Sunday 24 July: Tory party members have been given an uninspiring choice in the leadership election

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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488 thoughts on “Sunday 24 July: Tory party members have been given an uninspiring choice in the leadership election”

  3. Tory party members have been given an uninspiring choice in the leadership election

    Tory party members can have a choice, as long as it is grey

    1. So you’re saying (© Cathy Newman) that John Major is now standing for new leader of the Conservative Party? Lol.

  6. Our asylum system is broken. This is my ten-point plan to fix it. Rish Sunak. 24 July 2022.

    In my first 100 days as prime minister, I would set about reforming the way we manage our borders, to deter crime and restore public trust.

    In 2016 I backed and voted for Brexit because I believed we could do things differently. We needed a change of mindset, not just about what we couldn’t do while we were in the European Union, but what we didn’t do. Taking control of our borders and tackling the flow of illegal migration was at the top of that list.

    The truth is that we haven’t yet got a grip of the problem. Every year thousands of people come into the UK illegally and often we don’t know where they are from or why they are here.

    The system is in disarray and law abiding citizens are understandably shocked when they see boats filled with illegal immigrants coming from France to our shores, with our border force seemingly doing nothing to stop them. It’s perilous for the people on the boats and worrying for people living in this country.

    I guess the election is not going well to resort to this. Even if Sunak were telling the truth (he’s not) the Borg, Labour, the entire Political Establishment would prevent it. That’s probably how he plans to do it: Make a show and then say I tried and then let it die. Nevertheless it shows a new level of lying. A willingness to say almost anything!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/07/23/asylum-system-broken-ten-point-plan-fix/

    1. If politicians wanted to stop mass immigration and sort the borders they would have by now, well they could at least try.
      But I’m sure the globalist powers that be would cancel them very quickly.

      1. Morning Bob. Yes it’s quite obvously intentional but no one dare tell the voters. It would be political extinction!

    2. He could make a start by firing all the staff in border force and get the army on our beaches. Internment for illegals under armed guard.

    3. ‘Morning, Minty. Heard a profile of Richly Suntanned on the radio just now. According to the BBC he can walk on water. We are being fed high quality lies – situation normal then.

    5. Theresa May maxed out the Say-what-they-want-to-hear-and-do-the-opposite credit card with the general public.

    6. Why are they addressing this stuff to the public? They don’t get a say in the choice of party leader/PM, so why talk to them?
      In any case, after all the lies sputed over the years, especially since 2016, who would believe any of these bastards?

  7. Our asylum system is broken. This is my ten-point plan to fix it. Rish Sunak. 24 July 2022.

    In my first 100 days as prime minister, I would set about reforming the way we manage our borders, to deter crime and restore public trust.

    In 2016 I backed and voted for Brexit because I believed we could do things differently. We needed a change of mindset, not just about what we couldn’t do while we were in the European Union, but what we didn’t do. Taking control of our borders and tackling the flow of illegal migration was at the top of that list.

    The truth is that we haven’t yet got a grip of the problem. Every year thousands of people come into the UK illegally and often we don’t know where they are from or why they are here.

    The system is in disarray and law abiding citizens are understandably shocked when they see boats filled with illegal immigrants coming from France to our shores, with our border force seemingly doing nothing to stop them. It’s perilous for the people on the boats and worrying for people living in this country.

    I guess the election is not going well to resort to this. Even if Sunak were telling the truth (he’s not) the Borg, Labour, the entire Political Establishment would prevent it. That’s probably how he plans to do it: Make a show and then say I tried and then let it die. Nevertheless it shows a new level of lying. A willingness to say almost anything!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/07/23/asylum-system-broken-ten-point-plan-fix/

      1. Good morning, Sue. Yes I am, but I’m incredibly busy these days. I tend to keep my Sundays free in order to catch up on a few odd jobs missed during the week. These days there are a mountain of catch-up jobs which will fill the entire day. PS – I just interrupted writing this post because the phone rang. It was a dear friend who asked if I could take their husband to the local A&E. Of course, the answer was “yes” but of course this will change all my plans. Take care, and I’ll let you all know how things go at the end of the evening.

        1. What a blessing your friend has someone like you! Have a good day! I shall be back in the garden tackling rampant ivy trunks with my trusty Ryobi electric saw! Some of the trunks are the thickness of my wrist, so it’s very satisfying, although it makes me ‘glow’ a bit!

          1. Mind your fingers Sue – I bought one of these for branches up to 4″ https://www.amazon.co.uk/BLACK-DECKER-GK1000-Alligator-Powered/dp/B000EOOJQI/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?crid=3HH8C8Z6F6FX1&keywords=alligator+chainsaw+black+and+decker&qid=1658649168&sprefix=alligator+chain+saw%2Caps%2C90&sr=8-1-spons&psc=1&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUExSDBYTU5ZTExNVUxNJmVuY3J5cHRlZElkPUEwMzczMjIyMVpDMDhCV0IyNTRNNiZlbmNyeXB0ZWRBZElkPUEwNTU5NjQ2MlkzTkxQS0laVlgxUyZ3aWRnZXROYW1lPXNwX2F0ZiZhY3Rpb249Y2xpY2tSZWRpcmVjdCZkb05vdExvZ0NsaWNrPXRydWU=

          2. Oooh! That looks like my kind of tool! Very impressive but a lot of the trunk is attached to the fence and I’m having to use a small crowbar to remove it!

          4. We have the deep joy of repairing a heavy sash window.
            Why couldn’t the darn thing have (literally) hung in there for a few more weeks.

          5. Sue, as I grow older I see my purpose in life as giving support and encouragement to others, and the opportunity to help my friend was welcomed by me and not seen as a nuisance even though it meant that some things planned for today didn’t happen. I managed to spend an hour in the bathroom cleaning the shower tiles and grouting and some of the rust on the soap dish. The garden, however, was not even touched. I did manage to complete a little shopping and read a couple of chapters of this month’s Book Club. My evening meal was a bowl of soup and a few nibbles (pasties and a quarter of a small quiche). I then sat down and enjoyed watching Walt Disney’s DUMBO, which was completed quite quickly and got him out of financial difficulties as the fourth film he released – the second (PINOCCHIO) and third (FANTASIA) initially made a loss, not helped by World War II which cut off the chance of those films earning revenue from Europe.

            PS – The only thing which got to me when my schedule had to be re-arranged was seeing a “rainbow” level crossing when moving from the car park to A&E. Aaarghh!

    3. Like the dead, thank you, Elsie. Heavy physical work, good food and half a bottle of Prosecco, and I was away in the land of Nod by 21:00.

    1. The Beeb could have sacrificed the Crisp promoting common tater and a couple of other slebs and used the reduced employment costs to fight the disinformation. Think how virtuous the Beeb and their former employees would feel doing so much good!

      1. A healthy dose of sarcasm from you today, King Stephen, with which I heartily agree. (Good morning, btw.)

        1. Morning Elsie. I rely on the sarcasm to purge the large quantities of salt I need to take when reading stuff in or about the Beeb!

    1. Warning to rural property owners:

      Do not rely on the claimed performance of heat pumps. They are worked out in the most advantageous laboratory conditions. Your bills will be

      far higher than predicted.

      Also heat pumps have a much shorter working life than fossil fuel boilers, better add that into your calculations. Undoubtedly you will

      be surprised to know that the Government has not given this problem any publicity.

      1. This looks like a policy that will end up in a class action similar to diesel car owners who were misled by ovrr optimistic fuel efficiency claims.

  13. Good morning, all. Grey; windy and – amazingly – a dribble of rain in the night. Not much, but enough to darken the paths.

  14. ‘Morning, Peeps. A nice fresh start to the day, but still no rain.

    Today’s leading letter:

    SIR – Let me get this straight: the choice before Conservative Party members in the leadership contest is between an ex-Remainer who has converted to Leave for political convenience, and a tough-to-trust ex-Chancellor who spent weeks plotting against his boss while still in office.

    Many members of the party are furious that MPs have given them two second-rate candidates they don’t want. Boris Johnson would be more likely to win the next election than either of them.

    David Harris
    Poole, Dorset

    Did you really expect anything better than second rate? If so, who??

  15. Why we all need to cool down about a couple of hot days. Peter Hitchens 24 July 2022.

    In the winter of 1962-1963, the whole country was coated thickly with snow and ice, the sea froze and I suspect that, without the steam railway engines we had at the time, the nation would have come to a halt.

    It left a deep impression. And it was still much in the minds of the BBC when, in November 1974, they screened a two-hour special programme warning of a coming ice age. The cover of the Radio Times that week showed the planet capped by a huge ice sheet, beneath the headline ‘the ice age cometh’.
    It said ice a mile thick had covered Britain in the past and was ‘due again’.

    An article inside showed London trapped in an ‘icy tomb’. It warned of ‘the threat of ice and the obliteration of northern lands – including Britain’. The Corporation, which is now convinced we will all boil to death instead, produced pages of charts and pictures saying the South of France would be like Finland, Scotland would look like Greenland, there would be glaciers in California and ‘much of Europe would be a dusty, bitterly cold desert’.

    Magnus Magnusson and Eric Porter, presumably chosen for their serious grimness, intoned for two hours about the coming freezing doom.

    The Daily Mail’s TV reviewer, Martin Jackson, remarked, after watching the marathon lecture: ‘Those hot balmy English summers of our youth are unlikely to return.’

    You have to laugh.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-11042385/PETER-HITCHENS-fake-equality-defends-right-family-life.html

    1. Umm… if the world was to be capped by ice a mile thick, where would all the extra water come from? All the water we have is already here, in the seas, so there’d need to be rather a lot more to cover the entire globe to the depth of a mile (and yes, I know ice occupies a greater volume thatn the same amount of water, causing it to float – and make G&T cool).

          1. Not just Britain of course, but it was thicker in the North. South of us just cold but not thick glaciers. The Tropics certainly weren’t.

          2. You’d still need an awful lot of water if the northern hemisphere (and presumablt the southern) were to wear a skullcap of ice up to a mile thick. The seas would be rather empty…

          3. They were very low indeed at the height of the last glaciation. At least a mile high up Scotland way, which is why the land is still rising due to lack of ice overburden.

          4. “The Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) occurred about 20,000 years ago, during the last phase of the Pleistocene epoch. At that time, global sea level was more than 400 feet lower than it is today, and glaciers covered approximately:

            8% of Earth’s surface
            25% of Earth’s land area            ”

            https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/how-does-present-glacier-extent-and-sea-level-compare-extent-glaciers-and-global-sea-level#:~:text=The%20Last%20Glacial%20Maximum%20(LGM)%20occurred%20about%2020%2C000%20years%20ago,25%25%20of%20Earth's%20land%20area

          5. 1 mile of ice on my house plot – the evidence is all around – eskers, moraines, abandoned sand & gravel quarries and in other areas 150 feet of clay deposits replacing gouged out rock before you get to rock.
            10,000 years and for 9,800 man had little effect on earth – playing and trying to influence a warming spell will not counter the massive forces of nature and the sun’s activity – after all nature & the sun have been doing it for billions of years.

    2. Yet the great unwashed still appear to believe all the nonsense that is promulgated by the doomsayers, despite them having been proven so drastically wrong in all their ‘computer models’.

    4. You can be sure that if we were to suffer another such winter as 62-63, it would be evidence of climate change ‘disrupting the weather patterns’ or some such guff.

  16. SIR – Has the heatwave increased public awareness of the seriousness of the climate situation?

    Last November, thousands of politicians, diplomats and scientists gathered in Glasgow for Cop26 and left, after a week, full of good intentions.

    But that was the easy bit. Without the willingness of the wider population to reduce their individual carbon footprints by lowering their consumption, things will get worse.

    Governments can only do so much. The rest is up to us.

    M J Wheeler
    Gosport, Hampshire

    Perhaps they realise that it is just one huge scam?

    1. Why would a self-proclaimed conservative and rational broadsheet even publish that utter twaddle?
      The brainwashed walk among us.

    1. AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
      That’s it, out my system, so,

      Morning B3

  19. SIR – Lewis Page’s feature on the decision by Ministry of Defence mandarins not to equip our new aircraft carriers with catapults demands a serious response.

    The presentation of deliberately falsified figures to the Security Council alone would justify inquiry. The massive waste of money, and potentially disastrous consequences of the reduced fighting capability and increased vulnerability of the carriers, require immediate remedy.

    Sadly this is just the latest case of failure by the MoD to provide high-quality equipment within budget and on the agreed timescale. The SA80 rifle came into service in 1985 with a multitude of faults, some of which were potentially life-threatening. An MoD report, commissioned five years later, identified over 50. When a replacement version was issued in 1992 (after the Gulf War), only seven defects had been remedied.

    Currently, major problems remain unresolved with the Ajax armoured reconnaissance vehicle. The noise and vibration are harmful to its crews. (It is restricted to 20 mph, and personnel are allowed to operate it for little more than an hour.) It cannot reverse over anything higher than eight inches and cannot fire its gun on the move. Yet this £4.5 billion project was contracted for in 2014.

    Where other than the MoD would such incompetent project management be tolerated for so long?

    John Greaves
    Umberleigh, Devon

    The decision, finally, not to fit ‘cats and traps’ to our aircraft carriers has effectively neutered them, despite the expenditure of no less than £7.6bn.

    Yes, the Mk1 version of the SA80 rifle wasn’t up to scratch, thanks to serious penny-pinching. However, the Mk2 was a major improvement, although I would dispute that only seven of its faults were corrected in the process.

    The development of the Ajax has been shambolic, and a fine example of what happens when Snivel Serpents are making the decisions. We are, once again, a laughing stock.

    1. While the notion of paying businesses up front to develop a military item seems reasonable, as I seem to recall that Frank Whittle’s development of the jet engine was hampered by lack of funds, the downside needs to be considered. We have paid out huge sums for what is a heap of junk. We buy thousands of lorries from Germany, yet building a lorry is a simple business and we could do it here. We have given up having our own armaments works for reasons I do not understand, and are no longer self-sufficient. Nelson’s warships were not made from French oak.

    2. While the notion of paying businesses up front to develop a military item seems reasonable, as I seem to recall that Frank Whittle’s development of the jet engine was hampered by lack of funds, the downside needs to be considered. We have paid out huge sums for what is a heap of junk. We buy thousands of lorries from Germany, yet building a lorry is a simple business and we could do it here. We have given up having our own armaments works for reasons I do not understand, and are no longer self-sufficient. Nelson’s warships were not made from French oak.

    3. In the 70s/80s, when the East and Wesr were keeping the peace, using Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), the RN probably had more Nuclear Capable Frigates* (Leanders, Rothesays, class etc) operationly capableand at se , than the Fleet Air has F35-B Lightning aircraft to embark on its two new so calle aircaft carriers

  20. BBC gets emergency funding to fight Russian disinformation. 24 July 2022.

    The government is giving the BBC World Service emergency funding to help it continue bringing independent, impartial and accurate news to people in Ukraine and Russia in the face of increased propaganda from the Russian state.

    BBC World Service will receive an additional £4.1 million in emergency funding to support its Ukrainian and Russian language services in the region, and to help it increase trusted and independent content to counter disinformation about the war in Ukraine.

    I guess the UK Government Propaganda War is not going well either!

    https://www.gov.uk/government/news/bbc-gets-emergency-funding-to-fight-russian-disinformation

      1. Initial reports of the ‘pox made clear that infection was in the main confined to men of a certain persuasion and the dubious bath houses that they were inclined to inhabit.
        Now, it’s being ‘promoted’ as an international threat with a bit of doubling up as reports of children (2) have been infected. Rumours are building claiming that the infection has been ‘engineered’ to make it more readily transmissible. Could be that the more transmissible claim is in fact untrue and nothing more than another piece of misinformation to heighten the fear factor and give governments more leverage to impose restrictions. Two pandemics in a little over two years really ought to set alarm bells ringing even amongst the almost brain dead, if they can be bothered to turn off the TV/mobile/games console etc.

      2. And when they invent another vaccine they can shove it up there ar5e where, it would appear, it will be most useful for those likely to be infected.

        1. The delivery system should be a bolt to the temple. After all, if they are stupid enough to want another untested ‘vaccine’ – after the past two years of SAGE/iSAGE-driven shenanigans – it would be a blessing in disguise.

          Bring on Nuremberg 2.0; Fauci, Whitty, Ferguson and Mitchie front and centre.

    3. Yo Minty
      In English:

      BBC upset that Russian diinformation contradicts their own disinformation

  21. BBC gets emergency funding to fight Russian disinformation. 24 July 2022.

    The government is giving the BBC World Service emergency funding to help it continue bringing independent, impartial and accurate news to people in Ukraine and Russia in the face of increased propaganda from the Russian state.

    BBC World Service will receive an additional £4.1 million in emergency funding to support its Ukrainian and Russian language services in the region, and to help it increase trusted and independent content to counter disinformation about the war in Ukraine.

    I guess the UK Government Propaganda War is not going well either!

    https://www.gov.uk/government/news/bbc-gets-emergency-funding-to-fight-russian-disinformation

  22. Morning, all Y’all.
    14,2C outside, beautiful day, just seen a bright orange deer wander across the field outside the kitchen, stop, glare at me, then bounce away!

  23. SIR – I very much agree with Stephen Pollard, who laments the BBC’s sidelining of classical music at the Proms.

    Judging by this year’s advertisements, it appears that the aim is to present the event as more of a pop festival, in order to appeal to those who regard classical music as something for older and more privileged people.

    Surely it would be better to educate younger people to appreciate the beauty of this music. Otherwise, by the end of the 21st century, hardly anybody will be listening to it.

    Michael Evans
    Ludlow, Shropshire

    SIR – Stephen Pollard is sadly correct about the destruction of the Proms.

    However, the trend is far wider. In the 1950s and 1960s I often attended three concerts a week at the Royal Festival Hall and the Albert Hall. For a few shillings, audiences could see the greatest orchestras playing the classics. Venues were packed; this is not so today. Whatever happened to Friday-night Beethoven?

    Without YouTube, many have no opportunity to watch orchestras and soloists performing the works of the great composers. There is a place for modern music, too – but not at the expense of the riches of the past.

    John Pritchard
    Ingatestone, Essex

    When I saw what they have done to “our greatest celebration of classical music” (the BBC’s description of the Proms) I realised that the woke brigade had got involved. That was enough for me. Still, it was good for the roughly 50-ish years that they were as advertised.

    1. A BTL poster writes:

      Hereward Woke
      1 HR AGO
      This week’s edition of the Radio Times has the advertisement on the front cover “The Proms: Win tickets to the Earth Prom with Chris Packham”.
      Not Mahler. Theme tunes to BBC programs about climate change. You could not make it up.

      * * *

      And second prize is two lots of tickets with the odious Packham?!

  24. This is my husband Richard’s birthday today – a special one-
    So I can’t have another little word with him about something – I shall wait until tomorrow .

    Last night there was a knock on the door ( my husband went to the door )
    He told me that a little old lady left something for the young couple next door whose expecting a baby- we hardly know them at all apart from the odd good morning greeting .
    She apparently used there Christian names. I assumed it was a parcel that the husband took in – something wrapped up with a note, it wasn’t, it was two plastic containers containing breast feeding pads ( highly personal ). My husband said I’m being silly -that she was a little old lady in an ordinary car – claiming to be from some charity ( they are wealthy and don’t need charity ) I pointed our that she produced no proof of this and the items were not in a package with a note – but she clearly knew them. Well I placed the breast feeding pads in a bag . The husband isn’t going to knock on their door – he’s going to wait and see if the neighbours knock ( she might have put a note through their door – but I doubt it .
    I hope the strange woman doesn’t come back but if she does then I shall open the door – and act as if I know nothing about it and just point out that some lady knocked late and handed my husband two items without a note or packaged and said it was for one of the neighbours who we assumed would knock – that we can’t remember which neighbour. I am surprised my husband was so gullible- all he said was it was from a little old lady – maybe I’m being too cynical but it was very odd .

    1. It is unsettling.
      Particularly given the contents of the boxes and the lack of detail. They are basic items that only the very poor would need to take from a charity.

      1. That’s what I thought . We don’t know the neighbours hardly at all but they are certainly not poor or in need of charity. The lady just handed the items to my husband unwrapped and without a note – and I thought breast pads to be highly personal. I wish my husband didn’t take the items in, he’s far too trusting – I’d not have accepted them considering they were unwrapped and had no note with them – they were thin enough items to have fitted through a letter box . It’s rather weird .

          1. Thats what I thought. We did once have an old lady knock on the door many years ago who was clearly confused, who I guessed had Alzheimers or Dementia- a much love aunt had Alzeimers and I recognised the symptoms. But this old lady – and the way she used their Christian names to suggest personal acquaintance.

      1. Thank you on his behalf, he’s got sword fish for lunch ( a favourite and cake)

        A special one 🙂

    3. Morning all.

      How very bizarre. Items too personal to leave with a neighbour I would have thought.
      Happy special Birthday to Richard btw.

  25. Good morning all, and especially Sue Edison.
    Yesterday I listened to BBC radio news for a moment, where the reader solemnly announced that the latest ‘pox is concentrated among “men who have s*x with men”.
    Ignoring the illness and its ramifications, it is the verbal gymnastics that leaves me chuckling. For decades, the term ‘gay’ has been used worldwide, but suddenly the Main Stream Media has been obliged to change its tune.
    The irony is that the revolution always eats its children, and the official abbreviation for such men is …. MSM!

    (of course the reasoning is that in certain countries many of the MSM2 do not wish to be perceived as ‘gay’)

    3. I prefer “homosexual perverts” as the appropriate term. The use of the word “gay” is itself a form of perversion, ask anyone born on a Sunday.

      1. …and I would add “Abnormal Practices” because that’s what they want sanctified in their perverted ideas on marriage.

    4. Ah, it may surprise you to know that I’m not the only employee who consumes none of the product. I know one whose husband suffered swelling of the heart muscles after the vax. She’s thoroughly disillusioned. We just do our jobs to the best of our ability and support one another. The rot is at government level and media independence is a myth, as it always is with such regimes. My only concession is the Proms, where it’s still possible to cherry pick the good stuff.

          1. Given that the whole thrust of BBC music programming is aimed at yoof and BAMEs – I do wonder just how many of th target audience ACTUALLY listen….

            I still listen to dear old Donald Macleod – and I’ll bet they are planning to kill him off. Virtually nothing else.

            There are much better classical music progs available on line – Radio Suisse Classique; Catradio (from Catalunya – made the more interesting because one cannot understand a word the announcers say!!) Even France Musique – though they go in for some weird stuff and lotsa jazz and contemporary music….

          2. Don’t you know the script by now? They dumb it down until nobody wants it, then they announce that pale, male, stale white or Christian culture is dead and should be thrown in the rubbish bin.
            Attracting BAMEs was never on the serious agenda.
            See Church of England.

          3. If present BBC programmes (and the BBC) were thrown in the rubbish bin, would it really matter?

          5. Sue is officially working beyond her retirement age, so she would still be OK. I am sure she, as an eminently capable and intelligent person, would find something worthwhile if she wanted to stay working – the question is about the BBC and whether it should stay taking taxpayers’ money for ating and speaking against us, or not.

      2. Sorry Sue, I failed to express myself clearly. I was not in any way criticising BBC Radio news, as they were simply reading from a press release that may or may not have come from the World Health Organisation (WHO).
        Rod Liddle described a liberal lefty as someone able to believe in two contradictory ideologies at the same time.

        The WHO is dancing on broken glass: it realises that this particular orthopoxvirus is spreading as an STI, but gays and Bames are protected from any hurtful remark.

    5. Surely you know tim, that “gay” means skipping around with rainbows…nothing to do with venereal diseases or poxes…

      1. Listening to the diaries of Chips Channon (I know, I know – but they DO give a fascinating insight) he frequently uses the word “gay” to mean “happy”, “contented”….

        1. The Beggar’s Opera was a massive success for its author, for its stars, and for the producer, John Rich; it was famously said that it made Gay rich and Rich gay.

  26. Home Office ‘mistakes and delays’ mean girl, 4, must stay trapped in Ukraine. 24 July 2022.

    A four-year-old girl remains stranded in a block of flats on the Ukrainian frontline four months after attempts began to bring her to the UK, a delay campaigners have blamed on a series of government “blunders”.

    Efforts to rescue Alika Zubets from the city of Kharkiv began on 21 March when her UK sponsor applied for a visa under the Homes for Ukraine scheme and expected her to reach north Staffordshire by mid-April at the latest. Instead, she remains one of the few children left in her Kharkiv neighbourhood, with no schools or nurseries open and the constant threat of shelling from Russian forces nearby.

    Campaigners at Vigil for Visas said that the case is the most heartbreaking they have come across since the sponsorship scheme began, with even the intervention of the refugees minister Richard Harrington failing to provide a breakthrough.

    This is one of those stories designed to elicit sympathy for refugees. I admit that it reads better than 30 year old paraplegic Somali with six children, four dogs and two cats is to be sent to Rwanda by Royal Mail but it’s the same thing.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/24/home-office-mistakes-delays-alika-trapped-children-kharkiv-ukraine

    1. There are plenty of parts of Ukraine that aren’t on the front line…are they saying that Zelensky can’t organise an evacuation?

      2. Probably not but as you doubtless know, the Russkies have been very efficient in organising evacuation and providing food, shelter and medical care, even for wounded Uke soldiers.The aim is to ruin the American operation not hurt the people.

      3. Perhaps someone on the carousel of celebrities traipsing through Kiev could be persuaded to give her a lift.

    2. The Russians aim with the shelling is not good if they haven’t hit the target.
      False information but then it s the Guardian, what else would you expect.

    3. Wouldn’t it have been easier and far better for her to have stayed in Europe.
      But alternatively our media Wouldn’t have had the storey to blast in our faces would they ? Pathetic.

  27. Home Office ‘mistakes and delays’ mean girl, 4, must stay trapped in Ukraine. 24 July 2022.

    A four-year-old girl remains stranded in a block of flats on the Ukrainian frontline four months after attempts began to bring her to the UK, a delay campaigners have blamed on a series of government “blunders”.

    Efforts to rescue Alika Zubets from the city of Kharkiv began on 21 March when her UK sponsor applied for a visa under the Homes for Ukraine scheme and expected her to reach north Staffordshire by mid-April at the latest. Instead, she remains one of the few children left in her Kharkiv neighbourhood, with no schools or nurseries open and the constant threat of shelling from Russian forces nearby.

    Campaigners at Vigil for Visas said that the case is the most heartbreaking they have come across since the sponsorship scheme began, with even the intervention of the refugees minister Richard Harrington failing to provide a breakthrough.

    This is one of those stories designed to elicit sympathy for refugees. I admit that it reads better than 30 year old paraplegic Somali with six children, four dogs and two cats is to be sent to Rwanda by Royal Mail but it’s the same thing.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/24/home-office-mistakes-delays-alika-trapped-children-kharkiv-ukraine

  28. Good Moaning.
    A wonderful English summer morning; coolish and dullish.
    All we need is rain to make it perfect.

      1. Here in Kent, too. Off to explore Canterbury then hopefully meet a friend made on the first London march amd his gaggle of children on the beach at Margate, so have a good day, everyone!

          1. We have a secret weapon against rubber boats in the Oslofjord. It’s a huge female walrus that the press are calling Freya – it likes to climb out of the water onto rubber boats, and then puncture them with it’s tusks to be gently lowered back into the water. Many smaller boats have been trashed.
            Maybe we can persuade her to enter the Channel?

          2. How about importing a narwhal or three? Their tusks would do wonders to a rubber boat.

          3. Ashes is on her way to see me. We are doing lunch and drinks and gossip about you stay at homes.

          8. That I do, Bill; really enjoying exploring new places.

            I already have accomodation; dinghy superfluous to requirements.

    2. Tough. No rain for you today. Nor me. About lunch time there will be (allegedly) a lot of rain about 20 miles north of us….

      It’s a plot….

  30. “ SIR – It is also possible to feel the benefits of nature without annihilating it. The wildlife seem to enjoy it, too. Claire Goldie”

    Nothing like a little hyperbole to win people over to your way of thinking, Ms Goldie.

  31. Good morning all.
    A dull and damp morning after last nights rain with 14°C outside.

  32. I understand the School holidays started on Friday. And, like most years I can recall, the weather turned to dull and showery. Still we can look forward to the weather improving at the beginning of September when the schools go back…..

  33. I notice a new variant Project Fear appearing.

    The French passport buggerment: “…likely to get much worse and be appalling in August when people return to the UK”.

    Thanks for that cheering news.

      1. And ensure that all Frenchies returning home via Dover are in a queue, the front of which takes at least 6 hours to board a ferry…that will be noticed too

  34. Morning all 😃
    We went to a BBQ Yesterday arvo had a lovely time catching up with old friends we haven’t seen for about three years. A few more wrinkles and greyer hair but still the same old chums with the same sense of humour. I didn’t get to bed before midnight.
    And I didn’t have to drive home……if yer get my drift 😊😉

  35. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3f8c7dfd2566d4c7f1c9ac897bb14a5a06eb7474dd6cee30bae83af785ca24f2.png

    PhD students were advised to get a job to help with cost of living pressures. They were appalled. Increasingly, work is seen as an intrusion into me-time, something that has nothing to do with the business of life.

    During my PhD, there was a certain degree of moaning from other doctoral students. They were stressed, they were poor, life was tough. Having just ducked out of 10 years in the workforce for this bliss of funded scholarly self-indulgence, I had little time for these complaints, and even less time for complainers with funding – which, at the time, covered fees plus a stipend of about £14,000 a year; it’s now closer to £16,000 (£18,000 in London). I liked to remind my peers on scholarships that they were still being paid to ponder something they were interested in, privately thinking they needn’t do it if the money wasn’t enough.

    PhDs continue to attract far more applicants than there is funding, because it is lovely to do a PhD. It is nothing like real work and, because everyone knows you’re paid a pittance (if you’re lucky), in return you are given freedom, respect and mentoring. The stipends do tend to require a top-up of some kind for anyone who doesn’t want to eat beans in a college bedsit for three years, which is surely fair enough.

    This tends to mean work, a concept that seems to have fallen out of favour. Which must be why environmental science PhD students on a training partnership at the University of East Anglia, funded by the Natural Environment Research Council, were so furious at the university’s wellmeaning advice that they get a part-time job to help them through the cost of living crisis.

    Possible jobs suggested included selling Avon beauty products, petsitting and joining clinical trials. Present and former PhD students described the email and its contents as “appalling”, “ridiculous” and “unbelievable”.

    Yes, the email was a bit silly: must it really be explained to people aged 21 and over that getting a job can boost your income? But instead of being annoyed at the condescension, they were indignant at the idea of part-time work on top of their PhDs full stop – and especially at the mention of jobs they clearly thought were beneath them. Actually, the suggestions weren’t bad: Avon’s website promises “no 9-5, no limits”, “100 per cent flexibility” and anything from “a little extra to a full-time career”.

    But no. “This is just another example of how PhD students are completely let down by the system,” raged Adriana Lowe, who got her PhD from Kent in 2019 and now appears to have a prestigious-sounding job at an aid foundation. “These are people who are advising government on policy, advancing medical research, tackling the climate crisis and so on, and we’re expecting them to live like teenagers despite the fact they’re often adults with kids of their own.”

    I would politely point out that most PhD students, even the most gifted, aren’t advising governments on policy, and if they are, they can get paid for that, too. She makes “advancing medical research” sound like giving away your second kidney and as for “tackling the climate crisis”, there’s plenty of money in that too. You just have to hustle a bit.

    But they don’t want to do that. Moaning is apparently more gratifying. If only this were just a problem of lazy PhD students. But it isn’t. Increasingly, work is seen as an intrusion into me-time, something that has nothing to do with the business of life. Generous and extended Covid furlough schemes helped wrench apart the concept of labour from that of disposable income. But the trend had been in place for a while.

    Labour supply has been shrinking across Europe for years, according to a McKinsey Global Institute report from 2020. The same is true in the US, where labour-force participation has sunk sharply. In Britain, economic inactivity remains high, despite acute labour shortages, including in travel, haulage and agriculture.

    It’s hard to miss the sight of recreational spaces packed full of working-age people on any vaguely sunny weekday – a fixture of high Covid that has merely continued. Last week’s heat wave resulted in widespread (and unapologetic) bunking off work, even among those in new jobs, leaving bosses somewhat short staffed and taken aback.

    A counternarrative has, of course, taken root, that compares those who hand-wring about people working less to those who thought video would kill off radio. One viral tweet thread last week, titled “A Brief History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore”, from Paul Fairie, a Canadian academic, posted clips of past news articles on declining work ethics.

    It was cute, but misleading. Young people in particular are becoming more work-averse. They do expect to live without hard graft, and for many, the radical discombobulation of lockdown was the clincher.

    There has been much talk of the alienation and disillusionment of living in an apparently crisis-strewn, economically broken world, causing young people to withdraw not just from the workforce but from democracy itself (people under 30 are still far less likely to vote than those over 30).

    But a good deal of it is patently laziness, the collapse of any sense that one ought to get off one’s backside and do, make, earn, improve and potentially build something new, like a business or a family.

    Opting out has a strong lure, and the internet – both an endless source of entertainment and addiction, and a means to make a bit of money somehow so long as you have a phone – has made it easier. But on both an individual and a collective level, it’s a disastrous policy. Amusing yourself gets old eventually, as does a flatlining income. And a workforce with huge holes in it just breeds chaos and further disillusionment.

    Those angry PhD students at UEA are the winners: paid to do something they love. But their entitlement and distaste for work means they can’t even see it.

    Useless parents and clueless teachers have conspired to create a generation of witless, hapless and gormless idiots. I shudder to think how this continued and accelerating degeneracy is guaranteed to make a world inhabited by complete morons in a few generations hence.

    1. An acquaintance of mine who did a science PhD in the early 80s earned some useful income by supervising undergraduate practical classes. Would that happen now?

        1. When I was doing my degree I had to have a part-time job – during termtime. In the holidays I had a full-time job.

          When I did my post-grad. I had a full-time job during every holiday.

          These entitled twits don’t know they are born.

          3. Respect – I hope you were working in the field your qualification was relevant to? Sadly for my knowledge (but quite enjoyably otherwise) I was working in a wine bar during my degree and as a temp. secretary during my postgrads.

          4. I was teaching full time and my research was into teaching methods, so yes, very much related. It was still extremely tough, though!

        2. I expect there’s some modern regulatory requirement that has made it less attractive.

    2. These people are the weakness in society that will let the fascists take over.
      They will accept a Universal Basic Income (UBI) rather than putting 2 and 2 together and realising that it’s the bait in the trap.

      My son told me a comical anecdote yesterday. In his workplace, he was asked to look after a bunch of kids who were there for a week to get “experience in the workplace”. He said they were following him around, and when he had some easy job to do, he would give it to them.
      Apparently, it was like trying to hold water in your hands – they kept sloping off to the rest room to play on their phones. He said he ended up doing most of the jobs he’d given them to do. A supervisor had to explain to them (bawl them out) that workers do not sit in the rest room during working hours.

    3. ‘Climate crisis’ … money in that too. Dear life. The waste and inefficiency, of the state giving our money away to promote a blatnat lie for it’s own agenda. Just a tiny example of the profligacy of an over budget, feather bedded government.

        1. A chum of mine is a consulting neurologist. He’s a ‘Doctor Strange’ fellow. A true genius with incredible expertise.

          He was spending every penny he earned on rolexes, two Aston Martins, he’d invested in a night club and was losing moeny hand over fist. When he met his wife – a Tesco store manager who’d come from the floor up she gave him a budget card with a fixed limit and properly controlled his money. Out went the sports cars, sold off were the watches, the loss making club forgotten.

          It worked for them. admittedly she is very stern.

          1. ” Annual income twenty pounds- annual expenditure, nineteen pounds and sixpence. Result- happiness.
            Annual income twenty pounds- annual expenditure, twenty pounds and sixpence. Result- misery.”

            Mr. Micawber knew of what he spoke.

      2. No, you should grow up and learn to budget. Order your debts in highest interest rate first. Contact your debtors and tell then you’ll pay them back.

        Don’t pay your parents back until the others have gone. Work out what your monthly costs are and give yourself a £250 food budget.

        In four years you’ll be completely debt free and have learned some lessons in budgeting, going without and the value of money.

          1. But he earns good money. That’s about our household income, as the Warqueen’s sits in Switzerland. We have a £500 food and living budget and even with £200 of storage costs for the move we’re still saving 500-800 a month.

          3. oh without question. Inflation – thanks to QE and borrowing – has created absolute havoc. The state doesn’t care. It keeps borrowing and wasting money left right and centre.

            Do also read ‘Life after the state’ where Dominic Frisby discusses the deliberrate destruction of the pound once we moved off the gold standard.

          4. The gold standard destroyed the UK and made Churchill the worst chancellor we’ve had in the past 100 years.

            Inflation has been caused by energy costs. Demand is largely unchanged. We don’t have inflation because we have too much to spend, if that was the case there would be no cost of living crisis. We have inflation because of poor or completely down supply chains and the cost of energy. QE is not inflationary. it’s just bank reserves and they only get lent to other banks. That money never leaves the BoE it just gets shuffled around commercial banks reserve accounts.

            Frisby is a comedian who studied Drama. Listen to him by all means on complex economic matters but he’s such a madman he thinks Bitcoin is the future of money. He’s absolutely cuckoo. He also like you favours anarchy.

        2. He should read “The Richest Man in Babylon” which talks about this situation and how to get out of it. And grow up, obviously!

    5. Work beside the Ph.D….
      Cleared my Ph.D in two years; there wasn’t time for additional work, and bugger-all time for a party or a weekend off, either.

  36. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3f8c7dfd2566d4c7f1c9ac897bb14a5a06eb7474dd6cee30bae83af785ca24f2.png

    PhD students were advised to get a job to help with cost of living pressures. They were appalled. Increasingly, work is seen as an intrusion into me-time, something that has nothing to do with the business of life.

    During my PhD, there was a certain degree of moaning from other doctoral students. They were stressed, they were poor, life was tough. Having just ducked out of 10 years in the workforce for this bliss of funded scholarly self-indulgence, I had little time for these complaints, and even less time for complainers with funding – which, at the time, covered fees plus a stipend of about £14,000 a year; it’s now closer to £16,000 (£18,000 in London). I liked to remind my peers on scholarships that they were still being paid to ponder something they were interested in, privately thinking they needn’t do it if the money wasn’t enough.

    PhDs continue to attract far more applicants than there is funding, because it is lovely to do a PhD. It is nothing like real work and, because everyone knows you’re paid a pittance (if you’re lucky), in return you are given freedom, respect and mentoring. The stipends do tend to require a top-up of some kind for anyone who doesn’t want to eat beans in a college bedsit for three years, which is surely fair enough.

    This tends to mean work, a concept that seems to have fallen out of favour. Which must be why environmental science PhD students on a training partnership at the University of East Anglia, funded by the Natural Environment Research Council, were so furious at the university’s wellmeaning advice that they get a part-time job to help them through the cost of living crisis.

    Possible jobs suggested included selling Avon beauty products, petsitting and joining clinical trials. Present and former PhD students described the email and its contents as “appalling”, “ridiculous” and “unbelievable”.

    Yes, the email was a bit silly: must it really be explained to people aged 21 and over that getting a job can boost your income? But instead of being annoyed at the condescension, they were indignant at the idea of part-time work on top of their PhDs full stop – and especially at the mention of jobs they clearly thought were beneath them. Actually, the suggestions weren’t bad: Avon’s website promises “no 9-5, no limits”, “100 per cent flexibility” and anything from “a little extra to a full-time career”.

    But no. “This is just another example of how PhD students are completely let down by the system,” raged Adriana Lowe, who got her PhD from Kent in 2019 and now appears to have a prestigious-sounding job at an aid foundation. “These are people who are advising government on policy, advancing medical research, tackling the climate crisis and so on, and we’re expecting them to live like teenagers despite the fact they’re often adults with kids of their own.”

    I would politely point out that most PhD students, even the most gifted, aren’t advising governments on policy, and if they are, they can get paid for that, too. She makes “advancing medical research” sound like giving away your second kidney and as for “tackling the climate crisis”, there’s plenty of money in that too. You just have to hustle a bit.

    But they don’t want to do that. Moaning is apparently more gratifying. If only this were just a problem of lazy PhD students. But it isn’t. Increasingly, work is seen as an intrusion into me-time, something that has nothing to do with the business of life. Generous and extended Covid furlough schemes helped wrench apart the concept of labour from that of disposable income. But the trend had been in place for a while.

    Labour supply has been shrinking across Europe for years, according to a McKinsey Global Institute report from 2020. The same is true in the US, where labour-force participation has sunk sharply. In Britain, economic inactivity remains high, despite acute labour shortages, including in travel, haulage and agriculture.

    It’s hard to miss the sight of recreational spaces packed full of working-age people on any vaguely sunny weekday – a fixture of high Covid that has merely continued. Last week’s heat wave resulted in widespread (and unapologetic) bunking off work, even among those in new jobs, leaving bosses somewhat short staffed and taken aback.

    A counternarrative has, of course, taken root, that compares those who hand-wring about people working less to those who thought video would kill off radio. One viral tweet thread last week, titled “A Brief History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore”, from Paul Fairie, a Canadian academic, posted clips of past news articles on declining work ethics.

    It was cute, but misleading. Young people in particular are becoming more work-averse. They do expect to live without hard graft, and for many, the radical discombobulation of lockdown was the clincher.

    There has been much talk of the alienation and disillusionment of living in an apparently crisis-strewn, economically broken world, causing young people to withdraw not just from the workforce but from democracy itself (people under 30 are still far less likely to vote than those over 30).

    But a good deal of it is patently laziness, the collapse of any sense that one ought to get off one’s backside and do, make, earn, improve and potentially build something new, like a business or a family.

    Opting out has a strong lure, and the internet – both an endless source of entertainment and addiction, and a means to make a bit of money somehow so long as you have a phone – has made it easier. But on both an individual and a collective level, it’s a disastrous policy. Amusing yourself gets old eventually, as does a flatlining income. And a workforce with huge holes in it just breeds chaos and further disillusionment.

    Those angry PhD students at UEA are the winners: paid to do something they love. But their entitlement and distaste for work means they can’t even see it.

    Useless parents and clueless teachers have conspired to create a generation of witless, hapless and gormless idiots. I shudder to think how this continued and accelerating degeneracy is guaranteed to make a world inhabited by complete morons in a few generations hence.

  37. BBC News – Sunday Paper review
    Mainly about immigrants either being flown abroad for a holday or sent on a round the world cruise.
    Then about M20 being a parking lot for cross channel trips to France followed by a 15 yr old being asked to take her clothes off for a photo shoot.

    Nothing about global warming causing ‘explosive’ fires in the USA:

    https://www.sfchronicle.com/california-wildfires/article/Oak-Fire-west-of-Yosemite-explodes-in-size-17324683.php

    with a new phenomenon called pyrocumulus:

    https://cloudatlas.wmo.int/en/flammagenitus.html

    Actually, the official name is flammagenitus which sounds like a symptom of Monkeypox but that is being suppressed from the headlines as well.

  39. Good morning my friends.

    Just a quick visit.

    Christo and Katy are now married and we are staying in Lancaster with Henry and Jessica.

    We head back to France on Wednesday and hope the that Ferry Port chaos will be sorted out by then.

    Remember that Delboy has a birthday coming up on Tuesday – we hope we shall have access to a computer then!

    2. Congratulations to the happy couple and to you!

      And thoughtful of you to remind us of Delboy’s birthday on Tuesday. x

    4. Greetings, Sir!
      Presumably you’ll be coming down the M6 tomorrow or Tuesday?

    1. So a 2p in the £ tax cut would be able to get you “Savings of £384” for a basic rate tax payer. That won’t even compensate for the price hikes that we have had to fuel or utility bills. ANd we should be grateful, while the government squanders our taxes on NGOs, HS2, green grandstanding, and paying £millions to house, feed, educate and provide for millions of uninvited, unwanted 3rd world immigrants.

      You’re havin’ a giraffe.

      1. Yes, we don’t need pennies off our bill, we need the bill reduced from 33% for a basic rate payer to 15%. For a higher rate tax payer from 52% (excluding all the other benefits lost) – to, oh yes! 15%. For an upper rate tax payer – yes, you guessed it, to 15%.

        Flat. Set the tax threshold at 10,000 and just stop taking so much of our money. The state will just have to do more with less. So many things it does are utterly unnecessary, no one would miss it. A clear starting point is limiting what statist can earn. If Mandarins think they’re the bosses of IBM and BP then they are sorely mistaken.

      2. You are so right HL. They’re only interested in feathering their own nests.
        They only wheel us out every 5 years to put a pencil cross on a piece of paper and then carry on as usual. A plague on all their houses, second homes and dodgy dealings.

    2. They’ll just give them all Republic of Ireland citizenship, so that they can all come over here, natch.

    3. They’ll just give them all Republic of Ireland citizenship, so that they can all come over here, natch.

    4. Perhaps they should remind the EU mafiosi of their responsibility.
      Rubber boats to Wales and beyond ?

      1. Maybe the Taoiseach should tell Macron, forcibly, to keep his rubbish at home and deal with his own problems.

  42. Good morning, all.

    August is apparently a bad month if you want to get a cleaner – at least a Portugese one.

    A Portguese friend of mine (who is a carer and lives in her own mortgaged house here) mentioned that lots of her cleaner friends aren’t around in August. Why? Because they are back in their own properties in Portugal on holiday. Yet they live in Council accommodation here, many receiving tax credits of one sort or another. I asked my friend how this could happen and she shrugged and said “they think that if they can get it, why not?”

    Another Romanian acquaintance is apparently a cleaner here, with two properties in Romania; where she intends to retire to (living off the rental of the one)

    It’s enough to make my tits twirl.

    1. All the more reason to cancel housing benefit and child benefit. Just stop giving people other people’s money and the problem goes away. If they then can’t afford to live here, all the good. Reduced supply of labour pushes the prices of workers up. If government alloweed markets to work rather than continually fighting them we would have a far more robust, efficient economy.

      1. Cancelling housing benefit would put every single family relying on it on the streets. 33% of housing benefit claimants are pensioners. There are 3 million households claiming rent help. Councils won’t be able to help many of them. Charities would do even worse. Thank God you’re not running the country.

        1. You’re ignoring that it shouldn’t exist in the first place. Yet you have those people above claiming housing benefit to live here. That implies the welfare office is incompetent. Which do you have? The state shredded for incompetence or housing benefit radically reformed?

          The tax payer does not exist solely for the dross to sponge off them.

          However, you ignore a bigger issue: population. Too many mouths to feed. Too many people dependent on welfare. Too poor an education. Too few savings. Too greedy and abusive a state.

          Government is NOT there to provide for people. It does an appalling job of that and keeps people poor. Left alone, markets work and people prosper. Government screws it up.

          1. There has been rent help available for many many years, ever since we became fed up with people living in the street.

          2. Yes, they’re called markets. The best form of rent support. End all others. If housing is too expensive then it must be what people can afford. Joe Public should never be forced to pay for someone to have what they cannot. It’s perverse. Just becaus someone wants a 4 bed house with a big garden doesn’t mean they have a right to it through state force.

            You seem very keen on giving govenrment endless power to coerce and manipulate others in contradiction of market principles and common sense. That does not work – the evidence is all around us. Get the state out of meddling and cripple it by cutting taxes. It doesn’t create jobs, doesn’t create wealth, doesn’t improve quality of life. Reduce what it can spend by… 80%. Cut, cut and cut again.

          3. Rachmanism and Victorian Britain were examples of leaving everything to the market. How many people had no homes in Victorian Britain. Read your Dickens? In 1848 for example there were 30000 homeless children living on the streets of London. That’s just the kids and just London. You’re absolutely mad if we are ever going to go back to that.
            I am not keen on giving endless power to the government, I am simply telling you how things really work, that’s all.
            You can cut taxes to nil and still the government can spend on everything it does now. The difference is we’d have huge inflation.

          4. The taxpayer is never sponged off. Taxes do not fund spending, spending funds taxes. We pay tax for three reasons.
            1) Domestic demand for the currency. You can only pay UK taxes in UK currency so you have to get your hands on it. Easiest way is to sell goods and labour for pounds.
            2) Altering behaviour. Self-explanatory. Sin taxes, fuel duty, pollution fines etc.
            3) The big one. Removing excess demand.

            You have the entire system ass about face.

          5. No, I’m sorry, you do. Taxation is money taken from the earner. It ALL comes from the private sector. Spending DOES NOT Fund taxes. State spending is taking money out of the economy.The state can rob Peter to pay Paul, but that just forces Peter to pay for Paul to produce something Peter may not have wanted, which is antithetical to rational market economics.

            If someone live son welfare, someone has to pay for it. That person is the tax payer. The private sector worker.

            All all those are wrong. taxation exists solely to provide for essential public services. It must not be used for any other purpose – ever. The belief that it should force changes in behaviour or removing demand – dear life! That’s madness in itself, let’s break markets! It should never serve the currency alone as that only benefits the state and, que vis, the state should never, ever benefit from taxation.

          6. You still have everything ass about face.
            Spending precedes taxation. Taxation does not fund spending. Government funds itself by money creation. Too much money creation leads to inflation. So money created is later withdrawn via taxation. We rarely remove it all.
            State spending is not taking money out of the economy, that’s taxation. State spending is pumping money into the economy.
            If someone lives on welfare it has to be paid for? Yes and it is. Remember government funds itself through money creation. At no time do welfare recipients get told sorry no welfare this month as the government hasn’t got any money. Government cheques don’t bounce, not ever.
            Taxation does not exist to provide public services. I’ve told you what taxation is for, it’s to remove excess demand to cut the risk of too much money leading to inflation. Public services are provided through money creation. At no time does the government simply shut down public services because its bank account has run dry. Again government cheques can’t bounce.
            Whether you like it or not taxes are used to alter behaviour. Do you think the tax on smoking is to raise money? No. It’s to cut the number of people that smoke but making it unaffordable.
            The state doesn’t benefit from taxation. Whatever makes you think it does. We all benefit from taxation as it’s part of the fight against inflation.
            You are not a simpleton. How can you not see that this is how the economy really works? Ideological blindness I suppose.

      2. So dole is 75 quid per week. Dual fuel is approaching 40 quid per week, water 8 quid per week. 5 for transport. 5 for phone. 5 for internet. Leaves 12 quid for feeding yourself and rent and council tax. Know anywhere in the UK you can rent for less than 4 quid per week?

        1. By getting a job.

          I know folk don’t like this, but people have to work. Welfare should be a temporary option, not a sofa. It’s there to support those who need it, not those who want it. A lot of people reliant on welfare are simply stealing from those who cannot work.

          You mention the difficulties, yet I’ve seen two people on welfare happily puffing away, two packs a day between them. They brag about tattoos and getting a loan for the gas bill – one they never pay back – after all, they want their nails done.

          So no, sorry. It’s not a nice world. People must work. That’s going to mean a= complete and permanent end to immigration.

          1. Most people on the dole are actually in work. Seen the unemployment rate? But these people earn so poorly they’ll never afford full rent on their own. Besides you have to cater for the worst scenario which is being without work at all, or retired.

          2. Yes, it’s too high. Yes, they would if two things came into effect: massive shredding of the state machine (a necessary given) and radical tax cuts across the board.

            You’re assuming that things should carry on as they are, with ever bigger government forcing ever more of other people’s money into the economy. That is socialism and it does not work. Stop funding people by robbing them and giving some back. Take less in the first place. This is the fundamental confusion you seem to suffer from: if you take what someone earns, then give it to someone else you just penalise effort. Cut taxes, shred the state. End this socialist redistributive state’s malicious arrogance.

          3. The current unemployment rate is 3.8%. Companies are complaining there’s no one left to recruit and can’t find staff. Our nursing home is currently shockingly understaffed we’re having to cover over 50% of shifts with temp agency workers. That can’t continue, it’ll fail if we can’t recruit two full timers and 3 night staff.
            I don’t assume anything. I simply am telling you how things currently work. As I’ve explained many times I’d change the fiscal system drastically.

          4. All loans from the social fund have to be paid back.

            Under the counter ciggys are easy to find.

            Have you considered they could be working in some black market. Drugs, prostitution, car boot sales, etc.

            What about pensioners? Did you miss that 1 million pensioner households need help with rent?

          5. And why is that? It’s likely because the market has been broken. When government gives people money you create distortions in .. here it is again 0 the market, which drives up prices.

  43. Just in from some useful ladder work. Several branches on various trees have perished in the drought and needed removing and cutting up ready for (a) logs and (b) trimmings for the bonfire. We need to have a bonfire but with everything round here like tinder – it would be madness. I am hoping that we’ll have some rain in the next three weeks – when eldest grandson is coming up for weekend – and I can introduce hi to the pleasure of a bonfire!!

    Almost time for a beer………….it being Sunday.

    1. I’ve just taken a couple of the large chunks of the ash trunk I dropped on Tuesday across the road to my main logstack where they shall remain until the winter.
      The rest of the main truck is quietly sitting where it fell.

      The rest of the tree has been cut to convenient sized lengths, again waiting for room for me to deal further with it.

        1. I din know what the excess baggage fees would be but I have about a dozen tree trunks that Bob could have for his firewood collection. Nice apple and maple hardwood with at least a six inch diameter, it would be enough to heat a home for years.

        1. Seeing as you were going to entertain him to the delights of a bonfire i thought about hotdogs and marshmallows. Bit of male bonding.

          1. Rapid ladder dismounting techniques to be taught by our Bill. What could go wrong?

          4. A few years ago I was quite good at sliding down a long ladder Gloves and stout boots are essential . But i’ts good fun. I suspect a person might be arrested for having such fun these days.

          5. We tried him on a ladder a few years back. He was hopeless. I said, “Ben, you are hopeless.” He replied, “I have never been up a bloody ladder!”.

      1. After more strokes than Battersy dogs home when my father had become a head in Bed, someone organised a Nigerian named Femi to be his carer. Although it was horrible seeing him hoisted from his bed wearing a nappie and wheeled to the bathroom. The family treated the carer very well even invited him to family gatherings. It was however discovered that the drinks cabinet was being raided and probably other items were going missing.
        I’m saying he was responsible but they were also robbed and jewellery was stolen. My dear old trusting mother would just open the door to anyone who rang the bell.

  45. Oh, goody goody, yet more benefits of diversity
    The diseases are queuing up like holiday makers in Kent

    Deadly Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever which kills 30% of people it infects by making them bleed from the eyes spreads to Spain as man is hospitalised with virus

    and further down

    It came after a mysterious Ebola-like illness killed three people in Tanzania ten days ago.
    Authorities in the East African nation south of Kenya called the outbreak ‘strange’.
    Health chiefs were dispatched to investigate the illness, which has struck 13 people in total.
    None of the 13 Tanzanian patients, who live in the southern Lindi region, have tested positive for either of the haemorrhagic viruses.
    Covid swabs also came back negative, according to the country’s ministry of health.
    Tanzania’s chief medical officer Aifello Sichalwen said one of the patients had fully recovered while the others were being isolated.
    He added: ‘The government formed a team of professionals who are still investigating this unknown disease.’
    Tanzania’s President Samia Suluhu Hassan said the ‘strange’ disease may have been caused by ‘growing interaction’ between humans and wild animals.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11036509/Spain-confirms-case-Crimean-Congo-haemorrhagic-fever.html

    2. “Growing interaction between humans and animals….”
      It’s shag a sheep week, folks.
      Sorry- am trying to be good 😉

      1. At least you didn’t specify if it is the black sheep. That would be waycist.

    3. So when were bleeding from the eyes they were given a “covid swab” to see if they were ill. Yeah, right.

      1. They were probably hoping that it was caused by covid, to give them more grounds for yet more restrictions when the next variant arrives.

  46. Apols to the person that posted this link yesterday. https://www.deliclass.co.uk/ Can’t remember who but thanks.
    This is well worth a visit even though it’s an hour away by car for me.
    Tripadvisor reviews are excellent too. Just a shame they don’t deliver. I would buy half the shop !
    As some Nottlers are nearby i will make a day of it.

      1. Look behind you next time you are in the market. Max said he was going to stalk you !

    2. Ayup Phil,they do a bloody good bacon and egg ciabatta too!
      If you’re coming up I’ll buy lunch in the Red Lion lets organise a day that suits Geoff,John and Maggie as well

      2. Is that the Red Lion at Horsell?

        Horsell is also where HG Wells martians landed !

          1. Just looking at them. Looks fantastic. Dolly is allowed in the garden and the Pub part. Tripadvisor rave reviews. Calves liver…drools.

            Do a deal with Rik about the 20% off. Just a suggestion.

          2. I think it covers up to 8 people but I’m very good friends with them and that could be extended.

          4. Great, I thought it was going to be an instrumental until Justin Haywood strode out.

  47. How shallow our civilization is.

    We had a power failure yesterday, power was out for about eight hours. So much for any shopping, we couldn’t even buy a coffee. In that time our internet and mobile phone service went down, both services apparently have about two hours worth of backup power.

    If doesn’t look good for the future if things fall apart that easily and quickly.

      1. He doesn’t need to practice. It appears he is a fully formed see you next Tuesday.

          1. I have a battery powered rodent catcher, five seconds of zap pow and the beasties are ready for the barbeque.

            As .long as the machine is offline when the solar flare hits, it should be possible to just add batteries and plan dinner.

          2. I do have a working spring loaded rat trap that works. If rubbish did not get removed the rats would soon be out in vast numbers. I have a decent Webley air rifle and a few thousand pellets. Rat, squirrel and pigeon pie (as long as the flour holds out).

        2. You can if you like. I have dried egg and bacon powder to last at least a year.

    3. An EMP or major solar flare will wipe out virtually every form of communication and don’t even think about domestic electricity.
      Military communications in the past, always had terrestrial ‘HF’ back-up, I think its all been dismantled (lack of spares, lack of technical knowledge and money) and a total disinterest in what the future may have install for us.
      Technology is great until it fails.

    4. One system built on another. However I quite like the idea of Green tyrants like Thunberg and Lucas to be without power. They can keep the clothes they’re standing in, but every other sort of man made structure should be forbidden them.

      You can die of thirst after 3 days. I suggest we sell tickets to see lucas begging for a drink – the utter hypocrisy of her crippling hubris and arrogance finally smacking her in the fac ewould be wonderful.

      1. You are right, they can keep their clothes. A naked doomgoblin is too much for me.

  48. The Beeb in Overdrive:

    “Climate change: How to talk to a denier
    By Merlyn Thomas & Marco Silva
    BBC Climate Disinformation reporters”

    Climate Change: How to talk to BBC Climate Disinformation reporters.
    Fuck off and go and read what other reputable climatologists are saying!

        1. I’m sure these people are doing it just to annoy us!

          “The US climate envoy, John Kerry, says President Joe Biden is considering announcing a climate emergency.
          The move would give him additional powers to push his renewable energy agenda, which has been held up by lack of support in Congress.
          Mr Kerry told the BBC it was “less than ideal” that Congress was not “full-throatedly” in favour.”

    2. Another, factual, reply from climate deniers:

      Atmosphere
      Earth’s atmosphere is so much more than the air we breathe. A trip from the surface of Earth to outer space would result in passing through five different layers, each with very different characteristics.
      While oxygen is necessary for most life on Earth, the majority of Earth’s atmosphere is not oxygen. Earth’s atmosphere is composed of about 78 percent nitrogen, 21 percent oxygen, 0.9 percent argon, and 0.1 percent other gases. Trace amounts of carbon dioxide, methane, water vapour, and neon are some of the other gases that make up the remaining 0.1 percent.

      https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/atmosphere

    3. Given that China, India and other countries are not going to commit to ‘Net Zero’, wouldn’t it be better for nations collectively to come up with ideas to cope with any Climate Change there may be, rather than try to reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere?

      1. “…rather than try to reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.”

        That’s not the purpose of the mad policies (including the global ‘accords’). The intention is to reduce the rate of emissions.

        Taking meaningful volumes of CO2 out of the atmosphere in the timescales suggested is science fiction.

        1. “Taking meaningful volumes of CO2 out of the atmosphere …”

          There are NO meaningful volumes of CO2 – at just 0.04% it is only PART of the 1% trace gases, explained in the article from National Geographic below.

          2. Just for the record, and this is probably from an 11 or 12 year old’s syllabus,

            “Photosynthesis is the process in which light energy is converted to chemical energy in the form of sugars. In a process driven by light energy, glucose molecules (or other sugars) are constructed from water and carbon dioxide, and oxygen is released as a byproduct. The glucose molecules provide organisms with two crucial resources: energy and fixed—organic—carbon.
            Energy. The glucose molecules serve as fuel for cells: their chemical energy can be harvested through processes like cellular respiration and fermentation, which generate adenosine triphosphate—ATP, a small, energy-carrying molecule—for the cell’s immediate energy needs.

            Fixed carbon. Carbon from carbon dioxide—inorganic carbon—can be incorporated into organic molecules; this process is called carbon fixation, and the carbon in organic molecules is also known as fixed carbon. The carbon that’s fixed and incorporated into sugars during photosynthesis can be used to build other types of organic molecules needed by cells.“

          3. “…other types of organic molecules…”

            Such as cellulose and lignin, the very stuff of life!

          6. Meaningful volumes by their reckoning, hence the madcap schemes to pump the stuff into old oil wells.

          10. I think part (of what I regard as a false analysis) comes from the man-caused destruction of some of the Ozone layer, where relatively miniscule amounts of gas caused surprising amount of damage; The argument then runs: if one small amount of gas can do damage, why should another have an equal effect. Oddly enough the ozone issue might contribute to global cooling.
            https://climate.nasa.gov/faq/15/is-the-ozone-hole-causing-climate-change/#:~:text=The%20ozone%20layer%2C%20which%20lies,molecules%20in%20the%20upper%20atmosphere.

          12. I believe so. The article, even though it’s from a climate change group, is balanced, for a change.

        2. “Taking meaningful volumes of CO2 out of the atmosphere …”

          There are NO meaningful volumes of CO2 – at just 0.04% it is only PART of the 1% trace gases, explained in the article from National Geographic below.

      2. As any gardener (and greenhouse tomato growers in particular ) will tell you additional CO2 in the atmosphere is exceedingly beneficial for healthy and productive plant growth.

    4. It’s called negotiation. The problem is they can’t. Negotiation relies on the default that they can be wrong and the Left wing green tyrants can never, ever accept that they are wrong.

  49. Wordle 400 4/6

    🟨⬜⬜⬜🟨
    ⬜🟨⬜🟨🟩
    ⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    2. Bogey 5 for me.
      Wordle 400 5/6

      ⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜
      ⬜🟩🟨⬜🟨
      🟨🟩⬜🟩⬜
      ⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    3. #MeToo Par Four

      Wordle 400 4/6
      ⬜⬜🟨🟩⬜
      ⬜🟩⬜🟩🟩
      ⬜🟩⬜🟩🟩
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    1. A bit of sunshine wasn’t the cause of the fires.

      The Premier Inn will be full already with unpaying guests.

      1. I thought Nottlers might pick up my implication. The nearby Church suffered as well.

      2. I don’t think the heat was the cause of most of the fires either. It was an opportunity for those with agenda to make a point.
        Simply won’t believe another word said by the govt or media about anything- not that I have for ages. It won’t make an iota of difference who is slithered in as Tory leader- they are all as bloody bad. Ditto all the other so called parties. Enough!

    1. Daily Quordle 182
      5️⃣7️⃣
      4️⃣9️⃣
      quordle.com
      ⬜🟩⬜⬜🟩 ⬜⬜🟨⬜🟨
      ⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜ 🟨⬜⬜⬜⬜
      ⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
      🟨⬜🟨⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨
      ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ 🟨⬜🟨🟨⬜
      ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

      ⬜⬜⬜🟩⬜ 🟨🟨⬜⬜🟩
      ⬜🟩🟩⬜⬜ 🟨⬜⬜⬜⬜
      ⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
      ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬜🟨⬜⬜🟩
      ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬜⬜🟨🟨🟨
      ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬜🟨⬜⬜🟨
      ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ 🟩🟩🟨🟨🟨
      ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

      1. Of course not. The moderators wouldn’t be able to cope. far easier just to shut down any debate altogether.

        There’s also – if I were being fair – a legal element with an on going claim. One that should be refused and the illegal gimmigrant returned to france, as they should all be, immediately.

  53. That’s me for this hot day. Surprise surprise… They say it may rain tomorrow and Tuesday – but they have been saying that every evening for the last month or so. The “jam tomorrow” principle.

    Anyway, I bet it doesn’t. I am off to water – continuing to pray that the well doesn’t dry up.

    Have a jolly evening. A demain

    2. We just got back from lunch at Watergate Bay Hotel with daughter and her beau and his parents. Hectic drive there and hectic drive back. Poor but expensive lunch.
      MoH and I still speaking to shouting at each other.
      In between laughing about the lunch that is.

  55. The EU can’t afford a trade war with Britain

    The EU’s threat of a trade war is hollow. It is time to ditch the Protocol, and the UK needs a leader with the guts to take on Brussels.

    KATE HOEY, BEN HABIB

    The Northern Ireland Protocol has partitioned our country with a border down the Irish Sea. It has caused anger and despair. Every time any hint of reclaiming our territorial integrity is mentioned, the EU threatens a trade war; now we are seeing more legal action over the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, championed by Liz Truss.

    You do not deal with a bully by ceding ground. You most certainly do not do so when the threat is to the fabric of your own country. Not every Tory MP agrees with us, however. Many, Rishi Sunak apparently included, would prefer to give up on sorting out the Protocol than face a trade war.

    They need not worry. The EU is in no position to enter such a conflict and, if it were foolish enough to start one, we would win. Its economy is in deep trouble. Already massively over-indebted before the extra borrowing required to fund lockdowns, it now faces rising interest rates and an energy crisis. Many EU member states are nursing debt burdens well in excess of 100 per cent of GDP; Germany’s debt level is over 70 per cent. The UK has similar problems but our position is better because we have our own currency and a genuine central bank. Nearly half our national debt is owned by the Bank of England. Interest payments on this debt are in effect the right hand paying the left.

    Then there is the energy crisis facing Europe. Germany eschewed nuclear power, instead relying on Russian fossil fuels. Its economy is under huge pressure as it deals with the twin effects of the rising cost of living and having to cut ties with Moscow. Gas is likely to be rationed over winter. Hence, any threat of a trade war with the UK is vacuous.

    And if the EU did pick a fight, it would have to implement a customs border on the island of Ireland, doing the very thing it claimed would be unthinkable and which the Protocol was purportedly enacted to prevent. Their duplicity would finally be revealed. Our government would not implement checks on our side of the border, just as none are taking place for goods coming to the mainland at the moment. The contrast of a protectionist EU and an open UK would pull the rug out from under the false narrative to which our government bowed in agreeing to the Protocol.

    Surely even the weakest within our government must see that now is the time to ditch it? Let us start by accepting the truth: Parliament did not vote to partition the UK, so the Protocol’s existence is illegal. The Government should rightly concede the Judicial Review we brought against it and which is due to be heard by the Supreme Court in November. It was difficult for Mr Johnson to accept the Protocol’s illegality because it was his creation, but Ms Truss could and should do so.

    She has already moved against it with her Bill but that bill does not fully neuter the Protocol; it entails reams of additional legislation and an uphill battle with the House of Lords; plus, she will always be accused of breaking international law.

    Instead, by conceding the Judicial Review, the Protocol would immediately be illegal – from inception. Immediately, under international convention, it would then be the EU that would have broken international law (by signing an agreement in breach of fundamental domestic British law). In one legal and morally correct step, the Protocol would be gone.

    Whichever route she chooses, now is the right time for Truss to take decisive action. In Truss both of us and the people of Northern Ireland are trusting.

    Baroness Kate Hoey is a non-affiliated Peer and Ben Habib was an MEP for London

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/07/23/eu-cant-afford-trade-war-britain/

    1. Kate Hoey is another one who would have been a good PM, despite her being a Labour MP. It really isn’t right and left politics anymore, it’s that 99.9% of the bastards care not one iota for the country and its population.

    2. Tell the EU that if they want a hard border, let Eire control it.

      Tell Eire that if they want to trade with the UK they should tell the EU to STFU over a hard border.

      We can both carry on as before, I very much doubt that companies will absorb the extra costs of using Eire as their conduit into the UK and vice versa, to avoid customs etc..

      If they do, that suggests that the EU is batting on a very sticky wicket.

    2. Sir Robert Peel, who established the Metropolitan Police in London – the first professional, centrally organised police force – would not recognise the current regime.

      He would be appalled …

      1. I am appalled by the decades-long trend in police clothing/ uniform:

        The trend from white shirts to black shirts and replacement of traditional Bobbies’ helmets with baseball caps is sinister.

        The overt display and wearing of ‘rainbow colours’ is absurd, weird and woke.

        These trends have driven a breakdown of trust between the police and the general public.

        Perhaps – Reagan-like – we should sack the whole f**king lot – and start again?

        1. ‘Evening, Lacoste, The overt display and wearing of ‘rainbow colours’ is absurd, weird and woke, in my book they’d be charged with being improperly dressed, bringing the uniform into disrepute, flouting good order and discipline and any other charges I could think to throw at them

    4. A bit weird. It looks like bollocks to me. Especially with the live commenting.

  58. Ignoring all the doom & gloom along with the inevitable dire prognostications from the MSM.
    Had a very enjoyable evening at Burnby Hall Gardens (Pocklington not Pickering as I said in my previous post) mea maxima culpa. Although there was a slight drizzle but that cleared and replaced by being rather cold.
    The production of Pride & Prejudice was well done, despite the cold.

    Now sat listening to:
    https://youtu.be/HN2DiY5OXF4

    An album that I love, but only if I’m of a happy disposition, otherwise it makes me feel quite sad.
    Rain outside but a bottle of Shiraz helps.

    1. Going to watch the Proms at 8- seems like it might be good. Royal music…Zadok, I Was Glad.. and hopefully more.

        2. Lucky you 🙂
          The one advantage of living down south and there are not many.

        1. Yes, indeed. I love that sort of music and am quietly excited about this concert. I am wondering if Elgar’s pieces like Crown the King and etc will be included. I will find out.

        2. Zadok offers the thrilling opportunity, for an individual chorister, to have an unintended solo!

  62. When will some sporting body have the guts to stand up and say to the race baiters that if they don’t like the sport find another?
    https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-62283600

    Cricket Scotland’s board has resigned a day ahead of the publication of a review of racism in the sport.

    It is expected to report findings of institutional racism in the Scottish game.

    The directors resigned with immediate effect on Sunday morning.

    “We are all truly sorry and have apologised publicly to everyone who has experienced racism, or any other form of discrimination, in cricket in Scotland,” they said.

    1. Nearly every race-baiter is a leftist.

      Leftists don’t build…they only know how to leach off of, and destroy others.

          1. I don’t think we have one! But you can go on the ‘trusted’ list if you were invited here by Sosraboc.

          5. We’ll just have to run you past a few of our US intel assets first, but I’m sure if they don’t find anything you’ll be welcome.

      2. Welcome to Nottle, I don’t recall seeing you here before, although we’ve corresponded on other sites.

          1. From the posts of yours that I’ve seen elsewhere you ought to enjoy it here; there are many different viewpoints but by and large people get on, although some discussions can get quite heated.
            elf & safety used to be a regular visitor, but I’ve not seen him anywhere for quite some time.

    2. I’m not a director or on any board of any body, sporting or not, but is it not likely that these people, and their families, are just unwilling to run the gauntlet of MSM scrutiny which will always leave the taint of racism hanging over them. Easy to accuse these days, but very difficult to fight the accusations, real or purely malicious. Maybe it takes a lot of guts to put the family in the line of fire.

      1. And that’s why the bastards succeed. And it isn’t just the race baiters, it applies equally to the LGBTQ etc brigade
        The foul creatures whip up a social media storm and attack the individuals, it needs to be done at governing body level and the hate laws they are using should be used against them.
        It won’t happen of course.

    3. Canadian men won some 4*100 meters race last night. Noone is complaining that there was not a white man / person on the team.

      1. You never hear them complaining when an English sprint relay team is all black, nor when an African team for almost any sport is all black.

    1. A lady at our bowls club was going for her 4th booster and said she might miss bowls for a couple of weeks as every time she has a booster it makes her feel ill. She, like the majority of the members, boast at how many experimental injections they’ve had. We didn’t comment at how stupid she was but when we’re asked we reply that haven’t had any and have taken vitamin D3 on medical advice and haven’t had as much as a cold in 30 months. There is then an eerie silence.

      1. There is a huge amount of cognitive dissonance when people can see the jabs make them ill, but still go for more…….

  66. Patriotic Proms…. was very good- to a point. Too much Handel Water Music which is OK but boring. I am tolerant and quite enjoy the new composers but I did not like that piece using HM’s own words. Too screechy by half.
    I was really hoping for The Three Elizabeths by Eric Coates- wonderful music.
    Not enough Elgar; the Walton was wonderful and, as a virtuoso triangle player, the Britten Courtly Dances were wonderful.
    Fussy bugger aren’t I? ;-))

    1. Agree about the screechy rendering of HM’s words. I like the Water Music though and Pomp and Circumstance sent me home happy.

      1. Have got the Three Lizzies in my earphones right now.
        Handel wrote so much better stuff than the Water Music….Coronation Anthems and let’s not forget Messiah.

      1. Just arriving. Had I been leaving I would have written “goodnight, all” 🙂

  70. Goodnight and God bless, fellow NoTTLers – and that’s not because Connors has just arrived!

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