983 thoughts on “Wednesday 6 November: The Tories can win in former Labour strongholds if they stay true to blue-collar Conservatism”

  2. Vladimir Putin calls for ‘reliable’ Russian version of Wikipedia. Tue 5 Nov 2019 18.11 GMT.

    Vladimir Putin has called for the creation of a more “reliable” Russian version of Wikipedia.

    The president told a Kremlin meeting on the future of the Russian language: “As for Wikipedia … it’s better to replace it with the new Big Russian Encyclopaedia in electronic form,” RIA Novosti news agency reported. “At least that will be reliable information, presented in a good, modern way.”

    Morning everyone. I would settle for a reliable English version! Wikipedia was a noble idea for the new digital age that has been corrupted by the age and culture in which we now live.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/05/vladimir-putin-calls-for-reliable-russian-version-of-wikipedia

    1. When you read the article on fascism you get the same tired lie, that the Nazi’s were fascist and fascism is Right wing. It isn’t. It’s a Left wing construct.

      The truth has been argued over but the fact remains: All evil comes form the Left.

      1. Fascism, like Communism, isn’t Left or Right wing…it is Totalitarian. In the same way, Islam isn’t left or right wing, it is Totalitarianism. There can be no left or right wing thought in a Totalitarian system because left and right wing thoughts means thinking about other political systems and ideas is taking place within society…Totalitarian systems can’t ever allow that within ‘their sphere of control’.

        1. Fascism & Communism are Authoritarian Collectivist systems with more similarities than differences and there is much to be said for them to be classed as being on the same side of the political divide.

          Opponents of those systems wish to see minimal government interference beyond that necessary for the efficient operation of the state apparat with taxation restricted to provide for essential services, including the defence of the state from outside threats.

          Let us call the former Left Wing and the latter Right Wing.

          1. “Opponents of those systems wish to see minimal government interference”

            Right up until the moment that the market smashes those ‘freedom loving Righties’ who then scream that their losses should be met from the public purse (their profits staying strictly private of course).

          2. Left v. Right is a remnant from the French Revolution.
            I think it has lasted because any other description wouldn’t be so snappy or memorable.

          3. I think it predates the Revolution to the Estates General where the 3rd Estate, the Commoners, sat on the Left side of the chamber.

  5. Yes, democracy is in trouble. But burning it down is not an option. Tue 5 Nov 2019 .

    Citizens’ conventions or assemblies are a well-rehearsed means to solve seemingly intractable problems. They bring together a random but representative sample of citizens who are given the tools and the time to construct solutions that speak to complex long-term national interests. However Brexit is resolved, a citizens’ convention would bring all sides of the country together, allowing the hurt and the hope to be shared, understood and healed. This is the role they played in Ireland on the divisive issue of abortion.

    How can they be both random and representative? The use of the latter word surely implies some method of selection and where there is choice there is prejudice or even corruption. What neutral observer would doubt the Irish abortion convention was engineered to pass a measure that the politicians fearful of the consequences would not? So it must always be. The people who choose the representatives will choose the result!

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/nov/05/democracy-guy-fawkes-night

    1. What they mean is ‘we want groups of people who think like us to make decisions that we agree with.

      Real such assemblies do work, but the Guardian wouldn’t like the results. Can you imagine their outrage when 100 or so of us said ‘right, we’re sacking the council executive and we’re going back to one bin collection, weekly. We’re also building a gas power plant outside of town. And those Muslims who France want to dump on us? Increase patrol boats with a licence to hole the boats and not rescue the gimmigrants. They’d hate it. The facts of life are conservative. The Guardian forgets this because it cannot conceive that people think differently to it.

      1. Yes, you might even get, “Yes rich older people must pay for their own social care and not force younger people to pay for it. Yes, we are going to build stacks of new homes right on the doorsteps of the NIMBYs”.

        1. One thing about Social care that irritates the shonet out of me is the dual pricing used by many providers of such care when those funded by Local Authorities are charged substantially less than those using their own funding.

    2. ‘Morning, Minty, the Graudian spouts, “…citizens who are given the tools and the time to construct solutions that speak to complex long-term national interests.”

      I suppose in Graudian and snowflake millennial-speak, June 23rd 2016 is now ancient history and, therefore, best forgotten.

        1. However, over the next few days starting on Sunday, those same Graudianistas and Snowflake-Millennials will hear, time and time again,

          “At the going down of the Sun, and in the morning, we will remember them.”

          It will be tied to what our forefathers did, in order to be free of the German (European) yoke.

          1. But they’ll be wearing rainbow poppies, or at least white or purple ones (think of the animals, you know) if they wear one at all.

    3. The majority can be wrong. When a civilisation has lost its moral compass, when morality is a matter of choice, when self-interest is accepted as the only guiding principle for action, when the justice system is being driven by guidelines at odds with justice and precedent, the majority are going to go along with whatever the Press (suborned by evil) tells them to do.

      1. Tells… doesn’t even need to be so directive. Suppress alternative interpretations and alternative news items, and all folk hear is what you want them to hear. There’s no dissent, as people don’t know that there are alternatives.
        It’s what motivates me to read about the same news in different countries’ newspapers. Different takes on the news.
        BTW, whatever happened to the Gilets Jaunes, in France? Never a peep on the MSN, despite the regular ongoing violence. Only Twitter seemed to pick up on it.

        1. In addition to the selectivity, there is the choice of language. We are all aware that leaving on WTO terms is, in newspeak, “crashing out with no deal and going over the cliff edge”.

      2. Morality has always been a matter of choice…that is why years ago it was totally ‘moral’ i.e blind eye turned, to allow rich young women to attend a discreet doctor in a wealthy area to take care of the rich young woman’s ‘mistake’ but utterly immoral i.e faux outrage, for poor young women to attend a backstreet clinic…..

        1. Yes, I expressed it badly. When people do not choose to be moral, society fails. We are not perfect but striving to be good is beneficial to society.

  6. Looking out of the bedroom window this morning the trees are still and it’s very dull.
    Not surprisingly the wind farm output is less than 2GW and solar is zero.
    Grid demand is however over 35GW and rising – good job I still have a house with a fireplace and a chimney and the Government has decided to dig coal again

    1. AO’E, shouldn’t you have a warm glow from the UK trying to be the greenest land on the planet?😎

      2. Well actually I do.

        My fireplace houses an electric fuel effect fire which is currently mostly working on biogas renewables grid output which is outstripping both wind and solar combined at 2.4GW.

        The fuel effect is created with three red 40W tungsten light bulbs which create the impression of a 7kW log fire whilst only giving out 120W of heat.

        1. I’m totally dependent on gas for heating my bungalow as I removed fireplaces from three rooms and had the tall dodgy chimney stacks removed. My boiler is around eight years old and is vastly more efficient than what it replaced but what happens in a few years if the boiler fails? Will I be allowed to replace it or have to go fully electric, and what would that cost? The decision makers are being driven by the green ideology rather than by practicalities and that will lead to disastrous consequences for many people if forced through.

        2. I’m totally dependent on gas for heating my bungalow as I removed fireplaces from three rooms and had the tall dodgy chimney stacks removed. My boiler is around eight years old and is vastly more efficient than what it replaced but what happens in a few years if the boiler fails? Will I be allowed to replace it or have to go fully electric, and what would that cost? The decision makers are being driven by the green ideology rather than by practicalities and that will lead to disastrous consequences for many people if forced through.

    2. It doens’t matter. More windmills will be thrown up, green will be lauded, rational energy research kicked to the side. The country will just be told that brown outs are normal as our infrastructure crumbles. No one has the courage to say that this mess is wrong and unnecessary and favours only a tiny greedy, arrogant set of troughers and wasters.

      1. Some time back, I read one of Bernard Cornwell’s (to my mind) less successful books – The Winter King.
        There was one telling detail that caught my imagination; Arthur held a meeting in a decaying Roman town. The warriors showed their support by banging their spears on the ground – dislodging and cracking even more Roman mosaic.
        I think of that snippet every time I walk or drive along our patched up, crumbling roads and pavements. We have over-civilised ourselves to an unsustainable level.

        1. It’s interesting how rapidly the situation changed in Roman Britain towards the end of Roman occupation. It appears to go almost instantly from large luxurious villas producing large amounts of crops & wealth to abandonment in what seems an instant.

          1. The Roman Empire lost the will to defend itself and its way of life.
            I will leave others to draw the obvious conclusion.

        2. It’s interesting how rapidly the situation changed in Roman Britain towards the end of Roman occupation. It appears to go almost instantly from large luxurious villas producing large amounts of crops & wealth to abandonment in what seems an instant.

      2. From Merriam Webster: Green


        a: deficient in training, knowledge, or experience
        green recruits

        b: deficient in sophistication and savoir faire : NAIVE
        was green and credulous

        c: not fully qualified for or experienced in a particular function

        The above fits the PTB making these disastrous decisions, I think.

        Merriam Webster

  7. No, they can’t. Labour have placed a stranglehold on the country through massive uncontrolled immigration and controlling the narrative because the entire establishment has been infested with Lefties.

    The BBC is Labour’s mouthpiece, pumping out 24/7 propaganda which is mostly deceit and nonsense to suit it’s own agenda.

    The battle is lost. The Left won. The country is stuffed and cannot recover from the misery of poverty, communism and a command economy. ALl that waits is debt and taxes levied by an unresponsive, greedy, arrogant, incompetent state. What’s sad is that people will clamour – Labour’s people – for the government to ‘do soemthing’ and it will – just, as always, it will be the wrong thing designed to throttle the country ever more.

    The realisation that Boris has cheated us by allowing the Benn act to pass is evidence of this.

      3. As Ol says, filibuster – they pulled the filibuster in the Lords. Then, the nuclear option; do what Blair did and advise HM not to sign the Act. She would have had to comply. No Benn Act, no excuse “my hands are tied” and we actually were out on the 31st. I see lots of people have been conned into thinking “Boris has tried his hardest”. No, he hasn’t.

    2. Great piece of satire….what ever else this country is, it is not communist nor do we have a command economy.

        1. If real Communists ever got into power, Labour would s76t itself as much as the Conservatives… …though immigration and Islamic terrorism would be dealt with… ….NIMBYs would soon get short shrift as well when it came to improvements in national infrastructure….

  8. SIR – The election of Sir Lindsay Hoyle as Speaker of the House of Commons (report, November 5) is the first step, albeit a small one, towards restoring the reputation of that institution. There is a long way to go, but at least the Speaker is now someone worthy of a modicum of respect.

    Phil Coutie
    Exeter, Devon

    1. ‘Morning, Epi, (and Mr Coutie). Remember that the proof of the pudding is in the eating and, whilst he may have form as a Deputy Speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle has to prove himself impartial and operating by Erskine May, in the heat of the Chamber’s whinging, whining and trying to circumvent the rules.

      1. Erskine May this, Erskine May that, Erskine May the other. What on earth has the author of “The Riddle Of The Sands” got to do with the Speaker?

        :-))

    2. SIR – As well as banning clapping, can we hope that the new Speaker will ban MPs from appearing in the House in open-necked shirts and no ties?

      Susan Lapham
      Penzance, Cornwall

        1. From watching proceedings recently it seems the vast majority of them have been behaving like a bunch of old women…….

  9. So the election campaigning starts officially today but it already seems like we are heading for a dumbed down narrative, made up fake news on the back of what someone says or doesn’t say being taken out of context and embellished to suit the agenda, which basically means that a minority group must be offended when in fact the only people offended are liberal elite types trying to stir up division.
    This is going to be a low IQ election aimed at the low IQ voter, might as will go away come back in six weeks.

    1. Might as well go away. Don’t bother returning, it’s shite in the UK and will be getting worse when Corby gets elected.

      1. Morning Oberst. We are at one of those turning points in History where things become very nasty indeed!

        1. Things have been nasty since the 90s.

          Blair is responsible for most of it, Brown the rest. Cameron for doing sod all about it, May for making it worse. When Boris got in I had hope, actual hope things would be different but no. Same old same old. The rot is set too deep.

          1. A start was made on Monday; one small step, but even the HoC appears to have realised that it may need to rethink its image.
            The choice of Lindsay Hoyle as Speaker may indicate that the pendulum is poised to swing back.

          2. Hoyle can’t wait to kiss HMGs a67e….time a Speaker was picked at random from the GBE to serve for 6 months, then someone else gets the job and so on….

          3. Blair was created by Thatcher….she was ever so proud of that. And for every Red spending policy enacted, Blues cheered it on…

      2. Well, the GBE are the people who elected the HMGs that have been turning the UK into shite since the ’70s….or do you think all those s67t-on left behind areas of the UK were all created by accident….?

          1. But it’s true….stacks of safe seats filled with people who automatically prop their respective mobs and then complain that their respective mobs ignore their wishes….

    2. Look on the Bright side the BBC and media now have to be careful to be impartial as the Purdah period has started

    3. I turned off Radio 4 as soon as they put “Jacob Rees-Mogg” and “Grenfell” in the same sentence, as it this were going to be the issue that sets the future destiny of the nation.

      Contrary to what Sarah Sands is sending into the presenters’ earpieces, what he said was quite logical and sensible, but not terribly Conservative.

      If someone in authority tells you to do something, your best chance of survival is to do the very opposite.

        1. I think he made the mistake of expecting people to take responsibility for their own actions.
          He forgot that 70 years of the welfare state has removed that ability from many people.
          However, building a tower block with one physical staircase was not exactly the pinnacle of design. Neither was the failure to do anything about that design fault for the next forty years.
          But hey, the cladding looked pretty.

          1. “I think he made the mistake of expecting people to take responsibility for their own actions.”

            On spot.

            Me, the tortoise and the old lady with a stick have usually made it to the central island on the bypass in town by watching the traffic while the not-so-old folk are still waiting for the green man to tell them to cross.

          3. Yep…there is plenty in the s78t bucket to coat Blues and Reds when it comes to public policy failures… 🙂

      2. Exactly. “Please stay where you are until the toffs have got into the lifeboats.”

      3. ‘Morning, Jeremy, the nine most frightening words you can hear, “I’m from the Government and I’m here to help.”

    4. Low election IQ…ahh, you mean business as usual as Blue Sheeple and Red Drones rush to vote for their parties….

    6. Some Labour spokesman was going on about a trade deal with the US would mean our food would have rats hairs and maggots in it. It was a total misrepresentation of the truth, US food standards as do UK standards specify a limit for the amount of foreign matter that can be in our food. It is impossible for it to be zero so all food will contain some trave amounts of insects and animal matter

        1. Yes it is slightly off putting but it is only trace amounts. Crops are grown in fields and animals and insects live in those fields

          2. These same people are probably amonst those who sprout on about using sea salt for its added minerals and health benefits over common or garden rock salt. TV chefs are full of it.

            They seem not to be aware that those added minerals are simply flamingo shit. The salt pans in Spain are covered in flamingos feeding on brine shrimps. The water from those lagoons then passes to other lagoons for evaporation, then others, concentrating the dissolved solids until they are left with salt – plus added minerals. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9d029e24b72126a792ee3066f0c03852bd2a60a0d2ab7491dc2bffd565c1be2e.jpg

          3. These same people are probably amonst those who sprout on about using sea salt for its added minerals and health benefits over common or garden rock salt. TV chefs are full of it.

            They seem not to be aware that those added minerals are simply flamingo shit. The salt pans in Spain are covered in flamingos feeding on brine shrimps. The water from those lagoons then passes to other lagoons for evaporation, then others, concentrating the dissolved solids until they are left with salt – plus added minerals. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9d029e24b72126a792ee3066f0c03852bd2a60a0d2ab7491dc2bffd565c1be2e.jpg

    7. Good policy, Bob3. Anne Allan and I now both pursue it. Come and join us for a six week holiday.

        1. I too am spending a lot of time organising, i.e. de-cluttering, at home. But, compared with Brexit/Election discussions on here it feels very much like a holiday.

    1. Morning Bil, no rain here, but a lot of dew. Bally cold but that could just be me being a wimp.

    3. Dry in derbyshire, but as I got out of bed at 07:00 I was struck by how dull it was and how, had we not gone back onto the UK’s natural time zone, GMT, 07:00 would be 08:00.

      1. I get the impression that a lot of people on here would rather the UK time was now 1951…..

  11. SIR – During my student days, undergraduates at the then recently built Fitzwilliam College had a simple way of producing perfect toast (Letters, November 2).

    Each room had a small electric radiant heater on the wall with a grille to prevent contact with its coils. By attaching a few short pieces of wire (straightened paper clips were ideal) to the grille, leaving about half an inch projecting outwards, slices of bread could be hung in front of the heater coils for toasting. You could only do one side at once, of course, so it was necessary to turn the slice round to do the other side, but it worked well.

    Richard Holroyd
    Cambridge

  12. An economist blew a hole in Corbyns claim that by borrowing and spending you improve the economy/ It was estimated that UK productivity would have to increase 10 fold for that to work. Another problem is Corbyn wants to Nationalise a lot of companies. Now productivity in the Public Sector is very low and has typically grown at on;y 0.2% over the last 10 years so nationalising industries is likely to lead to reduced productivity in them

    1. Corbyn’s economics is based on the mirage that if you pay people to dig a ditch, you create value.

      The value being the ditch. However, what if no one wanted the ditch? What if the ditch is never used? Now what we’ve done is tell people to do something that no one wanted or uses. That’s called ‘wasting money’. However, for the communist, people have been employed, work has been done money has gone into the economy – but… money has come from the tax payer, given to (after sloshing the bucket about and losing most of it) someone else and used to buy stuff. Thus, job done, money moved around.

      But no new wealth created and a lot taken, so money has really just moved around and been reduced with the outcome being an unwanted unsued, unusable product. It looks good on paper, but in reality is just an exercise in wasting private money. It breaks supply and demand.

        1. Our stuipd Lefty at work said ‘Has some fool has the decency to die in a ditch?’ Could have punched him.

          Stupid thing to say. Just because he’s an authoritarian anti democratic spoon isn’t Boris’ fault.

          What was notable is the one time he raised a voting system I said let’s use the Brexit one, where we vote for something, everyone ignores it and yet it’s the right thing to do! I think my passion and anger rather got to him.

          1. Your man sounds like my boss. Fails to recognise that the issue is greater than “stupid” Brexit, it’s about democracy – and that just because one arrogates to onesself that people “didn’t know what they were voting for” does NOT make the vote invalid – maybe inadvisable, but not invalid.
            I avoid going for a beer with him now, as he always brings up Brexit, and I don’t want to sour the relationship by blasting him with both barrels.

      2. A ditch is no value in itself whatever. It is merely a means to an end. It’s the function of the ditch that has value – so, water draining, land barrier, tank trapping. Otherwise, it’s just a long half-hole in the ground.
        Once you decide what function is required, and the necessary attributes, then decide how best to fulfill that function. Draining may better be done by covered land drains, for example, as an open waterway may pose a drowning hazard to small children.
        Sorry about this. Function identification and maintenance is my business… :-))

        1. ‘Morning, Paul, ah yes, similat to Failure Mode Effect Analysis (FMEA) easily remembered as Fucking Mucking Everyone About.

      1. Labour have yet to explain that. They want to nationalise several industries but that would not be permitted under EU legislation. They are saying they dont want the US to be able to bid for NHS contracts but that would break EU legislation. They want to Remove VAT from some products but again EU legislation does not allow that. They want to borrow about £200B for their spending plans and that would break EU spending limits

    3. One problem with ‘Nationalising’ our utilities, is they are all owned by furriners, French,German, Chinese, Cayman Islanders

      1. /That in itself is not an issue they can issuer a CPO but it would cost a fortune to buy them out

        1. Unless the RN has changed even more than I thought it has, no selfrespecting Chief Petty Officer would go anywhere near thes companies

  14. Morning, Campers.
    Below is a clip from the Ask Tony column in the DM.
    Am I alone in thinking that this clip contains an ‘inappropriate’ word? And which word do I find so insulting?

    “An HMRC spokesman says: ‘We are sorry for the worry caused to the customer and that he didn’t receive the high level of service he would expect from us.”

  15. Good morning thinkers

    Lovely morning here .. The golfer golfs.. frost on the car windscreen , but no sign of frost on house roof!

    The media is laying into the Tories this morning . Why is politics becoming childishly spiteful.

    If the nastiness continues , we have a very trying 7 weeks ahead politically .

    I cannot bear the thought of weeks of Corbyn campaigning .. that man has a perfunctory sniff , he doesn’t mind that we don’t matter .. He is only interested in power and ruining us all.

      1. Good point. Is media singular or plural?
        If you use the word ‘medium’ Mme Arcati springs to mind.
        (Her predictions would be more accurate.)

    3. “Why is politics becoming childishly spiteful.”

      Becoming spiteful? Why is it the width of the aisle between the sides in the HoC is more than two sword lengths wide….

      “He is only interested in power and ruining us all.”

      Or rather “He is only interested in power and ruining my tribe”…

      If you’re going to charge PMs with ruining the country and leaving lots of the country behind, you’re going to have to go back long before this election…..

      1. I get your point .
        However
        I believe the country is ruining itself .. with mindless acceptance of copycat hedonistic behaviour .. coupled with lack of self control and no morals.

        1. Hmmm….that word morals again…the implication of probity and integrity….

          …can you guess who said…

          “Our best economists, and some of them are in this room, say we having nothing to be fearful about [from a hard Brexit]”

          Jacob Rees-Mogg MP launches Economists for Free Trade, 11 September 2018

          ..and this…

          “If you ask an economist anything, you get the answer you want.”

          Jacob Rees-Mogg refuses a request from SNP MP Kirsty Blackman for an economic impact assessment of Boris Johnson’s Withdrawal Bill, 21 October 2019

          Source; Private Eye 1508 & assorted internet pages.

          1. Listen GB

            I really don’t give a tinkers cuss about the majority of MP’s .. I do however fret about a certain type of CANKER that has infiltrated and is spreading rapidly .. encouraged by just a handful of influential Svengali type marxist mad men ..

            I do not want discuss and argue with you , my blood pressure is raised enough . thanks ;0(

          2. You mentioned morals….I gave a single example of an MP (there are others of course) yet you rant on about Marxists…

            ….do you think JRM is a Marxist?

          4. It’s a comment thread…if you don’t want people to discuss your post….don’t post in the first place.

  17. reduce the impact or climate change. Hot water bottles and electric blankets will also be banned

    1. Morning S,
      A great many of the electorate suffers LMF again & again, is what happened.
      More likely today to say “is my seam straight” than, pass the ammo.

      2. Boll0cks…there is no existential threat facing the UK…that is why society is going off all sorts of directions.

        Remember when the students said, just before WWII that they would never fight for the UK….they soon joined up.

        The difference is today that there is also far less deference to authority as younger people have stacks of information available to them…

        …thus they can see what the powers-that-be are up to….naturally that makes the younger voter far less likely to swallow some bulls76t when some loon calls for HM Forces to be deployed to ‘X’ for no apparent national interest….

        1. After the last three years would be very hard to put your life on the line for this country.
          Particularly if you knew that forty years later, your government would throw you to the tax payer funded mob.

        2. Morning Gunner,
          Your opening describes the between the ears contents of current lab/lib/con supporter / voters very aptly.
          My meaning was not with the forces only ( although feminine
          make up for male troops) does make one wonder.
          There is , plain to see on leaving your front door a rapid growing
          existential threat to each & every one of us living within the UK.

    2. I read about ‘Boy’ Cornwell when I was about eight years old. Back then I had a large book, The Blue Book of the War I think it was called, and I’m sure it was in that book that his heroism was recorded. Selfless dedication to duty and his shipmates, nothing else to add.

      1. @Bassetedge might remember the remains of the old forest that would often appear on Newbiggin Beach below the Quay Wall after a high sea had washed the sand out.

        1. There’s another one that appears regularly at Hauxley, south of Amble. Tree stumps about 5,000 years old. Then another big sea comes on and they are buried under sand again and all is back to normal.

    2. I don’t think it’s appreciated how thin the layer of sand on all of our beaches usually is, usually a couple or so feet, maybe more as it approaches the dunes, but with a greater incidence of beds of large pepples, overlying the bedrock (or in this part of the country the boulder clay left over from the ice age).

      It comes and goes. All the time, but usually deposition equals erosion, until something happens. Then something else happens in the opposite direction and it’s back to square one.

      I remember a science programme on the telly about 30 years ago when they did an experiment with a pebble containing a (legal) low-level alpha-emitting isotope in a demonstration. People looking at a beach would have the impression that the beach looked the same, storms excepted, from one day to the next. They may look the same, but they aren’t the same, they are in a constant state of flux.

      They dropped their pebble in the intertidal zone at the north end of a shingle beach amongst very similar pepples, then they went away and waited. The next day they came back, a tide or two later, and scanned the shingle bed with a geiger counter. The pebble wasn’t there. They looked further south (down-drift), still not there. They kept looking.

      They eventually found it a quarter of a mile from where they’d dropped it the day before and repeated experiments produced the same results. Our beaches are constantly moving.

      1. Yes , absolutely correct there , and a classic example are the pebbles on Chesil beach which are constantly changing according to weather conditions .. from huge round ones West bay area to further east around the Fleet .. larger, smaller, smallest! Then the size of the pebble banks and the dangerous drop into the sea..

    2. Yo Peddy

      Town Councils can now be prosecuted if they do have at least Two ‘Turkish Barbers’ in their environs

    4. Thought you used the German one, peddy – Herr Cutts.

      P.S. Watch out for the Kurd with a razor.

  21. ‘Morning All

    Now about that NHS funding crisis…………..

    Band 8a Equality and Diversity Manager – Patients and Carers

    Band 8a

    Main areaAdministrative ServicesGradeBand 8aContractPermanentHoursFull Time 37.5 hours per weekJob ref391-6377-C-LL-A

    EmployerRoyal Free London NHS Foundation TrustEmployer typeNHSSiteRoyal Free HospitalTownHampsteadSalary£51,383 – £57,596 per annum inclusive of HCASClosing06/11/2019 23:59

    http://jobs.royalfree.nhs.uk/job/UK/London/Hampstead/Royal_Free_London_NHS_Foundation_Trust/Administrative_Services/Administrative_Services-v2071033

    1. p.s. if you are a 90 year patient with dementia, we will leave you to die of cold and starvation if you use the word ‘w0g’.

    2. Come the day, equality and diversity officers will be the first up against the wall. Just warning anyone thinking of joining their ranks.

    3. No doubt their first job when they start will be to ensure everyone is on Band 8a. Then we’ll know if they believe in equality.

    4. What on earth is their problem ..

      They are making matters worse by specially singling out people of another colour / gay/lesbian / neutral and everything else ..

      My late mother in law who was in her nineties was admitted to a large hospital in Hampshire after a bad fall.. was old fashioned and quite prim and insular , God bless her, yelled like hell when a couple of nurses from Zimbabwe tried to change her bedclothes ..

      The ward sister ran to her bed and ticked her off for being racist .. We were embarrassed and had to explain .. she is an old lady , and was unfamiliar with certain modern ways of the world , and voices!

        1. Things are so well run in Zimbabwe that they no longer need doctors, nurses or social workers!

          [It always strikes me as rank hypocrisy to recruit doctors and nurses from the third world. Surely we should train our own doctors and nurses rather than looting them from places like Zimbabwe where they are very badly needed? One of my aunts was a doctor as was her husband. They spent their working lives in Rwanda trying to help the local people rather than having an easier life at home. Of their five children 3 were doctors, one was an architect and the other was a nurse. Mind you, they were very devout Christians.]

    5. Yup….there are some sh1te non-jobs in the public sector….but if you don’t want Diversity Managers to be appointed….don’t vote for moronic MPs that are happy to bring in laws requiring major organisations to manage diversity….

  22. Daily Brexit Betrayal

    Don’t believe for a moment that this will be about Brexit

    if we let the establishment Parties and their allies in the MSM set the

    agenda! This morning’s headlines show how the MSM will play this. In

    one corner we have the Tories who are still struggling about how to ‘get

    Brexit’ into their manifesto – more on that below. In the other corner

    we have Labour whose policies are already attracting criticism from

    across the board. In the yellow corner are the Libdems whose Leader

    firmly believes she can become PM and in the last corner we have TBP and

    Nigel Farage, the devil incarnate whose sole existence means Brexit

    will be scuppered.

    Yes, that’s right: it’s not the Remainers’ policies of obstruction

    since the EU referendum which have been wrecking Brexit for over three

    years, it’s not Labour with their rejection of ‘a Tory Brexit’, and the

    pledge to do better: three months negotiations and then six months for a

    2nd referendum even if their leader is still not sure what he’ll do.

    Above all, it’s not Johnson with his ‘oven-ready Deal’ who is the

    wrecker – it’s Farage, having shown the traps in Johnson’s deal, who is

    the official Brexit wrecker.

    https://independencedaily.co.uk/your-daily-brexit-betrayal-wednesday-6th-november-2019/

  23. Now colour me confused but advise on checking into hotels is
    “Make sure you know where the fire exits are”
    In fact I have been in one such hotel when an alarm went off at 1 am leading to an orderly evacuation of said hotel,I have seen many similar scenes on the news
    Feels like common sense to me………………
    The confected hysteria about JRM’s remarks are a sign of the times and not a good one

    1. Not just the location of the exits, but also:
      – is the exit from the stairwell at the bottom unlocked?
      – Can the door be opened? (piles of rubbish outside)
      – Once in the stairwell, can you exit again at a floor other than the bottom, in case you can’t get out / the stairs are blocked, and you need to get back into the hotel to complete your escape?

        1. Was in a hotel Downtown Khartoum some years ago. Escape stairwells were unusable due to wiring hanging out of the ceiling… open fuseboxes… and the biggest rat I ever saw lurking there as well! Eek!

          1. Save yourself the travel costs.
            Stay in Slough.
            Or Tower Hamlets if you fancy being nearer the bright lights!

          2. Ah, but is it as warm as Khartoum? Actually, I liked it there a lot. Fine people, interesting town, even walked to the confluence of the brown Nile and the khaki Nile. Got to eat crocodile (ukk), and loved the Sudanese coffee – think a powerful blend of espresso and ginger!

      2. All good advice.
        Been there, done that. Been in two fire alarm situations. One was false alarm and hotel, in St Albans, was evacuated. The other was a real fire in a room next to mine but on floor above. I slipped on my shoes and left upon the instant. This led to me standing in Kings Cross Road at 2:00AM in only a nightshirt. A bit cold rather than very hot! Also the subject of much amused comment – like I cared.
        I routinely check the fire escape route upon arriving at an hotel. I’ve found locked doors, and worse, the back stair to the fire exit is sometimes used as a store for chairs, tables and the like completely blocking the entire stairwell. I always take a torch when staying at an hotel or BnB as the emergency lighting might not work.
        The hotel staff are generally at a loss as to what to do. Often it can take an hour for them to get a list of residents, when it should be printed off at reception as soon as the alarm goes off so that residents, and friends, can be immediately accounted for.
        I remember a colleague analysing our usual big hotel scenario. Most of the people in the hotel are travelling on business. Almost all will have had a few drinks before retiring for the night. Around half will be smokers. So when you go to sleep consider that you are sharing the building with a least fifty drunks who may fall asleep while smoking a cigarette in bed. Very cheerful.

        1. A previous employer issued us all with portable smoke & fire detectors, and a door alarm that would shrill if someone was messing with the room door. Also, advise to stay no higher than the 4th floor, as few places (viz. Grenfell) have cherrypickers or ladders that reach higher than that.

    2. Not just the location of the exits, but also:
      – is the exit from the stairwell at the bottom unlocked?
      – Can the door be opened? (piles of rubbish outside)
      – Once in the stairwell, can you exit again at a floor other than the bottom, in case you can’t get out / the stairs are blocked, and you need to get back into the hotel to complete your escape?

    3. Just to confuse you more, it’s advice (noun), not advise (verb), in this context. 😉

      1. I had a job for 14 1/2 years where I had to listen to the yoofs and can confirm that the dumbing down of the education system and the break up of the family unit has been done near perfectly, yet they all think they’re brilliant.

        1. RS,
          The problem is they, the “yoof” cannot make comparisons with reality, as in all our yesterdays.
          Then employers call for “yoofs” with experience.
          The family breakup can also be seen to be brought about via the
          polling booth with family input, either intentionally or through
          political ignorance.

          1. Yes ogga1 but the yoof of today have been brainwashed expertly. They are the first generation in the history of mankind which is not only cleverer but wiser than its elders.

            It’s called the Frankfurt School, ogga1, it’s all here in this essay.

            1http://whale.to/c/frankfurt_school1.html

            Just in case you don’t like clicking in dubious linky links here are the main points. Sound familiar?

            1.The creation of racism offences.
            2. Continual change to create confusion
            3. The teaching of sex and homosexuality to children
            4. The undermining of schools’ and teachers’ authority
            5. Huge immigration to destroy identity.
            6. The promotion of excessive drinking
            7. Emptying of churches
            8. An unreliable legal system with bias against victims of crime
            9. Dependency on the state or state benefits
            10. Control and dumbing down of media
            11. Encouraging the breakdown of the family

          2. RS,
            More like the Stockholm syndrome in regards to the
            eu / students.
            They are not that clever but I would say more selective because they, in many cases leave out the building blocks of society as in
            decency, self respect, integrity.

        2. Frankfurt School. They must have succeeded beyond the wildest of imaginations.

          Edit: oops, sorry, I did not see your reply to Ogga further down. I work from newest comment to oldest, for some reason known only to my subconscious.

          1. You can’t mention the Frankfurt School, Kalergi Plan, Charlemagne Prize, Barcelona Declaration, Common Purpose, NWO and their plans, etc. enough. Some passing unenlightened soul may have read your comment and thought what’s she going on about and looked it up. But that essay I posted for Catholic Insight tells all you need to know. I actually haven’t read it yet, but I’ve been linking it for 4-5 years.

          2. The Catholic Insight was the first article I read about this, about 15 years ago. I knew something was wrong with our society, but not why. I was reading comments in the DT during my lunchbreak, and someone wrote, in passing, (as you said) ‘come on, folks, educate yourself, look up the Frankfurt School, Common Purpose’. I remember thinking, ‘oh, I don’t want to do this, I think I want to keep my head in the sand….’ I knew I wouldn’t like what I would read, but I felt I owed it to my family to find out as much as possible about What Was Going On. I was horrified, I remember sitting there with my hand to my mouth, realisation flooding my head, that this was a concerted Plan Against the British People of these isles and later I realised, Western Europe. Once you see it, you cannot unsee it, you cannot not understand what is going on. It is around us all the time, it is relentless, ongoing and will continue until we rise up as one (like a shoal of fish that turns on the second together).

          3. So you’ve been enlightened all those years, I would have exploded by now if it had been me. I’m a relative newcomer of around 10 years. The last big piece of the jigsaw for me was the Barcelona Declaration, aided and abetted by the Yanks bombing everywhere, Afghanistan, Iraq, Serbia, Libya Syria and soon to be Iran to create all the refugee streams.
            I reckon its aimed against the Anglo-Saxons, as the Yanks have been treated the same as us, but most of them don’t realise they are in more danger. You know where all the trouble is kicking off in Germany don’t you, yep Saxony.
            But like your shoal of fish, one morning you will awake and it will have kicked off, 1381 style, everywhere.

      1. He’s not Lenin either. No, because Stalin was very, very, very clever. But neither is Johnson a dope, he’s just following the orders of your favourite globalist and his bosses too.
        Out of Stalin and Lenin who do you think came up with the term Useful Idiot?

  27. Information required from Frogophiles.
    Are andouillettes as disgusting as they look?
    Thank goodness smellovision hasn’t been developed.

    1. A friend tried some while on a trip with his fishing club to France.

      Never again.

      He described it, only marginally inaccurately, as sausage of pigs’ arse-holes and he said that the taste and smell gave away its origin.

    2. I have to agree with grumpygrey. The texture alone is enough to turn the stomach. Perfectly disgusting.

    3. You saw the Rick Stein show last night, didn’t you!

      I thought they looked pretty good.

      1. I did.
        When the butcher was simmering the things in stock, I remembered a row between MB’s ancient aunts. It impressed the then small boy because he didn’t think that generation knew about such things.
        Auntie Ethel – spinster lady – to her sister who always boiled sausages before she fried them: “You keep playing with them sausages because they’re like men’s doodles.”

        1. I thought the series got off to a good start.

          Bit of a messy eater, though, isn’t he?

          1. Yes, I noticed a lot of mopping of the mouth with his napkin. it was a bit off-putting, momentarily. I thought his dish of mussels that he cooked up in his hideaway in Haute Provence looked delicious. The hideaway looked very remote.

            Edit: For info: HMTQ never mops her mouth at the table. Not even with the tablecloth.

          2. The mussels at Côte are my default starter, but today (Thurs.) I’m starting with whitebait because I want to try the ling-cod.

    5. What on earth do you expect in a sausage ! They are delicious.

      On another note. The Chinese take the intestines including the anus. Wash them thoroughly and then dry. Chop into rings and deep fry. Bar snacks par excellence.

    6. Uncovered one in a bowl of cassoulet and cut it open to eat and very nearly threw up. Never, ever again.

    7. My wife once ordered an andouillette pizza in La Rochelle, not knowing what is was and having berated our sons for not trying new foods. It was a one time experience.

    9. No Anne, they are not as disgusting as they look they are far far worse.
      Tried them once and I’m surprised I’m still here to tell the tale.
      A fine example of cuisine basse.

    10. No they are even worse – but some people love them. Like tripe they are made of offal like Mr Boles and Sir Alan Duncan.

      Funny how people do love completely disgusting things. For example Sally supposedly loves her husband John Bercow and Carrie loves Boris – at least for the time being.

      1. The Poles make a delicious soup from intestines – the name escapes me.

        Sally does not behave as though she loves Bercow, otherwise she wouldn’t do so many things to belittle him (if that’s further possible).

      1. I make a cassoulet using confit of duck leg and Toulouse sausages. The beans are necessary, as are tomatoes, garlic and fresh thyme. Served with ciabatta and a bottle of Cahors Malbec, it’s a fine winter dish.

    12. Just pretend that they are sausages and swallow them in as lumps as large as you can manage. Just try to avoid the image of fingernail sausage!

      When I was working with a client in Lyon, I was fed them one lunchtime. So much for culinary capitals.

  28. What does the US financial crisis 2008/9 have in common with the British ERM crisis of 1992 ?

        1. George Soros made £billions courtesy of the John Major – Tory Europhiles misguided ERM policy. And I think Soros had some pretty large shorts/sells on the markets in 2008.

        2. Oh Miss Polly, I don’t understand finance and money like you clever rich folk, that’s why I’m a poor, destitute peasant (aka chav). I tried reading a Godfrey Bloom article on GP on Monday, I had no idea what he was talking about, going on about quantitative easing and printing money, it’s all bowlocks to me.

          But on a previous article Bloom wrote, I commented something along the lines of:-

          Before we joined the Common Market the government based the economy on the balance of trade, the difference between imports and exports including invisible earnings which are banking, insurance, stock market, shipping and computer technology. So every month on the Nine O’clock News and News at Ten they would tell us that Britain was in the red in September by £26 million after being in the black in August by £11 million. You can go back and check on ONS data when was the last time, apart from the North Sea Oil years when Britain had a trade surplus.

          But you’ve never heard economic news like above on the TV every month have you? Now we have a trade deficit of between £2 to £9 billion every month. The government with the help of the EU systematically destroyed all our industries. That’s why we now have a national debt of £1.8 trillion. One financial genius told me debt doesn’t matter. So that means you Yanks with your $19 trillion national debt are the bestest.

          Now the economy is based on GDP and government borrowing. GDP what a larf, make it up as you go along figures to suit your requirements.

          So in conclusion I’ll guess exactly what Lewis Duckworth has guessed. If there is a prize I suggest you come up to Brum and me and LD will test the theory on debt is god (I’ll leave my Freudian slip in) by using yours and your dad’s credit cards to the max.

          PS Have you relapsed, yet again? Too many dots in your ellipsis. I had seen that you got it right three times.

  30. Sad:

    An MP who learnt she is not entitled to a £22,000 parachute payment after switching from Labour to the Liberal Democrats has complained of “discrimination”.

    Angela Smith, who left Labour this year, said she was “horrified” that she was not entitled to the cash if she loses at the election because she is fighting a different seat.

    The MP for Penistone and Stocksbridge resigned from the Labour Party in February to join the The Independent Group, later renamed Change UK.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/11/05/mp-denied-22000-parachute-payment-switching-parties-complains

      1. You know, you’d make an excellent doorkeeper (I was busy all yesterday seeing my wife off on her 8-day trip to Israel).

          1. Flaki? I avoid like the plague – my father worked in a slaughterhouse before conscription (and an 75% pay cut) in 1940 and told me to steer well clear.

  31. No mention of Brexit:

    Our son has been living with us while he’s been looking for a job since finishing university earlier this year. We are supporting him financially, and have been happy to do so. He has spent a lot of time looking for jobs but recently started volunteering for the Labour Party ahead of the December General Election.

    My husband and I have always voted for the Conservative Party and very much disagree with Jeremy Corbyn’s left-wing views.

    We are uncomfortable supporting him while he spends his time volunteering for a party whose policies we fundamentally disagree with, especially when it means he’ll be spending less time finding a job. Should we stop supporting him?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/consumer-affairs/moral-money-should-financially-support-son-volunteers-labour/

      1. Doesn’t look as though he can; the parents have been supporting him. He may be getting job-seeker’s?

    4. Morning LD,
      Would the uni that has educated him not
      finance / feed / & bed him or the local lab office accommodate for his needs ?
      IMHO and to my mind seeing the lab/lib/con are a coalition what you save on the lad you could send to UKIP.

    5. Well if he wants to vote for party that will put him at the back of the housing queue and push up house prices thats down to him

    6. Yo LD

      Read through all the BLTs

      This, by far, is the best answer

      Simon Bell 6 Nov 2019 7:11AM

      Tricky one. Obviously the risk is that he may form the opinion that you and your husband are capitalist pigs and must die like dogs because
      you own your Ford Fiesta outright.

      The Labour party’s core values are envy and hate.

      Could you not encourage him to sit around and smoke dope all day like most normal kids?

  32. Looks like network insiders have opened up to Project Veritas about JE…….. check out PV twitter if you’re interested.

          1. Epstein The US man who committed suicide whilst the Prison Security cameras weren’t working and two prison guards fell asleep. Top US pathologist has said his injuries are consistent with those of someone strangled. ABC news sat on the Epstein allegations of Pedophilia for over 3 years according to their news anchor who got first got the story and is now thoroughly pi55ed. However Prince Andrew is probably breathing a sigh of relief that Epstein can no loner be question…

          3. When at RNAS Culdrose, ‘Andy’ played rugby.

            At the start of one game, his teanmates asked him what he wanted to be called, whilst playing (rugby) with them.

            The answer was SIR

            When he walked into the Wardroom, some Orficers walked out, another door

            Charles was liked and respected.

          4. I seem to recollect that after Charles left the Navy several senior officers expressed regret as he could have had a good career there.

    2. Can you supply subtitles in British English, Miss Polly?
      Otherwise WYSINWYG, hope you understand.

    3. Can you supply subtitles in British English, Miss Polly?
      Otherwise WYSINWYG, hope you understand.

  33. BBC
    “Extinction Rebellion has won a High Court challenge against the Metropolitan Police over a London-wide ban on protests.
    The police imposed a four-day ban last month, prohibiting two or more people from the group taking part in protests dubbed the ‘autumn uprising’.
    However, judges have ruled that the move was “unlawful” and officers had no power to impose it.
    Lawyers for the group described the police action as “hastily imposed”.
    They say the Met Police now faces claims for false imprisonment from “potentially hundreds” of protesters.“

      1. A daft Judge in my view. They were not really banned what they had to do is agree with the Met locations where they could protest.

        It has never been legal to deliberately cause obstructions

      2. In many respects it’s good that the police can’t ban protests but surely the ‘false imprisonment’ claims are worthless because the cause of the arrests, as far as I’m aware, was always based on obstruction or causing a disturbance.

        1. Nothing wrong with peaceful and well-organised protests – but this lot were intent on causing disruption to people going about their business.

  34. BBC
    “Extinction Rebellion has won a High Court challenge against the Metropolitan Police over a London-wide ban on protests.
    The police imposed a four-day ban last month, prohibiting two or more people from the group taking part in protests dubbed the ‘autumn uprising’.
    However, judges have ruled that the move was “unlawful” and officers had no power to impose it.
    Lawyers for the group described the police action as “hastily imposed”.
    They say the Met Police now faces claims for false imprisonment from “potentially hundreds” of protesters.“

  35. Some daft caller on LBC the other day was calling the Fire at Grenfell Racists. He tried a different tack and did not blame the Fireman but claimed it was racist because because the cladding was only put on Grenfell because poor people lived there. The presenter never picked him up on that claim as being false

    As a result of the Grenfell fire a UK wide check was made of all High rise buildings and guess what it was found on private blocks of flats including Luxury blocks
    Unfortunatlyt the term racists is now used when someone wants to object to something

  37. A Conservative candidate has apologised for defending Jacob Rees-Mogg’s comments that it would have been “common sense” to flee the Grenfell Tower fire.
    Andrew Bridgen said Mr Rees-Mogg would have made a “better decision” than authority figures who gave people advice on the night of the fire.
    He has now apologised “unreservedly” for his choice of words.

    https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/278168/FINAL_GRA_3_2_Fighting_fires_in_high_rise_buildings.pdf

    I listened to the full text of what JRM said and it is being very much taking out of context

    The fundamental issue was down to the senior management of the LFB that had not put appropriate process and training in place for high rise fires

    The LFB claimed this was an unprecedented fire but that is not correct. A similar fire occurred in another high rise block but was not as severe and there have been several similar fires abroad

    There is also Specific government guidance for fires in high rise buildings which included the need to evacuate them if the compartmentalisation fails which in this case it did

    The LfB seem to have a basic misunderstanding of compartmentalisation. IT is intended to give time for the fire brigade to get to a building and put the fire out. It only though gives an Hour after that the fire may spread. There can ea silly be 15 to 30 minutes before the brigade arrives , First some on has to discover the fire which will be an unknown time but probably about 15 minutes or less, then the Fire brigade have to be called and the Control Room operator takes details (In the case of Grenfell in some case the required details were not taken, then the operator has to mobilise the Fire Service and they need to travel to the fire so on a reasonable basis there is about 30 minutes containment left

    Another issue was the Control room operator was supposed to stay on the line until the Fire service got to them. That though failed for two reasons. The number of callers exceed the number of control room operators so they had to terminate the calls

    The other issue was this information was not convey to the Fire Ground and no one was monitory the fact that the fire service was not getting to this people
    and the Fire servive at the Fire had no idea how many people were in the building or where they were

    The confusion then got worse as the Control Room decided they had to abandon stay put and started to advise people to evacuate but this was no conveyed to the Fire Ground . They decided of their own violation to cease the stay put half hour later

    The Government guidance covered most of this things but the LFB appear to have ignored it

    1. There’s far too much apologising going on these days.

      There should be more of a ‘Get stuffed’ attitude to those pretending to be offended on behalf of people they’ve never met and whom they would seek to avoid if they did meet.

        1. As Monty Python would have said.
          “I’m sorry, is this a five minute apology, or the full half hour?”

    2. There’s far too much apologising going on these days.

      There should be more of a ‘Get stuffed’ attitude to those pretending to be offended on behalf of people they’ve never met and whom they would seek to avoid if they did meet.

    3. compartmentalisation

      Resolving a problem which is common sense but really part mental.

  38. Christmas rail strike: Travel misery as union plans 27‑day walkout.
    Just what you would expect under a Labour government.

      2. Afternoon GG,
        You mean there will be a difference ?
        The only difference I see over the decades is
        daily downhill destruction of a nation via this
        lab/lib/con coalition party.
        And anyway it is labs turn.

    2. Magic.Just effing magic.
      :-((
      We’re booked to travel to UK & mother-in-law on 22 December, for Christmas. As if that wasn’t bad enough, there will be transport strikes. Probably snow, too, to just make it all f**king perfect.
      Crapola.

    3. Just the unions throwing a tantrum, AS I understand it these trains will no longer have a Guard but will have a train manager also the driver becomes responsible for the doors which seems sensible. Exceptionally a train can operate without a train manager such as if a train manager is not available. It avoids cancelling a train

      The entire underground operate without guards or train managers as do many commuter trains

  39. Thirty years after the fall of the Iron Curtain, the West is too divided to resist the new evil empire. 6 NOVEMBER 2019.

    Thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall precipitated the collapse of the Soviet Union, Europeans will celebrate the anniversary of that seismic event in the knowledge that it did not, in fact, mark the end of the Kremlin’s malign influence over their lives.

    BELOW THE LINE.

    Peta Seel 6 Nov 2019 10:51AM.

    Putin must be looking at the snow-flakey west and laughing his little socks off. While we are trashing our own history and achievements, branding common sense conservatism as “extreme right”, squabbling over whether boys are girls or girls are boys and which toilet they should use, taking offence over things that would make kindergarten school teachers weep with frustration over their charges, and generally behaving like infants, he is getting on and doing the grown-up stuff. If I had to choose between Putin and the likes of Corbyn or the unelected members of the EC to protect me from China and Islam I know which one I would choose.

    Amen to that Ms. Seel! These anti-Russia propaganda articles are becoming embarrassing. There’s more support than opposition for Vlad on them!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/11/06/thirty-years-fall-iron-curtain-west-divided-resist-new-evil/

    1. Afternoon AS,
      I am told on a regular basis that brainwashing is the cause of much of our plight, but that is hog wash & won’t wash any more.
      The naked eye puts clothes on all the sh!te that is going down daily in reality, and still dangerous fools via the ballot booth & the three monkeys still condone all the damage done by mass uncontrolled immigration policy parties.
      Not long ago a punch in the mouth followed by a beer
      settled many a problem, now them same problems could lead to a place in the undertakers.
      There were men / women / poofs, no PC/Appeasement
      no problems.
      All this current sh!te is lab/lib/con alternating governance created ,and voted for by a great many of the electorate time & again, and in many cases the same ones who then say ” the state of these Isles,this ain’t right”

        1. RS,
          Don’t wash, my post have backed the brexit group as in power to their collective elbows and their one off quest.
          But their leader I do not trust.
          Please feel free to back up your post with evidence of any anti brexit comments of mine.
          The proof of the pudding regarding lab/lib/con can be seen on a daily basis just open your eyes and face reality, lab/lib/con are sh!te.

          1. You missed my point. I was on about brainwashing. Since the Marxists of the Frankfurt School were given free rein they have brainwashed and dumbed down education standards in the west. If you remember I asked you questions earlier in the year about the glorious former leader of UKIP, from what you and EE told me I don’t trust him at all. He’s a plant.

  40. Another one bites the dust

    Alun Cairns resigns in Ross England rape trial ‘sabotage’ row

      1. Over the years BJ has proudly demonstrated he has a hide thicker than a Dead Rhinoceros’s with full blown rigour mortis …:-)

      2. It happens. No post when you start typing but when you submit it you find someone has got in first

        1. It took you over an hour to copy and paste two lines?

          As I type this your post says ‘Bill Jackson – an hour ago’

          Three post below it says ‘Tony – 2 hours ago’.

          There’s slow typing and there’s slow typing. When I saw your post my immediate thought was ‘hang on, I read that ages ago, but it’s just appeared again’.

  41. Grenfell

    There were two primary causes of the fire. The initial source was a faulty Fridge Freezer. Now these have to be approved by self declaration under the CE Marking Directives. I have some experience of carry out approval to those Directives but on electronic equipment and not Domestic equipment and I fail to see how it could have meet the relevant standards with a plastic back on it. To meet the standard it would need to be UL94V-0 but you could get by with UL94-V2. UL. Plastics to UL94-V0 are quite hard and would be difficult to mould. Ideally you would have a metal back

    The secondary cause of the Fire would be the cladding panels. Now the panels themselves again would be required to meet the CE marking directive and they did or at least claimed they did as I l0oked it up on the Web site and there was a signed DofC for them

    WE will have to wait for Part 2 of the enquiry to see what they establish but reports seem to say they were not compliant. Now whoever signed the DofC if the report is correct is legally liable for those panels. THere may be other standard apply when attaching them to a buildig

  42. General election 2019: How would the Greens fund their £1trn pledge?

    The Green Party has pledged to invest £100bn a year to fund its climate policy over the next decade, if it wins the election.
    Where would the money come from and how would it be spent?
    Borrowing
    The Greens believe a large public investment, worth £1trn over 10 years, is essential to fight climate change and make Britain fossil fuel free by 2030.
    The party says the money would go on building 100,000 energy-efficient homes each year, revolutionising transport infrastructure and creating hundreds of thousands of low-carbon jobs.
    The bulk (£91.2bn a year) would come from borrowing, with the rest from tax changes.

    1. It very easy coming out with a load of old tosh because you know you’ll never be elected and have to implement such daft ideas. The meaning of the word green hasn’t changed since I was a child. It means immature and lacking in common sense.

      1. Even if you throw money at it , it would be impossible to meet their targets . They want to get rid of all conventional power stations and cars and buses and lorries within about 3 year. Common sense and practicality dont come into it with the Greens. Strangely as well they are ken on open door migration. How that fits in I have not a clue. I doubt they do neither

      2. The trouble is that the mainstream politicos hear this tosh and feel the need to respond to it by promising things they shouldn’t just to please their focus groups and to be on-side. They make promises they shouldn’t that damage things that shouldn’t be damaged and waste our money in doing it. They are falling over themselves to change policy to avoid being seen as uncaring.

        Boris just this week closed the door on fracking in direct opposition to his statement not all that long ago that we should ‘leave no stone unfracked’.

        Only a couple of decades ago a potential (I say potential, because it’s still to be detemined) new energy resource for the country would have been looked on as a boon and the flags would be out (look at North Sea Gas and Oil in the 60s). Now it is seen as a threat based on the mere possibility that it might trigger almost imperceptible tremors – preceptible only to sensitive machines – that would probably have happened anyway unnoticed, but which our over-excitable media insist on desribing as ‘Earthquakes!’, as if they were equivalent to the seismic events many hundreds or thousands of times more powerful that people in other countries with more active tectonics live through as a matter of course.

        In that way the greens have an impact way beyond their true importance as a body.

      3. The trouble is that the mainstream politicos hear this tosh and feel the need to respond to it by promising things they shouldn’t just to please their focus groups and to be on-side. They make promises they shouldn’t that damage things that shouldn’t be damaged and waste our money in doing it. They are falling over themselves to change policy to avoid being seen as uncaring.

        Boris just this week closed the door on fracking in direct opposition to his statement not all that long ago that we should ‘leave no stone unfracked’.

        Only a couple of decades ago a potential (I say potential, because it’s still to be detemined) new energy resource for the country would have been looked on as a boon and the flags would be out (look at North Sea Gas and Oil in the 60s). Now it is seen as a threat based on the mere possibility that it might trigger almost imperceptible tremors – preceptible only to sensitive machines – that would probably have happened anyway unnoticed, but which our over-excitable media insist on desribing as ‘Earthquakes!’, as if they were equivalent to the seismic events many hundreds or thousands of times more powerful that people in other countries with more active tectonics live through as a matter of course.

        In that way the greens have an impact way beyond their true importance as a body.

      1. What £1T between friends . I suspect the £1T is a guess as well so it could equally be £5T

    1. Christians are being persecuted right across Africa and South East Asia and the Christian population of the Middle East has been decimated and will not recover. Worst of all, with the possible exception of ACNA (conservative Anglicans in North America who’ve broken away and gone independent), the Western Church doesn’t give a damn.

    2. This should certainly be given a much higher profile in the MSM. I wonder why it is not given it?
      .
      The number of desecration attacks on Christians and their churches in France has reached epidemic proportions – but virtually nothing is said about it.

      1. R,
        Fear by our established gov mental & gone mental supporting
        fools of big A, as I say PC / Appeasement rules, OK.

      2. It is difficult to comprehend the ignorance of islam by our leaders. They do not understand the ideology and its aims and equate it to a placid Christian population who sometimes goes to church and sells home-made jam to pay for the roof. There is most definitely deep state conspiracy to avoid scaring the horses by suppressing any stories that show islam in a bad light. What has been inflicted on TR by a corrupt legal system has been shocking and shows how scared the authorities are of the truth being exposed. I understand that in Sweden and Germany there are limitations on press reporting of immigrant issues (I dont have the reference). They seem to be quite happy to report if they are baking cakes in burquas but nothing beyond.

  46. General Election 2019: Labour bans three former MPs from standing again

    May be The Commons should be renamed the House of Corruption

    Three former Labour MPs – including Jeremy Corbyn ally Chris Williamson – have been banned from standing by the party’s National Executive Committee.
    Mr Williamson, who represented Derby North, was suspended in an anti-Semitism row.
    Stephen Hepburn, ex-MP for Jarrow, was being investigated over a sexual harassment claim, denied by him, while Roger Godsiff was facing a reselection battle in Birmingham Hall Green.
    New candidates will be chosen instead.

    3. As opposed to the Yank system of one past the post. Then do nothing apart from Twittering and play golf. Tell us has the wall been built? Has the swamp been drained? Have the Yanks stopped bombing hell out of everywhere in order to create the refugee streams to meet the requirements of the 1995 Barcelona Declaration and the Marrakesh Declaration of this year and the need to warmonger? When does Iran get bombed to hell? The Yanks have had two goes at voting but still they favour being under the globalist yoke. Soon they will rename MN to Minnesotastan. Official figures for New Mexico are 47% Hispanic, think we could hazard a guess and say more likely 60%, soon be Old Me-hi-co, along with California, Arizona, Texas and Florida.
      As for your bolt hole? Hmmmm You should consider Crimea. First thing the Russians did when they took it back was re-vamp the nuclear bunkers. The Russians now have the largest capacity for nuclear bunkers.

  48. Virgin Media switches phone customers from BT to Vodafone

    Virgin Media is ditching telecoms group BT and switching its three million mobile phone customers to the network run by Vodafone.
    Customers are being promised a host of new services and will not have to change Sim cards, Virgin Media said.
    The cable group’s current contract with BT, which owns the EE network, expires in 2021, although Virgin will launch 5G services with Vodafone before then.
    The contract is reportedly worth about £200m to BT, whose shares fell 4.5%.

  49. Good afternoon all. BBC scuppered! Apologies if repeat.

    From Unity News Network:

    “It gives us great pleasure to say that today we have won a TOTAL VICTORY over the BBC’s attempts to diminish the Jo Swinson story. Their article was based on the premise that the story was somehow ‘misinformation’ that was being spread.

    The irony of this is that in their article they spread misinformation about us saying we were UKIP activists! Hopefully you will have seen my colleague David Clews’s videos on this.

    Our investigative Journalist Oliver Down also looked into the social media history of the author of the story who in 2016 tweeted out she was devastated by the vote for Brexit! She then left Oxford University & went to work for The Guardian then the BBC, but of course there is no liberal bias at the BBC!

    These tweets have now been deleted but not of course before we screenshotted them and you can see these in the article below.

    We have since had an apology from the BBC’s Editor on this story and they have updated the article accordingly.
    Imagine writing an article on ‘misinformation’ and not getting your facts right, its comical if it wasn’t so serious!

    We will be discussing this on tonights show and please click below to read the article in full but we thought you would be pleased to hear this.

    Carl & The UNN Team” Link below to full article

    https://unitynewsnetwork.co.uk/bbc-misinformation-exposed-as-they-try-and-highlight-misinformation/

  50. Boris Johnson has just confirmed that Christmas will be on 25th December this year, and that he would rather die in a ditch than fail to deliver it.

    2. As he likes a laugh and will play the buffoon to the very end he will choose a ha ha rather than an ordinary ditch for his final curtain.

  52. Afternoon, all. Just popping in before I go to collect my car from the garage. The Cons haven’t been conservative for decades, blue-collar or any other variety.

  54. Wow,given the controversy over Mogg’s comments, wait until the BBC find out
    that Naz Shah told the thousands of tortured, multiple gang-raped,
    covered in petrol children in Rotherham to “shut their mouths for the
    sake of diversity”!

    It’ll be huge!
    Oh Wait……………………….

  57. Morning all

    SIR – It is claimed – by Nigel Farage, among others – that the Conservatives cannot win in former Labour strongholds, but this view is belied by the results of recent general elections.

    In 2017 the Conservatives won the former mining seat of Mansfield for the first time since its creation in 1885. In Bishop Auckland, which sits in Labour’s fiefdom of County Durham and has never been represented by a Conservative, the Labour majority was reduced to 502 from over 10,000 as recently as 2005.

    The Conservatives achieved their highest share of the working-class vote in 2017, a trend that is likely to continue if the party campaigns wisely on a platform of blue-collar Conservatism, promoting tax, welfare and social policies that reward aspiration and seek to raise the living standards of the lowest paid.

    Philip Duly
    Haslemere, Surrey

    1. SIR – Leading Tories should have asked themselves a number of difficult questions before launching their assault on Nigel Farage and the Brexit Party (report, November 5).

      First: why is it that Government supporters are so divided on the merits of the Prime Minister’s Withdrawal Agreement? Opinions go from “fantastic” to “still 95 per cent rancid”, the latter appearing in an influential Tory-supporting article written by Gerald Warner in Reaction.

      Secondly, how can it be that Boris Johnson’s deal, negotiated in the context of the Surrender Parliament, can be the best possible starting point for more discussions with the European Union, when he himself complained he was negotiating with one hand behind his back?

      Thirdly, why is it that the No 10 team – so keen to reset Theresa May’s Brexit policy when Mr Johnson succeeded – now resiles from doing so when it is finally free to do it?

      Lastly, how can we reconcile the flip-flop behaviour of the European Research Group “Spartans”, who, in the last Parliament, put the Brexit mission above party loyalty, but are now acting as enforcers of party discipline?

      The Tories are wedded to a prior position even though the chains that produced it have been smashed by the initiation of a general election. The Brexit Party’s position, by contrast, may be the rational one. As Maynard Keynes once said: “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”

      Jeremy Hosking
      London WC2

      1. As far as Boris’s deal is concerned it depends who you believe. His deal does take us out of the EU and the single market and custom union(The situation with NI is slightly different )

        There are differing views in the Conservative party most will accept Borisi”s d eal and about 20% are so would not be happy with it. Labour is probably about 70% REmain, 30% Borisis deal

      3. Keuenesian economics is some of the silliest going. In times of need, government should spend!

        Yeah, because spending money you don’t have to create ‘stimulus’ is such a good idea! The only economic system that works is Friedmanite because it cuts taxes and allows people to spend, creating natural demand.

        It is only spite and political arrogance that create the idiotic situation we are now in.

        1. It is actually politicians misunderstanding it or spinning it. What it actually says is during the good times you put money away and when the bad times arrive you spend that money

      4. This is quite a logical argument. However, it could be argued that for Boris to unilaterally announce the UK is leaving the EU this instant “when it is finally free to do so” would result in pre-election attacks on him painting him as a devious deceitful tyrant and could seriously affect his chances of a strong majority in the December 12 election. Far better to wait until December the 13th when he really will be free to do so, since no government is free to bind the hands of its successor. I am not suggesting that we give him the benefit of the doubt, as I did pre-Halloween. In fact, I no longer have any idea what will happen. But far too many people have already made up their minds about various politicians and their parties, based on little more than hunches about what those politicians are “really like”. Just read the opinion pieces in any MSM newspapers and you will see well-argued but totally opposite opinions on the matter. Like Anne Allan, I am now bowing out of this debate and focussing on other matters until the election and its aftermath is well and truly over.

    3. “platform of blue-collar Conservatism, promoting tax, welfare and social policies that reward aspiration and seek to raise the living standards of the lowest paid.”

      A total repudiation of the past 40 years of Blue and Red policy then….

    4. Thing is, how can they change tax law when the EU controls it? How can they remove VAT when the EU sets it?

      Hmm? Yes, it’d be nice if we actually had social policies that worked for individuals and promoted employment, work, reward for work but there’re a bunch of spiteful fools who say ‘we’ll just give you the money from those ‘rich Tories’ in the south who just scam you. No need to work.

      Who’d you vote for if you were a frightened, have a family to feed type? Of course, the decent mind says I am a Conservative. I work and earn for my keep. But that’s risky. What if the company you’re working for shuts down?

      But then there’s that nice Mr Corbyn, promising me I’ll get more money without any risk at all… I don’t want to, I want to work but… and lo, we get Labour voters.

      As it is, the Conservatives have shown a complete disinterest in creating jobs. Where are their policies to cut corpoaration tax (ooops), to reduce regulation (oops), to cut the controls over business (ooops) and to set the economy free by time boxing welfrea, cutting masssive uncontrolled immigration (ooops!).

      Every oops is an EU authority that we’ve no control over. The Conservatives have tied hands even if they did want to change anything.

      1. IIRC, VAT is a national issue, but once set it can neither be removed nor reduced. That’s why there are different levels in pretty well all EU countries.

  58. SIR – How can any sensible person stand as a Brexit Party candidate? Surely they can see that they are likely to prevent Brexit occurring at all, as well as quite possibly bringing about a Marxist-led government.

    Sir Neville Trotter
    Newcastle upon Tyne

  59. Hysterical Air Traffic Control Instructions

    Tower: “Delta 351, you have traffic at 10 o’clock, 6 miles!”
    Delta 351: “Give us another hint! We have digital watches!”

    Tower: “TWA 2341, for noise abatement turn right 45 Degrees.”
    TWA 2341: “ATC, we are at 35,000 feet. How much noise can we make up here?”
    Tower: “Sir, have you ever heard the noise a 747 makes when it hits a 727?”

    From an unknown aircraft waiting in a very long take-off queue: “I’m f….ing bored!”
    Ground Traffic Control: “Last aircraft transmitting, identify yourself immediately!”
    Unknown aircraft: “I said I was f…ing bored, not f….ing stupid!”

    O’Hare Approach Control to a 747:”United 329 heavy, your traffic is a Fokker, one o’clock, three miles, Eastbound.”
    United 329: “Approach, I’ve always wanted to say this…I’ve got the little Fokker in sight.”

    A student became lost during a solo cross-country flight. While attempting to locate the aircraft on radar, ATC asked, “What was your last known position?”
    Student: “When I was number one for take-off?”

    A DC-10 had come in a little hot and thus had an exceedingly long roll out after touching down.
    San Jose Tower Noted: “American 751, make a hard right turn at the end of the runway, if you are able. If you are not able, take the Guadeloupe exit off Highway 101, make a right at the lights and return to the airport.”

    A Pan Am 727 flight, waiting for start clearance in Munich, overheard the following:
    Lufthansa (in German): “Ground, what is our start clearance time?”
    Ground (in English): “If you want an answer you must speak in English.”
    Lufthansa (in English): “I am a German, flying a German airplane, in Germany. Why must I speak English?”
    Unknown voice from another plane (in a beautiful British accent):”Because you lost the bloody war!”

    Tower: “Eastern 702, cleared for take-off, contact Departure on frequency 124.7”
    Eastern 702: “Tower, Eastern 702 switching to Departure. By the way, after we lifted off, we saw some kind of dead animal on the far end of the runway.”
    Tower: “Continental 635, cleared for take-off behind Eastern 702, contact Departure on frequency 124.7. Did you copy that report from Eastern 702?”
    Continental 635: “Continental 635, cleared for take-off, roger; and yes, we copied Eastern… We’ve already notified our caterers.”

    One day the pilot of a Cherokee 180 was told by the tower to hold short of the active runway while a DC-8 landed. The DC-8 landed, rolled out, turned around, and taxied back past the Cherokee. Some quick-witted comedian in the DC-8 crew got on the radio and said: “What a cute little plane. Did you make it all by yourself?”
    The Cherokee pilot, not about to let the insult go by, came back with a real zinger: “I made it out of DC-8 parts. Another landing like yours and I’ll have enough parts for another one.”

    The German air controllers at Frankfurt Airport are renowned as a short-tempered lot. They not only expect one to know one’s gate parking location, but how to get there without any assistance from them. So it was with some amusement that we (a Pan Am 747) listened to the following exchange between Frankfurt ground control and a British Airways 747, call sign Speed bird 206.
    Speed bird 206: ” Frankfurt, Speed bird 206! Clear of active runway.”
    Ground: “Speed bird 206. Taxi to gate Alpha One-Seven.”
    The BA 747 pulled onto the main taxiway and slowed to a stop.
    Ground: “Speed bird, do you not know where you are going?”
    Speed bird 206: “Stand by, Ground, I’m looking up our gate location now.”
    Ground (with quite arrogant impatience):”Speed bird 206, have you not been to Frankfurt before?”
    Speed bird 206: (coolly): “Yes, twice in 1944, but it was dark, — And I didn’t land.”

    While taxiing at London’s Heathrow Airport, the crew of a US Air flight departing for Ft. Lauderdale made a wrong turn and came nose to nose with a United 727. An irate female ground controller lashed out at the US Air crew, screaming:
    “US Air 2771, where the hell are you going? I told you to turn right onto Charlie taxiway! You turned right on Delta! Stop right there. I know it’s difficult for you to tell the difference between C and D, but get it right!”
    Continuing her rage to the embarrassed crew, she was now shouting hysterically:
    “God! Now you’ve screwed everything up! It’ll take forever to sort this out! You stay right there and don’t move till I tell you to! You can expect progressive taxi instructions in about half an hour, and I want you to go exactly where I tell you, when I tell you, and how I tell you! You got that, US Air 2771?”
    “Yes, ma’am,” the humbled crew responded. Naturally, the ground control communications frequency fell terribly silent after the verbal bashing of US Air 2771. Nobody wanted to chance engaging the irate ground controller in her current state of mind. Tension in every cockpit out around Gatwick was definitely running high. Just then an unknown pilot broke the silence and keyed his microphone, asking:
    “Wasn’t I married to you once?”

  60. Any advance on a £100B

    The Greens have decided to trump Corbyns £50B on climate change and have gone for a £100B. What they intend to do with it who knows. THe idea as well that you can just throw money at something ids flawed in any case

    1. Bah, it’s only two months spending. Who cares if there are better things to spend the money on.

      The question to really ask them is ‘what would you spend it on? What would we get for the money?

      1. Properly securing our borders would be a start and investing in driving up productivity another. It is increasing productivity that increases wealth. Flooding the UK with cheap Labour does not

        Labour the other day was as usual contradicting itself. It wants to increase minimum pay whilst wanting the minimum pay for migration to the UK to be reduced from £30K a year to £20K a year which is below the Living wage level in London and is retty close to minimum pay in fact next year it would dip below it

        2. Very difficult to boost productivity in a mainly services economy….there is only so much insurance and cups of coffee we can sell to each other….

      2. Best ask the same question of Boris J. because he intends to, err, spaff, billions up the wall as well…. 🙂

  61. Rich Hall’s Red Menace review – down with the nuclear nitwits! 6 November 2019.

    Cold war Americans were less likely to kill Soviets with nuclear weapons than themselves, Hall argued. At Los Alamos in 1945, one scientist was rearranging tungsten carbide bricks around a plutonium core for a test called “tickling the dragon’s tail”. But he inadvertently dropped one of the bricks on the core, producing a blue flash of light, a mule kick of heat, and 25 days later his death from radiation sickness. The core was moved to a new site to keep it safer, but within a year another physicist was beating out time with a screwdriver between two beryllium spheres that surrounded the core so he could hear metronomic changes on a Geiger counter. “When he reached the approximate tempo of The Girl from Ipanema,” Hall reported, “the screwdriver slipped, the spheres came together – blue light, mule kick and nine days later he was dead.” That’s the next episode of Horrible Histories’ Stupid Deaths sorted.

    This was an amusing and informative 90 minutes with anecdotes even I haven’t heard. I would guess that Rich Hall is not everyone’s cup of tea with his dead pan delivery and understatement. I like him!

    https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/nov/05/rich-halls-red-menace-review-down-with-the-nuclear-nitwits

    1. I watched it too. I learned a lot, I was amused and I didn’t think I was being manipulated.

      I’ve seen Rich on stage a couple of times. He takes no prisoners and is very funny.

    2. Rich Hall’s deadpan style is superb. I think that he is the only comedian that I have bought a DVD of, so that I could see the whole performance and not just the edited parts that you see on TV shows. Here is a 4 minute clip of him as his alter-ego, the American prisoner Otis Lee Crenshaw singing “Like a woman” from the DVD that I bought called “Hell No I Ain’t Happy.” There are some classic lines: “The banjo’s like a woman. Nobody needs to hear it.”

      (There is use of the F word a few times.)

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2p4oQXIWmiU

  62. From the horses…………..

    “Brussels has poured cold water on Boris Johnson’s claim to have negotiated an entirely new Brexit deal with the EU, and insisted that it never reopened the withdrawal agreement for him.

    A spokesperson for the European Commission raised eyebrows on

    Wednesday by insisting that the EU had merely made “clarifications” to

    Theresa May’s Brexit deal and that it had not been “amended” in any

    meaningful way.

    The sensational claim is at odds with Downing Street’s

    presentation of negotiations: the prime minister hopes to get his

    agreement through parliament on the basis that it is not the same as his

    predecessor’s, which was rejected three times by MPs.

    “I’m not aware that we have amended the withdrawal agreement,” a European Commission spokesperson told reporters on Wednesday”

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-deal-boris-johnson-theresa-may-european-commission-general-election-a9187691.html

      1. They wouldn’t want to admit that they had agreed an amendment, even if they had. But Boris’s statements did look fishy from the start. I think he was economical with the truth.

      1. Evening M,
        Surely you do not mean the WA another way say another way for the WA, like say, AW issued against ALL politico enemas of the state.

    3. This should be shared far and wide. Johnson is blatantly lying when he says he has negotiated a ‘great new deal.’ It reminds me of Camerons so-called ‘reforms’ to the EU. No matter how many times you repeat a lie, it still remains a lie.

      3. I saw this on another site with no link,It annoyed me so much I dug around to check the authenticity before posting
        It is devastating critique of Tory lies

    5. What has been published has changed Martin Howe QC’s opinion of the WA. He doesn’t think it’s a great “deal” but tolerable in the current circumstances. What of the ‘walk away’ after 12 months of transition: fact or fiction? One way or another Johnson has some questions to answer.
      Political commentators are reporting that Johnson’s opening day of the election has been a horror story and this news just adds to his woes.

    6. I assume someone somewhere has read both in their entirety. Surely someone can tell us if there is any difference. I won’t pretend I have made any attempt to read either. Has any nottler attempted to wade through the verbiage – I’d rather trust anyone here that all the political spokesthings to tell me whether they are the same or not.

      1. I came across this little snippit yesterday, but my mind is foggy and I cannot remember where I saw it. In general, the sort of people that you do trust to look out for democracy on this Isle would not touch this Withdrawal Agreement with a barge pole. It is a trap that we will not be walking away from, written by EU lawyers to break the United Kingdom. Boris knows this.

        “…but this Tweet from the EU Commissioners, dated 19th October, 2019, proves that what the Tories are offering is not Brexit at all. It’s just BRINO Mk.II.

        “The revised protocol responds to the unique circumstances of the island of Ireland with the aim of protecting peace and stability. All other elements of the Withdrawal Agreement remain unchanged in substance, as per the agreement reached on 14th November, 2018.””

  63. Tories threaten deselections amid fears of secret Brexit Party deals

    Why cannot they sort this out. Drop asking Boris to go to no deal it is not going to happen and if you look at the polls etc support for a No deal is not that high

    If Boris try’s to go it alone he could let in Labour or a Rainbow Coalition and that means No Brexit at all plus totally out of control spending

    It may not be ideal but we are where we are mainly due to May

    With a Deal Brexit Party should return MP’s to Westminster and can try to influence the deal as it has not gone though the commons and the important Committee stage has to be gone through where it can potentially be kicked out or changed

    Boris Johnson is reportedly losing his grip on party discipline after it emerged that Nigel Farage is in talks with Brexiteer Tories to offer secret electoral pacts.

    The pacts would involved Farage standing down his candidates in exchange for a successful Tory MP to back a no-deal Brexit rather than Johnson’s deal.
    The moves threaten to undermine the Conservatives’ election promises, as Johnson has pledged not to work with the Brexit Party in any formal alliance, and to follow through on the Brexit deal he struck with the EU.
    Arch-Brexiteer head of the ERG Steve Baker has told local Conservative party associations that any Tory engaging in Brexit Party talks should be barred from standing for election.

    1. I wonder what post Steve Baker has been promised in the next Government? Oh, and what gong in the NY Honours list?

    2. Conservatives’ election promises…….hahahahahahahahaha…………breath…….hahahahahahaha

    3. BJ,
      You type as if tory promises, vows,pledges are still believed.
      With a deal brexit party can return MPs to the house AND TRY to influence the deal, stop right there, I just heard the semi re-entry ratchet click.
      TOTAL SEVERANCE is the only way.

      1. None of them can be believed. They’re all lies.

        What will happen is simple: they’ll hike taxes, create unemployment, blither on at each other and achieve nothing.

        1. Evening W,
          But are still revered by a great many of the peoples as the polling booth shows.
          Following the keep in / keep out voting pattern
          guarantees as a country we will always be in the sh!te.

    4. I am disturbed that people are willing to accept Boris’s WA deal.

      It’s a disasterous treaty that would obliterate this nation. It’s slavery. Conditions so harsh the would simply lead to us being hauled back in to the EU as the conditions are better than what we’re suffering. It gives us no control over our country at all.

      I appreciate people will say ‘bet you’ve not read the treaty’ but i have. Even cross referencing some of the worst nonsense and legalese gibberish – which is all eurospeak is.

      The problem, at heart, is ignorance. The Left are relying on it to get their people elected – because only the ignorant vote Labour and the Lib Dems desperately want to destroy democracy entirely which rather makes voting for them pointless as their government would have no legitimacy at all – but they won’t win either, getting barely 10 MPs. One can only hope they are obliterated at the polls.

      The Conservatives need votes. They need a majority but… why? Brexit should have happened by now if Boris hadn’t allowed the disgusting, traitorous Benn act through yet he did. Why? Brexit was not about politics. It was about *government*. We wanted to be goverened by our own parliament and that parliament rejectd that – for their own personal greed – to remain chained to the EU, merely a vassal state of a communist empire run by kelptocrats who would see poverty, starvation, conflict and misery across the continent. Why would they want it any differently?

      This lot of wasters are playing politics with our lives. That’s all they know. That’s why every single one (ok, the majority) of them must go. As it is, there are too many MPs. Too much corruption. Too much fraud. Too many cushy after office jjobs as directors of multi nationals.. why? What possible utility are these fools to them except to buy policy?

      Westminster stinks. It’s a cess pit of vipers, fools, liars, cheats and sewage. No londer the sewers of London are clogged up. MPs are spewing their bilge into it all the time.

      I’m sorry to say it, but i despise them. Utterly, completely.

  64. @MSmithsonPB

    Westminster voting changes from today’s YouGov London poll suggest the Tories could make gains from LAB in the capital Changes since GE2017: Lab -16% CON -4% LD +10% BRX +6% GRN +2% Swing 6% from Lab to Con

    6:06 am – 5 Nov 2019

    2. Scientologists such as Tom Cruise believe in a similar origin. And maybe GS really an alien? Perhaps the candidate is correct in her thinking.

  66. Good morning all. No worries … Grizz is certainly not toast …. [ apols if already posted ].

    SIR – The best toast was always made by using a toasting fork before a blazing fire.

    Alan G Barstow
    Onslunda, Skåne County, Sweden

  67. Daily Brexit Betrayal

    Don’t believe for a moment that this will be about Brexit

    if we let the establishment Parties and their allies in the MSM set the

    agenda! This morning’s headlines show how the MSM will play this. In

    one corner we have the Tories who are still struggling about how to ‘get

    Brexit’ into their manifesto – more on that below. In the other corner

    we have Labour whose policies are already attracting criticism from

    across the board. In the yellow corner are the Libdems whose Leader

    firmly believes she can become PM and in the last corner we have TBP and

    Nigel Farage, the devil incarnate whose sole existence means Brexit

    will be scuppered.

    Yes, that’s right: it’s not the Remainers’ policies of obstruction

    since the EU referendum which have been wrecking Brexit for over three

    years, it’s not Labour with their rejection of ‘a Tory Brexit’, and the

    pledge to do better: three months negotiations and then six months for a

    2nd referendum even if their leader is still not sure what he’ll do.

    Above all, it’s not Johnson with his ‘oven-ready Deal’ who is the

    wrecker – it’s Farage, having shown the traps in Johnson’s deal, who is

    the official Brexit wrecker.

    https://independencedaily.co.uk/your-daily-brexit-betrayal-wednesday-6th-november-2019/

  69. The Tories under Thatcher got some working class votes, mainly from the self-employed who had money to make.

    Thatcher could never in a million years turn the heads of those in the Labour constituencies of the north where I grew up, and that situation has become more entrenched in the years since. They blame the Tories for the decline in industry with no adequate replacement and the taking away of their jobs, it’s as simple as that. The fact that Labour between 1997 and 2010 did nothing to redress that passes them by, because they still believe that Labour is ‘the party of the working man’. In the meantime, their youth swirls aimlessly down the plughole of life, crime and drug use escalate, but it’s all the fault of ‘The Tories’. People from those areas these days with any sense of wanting to get on tend to take their degree in some university and once they’ve got it – provided it’s a proper one – they stay away, where the money is to be made. That has always happened to a certain extent, even when I was young, but in the past there were enough opportunities for those who wanted to return and do well to do so.

    Those that remain would continue to avoid voting Tory even if Labour were to include in their manifesto that all boy babies and people over the age of 70 would be impaled on bayonets. They see ‘Tory’ as a sheep sees a wolf.

    They want Brexit, but when it comes to voting Tory, they’ll leave that to someone else.

      2. If the Brexit Party only stands against the Blues…..Reds won’t vote for a party they think are out to purely help the Blues….

    2. I think the feeling is that ‘The Blues’ enjoyed smashing the industries whilst the ‘New Reds’ were never really truly Red but that Blair was better than a Blue….

      I don’t think it has helped the Blues that morons like JRM have shouted their support for loons like Minford…the man who helped smash things the first time round and is demanding Brexit be used to end manufacturing in the UK.

    3. “People from those areas these days with any sense of wanting to get on tend to take their degree in some university and once they’ve got it – provided it’s a proper one – they stay away, where the money is to be made. That has always happened to a certain extent, even when I was young, but in the past there were enough opportunities for those who wanted to return and do well to do so.”

      Spot on.

    4. Funnily enough my second son recently moved from working in London into a post-graduate flat on campus with his girlfriend who is studying for a paid Ph.D at Lancaster University in Maths while he does an external M.Sc in computer Science at York University while working in Preston.

      He managed to find a job straight away. As far as they can see there are plenty of good jobs ‘North of the M25’ for those who want to find them.

        1. It is quite North enough for me.

          Mind you, one of my very best friends used to live in Gosforth and now lives in Durham where he studied Theology at St Chad’s when ee were nowt but a lad.

          1. York may be at a higher latitude than the rest of The South, but in reality it’s just a bit of Southern England that got lost and remains so. It’s not representative in any way of the areas both north and south of it.

            Similarly Durham and Gosforth. Gosforth is where the doctors, surgeons and lawyers live. Now travel only a couple of miles south to Heaton and Byker and open your eyes.

          2. Someone on GP made a comment about running the local Air Cadets in Gosforth, North Tyneside and the trouble they were having with organising the Remembrance Day commemorations.
            I made the point that, geographically, Gosforth was in Northumberland and that the boundary with the City & County of Newcastle Upon Tyne on the old A1 was at the top end of the Town Moor as it ran into the bottom end of Gosforth.

            I also pointed out that I well remember the turning circle for the Trolley Busses at Gosforth Park!

          3. The ‘Northumberland’ sign was just on the north side of the Blue House Roundabout, I remember it well. Officially the City of Newcastle wasn’t part of Northumberland or anywhere else. As you say, it was a county in its own right.

            That all changed in 1974 when they decided to meddle with boundaries for no good reason and Gosforth became part of the mongrel Tyne and Wear.

            The difficulty in getting representation for Remembrance Day might be something to do with the proportion of those doctors, surgeons and lawyers that I mentioned, along with others nor mentioned harking from other lands and having no historical connection to Britain and its traditions, but that’s just suppostion on my part, based on some of the names on the brass plaques at the gates of houses on Elmfield Road etc and I could be miles off the mark.

      2. York is a world away in a thousand ways from the areas I’m discussing.

        I’m on about an entirely different ‘North’ to the gentility of York.

  70. Good morning, my friends

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/11/05/deal-oven-ready-get-brexit-done-take-country-forward/

    A deal is oven-ready. Let’s get Brexit done and take this country forward
    BORIS JOHNSON

    It may have been in the oven but it is certainly only a half-baked ‘deal’.

    As usual this article by Johnson is very full of waffle and very low in factual content about the ‘deal’. The more the Conservatives avoid the nitty-gritty details the more people will see that Mr Johnson’s words, for all their sound and fury, signify nothing.

    Just have a look at all the comments under DT articles about the election and about Brexit. The most highly up-ticked comments all state that at best the Boris deal is a very poor BRINO. A fellow NoTTLer poster last week accused me of heresy and down-ticked me for suggesting that Remain might be better than such a bad deal, 95% of which is just a rehash of May’s despised WA.. More and more avid Brexiteers who post in the DT comments section are beginning to agree.

    Do members of the government actually read the comments under the DT’s articles or have they completely given up caring what people think?

    Without a pact with TBP and a proper Brexit it will be all over for the Conservative Party and all over for Mr Johnson.

      1. To mark the demise of the 17 Lewes Martyrs, 17 burning crosses are carried through the town, and a wreath-laying ceremony occurs at the War Memorial in the centre of town.

        The Lewes Martyrs were a group of 17 Protestants who were burned at the stake in Lewes, East Sussex, England between 1555 and 1557. These executions were part of the Marian persecutions of Protestants during the reign of Mary I.

        On 6 June 1556, Thomas Harland of Woodmancote, Near Henfield, West Sussex , carpenter, John Oswald (or Oseward) of Woodmancote, Near Henfield, West Sussex husbandman, Thomas Reed of Ardingly, Sussex and Thomas Avington (or Euington) of Ardingly, Sussex, turner were burnt.

        Richard Woodman and 9 other people were burned together in Lewes on 22 June 1557, on the orders of Edmund Bonner, Bishop of London — the largest single bonfire of people that ever took place in England.

          2. As Catholic schoolboys we were regaled with stories of martyrs, not least Jeanne d’Arc, and advised to expect the same treatment, and prepare for it. I do understand, a bit.

        1. None at all, I shall return to my cave and thank u for reminding me of my position in life. Pip pip..

  72. Further to NTN’s earlier Post

    This is the transcript of a radio conversation of a US naval ship with Canadian authorities off the coast of Newfoundland in October, 1995. Radio conversation released by the Chief of Naval Operations 10-10-95.

    Americans: Please divert your course 15 degrees to the North to avoid a collision.

    Canadians: Recommend you divert YOUR course 15 degrees to the South to avoid a collision.

    Americans: This is the Captain of a US Navy ship. I say again, divert YOUR course.

    Canadians: No. I say again, you divert YOUR course.

    Americans: This is the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln, the second largest ship in the United States’ Atlantic fleet.We are accompanied by three destroyers, three cruisers and numerous support vessels. I demand that YOU change your course 15 degrees north, that’s one five degrees north, or countermeasures will be undertaken to ensure the safety of this ship.

    Canadians: This is a lighthouse. Your call

    Number 127 in the Register of Oft Repeated Jokes

        1. I scroll down, unclever penis, and my last visitation to spec-savers had me sitting down for a moment in the waiting area when the complete false ceiling dropped down to greet me.
          Being a fast reaction type I done a para roll then spent some time uncovering two old ladies that were next to me.
          Being of older stock no compensation claim was made for mental scarring & as a true hero type I just disappeared into the crowd.

  76. Ursula von der Leyen makes desperate plea to Boris Johnson in effort to save her job

    BORIS JOHNSON has been ordered to nominate a female EU commissioner by the end of the month, in a desperate letter from incoming Brussels boss Ursula von der Leyen.

    In a bid to salvage her gender-balanced top team, the German insisted the Prime Minister should put forward a woman as Britain’s top eurocrat. Ms von der Leyen promised to deliver a neutral team of EU commissioners in her pitch for the top Brussels job. European sources said the letter was a “firm” warning to the Government that it is expected to nominate a commissioner as part of the latest Brexit delay. A European Commission spokeswoman said: “The President-elect has sent a letter to Boris Johnson, the UK Prime Minister, which she invites Mr Johnson to propose the name of a UK candidate or candidates.

    1. Yes they want to spend £1T just on climate change. Goodness knows what the total bill will be for their manifesto

    2. On the bright side, the zillions of magic money trees they will need to plant to pay for their pipe dreams will use up available Green Belt space, so no more immigrants allowed, and they will suck up all the man-made CO2.

    4. Fantasists. Meanwhile China builds coal fired power stations and India reciprocate. With this Green agenda we will all become peasants were their rabid pronouncements ever enacted.

    5. It’s been mentioned already a couple of times below. I just had a word with them and they have agreed to raise the State Pension to £8,000,000 p.a.when they get in, and ( this will get my vote ), donate a trillion pounds a year to the Cats Protection League.

  79. I don’t know if anyone else has noticed, but I’ve not had the screen jumping up & down today and have not been forced to reload the page to clear it today.
    Have Disqus finally sorted the problem out?

  80. Farage in desperate election fightback after disastrous Brexit Party campaign launch

    Usually Nigel gets it right but he has badly misjudged it this time

    NIGEL Farage attempted an election fightback yesterday following an exodus of candidates over his ballot box war with the Tory party.

    The Brexit Party leader came out swinging after it was revealed that at least 21 of his parliamentary hopefuls quit and a major donor switched sides to Boris Johnson. Three candidates withdrew over fears the Brexit Party could prevent Mr Johnson getting a majority. Calum Walker became the latest to jump ship to back the Tories last night. He confirmed: “I will not be representing The Brexit Party in Dundee East. Having The Brexit Party stand against the Conservatives will only split the Brexit vote.

  81. he Green Party have launched their general election campaign with a call for £100bn a year to be spent on tackling the climate “emergency”.
    Co-leader Sian Berry said: “Some things are even bigger than Brexit. This must be the climate election. The future won’t get another chance.”

    The party says it would fund the pledge by borrowing £91.2bn a year, with an extra £9bn from “tax changes”.

    he Green Party is proposing to fund its key pledge by increasing government borrowing by £91bn a year.
    The remaining £9bn will come from tax changes, including an increase in corporation tax to 24%.
    This would represent a massive increase on current borrowing levels. The independent Institute for Fiscal Studies believes government borrowing will be £55bn this year.

    In terms of how £100bn compares to other areas of UK government spending, it’s about the same that’s spent on education each year.

    Deputy leader Amelia Womack also set out the Green Party’s plan to make the country carbon neutral by 2030.
    This will be done, Ms Womack said, by building 100,000 energy efficient homes each year, by “revolutionising” transport infrastructure, a roll-out of renewable energy and creating “hundreds of thousands” of “low carbon jobs” – including, for example, workers installing insulation in homes.

    1. -. — – / -. . . -.. . -.. / -… -.– / -. — – – .-.. . .-. … / – — -.. .- -.–

  82. Lib=Dim’s

    Build a fairer economy by providing free childcare from 9 months and giving every adult £10,000 to spend on skills & training throughout their lives.

  83. Labour election candidate Zarah Sultana apologises after writing online that she would ‘celebrate’ deaths of Tony Blair and Benjamin Netanyahu

    How an earth can Labour still allow her to stand as a candidate ?

    A Labour candidate said she would ‘celebrate’ the deaths of Tony Blair and Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu.
    Zarah Sultana, who is standing for Coventry South, also wrote of her support for ‘violent resistance’ by Palestinians and used the hash tag ‘extremistmuslim’ online. Despite Labour’s anti-Semitism crisis, the 26-year-old will still stand in the election on December 12.

          4. All that diversity training is paying off. I reckon I could do well on Diversity Challenge: “Your starter for 10 Little….”

          5. What’s black and white and read all over?

            Corbyn and Abbott, because neither could tell that read could be pronounced red

    3. It would seem to me that if a similar comment had been made by a straight, white, Christian male, a hate speech prosecution would have followed immediately.

  84. Found some data on Home Insulation for 2013. It shows only a tiny percentage of UK homes are not insulated

    It does not cover double glazing I shall try to find a figure. I suspect it will be pretty high. Listed building will in general not have double glazing due to the listing
    Grade II building it migh be possible to fit secondary glazing

    https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/209029/Statistical_release_-_Estimates_of_home_insulation_levels_in_Great_Britain_April_13.pdf

    Estimates of Home Insulation Levels in Great Britain: April 2013
    Key points
    It is estimated that at the start of April 2013:
     There were 27.1 million homes in Great Britain. Of these 19.1 million had cavity walls with the remaining 8.0 million having solid walls. 23.7 million properties had a loft.
     16.2 million homes had loft insulation of at least 125mm (68 per cent of homes with lofts). Of the 7.4 million homes with lofts without at least 125mm of insulation, only a small number are estimated to have no insulation – around 1 per cent of all properties with lofts.
     13.4 million homes had cavity wall insulation (70 per cent of homes with cavity walls). Of the 5.3 million homes without cavity wall insulation, most are hard to treat, with only 0.7 million of them being easy to treat standard cavities.
     205,000 homes had solid wall insulation (3 per cent of homes with solid walls).
     Through Government schemes since April 2008 (the start of CERT), there have been 5.5 million lofts insulated, 2.6 million cavity walls insulated and 140,000 solid walls insulated.
     Compared with April 2012, 1.4 million more properties had loft insulation of at least 125mm, 610,000 more had cavity wall insulation and 73,000 more had solid wall insulation

      1. Do you know of the government assisted scheme to inject a foam like substance in cavity wall which ended up with many people having damp where they hadn’t before? I heard there was a compensation payout but can’t find it anywhere.

    2. Morning PT,
      just post referendum victory and hearing the cry
      “we won,job done, leave it to the tory’s”
      I was calling for a 17.4 million new UKIP members, even temps, after suffering 6 years of the wretch cameron / may combo.
      The 9 month may delay confirmed my feelings.
      The peoples entering the polling booth should really try, for once, putting Country before party.

    3. Morning PT,
      just post referendum victory and hearing the cry
      “we won,job done, leave it to the tory’s”
      I was calling for a 17.4 million new UKIP members, even temps, after suffering 6 years of the wretch cameron / may combo.
      The 9 month may delay confirmed my feelings.
      The peoples entering the polling booth should really try, for once, putting Country before party.

    4. I think Julia Hartley Brewer had the best answer.

      She said that at the beginning she would have gone to Juncker and Tusk and said: “We’re leaving straight away. We offer a free trade arrangement to all the countries in the EU. If you decide to impose tariffs on us we shall put the same tariffs on you. That’s it – take it or leave it.”

    5. Very simple Plum Tart, Article 50 should have been sent off on 24th June 2016. Then trade delegations with high ranking government ministers sent to the USA, Russia, China, Korea, India and Brazil to sign free trade agreements and to secure investment from vehicle manufacturers to set up joint ventures to replace EU imports especially German luxury vehicles. But most importantly to re-vamp the commonwealth. We gave up the commonwealth for a market of 500 million people.
      Oh yes and spread rumours of imposing a 200% anti-dumping rate on all EU cars in order to protect home producers from unfair co-operation. That’s how the Thais protected their Japanese car plants. You could also make all imports of EU cars to be custom cleared in Aberdeen, with a full inspection for each one and one customs entry to one vehicle. Then get all Navy vessels patrolling UK fisheries and arresting any foreign trawlers with any old excuse.
      But as we have seen British governments are not there to promote British interests so it would never happen.
      What would you do Plum Tart?

      1. Aberdeen? What is wrong with Uig?
        When the USA was having a dispute with Japan about colour TVs they required the Imported TVs to be conformity tested in Santa Fe.
        So TVs arriving in containers at San Diego were having to be moved to New Mexico for testing. Ah…

        1. Yes, the French threatened the Japanese car manufacturers with the same idea if they didn’t play ball by proposing customs clearance for all their cars would be in the middle of France. The Japanese thwarted our car industry by changing the specifications every time vehicles were sent for testing and upped the specs. I once got involved in prototype Jags being sent out to JP and coming back with new electrics. But our governments never do what’s best for our industries and the UK.

      2. India has already said that there will be no FTA without a linkage to FoM….so still want that trade deal with India? You may recall, the EU-India FTA floundered over that very issue…. https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2017/07/its-time-recognise-truth-trade-deal-india-means-concessions-immigration https://www.politico.eu/article/india-no-rush-to-do-bilateral-trade-deal-with-post-brexit-britain-commonwealth-eu-customs-union-external-tariffs/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/11/23/britain-must-accept-immigrants-wants-free-trade-deal-warns-senior/

        1. OMG faced with that then, I’d give up.

          But then again, I’m not the British government. Here’s a question, name me a couple of things that the British government has ever done for the benefit of the people and country? I can only think of one and they’ve tried to reverse that decision ever since.

          I searched for UK-India trade and got all the Google bowlocks that they lead you to but one said that India was the 20th biggest trading partner. Then for 2017 I saw £10,898 billion on imports and £6,926 on exports. So I’d tell India to shove any idea they had of FoM and impose stronger checks on all imports and arrivals in the country and exclude them from any negotiation in the new Commonwealth Trade agreement. I’d also invite importers to source products from elsewhere and ban all the dubious food imports. Obviously I’d stop all foreign aid too, but I’d stop it all together any way, until we got our industry back on track.

          Tell me have you ever had any experience in importing or exporting?

    7. I think Julia Hartley Brewer had the best answer.

      She said that at the beginning she would have gone to Juncker and Tusk and said: “We’re leaving straight away. We offer a free trade arrangement to all the countries in the EU. If you decide to impose tariffs on us we shall put the same tariffs on you. That’s it – take it or leave it.”

        1. Except JHB is full of s78t because the rEU members of the EU allow the EU to negotiate trade policy….it’s almost as if she is so stupid she didn’t know that or (this is what I think) she did know that but couldn’t say so otherwise it would have smashed her argument.

          1. Julia is an excellent broadcaster/journalist without being ballsy and arrogant….like some at the BBC.

      1. Well then you would first have to cancel all agreements with USA. Then purchase Russian nuclear weapons, they allegedly have one that can take out the whole of France in one go. So buy three, just to be on the safe side.

          1. The Russians would be more sincere than the Yanks in negotiations. Buy two get the third one free.

  88. Channel 4 News – Jacob Rees-Mogg under pressure to resign after ‘common sense comment.

    Give it a rest FFS…

    1. it’s no wonder Chairman Mao had no problem inducing millions to carry out his Little Red Book philosophy. The Tyranny of Woke.

    2. Jacob Rees-Mogg was at fault in making his comment. The single staircase at Grenfell was a fire fighting staircase and never intended for escape purposes. The fire strategy was that the fire would be contained within the apartment by means of fire compartmentation.

      The fire fighters would approach a fire in a compartment via the fire fighting staircase and fight it from two floors below by hooking hoses to the Dry Riser (a 4” steel pipe with valves at each storey) and charging it with water.

      The failure of the compartmentation and devastating spread of fire was entirely the result of highly combustible cladding panels and polyurethane insulation applied to the outside of the building. The fire spread was accelerated by the stack effect provided by the air gap between the insulation and ‘rainscreen’ cladding panels. End of.

      1. How is it in all the Grenfell finger pointing over the fire fighting approach, I still don’t recall seeing any reports as to who exactly specified the flammable version of that cladding instead of the “correct” fire retardant version, who approved its use, and who installed it?

        1. The answers are here:

          The Grenfell tragedy was about more than cladding

          CHRISTOPHER BOOKER

          Sunday Telegraph, 2nd July 2017

          By way of offering faint cheer in these darkling times, I have more than once observed here that “there are still a lot of good people in this country – the trouble is that none of them are running it”. This was again borne out in spades by the extraordinary scenes following last weekend, when Camden’s Labour council decided that up to 4,000 people must immediately leave their homes in five tower blocks on a council estate in south Hampstead.

          Everything about the mindlessly cack-handed way in which that panic evacuation was handled was astonishing. Presiding over the chaos was Camden’s council leader, Georgia Gould, daughter of the PR man who, with Peter Mandelson, was the chief architect of Tony Blair’s “New Labour”. How on earth could this hopelessly inexperienced 31-year-old be put in charge of a major London borough?

          Back in the early Seventies, when I lived near that estate, I and my then-colleague Bennie Gray were awarded as Campaigning Journalists of the Year for relentlessly exposing Camden as London’s first “loony Left” council, above all for the reckless way in which it was razing whole tracts of the borough to replace them with concrete towers and blocks of council flats. But even then, Camden never created quite such a cruel shambles as it did last weekend.

          Of much wider significance, however, as the great post-Grenfell Tower “cladding crisis” rolls on, is the way it has been emerging that the real cause of that disaster was not simply the “cladding” itself at all.

          The real story began back in 2000, when a Commons committee held an inquiry into the fire risks of cladding on multi-storey blocks, following a fatal fire in Scotland the previous year. The MPs were particularly impressed by the evidence of Peter Field from the Building Research Establishment (BRE), who told them that the existing fire standard, EN 13501, was seriously inadequate, because it required only a “single burn” laboratory test of each separate material used in “cladding” operations.

          What was needed, said Field, was a much more realistic test of how all the materials involved might behave when installed together. This is crucially relevant to Grenfell and many other towers because, contrary to what everyone has assumed, it was not the thin outer skin of external decorative cladding by itself that caused the fire. The problem was a combination of the 6in of combustible Celotex plastic foam insulation behind it, next to a void which, once the plastic was set alight by the fire from a flat, created an updraught, sending the flames roaring upwards. In fact, the BRE had already devised a new British standard, BS 8414, which the MPs recommended should replace the wholly inadequate EN 13501. But the latter had come from the EU, making it mandatory. So, under EU law, the new British standard could only therefore be a voluntary (and more expensive) option.

          The relevant minister who could have gone to Brussels to call for a much more effective EU standard along British lines was John Prescott. But his officials at the time were concerned only with new regulations to improve insulation required under the EU’s Energy Performance of Buildings directive. This was designed to comply with the Kyoto Protocol on global warming (signed for the UK by Prescott in 1997). The need to deal with fire risk seems not to have entered their heads.

          The ultimate irony is that the maker of Celotex actually claims that its “product” does comply with that British standard, BS 8414. Its website gives details of its self-certified test, but this bears no relation to the context in which the product was installed at Grenfell Tower. The small print of its brochure even emphasises that its test is valid only when it is compatible with the “end-use system”, which its own evidence suggests it cannot show.

          When John McDonnell, Jeremy Corbyn’s deputy, famously described the Grenfell victims as having been “murdered by political decisions”, he clearly had no idea of the role his own party had played in this murky saga. At least we must hope that the learned judge who looks into the causes of the fire will come to understand why, if only full compliance with the BS 8414 standard could have been made mandatory, as the select committee intended, that fearful conflagration would never have happened.

          https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/07/01/grenfell-tragedy-cladding/

          1. Add in a pretty detailed report on Wikipedia, and it seems the decision to go with the “cheap” outer coating came from the Kensington & Chelsea authorities who were under pressure to cut costs, and all that Westminster was concerned about was thermal insulation.

            I had previously looked at the US parent company’s website which puts limits on the use of different product for different height buildings, and the product they used should not be used on any building over 40′, over that either the fire resistant version or the completely non flammable version should have been used.

            Shades of “For want of a nail,etc.”

        2. I suppose that Phase 2 of the Inquiry will seek to provide an answer to that question.

          Had I been responsible for the refurbishment of Grenfell Tower I would have built a second staircase for access and escape (with high speed lifts) as an adjoining tower with a link. I would never have specified combustible cladding. If that were not possible I would have recommended demolition and replacement by low rise housing.

        3. The cladding panels were approved to the EU CE marking directives and a Signed DofC was issued

      2. All true.
        But if in doubt get out.

        I recall a “fire-chief” giving a talk at a round table dinner, saying that he always checked the fire exits when booking in and at the very first sign of an alarm or a fire he would leave the building immediately.

        He also commented (this was early 70’s) that he would never accept a room above the seventh floor in an hotel.

        I had an incident where an alarm went off (in France) and we all scuttled down the fire escape route, only to find that the fire door was locked at the bottom and we could not have got out. We were lucky that it was a stupid bástard smoking in a bathroom that set the alarms off.

      4. Rubbish the stairs are designed as a fire escape. Compartmentation is only deigned to last for 1 hour

        There is specific government guidence on when evacuate high rise building which the LfB chose to ignore

        1. The single staircase in the event of fire is a fire fighting staircase. I am an experienced architect and familiar with The London Building Act which applied when the Grenfell Tower was built.

          Evacuation of such high rise buildings will have been by extendable ladders and platforms. You cannot have fire fighters holding hoses being obstructed by people flooding down the staircase. The expectation was that the compartmentation would hold for one hour.

          Not for the first time you are out of your league and spouting rubbish yourself.

          1. I am afraid it is you talking rubbish. You like the LfB have not read the government guidance on fighting fires in high rise buildings

            Would you care to explain how you evacuate a high rise building using ladders add even more so when the outside is alight

            The Government guidence is specific , If the compartmentisation has failed you swich to evacuating the building

          2. Yup. By the use of ladders and platforms. The fact that no sufficiently extendable platform was available to London Fire Brigade has already been exposed in the first phase of the investigations and Inquiry.

            Remember that at that stage the available staircase is full of acrid black smoke and requiring breathing apparatus to approach.

            For an otherwise intelligent person you are very free and confident in your opinions of others which as I stated remain untenable and a nonsense.

          3. The outside of the building was alight and there are no ladders or platforms anywhere near enough height.

      5. “Jacob Rees-Mogg was at fault in making his comment.”

        Technically? Politically? Emotionally?

          1. The treatment of Mogg in this has been a disgrace. He merely expressed what millions must have thought upon hearing of the instruction to stay put.

          2. As I have on occasion attempted to explain there has been a serious disconnect between the authorities charged with the safety of our population.

            Many of our time honoured practices of control and regulation have been ditched and replaced by a hotchpotch of EU directives and a dilution of our own fail-safe UK standards established since The Great Fire of London in 1666.

          3. I know. I have read your comments over the years. Are we to suggest that JRM shouldn’t have answered the question? Here it is:

            “There have been suggestions that in part the tragedy was caused by either racism or policies of class. Are these policies correct?”

            Truly obnoxious.

      6. My thoughts, if caught in a blazing building, would not be to ring the FB and ask for advice. I would be gone by whatever means and talk about it later. Those who perished sadly confirmed that JRM was correct.

        1. The idea of the 1 Hour compartmentation is to allow the fire brigade to get to the fire and access the situation taking into account the elapsed time. They have to decide can they get the fire under control quickly or switch to evacuating the building

          1. That is a fair point and the London Fire Brigade gave the appearance of being rabbits under the headlights. The fire fighters never expected to find such a monstrous conflagration.

            In their mitigation they would not have anticipated fighting a fire in a multi storey building clad with highly inflammable materials.

            All of these failings and lax regulatory controls will be subject I trust of examination by experts from The Building Research Establishment and other independent Authorities.

            I suggest we stop the speculation and await the result of the Inquiry.

          2. That is a fair point and the London Fire Brigade gave the appearance of being rabbits under the headlights. The fire fighters never expected to find such a monstrous conflagration.

            In their mitigation they would not have anticipated fighting a fire in a multi storey building clad with highly inflammable materials.

            All of these failings and lax regulatory controls will be subject I trust of examination by experts from The Building Research Establishment and other independent Authorities.

            I suggest we stop the speculation and await the result of the Inquiry.

          3. There is nothing to be lost from leaving a burning building on your own volition. If it turns out that you did not need to leave your place, then fine. If the fire brigade can not control the blaze you’re screwed.

    3. All he needs to do is ignore for 24 hours and the permanently offended will find something else to be outraged about.

    4. According to the official report, over two-thirds of the Grenfell residents employed that much-decried Common Sense and escaped before the Fire Service announced that the policy of ‘stay put’ has failed.

      1. The LfB advice was not consistent with Government Guidance. That state specifically that the Fire Service should access the situation on arrival and if compartmetalisation has failed then they should consider evacuation the building. In addition they need to take heed of the elapsed time as it only has 11 hours protection

    5. Judas Grease Smugg should resign for being a complete traitor to his own convictions that both the May Surrender WA and now the almost identical Johnson Half-Baked ‘deal’ copy are the best that Britain can do.

      He is a disgrace and I hope his sister is reminding him constantly of the fact that he has rendered himself morally and intellectually worthless.

  89. Its meant to get very cold next week, possible snow according
    to my neighbour who keeps an eye on these things.
    Thought I’d share the cheery news, best dig out my favourite
    huge Shetland wool jumper .

    1. I had an open mind, TB. It’s the usual Guardian hatchet job on Boris, Trump and Brexit hiding behind a broad canvas that the world is becoming a dangerous place and we Europeans should be sticking together rather than splitting up.

        2. But his “countries in Europe – even peripheral ones, such as Britain ” seem to belie his previous importance of us propping up the EU.

    2. Jay Rayner is normally a good read when he critiques a restaurant. Especially when they get it horribly wrong.

      Good evening, Belle.

          1. Not on toast. In an oven…..where he belongs. Along with all the poor souls that he cold bloodedly helped facilitate.

        2. Nasi Goreng is a favourite of mine when i want easy to eat comfort food. I would be honoured and intrigued to hear/have your version of it.

          Don’t forget that the most popular of curry in England originated in England.

          1. The first time I ate it was in Malta .. when I was nursing with the RN in the late 60’s .. it was cooked by RN cooks who were .. from Singapore ( I think)

            I am certain the dish contained cooked chopped liver , chicken and prawns and peas omelette eggy rice and and flavourings of which I am uncertain of , with a bite , if you know what I mean and chopped nuts.. truly delicious . It was an all round favourite .. and a standard RN recipe for those days .

    3. I will give the Guardian points for being well written and not letting elementary grammar and spelling errors get through. Some (many? most?) of their “contributors” though are thoroughly out to lunch.

      1. Are you reading the same Grauniad that I see?

        More stupid typos per page than the dyslexic’s dictionary.

        1. Compare with the DM, or other similar. They can’t even spell the words in their headlines correctly.

  92. – Corbyn wants to tax the super rich and the powerful and give it to the poor, proof that he is anti Semitic

    1. The super rich will leave and it will be the middle classes that get hit very hard, because they can’t afford to escape, unlike the Toynbees and other champagne socialists.

      Do you think if I convert to Judaism that Israel might let me in?

          1. I love here , passionately, but I am not too brilliant at accepting change .. and I try to campaign like mad for this that and the other .

      2. All you have to have is some amount of Ashkenazi genes showing up in your DNA. And a lot of Europeans do have Ashkenazi in their ancestry.

          1. Friend of mine here, who looks to be a good German – even has a German surname and his family came over a long time ago – found he had the Ashkenazi marker when he used one of the testing services. Good job they had not stayed in the Fatherland, methinks.

          3. Do keep up with “tomorrow’s English”.

            I always preferred Poet’s Day – Pi$$ Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday.

    1. More like make the waters muddier so no truth can ever come out and can be confirmed. Just like everything else that goes on.

    2. I have thought this for some time. Many things seem to lead back to Epstein including, rumouredly, Markle.

      1. Afternoon P,
        He was probably pulling the strings of whoever is ruling England / GB in his time, via an elasticated filing system of odious dealings among the political miscreants within parliament ,bet he was upset when vaz was revealed.

    1. It’s not political. Only for personal reasons…..:-)
      Dammit, don’t say he’s been mucking about with little boys as well.

    2. “In the meantime, he (Watson) wants to spend more time campaigning on public health.”
      Well, if he treats the health of the public as he did that of Gen. Bramall, Harvey Proctor and the dying Leon Britton, the GBP should be rightly worried.

    3. The saddest thing about Watson going is that we will no longer be able to say that the Labour Party is being run by Tom and Jerry.

    4. I wonder what this is about. He had given no indication of going in fact he seemed to be keen to take over from Corbyn , My guess is he has a skelton in the closet and someone has found it

  96. – Whatever happened to Tom Watson?
    He got an ice pick
    That made his ears burn

    Whatever happened to dear old Kenny?
    The great Hammond
    And the Bercow?

    Whatever happened to the Euros?
    Whatever happened to the Euros?

    No more Euros any more
    No more Euross any more

  97. Two days ago Nov 4th would’ve been my little brothers birthday,
    lost him when he was a boy .He always liked the fact that
    his Christian name was the same as one of Homer’ s heroic
    figures in the classical books. I always moaned that my name
    wasn’t in the books. He responded telling me that as a girl I
    would’ve inspired Homer and got to bandage up
    all those injured. He learnt diplomacy at a very young age,
    even if the feminists wouldn’t have been hugely happy these days
    with his thinking .

      1. Ok.. tell me to bite my lip..

        Jack spaniel was bitten by an adder 8 years ago on November the 4th .. we were on the heath.. I caught a lunchtime sunny weather window after days of rain . The adder bit the dog on the lip.. Jack staggered and collapsed in shock , I saw the snake , a big mother of a snake , slither away.

        His eyes rolled .. his gums were white , I gave him the kiss of life … stupidly .. then picked him up and carried him back nearly half a mile to the car .. he was a dead weight .. I thought he had had it .. and carrying him practically did me in as well

        I took him straight to the Vets, he was given anti toxin and other stuff via an intravenous drip. His poor face was swollen .. I was panic stricken.

        The vet told me that the snake had probably appeared out of a rabbit hole to seek some warmth from the sun and a drink , after hibernating .. and Jack had sniffed the rabbit area and was bitten .. You could see the fang marks on the inside of his lip .. Toxins vary .. but this particular snake must have been really extra venomous. Jack was on a drip for 2 days , then a course of anti inflammatories and antbiotics thereafter.

        Look, I understand totally the sadness Nottlers have experienced through their own memories of family loss.. November the 4th is etched in mine .. for different reasons .

        1. Good job you were there to see what had happened.

          Dogs and cats are family. They are with us for a shorter time than human members usually but they are not forgotten.

        2. We have areas round here that we do not use for dog walking because of the adder problem.
          If it was November, maybe the adder was winding down to hibernate and felt trapped.
          I think all vets keep adder anti-venom because dogs will chivvy up the snakes.

        3. We have areas round here that we do not use for dog walking because of the adder problem.
          If it was November, maybe the adder was winding down to hibernate and felt trapped.
          I think all vets keep adder anti-venom because dogs will chivvy up the snakes.

    3. My brother’s birthday was the 4th too. He was a terrible tease but I thought the world of him…

    4. Mine died at five days old, before I was born, so I never knew him. My mother never spoke of him at all, ever. But my Grandma told me. After my mum had died and I got into family history research, I found his birth and death certificates, also his wartime ID card.

    5. I can’t begin to know how anyone can get over that sort of tragedy.
      4th November would have been my parents 86th wedding anniversary. They managed 54 years.

      Edit added to know to make more sense.

      1. My parents had 52 happy years together and Caroline’s parents had 57. My elder sister, Belinda, has now been very happily married for 63 years.

        I was 41 when I married my lovely Caroline but I’d have to live until I am over 100 to match Belinda and her Chris.

        1. Your family seems to be similar to ours.
          My eldest brother was married for 48 years and his widow is still going strong. My two sisters were married for 51 years each. We have been married 51 years our daughter for 29 years and our son for 19 years. My other brother liked married so much that he did it three times. Unfortunately I am last of my original family of seven (mum dad and 5 children).

          1. It is not always hereditary.

            We have been married for 51 years but my brothers have both had more wives than they have ever owned cars.
            Neither is married at the moment, just living with someone seems to be more stable than marriage.

          2. My other sister abandoned her first husband whom I rather liked and with whom she had four children and she ran off with a man 12 years her junior and had two more children with him. He was not my type at all but they were together for 40 years until she died of cancer aged 75.

  99. I wonder if the Labour party will be changing it’s name to the Metropolitian Momentum Party

    1. I beg your pardon, Sir. This is ENGLAND. ” Theater ” is an American thing.

      ” Piccadilly Theatre ”

      Death of a Salesman. Fortunately no casualties.

    3. The audience has been told to remain in their seats, ’til the boss of the London Fire Brigade has finished her dinner with Ms Dick Head

      Any advice to leave earlier has been shouted down, by the 1,000,00 Grefellistas, as it may effect thier claims

  101. Tom Watson quits.
    Either he wants to keep his nose clean and create
    some distance from Corbyn. Or and more likely
    he’s been ‘encouraged’ to leave so that the deputy leader
    can be one of Jezzas hard left acolytes and probably female.

      1. ”
        black woman who isn’t Abbott , but has long hair and sits at the front?”
        ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha hah
        She’s quite pretty, actually. Something the Abbott woman never was.

      2. Possibly one of those two.
        The hard left positioning Is rather sinister, especially
        quietly on local levels.

  103. Poor clothing sales see M&S’s profits slide

    Another bad half year for M&S. Food sales seem to have held up. Whther the deal with Orcado will work remains to be seen. It will be adding costs as you have another contractor in the supply chain. Another issue is not many people do their main shop at M&S

    Marks and Spencer profits dropped in the first half of its financial year following a sharp fall in demand for its clothes and home goods.
    The High Street retailer said that while its food business was “outperforming the market”, there had been issues in clothing and home.
    Marks and Spencer is undergoing a transformation plan led by chief executive Steve Rowe.
    He said after a “challenging” first half, it is now seeing improvements.

    Overall, pre-tax profits tumbled by 17% to £176.5m on total sales down 2.1% to £4.86bn.
    Like-for-like sales in clothing and home fell by 5.5% during the six months to 30 September, worse than an expected 4.3% drop.

    In contrast, like-for-like sales in food grew by 0.9%, ahead of a forecast 0.3% rise.
    To stem the decline in food, M&S forged a joint venture with Ocado in February, agreeing to buy 50% of its retail business for £750m.

    But Mr Hyman said: “I can’t see the central logic of the Ocado deal. I don’t think they have to be online in food at all. Online [food retailing] in the UK is 7% of the market, suggesting people are not clamouring to buy food online.”
    And Neil Wilson, chief analyst at markets.com said that overall, change had been far too slow at the company.
    But M&S boss Mr Rowe said the firm was now starting to see the benefits of its transformation plan. “For the first time we are beginning to see the potential from the far reaching changes we are making,” he said.

    However, while it forecast some improvement in trading in the second half of the year, market conditions remain challenging.

    1. I don’t think they’ll have improved their sales position with their core market – women of a certain vintage and outlook – with their announcement a couple of days ago that they were going to let men who ‘identify’ as women use the womens’ changing rooms.

      It’s as if they planned to fail.

    2. I don’t think they’ll have improved their sales position with their core market – women of a certain vintage and outlook – with their announcement a couple of days ago that they were going to let men who ‘identify’ as women use the womens’ changing rooms.

      It’s as if they planned to fail.

  104. Nicola Sturgeon is getting herself in all manner of
    pickes, she’s now going to have to accept that many
    Scottish people are so sick of Brèxit and the way that
    Remain politicians and that of the EU have been behaving
    that they might’ve voted to leave the EU and don’t want
    closer union with the EU. Which leaves Nicola in a
    pickle with her independent Scotland.

    I dont know how, tp, Duncan and others that live in
    Scotland can put up with the SNPs utter hypocrisy.

    1. Climate change fake emergency – part of the audacious and hyper well funded globalist plan to take control of the Western world.

  107. Theresa May has made her first move into post-prime ministerial life by signing up with an international speakers agency.

    The former prime minister is advertised by the Washington Speakers Bureau
    as being available to speak at board meetings, to corporations and to
    global audiences. Her areas of expertise, the agency says, are the
    global economy and trade, Europe, women in leadership, diplomacy and
    “inspiring lives”.

      1. Yo Mo

        Sell out venues. Hah! Silly trollop.

        Well, she did Sell Out UK, to the EUSSR

        Treason by name, Treason by Nature

  109. Panorama tonight

    David Dimbleby travels across the UK in the lead up to the 2019 general election to reveal why it is going to be one
    of the most unpredictable elections in recent history. David finds a United Kingdom divided, and discovers people’s views on Brexit have largely hardened, while party allegiances have weakened, and fury with politicians is rarely far from the surface.

    Well who would ever have guessed?

    3. Although I won’t be, as Bill will be, giving this site a miss, I will be giving politics a wide berth. For me, it’s 90% hot air and nonsense and 10% substance.

    4. I’m so fed up with people saying the U.K. is divided. Of course it is, it always is at any and every election.

    2. Corbyn, is the most important part of the body

      One day, all the parts of the body were talking about who was most important.

      THE BRAIN SAID – “Since I control everything and do all the thinking, I am the most important therefore I should be boss.”

      THE FEET SAID – “Since I carry him everywhere he wants to go and get
      him in position to do what the brain wants, I am the most important.”

      THE EYES SAID – “Since I must look out for all of you and tell you where the danger lurks, I an the most important body part.”

      THE HANDS SAID – “Since I do all the work and earn all the money to keep the rest of you going, I am the most important.”

      Of course, everyone got into the arguments and the heart, lungs, and ears all say the same thing.

      Finally, the asshole spoke up and pointed that he was the most important even though the others didn’t know it. All the other laughed
      and laughed to think of an asshole being boss. The asshole decided to prove the point and refused to function. Blocked up tight.

      Soon the brain was feverish, the eyes crossed and ached, the feet were too weak to walk, the hands hung limply at the sides, and the heart
      and lungs struggled to keep going.

      All pleaded with the asshole to relent and agreed that the asshole was the most important and so it happened.

      Moral Of The Story

      The MORAL of the story is that the network is the most important part of IT infrastructure but not everyone realises it.

      Or that the asshole always ends up being the boss

    2. Always having been a Beano, Dandy and Topper man, I’m new to books. Recently, though, I’ve been visiting this website for free e-books.

      I did start Of Human Bondage but found it heavy going and settled for Treasure Island instead.

    3. No sign of Tolstoy, Trollope or Thackeray. Perhaps they don’t like authors whose names begin with a T, or perhaps history and Christian morality don’t appeal.

      I notice that Orlando by Virginia Woolf is there. She wrote it as a history of Knole, the Sackville family estate in Kent but of course it’s doubtless been included here because the central character begins the story as a man and then changes into a woman a couple of centuries and half way through.

        1. That’s easier to follow. I read everything I could lay my hands on when I was young.
          I have no idea why Huckleberry Finn is considered a good book. I read Tom Sawyer many times, but couldn’t understand a word of Huckleberry’s screwy slangwidge. It was permanently unreadable. Worse even than Clockwork Orange …:-)
          I’ve heard of nearly all on the list, and read most of them, but nothing after 1960 thank you.
          The further you go back in time, the more there IS in books, and the more enjoyable they are to read for the pleasure of reading.
          And, apart from D.H.Lawrence, who was having everybody on, no “F” words.

        1. There’s the Hunger Games FFS. I actually read it. The shitest SF book I’ve ever read, and after 50 years of reading the genre, that’s saying something.

    4. That list is just a diversity tick box.

      So many authors far better than any on that list should be there.

      1. I can live with Lord of the Rings, but those others are not worth 5 seconds of browsing through.

    7. It’s as if they’re just trying to wind us up. I know no one could agree on a top 100, but there’s a lot of total crap on the list.

    8. I’ve calmed down a bit now as I see “The Jack Aubrey Novels – Patrick O’Brian”. That gives him 20% of the total.

    10. No sign of Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, Leo Tolstoy, Boris Pasternak, F Scott Fitzgerald – or Nevil Shute …

  112. I’m convinced our Bill has been selected to stand for Parliament in his local constituency. The fact that he call fall off ladders and survive proves that he is very much alive unlike the retiring MP, the’Noted Historian” who no one has seen for yonks. Now if the voters of North Norfolk had any sense (I know, I know) they’d vote for our Bill.

    It’s no wonder he’s felt it necessary to retire from the NOTTL battlefield for a while, electioneering pamphlet to write etc. If he includes his favourite symbol i.e. Eeyore on his pamphlet it will coin in thousands of votes as I’ve heard it said you could pin a rosette on a donkey and people will vote for it. Perhaps we need to start a GoFundHim page to help with expenses?

  113. Oh deary……..

    I did say to Mr R that he should deal with the elephant in the room, ie where LibDem funding is probably coming from (GS)…..

    …..but now it looks like the elephant is not far away from dealing with him !

    Britain Elects

    Wokingham, constituency voting intention: CON: 42% (-15) LDEM: 38% (+22) LAB: 12% (-13) BREX: 5% (+5) GRN: 3% (+1) via @Survation, 01 – 04 Nov Chgs. w/ GE2017 result

    1:09 pm – 6 Nov 2019

      1. Here’s another one…

        …George must be so happy !

        Britain Elects

        South Cambridgeshire, constituency voting intention: LDEM: 40% (+21) CON: 36% (-16) LAB: 12% (-15) BREX: 7% (+7) GRN: 4% (+2) via @Survation, 04 – 05 Nov Chgs. w/ GE2017 result

        1. Again, no surprise, both constituencies big remain spots. The Remainers have a pact whereas the Brexiteers are divided.

          1. I doubt the Remainers would be so keen if they knew all about the conspiracy, how the EU looks controlled by one individual, and that abolition of Britain is the globalist plan.

        2. i am surprised about the lib dems – this is tory country with a huge majority. Having said that, we feel like the only Leavers for miles around. Sooooo, on the one hand … we have tories….but on the other hand…we have Remain….. who knows what the result will be. Will they revert to type in the polling booth?

          1. Remainers haven’t a clue. They’re just useful idiots for the hugely well funded abolish Britain globalist plan.

  114. All, I have been nursing a back injury that practically paralysed me last week and is merely agony this week. Pain from my back is radiating down my leg. I have not slept (at all last week) and intermittly this week, usually waking as one part of the body aches painfully enough to bring me to consciousness despite the opiates.

    I am, therefore, short of temper and in rather considerable pain making my usual attitude from ‘listen carefully to what they say then shoot them’ to ‘beat them to death with a lump hammer’ so I apologise if i am snappy.

    4. Sciatica is a pig.
      Although a little early in the day, perhaps you could try Juncker’s cure.

      1. Good. I shall continue my curmudgeon grumpiness.

        It’s infuriating to go downstairs backward on hands and knees. Bloody dog wonders what the heck I’m doing.

        1. Yo wibble

          on hands and knees

          If you are of a ‘mature age’ and stop to talk to the dog, you could easily forget if you were ascending or descending the apples and pears

    8. Ouch! Hope you get well soon.

      I saw the doctor yesterday and after he’d greeted me and asked how I was, I turned the tables and asked him how his back was as he’d been in some pain the last time I saw him!
      He was pleased with the jar of Apple, Quince & Ginger Chutney I gave him though.

    2. I had a proper two headed battle axe once. Titanium blades, ashwood shaft (so it’d bend a bit). Was beautiful beyond measure. Spent ages dremmelling patterns on it on to it until I ran out of room.

      It was lost in a house move long ago.

  116. THe colder weather has arrived. It has one big advantage. The Extinction Rebellion types have gone into hibernation for the winter

    1. Yes, why aren’t they out whining about climate change? After all, the climate is changing. Or are they all indoors, drinking hot drinks with central heating on?

      Surely if they are all for this green stuff they should be outside, giving up any of the trappings of those things produced from energy?

        4. Tut, Belle.
          That means exploiting sheep.
          (And I’m not talking about the poor s0ds – which includes several friends – trying to get to work.)

    3. Morning Bill

      All we need are a few weeks of cold still weather , where the solar power doesn’t function, wind turbines don’t turn and a few power outages like we had last week , and that’s when the fun and games start!

      1. Whether is still reasonably mild so we have plenty of conventional capacity. January & February are usually the real testing times

      2. Solar is fine when the sun shines, or is it? What about mornings this time of the year if the panels are covered in frost or worse, several inches of snow? Heavy frost and snow settling on the windmills’ blades are known problems that have to be addressed, so what about solar panels? Perhaps they have electric heating to…

        1. Good morning KK
          We have loads of solar farms around here .. When the sun shines , they look like large lakes.

          So many people are cynical about alternatives , yet there is a decommissioned experimental Nuclear power station a few miles away.. It has cost billions to sort out. What has happened to the promised new nuclear programme .. suddenly gone very quiet, hasn’t it.

          1. There’s a solar ‘farm’ out towards Clacton-on-Sea and when I first saw it from a distance I thought it was a polythene covered field of early potatoes.

        3. We have solar panels on Mianda. In the summer these give us all the electrical power we need to run the fridge, the heating system, the lights and the navigational gear.

          If we are sailing in the autumn or the winter we have to use our diesel motor to keep the batteries up to the right level.

        4. We have solar panels on Mianda. In the summer these give us all the electrical power we need to run the fridge, the heating system, the lights and the navigational gear.

          If we are sailing in the autumn or the winter we have to use our diesel motor to keep the batteries up to the right level.

          1. Your second paragraph demonstrates the weakness of the green power obsession.
            For six months of the year, even in the Mediterranean, solar power doesn’t work.
            Imagine if you were docked in, say, West Mersea.

  117. Morning Each,
    Could this break not be turned into a game end ?
    If the handling of Brexitexit has not been an eye opener for the peoples
    then there is no hope ever of regaining a country of decency for the future.
    The semi re-entry campaign has been a resounding success so far and the peoples are at the ready once again to give succour / support / votes to the very same pro eu pied piper political pelt.
    The politico’s / sons of politico’s have a lifestyle near guaranteed by the electorate who are locked into the keep in / keep out, three monkey mode of voting,regardless of the consequences.
    One party only has truly ever fought England / GBs corner for
    total severance.
    Keep in mind the Capo Dei Capi in brussels depends on the UK adhering to its regular voting pattern.

  118. Brexit Party. What is going on ?

    They have a big presentation to announce they are fielding 600 candidates but have released no names or the constituencies they are standing in. That makes no sense to me. To me it sounds like a ploy to try to get Boris to talk about contesting seats. I am increasingly doubtful the Br-exit Party has 600 candidates
    We will know next week. I think it is the 14th is the final day to register as a candidate so on the 15th the names will be available

    Whilst I would prefer a Free trade deal that is highly unlikely. The numbers simply do not support it. Nigel needs to get less stubborn and let Boris do what he wants to do. The Brexit party then stands a chance of getting an arrangement over seats with him. It i better that the Brexit Party gets seats in Westminster than no seats

    Boris’s deal as well is not a done deal. It never reached the committee stage so is still open to change or even being thrown out

    1. “Nigel needs to get less stubborn and let Boris do what he wants to do.”

      Oh, you mean let Boris ram through BRINO and have a huge amnesty for illegal criminal scum….

    2. “Nigel needs to get less stubborn and let Boris do what he wants to do.”

      Oh, you mean let Boris ram through BRINO and have a huge amnesty for illegal criminal scum….

    1. If they had a brain they’d be dangerous.

      If they could do sums they wouldn’t be greens.

      They make Daine Abbott look like Einstein.

      1. Yo Basset

        I understood, that the Abbotopotamus was the Senior Tooter at the University of Climate Change, Global Warming and Extinction Rebellion Ethics (it is in Effex)

    2. The Green Party’s co-leader Jonathan Bartley appeared on BBC Breakfast this morning wearing a white poppy. I’m afraid that just gets my goat.

  120. ” Alun Cairns quits in Ross England rape trial ‘sabotage’ row ”
    They are dropping like flies for one reason or another.

    1. DT Live: General Election latest news: Conservative campaign launch overshadowed by resignation of minister

      Does the Bumbling Bonker have any control over anything? His timing is lunatic.

      Little wonder that his half-baked ethelred deal was not properly cooked – the oven didn’t work.

      All Boris needed to do was to honour his word and go for a proper Brexit rather than a rehash of Treason May’s surrender WA. Had be behaved honestly he would now be heading a large majority.

      We have to ask the question:

      “Has Boris been nobbled and blackmailed and if so by whom and how?”

  121. The UK’s national debt currently sits at £1,790.9 billion, according to the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics

    That’s £1,790,900,000,000 but Greens are promising to borrow and tax us to the tune of £100,000,000,000 a year to save the planet by 2030.

    That makes a total of £1,000,000,000,000 over 10 years.

    Divide by cost of Greta’s carbon free yacht at £3,500,000 and that makes almost 300,000 Malizia2s for the Green party.

    I think the Greens need to make an adjustment to their figures to allow for a more functional toilet.

    Read more: https://metro.co.uk/2019/11/06/green-party-promises-100000000000-year-tackle-climate-change-11050832/?ito=cbshare

    Twitter: https://twitter.com/MetroUK | Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MetroUK/

    Read more: https://metro.co.uk/2019/11/06/green-party-promises-100000000000-year-tackle-climate-change-11050832/?ito=cbshare

    Twitter: https://twitter.com/MetroUK | Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MetroUK/

    1. “That makes a total of £1,000,000,000,000 over 10 years.”
      I don’t know about Zero Emissions but I’d prefer Zero Omissions, about 12 of them.

  122. Xerox Considers Takeover Offer for HP

    HP is what remains after Hewlett-Packard Co. split off Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., which sells servers, data-storage gear and related services to corporate clients, in 2015. Before a decline in its printing-supplies business in recent quarters, it had grown faster than expected as a stand-alone company.

  123. DT https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/11/06/brexit-general-election-news-latest-boris-johnson-conservatives/

    Live Boris Johnson: ‘Come with us’ to avoid ‘horror show’ of Brexit delay

    Has he now blown it beyond redemption?

    Boris Johnson has abandoned any pretence of trying to say why his appalling deal is any good at all. Bombast and nonsense is all he gives us.. “Don’t worry about how bad it is – let’s just get on with it” seems to be his message. He just wants to brow beat and hustle us. We should all feel deeply insulted by this absurd buffoon.

    There is an alternative – with a decent majority Johnson could have a proper Brexit with less delay as his ‘deal’ has not yet been agreed. But this would require an electoral pact with TBP.

    But Boris Johnson has morphed into Theresa May. “It’s my deal, it’s my deal. It’s my deal. No other deal will do. I refuse to have any discussion or examination of it. It’s my deal or nothing, Ya Boo Sucks to you.”

    1. The Cons are going to get a nasty wake up call because all pretence has now been abandoned that Brexit means Brexit. As with Mrs May I had hopes that she meant what she said and now Boris has more or less repeated her actions. And I am c so disappointed in the ERG group. The GE is all about keeping the Tories in power, Brexit is in the back seat, if not in the boot.
      Hopefully any polls carried out before 14th November will give a big clue as to voting intentions – I.e., TBP and Cons must make a deal and TBP must hold the Cons’ feet to the fire for a WTO exit. If he takes “no deal” off the table in their manifesto then it’s all over. (I know it is already in my heart of hearts but you get my drift …).

      1. More fool me – I really thought that Mark Francois and Steve Baker were decent people with integrity and true loyalty to the cause of Brexit. But now they have revealed themselves to be mere duplicitous scumbags like most of their colleagues in the Conservative Party.

        But I do find it upsetting to find just how very wrong my judgement of them was. I am beginning to see that Britain is probably not capable of pulling off a proper Brexit – all those who claim to want it disintegrate at the slightest pressure.

        1. The really sad thing is that we had the makings of a great bargaining position when the leave vote came in. But the wrong person was PM. And it’s no better now.
          Edit: vote not cote!

      2. That’s what they want, vw, for us to be demoralised and throw in the towel. We must never give in, never give up – keep in mind always those that went before us who have been so betrayed.

        1. I won’t “give up” but am simply accepting the writing on the wall. Boris has made no effort to insist a WTO Brexit would be fantastic for the U.K. – he’s too giddy with excitement that he’s finally made PM. Did he ever really intend to push for Brexit? I don’t think so any more.

          1. I don’t think so either, it was all bluff and bluster. I recall his saying just minutes after the leadership election that the Withdrawal Agreement was dead, buried and we needed a new approach. I thought at the time ‘somehow, I don’t think it will be’. The new approach turned out to be the removal of the Irish backstop (I keep typing backsop – probably as appropriate!). My apologies, I didn’t intend to infer you had given up. I do get demoralised and wonder if they will still be kicking the can down the road in 20 years time or until sufficient time has passed to make the 2016 Referendum irrelevant. I can’t believe we are into our fourth year and no progress towards leaving.

          2. I am actually even beginning to feel that we should vote to stay in, if there’s a referendum. I think someone else on here mentioned it, may have been Rastus? Apologies if that’s not right R. Anyway my belief is we will never leave in the sense that I want and this will go on for years – unless Article 50 is revoked following a Labour/Limpdumb coalition.

          3. I agree. Staying in is infinitely preferable to the abomination that is the May-Johnson Withdrawal Agreement, however much this may stick in my throat. However, should it come to a vote between Remain and the W/A, I am not sure I could get myself to the polling station. I think I would have to let things take their course without my tiny input. I also agree we will not leave in the sense that we want – which is the repeal of the Act that took us in to the eu in the first place, and then discussions about trading deals, which should be in our favour under those circumstances. It is all unbelievable, they are giving everything away, everything for which our ancestors paid the ultimate price. There are no words to describe their betrayal and treachery.

      3. Good afternoon vw, you are not alone. I believed out of 300 odd Conservative MP’s there would be at least a handful of them with some integrity.
        What really galls is the comment often posted that Farage and the Brexit Party should fall in line to support Johnson’s t^rd of a deal.
        As I have often posted on these pages, I have a Conservative MP who voted 3 times (yes 3 bloody times) for May’s surrender treaty who will be standing again as the Conservative candidate. Perhaps all those who blindly accept the message “Support Boris For Brexit” will explain to me when those re-elected will act with more integrity than previously.
        Some things are just a permanent fact of life, the sun rises in the east, leopards can’t change their spots, the Conservative Party are Europhiles who will always put party before country. Cameron, May, Johnson, all tarred with the same brush.
        Speaking for myself there is only one party worth considering, I pray they will have a candidate I can vote for.

    2. Afternoon R,
      Are peoples beginning to feel as UKIP members have felt for years.
      We recognised long ago when it was said ” it is only a tidying up exercise” same rhetoric now.
      Real UKIP members take heed & learn.

      lab/lib/con members have not learnt by any of their many mistakes and seemingly never will.

      The original UKIP plan ( referendum / Brexit) if carried through on the 24/6/2016 would now have had us out and amassing a fortune, with other countries taking our lead.
      But treacherous fools interceded.

    3. All true… but the reality of Britain’s FPTP system is Johnson or Corbyn to wake up to as PM on Friday 13th…………….

      Which would you prefer ?

  124. Another Emergency service mess up with fatal Consequences

    Shante Turay-Thomas, 18, may have had an allergic reaction after consuming hazelnuts at her home in Wood Green on September 14 – she died in hospital hours later.

    Shante struggled to breath and said: “I am going to die” before she collapsed, while her mother Emma repeatedly called 111.

    The incident was initially rated as category 3 (urgent two hour response time) and one ambulance was mistakenly sent to the wrong address six-miles away in Enfield, according to Leigh Day Law firm, which is representing Shante’s mother Emma Turay.

    At a preliminary hearing last week the coroner heard evidence that the NHS 999 system categorises anaphylaxis as category 1 (life threatening 7 minute response time) but that NHS 111 categorises the same condition as category 2 (emergency 18 minute response time).

      1. It could have been mis reported as I would have though she would dial 999 but 111 should have passed it on to the ( handler. They are actually in the same control room which makes it a bit of a mystery as to why it was classed as Category 3, Category 2 and Category 1

  125. As my thumbs continue to fall by the hundred (by the hour), I have decided to call it a day until after the election.

    I wish you all a happy campaign and hope that you will remember to vote for the right person (not party).

    My sole interest is to see how 17.4 million very, very angry people will vote.

    I’ll see you all around Christmas – if I am spared.

    4. I’ve lost several thousands since the bots started removing votes but I’m not going to let it bother me unduly.

      1. I am a sensitive soul…

        I am also fed to the back teeth with the political state of affairs, and the election.

        And I have found NoTTL not quite the same as it was a year or so back. Elements of unpleasantness surface from time to time – and though one can try to ignore them, I don’t enjoy it as much.

        A break will be good for me – and for fellow NoTTLers…{:¬))

        1. Some of the elements of unpleasantness were always there – but we try to keep things friendly. We will miss you so don’t stay away too long.

          1. None. They could find no fault. I shall leave it for a couple of weeks and then refill – hoping that that curesthe problem.

    9. Bill, lots of people are getting the thumbs down carp. Don’t let them get you – just ignore the thumbs up or down. You know what people think of you, which is thumbs up!

      If you want to stay away for a while, then that is right for you, but don’t let some bot be the cause.

      You will be missed, as has already been said.

      1. I’ve never once checked my up or down votes and do not intend starting at any time.

        2. Quite frankly, if some Bot – human or otherwise – is incapable of appreciating my wit and wisdom, bad cess to it.
          I know I’m bloody brilliant: so there!!

    1. Socialism :Build walls to keep people in
      Capitalism :Build walls to keep people out
      ‘Nuff Said
      Wotcha Anne

  128. Corbyn Refuses to Rule out Cancelling Brexit as Price for Power-Sharing with Liberal Democrats

    So Labour is now for all intents and purposes a REMAIN party and is prepared too work with the Lib-Dem’s in order to gain power

  129. Power supply appears to be dropping in this part of Northallerton just as i need light and heating. Heading for a power cut I think. Is the grid overlaoded?
    I see people at their windows wondering what is going on.

    1. It’s back on again after I had my meal in the dark. It ended by a total blackout followed immediately by a full switch on and a yelp from my alarm.

        1. Eddy -I’ll save that for New Year’s day. We may need to find a new name for this particular Scottish iconic meal. I seem to remember Rabbie Burns had a name for the black pudding. I had home made tomato soup which I managed to heat up on my gas range and eat by torch light. If this power failure is going to be a regular feature I shall look into setting up a stand alone nuclear power generator or a diesel powered stand-by generator

          1. A place in town where I occasionally go for a full English offers an option of black pudding as an extra. I always take it.

            I believe Argos do portable nuclear generators.

      2. Just been through two days without power over here.

        Nice shiny standby generator being installed in two weeks.

        1. A word to the wise.

          Test it regularly and do not leave fuel to “go stale”.

          I worked up a Hell of a sweat starting mine because the fule (sic) wasn’t perfect.

          1. The new ones will be propane and self test itself every week. If also takes over automatically when power goes out.

            I found out the hard way about testing. We have a portable generator, it wouldn’t start, the fuel line had rotted. After several trips into town for repairs bits, it started and was useable.

            It went downhill from there. I assumed that the water pump would need priming so I started the pump. It didn’t need priming but at least I now know that the pressure relief valve works. Then we noticed missing shingles on the roof, so I did a Bill Thomas and climbed a ladder to fix that problem. We are now searching for various pieces of garden equipment that went walkabout during the storm.

          2. That makes life easier.

            I have to bring mine down from the garage and hook it up to a special socket.

            And, needless to say, it’s always dark when it’s needed!

            My real concern is flooding of areas where I have tilt-switch pumps, if there is no power the water level just keeps rising. It then ends up taking out fuse boxes and I’m in real trouble.

          3. We installed one when we built the house back in 2007-8. Something re-assuring about hearing it start when the utility power fails. No regrets, especially as we are on a well and have a pumped septic system…

            Friends here put one in specifically to be able to keep their basement level dry, even when the water table is high due to rain, snow melt, etc. He got hit a couple of times with bad weather dropping a ton of rain and knocking out power, so the normal basement sump pumps were MIA.

      3. Just been through two days without power over here.

        Nice shiny standby generator being installed in two weeks.

        1. Although chilly here today, it’s a few ice creams above freezing.

          What’s going to happen if we have a serious freeze is anyone’s guess.

          2. That will be a side-effect of Hell freezing over after we actually leave the EU with a WTO Brexit.

          4. This serious freeze will be a test for electric cars. I doubt they won’t get very far and will be unpleasantly cold for driver and passengers.

      2. It’s a sad idea but I think that regular ‘brown outs’ followed by a number of ‘black outs’ are the only events that may make the morons take a hard look at what they’re doing. The public getting very angry should be a game changer. The Green eco-loons will not be moved but if the mainstream parties do not act to ensure secure power then all bets are off. Really cold, hungry and pissed off people will force change and the morons will not change until forced to.

  130. So many people are saying how utterly mad it is to hold a GE 12 days before Christmas .

    We will all have an unpleasant shock of that I am certain.

    3. Evening TB,
      “Unpleasant shock”
      Could be 70 million turkeys with an immigrant attached,
      keeping in mind that the PM is AKA,
      The turkish delight & amnesties R me.

    4. Evening TB,
      “Unpleasant shock”
      Could be 70 million turkeys with an immigrant attached,
      keeping in mind that the PM is AKA,
      The turkish delight & amnesties R me.

      1. Went into Dorchester this afternoon.. more closed shops .. and our small much loved M+S closes in February .. now that is really upsetting.

        The town’s economy is looking fragile.

  131. Government ‘set to break its spending rules’

    No surprise with benefits and minimum pay etc increasing. Without productivity increases it drives up inflation and that’s what we are seeing, The spending announced by Labour & the Lib-Dem’s is simply not possible. Both want o remain in the EU and their spending plans would far exceed that allowed by the EU and trying to claim it is an investment does not work neither

    High borrowing means the government is set to bust its rules on spending, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has said.
    The gap between what the government spends and what it receives was now set to be much higher than expected, the think tank warned.
    Higher public spending, slower growth and changes to the way student loans are counted have pushed up borrowing.
    Years of rising debt risked burdening “future generations”, the IFS said.

    IFS director Paul Johnson said it left little room for election giveaways if the parties wanted to keep within the current spending rules.
    UK borrowing up by a fifth over past six months

    “At some point it becomes unsustainable, you’ve got to stop it going up at some point especially when you know big spending pressures are coming down the road,” he added.

    Currently the rules state that borrowing should remain below 2% of national income.

  132. I find it highly amusing to see how many politicians and others are signing out, either because of or in protest against anti-semitism. And it is being reported in the media.
    After a near-lifetime of watching media anti-semitism going strong at full blast, disguised as anti-Israel comment, It sounds too good to be true.
    It probably is, but I’m reasonably pleased just the same.

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