked “cute and cheeky”). Also, he has never come up with an original recipe: all he does is utterly trash other people’s original efforts by “putting a twist on them”.

        1. You should hear our younger son on the subject; he’s the same age and did much the same training.
          He has done perfectly well and made the qualification work for him, but JO gets right up his nose.

        2. It is easy to see. Take any classic dish and take a look at Jack Offs Jamie Oliver’s version.

          He adds several other ingredients which aren’t in the original.

          If it ain’t broke and all that.

      2. Jamie Oliver is presently wrecking Spain’s Hall, a fabulous historic house near Fiinchingfield.

        His parents no longer run The Cricketers at Clavering. I have memories of decent pub meals cooked presumably by his parents.

        I surveyed a defunct Jamie’s Italian in Chelmsford snd designed the replacement kitchens for Middletons.

        The place was a complete mess, floors covered in cooking oil and filth and with several printed messages to staff in Euro Polski to check the temperature of their burgers as punters had gone down with food poisoning. The hard wooden benches in the restaurant would give you splinters and the roof leaked.

  9. Energy rationing feared as Russia’s gas squeeze exposes the UK’s perilously low reserves. 6 September 2021.

    Russia’s Vladimir Putin is orchestrating a deliberate energy supply crisis in Europe by restricting the seasonal flows of pipeline gas, preventing the region rebuilding its severely depleted inventories fast enough before the onset of winter.

    The UK is not the target of this geostrategic squeeze but is dangerously exposed after having slashed its gas storage capacity to wafer-thin levels in order to save costs. The country must rely on energy back-up through gas and electricity interconnectors to the Continent, which cannot be taken for granted in emergency circumstances. TELEGRAPH

    Gazprom PJSC needs to store nearly as much natural gas at home to keep Russians warm this winter as it currently ships to its top customer Western Europe every day, Bloomberg calculations show.

    The Russian gas giant has just two months to build its depleted inventories to the record levels it’s targeting, a goal the Energy Minister Nikolay Shulginov expects Gazprom to meet. That will require pumping into underground storages sites in Russia supplies equal to about 80% of daily exports to Western Europe. BLOOMBERG.

    In other words Vlad (it’s not really Vlad of course but Gazprom) is building up supplies at home to counter the Russian Winter while the UK’s rulers incompetence has caught up with them!

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-03/russia-has-a-gas-problem-nearly-the-size-of-exports-to-europe

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/09/05/energy-rationing-feared-russias-gas-squeeze-exposes-uks-perilously/

    1. Morning, Araminta.

      How sure are you that incompetence is the main driving force behind the situation we find ourselves in, energy wise? Looking at Johnson’s crazy ideas/plans it’s as likely that the rundown of our energy resources is a deliberate act to condition the people to shortages in the near future. All to save the planet along with massaging the Green credentials of our hubristic politicians, of course.
      Richard SK, below, hits the nail on the head. Why would a country deliberately abandon massive energy resources in an energy hungry World? It’s madness, deliberate madness.

      1. Morning Korky. I took the most obvious line in that incompetence is always a more likely explanation than conspiracy. Though this, as you point out, is not always the case!

        1. My opinion, for what it is worth, is that the Green Agenda has been followed by successive governments for years and that fact alone rules out incompetence. Green is the colour and is an agenda. Another example in my area, the ‘driest’ in the Country, is an attack on water usage via adverts on the radio that involve ducks complaining about their streams running dry. Infantile but I suppose the analysts have researched their audience. Nobody asked me, by the way.

          1. Water companies havee been asking for ages to build more reservoirs. Government eeps refusing them.

            Same as gas companies asked to mine gas. Again, state refused.

            Both were part of the moronic and ecologically destructive green agenda of the EU. We have left the EU, and could do both of these things, improving our water and energy security. Why does Boris not get on with them?

          1. Yebbut! Youse all pissed orf when the Vikings turned up to kick your sorry Saxon arses! Innit?

            Horned helmets never happened: they were a figment of some cartoonist’s imagination.

          2. Aksherly, Æthelflaed’s daddy put them back in their box.
            As we were then not daft enough to give invaders 5 bedroom houses and free healthcare, the Vikings soon knuckled down and became useful members of society.

          3. Subjected to the terrors of Northern hospitality and a surfeit of whippets and flat caps (cat flaps).

            Too much ecky thump.

    1. Even if people think the vax is good for the elderly and infirm, giving it to youngsters was always going to be statistically unsound because of unknown consequences.

    1. As they pour off the boat, we should fill them with arrows. That was the traditional greeting to invaders.

  16. This is a real humdinger…

    WATCH: ‘Revolution or Ruin’ – Extinction Rebellion Activist Says Only Socialism Can Stop Climate Change

    At an Extinction Rebellion protest on Saturday, a speaker claimed that the socialist model, along the lines of Communist Cuba, is the only way to combat supposedly man-made climate change.

    On the final day of the two weeks of demonstrations from the radic al climate change alarmist group Extinction Rebellion (XR), an activist from the Marxist-Leninist Revolutionary Communist Group (RCG) declared that socialism is the answer to climate change, to the applause of the crowd in Trafalgar Square.

    “The only logical response to the urgency of the climate crisis is through an anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist socialist movement built here on our streets,” the XR activist said.

    “Environmental destruction is an essential part of the capitalist mode of production. Any movement that is not anti-imperialist will simply be green imperialism. Socialism is the only alternative to the destruction born through capitalism, the needs of the people and the planet are put before profits.”

    She claimed that Socialist Cuba has “achieved sustainable development” which she said shows the potential of socialist framework proposals in tackling climate change.

    “Through remarkable steps like their 100-year-plan to protect the population from the worst effects of climate change, Cuba shows that socialism is the only system capable of marshalling the organisation necessary for a sustainable future by returning the power to the working-class masses,” she asserted.
    *
    *
    *
    https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2021/09/05/exclusive-video-extinction-rebellion-activist-says

    2. Socialist Cuba has managed sustained development by not having any. It’s has fewer emissions because it has widespread poverty and no food, fuel or soon, clean water. Yes, such is infinitely sustainable – it’ll just mean crushing poverty, deaths and eventually war, because someone will have something someone else wants.

      Socialism does not work. There’s a book written about it. El Book

  19. Morning all. Here are the letters……

    SIR – The only way that the deficit will be reduced is through increased tax revenues from the private sector. And the only way those revenues will rise is from increases in private sector profits and incomes, which only happen as a result of people in the private sector working harder, more creatively and more productively.

    Increasing tax rates, particularly in the form of National Insurance Contributions (report, September 4), only creates disincentives to work and build profits, so is counterproductive.

    Donald R Clarke

    Tunbridge Wells, Kent

    SIR – This Government’s new mantra: “Get out to work. Pay more taxes. Save the NHS”.

    Phill Hopkins

    Bridgend, Glamorgan

    SIR – If the Government is intent on raising NICs to help fund the NHS and to reform social care costs for the elderly, surely better-off retired people should also pay the 1 per cent extra NIC, perhaps renamed the Health Insurance Contribution.

    Advertisement

    The argument that retired people have already paid through their working lives does not hold water as there is no fund built up to provide benefits for pensioners, and all such expenditure is paid out of current taxation.

    Michael Staples

    Seaford, East Sussex

    SIR – Society has changed dramatically since the inception of the NHS in 1947. Laudable though “free” care for all might have been then, it is no longer sustainable.

    The time has come for personal contributions to reflect usage, and that means some kind of insurance model. There are existing models that are punitive (as in the US) and those that deliver affordable and accessible healthcare (as in France).

    Do we have a government with the courage to do what is necessary?

    Charles Holden

    Micheldever, Hampshire

    SIR – Around the time of my retirement, I went to visit my supervisor from student days. We talked about a few things, then he asked: “What provision have you made for the care you may need in a few years’ time?”.

    I was surprised by the bluntness of his question, but it was a reasonable one, and everyone should have a reasonable answer.

    Advertisement

    Alistair Mills

    Hungerford, Berkshire

    SIR – My mother died last month from Alzheimer’s aged 89, having spent over four years in a care home.

    I wonder if the Chancellor would be prepared to offer a tax credit for the sale of her house and the use of her life’s savings to pay for her care. It seems that if you work hard, keep fit and subsequently get age-related dementia, you get penalised. If, however, you get a lifestyle-related illness then the state often pays.

    Richard Colgan

    St Neots, Huntingdonshire

    Use of stop and search

    SIR – There are many arguments made to discredit police use of stop and search (report, September 4). One of these is the success rate. For example, if police are called to a group of five youths armed with a knife it is highly likely that all five youths will be searched. If one knife is found in the possession of one youth that means that 80 per cent of the searches returned no result – despite a weapon being taken off the streets.

    In my 32 years as a police officer I did not particularly enjoy using stop and search. However, it is a valuable preventive tool which the majority of youths I met actually supported.

    Advertisement

    People should accept that not every search will result in a prohibited article being found. Police use is proportionate and, once a youth is in possession of a weapon, it is only the intervention of a police officer that can sometimes prevent a death or serious injury.

    Clifford Baxter

    Wareham, Dorset

    Born in Afghanistan

    SIR – My grandmother was born in Afghanistan, where her father was serving with the Baluchistan Rifles. The regiment was then relocated to the Boer War in South Africa.

    My grandmother was considered too small and delicate to make the journey, so she was left with an Afghan family who fed her ass’s milk. A couple of years later she was collected and brought back to England where she lived until she was 93.

    I am very grateful to the Afghan family and the donkey. And sad for the great grandmother who was forced to leave her baby behind.

    Sally Malmesbury

    Hook, Hampshire

    Legalising cannabis

    SIR – Rachel Cunliffe (Business, August 30) extols the virtues of legalising cannabis. It is not clear how she imagines that legalising cannabis will create jobs unless she is referring to the work done by the drug counselling services or the street corner sellers.

    Advertisement

    The idea that legalisation would provide a handy source of tax revenue is wrong and immoral. It would place the Government on the same level as the worst drug lord.

    The claim that cannabis is less harmful than tobacco is not borne out by experts in the field and it has undesirable effects not present in tobacco, psychosis being one.

    Brendan Flynn

    London N1

    Palliative care and the assisted dying debate

    SIR – Charles Moore’s thoughtful article on assisted dying (Comment, September 4) misses a fundamental point. Hospices are indeed the experts. They provide some beds and, more importantly, outreach services to the majority of us who want to die at home.

    However, hospices are largely funded by charitable donation. More and more people are living longer. Many more will die painfully from cancer. It is untenable for the funding of hospices to be entrusted to the vagaries of society’s continuing goodwill. A sudden loss of income can have a catastrophic effect on the ability of a hospice to supply those expert palliative care services so often quoted as the answer to the assisted dying debate.

    Advertisement

    Linda Hughes

    Newton Abbot, Devon

    SIR – Tolerance of indignity varies among individuals. I know of a 68-year-old who wanted to experience his own painful death from cancer as a matter of scientific interest, and a 70-year-old who put up with immobility, incontinence, and intimate care from both his wife and strangers (his multiple sclerosis was apparently not particularly painful). Both died at home. However, I also knew a gentleman in his mid-80s who went to Switzerland when his physical ailments meant he would have to undergo a series of operations he didn’t want.

    Assisted suicide belongs in the palliative care system. A thorough assessment of the person’s needs could be applied to a request to be helped to die. It would include establishing whether the request stems from depression, a sense of being a burden or indeed coercion. Rational people living with intolerable suffering should be allowed to choose where, when and how they die.

    Sarah Hyde

    Filey, North Yorkshire

    Politicians’ honour

    SIR – Recent events have illustrated that certain members of the Cabinet are not up to the job. Outstanding examples of ineptitude are Dominic Raab at the Foreign Office and Gavin Williamson at the Department for Education. Despite ongoing criticism of their work, such career politicians continue in post.

    The statesmen-politicians of the mid-19th century clearly had a greater sense of honour. For example, in the 1860s it was rumoured that Gladstone never attended a meeting of the Palmerston Cabinet without the precaution of having a letter of his resignation in his pocket, although Palmerston claimed (as a joke) that he fuelled the fires at his Broadlands house with such letters.

    David S Ainsworth

    Manchester

    Remember them

    SIR – Clive Aslet’s article on churchyards (September 2) reminded me of a headstone my wife and I came across in a church cemetery during a holiday tour of Scotland in 1984.

    It commemorated a mother who had collapsed and died on being told of the loss of the third of her sons to be killed in the First World War.

    In his book War Memorial Mr Aslet wrote a most interesting and poignant account of his research into the lives of those named on the war memorial of the Devonshire village of Lydford, providing a permanent record of a small community which had contributed greatly to this country’s history.

    Derek Walker

    Strensall, North Yorkshire

    Driven to distraction

    SIR – I am concerned that cars are becoming more dangerous as the proliferation of new technical additions increasingly tend to distract the driver.

    In my car, for example, the owner’s manual – running to 408 pages – lists no fewer than 115 warning and indicator signs that appear on one of the two screens. I assume I am meant to remember what each of these indicates, but I imagine few people actually do know what they are about.

    Richard Dalgleish

    Newbury, Berkshire

    Neckties are vanishing from men’s wardrobes

    a skirt made out of ties at Copenhagen Fashion Week last month

    Wearing it well: a skirt made out of ties at Copenhagen Fashion Week last month CREDIT: Getty Images

    SIR – We read of the imminent demise of the suit (Comment, August 30), although surely the jacket-and-trousers combination is too classic ever to go.

    More puzzling is the vanishing necktie. Shirts remain as they were, designed to accommodate this obsolete bit of tokenism.

    Marion Wilcocks

    Beare Green, Surrey

    SIR – When men wore suits every day to go shopping or to the pub, it made sense for them to dress equally formally for work. Today in pubs, restaurants, theatres, shops and everywhere else, it is very rare indeed to see a man wearing a suit and tie unless he works there.

    Women’s workwear has evolved to reflect changing fashions and does not have this sharp dividing line between work and leisure. Men are now choosing to dress more flexibly, and it is entirely correct of Marks & Spencer to adjust their menswear departments accordingly.

    Steven Field

    Wokingham, Berkshire

    What makes a weed

    SIR – Rebecca Pow, a former presenter of gardening programmes, tells us that “A weed is just a plant in the wrong place” (report, September 4).

    Clearly she has never met ground elder.

    Jennifer Wade

    Oxford

    Nice to see you

    SIR – Rather than powdering her nose, my late mother-in-law always put on her glasses before answering the telephone (Letters, September 4) as she swore she could hear better.

    Nick Pope

    Woodcote, Oxfordshire

    In a jam

    SIR – Making my own jam, I must pay almost £1 each for jam jars bought from the internet. However, if I buy a jar of Tesco cheap brand strawberry jam, it costs 26p.

    Do any of your readers have suggestions for what to do with all the jam I must empty out in order to take advantage of this bargain?

    Geoff Snape

    Great Harwood, Lancashire

    1. “… reduced is through increased tax revenues from the private sector. And the o…”

      NO!

      Taxing your way out of debt is like trying to lift yourself out of a bucket by the handles. Why, WHY do people not understand this? It is so screamingly obviously the wrong thing to do.

      Higher taxes, lower demand for goods, less employment, lower tax revenue.
      State spending stays the same, debt continues to increase, deficit increases.
      With a shrinking tax base, more is borrowed.

      The only solution – the ONLY one is less state spending. The state is awash with waste.

      Quod erat demonstrandum.

    2. And again! “…argument that retired people have already paid through their working
      lives does not hold water as there is no fund built up to provide
      benefits for pensioners, and all such expenditure is paid out of current
      taxation….”

      Why has no fund been built up? Because the state has spent it. On what? Life knows! HS2, the NHS, public sector pensions, a rooftop garden, councillor salaries, taxis, a government plane, hare brained Left wing eco nonsense, union time, endless quangos, charities such as Stonewall, lobby groups demanding more money from the state, welfare fraud, MoD incompetence. You name it, point at a department and you’ll find waste.

      The money IS there, the state is just deliberately incompetent and spends it on what IT wants, not what it should. They’re like spoiled children in a sweet shop.

        1. What a wonderful country we live in…

          (From the Guardian 12 February 2021)

          Mismanagement claims against Kids Company founder thrown out

          Camila Batmanghelidjh exonerated of allegations she was responsible for charity collapse

          https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/d7abe7ecbb218a73d2913b2e5daedff767880661/70_332_4064_2438/master/4064.jpg?width=620&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=94d3e20b9f0eb28b9e01dc8637f69504
          Camila Batmanghelidjh. There had been no dishonesty, bad faith or personal gain on the part of her or the trustees at any stage, Mrs Justice Falk said. Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardian

          https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/12/mismanagement-claims-kids-company-founder-thrown-out-camila-batmanghelidjh

          2. Looking her up on the Internet I discovered to my astonishment that she went to the same school as my sisters – but several years after they went to Sherborne Girls’. I also discovered that she is younger than my wife although she looks at least ten year older.

          3. “(not) responsible for charity collapse… but several bridges and escalators have been seriously threatened on a regular basis.

      2. When you fall behind on your social security a payments you can only restore your full OAP by paying a capital sum to make up the shortfall.

        Does this not prove conclusively that it is a complete lie to say that your NI contributions have nothing to do with your pension?

      3. When you fall behind on your social security a payments you can only restore your full OAP by paying a capital sum to make up the shortfall.

        Does this not prove conclusively that it is a complete lie to say that your NI contributions have nothing to do with your pension?

    4. “The argument that retired people have already paid through their working lives does not hold water as there is no fund built up to provide benefits for pensioners, and all such expenditure is paid out of current taxation.” Therein lies the problem, Michael Staples. The trouble with assisted suicide, Sarah, is the mission creep which will inevitably happen. Remember the arguments for abortion?

      1. 338567 + up ticks,
        Morning Anne,
        Lying as the past shows us quite clearly, & still finding the majority consent of the electorate.

      1. He’s that same bloke who as soon as covid hit had his wife register as a supplier of medical goods, isn’t he?

        You now, who before hand had no experience or history as a medical supplier?

      2. I wonder how many people took one look at this chap and said: “This is a kind, pleasant, generous-spirited, honest man whom I can trust”?

  22. On yesterday’s TMS blog, a poster announced that he had just noted in his office diary that today he had an all day meeting with Kenny Oval.

  23. Good Moaning. Bright yellow thing in the sky again. We’re all dooooooomed …….
    Tim Stanley in the DT:
    “Al-Qaeda made several organisational blunders that intelligence failed to spot or exploit, and airline security was shockingly poor. It’s staggering to read that on the day of the attack, the hijackers were flagged at the airport for extra scrutiny (one had no photo ID, couldn’t understand English and was behaving suspiciously), but this only meant that their bags were held before they were confirmed to have boarded. They passed through metal detectors. One of them set off the alarms twice.”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/09/05/west-has-still-not-learnt-lessons-911-even-20-years-later/

    “The West has still not learnt the lessons of 9/11, even 20 years later

    America had been interfering in Muslim states for decades, making it a target for resentment

    Tim Stanley5 September 2021 • 9:30pm

    This Saturday is the 20th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, and to mark the occasion the BBC produced a documentary telling the story from the point of view of White House staff. It was compelling, but, as is always the case with TV, the medium shapes the message. By focusing on the shock and anger of America’s leadership in the hours the atrocity unfolded, it inadvertently reinforced the narrative that 9/11 came out of nowhere.

    This is untrue. The hijackers – psychopaths, all – were responsible for the slaughter, but Americans also had every right to be angry with their government for not preventing it. Failure to comprehend the mistakes that led up to 9/11 helps to explain mistakes the West has made since, culminating in our wounded withdrawal from Afghanistan.

    After watching the show, I reread the 9/11 Commission Report, ordered by George W Bush and Congress and issued in 2004, which concluded that the attacks “were a shock, but they should not have come as a surprise”. Al-Qaeda made several organisational blunders that intelligence failed to spot or exploit, and airline security was shockingly poor. It’s staggering to read that on the day of the attack, the hijackers were flagged at the airport for extra scrutiny (one had no photo ID, couldn’t understand English and was behaving suspiciously), but this only meant that their bags were held before they were confirmed to have boarded. They passed through metal detectors. One of them set off the alarms twice.

    The country should have been on maximum alert: “During spring and summer” of 2001, to quote the commission, intelligence agencies received “a string of warnings” that something “very big” was coming.

    In 1993, there had been an attempt by a different group to destroy the World Trade Centre with a truck bomb; in 1995, in Manila, a plot was uncovered to blow up a dozen US airliners. By 1997, al-Qaeda was firmly on the radar, attempting to purchase nuclear material, and in February 1998, its leader, Osama bin Laden, issued a fatwa calling upon Muslims to kill Americans. Duly, in August 1998, his organisation was responsible for the deaths of 224 people in joint attacks on US embassies. Clinton reportedly wanted to kill bin Laden and had a plan; his failure to act hinged, say some, on embarrassment at speculation that he only went to war to distract from his domestic troubles.

    But the US was also overstretched, active in Iraq and the Balkans, and there were worries about inflaming Muslim opinion that, in retrospect, appear quaint. In October 2000, al-Qaeda ran a boat packed with explosives at the USS Cole, off Yemen, killing 17 US sailors. None of these attacks was as complex or devastating as 9/11, but by the time the hijackers went through security, the US had received “clear warning that Islamist terrorists meant to kill Americans in high numbers”.

    One explanation for the lack of alarm was a perception among the public that the US was widely seen as benevolent. Who would want to do its citizens harm? Antiwar activists counter that 9/11 was “blowback” for decades of US intervention, pointing to bin Laden’s demands that America withdraw its bases from holy lands and stop providing aid to Israel.

    It’s a flawed case: bin Laden also asked America to convert to Islam, which had nothing to do with foreign policy, and “blowback” edges towards blaming the victim. Nevertheless, the commission painted an inglorious picture of involvement in the Muslim world, providing no excuse for 9/11 but critical social context.

    During the Cold War, the US propped up dictators who destroyed civil society; such that the only place opposition could be voiced was the mosque, and “development” was often experienced as cultural imperialism. Rising life expectancy and a baby boom produced an army of young men with nothing better to do than jihad. Thousands were recruited by Sunni fanatics, of a stock once bankrolled by America in the Soviet/Afghanistan war, and further radicalised by policies such as Clinton-era sanctions on Iraq, which were blamed for the deaths of thousands of children.

    The Saddam regime did indeed have connections with al-Qaeda and, yes, the Taliban did provide it with an operations base, but as the BBC’s documentary suggests, Iraq was a preceding obsession with the Bush administration. In many ways, US policy post-9/11 was not innovative but a dramatic scaling up of what Bush Snr and Clinton had already been doing.

    The argument was swiftly made that America now had to go “over there”, to the Islamic world, to stop the terrorists coming “over here”, yet America was already very much over there, and had been so for decades, which made it a target for resentment and terrorism. It might have made sense to tighten US security and find and capture bin Laden, while recalibrating US policy to withdraw from the region and reduce its overexposure. Instead, it did the complete opposite.

    Stable dictatorships were uprooted, creating a vacuum for terrorists to fill; the US handed propaganda victories to the enemy via accusations of torture. If America’s empire has ended – which I very much doubt – then it wasn’t when it retreated from Afghanistan, but when it injected itself so violently into the region. Anyone reading the 9/11 Report would see that the politics and culture of the Islamic world rendered the mission improbable, even though the commission effectively endorsed it, because the basis for the kind of society the US wished to create did not exist. Hand-wringing over the failure of nation building evades the equally valid question of why it happened and who was to blame. The answer is many of those who were in charge when 9/11 took place. Their re-election defied sense.

    The military was “unprepared” for 9/11, concluded the commission, and its civilian response “improvised”. The order was given, if necessary, to shoot down Flight 93 on the way to Washington DC, but responders were probably not in a position to carry out this objective, and had its passengers not fought back, forcing the hijackers to crash in a field in Pennsylvania, the outcome could have been even worse: “Their actions saved the lives of countless others, and may have save either the Capitol or White House from destruction.” In the midst of such wickedness, their courage was humanity at its best.”

    1. The hijackers – psychopaths, all – were responsible for the slaughter…

      No mention here of the preponderance of Saudi’s among them!

      Morning Anne.

    3. I’d just started seeing the other half and knew she was in New York. I remember emailing and asking if she was all right.

      She was right snooty, and said ‘it’s quite a big city you know.’ I put it down to shock and embarrassment. That and her mother had probably hounded her as well.

  24. Good morning all.
    Bright start with a thin overcast and 10½°C on the yard thermometer.

    1. Kick the Stevia into touch! Train your taste buds not to require sweeteners in your food and you will be better off with your health.

      2. Stevia is weird.
        SWMBO made some merigues with it, as a test. The sweetness was weirdly cold in the mouth, and the meringues were slightly yellow. Yukk, frankly.

  26. ‘Highway robbers’ mugging victims and plundering their banking apps. 6 September 2021.

    In one recent case, a man in his 20s was attacked as he walked home from a pub in north London and was dragged into an alleyway and threatened by two men.

    The victim, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals, said his ordeal lasted for 15 minutes and left him extremely shaken.

    He said while one of the pair threatened him, the other one made a phone call and appeared to be taking instructions.

    No description of these attackers! I rest my case!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/09/05/highway-robbers-mugging-victims-plundering-banking-apps/

    1. Fortified by a stirring Friday sermon at the mosque?
      Or was the latest baby mother short of the readies to pay her drug bill?

  27. “In a jam
    SIR – Making my own jam, I must pay almost £1 each for jam jars bought from the internet. However, if I buy a jar of Tesco cheap brand strawberry jam, it costs 26p.

    Do any of your readers have suggestions for what to do with all the jam I must empty out in order to take advantage of this bargain?

    Geoff Snape
    Great Harwood, Lancashire”

    Compost it.

      1. MOH used to bottle the beetroot that I grew and make jam from the fruit. Friends were always willing to donate their jars (and get a jar of pickled beetroot or jam in return). In fact, I have a collection of jars which I’m going to have to fill with raspberry jam (and damson when I’m given a load of that fruit). I may be putting out a call myself soon.

          1. The Mary Rose was ridiculously over loaded. Even if some of them could swim they wouldn’t have been able to. She went down so fast. Someone left the gunports open.

            Think Zebrugge ferry disaster.

          2. Also professional sailors often did not learn to swim. Joshua Slocum in his book “Sailing Alone Around the World”, describes an incident off the coast of South America. He is setting out to drop an anchor in order to get his sloop off the beach by hauling onto anchor back in using the sloop’s windlass. He has the anchor and cable in his tiny dory. It is filling with water in the swell. It turned upside down in the sea, tipping Slocum into the water. “I grasped her gunwale and held on as she turned bottom up, for I suddenly remembered that I could not swim.”
            Swimming was generally seen as useless accomplishment, as falling into the North Sea in winter was certain death. As was falling overboard in the ocean. One might survive a little longer in warmer climes, but not often long enough for a ship to turn, search and find you, if they even tried.
            One of our children worked on cruise ship. There was a special code used on the public announcement system. “Oscar” meant “man overboard”. She experienced that about six times. The ship would turn back and search. The track could be traced very accurately using GPS. However, the body was seldom found.

          3. The sister of a Morris dancing friend used to be a policewoman in a group that tracked & traced smugglers and as such had a pass that not only allowed her to board any cross channel ferry, but secured her a cabin on the ship.
            She told us that a couple of dozen people a year regularly fell overboard without being noticed, especially from Booze-Cruise coach trips!

          4. The sister of a Morris dancing friend used to be a policewoman in a group that tracked & traced smugglers and as such had a pass that not only allowed her to board any cross channel ferry, but secured her a cabin on the ship.
            She told us that a couple of dozen people a year regularly fell overboard without being noticed, especially from Booze-Cruise coach trips!

          5. And she had had another ‘layer’ added to make her taller and more impressive, thus shifting her centre of gravity too high up.

    3. One of the most effective life-lengthening actions is to use soap when washing, and to keep clean.

  29. Shriek. Hayulp ….. © Penelope Pitstop.

    If any Colchester based NOTTLER has spare jam jars, I need them.
    I have been given a bagful of cherry tomatoes that went rogue while chums were on holiday and I’ve found a scrummy chutney recipe.

      1. In a burst of unprecedented generosity, I donated some a few weeks ago to a local fruit grower who keeps them in her farm shop for keen jam makers.
        That’ll larn me.

        1. Still in your nightgown and dressing gown with curlers in your hair, hairnet on, mudpack on your chops, and Woodbine dangling from your lip?🤣

          3. How sweetly old fashioned.
            None of that recycling green crap for ‘our NHS’.
            Nowadays, they are single use and made from the same material as egg boxes.

          7. Good morning, Grizzly

            This reminds me of the lyrics of that brilliant man, Jake Thackray, in his song about his rude forefathers:

            When brother Richard was thirteen
            He was a boy scout keen and clean
            He was presented to the Queen
            But he went and spoilt it all when he offered her a Woodbine
            Nevertheless for all their sins
            Bless my kiths and bless my kins
            There they perch for all to see
            Up my family up my family tree!

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvTzjIp53CQ

          8. Good morning, Rastus. The morning chorus in my household as a child was my father’s baritone Woodbine cough, harmonising with my mother’s alto Senior Service cough.

    3. I have a pair of Kilner jars but they need new seals. I’ve done a Lammy, I’ve looked and looked and have not been able to find replacements. But you’re welcome to have them on loan if you can use them.

        1. As long as that…?

          When I moaned to the MR about only having 12 damsons in total this year, she replied that it didn’t matter as we were still on the 2019 damson jelly!

    1. A heavy one – more, it’s a tax on the lowest paid as everyone pays NI.

      While technically you could argue all taxes are a tax on employment, NI is especially offensive.

      1. It’s a progressive tax but the years in payment are used to calculate entitlement to pensions and benefits.

        1. I find it egregious that career welfarists – the sort who do nothing their entire lives but breed, and see having another kid as a metho of getting a bigger home on the tax payer still get a pension at all.

      2. It’s a progressive tax but the years in payment are used to calculate entitlement to pensions and benefits.

  31. UK ministers planning US blitz visit to smooth Special Relationship. 6 September 2021.

    Up to seven of Britain’s most senior politicians will head to America on official visits in the coming weeks, the Telegraph can reveal.

    Plans are being drawn up for the Prime Minister, Foreign Secretary, Home Secretary, Chancellor and other cabinet members to fly to the US for meetings and conferences later this month or in early October.

    However, the visits are also seen as coming at a helpful time for ministers to smooth relations with their American counterparts amid a rocky period for the US-UK special relationship following the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal.

    You cannot breathe life into a corpse, though you might get a Zombie or two!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2021/09/06/uk-ministers-planning-us-blitz-visit-smooth-special-relationship/

        1. “Oh come on! I grasped the take off bit. We’re up here aren’t we? Bobbing along nicely, found the auto pilot switch. Landing? I can hardly miss the ground. It’s down there, lots of it. Piece of cake!”

        1. Altogether? What would we do if the plane disappeared over the Atlantic? We would be leaderless.🤣

    2. If they head over there, will they do so at their own expense, please?

      What are they going to talk about that couldn’t be done over video conferencing?

          2. There is nothing quite like a Fall Foliage trip around New England. If travel ever becomes tolerable, I would do it again one last time.

    4. Hope they all remember to quarantine and take their vaccine passports and have the tests here and there and wear their masks and fill in their locator forms….

    5. President Biden dislikes the British, and for whatever reason he will try and do them down at every opportunity.

      Why send creepy individuals over to Washington to grovel at his feet?

      It certainly sends the wrong message.

  32. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1e22f0f001c4d6bb8a35817a6f7bfd8c7245995aec1f24940140062c483366f4.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d4aceabb40694c9dc35a7ac8e920892b5e6357d4bb9e91cdec1f3a3c8df69cb5.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a27b125d1f7e4aa843c6db6b11e56401a3d6c325353cf1c6be779a716dfc4644.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e46cf548486ea00535076d0cf56a5fbee25216af26151c21732b8f3fc7e66023.jpg Another excellent morning in the garden today. First a beautiful Holly Blue Celastrina argiolus perched feeding on the Campanulas, then a delightful Whitethroat Sylvia communis showed off for me on the Snowberry and the Honeysuckle.

    This made up for yesterday’s disappointment when a Lesser Whitethroat S. curruca flitted around for quite some time in the Lilacs but I couldn’t get a decent focus on it due to it not fully emerging from the myriad of twigs and branches.

  33. What a Woman Says:
    “This place is a mess!
    C’mon, you and I need to clean up.
    Your stuff is lying on the floor,
    And if we don’t do laundry right now
    You’ll have no clothes to wear.”

    What a Man Hears:
    Blah, blah, blah, blah, C’MON
    Blah, blah, blah, YOU AND I
    Blah, blah, ON THE FLOOR
    Blah, blah, blah, RIGHT NOW
    Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, NO CLOTHES.

  34. Our member Jeremy Sleath urgently needs your help. In September 2020, after 17 years of loyal service, he was dismissed from his job as a Senior Conductor with West Midland Trains.

    Jeremy’s offence? He had celebrated the end of lockdown by posting on his personal Facebook account: “Thank F*** our pubs open up today. We cannot let our way of life become like some sort of Muslim alcohol-free caliphate just to beat Covid-19.”

    One anonymous complaint about this post was all it took to get Jeremy sacked. He decided to take West Midland Trains to the Employment Tribunal but couldn’t afford a lawyer. Nonetheless, he managed to persuade the judge at a preliminary hearing that this comments were a legitimate expression of his secular philosophical beliefs and the judge said he could go ahead and take his case to the Tribunal. (You can read about that victory in MailOnline.) But now he needs our support to continue the fight.

    Jeremy is living off modest savings with no income to speak of and cannot afford a lawyer without our help. We’ve linked him up with a formidable legal team, but the estimated bill will be £15,500. The full hearing into his unfair dismissal claim is due to take place on 23 September so we have less than three weeks to raise the money. Please donate to his crowdfunder here.

    Two more victories for the FSU

    We’ve dealt with around 700 cases since our founding in February of last year – and won most of them. But we’re not allowed to talk about some of them, either because the other side insists on confidentiality as a condition of settling, or because the member in question doesn’t want anything about their case to come up on Google up if an employer does a background check on them – which is fair enough.

    This month we’ve had two big wins. In the first of these we won a five-figure settlement from an employer on behalf of our member, and in the second we achieved an outcome that our member was delighted with. Alas, we cannot share any more detail about those cases without breaching confidentiality.

    Remember, we wouldn’t be able to achieve these victories without the support of our members and donors.

    Piers Morgan: another victory for free speech

    We can’t claim all the credit for Piers Morgan’s recent free speech victory, but we like to think Ofcom took our arguments into account when deciding to exonerate him following the 57,000 complaints it received about his commentary on Harry and Meghan’s Oprah Winfrey interview on Good Morning Britain. Last March, shortly after Morgan had parted company with GMB, we wrote to the Chief Executive of ITV, copying in the head of Ofcom, making the case for Morgan’s defence. In our letter we warned the broadcaster that it was them, not Morgan, who could be in breach of Ofcom’s Broadcasting Code, given that he’d been forced out of his job as a presenter on GMB after expressing scepticism about the truthfulness of the Duchess of Sussex’s claims concerning her treatment by members of the Royal Family – something any journalist is perfectly entitled to do. And Ofcom agreed with us, ruling that penalising Morgan for his comments would be a “chilling restriction” on free speech.

    You can read our press release about Morgan’s victory here and a piece I wrote for Mail+ about the case here.

    FSU intervenes in case of Catholic priest barred from chaplaincy role for his religious beliefs

    We have written to Professor Shearer West, the Vice-Chancellor and President of Nottingham University, asking her to reconsider the decision not to recognise the appointment of Father David Palmer as the University’s Catholic chaplain. Nottingham has 12 other chaplains of different faiths, all of whom are officially recognised, but the University has refused to grant the same honour to Father David because it objects to his opposition to abortion and euthanasia. Since that opposition is rooted in his Catholic faith, and religious or philosophical belief is a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010, we think this constitutes unlawful discrimination. Not surprisingly, our letter received some favourable coverage in the Catholic Herald, but it goes without saying that we’d go to bat for a chaplain of any faith who was being discriminated against in this way.

    Free Speech Union wins plaudits for saving people’s jobs

    The hanging of the “witches” in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1650. Photograph: Getty Images.

    The columnist and historian Ruth Dudley Edwards has urged readers to join the FSU: “The Free Speech Union – set up to defend those threatened, silenced and even fired for challenging the destructive ideology of Wokeness – is already on the battlefield, saving people’s careers and growing strongly in numbers and strength. It protects people persecuted by the thought police and the witch-finders who scour social media in search of a few words that can be used to destroy heretics.”

    If you’re in any doubt about how urgent it is to defend free speech, we recommend this piece about cancel culture by Anne Applebaum, another historian, in the Atlantic magazine. The following paragraph illustrates why the support of the Free Speech Union is so important when someone finds themselves targeted by a Twitchfork mob:

    Here is the first thing that happens once you have been accused of breaking a social code, when you find yourself at the center of a social-media storm because of something you said or purportedly said. The phone stops ringing. People stop talking to you. You become toxic. “I have in my department dozens of colleagues – I think I have spoken to zero of them in the past year,” one academic told me. “One of my colleagues I had lunch with at least once a week for more than a decade – he just refused to speak to me anymore, without asking questions.” Another reckoned that, of the 20-odd members in his department, “there are two, one of whom has no power and another of whom is about to retire, who will now speak to me.”

    FSU New Zealand rallies Kiwis against chilling new ‘hate speech’ laws

    More than 10,000 New Zealanders have submitted responses to a consultation on new “hate speech” laws proposed by the Ministry of Justice thanks to an online portal created by the New Zealand FSU, our sister organisation.

    Jonathan Ayling, Campaign Manager for the New Zealand FSU, said: “Ministers’ inability to explain what would be criminalised under these proposals reveals the danger they pose to free speech. Vague intention is an irresponsible way to legislate. The Government should listen to the public, and drop these proposed reforms.”

    Maureen O’Bern, sacked for raising China’s human rights record

    Maureen O’Bern was sacked by Wigan Council after 34 years working for them as a librarian because she objected to the involvement of a state-owned Chinese firm in a major council development. She pointed out, quite rightly, that the Council’s professed commitment to standing up for the rights of oppressed minorities should extend to the Uyghur Muslims forcibly detained in re-education camps by the Chinese authorities. We’ve been supporting Maureen and, with our help, she set out her case on talkRadio in August.

    Briefing on the Law Commission’s recommendations for reforming communications offences

    Last month we gave a qualified welcome to the Law Commission’s proposals about reforming the Communications Act 2003 and the Malicious Communications Act 1988, which took up many of the FSU’s suggestions in our response to the Commission’s consultation on this issue. The Commission has recommended repealing some of the more censorious communications offences, such as the charge of sending a “grossly offensive” communication which was used to prosecute the comedian Count Dankula for posting a YouTube video of his efforts to teach his girlfriend’s pug to do a Nazi salute. But we are concerned that some of the new laws the Commission has recommended in place of the repealed offences would have a chilling effect on free speech, such as the new “harms based” communications offence, where the definition of “harm” includes psychological harm.

    Emma Webb, our deputy research director, has fleshed out some of these concerns in a fuller response that we’ve published in the “Briefings” section of our website. You can read that briefing here.

    Battle of Ideas

    The FSU will be out in force at this year’s Battle of Ideas Festival at Church House in Westminster on the weekend of the 9th and 10th of October. We’ll be organising a session, chaired by me, called “The FSU Files: How to Fight ‘Cancel Culture’ and Win” in which we’ll hear from individuals who’ve experienced first-hand what it’s like to be cancelled. But these particular individuals also have something else in common: with our help, they’ve all fought back. We will hear from them what the most effective ways are of surviving an online assassination attempt, as well as more general advice on how to persuade people that free speech is a cause worth defending.

    Across the weekend, there are numerous other sessions on free speech issues that should be of interest to FSU members, including “Hate, Heresy and the Fight for Free Speech”, “From GB News to Ben & Jerry’s: Boycotts or Censorship?”, “Publish and Be Damned?”, “The History Wars”, “The Social Justice March through the Institutions”, “Has Coronavirus Changed Us?” and “Can Culture Survive the Culture Wars?”

    We’ve secured a discount rate for those FSU members interested in attending. Use the code FSU-BattleFest2021 when you register to get the excellent price of £55 for the weekend (£35 concession) and £40 for the day (£25 concession). Tickets are usually priced at £75 for the weekend and £45 for the day.

    I’ll be there all weekend, along with most of the FSU’s staff, encouraging others to join the FSU, so come and find us at our stall and say hello.

    Buy tickets here.

    Ex-Labour member shamed for “transphobic” t-shirt speaks out

    We’ve been assisting our member Rebekah Wershbale since she was labelled a “transphobe” in Labour Party training materials being used across the country – all because she wore a t-shirt saying “Woman: adult human female”. She’s written for Graham Linehan’s substack The Glinner Update about her ordeal.

    Our next members-only event – a Speakeasy with Graham Linehan

    We’re delighted to announce that our next Speakeasy guest will be Graham Linehan. Members are invited to join us online on Tuesday 14th September at 7pm for a seriously entertaining exploration of the joys of comedy with one of Britain’s most prolific and successful comedy writers. Creator of much-loved classics Father Ted, Black Books and The IT Crowd, and contributor to Brass Eye and The Day Today, Graham has been awarded 10 BAFTAS and an Emmy. As well as being the ideal guest to discuss the shifting boundaries of comedy, Graham has had several run-ins with anti-free speech zealots thanks to his championing of gender critical feminists. We’ll speak to Graham about the relationship between comedy and freedom of speech and the twists and turns of cancel culture.

    While this event is free of charge for members, you must register for the event if you want to attend.

    Keystone Legal Insurance Scheme

    We have now put a legal insurance scheme in place for FSU members. All members will now be entitled to “free to access” legal assistance when it comes to breach of contract claims. That means a free consultation with a legal expenses firm called Keystone Legal Benefits Ltd to consider your options. If they fancy your chances, Keystone Legal will offer you legal insurance on a straightforward “one-stop shop” basis. You’ll pay nothing unless you win, in which case you’ll pay 25% of any damages awarded. If you think you might need their help, email Keystone at FSU@keystonelegal.co.uk. If you provide your contact telephone number and brief details of your case, one of their experienced underwriters will quickly get back to you.

    The Workers of England Union

    A quick reminder that if you’re worried you might be put through a disciplinary procedure at work because your beliefs are at odds with your employer’s, you should consider joining the Workers of England Union. The WEU has won tens of thousands of pounds for members whose religious or philosophical beliefs have been discriminated against.

    We’ve negotiated a deal with the WEU whereby you can become a member for a fee of £25. Unlike other unions, the WEU will go to bat for its members as soon as they sign up. If you’d like to take advantage of this offer, you can join online here, but don’t forget to email them here first, letting them know you’re a member of the FSU.

    Affinity

    We also have a relationship with another independent trade union – Affinity.

    Affinity represents thousands of people working in a wide range of industries including banking and finance, accountancy, retail, manufacturing, education, the law, hospitality and travel and tourism. Its members include teachers, bank staff, IT consultants, financial advisers, academics, local government staff, lawyers and civil servants.

    Currently in its centenary year, Affinity is different to most trade unions in that it has no party political affiliations, is not a member of the Trades Union Congress and has no ties to the employers it deals with, leaving it free to protect the rights and interests of its members without fear or favour.

    Many of the problems Affinity’s members face at work involve free speech issues and the union will be lending its support to the FSU’s campaigns.

    It is offering members of the FSU three months’ free membership (normally £7.65 per month for full-time staff), which includes:

    • Access to its dedicated 24-hour Advice Line

    • Representation in all formal meetings with your employer, such as disciplinary hearings and grievances. Last year, Affinity supported over 2,500 members in cases of all different types and everyone was represented by a full-time Affinity official not a lay representative.

    • Access to a market-leading ancillary services package, including free CV writing, free will writing, free travel insurance, free income protection insurance, free personal accident insurance, free contract checking, free consumer rights advice… and more!

    To find our more, visit workaffinity.co.uk or call Affinity on 01234-716005. Its membership lines are open 9am-5pm, Monday to Friday.

    Note: the FSU does not receive a commission if any of our members join the WEU or Affinity or become a client of Keystone.

    Thank you for your support of the Free Speech Union.

    Kind Regards,

    Toby Young

        1. This has now gone to ‘404’ error. Wonder if it is because target of £15,500 had been reached? Started out at about £6,000 something early in the morning and was at £15,415 when last checked at 10.30am.

    2. Again – and apologies for being a broken record (although that’s my current bun) – the free speech union shouldn’t be necessary. I applaud the work they do and the effort they make but their existence highlights a gaping problem in our society.

      1. The Free Speech Union agrees with your sentiments entirely. They stated, when they first started up 21 months ago, just as much. Their whole ethos is to return society to a time when free speech is again taken for granted, just as it used to be and always was.

    1. I wouldn’t insult weasels – our native, hard working mustelids – by comparing them to AD. He really is a spiteful little shiite.
      A case where both sides of the argument deserve each other.

    2. Did Alan Duncan and Matthew Parris have a homosexual affair when they were both MPs and if so I wonder who was the bugger and who was the buggee.

      1. Your unquenchable desire to speculate about what goes on in private bedrooms goes well beyond the call of duty.

  36. Bloomin’ ‘eck. When Olaf’s Relict says “5 minutes” she means 5 minutes.
    On our doorstep we found a bag full of jam jars. Better still, they were in a Waitrose carrier bag, so for about 10 minutes, the approach to Allan Towers looked posh.
    Ta ever so, Elsie.

    1. Heh! My mother’s idea of five minutes is an afternoon. The wife’s idea is 5 minutes, as she’s learned to be precise after I left her at home the first time.

  37. The West has still not learnt the lessons of 9/11, even 20 years later
    America had been interfering in Muslim states for decades, making it a target for resentment

    Tim Stanley: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/09/05/west-has-still-not-learnt-lessons-911-even-20-years-later/

    If we can accept that it is only going to stir up trouble and resentment in the Middle East and Muslim lands if the West continues to try and interfere and impose its values there then:

    WHY can our politicians not accept that by the same token Islam trying to impose its laws and barbaric practices in countries with a traditionally Christian heritage and culture is going to stir up trouble and resentment in the West?

    By all means let us accept that we should not interfere in Muslim lands but Islam should not interfere in culturally Christian lands and should be expelled when it does. Britain is traditionally a hospitable country but those who want to come to live here should integrate and realise that our hospitality must not be abused.

  38. The Benefit system in this country is a maze and difficult to understand. It is wide open to fraud and probably open to intimidation of the front line staff dealing with claimants. Fraud does not seem to be a priority for governments.

      1. Simply not true. The richest are usually company directors and so pass on their costs (in terms of profit) to the customer of their goods.

        Thus the customer pays their taxes. National insurance is a tax everyone pays, especially the poorest. It directly affects employers as well making it less likely people will take someone new on.

        The Left don’t understand tax, as cutting taxes for the most well off results in more taxes being raised. Their pathetic idea that if you take more from people you get more is idiotic, as evidence shows.

    2. The welfare department’s accounts have not passed audit for many years. They are an absolute mess.

    1. Morning all, I distinctly remember paying NI and taxes every pay day when my parents and grandparents were alive and I was working full time.
      Whats the difference now ?

        1. Stop me if you have heard this Plum……… 🙄 I started work at 15 years and six months. And earned 2.10 shillings, ten bob tax plus NI contributions. Ten bob house keeping, and of course paid my own bus fares etc. In total worked for just over 53 years. I lived abroad for a total of 6 years and in the mid 90s was told that unless I had paid in for 40 years to make up the difference in my pension contributions I would not receive a full state pension.
          I paid the money and they later dropped the period to 30 years, I believe it’s gone up to 35 now. I was self employed a lot of the time, I injured my back early 2000s I tried to get some finical assistance from the benefits office, aka government, the fat bastard in the chair behind the screen leaned back, fingers clasped behind his head and told me “You don’t qualify for benefits because you are self employed” ! We had three sons at school my wife had to work full time while I sought treatment, but I did eventually get 50 quid a week. Which through a crooked French company who employed eastern European box ticking ‘doctors’ they stole it back when it appeared I could make a cup of tea and pick up a pound coin from a table. But I could not work. And had a large mortgage to pay. I could go on and now I get the minimum pension, less then many people I know who only worked for 35 years. I have banged my head against several walls trying to find out why, but nobody responds any more. What happened to the 23 years of extra pension contributions I paid in ???

          1. Why did we bother…..
            I offered work to a teenager who was short of cash since the local cafe closed. Spring cleaning and light housework etc. £12 an hour, double her pay at he cafe….

            Not interested……..go figure.

        2. Snap. I didn’t earn enough to pay income tax, but the NI was still taken from my weekly £4 10/-.

      1. But this wanqueur does NOT part with his money. He simply wants the rest of us to feed the little “starving” piccaninneys

  41. Extract from a sermon given yesterday at the Benedictine Monastery of Notre Dame in Australia:

    “Sadly also and unbelievably, at least one Australian bishop has evoked the possibility of opening churches only to the vaccinated. We even have some bishops in other countries declaring that there is a moral responsibility to take the vaccine. Let’s be clear. There is no moral responsibility to receive the vaccine. I’m going to explain why…
    What conclusions are we to draw from all this? Principally, that those of us who refuse the vaccine have solid ground to stand on. But we will need to be strong. The pressure will only increase as time goes by. We will be locked out of many public places; we may even be denied entrance into our own churches; perhaps our own Catholic friends and shepherds will deny us. So be it. But we do have a word for them and this word is for everyone, including authorities, both civil and religious of every rank. It is a strong word. That word is this:
    Beware. Our conscience stands firm on this issue. If you wish to pressure us, know that you are violating the voice of a well-formed conscience, that is the voice of God Himself. You should also know that international law condemns severely the use of moral persuasion when it comes to that taking of any medication that is experimental. This sort of thing has been done before. It was perpetrated by the same people who put yellow stars on the shoulders of the Jews, and then ultimately decided that they had a better, more final, solution for them. Beware. Whoever you are, whatever badge or religious symbol you might wear, you are crossing a line that you will bitterly regret and for which you will have to give an account    .”

    Maybe the tide may turn, maybe…

  42. On the you.gov site the Question ” what is the National Insurance for?” does not mention the NHS or Social Care. It contributes to basic pension, Maternity Allowance, Bereavement and other benefits depending on which of the 4 classes you are in. Class 1 pay 12% on monthly salary between £797 – £4189. Over £4189 per month the rate drops to 2%,. Rates for others get confused with plenty of scope for manipulating the payments eg for Directors etc.

    2. ” what is the National Insurance for?” does not mention the NHS or Social Care.

      NHS is non existent………still waiting to ‘SEE’ a doctor!

    3. When Mr Wooster committed a sartorial atrocity his personal gentleman’s gentleman was not impressed:

      Bertie Wooster: Several people have asked me for the name of my tailor!

      Jeeves: Doubtless in order to avoid him, Sir.

    5. I don’t qualify for bereavement benefits, despite having poured a load of dosh into NICs over the years.

  43. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5a047bc0337bab3b1ea4b5c9b82fd3c3a06823372de058047c58ae256dade376.png Well said, Marion.

    Yo are reiterating what I have been saying for a number of years now. The clueless clown that masquerades as modern man is not only getting stupider by the second, he still hasn’t managed to work out that a standard dress shirt was designed to be used with a tie. Without one it looks quite ridiculous.

    It is also beyond uncomfortable, as well as being utterly scruffy. Those who still have a modicum of brains and class wear a smart crew-necked shirt under their jackets.

    1. ‘Morning, George, “…designed to be used with a tie. Without one it looks quite ridiculous.”

      I have to disagree, provided the top button is open – fine.

      What does look ridiculous is a dress shirt buttoned to the neck with no tie.

      2. The war queen had me get measured for a tailored suit. Proper length of everything – as usually a suit jacet if long enough isn’t wide enough, if wide enough, the sleeves are too short.

        I wore a suit once to a do. Bow tie and everything. After 5 minutes it looked like rumped mess and had split when I went to pick a plate up using both hands. It was too hot, itchy and the tie got in a knot.

        Never, ever again. If I want to wear a straitjacket, I’ll find a bondage dungeon. What I wear has no bearing on who I am.

    2. I’ve got a few Ties lined up in my wardrobe, just waiting for the revival………
      Are you wearing that for a bet was the classic phrase.

  44. Islamism remains first-order security threat to west, says Tony Blair. 6 September 2021

    The west still faces the threat of 9/11-style attacks by radical Islamist groups but this time using bio-terrorism, Tony Blair has warned.

    Blair also challenges the US president, Joe Biden, by urging democratic governments not to lose confidence in using military force to defend and export their values.

    Because it’s all worked out so well! We’ve just had our asses kicked in Afghanistan and there is more danger of Islamic Values taking over the West than the opposite!

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/sep/06/islamism-remains-first-order-security-threat-to-west-says-tony-blair

    1. What a stunning speech by Tony Blair to RUSI this morning.

      An amazing about turn from his previous well publicised thinking on Islam.

      You will all remember his enthusiasm for importing large numbers of uneducated Muslims, many who could not even speak English.

      Now that they are causing major problems, and high costs to the community, he changes his views to fit in with those expressed by the more

      intelligent and deep thinking Britons.

      Now all we’ve got to discover is whether he has genuinely had a revelation, or whether this is just a ploy to get back into front line politics.

          4. It’s not mentioned for obvious reasons, but it is supposedly about TB and he employs a writer to fill in the many spaces in his life story, but finds out to many discrepancies from what is generally help as public knowledge and is eventually bumped off.

    2. can anyone explain the difference between ‘radical Islamist groups” and ordinary Islamist groups?
      Bloody Romans.

  45. Firmly OT.

    On our marathon (well, it seemed like that) bike ride yesterday, we went through and then past Little Snoring. In the war, there was an RAF Station there. All that remains are the ruins of the control tower; a section of runway (still used by private aircraft), a pill box – and, er, that’s it. Between 1943 and the early 1950s – there was an RAF population of at least 1,000. A lot of accommodation was required – and provided. Not a trace now exists. An existing road was adapted to be the eastern peri-track. That is now back to the lane it previously was. There are still bits of hardstanding to be seen – if one knows what one is looking for.

    Otherwise, it is as if it had never been. This must be replicated all over East Anglia. Made me think of the pre-eminent novel “Bomber” by Len Deighton and his imagined RAF Warley Fen.

    Made us both think…

    1. Just give it a few months Bill and the planning applications for 2,000 new homes will be passed.
      Things are a bit slow at the moment and planning apps have a life and apparently there is a shortage of building materials at the moment.

      1. I went to Wickes to buy a bag of kiln dried sand yesterday, out of stock for some time. One of the staff told me that other building material suppliers were experiencing the same problem.

          3. I hadn’t bought timber for a couple of years and then in June this year I needed some 4 x 2 for a job I was planning. Went round the corner to the merchant and I nearly fell over when he priced the lengths up. Apparently the price had soared by 43% the previous week.

          4. I went to buy a new loo seat today and when I enquired, the chap explained where they were but said they were in short supply. They had no back stock. They didn’t have one with the fixings I needed, so I’m still without what I want. Annoyingly, when I didn’t want one, Home Base had them in stock.

      1. Slammer Road, El Aqsa (Control tower) mosque with Gaythrow viewing platform, Sooiside Beltway, Burnt Church Lane…? More likely.

    3. Very flat Norfolk!

      I was a very enthusiastic cyclist in my teens and Devon is extremely hilly.

      2. There was a TV program on the other day with the ultra smug Paul Merton and his partner traveling around Derbyshire in a huge camper van, the prog was crap. But at one place they stopped they were supplied bicycles and both were off like a shot, the bicycles were electric. Not sure of the point, unless of course it’s a money spinner for the manufacturers etc and it just gets people out and riding which is fair enough, but being a menace on public foot paths, not good.

        1. Surely cycles aren’t allowed on public FOOT paths, only on bridleways (yep, we have to put up with the damned things sneaking up silently, then whizzing past to frighten the horses).

      3. Hills are very good at hiding. It’s only when I get on a bike that I realise there’s one in our road.

    4. Bill,

      I think our wartime and industrial history is being cancelled out . Where there were runways, there are now brambles , nettles and dumped rubbish .

      We will have nothing to show these invading Muslim hordes and people of various hues of colour that we were courageous and protective of our wonderful country ..

      Our bloodlines are being trashed and the proud historical figures who advanced our cultural heritage are being vandalised by fuzzy headed mongrels .

      The wealthy globalist men and woman who are members of our government possess not a thread of loyalty to the backbone that keeps Britain ticking over .. I am not talking about the useless Royals , just the chaps and chapesses who empty the bins , keeping things ticking over in an orderly fashion .

      There are still many little kindnesses that still exist , but Boris needs to be reminded that WE MATTER , very muchly

    5. In the latter part of WWII, S/Ldr Harold ‘Micky’ Martin DSO, DFC, AFC was stationed at Little Snoring.
      And as usual I beg to differ, but you are not OT; very recently there was talk about a campaign ribbon for the Afghanistan Evacuation participants, and that reminded me that the last remnants of Bomber Command are still waiting.
      RIP 55,573.

      1. They day his obituary appeared, I was a speaker at a dinner in Norwich. The chap on my right was ex-RAF. I mentioned Micky Martin’s death. “Oh,” replied neighbour, “Were you Pathfinder or Mainforce?”

        I nearly fell off my chair!

        1. One of our RAFA members will be 100 on Wednesday (he wasn’t there today, but we sent our best wishes). He flew Mosquitoes. He’s planning a centenary flight (with an accompanying pilot).

    6. In the latter part of WWII, S/Ldr Harold ‘Micky’ Martin DSO, DFC, AFC was stationed at Little Snoring.
      And as usual I beg to differ, but you are not OT; very recently there was talk about a campaign ribbon for the Afghanistan Evacuation participants, and that reminded me that the last remnants of Bomber Command are still waiting.
      RIP 55,573.

    7. I drove past the former RAF Bridleway Gate today. There is nothing, not even the vestiges that remain at Little Snoring! It’s only because of the book of wartime airfields that I know it existed.

  46. 338567+ up ticks,

    breitbart,

    ‘National Security Risk’ — UK Dependant on Chinese Companies for ‘Disaster Relief’ Products

    🎵,
    I’d rather trust a chinky than an M pee if I only could. if I only couldddd.

    1. ‘Morning, Bill. I have been instructed to politely query the recent paucity of feline photos. 🙂

        1. Believe they have regal pretensions, so can they have another birthday (with photos) before then?

          1. They are either asleep – and I have posted lots of those – cute though they are, they can pall! Or running about deliberately NOT standing and posing…! They are a bit like children. They sense the camera ad play up!

          2. Just wait a year or two until they are in ‘teenager’ mode – lazing about all day, out all night, bringing birds home…

      2. I mentioned this to the MR. Gus sauntered in and she took a couple. As I said in few mins ao – as soon as he saw the camera he started misbehaving – trying to grab it etc etc.

        https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5828a20d62435bcd53fee620ebab711381c89207f11fd160ec9c56d55a1bcb24.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d71a519db5bfd0ea809d0db87b204acdec22808c12a443e19f7b734266d8b4cc.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0ad37bd4a29a2287d67f0b2e57bc9e7f4ee83bdf8acfdc01eb9e2252021125fc.jpg

    3. The geese left already – half yesterday, the other half today. Great skeins of them, honking as they flew (it was pretty crowded up there…).

    2. Those were they Days at Watford Trades Hall. The noisy booggers.
      Tomorrow I have a treasured telephone appointment with my GP. 6 months i have been having problems i have had many tests and examinations, but not a single sign discussion or letter regarding the results of my tests. Is he going to get it in the neck !
      I now believe that the NHS has a new logo for the elderly it’s four letters. FOAD.

  49. Good morning all! Meanwhile the master of international diplomacy is fouling things up, yet again, with us this time. Article truncated to avoid the waffle:

    “Biden risks ‘causing civil unrest’ over Northern Ireland Protocol, warns Lord Trimble
    The Nobel laureate has written a strongly worded letter to the current US President.
    Lord Trimble has urged Joe Biden to drop his support for the Northern Ireland Protocol, warning the post-Brexit border rules ‘risk a return to sectarian strife’.

    The architect of the Good Friday Agreement accused the White House of ‘contributing to the damage being caused’ to the peace treaty by siding with the European Union on the issue.

    He said in a letter to the US President that the ‘political promises of the Belfast Agreement have been flippantly dismissed’ because of the protocol.

    Lord Trimble told Mr Biden, who has Irish ancestry, that the protocol had been ‘imposed’ on the people of Northern Ireland without their consent.

    He said: ‘The result has been political unrest and violence and threats of further violence on our streets because the political promises of the Belfast Agreement have been flippantly dismissed through the NIP.’

    ‘The Northern Ireland Protocol has not only subverted the main safeguards within the Belfast Agreement causing civil unrest and political uncertainty, it is also damaging the Northern Ireland economy.

    ‘At the heart of the Belfast Agreement is consent, meaning that there can be no change to the constitutional position of NI as part of the UK without the agreement of a majority of the people of the country.

    ‘But the NIP, by giving the EU powers over the movement of goods into and out of the Province, has torpedoed the ‘consent’ principle and risks a return to sectarian strife.’

    The peer said the protocol had ‘totally destroyed’ the consent principle ‘to the detriment of the unionist community’.”

    I wonder at which point he will bring everyone to the brink of war? And as the Holy Obama said, never underestimate Joe’s ability to F thing up.

  50. And how will this be enforced?

    Exclusive: Almost 1,000 GP practices ordered to provide face-to-face appointments

    Patient groups demand Government ‘gets a grip’ on growing crisis as just 57pc of GP appointments in July were in person

    Almost 1,000 GP practices have been ordered to improve patient access, amid growing concern about the number of patients struggling to see a family doctor. Sajid Javid, the Health Secretary, said GPs must provide face-to-face appointments, after patient groups urged the Government to “get a grip” on the growing crisis. Health officials have identified hundreds of surgeries which are failing to meet the needs of their local communities, with long waiting times and low levels of satisfaction…

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/09/05/exclusive-almost-1000-gp-practices-ordered-provide-face-to-face/

      1. Our local GPs closed the surgery for seven weeks.

        Can we assume that the Government still paid them for that time off?

    2. We have no complaints about our GP surgery but the waiting list for a fairly routine operation is several months. Referral was the quick part.

      1. I expect my condition will require a new CT scan after a 7 month hiatus. My op was supposed to be at the end of February. My condition has probably progressed/deteriated or become inoperable.

        I haven’t heard a word from the department in all that time. I think i might send them a hedgehog Christmas card to remind them i’m still alive.

          2. He was lucky two years ago with the shoulder surgery – private 1st consultation, then referral via GP for NHS surgery.

          1. No need to feel sorry for me, Belle. Others are much worse off.

            I haven’t seen my Doctor in months. When i do E-Consult i get a different one each time. Normally responding to Haemo and blood pressure tests. Speaking to them about it has got me nowhere.

          2. I haven’t seen a GP this year, despite having aggravated a problem with my hip. All I’ve had is a telephone “consultation”.

      2. You are, I suspect, one of the very few. As I said a couple of days ago. My neighbour has a mysterious rash over much of his body. He was told to stand in front of a mirror and photograph it and send it to the surgery. His reaction: “They are taking the Pzz”. Ended up going to the hospital and getting help there.

      3. I was talking with somebody today who had moved from Pontesbury to Shrewsbury. After trying to deal with a Shrewsbury surgery, he’s arranged to stay with the Pontesbury one. He said at least he could get seen by a GP there.

    2. The sad thing is that 99.9% of young people would not get your joke because they are historically illiterate.

  54. https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-aren-t-tax-rises-more-unpopular-

    Gah, they are, we’re not given any choice in them and the vast majority of people are stupid and don’t understand taxation assuming other people pay it.

    In a democracy we would simply say no and demand reform of the welfare system instead. Thus we don’t live in a democracy.

    Being able to get rid of Boris’ lot is not democracy. Democracy would be refusing this rise entirely and demanding a cut.

  55. Samaritans volunteer has life turned around by six-figure book deal. 6 September 2021.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9dcffe4962b65e8c24eba42ed26a10714c542172e0488f66b25ecbf01898632a.jpg

    A man living below the poverty line, helping others as a volunteer with the Samaritans, who self-published a book after literary agents showed no interest in his earlier work has had his book snapped up in a six-figure deal by publishers in 20 countries so far.

    https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/sep/05/unreal-samaritans-volunteer-has-life-turned-around-by-six-figure-book-deal

  56. Just off to take the MR to Cromer for a X-ray. Then – great excitement – we are going to Overstrand to walk on the beach… And possibly paddle in the bitter North Sea.

    Toodles.

    2. I was engaged to a guy many moons ago (not current old man!) who went for an interview for the general managers job at the Overstrand Hotel! I went with him as we were due to get married the following year. It was quite a surreal experience as it was out-of-season, and pretty bleak!
      Have a lovely paddle!👍

        1. Thank you Ndovu! He and our daughter are having a meeting with his clinical physio and the OT right now! The OT is coming out to vet our house tomorrow to assess whether he will be able come here, as their house won’t be ready until 24th! We have a spiral staircase but the bathroom is downstairs, so who knows? The dining room is out of action with the 2 dogs plus tables, chairs, comer cupboard and dresser!

          2. Thank you pet! It’s a bit daunting! The thought of him falling or taking ill is a bit of a responsibility, on top of the care of the twins and Vic being back at work! Meh! ‘Spect we’ll manage! 😱😂

  57. 338567+ up ticks,

    All the while the johnson is giving it big licks on the fiddle as the Country disintegrates, him especially & his cabinet ilk richly deserve a toetector
    size 11 HARD up the toga, NOW.

    Not be waiting for a General Election May 2024 & seeing what a complete set of new suppressive rulings the imams & mullahs demand.

    breitbart,

    The backlash will come for the Government’s social care plans – just not until the next election

    1. 338567+ up ticks,
      O2O.
      These tax hikes Og, is it to finance the potential army, incoming campaign at DOVER because all the time the political treacherous drawbridge is down there will never EVER be an answer.
      Do you think these mass uncontrolled immigration party’s are still financed via the indigenous or is it purely
      “illegals” if so, to what ends ?

    1. Can anybody give an example of a single promise that this wretched government has honoured?

      And don’t say Brexit – we still have not regained control of our fishing waters; we have a border in the Irish Sea; there is a hostile foreign power (the EU) calling the shots in Northern Ireland; we have no deal on financial services and don’t even dare to mention the BBC licence fee.

    2. Could have been the one I saw recently. I saw a rare retrograde satellite (going from east to west) and as it approached the western horizon a bright meteor appeared to cross its path. A rare occurrence.

  60. Environmental disaster they WON’T be talking about at climate change summit in Glasgow: How Nicola Sturgeon’s SNP turned one of Britain’s greatest cities into a stinking dump infested with giant rats
    Joe Biden will visit Glasgow for the UN climate change summit in a few weeks
    But the city hosting the summit is itself in the midst of an environmental crisis
    Below the M80 and M8, there is a six-foot pile of rubbish stretching for an acre
    To encourage recycling, council reduced bin collection to once in three weeks

    https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2021/09/04/20/47509745-9958227-image-a-85_1630783929309.jpg

    Glasgow, the city hosting a global environmental conference, also known as COP26, is itself in the midst of an environmental crisis. Pictured: Rubbish dumped under the M8

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9958227/Climate-change-summit-Nicola-Sturgeons-SNP-turned-Glasgow-environmental-disaster.html

    1. The surefire way would have been to keep British troops out of other countries but that would have upset the “special relationship”!

      1. Nigel Farage has said he will devote his programme tonight at 7 on GBNews to the special relationship – is it broken? Senior Americans will be on show.

        1. Why does everybody delude themselves about a non-existant “special relationship”? The US does what’s best for the US, and always will do. About time the UK started to do the same, and stopped sucking US d!ck.

          1. There is a headline suggesting Britain steps into the void of world leader recently vacated by the septics.
            I don’t want the UK to be the world’s leader or the world’s policeman. Time to raise the drawbridge and adopt a more isolationist stance.

      1. And how many UK people live in a 5 bedroom house??? – – paid for, and fully furnished with new stuff – – – by other people?

        1. I feel giddy with anger, because our village is going through a lengthy consultation , plans that were for 450 homes increased to 600 and now 1,000.

          I have never ever felt hate for any one , but I have a feeling, collectively all of us who contribute our political anxieties on these little forums are being betrayed big time , with lies and more damned lies from politicians .

          1. Hate is an emotion I’ve not felt until 18 months ago.
            It is a very unpleasant sensation and is based on a feeling of complete helplessness.

      1. If wives – – assume THEIR families will arrive soon – and all THEIR relatives. the 20k will soon be heading to 7figures.

        1. If sisters – – assume that at some later date they will go on holiday to visit relatives and marry a local.

  64. Test & Trace Calls

    Have any other Nottlers had the delightful experience of being called repeatedly (and texted, and emailed) by NHS Test & Trace?

    I have been audio-recording these mind-numbingly repetitive chunks of text, being read at full speed from scripts by poorly-educated youths.

    I had to remind one of the ‘girls’ who sounded about 16 that she had forgotten to advise me that “any information you share with me today will be stored securely, and that this call is being recorded for training and quality purposes”.

    Incidentally I found that the information is being stored on Amazon Webspace servers via a program called Ring Central. Another nice big contract for Amazon – wonder who set that up and if any brown envelopes were involved.

    I asked another Test & Tracer to guess how old I am, bearing in mind that he had my date of birth in 1941 on his screen next to my name. He just could not work out how old I could be.

    I am a retired Pathologist, and when asked how my wife is feeling just now (she has Dementia and I have to act as proxy) I said that she has occasional bouts of unproductive tussis, occasional mild pyrexia, slight hypoxia 92% and mild anorexia. Guess that’ll get them looking up those words (if they can) after replaying the recording a few times to see what I said. Don’t get mad – get even!

    With a bit of luck there should be only one more phone call from this disastrous organisation, the day before my wife’s Isolation ends on Sept 10th. My own Isolation ended on Sept 4th, so I have all of these calls (and texts, and emails) twice now.

    I can understand there are reports that many people are now blocking the T&T phone number of 0300 013 5000. I have tried to remain civil but they often bash on and don’t listen.

    We were both double-jabbed with A-Z in January and April but If we get COVID yet again this winter I shall just block the number.

    1. Afternoon all.

      I’m sorry if this upsets you but putting the test and trace app on my phone is an absolute “no, no”. The tests are completely unreliable and ruining people’s businesses and lives. It’s almost as if they want to keep us under control for ever! (Extreme sarc!).

      1. I don’t think he means the app – this is the one where they actually ring to make sure you are doing as you’re told. Richard Sk described his experience with it.some weeks ago.

        1. Correct NDOVU – there is NO WAY I would put the test & trace app on my smartphone. I had a runny nose but no other symptoms and just happened to scrounge a couple of Lateral Flow Test kits from the Carers who look after my wife, back on 24th of August. BIG MISTAKE! Being a Good Guy I went online and reported that I was positive but my wife was negative. That started the ball rolling and these unending phonecalls etc etc. They don’t give up!

          1. It was probably a false positive then. What a waste of everyone’s time and energy. they should stop all this testing of people who have no illness, and just concentrate on the people who are actually ill.

        3. But how will they know who you are unless you have either the app or given your real,name and real phone number to someone.

    2. We haven’t been anywhere or knowingly been in contact with an infected person so haven’t had any of these calls – but how dispiriting to have to put up with this nonsense for weeks on end! I think I would block the number, too.

    3. The T&T scam has cost roughly £500 for every man, woman and child in the UK, they have to keep pushing it, to “justify” the cost.
      It is yet another gigantic waste of money, lining the pockets of government cronies at our expense.

    4. I was not happy that we were asked to indicate at my lunchtime meeting if we hadn’t had, or couldn’t have, the vaccine. I did own up, but I was very tempted to tell the Chairman that it was nobody’s business but mine.

      1. At times like these it is noticeable that inside too many, there’s a control freak trying to break out.

        1. I think the instructions came from higher up than the branch and he felt obliged to carry it out. Ostensibly, it was so that others knew who hadn’t been jabbed (and presumably could run a mile like the woman assistant I approached for information in a supermarket earlier; she was masked to the hilt). I felt like reminding everybody that vaccination (or non-vaccination) doesn’t affect anyone else. Being vaxxed doesn’t stop you passing it on. In the end, I decided not to rock the boat.

          1. A friend was asked the same thing by her employer. It is not legal, but they are trying to pressure people. People are being encouraged to see this as a moral crusade. And as you say, none of us wants to cause a scene.

          2. I had someone I’ve known for a long time text me today to thank me for the card and birthday present I gave, but asking me to give them a “wide berth” in future because I hadn’t been jabbed! I pointed out that being jabbed doesn’t stop anybody passing it on, but I would. I didn’t add that this would also include if this person needed help in the future. but it will.

          3. Oh dear, that is very sad and completely illogical! A jabbed person is more dangerous to you than the other way round.
            I am facing sitting in an office with three people who have been jabbed, and they could be sitting there breathing out covid virus if they are infected but have only mild symptoms. But I can’t say anything of course.

    2. I watched ‘Countdown’ after lunch….too hot to sit in the garden!
      I used to be a regular viewer ….however Anne Robinson was in the chair.
      I won’t be watching again!

  66. Just spent an hour trimming back the shrubs in the front garden – some were blocking the pavement, Had a chat with a neighbour I hadn’t seen to talk to for about 2 years. Now a richly deserved cuppa tea.

    1. It’s not just tax rises, though, its vax passports and vaxxing our children as well against the advice of the JVCI.

    2. They’ve simply worked out what the lady would have earned at minimum wage if she’d been paid

      properly.

    3. Signed, and made me remember how much I LOATHE our politicians. Local MP no use – career politician, doesn’t care about anything else.

      As for Fattaturk the Bumblestilskin – if he spent even half the time using his big (supposedly intelligent) head rather than his small (procreative and far easier to satisfy) head, he might have been able to achieve something. For this country. But he is far too lazy to use his big head – so much easier to use his littler.

      1. If you try again with the same email address they confirm that. I guess you can use another and they won’t know any different.

  71. Good afternoon all
    We’ve had a busy weekend and Monday morning.
    Saturday and Sunday was our bowls club internal competitions finals weekend and a very successful one it was for vw. On Saturday afternoon she won her match to become the club’s Ladies Champion. Yesterday morning vow and her partner won the Ladies Pairs championship. A very successful double honour for the weekend.

    This morning we paid a visit to West Horsley Place near Leatherhead. A Manor House built in 1425 but with a Georgian façade that was never attached to the original house. It was owned by the Duchess of Roxburgh who left it a member of her family, namely, Bamber Gascoigne. The amount of restoration work required is enormous and it’s now West Horsley Place Trust. A fascinating building which is shown warts and all and a thoroughly enjoyable visit.
    https://www.westhorsleyplace.org/

      1. A far better bowler than me.
        Next season there will be a match between vw and the Men’s Champion to be the unofficial Club Champion.

          1. It’s quite likely she will.
            She won the Championship in 2015 and then beat the then Men’s Champion and the club’s President on successive weekends.

      1. There are no gilded rooms like NT properties. This is work in progress and will take more years than I have left on this planet. So much to do. They had to sell about 7,500 books plus many original paintings to realise sufficient money to attach the façade to the 1425 building to prevent it falling down.
        The Trust has 6 part time workers. There were 19 visitors in out group at £20 each.

        Edit progress for pro free.

    5. West horsley Place is a house that I would love to visit one day. It is a little sad that Mr Gascoigne was about 80 when probate was granted; OK, he is intelligent cultured and affluent, but that’s a big responsibility to take on when you are in your 9th decade. Just a tiny bit thoughtless of the great aunt not to have started the ball rolling ten or fifteen years earlier.

      1. Wholeheartedly agree but have we all buried our heads and thought those left will,sort it out.

        We’ve done quite a bit to mitigate death tax but it’s quite difficult when your main asset is your home.

  72. NHS managers have embraced Critical Race Theory. It will backfire tremendously

    These instructions are inherently racist, singling out a large percentage of the UK population based on their skin colour

    CALVIN ROBINSON
    6 September 2021 • 2:48pm

    According to headlines this week, the NHS needs billions in extra funding, despite seeing the biggest funding boost since the Blair years. So where is all that money going?

    I’d suggest that a fair bit of it is being splashed on bloat and waste. NHS trusts up and down the country have recruited so-called ‘Diversity, Equality and Inclusion’ experts – and we must use that term expert loosely. Forgetting for a moment that the job title is an oxymoron, some of these people are using their time – and tens of thousands in public funds for their salaries – to essentially spread anti-white propaganda.

    Take one of the blogs found last week on an official NHS website, titled “Dear white people in the UK” and published by the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion lead at the Nursing and Midwifery Council.

    The article is ostensibly aimed at reducing racism in healthcare by encouraging senior leaders – made up, at least in part, of medics – to discuss race more often. But the language tells a different story. “Don’t say ‘I’m not political’ to excuse yourself from this conversation,” says one of the bullet points. “Work on your empathy,” says another. And to top it all off, doctors and nurses, as if they aren’t already distressed enough having worked through a global pandemic, are told to “be uncomfortable” when confronted by a person of colour.

    This material is inherently divisive, singling out a large percentage of the UK population based on their skin colour. It’s condescending and dare I say racist. The idea is that only white people are racist when we know, of course, that anyone can be racist, and anyone can experience racism. This school of thought originates from Critical Race Theory (CRT), an American academic-thought experiment that attempts to solve racial inequalities but, in actual fact, ends up exacerbating them.

    While the Equalities Minister has made efforts to keep this toxic theory away from school curriculums, and the civil service has removed it from its equality/diversity training, the NHS appears to be embracing it.

    The blog post, published on the ‘NHS Senior Leadership Onboarding and Support’ page. It features in the first paragraph a university-style reading list for health professionals which includes Robin Diangelo’s ‘White Fragility’ – a book that suggests all white people have an innate “complicity and investment” in racism. Is this now a formal position held by the NHS, that white staff are practically born racist? I’d humbly advise NHS leaders not to explore that particular rabbit hole.

    It is absolutely ludicrous to suggest that healthcare professionals, currently dealing with an historic backlog of patients which will take years to clear, have the time or mental capacity to indulge in these pointless academic debates. The recommended reading is not exactly a broad and balanced canon either.

    Although the temptation to laugh at such absurd thinking is strong, we cannot shrug off the Critical Race Theory branch of identity politics as ‘woke nonsense’, because it’s more dangerous than that. It’s divisive, discriminatory, and – critically for the NHS – damn well expensive. By redefining racism from ‘prejudice or discrimination against someone based on their race/ethnicity to ‘a power struggle between white people and non-whites’, grifters are able to peddle racial discrimination whilst calling themselves anti-racist activists.

    We must not let our medics be bullied into capitulating to this snake oil. This kind of racism has no place in the NHS or any other public institution.

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

    Brock O’Leigh
    6 Sep 2021 3:04PM

    It is not just NHS managers who are subject to this hateful nonsense is being foisted on our kids (presumably with the teaching unions’ blessing). Can you imagine being 7 from Jaywick and being told you are inherently racist and benefitting from the slave trade?

    It is about time the government banned CRT for all public institutions. As Mr Robinson notes it is itself racist. Surely racism is hate speech?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/09/06/nhs-managers-have-embraced-critical-race-theory-will-backfire/

    1. Yet the state advertised the jobs, wasted time interviewing people and hired someone for a cost to the tax payer of about 50K.

      Now that person is stuck in the state system, claiming oodles in pension, benefits and contributing nothing. In fact, they’re wasting a lot of productive time.

      The NHS is there to provide healthcare. Not to preach to itself on racist nonsense. As it is, a nurse shouldn’t feel uncomfortable around a black patient. They should treat that person as an individual. Nothing else.

      This is why taxes must not go up. The state wastes it.

      1. Is there any real evidence that nurses feel uncomfortable around a black patient (presumably only white nurses, not black nurses from another tribe)?

  74. “A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it
    cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less
    formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the
    traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers
    rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government
    itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents
    familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he
    appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He
    rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to
    undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that
    it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.”
    Another 800 barbarians crossed today enabled by traitors within
    treason most foul………..

    2. I love that speech and was gutted to be told that it’s a made up speech from an historical novel.

  75. Back from Cromer – X-ray all done in 20 minutes. Results will be available “In the next SIX weeks”. Must remember to clap…(sarc).

    Then to the beach at Overstrand. Glorious sun; very few people (possibly because of the icebergs!!). addled fr the first time for exactly two years. What fun to smell the sea and feel the salt water on your legs.

    Here is the MR cavorting. And some old fool who had been let out fr the afternoon.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c04044d1421748aa343c8b825c0a0d58bc7a38be76d296adddbb37d4911b1935.jpg

    1. It’s outrageous that the results will not be given to you until, a maximum, of 6 weeks as they are available immediately but they can’t be bothered to read them and inform you quickly.
      I hope all goes well for you Bill and so pleased to see you and your beloved MR enjoying yourselves having a paddle.

    2. It’s outrageous that the results will not be given to you until, a maximum, of 6 weeks as they are available immediately but they can’t be bothered to read them and inform you quickly.
      I hope all goes well for you Bill and so pleased to see you and your beloved MR enjoying yourselves having a paddle.

      1. Agreed about the results. In yer France, the radiologist would ask one to wait ten minutes – then go through the results with you and give you the film to take away AND keep.

        1. They don’t have films anymore, Bill, it’s all done electronically and has been for years. vw was a medical secretary in an X-Ray department until she retired 11 years ago and it was all electronic then.

          1. I don’t know what they call them, nor how they are produced, but BT is correct as far as France is concerned. Wait ten minutes and the radiologist produces the pictures, discusses the results and sends you away with those pictures. They also send a report to your GP at the same time.
            Modernisation doesn’t always seem to result in improvements.

          2. That’s how it should be but the NDS (National Death Service) is mired in perpetual bureaucracy causing untold misery and worry.
            No wonder no other country followed our disaster of a health service sic

          3. When the NHS is good, it is outstandingly good, it saved my son’s life, but when it is bad it is absolutely dreadful.
            It won’t happen, but it needs reform from top to bottom. And had they known what it was going to become, I suspect that its founders would have done something else entirely.

          4. I know that. The results ought to be at the GP surgery about half an hour after they were taken. They won’t be. Don’t forget to bang your saucepan for this world beating “service”.

        2. Strange that my dentist can look at the X-Rays as soon as they’re taken.
          But then they don’t have layers of people wandering around with one sheet of paper.

        3. Ha! yes, that was one of the most astonishing things to me too about living on the Continent, that doctors entrust patients with their own X rays and test results.

    6. There is a beautiful Lutyens designed house at Overstrand built for Lady Sheffield from memory.

      When I last visited it was some sort of Cheshire Home and the gardens a shadow of those originally designed and featured in early Country Life.

      I remember the beautiful coastal walk from Cromer.

          2. Is that doing the hog’s back, A31?

            There, you see; I listened, but as a man my interpretation was different.

            };-))

            I’ll send lacoste over…

    3. About 25 years ago a pal was motoring along a narrow street in Knightsbridge; slightly over-assertive driver coming towards him in a flashy car, so my pal had to move over to the left very carefully. The oncoming driver wound his window down and instead of saying thank you, said something casually unpleasant in Arabic. However, my pal speaks the lingo, so he replied with a particularly offensive phrase, and drove on. In his rear view mirror he could see the Arab gentleman absolutely furious and gobsmacked, but unable to take action due to the traffic.

    4. Slightly longer story:

      Woman, whilst watching man disappear round bend in her rear mirror,
      crashes into a huge beech tree that had just fallen across road.
      If women would just stop barking up the wrong tree!

    1. Well she looks straight-ready for the NHS … they’ll gift her two new walking sticks minimum. I suspect she is Vitamin D deficient.

      1. ….preferential treatment courtesy of the NHS.

        I’m still waiting for a doctor’s app. re. my Achilles torn tendon…..

          2. but – be a white, native born, English taxpayer – and be prepared to wait 6 hours at Heathrow….and be grilled by some wazzock from Border Farce who is as black as your hat.

    4. Boris Johnson urges the French to ‘stiffen their sinews’ and stop wave of migrants crossing the channel after a record THOUSAND make it to Kent in small boats in just one day
      Packed lifeboat was seen arriving on a beach in Dungeness in Kent today as crossings boosted by heatwave
      While officials led passengers away, one woman was seen clutching a small baby who was strapped to her
      Images show other young boys and girls being carried or escorted to safety among several men and women

      https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9962063/Migrant-Channel-crossings-resume-time-fortnight-thanks-heatwave.html

  80. Afternoon, all. Just popping in as I have to go to a meeting tonight (my calendar is now getting to be as full as it was before lockdown, thankfully). This government (and previous incarnations thereof) has done everything in its power to discourage the work ethic. Tax, tax, tax the working class while heaping largesse on their benefits clientele. If you can get more for not working, why work? If you can access services for nothing if you don’t work, why work? We might as well have had Labour in power; we’ve got their big state, high tax policies anyway. On another note, following my ecstasy about the church service yesterday, I found out today that St Chad’s in Shrewsbury, which normally hosts the Battle of Britain service, is insisting on masks and if singing is allowed (there seemed to be some debate about whether it would be or not), the congregation was to be masked! I understand there will be no BoB service as such, just a parade from RAF Shawbury and a wreath-laying ceremony at the memorial outside. As St Chad’s is in a vacancy, it must be the church wardens who made this decision. Thankfully, our church wardens are risk takers. None of us died of the plague following the (very successful) concert on Bank Holiday Monday, so we had coffee and biscuits as well as a sing-song.

    1. WTF? Masks are NO LONGER REQUIRED. Singing is ALLOWED.

      Can you not tell the wanqueurs at St Chad’s to read their newspapers and keep up to date? Refer the to a good lawyer. Set Oscar on to them.

      Our churchwarden is – er, timid: a Limp Dumb. One who says “I received your e-mail last Thursday week and will get round to answering it when I have considered what you say”…(and a crashing bore). BUT – it was he who insisted that the Church remain unlocked and open throughout the last 18 months. And ensured that – at the earliest possible date – full services AND singing AND no masks happened.

      1. It’s not my church, Bill (I only ever go there for civic functions – it’s a long way away and parking is diabolical). It comes under Lichfield diocese, whereas my church operates under Chester.

  81. 338567+ up ticks,
    Now there’s a question,
    Surely ALL mass uncontrolled immigration party current members must be morally liable for the illegals welfare ongoing, after all they are financing & supporting the purveyor parties and have been for decades.

    I see no reason for the issue being three monkeyed because the MUI parties member / voters lifestyle is now coming under threat.

    https://twitter.com/NKrankie/status/1434918345627815944

    2. And they will keep on arriving because they know that once they get here they will never be sent away by a tribe of weak white people who have neither the moral conviction nor the courage to stick up for their own interests.

      Our humanity and our Christian charity are considered to be absurd and pathetic weaknesses by those from the Middle East who will be very happy to go on exploiting these weaknesses in the full confidence of the knowledge that they will ultimately defeat us and when they do they will slaughter us without a qualm.

      Don’t take my word for it. Take the word of Mansiir Al Aquab, a Sudanese Muslim person I knew when I was a student at UEA over 50 years ago, to whom I gave a lift from Norwich to London on the occasional weekend.

      1. A comment from elsewhere:-

        Rather than robustly defending and supporting our own heritage, and indeed our troops, we have sold our traditions, spirituality and values for a bowl of pottage. Can there be any wonder that we are despised and hated? When we have such scant respect for ourselves, our culture, our beliefs, how can we expect anyone to have respect for us?

        https://going-postal.com/2021/09/without-compassion/

      2. 338567+ up ticks,
        Evening R,
        At a 1000 a day until the next General Election tally’s up to 1157000 NEW reset, replace greatful members, reset
        complete just a little tidying up exercise now, NO need of the old stock, but thanks for their continuing input.

        Mr Batten was never very far off course the fruitcakes always had a winning recipe.

        1. At least you have more space to get away from the bu88ers.
          Who would thought Mick Jaggers’ boy would be such a wimp?

      3. Me neither. Now, despite earlier assurances to the contrary, they are to impose vaccine passports on us. Divide and rule is their mantra.

        Nuremberg Codex Trials 2 cannot come too soon. These bastards must be made to suffer for their sins.

      5. None of this would have been possible without the changes that Blair and his crew of wreckers put in train.

        NEVER EVER FORGET THAT.

    2. Never mind ‘could be’- our surgery has today postponed all winter ‘flu vaccinations due to uncertainty over delivery dates. Apart from anything else, that’s a lot of time and effort wasted.

  83. 338567+up ticks,
    A thousand a day keeps democracy at bay, courtesy of the lab’lib/con mass uncontrolled immigration coalition we are coming via reset, replace
    to be a holding station nation for brussels no other way of seeing it.

    I was joking some while back in saying compulsory lodgering, but it could very well be on the cards.

    These types covered up the likes of rotherham for 16 plus years, now they are trying to say your kids are state property
    first & foremost and they are still finding support & votes.

  84. Thought for the day for for all old people with woke children.

    Tell them that you have listened to their critical race theory and all the woke mantras and have decided to leave every brass farthing that they were due to inherit to refugee charidees.

  85. That’s me for today. Glad my typo made you all larf. Hah bleeding hah.

    We had a wonderful hour by the sea. The MR Threatens to go there again. I hope so.

    Have a jolly evening.

    A demain.

  86. Thanks to Elsie, I have made and potted up 5 jars of Mixed Tomato Chutney and 5 jars of lemon curd.
    Apparently chums will have even more tomatoes at the weekend. What have I started!

    2. Glad to hear that, Annie. If the extra tomatoes produce lots more chutney and you can spare a small jar of the same I would be most grateful.

  87. It’s a hard life here.

    Air temperature 88 in proper money, no noticeable humidity and a pleasant breeze. Pool 78, to cool off in.

    Eat outside and then sit and watch the sun go down, glass of red medicine to hand; cloudless sky so excellent star gazing.

    The only downside is the appearance of the orchids: Autumn ladies’ tresses, a sure sign summer is ending.

    I don’t know how I cope.

  88. Just returned from a bassing session at eastern Whitsand Bay. Another cracking day for bass numbers caught, but the size of them was not good. Imagine the size of farmed bass you see in the supermarket and add 50%. Still, a beautiful afternoon and lots of exercise from the walk (climb) down and up, not to mention about 500 or more lure casts. Pipits and oystercatchers, a peregrine cruising along the cliffs and scorchio weather. Barely saw a soul as the access is a little challenging.
    Shower and off to open mic night at the local and hope I don’t fall asleep up there.

    1. Boris Johnson urges the French to ‘stiffen their sinews’ and stop wave of migrants crossing the channel after a record THOUSAND make it to Kent in small boats in just one day

      Will the French understand Boris’s bedroom talk?

      1. If the UK just threw them back, the message would get across pretty quickly – don’t waste your money trying to be smuggled across the channel. By collecting them and bringing them in, hotels and the like, is just encouraging them.
        But then, they don’t want to stop the stream, they want them in the UK.

      2. They’ll understand it, but they’ll ignore it. After all, they’re paid to stop the bastards getting over here, but they facilitate it, take the money and shuck off their problem onto us.

        1. Hi Conway!
          I’m going to reply to you here as my iPad doesn’t like going so far down the comments!
          Many thanks for your good wishes and kind thoughts. Glad to read that your life is finding an even keel, and some semblance of normality. Oscar must be worth his weight in gold!

          1. Hello, Sue. Thanks for the good wishes. Oscar certainly earns his keep. Life has taken on a semblance of normality today; I had a RAFA meeting that had very few absentees (most of us are north of 60, some well north), then I got the locksmith to sort out a sticking lock and finally I sat through a Parish Council meeting. Tomorrow is a day off, so I expect I’ll take Oscar for his flapjack 🙂 We may drive up to Cholmondeley to stroll round the gardens if it remains fine and not too hot.

  90. Schadenfreude.

    So many of my friends and acquaintances used to lecture me non-stop over my views on the efficacy of the vaccinations.

    They are suddenly realising that I was right after all.
    When I consider the abuse I got, I’m actually quite pleased that they are wetting themselves with the realisation that it doesn’t prevent Covid, it doesn’t stop transmission, and it makes transmission easier.
    Almost without exception they were telling me it was the answer to the maiden’s prayer.
    Well people, the maiden has certainly been fucked now.

      1. Hail to the Champ.

        The fact that many of their double-vaxxed friends have caught it and are seriously ill.

        1. Thank you, she says demurely.

          Sorry to hear about their friends illnesses. But still very nearly the first topic of conversation is Covid/vax. The vast majority are still believers. I can’t believe how many are still masked when shopping or walking along the street. Utter madness.

          1. I agree re the illnesses, I don’t wish the poor so-and-so’s harm.

            But it staggers me that anyone who reads even the “normal” press can still accept what they are being sold.
            If they read off-piste their hair would fall out.

          2. I think Alf and I posted here recently about the group in a local park handing out free lateral
            Flow tests to anyone who wanted one and the “discussion” we had with the medical student about how we “keep everyone safe”. she seemed surprised when I knew what mRNA was and I had to walk away in the end. What is it they say, it’s easier to fool people than to convince them they have been fooled.

      2. Probably his performance has caused swathes of leftards to claim that they never voted for him.

    3. And some of my friends are very much less sure that Biden won the election than they were a few months ago!

        1. There is still a lot of good research coming out of both Universities, the problem they have is that they are being/have been taken over by the woke. The long march through the institutions is almost complete.
          Sadly.

          1. An architect reminisces:

            I look at Cambridge and remember Petty Cury in the late sixties. Petty Cury was Cambridge’s most important street. It had contained some of the town’s best buildings, from the building of the great inns in the 16th century, until Heffer’s new shop-front in the 1930’s.

            The most important side of Petty Cury, the south, was entirely demolished in 1972. The inns which had lined Petty Cury for 800 years from west to east included The Red Lion, The Falcon, The Red Hart and Antelope and The Wrestlers.

            The Red Lion and several of the yards to the other inns had survived along with modified facades. Most were lost in the mid to late 19th century excepting The Red Lion which remained and prospered.

            When the railway arrived in 1845 the University exiled the new station to its present site a mile or more from the town centre.

            The redevelopment of the south side of Petty Cury of 1972 remains an abomination.

            Similar catastrophic redevelopments at that time include those in my home city of Bath where a ghastly shopping mall replaced a mediaeval structure of street and alleyways and beautiful shop-fronts from several eras. That development has now been replaced with further abominations.

            I lived in the centre of Cambridge for ten years whilst commuting to London. I watched the destruction of beautiful buildings and their substitution by Modern Movement rubbish.

          2. I couldn’t agree more.

            I used to walk along Petty Cury every day. I was living in Cambridge and recall the 1970’s with dismay. We left in the early 80’s.

          3. An architect reminisces:

            I look at Cambridge and remember Petty Cury in the late sixties. Petty Cury was Cambridge’s most important street. It had contained some of the town’s best buildings, from the building of the great inns in the 16th century, until Heffer’s new shop-front in the 1930’s.

            The most important side of Petty Cury, the south, was entirely demolished in 1972. The inns which had lined Petty Cury for 800 years from west to east included The Red Lion, The Falcon, The Red Hart and Antelope and The Wrestlers.

            The Red Lion and several of the yards to the other inns had survived along with modified facades. Most were lost in the mid to late 19th century excepting The Red Lion which remained and prospered.

            When the railway arrived in 1845 the University exiled the new station to its present site a mile or more from the town centre.

            The redevelopment of the south side of Petty Cury of 1972 remains an abomination.

            Similar catastrophic redevelopments at that time include those in my home city of Bath where a ghastly shopping mall replaced a mediaeval structure of street and alleyways and beautiful shop-fronts from several eras. That development has now been replaced with further abominations.

            I lived in the centre of Cambridge for ten years whilst commuting to London. I watched the destruction of beautiful buildings and their substitution by Modern Movement rubbish.

          4. An architect reminisces:

            I look at Cambridge and remember Petty Cury in the late sixties. Petty Cury was Cambridge’s most important street. It had contained some of the town’s best buildings, from the building of the great inns in the 16th century, until Heffer’s new shop-front in the 1930’s.

            The most important side of Petty Cury, the south, was entirely demolished in 1972. The inns which had lined Petty Cury for 800 years from west to east included The Red Lion, The Falcon, The Red Hart and Antelope and The Wrestlers.

            The Red Lion and several of the yards to the other inns had survived along with modified facades. Most were lost in the mid to late 19th century excepting The Red Lion which remained and prospered.

            When the railway arrived in 1845 the University exiled the new station to its present site a mile or more from the town centre.

            The redevelopment of the south side of Petty Cury of 1972 remains an abomination.

            Similar catastrophic redevelopments at that time include those in my home city of Bath where a ghastly shopping mall replaced a mediaeval structure of street and alleyways and beautiful shop-fronts from several eras. That development has now been replaced with further abominations.

            I lived in the centre of Cambridge for ten years whilst commuting to London. I watched the destruction of beautiful buildings and their substitution by Modern Movement rubbish.

  93. As with the Nazis this government are now proposing that children can disobey their parents and be coerced into taking the jabs.

    I truly hate and despise Johnson and his tyrannical band of goons.

    2. Good. 1 in seven fewer people the NHS has to pay for trans surgery, or rectal prolapse, STDs and drug abuse.

      Might also be handy to point out that Boris’ tax hike is paying for this nonsense and the invasion coming through Dover, and thus should be refused and taxes actually cut.

    1. Boris is behaving like a thief, and he is silencing us all.

      I think of him as this !

      Abdul Abulbul Amir
      Written By: Percy French
      Copyright Unknown

      The sons of the prophet were hardy and bold,
      And quite unaccustomed to fear,
      But the bravest of these was a man, I am told
      Named Abdul Abulbul Amir.

      This son of the desert, in battle aroused,
      Could spit twenty men on his spear.
      A terrible creature, both sober and soused
      Was Abdul Abulbul Amir.

      When they needed a man to encourage the van,
      Or to harass the foe from the rear,
      Or to storm a redoubt, they had only to shout
      For Abdul Abulbul Amir.

      There are heroes aplenty and men known to fame
      In the troops that were led by the Czar;
      But the bravest of these was a man by the name
      Of Ivan Skavinsky Skivar.

      He could imitate Irving, play Euchre and pool
      And perform on the Spanish Guitar.
      In fact, quite the cream of the Muscovite team
      Was Ivan Skavinsky Skivar.

      The ladies all loved him, his rivals were few;
      He could drink them all under the bar.
      As gallant or tank, there was no one to rank
      With Ivan Skavinsky Skivar.

      One day this bold Russian had shouldered his gun
      And donned his most truculent sneer
      Downtown he did go, where he trod on the toe
      Of Abdul Abulbul Amir

      “Young man,” quoth Bulbul, “has life grown so dull,
      That you’re anxious to end your career?
      Vile infidel! Know, you have trod on the toe
      Of Abdul Abulbul Amir.”

      “So take your last look at the sunshine and brook
      And send your regrets to the Czar;
      By this I imply you are going to die,
      Mr. Ivan Skavinsky Skivar.”

      Quoth Ivan, “My friend, your remarks, in the end,
      Will avail you but little, I fear,
      For you ne’er will survive to repeat them alive,
      Mr. Abdul Abulbul Amir!”

      Then this bold mameluke drew his trusty chibouque
      With a cry of “Allah Akbar!”
      And with murderous intent, he ferociously went
      For Ivan Skavinsky Skivar.

      They parried and thrust and they side-stepped and cussed
      ‘Till their blood would have filled a great pot.
      The philologist blokes, who seldom crack jokes,
      Say that hash was first made on that spot.

      They fought all that night, ‘neath the pale yellow moon;
      The din, it was heard from afar;
      And great multitudes came, so great was the fame
      of Abdul and Ivan Skivar.

      As Abdul’s long knife was extracting the life –
      In fact, he was shouting “Huzzah!” – –
      He felt himself struck by that wily Kalmuck,
      Count Ivan Skavinsky Skivar.

      The sultan drove by in his red-breasted fly,
      Expecting the victor to cheer;
      But he only drew nigh to hear the last sigh
      Of Abdul Abulbul Amir.

      Czar Petrovich, too, in his spectacles blue
      Rode up in his new crested car.
      He arrived just in time to exchange a last line
      With Ivan Skavinsky Skivar.

      A loud-sounding splash from the Danube was heard
      Resounding o’er meadows afar;
      It came from the sack fitting close to the back
      Of Ivan Skavinsky Skovar.

      There’s a tomb rises up where the blue Danube flows;
      Engraved there in characters clear;
      “Ah stranger, when passing, please pray for the soul
      Of Abdul Abulbul Amir.”

      A Muscovite maiden her lone vigil keeps,
      ‘Neath the light of the pale polar star;
      And the name that she murmurs as oft as she weeps
      Is Ivan Skavinsky Skivar.

      2. I used to sing this as a little boy. My sympathies were with with Abdul as there was a pleasant rumbling assonance to his name.

          1. I first learnt an alternative, and very bawdy, version of this song in The Book of Rugby Songs.

  98. Sometimes the telly is on but I am not consciously watching it.
    Today I glanced up to see an advert for Coco Pops ( a sugar laden breakfast cereal M’lud), and it featured a white dad and his white son. Puzzled by the absence of mixed ethnicity children and adults, I realised that diversitisers dare not risk promoting a chocolate product by exploiting coffee faces.
    (they would be mocha-ed)

    1. Foxoles • 7 minutes ago
      Mrs Dr Kelly Pickard Smith

      ‘I am a Researcher Developer within the Faculty of Humanities. I provide training for PGRs, Research only contract staff (including Fellows), Teaching Assistants and Academics on the New Academics Programme. I contribute to strategy development of researcher development, Teaching Assistants and EDI through committee work.
      I remain research active and have a particular interest in equity in education and creative pedagogy. I am a keen proponent of Arts Based Research and produce film as research outputs. I push the boundaries of what is considered research and research publications through drama, film and stand up comedy’

      https://www.research.manche…

      So a further post from me:-
      https://twitter.com/BeardedBob7282/status/1434985712374398978

  104. From BBC News headlines:
    “Police record disturbing rise in children abusing peers.”
    Isn’t it usually the other way round?

  106. Good night all – we watched the Bach & Handel prom from last night and enjoyed it. Two great talents in their early years.

  107. Tuesday 7th September, 2021

    Araminta Smade

    Three Quarters of a Century!

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e281877e66f9640965428cfaf7612b736a56b10f037dc7830d6ff3f7e0f8aba9.png

    With very best wishes for very many more excellent returns of the day.

    Rastus and Caroline

    We found this when looking for something relevant:

    Imperial Pale Ale : Originating from Smade’s brewery it is best served by the taciturn yet artistic Araminta Smade.

    Any way I am sure we shall all raise a glass to you today!

Comments are closed.