944 thoughts on “Tuesday 22 October: The Speaker’s evident determination to prevent Brexit undermines the credibility of Parliament”

  1. Good morning all and thank you Geoff.
    Awake early and having a mug of tea in bed with the DT.

    So when are we going to get the General Election we so desperately need?

      2. Probably because Labour will jut block it as they don’t want an election. It leaves in the crazy situation of having a government that cannot govern having to carry on

        I think it needs a legal test on the FTPA as I dont read it as meaning Labour can get to have a go at forming a government.

        What appears to cover this 14 day period is something in the Cabinet manual . The manual also implies the existing PM can try to carry on or could head up the interim government, It is all a bit unclear and appears to contradict the FTPA itself

        What happens in the 14-day period?
        The Cabinet Manual says that in the 14-day period: “an alternative Government can be formed from the House of Commons as presently constituted, or the incumbent Government can seek to regain the confidence of the House.”
        If an alternative Government is formed, the fact that the second motion must express confidence in ‘Her Majesty’s Government’ means that its leader must have been appointed Prime Minister by the Queen before he or she can test the opinion of the House by putting the second motion.
        It is also important to note that, as the then Political and Constitutional Reform Committee said in their report, ‘Government formation post-election’ (at para 31) there must always be a Government. Hence a Prime Minister who resigns their Government either hands power to a successor,or a ‘caretaker’ administration governs until an election is held. The caretaker administration could be headed by the outgoing Prime Minister (as Callaghan did in 1979) or a new Prime Minister appointed by the Queen. The Institute for Government (IfG) notes that:
        “…at the point when the previous government has lost a vote of confidence, it may not be obvious that their opponents could themselves win one.”
        The IfG points out that a Prime Minister who has lost a vote in such circumstances would have to choose between hanging on and hoping to regain the confidence of the House; or handing over to the leader of the Opposition,even if they seemed unlikely to be able to put together a parliamentary majority.

    2. So, we have a GE and the Labour Party take a hammering and the Tories, with Johnson at their head, lead us in to EU servitude.
      Unless Farage’s party wins enough seats to control the Tories and force a deal that really sets us free we would be up that particular creek…

      1. If Boris does not make a pact with TBP then every Conservative who believes in Brexit must vote for Farage’s party.

        1. Farage has been consistent in his opposition both to this and May’s WA. Redwood on the Tory side too, has had no time for a WA. It will be a disappointment should Redwood succumb to the need to keep the Tories afloat by voting for it.

    3. Morning Bob,
      The reshuffle you mean ? or will we see a very radical change in the voting pattern.

    1. In an interview with Sky News, former cycling champion Victoria Hood said, “It is not complicated. The science is there and it says that it is unfair. The male body, which has been through male puberty, still retains its advantage; that doesn’t go away. I have sympathy with them. They have the right to do sport but not a right to go into any category they want.”

      Now Now. It’s all in the cause of equality! Lol!.

    2. There’s a simple solution: XX women boycott any event where an XY person is allowed to compete. The move will cause chaos for a while but the money people behind the big events will have to come round to be seen to be promoting fair competition. Perhaps too many people have forgotten the era of Russian, East German et. al. domination of women’s sport via the use of drugs.
      Perhaps sporting organisations should have the balls to commission market research to find out exactly how much support there is for transgender events amongst the paying public. Remind me, what % of the human race is transgender?

    3. As with Parliament, it has lost all credibility and I am simply no longer interested, other than its capacity to extort favours from me without my consent.

      We could explore the practice of castrating males in Italy 250 years ago, when powerful opera singers with extended ranges commanded as high a premium as sportspersonages do today. Even though they sang like women, these well-paid eunuchs were not women.

      1. Surely a principal aim of sport is to be able to determine those individuals who are able to further the human race by procreation – winning a race should just confirm the selection.
        Those unable to provide confirmation by procreating naturally with appropriate organs should be relegated to the Eunuch class.
        To strike the right note I prefer Yamaha myself.

        1. Surely a principal aim of sport is to be able to determine those individuals who are able to further the human race by procreation – winning a race should just confirm the selection.

          Didn’t the Germans commence something like that in the 1930s? Master Race and all the horrors that that ghastly idea leads to. I’d rather we allow the best to win medals, make some money and then disappear to live normal lives.

          1. It goes back several decades beyond 1930s Germany. The British Fabian Society was a firm believer on Eugenics from it’s inception.

  3. Far-Right death threat to German politician. 21 OCTOBER 2019.

    The anonymous email threatened him with “countermeasures” including stabbing and a car bomb attack unless he withdraws from the election.

    “If you don’t heed this warning the same will happen to you as happened to Henriette Reker,” the email says, referring to the mayor of Cologne who survived a stabbing at an election rally in 2015.

    “We will try to stab you at your next public event, and if that fails, you can expect a car bomb or some other form of assassination,” it goes on.

    Morning everyone. Things being what they are I always wonder (emails are traceable and warnings seem counterproductive) how many of these threats are sent by the Security Services? The FBI was the largest employer of terrorists in the US for almost 10 years with its programme of planning, equipping and recruiting vulnerable individuals for spurious bombing operations, then arresting them (before they actually killed anyone) and claiming the credit for it.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/10/21/far-right-death-threat-german-politician/

    1. ‘Morning Minty

      Meanwhile

      “The sentencing council is recommending that those found guilty of

      encouraging terrorism would see their minimum time behind bars double

      from five to ten years.

      Longer sentences are also proposed for those caught in possession

      material such as bomb-making manuals that could inspire terrorist

      attacks and for those who fail to disclose information of imminent

      atrocities. Their minimum terms would rise from four to seven years.”

      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/10/21/extremists-convicted-encouraging-terrorism-face-doubling-minimum/

      “Could” now there’s a word to conjure with as I look nervously at my bookshelves

      Perhaps Amazon is next to be hauled into court and sent down for “Promoting Terrorism”

      https://www.amazon.co.uk/Anarchist-Cookbook-William-Powell/dp/1607964813

      1. Morning Rik. This is just part of the intimidation of ordinary people. No terrorist is going to be discouraged by such measures!

        1. Indeed. The word “terrorist” has been debased to mean political opponent and can be used against anyone who gets in the way.

      2. Yo Rik

        Perhaps Amazon is next to be hauled into court and sent down for “Promoting Terrorism”

        Only if there is (Tax Free) money in it for them

    5. “Green New Deal” = taking a bulldozer to crack a non-existent walnut.
      And bankrupting yourself with an unplayable debt in the process.
      Whilst committing suicide.

  6. Audit firm EY, which signed off on

    Thomas Cook’s financial health before its collapse, also wrote a report

    used to award its former boss a £5m bonus.

    The bonus, paid to former boss Manny Fontenla-Novoa, followed a heavily-criticised 2007 merger with MyTravel.

    Senior EY staff will on Tuesday appear before a panel of MPs investigating Thomas Cook’s collapse.

    The audit firm, which also faces an investigation by the Financial Reporting Council, declined to comment.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-50099288
    How much were the audit fees??

    1. Creative accounting in very large firms is the norm. It enable the director to take huge sums out of these firms and leaves them with inadequate equity to cover any small downturn in business. Look at how many large companies have collapsed many of them with pretty safe businesses and with large government contracts

  7. Morning all

    SIR – Again the Speaker has prevented the Government from having Parliament vote on the deal to leave the EU.

    He is determined, before he vacates the chair, to cause maximum disruption to this Government and prevent us leaving the EU.

    His bias and undemocratic 
actions have undermined the 
credibility of Parliament.

    Keith Austin
    Worthing, West Sussex

    SIR – Yesterday Mr Speaker Bercow yet again showed his Remain preference in the Commons. He is a partisan, undemocratic, pompous, self-serving, smug excuse for a Speaker.

    Patricia Griffiths
    Abergavenny, Monmouthshire

    SIR – Before deciding on an extension, the EU is waiting to see if the deal will pass through the Commons.

    With John Bercow blocking a vote on the deal, has he unwittingly made no-deal more likely?

    Christopher Mann
    Bristol

    1. Yo Epi

      He is a partisan, undemocratic, pompous, self-serving, smug excuse for a Speaker

      and those are his good points the poisonous little Quisling

      1. Morning OLT,
        “Has he unwittingly made no deal more likely ”

        In my book that is his only good point, surely.

    2. I hope that he does not receive police protection at the taxpayers’ expense as the repulsive Blair does.

    3. What on earth are our security services doing ? Why have none of these charlatans been authorised for the Dr David Kelly treatment ? (nothing to see here, no sireee !)

  8. SIR – I am brexasperated, brexhausted and brexpiring over Brexit. Please, no Brejoin or I may brexplode.

    David Stolworthy
    Hornchurch, Essex

    SIR – I envisage that many effigies being consumed by fire on November 5 will be adorned with masks of John Bercow or Sir Oliver Letwin.

    David Gray
    Corfe Mullen, Dorset

  9. SIR – How I wish that the Queen could remove the knighthood from Sir Oliver Letwin. He has done the country a huge disservice.

    Sue Lucas
    East Stour, Dorset

    1. The Honours System is now so discredited that it is a wonder that anyone pays any attention to it!

      1. You Minty

        With regard to honours, I think pays (or buys) has a lot to do with the system

  10. Morning again

    SIR – Plastic or not, don’t let them ban cling film. It’s the only way to keep dry a limb or digit in plaster or bandages in the shower. Unless Telegraph readers know of anything better…

    P J Mills
    Dursley, Gloucestershire

    2. It is the best thing for the initial treatment of burns , I is also the best thing for covering food and therefore extending its life

    3. Don’t shower. Have a nurse (nurse-substitute) work you over with a warm wet, flannel.

  11. SIR – Under the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act, opposition parties can keep a minority government in power but vote down all its proposals.

    It is hard to envisage a more ridiculous situation.

    Leonard Macaulay
    Staining, Lancashire

    1. And the reason we are lumbered with this anti-democratic nonsense is because of the nasty little Clegg’s vanity and lust for power

      When he formed a coalition with Cameron the quid pro quo for voting for the massive increase in student tuition fees was the Fixed Term Parliaments Act. He knew that if an election were called at any time he would immediately be out of power.

      So we are up Sh*t Creek without a paddle. Not only did we have to suffer a full term of Cameron’s disastrous coalition with Clegg but now we are trapped in a cul-de-sac with no room to turn and no reverse gear.

  14. Three Welsh weeklies shut six months after promise of £1.5m investment

    Three Welsh weekly newspapers have been forced to close as their publisher suddenly ceased operations, putting 24 jobs at risk.
    Staff at the Pembrokeshire Herald, Camarthenshire Herald and Llanelli Herald were told they were at risk of redundancy on Friday morning.
    Six months ago Herald News UK had announced it planned to invest £1.5m over the next year, creating ten new jobs and relaunching its titles.

    But group director John Hammond said it was decided at a finance meeting on Thursday night that the company was no longer viable as it could not pay its costs after the investment fell through.

    1. Latest: Last minute investor found.

      An agreement with investors means the websites of all three titles will survive, along with the print edition of the Pembrokeshire Herald. It also means 10 of the 24 staff will keep their jobs.

    2. Surely it would be possible for a group of local businessmen to get together and take the titles over as a community service?

  15. History can
    help in understanding politics. It can explain how situations have
    arisen, put things into context, show how institutions developed, and
    how they work. But we have got to a point at which Clio, the muse of
    history, raises her arms in despair. For, as Remainers in Parliament
    gear up to wreck Boris Johnson’s revised Brexit deal, we have never been
    in a situation like this.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/10/21/clio-muse-history-would-despair-remainers-have-done-parliament/
    Anybody put up the full article?? Looks worth a read judging by the comments

    1. Morning, Rik and Campers ….
      Et voila ….

      “Clio, the muse of history, would despair at what Remainers have done to Parliament

      ROBERT TOMBS

      21 OCTOBER 2019 • 9:26PM

      “The Lib Dems are unabashed in their contempt for the electorate’s choice: at least they are honest,” writes Robert Tombs CREDIT: REUTERS

      History can help in understanding politics. It can explain how situations have arisen, put things into context, show how institutions developed, and how they work. But we have got to a point at which Clio, the muse of history, raises her arms in despair. For, as Remainers in Parliament gear up to wreck Boris Johnson’s revised Brexit deal, we have never been in a situation like this.

      This is not to say that it is the worst situation. We are not at war. There is no socioeconomic crisis. The country is – to the surprise of many visitors – astonishingly normal. Even Saturday’s demonstrations in London were pretty light-hearted compared to Hong-Kong. Nevertheless, our crisis, entirely caused by and – for the moment at least – confined to the political world, is one we have never experienced before.

      There is nothing new under the sun, and we could doubtless find exotic parallels in other times and other countries, when elected assemblies looked to some outside power for permission to act. Perhaps to the 18th century Polish parliament, where members took their voting orders from foreign ambassadors. Or to defeated states – say Germany or Japan after 1945 – whose political choices were decided by their occupiers. But this is not our situation, all the more bizarre as it has no obvious cause.

      So what is the nature of our crisis? Liberal thinkers have long recognised that a parliament that rules without popular legitimacy is a form of tyranny, and we have plenty of precedents for Parliament opposing the people in previous centuries. But for the first time since we became a democracy, a large part of the political class, including nearly half of elected MPs, are now resisting the legally expressed decision of the majority. Parliament and the Supreme Court have both acted unconstitutionally, not to defend the will of the people, but to oppose it.

      The SNP and DUP have their own particular and understandable reasons. What about the rest? Most have used and exhausted a variety of pretexts, the most obvious being that they were merely opposing a no deal, for which “no one had voted”. This week, most of these excuses fell away. The Lib Dems are unabashed in their contempt for the electorate’s choice: at least they are honest. What of the majority of Remainers, elected on a promise to accept the referendum result? Even their claim that the electorate had changed its mind – an argument utterly subversive of orderly democratic government – has been exploded. So how can they now justify both blocking Brexit and refusing a general election?

      There is no precedent in our history for this, so we have to accept that we are facing something new. True, there have in the past been people, including MPs, whose higher loyalties were somewhere else. On Nov 5 1605, some tried literally to blow up the whole political system in the hope of a religious counter-revolution. In the Forties and Fifties, some worked for the Soviet Union in the hope of a socialist utopia. But never before have hundreds of MPS worked to undermine the edifice of democratic government. Our long membership of the EEC and then the EU has created something like a state within the state. We must look at Ireland, France, Denmark, Italy and Greece, where democratic votes were in one way or another neutered by a Europe-wide political establishment, to understand what is happening. In all these countries, a substantial section of the political, administrative, business and intellectual classes have been absorbed into a supranational system, which treats national democracy as a problem to be circumvented. Absorbed ideologically, absorbed in their material interests, their careers, and even their social lives.

      British electors have become the latest and biggest obstacle to be overcome. Centuries of representative government, and a century of democratic practice, are being pushed aside by many of those whose duty it is to defend them, but who see their interests, prejudices, hopes and ambitions in conflict with their own voters. The institutions, conventions and rules that we thought we could rely on have proved a house of straw. “Who guards the guardians?” asked Juvenal nearly 2,000 years ago. In Britain today we have no answer. After the next general election, we shall need to find one, and quickly.”

      Robert Tombs is the author of The English and Their History

      1. Thank you Anne, I was about to do the same when I noticed that someone was typing a response.

        1. De nada.
          Off for a long hair appt; highlights i.e. the whole nine yards.
          A girl has to keep trying. Never say dye! 🙂

          2. 🙂 I haven’t had long hair since I was ten.
            When I started at my new school, I had a punch-up with the only other blonde with curly tresses in the class who deeply resented my arrival. Until then she had been the focus of attention.

          3. Morning Anne , that reminds me ..

            Moh scissored my hair a few weeks ago .. the local hair salon has little girlie snippy nippy cautious types , a previous appointment became a disaster .. I normally travel 12 miles for the real thing , have visited the same teasy weasy for 35 years .. when the Dallas look was the in thing!..

            Sadly all the young Teasy weasy dudes become bald old dudes .. and the conversations and loyal fan clubs also become rather strained and dated .. as do the glitzy gold interiors ..

            I always pray the dye records are kept up to date .. Hope you enjoy your experience!

          4. I remember my hairdresser setting up her salon.
            Last week her business celebrated its fiftieth anniversary.
            It’s the sort of local place where you can guarantee meeting people you have known for years.

          6. “The whole nine yards”? No, Annie, no! You will only trip over your hair when you walk. Be like me and adopt the Shami Chakrabati look and look more like a pixie.

            Incidentally, I watched the film OFFICIAL SECRETS yesterday which showed Shami in the days she worked for Liberty in a quest to protect a whistleblower who exposed the UK and US Governments’ lying over the Iraq War. Clearly, at the time she was very much against politicians’ lying and “dirty tricks”.

            Of course, what the film did not mention, was that later on she was asked by Mr Corbyn to investigate the allegations that the Labour Party was anti-Semitic and – surprise, surprise – concluded that it was not. Arise, Lady Shami!

  16. I see the smug creep Toy Boy Trudeau has been re-elected. What’s the matter with Canadians?

    The same thing will happen if we ever have a General Election in the UK. The same ghastly people will stand from the same ghastly parties – and will be elected.

    1. Part of our problem is FPTP politicians will try to claim that you vote for a person that is clearly not the case for most people. They vote for a party. The candidate will wear the parts rosette . The candidates election literature will be Party branded and they will stand on the parties manifesto . A further test is to ask people the name of their MP the vast majority will not know although they will know the party they voted for

      When you take it down to local policies if you were to ask a thousand people the name of their local councillor most would give you a blank look if you found even two that new you would be doing well

      1. Would you be so kind as to explain how PR voting works, how the List works and whether or not it is possible to get rid of a sordid MP with influence with his party who has a safe position on the List?

        Tony Benn was a man of principle even if he sired a piece of excrement.

        His test of a democracy was: Can you get rid of the bugger through the ballot box?

        1. The Norwegian system is complex, but you can vote for an individual to be the MP, so they rise in the rankings, even if they are from another party. Sounds crazy, but this years local elections, several well-established politicians were voted off, even though their party got most votes.

    3. ‘Morning, Bill. His will be a minority government, so he will need to cobble together an arrangement with one of the other parties. We all know how that might end…he deserves nothing less, of course.

    4. Reminds me of Groucho Marx who said he did not want to join a club which would have him as a member.

      The MPs’ view is: “Why should I respect anyone who is stupid enough to vote for me.”

  18. Elephant riding holidays abroad offered by British travel companies could become illegal under plans being considered by Defra.

    Senior sources at the department said they were seeking the best

    legislative route to banning the “appalling” holidays, with plans to

    hold a consultation into banning it.

    British holiday companies currently offer experiences abroad in

    countries including Sri Lanka, Thailand and India, where travelers can

    ride elephants or watch them perform “tricks”.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/10/21/elephant-riding-holidays-could-become-illegal-plans-considered/
    I have never been keen on these sort of “Experiences” especially after reading of animal abuses of elephants and tigers in particular but I have to ask will all British tourists be microchipped to monitor their activities on holiday?:?
    Their promotion will move from the brochure to in country,this is a prime example where environmental education to turn children off such things could actually do some good.
    But hey lets just signal some virtue,that’ll sort it

    1. If Nellie the heffelump isn’t making money for her mahout, guess what happens to Nellie? She gets “retired”.

  19. The final debate on the Queens Speech is today. The fun and games will then kick off again when it comes to the votes. It will all be about political point scoring rather than the content of the queens speech

    A vote should be taking place today o the WAB. Whether it does who knows

  22. Brits go out through Boris’ revolving door……

    ……then straight back in again !

    And the Brussels fox then rules the British roost……

    Bruges Group 🇬🇧 @BrugesGroup

    The European Communities Act will be repealed on exit day. However, the Withdrawal Agreement Bill effectively restores the act for the duration of the transition period.

    Is Boris a Brussels fox ?

      2. Good morning, Bill

        Many of us here suggested that this would be the case as soon as Boris came to power.

        He thought he would gain a political advantage by backing the Leave side when his colleagues went the other way but he has never truly believed in Brexit.

        He lacks the testicular strength to join forces with Nigel Farage. If he were a genuine Brexiteer he would have seen that this was the only way as soon as TBP won the European elections. The Conservatives and TBP would win a general election and achieve a proper Brexit – I cannot see any other course working. Can anybody here see one?

    2. Same deal, different salesman. Good old Boris with his ‘Bounce’ of popularity will finish what May started. By the time the electorate wake up he will have caved in at the trade deal stage and it will be game over for the UK. Farage has taken a bit of flak over his intransigent stance on this “deal” but he was correct when he forecast exactly what Johnson was up to i.e. doing a Lazarus on May’s “deal” and he’s correct now; it’s nothing short of a sell-out.

    3. That though is not correct. In Mays deal we remained in the Single Market & Customs Union for an indefinite time

      1. Bill, you haven’t read the facts.

        Section 12 of the Extension Agreement reads:
        (12) This extension excludes any re-opening of the Withdrawal Agreement.

        Any unilateral commitment, statement or other act by the United
        Kingdom should be compatible with the letter and the spirit of the
        Withdrawal Agreement, and must not hamper its implementation.

        Such an extension cannot be used to start negotiations on the future relationship.

        After reading this, how can Boris’ deal be different?

  25. Katie Price quits Celebrity SAS after just 48 hours in £120,000 gig

    I doubt she will get the £120K . They probably get a retainer and then an amount for each day

    Katie Price has quit her big comeback gig on Celebrity SAS after just 48 hours.
    The former glamour model, 41, found the process too difficult and has already left Raasay Island in Scotland where the gruelling show is filmed.

    She was being paid £120,000 for her brief stint on the show.
    It was meant to be her opportunity to relaunch her struggling career and boost her finances

  26. Does anyone actually know why Boris and Treasa want Brussels to control Britain for a year plus with no British veto ?

    Seems stoopid, unless you actually want to be ripped off..

    1. Good morning, Polly

      Have you any suggestions as to why they want to sell Britain to foreign powers?

    2. The theory is it allow for a trade deal to be negotiated but given the incompetence and time wasting of our politicians the chances of them doing that in 14 months is ZERO. In theory it should be straightforward as we all ready meet all the EU legislation for goods

      1. Oh, wake up!
        Fishing, farming and finance will be wide open to anything the EU decide to do. Our trade outside the EU, imports and exports, will be hobbled.
        All backed by a legal treaty which we have signed and which will be adjudicated, if challenged, by EU judges.

      1. Morning R,
        Party before country via the ballot booth is at fault,
        Note what type of creature would down vote the Gerard Batten Post ?

        1. What kind of snake in the grass coward blames a third party ( it purportedly supports ) for ‘its’ downvotes?

          1. You for one should know being a follower of failure & a down voter, check in your dads shaving mirror.

          2. If you don’t approve of the valid use of Disqus functions feel free to vote with your feet & go elsewhere to use a platform that suits your fragile persona, you won’t be missed.

          3. Define “valid use” and there is no need for walking, let your fingers do the talking, ask an adult to help you with my reply.
            Must be off, rather busy.

      2. Morning Richard

        Dear heavens above , what has this country become . Who allowed this to happen .. Why are we quickly becoming another Muslim island .. in the space of under fifty years .. Mosques and knife crime, barbaric slaughter and duplicitous dealings are amongst us.. things are happening here in Britain that we used to read about that happened in far away places other than Europe. .

        The law is terrified of these people because everything could get out of hand very quickly .. middle Eastern / Indian sub continent history is proof of that!

      3. Who has authorised this two tier system of justice? I don’t imagine that the authorisation is written down but the nod has been given to proceed. I think we all know which organisation has the network of people in the right places to spread this cancer.

        1. It’s obvious that we ( non moslems ) are no longer served & protected by ‘the rule of law’, it is rapidly being ‘spun’ to the dictatorial ‘subservient to rule by law’ ( sharia? ), with precious little protection from it.

          1. That will lead to trouble; of course, that’s what the PTB desire as that will allow more draconian laws to be passed to control the indigenous. Our political class are in lockstep with the EU.

  28. A Spekkie read.

    https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2019/10/how-a-chicken-shop-was-cancelled/

    “How a chicken shop was cancelled
    Will Maule

    From the moment the popular American fried chicken vendor Chick-fil-A opened its inaugural UK branch in the city of Reading, gay rights activists started mobbing it with complaints and calls for it to close.

    Why?

    Well according to Reading Pride who led the campaign, the food outlet’s charitable donations to ‘anti-LGBT’ organisations such as The Fellowship of Christian Athletes and, God forbid, The Salvation Army, was indicative of their unforgivable bigotry. The Fellowship of Christian Athletes are opposed to same-sex relationships and marriage equality, and the campaigners say several charities Chick-fil-A gives money to are hostile to LGBT rights. And so, cancelled they must be. Chick-fil-A’s first batch of specialty chicken and waffles had barely been dunked into the fryer when Reading Pride announced a call to arms in the form of a boycott.

    ‘We respect everyone’s freedom to eat where they choose,’ they qualified, ‘however, we ask the LGBT+ community (including its allies) to boycott the chain in Reading.’

    Now, barely a week after the chicken shop began serving British customers, Reading’s mall, The Oracle, has announced that it will not be renewing the company’s lease. ‘We have decided on this occasion that the right thing to do is to only allow Chick-fil-A to trade with us for the initial six-month pilot period, and not to extend the lease any further,’ The Oracle said in a statement, noting that it seeks to ‘offer an inclusive space where everyone is welcome.’

    The officials at The Oracle clearly brushed over the fact that Chick-fil-A has some of the most generous employment opportunities available in catering – including scholarships and management schemes – and retains a staff that is world-renowned for its service. Chick-fil-A employees are seen as the friendliest in the entire fast food industry in the US, and the chain would have been a welcome addition to Reading. But now, the Chicken-fried dream is over.

    The Chick-fil-A haters didn’t stop there though. In a bizarre statement, an affiliated LGBT group even suggested that the British government should investigate the chain before allowing them to open any UK-based restaurants.

    ‘Parliament should be questioning businesses like this that work against the values of our amazing country,’ said UK Pride Organisers’ Network member Stephen Ireland, according to the Christian Institute. How Chick-fil-A was ‘allowed to hit the UK high street without openly answering the concerns of the LGBT community’ was shocking, they added.

    True to its Christian ethos, Chick-fil-A, the third-largest restaurant chain in America, responded graciously to the bad press. ‘We hope our guests in the UK will see that Chick-fil-A is a restaurant company focused on serving great food and hospitality, and does not have a social or political agenda,’ a spokesman said when the boycott was announced. ‘We are represented by more than 145,000 people from different backgrounds and beliefs, and we welcome everyone.’

    Still, more clarification was needed. Chick-fil-A doubled down on its commitment to diversity and equality, and defended the charities it supports. ‘Our giving has always focused on youth and education. We have never donated with the purpose of supporting a social or political agenda,’ the company said. ‘There are 145,000 people – black, white; gay, straight; Christian, non-Christian – who represent Chick-fil-A.’

    But the writing was already on the wall.

    For the simple sin of giving away millions of dollars to worthy causes, the popular eatery has fallen victim to the mob of intolerance and will be forced to close its doors to a British people who, sadly, will no longer have the chance to taste its chicken, and see that it is good.”

    2. The gay people that I know just want to live their lives and care nothing about these LGBT extremists and disown them. The political ambitions of these crazed Christian-haters are being shown clearly now. After years of pretending to want equality, their goals of total domination of society are there for all to see.

      1. “We just want equality”
        “Fine have a civil partnership”
        “No,we demand marriage”
        “Ok ok if you must”
        “Getting there,now bake the cake, bigot”
        Always the ratchet only turns one way……………………….

      3. Homosexuals and the practice of homosexuality are a sure sign of civilisation slithering into immorality, licentiousness and oblivion. Christianity condemned and punished in a Christian country is not a healthy route to take.

    3. I wonder if the rainbow group will now go on and investigate the ethics of all the people running kebab take-aways and have them closed down?

      1. Who cares about animals flipped onto their backs and choking to death in their own blood?
        You judgmental, person, you …..

  29. Let’s be honest about what a second referendum means
    Brendan O’Neill – Coffee House – 22 October 2019 – 6:30 AM

    A second referendum would be a political abomination. And it’s about time more of us said so.

    We need to get real about what a second referendum would mean. If we have another referendum in which Remain is an option on the ballot paper, it will be the first time in the history of British democracy that the British people voted for something and it didn’t happen.

    It will be the first time we made a clear, mass democratic choice and the political class turned around to us and said:

    ‘Sorry, you can’t have that. You have to vote again.’

    The precedent this would set would be dreadful. It would rip up the democratic contract itself. It would rupture the bond that exists between the people and the political class — the bond that says that when we make a decision, they act upon it. Democracy cannot function if this bond is broken.

    It is striking that the phrase ‘second referendum’ has largely fallen out of fashion. That’s because the politicians and campaigners who want another referendum recognise, at least instinctively, that they are doing something wrong.

    They know how the words ‘second referendum’ sound to most people. They make it sound as though the political class doesn’t trust us. That they think we are ignoramuses who made a dumb decision in 2016 and therefore must be given a second chance to make the right decision — the right decision being to vote Remain, of course.

    And so some doublespeak phrases have been invented to disguise the deeply undemocratic and patronising nature of a second referendum. Some campaigners call it a ‘confirmatory vote’. Others call it a ‘People’s Vote’.

    The army of Remainers who marched in London on Saturday did so under the banner of a ‘People’s Vote’. They overlook that we had a people’s vote already, in June 2016, and that it was the largest people’s vote in the history of this country. It’s a bit of a bloody cheek to march for a ‘people’s vote’ when really your aim is to overthrow a people’s vote.

    Labour, which will this week whip its MPs to back a second-referendum motion in parliament, has taken to calling it a ‘Final Say’ referendum. That in itself is a pretty terrifying phrase. Why should the second referendum be the final say? Why wasn’t the first referendum the final say?

    The thing is that however a second referendum is dressed up, it remains just that: a second referendum. This is the key question: is Remain on the ballot paper? If it is, then it is a second referendum, and it is an entirely illegitimate vote to hold.

    Of course, every single campaigner for a confirmatory vote, a ‘People’s Vote’ or a ‘Final Say’ wants Remain on the ballot paper. They make this clear constantly. Because their true aim is to try to do over the result of the first referendum — the legitimate referendum.

    The most unconvincing claim made by second-referendum agitators is that democracy always involves going back to the people. ‘Democracy is an ongoing process’, they say. We vote in General Elections every four years, so why shouldn’t we have another EU referendum given it is nearly four years since the first one?

    Here’s why that is staggeringly disingenuous and almost unbelievably cynical: because the difference in this case would be that the result of the first vote would not be enacted before we were made to vote again. Let’s say that one more time: a second vote would take place before the first vote had taken force.

    This would be clearly, obviously and alarmingly anti-democratic. Comparing a second referendum to a General Election is ridiculous. When we vote in a General Election, the thing we vote for actually happens. The party we vote for forms a government. It passes laws. It does what it says it would do (sometimes).

    Imagine if there was a General Election and a majority of people voted for the Tories but various political elites and business elites prevented the Tories from entering Downing Street or forming a government. Imagine if they frustrated the creation of this democratically-elected government for nearly four years. And imagine if they then said to the public:

    ‘You can’t have this government. You were wrong to vote for it. Now you must vote again.’

    That would be shocking, right? That would be an outright assault on the entire principle of democracy, yes? Well, if you are one of the ‘People’s Vote’ or ‘Final Say’ activists, this is exactly the scenario you are fighting for. A scenario in which the people are told they cannot have the thing they voted for and must instead take part in a second vote. Can you just think about that for a moment? Like, really think about it.

    In 2016, we were told again and again that this was a once-in-a-generation vote (Nick Clegg) and that we wouldn’t be made to vote again (Peter Mandelson) and that the government would enact what we voted for (David Cameron and every single MP who signed up to the EU Referendum Act).

    For the establishment to backtrack on all of this would do irreparable damage to democracy and to people’s trust in politics. If you are campaigning for the holding of a second vote before the first vote has taken force, then, frankly, you should be ashamed of yourself.

      1. The sole purpose of the second referendum is they think it gives them the best change of overturning Brexit. They hope apathy will help them

        I don’t see a referendum achieving anything. For starters there are 4 Leave Options at present. Leave with Mays Deal, Leave with Boris’s deal or Leave with No deal. Leave with a modified Boris deal

        1. You missed ITV news Bill.

          Sir Kier Starmer carefully explained the wording of the second referendum:

          We either Remain, or we Leave under May’s terms.

          That’s all. A binary choice.

          [As we all realise, May’s WA is BRINO].

    2. The precedent this would set would be dreadful. It would rip up the democratic contract itself. It would rupture the bond that exists between the people and the political class — the bond that says that when we make a decision, they act upon it. Democracy cannot function if this bond is broken.
      Exactly.

      1. Any Referendum should not have Remain on it but if it did not the Remainers would go off of the idea

        I have a solution but the Remainers would not like it, WE have a Simple Remain or Leave ( Leave would include, May’s deal. Boris’s Deal or No Deal)

        If Leave Wins a further vote is taken using the transferable vote system to decide which way of Leaving is the Preference

          1. The problem is the MP’s will; not allow it to be implemented. They will keep trying add amendments to it and to delay it though strangely when it suits them they can push legislation through in hours

          2. So the MPs rule the people. That is not democracy, is it? Having a thousand referenda is meaningless if none are implemented because our rulers refuse.
            The problem becomes the MPs who have stolen from the people their right to democratic government. We are close to complete democratic collapse, to power fallen completely into the hands of the unelected, including unelected foreigners.

          3. MPs are supposed to be representative, but they are not for as long as there are whipped parties there. In 2015, one of those whipped parties got a popular national vote of 4 million and one MP who refused to take the whip for long. The party understandably fell apart when it lost its figurehead, denied his place through electoral fraud in Kent, for which the perpetrators got away scot free.

            UKIP’s lack of a voice and a representative vote for its position on Brexit since 2015 is responsible for the mess that Parliament is in today, and the breakdown of public confidence in its capacity to make any decision about negotiating with, or leaving the EU.

      2. For a free, independent country, definitely. Brussels will be stoking up the asset strippers.

  30. Yeah, right and I have a bridge in London that I can sell you.

    BTL is not convinced by either Barclay’s assurance or that the EU would agree or worse, stick to any agreement once signed. With the EU under the aegis of the political ECJ they would literally have us over a barrel. Little wonder that Johnson is attempting to rush this “deal” through with little scrutiny.

    My intervention during the debate on the European Union (Withdrawal) Acts, 21 Oct 2019
    By JOHNREDWOOD | Published: OCTOBER 21, 2019

    John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con): This debate should be about restoring the independence of our country in accordance with the votes of the referendum. Given that in the implementation period the EU will have massive powers over us, is there something that the Government can build into the draft legislation to give us reassurance that the EU will not abuse those very excessive powers?

    The Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union (Mr Stephen Barclay): Yes, I am happy to give that reassurance to my right hon. Friend. That is something that we can commit to do as we move forward.

    ========================================================================================================================

    BTL

    J Bush
    Posted October 21, 2019 at 1:12 pm | Permalink
    Pity he couldn’t elaborate how and in what way the government intend to stop the EU’s abuse of power, when it will be an international treaty.

    Why do politicians think it is necessary to have a treaty with strings attaching you to organisation you want to leave?

    BillM
    Posted October 21, 2019 at 1:27 pm | Permalink
    But can we really believe the Minister? Unless it is FIRMLY WRITTEN into the agreement, the EU will ignore any such approaches. The Government assurances that they will “Commit to it as we move forward” after accepting an agreement without its terms is completely meaningless.

    alan jutson
    Posted October 21, 2019 at 1:36 pm | Permalink
    How about “nothing is agreed or finalised, until all is agreed” being WRITTEN into the withdrawal agreement

    If both sides accept this, then there is protection for both, if only one side will, then we know the true answer, we will be screwed.

    Len Dann
    Posted October 21, 2019 at 1:41 pm | Permalink
    You want the EU to promise not to abuse its power. Do you realise how silly that is? Do you think the UK would ever make such a promise?

    John Redwood’s Diary- My Intervention re EU Withdrawal Acts

  31. PM Aims to push through bill in 3 days

    Boris’s track record on these votes is not good. The dice are loaded against him so how he is going too do it I do not know. Bluff and bluster will not do it

    Boris Johnson will urge MPs to back his Brexit deal later, as he launches a final bid to get the UK to leave the EU by the end of the month.
    MPs are to vote on whether to back the prime minister’s Withdrawal Agreement Bill, which was published on Monday.
    If they back his deal, they will then be asked to approve an intensive three-day timetable in which to consider the legislation.
    Opposition MPs have said this will not be enough time to scrutinise the bill.

    1. He is right.

      But if he does not vote it will be taken as consent to something with which he does not agree.

      But part of the MSM’s and politicians’ policy of destroying democracy is to make people so frustrated that they will give up voting altogether. This is what they want so even if your vote doesn’t count the fact that they can frustrate you into not voting at all gives them a victory.

  36. Statement of the bleedin’ obvious coming up.

    I blame the whole of the chaos that is modern life – screaming mobs, rebellious “students”, alphabet protests, anarchists, traitorous MPs etc etc etc (you can add you own) to social meeja.

    When one had to write a letter or queue at a phone box or knock on doors to get a message across or try to create some sort of meeting or protest – very few were actually involved.

    Now, a the drop of a tweet – a million people can be informed in a trice.

    1. Morning Bill

      I am annoyed that reformed County councils are also in on the act .. and ….. they are also encouraging youth councils and very green issues , yet continue to give planning permission for hundreds of new homes to be built in the countryside .. Sickening hypocrites.

      1. Yet they will turn down an extension on a cottage down a rough track in the middle of nowhere for being “out of keeping with the local vernacular and incongruous with the street scene”.

        1. Indeed. That happened to a friend of mine. His cottage is listed and he wanted to build an annex in keeping with the style. It took him eight years of wrangling with the planning department before he finally got permission.

  37. Ageing prison population ‘sees officers working as carers’.

    More and more inmates were frail, incontinent or had dementia, the POA said.
    The ageing jail population has left prison officers providing care for a growing number of older inmates “dying in front of them”, officers have said.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-50082036

      2. Reading down the article I think it might be the man convicted for 13 yrs at the age of 101 of sex offences comitted during the 70s/80s. It seems some of the problem arises from convictions late in life for crimes earlier in their lives.

        1. Family get to keep the home and aren’t lumbered with care. It’s a no brainer. First sign of dementia or incontinence and I’m off to the local primary school to bag me a place in a free care home for the elderly. Have to be a bit careful though – any hint that what I am up to is compliant with LGBT practices and they might not pick me up.

          If they put me in a cell with a fanatic jihadi, then all I need do is to insult his Prophet a few dozen times, and it would even spare the cost of a Swiss clinic or a spell in the local PFI Special Measures Exciting Retail Development Opportunity (aka “hospital” as in corporate hospitality).

    2. My cell has already been reserved, for when I refuse to pay the TV Tax next ‘Month between April and June’

      I just cannot say the ‘M**’ word

    3. Not surprising. If I need a care home when I’m retired, I’ll need to rob a bank to pay for it. If I get caught, so what? Living in gaol will be much cheaper.

    1. Shirley, that’s why Johnson doesn’t want close scrutiny. He will be found wanting on his EU stance but I fear it will be later rather than sooner. The Tories remain on the road to self destruction, Johnson’s thin veil of popularity has only postponed the day of reckoning. Who will appear who is strong enough to abrogate what Johnson is tying us up in?

  39. AS a hate crime seems to be anything one is personally offended by could I records as a hate crime the LGBT flag ?

    1. Remainiacs like Blackford play the three monkeys brand of support for the calamity that is the EU.

        2. Well I could have tried searching Wimbledon, plum and tart but all I got then was strawberries and cream!

    2. ” But wherefore could not I pronoune “Amendment”?
      I had most need of blessing, and “Amendment”
      Stuck in my throat”

  42. Shall we ever forget him – I can see him spending many hours watching himself on YouTube in the future:

    John Bercow has only 10 days left as Speaker. But you can be sure he’s going to make the absolute most of them. He’s going to suck up every last drop of sweet, sweet drama, like a small boy slurping the dregs of a slushy.

    This afternoon Boris Johnson hoped to hold a vote on his Brexit deal. But to do so, he needed the permission of the Speaker. Mr Bercow sprang importantly to his feet, unfurled the manuscript of his ruling, and proceeded, with booming aplomb, to declaim.

    He clearly loves moments like this. Which is presumably why he draws them out so long. It’s like watching some crucial moment of The X Factor: the way Simon Cowell makes everyone wait and wait to hear his decision, the studio audience holding its breath, the contestants’ foreheads icy with sweat – and then nonchalantly announces his verdict, the fans erupting as he sits back and surveys his kingdom with a look of cat-like satisfaction.

    Today Mr Bercow had been addressing a hushed Commons for a full six minutes before he at last confirmed that, no, on this occasion he would not permit a vote (on the grounds of “the so-called ‘same question convention’, which dates back to 1604…”). Indignant Tories hopped up and down.

    “It’s becoming remarkable how often you please one lot and not the other,” huffed Sir Bernard Jenkin (Con, Harwich & N Essex).

    “Some people perceive that the only consistency in your rulings is that they always seem to favour one side,” scowled David TC Davies (Con, Monmouth).

    Mr Bercow, however, savoured their umbrage as though it were the finest wine. He swirled it in his glass, sniffed its sumptuous bouquet, and sipped it with a connoisseur’s pleasure. Why, he declared, it was scarcely six months since, on the precise same grounds, he’d rejected a vote on Theresa May’s deal – and had, in return, received a note of congratulation from none other than Jacob Rees-Mogg. To amusement from the Opposition, and rather less from the Tories, Mr Bercow quoted from this note, directly in front of Mr Rees-Mogg himself.

    The man was in his element. He purred. He preened. He even, inexplicably, performed impressions, one of Willie Whitelaw, and one of Tony Benn (“As a very long-serving member of this House used to say: ‘It’sh not about pershonalitiesh, it’sh about polishiesh’”). And, as ever, his style of speech was pure Dickens: the tumid verbosity, the strutting orotundity. I sometimes wonder whether he talks like this at home. “My dear, might I humbly prevail upon you to convey in my direction the cellar of what the scientifically minded refer to as sodium chloride?”

    Tories continued to fume. “I have simply sought,” Mr Bercow assured them airily, “to discharge my obligation to do what I believe to be right.” For a moment I thought he was about to break into a rendition of My Way.

    Maybe he’s saving that up for his last day.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/10/21/biased-moi-tory-brexiteers-fumed-john-bercow-element/

    1. “Today Mr Bercow had been addressing a hushed Commons for a full six minutes.”

      I am glad that I have not watched the Parliament channel in months. It would be soul-destroying.

      What a cold and empty existence Mr Bercow must have to act in the way that he does.

          1. Thanks for posting – it brought back memories of sharing a Chipmunk with an RAF pilot and doing some aerobatics over Pegwell Bay about 60 years ago…

      2. His wife, like Mr Clegg, boasted about the fact that she had had very many sexual partners and particularly enjoyed ‘one night stands’ before meeting her husband and indeed her extra-curricular sexual encounters did not stop after her marriage.

        Mr Bercow is very happy with this but most of us would not be under such circumstances.

      3. “Today Mr Bercow had been addressing a hushed Commons for a full six minutes.”
        That must have tested his vocabulary

    3. “…his style of speech was pure Dickens: the tumid verbosity, the strutting orotundity.”

      If someone told him he sounds like Jo Brand’s boy, would he shut up?

  43. This whole undemocratic mockery of a political system that our elected MPs have allowed and connived to come about is an anarchist’s wet dream.

  44. Dunno if any of you have asked before, but when ( not if ) World War Three comes along, will half of our M.P.’s join up to fight for the enemy, while our Prime Minister simply proposes to sign a peace treaty offering the oppressors the use of Westminster as an ammunitions dump ?

    2. WW3 has been going for some time, but Merkel, being smarter than most Brits, has fought it peacefully by employing Quislings. She’s winning!

  45. Guy Verhofstadt
    ‏

    I mentioned 4 issues that need to be addressed :

    No deportation for those who missed the deadline
    More assistance for vulnerable citizens
    Real independence for the IMA
    Settled status for those actually kept in pre-settled status.

  46. I don’t know if this has been posted before but Martin Howe reckons Boris’s WA is ‘Tolerable for our freedom’.
    https://briefingsforbrexit.com/this-flawed-deal-is-a-tolerable-price-to-pay-for-our-freedom/
    Having read the ‘positives’ and the negatives I think Martin Howe is having a funny turn. My MP agrees with him. I have sent him this response.

    I have just read Martin Howe’s article and can only conclude that he’s had a funny turn and got it wrong.

    How can our Parliament pass this WA and give away our country, still subject to the ECJ, and it be called a better agreement than May’s. Having read all the negatives I find it hard to see how he, or anyone else, could find anything positive about it. Even the NI backstop, which is/was a non problem, is the only movement. We still pay the ’£39 billion’ and continue to pay without any say in the matter.

    If that’s acceptable then my name is George Soros and I will laugh all the way to the bank, again.

    We have got to leave with no deal otherwise democracy (along with all political parties) will be consigned to the grave. Why is it 17.4 million votes in favour of Leave are being ignored. Why should we continue to vote if we are told we are leaving the EU but will be tied to it more than any other of the remaining 27.

    Trying to defend the indefensible has been turned into an art form by this Rogue Parliament. It proves that old saying that ‘IF VOTING EVER CHANGED ANYTHING IT WOULD HAVE BEEN ABOLISHED’. Why should we bother in future.

    I urge you and all patriotic MPs (very few) to vote this Wretched Deal down. There are ways to ignore the Benn Law, an Order in Council, I believe.

    It is as appalling as May’s deal and we go on paying without a say and will be more tied to the EU than the other 27

    1. Boris is focussing on obtaining a deal which satisfies the EU and this Remainer parliament. Self-evidently, any such deal is going to be very far from any kind of meaningful Brexit, as neither the EU nor Parliament wants this. Perhaps he should focus on what the 17.4m leave voters want?

      Extend Art.50 to end of January, have a General Election, Farage takes the North, Johnson the South, thumping Leave majority and WTO-freedom beckons. You know it makes sense!

  47. Civil Servant Caroline Bell takes a pessimistic view of a future under Boris Johnson’s Withdrawal Agreement.

    Having spent hours thinking about Boris’s Withdrawal Agreement and taking on board the opinions of learned friends, I still remain unable to support it. Committed Brexiteers seem to be folding, one by one. They don’t like the deal, but they think that it could work. Reluctantly, they conclude that this is the last chance to deliver Brexit.

    My view is that it could be the EU’s last chance to reverse Brexit (I have always been a contrarian). Were we living in normal times and without a Fixed Term Parliament Act, I would be inclined to grit my teeth for a year’s transition and a humongous payout to Brussels in order for us to regain our full sovereignty in January 2021, because by removing the backstop and revising the Political Declaration towards a free trade agreement, Boris has charted a clear course towards full independence. So he has done well there.

    But we are not living in normal times. And the unchanged part of May’s Withdrawal Agreement provides a perfect field for continued guerrilla warfare by Remainers for the next three years as they try to reverse Brexit altogether. If the Withdrawal Agreement is passed, technically we leave the EU on 31 October and commence a new totally subservient relationship under a binding new treaty, which requires us to implement and obey all EU law (including new tax law) during the transition period scheduled to end on 31 December 2020. This is so we can negotiate the new relationship set out in the Political Declaration. Total cost around £15 billion, just to talk. There is no termination clause in this new treaty. That is a crucial point.

    The transition period, however, can be extended by one or two years (up to 31 December 2022). A decision on extending it must be taken in July 2020. Given that a general election is not due to be held until June 2022 under the Fixed Term Parliaments Act, it would appear to me that if the Withdrawal Agreement is passed tomorrow, Remainer MPs would certainly resist all calls for an election. Instead they would use the transition period to thwart negotiations (doubtless hopping over to Brussels constantly to encourage EU intransigence) and to impose conditions on the PM that will block his every move. It would suit them perfectly to have Boris Johnson hamstrung by his own deal, a PM who is nominally in power but who cannot govern because he has no majority. Mr Vote Leave will become a poster boy for the Remainer cause as the adverse consequences of the Withdrawal Agreement begin to bite. We will be trapped in limbo, powerless to resist an EU onslaught on our economy, particularly the City. Why, we will ask, did we vote ourselves into this position of having absolutely no influence in the EU?

    You may be sure of another backbench Bill next June to force Boris to extend the transition period. This means another £30 billion to Brussels, more EU law, more attacks on the City, more fisheries lost and no new trade agreements with third countries able to start.

    Brexit would die a long, slow death by a thousand parliamentary motions and lawsuits. The hope would be that the British public would be so fed up with the ‘pay with no say’ position we would find ourselves in, that we would welcome a referendum to cancel Brexit and return to the EU as a full member. And the EU would have us right where they want us in the meantime.

    So, even if one swallows the many nasty surprises lurking in the small print of Boris’s deal in the hope that he can reach his final goal, it seems to me that domestic politics will ensure it never works. And the price to pay – another three years of acrimony, treachery, delay and frustration – seems inordinately high.

    Taking a gamble on Boris’s deal to deliver Brexit seems to me a bit like playing Russian roulette with every chamber in the gun containing a bullet. And therefore, whilst I give him full marks for effort and optimism, I hope he loses the vote tomorrow.

    Caroline Bell is a pseudonym for a civil servants who needs to remain anonymous.

    1. WE do not have to follow UK tax law. There is a mention in the non legally binding political document of try to keep close alignment with EU ta law but nothing that is legally binding. It would make sense to keep tax laws aligned as far s possible but little in the way of tax is controlled by the EU. VAT is to a limited extent as is VAT and Corporation tax but that’s about it

      There has been talk in the EU & UK of replacing corporation tax with a Turnover tax with companies being taxed on the profit on turnover within each country as with Corporation tax there are some loop holes that would need to be closed. IP rights are frequently used to avoid tax. They set up another company in a tax haven., This company owns the IP and they then charge all the trading companies an excessive charge for using the IP so the trading companies can then declare low profits or even a lose

      1. Do you not get a bit fed up with continually and continuously promoting the case for Remain and BRINO?

  48. Brexit deal: NI firms must declare goods heading to rest of the UK

    It is more likely to be just an electronic file. I assume it is needed to confirm tht EU external tariffs have been applied to the goods

    As I understand it though during the Transition period no tariffs apply so this document/data will not be needed. It would only be needed in the case of a no deal

    Firms in Northern Ireland will have to submit declaration forms for goods heading to the rest of the UK, under the government’s Brexit deal.
    Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay confirmed the details on Monday when giving evidence to the Lords Exiting the EU committee.
    This followed previous assurances that NI-GB trade would be “unfettered”.
    DUP MP Sammy Wilson said it represented a “clear breach” of previous commitments made by the government.

    1. “Transition period”? Think, the Sack of Rome, the Destruction of Sennacherib, the Rape of Nanking…

  49. Drama based on Novichok in Salisbury begins filming this week. Spire. 22 October 2019.

    The poisonings in Salisbury shocked the nation and had a huge impact on an unsuspecting community.

    This drama will capture the bravery, resilience and personal experience of the local people who faced a situation of unimaginable horror, so close to home.

    Yes I remember them threading their way through the Hazmat people to do their shopping and driving to work through the refugees!

    https://www.spirefm.co.uk/news/local-news/2975308/drama-based-on-novichok-in-salisbury-begins-filming-this-week/

  50. Today’s mail to Mr R……..

    Boris Brexit looks like being as successful as Boris Airport, Boris Garden Bridge and as realistic as Boris Belfast Bridge………..

    It’s not going to work, and the only way to achieve a proper Brexit and beat Remain is to expose the £100,000,000 plus conspiracy !

    Polly

  51. O/T When i let Dolly out this morning i noticed my clematis has flowered again ! I blame brexit.

  52. ”Overnight Mr Johnson appealed to MPs to back his deal ‘so that we can leave without disruption and provide a framework for a new relationship based on free trade and friendly co-operation”.

    ”Friendly co-operation”……

    Haha… this is another Garden Bridge.

  53. ‘Morning All

    We start the morning wiith Wee Willy Hague begging for the Tories to “unite” and get behind the BoJo deal

    If I ever needed confirmation the deal is a sell out his endorsement seals it,to hell with all of them

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/10/21/tories-must-unite-stop-labours-plot-wreck-boris-johnsons-brexit/

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/politics/2019/10/21/116blower22-10-19_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqqjYeQRtCUmaNTl9ge3SkvXvsQtCHq939w7zx1f6lxc4.jpg?imwidth=1400

  54. SNP lodge amendment declining second reading

    This is clearly just a wrecking tactic. Even Bercow cannot allow this one. If he does allow it it kills Brexit as it cannot come into law. If he had bothered to read it he would find that in devolved areas of legislation they do get to approve it

    Ian Blackford

    1 hour ago

    We ⁦@theSNP⁩ have lodged an amendment to the withdrawal bill declining a second reading in the absence of the Scottish Parliament giving consent. Our right to determine whether we remain EU citizens must be in our hands not

  56. UK government borrowing up by a fifth over past six months

    No surprise given the way the government have been throwing money around. Mind you the Conservatives are no competition to Labour on this front

    Public sector borrowing has risen by a fifth during the first half of the financial year, official figures show.
    Borrowing for the six months to September has now hit £40.3bn, up £7.4bn from the same period in 2018.
    In the month of September, borrowing was £9.4bn – slightly lower than expected but still up from £8.8bn last year.
    The figures raise questions about the chancellor’s room to manoeuvre in next month’s Budget.
    Sajid Javid has said he is “turning the page on austerity” and promised big spending rises in his November statement.
    But John Hawksworth, chief economist at PwC, said: “Today’s data showed the UK public finances heading further into the red, with the deficit more than £7bn higher in the first half of this financial year than the same period last year.

  58. Yet another one trying to sabatage Brexit

    Nick Boles
    More
    I have tabled the following amendment to require the government by default to seek an extension of the transition to Dec 2022 unless MPs pass a resolution to the contrary. We must stop No Deal Brexit in Dec 2020.

    1. Shirley, all thses traitors could and should be be prosecuted for Malfeasance in Public Office

  59. LBC to launch new ‘pure news’ radio station with no opinion

    Sounds like one of these so called rolling news programs. It will be in 20 minute round up’s which sounds like the same 20 minutes of news being endlessly repeats but with minor updates to it during the day

    1. LBC to launch new ‘pure news’ radio station with no opinion.

      I’ll believe it when I hear it!

      1. Except it will be the editor’s opinion that decides what news to include and what to leave out.

  60. Sometimes BBC job titles make me laugh. There is an internal ad this week for, “Self-Shooting Directors, Crimewatch Roadshow”. I know what it actually means, but…

    1. They should put it in the Gruaniad. Anything apparently to do with guns gets them in a tizzy.

      1. Yes, Bill. “Shoot” in this context is also an anachronism since it will be a digital recording and not a film shoot.

  61. Still raining – but not as much as they feared. It is a year since the terrible catastrophe – and the warnings have been coming every hour or so. Overkill, natch.

    1. Lovely autumn sunshine in the Cardiff area, just a few clouds to break up the Dutchman’s trousers.

      2. Clouding over now but it has been warm sunshine and no wind all day. My clematis has flowered again !

        Took Dolly for a long walk over the park and watched her frolic.

  63. If the French were in our position regarding leaving the eu on the 29th on a NO DEAL basis and it was denied by the establishment, then I truly think the country would be at a stand still on the 30th.

  64. This was recently posted on Facebook by a nephew of mine – as a Remainer and slightly too old to be a snowflake I was beginning to despaoir of him but…

    The United Kingdom European Union membership referendum took place on 23 June 2016 in the United Kingdom(UK) and Gibraltar to ask the electorate if the country should remain a member of, or leave the European Union (EU), under the provisions of the European Union Referendum Act 2015 and also the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000.
    THIS IS CLEARLY A YES OR NO VOTE! REMAIN OR LEAVE! We voted to leave by a clear majority.

    I voted to remain, but I accept and respect the majority vote.

    There were no “deals” on the table to confuse the question it was black and white simple.

    Clearly the House of Commons has no respect for the British public as they confuse the matter for personal desire and party gain this is led by Jeremy Corbyn who preaches he is a man of the people and for the people. Well if that was truly the case, he and his party along with others in the House of Commons would support the will of the British people and honour the simple clear vote to exit the EU!

    We British are a strong and resilient nation and whatever the consequences of leaving the EU on the 31st October we will survive; we will grow strong and we will continue to fight those that oppose us once again! But we can’t do this while Jeremy Corbyn battles against the will of the people and confusing the issues at hand!

    Deal or no deal, that is not the question. On the 31st of October it is simple #Getbrexitdone

  65. Shakespeare for today 22nd October 2019:

    To be in or not to be in. That is the question.

    3. All the world’s a stage,
      And all the men and women merely players;
      They have their exits and their entrances;
      And one man in his time plays many parts,
      His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
      Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms;
      And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
      And shining morning face, creeping like snail
      Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
      Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
      Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
      Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
      Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
      Seeking the bubble reputation
      Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,
      In fair round belly with good capon lin’d,
      With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
      Full of wise saws and modern instances;
      And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
      Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,
      With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
      His youthful hose, well sav’d, a world too wide
      For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
      Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
      And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
      That ends this strange eventful history,
      Is second childishness and mere oblivion;
      Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

  67. Amendments proposed to WAB so far

    Amendments to the Brexit bill so far include:

    – Ken Clarke et al on negotiating a customs union

    – Nick Boles on extending the implementation period

    – Labour on Parliamentary scrutiny of Joint Commmittee & disputes

    – Lib Dems on safeguards for people applying for settled status

  68. Even Sky News, with their status as a pro-eu propaganda channel second only to the BBC, was struggling last night after this “new” W/A was announced. Their attempts to say that it was something different from the trap that was Theresa May’s deal were desperate. The best that they could come up with was:

    “It has been reported by some sources that up to 20% of this deal is different.”

    What sources were they Sky? When others who are on the inside, and had already seen it, have said that only the substance of the Backstop area has been changed, and the deal is 95% the same. The best you can fabricate is that 80% of the rejected prison cell for the United Kingdom is still there? No wonder Boris is keen to rush it through before its contents can be looked at.

    Not that the media will bother reporting that it is not leaving the EU at all, just tying us to them far more closely than we are now for an infinitely extendable “transition period.”

    1. In the new version the roof has been left off the cell. We can see the sky, perhaps, but have no shelter from a hard rain.

  69. It’s her again, I’m afraid. Music’s antidote to Greta Thunberg (but two years younger) speaks at the European Culture Prize event in Vienna on Sunday:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_ssngwOHPE&fbclid=IwAR0kJfq9xrIDh2y3v82uu3WecSwpYbZN-pIpePGjQNYx1CxYeXobiwbz02k

    Here is the English translation from German (despite her name, it is actually her third language):

    It’s an amazing feeling to receive this prize from the great artist Thomas Hampson.

    I also wanted to say that (until now) I have always composed melodies and harmonies just as they pour out from my heart. But I have often been told: as a modern composer, you’ll soon have to forget your melodies, and concentrate on dissonance as befits our modern age.

    But maybe this award today means that a more tolerant age is dawning when melody and beauty will once again be permitted. Perhaps this is a message that there is more to European Culture than just dissonance. Perhaps there is also a place in European Culture for harmony. And how beautiful it would be if this message could go out into the world from Vienna, from the city of music.

    1. They need to admit they just want to kill Brexit. Oh and stand for their own seats in a General Election.

      1. Exactly.

        Like millions of others I am sick to the back teeth of the lies and hypocrisy. If you hate Brexit so much have the bottle to say so – stop playing stupid games pretending you accept the referendum result.

        We know they hate the people or this country so just have the guts to say so.

        After all – it’s not as if we haven’t noticed.

        1. I think the woman’s explosive comments to me in the vet’s waiting room was a pointer to a changed British attitude.
          We don’t talk politics, especially to complete strangers. Parliament – take note.

          1. I have never felt such cold sullen anger,both online and down the pub,our new “masters” would do well to reread their Kipling

            “My son,” said the Norman Baron, “I am dying, and you will
            be heir

            To all the broad acres in England that William gave me for
            share

            When he conquered the Saxon at Hastings, and a nice little
            handful it is.

            But before you go over to rule it I want you to understand this:–

            “The Saxon is not like us Normans. His manners are not so polite.

            But he never means anything serious till he talks about justice
            and right.

            When he stands like an ox in the furrow – with his sullen set eyes
            on your own,

            And grumbles, ‘This isn’t fair dealing,’ my son, leave the Saxon
            alone.

            “You can horsewhip your Gascony archers, or torture your
            Picardy spears;

            But don’t try that game on the Saxon; you’ll have the whole
            brood round your ears.

            From the richest old Thane in the county to the poorest chained
            serf in the field,

            They’ll be at you and on you like hornets, and, if you are wise,
            you will yield.

            “But first you must master their language, their dialect, proverbs
            and songs.

            Don’t trust any clerk to interpret when they come with the tale
            of their wrongs.

            Let them know that you know what they’re saying; let them feel
            that you know what to say.

            Yes, even when you want to go hunting, hear ’em out if it takes
            you all day.

            They’ll drink every hour of the daylight and poach every hour
            of the dark.

            It’s the sport not the rabbits they’re after (we’ve plenty of game
            in the park).

            Don’t hang them or cut off their fingers. That’s wasteful as well
            as unkind,

            For a hard-bitten, South-country poacher makes the best man-
            at-arms you can find.

            “Appear with your wife and the children at their weddings and
            funerals and feasts.

            Be polite but not friendly to Bishops; be good to all poor parish
            priests.

            Say ‘we,’ ‘us’ and ‘ours’ when you’re talking, instead of ‘you
            fellows’ and ‘I.’

            Don’t ride over seeds; keep your temper; and never you tell ’em
            a lie!”

          2. The Beginnings – Rudyard Kipling

            It was not part of their blood,
            It came to them very late
            With long arrears to make good,
            When the English began to hate.

            They were not easily moved,
            They were icy-willing to wait
            Till every count should be proved,
            Ere the English began to hate.

            Their voices were even and low,
            Their eyes were level and straight.
            There was neither sign nor show,
            When the English began to hate.

            It was not preached to the crowd,
            It was not taught by the State.
            No man spoke it aloud,
            When the English began to hate.

            It was not suddenly bred,
            It will not swiftly abate,
            Through the chill years ahead,
            When Time shall count from the date
            That the English began to hate.

  72. The saga goes on

    PM to pull Brexit bill if timetable not approved

    The government will abandon its Brexit bill if MPs vote down the three-day timetable for its debate and the EU confirms a delay.
    The Withdrawal Agreement Bill was published on Monday night, and MPs will vote later on whether to agree the timetable to get it through Parliament.

  73. If the EU is so attractive to the Remainers why do they have so little respect for the views of the British political party with the most seats in the EU parliament?

    The very fact that they do not exposes the fact that they – and the whole of the EU – hold the concept of democracy as something of virtually no importance.

    1. “British fish must not be used as a “bargaining chip””

      All we are saying is give peas a chance.

          2. E,
            Being a KIpper we roe a different course one that follows political leaders of integrity, ie Braine / Batten.

    2. The PM replies, saying that we will take back control of our “marine wealth.”

      He’s going to impose a special tax on the jollies?

  75. Boris being bombarded with questiond from Labour and the DUP and making heavy weather with his replies.

        1. AOE,
          My belief is that the homo sapiens contents of parliament is constructed of mainly rubber & look upon them now as talking
          dildo’s, guaranteed to act treacherously at the climatic moment.

  77. Naturally there is a reference to Brexit, but this is from Lonely Planet as reported in the Guardian –

    ” Lonely Planet names England the world’s second best tourist destination in 2020 ”
    (after Bhutan. I know it’s not 2020 yet )

    What absolute colossal bilge. Much as I like England, I am sure that many of you have travelled
    even more than I have, and as a tourist destination England comes nowhere.

    The patriots among you will shoot me down, but, honestly, do we need this childish stuff to make us feel good ?

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/oct/22/lonely-planet-names-england-the-worlds-second-best-tourist-destination-in-2020

  79. A couple of people asked about Grizzly. Sorry, don’t remember who.

    I emailed him and he said he can’t hang around you lot all day when he has pots to scour and clinkers to riddle.

    What he actually said.

    “I realised a few weeks ago that I have been seriously neglecting my woodwork commitments and I also have a few commissions to complete in my painting hobby (with more to come!).

    Unfortunately there are not sufficient hours in the day to do all I need (or want) to so. It also seems that I’m busier now, in retirement, not to mention playing with new toys [sorry: “machine tools”], than I
    ever was when I was in full-time gainful employment.

    Please tell those who are kindly asking after me that I am hale and hearty (I think!) and very busy in my man shack.

    Best wishes to all,
    Grizzly George”

    So there you have it. Spends all day finger painting and polishing his wood.

      1. From my log earlier this year:
        “Not only have ducks got good eyesight, they appear to have remarkable hearing. As I unwrapped the Weetabix for breakfast, I suddenly saw thirty pairs of ducks’ eyes focused with a laser like intensity on my cereal bowl.”…..

    2. I was once toold that a precondition to working at GCHQ was to have had sex with both of one’s parents. Hi, guys and gals!

  81. I am not generally a supporter of targeted assassinations, but I could make an exception for Jeremy Corbyn, but on condition that the entire Labour Party were taken down with him.

  82. Why are so many worried about losses of jobs in manufacturing, when the figures there are tiny in comparison with the imminent loss of jobs in Westminster ?

    2. It is just pure speculation. Most manufactured good are hardly affected by tariffs other than cars but the tariffs do not apply until 14 months later and I would suspect that little issue will be dealt with quite quickly as the UK car market is very important to the EU

  83. In what world does an independent nation have to organise customs
    arrangements regarding internal movement of goods at the demand of a
    foreign state and a supra-national trade body?

    Stuff the details, that’s the principle

    1. That is due to the arrangement e have come up with for NI land border, NI remain temporarily in the Customs Union but mainland UK is not, That means if goods go from Ireland to the Mainland UK EU third party tariffs apply

    1. “She added: “The UK does not have 36 different ways to leave the EU: it’s either with a deal – the one Michel Barnier negotiated – or without a deal.
      Either that or the British finally say to themselves that this exit is absurd and they put the deal or remaining in the EU to a referendum.””

      She says we can still leave with no deal.

      1. She’s right, but I suspect she might be given some earache in Brussels and from Macron for saying so.

  86. Boris Johnson is absolutely correct, there will not be another
    referendum. Or extension, they can vote for this deal, or no
    or as the Prime Minister said an election before Christmas,
    the petrified look on that old Trots face was a picture.
    Corbyn has been told and he knows that lose If he
    takes on Boris Johnson. Labour voters are now
    popping up saying they’ve never voted Conservative in their
    life but they’d vote for Boris Johnson over Jeremy Corbyn.

    1. Afternoon A,
      My belief is they have a prior trial run of sittings so when on camera it comes across as nearly authentic for the herds consumption.
      The in-house game continues unabated, do not be surprised to find the keep in / keep out, party first mode of voting at the next GE.

  87. Something really frightened the SNP in terms of animal transportation,
    they weren’t arguing or being loud and cocky as usual, there was fear
    behind a nervous question. Hmm, wonder what they’d want to import/
    export to the EU. Aberdeen Angus beef breed in Warsaw .

  89. No comments allowed.
    Otherwise I could mention that they used to do a brilliant sausage sandwich.

    https://www.gazette-news.co.uk/news/17982950.old-pub-become-new-home-islamic-centre/

    “Beehive pub could become new home for Islamic Centre

    AN old pub could become the new home of the Colchester Islamic Community Centre.

    The group has applied to Colchester Council to take on the ground floor of the old Beehive pub in Bromley Road, Parsons Heath, Colchester.

    The building would be used for coffee mornings, educational classes and daily prayers.

    A planning statement said: “Community uses will inevitably be changing in frequency and type depending on demand by the various activities as well as the time of year.

    “Examples include coffee clubs, social gatherings and educational classes in the same way other community and church halls accommodate such activities.

    “The use for daily prayers will be on a regular basis.

    “Since most people conduct the five daily prayers at home or at work it is likely the size of the congregation would be small for routine daily prayers.

    Activities would take place between 8am and 10pm if permission is granted.”

    3. That will guarantee the place is never used to sell alcohol again. Two birds with one stone. For them.

    4. “Examples include coffee clubs, social gatherings and educational classes”

      Classes in what exactly, I wonder.

    2. Why is it up to strutting little poppinjays like him to agree anything? We should have simply said ‘we’re leaving on WTO terms, if you want to offer us something better you know where we are’ and been on our merry way. But no, we had to have a ‘deal’ and now instead of the Worst Deal in History we are going to settle for the second worst.

      1. “Why is it up to strutting little poppinjays like him to agree anything?”
        It’s not, that’s why he’s upset.

        1. Good!

          Seriously, why does anyone want to ruled by the likes of him, Verhoesdaht (can’t spell it, don’t care) and Junker? Don’t we have enough well-paid political tossers at home?

      2. Morning JK,
        Precisely, total severance, one month celebratory
        period,then inform the eu we are open for business if they wish to do business otherwise no problem, do not accept any calls from brussels for one month.

    4. Morning PT,
      With the help he receives from many UK politico’s he can speak with confidence & keep his frankfurters, fact.

    5. If we had Governance that wasn’t already owned by the Globalists we could just simply Leave. As yet, they only have soft power ( & police brutality ) to use against us, it is farcical how they are ‘pretending’, acting out their ‘charades’, and being allowed to get away with it

  91. An immense number of Labour speakers, one after the other. All making a good case for the deal that they are opposing.

  92. I think Boris Johnson wants an election, he’d very much want one
    of those, he’s not accepting any more delays, allowing the EU to
    decide our ‘ discussions ‘ unless he has an extension for a general
    election, he’s even said he’d go onside.
    Jeremy Corbyn has repeated that any Labour MP that supports the
    government will be ” punished ” true Marxist style I should imagine,
    some of them will vote for the government and accept they’ll
    be punished and removed.

    1. I wouldn’t vote for him, his handcuff treaty has proven that he is prepared to sell us down the river.

  93. Breaking;
    “The government will abandon its Brexit bill if MPs vote down its three-day timetable to get it through Parliament.
    Boris Johnson told MPs if the programme was rejected and the EU confirmed a delay to the 31 October exit, he would instead push for a general election.”
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-50142367

  94. Who knows?

    One day, when a real Brexit does arrive, Benn, Letwin, Hammond, Bercow and Grieve will be hailed as heroes by the Brexiteers for having saved the country from signing up to either May’s or Boris’s surrender deals which would have made Britain far worse off than staying in the EU.

    Boris’s wheels are coming off. The more they look at his ‘agreement’ with the EU the more true Brexiteers can see how it will continue to enslave us.

    We need Brexit – we do not want to be slaves.

    2. I’m pretty sure he and Cummings are aware. But they have to go through the motions to encourage the ‘Boris and Co siding with the people while the Commons and media side with the EU’ story.

      1. If Boris was serious about Brexit, he’d be asking where the £100,000,000 plus went…. but he’s not asking so he’s not serious.

  95. Superhero films are ‘cynical exercise’ to make profits for corporations – Ken Loach. Tue 22 Oct 2019.

    Loach spoke to Sky while promoting his new film, Sorry We Missed You, an account of the breadline existence of a gig-economy delivery driver in Newcastle.
    Loach said of superhero films: “I find them boring. They’re made as commodities … like hamburgers … It’s about making a commodity which will make profit for a big corporation – they’re a cynical exercise. They’re a market exercise and it has nothing to do with the art of cinema.”

    Profit! Dirty word that! Still I’m sure there’s a queue forming around the block waiting to see a movie about another no-hoper. Loach of course is a keen Labour and Corbyn fellow traveller and would one imagine like nothing better than that the taxpayer finance his films. One wonders if it has ever occurred to him that film is an entertainment medium and not a Social Justice enterprise? There is at the back of all this a resentment that the peasants don’t really appreciate what he’s doing for them. Genius of course can both enlighten and entertain. Shakespeare’s plays, though it is unfashionable to say so, were both profitable and immensely popular in his time. That’s never going to be a problem for Loach!

    https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/oct/22/superhero-films-are-cynical-exercise-to-make-profits-for-corporations-ken-loach

    1. I enjoyed the first Superman movie as a kid. I haven’t bothered with all the others, especially what Marvel shovels out. Loach directed ‘Cathy come home’ which i was forced to watch at school. I just thought she was a silly cow who created her own problems.

    3. Personally I loathe “superhero”films nearly as much as Loach’s cringemaking attempts at social engineering

      Happily no-one is forcing me to watch either genre (yet)

        1. I’ve never liked superhero movies either, although I did just watch “Venom” and that WAS good. But that might well have been the utterly sarcastic / destructive relationship between the “hero” and his “alien parasite.” As for Batman – there can be only one. I didn’t realise that he had those eyebrows painted on until I looked for this image, but they are there on all of them.

          https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0092843e3a855abfc39deb6c09e570cb7065c9044a0c427da4e931b342c3e6b3.jpg

    4. Superhero films are ‘cynical exercise’ to make profits for corporations – Ken Loach. Tue 22 Oct 2019.

      Other ‘cynical Exercises’

      Lidl. Aldi, Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Waitrose etc selling Grocery and fings
      Jaguar Land Rover selling cars
      Power companies (who are mostly foreign) selling gas and electricity
      Airlines moving Extinction Rebellion peeps around the world
      British Rail
      etc

      Non Cynical Exercises

      NHS
      John Lewis
      Thomas Cook
      etc

      I take it that Loach pays companies so that he can work for them

      The man is a Pratt

      1. All those hundreds of thousands of people gainfully employed and not dependent on benefits..utterly shocking.

      2. Campaign for boycott of Israel

        Main article: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

        In a letter sent to The Guardian in 2009, Loach advocated support for the Palestine Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) along with his regular colleagues Paul Laverty (writer) and Rebecca O’Brien (producer).[55]

        In 2007, Loach was one of more than 100 artists and writers who signed an open letter calling on the San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival “to honour calls for an international boycott of Israeli political and cultural institutions,
        by discontinuing Israeli consulate sponsorship of the LGBT film
        festival and not co-sponsoring events with the Israeli consulate”.[56][57]
        Loach also joined “54 international figures in the literary and
        cultural fields” in signing a letter that stated, in part, “celebrating
        ‘Israel at 60’ is tantamount to dancing on Palestinian graves to the
        haunting tune of lingering dispossession and multi-faceted injustice”.
        The letter was published in the International Herald Tribune on 8 May 2008.[58]

        Responding to a report, which Loach described as “a red herring”, on the growth of antisemitism since the beginning of the Gaza War of 2008–2009,
        he said: “If there has been a rise I am not surprised. In fact, it is
        perfectly understandable because Israel feeds feelings of
        anti-Semitism”. He added that “no-one can condone violence”.[59][60] Speaking at the launch of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine
        on 4 March 2009, he asserted that “nothing has been a greater
        instigator of antisemitism than the self-proclaimed Jewish state
        itself”.[61]

        In May 2009, organisers of the Edinburgh International Film Festival
        (EIFF) returned a £300 grant from the Israeli Embassy after speaking
        with Loach. He was supporting a boycott of the festival called for by
        the PACBI campaign. In response, former Channel 4 chief executive Sir Jeremy Isaacs
        described Loach’s intervention as an act of censorship, saying: “They
        must not allow someone who has no real position, no rock to stand on, to
        interfere with their programming”. Later, a spokesman for the EIFF said
        that although it had returned £300 to the Israeli Embassy, the festival
        itself would fund Israeli filmmaker Tali Shalom Ezer’s travel to Edinburgh from its own budget.[62][63][64] Her film Surrogate (2008) is a comedy set in a sex-therapy clinic which is unconcerned with war or politics.[62]
        In an open letter to Shalom-Ezer, Loach wrote: “From the beginning,
        Israel and its supporters have attacked their critics as anti-semites or
        racists. It is a tactic to undermine rational debate. To be crystal
        clear: as a film maker you will receive a warm welcome in Edinburgh. You
        are not censored or rejected. The opposition was to the Festival’s
        taking money from the Israeli state”.[65]
        To his critics, he added later: “The boycott, as anyone who takes the
        trouble to investigate knows, is aimed at the Israeli state”. Loach said
        he had a “respectful and reasoned” conversation with event organisers,
        saying they should not be accepting funds from Israel.[66]

        In June 2009, Loach, Laverty and O’Brien withdrew their film Looking For Eric from the Melbourne International Film Festival, where the Israeli Embassy is a sponsor, after the festival declined to withdraw that sponsorship.[67]
        The festival’s chief executive, Richard Moore, compared Loach’s tactics
        to blackmail, stating that “we will not participate in a boycott
        against the State of Israel, just as we would not contemplate boycotting
        films from China or other nations involved in difficult long-standing
        historical disputes”. Australian lawmaker Michael Danby
        also criticised Loach’s tactics stating that “Israelis and Australians
        have always had a lot in common, including contempt for the irritating
        British penchant for claiming cultural superiority. Melbourne is a very
        different place to Londonistan”.[68] An article in The Scotsman by Alex Massie noted that Loach had not called for the same boycott of the Cannes Film Festival, where his film was in competition with some Israeli films.[69]

        1. Oh, where to begin. You know the history of course. The Jews have been in the Holy Land since around 1200-1300 BC. The Arabs first invaded in 637 AD. The term Palestine was coined by the Emperor Hadrian and he was referring to the Philistines, a Greek tribe most likely wiped out in the 6th Cent BC by Nebuchadnezzar. The Egyptians, Lebanese, Syrians, Jordanians and Saudis who since 1967 have styled themselves Philistines now live in Philistia (aka Gaza). Except those lucky enough to live and work in Israel, which gives them a much better standard of living than Hamas and the so-called Palestinian Authority allow. It irritates the hell out of me when church people refer to “first century Palestine”. There was no such place.

          1. And the Big Mo deliberately targetted ancient Jewish centres in the hope his followers would build mosques.
            All that nonsense about flying horses and travels to the most distant mosques was a ploy to usurp the Jews.

          3. All true, Sue. Oops, I’m a poet…

            I suspect the real problem the local Arabs have with Israel, is that it demonstrates every day that you can have a viable productive country in that neck of the woods. And of course, if Israel was not there, the “Palestinians” would have no-one to blame for their total failure to achieve anything.

    5. How does Loach pay his bills? Cowrie shells? Barters beetroot for parsnips?
      Welches and leave a trail of creditors?

    7. Hang On! I’ve got this script. A young woman steps out of the Tony and Guy hairdressing salon into the High St. Just as she does so, a young delivery man is being attacked and robbed by a gangsta type. The gangsta is threatening the young man with a machete and demanding that he hand over his box of Domino Crusty-Crust Five Cheese Pizzas. Carol Danvers (for it is she) approaches the gangsta from behind. She seizes the machete from the gangsta and bends it in half, casually tossing it into a nearby waste bin. The gangsta had turned angrily, and almost not realising what has happened to his weapon he attempts to strike Carol Danvers. But the delivery man grips the gangstas leg, and the gangsta kicks the delivery man with his Nike wearing foot. The young courier of pizzas slumps to the pavement.
      In that instant Carol Danvers takes hold of the gangsta and throws him over the Ford delivery van into the road, into the path of an approaching BMW police car.
      Carol tenderly lifts the delivery man and carries him to her car, parked nearby. She gently places him in the passenger seat of her Ferrari GTO and then drives off, quickly and efficiently. Driving with one hand she expertly ruffles through the young man’s trousers to find his wallet. Taking out his driving licence she notes his address. She drives there, not sparing the horses. On one tight turn, just as they are passing the Starbucks coffee shop she glances at him. In that moment he opens his eyes briefly. She is thrilled to see that his eyes are as blue as the sky and as deep as the ocean. She drives on.
      The young man lives in a council housing scheme, its dingy houses and unkempt gardens speak eloquently of poverty and social inequality. Lifting the blue-eyed young man in her arms she goes to the front door and rings the bell. It is broken. She knocks. The door is opened by a pale and ill-looking woman in a wheel-chair. It is the young man’s mother.

      This should be ideal, I think, for a major artistic and commercial collaboration between Marvel Studios and Ken Loach, combining the romance and colour of the Superhero Universe with the grinding poverty and unremitting misery of the lives of the lower classes.

    3. Rik,
      The current lab/lib/con pro eu coalition party DO NOT DO defence in regards to England / GB.

  97. Dragons’ Den success story firm risks collapse

    I think a lot of people who get into crowd funding do not understand the considerable risks involved and quite a few of th companies they invest in will collapse. Good crowd funding platforms will invest in a large number of companies in order to try to spread the risk but when you being given an indication of 7 or 8% return that indicated high risk

    A firm founded by the youngest entrepreneur to secure investment on the BBC’s Dragons’ Den is on the brink of insolvency, the BBC has learnt.
    Gripit Fixings makes a product designed to fix heavy items to plasterboard. Its inventor, Jordan Daykin, was just 18 when he appeared on the programme.
    Now investors have been told Mr Daykin has left the company and an insolvency practitioner has been called in.
    The firm’s board told them it was in “a precarious position”.
    Angry shareholders, who stand to lose their entire investment, have been reacting on a forum on the crowdfunding platform Crowdcube, which Gripit has used in the past to raise money.

        1. DAYKIN, Jordan Andrew

          I would have thought the best option is to sell the company it could complement the range of one of the big companies in the fixing market

          There is a lot of competition out there and GripIt is a small player in a crowded market, Its fixings are as well are quite pricey , They would also need to sell a hell of a lot of them. They are probably limited to the DIY market because of the price of the fixing . To costly for builders

          1. Plasterboard is the usual material for interior walls over here. As a result, there are many similar products in the DIY stores.

            Their web site seems to be a bit optimistic, can you imagine hanging a nice expensive TV on a wall using a couple of these anchors?

      2. THey tend to market as a sort of lo risk scheme and make it look like a savings account when it is far from that

  98. How liquid air could help keep the lights on

    Sounds interesting but no indications of costs. Sounds a bit similar to refrigeration. There are techniques around that do work as a lot of gas used in the UK is shipped in liquefied form which in itself raises an interesting question could we produce electricity from the liquefied gas ?

    The problem with wind is it does not produce enough power to meet demand in the first place for most of the year. It might work in the summer but how long can you economically keep it liquefied ?

    It sounds like magic but it is real – a plan to store cheap night-time wind energy in the form of liquid air.
    Here is how: you use the off-peak electricity to compress and cool air in a tank, so it becomes a freezing liquid.
    When demand peaks, you warm the liquid back into a gas, and as that expands it drives a turbine to create more electricity.
    The technology, created by a backyard inventor, is about to hit the big time.
    It has been tried at small scale but now the firm behind it, Highview, has announced that a grid-scale 50MW plant will be built in the north of England on the site of a former conventional power plant.

    1. We could always put large Elecrically powered fans in front of the Wind Turbines to drive them when wind force is low

      The fans can use Electricty (made from fossil fuel powered power stations) and ‘shipped in’ from overseas, to satiisfy the the Green lot.

      Will Cost us loadsadosh, but we will be continuing to prove to the world that we are being controlled by total idiots

          1. Oh I wish. It’s the Mikado of course. I won’t say I can’t sing (as most of us can) but I have a pathetic whine of a singing voice.

          6. Ackshally, we have been lucky.

            It has rained on and off most of the day – quite steadily right now – but we have avoided the heavy downpours that have afflicted places about 25 miles east from here.

            It has been bad in Catalunya – which suits the Madrid government.

          7. I hope not as dreadful as last year. You might have to suffer another useless toy boy visitation. that achieves nothing apart from giving him another photogurning opportunity.

          8. He’s just announced live on TV that he is off to Mayotte – “which lies at the heart of France and the Republique”…. (and other facile comments.

          10. Yo Bill

            Down here in very wet Alicante, it has been raining for about 24 hours

            At least 5cm of rain (however much that is ) has fallen

          11. Yer natives (Frog and Spick) talk about 200 litres per square metre per hour – which means absolutely NOTHING to me!

    3. Thank you for providing a link to your machinations (not). Links aren’t your forte, are they.

      What are you exactly trying to achieve from posting here on NoTTL? Doom and gloom and death – and when you come up with something that might be positive, you keep the source to yourself.

      I have only ever barred someone once (and that was very temporary). But you really take the biscuit for your arrogance and lack of real content. Most of us here communicate with each other. You just spout.

        1. Who is down voting you?

          Cannot something be done so that we can see who has downvoted our posts just as we can see who has upvoted them? And if not, why not?

          2. Afternoon R,
            I call him old clog and he always bites at that, he is self confessed, has a pet called daz another down voter who has the brass neck ( unwashed) who call ogga cowardly from a hidden down vote position.
            The clog type I do not reply to as I have no wish to take advantage of the afflicted.
            No worries.

        2. Thank you oggs,

          Goodness, you have received three downvotes. Why? If it’s just because you agree with what I said I should have received them as well. (No doubt I will after this, but then, so what?)

          1. HL,
            Tis the old clog running a personal vendetta strong lefty
            personality shows through, same as his pet down voter bez who calls one a coward from a hidden down vote position.

  99. Corbyn: PM ‘trying to blindside Parliament to force deal through’

    Well first his 17 hours is not correct lets call it 8 hours a day that’s 24 hours and their are 650 MP”s that 15,600 hours and that’s without the Lords. and much of it has been through endlessly before and listening to the debate I can see little evidence of them debating the clauses it is more of them trying to pint score and invent non existent scare stories

    House of Commons
    Parliament
    Labour MP Jim McMahon says: “Isn’t it wrong that the risk assessments have been incomplete?”
    Mr Corbyn replies: “My friend is absolutely right.”
    Then, referring to the amount of time MPs have had to read and scrutinise the Withdrawal Agreement Bill, he says: “17 hours isn’t very much to deal with 40 clauses and 110 pages of legislation.
    “This prime minister is trying to blindside this Parliament to force deal through

  100. Norway ambulance: Three hurt in Oslo rampage

    A man has been detained after a stolen ambulance crashed into a family in the Norwegian capital Oslo, injuring three people – including twin babies.
    Public broadcaster NRK showed images of the ambulance driving through the city as gunshots were apparently fired from inside the vehicle.
    The alleged hijacker sustained gunshot wounds after police returned fire.
    A motive for the attack has yet to be established. Police say they are searching for a second suspect.
    A woman who “appears to be under the influence” is also thought to have been involved in the incident, the AFP news agency reported.

  101. Swinson: Brexit deal ‘is bad for UK’
    HoC

    AS far as I know we remain in the European arrest Warrant Scheme. It was certainly in May’s deal

    Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson says her MPs will vote against the bill later.
    “This Brexit deal will be bad for our security,” she says, adding that it will “rob our police of the ability to use the European arrest warrant”.
    She says it will be bad for the UK.

    1. So, it’s a bad thing for our Police to lose the European arrest warrant but it’s all fine and dandy for our Military to be run from Brussels. Idiotic woman.

  103. Question.

    I have just noticed that my “votes” tally has fallen by several hundred. I care neither a jot nor a tittle – but I wonder if I am alone in this. And whether there is some person or persons unknown who delight in mocking my gold-plated comments.

    1. Ditto, there was an explanation yesterday; it is some idiot who has designed a bot to remove the votes from people who don’t adhere to their way of thinking.
      It appears that you’ll eventually get below zero.

        1. Indeed.
          But think how special we’ll feel with thousands of comments and not a single upvote.
          That takes real determination to offend.

      1. It happened on the majority of sites that were once free sites,
        according to my American friends. Disss qus playing games.

        1. I looked on some forums, but it appeared that that was happening three or four years ago. Perhaps it’s started up again.

          Someone (Meredith M?) posted yesterday that it was a bot.

    3. Bill Thomas – I did type an explanation at the end of yesterday evening, that it was lefty trolls who cannot win arguments who lower peoples vote scores to make themselves feel powerful – which shows in fact just how sad and weak they are. I have heard about this for months and have seen several names that I was talking to who now have 0 votes.

      I hope that this does not sound “stalky” but I have never been on a channel where it was happening to multiple people at the same time, so I have taken a few seconds to record peoples upvotes because I was curious as to whether they all fell at the same rate or not. I like information so that if someone asks in future, then I can answer more accurately.

      There are 3 people who said it was happening, and these are the rates that I have seen, although I have not spotted Peddy recently, so accurate figures are missing there. Number of upvotes:

      sosraboc –
      97,872 20:05 21/10/19
      97,132 08:25 22/10/19
      96,714 16:38 22/10/19
      (-1158 votes so far in less than 24 hours.)

      zxcv3
      38,994 20:45 21/10/19
      38,866 08:25 22/10/19
      38,833 13:30 22/10/19
      (-161 votes. Although this will be heavily skewed as they cut/past comments that get lots of upvotes.)

      Peddytheviking
      73,042 21:20 21/10/19
      72,979 08:25 22/10/19
      (-63)

      The end result of this bot will be 0 votes so that people who do not know you won’t know how “agreed with” your comments are. The real people will just read your words and will decide on their own merit, so it does not really matter anyway. It does show the type of losers that we are facing though, who would do something like this. It almost always happens to those who are “on the right” on channels across Disqus.

      1. I am obliged to my learned friend.

        I switch off at 6 pm (ish) and have no idea what happens in the small hours when hard-line NoTTLers are foaming away!

        As I said, I do not give a toss. If some sad Dick Head wants to waste his time this way =- so be it.

        1. It is a sign that your comments are effective, because you have really managed to get under the skin of someone who thinks that censorship is okay. Which is always a good sign.

      2. I think I’m now down about 5,000 since I first noticed it.

        Splendid. It means I must really be getting on the Lefty’s tits.

      3. It happens a lot on the Speccie blogs site. Some sad little runt is very busy over there downsizing everyone. And upvoting themselves.

          1. People apparently set up more than one account. Not sure how, other than setting up multiple email addresses.

          2. Ask the un-potty-trained parrot; she has had over a hundred “new” accounts with which to bore everyone to death.

      4. P.S.: I haven’t checked mine, so I have no idea if I’m affected.
        If I am, I want compensation. And I’m going to complain to the perlice that I’m a hate crime victim.

        2. lms2 – I have added your name to the list (sinister music) and if yours starts going down I’ll let you know.

          I would not normally bother with this, and I don’t care if someone has a high score, but I have not seen multiple users dropping at the same time and it only takes seconds to type in a few numbers.

          There must be 50 or 60 names that I recognise from 2 years ago when I first started using this Ferengi software, who had 100,000’s of upvotes, now they are at 0. Which shows that they have annoyed “The Left” – excellent.

      5. Peddytheviking -63 is my doing.

        I don’t downvote any one else. Even if i disagree with what they are saying. People are allowed their own thoughts and opinions. If i feel strongly against what they say then i may post my thoughts and opinions in response.

    5. I too have suffered from some meddling from unknown sources.

      Somebody cannot bear to hear the truth we’ve spoken (to borrow from Rudyard Kipling) and so the knaves have twisted it to make a trap for fools.

      1. Good evening rastus,

        One of your great contributions to us other Nottlers, is the wonderful “borrowings” you do from our illustrious writers.

  104. Lots of Brexiteers have said they’ll march to Westminster if
    parliament stops the government, I’d reckon it’d be larger then
    the remain gathering on Saturday.

  105. Think of Shakespeare’s Enobarbus who betrayed his master, Antony, and then saw the enormity of what he had done:

    I am alone the villain of the earth,
    And feel I am so most. O Antony,
    Thou mine of bounty, how wouldst thou have paid
    My better service, when my turpitude
    Thou dost so crown with gold! This blows my heart.
    If swift thought break it not, a swifter mean
    Shall outstrike thought, but thought will do ’t, I feel.
    I fight against thee? No, I will go seek
    Some ditch wherein to die. The foul’st best fits
    My latter part of life    .

    Let’s hope that many of our treacherous politicians will see the sheer obscenity of what they have done and go to join Boris in his ditch.

    1. I will go seek
      Some ditch wherein to die. The foul’st best fits
      My latter part of life.
      I will rather die in a ditch
      than request an extension.

    2. Maybe Sainted Nige ” my kingdom my kingdom, my kingdom,
      for a horse seat “might ride in on a white charger ( after a radio show )
      and save the day.

    4. Simply you just adopt the LGBT approach so she declare herself as thinking she is 12 different woman

    5. I’ve drunk from those on many happy occasions and know how heavy they are.

      To be able to hold on to 12 of them, she must have fingers that could crack walnuts.

    6. Last time I drank from one of those, I was in Munich.

      Since my then employer was footing the bill, it tasted all the better.

      1. Ditto, except that at the time I was auditing a stockbroking subsidiary of the bank in Munich and therefore, in theory the enemy..

        The Boss thought I had made a reasonable assessment and accepted the criticisms. If there was one thing I liked about the Germans it was that they never tried to challenge things that they knew were correct but fought tooth and nail if they thought I was wrong. It saved a lot of toing and froing when the report was published.

        On my last night there he took me out on a beer and mushroom, (yes seriously), bender.
        Supeb night out, I don’t know how many different types of mushroom I sampled but they were brilliant and as for the beer!!!!

        1. Reminds me of going out for dinner with our local guys in Turin many years ago. They asked me if I liked asparagus then when I said I did, we went a place called The Asparagus House or similar, way outside the town. First course – you guessed right, but ALL the courses were green, including asparagus flavoured desert. Thank the lord the coffee was not green as well, or dinner would made made a reappearance.

          p.s. Google still finds such a place, tho’ whether it is the same place as I visited in the ’70’s, who knows.

          1. You might like the Garlic Queen in Amsterdam. Even the ice cream is based on garlic.

          2. Don’t remember that one from when I worked there. We would mostly find somewhere just off the Leidseplein – lots of variety, and wrap the evening up with a Genever in the Nightwatch Bar. Plus our business “visitors” most often stayed at the Marriott.

          3. Do you get that weird smell after eating asparagus?

            I was offered some wild asparagus, delicious, the flavour was incredible but the stems were tiny.

          5. I’m a salted butter and pepper man.
            Eat with fingers, tip downwards.

            HG makes an absolutely brilliant smoked salmon mouse with green asparagus running through it. The “binder” is thinly sliced smoked salmon.

            Heavenly.

  107. Meanwhile

    Ms Begum has now apparently won the right to fight a court case to

    revoke her ” stateless “status in a British court see below.

    Who the freaking hell is paying for all her phalanx of lawyers quoted in the

    article and indeed the court case itself as she has legally currently

    nothing to do with the UK?

    Assuming it is the state, to what extremities does legal aid extend in this country?

    https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/h/stripping-shamima-begum-citizenship

    1. Will I get the same support from phalanx of lawyers quoted in the article
      when I refuse to pay the TV Tax,

      TV That is the Telly one, not the ‘not dressing up as a laydee’ crime

  108. Latest mail to Mr Redwood…………………………..

    Drain The $100,000,000 King George 7th Swamp !

    Polly

  111. That’s me for this wet day – as thunder rolls around the hills.

    A demain – in the rain. Have a nice evening plotting.

  112. Bizarre, but somehow quintessentially Channel 4, programme tonight at 7.15pm: ‘The British Tribe Next Door’. This transports reality TV star (so it says) Scarlett Moffat and various family members to Namibia to live alongside Himba people. However, they have built an exact replica of her Durham home, complete with running water, electricity and possessions for them to live in.

    Checked several times that it isn’t April 1st but am still wondering if it is an elaborate hoax!

    2. I was just off for a read when I saw your comment. Scarlett Moffat was one of those people on the TV show “Gogglebox” back when they reviewed some “good” programs and real documentaries. I have not watched it in a long time as it seemed to be all mass-media dancing / talent shows now.

      I remember her because of one particular comment that she made while a historical documentary was on: “Eh – Queen Victoria. Do you think she was alive around the Victorian Era?” Her parents just looked at her.

      1. The programmes now chosen for viewing are dire.
        There is an awful lot of padding to provide human interest (?).
        Googlebox has definitely lost its sparkle.

    3. No wonder she looks like an Extinction Rebellion girl. When the glaciers were really melting, and she’d just bought the the wolf skin jacket at the mammoth sale.

  114. Asa Bennett
    @asabenn
    France’s foreign minister tells French MPs he sees “no justification at this stage” for more Brexit delay. Yves Le Drian: “We’ve been waiting for three years for this decision. It’s important for it to be announced today because otherwise there will be no option except ‘no deal'”

  116. The tactics of the Retainers tonight seems to be to Approve the first vote but reject the second vote they will be asking for more time. My gut feeling is they will go for a technical extension of no more than 5 days. The EU would need to agree this but I think this would be no problem but that would be it I think No more extensions

    At present we need to wait and see what happens with the second vote tonight. It is due to take place at about 19:50

    1. Until the UK runs out of money to send them, the EU will remain open to accept the dosh, if somewhat ungratefully.

      2. Seems to be confusion as to the order of the vote, Nigel is saying the vote for an extension comes first

        Ah someone has corrected Nigel it is the second vote

      1. Not keen on any extension but if we have to have one 5 days should be more than enough extra time probably 3 days would do

  117. Men Teaching Classes for Women at
    THE ADULT LEARNING CENTRE
    REGISTRATION MUST BE COMPLETED
    By January 15, 2020
    NOTE: DUE TO THE COMPLEXITY AND DIFFICULTY LEVEL OF THEIR CONTENTS, CLASS SIZES WILL BE LIMITED TO 8 PARTICIPANTS MAXIMUM.

    Class 1
    Up in Winter, Down in Summer – How to Adjust a Thermostat
    Step by Step, with Slide Presentation. Meets 4 weeks, Monday and Wednesday for 2 hrs beginning at 7:00 PM.

    Class 2
    Which Takes More Energy – Putting the Toilet Seat Down, or Bitching About It for 3 Hours?
    Round Table Discussion.
    Meets 2 weeks, Saturday 12:00 for 2 hours.

    Class 3
    Is It Possible to Drive Past a Supermarket Without Stopping?
    Group Debate.
    Meets 4 weeks, Saturday 10:00 PM for 2 hours.

    Class 4
    Fundamental Differences Between a Handbag and a Suitcase
    Pictures and Explanatory Graphics.
    Meets Saturdays at 2:00 PM for 3 weeks.

    Class 5
    Curling Irons – Can They Levitate and Fly into The Bathroom Cabinet?
    Examples on Video.
    Meets 4 weeks, Tuesday and Thursday for 2 hours beginning at 7:00 PM

    Class 6
    How to Ask Questions During Commercials and Be Quiet During the Programme
    Help Line Support and Support Groups.
    Meets 4 Weeks, Friday and Sunday 7:00 PM

    Class 7
    Can a Bath Be Taken Without 14 Different Kinds of Soaps and Shampoos?
    Open Forum.
    Monday at 8:00 PM, 2 hours.

    Class 8
    Health Watch–They Make Medicine for PMS – USE IT!
    Three nights; Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 7:00 PM for 2 hours.

    Class 9
    I Was Wrong and He Was Right! –Real Life Testimonials.
    Tuesdays at 6:00 PM Location to be determined.

    Class 10

    How to Parallel Park in Less Than 20 Minutes Without an Insurance Claim.Driving Simulations.
    4 weeks, Saturday’s noon, 2 hours.

    Class 11

    Learning to Drive–How to Apply Brakes Without Throwing Passengers Through the Windshield.

    Tuesdays at 7:00 PM, location to be determined

    Class 12

    How to Shop by Yourself.

    Meets 4 weeks, Tuesday and Thursday for 2 hours beginning at 7:00 PM.

    1. StorminaDcup is going to love you. Erm..not love. What’s the word i’m looking for?……Strangle !!!

      1. No, Philip, she’s too busy in Class 9.

        Fills Sandbags, dons tin helmet and retires into redoubt.

  118. I just looked again at the Shamima Begum video on the BBC.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-50137470

    ” Shamima Begum: Stripping citizenship put her at risk of hanging, court hears ”

    I agree. Hanging would be far too good for her, the lying litle bitch.
    If our legal system lets her back in, I give up.

    “

    1. Seems highly unlikely she has been there years with no attempt to hang her. I dont think they go in for hanging out there . She has in any case Pakistani & Dutch nationality available to her

          3. Nah, a peaceful transistion from one flavour of Islam to another.

            And, as one would expect from Islamic separations, a generous death toll.

    2. I wonder what the odds are?

      I doubt if any sane better would risk a bet on her being banned from coming to Britain

    4. I find it strange, we prosecute our troops for things that may have happened 40 odd years ago

      but give Legal Aid to those who have tried to kill us, so that they can reside amongst us, on benefits in the UK

      1. In this scenario “we” is not us. The “we” is the Government applying rules and processes which have never been assessed and approved by citizens. The UN and the EU have imposed codes of action to which no sane, objective, patriotic, white, Western, Christian country would ever subscribe.
        Keep in mind that the majority of the members of the UN are countries run by savages. Countries which our Foreign Office suggests that we avoid.
        Furthermore many of these UN members are countries that are muslim and determined to conquer the world in any way that that may be achieved.

    5. When Shamina waltzed through Gatwick on a stolen passport she was only sixteen years old. If Britain had introduced biometric ID or two stage verification as passport control, she and her pals would have been sent home with a flea in their ears. UK Border security is not fit for purpose.

        1. Tony, she was a child.
          I dislike her ‘faith’, but she left the country because of incompetent security procedures at Gatwick. Once you start wishing your enemies dead you are no better than they are.
          These twits in government allow inadequate processes that would not happen in other EU member states, or even countries like Nicaragua. Also, I seriously wonder if there is any Border Force/ Passport Control corruption; 2001 was eighteen years ago and it should not take that long to make a major airport secure against ‘ringers’.

    6. Compare her crimes to those for which Tommy R was imprisoned

      She actively supported the killing of non Muslims

      Tommy just reported that some users of Ali’s Snack Bar were child sexual abusers

      She gets top £ to a guarantee a life of luxury in UK

      Tommy ends up in a Jail, inhabited predominantly by the cousins of the child molesters

      1. Evening OLT,
        Plus Gerard Batten gets castigated for taking Tommy as a personal adviser.
        I know if my tongue was nailed to the table prior to being raped I would rather Tommy kicking the door down than any PC / Appeasement tw@ts
        asking if it would cause offence to enter.

        1. This post has obviously caused offence
          shown by the down vote
          have we now a paedophile protector or heavens forbid a practising
          paedophile on board?

          4. I honestly am still not sure yet whether a number of the posters are, male, female, or undecided.

          5. Perhaps, like myself and many others, he is disgusted at not only the abuse those girls suffered, but at the way the Labour Party used all sorts of tactics to cover up that abuse, including gagging one of their own MPs, Anne Cryer, when she tried raising the matter in a speech in Keighly, over 10y before the truth finally came out.

          6. I don’t disagree with your view BoB, far from it; but it’s the constant salacious salivating from him that makes me wonder.

            He seems to wallow in it, blaming everyone who isn’t UKIP for what happened.

            Were you a UKIP representative when it first surfaced?
            Were you even aware what was happening?

            If the truth be known, it wasn’t UKIP chasing this down, it was TR and his people. UKIP just jumped on the bandwagon and have been claiming the credit ever since.

            I’m no fan of TR but he was the principal and I doff my cap to him and his team, but please don’t try to tell me that it was UKIP, and please don’t try to say that because I voted Conservative that I was complicit.

          7. I think that the National Front were silenced and destroyed for making these crimes public?

          8. Not sure, I think BNP and EL were in the mix.

            All crucified for saying what was happening.

      2. She would certainly be housed and I suspect she would be living on benefits for the rest of her life. Work out how much that would cost us

  119. What the so called debates on the WAB today show most have not even read it and the rest do not really understand it

    1. A day or two ago you were telling us how good it was and how different from Mrs May’s capitulation surrender WA.

  120. 4. Workers’ rights

    The bill sets out the already-announced principle that rights which currently come from EU law, such as the working time directive, will still have effect in UK law.
    In the longer term, the bill makes vague commitments to “non-regression” – that the position on workers’ rights at the end of the transition period will not be reduced in later laws.

  121. What a farce the so called debate is. What they should be doing is going through the WAB clause by clause and not just generating random waffle

  122. The last three comments have been by Bill Jackson, Bill Jackson and Bill Jackson.
    As Boris Johnson keeps saying, this Bill must be passed, now.
    As with Brexit, we will settle the Bill afterwards.

    1. How politicians can spend over 3 years to achieve almost nothing I find staggering and shows just how incompetent and useless our politicians are

      1. They have achieved something pretty big. They have alienated the whole country outside Westminster.

        2. They have run up a very big bill on it. 650 MPs on about £80K a year have spent most of 3 years on it.Ad on civil servants time and endless traveling back and forward to Brussels

        3. T,
          Up till now it does not show in the ballot booth hardly a ripple in the voting pattern
          will this change ?

  127. In both Ameica and Britain we are fighting for freedom from the globalists. Its the Democrats in the USA and the remainers in Britain that have to be put to the sword so to speak. So many people cannot see waht is happening and just what is at stake.

    1. But a lot of people do see it now.
      Word is across the pond that voters are leaving the Democrats in droves. Tulsi Gabbard is the only sensible Democrat candidate, and Hillary (boo, hiss) has just accused her of being a Russian agent.
      Bear in mind, whatever they accuse you of is exactly what they are doing…

    2. And they are so brazen about it, they just plough on regardless of what the electorate thinks, like we don’t count any more, if we ever did.

  129. O/T because Bill is boring me to death.

    My neighbour had a successful bid in a charity auction. For £200 he won dinner for two at Vivek Singh’s Cinnamon Club. They had the tasting menu with wine which would have cost £180 per head.

    I am neon green with envy… much like the mint sauce from my local. :o(

    A destination restaurant. I’m going for my birthday…stamps foot !

    http://cinnamonclub.com/

    1. That’s unusual.
      It’s a long time since I bid at charity auctions but most times the winning bids were far higher than the value of the prize.

      HG and I once got caught up in a joint bid with a silly woman and her husband to attend a Cliff Richard concert (yes I know }:-(( ). She bid way, way over the odds and when we “enjoyed” our prize none of the bells and whistles, such as back stage access and party, materialised. I will never bid at such things again.

      1. That’s a shame but it is showbiz after all. One needs to be assertive in these things and make a noise. They soon find a place for you then.

        Garry won the bid in the Mess. Limited amount of people bidding.

        1. I don’t mind the glitter, I’m happy to pay £105 for something that’s given free and worth £100. What I object to is when the “gift” isn’t remotely what was on the wrapper.

          1. Understood. Leaves a nasty taste in the mouth.

            The last charity i supported was Ndovu’s Hedgehog charity http://www.helpahedgehog.org/

            The one before that was a local lad who is now someone quite amazing. https://www.alex-lewis.co.uk/

            I donated a painting for the Auction and outbid everyone and got it back :o)

            Plus i won half a dozen raffle prizes !

            Next one is a James bond theme night at my favourite restaurant. They are having a charity roulette table and all guests are required to wear Tux and posh frocks.

            I have six guests coming. Makes it a magic 007 and some of them are coming in character.

          2. More power to your elbow.

            Did you by any chance see the Lyon & Turnbull rare manuscripts auction recently, where early Ian Fleming books were selling for an absolute fortune, 10’s of thousands for first editions.
            If you have a first Casino Royale with jacket, best you put it in the bank.
            };-))

          3. I missed that. I wouldn’t have bid anyway. Got to be a real collector for that. Plus i wouldn’t spend that sort of money. I do like to support small local charity when i can. (Polishes Halo). It makes more of a difference.

          4. We tend only to donate and give matrial things to local Hospices in the UK and Red Cross/Sally Ally elsewhere now.

  130. Evening GG,
    I am afraid the rhetorical knot weed is increasing on your most enjoyable & decent blog I would like to point out that it is none of my doing as I choose not to reply to the main instigator.
    This is in no shape or form a whinge but an observation as I see the field of debate & humour become tainted.

    1. We are old sparring partners from elsewhere
      way beyond 15 years back or so. Regardless of political
      differences, you remain one of the most polite and respectful
      people I’ve come across. Big silver back ape. K .

      1. Evening A,
        I remember way back well, one really must respect ones
        adversaries if one values self respect,thanks for your
        input, much appreciated.
        I really believe that the rampant down voter targeting ogga1
        is due to a medical condition suffered by many lefties known as
        loosescrewincannister, sad really.
        Keep up the good debate,
        No worries.

        1. I very much miss many of my old kipper friends such as Raddy, Mobius
          and you were / are one of those. People that can have
          Political differences and remain on good terms, but it’s
          changed so much. Many have fallen out and there is less
          kindness and warmth around these days. I was made
          a honoury kipper by Raddy but he thought i was a bit too
          much of a rebel due to sending Cameron very dark Nordic
          poetry damning both Cameron and the EU… Cameron
          was furious. Not sure if Tim Montgomerie appreciated
          It much too but he was more reasonable then PG .

          1. A,
            I do believe it was Monti who gave me the hard word on CH, still,we all rhetorically battled and came out none the worse for
            wear.

            The current down voting units are a sad affair they are really coming across as being paedo friendly then accusing others of being of a nasty nature.
            No worries.

          2. Yo, ogga1. It was always possible to see downvotes, using extensions such as Disqus Downvote Exposer in Chrome. It’s a shame that Disqus have chosen to re-introduce visible downvotes. It’s more of a shame that the downvoters are anonymous. Moderators can see who has flagged a post, but not who has downvoted. In the overall scheme of things, downvotes are not that important. KBO…

          3. Evening GG,
            But surely targeted down voting is a form of harassment is it not, is that to be tolerated ?

          8. Evening GG,
            Then let us hope it does not accumulate as most is not genuine
            debate but maliciously spewed from ambush of down voting & in time sh!te will attract more sh!te.
            Thanks for your reply.

          9. Thanks for letting us know the inmost secrets of the mod control panel, Sir…………

            Care to share the login code….. ?

          11. I’m sure nobody is looking, Sir, so please could you post the details here…

            It’s not a big deal… I merely wanted to make a minor adjustment to sosy’s account…….

          12. Sorry I never realised Tim had a banning hammer too.
            I was banned twice from there by PG , Once for defending my
            UKIP and Right Wing Conservative friends and the
            second time for defending Boris Johnson Burka letter box
            remark. They don’t have any voting anymore there,
            whether it be up or down.

  132. Classic Farage this evening on LBC. When he performs like this it is obvious why Johnson and Cummings do not want him near their election campaign. He would put Johnson in the shade both in oration skills and more importantly on mastery of detail.
    He put down one caller by quoting chapter and verse from May’s WA, of which 95% of Johnson’s “deal” has been gleaned from but the best effort was his take down of Johnson’s garrulous reply to Owen Paterson re our fisheries.
    Shortly after Johnson became PM Paterson asked him if the UK would take back control of the full 200 mile limit and manage our stocks. Today, Paterson asked a similar question and Johnson confirmed that that is what he is intending to do. Johnson’s answer is worrying as Farage pointed out: the very “deal” he is pushing through the House makes his answer a nonsense. Farage again quoted the relevant text in the “deal” that Johnson is today promoting in Parliament. If this is the level of Johnson’s understanding of his “deal” then we are deeper in the smelly brown stuff than our worst fears were telling us.

    1. Nigel was being somewhat misleading the things he was mentioning are in the non legally binding political document nd are subject to negotiations and we can walk out and go to WTO

      1. What he was quoting was from the treaty and that is legally binding if accepted. It lays down conditions on how we have to act in the trade deal negotiations e.g. in a non discriminatory manner. As for the PD, Martin Howe QC wrote an article on May’s version and it turned out that not everything was clear cut as to it being non-binding – no surprise as the EU wrote it. Unless the PD has change significantly then some of those items will have been carried over.

    2. No power, no influence and no voice apart from that of
      delusions of grandeur from the guilded cage of an echo chamber
      In a radio station. The man who abandoned UKIP in the middle
      of a battlefield.

        1. Nigel Farage is the leader of the largest party in the European Parliament and absolutely CANED both Labour and the Conservative parties in the European Elections, after those parties betrayed the people by trying to overturn the referendum result.

          There are fewer and fewer people now who are prepared to sell out the United Kingdom by continuing to vote for MP’s who will not let us leave the EU. That is choice that is facing us. Get out of the EU first and then go back to voting the way you always have if you must.

          What a shock it would be if The Brexit Party turned out not only to get us out of the EU with a clean Brexit, but also turned out to be better at running the country than these lazy toads that we have at the moment. TBP has a lot of older, experienced businessmen and women who have had to work in the real world.

          They also have Ann Widdecombe who could punch a horse to the ground and will take no nonsense from the EU.

          1. The Conservative sleuths will have checked the backgrounds of all 650 of the BP candidates and any dodgy candidates will be exposed during the election campaign. Nigel will get special attention. The Conservatives fear him.

          2. With Boris’s track record “with the ladies” and some of the things that many of the other MP’s get up to (eww Keith Vaz) they will need to dig deep to find things that are comparable. Although, with the media as they are now, they will just make things up.

            It is now freedom or subjugation for the United Kingdom. Some people in the country should get some perspective and stop hating Nigel Farage. Our nation is in enough trouble as it is already without throwing away the best chance we have of actually leaving the EU with a WTO Brexit.

          3. I would like the BP to hold the balance of power, get a few Ministerial positions and handle them very successfully. Then grow from there.
            They need experience in the snake pit of the Civil Service before taking over.

          4. This is one of the few areas where I disagree with you. It had to happen sometime. 🙂

            I am very much of the opinion that those who are elected with experience of the real world should be telling the Civil Servants what to do, not wait to be “House-trained” by them, as they said in the Yes (Prime) Minister series.

            There are plenty of talented people in the country who would be much better at doing the jobs of senior civil servants than these pro-EU drones that we have at the moment. If the civil servants are a bit slow to realise that they are now the ones who are taking orders, then they can be re-located to the vehicle licencing centre in Swansea.

          5. We might be at cross purposes here.
            The BP have to experience first hand what they will have to deal with.

            Until one sees such things at the coal face one is seldom prepared for how dreadful it is, but on the plus side, nor how many good bits there actually are.

            I lost count of the business areas where “top” management told me there was a problem with a department and it turned out that the real problem was “top management”.

          6. I think that the Brexit Party has all of the experience that they need. They learnt it the hard way as well. Not like that mindless teenager that I have just witnessed on the TV. She would not be out of place in a college debating team. I believe that she is called Jo Swinson and is the leader of the Liberal Democrats.

            If these muppets are what the civil service are accustomed to “forming” then the Brexit Party will eat them alive. I cannot see for one second Nigel Farage, with all of his years in the EU, being unable to cope with our gaggle of civil servants.

          7. To beat anyone at a game you have either to learn the rules and play better or change the rules!
            };-))

          8. I think that we have had enough of “their rules” and watching them change them to suit their needs. So it is long past time that we play by our rules again. If they don’t like it they are free to resign. 🙂

  134. Boris is playing high stake poker, it could still be
    No Deal Brèxit. He’ll not let it go beyond 31/ 10 / 19.

    3. Well we now wait for the next move by Boris. Given the timescales at latest he will have to play his hand by tomorrow

  135. Confirmed : If the bill is rejected then Boris Johnson will call for a general election
    before December. Go for it Boris anyway .

      1. He’d love a general election, they keep trying to stop
        him. The Prime Minister by law was required to find a
        deal and take it to parliament, they’ll of course will
        reject the deal. So therefore the Prime Minister has the
        right to remove the deal and either go for No Deal Brèxit
        and/ or a general election.. he’d personally like both.
        Very savvy is Boris Johnson, he runs rings around all the
        stuffed mannequins in Parliament .

        2. Boris would crawl over broken glass to stop a no-deal Brexit. That is one of the things that should be apparent by now, and will be by the end of this month. His “Leaving on Oct 31st, do or die” sounds nice until the penny drops and you realise that what he means by leaving is handing even more control of our country over to the EU for at least the next 2 years.

          But if he can trick enough Conservative voters that still being under the authority of the European Court of Justice DOES actually mean leaving, then he will go for broke in an election and if he wins he will keep us under EU control for at least another 5 years. I merely state this so that you can brace yourself, as you still seem to believe that Boris actually wants to leave.

          I don’t want you to suddenly be upset when this reality dawns. We are going nowhere with Boris as leader. If Parliament does do something stupid with their amendments, then they are not playing into Boris’s hands. He will just skip along to his very close friends in Brussels, the ones who were patting him on the back and hugging him so warmly, and get another extension.

          1. He seems to have tricked far too many people in the Conservative Parliamentary Party.

            Which of the following have remained firm in not supporting Boris’s capitulation WA?

            Owen Paterson?
            Mark Francois?
            Bill Cash?
            Kate Hoey?
            John Redwood?
            Richard Drax?
            Esther McVey?
            Lord Tebbit?

            Judas Grease-Slime has lowered his trousers and asked, very politely, to be buggered!

        1. Even if he was able to call one, unless he does a deal with TBP, he and his party are screwed.

          1. That’s my belief too.

            I don’t think he really does want anything other than to remain and his agreement plus political declaration ensures that; particularly if that cretin’s 2022 amendment gets passed.

          4. Many of us have been saying this from the moment Farage won the European elections and Boris became prime minister.

            Unless Boris does a deal then it will not just be the Conservative |Party that is screwed – it will be all of us.

      3. Two thirds of MPs have to agree to it.
        And most of them are worried they’ll lose their seats.

        They should be worried about losing more than that.

  136. Boris threw Carrie Symonds out of Downing Street to keep a clear head while he was working.
    Question: Was that a good descision or a bad decision ?

    Second Question : Is the Downing Street Cat bearing up ?

  138. My head is spinning from trying to understand the insanity of our masters.
    Can someone tell me what the state of game is now other than a few more days faffing around.
    Will we still be good Europeans after Halloween ?

  143. Well the schedule according to JRM is the next 2 days is to debate the Queens speech and the house will not sit on Friday

    3. Some thirty years ago, as project QS on a new store for Sainsburys in Norwich, all hands were on deck, 24/7, for the opening. Our regional director joined in, and proved useful with a broom and a wheelbarrow. He was also a good proof reader, since the white lining crew had done their stuff in the car park. “What are bicycycles?”, he asked, late one Sunday evening…

  145. Off topic

    There has been an excellent Beeb 4 program on an eagle , if they do + 1 it’s worth watching

  147. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

    Just seen an advert, on the telly for Tesco’s Meat Free Cumberland sausages

          4. I noticed that glitch a few minutes ago, as did OneLastTry above. Disqus fritzed out for a moment. I almost ended up posting the same comment twice, but noticed it was already there after it looked like it failed. Just one of those hiccups.

    2. How Tesco’s and Greggs get away with it I dont know. The definition of a sausage is it has to contain meat

  148. Ive not the foggiest of what’s going on
    but I believe we are heading towards No Deal Brèxit on the 31/ 10 /19.

    1. The only stipulation is the UK has to agree to adopt American dates (10/31/2019).
      If not, Americans will wait until the 31st month of this year to resume trade negotiations.

      1. I dont understand why the US has not changed to the International date standard of day, Month . To my knowledge only 5 countries use the US system

          1. I never did understand all the press discussing roughly ten bob (nine shillings and eleven pence) when the more important news was about those hi-jacked American airlines being flown into tall buildings in 2001.

          1. International Date Format

            Since 1996-05-01, the international format yyyy-mm-dd has become the official standard date format, but the handwritten form d. mmmm yyyy is also accepted (see DIN 5008). Standardisation applies to all applications in the scope of the standard including uses in government, education, engineering and sciences. Apr 5 2019

          2. Trying to reply to Stephenroi below. Click on “reply”, get a blank screen. I think I broke Disqus, URL shown is:

            https://disqus.com/embed/comments/?base=default&f=nottl&t_i=201%20https%3A%2F%2Fnttl.blog%2F%3Fp%3D201&t_u=https%3A%2F%2Fnttl.blog%2Ftuesday-22-october-the-speakers-evident-determination-to-prevent-brexit-undermines-the-credibility-of-parliament%2F&t_e=Tuesday%2022%20October%3A%20The%20Speaker’s%20evident%20determination%20to%20prevent%20Brexit%20undermines%20the%20credibility%20of%20Parliament&t_d=Tuesday%2022%20October%3A%20The%20Speaker’s%20evident%20determination%20to%20prevent%20Brexit%20undermines%20the%20credibility%20of%20Parliament&t_t=Tuesday%2022%20October%3A%20The%20Speaker’s%20evident%20determination%20to%20prevent%20Brexit%20undermines%20the%20credibility%20of%20Parliament&s_o=desc#

        1. About 1/80,000 people in the general population are 46,XY (Complete Gonadal Dysgenesis, aka. Sweyer Syndrome). https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/swyer-syndrome#statistics
          With respect to the female population that’s approximately 1/160,000 women who are 46,XY–the overwhelming majority of whom have typical female genitalia and are raised with a female gender identity (not the transgenders seen above).

          Doing the math and assuming 68 Million total population, that’s only 850 people who are 46,XY females in the entire United Kingdom.

    7. 2nd from right reminds me (facially) of Mme Macron. The one on the left doesn’t look too bad, but the one on the right on the other hand…

    8. Possibly a phobia about knobbly knees and a big cock when you might expect something more inviting?

      1. As many an ex-Serviceman can tell you, by far the best looking women in Bugis Street, Singapore, were actually somewhat differently equipped.

    1. If Boris attempt to become PM had not been sabotaged we would have been out by now but instead we got the waste of space May

  151. Has Boris got a plan? Surely he had considered the loss of vote 2. The odds were against it

  153. Wax the Balls,Bigot

    The suggestion that these Canadian female waxers are ‘transphobes’

    because they refused to wax a dick confirms the cynical, sinister nature

    of that term ‘transphobic’. It really is just a way to demonise and

    punish anyone who refuses to bow down to the ideology of genderfluidity.

    It is stick used to beat those who refuse to buy into the Orwellian

    notion that war is peace, freedom is slavery, and a penis can be female.

    You can now be a bigot simply for believing in reality itself, in this

    case that people with penises are not women. Pressuring women to handle

    male genitalia against their will is dreadful and it suggests woke

    politics has now crossed the line from irritating to disgusting.

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2019/07/19/canadas-bizarre-trans-waxing-controversy/
    Finally a tiny smidgen of sanity

    1. They should change their business model. ‘We wax anything. We remove the wax with a blowtorch’.

  154. HAPPY HOUR – and a whole lot more….

    Can’t quite get the hang of the selfie…HIC!

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/fbe01187f3ef8728c909a6801440996ebcc6b7e5eb605f87c9eb6615af7d7237.jpg

    After setting off this morning in brilliant sunshine I was looking forward to a set or two of tennis, optimist that I am.
    A birthday celebration was in progress at the club and i succumbed to a liquid lunch after a couple of sets.
    Returning home I poured myself a large sherry whilst preparing lunch and try as I might I cannot remember what I ate ….i was totally blotto……. It’s been a long time since I felt this good!
    FK B….T

          1. Poor sosy………….

            Still annoyed you lost our WW1 argument.

            Maybe you’ll get over it….. but maybe, by the look of things, you’ll be forever upset……..

            Oh well…

            What a shame…

            Never mind !

          5. You seem to know about itches on your ”whole”, sosy, but I don’t think you should share your personal experiences of that nature here.

          6. I’m of the generation that didn’t put it about. I know from your previous reaction that you are of the generation that does.

            Are you from Hitchin?

          7. Just because I might well be of ”the generation that” allegedly ”puts it about” doesn’t mean that I do, sosy……

          9. Absolutely so, just because allegedly many do does not mean that any one individual does.

  161. This Dominic Cummings has said the best book to teach of
    politics is that of Thucydides who wrote of the Peloponnesian War
    Spartan verses Athens.. excellent !!

    On that not dinner needs cooking.

    1. A few weeks ago there was an excellent Melvyn Bragg “In our time” discussion on that topic. Well worth trying to find.

      1. Or, for our politicians

        The Beano
        There will Beano Brexit
        There will Beano Freedom from ECHR
        There will Beano more heterosexual marriages
        The will Beano Monarchy in UK
        There will Beano Border

        There will Beano UK fishing industryControls

  164. Won the poker game ; we leave on the 31/ 10 / 19 without a deal .

    Don’t blink now man, get on with it !

  166. Mail to Mr R………………….

    ”best-in-class free trade agreement”

    Another massive laugh……….

    That’ll be the agreement where Brits desperate for the holy grail of free trade sign away most or all of their new found freedoms….. including their fish…. and end up right back where they started.

    Thanks to British weakness and naivety, the EU really have this sorted. No wonder Brussels loves the ”deal”.

    Polly

    1. So you’ve given up your British citizenship and are now a full blown Yank? From 9.15am on 24th June 2016 after Cameron had delivered his passionate resignation speech (the only passionate speech I saw that morning) it was quite obvious to me that TPTB had no intention of ever letting us leave the EU. The only decent MP, a German, resigned as she’d obviously couldn’t stomach being associated with such traitorous scum.
      If they had any intention of leaving it was a simple case of signing Article 50 that morning and then going out and negotiating trade deals with the worlds’ industrial powers and re-vamping the commonwealth preference system and totally ignoring the EU. I’d have made a beeline to the Japanese, Koreans and Yanks to get investment to build new car factories, especially luxury cars and do what the Thai’s did to protect their Japanese car plants, slap 200% duty rates on imported cars.
      But I’m sure Johnson will be taking us out on a No Deal on the 31st.
      So Miss Polly, I resent your comment about weakness and naivety and I would point out that the UK is still the only country to have voted by a majority against your “globalists.” You Yanks have voted twice and got nowhere near a majority, you haven’t built your wall, you haven’t drained your swamp and you haven’t stopped warmongering. When do you go OTT in Iran? We have always, with a few exceptions, been ruled by donkeys, nearly always the this red line has to prevail.

      1. I don’t think Boris wants No Deal.

        I don’t think Boris ever really wanted to Leave.

        Leave was just his career move.

        Fudge is his way of Remaining.

        1. I’m 100% certain Johnson doesn’t want No Deal as he’s a Remainer.

          Remember he wrote two letters and on a whim chose Vote Leave. He and the lead Tories on there were all plants and were just as shocked as Cameron was as they never expected Leave would win. Gove’s wife writing in the DM says to him after he was woken at 4.45am on referendum night to be told “Michael, we’ve won” she responds “You were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off.”

          I never watch the TV news and switched on at 10.30pm on the last day of polling to see Johnson being heckled in Ashby by a 17 year old brainwashed remainer. Johnson had no idea on how to respond because he had no conviction in what he was supporting. Watching that I was depressed and thought if that’s the best we have, we’re lost.

          Part of the heckling is shown in this clip. But the three MPs in the studio cannot put this brainwashed yoof to the sword.

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6mMP1HYJDc

          Also watch again Johnson’s Referendum victory speech, totally passionless, bit like Farage’s conceding defeat and victory speech.

          I haven’t bothered with anything since before Johnson became PM as it’s all smoke and mirrors, muddying the waters and convoluted as possible so nobody can understand what’s going on. Johnson in that respect, like May, is playing a blinder, so a fudged job is 100% correct.

    1. The one where the cute little girl says, “Daddy, I don’t want to eat animals anymore”? Doesn’t it make you want to feed her to the lions.

      1. Nowt to do with me Disgust was playing up

        Nowt to do with me Disgust was playing up

        Nowt to do with me Disgust was playing up

  170. I have a hope that Boris is playing a blinder. The Contemptibles have agreed the Second Reading of the Withdrawal Agreement but have then voted to give themselves some unspecified duration during which they will ‘debate’ it. The damn Withdrawal Agreement is a duplicate of May’s deal and they have had two out of three and a half years to rant about that pile of poo.

    This rabble are incapable of debate and merely posture with their superfluous, verbose and irrelevant rhetoric. Prime exponents are Ian Blackford and Jo Swinson but there are other equally inanimate automata in the pay of Soros.

    I hope Boris will allow the EU to say ‘no more’ and refuse an extension under Article 50. That way we will have the hoped for General Election this year and we can leave under our own terms if Boris leads the Tories to re-election.

    The alternative is that the EU propose some technical extension and Boris sticks by his guns and refuses. This will also result in a likely General Election.

    I hope I have read this correctly. One lives in hope.

        2. That looks like a clip from “The Searchers” – one of the very best Westerns ever made.

    2. There is a saying that no speech should last longer than the speaker can make love. If certain parliamentarians followed that premise Westminster might resemble a Trappist monastery. The thought has a certain appeal.

      1. How interesting. I doubt the dwarf Speaker could retain an erection for the same period as that by which he deploys his opposition to entirely legitimate government business.

        Bercow is a contemptible and grotesque Speaker, unworthy of the title and role of his office. Everyone can see this and everyone with an ounce of intelligence knows that he is just another Soros shill.

    3. C,
      Not to put to finer point on it but it was hope that got us into our current odious position as a country.
      Hoping that the next to head of government would be better than the last and it has never worked out for decades.
      Country before party via the ballot booth.
      Hope can be fickle,

      1. Point taken ad Infinitum as your oft repeated argument.

        I am simply suspecting that Boris is a bit cleverer than the rest of the useless mob. I might be wrong but it seems obvious to me that we might still leave the EU without the Treaty (which would have bound us to the ECJ for donkeys’ years and without influence in its judgements).

        Alternatively we could leave under WTO terms which represent freedom for our country from the exigencies of the EU.

    4. I don’t quite follow you, Corrie. Under our “5 year term of office” legislation, even if Boris refuses suggested EU extensions he cannot just “order” a General Election, can he? He needs two thirds of Parliament to agree to that and the Remainers will keep on refusing to do so, so that he is stymied for the next 2-plus years until 2022. Can you please explain how you reached your views?

  171. Boris Johnson has won the game of poker,
    he and Jacob Rees Mogg are in total control of the committee’s and
    everything else. The Remainers have totally lost the argument and
    any ounce of credibility they might have had.

    1. Not sure I understand that. It is now largely out of Boris’s control. A lot depends what the EU come up with. My be he is talking to them and asking for a 1 week technical extension

        1. It changes almost by the hour. I cannot see anyway Boris can pull it off now as any legislation needed to get through cannot get into law

          I think the best bet is to try to get the EU to give short technical extension of say 1 week yo allow the legislation to go into law

    1. Hi Geoff,
      Sorry to bother you, but I made a reply post to Sue Edison, an innocuous and friendly reply, some minutes ago and it went straight into ‘pending’ for some strange reason?
      If you or one of the other mods could release it please, I’d be most grateful.

Comments are closed.