624 thoughts on “Monday 14 October: Overpaid locum doctors are a symptom of the NHS’s wastefulness”

  3. BBC’s Nick Robinson compares Boris Johnson’s People’s PMQs to ‘propaganda used by dictators down the ages’. 13 OCTOBER 2019.

    Nick Robinson has described Boris Johnson’s social media operation as “a form of propaganda used by dictators down the ages” because it does not allow for proper scrutiny.

    The BBC broadcaster complained that the Prime Minister’s use of Facebook and Twitter to communicate his messages was not democratic, and that there is no opportunity to hold him to account on the platforms.

    Morning everyone. I have to confess that I wasn’t aware of Boris’s predilection for Social Media but it makes sense to bypass the propaganda farms of the MSM if you have any message that contradicts their agenda. The BBC in particular is an exemplar of Cultural Marxism and a mouthpiece for Remain. The day that it is shut down will be a good one for the truth in the UK!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/10/13/bbcs-nick-robinson-compares-boris-johnsons-peoples-pmqs-propaganda/

    1. I do seem to recall Cameron using Facebook to target potential Remain voters during the run up to the referendum? Presumably Robinson would happy with that though as it was the “right sort of propaganda?

    2. Hold him to account?

      Is that BBC speak for ‘don’t let him get a word in edgeways to demonise his message in favour of promoting the other side?

    3. Morning, minty

      …“because it does not allow for proper scrutiny.”

      and because it puts the likes of Nick Robinson, Andrew Marr, etc. out of a job. I can’t think of a single interviewer worth their salt other than Andrew Neill.

      …“to communicate his messages was not democratic”

      They’re having a larf, them beeboids.

      1. Funny how they see democracy as the press silencing politicians they disagree with.

        That is not democracy and they know it, putting even more weight on how cynical and desperate their behaviour is.

  4. SIR – A poll has suggested that, in the event of an early general election, the Conservatives will win a very substantial majority if Britain has left the EU on October 31 with a mutually agreed deal (the outcome for which Boris Johnson is striving) or without one – not the preferred option, but preferable to the impossibly bad terms hitherto insisted on by the EU.

    Leaving after this date, whether with or without a deal, will apparently result in a hung Parliament, with the Conservatives 14 short of a majority.

    How unsurprising that parliamentary machinations, and in particular the Benn Act, have aimed to frustrate the first two outcomes – the second explicitly, and the first through convincing EU negotiators that they need make no accommodations. Seldom has the national interest been so transparently subordinated to party politics.

    Dugald Barr
    London W8

    Party politics may trample over the national interest but the EU have been bolstered in their belief that they need make no concessions to a far greater extent by the procession of Remainer politicians of all parties through the corridors of Berlaymont. In accordance with their standard operating procedures, the EU want the UK to have a second Referendum. The traitorous shower of yesterday’s men have shown them the way by boxing in Boris.

    1. Why do you think that’s happened, Dolly ?

      Is it because Uncle George spent £52,000,000 in the UK in 2018 apparently to achieve exactly that ?

      As well as spending, quite probably, another £52,000,000 in 2019.

      Do you think spending over £100,000,000 might help George keep Britain in the EU ?

      What do you think ?

      1. A hundred million buys a vast number of placards and pays for thousands of hire coaches with plenty of loose change leftover. Where has all this money gone?

          1. If true, to whom would make interesting reading. I’m sure that it would have been accomplished in a more sophisticated manner than crudely stuffed brown envelopes.

          3. Endless quangos and charities, pop up campaign groups with vast funding, expenses covered no matter what.

            There are a lot of people who stand to lose billions if the UK leaves the EU. Wasting a few hundred million is simply a sort of tax deductible investment.

    3. Morning zxcv3 – The traitorous shower have had the assistance of the blatantly Remain supporting Speaker and the “one off” Supreme Court decision to retrospectively chastise our PM and overturning his decision to prorogue parliament which until then was perfectly legal.

  6. I saw this one coming.

    The pro-West tolerant Kurds, abandoned to a neo-Ottoman genocide by their former American allies and an Islamic State breakout have now thrown in their lot with Assad, who is now moving north-eastwards, presumably with support from his allies Russia and Iran, to clear out the Turks and reunify Syria. It is not what the Kurds wanted, but as they say, it is better than genocide at the hands of the West’s new alllies.

    What then does NATO do? Back Turkey, bringing American soldiers back into the fire with a vengeance to defend a regroup of Islamic State and its import of terrorism all over Europe including its Western allies there such as the UK, or abandon Erdogan’s troops to their fate at the hands of the Russians, and a greatly increased Iranian influence in the region?

    Trump brought this on himself.

    1. The word “Clusterfcuk” is too mild to describe the outcome of this simple call made to Erdogan. Could not the US see what would be the result? A man who trumps up a coup attempt to give an excuse to increase totalitarianism in his country and who has expressed hatred of the Kurds would surely take this opportunity for action? It’s interesting how quickly it all kicked off – everything must have been prepared and just waiting for the blue touchpaper to be lit.

      1. What “call” ?

        Were you listening in ?

        What do you know beyond what you read in the fake media ?

        1. Here we go again – expecting commenters from a public online forum to have access to everyone’s official secrets as if we had the resources of GCHQ, MI6, Mossad and the CIA combined. Even they don’t know precisely what is going on.

          We can surmise quite enough though simply by watching troop movements. Erdogan was holding back on his invasion unless and until he got the go-ahead from Trump, who would pledge not to get in the way.

          1. What troop movements ?

            Are you out there or are you always quoting the fake anti US anti Trump media ?

          3. One thing looks sure.

            If the fake anti US anti Trump news media is what you’re reading, you’ll be led into believing a fake anti US anti Trump story.

    3. Morning Jeremy. Well NATO is the United States and its other members are going to do nothing without its approval, nor are they going to attack or threaten Turkey on their own! What will probably happen is there will be a fudge (negotiated by Vlad) between Erdogan and Assad about the Syrian border. You are right about Iranian influence being extended but so will that of Russia. The United States is being excluded from the area entirely which is to everyone’s benefit. Whether they decide to act against Iran directly using the Saudis as an excuse we will have to wait and see!

    4. No, Donald Trump is putting America First and correcting the errors of previous administrations of fighting endless highly destructive ME wars.

        1. Europe is wealthy enough to look after themselves.

          This is Donald’s tough love to make you lot spend much more on your own defence instead of expecting the US to do it for you.

          1. I hope so.

            Israel now has the prospect of enhanced Russian-backed Iranian allies on its doorstep, and Western Europe now has the prospect of 3 million refugees, who would never return to Erdogan’s “Safe Zone” except at the point of a sword, being mixed in with tens of thousands of hardened Islamic State mercenaries and their brood mares and traumatised progeny to be dumped on Greece and seeded into sleeper cells all over Europe to radicalise its own formerly respectful Muslim communities, including our own Pakistanis.

          2. Donald is helping others in the region defend against Iran, and assistance is still available for Israel.

          3. ‘Others’, I presume you mean Saudi Arabia, currently waging its own genocide on Yemen, threatening Iran with a major conflagration, and whose Wahhabi-indoctrinated radicals were behind the Al Qaeda attack on New York and Washington in 2001.

          4. If you don’t like Saudi becoming a major force in the region, please feel free to go yourselves.

          5. Good morning Jeremy,
            Time to get rid of bleeding heart legislation, such as the ECHR and the associated Act?
            The problem (sorry, challenge) is not that the weak have to kiss the rrr’s of the strong, but that they must first choose which one deserves their fealty. ‘Twas ever thus.

            68,000 observant Daesh women in just one camp? How many do you want living in your village? (and they would get planning permission)

      2. Good Morning PP,

        Wow, at last someone who understands the concept of ‘tough love’. The Middle East needs to get its act together (apart from Israel).

    5. I can understand Trump feeling that the US has done enough in the ME (with a spectacular lack of success) but his abandonment of the Kurds really stinks.
      I hope Russian and Syria prove to be more reliable allies. I am also aware that Turkey’s membership of NATO poses problems for us because of its Three Musketeer premise.
      I also sympathise with Trump’s (alleged) feeling that Europe has been coasting along – treating bunions and supporting wasters to buy votes – while the US pays the major part of supporting NATO.

      1. ‘Morning, Anne, is it not Vietnam again? Granted on a smaller scale but with potentially much larger consequences – giving Russia and Iran the chance to put some heavy muscle in Northern Syria.

        I’m surprised that Assad hasn’t declared all out war on Turkey as they’ve invaded his sovereign territory.

        1. And, of course, considering that by invading Syria’s sovereign territory, Turkey is the aggressor and can not legitimately call on NATO assistance.

          1. ‘Morning, BoB, Best Beloved and I were discussing that self-same point over breakfast this morning.

      2. I note that the countries critical of Trump’s decision aren’t offering their own troops to fill the gap.

  7. Good morning, all. Raining. More threats from the EUSSR I see (according to The Grimes). Prepare (again) for the great sell out.

    1. They have several, probably lucrative interviews on TV and Radio in the USA. However it doesn’t bring their boy back.

    2. It appears to have been an unfortunate accident but possibly with an element of carelessness although the road layout may have played a part as a Keep Left sign has now been put up

    3. Donald possibly. He’s a nice guy and he’s said he wants a solution and reconciliation.

  9. SIR – Geoff Crome (Letters, October 11), discussing the climate protests, states: “In England in the 14th century there was no coal, no electricity – in fact , no fossil fuels at all.”

    While it is true that there were no deep coal mines in the 14th century, “sea coals” found in the north-east of England had been burnt as heating fuel as early as the 9th century. These were cheap and were shipped to London, where wood was becoming scarcer and more expensive as the city expanded. Air pollution in London became so bad that, in 1306, King Edward I banned the use of this fuel.

    A bad-tempered monarch, he was arguably one of our first environmentalists. However, it is unlikely that he would have been as tolerant of the anarchists in Extinction Rebellion as we are today.

    Anthony Franks
    Chesham, Buckinghamshire

    And he http://www.shakespeareandhistory.com/resources/Edward%20I.png would have done a thorough job of sorting out Nicola (currently spouting forth on the Today programme)

    1. Scottish woman interviews Scottish woman about the SNP’s position regarding their support – or otherwise – for the Terrorists’ Friend as he continues to avoid the election he’s been demanding? Nope, far too early in the day to listen to all that inconsequential noise, so it went off. A better case for ear plugs is hard to imagine.

      ‘Morning, Citroen.

      2. Corbyn doesn’t want an election. He wants the job and power without the annoyance of having to ask for it.

        Once he gets it, he’ll – like all good communists – never return it.

  10. A fine example of the smothering effect of the EU, its directives and support for large enterprises as opposed to smaller, more nimble and innovative companies. If we ever do slip the chains that bind us to this bureaucratic behemoth then expect more revelations as people become empowered to finally speak out and reveal the truth.

    I’ve added spacing to make it an easier read.

    Brexit Central – Shunning EU Science Programmes

    Harmonisation supports protectionism. The underlying drive to encourage collaboration (e.g. harmonisation of protocols, techniques, etc.) and EU Directives has increased commercial protectionism and done an extraordinary amount of damage to British clinical research.

    The effect of the Clinical Trials Directive has been so draconian that even the EU has had to admit that changes are needed (note, the EU normally makes it clear that no changes can be made to any Directive whatsoever once it has been enacted!).

    The Clinical Trials Directive was put forward in the spirit of harmonisation but was, in fact, a mechanism to make trials so horrendously expensive that only Big Pharma could afford to get their products registered. This conveniently made it extremely difficult for smaller companies and generics to compete.

    Unfortunately, at a stroke, this killed clinical academic research into innovative treatments that could be applied rapidly to the clinic.

    Take the specific case of a promising treatment for pancreatic cancer that currently has a dreadful prognosis. Even if a clinical trial can be mounted and is successful to the point where there is no reason to prevent licensing a non-toxic agent that increases pancreatic cancer survival, the EU mechanism demands another randomised study on a scale that is commercially unaffordable.

    However, once outside the EU, it should be possible to provide a licence for further availability to such agents. They could then be made available to the thousands of patients who would benefit from such products, particularly as several of these are non-toxic – especially compared to the agents currently approved.

    1. Morning Korky. Here’s the DT’s article on the very same

      EU rules could make cancer deaths more likely, says report

      The professors warn that EU rules are making drugs licensing too expensive for smaller firms to compete with Big Pharma

      Camilla Tominey, associate editor – 13 OCTOBER 2019 • 9:00PM

      EU rules placing “unreasonable burdens” on drug licencing risk making cancer deaths more likely, two top scientists have warned.

      Angus Dalgleish, professor of oncology at the University of London, and Professor Keith Lewis, director of science and technology consultancy Sciovis, have criticised the EU’s Clinical Trial Directive saying it has “killed academic research” by making trials so “horrendously expensive” that only the largest pharmaceutical companies can afford to get new products registered.

      In their joint report, Let’s Embrace World-Class Scientific Collaboration, the professors claim the directive is pushing up the cost of treatment for UK taxpayers with cancer drugs now costing an average of £5,000 a month.

      The report states: “Patients suffer from directives. The Clinical Trial Directive was put forward in the spirit of harmonisation but was, in fact, a mechanism to make trials so horrendously expensive that only Big Pharma could afford to get their products registered.

      “This conveniently made it extremely difficult for smaller companies and generics to compete. Unfortunately, at a stroke, this killed clinical academic research into innovative treatments that could be applied rapidly to the clinic.”

      Giving the example of pancreatic cancer’s “dreadful prognosis”, the report adds: “Even if a clinical trial can be mounted and is successful to the point where there is no reason to prevent licensing a non-toxic agent that increases pancreatic cancer survival, the EU mechanism demands another randomised study on a scale that is commercially unaffordable.”

      Calling for Britain to decide its own funding objectives post Brexit, rather than having to pay into EU schemes over which it has no control, the report claims decision making in EU science programmes has become increasingly political, describing their administration as as a “bureaucratic nightmare”.

      The report also criticises Sir Paul Nurse, former President of the Royal Society, for claiming Brexit will be a “disaster” for British science, pointing out that overseas funding for UK’s research and development (R&D) fell for the third consecutive year during the period 2014 to 2017, with the business community providing the largest contribution (68 per cent).

      The UK receives the lowest science funding from the EU’s R&D structural funding programme – less than half of what Germany receives, less than a third of Italy’s total and less than a quarter of Poland’s income.

      The report adds: “After we leave, only one of the top ten research universities in Europe will be in an EU country (Sweden), as eight of them are in the UK.

      “In spite of our relatively small population, technological innovation is an integral part of our British history that has given rise to the most incredible inventions, from the steam train to the jet engine and from the telephone to the television – not to forget discovery of the DNA double helix.

      “The list goes on and on: none of these were done with EU funding.”

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

      BTL:

      Nick Russell 13 Oct 2019 9:55PM
      “…only the largest pharmaceutical companies can afford to get new products registered.”

      This is precisely the point. This is what the EU is for. Very large companies spend very large amounts of money ‘lobbying’ – that is, inducing EU Commissioners to introduce legislation to cripple their competitors. Crony capitalism at its worst – and I write as one devoted to free markets and free minds.

      Robin Malpas 13 Oct 2019 11:19PM
      30,000 lobbyists in Brussels all representing large corporate interests. Is it any wonder that big corporations including pharma are against Brexit and stoking project fear for all it’s worth. The EU stifles innovation and protects vested interests.

      1. I didn’t copy in the whole article as I thought it a bit long.

        It’s worrying that if Johnson ties us to EU regulations/ECJ for an appreciable time then the possibility of the EU ruining this Country rises to danger levels. I’m becoming more convinced that our ‘leaders’ are either ignorant of how the EU operates or are too keen to turn a blind eye on the corrupt methods used by the Brussels’ cabal. Johnson sees Farage as, “a not fit person,” probably because nobody knows or understands how the EU works as well as Farage and he would not remain quiet if the Tories got up to no good in their dealings with Brussels.

  11. Morning all

    SIR – You report that some locum doctors are earning £3,500 for a shift.

    This is surely intolerable at a time when the NHS is severely strapped for cash. Many of these locums are being paid just for being on call.

    Hospitals must agree on maximum nationwide rates to be offered to consultants for a single shift. No ifs, no buts – and, above all else, no time-consuming consultations on the matter.

    Michael Batchelor
    Swansea

    1. SIR – The fees paid to locum doctors have underlined, once again, the incompetence of hospital management and the Government.

      Why are these agencies’ extortionate charges being paid when the “staff bank” system has operated in hospitals for many years – and could provide the same service at a hugely reduced cost?

      Bill Parish
      Bromley, Kent

    2. In the 60’s this could never have happened. Doctors would have worked longer hours to cover. Someone coming in and earning this much would have been ashamed.

      1. If I remember correctly most Professionals in the 60s and earlier,worked longer hours as necessary without extra payment.

        1. Thats what happens in the private sector if you are in a professional grade you dont get paid for overtime

          1. When I started work in the 60s and having to work most days and many nights on call i was getting £900 per annum and worked out that I was being paid about half a crown [12.5p]] per hour. My boss was raking it in although he took all the night phone calls and passed them on to his minions to do the visits in all weathers. The 62/63 winter was really bad.

      2. Why are they being paid that amount most do not work a full shift. In the private sector you would get an On Call allowance and only be paid for the actual time spent when called out

    3. I find it fascinating that the Out of Hours surgery where SWMBO works often has to close ( or not open) due to the unavailability of Doctors thus leaving the patients with the option of a 30 mile round trip to be attended to or wait until the morning.
      When Docs can be found they’ve been from Nigeria, Hungary and India and elsewhere and often with a bit of a problem with communication. It may have something to do with the fact that our indigenous Docs are retiring earlier because of the ludicrous tax regime and their replacements are mostly young ( and predominantly female ) clinicians who have families .

      1. >>replacements are mostly young ( and predominantly female ) clinicians who have families .
        & work part-time ………….. I have 2 x nieces that work part-time for 25+ years – full-time was 3/4 yrs after graduation – £50K for 3 days a week + odd 12 hour shift out of hours cover helps the family budget quite nicely.

        1. Add to this the the fact that a retired GP who might like to do the odd shift to help out is faced with the cost and time in having to maintain his/her registration through annual appraisals, proof of continuous training and re-validation plus the horrendous cost of Medical Defence Union insurance fees , unsurprisingly there aren’t many takers.

  12. Morning again

    SIR – I was amazed to read that hospitals are complaining about walking aids not being returned.

    I have had major knee surgery twice in recent years, and each time the hospital has declined my offer to return crutches and other walking aids. Local charity shops have also refused to accept these on health and safety grounds.

    Bill Mason
    Chorley, Lancashire

      1. I always wonder why, if people have such aids already, they don’t take them into the hospital so that they can reuse them themselves.

          1. Why?
            It’s no different from everything else the patient brings into the hospital, from pyjamas to washkit, from clothes to spectacles, from handbags and mobile phones to shoes.

      2. At the cost the NHS probably pays for them it is costing the NHS a fortune and in the end it is us taxpayers footing the bill

      3. Morning Peddy..

        The Red Cross might appreciate them . When poor ma in law became disabled before she had to go into a care home , i borrowed walking frames and a commode , toilet frames , chair etc from the Red Cross .. I gave them a generous donation .. and returned stuff after she went into care .

        I had to keep the plastic commode potty of course , but everything else was returned , and I think , they steam clean the equipment .

    3. Morning, epidermoid.
      Admittedly (thank goodness) I’ve not had to worry about such matters for several years, but when I did, Essex had a good system for returning medical aids.
      When you had finished with back rests, loo supports etc…. you contacted the authorities and the items were collected from your home and taken to a depot for repairing and sterilisation.
      Crutches were even simpler; you merely dumped them in a bin when you went for your final visit to the plaster department.
      I just hope that some bureaucrats hasn’t decided to meddle with such sensible arrangement.

    4. Why, when there’s a bottomless pit of borrowed money for the NHS and all else, is there any need for being economical?

  13. A long letter but a sensible one. The future was always nuclear but the Lefties of my generation wrecked it.

    SIR – I am a chartered engineer, and worked in the energy sector for almost 50 years. I enjoyed the excellent letters (October 5) from Steve Proud and Richard Holroyd on the subject of renewable energy and nuclear fusion.

    Since Walter Marshall, chairman of the Central Electricity Generating Board, was refused permission in 1989 to build a fleet of nuclear power stations similar to Sizewell “B”, as the Government had decided to sell the business, Britain’s electricity supply industry has been the victim of ignorant politicians in both main parties. They do not understand that, while you can distort finances, for example, by the application of incentives, taxes and creative accounting, the principles of engineering and laws of physics cannot be so manipulated.

    As Mr Proud states, if non-synchronous generation from wind, solar and tidal sources exceeds about 30 per cent of generation, the grid becomes unstable, and blackouts will occur. The remaining 70 per cent must be generated by high inertia synchronous generators; currently, the only ones that are essentially carbon-free are nuclear-based.

    I share Mr Holroyd’s views on nuclear fusion. This is the holy grail of electricity generation, but only works on a very large scale – and the first commercial plant will probably not be commissioned until 2050 or later, so cannot contribute to ameliorating global warming. The Prime Minister’s allocation of £220 million to the development of fusion is therefore well-meaning but misplaced, representing only about 1 per cent of the cost of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor.

    It would be better if this sum were directed towards the development of thorium-based nuclear power. The physics and technology were proved in 1962. Thorium is, compared to uranium, plentiful and widely distributed, cannot be weaponised and produces less long-lived radioactive waste – and the existing reactor designs are fail-safe.

    Bruce Gawler
    Chippenham, Wiltshire

      2. The worst by-product of the Thorium cycle is U-232, which has a half-life of about 70 years and is a powerful gamma emitter. This is manageable, presuming civilisation can last another century or so.

    3. But the papers have a story today about renewables producing more energy than traditional generation methods.

      Mind you it was for three months in summer.

      2. This would be when coal was shut down, nuclear turned off and a specific small section of energy generation – such as solar – for a limited time.

        There is nothing ‘renewable’ about green. It’s a massive waste of energy and resources that is never balanced by their output over their lifetime. All at massive cost.

        But hey. The state has never let endless lies get in the way of promoting its message.

      3. Te summer i always time when power stations are taken off line for maintenance. In the Summer we probably topically need only about 25% of the total capacity

        1. Hey they are not completely stupid, of course they selected the best period to measure generation.

          Even in England, the sun shines in summer.

      1. When you google thorium reactors, amongst a slew of scientific papers discussing them, there’s a Guardian article complaining about them. Therefore, they’re the right thing to use.

        However really we need to look at using hydrogen and helium3.

      2. I understand that one of the benefits of thorium energy production is that it is ideal for small power stations serving dedicated areas.

    5. For the record, here are the letters to which the writer refers.

      Renewables alone by 2030 will not mean zero emissions but blackouts

      SIR – As a chartered engineer who worked in the electricity supply industry for 39 years, I despair to hear politicians like Rebecca Long-Bailey claiming that renewables will provide for most of our energy needs by 2030.

      Renewable generation – solar, wind and tidal – is, by definition, non-synchronous and it is technically impossible to operate our electricity transmission system solely on non-synchronous generation. There is a real danger of system instability and consequential widespread blackouts once non-synchronous generation exceeds around 30 per cent of total generation at any one time.

      The National Grid report on the recent major outage makes numerous references to the lack of inertia in the system. This resulted from insufficient large synchronous generators (nuclear, coal, gas) being connected.

      Given the need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, the only option is to increase significantly nuclear build rapidly. Both Labour and Conservative governments have been unwilling to commit themselves to this, which has led us into the problems we now face.

      It is unfortunate that politicians and environmental campaigners are ignorant of the technicalities of energy supply, or wish to ignore them. MPs may have the power to change the laws of the land, but not to change the laws of physics.

      Steve Proud
      Swansea

      SIR – I read with some amazement of government plans to spend £220  million on the world’s first nuclear fusion plant, which could power entire towns without creating greenhouse gases or radioactive waste (report, September 28).

      In the Seventies my PhD research concerned fusion reactor design. The more I understood the background, the more sceptical I became of such a plant ever being realised.

      After all, research and development had been going on for 20 years or so at that time, yet they hadn’t even managed to work out how to contain the plasma where the energy from the fusion reactions is created. I found it hard to understand how scientists and engineers at Culham could be so wrapped up in the project as if success were just around the corner.

      My scepticism deepened when I read Les Woods’s autobiography Against the Tide. Woods, an Oxford professor and consultant for Culham, described how, by adding a term to the relevant equations, he gave a possible explanation of why the plasma could not be contained, because of inherent instability – yet the powers-that-be at Culham did not want to know.

      Forty years later, I don’t think fusion energy is any closer to being realised. I very much doubt that it ever will be.

      Richard Holroyd
      Cambridge

  14. The Budget has been announced for 6 November whether it actually happens who knows. Anything could happen this week

  15. Labour’s nationalisation price tag would start at £196bn, CBI says

    The CBI bases its analysis on the nationalisation of:
    Nine water and sewerage companies and seven water-only companies in England
    National Grid, and the electricity transmission and distribution networks
    Rail rolling stock
    Royal Mail

    1. Should that happen then the union leaders would de facto become the bosses. The cost to the exchequer might be £196 billion but the cost to those depending on the services would be incalculable as everything goes tits up.

      1. Boris.s plans for the railways seems more sensible although there is no detail yet.

        The total isolation of Network Rail from the Train Operating companies has not worked well it needs a closer management link between the two
        Another part of the problem in my view is the very poor management in the railways. They really struggle with communication you would think we were still back in the days of steam. Another big problem on the railways are the signalling systems. The first problem is they dont have a standard signalling system. The signalling system still seem to be based around what was being used denationalisation. Even more crazy is they still have some semaphore signalling in use.Another problem is the poor quality and design of the equipment. A lot of it is use in a harsh environment and needs to be designed for that environment frequently presumably down to cost cutting it is not

        The signalling is also safety and servie critical so redundancy should be built into it so that no single failure brings the system down.

    2. What about the cost of repaying shareholdders? Of the investments made in those industries by pension funds?

      That’s th eupfront cost. The real cost would come later, when pensions are decimated and industry pulls out of the UK for fear of having the stupid shopper steal their work.

      All of which of course ignores that government is incompetent. Let’s not pretend – these people are useful. They cost a fortune but have never run a business. Have absolutely no idea how to run a budget or manage resources or plan for the future – look at the utter mess the state is in, the deficit that continues to grow, the endless fiddled figures, the constant growth of their little empires but the shrinking interest in providing a service yet desperate demands for more cash. They’re politicians and civil servants because that suits them. Far easier to waste other people’s money than manage their own – but that’s the problem with nationalisation. It’s someone else’s money again, never their own.

      1. It is pretty difficult to find even one Nationalised industry that was run efficiently and did not lose a fortune

        1. After the reorganisation that saw the operating side stripped away from the Regions and put under the newly created Business Sectors, BR came close to actually making a profit and for the short time before Major’s disastrous Privatisation Scheme, was one of the leaders in efficiency in Europe.

          1. British Railways made a profit until the mid-1950s, by which time road was taking a lot of the more profitable traffic. A two-week ASLEF strike in 1955 was very damaging and drove even more traffic away. The North-Eastern Region was still making a profit until the early 60s.

      2. They won’t pay the shareholders.
        They have previous in this regard, e.g. Railtrack. “Who cares if a few grannies lose their blouse” I believe the quote from the last Labour government was.

  16. Morning all.

    As part of living in the 70’s, I found this:

    1972 Dec – 1973 Feb – South Australia suffers its worst number of bush fires killing at least 75 people and had injured another 800.
    (Southern Australia: Heatwave. Ag.gov.au. 25 July 2003)

    Get stuffed Greta.

    1. It is forecast for most of the week. Mind you we had a pretty dry summer so need some rain

    2. Morning Anne

      Wet Dorset here this morning , but a lovely dry sunny afternoon yesterday , which was a nice surprise.

      The tumble drier will be working overtime this week, dog towels on the radiators ..

      i remember after I got married putting the heavy laundry bundles out to be collected on a Tuesday by the laundry van .. No washing machine then, sheets , towels , shirts etc… would be returned wrapped in brown paper.. everywhere had a laundry then.

      1. Even my parents, who were struggling to pay school fees, let alone every day living costs, used to send bed linen and towels to the laundry.
        But, as you say – no washing machine or tumble dryer then. It was enough of a struggle to handwash and dry our clothes.
        Morning, Belle.

        1. Yep and just a little later on in life when we moved to a rural area when Moh was flying and no laundry for domestic stuff ..I had a burco boiler and a mangle .. then gravitated to a twin tub which was an absolute pain .. much easier to wash stuff in the bath ,, I still have my old wooden clothes horse .. My burco boiler was brilliant for terry nappies .. the whitest of white !

  18. Syria war criminals may find the law is finally closing in on them. Mon 14 Oct 2019 05.00 BST.

    When it comes to war crimes, Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Trump, Assad, the Russian and US air forces and the rebel militiamen in Tel Abyad all have one thing in common: they are unlikely to face prosecution. The culture of impunity stretches from the top to bottom.

    What about the British War Criminals, Blair and Cameron? The MP’s who voted for the Iraq war and the attack on Libya in Parliament. Where are they on this list?

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/14/syria-war-criminals-may-find-the-law-is-finally-closing-in-on-them

  19. How comes in the 1940′ to 1950’s CO” was not a problem ? Homes would have been heated by coal. The railways run on coal , Factories were heated by coal and coal was used to produce town gas., You can still see some of the old redundant gasholders around.. Roads were lit by gas lighting. All cooking in home used gas or coal

    1. 1. There was no money to be made complaining about it
      2. Governments didn’t see it as a way to slosh about in our pockets

    2. CO has always been a problem, it’s poisonous. CO2 at a certain level will kill you by suffocation. Perhaps nobody noticed anything untoward happening as they stumbled through the smog.

          1. Of course any gas in high enough concentrations will kill you as you need air to be able to breath. A 100 Nitrogen would kill you as would a 100% hydrogen

          2. They had to limit the supply of helium after someone discovered it is a painless and effective way to top yourself. I think it should be on the National Health.

        2. You are right – it was particulates and NO2 and SO2. One curious side-effect of the Clean Air Act is that there is a deficiency of sulphur in the soil that may well affect the growth of plants. When I sprinkled flowers of sulphur around a birch tree, it perked up considerably.

          I do recall that the ultimate comfort for the disillusioned was to stick your head in the oven and turn on the gas ready to meet your Maker. It worked with town gas, but all you get with natural gas is a headache.

  21. From TCW:

    https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/take-these-brexit-medical-scare-stories-with-a-huge-pinch-of-salt/

    Take these Brexit medical scare stories with a huge pinch of salt
    October 14, 2019

    AS we near a point of no return with Brexit, Project Fear is back with a vengeance. Amongst the latest ludicrous stories are warnings that a no-deal Brexit will result in a lack of sperm at IVF clinics and that we will run out of toilet paper.

    More worryingly, a few days ago the Daily Mirror ran a deeply irresponsible and misleading article with the headline ‘No Deal Brexit could put thousands of people at risk as life-saving drugs run out.’

    I was incandescent when I read it, as there is simply no truth in this. It’s a scare story which can only be intended to whip up a climate of fear amongst the most vulnerable. It is playing politics with lives. I say this as a medical doctor and an MEP.

    Since I was elected as a North West MEP for the Brexit Party over four months ago, I’ve held a huge number of meetings with representatives of the pharmaceutical industry, the NHS and various parties with vested interests. The overwhelming message I have heard back time and again is that robust planning is in place to cope with no deal.

    There is a current shortage of some medicines but it has nothing to do with Brexit – we haven’t even left yet. It is due to a perfect storm of manufacturing issues, supply chain problems and market forces.

    One thing I cannot repeat enough is that medicine does not revolve around Europe. It is a global industry and it is flexible. It is also in the interests of both Europe and the UK to ensure that trade between the two continues seamlessly.

    We export more pharmaceuticals to the EU than we import. If trade barriers are put up it will be Europe and not just the UK that will suffer.

    Nor should Europe underestimate the power of the UK Pharma industry. It has a market share of £41.8billion. The UK is home to GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca, the world’s fifth and sixth largest pharmaceutical companies. Foreign companies with a major presence in the UK include Pfizer, Novartis and Roche.

    Although currently 73 per cent of pharmaceuticals in the UK come from EU countries, this is a declining share. A third of the world’s generic medicines are made in India and by 2050 this proportion will be half. We can also import many drugs from Japan, Switzerland, Israel and the United States.

    Make no mistake, Europe is heavily reliant on the UK for other reasons. Regulation of drugs across the EU currently falls under the European Medicines Agency (EMA). This is a devolved body made up of 28 member states plus Norway, Liechtenstein and Iceland. The UK has its own regulatory body, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).

    The headache for the EU is that the MHRA leads 25 per cent of all EMA assessments of pharmaceuticals. We are a leader in pharmacovigilance, the practice of monitoring the effects of medical drugs after they have been licensed. It would be impossible for the EU to cut out the MHRA post-Brexit as it simply does not have the facilities or testing sites to ensure that medicines are safe.

    Furthermore, since the UK already conforms to EU standards, mutual recognition of standards would be simple to implement.

    That is all quite apart from the fact if we do move to a no-deal Brexit there are 10,000 tariff-free medicines under WTO rules as well as interim free tariffs under Article 24 of the GATT agreement.

    The European Federation of Pharmaceutical Associations and Industries (EFPIA) has confirmed to me in writing that ‘robust preparations’ are in place in the event of a no-deal Brexit. It has also confirmed that the EU does not have the necessary facilities to move production and testing completely out of the UK. It has gone further and called on the European Commission to ensure the free movement of medicines even in a no-deal scenario.

    I have spoken to the largest insulin supplier to the UK, Novo Nordisk, which has confirmed that insulin has been stockpiled. Diabetes UK has confirmed this, stating that it has a 16-week stock of insulin and will continue to increase that stock if necessary.

    I have had meetings with major European pharmaceutical companies, all of which have told me that it will be business as usual. As one put it to me, ‘The UK is too big a market for us to lose.’ They need to sell us their drugs.

    The Government has done its bit. It has set up round-the-clock supply chains to ensure medicines are available in the UK, including freight services with documentation to cross borders in under 24 hours, and it has been stockpiling between six and 52 weeks worth of medicines. It has introduced a ban on parallel importing (the practice of companies importing medicines for the UK, then exporting them for a higher price to another EU market) of certain drugs. The Association of British Pharmaceutical Agencies (ABPI) has welcomed this.

    Finally and most importantly, I met the NHS Confederation at the European Parliament in Brussels. This is the umbrella organisation, representing commissioning bodies, CCGs, NHS Trusts, Mental Health Networks and NHS employers. It is apolitical and the independent voice of the NHS. It said robust plans are in place in the event of a no-deal Brexit. It also believes that not enough is being done to highlight the damage that will be done to EU healthcare systems by the UK leaving.

    I was told that though the UK has stated that it will continue to follow the standards set by the EMA, the EU has not confirmed it will follow suit.

    Much work is still being done to ensure patients can get the medicines they need in the event of a no-deal Brexit. However, having seen the data and held meetings with the various companies, I am in no doubt that we are prepared to leave. What we need now is for the media to stop scaring patients and doctors alike.”

    1. ‘The UK is too big a market for us to lose.’
      That goes for cars, wine, olive oil, cheese, dairy products, biscuits, salami. sausages, coal, gas, white goods, electrical gadgets, rice, pasta, pate de foie gras, …

      1. I check provenance of the foods I buy.
        Wherever possible, I buy goods from non-EU countries.
        Britain first, Commonwealth second, rest of the world third; EU very firmly last.

  22. Well things kick off later today?:

    WE will have to wait and see until later today the oppositions reaction to the Queens speech. This will have to be voted on

    To quite an extent it is all hypothetical as it is very unlikely this government will be able to enact much of the legislation in the Speech

        1. Yes, but Bercow and the Remainers have no respect for convention or indeed for Parliament itself which they have brought into gross disrepute.

      2. That’s why Boris has put all the socialist freebie stuff in, to make it more difficult for them to reject.

  23. Nagsman and I are going to the Speccie’s “An evening with Douglas Murray and Lionel Shriver on Identity Politics” on Monday October 28th. Are any other NoTTLers going?

    Asians are doing too well – they must be stopped
    Lionel Shriver – Coffee House – 13 October – 7:40am

    https://spectatorblogs.imgix.net/files/2019/10/Lionel-Shriver-3.jpg?auto=compress,enhance,format&crop=faces,entropy,edges&fit=crop&w=820&h=550

    Riddle: when is discrimination against a historically disadvantaged racial minority perfectly legal? Answer: when they do too well.

    The first ruling on the Students for Fair Admissions suit against Harvard University is in. A federal judge in Massachusetts concluded last week that for America’s be-all-and-end-all university to discriminate against Asian applicants in order to serve the all-hallowed goal of ‘diversity’ is constitutional. (Or strictly speaking, if you can follow this logic, the university did not discriminate against Asians by discriminating against them.) The reasoning: ‘Race conscious admissions will always penalise to some extent the groups that are not being advantaged by the process.’ The decision has already been appealed, and the case is likely to land in the Supreme Court.

    For American schools, the sole purpose of turning ‘diversity’ into a crowning educational asset has been to disguise the affirmative action that these same universities once openly pursued and now can legally enforce only by calling the practice something else. Fifty years ago, the notion took hold in the US that racial equality would never evolve naturally, but had to be socially engineered by giving historically disadvantaged groups an active leg up, especially in higher education. Bald racial quotas and substantially lower admission standards for minorities became commonplace. Yet using racism to combat racism obviously doesn’t sit easily with the 1964 Civil Rights Act, so multiple previous cases of this nature have ended up in the Supreme Court — whose rulings on the matter have been, to use a technical jurisprudential term, a big mess.

    What makes the Students for Fair Admissions case different is that it’s not white high school students with excellent records objecting to being shafted. Asian applicants to Harvard with dazzling grades and perfect test scores, who play the violin, speak four languages, volunteer for the Big Brothers programme, captain the volleyball team, adopt rescue dogs and memorise the value of pi to 31.4 trillion digits have still received rejection letters in droves.

    How is this possible? Like many choice American universities, Harvard still deploys racial quotas, but by covert means. (After all, how else are schools to achieve ‘diversity’?) Suspiciously, in concert with the other Ivies, and in defiance of fluctuating application numbers, Harvard’s freshman class has nearly identical racial proportions from year to year. To arrange this improbable symmetry, admissions staff have systematically downgraded inconveniently accomplished Asians on their ‘personal ratings’ — purely subjective assessments of character traits such as leadership. Although the federal judge last week allowed that these dismal personal ratings could have been the product of ‘unconscious bias’ (stereotypically, Asians are passive, compliant and unimaginative), the truth is clearly more disagreeable. Depressed personal ratings are intended to skew the data and suppress Asian admissions.

    Asians are doing too well and have to be stopped. They work too hard. They are too disciplined. They are too willing to make short-term sacrifices to reach long-term goals. They are too inclined to obey their parents. They stay up too late studying and get up too early to resume studying. Obviously it’s not fair.

    And they’re making too much money! In the US as of 2017, the approximate median household income for blacks was $40,200, for Hispanics $49,800, for whites $63,700, but for Asians more than $83,000! It gets worse: for ethnic Indians, median household earnings were $120,000. Even in the UK, those ethnic Indians are also doing horribly, unjustly well, out-earning the white British by 12 per cent. And who has the UK’s highest average hourly wage? The Chinese! Who annually pull in 31 per cent more dosh than white Brits. It’s an outrage.

    Yet especially in the US, you can’t argue that Asians haven’t been subject to bigotry. In 1854, the Chinese were banned from testifying in court. In 1882, when the Chinese composed only 0.002 per cent of the population, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, intended to prevent labour competition from earlier hard-working Chinese as well as racial ‘contamination’. All Chinese immigration and naturalisation were stopped; the Chinese continued to be ineligible for citizenship until 1943. In 1924, immigration by other ‘undesirables’ such as ethnic Indians was also curtailed. Fast-forward to today. With the incessant Trumpian trash talk about China being larcenous and double-dealing, Asians still stir distrust and hostility, particularly given soaring American paranoia about being economically supplanted by China.

    The Asian-American success story catastrophically undermines the assumptions behind affirmative action. How could a group that’s confronted so much prejudice still do so bleeding well without any extra help? Asians are showing other minorities up. Accordingly, they’re not really considered a proper minority. By convention in the US, the trendy expression ‘marginalised communities’ excludes Asians. The equally popular catchphrase ‘black and brown people’ clearly excludes East Asians. As a minority that might deserve any special consideration, Asians don’t count.

    In Californian state law, however, affirmative action in higher education is forbidden. Thus out of the 15 American universities with the highest Asian enrolments, eight are in the Golden State. With admissions unconstrained by racial quotas, the student body of the California Institute of Technology is 40 per cent Asian. At the prestigious University of California, Asians compose 38 per cent of students in San Diego, 36 per cent in Irvine, 35 per cent in Berkeley. Yet only 15 per cent of the state is Asian, and only 6 per cent of the country.

    Some believe that the ‘Tiger mom’ phenomenon is likely to grow more dilute as these over-achievers bear children who are lazy and unambitious, like real Americans. Until that happens, I’m happy for Asian students to colonise elite universities to their hearts’ content. These are kids who have foregone movies, TV, video games, drugs, booze, sex, relationships and skipping school to vape in the loo, all to get into the college of their choice. True, they may find on arrival that in America the overpriced top-tier university isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, but they’ve earned the right to make that disappointing discovery for themselves.

      1. #metoo. Have never seen/heard her ‘live’. Not sure if Naggers and I will be able to keep up with her & DM’s pace after a Goya supper.

    2. Look, the Left hate merit achievement, intelligence, conformity, dignity and self reliance.

      They *really* hate it when people are successful because of those values and ethics. They are the most bitter, spiteful, unpleasant bunch going.

      No one needs special treatment. The thing is if you take away the impetus to succeed on their own efforts from a person, they stop bothering – as we’ve seen with inner city black youths in London.

    3. With the incessant Trumpian trash talk about China being larcenous and double-dealing

      She clearly dislikes Trump, but is he wrong on this point? The Chinese government has been engaged in intellectual property theft, aided and abetted by some Americans, for a long time. They have a long-term plan, i.e. a 100-year plan, to overtake the U.S. as the dominant world power. I don’t think that’s just a conspiracy theory.
      The mistrust and hostility in the U.S. is mainly from the Left, and mainly from those who do not do as well as the Asians, i.e. blacks and Hispanics, the ones that the universities discriminate in favour of, because clearly, if they don’t do as well academically, it’s all due to racism and white privilege…Or something.

    4. Some time ago when the children* were still at home, we invited students to stay with us for Xmas. There was an agency that arranged this. Students from overseas often cannot afford to return home for the Xmas holidays. One year two students from Malaysia stayed with us. Both were around twenty-two years old doing PhD things. When we invited them to have a glass of wine, one refused. He said that his father had asked him not to drink alcohol and he respected his father’s wishes. Six thousand miles for home and he was quite comfortable doing what is father had asked.
      Just saying.

      *We lived in an all white part of the world. We ourselves, being from a city thirty miles away, were regarded as foreigners. As dyed in the wool racist extremists we thought it would be a good way to introduce people of other races etc to our children.

  25. So much for Green Energy

    Today at present just 10% of our energy is coming from renewables and that on quite a mild day

    Wind 3% Solar 0%

      1. Biomass 4% (debatable as to whether this is really green)
        Pumped Hydro 2%
        Hydro 2%

        It adds up to 11% though. May be due to rounding

          1. Electricity. The theory is you get slightly more power when using in non pumped you then use electricity to pump the water back. In the end when you take all costs into account pumped is a total waste of time. You can only uses it for at most an hour as the water runs out

          2. Pumped hydro uses more elecricty than it generates. It has to be so. Laws of physics.

            It’s a fix to balance out demand and only works because the electricity used in the pumping is used at off-peak times (overnight), so it’s cheaper to buy in than the power it generates, which is sold off at peak rates.

          3. So then, when you factor in the likely overnight increase in demand due to electric cars needing to be recharged, pumped storage ceases to be so attractive.

          4. Just so. Once demand grows for overnight electricity, it ceases to be off-peak and the price goes up. Goodbye to pumped storage thereafter.

          5. It is just one technology of many to store energy, coping with the fact that energy is not often produced at the same time it is consumed,

            Others include batteries, winding clocks, eating Mars bars, and planting trees – the energy contained in them as wood is locked up until they are burnt; as a long-term measure (on a geological rather than a human time scale) this vegetation is stored underground as coal.

            I welcome any more innovations – the more that can be made viable, the better, and science and enterprise combined can do wonderful things sometimes.

          7. Would that big key to wind up your big clockwork car require a small electric motor to turn it?😎

          8. Or a couple of big blokes.
            Actually there’s a thought. There could be men employed to wind up clockwork cars. They could stand at street corners wearing the livery of the companies for whom they work.
            The companies could be run by entrepreneurs. I’d like to do that. I could be a wind-up merchant.

          9. Excellent, Horace.
            Cars could have crests much like houses had years ago to indicate their insurers but now to identify themselves to their winderuppers – is that a word or did I just invent a new one?
            Hordes of liveried burly men at strategic spots e.g. on steep hills keeping an eye out for their customers. There’s probably some other men, and women, who would find that rather appealing.😎

          10. >>You can only uses it for at most an hour as the water runs out
            Needed to ramp up supply with sudden peaks in demand – half time at a televised football / rugby match.

            The Norwegians buy cheap surplus Danish windmill power & pump their water uphill – at peak times ( or no wind) they sell their expensive HEP to the Danes.

          15. Might have. Or perhaps the other way round. Perhaps it will feature in future speeches to the UN.

          1. They try to claim it is cleaner than coal which is highly debatable burring wood will produce a bit less CO but will give off a lot more pollutants and that ignore the cutting down of trees and turning them into wood pellets shipping them to the UK and then transporting them to the power station. Wood is also a less energy efficient fuel than coal, If you compare it on a like for like basis would may generate more CO2 than coal as you need to burn more of it to get the same energy from it

          3. …and our former coal-fired power stations are sited over 300 years of coal. There’s energy logic for you.

          4. Look here bassetedge, if you’re going to keep being sensible and use common sense you’re never going to get a cushy quango job nor massive government subsidy at tax payers expense. You need to accept that big state is right and that green is good – especially when ten millions of acres are cut down and called ‘biomass’ to disguise the real issue.

      2. Diesel generators make up the differnce to give a full 10% from green energy……

        Ummmmm….

        Oh.

    2. “Today at present just 10% of our energy is coming from renewables”

      Not so, Bill, definitely not so.

      Electricity is only about 20% of our energy mix, the rest being fossil-fuel energy for heating, transport, construction, warfare, etc.

      Even in the impossible event of renewables providing all our electricity, we’d still need to get about 80% of our total energy from somewhere.

        1. No problem, Bill. Unfortunately, the Eco-loons don’t take it into consideration.

          Without that energy and with no ER exaggeration, millions would die. Not to mention all the essential oil-based products provided by the companies they so despise.

    3. We shouldn’t even be taking any of their announcements and requirements at face value, i.e. whether we should be using renewables or not.
      Their core premise is wrong, i.e. CO2, a trace gas essential for all life on Earth, is not a pollutant or particularly worrisome greenhouse gas.

      If they were addressing real pollution and environmental damage, we’d be behind them. But it’s all a scam, so I’m going to burn wood in my woodburner, drive my petrol car, heat my home, and not worry.

  26. Morning Geoff G,
    Out of curiosity did you cast an eye over the
    Dr William Davis ((cardiologist) on U-tube concerning wheat & using your
    loaf ?
    Well worth a look.

  27. We all know this but it bears repeating…..

    Panicking Tory Remainers are determined to sabotage any Brexit deal
    IAIN DUNCAN SMITH – 14 OCTOBER 2019 • 6:00AM

    Philip Hammond and Dominic Grieve have gone into a furious spin at the prospect of a Government win

    Not long ago, ‘rebel Remainers’ in the Tory Party swore faithfully that they voted for the Benn “Surrender Act” because they wanted to ensure Boris Johnson got a deal. I can recall vividly in the House of Commons how they all nodded sagely when Oliver Letwin stated that this was their only goal. Yet within just a few weeks, many of those nodding heads now seem to be shaking heads. Philip Hammond, Dominic Grieve and their cohorts, panicking at the possibility that Boris Johnson may actually now get a deal, have seemingly started hatching a plot to force the UK to stay in the EU beyond the October 31.

    We shouldn’t be surprised. After all, so many of these complainants have form when it comes to changing their position on the issue of Brexit. After Britain voted to Leave, they vowed to uphold the result, and decried a second referendum. Grieve himself said in 2016 that, “If you invoke Article 50 it is a one way street to exit, with no agreement … if necessary”. Yet now it seems these and other pledges are to be trashed. As well as abandoning democratic commitments, many have even taken to casually abandoning their previous political views.

    Take for example the issue of free trade, a cornerstone of Conservative policy. Poverty around the world has been dramatically reduced as a result of open markets and freer and fairer competition. Yet astonishingly, only last week Philip Hammond took aim at the idea the Brexit Britain would be able to increase its GDP significantly by doing trade deals around the world.

    Needless to say he drew on the very flawed Treasury forecast produced whilst he was Chancellor. This is the one which ignored international evidence to the contrary and used very negative assumptions on migration – and even more brazenly referred to unspecified “implementation difficulties”.

    Unsurprisingly, the research concluded that the positive effects of any non-EU trade deals struck after agreeing a Brexit deal with Brussels would be minimal. Such a ridiculous assessment flies in the face of basic global economic history. Not least the repeal of the UK’s Corn Laws in 1846, a move which led to decades of growth; Singapore’s post war GDP per capita growth to 155 per cent of that of our own country today; and the fact that liberal trade deals over 30 years have boosted Australian GDP by a remarkable 5.4 percent. Mr Hammond’s position also flagrantly contradicts a range of successful independent forecasters that show the boost to the UK economy would be between two per cent to four per cent.

    The former Chancellor’s puzzling attitude to free trade lends a worrying insight into the political psyche of so many avid Remainers. One wonders whether over time they have become so corroded by their anger at Brexit that they are determined to see no benefit whatsoever in striking a deal of any kind. Even some of his fellow Conservative rebels are concerned by this extremism: one who rebelled on the surrender act but who, like many rebels wants to support a deal has described the former chancellor as “totally paranoid”.

    Then there is Mr Grieve. Remember how he has twice in the last few months forced through very significant legislation in constitutional smash-and-grabs, allowing MPs less than one day to examine the details. Now the PM hopes to bring a deal before us and get the bill through quickly, his attitude has changed. Mr Grieve claims it would be wrong to force through such important constitutional legislation in seven days.

    He has declared, it “improper”, unaware of the irony. Brexiteers need to brace themselves. Mr Hammond and Mr Grieve appear to form part of a die-hard Tory rebel clique. It may be plotting to give Speaker John Bercow the power to send an extension letter to Brussels – or even appoint him PM in a ‘constitutional coup’ by voting down the Queen’s Speech.

    These hard-core Remainers simply want to stop Brexit and defy the will of the people by any device – whether that be by revoking the referendum result, having a second referendum or taking over government.

    Evidently, this group allied with such saboteurs as Lib Dems, Scots Nats and astonishingly Jeremy Corbyn are determined to break Brexit whatever the cost. But their days of subterfuge are over, and at last their anti-democratic agenda is now exposed to the British public.

    1. ”their anti-democratic agenda is now exposed to the British public”

      Lol.

      Not really.

      What happened to the £100 mil ?

      1. I would argue that it isn’t so much as exposed – we knew it was there all along. The difference is they’re blatantly saying that they want to cancel Brexit, over throw the government and impose themselves on us without any reference to democracy whatsoever.

  28. Jacob Rees Mogg identified the clear fact that Mrs May’s WA, if passed, would turn Britain into a vassal state and yet both he and Boris Johnson voted for it the third time it was presented.

    Very little is known about what Boris Johnson is prepared to accept from the EU but if it is fundamentally the same as Mrs May’s WA then Rees Mogg must be hounded over and over again by the MSM for an honest answer to the question: “Will Boris’s WA turn Britain into a vassal state and if so, for how long?”

    1. My post above re Merkel’s concerns about a free and competitive UK indicates why the EU wants us as a tribute paying, shackled to EU regulations vassal. She would have us on our knees in short order.

      1. Yes we could have a much bigger car industry outside of the EU. Or car plants are now highly efficient as are their staff gone are the days of the inefficient union led car plants. Our car plants could do with more volume to further increase efficiency

        1. Is the car industry a good source of overseas sales? Many countries are very protective of their car manufacturing and impose tariffs at the drop of a hat.
          As for the Vauxhall that the hire company let me borrow last year, it certainly would not compete in any open market.

          4. Thanks Geoff, I cannot (and maybe, will not) keep up with all these pass the parcel situations that seem to happen on a daily basis.

          6. They will not sell many Opels overseas either.

            That is another issue with looking for the auto industry to provide jobs. To get access to the big Chinese/ us / Indian markets, they will probably need to open manufacturing plants in the target countries. Not many jobs at home when they have to do that.

            I think that my Subaru has a few Japanese characters on the nameplate but it was made in Indiana with North American bits and pieces.

          7. Yes, and they are universally bad.
            The only way they can shift them is to get them into car hire fleets – nobody will buy them.

    2. Morning R,
      When the wretch cameron said “we are all in it together”
      he did NOT mean we inclusive of the peoples, his meaning was politico’s only.
      Poking butter up a porcupines bum with a hot knitting needle is easier than finding a MsM outlet to give an honest answer.
      Answer to your last question, for ever & a day.

    3. Yes he said that about May’s deal but if the rumours are correct Boris deal is very different. WE will just have to what for the details

      1. Why haven’t the details been published then?

        I fear Britain will become a vassal state unless we have a clean break with the EU.

        1. The deal has not been finalised and it could all still fall apart but they are still talking and have been fo days so it sounds as if they are working through the details

        2. They haven’t been agreed yet?
          But I suspect there’ll be insufficient time to go through it in detail before October 31st. And that the opposition will vote it down on principle, push through another extension, and install Bercow as PM in charge of a “Government of National Unity,” the only unity being the Remainers, and Leavers can go whistle.

    1. Freedoms defined by the state are freedoms the state can remove.

      British law works in that government can tell you what you cannot do. It does not tell you what you can do. The difference is staggering. This is why British law is better than the Napoleonic nonsense.

      1. Morning W,
        Specifically what I am asking is are the rest of the world entitled
        via the lab/lib/cons welfare policies to welfare payments from
        once they step ashore ?

  34. Well I never:

    A FOUNDER of the Extinction Rebellion eprotests has been accused of “blind hypocrisy” after it was revealed she had flown to Central America for a luxury break despite leading calls for a “rapid reduction” in air travel.

    Gail Bradbrook clocked up 11,000 air miles as she flew to Costa Rica for a week’s £2,500 stay at the New Life Iboga retreat then a week touring the tropical paradise.

    ””
    Yet Bradbrook, who has posted about the need to ground aircraft, proudly put pictures on Facebook during her 2016 Costa Rica jaunt — which left a carbon footprint of 2.6TONNES of CO2 emissions. One photo was of her in a flowery dress at the beach taking snaps of monkeys.

    CORBYNISTA
    She revealed that her holiday of self-discovery included taking hallucinogenic drugs that inspired her calling “to get with the spirit of the otter”.

    And she said it was “filled with nature and the warm sea”, cooing over lizards, iguanas, birds that “nick your breakfast” and monkeys that “smash mangoes on the roofs”. She also gushed that she wanted to use her visit to “express my most passionate self” in “the most filthiest, animal way”.

    Bradbrook said she contacted a spirit known as Grandmother Ayahuasca and got a “kick up the a*** on negative habits”.

    “Just like their Corbynista backers, they say one thing and do another. And as we’ve seen already, they are more interested in creating a scene than offering solutions — all at taxpayers’ expense. Only Boris Johnson and the Conservatives are taking world-leading action on climate change. We have reduced emissions by a quarter since coming to office in 2010, the fastest reduction by any G20 nation, and boosted renewables to record levels.”

    ….

    https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/10123037/extinction-rebellion-founder-central-america-luxury/

  36. I read that Specsavers will be laying off hundreds of workers after Christmas. Seems we’ll all have 2020 vision next year.

  38. A father walks into a restaurant with his very young son. He
    gives the young boy three 10 pence coins to play with to keep him
    occupied.

    Suddenly, the boy starts choking and going blue in the face….

    The father realises the boy has swallowed the coins and starts slapping him on
    the back.

    The boy coughs up 2 of the 10 pence coins but is still choking.

    Looking at his son, the father is panicking, shouting for help.

    A well dressed, attractive, and serious looking woman, in a blue business suit
    is sitting at a coffee bar reading a newspaper and sipping a cup of
    coffee.

    At the sound of the commotion, she looks up, puts her coffee cup down, neatly
    folds the newspaper, places it on the counter, gets up from her seat and makes
    her way, unhurried, across the restaurant.

    Reaching the boy, the woman carefully pulls down his pants; takes hold of the
    boy’s’ testicles and starts to squeeze and twist, gently at first and then ever
    so firmly. Tighter and tighter!

    After a few seconds the boy convulses violently and coughs up the last of the
    coins, which the woman deftly catches in her free hand.

    Releasing the boy’s testicles, the woman hands the coin to the father and walks
    back to her seat at the coffee bar without saying a word.

    As soon as he is sure that his son has suffered no ill effects, the father
    rushes over to the woman and starts thanking her saying, “I’ve never seen
    anybody do anything like that before, it was fantastic. Are you a doctor?
    ”

    ‘No,’ the woman replied, ‘I’m with the Inland
    Revenue.’

  41. Good morning all. A dry start, at last here …..

    The young blonde bride made her first appointment with a gynecologist and told him that she and her husband wished to start a family..

    “We’ve been trying for months now, Doctor, and I don’t seem to be able to get pregnant,” she confessed miserably.

    “I’m sure we’ll solve your problem,” the doctor reassured her. “If you’ll just take off your underpants and get up on the examining table…”

    “Well, all right, Doctor,” agreed the young woman, blushing, “but I’d rather have my husband’s baby

  42. Brexit latest news: Jacob Rees-Mogg claims EU law could get around the Benn Act

    What sheer delight it would be if the pro-Remain traitors were blown away by EU law and this enabled us to get a clean, clear Brexit.

  43. ‘Morning All
    Some musings on Syria,firstly will all those weeping about the fate of the “plucky Kurds” either volunteer themselves or their children to pick up a rifle and go and sort it or kindly stfu,reading blogs like American Thinker an awful lot of americans are sick to death of seeing their sons and daughters arrive home in body bags from another futile attempt to bring peace to Moslem areas.
    BTW if fighting for the Kurds is such a good idea why did we prosecute returning fighters??

    The very people who are weeping the loudest are the very same people who insist on rules of engagement that mean such wars can NEVER be won
    Soldiers are not policemen,there are there to break things and kill the enemy or terrorise them into total submission exactly as we did in the 1920’s with a bombing campaign against the Kurds(among others) which in response to an ambush bombed the crap out of the nearest village including the use of chemical weapons.
    Secondly,there is more wailing that ISIS prisoners may come under Assad’s control as he moves north meaning they might face pretty summary trials for crimes against Syrian law committed in Syria,well boo hoo,for me every foreign fighter should be promptly tried and executed
    Finally lest we forget this civil war was sponsered by US,the West,another failed “Arab Spring” against an elected hardman Assad under whose rule there was largely peace and Christians and Yazedhis were not subject to mass rape and murder and if anyone has any delusions that our interference was anything to do with democracy and not gas pipelines?? Well i’ve got this bridge for sale

    1. If only the west had worked with Russia to control Assads excesses, the wars would have been over before they started.

      1. My thoughts at the time.
        From day one it was obvious that we’d backed the wrong horse.

      2. When the USSR collapsed, we should have given a helping hand, not rejoiced and been bloody minded. (By ‘we’ I mean our useless western politicians.)
        The Russians may not always conform to western ‘values’ but they are basically our lot.

  45. Good Morning All,

    Could Boris be saved by EU Law and the Lisbon Treaty?

    It is agreed by all that at present EU Law superceded UK Law – even Bercow and the Suprememe Court admit to that.

    I am reliably informed that the Lisbon Treaty only provides for only 1 extenstion to Article 50 – which we have already had.

    I need to check this – but if is correct then the so-called Benn Act is irrelevant.

    2. Or:

      https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=snscpgYgrV0
      Brexit | Loophole That Could Shatter The Benn Surrender Act?!
      Jeff Taylor:

      PLEASE NOTE THE FOLLOWING MAY NOT BE A FULL TRANSCRIPT!!

      It’s funny when something doesn’t stack up properly for you and you get that constant nag in your mind that something isn’t quite right and that you should therefore keep digging, isn’t it?

      Well, I’ve had that feeling about the so called Benn Surrender Act for some time now. So I kept digging and I think I’ve found the gaping hole.

      If there are any qualified lawyers out there who can put me right on this, or put some meat on the bones that Boris Johnson can use, please do chip in.

      One thing I have to ask though, is why do some people refer to this Benn Surrender Act as the Benn Dover Act – I’m trying to work out what a Kent town has to do with it.

      Anyway, just to refresh peoples’ minds, the Benn Surrender Act was voted through by parliament in order, it is claimed, to stop a no deal Brexit.

      What it does, is forces Boris Johnson to send a letter to the EU Council against his will and against his own government policy, to extend the Article 50 process.

      Now, what the Act does, by stipulating that the prime Minister sends the letter, is make Boris Johnson the UK representative for this exercise.

      It is there in statute law, the PM, Boris Johnson, must send the letter so is our authorised representative by being both the head of government and having the force of this statutory law behind him.

      Now, those that drafted and enacted this legislation, that is the UK parliament, are 100% aware that Boris Johnson does not want to send this letter – after all he said he would rather be dead in a ditch than send it and has regularly made it quite clear that it is neither his, nor his government’s, policy to do so.

      In response to this Boris Johnson has been threatened with legal action, contempt of court proceedings and even imprisonment by his opponents, if he does not comply with the requirements of the Benn Act.

      The Court of Session in Edinburgh even has a case against him left open to take action should he refuse to send that letter.

      Now, you only have to listen to those making those threats to understand they are not idle threats – these people mean to follow through on these threats with everything they’ve got.

      So, what that amounts to, is the UK representative for these Article 50 so called negotiations, Boris Johnson, is being coerced personally by threats to follow a particular course of action, against his will, that would bind the UK to the EU treaties for a further period of time.

      Now I will read to you what Article 51 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties says. This Convention, to which the UK signed up to on the 25th of June 1971, is called the Treaty on Treaties. And I would urge you to listen and read this Article a couple of times.

      “Article 51. COERCION OF A REPRESENTATIVE OF A STATE

      The expression of a State’s consent to be bound by a treaty which has been procured by the coercion of its representative through acts or threats directed against him shall be without any legal effect.”

      So, by using threats against Boris to force him to be the UK representative to not only send the letter but to also comply with any response in a prescribed manner, that is to express the UK’s consent to be bound further by EU treaties, under the duress of threats directed against him personally, means to me that the Benn Surrender Act should be without legal effect, zero, null, nil, sweet FA.

      Now, I understand that the EU itself is not a signatory to this convention, but many EU member states are, with notable exceptions. But the UK is a signatory, so this convention must surely apply?

      But what really concerns me, is why hasn’t anyone else brought this point up?

    4. Rules, shmules. Article 50 May well say that, but since when does the EU abide by its own rules when it’s inconvenient??

  46. Civil disobedience has already started in Catalunya. Road blocks; marches; it will build and build. Yer Catalans are not going to take this lying down.

      1. The imprisonment for “sedition” of the Catalan politicians who held the “illegal” referendum in 2017.

          1. If only…

            Seriously, imagine the reaction north of the border if she and a dozen other SNP people were banged up for up to 13 years

          2. Not necessarily, but we could see a former pal, Salmond, heading there if found guilty of a number of sex offences – the trial starts in January.

  47. Sedition.

    That’s what Bercow and his mates should be facing charges for.

    13 years inside would wipe the smile from the smug sod’s face.

    3. Another Act that Bliar repealed. Now there is no such crime as Sedition and you now cannot be executed for Regicide nor Arson in HM’s Dockyards.

      Good morning, Basset.

  48. I see some are already complying about the budget including legislation that will require you to produce Photo IS to vote. Some are saying it will mean they need to get as passport or driving licence and that costs money. That will not be the case though. In some of the trial areas you needed a photo ID to vote and if you did not have a driving licence or passport you could apply to the local council for a photo ID you just needed to supply a passport size photo and fill in a form. I think it could be done on line. Not sure if they accepted a bus pass as ID

    In NI it has been a requirement to have photo ID to vote for some time. They used to have a saying “Vote and vote often”

  50. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=snscpgYgrV0

    Brexit | Loophole That Could Shatter The Benn Surrender Act?!
    Jeff Taylor:

    “PLEASE NOTE THE FOLLOWING MAY NOT BE A FULL TRANSCRIPT!!

    It’s funny when something doesn’t stack up properly for you and you get that constant nag in your mind that something isn’t quite right and that you should therefore keep digging, isn’t it?

    Well, I’ve had that feeling about the so called Benn Surrender Act for some time now. So I kept digging and I think I’ve found the gaping hole.

    If there are any qualified lawyers out there who can put me right on this, or put some meat on the bones that Boris Johnson can use, please do chip in.

    One thing I have to ask though, is why do some people refer to this Benn Surrender Act as the Benn Dover Act – I’m trying to work out what a Kent town has to do with it.

    Anyway, just to refresh peoples’ minds, the Benn Surrender Act was voted through by parliament in order, it is claimed, to stop a no deal Brexit.

    What it does, is forces Boris Johnson to send a letter to the EU Council against his will and against his own government policy, to extend the Article 50 process.

    Now, what the Act does, by stipulating that the prime Minister sends the letter, is make Boris Johnson the UK representative for this exercise.

    It is there in statute law, the PM, Boris Johnson, must send the letter so is our authorised representative by being both the head of government and having the force of this statutory law behind him.

    Now, those that drafted and enacted this legislation, that is the UK parliament, are 100% aware that Boris Johnson does not want to send this letter – after all he said he would rather be dead in a ditch than send it and has regularly made it quite clear that it is neither his, nor his government’s, policy to do so.

    In response to this Boris Johnson has been threatened with legal action, contempt of court proceedings and even imprisonment by his opponents, if he does not comply with the requirements of the Benn Act.

    The Court of Session in Edinburgh even has a case against him left open to take action should he refuse to send that letter.

    Now, you only have to listen to those making those threats to understand they are not idle threats – these people mean to follow through on these threats with everything they’ve got.

    So, what that amounts to, is the UK representative for these Article 50 so called negotiations, Boris Johnson, is being coerced personally by threats to follow a particular course of action, against his will, that would bind the UK to the EU treaties for a further period of time.

    Now I will read to you what Article 51 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties says. This Convention, to which the UK signed up to on the 25th of June 1971, is called the Treaty on Treaties. And I would urge you to listen and read this Article a couple of times.

    “Article 51. COERCION OF A REPRESENTATIVE OF A STATE

    The expression of a State’s consent to be bound by a treaty which has been procured by the coercion of its representative through acts or threats directed against him shall be without any legal effect.”

    So, by using threats against Boris to force him to be the UK representative to not only send the letter but to also comply with any response in a prescribed manner, that is to express the UK’s consent to be bound further by EU treaties, under the duress of threats directed against him personally, means to me that the Benn Surrender Act should be without legal effect, zero, null, nil, sweet FA.

    Now, I understand that the EU itself is not a signatory to this convention, but many EU member states are, with notable exceptions. But the UK is a signatory, so this convention must surely apply?

    But what really concerns me, is why hasn’t anyone else brought this point up?“

    2. This has already been picked up. I posted this in last Tuesday’s NOTTL:

      Boris has won victory in the Scottish court, but the case should never have been brought in the first place

      BOBBY FRIEDMAN

      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/10/07/boris-has-won-victory-scottish-court-case-should-never-have/
      _______________________________

      It’s Premium so I can’t read it but this BTL amused me:

      Mike Davies 7 Oct 2019 9:48PM

      Regarding the Benn “Surrender” Act, I think this may hang on the UK Supreme Court decision in October 2018 concerning the bakery that refused to write “Support Gay Marriage” on a cake.

      The ruling was that freedom of expression, as guaranteed by article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, includes the right “not to express an opinion which one does not hold”.

      The judge, Lady Hale, said, “This court has held that nobody should be forced to have or express a political opinion in which he does not believe.”

      That’s the same Lady Hale who was President of the Supreme Court in the ruling on prorogation.

      Nobody can force the PM to write or sign that letter.
      _______________________________

      1. Premium article, so I don’t know what it said.
        Did it pick up on the Article 51 point mentioned above??

        1. Nor had I read it but the BTL makes the same point.

          There is a direct line from Universal Declaration of Human Rights through the ECHR to the Vienna conventions so there is more than one defence for BJ.

  51. For those of you not fluent in Catalan – the editorial line in their press is remarkably similar to that of normal people in England after the recent decision against the government..

    The “supreme court” has stopped being a judicial process but has entered politics.

  52. Latest from leader of catalunya regional government:

    Quim Torra: “To condemn these people is an insult to democracy and a contempt for Catalan society”

  53. Feeling Mondayish…..

    When I was a child
    I caught a fleeting glimpse
    Out of the corner of my eye
    I turned to look but it was gone
    I cannot put my finger on it now
    The child is grown
    The dream is gone
    And I have become
    Comfortably numb.

    PINK FLOYD, “Comfortably Numb”

      1. Hi Belle

        I prefer comfortably numb …..and it’s raining so tennis is off unless it clears by 12….

    2. There’s a couple of guys who usually do that at my pub’s open mic. When they’re backed with a few good guitarists it works really well.

      1. One of our gym instructors uses that as background to a particularly stressful shoulder routine.

        Comfortable and numb are not words that come to mind at the time.

  54. Yer Catalans don’t mess about. Virtually the whole of the centre of Barcelona is blocked by thousands of protesters.

  55. Kurds agree to Russian-brokered plan to allow Assad into their territory. 14 OCTOBER 2019 • 12:38AM.

    The West’s Kurdish allies on Sunday night announced they had agreed to a Russian-brokered deal to allow the Assad regime into their territory in a bid to spare their cities from a Turkish assault after they were abandoned by Donald Trump.

    Hours after the US said it was withdrawing all of its troops from northern Syria, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said it had reached an agreement to allow Bashar al-Assad’s troops into their territory.

    The Donald screwed up here but all might yet turn out reasonably well. This will save the Kurds since they will now have Vlad onside in their argument with Turkey; it will also expand the territory controlled by the Syrian Government and so increase the chances of a final peace. There is one small drawback which is that the remnants of the White Helmets will almost certainly be brought to the UK!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/10/13/kurds-agree-russian-brokered-plan-allow-assad-territory/

    1. Hmm… hope you’re right, but the concept of Russia sitting across the wire from a NATO country, shooting at them, doesn’t make me full of joy.

      1. Yo PP

        Any ‘warlike actions’ must be authorised and names signed to that effect, by the Supreme Court.

        Then they will be responsible for any Btitish deaths

        You cannot have Authority, without Responsibility, unless of course you are paid by the Metripolitical Perlice.

        I purposely avoided saying ‘work for the perlice’

    1. I can claim to be prescient. As soon as it was announced that, the eve of the killings, he had been “hearing voices” I said on NoTTL that they must have been the voices of his imama.

    2. The attack has raised questions about how police failed to notice signs of his radicalisation in recent years.

      Silly question. Anyone who’d raised any concerns would have been immediately dismissed, possibly literally, as being Islamophobic.

    3. All of the pigeons are at Gatwick proving communications links for the check in machines.

      My, if we had ever delivered a system that run that slowly, we would have been in serious trouble.

      1. Would a pigeon equipped with a webcam be considered a drone for airport security purposes?

        Is it possible to train pigeons to respond to command signals from the ground?

    4. I like the pigeon house (I thought the term was dovecot) – pity about the rest of it. I await with interest any comment that corim may deign to pronounce on the building.

      1. I agree with Plum Tart. The dovecot is a beautiful structure and should have been left alone instead of becoming subsumed by crappy new build.

  59. Good day for a fight in the Commons – 953 years since the Battle of Hastings – (Hastings, where Amber Rudd has decided not to contest the next election).

  60. Woke Air Canada Goes Gender Fluid: Drops ‘Ladies and Gentlemen’ Welcome

    When will they stop pandering to these very tiny group of people who claim they are gender fluid?

    Why should they offend as thy seem to think they are male or female depending on what way the wind is blowing or what they had for breakfast

    1. Air Canada standardize on stale banana bread for breakfast. They have to do something to distract passengers from the slop being served.

      We will see how Westjet do. They normally bring a sense of humor to announcements.

        1. I’ve always loved that! Especially starting with the clever “eh up and away” parodying BA’s then jingle “up, up and away”…gave an indicator of the rest….

    2. I had eggs for breakfast, but sausages for lunch. What gender would that make me by teatime?

      1. Not sure, but a portion of toad-in-the-hole should keep you happy alongside the hormone blockers.

    4. One day someone sensible will say ‘the emperor has no clothes on!’ and the spel of stupidity will break and we’ll stop pandering to the mentally ill.

  61. The Queen says: “My government’s priority has always been to secure the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union on 31 October.
    “My government intends to work towards a new partnership with the European Union, based on free trade and friendly cooperation.”
    She says her ministers will work on new regimes for fisheries, agriculture and trade, “seizing the opportunities that arise from leaving the European Union”.

    1. What about when their ‘priority’ was to secure our departure on 29th March?

      That’s a pretty short ‘always’.

  63. Make what you can of that, Nicola want to be out of the UK but all in it

    “We’ve seen the problems that have been created in Northern Ireland and potentially a border in the Irish Sea.

    A lot of Scottish businesses rely on a frictionless border for their trade, of which the vast majority is with the rest of the United Kingdom.
    “Of whatever flavour, there would have to be some sort of border if you become an independent country.”
    The First Minister replied: “I don’t favour borders, I don’t accept the inevitability of that.

    “There is nothing in my proposals that will make a border between Scotland and England inevitable.
    “And I would work hard to make sure we get the arrangements in place to avoid that.
    “Trade between Scotland and the rest of the UK is important, trade between the UK and Scotland is important.
    “But we should also have the opportunity to continue to trade in the single market.”

  64. Good afternoon from a Saxon Queen with long bow and axe.
    Queens speech today but I am still very confused,
    are we leaving the EU on the 31/ 10/ 19, is there a ‘ deal ‘
    will the EU and those in Westminister play ball.
    Will it ever end .

      1. I really haven’t been taking much notice recently,
        it just gives me a headache . I also believe there were
        and will always be those who are determined to
        keep us in the EU, one way or another.

        1. It won’t ever end until the eu collapses, whatever happens on/by 31 October. The hardline Remainers will never shut up and steal away with their tails between their legs.

      2. Don’t worry, Bill. The Bonking Buffooon will ensure that Britain has complete vassal status.

  65. The Queen really could have brought the house down and gained almighty praise from the nation as with a play on words she said,
    “I am having my government committed”
    The good bits were UKIP material, never over the years listened to by the peoples & will never be listened to now by the politico’s.

    1. The Queen really could have brought the house down and gained almighty praise from the nation as with a play on words she said,
      “I am having my government committed”

      A few sticks of dynamite would be more effective.

      1. Ims,
        To crude, people power are the answer, we must be reaching a point now where paedophilia rape & abuse, mounting knifing’s, acid tossers, etc,etc, are seen as being completely unacceptable as these issue were three plus GE ago.
        Only the people via the ballot box can bring about change, so we will have to wait for the light to dawn.

  66. Is there anything else to which you wish to draw my attention, Mr Holmes ?

    To the curious incident of the £100,000,000, Inspector Gregory.

    The £100,000,000 hasn’t been mentioned by the media or in parliament, Mr Holmes.

    That, Inspector Gregory, is the curious incident.

      1. G S spent £52,000,000 in the UK in 2018 apparently to stop Brexit and almost certainly the same or more in 2019.

        Do you think this might be a factor in the Brexit chaos ?

        1. You can make that much through insider trading on currency manipulations that seem to be in direct proportion to how close the UK is to be tied to the EU post-Brexit.

  67. Assad troops enter northeast Syria after Russia-backed deal with Kurds. 14 OCTOBER 2019 • 9:44AM.

    Bashar al-Assad’s forces began entering northeast Syria in large numbers for the first time in years on Monday after the West’s Kurdish allies agreed to a Russian-brokered deal to try to hold off a Turkish onslaught.

    I bet they’ve all got snow blindness from those white helmets laying in the road!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/10/14/assad-troops-enter-northeast-syria-russia-backed-deal-kurds/

      1. Afternoon Joseph. I couldn’t decide if it was lieing or lying so I opted for laying. Hoist by my own pernickety petard. Lol!

    1. At least it’s not Facebook. He’d have been thrown off the platform for being a “hate preacher.”

      Still, he’d better not quote any government inquiry statistics. That would definitely get him banned from Tw@tter permanently…

      1. Afternoon Ims,
        As old willy shaky said standing in the butchers queue in Venice, “truth will out”

  70. France goes to war on bloc enlargement as Macron threatens to spark huge revolt

    FRANCE is strongly opposing the ascension of North Macedonia and Albania into the EU, despite other European ministers calling for the Western Balkan countries to join other member states.

      1. Since when did Angela M. stop collecting countries ? She lost out on the Ukraine and Turkey, and hopefully will be losing us.
        Let her have Macedonia and Albania to cheer her up. Albanians in particular are world experts at washing cars.

    2. “FRANCE is strongly opposing the ascension of North Macedonia and Albania into the EU”
      Makes it sound like a heavenly place.

      2. Wasn’t it a retreating Russian General who advised the Americans not to go there? 19 years later they are still there trying to explain that Wars should be fought like American Football. Mind you the Brits in an earlier century didn’t have too much success suggesting the Afghans should fight their wars as if playing Cricket

        1. Something must have stuck – Afghanistan took part in the Cricket World Cup earlier this year. So it’s not all bad.

        2. The most effective ambassadors for world peace in Afghanistan were the 1970s hippies in their camper vans.

      3. ‘Afternoon, Bill, nobody does well in Afghanistan. We, as the British Empire tried in the 1800s and left without subduing the tribes. It was a bit like my Father’s description of our early pacification of the Scots, “Chasing bare-arsed savages around rocks with a sword.”

        1. Nothing has changed as far as your second sentence is concerned!

          (Takes cover from incoming Scots…)

      4. The AffGaff women were freer.
        Ultimately, Afghanistan wastes western time, lives and money.
        Leave ’em to it.

    2. If Trump leaves troops in the Middle East or sends more, he’ll be damned as warmongering. When he withdraws troops, his detractors discover a sudden concern for the Kurds that they never had before. They didn’t care at all for the millions of lives lost when Obama bombed seven countries.

      1. Actually, that token force in Northern Syria, leaving the actual fighting and dying to the only trustworthy and honourable local militia bringing in a measure of peace and stability there has not been since 2011, was about the first time the Americans got it right since WW2. So what do they do?

        I was not one of Trump’s detractors. He won his presidency fair and square and has a number of sound ideas about the US’s industrial revival and the protection of its borders, even though I disagree with him over Israel and the environment.

        My concern for the Kurds is not sudden though – I was made aware back in the early 1990s how much they were suffering under Saddam Hussein, and stumbled upon a Kurdish demonstration about Afrin in Vienna whilst on a classical music pilgrimage in 2017. Ever since they had shown what could be made from the carnage of Iraq, I have had confidence that the Kurds alone could sort out the impossible wretchedness of Syria since Assad went crazy after the Arab Spring insurrection.

        That the Kurds, with great reluctance, have turned to Assad, Russia and Iran for their salvation suggests to me that they show the world whom we should trust in future.

        The Americans have a lot of work to do undoing the diplomatic damage done to their most loyal allies by that one phone call.

        1. The bigger problem is that Turkey regards the Kurds as terrorists, and will take great delight in wiping them out if they get a chance.

          Then vigorously denying it, as they have done with the Armenian genocide for many years.

          1. They said today they have no intention of containing Islamic State until they have wiped out the Kurds. Islamic State are not proper “terrorists”, and are useful for killing Kurds. They interviewed one IS female escapee today making her way to Turkey in order to be resettled somewhere in Western Europe. I am sure Erdogan would oblige – he doesn’t want these people in Turkey, they are our problem, not his. The male fighters can follow their wives and children as soon as they are done killing Kurds.

            Trump and the UN still insist no red lines have yet been crossed.

        2. The Americans have a lot of work to do undoing the diplomatic damage done to their most loyal allies by that one phone call.

          I would think the “diplomatic damage” irrecoverable. The US is finished in this part of the Middle East for the foreseeable future. Better just to get out!

          1. The US may well be finished too in Europe if released Islamic State fighters start getting to work here. Trump’s only friends, after this huge mistake, seem to be in Brazil, Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and North Korea.

          2. Why do you bring Israel into every comment ? You got an agenda ? It couldn’t possibly be the anti-S disease again, could it ?
            Bracketing Israel with Turkey, Saudi Arabia and North Korea ?

          3. I do so because Erdogan’s annexation of Northern Syria, with his talk of “terrorists” and his scapegoating of the Kurds bears an uncanny resemblance to Netanyahu’s attack on Gaza in 2014, with his talk of “terrorists” and his scapegoating of the Palestinians. They are both supporters of Islamic State and mortal enemies of Assad and Iran. Prince bin Salman is conducting a similar raid on Yemen, regarding the people there as “terrorists”.

            The common factor in all four states is their close relationship with Donald Trump. You also miss out Bolsonaro, who is mounting a similar raid on tribal lands in the Amazon, and must regard the indigenous folk there as “terrorists” as he sets his settler gangs on them.

            Netanyahu has proved to be quite adept at interfering with the political processes in foreign countries, including and especially the UK, where he has been gunning for the Leader of the Opposition for some time. I do wish that there was a separation between the sort of antisemitism that led to the Holocaust, and political criticism of Netanyahu and his methods. The latter is fair game, and should not be allowed to distract people from relentless pursual of the former. I do suspect that Netanyahu has been the core adviser in the current bankrupt morality of certain Western leaders lately; he has been around the longest. He may not have had direct influence on Erdogan’s outrageous invasion, but he may well have influenced Trump to give the green light to it and betray the Kurds (themselves long friends of Israel, which makes it all the worse).

            It must be said though that Israel, of all of them, is a stable democracy, and stands the best chance of pulling itself free of this madness, providing there is the will.

            I hesitated to include North Korea, because Kim Jung Un does not fit the same pattern as the other three. He is a maverick, and perhaps a Korean Beloved Leader version of Trump himself and quite unpredictable.

          5. Done. All I see is a fat old man with a bushy white beard that everyone forgets after Christmas.

          6. The Americans have this naive idea that democracy – US style – suits everyone.
            They hold this belief that once a ruler of whom they do not approve is overturned, all citizens of that freed country will be miraculously converted to the blessings of OMOV.
            It don’t work like that – as we have seen over the past couple of decades; in fact, over the past half century.

        3. ” I disagree with him over Israel and the environment.”
          You are a Giardian reader, or just been following the BBC for too long ?

  72. “Richard Huckle, one of Britain’s worst paedophiles, is ‘murdered’ in his prison cell”
    I doubt anyone is going to shed a tear.

      2. They found his body with a knife stuck in it. Probably not the prison food that got him.

  73. Just announced on Bbc News that HS2 may stop at Old Oak Common to cut costs. That’s RyanAIr’s trick isn’t it – to leave passengers another hour away from their destinations.

      1. It would be more sensible to take most through to Heathrow. Can also connect at Old Oak Common to HS1 to St Pancreas. There were proposals for Crossrail to have a station at Old Oak Common

      2. Since the Birmingham end already is a taxi ride to the city centre (or New Street station for onward connections), plus much of it will be in tunnels where speeds are reduced, it will end up being quicker just to go from Euston to Brum on the existing service.

        Total waste of money. At least the French TGV’s use existing termini, rather than adding time at both ends of the journey.

  74. Surprised and saddened to hear Steven Moore, the voice of 1000s of audio books , voice overs and the voice of Marvin the Paranoid Android has died at the age of 82 . “Life! Don’t talk to me about life”

  75. Comedian and trans activist Daphne Dorman dies aged 44 from apparent suicide

    Comedian and trans activist Daphne Dorman has died aged 44 in an apparent suicide, after the actress posted a final message to Facebook saying goodbye to her loved ones. She accompanied the post with a shot of herself with her name and the dates 30 April 1975-11 October 2019. Along with that, was a message that read: ‘So long and thanks for all the fish.’

  77. AS usual it i a bi of a joke the debate on the Queens Speech. It is just MP’s standing up and liking the sound of their own voice. It seems to be a total waste of time

      2. They would love India, with the overarching smell and haze from wood burning and car pollution on a grand scale.

          1. Is that grandma turning into crackling as she becomes sooty? I thought that had been banned.

      1. If she stopped giving speeches she would cut down CO2 emissions along with volatile organic compounds (VOCs).

        1. I have to make a correction. The CO2 we all exhale when breathing is apparently already counted in the Carbon cycle so it is perfect possible to drone on and on and on spouting bollux and not add to the total amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. Therefore carry on Greta….

    1. May I refer you to India’s take on increasing its consumption of coal by 66% (see below).

      Don’t Indians worship cows?

    1. The US example is spurious too. One of the strictest states is Georgia, with a list of acceptable ID’s:

      • GA driver’s license or GA-issued ID (NOTE: acceptable even if expired)

      • Any U.S.- or any other state-issued ID*

      • U.S. Passport*

      • Military ID*

      • Employee ID issued by US government or GA entity*

      • Tribal ID*

      • Student photo ID from this list of schools:

      http://bit.ly/GAStudentID

      • Free GA Voter ID Card*

      * Must be current

      Since a huge majority in the US have Driver’s Licences, this is no hardship. Except for illegals of course.

      Note the Tribal ID – issued to Native Americans to make sure they can vote. Doubtless Khant could come up with a variation for appropriate Londoners…

    2. Time for the NUS’ input.
      They will be outraged that their members can’t vote at home and away.

    1. No he wasn’t but he was surrounded by an undisciplined rabble who saw what they thought was victory and chased the Normans down Senlac Hill, only to be slaughtered by Norman knights.

      1. Afternoon A,
        Could it not be augued that the opposition had better tacticians “undisciplined rabble” comes across as a bit harsh.

        1. Most accounts say that things were going well for Harold until the fyrd (what might be called the conscript forces) broke ranks and chased William’s forces downhill, thinking that they were defeated and retreating. I expect that William claimed that this was a ruse.

        2. Good afternoon, ogga1. I have been thinking about the Battle of Hastings and, admittedly with a bit of imagination and licence, I can draw some interesting parallels with Brexit today. Harold’s army (Brexiteers) rejoiced after the referendum and, after crying “we won, we won, we’re leaving, hooray”, Harold (Nigel Farage?) left the field, his knights (MPs) started squabbling amongst themselves and the rest of the army pretty well all went home.

          Wlliam’s army (Remainers) on the other hand, took note of Harold’s statement that “in a 48/52 result, it wouldn’t be over by a long way” and fought on, taking comfort that their numbers would swell with time by hundreds of thousands of reinforcements (young people reaching voting age and likely to be Remainers).

          The battle is still, I think, in the balance but, as in 1066, if Harold’s army loses it will once again be because of hubris.

          1. My second thought after hearing the result was, “Now, our most important task, ensuring that we do leave, begins.

          2. That, I think, is the nub of it. Too many of the leaders of the Leave campaign simply forgot or never realised what you so rightly say.

          5. I think too many of us were guilty, as I was, of believing what it said in the propaganda leaflet that “this is your decision, the government will implement what you decide”. After all, we had been used to accepting a majority verdict – that’s always been the way it worked.

          6. I too thought that the government would implement the result but pretty soon things started to unravel. I suppose that, given the closeness of the result and the high emotions on both sides, it was bound to happen but I do think that the Remain side has fought a more effective campaign and that the Leave side has relied too much on the result. Still, the fat lady has not yet sung!

          7. Why should the “closeness of the result” have any bearing on whether it was implemented? One vote is sufficient for a majority to be accepted in an election.

          8. You misunderstand me. The closeness of the vote should not have any bearing on the implementation but it did encourage Remainers to think that they should carry on the fight, much like a boxer who was beaten on a narrow points basis will ask for a rematch but probably not if beaten within an inch of his life. Ok, that may not be a good analogy but you get my meaning.

    2. Wasn’t he late to confront the Norman invading army because he’d just had to battle his brother oop north??

      The background to the battle was the death of the childless King Edward the Confessor in January 1066, which set up a succession struggle between several claimants to his throne. Harold was crowned king shortly after Edward’s death, but faced invasions by William, his own brother Tostig, and the Norwegian King Harald Hardrada (Harold III of Norway). Hardrada and Tostig defeated a hastily gathered army of Englishmen at the Battle of Fulford on 20 September 1066, and were in turn defeated by Harold at the Battle of Stamford Bridge five days later. The deaths of Tostig and Hardrada at Stamford Bridge left William as Harold’s only serious opponent. While Harold and his forces were recovering, William landed his invasion forces in the south of England at Pevensey on 28 September 1066 and established a beachhead for his conquest of the kingdom. Harold was forced to march south swiftly, gathering forces as he went.
      Wikipedia

  84. A good comment under an article about the absurd Nick Robinson of the Brussels Broadcasting Corporation:

    “The test used to be – it should not be possible to tell the interviewer’s political leanings or their own views from the interview”

    Apart from Andrew Neil is there anybody at the BBC who would pass this test?

    1. The politicians have allowed the BBC to end up like this. They have been scared of the BBC so have done nothing.

  85. Ian Blackford is declaiming a fantastic speech from Shakespeare at the moment. Think it’s the National Theatre ? Not the Parliament channel ?

    1. Hopefully he’s playing Antigonus and he’ll exit the chamber pursued by a bear that will tear him apart.

        2. The hooker said to the priest : ” He’s a lovely guy, but he just goes on and on for ever “.

  86. I will shortly stop being boring about Catalunya.

    Two points to make.

    1. Having an unconstitutional referendum (the result of which was going to be ignored) should not bring criminal sanctions in a civilised country..

    2. The Spanish Supreme Court decision is receiving exactly the same contumely in Catalunya as the English one did two weeks ago.

    “Politically motivated and biased judges.”

    The civil disobedience and demonstrations will run and run.

    Comiat democràcia

    1. The decent British – ie those who support Brexit – are too law abiding and well-mannered and this is what the common scum – ie those who want to remain enslaved by the EU and have no respect for democracy – exploit – they see our good manners and decency as weakness.

      But even the worm will turn and the cornered rat will attack its persecutor.

      1. So many times in the past, people and countries have made that mistake about the “Good Manners” of the British. Kipling tried to warn them, but the poem was not taken seriously. Others have looked at our history of fighting and nervously thought “they are not aggressive like that anymore…”

        The countries in Europe would get invaded every Friday afternoon, so they became accustomed to a new wave of men sweeping past their front doors on a regular basis. They learnt to take orders from new people all of the time. Usually the man with the biggest stick.

        We have not been invaded for 1,000 years and we don’t like taking orders from anyone. Even our own politicians. The icing on the cake is we now have many young people who call themselves “Social Justice Warriors” who think that shouting and stamping their feet on their little protests is a sign of strength. It will be a short sharp shock when they find out what a real British Warrior looks like when we finally stop smiling.

        The only thing that is saving these MP’s and the social justice snowflakes from being held to account, is that the vast majority of British people do not realise yet the scale of what is being done to our country, and where this path inevitably leads. When they see the extreme threat to those that they love, and see the politicians who are knowingly taking us there, how do you think that they will react? Threaten to kill our families and watch the British response.

        https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/13ffaea53422e3873848eb08e9fde698a1e202c612258afae0c12eb662e60b22.jpg

  87. Radio 4 news, 4pm.

    “Opposition leaders have dismissed Boris Johnson’s first Queen’s Speech as PM as an election manifesto.”

    They’re worried.

    “Syrian government forces have started to reach the north of the country hours after President Assad agreed to help Kurdish fighters who are confronting Turkey.”

    At this point I was about to shout at the radio but then:

    “Ankara began an offensive in the region last week following the announcement that US troops were being withdrawn. Dozens of civilians and fighters have been killed on both sides. Russia has warned against escalating the situation.”

    Ah. The carefully measured and even-handed language…

      1. So you throw him out of the front door, but leave the light on for him to find his way home?

        2. 🙂 He would do it, but, like his unfortunate predecessors, would pay no attention to minor inconveniences like traffic.

          2. He has the back garden and an annoying Norwich Terrier next door with whom he can exchange insults.
            Burns off the calories a treat.

      2. So you throw him out of the front door, but leave the light on for him to find his way home?

      3. Mine have walked and are saturated.. it is dark , gloomy, mildish temp, mud everywhere.. damp dog towels .. I don’t want to put the heating on but I might later .

        Utterly depressed reading about the scabby ignorant Labour bunch and what may lie ahead.. I hope we don’t have an election .

        1. I would like to see an election but with a pact between Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage. Boris Johnson can only be trusted if Nigel Farage is there to stop him straying.

      4. I put a divers strobe on the hound from hells’ collar so i now where she’s run off to.
        It also scares the wits out of any other dog walkers (and those few kiddies who think they can’t be seen in the long grass).

    2. Is someone preventing her handing her over-inflated pay and expenses to the poor to lessen their misery?

      1. Given her safe seat, she could probably select a random homeless person to replace her.

        AND they might have better ideas on how to deal with the crisis.

        1. Like a lot of the old industrial areas in the region. They will vote Labour whatever happens, because they were told in the cradle that Labour looked after the working man. They’ve continued to vote that way and will continue to do so, not noticing in the 20 or 30 years since the pits, shipyards and heavy industry closed that their heroes haven’t done a thing, while the dole queue lengthened, to change their lot apart from draw their salary and complain about Tory cuts.

    4. That’s because they still buy expensive cigarettes or spliff stuff or even other kit , get their nails manicured , smother themselves in tattoos .. own expensive mobile phones , and have kids by multiple men .. and don’t really care .. of course the state will look after their sprogs.. fecund and feckless.. usually black or very chavvy white.

    5. She could set an example to all at Westminster. She could make a start by wearing sackcloth and ashes. And giving up her salary.

    6. I thought it was very nice of the Queen to help that old man in the green sash to his chair.

    7. …and all because the last Labour Government pissed all the money away.

      Is there a means test for food-bank users? Thought not

      Anyway Charles was only there ‘cos it was,”Go to Mummy’s Work.” today.

  90. An interesting view on Trump’s actions in Syria.

    https://www.takimag.com/article/is-trump-at-last-ending-our-endless-wars/
    “We” is America

    Too many good quotes to put them all, but here’s a couple to ponder:

    “Consider. Today, the Taliban conduct more attacks and control much more
    territory than they did in all the years since we first intervened in
    2001.”

    “Among those objecting most loudly to an American withdrawal from the forever wars of the Middle East are those who were the most enthusiastic about plunging us in.”

        1. Ask him whether Franco had the right approach and then, when he says no, why the current approach is any different from Franco.

      1. Initially found and distributed by granddaughter; great to see that Grannie’s influence is so pervasive.

  93. VERY LAST POST

    Does anyone, anywhere, especially politicians, EVER look at replies to their vacuous tweets (and others)?

    They just tweet their vomit and appear not to understand that, by virtue of being on an open soschul meeja platform (doncha love it?) someone may reply…..

    TTFN University Challenge calls – eventually

    1. Other than President Trump and perhaps PM Boris i doubt any of them actually post tweets. Their overpaid family members do it and are probably afraid to tell them the responses.

  94. In these stress filled-times it is good to relax and be reminded that it is still a beautiful world out there, where the default position of many is to help others, not drag them down. Here is a gentle and relaxing piece of music called “China Roses” by Enya. There are some nice pictures there as well.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFD17YwIZ_g

    2. I’ve got loads of tracks by Enya – all downloaded for free from Youtube – great listening

  95. Despite the noise, there is a kind of deathly silence here, as we all know that there is absolutely no way to leave on 31st October without an agreement, and should an agreement be made it would certainly be voted down and an extension would be a requirement.
    The conundrum remains the same.
    I think everyone should stop pretending. The worst is yet to come.

    1. I’m not being deathly silent tonight. Its just that I have discovered that I have only ordered half of a series of books that I thought I had all of. So I’m trying to find the other 12 that I am missing without paying a fortune for them as they are out of print. 🙂

      I think that a lot of people are now waking up to reality and it can take some time to adjust, especially as we have had a long time of “relative peace.” Certainly compared to some times in our history. 80 years ago you could be going to bed with the sounds of sirens on the air and the chance of being suddenly killed in the night, every night. That would cause some stress I would imagine. We still survived.

      The dragon raises its murderous head every few decades, and we strike it back down again. It keeps coming back. This time the enemy is within our political system and their foot-soldiers are inside the city gates, so it will not be easy. We will fight on though, and we are in the vast majority at the moment.

      Voting out every Remain politician from ALL parties, the next time that we get a chance to, would be an excellent start to putting our country back to where it should be.

        1. Thank you both for the suggestions, I have now managed to order the 12 missing volumes. I hate having a missing book in a series, but to have 12 shows that I must have been distracted by a squirrel or something when I was ordering the series, and forgot what I was doing. It was only when I came to start reading them now that I spotted the missing numbers on the spines. 🙂

          1. This is a good forum for advice when needed. Even if it is an opinion which you disagree with.

    2. I’m enjoying watching Parliament and the mainstream parties all fall off a cliff, revealing their true selves to the electorate for once and the whole charade and pretence that we can ever be a democratic country while under EU rule.

      1. Evening B,
        Will it make a difference ? their actions year on year over the decades have shown their true colours time & time again.
        As I ask, will it make a difference.

      2. Brits are not really under EU rule and haven’t been for years, even if it looks that way.

        G S controls the EU which is why EU policies are the same as his policies, and why he has open door anytime access to EU royalty, namely the European Commission.

        So the reality is that G S has in effect been running Britain since at least 1997, and quite possibly before.

        After all, all major British policies have been identical to G S policies for over 20 years up to Boris Johnson’s premiership.

      1. BJ,
        If a deal is agreed then we are still attached
        you DO NOT delouse a dog and leave a flea in place for future reference.
        Total severance.

  99. Just went to see Downton Abbey at the cinema. On a wet Monday evening there were six people in the audience. It put a smile on everyone’s faces though. No diversity to speak of except a gay Butler. Not a tanned face to be seen.

    1. I was tempted to stop and go to the cinema to see it when I was in London, but I’d had a long day and wanted to get back “home” to the campervan. Hopefully, I’ll get a chance to see it soon.

    2. It was pouring with rain, so I went to see it in a tiny cinema in Broadstairs a couple of weeks ago. First cinema visit for 38 years. The cinematography was stunning but the plot was shallow. It will go down a storm in the US.

      1. Yes, i thought so too. It felt like a big episode rather than a film. I still enjoyed it though.

  100. Evening, all. Been a busy day for me; yet another funeral (falling leaves, as someone pointed out) and a trip to Wolverhampton for the races (he finished third) to round off the day.

    1. I pay my respects but i don’t feel too sad if they have had a full life and been blessed. I was heartbroken about my neighbour at the age of 28 killed on his motorcycle in a head on collision.

      Good evening, Conway.

      1. Evening, Phizee. The last two funerals I have been to have been people who’ve had a long (eighties) life and lived it to the full. The RAF chap was a real character who was frequently “nearly a goner”, but who, unfortunately, suffered from vascular dementia for the last few years.

        1. It’s the dementia/Alzheimer’s that worries me. I don’t want my family (there’s not many of them anyway) to go through that.

          1. It’s not a pleasant prospect. MOH has been diagnosed with “a dementia”, but we’re still waiting for the tests to find out what sort. It’s no wonder I sometimes feel quite depressed!

          2. I think at a certain age we all have a ‘touch’ of dementia. It’s where we get to on the scale that can be scary. I always feel that I want someone who’s willing to help me ‘depart’ and I think/hope I know an army nurse (school chum of my daughter) who wouldn’t let me go on too long.

    1. I wonder if i can get Dolly to do that. Might be diff though cos she doesn’t even like paddling. Throw her in and see what happens i suppose.

      Good night.

    4. That’s not a lobster, it’s a crawfish. I’m not fond of venison.

      Had pheasant for supper last night.

  105. Nell Woodford firm close to collapse

    It leaves him with 2 funds. One he only manages and the trustees of the fund are looking for another manager, THe other is quite a small fund, It looks as if the business will have to be wound up

    Well-known stockpicker Neil Woodford’s flagship fund is to be wound up, its corporate director Link Fund Solutions has announced.
    Link said in an emailed statement to investors that it intended to return cash to them at the earliest opportunity.
    Withdrawals from the Woodford Equity Income Fund have been frozen since early June.
    The move came after rising numbers of investors asked for their money back.

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