Wednesday 29 September: It’s not Brexit to blame for the lack of HGV drivers but the short-sighted haulage industry

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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587 thoughts on “Wednesday 29 September: It’s not Brexit to blame for the lack of HGV drivers but the short-sighted haulage industry”

  3. Personally I believe this petrol crises has been deliberately created as part of the reset process to get people used to rationing and accepting some sort of electronic phone app rationing system connected to the vaccine app.
    The most obvious explanation is often the most accurate bearing in mind the strange events that are occurring on a daily basis.
    Although most people will still be persuaded that it is all down to incompetence and mismanagement I suppose, because the truth is far to daunting for them and they don’t want to go there.

      1. Johnny I have a new iPad which is much more sensitive to touch and it looks as if I’ve downticked hour comment but didn’t mean to. I heartily agree with you.

    3. The ‘nudge’ has been applied with the idea of special access to fuel for essential workers e.g. nurses.

      “It’s for nurses, doctors and other essential workers, it’s only for three weeks, you know, to flatten out the supply problems, get the Army on board, Minister Shapps has it all under control and will hold a press conference on a daily basis to keep everyone informed. Meanwhile I would urge everyone, other than the essential workers, to stay at home, not use their vehicles and save the fuel delivery industry. You know it makes sense.”

    4. 339403+ up ticks,
      Morning B3,
      You have it in one, nothing but nothing should be put down to incompetence ALL orchestrated ALL going forward with reset on the near horizon.

      People ( lab/lib/con ) party members in the main, refuse to face the truth on account of the close shop support,
      that MUST be adhered to WHATEVER the consequence.

    5. I fear you’re right. However, I fear there is a degree of sheer incompetence involved. A kick the can down the road approach because a situation is too difficult/awkward/annoying to handle properly.

      It’s just more meddling from an incompetent, useless government when the market should have resolved this situation.

  4. Morning everyone. Quiet again! The Bus Stop for the morning shopping run yesterday was a lot busier than it has been for some time now. While we were waiting a conversation sprang up among the regulars about the Petrol Shortage which diminished markedly when I put in my five pennorth worth. There was a lowering of voices and shuffling of feet and I found myself outside the circle. Now I understand why people are fearful; though I never thought to see it in England. I am myself a naturally timid person and age has made me more so. This said I see no point in dodging the issues or pretending that they do not exist. They will not go away!

    Three thousand years ago a Greek poet wrote a story about a City; one of whose inhabitants was a certain Cassandra who had the gift of prophecy and foresaw its doom. This knowledge availed her and the city nothing since no one believed her. Homer attributed both the Gift and the Curse to the Gods but they are of course human attributes. People were no different in the Bronze Age to what they are now. Weapons, technology, beliefs, these may change, but human nature is eternal. It is as fixed as everything else is fluid and mutable. This time the Wooden Horse is not made out of pine trees, except in the sense that it comes printed on paper. It is the deception that has been manufactured.

      1. Morning Stephen. Non-conformist Moi?

        From the day I was born though the truth is more important to me than iconoclasm!

    2. Stop being sensible Minty. Everyone knows the Russians are to blame. We’ll have none of that truth lark around these parts, thank you very much!

    1. You can take the lead out of petrol but you can’t take the 007 out of Bond.
      Join the Q!
      (I wonder what Bond can do with his index finger)

          3. I like her. She comes from a sensible non royal family (Yorkshire stock) who have made their own way in life and has introduced a breath of fresh air, and new blood, into the Royal Family. Most of the royals are hard working, if somewhat misguided, and the monarchy prevents people such as Blair, Brown and Boris becoming President/dictator. The money generated by the Royal Estates, pageantry and patronage more than cover the cost of running them

            Constitutional monarchy, like democracy, is the worst form of Government – except for all those other that have been tried before (Winston SC).

      3. Cambridges out supporting woke again, I see. They never represent me! I feel excluded.
        I am now a former royalist.

        1. Prince William has undecipherable speech .. he sounds very adenoidal , so unclear , he also gabbles , he sounds similar to the football twerp Harry Kane

    3. ‘Morning, C1. Whilst not a close follower of the Bond series, I can’t recall any occasion when Q has addressed his colleague as “Bond” instead of the usual “Double-o-seven”….

    4. An example of the new ‘diversity’ of Bond films. Q is the head of Q Branch (later Q Division), a senior position occupied by an older/elderly man with long service. Here we have a ‘gay boy’ (or girl; you can never tell these days) just out of his/its teens. The next Q is a one legged dwarf from Gambia who has trans’ed from XY chromosomes to XX and back but still has one large breast in the middle of his/they chest. Did I mention the head transplant?

      Remember you read it here first. 🙄

    2. Don’t you worry, he’s on the case

      That’s precisely why everyone should be very worried.

      2. The most terrifying 9 words in English: “I’m from the government and I’m here to help!”
        (c) R Reagan

      3. The most terrifying 9 words in English: “I’m from the government and I’m here to help!”
        (c) R Reagan

  7. Either build more nuclear power, or risk asking Putin for permission to boil the kettle. 29 September 2021.

    At last the Government has woken up and realised it won’t be able to smell any coffee this winter if rolling power outages mean that millions of people are unable to boil their kettles.

    It has taken spiking gas prices caused by a global energy crisis, a fire at an important interconnector that links the UK and French power grids and unrelated queues at the petrol pumps, but the Government has finally figured out this country’s energy policy isn’t fit for purpose.

    A false equivalence in the title. Vlad would of course be delighted to sell us gas, not refuse it! The present crisis is manufactured in the West not Russia!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/09/29/either-build-nuclear-power-risk-asking-putin-permission-boil/

    1. It’s not Putin we will have to ask for permission, it’s our own home-grown, home-hating Green lobby, currently residing in 10 Downing St.

  8. In the new Bond film, James has to contend with a new group of anarchists that goes under the name of CERVIX.

  9. SIR – The University of Kent says that wearing second-hand clothes is a sign of white privilege because, unlike others, white people are not judged as being poor for doing so. By the same logic, being able to afford new clothes would presumably be an indication of white privilege, in which case white people should not wear clothes at all.

    David Salter
    Richmond, Surrey

    Peppery

    2. By the same token, riding bicycles is also a sign of white privilege.
      Not that anyone at the University of Kent would know about such things, but I remember being the only cyclist on a council estate full of immigrants. They used to give me pitying looks as I passed, clearly in the belief that I was too poor to afford a car, and too undignified to care whether the neighbours knew it or not.
      Now can we please have cycle free days in our cities, as a way of curbing white privilege?

  11. SIR – Before removing charitable status from independent schools and taxing them, Sir Keir Starmer should bear in mind that academy trusts are charities, as are many free schools.

    The only difference is that, at private schools, it is the parents who pay for the capital and running costs, while at state-funded schools the Government pays. That in itself is unfair, as most private-school parents have made considerable sacrifices to educate their children there.

    What private schools receive in rates and corporation tax relief is much less than the per capita contribution made by the Department for Education to state schools. Meanwhile, many academy trusts are making greater surpluses with their government funding than are many independent schools, prompting questions about what types of school should be taxed.

    These squabbles are, of course, part of our national embarrassment about private education and how it can give advantages to children. Actually, in 20 years of education consultancy, I have found that everyone wants all children to have the best possible opportunities. This means matching them with the right school, rather than trying to make every school brilliant at everything. In my experience, those who run independent schools acknowledge that they are better at doing some things, and that another school – private or state – may be better at others. Fees can, of course, be a barrier, and they just want help with making their own school more affordable to those on lower incomes.

    There is massive waste and misallocation in Britain’s education system. Taxing independent schools into closure will not only undermine Sir Keir’s plans, but it will also put even more pressure on the state sector. A better solution would be for funding to be used more intelligently – and it could be, if the state and private sectors were seen as a single, integrated system, as they are in countries such as Spain.

    Simon Shneerson
    Chorleywood, Hertfordshire

    It’s not about common sense – it’s all about manufactured envy.

    1. Especially considering Starmer et al problably were educated privately.

      It’s all ‘stopping people doing something’, they never have the mindset of ‘change the system so anyone can benefit.’

      Why not school vouchers. Cut out the middle man of the state entirely. Have the school owned by the parents as the customer. That way when some teacher in Batley teaches a valid class, and the head decides they don’t like the hassle of da muslims, the parents step in and demand the teacher is reinstated, the class taught, and the head brought to heel.

      1. We used to have assisted places – it was the Fettes (Scotland’s Eton) educated Blair that put an end to that.

  12. Good morning from a beautifully clear Newcastle.
    A very enjoyable meal last night in the Broad Chare on the quayside, but I over ate and suffered for it through the night.

    I reckon I’ve a good 300 miles in the van’s tank, so will not be looking to fuel up until tomorrow.

  13. ‘Morning, Peeps.

    SIR – At the risk of sounding smug, I am enjoying the petrol crisis. I set myself the challenge of seeing if it was possible to live, shop and work without a car, so last week I took to the cycle paths around the city centre on my electric bike.

    What a joy. I managed to get my shopping and all my local work done. For work further afield I’m using the buses and trams.

    It’s been totally liberating, with the fresh air and the feeling of being part of the buzz of the city. Obviously it’s not for everyone, but I would heartily recommend it as an option to consider.

    John Howard
    Birmingham

    You are entitled to sound smug, John Howard, but that’s because your nice expensive electric bike hasn’t been nicked – yet.

    4. Morning

      SIR – I am perplexed as to why so many people are blaming the Government for the shortage of HGV drivers.

      Surely it is the responsibility of any industry to ensure it has an adequate workforce, and I do not believe that there were 100,000 – the size of the shortage estimated by the Road Haulage Association – European drivers who have all gone home as a result of Brexit.

      Even if this were the case, it is a devastating indictment of the haulage industry’s management that it did not see this coming and recruit and train accordingly.

      C R Rowe

      Liphook, Hampshire

      SIR – In the past, retired HGV drivers would often cover permanent staff when they took holidays or sick leave.

      Then the Driver Certificate in Professional Competence was introduced from the European Union. This meant that drivers with 30 years’ experience had to sit in a classroom for five days every five years – paid for by themselves and often at weekends, as the haulage companies did not take responsibility for this training. Many older drivers said they would rather be at home, so the part-time driver disappeared.

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      If the Government is serious about getting experienced drivers back to work, suspending this requirement would help.

      Paul Matthews

      Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire

      SIR – I know someone who obtained an HGV licence. On his first day on the road he was 10 minutes over the time allowed on the tachograph when he checked back in, which resulted in a £1,000 fine.

      He is no longer an HGV driver.

      June Bennett

      Lytham, Lancashire

      Placeholder image for youtube video: sL8_sJK9Up

      SIR – Why would HGV drivers from Europe, where there is already a shortage of drivers, want to leave their homes and families to work in Britain for three months and then be sent home on Christmas Eve? Surely we need military assistance right now, immediate intensive training for British drivers and a guaranteed minimum wage for all HGV drivers, which will prevent companies from trying to recruit cheap labour from abroad.

      Nigel Scotland

      Cheltenham, Gloucestershire

      SIR – The consideration of temporarily hiring people from abroad for lorry driving, poultry working and seasonal fruit picking suggests a mature approach at long last to immigration.

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      It was always the understanding, echoed in contracts, in the territories where I worked, from central Africa to the Middle East, that I would be present for as long as they wanted me, not the other way around.

      It applied to all British workers, whether agriculturalists, barristers, medical staff or teachers like me.

      Were such an approach to be adopted here, the benefits would be substantial. Supply nations would no longer be permanently bereft of expertise they can ill afford to lose, and there would be added impetus to train our own workforce in required areas, while at the same time plugging temporary gaps.

      Edward Thomas

      Eastbourne, East

      1. Sensible comments from Messrs Rowe and Matthews. The rest vary from drivel to tripe.

        June Bennet: “On his first day on the road he was 10 minutes over the time allowed on the tachograph when he checked back in, which resulted in a £1,000 fine.” There must be more to this. Drivers hours are spread over a week. Being over planned time on one day is not a problem, unless the employer makes it so. I managed deliveries throughout the UK and in Europe.

        1. Interestng stuff Horace, didn’t know that.

          I appreciate the need to ensure drivers are not being run ragged, but surely some leaway is necessary.

          1. Driver hours are divided into driving time, non-driving and rest periods. The intention is that drivers should have sufficient rest and sleep, so that they do not fall asleep at the wheel.
            The calculations are a wee bit complex with the possibility of some carry-over from day to day. Supermarkets give delivery businesses a time window. The lorry has to be there to meet the time window. Otherwise it’s curtains. It is a long time since I was involved in such stuff so the details will have changed, not that I remember it clearly anyway. As a general manager I was responsible for making sure things were done properly, but not for daily detail. As part of that I became a qualified transport manager, CPC etc
            Managers are not ogres. They depend on the drivers doing their best. Both are on the same side

      2. Trapping people in a contract is unfair though. I’ve had a 6 month notice period before and it’s absurd.

        If a worker is leaving to a competitor, good for them! You’ve got to learn to improve your own company to make it worth pepole staying.

    5. Wait until it’s raining properly, snowing, or icy.
      We can buy spiked tyres for bicycles here, but can you in the UK get such things?

      1. Irrelevant, I’m afraid. When the power cuts arrive he won’t be riding anywhere…

        ‘Morning, Oberst.

    6. Can’t wait for the next power cuts! Won’t someone manufacture a crisis in the electricity sector? Please God, stop the wind from blowing round the British Isles for just one week!

  14. Morning all

    Hellish house-moves

    SIR – Anyone trying to buy or sell a house recently will have experienced the inertia in the conveyancing system caused by legal executives working from home (report, September 28).

    The inflexibility of the protocols that govern this industry have been intensified by the inability to speak to the person allocated to your case even by phone, or to know whether emails are received and read. Those concerned also seem under no obligation to tell you when they are on holiday. Buyers and vendors scramble to supply answers to queries, only to receive an “out of office” automated reply.

    No wonder this aspect of legal work has become the least respected, or that moving house is among the most stressful of life’s experiences.

    Sarah Cuff

    Reading, Berkshire

    SIR – Last Thursday evening my wife and I caught a train from London to Maidstone. It seems that Thursday is the new Friday, as the train was packed with drunk office workers. No doubt they will use “working from home” on Friday to sleep off their excesses at their employers’ expense.

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    Stan Kirby

    East Malling, Kent

    1. Our house move took seven months to complete (Feb this year) and throughout that time our solicitor was usually ahead of the game. She was endlessly patient when we expressed our frustration with a process which was apparently caused by a party at the top of the chain who decided to switch her choice of house from existing to a new-build, the latter being incomplete when she did so! No, my irritation is with a couple of agents in the chain who tried to keep this information to themselves for week after week. It was only when we flushed them out by stating that we would be pulling out in seven days’ time that they realised the game was up…and she immediately announced that she would move into rented. After this we exchanged and completed in about ten days.

      If anyone needs a good conveyancing solicitor in the Hailsham area of E Sussex…

      ‘Morning Epi.

    2. This working from home bashing is annoying.

      When I do it, which is most of the time, I’m actually working. usually debugging or monitoring. I have an open calendar that anyone can look at, including all my customers. My hours are set and I am clearly away if I am marked as away.

      The wife starts work at 8 – not ‘sits down with a coffee and pretends ot until 10, she’s ready to go in her locked room from 8am. She usually finishes much later, often past 7 – until I put a stop to it.

      From her traffic logs there are endless meetings, tiresome calls, a lot of patience and much looking up of Tolley’s. Her VPN consumes practically 90% of the bandwidth of our line – so much so we have two of them.

  15. SIR – Your otherwise spot-on review of Vigil said it portrayed “the most disaster-prone sub in military history”.

    In fact, that title should go to HMS K13, a steam-driven First World War Royal Navy submarine. She sank during sea trials in early 1917, killing 32 of her crew, but was later salvaged and recommissioned as HMS K22.

    Despite the name change, in 1918 K22 rammed another British sub. The two disabled submarines were then overtaken by the fleet, and K22 was struck by the battlecruiser Inflexible, which destroyed the external ballast tanks on her starboard side. This triggered a chain of events in which another 103 lives and two submarines were lost.

    Mark Hodson
    Bristol

    A sub with ’13’ in its name? No wonder it was a disaster. I thought sub crews were superstitious?

  16. SIR – Your otherwise spot-on review of Vigil said it portrayed “the most disaster-prone sub in military history”.

    In fact, that title should go to HMS K13, a steam-driven First World War Royal Navy submarine. She sank during sea trials in early 1917, killing 32 of her crew, but was later salvaged and recommissioned as HMS K22.

    Despite the name change, in 1918 K22 rammed another British sub. The two disabled submarines were then overtaken by the fleet, and K22 was struck by the battlecruiser Inflexible, which destroyed the external ballast tanks on her starboard side. This triggered a chain of events in which another 103 lives and two submarines were lost.

    Mark Hodson
    Bristol

    A sub with ’13’ in its name? No wonder if was a disaster. I thought sub crews were superstitious?

  17. SIR – This week No Time To Die, the latest James Bond film, is released in Britain. It will give cinemas a welcome boost, but also means again seeing scars, burns or physical imperfections as shorthand for villainy.

    Living with a disfigurement or visible difference means contending daily with staring and comments. Sadly many also regularly experience abuse. Research shows that only one in five people with a visible difference has seen a character who looks like them as the hero in a film or on television. The disfigured villain trope – and the lack of representation in other roles – fuel harassment.

    To address this injustice, Changing Faces has written to Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson, who produce the Bond films, calling for the next instalment to include a positive character with a visible difference.

    Catherine Deakin
    Deputy Chief Executive, Changing Faces
    London WC1

    Dear God, this woman must have time on her hands!

    1. Yes, because I judge Simon weston on his scars.

      I see them, but I respect the man. We have reached a low point as a society when we specifically create labels in the name of promotion.

      Leave people alone!

    2. She should have been in East Grinstead during the war – it was the town that didn’t stare (because of Archie MacIndoe’s guinea pigs).

    1. He looks happy enough. He could do with a small side table for refreshments, magazines, and the like.

  19. Russian threat to UK doesn’t end with Skripal poisoning, warns terror chief. “9 September 2021.

    Mr Jacques warned the threat extended beyond direct assassinations.

    “In terms of the whole host of elements used to try to attack the UK and UK interests from those states seeking their own advantage”, the threat from Russia is “much wider, much deeper and much more concerning,” he said.

    Targets include those parts of society “underpinning the economic stability of the nation [and] this is what we expect them to do”.

    Really? I thought that was Westminster. Perhaps he could have furnished us with an example of this program! Are they ferrying migrants across the Channel? Blocking the M25? Abducting HGV drivers?

    This is of course a distraction from the Governments travails. “It’s nothing to do with us that everything is falling to bits. It’s those beastly Russians.” It sounds more like the sixties than the Twenty First century!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/09/28/russian-threat-uk-pervasive-just-skripal-poisoning-warns-terror/

    1. Russia is adopting the moral outlook of how GB was in the past, ie Christian

      Boros land is rapidly becoming a ACaliphate mimicing the USSR of the 1970′

      1. Morning OLT. Yes! I feel a lot more threatened by Westminster and its cohorts than Putin and the Russian Army!

    2. Assistant Chief Constable Tim Jacques of Lancashire police, deputy senior national co-ordinator for counter-terrorism policing, that Tim Jacques?
      I’d have thought that he has more serious worries a lot closer to home than St Petersburg.

  20. Sadiq Khan: I need 24-hour security because of my skin colour and the god I worship

    London mayor reveals to the Labour Party conference that a team of 15 police officers keeps him safe ‘around the clock’

    By Lucy Fisher, DEPUTY POLITICAL EDITOR
    28 September 2021 • 6:25pm

    The mayor of London has expressed his disappointment that he is forced to have 24/7 protection due to the “colour of his skin and the god he worships”.

    Sadiq Khan told Labour activists at the party’s conference in Brighton on Tuesday that he had initially dismissed the suggestion of adopting a security detail when he was elected mayor in 2016.

    However, he accepted police protection when he was warned of the risk of those around him – including his family and his staff – if he declined.

    The Labour mayor, a practising Muslim and the son of a Pakistani bus driver, indicated his heritage and religion were frequently cited in threats against him.

    Revealing that a team of 15 police officers keep him safe “around the clock”, he said he had kept his silence previously about his security arrangements because he did not want to put others off from entering politics.

    It was the example set by footballers speaking out against racist abuse that inspired him to be forthright about his own situation.

    ‘Islamophobes will not intimidate me’
    “I’m not going to allow these racists and these Islamophobes to intimidate me, and I’ll never bow to them,” he said.

    “The mayor of the greatest city in the world needs protection 24 hours a day, seven days a week because of the colour of his skin and the god he worships, that can’t be right.”

    Mr Khan also disclosed that his staff had been offered counselling to deal with the “vitriol” that had been levelled at him.

    His intervention came after he faced criticism for driving in a convoy of three cars from his home to Battersea Park, a journey of 4.5 miles, to take his dog for a walk.

    The travel arrangement was made on police advice, he said, adding that press coverage about his security arrangements “leads to people then sending threatening emails”.

    Speaking at a fringe event at the party’s annual five-day meeting, he said: “When I was first elected, very shortly after, I was told that because of risk assessments I should have full police protection and I declined.”

    Mr Khan added: “The game changer for me was when the police spoke to my chief of staff and my wife to try and persuade me to accept, and the point they made, which was I may reject it, but do I realise that because of me, those who are with me may be at risk?

    “Whether it’s my wife and kids or whether it’s my staff who I work with, and that was the reason why I said yes in the end.”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/09/28/sadiq-khan-need-24-hour-security-skin-colour-god-worship/

    It’s because you’re loathed and do everything in your abused power to alienate Londoners and the wider public. S*d off back to your bus shelter.

    1. “I need 24-hour security because of my skin colour and the god I worship”,

      Said the Anglophobe, Sad Dick Cant

        3. Cant, (not Cnut)

          hypocritical and sanctimonious talk, typically of a moral, religious, or political nature.

          “he had no time for the cant of the priests about sin”

          hypocrisy

          sanctimoniousness

          sanctimony

          humbug

          pietism

          affected piety

          insincerity

          sham

          lip service

          empty talk

          pretence

          Pharisaism

          Tartufferie

          talk hypocritically and sanctimoniously about something.

          “if they’d stop canting about ‘honest work’ they might get somewhere”

    2. The man needs protection in the city he runs because he is pathologically useless. Why can’t he simply make London safe for everyone, not just for one chosen primadonna shouting race and religion?

    3. No, he “needs” 24 hour security because he has turned London into a crime-ridden place where nobody is safe.

        1. Even when he was running for office, he wasn’t terribly interested in meeting the public, if I remember correctly.

          1. He had no need. He already knew the vote was in the bag. Especially after disenfranchising the Jewish population of London.

    4. ‘However, he accepted police protection when he was warned of the risk of those around him – including his family and his staff –’

      Even his family and staff obviously hate him.

    7. He is such a self confessed little shite isn’t he. Perhaps he needs to consider why Tony AH Blair has 24/7/ 365 protection it’s not because of his skin colour or the fact he became a catholic. But more due to the results of his period in charge of something very special to the vast majority, as in the UK, including the capital city of England, London and it’s further sprawling suburbs. It has become perfectly obvious that Kahn has worked tirelessly to alienate as many people as he can. Build, build, build any where and everywhere, Including giving the order to demolish the Iconic Building on the ridgeway NW7, the National Medical Research Institute building. It was planned to be refurbished and converted into flats and apartments. Now the whole site has been flattened and a massive building project is taking place. He even went as far as suggestion that a new gas fired power station was built on almost adjacent land. I suspect he’ll make sure there are facilities provided for the furthering of worship to his personal god,…………. perhaps all he needs is a small mirror.

    1. No Fuel, No Fuel
      Bill Thomas did say
      To certain poor Nottlers as in bed they lay
      In bed where they lay weeping their weeps
      Over the old politicos that gave them the creeps,
      No Fuel No Fuel

      1. Good morning all

        We have diesel cars , son has to go to work 14 miles away, and Moh and I have elderly diesels , clean efficient cars , well they have to be , because they pass their MOT!

        There is no diesel .. is this another great reset to wean us all off diesel ?

        There are 2 small garages in the village , this is a tourist area , so the garages are popular. One is one side of the railway line , and the other one right in the middle of the village .

        There is a £30 fuel limit , local people are frantic , many have to get children to school, go to work , shop , the car care and share taking people to hospital 12 miles away for appointments that sort of thing .

        Local businesses need fuel for their vans and wagons, grass cuttng and hedge trimming , the pet care gang who exercise dogs etc , people with horses that are a few miles away in fields , ambulances , police cars, you get the picture ?

        Moh is puzzled and annoyed .. he spent 16 years flying helicopters north of the Shetland Isles , Shell Brent oil fields , and of course in Nigeria , late 1970’s 80’s mid 90’s.

        What on earth has happened to our investment in oil and gas , where has the money gone , where are the back up resources , why is this country leaping from one crisis to another .

        Why isn’t Britain an up and running modern country now , why has Britain become a benefits paradise , why have hard working baby boomers had the rug pulled from under their feet .

        Our infrastructure should be perfect , but it isn’t , our NHS , our schools and universities , civil service and resources are ruined and innefficient .. in the 1960s pratically everyone had a job and access to all sorts of training and furtherment of their careers.

        We had sufficient layers to make life run smoothly ..

        Why are we being dragged down to third world levels , Moh and I have wiitnessed fuel go slows in Nigeria , days waiting for fuel , stuck in traffic jams , and have seen shortages of food and the basics and super inflation .. and near murder committed , fights that are not pleasant to witness.

  23. ‘Morning again.

    In the military the job of bomb disposal is surely carried out by the bravest of the brave, and this chap’s dedication is off the scale:

    Frank Giblett, bomb disposal expert awarded a George Medal in Cyprus during the Eoka campaign – obituary

    He disarmed booby-traps, including a pressure-activated electrical mine, and a time-bomb fitted with a hidden time-pencil and trembler fuse

    Frank Giblett, who has died aged 93, was awarded a George Medal for bomb disposal operations in Cyprus during the Eoka campaign.

    In the 1950s Eoka, the Greek-Cypriot paramilitary organisation, fought to end British rule in Cyprus and achieve union with Greece. Giblett, a Staff Sergeant in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps (RAOC), was attached to the Larnaca Civil Police and served as a bomb disposal expert between 1956 and 1959. He was on continuous 24-hour call to examine and dispose of all Eoka devices in his area.

    In February 1957, in a large petrol depot, he disarmed a new type of time-bomb fitted with a hidden time-pencil and trembler fuse. The time-pencil fired shortly after it was removed. His action averted a major disaster and heavy loss of life.

    A few days later he went with a raiding party to a hide which Eoka terrorists had been using. He cleared it of booby-traps including a “Red Devil” Italian hand grenade.

    In August 1958, Giblett went to a local village and removed an electrical mine for further examination. It was set to explode on very slight pressure. A comrade had been killed the day before while attempting to neutralise a similar device.

    “His courage,” the citation for the award to him of a GM stated, “is of the highest order.”

    Francis George Giblett was born in London on July 11 1928. His father, Jack, was a regimental featherweight champion boxer during the First World War. Always known as Frank, he was educated at Highbury County Grammar School before being conscripted into the Army in 1946. He subsequently signed up as a regular and served with the RAOC in Germany, Belgium and Cyprus.

    In Cyprus, to avoid discovery of his real job by the Eoka, he served mainly as a civilian and carried identification papers as a British policeman. During almost three years of bomb disposal duties, he took no leave.

    The work could be gruesome. On one occasion, as he entered the prosecutor’s office, the security staff insisted that he open the bag he was carrying. It contained a human foot, evidence of all that was left of a terrorist who was killed while making explosives.

    While blowing up a hide, it was prudent to listen to the voice of experience. A sergeant in a raiding party disobeyed instructions to withdraw to a hundred yards from the site. The man, however, insisted that the safest place to stand was next to the disposal expert setting off the charges. After the explosion, when the dust cleared, the sergeant was seen to be flat on his back having been knocked out by a falling rock.

    Giblett retired from the Army in 1972 in the rank of Warrant Officer 1 (WO1 CDR).

    He worked as a materials manager, initially for the petrol and natural gas company ConocoPhillips in Lincolnshire for 10 years and then in Libya. He was a postmaster at Norwich for three years before finally retiring in 1993 and settling in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk.

    Frank Giblett married, in 1951, Diana Moon. She predeceased him and he is survived by their two sons.

    Frank Giblett, born July 11 1928, died September 12 2021

    1. That is real bravery; no adrenaline to fire you up. In fact, that is the last thing that is needed in such situations.

    2. Respect. One of my jobs was SBS – Specialist Bomb Search. Luckily I didn’t have to do it often and I was not required to defuse them – that was for people like Frank Giblett.

  24. Dear Aunty

    A quandry

    Our Jazz, has nearly a full tank of Unleaded.

    I have to drive SWMBO, to ‘get her feet done’, a round trip of about 10 miles

    I normally Top the Tank’ when it is down 3/4 empty:

    Should I join Boros and become a Lemming anf fill up if I can?

  25. 339403+ up ticks,
    Morning Each,
    Fact,
    Wednesday 29 September: It’s not Brexit to blame for the lack of HGV drivers but the short-sighted haulage industry,

    Under the governance party’s guidance ( the lab/lib/con coalition) the reset campaign has been in evidence openly since major sampled curry,
    backed by successive PM overseers since & getting successfully worse for these Isles via each placing.

    The everyday fabric of society shredded on point of destruct,
    medication,education, accommodation, incarceration & the political
    destroyers STILL finding support.

    Your local MP in many cases is still operating in pro brussels mode , the last major inclusive PMs most certainly have.

    Every boat that empties at DOVER strengthens the reset / replace cause
    & weakens the decent indigenous peoples stance.

  26. Philip Johnston, you are not wrong! I would like to think that this article will make a difference, but we all know that the eco-loon in No 10 isn’t listening – and won’t be until it is too late:

    The criminal neglect of our energy security has left Britain in danger

    Successive British governments baulked at the opportunity to invest in nuclear energy, leaving future generations with a tremendous burden

    PHILIP JOHNSTON
    28 September 2021 • 9:30pm

    With luck, and it will be with luck, as there seems to have been precious little planning to avoid or mitigate this episode, the current fuel disruption may prove to be temporary. Once motorists stop joining forecourt queues every time a tanker is seen disgorging its precious cargo then supplies should be gradually restored.

    But the underlying issue remains: a shortage of drivers to deliver petrol and diesel to service stations. Whatever the cause, whether it be Brexit, Covid, low wages or a combination of all three, the problem has been known about for years. This dearth is also hitting farmers, food processors and supermarkets which operate just-in-time supply chains that are efficient but vulnerable when even small things go wrong.

    Our curse is that we also have just-in-time politicians, an approach to governance that relies on something turning up – although these Micawberist tendencies are not unique to Boris Johnson and his team. Short-termism has been a pernicious feature of successive governments, Tory and Labour, not least when it comes to our energy policy. Running out of petrol for a few days may be annoying and inconvenient; running out of the means to power the country is an altogether different level of calamity, and yet it is where we are heading unless some serious decisions are taken soon. It may already be too late.

    How did we get here 50 years after the extent of the oil reserves beneath the North Sea first became apparent? Gas had already started to come ashore in the late 1960s, prompting a massive programme to convert every appliance in the UK to use natural gas instead of “town gas” derived from coal (something similar is planned to remove gas boilers in the next 20 years).

    The discovery of the Brent oilfield in 1971 was a seminal moment in the country’s post-war history. It seemed to presage great wealth and energy self-sufficiency, although neither materialised. At the time, Britain was an economic basket case in thrall to union militants and North Sea oil seemed to be our salvation. It certainly looked like that to our competitors.

    Across the Channel, the French, with no oil and depleted coal reserves, invested instead in nuclear power. Over the next 15 years, France installed 56 reactors, satisfying her power needs and even exporting electricity to other European countries, including us.

    They produce 70 per cent of their electricity by nuclear fission, which does not emit CO2, and are not dependent on energy from volatile regions like the Gulf or despotic regimes such as Russia. This was as much force majeure as prescience. As the French say: “No oil, no gas, no coal, no choice.” As a result, they find themselves in a better position than Britain, notwithstanding the headache over reactor waste disposal, although recycled fuel provides 17 per cent of French electricity.

    By contrast, and because of the apparent bonanza provided by North Sea oil, we shamefully neglected the one source of power that would help create self-sufficiency and meet low-carbon objectives. The Thatcher government commissioned eight new reactors, but cheap gas made the economics problematic and just one was built. Only when it was too late and much of the industry’s expertise had been lost did the last Labour government try to reactivate the nuclear programme. The Coalition agreed to build the first new reactor at Hinkley Point using French technology and Chinese finance, a damning indictment of our own inability to revive an industry that we pioneered.

    Future reactors were to have been Chinese built, which now seems inconceivable given the cooling relations between the West and Beijing. There is talk of a new era of nuclear power generation, focused on smaller, cheaper reactors designed and built in the UK to provide local energy generation. In the long run, we should be investing in thorium reactors, which have none of the risks and waste associated with the uranium fission cycle. But it would take decades to undertake such a programme, so we need a plentiful interim energy source.

    Ten years ago, we found one in the vast quantities of shale beneath our feet. One commentator excited by this prospect was Boris Johnson, who as London mayor in 2012 wrote an article in this newspaper under the headline: “Ignore the doom merchants – Britain should get fracking.”

    He added: “Wave power, solar power, biomass – their collective oomph wouldn’t pull the skin off a rice pudding … We are increasingly and humiliatingly dependent on Vladimir Putin’s gas or on the atomic power of the French state … By offering the hope of cheap electricity, fracking would make Britain once again competitive in sectors of industry where we have lost hope … What, as they say, is not to like?”

    Yet Mr Johnson’s administration has scrapped the fracking programme because of the probability of tremors associated with the process. If such geological impact tests had been applied to coal mining we would never have had an industrial revolution.

    Back then, Mr Johnson denounced the “mad denunciations of fracking” by a Green movement that he recently championed before the entire world in his Kermit the Frog speech to the UN. He was right then and wrong now. Shale gas, while not carbon-free, reduces emissions and replaces imports which are more damaging to the environment. The US is now an exporter of gas, energy costs have been cut and thousands of jobs created. The Americans met their obligations under the Kyoto protocol on climate change without even signing up for it.

    The environmentalists hate this because they are opposed to any form of economic growth. Yet at their behest we are gambling everything on a huge expansion of offshore wind generation which is ineffective on calm days, needs to be backed up by gas and can never produce enough power for a modern economy and a population of nearly 70 million.

    The state’s duty is to protect the nation from harm by anticipating its future needs. Generations to come will see the failure to exploit and develop the power sources that would have guaranteed our energy security as neglect bordering on the criminal.

    1. Fine, but fracking does not have to take place on land. It can be done under the North Sea. We have the technology. However, that’s surely not the problem. We already bring gas ashore from the North Sea. The problem is greenie loonies and their support in government. We now have two Green Party MSPs in the government, a coalition that gives the majority SNP an overall majority at Holyrood.

      Here is a free sample:https://www.gov.scot/about/who-runs-government/cabinet-and-ministers/minister-for-green-skills-circular-economy-and-biodiversity/

    2. I think there’s a fundamental ignorance over energy entirely. You have the hardcore green zealots who, at heart are really just anti capitalism.

      They don’t care about energy at all, as long as it destroys the economy.

      The bigger group are the real concern. They’re the stupid. The people who assume energy comes from the wall, by magic. These are usually young metro liberals. They like green, they support green, they vote green. But they don’t know how power is generated. They assume it’s just there – because it always has been. More, they assume it always will be, regardless. They believe they can go green without the power going out. That their decisions have no consequence.

      I fear we have raised a nation of stupid people.

        1. Being a bit of a saddo, I put in lights that go on when you’re in the room – but only about 1%, and go off when there’s no movement.

          I’d like to do per room heating but it’s not efficient enough, so the app thingy lets people set temperatures for their rooms individually. As junior and I don’t mind the cold – or, more likely Mongo *doesn’t* like it, and he’s usually with us – we have it set to about 19’c but the war queen has her office at 21 or 22.

          1. It was 14 degrees C indoors this morning. I put a fleece on and not the heating (something I couldn’t have got away with if MOH had still been alive).

  28. XR have a protest due to start in Helsinki today.
    The Extinction rebellion protest is scheduled to take place on Mannerheimintie, the capital’s main thoroughfare, for ten days.
    It will be interesting to see how Finnish police handle the situation compared to UK police.
    I’ll update as things happen.
    Note: there is a counter protest due at the same time!!

  29. Good morning, my friends

    Eco-mob are back on the M25 AGAIN! Insulate Britain launch SEVENTH sit-down protest by blockading Junction 3 – despite High Court injunction
    Eco mob say 50 arrested for blocking motorways were all released again allowing them to keep protesting
    Demonstrators at blockade who have been arrested previously include Joshua Smith and Rev Tim Hewes
    Insulate Britain is planning to fill Britain’s jails with hundreds of eco-activists despite injunction threat

    DM Story

    If there is no room for them in prisons then dump them on an island like Lundy or one of the remote Scottish ones and give them tents and basic camping gear – after all they are environmentalists who must learn how to survive without modern technology as that it what they want for the rest of us. They should not be allowed mobile phones. Food supplies can be landed by helicopter and they can be given a couple of very small wooden rowing dinghies.

    1. No, please not a Scottish island. Most of them are now full to bursting with staycationers, and all the other groups that Nottlers have banished because they are intractable nuisances.

        1. Bute House already has a fair complement of intractable nuisances, but, you know, if they can be crammed in…

    3. Why give them tents? They’re made from nylon. Give them nothing – in fact, take a lot away. Don’t give them food, give them seeds. No tools, either. They want to live in their green utopia, fine.

      In fact, if we’ve empty islands miles from the mainland then shift the gimmigrants there as well. We could call it Australia2.

    4. Easier way – if they’re at the bottom of a slope, urinate uphill from them and then see how long it takes them to move.

  30. Headlines from the American Papers – or how not to use English!

    Something Went Wrong in Jet Crash, Expert Says

    Police Begin Campaign to Run Down Jaywalkers

    Safety Experts Say School Bus Passengers Should Be Belted

    Drunk Gets Nine Months in Violin Case

    Survivor of Siamese Twins Joins Parents

    Farmer Bill Dies in House

    Iraqi Head Seeks Arms

    Stud Tires Out

    Panda Mating Fails; Veterinarian Takes Over

    Soviet Virgin Lands Short of Goal Again

    British Left Waffles on Falkland Islands

    Lung Cancer in Women Mushrooms

    Eye Drops off Shelf

    Reagan Wins on Budget, But More Lies Ahead

    Squad Helps Dog Bite Victim

    Enraged Cow Injures Farmer with Axe

  31. 339403+ up ticks,
    Do not the peoples think that a great deal of good could be done regarding the payroll value of the protecting officers.

    What is he receiving protection for, its his own creation ?

    Dt,
    Sadiq Khan: I need 24-hour security because of my skin colour and the god I worship
    London mayor reveals to the Labour Party conference that a team of 15 police officers keeps him safe ‘around the clock’

    2. But I thought London was such a wonderful place to live, you know, all ethnicities together blah blah blah.

        1. all ethnicities together etcetera etcetera etcetera. Betterer?

          Good job you like cycling if the shops are 6 miles away. Hope your paniers are very large!

    3. No, you need protecting because you are an arrogant smug tw@t who is deliberately ruining our – OUR – capital city.

    4. A waste of money. Boris could get the tube. You’re unpopular because you’re a revolting smug twonk. Playing the race card allows you to ignore the real problem.

  32. I suspect there will be 10 people in the UK kicking themselves this morning. Having chosen 4/5 winning numbers and the correct 2 ‘star’ numbers, they missed out on a £122million jackpot by just one number. Each won £950 just about enough to drown their sorrows!!!

    2. We stopped doing the lottery years and years ago, so long that I can’t remember the last time we bought a ticket.

          2. I think the government takes 12p in every pound spent on the tickets.
            I haven’t studied such matters for years, so it may have changed.

  34. “SIR – At the risk of sounding smug, I am enjoying the petrol crisis. I set myself the challenge of seeing if it was possible to live, shop and work without a car, so last week I took to the cycle paths around the city centre on my electric bike.

    What a joy. I managed to get my shopping and all my local work done. For work further afield I’m using the buses and trams.

    It’s been totally liberating, with the fresh air and the feeling of being part of the buzz of the city. Obviously it’s not for everyone, but I would heartily recommend it as an option to consider.

    John Howard
    Birmingham

    No risk, arsehole. You ARE smug. Try living six miles from the nearest shop.

    1. … “sounding smug”? He is the smugsters’ smugster from Smugland.
      May his bloody bike catch fire and wipe out the seat of his trousers and the arse occupying them.
      Good moaning, Willum.

    2. And having a family. And needing to take a large dog. Trams? Buses?

      Public transport’s fine, if you’ve infinite time. For example, getting to a doctors appointment in the car – 10 mins there, back appointment, done.

      On the bus? Let’s say it arrives at 2pm and the stop is ten mins away. You have to leave 20 minutes before in case the bus arrives early.

      However, it’s worse than that. As you cannot trust that the bus will arrive on time, you really have to get ‘the bus *before* the bus that would get you to your appointment. So you’re leaving 40 minutes before your appointment, then you’re waiting, then the journey is £3.40 return. Then you finish your appointment, come home and are waiting for the bus, so again it’s another 40 minutes.

      Total time is about an hour and a half, usually 2 hours. Time lost waiting for an expensive bus. That’s why people drive. Cheaper (even with the offensive taxes), quicker, more convenient.

    3. Good morning, your worship.

      Six miles on an E-Bike is nothing. I can carry four full carrier bags of shopping in my saddle bags. You don’t even notice the extra weight…he says smugly.

      1. When fully laden and the battery goes flat they are far too heavy to propel by using the pedals so you have to take a taxi home.

      2. “…four full carrier bags…” that’s at least 2 dozen bottles. It’ll weigh nearly 30kg. That’s seriously impressive.

          1. My commiserations. I know what it’s like not to be able to do what you enjoy. I actually saw a practitioner today! I am going to be referred to the orthopaedic centre of excellence for more real life prodding and poking (and saying “ouch!”). “I think,” she said, as I nearly leapt off the couch, “that we’ve found the seat of the problem”.

    5. Try having no buses to speak of (or trains or trams, for that matter). I only hope his electric bike runs out of juice and he can’t recharge it because of a power cut.

  35. Three-quarters of small French boats may be denied fishing in UK waters. 29 September 2021.

    Three-quarters of small French fishing boats could be denied access to British waters under a post-Brexit regime in a move that risks further damaging Anglo-French relations.

    The UK government had granted only 12 out of a total of 47 applications for licences for the French vessels under 12 metres long to fish the UK’s inshore waters.

    We should torpedo them and hang any survivors from the yardarm!

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/sep/29/three-quarters-of-small-french-boats-may-be-denied-fishing-in-uk-waters

    3. One of the benefits of a lot of our fish not going to the continent is the re-emergence of a wet fish shop in my town.

      The choice is extraordinary. Much cheaper than Pesky Fish.

      I’m sure my town is not alone.

      Good morning, Minty.

  36. Good Moaning.
    Lovely and sunny. To make sure it stays that way, I promise neither to hang out washing nor take Spartie for a walk.

    2. Drat and double drat, Annie. I think I may have jinxed you because I have hung out some washing an hour earlier and a second load is spinning round now and will follow shortly. Well, I’ve been forced to do that ‘cos I off for a short break in a couple of days.

        1. All might yet be saved, if you take your umbrella with you everywhere you go, especially if it is large and heavy and you wear gum boots too.

        1. North of the M25: Bedford, Harrogate and Altrincham. Visiting friends, relatives and Steam Railways holiday (York, Whitby and Haworth).

        1. Two little boys and a little girl were in class and the teacher said to one of the little boys “What did you do at the weekend?” Little boy said “I spent the day in and out of puddles, I really enjoyed it”, She asked the 2nd little boy who said ” I also spent the day in and out of puddles” She asked the little girl who replied “I had a smashing weekend…..my name’s Puddles”

    1. The link came up when I completed this useless consultation which won’t make any difference but still I said what I thought abbout vaccine passports.

      1. Morning! Me too. There are some loaded questions in there which will of course skew the results, irrespective of qualifying comments but one can but try.

        The same is true of the CofE consultation on their new rules that will make it easier for the central powers-that-be to close and sell off historic church buildings. I got the link via e-mail from Fr Marcus at Barts but he warned that it’s very tedious to complete and littered with loaded questions. Hey ho.

        1. One question I couldn’t answer “which category should be excluded? Vaccinated or unvaccinated? ” there was no option to tick “neither”. All I could do was vent my spleen in the free text boxes.

        1. It’s clearly what they want – the loaded questions in the consultation were intended to get the answers they want. Still I made it clear what I thought.

    1. Ah but he likes white men – his mother is a black woman but his father is a white man.

      He is typical of the Lewis Hamilton/Meghan Markle syndrome – i.e. people who are half-white who identify as being black as they think this will win them brownie points!

      1. I see what you did there. If white people identify as black why cannot they get away with it too?

      2. There are a few footballers like that as well.
        I’m sure their mothers couldn’t have been so bad that they deny their existence. But more then emphasise the existence of their more often than not, absentee fathers.

    2. Chucked out by unidentified thugs. Looks like assault to me, supposing their target is a fully paid up conference attendee.

      1. https://www.gov.uk/discrimination-your-rights

        First lines!

        It is against the law to discriminate against anyone because of: “race including colour, nationality, ethnic or national origin…”

        Although why gender reassignment is on there instead of simply ‘sex’ is beyond me. Thus the speaker was directly ddeliberately breaking the law. I’m sure she feels good about her abuse, but she’s a criminal who should be arrested, flogged, beaten, shot, hanged and left to die.

        Well, she would in my world.

    3. It’s obviously not only the Tories who are scum is it, the labour party have done this sort of thing before.

    4. It’s an irony that the security people are both white men.

      The Left never change. Perhaps he’ll stop voting Labour now he sees them as abusive fascists? I imagine this si also illegal under discrimination laws. I think that’s the way to fight them – at their own game.

  40. “Soldiers will be delivering fuel in the next couple of days in a bid to ease petrol supply issues, the business secretary has said. Kwasi Kwarteng admitted the past few days – which have seen long queues outside petrol stations and some pumps running dry – had been “difficult”.”
    I wonder if he is related to Kwashi Orkor? But I digress.
    Why are the military being involved, giving vaccines, manning clinics, driving petrol lorries? Is this to get us used to having troops on the streets? Somewhere they have no business being? Is it also because the clueless government has not the first idea how to manage except by direct control or threats?

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-58729653

    2. 54.000 HGV Licences held up at DVLC,more effective to send the army there armed with rubber stamps………

      1. Also the ones that have managed to get their licences are unable to work because GP’s are not giving them the necessary health checks.

    1. It’s strange! They are a danger to Poland but a benefit to us. Maybe we should swap Places!

    2. I’d say “coming soon to the paradise of Albion.” But they are already here. Do our Border Force people search immigrants’ phones, or would that be a violation of their privacy and Human Rights? Oh, they don’t. Because it would be a violation etc etc. Oh, right.

      1. Apocalyptic times described by King Lear’s Fool who, as Kent says, is not altogether fool!

        When priests are more in word than matter,
        When brewers mar their malt with water,
        When nobles are their tailors’ tutors,
        No heretics burned but wenches’ suitors,
        When every case in law is right,
        No squire in debt nor no poor knight,
        When slanders do not live in tongues,
        Nor cutpurses come not to throngs,
        When usurers tell their gold i’ th’ field,
        And bawds and whores do churches build—
        Then shall the realm of Albion
        Come to great confusion.

        1. Greta Garbo actually said some thing I agree with for the first time. She quoted some of Boros’ Blah, blah, blah frivolity, but still she or he never mention the deliberate decimation of the British country side in the building of thousands of carbon loaded and carbon associated concrete and brick properties, seemingly for people who have come here for no other reason but to live directly off of the UK taxpayers.

        2. As Bill Thomas can tell you con is a vulgar word in French for female genitalia – so one must choose one’s words carefully when talking to a Labour supporting trans woman who may not have one.

          I find it strange that in French grammar le con is masculine – but it does illustrate that there is a difference between sex and gender.

    1. “…the BBC … should tell the unvarnished truth”
      Now you can see the nonsense for what it is.

    2. As I may have mentioned before, I met a lady who served on a committee in Stoke Mandeville area, and therefore knew Sir JS slightly; she told me that he was very creepy and explained why, which was a visual demonstration not easy to type.

    5. Saville was the gossip of the ‘Green’ room. There is no way that Rantzen didn’t hear about it.

      Given her position regarding Childline she should have followed it up.

      I believe she, like others at the BBC didn’t want to rock the boat.

      Which makes her a flaming hypocrite.

    1. Morning Araminta. Where do you live, as a matter of curiosity? Because here, my closest town to get petrol is Haselmere in Surrey and everything is totally normal.

      1. Morning Jonathan. I try to keep my location confidential but I’m pretty near the Centre of England!

          1. O/T

            I emailed Garlands regarding last nights post. I’ll let you know if and when i get a response.

  47. Mark Twain came up with lots of pieces of good advice, and this one applies even more strongly in this era of online communications:

    “Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.”

      1. “Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him.”

        When I was at school we had compulsory Scripture lessons and none of this Comparative Religions nonsense.

  49. International rating agency S&P has improved its outlook for Russia’s GDP growth this year to 4% from its previous forecast of 3.7%, according to a survey released on Tuesday.
    The document, focusing on emerging markets, also gave a forecast for Russia’s GDP in 2022 and 2023, with the agency’s analysts expecting the country’s economy to grow by 2.6% and 2% in the next two years, respectively.

    The agency sets Russia’s inflation at 6.1% in 2021, but predicts it to drop to 4.2% next year.

  50. A Spekkie piece on Violet Elizabeth Rayner.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-trouble-with-angiemania-

    “The trouble with ‘Angiemania’ | The Spectator

    Brendan O’Neill

    The most annoying thing about Angela Rayner’s branding of the Tories as ‘scum’ was not that it offended some Tories, though no doubt it did. It wasn’t even the sad story it told us about the calibre of left-wing politicians in the 21st century, who seem more adept at reaching for playground insults than at making a cool, rational case against their opponents.

    No, it was the implication made by some that Rayner speaks like this because she is working class. That’s what working-class people do, right? They bark the word ‘scum’ at everyone. Such larks! When they aren’t gathered around a piano belting out hilarious songs they’re hanging around on street corners yelling the S-word at passers-by. Gawd bless ’em.

    This aspect of Scumgate has infuriated me. It looks like a defence of one of the few working-class women in parliament, but in truth it is an insult to the broader working class. It is classist prejudice masquerading as a rallying around Rayner.

    I have news for these left-leaning poshos who cooed over Rayner’s ranting and probably said to their partners, ‘Darling, she’s just like your favourite character from Shameless!’: working-class people don’t actually go around hurling invective at everyone they dislike or disagree with.

    Rayner rattled right-wingers and titillated the ABC1 millennials who make up much of the radical left by saying ‘scum’ at a reception for Labour activists at the party conference in Brighton. She said of Boris Johnson’s government:

    Rayner has become a posh person’s idea of a common person

    ‘We cannot get any worse than a bunch of scum, homophobic, racist, misogynistic, absolute pile… of banana republic… Etonian… piece of scum…’

    Charming. And she was holding ‘back a little’, she says.

    Many have said her language is unbecoming of a parliamentarian, which is true. Others have asked how Keir Starmer hopes to win back those Red Wall voters who defected to the Conservatives when his deputy is calling the Conservatives ‘scum’. Good question. But others essentially said that we shouldn’t judge Rayner too harshly. She’s just being ‘authentically’ working class.

    Such patronising twaddle was offered up by Sean O’Grady in the Independent. Scumgate is a sign of Rayner’s ‘authenticity’, he said.

    Cathy Newman was likewise gushing over Rayner’s ‘authenticity’ a few days ago. She reminded us of Rayner’s working-class origins and then cheered her core qualities — she’s ‘aggressive, cheeky and (speaks) with a knowledge of the real world’. Salt of the earth, one might say. Cringe.

    John McDonnell defended Rayner’s utterance of the S-word by saying she is more real than the rest of the stiff inhabitants of Westminster.

    ‘What I like about Angie Rayner is that she’s human’, he said.

    Paul Mason said Rayner’s ‘scum comment reflects exactly how working-class people talk’. No, it doesn’t. It is a figment of the fever dreams of the bourgeois left that working-class people up and down the country are forever shouting ‘scum!’.

    Rayner herself said ‘scum’ is part of the ‘street language’ of her northern working-class roots. ‘We’d even say it jovially to other people’, she said. As if everyone in the north is going about saying ‘Hello, scum!’ for a laugh. Rayner is playing up to a caricature created for her by the middle-class leftists she is now surrounded by.

    This is what concerns me about the left’s love for Rayner — or ‘Angiemania’, as the Independent calls it. Rayner has become a posh person’s idea of a common person. Gobby, strident, that fiery hair, the throwing around of words like scum — this is what the common folk are like, right?

    You can picture the overeducated middle classes who formed the backbone of the Corbynista movement squealing with delight when Rayner issues a stern, sassy insult. ‘She’s SO authentic!’ There’s a shade of ‘noble savage’ thinking in this patronising praise for Rayner’s alleged realness.

    But most people aren’t like this. They don’t casually say the word ‘scum’. A YouGov poll found that just 19 per cent of Britons think it is acceptable for a senior politician to call her opponents scum; 70 per cent think it is unacceptable. And higher numbers of middle-class people (21 per cent) thought it was acceptable in comparison with working-class people (17 per cent).

    I wager that the fifth of middle-class folk includes the kind of comfortably off southern lefties who fantasise that Rayner is the epitome of the northern working class.

    The danger now is that Rayner will start conforming to the image of her created by the middle-class left. The more they praise her apparent earthiness and rudeness, the more she will feel tempted to big up those traits in order to consolidate her position in the party and on the left more broadly. We could end up in a situation where a rare working-class MP becomes a performer for the radical middle classes rather than a true representative of what working-class people think and want.”

    2. Notice the cigarette too. I suppose she thinks the working class habit of communication is to to use swear words when discussing anything and contaminating the air with smoke. Talk about a poser. From Wikipedia: “Rayner was born on 28 March 1980 in Stockport, Greater Manchester.[2] She attended Avondale School in Stockport, leaving the school aged 16 after becoming pregnant, and did not obtain any qualifications.[3][4] She later studied part-time at Stockport College, learning British Sign Language, and gaining an NVQ Level 2 in social care.[2][5]”

      In other words a thick lazy slag. But at least one benefit. If she takes over from Herr Stormer, it will be the end of the Labour Party, she is definitely a gift that keeps on giving for conservatives.

    4. She’s got previous form too; ‘ In October 2020 Rayner called Heywood and Middleton Conservative MP Chris Clarkson “scum” as he was giving a speech in Parliament.[‘
      Wiki

    5. One of the problems is that Angela Rayner is right. Many politicians – and not just Conservatives – are scum.

    6. One of the problems is that Angela Rayner is right. Many politicians – and not just Conservatives – are scum.

  51. Another belated god maoning to you all.
    I’m a bit like Burlington Bertie at the moment. I can’t seem to get things together I think I need a holiday.

          1. She use to fly to the little used airport on La Gomera and stay at a luxury hotel facing the Atlantic.

      2. We’ve done with cruises thanks 😎
        Norway and Fjords was very nice.
        Previously 12 days to Cape Town and 6 weeks to Oz Via Cairo, and very shitty Djibouti. 😏

    1. Not until the hard left fascists are starved of public funds so they cannot campaign to stop advertising.

      They start out abusive and get worse. The Left are thoroughly evil.

  53. 339403+ up ticks,

    breitbart,
    Boris Johnson’s Govt Cut Immigration Enforcement Spending by £40m as Migrant Crisis Escalated.

    Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government cut spending on migration enforcement by over £40 million as illegal entries into Britain soared, a report from the Migration Watch UK think tank has found…….

    More needed so the pretence regarding illegal entry enforcement monies
    must go towards hotel bills.

    We as a nation are looking requisitioned houses & compulsory lodgering
    right in it’s evil eye with a dose of amnesty thrown in via amnesties R me fat turk.

    To make it a certainty in the near future the voting pattern MUST be adhered to & expanded on, hence DOVER must be the way to go.

    1. Compulsary lodgering? Surely.. no? The state cannot force you to have an illegal immigrant, a violent, aggressive rapist in your home?

      Besides, they shouldn’t be getting here at all. The entire dross lot of them should be pushed back to france. if that means chaining them together and dragging their cuffed bodies keel haul, so be it.

      1. 339403+ up ticks,

        Afternoon W,

        A great many of the electorate would accept it for the “good of the party.”

      1. 339403+ up ticks,
        Afternoon M,
        One of each is the minimum,
        one he,one she, one it, that will be a new reset law.

      2. 339403+ up ticks,
        Afternoon M,
        That was lodgering & NOT rodgering many of the supporters / voters are in receipt of the latter currently
        via the political fraternity, and seemingly enjoying it, shown by seeking more time after time.

  54. Sad Dick Cant, the Mayor of London

    Cant:

    hypocritical and sanctimonious talk, typically of a moral, religious, or political nature.

    “he had no time for the cant of the priests about sin”

    hypocrisy, sanctimoniousness, sanctimony, humbug, pietism, affected piety
    insincerity, sham, lip service, empty talk, pretence, Pharisaism, Tartufferie

    talk hypocritically and sanctimoniously about something.

    Seems to describe him!

    1. He’s a pr*ck every time he is interviewed he looks as if he’s just been punched in the stomach and is fishing for sympathy. How the hell did he get back into office again ?

  55. Funny old world isn’t it .

    Both of Moh’s grandfathers served in WW1.. They were horse men in the artillery .. their horses pulled the cannon , We have an old yellowing photo somewhere of the harnessed horses and the huge gun the horses pulled .

    Both of the grandfathers died of good old age in the late 1970s.. they had also been wounded badly , one had shrapnel in his back , but he led a good useful life
    after the war , and the paternal one had damage to his legs , but also led a useful life afterwards working in aircraft factories just like his son did later , Moh’s father .

    Rural Hampshire in those days still used horses to plough the fields etc . The Maternal Grandfather (Mohs) was a carter before WW1, he had a horse and trap , and a cart , to convey people to town or pick up parcels , food that sort of thing , he did this for a while after the war and worked on a farm as well , many people were tied into their jobs , he was clever , could read and write and eventually went into clerical work .

    Paternal grandfather ( Mohs) also worked hard in the family market garden , and they had a business in Southampton selling fruit and veg , horses were an asset in those days , and rural trade came into the city , it must have been long hard work .

    We have a few nice yellowng photos of how things were pre WW2 and pre WW1. Horses and mules were the mode of transport in Hampshire

    Where we live now has so much history , the local paper has some amazing old photos ..

    People forget how the country relied on horses over a hundred years ago .. to fight battles and to keep everyday living ticking over .

    https://www.dorsetecho.co.uk/news/19536924.old-pictures-glory-days-lulworth-camp/

    1. Our milkman and greengrocer were still using horses in the 1950s. The milkman used to give me a ride to the end of the road.

      1. When I was living in Essex in the late sixties, early seventies, there was a farmer who always drove his pony and trap into Colchester to go to the bank and do his shopping.

    3. My grandmother’s first pocket money was getting paid a penny to go out into the road with her bucket and spade and scoop up horse droppings for the garden.

  56. The price of natural gas in Europe surged above $1,000 per 1,000 cubic meters for the second day in a row on Wednesday after adjusting to $950 the night before, Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) data shows.
    The cost of November futures on the TTF hub in the Netherlands has so far increased to about $1,020 per 1,000 cubic meters, while the cost of October futures stood at about $1,010 per 1,000 cubic meters.

    The overall rise in gas prices since the start of Wednesday’s trading session was about 6% by 7:00 GMT.
    On Tuesday, gas prices exceeded the $1,000 level for the first time in history. The cost of October futures jumped 11% at one point to nearly $1,040.

    Experts at the Fitch rating agency expect the price of gas to continue to grow and break new records if the current shortage of the commodity on the European market is not curbed ahead of the upcoming winter.

    Analysts attribute the price hike to the post-pandemic increase in demand for natural gas combined with underfilled gas storage facilities in Europe. Europe’s energy crunch has resulted in higher costs for consumers and threatens to derail the continent’s economic recovery.

    1. Given that supply and demand set prices, it was obvious that demand would rise as the economy recovered.

      Equally obvious was the desperate green nonsense would cut that recovery off at the knees, then chew off the thighs, hips and go for the heart. Government doesn’t care.

    2. The bottom line is that Starmer is a member of the Trilateral Commission – led by the global banking elite – therefore he’ll do their bidding.

  58. Just popping to a webinar from the Fitzwilliam on the “Great Steppes” Gold exhibition. Back later.

  60. Just watched the Bbc lunchtime news. In a report on the French throwing a wobbly over being denied fishing licences the reporter made zero mention of why they were denied, namely the fishermen concerned couldn’t prove they had a record of fishing in UK coastal waters because they routinely turned their tracking devices off so they could fish illegally. But hey, any chance to bash Brexit, eh?

  61. The British Army found they had too many officers and decided to offer an early retirement bonus. They promised any officer who volunteered for retirement a bonus of £1,000 for every inch measured in a straight line between any two points in his body. The officer got to choose what those two points would be.
    The first officer who accepted asked that he be measured from the top of his head to the tip of his toes. He was measured at six feet and walked out with a bonus of £72,000. The second officer who accepted was a little smarter and asked to be measured from the tip of his outstretched hands to his toes. He walked out with £96,000.
    The third one was a non-commissioned officer, a grizzly old sergeant-major who, when asked where he would like to be measured, replied, ‘From the tip of my penis to my testicles.’
    It was suggested by the pension man that he might want to reconsider, explaining about the nice big cheques the previous two officers had received. But the old sergeant-major insisted and they decided to go along with him providing the measurement was taken by a medical officer.
    The medical officer arrived at the barracks in the UK and instructed the sergeant-major to ‘drop ’em’, which he did. The medical officer placed the tape measure on the tip of the sergeant’s penis and began to work back. ‘Dear Lord,’ The medical officer suddenly exclaimed, ‘Where are your balls?’
    The old sergeant-major calmly replied, “Afghanistan”

  64. Just back from shopping. Lovely sunshine, but the breeze is almost icy.

    Fewer cars about & everyone driving cautiously. Small Qs at the pumps.

    1. A bad example as it breaks the basic rule of freedom from the actions of others.

      However, if the bloke digging through his floor affected no one else, then that’s his choice.

  68. On the way to get married, a young Catholic couple was involved in a fatal car accident.
    The couple found themselves sitting outside the Pearly Gates waiting for St. Peter to process them into Heaven. While waiting, they began to wonder: Could they possibly get married in Heaven? When St. Peter showed up, they asked him.
    St. Peter said, ‘I don’t know. This is the first time anyone has asked. Let me go find out,’ and he leaves.
    The couple waited and waited. Two months passed, and the couple were still waiting. While waiting, they began to wonder what would happen if it didn’t work out. Could you get a divorce in heaven?
    After yet another month, St. Peter finally returned, looking somewhat bedraggled.
    ‘Yes,’ he informed the couple, ‘you can get married in Heaven.’
    ‘Great!’ said the couple, ‘But we were just wondering, what if things don’t work out? Could we also get a divorce in Heaven?’
    St. Peter, red-faced with anger, slammed his clipboard onto the ground.
    ‘What’s wrong?’ asked the frightened couple.
    ‘OH, COME ON!’, St. Peter shouted, ‘It took me three months to find a priest up here! Do you have any idea how long it’ll take me to find a lawyer?’

  69. Well, that was a real treat. A young woman completely on top of her material gave a spell-binding 45 minute talk about the Steppes Gold Expo at the Fitzwilliam. It is on until the end of January 2022 – and I commend it to anyone who (has petrol) and lives in the region.

    PS – The talk will soon be available online.

  70. OT – compare and contrast.

    The MR is entitled to a Dutch pension as she worked there in the 1980s. She applied (as you have to) to the Dept of Pensions in Newcastle. Nothing heard of for nine months.

    This Monday, a letter arrived from the Dutch pensions dept. Letter and form in both Dutch and English. Letter contained name and phone number of chap dealing. The MR rang him this morning. PA said he was busy but would ring back. An hour later he did. Answered all her questions – in perfect English, of course. We’ll post the form tomorrow.

    I have had an endless and continuing struggle to get a named HMRC person (with a phone number (never answered) to deal with a tax query raised in June. Going to the “Top Man” was a complete waste of space…

    Wish I lived in Holland….

        1. Ye, he’s rich enough. Holland has two different meaning. The Dutch one means ‘woodland’ and the English one is ‘high land’.

  71. Good afternoon from a Saxon Queen with blooded axe and longbow.
    Waves from holiday in sunny Devon, lovely weather today but it was been dreadfully wet yesterday, lots of local walks, a lovely local pub but being careful not to use the car much, not many petrol stations down here. This cottage we are staying in happens to be a lovely 300 thatched roof cottage with leaded windows ( with window seats ) cozy and warm .

      1. Thank you . The weather hadn’t been brilliant but its nice to be away and it’s a nice peaceful way of life down here, a lot more quiet and relaxed.

  72. Apparently, someone called Cary Joji Fukunaga was responsible for directing the latest Bond Film – No time to Die. Did his mother have some grudge against the delectable (BBC speak) Munchetty?

  73. “‘Corporate charity’ received up to £10m in furlough funds despite not appearing to have any staff.
    24 September 2021 by Stephen Delahunty
    “An unregistered “corporate charity” received between £5m and £10m in furlough cash in May despite little public evidence the organisation has any staff, it has been claimed.
    An investigation by the Financial Times newspaper found the arrangements of a group of companies that received as much as £40m in furlough support in a single month this year.
    The four companies, all registered to a virtual mailbox service in London, were paid between £20m and £40m in May from the UK government’s Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme.
    One of these businesses, the Domain Foundation, claims to be a “corporate charity”.
    There is no organisation with that name on the Charity Commission’s register.
    The FT found that the unaudited UK accounts of a company called Domain Corp Ltd together with the Domain Foundation claim they have 50 employees each.
    Each of the companies – Domain Corp Ltd, the Domain Foundation, Domain International School and Domain Research Hospital – received between £5m and £10m in furlough cash in May, according to government data published earlier this month.”

    I’ve had a quick look. There is another company involved, “Technotic corporation Ltd”. I looked all these up without taking notes. I’d have had to draw it on paper. These companies all have related directors, and some of the companies are directors of the other companies. Mostly set up in the last two years.
    So if the FT is correct some £20m of taxpayers money has gone to fraudsters. (Fifty employees at £40,000 is just on £2m a year. – my ballpark context calculation, so more than the actual salaries, if there were any.)
    Our government has given away £20m when fifteen minutes on Companies House website would have set off sufficient alarm bells to suggest an urgent physical check on the existence of the companies in the real world together with their employees. Followed by a telephone call to the Fraud Squad.

    This is the same government that requires disabled people to attempt handstands in order to prove their need to claim social security benefits.

    https://www.thirdsector.co.uk/corporate-charity-received-10m-furlough-funds-despite-not-appearing-staff/finance/article/1728620?bulletin=finance-bulletin&utm_medium=EMAIL&utm_campaign=eNews%20Bulletin&utm_source=20210929&utm_content=Third%20Sector%20Finance%20Bulletin%20(58)::&email_hash=

    1. So if the FT is correct some £20m of taxpayers money has gone to fraudsters.

      I think that is a little modest Horace. The whole system has been milked for many years.

  74. Three more UK energy suppliers go bust. 29 september 2021.

    News just in that three more UK energy suppliers have gone bust, amid the surge in wholesale gas prices.

    ENSTROGA, Igloo Energy and Symbio Energy have today announced they are ceasing to trade, said the regulator Ofgem. ENSTROGA supplies gas and electricity to around 6,000 domestic customers, while Igloo Energy supplies 179,000 people, and Symbio Energy supplies gas and electricity to 48,000 domestic customers and a small number of non-domestic customers.

    It’s all coming apart at the seams. The whole shebang! Twenty years of incompetence and lies. We are on the Highway to Hell.

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/live/2021/sep/29/uk-petrol-army-tanker-drivers-fuel-crisis-ftse-live?page=with:block-615472fb8f08483680af3271#block-615472fb8f08483680af3271

        2. I’ve heard so many people (myself included) remark that they are glad they are old! What an indictment of society today!

    2. Those companies don’t ‘supply’ gas and electricity, they buy it and sell it – it’s supplied by the national grid

        1. Afternoon Minty, they couldn’t do it without the gullible customers who believe them when they say they supply 100% renewable energy

          1. Also with the co-operation of the Advertising Standards Authority and Ofgen. There were TV adverts a fortnight ago in which an electricity supplier claimed 100% green.

    3. I have to say when Avro crashed last week, OffGen appointed Octopus to take over my supply. Full marks to Octopus their communications has been first class.

    1. There was a list of her driving convictions in the DM yesterday. She has been ignoring the motoring law for years and I agree she needs a spell inside.

    1. I’m fed up with this Save Christmas nonsense. Puerile rubbish for half-wits. What we need is common sense, not soundbites and virtue-signaling.

  79. I came into some money and bought a petrol tanker and drove it to the
    petrol station. The massive queues of drivers were so friendly and let
    me go to the front of the queue.

    Such a shame there was no petrol left after Id finished filling it up. :@)

  80. ‘Not since 1829 and the formation of [Sir Robert] Peel’s police has anybody been required to enforce legislation about who can go into somebody’s house. That’s been really tricky.’

    – Sir David Thompson, chief constable of West Midlands Police on the coronavirus legislation

  81. There is an article in the Mail about people living “off grid” i.e. not connected to electricity or mains gas.
    I know my father looked into various ways to be self-sufficient in leccy, but never implemented them.
    Has anyone got any experience with off grid self-generated electricity?

    I assume you’d get heating and hot water from a woodstove, with maybe a backup solar installation for summer.

      1. Most things like solar panels and windmills feed into the grid though, and you get a reduction on your bill. I mean really not connected to the grid. I suspect the couple in the article have a battery, which is very inefficient, as they use wind and solar.

    2. Personally no. But a friend of mine years ago had a set up something like this. His was from the Whole Earth Catalogue, a great publication fore all sorts of gadgets for people living off the grid. That was almost 40 years ago when we waz hippies. There is nothing new under the sun, as they say.
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjEgFlngZ04
      The whole Earth Catalogue was by the great Stewart Brand whom I have no doubt you have heard of.

      PS. Looked up: “make your own hydro powered generator” and quite a few plans came up.

      2. I’m new to it actually, and where I live at the moment I don’t really have any options. I’ve never lived in a property with running water. Just curiosity and idle planning for the future. Thanks, that is very informative.

        1. I don’t know if there is anything like a modern version of the ‘Whole Earth Catalogue’ because such a thing would be invaluable for you. Perhaps it is even worth it for you to find a second hand copy. It would open a whole new world to you. It was an incredible cornucopia of ideas and things from solar cookers to Amish furniture. Tools, gardening, keeping life stock, even weaving looms and how to manufacture dyes from moss etc. Perhaps you could find one on ebay? It would certainly be a great jumping off point to look for things which, I’m sure, still exist, but updated and therefore even better than they were.

    3. You need space for lead acid batteries well away from the main property, fire risk.
      Typical problem would be with using a washing machine; that generally needs a lot of power at start up. Solar panels can be fitted without the subsidy. A pal who was off grid for a while used to grumble about frequency difficulties, and you might need to learn about inverters. Large batteries sometimes available at low cost secondhand, but currently worth good money for scrap. I’d be very surprised if payback period is ever less than 7 years.

      1. I foresee all those problems. TBH, I don’t see how it’s possible without being able to use running water to generate electricity – at least you’d have a fairly constant supply.
        Bet the UK local authorities would find a way of making it illegal though.

    4. In the fifties one of my mother’s friends lived “off grid”. They used oil lamps, had a pump you had to prime in the kitchen for water and an earth closet. Mind you, that was standard for rural Worcestershire in the fifties 🙂

      1. Oil lamps are always a possibility, but a bit stinky, plus a fire risk of course – I should imagine the oil doesn’t get 100% burned. The Greens are bound to find a dozen reasons to ban them.

        It would clearly be far easier if one lived on the side of a mountain, with a healthy stream flowing through the garden. Earth closets, bleugh. You would have to build a giant brick lined one, that would last for about half a century without needing mucking out, and then replacing it would be someone else’s problem.

        1. No, build a compost one. I’ve used them in Oz (and in places in the UK as well). Fair (dinkum) drop and then earth on top. Matter decomposes and turns to compost.

  83. Very nasty man about to be sentenced for murder tomorrow.
    I do not wish to be accused of speaking ill of the dead, but may I sadly say that the late Sarah Everard was poorly advised. The streets of London at night are not safe for young women walking alone after dark; never were, and never will be.
    No idea why her boyfriend did not insist on meeting her & taking her home.

      1. Anyone can learn self defence, but the problem is that the attacker(s) will have had a surge of adrenalin, but not you.

      2. Don’t wish to unsettle you but age rarely plays a part.

        Though outrageous, this sort of attack is still quite rare.

    2. Wayne Couzens had not long come off shift. Probably still in uniform. Sarah was an easy target. In cases like this i believe we should have the option the death penalty.

      God rest her soul.

        1. Such a lovely young woman. I’m afraid i can’t read those statements.

          Also the other young lady killed, Sabina Nessa. Tragic.

      2. No, it had not been on duty, but it had lied to its wife that it was. The attack was pre-meditated, and it was driving a hired car. FYI, many hire cars have tracking devices fitted.

    3. I lived in Clapham SW4 between 1977 and 1984. I tried to avoid walking late even then – and I had my dog with me.

    1. Look, just put then in a shipping container and push it into the sea.

      I’m sick of these vermin. If some gimmigrant did that to Junior I’d kill the bastard him and any other afghans around him and I think I’d keep going until I ran out of strength to kill.

      Beeep any bleeding heart liberals. They’d pay, and keep paying. Then I go after the sodding government and anyone inviting the dross here. This is on all those MPs. They must pay the price and share the cell with this scum.

      1. A merkin joke

        A blonde and a redhead have a ranch. They have just lost their bull. The women need to buy another, but only have $500.

        The redhead tells the blonde, “I will go to the market and see if I can find one for under that amount. If I can, I will send you a telegram.”

        She goes to the market and finds one for $499. Having only one dollar left, she goes to the telegraph office and finds out
        that it costs one dollar per word.

        She is stumped on how to tell the blonde to bring the truck and trailer. Finally, she tells the telegraph operator to send the word
        “comfortable.”

        Skeptical, the operator asks, “How will she know to come with the trailer from just that word?” The redhead replies,

        “She’s a blonde so she reads slow: ‘Come for ta bull.'”

  86. You may have read that Lithuania and Italy are the guinea pigs for the EU’s digital id scheme.
    Here’s a chilling account from Lithuania – note the queues of obedient sheep waiting to scan their digital ids to enter the shopping centre.
    https://txti.es/covid-pass/images
    According to the writer, this is a quote from a speech by a member of the Lithuanian government:

    “To not vaccinate yourself means that you will spread it, because anyone who does not vaccinate is a potential spreader. Not vaccinating yourself, and encouraging others to not vaccinate, are not yet crimes. We are – still – gentle and polite. But therefore, we suffer because we do not stop the unvaccinated with the force of law and order. However, it can be done. We are at war. Let us reflect among ourselves and the coalition government on whether the state is really doing everything it can to fight the virus that is the anti-vaxxers.”

    The most sobering part is near the end, where he talks about the near lack of opposition to this authoritarianism:

    “But in general, there isn’t much mainstream condemnation of the entire Covid Pass regime as a fundamental violation of human rights. Voices of principled opposition are rarely featured in our country’s media. Opposition is usually ignored by the mainstream, and when mentioned, those who oppose mandates are caricatured by both the government and the media as far-right, anti-LGBT, conspiracy theorists, and neo-Nazis.”

    “At my work, we had to indicate whether we have the Opportunity Pass. The next day, a list was posted publicly of everyone’s Pass status. Turns out I’m the only one in my area who doesn’t have the Pass. The only reason to post that list was to shame me.

    The public shaming worked. Most colleagues avoided me afterwards.

    But one colleague pulled me aside. Whispering in my ear (literally), she told me that she thinks the Opportunity Pass is a crazy violation of human rights and despises the fact that she was forced to vaccinate against her will, particularly because she plans to have another child soon. But she feels that she doesn’t dare oppose it, because she already has one child, is scared for her job, and needs to shop and otherwise continue life.”

    I was suspended from work a few days later.”

    The writer asks people to pass on the link and share this information as widely as possible outside Lithuania.

    2. I’ve now read the whole piece – he’s very brave but I don’t see how he can continue to live normal life under this regime. He doesn’t have much alternative either.

      1. We will all face the same choice sooner or later. Even most of those who intend to get annual boosters must surely realise that it is authoritarian to have to show an app to go into a shop.
        I suppose the government doesn’t mind if people are unemployed, because that will give them the excuse to put them on central bank digital currency money.
        Sunak already touted that as an advantage of a CBDC – it would make it easier for government to make furlough payments.
        So one way or another, they will have control over everyone, if people are stupid enough to go along with digital ids.

        1. MY OH has been struggling to order his repeat prescription online – apparently he didn’t do it right so they haven’t got it at the pharmacy, which means he’s had to postpone the appointment at the surgery.
          There are plenty of older people less computer literate than he is – how are they supposed to manage?

          1. The awful truth is, nobody cares except one’s own family. We were brought up with this (ridiculous) idea that the government would look after us from cradle to grave – now they just seem to want to hurry us to the latter as soon as we hit retirement age.

    4. Being vaccinated does notstop you spreadind Covid: it just reduces the amount of damage the infection can do to you..

      Or should.

      What is not taken into account is what damage can be done to your health, in the long-term, from side effects

      If this goes ahead, the instigators should be held liable for

      early deaths
      illnesses
      Mental health problems
      Fertility problems
      Congenital problems etc

      1. There are some worrying reports of physicians seeing unusual cancers in people who have been vaccinated. Just a few murmurs, but coming from Ryan Cole, who has been reliable in the past.

    5. As you may know the UK ‘Government’ is currently consulting on the need for vaccine passports. I think the result will be an overwhelming “Please take us out of our misery and introduce them forthwith” My own view FOAD.

  87. Got a snotty letter pushed through my door telling me I was £32 in arrears on my rent for my sheltered studio “Kindly pay up at once”

    I don’t think he’s going to enjoy the response

    Dear Sir

    With regard to the alleged rent arrears,all my payments to Housing 21 are by direct debit

    MY duty is to ensure sufficient fund are in the account to meet my
    obligations,YOUR duty is to ensure the rent etc are collected in a
    timely accurate manner.

    As there is in excess of £5000 in the account linked to the DD it appears it is YOU that have failed in your duty not me!!

    There was one other possibility a fraudster could have emptied out my account
    so I at once travelled to my bank to check to find the balance of
    £5000+ was intact,it was,we will return to this at the end*

    It is clear the problem is NOT with your residents but your accounting
    admin,did you not consider the distress this sort of cock-up could cause
    to our elderly residents?? Or is the Rent-Roll the only consideration
    that matters to you??

    *You have wasted 40 mins of my time rushing out to check my bank for YOUR
    error my charge-out rate 20 years ago was £100 pound an hour generously

    I haven’t updated it so kindly take this as an invoice for £66.66 due within 7 days

    Yours Sincerely

      1. Don’t expect the money Willum,although I may threaten small claims court just for the crack
        I wanted to rattle the little shit’s(area manager) cage it’s not the first time they’ve tried to blag residents for their own errors I’m hoping he’ll dig himself a bigger hole so I can drop him in it with HIS boss

        2. When i lived in London i had an account with a taxi service (mainly because after an evening on the razz i had no money left). They often sent an invoice followed a week later by another one.

          They have to get up very early in the morning to catch me out.

    2. Excellent.
      Bastards.
      Many years ago, was called by the bank asking why I hadn’t paid the mortgage. Some enqiries revealed that they had forgotten to ak for the money.
      Their call was unpleasant and abusive. Their apology hasn’t yet been delivered. Still waiting 36 years later… Bastard Barclays, that was.

    4. Dear Sir,
      My secretary always opens my post on my behalf.
      Your letter was libellous and has been joked about in the community, harming my reputation.
      You will be hearing from my extremely expensive and always victorious lawyer; Bill Thomas, well known as the Legal Beagle.
      He always wins punitive damages and is invariably awarded exorbitant costs.
      To prevent litigation, I will accept your undertaking that all future rent, until I decide to move on, is cancelled.
      Yours sincerely,
      Rik-the vengeful-Redux

    6. This morning I received an “overdue payment” letter from my electricity company (Scottish Power). It was because when MOH died, I changed the name on the account. They have not previously sent me a bill (I checked), so how could I know how much was owing to pay it? It needs, according to them, to be settled “as soon as possible” or they’ll send the debt collectors in. I’m due to pay the internet and phone bill tomorrow, so I’ll do both at the same time, thus making only one trip to the bank. It’s bad enough that they couldn’t just change the name on the bill without changing the tariff and billing to monthly from quarterly without sending me threatening letters.

  88. That’s me for this strange day – sort of sunny – quite chilly – strong westerly wind.

    I’ll not be about much tomorrow. I have an apptmt to see the DR for my quarterly review at the NNUH (last one back in December!!!) at 4.40. Fine – no problem – market first thing etc. HOWEVER,Ttis morning, the NNUH rang the MR and offered her an apptmt tomorrow at 9.15. So we’ll have to go to the damned place TWICE.

    I have just about enough fuel. Modern life, eh?

    A demain (or not).

  89. I have noticed that the government has been prominent in many recent problem areas, for example, shortage of HGV drivers. Why does the government accept responsibility? It is not their fault directly, nor is the failure of energy retailers. I’m guessing that this is simply a means of making the electorate comfortable with a socialist Tory government?
    A Tory government might have got involved to the extent of inviting the heads of the problem businesses to Downing Street, given them all a thorough drubbing and told them to get it sorted out?

    1. Government legislation – EU and British – have complicated the matter even further.
      If governments at all levels kept their beaks out of people’s lives, then they would attract less flak.

      1. GPs are, in effect, private contractors to the NHS. However, successive governments have privatised and outsourced to the nth degree.

        1. It’s their raison d’être these days. Can’t let the working class be upwardly mobile through education, can they? They might start thinking for themselves.

  92. Well, MB is regretting his noble gesture. I had booked a visit to see Elderly Chum.
    MB offered to come along as he hadn’t seen her since she was admitted in March 2020.
    The home suggested we sat outside. I refused as, although it was sunny, it was darn cold. EC is 91 and no amount of blankets and jackets would have kept her warm enough.
    That meant the farrago of stuffing cotton buds up your nose and all the other palaver. We had to wait ages for the tests to be done. Then it was discovered that a doctor was visiting a resident in the visitors’ room at the very time I had booked. We sat in the car for half an hour; then the nurse came out with the diary to say the booking hadn’t been made; I firmly pointed out that I had definitely made a booking for 3.0 pm and had confirmed it that very morning so MB could visit as well. By that time, other visitors – whose booking had been written in – were in the visiting room.
    The staff crumpled and we were allowed to sit in the spacious entrance hall with EC; she didn’t have her glasses, so the magazines I brought for her were nigh on useless.
    Physically Elderly Chum was as good as could be expected; mentally, she has now gone back to the 1950s.
    Aaaarrgghh ………………..
    On the plus side, MB now has unstinting admiration for my patience and forbearance.

    1. Let’s all just pray we don’t end up in a care home. No matter how well they attend to physical needs, the soul requires more sustenance than they can provide.

    2. I am so fearful that when I had that reaction to my second Covid jab , I was left with brain fog , I really feel very forgetful , and the dreams visiting me before I wake up are weird and terrifying .

      I just seem to have slowed down horrbly.

  93. Russian President Vladimir Putin brought an attractive female translator to a meeting with Donald Trump at the G20 Summit in Osaka in 2019 as a way to distract his American counterpart, a former White House aide has claimed.
    In her not-yet-published memoirs, Stephanie Grisham claims that Fiona Hill, former Senior Director for Europe and Russia of the National Security Council, observed Putin’s subtle attempt to throw Trump off guard.

    “As the meeting began, Fiona Hill leaned over and asked me if I had noticed Putin’s translator, who was a very attractive brunette woman with long hair, a pretty face, and a wonderful figure,” Grisham writes, according to an excerpt published in The New York Times. “She proceeded to tell me that she suspected the woman had been selected by Putin specifically to distract our president.”

    My gast has never been so flabbered…this country leads “the free World”!!!

  94. Evening, all. Happy feast day to all called Michael. Some torrential rain again today, interspersed with sunshine. Rode and schooled a new horse; an Irish draught cross. He has mainly hunted, so didn’t know what balancing himself going round a sharp corner was when it came to work in the arena. Very nice, though, and showed lots of promise. At this stage, he can’t sustain it and he has no idea about lateral work, but I’m sure it will come with practice. He’s a work in progress and a project for the future. I shall still ride the Connemara from time to time, though, but today they wanted me to ride the new horse and teach him a few things.

    3. I have happy memories of hunting and hunter trials on Irish three-quarter bred draught crosses; perhaps the perfect hunter, Conners?

      1. That’s all he’s done so far, apparently. Just like Coolio when he first came. My instructress said that he came off the lorry as though he’d always been there, so he’s pretty laid back, it seems. Will try to get photos when I can.

  97. Apologies if posted previously but it is not often I agree with Deacon, however I find myself nodding my head in agreement with this article.

    The real lesson of this week’s chaos? There’s no one left to vote for
    Michael Deacon COLUMNIST & ASSISTANT EDITOR 29 September 2021 • 7:00pm
    5-6 minutes

    What with all the talk of lights going out, a three-day week and a Winter of Discontent, many people seem worried that we’re going back to the Seventies. But I really don’t think we are. After all, in the Seventies, people were at least still able to drive their cars. This is going to be more like the 1870s, with everyone having to travel everywhere by horse. Until, of course, we run out of grass to feed our horses with, thanks to an outbreak of panic mowing.

    At any rate, our immediate future doesn’t exactly look dazzling. Fist-fights are breaking out at petrol pumps. In Scotland, the threat to Irn-Bru supplies now practically guarantees a vote for independence, if not a full-blown re-run of Bannockburn. And on Tuesday, in response to empty shelves in supermarkets, The Sun ran a full-page article urging its readers to eat mouldy food (“Don’t despair – not all mouldy grub is inedible!”). Next week: exclusive recipes for rat madras and squirrel stew.

    Still, we aren’t quite back in the Seventies yet. Except in one sense. We have a Government whose response to crisis seems to be: “Crisis? What crisis?”

    For days on end, as chaos reigned, we heard not a peep from ministers. You’d think the PM would at least have held a news conference so he could allay the nation’s fears and call for calm. Yet it wasn’t until Tuesday afternoon that he finally surfaced, and even then only to dash off a 90-second video clip for Twitter.

    Supposedly, he and his ministers declined to go on TV or radio because it’s traditional for politicians to keep a low profile during a rival party’s conference. But surely to goodness that convention can be waived during a national emergency? Imagine if Chamberlain had taken that approach in September 1939.

    “…No such undertaking has been received, and consequently this country is at war with Germany. However, as this is the time of year during which the Labour Party traditionally meets for its party conference, the Government will be making no further comment this week, so cheerio for now. Best of luck dodging those doodlebugs, and hope to see most of you next week!”

    Of course, ministers may resent the criticism they’ve received. They may even be tempted to blame the panic-buying on the public. Then again, if they did that, the public – also known as “the voters” – might not take it tremendously well. In 2010, the Conservatives won by pledging to clear up the mess Labour left behind. But I’m not sure they should go into the next election pledging to clear up the mess the public left behind (“Vote Conservative – Because You Poor Dopes Simply Can’t Be Trusted to Look After Yourselves.”).

    Whatever the initial cause of the panic, the Government has handled it poorly. But there has been one source of comfort for ministers. However hopeless they look, the Opposition looks even worse.

    This week, Labour has had scarcely more to say about petrol than the Government has – because its members have been far more interested in attacking each other. At Left-wing rallies, the “Blairite” party leadership was furiously denounced. And, during his climactic speech, Sir Keir Starmer was relentlessly heckled – even while talking about the death of his mother. All week, it felt as if Brighton was simultaneously hosting a Labour conference and an anti-Labour conference.

    The highlight of the in-fighting came when Andy McDonald, a senior Corbynite, quit the shadow cabinet over Sir Keir’s refusal to pledge a minimum wage of £15 an hour. Less than two years earlier, Mr McDonald had been elected on a pledge of £10 an hour – set by Labour’s then leader, Jeremy Corbyn. John McDonnell, Mr Corbyn’s closest ally, praised Mr McDonald for quitting “on a point of principle”. This is the same John McDonnell who was still calling for £10 an hour in October last year, as a “reward” for British workers. Yet now, all of a sudden, £10 an hour wasn’t a reward but an insult.

    Sir Keir could always relent. But it wouldn’t do him any good. Because then it would suddenly turn out that £15 an hour is an insult to British workers, and the Left wants £20.

    Still, enough doom and gloom. Let’s remember: we still have one reason to be cheerful. There isn’t an election coming up. Which is a relief, because right now, it feels as if the main lesson of this week’s chaos is that there’s no one left to vote for.

    Mind you, there is another way of looking at things. A (non-political) friend of mine has a theory that the petrol shortage was deliberately engineered by the Government – as an alternative to another lockdown. If ministers ordered us to stay at home again, millions would probably disobey. So they’ve ensured we can’t actually leave home, instead.

    Of course, such a plan would require imagination, strategic planning and organisational competence. So it clearly can’t be true.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2021/09/29/real-lesson-weeks-chaos-no-one-left-vote/

    1. The government denied there was a fuel shortage. The people, from long experience, realised that they should never believe anything until it had been officially denied.

  101. 339403+ up ticks,

    An undeniable fact, the inmates of the political cesspit are running roughshod over decent peoples more peoples WILL suffer before this lot is outed,

    Ministers were warned before Sarah Everard murder that ‘draconian’ Covid laws gave police too much power

    The month that Wayne Couzens abused the rules to kidnap Sarah Everard, Tory MPs were urging Boris Johnson to ditch the Coronavirus Act

    This tory lookalike party house both for & against sides internally, on any issue with the issue conclusion already agreed..

    1. We met some one at a party at the week end who had just purchased a top of the range all electric Jaguar .

      Honestly never ever seen anything like it . Retractable door handles , and a little light from the wing mirror reflected the Jaguar logo as a spotlight onto the road . The bits and pieces were dazzling . The car was gunmetal grey , but looked boxy like all the current big cars there are these days.

      A far off relative of and far removed from the older Jaguars!

      1. When I were Nobutalad,as you drove through Coventry, giant hoardings poited yo to the Jaguar Factory, I think at Browns Lane

        Ijust could not get there on my tricycle

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