Tuesday 16 August: The candidates for PM had better have an answer to the energy crisis

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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701 thoughts on “Tuesday 16 August: The candidates for PM had better have an answer to the energy crisis”

  3. Good morning all.
    11½°C and a bit of a hazy sky this morning. Looks like another hot & dry day ahead.

    Off to Derby later to see Step-son.

    1. Well, over here the forecast is possible rain from 5 pm today until 8 pm tomorrow. Hopefully it will come to pass.

      1. Nice one! A hangup and kick back in one movement.
        Silly bugger should have been stood further back or over to the side.

  4. An excellent commentary on the VERY disturbing case of a PCSO over reaching her powers that I highlighted yesterday is on Grahame Linehan’s site:-

    “In this country we have never had a Cheka, a Gestapo or a Stasi. We have never lived in an Orwellian society”
    Women are now being harassed in their homes by an ideological police force. Dennis Kavanagh looks at the legal side of the recent incident

    Dennis Noel Kavanagh
    9 hr ago
    Mr Justice Knowles giving judgment in the case of Miller v College of Policing memorably dealt with the submission that a visit from police officers to “check your thinking” was not some trivial matter holding:

    “In my judgment these submissions impermissibly minimise what occurred and do not properly reflect the value of free speech in a democracy. There was not a shred of evidence that the Claimant was at risk of committing a criminal offence. The effect of the police turning up at his place of work because of his political opinions must not be underestimated. To do so would be to undervalue a cardinal democratic freedom. In this country we have never had a Cheka, a Gestapo or a Stasi. We have never lived in an Orwellian society”

    Those words seem particular apt today with the news that a woman was visited, (apparently in her own home), by a police functionary who objected to her displaying a sticker on her own property reading “Trans ideology erases women” and encouraging her to obtain education such that she wouldn’t think or communicate this idea which (apparently) offends against the police’s political position that “Trans women are women”. A recording of the exchange is available on the twitter link below, Glinner has also posted a page containing the audio here which also contains a transcript prepared by a user going by the name “Parrot” which I’m going to repurpose in this piece order to make legal comment.

    Others can elegantly make the obvious political points regarding how terrifying this authoritarian Stonewall style of policing is, I’ll confine myself here to a basic legal primer with the hope people can use it if necessary if they find themselves in a similar position.

    Read further at:-
    https://grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/in-this-country-we-have-never-had

  5. Interest-free loans to be rolled out in UK to help with food bills. 16 August 2022.

    Supermarket Iceland is part of scheme to offer sums of £25 to £100 to buy everyday items.

    But you would still owe money that you do not have! This is just a part of the process of creating a society of debt serfs. You have to compare this penny-pinching lickspittle, miserliness with the largesse distributed free of obligation to anyone who is not white and born in this country!

    https://www.theguardian.com/money/2022/aug/16/interest-free-loans-uk-food-microloans-cost-living-iceland

    1. FFS has it not dawned on people yet that loans have to be paid back?

      I very much doubt that the satanists will “forgive us our debts.”

      1. Except usurious students loans which work on the basis that you pay far more than an equitable rate of interest. For example when the bank rate was under 1%, interest was being charged at over 6%. In any fair system 5/6ths of the repayment should have been considered repayment of capital.

        And yet the excess payment – which is in effect capital repayment – does not reduce the level of the outstanding loan. Another word for this is theft.

        1. Agree completely – if the kids had learned how to do compound interest at school, they would realise it is a scam!

    2. Mid-morning we had 29mm in 30 minutes – the first rain we’ve had in over three months down here near Winchester.

  7. Sacheen Littlefeather: Oscars apologises to actress after 50 years D Fail

    The activist and actress appeared on live TV in 1973 to refuse an Oscar that Marlon Brando won for The Godfather.. (Brandon’s speech, the first political statement at the televised ceremony, was extremely long and she was told to reduce it to a one minute rant.)

    “The abuse you endured… was unwarranted and unjustified,” said (Gay boy) David Rubin, former president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

    Brando was acclaimed for his portrayal of a gay-boy soldier in 1967* – based on experience perhaps? The recent explosion of rainbow flags and LGBT has been simmering in Hollywood for more than 70 years.

    *Reflections in a Golden Eye – American drama film directed by John Huston .. It deals with elements of repressed sexuality, both homosexual and heterosexual, as well as voyeurism and murder. The film stars Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando.

    1. Morning, Elsie. I have about half a gallon of the wild plums you want to ‘crumble’ available. Thrashing the tree as suggested by Phizee worked but flying bullace are a menace. Not as bad as ladder work, though. I’m passing your location later and I’ll call, if you’re out I’ll leave the bag by your door.

      1. As you know, Korky, I wasn’t out and I was very pleased to see you again. I think your post is mistaken – it wasn’t about half a gallon of wild plums but rather a ton and a half of them. I have put most of them in the freezer, except for 2 lbs with which I made a massive large plum crumble which will keep me in desserts for the next six months! Still, rather too much than too little (as I also remarked after the very small amount of rainfall today!) Thanks, once again. (PS – the crumble is delicious.)

  10. 355144+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,
    Tuesday 16 August: The candidates for PM had better have an answer to the energy crisis,

    Surely rephase,

    Tuesday 16 August: The candidates for PM had better have an answer to the mass multi crisis situation as we have now, inherited via the polling booth.

    This odious situation these Isles are in is not a new happening it has been politically constructed & finding support these last forty years, you can NEVER EVER,EVER put a party before a Country, history proves that as in 39/45 at an unacceptable cost in live’s.

    The only difference being there will be no need of travel for the next major upset it will surely be internal.

    The death count started insidiously when anthony charlie lynton AKA the bog man invited every miscreant on the planet to the United Kingdom, and the bog man had support time & again.

    That triggered the tory party into action, acting NO longer in the interest of the Country but to continue in the same vein also with support time & again
    ongoing.

    in hamlets,villages,towns & city’s the situation is out of control and OUT of indigenous hands, change will surely come via the NEW electorate, the existing electorate majority will see to that as repress,replace,reset finds more support arriving daily.

    ‘

  11. Today’s leading letter:

    SIR – I share Alan Rogers’s frustration (Letters, August 13) at the absence of energy from a list of policy priorities in a Conservative Party questionnaire for members – presumably for the benefit of our next prime minister.

    The current shortage of affordable energy was predictable, Ukraine war notwithstanding. Because of poor and political decisions and indecisions, it has been like watching a slow-motion car crash 30 years in the making.

    Stephen Rae
    Petersfield, Hampshire

    Yes, he’s not wrong. I trust that history will not be kind to Johnson and former governments for their shocking dereliction of duty in failing to provide for a secure and affordable energy supply, the damage from which is going to blight the next generation’s hope of prosperity.

    1. SIR – Which prime minister oversaw the destruction of our gas storage facilities? They should be in jail.

      Lady Dutton
      Sherborne, Dorset

      If only…

      1. They should be in jail.

        They should all be in jail Lady Hutton. Except for the ones who should be hanged!

          1. I suppose at £50,000 per head per annum, gaol would a be a darn sight cheaper than keeping them in their current posts.

    2. Same old, same old story…….everything they come into contact with they eff it
      up big time. Everything !

    3. Same old, same old story…….everything they come into contact with they eff it
      up big time. Everything !

  12. Do you want free speech to thrive? Then it has to be regulated, now more than ever. 16 August 2022.

    Freedom of speech is one of the most slippery concepts in political philosophy. John Stuart Mill pronounced it absolute but qualified it, as he did all liberties, where it causes “harm” to others. On that tenuous footing has grown an edifice of laws on slander, libel, incitement and, more recently, the causing of offence.

    What we see in this article is the Socialist Dilemma; if people are allowed to say what they think where would this leave us?

    The very words, Regulated Free Speech are a logical paradox. What is regulated can never be Free! There is nothing “slippery” about Free Speech at all. It is simply the right to say what you please without fear or concern; the natural state of things. Mill’s only qualification was to say that it would always be better than the alternative.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/aug/15/free-speech-regulate-online-safety-bill

    3. There is a three-letter word that does all that is required to regulate free speech; this is ‘wit’. If someone has said something tasteless or even offensive, then there is an art in making such a comment rebound on the perpetrator without needing to go to law.

      The knack is coming up with a come-back immediately, rather than ten minutes after the event! It ought to be taught to all politics students. Offensive comments are therefore welcomed as a golden opportunity to show off one’s wit.

    1. I’m probably alone in this but I find a sport which involves repeatedly punching someone in the head until they’re concussed for at least 10secs less than appealing

      3. I don’t regard boxing as a sport – the purpose is to inflict as much physical damage as possible on the opponent. And the spectators remind me of Romans viewing gladiatorial bouts in the Colosseum.

        1. My guilty secret is that as a teenager I hugely enjoyed the Saturday wrestling with Kent Walton commenting and the antics of Les Kellett et. al. Even then I was well aware that it was a choreographed pantomime with goodies and baddies but I enjoyed it non the less

      4. I have never understood the appeal.
        And the shots I’ve seen of women boxing just remind me of the more overheated 50’s epics on the decline and fall of some ancient civilisation. (Usually starring Burt Lancaster in a gilt embroidered bed sheet.)

  14. SIR – Professor Karol Sikora points out that non-Covid deaths are soaring.

    Indeed, mortality from any cause is well above the five-year average and has been for months. Given that the average age for Covid deaths during the pandemic was 82, it would be reasonable to expect rates to be lower.

    The public needs to know which age groups are being affected and what the causes of death are. If, as is likely, they are a result of the measures taken during the pandemic, it is imperative to understand why.

    This tragedy is unfolding in plain sight and no one seems to be trying to get to the truth of the matter.

    Dr David Walters
    Burton Bradstock, Dorset

    Tried watching GBN, Dr Walters?? It’s all there!

    1. This is the stage when people start pretending that vaxx side-effects were totally unknown and unpredicted.

      1. One of the major reasons why I’ve abstained from day one – and continue so to do.

        1. The best thing that happened to me was that my doctor advised me most strongly not to have the bogus vaccine; Caroline has two auto-immune diseases so it is imperative that she does not take the shots.

          If it all got too much and we decided to end it all then getting the Covid gene therapy might do the trick and we would not have the stigma of suicide being written on our death certificates!

  16. ‘Morning All

    Modern Life…….

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/293c7f97c1f9c980a037f8ef6b1a74ffdea9c77897ac6d8c98a991d2d3f68b0d.jpg

    http://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/81b6f43f3b9f1a1cc4abba18e76ac8dc64703c5a4d3350555a08dc0a507a9e15.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/243c3fa8722ca03187927af39b4934670a0191fa480f318a21a0e681bc272b95.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7d4534346a1431b95dbff89e325a8114cbaedabe70f2fea4c8ffeb9767e68836.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2caf3b0bc67ea5a7fcec72065c3d3aaf2af97f3a998e70dbb916f7a4bb32f217.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/aa269e04502affec236161f10fd1f0a70390bb6b27c4cfb4b4d267b7d4eae99c.jpg

    1. Some really good ones there; thanks!

      I’d steal them for Twitter, but have been on the naughty step again there for a week now.

          1. Daily Clout, a website organised by Naomi Wolf, tweeted the miscarriage rate from the Pfizer documents and:

            Twitter bans DailyClout for accurately reporting on a 44 per cent miscarriage rate in the Pfizer documents.

  17. SIR – What is the controller of BBC Radio 2 trying to do to the station? I fail to understand the drive towards a younger audience when the BBC already caters for it with Radio 1.

    Most listeners to Radio 2 knew that Jo Whiley wasn’t suited to daytime radio, yet Simon Mayo’s excellent drive-time show was destroyed by putting her with him. Thankfully, Ms Whiley is back on evening radio and remains one of the few presenters worth listening to on weekdays.

    The removal of Steve Wright is another issue. While not my favourite presenter, he attracts an audience of several million, yet this is apparently not good enough for his bosses. Now we have Paul O’Grady departing – another presenter messed around by the BBC and driven out. Yet all this change actually goes against the BBC’s own philosophy.

    The BBC has for some time made diversity a major part of its business, which included employing a director of creative diversity (at considerable expense to the licence payer – though she, too, has left), yet it is showing no diversity in aiming Radio 2 at an audience it caters for elsewhere.

    The only daytime presenter worth listening to nowadays is the superb Ken Bruce, though I fear he may be the next one to leave. I cannot stand the “in-your-face” style of Zoe Ball and Sara Cox, and the latter has the misfortune of being on at the same time as Simon Mayo, who has taken his old drive-time show to another station.

    Even though I watched very little of the BBC’s television output, I was happy to pay my licence fee for the diversity of the radio stations. Now this has been severely narrowed, and there is very little left for my generation (born in the 1950s) to listen to. I’m wondering if it’s worth continuing.

    Matthew Biddlecombe
    Sampford Courtenay, Devon

    The BBC’s manic pursuit of the ‘yoof’ listener and viewer does not seem to be paying off if my family’s experience is any guide. In their case BBC programmes are rarely visited because they don’t appeal. Furthermore, there is so much choice available now. But in the process the BBC is destroying the viewing and listening habits of those of us who have been round the block a few times. The failure to attract the young while at the same time pi55ing off the traditional audience takes real skill!!

    1. My eldest grandson (aged30 = beeboid target audience) has no TV and doesn’t listen to ANY BBC radio. Gets all his music off of (sic) the internet

        1. No doubt. But that is par for the course, these days. My point was that the beeboid drive for yoof had completely by-passed one of the prime targets.

    2. Frankly the increasing amount of [c]rap music, the loss of Mayo and now Paul O’Grady, and the dreadful music choice and style of Sarah Cox is beginning to grate – BBC Radio 2 should be for those of us who choose not to listen to the crap churned out by Radio 1, 6, etc, not a clone of those stations! I worry about how long Ken Bruce will last – his excellent show is one of the few worth listening to.

      1. Ken the Bruce most irritating. He has a very patronising tone towards callers and sounds terribly sel-satisfied the rest of the time. I always thought of him as a poor man’s Wogan.

    3. Just spotted this in the top Letters BTL comments:

      Matthew Biddlecombe 3 HRS AGO

      This morning’s letters make for very depressing reading.

      Planning processes and road adoptions taking three years to complete, non-Covid deaths (of any cause) well above the five year average, soaring energy costs that neither Rishi Sunak or Liz Truss have addressed in their campaigns, lower than anticipated A-Grades for our school-children because they bore the brunt of lockdown, and a gentleman who, in May, was diagnosed as needing a replacement hip and (3 months later) finds he is still bottom of the list with a 25 week wait.

      I could, of course, add that whilst all this is going on we have a Prime Minister who, along with his cabinet, have gone AWOL with the exception of the aforementioned two, who are travelling the country in an effort to get a mere 180,000 members to vote for them to become our new leader.

      Let’s face it everyone; the UK is, well and truly, broken.

      * * *

      Is this Mr Biddlecombe’s drive for domination? Let’s hope so.

    4. The young use streaming services to view their programs as they have a choice of time to view ie on demand. The BBC (spit spit!) ignoring the older generation who is paying the licence fee (I don’t)

    5. I use to listen to radio 4 first thing but……. then had 2 on in the background most of the day, Ken Bruce, Vine turned down, a nasty piece of work. The kitchen radio remains unplugged now.

        1. Ditto – I now stream music, podcasts and audiobooks from my PC through the Alexa in the kitchen. No ads and all stuff I want to listen to.

  18. Morning all 😃
    Still no rain 🤔 did they mean if the weather changed it would rain or might rain. It seems weather forecasts have become politicised as well. Promises, Promises !

  19. SIR – Jacob Rees-Mogg is right to criticise council workers still working from home.

    As a commercial property lawyer in the North West, I feel I can speak for most in that profession, as well as land agents and developers. We are all fed up with delays in the planning process, associated planning agreements and road adoption agreements.

    Documents that took between three and six months, before Covid, now take anything from 18 months to three years. This delays developments and the associated Community Infrastructure Levy payments to councils, along with payments for housing, highways and so on under planning and road agreements.

    One can only wonder if “working” takes on a new meaning when council employees are doing it from home.

    Naomi Fell
    Kendal, Cumbria

    Never mind, Naomi; when the cold weather arrives and individual fuel bills look like the national debt, many will be glad to return to ‘proper’ working. Who knows, they might even find the whole experience more rewarding than shirking solo…

    1. 355144+ up ticks,

      Morning Rik,

      On par with Brexitexit 48 % wanted incarceration
      ongoing, & in the United Kingdom they are still in positions of power & finding support.

    2. This is not hyperbole.
      Never on NOTTL, but in real life I also experienced this. I went on some demonstrations, just standing quietly holding up placards questioning what we were being told about the vaxx.
      We had people driving past in their cars, their faces distorted with fury as they made rude gestures at us. Cars swerved towards us and away at the last moment. Several times we had people giving a na zi salute as they drove past. People stopped and lowered their windows to shout abuse at us.
      About 10 – 15% of the population would have put us in a concentration camp, no question about it.

      1. Since 2019, I have developed a different view of “British phlegm”. Either we had a lucky escape in the 1930s, or the national character has changed.

    3. Spell “unvaccinated” as “Jews”.
      (And I’ll forgive him ‘naval piercings’.)

  26. I put this up last night and I apologise for posting it again.

    In my defence, at the moment we have six students with us on a French course from schools such as Winchester, Marlborough, and Lancing and also a girl from a state funded grammar school.

    One can debate the fairness of private education until the cows come home (not that flatulent cows as much in favour at the moment with the PTB!) but what these young people have in common is the desire to succeed and do as well as they can. The people who come to us are happy to give up a week of their school holidays and work harder on their French than they have ever done before because they and their parents want them to prosper.

    And yet such motivation must now be punished. No wonder Britain is quickly descending into suicidal mediocrity!

    Record number of A-level pupils from affluent backgrounds set to miss out on university
    Students from areas rated ‘most advantaged’ by universities least likely to have an offer compared to disadvantaged pupils, data show
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/08/15/record-number-a-level-pupils-affluent-backgrounds-set-miss-university/

    BTL

    And the BBC would rather have an English Women’s football team which was not all white even if this meant having a team which would not win the competition! And how about replacing the fastest black women in the 100 metres sprint relay team with a couple of slower white women?

    Meritocracy is all very well if it seriously wants those with merit to succeed whether in the academic field or on the football field or athletics track – the alternative is mediocrity.

    1. Rastus
      one of my sons gave himself an education at the university of life, watched a zillion youtube videos on finance,taught himself animation theory, got a lifetime ban from the google app store as a fourteen year old for uploading a glue-sniffing simulation app and is now a freelance game developer (self taught), saving for his first house.
      He and his friend use their local university library to work in. Two kids in their early twenties, both with money in the bank, sitting quietly working alongside students with five figure debts.
      Tell me again why my son needs university?

      1. I agree that going to university is not necessarily a sensible decision – indeed it is often a waste of time.

        But my point is that society seems to be punishing aspiration. Turning things on their head: Imagine a skilled worker with his or her hands being thwarted because he or she came from a poor area!

          2. I think we agree on this point. But what I object to is being told what to do.

      2. I agree that going to university is not necessarily a sensible decision – indeed it is often a waste of time.

        But my point is that society seems to be punishing aspiration. Turning things on their head: Imagine a skilled worker with his or her hands being thwarted because he or she came from a poor area!

      3. I have never been able to understand why it seems to be the assumption that people with money are more able or likely to be better at learning languages. My parents weren’t wealthy my eldest sister learnt French and was good enough to take summer holidays with families in France. She was at an all girls Grammar school. I must out on Grammar school because one of my teachers hated me and used to beat me up. At my secondary school our form teacher was a French lady but for some unexplained reason, most of my class were never given the opportunity to study French. Although I was good at history geography RE music technology games reasonable at maths.
        Forward thinking at education planning level was not part of the adgenda.

        1. I’m not and never have been wealthy, Eddy, but I have been fortunate that my work has taken me to quite a few countries where English is not the first language and, by dint of listening and asking, I have more than got by in German (plat) and French and am able to be understood in Swedish and Spanish. I even learnt a little Tagalog and Mandarin during sojourns in the Far East,

          1. That’s more or less my point Tom.
            I was able to pickup and understand language fairly easily.
            Typical of our society, too much emphasis has always been placed on rich and posh. It’s the reason we have always ended up with our out of touch political classes.

      4. A chum is having his newly graduated students applying for roles. Both are bright, both have created little apps. The graduate role one applied for wanted a minimum of 3 years experience in Python. Another 4 in C# and SQL. They’re graduates, for goodness sake. They’re bugger all commercial experience let alone having written database software under working pressure for 3 years.

        1. My recommendation is that they submit their CVs in electronic format and that they repeat all the keywords and phrases in white text in the white background. A casual reader will not see these but the software that filters out potential recruits will, and hopefully lead to an interview where the applicant has a chance to sell themselves personally. The key thing is to get past the initial software filter.

      5. Well done your son. I agree that he did not need or want to go to university – but we all have different aspirations and what I abominate is politically motivated people trying to direct us and tell us what to do.

        I was a wastrel when I was 18 and had no desire to go to university even though I had good enough ‘A’ level grades to do so so I got a job in an advertising agency and shared a rented flat with friends in London and had the whale of a time. I only went to university because a girlfriend at the time had a spare UCCA form which I completed for fun and I was surprised to receive an offer.

        Both my sons went to university and both are now in very highly paid jobs doing the things they love. They both bought their own homes in their mid 20s, one is married and the other lives with his girlfriend whom he met at the age of 17 on his first day at UEA. He has now got an M.Sc and his girlfriend is about to finish her Ph.D

    2. The state does not want people to succeed. Success is bad. Look at those energy companies making ‘excess profits’ (whatever that dribbling nonsense means). Success is frowned upon as it stinks of individualism, duty and hard work. No one should have to work hard for what they get. It should be given to them, regardless if they deserved it or not.

    3. Perhaps failure to get into university will turn out to be the best thing that could have happened to them.

      1. I have the same feeling.
        Oldest granddaughter had to go to university to become a nurse! I have kept v.v. schtum on that one. Her younger sister has just completed 3 years of paying to be bu88ered about by lecturers and ‘covid’; she wishes to become a teacher in social stuff etc…. I kept even quieter when she told me about her dissertation!!!

    4. My goddaughter(ish) is currently waiting for A level results, and I fear she will be affected by this, her parents having gone without to send her to private school. They’re all for equity and the latest social justice cause; I just hope that she doesn’t learn the hard way what it means in practice.

      1. Same with our youngest granddaughter who is waiting for her “A” level results and grandson who took his GCSEs this year.

  27. How can anyone expect either of the two candidates to be able to sort out the mess in the bin of lies left behind by Johnson.
    I see the removal vans were outside number 10 at the weekend. I wonder where they are them moving to.
    As we all know it’s the civil service that runs the country so I don’t believe it actually matters who gets the job. Unlike the last occupant of No. 10. I expect the next will be a better, more rational person to deal with. Note the missing word……..honest.

        1. Nice one. I had to check.
          There are so many places in New England named after East Anglian villages that it sounded all too plausible.

          1. Well, HP Lovecraft knew a thing or two. One of the children likes his creepy stuff. I now avoid it like the plague.

      2. Quite often places known as towns for centuries are being renamed as a village, just because its trendy.

        1. I used to live in Clapham SW4 – just off Abbeville Road. I left in 1984.

          I am told that the area is now known as “Abbeville Village”…..{:¬))

          1. Harpingyarr aka the town of Harpenden in Herts. Is known by the locals as The village of…..

    2. There is so much that needs resolution it’s almost comical. The state will do nothing, of course. As soon as whoever gets the job, they’ll start campaigning for re-election. That’ll be their focus.

      Standing up to the blob will come a very long way down the list because it would mean endless negative press headlines, a constant stream of obstructions, hinderances and minor inefficiencies that would cripple the state machine. Nothing will be done about gimmigrants, policing, NHS reform, the cost of energy and fuel. The mantra will be ‘get re-elected’, then we will have a whole new agenda.

  28. Good Morning. Another gray day with drizzle like a fine mist. The grain harvest was mostly completed in the sunshine, and that’s perfect. Cool, like a Scottish summer.

  29. Good morning all, a muggy start to the day – it was a steady drizzle for most of yesterday – with rain forecast later. I’m hoping it clears up tomorrow and Thursday as I’ve got the pleasure of two rounds at Loch Lomond GC to look forward to – I’ll be taking a spare trolley to carry extra golf balls, just in case.

    1. We had a moggy start to the day. Pickles came in very fast for his breakfast. Gus took an hour. Both are now sound asleep.

    1. If that isn’t an invasion I don’t know what is.
      How many people this week had a request in the post for donations for RNLI ?

      1. Who is going to fund the RNLI when regular contributors decide they have had enough?

        1. The state, through enforced taxation. Pretty much what the Home office has been doing.

        3. Precisely Richard. The government had and still have no right to use this publicly funded rescue service to transport illegal invaders. It stinks of arm waving Johnsonism.

        4. Is anyone still contributing?

          Any pub or shop with one of their little boat shaped collecting tins should paint over RNLI and change it to IRLN – Immigrant Reception, Liaison and Naturalisation

    2. Our borders *could easily* be protected. The state doesn’t want them to be. When they pull up, have them shot.

      1. Realistically we could certainly be a lot tougher. Handcuff them all immediately on arrival. Keep them that way. Take fingerprints and retinal prints. Check blood samples, Examine very throughly for any kind of disease including X-Ray. Send them to a”prison hulk”, still handcuffed and with ankle monitors. There are plenty of cruise ships going cheap. Then deport them without recourse to any appeal or court hearing. No Legal Aid at all. Repeal all law that would prevent or delay any of this. We did not have these laws before, so we do not need them now – they do nothing protect actual British people, far from it.

        1. Yep, certainly the chain gang approach is a good idea – by the collar and straight on to a prison hulk. They don’t exist legally and thus have no protections under law. If lawyers bleat and whine then have them join the other criminals. It’s always foreign lawyers troughing off legal aid anyway, so abolish that.

          When the hulk is full then ship it to France. There’s lots of blither about international law and why we must follow it – that and maritime – but everyone forgets that every country these creatures have passed through has completely ignored those laws itself, so why must we be paragons of virtue?

        2. ‘…with ankle monitors”

          What about those collars in the film Running Man (?) that were worn around the neck that exploded if you crossed the boundary?

    3. 355144+ op ticks,

      Morning TB,

      “What does that tell the current electorate”
      Even though they are a coalition via mass uncontrolled immigration you have to vote tory (ino) party to keep out the lab (ino) party
      it’s the NAME GAME you see.

    4. But an honest, tax-paying, native born white person holding a passport will be treated with suspicion by Border Farce.

  31. Good Morning, all

    Ukraine/Russia conflict Overnight bulletin from Nagsman

    Putin dies and goes to hell. Now, in hell if you toe the line you get a day out every 10 years. So on his day out Putin goes back to Moscow and into a bar to order a drink and says to the barman “Tell me – is the Crimea ours?”
    “Yes” replies the barman
    “Good” says Putin “…and Donbas?”
    “Oh yes” says the barman.
    “Great” says Putin. “How much do I owe you?”
    Barman says “5 euros.”
    🙂

  32. Oh my! The native people now running their own country take s dim view of their fellow countrymen who worked for occupying military powers. Who would have guessed it? (PS Question. Did the US “rescue” thousands of their own friendly Afghans and take them to America to be kept in relative comfort?)

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-62549605

    1. I can’t help feeling that they brought it upon themselves.

      The Islamic fanatics are now well established in the UK and we are seeing what they desire here too, on a regular basis.

      Certain countries philosophically live in the middle ages and will never move, so trying to establish Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, let alone Democracy is an utter waste of time.

      Unfortunately we have now imported/had bred amongst us millions of them, just biding their time, chipping away at our laws and rights, waiting for the opportunity to use the ballot box to change us irreversibly.

      1. It’s very simple. We stop giving them special treatment. When they start trying to intimidate teachers plod arrive and move them on under breach of the peace laws. If they refuse or get uppity, smack them about a bit. Remind them that they’re unwelcome guests who have no right – none – to complain about what is taught. That free speech is paramount and mo, their prophet was a bent paedophile.

          1. I’m beginning to empathise with Ferdinand and Isabella.
            Like Aydolph or Josep, it could be argued that they let things get out of hand.

          3. Kristalnacht and The Final Solution would work. If they act like Na zis, let ’em get their own back.

  33. ‘If you can see me, weep’: Drought-hit River Elbe reveals ‘hunger stones’ from 1616. 15 August 2022.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d8e03b11ffebc531a63db5ca7a0011c18bb6ed17daba9f90551f3674742d719c.png

    Severe drought has caused water levels of the river Elbe to drop, exposing centuries-old “hunger stones”.

    One stone now visible in Decin, where the Elbe flows from the Czech Republic into Germany, is carved with a warning from 1616 that reads: “If you see me, weep.”

    The stones, embedded into the banks to mark water levels during famines, have been exposed as drought continues to afflict Europe.

    Other stones, which were common in German settlements from the 16th to the 19th centuries, were inscribed with similarly macabre warnings of falling water levels. Water levels in the Rhine reached record lows on Monday.

    The following droughts are commemorated on the stone: 1417, 1616, 1707, 1746 1790, 1800, 1811, 1830, 1842, 1868, 1892, and 1893.

    It was all those coal fired power stations!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/08/15/can-see-weep-drought-hit-river-elbe-reveals-hunger-stones-1616/

      1. Of course the stone is downside up.
        It’s so you can read it looking down upon it from the river bank.

        1. It looks vertical from this angle, so would someone only be able to read it standing over it leaning forward and down?

    2. So, today’s drought not a result of all our “emissions”?! Climate Change fanatics – take that!

  34. OT – did anyone watch the beeboid play called “Marriage”? Much lauded by TV reviewers – generally found boring by a majority of viewers!

    I have some experience of marriage over the last 57 years – and none of the three was remotely like the union portrayed by Seen Been (sic) and a plain lady actress. For a pair who had been together for 20+ years, they seemed to be like total strangers. Of course their “daughter” was black as yer hat – I assumed that she was adopted – but the MR, unusually cynically, thinks that it is “blind casting” and that she is supposed to be their natural child.

    I fear that I’ll be expected to watch episode 2……..

    At least one of life’s mysteries was solved. “Whatever happened to the Likely Lads?” Well, one of them is playing himself as the plain woman’s father!!

        1. I enjoyed “When the boat comes in” and “The likely lads”, but not the follow up.

          1. Morning all. Loved “When the boat comes in”. The Likely Lads was ok but nowhere near as good.

    2. It will ultimately turn out that the daughter is her natural child and the marriage will break up because the wife stumbles upon the black man who impregnated her on a one-night-stand, who is now very successful and rich as Croesus and she goes off to live with him happily ever after!

    3. ??Don’t understand the MR – was the “daughter” the result of a “blind date” when both ‘participants’ were blindfolded?

    4. I sensibly waited until I had grown up before committing matrimony which is why I postponed marriage until I was over 40.

      I was very lucky that I met a lovely and intelligent woman of 24 who wanted to marry me.

    5. ‘Morning Bill. You too? I tried to stick with it, thinking it couldn’t become any more boring. I managed 15 mins before baling out.

    6. Apparently folk complained it was boring. I think the misunderstanding was that it’s supposed to be realistic and as much of life *is* boring, what did they expect?

        1. Nor Me, Bill:
          37 + 13 + 5

          Now separated and living 350 miles apart. Yet I still miss the last one.

  35. Rough gas storage site cleared to start filling up within weeks

    Facility wins approval from safety inspectors to come back online

    Britain’s biggest gas storage facility has been cleared to reopen by safety inspectors in a move that will allow it to start filling up for the winter within weeks. Centrica, the owner of British Gas, is poised to begin pumping natural gas into the Rough storage site at the start of September after securing approval from the Health and Safety Executive.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/08/15/rough-gas-storage-site-cleared-start-filling-within-weeks/

  36. Right…it’s time for a column from Jordan Peterson. It’s lengthy but well worth the effort if you have the time.  Fill yer boots!

    COMMENT

    Peddlers of environmental doom have shown their true totalitarian colours

    Corporations and utopians are offering authoritarian solutions to crises only democracy and free markets can solve

    JORDAN PETERSON 15 August 2022 • 7:00am

    Deloitte is the largest “professional services network” in the world. Headquartered in London, it is also one of the big four global accounting companies, offering audit, consulting, risk advisory, tax and legal services to corporate clients.

    With a third of a million professionals operating on those fronts worldwide, and as the third-largest privately owned company in the US, Deloitte is a behemoth with numerous and far-reaching tentacles.

    In short: it is an entity we should all know about, not least because such enterprises no longer limit themselves to their proper bailiwick (profit-centred business strategising, say), but – consciously or not – have assumed the role as councillors to believers in unchecked globalisation whose policies have sparked considerable unrest around the world.

    If you’re seeking the cause of the Dutch agriculture and fisheries protests, the Canadian trucker convoy, the yellow-jackets in France, the farmer rebellion in India a few years ago, the recent catastrophic collapse of Sri Lanka, or the energy crisis in Europe and Australia, you can instruct yourself by the recent pronouncements from Deloitte.

    Whilst not directly responsible, they offer an insight into the elite groupthink that has triggered these events; into the cabal of utopians operating in the media, corporate and government fronts, wielding a nightmarish vision of environmental apocalypse.

    In May this year, Deloitte released a clarion call to precipitous action trumpeting the climate emergency confronting us. Called ‘The Turning Point: A Global Summary’, it is a stellar example of a mentality more common among officials in the EU: one of fundamental bureaucratic overreach (and one which generated Brexit – a very good decision on the part of the Brits, in my view) that threatens the very survival of that selfsame EU.

    The report opens with two claims: first, that the storms, wildfires, droughts, downpours, and floods around the globe in the last 18 months are unique and unprecedented – a dubious claim – and implicitly that the “science” is now at a point where we can say without doubt that experts can and must model the entire ecology and economy of the planet (!) and that we must modify everyone’s behaviour, by hook or by crook, to avoid what would otherwise be the most expensive environmental and social catastrophe in history.

    The Deloitte “models” posit that “climate impacts” could affect global economic output, and say that unchecked climate change will cost us $178 trillion over the next 50 years – that’s $25,000 per person, to put it in human terms.

    Who dares deny such facts, stated so mathematically? So precisely? So scientifically?

    Let’s update Mark Twain’s famous dictum: there are lies, damned lies, statistics – and computer models.

    “Computer model” does not mean “data” (and even “data” does not mean “fact”). “Computer model” means, at best, “hypothesis” posing as mathematical fact.

    No real scientist says “follow the science.” Yet this is exactly what bodies such as the EU consistently pronounce, pushing for collectivist solutions that do more harm than good.

    What might we rely on, instead, to guide us forward, in these times of accelerating trouble and possibility?

    Valid authority rests in the people. Truly valid structures of authority are local, not centralised for reasons of efficiency and “emergency”. This must not become the generation of yet another top-down Tower of Babel. That will not solve our problems, just as similar attempts have failed to solve our problems in the past.

    Ask yourself: are these Deloitte models – which are supposed to guide all the important decisions we make about the economic security and opportunity of families and the structures of our civil societies – accurate enough even to give those who employ them any edge whatsoever, say, in predicting the performance of a stock portfolio (one based on green energy, for example) over the upcoming years?

    The answer is no. How do we know? Because if such accurate models existed and were implemented by a company with Deloitte’s resources and reach, Deloitte would soon have all the money.

    That is never going to happen. The global economy, let alone the environment, is simply too complex to model. It is for this reason, fundamentally, that we have and require a free-market system: the free market is the best model of the environment we can generate.

    Let me repeat that, with a codicil: not only is the free market the best model of the environment we can generate, it is and will remain the best model that can, in principle, ever be generated (with its widely distributed computations, constituting the totality of the choices of 7 billion people). It simply cannot be improved upon – certainly not by presumptuous power-mad utopians, who think that hiring someone mysteriously manipulating a few carefully chosen numbers and then reading the summarised output means genuine contact with the reality of the future and the generation of knowledge unassailable on both the ethical and the practical front.

    Why is this a problem? Why should you care? Well, the saviours at Deloitte admit that there will be a short-term cost to implementing their cure (net-zero emissions by 2050, an utterly preposterous and inexcusable goal, both practically and conceptually). This, by the way, is a goal identical to that adopted last week by the delusional leaders of Australia, which additionally committed that resource-dependent-and-productive country to an over 40 per cent decrease by 2005 standards in “greenhouse gas emission” within the impossible timeframe of eight years. This will devastate Australia.

    Here is the confession, couched in bureaucratic double-speak, from the Deloitte consultants: “During the initial stages the combined cost of the upfront investments in decarbonization, coupled with the already locked-in damages of climate change would temporarily lower economic activity, compared to the current emissions-intensive path.”

    The omniscient planners then attempt to justify this, with the standard empty threats and promises (the suffering is certain, the benefits ethereal): “those most exposed to the economic damages of unchecked climate change would also have the most to gain from embracing a low-emissions future.” Really? Tell that to the African and Indian populations in the developing world lifted from poverty by coal and natural gas.

    And think – really think – about this statement: “Existing industries would be reconstituted as a series of complex, interconnected, emissions-free energy systems: energy, mobility, industry, manufacturing, food and land use, and negative emissions.”

    That sounds difficult, don’t you think? To rebuild everything at once and better? Without breaking everything? Fixing everything in a few decades in a panicked rush while demonising anyone who dares object?

    And what will it take to do so? Here’s the most alarming part: nothing more than “a coordinated transition” that “will require governments, along with the financial services and technology sectors to catalyze, facilitate and accelerate progress; foster information flows across systems; and align individual incentives with collective goals.”

    A clearer statement of totalitarian inclination could hardly be penned.

    The one thing the Deloitte models guarantee is that if we do what they recommend we will definitely be poorer than we would have been otherwise for an indefinite but hypothetically transitory period.

    Yet any reduction in economic output (however “temporary” and “necessary”) will be purchased at the cost of the lives of those who are barely making it now. Period.

    Have you noticed that food has become more expensive? That housing has become more expensive? That energy is more expensive? That many consumer goods are simply unavailable? Can you not see that this is going to get worse, if the Deloitte-style moralists have their way? How much “short-term pain” are you going to be required to sustain? Decades worth? All your life, and the life of your children?

    It’s very likely. For your own benefit. Remember that.

    All this painful privation is not only not going to save the planet, it’s going to make it far worse.

    I worked for a UN subcommittee that helped prepare the 2012 report to the Secretary-General on sustainable development. Whether or not it was a good idea to contribute to such a thing is a separate issue: I do believe at least that the report would have been much more harmful than it was without the input of the Canadian contingent. We scrubbed away several layers of utopianism and Cold-War era conceptualisation and cynicism. That was something.

    I garnered a key and crucial insight from the several years’ work devoted to my contribution: I learned that the fastest and most certain pathway forward to the future we all want and need (peaceful, prosperous, beautiful) is through the economic elevation of the absolutely poor. Richer people care about “the environment” – which is, after all,outside the primary and fundamental concern of those desperate for their next meal.

    Make the poor rich, and the planet will improve. Or at least get out of their way while they try to make themselves rich. Make the poor poorer – and this is the concrete plan, remember – and things will get worse, perhaps worse beyond imagining. Observe the chaos in Sri Lanka, if you need proof.

    There are clearly more important priorities than costly and ineffective emergency climate change reductions. Bjorn Lomborg’s work (among others such as Marian Tupy and Matt Ridley) has demonstrated that other pressing problems could and should take political and economic priority, from the perspective of good done per dollar spent.

    Money could and should be spent, for example, to ensure the current health and therefore future productivity (and environmental stewardship) of currently poor children in developing countries. How about remedying the actual world of pain and deprivation of such children rather than saving the hypothetical world, and the hypothetical world of future children, in abstraction?

    I worked for a UN subcommittee that helped prepare the 2012 report to the Secretary-General on sustainable development. Whether or not it was a good idea to contribute to such a thing is a separate issue: I do believe at least that the report would have been much more harmful than it was without the input of the Canadian contingent. We scrubbed away several layers of utopianism and Cold-War era conceptualisation and cynicism. That was something.

    I garnered a key and crucial insight from the several years’ work devoted to my contribution: I learned that the fastest and most certain pathway forward to the future we all want and need (peaceful, prosperous, beautiful) is through the economic elevation of the absolutely poor. Richer people care about “the environment” – which is, after all,outside the primary and fundamental concern of those desperate for their next meal.

    Make the poor rich, and the planet will improve. Or at least get out of their way while they try to make themselves rich. Make the poor poorer – and this is the concrete plan, remember – and things will get worse, perhaps worse beyond imagining. Observe the chaos in Sri Lanka, if you need proof.

    There are clearly more important priorities than costly and ineffective emergency climate change reductions. Bjorn Lomborg’s work (among others such as Marian Tupy and Matt Ridley) has demonstrated that other pressing problems could and should take political and economic priority, from the perspective of good done per dollar spent.

    Money could and should be spent, for example, to ensure the current health and therefore future productivity (and environmental stewardship) of currently poor children in developing countries. How about remedying the actual world of pain and deprivation of such children rather than saving the hypothetical world, and the hypothetical world of future children, in abstraction?

    Citizens are waking up to this. Dutch farmers and fishermen are rising up, Canadian truckers are pushing back. Such protests are spreading, and increasing in intensity. As they should.

    Why? Because, Deloitte consultants, and like-minded centralists are pushing things too far. It will not produce the results they are hypothetically intending. This agenda, justified by emergency,  will instead make everyone poorer, particularly those who are already poor. This use of emergency force will, instead, make the lives of the working men upon whom we all depend for our daily bread and shelter more difficult and less rewarding.

    Finally, this use of emergency force will also make the “environment” worse, not better. Why? If you wreck your temporary economic havoc, to (eventually) remediate the world, those whom you sacrifice so casually in the attempt will descend into chaos. In that chaos, they will then, by necessity, turn their attention to matters of immediate survival – and in a manner that will stress and harm the complex ecosystems and economies that can only be maintained with the long-term view that prosperity and nothing else makes possible.

    Critics of my view will say “we have to accept limits to growth.” Fine. Accept them. Personally. Abandon your position of planet-devouring wealthy privilege. Join an ascetic order. Graze with the cattle. Or, if that’s too much (and it probably is) then purchase an electric car, if you want one (but no diesel-powered emergency backup vehicle or electric power generator for you). Buy some stock in Tesla. That’s probably the best bet (but you don’t approve of Elon Musk, do you?). Stop flying. Stop driving, for that matter. Get on your bike, instead. In your three-piece business suit. In the winter, if you dare. I’ll splash you with icy and salty slush as I drive by, in my evil but warm Ford Bronco SUV, and help you derive the consequent delicate pleasure of your own narcissistic martyrdom.

    Save the planet with your own choices. But quit demanding that the rest of us blindly follow your diktats. Quit demonising and castigating us, merely because we don’t just happily cede to you all the extant power. We’re not evil just because we don’t believe that you are omniscient. We’re not evil just because we don’t want you to assume omnipotence and omnipresence too.

    There is simply no pathway forward to the green and equitable utopia that necessitates the further impoverishment of the already poor, the compulsion of the working class, or the sacrifice of economic security and opportunity on the food, energy and housing front. There is simply no pathway forward to the global utopia you hypothetically value that is dependent on force. And even if there was, what gives you the right to enforce your demands? On other sovereign citizens, equal in value to you?

    A better way forward would be to prioritise the problems that beset all of us on this still-green, functional and increasingly abundant planet with the requisite focus and attention demanded of a true political class, elected by the people, capable of and willing to  look at everything, trying to fix where necessary, trying to maintain as much freedom and autonomy as possible, and stop simply capitalising narcissistically on the mere appearance of action, knowledge and virtue.

    We should obtain true, cooperative consent from those affected – farmers, truckers, working-class people who have turned in irritated desperation to figures such as Donald Trump – and work with them, rather than forbidding them with your power or improving them so they will be finally worthy of your time and attention. Help replace dirty energy with clean, if you must, but do it on your own dime, and make sure that the results are cheap and plentiful, if you want to help the poor, and the planet.

    The warning bells are ringing. Listen to them, before they turn into sirens.

    We will not advance without resistance through the straits of your enforced privation. We will not allow you to steal and destroy the energy that makes our lives bearable (and that produces our food and shelter and housing and the sporadic delights of modern life) just to address your existential terror (particularly when it will fail to do so in any case). We will not allow our children to be criticised first for having the temerity to merely exist and then be deprived of the prosperous and opportunity-rich future we strived so hard to prepare for them. We remain unconvinced of your frightened and self-congratulatory moralising and intellectual pretension, ignorance of the limits of statistics, and misuse of arithmetic.

    We do not believe, finally and most absolutely, that your declared emergency and the panic you sow because of it means that you should now be ceded all necessary authority.

    So leave us alone, you centralisers; you worshippers of Gaia; you sacrificers of the wealth and property of others; you would-be planetary saviours; you Machievellian pretenders and virtue-signallers, objecting to power, all the while you gather it around you madly.

    Leave us alone, to prosper or not, as a result of our own choices; as a result of our own actions; in the exercise of our own requisite and irreducible responsibility.

    Leave us alone. Or reap the whirlwind. And watch the terrible destruction of what you purport to save, in consequence.

    * * *

    So far there are 3,500 BTL comments, and as far as I can see they are overwhelmingly favourable.

    2. So far there are 3,500 BTL comments, and as far as I can see they are overwhelmingly favourable.

      There are still plenty along the lines of: “We are making the world burn but a politics graduate tells us it’s of no concern. Stick to what you know, mate.”

    3. I know a demented greeniac. He has screamed ‘if you don’t believe in climate change, get off my planet!’ He thinks Thunberg is right in her every proclamation. He can’t understand that his views are just tyranny. He thinks one way and cannot deviate from that. He cannot understand he’s just being used, refuses to acknowledge the whole thing is a farce to rob the worker of their income.

      Worse, his entire mindset is based on ignorance. Vaunted ideals, but having absolute no concept of the real world. He expects everyone to live like him, to think like him not realising how destructive that is. He is also desperately pro unlimited immigration and thinks whoever wants to come here should be able to. But not to live with him, as he hasn’t got the room. I would also be slightly worried if a dozen Sundanese Muslims were moved in with him, his wife and young daughters.

      You cannot reason with such zealotry. He – and folks like him – are nutters.

      1. Get used to the greeniacs. They have been indoctrinating school kids for years, they believe that the sun shines (non polluting of course) out of Gretas arse.

        Just a few more years and this new generation will be taking over and completing the destruction of civilization as we know it.

    4. Where is the real difference between Net Zero and divining chicken entrails and being forced to sacrifice to Apollo? The ancient observational model may even be more accurate.

    5. Down to 3274 now, and falling – the teenagers are obviously panicing and deleting the truthful ones.

  37. My younger sister is on her way back home .. to South Africa

    The final leg of her holiday was spent with my folks in North Yorkshire .

    She spent the night in a hotel near Newcastle airport for an early flight to Schipol, to connect with her homeward bound flight to SA .

    She was delighted with the tranquility of the airport in Newcastle .. no scrum , although Schipol was more hectic .

    I will miss her when all is said and done .. we last saw each other five years ago , and of course we are now a hell of alot older .

    We remembered the days when flying was a lot gentler and easier with space to stretch out , and travelling companions were of a similar back ground .

    It seems to me that the people who travel by air these days by and large are crushed squashed and squeezed and given an inferior service .

    Were the old days of travel nicer , yes they were .

        2. Big glass windows were installed following passenger losses on first few flights.

  38. Good morning all.
    Grandson sent home from Jury Service again today as barristers still on strike. Trial postponed until Thursday.

    2. This is why they are striking…

      By contrast, the lack of dosh available at the junior end of the

      is well documented. Successful junior barristers doing – be that criminal or civil – can earn under £20,000 a year. Some
      juniors in this field may struggle to make enough money to live on, and
      certain chambers whose juniors have low earnings offer them
      interest-free loans to cover costs.

      https://www.chambersstudent.co.uk/where-to-start/newsletter/how-much-do-barristers-earn

      1. Yes I was aware of that from my time working for HMC&TS. I bet the top barristers have looked after themselves. If the legal aid payments are increased it should exclude payment for illegal gimmegrants and appeals.

        1. Jonathan Sumption QC earned £3 million representing Abramovich. I wonder if he tipped the Usher.

        1. It makes me very sad. I taught in Manchester and lived in Greater Manchester for several years. There were always dodgy places which you avoided but it was never like that.

          1. I was there for 2 years and I never felt at home. My grandfather was from Manchester, but it wasn’t a very happy place and it didn’t seem to know if it was a Northern town or not!

      1. Definitely – and my midnight rain dance appears to have been successful – we have had a much needed gentle overnight soaking – and there could be more to come. Cattle and horses are happy. Less flies. Everything good 🙂

    1. Dry as a bone in yer Norf Narfurk. The “lunchtime ” rain is postponed until, er, 4 or 5 pm… If then.

        1. “To speak of many things…” If only this bloody govt would get on with things.

  45. Apparently the Wet Office is saying that 3 MILLION people will be drowned and their houses washed away within a few hours…(or something similar…)

  46. I am posting this solely to brag about my BTL witticism

    MICHAEL DEACON
    COLUMNIST
    16 August 2022 • 7:00am
    *
    *
    *
    Why did Cambridge stop producing prime ministers?

    Here’s a curious fact. In the past 100 years, the University of Cambridge has produced only one British prime minister. And that was Stanley Baldwin – who left office all the way back in 1937. Since then, remarkably, the University of Oxford has produced no fewer than 11 British prime ministers. And next month, either Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak will make it 12.

    A surprising pattern. We think of our politics as being dominated by Oxbridge types. Yet that isn’t quite true. It’s actually just Oxford types.

    It wasn’t always like this, however. In the preceding two centuries, these great universities produced prime ministers at similar rates: Oxford 17, Cambridge 13. Indeed, Cambridge had a head start, because the very first prime minister, Robert Walpole, was a Cambridge man.

    So what happened? By other measures Oxford and Cambridge are closely matched. From university rankings to the Boat Race, they’re neck and neck. Yet since the dawn of the TV age, the Cambridge-to-Downing-Street production line has completely dried up – while Oxford has been pumping out PMs like sausages.

    It may seem strange. But I think the explanation is actually quite simple. Cambridge, after all, has always been celebrated for its mathematicians and scientists. That is, people who deal in facts and reasoning and evidence, who believe that every last figure must be scrupulously double-checked and every assertion rigorously tested. Naturally, such people are hopelessly ill-equipped to succeed in the fraudulent world of modern politics, where an insistence on factual accuracy is regarded as a sentimental and almost certainly fatal weakness.

    Oxford, meanwhile, has always been particularly strong in humanities and PPE: academic fields in which students grow highly skilled at constructing an argument that is eloquent, polished and irresistibly persuasive – even if they themselves don’t believe a single word of it. The perfect preparation for a career in modern politics.

    I don’t know whether Cambridge feels embarrassed to have fallen so far behind Oxford in the prime ministerial league tables. But if so, perhaps it could boost its record by encouraging its maths and science undergraduates to show a little more creative flair. For example, by writing a thesis explaining that two plus two actually equals 37.9, or arguing that water is composed not of hydrogen and oxygen, but cheese.

    It’s Cambridge’s only hope of closing the gap.

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

    Michael Hudson

    Cambridge clowns join the Footlights which often leads to a fruitful career. Oxford clowns go into politics which is a tragedy for us all.

    1. 3551454+ up ticks,

      Afternoon C,

      The cambridge school for scoundrels has oxo beat, hands down when it comes to treachery though, in saying that oxo are gaining ground fast and before, shortly, the Country implodes will be neck& neck if nor leading.

      Remember the daisy chain spy ring and old kim and co ?

      1. Sure I remember them. My father (Trinity) used to play squash with Donald Maclean (Trinity Hall). When Burgess and Maclean defected, Dad told ‘The Authorities’ about a suspicious chap called Philby (obviously they were already on his tail). Dad was never part of The Cambridge Apostles social circle,….or that is what he told me. {:^}}

    1. I’ve had to put the water on one of my Rhodos, I don’t want to lose it and it’s now very droopy despite a whole 0.3mm of rain overnight.

    2. I’ve had to put the water on one of my Rhodos, I don’t want to lose it and it’s now very droopy despite a whole 0.3mm of rain overnight.

    3. Who remembers singing this on the bus on the way home from a rugby match?

      Cats on the roof tops, cats on the tiles,
      Cats with syphilis cats with piles
      Cats with their arseholes wreathed in smiles
      As they revel in the joys of fornication

      And if there are any lady rugby players on this forum, have they adopted the after-match tradition that men have for drinking excessive amounts of beer and singing obscene songs? Is there, for example a song sung by a raucous group of women imploring Desmond to show them his leg a yard above the knee or a tribute to a lady engineer who developed a curious machine which exploded dramatically with rather mucky results which she, the lady engineer, told us about before she died?..

  51. The attack on Salman Rushdie highlights a growing cancer

    The politics of free expression have changed in the past 30 years. The practice of seeking retribution for causing ‘offence’ is widespread

    SIMON HEFFER

    The attack on Sir Salman Rushdie recalls the letter he and dozens of other prominent people sent to Harper’s magazine two years ago. The signatories deplored “the forces of illiberalism”, and protested that “the free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted”.

    The letter highlighted growing limits on freedom of expression – editors sacked for running controversial articles, academics punished for teaching certain texts, and calls for “swift and severe retribution” against those refusing to conform to a new, illiberal orthodoxy. One victim of these trends is another signatory, JK Rowling, being rendered a non-person by fascists of the Left who object to her expressing a perfectly legal and sincerely held opinion on what really constitutes a woman. Sir Salman, regrettably, knows too well the horrific forms that the extremism of retribution can take: but it has other appalling manifestations, as a growing number of academics, writers and other intellectuals will testify.

    When Iran imposed a fatwa on Sir Salman 33 years ago it appeared to be because he, as a man of Muslim birth, had blasphemed. However, there were profound political reasons too, not least Iran’s attempt to wrest from Saudi Arabia the notion that it led the Islamic faith. Nonetheless, a cultural clash between Western and Eastern values was widely debated. There seemed no point trying to ask the East to respect Western freedom of expression, because the theocracies would not have it. Sir Salman apologised, something he said he later regretted; for it made no difference. We cannot ascertain his attacker’s motivation. Since before 9/11, attacks by Islamists in America usually turned out to be politically motivated.

    When the fatwa was issued, the British Left rushed to defend Sir Salman; the British state provided comprehensive police protection. But in the intervening years the politics of free expression have changed. The creation of an international mob of censors and bigots – also politically motivated – on Twitter and elsewhere has meant that the practices of denying freedom of expression and demanding “retribution” are widespread among those whose only gods are ideological. This has been Miss Rowling’s fate.

    Those who own certain rights to her works expunge her name from their spin-offs, not necessarily because of their own convictions, but because the mob bullies and threatens them into doing so. In universities, dons often live in fear of the opinions of their students, which limits their academic freedom, and distort curriculums to focus on race, gender and sexuality. Students who question the consequent assumptions become afraid to speak out in case they are marked down or failed. Their teachers often conform with the new orthodoxy because they fear losing their jobs if they do not.

    Publishers routinely censor books because certain words have become unutterable; fear of “hurt feelings” has become compulsory. This desire to signal virtue, to acquire the same false cloak of self-righteousness, is not confined to the Left: Conservatives such as Tom Tugendhat jumped on the bandwagon when the late Sir Roger Scruton was wrongly branded a racist, because it advanced their reputations among those with whom they wished to ingratiate themselves.

    The Harper’s signatories wrote that “we need to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences”. As we now know, the consequences of this mania to control free expression go far beyond the professional. They appealed for individuals to defend these rights, because otherwise democratic states could not be prepared to do so. Well, Sir Salman and others have stood up. What will the western democracies actually do about cutting out this cancer before it becomes universal?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/08/14/attack-salman-rushdie-highlights-growing-cancer/

    1. It is a grave offence in Islam to make a martyr out of a kuffah.

      Therefore anyone that has murdered righteous or innocent non-Muslims such as an aid worker or girls at a pop concert has committed that very offence and should have a fatwa declared against him or her and denied any virgins in heaven.

      I wonder if that law is as rigorously enforced at that pronounced on Sir Salman for embroidering in print the character of the Prophet (PBUH…and PBUAOU)?

    2. “JK Rowling, being rendered a non-person by fascists of the Left.”

      Would that would be the very same Left that has continuously benefitted from her massive donations for years?

    1. I think you mean that there is no-one you consider worth voting for. When you consider that people vote for Jeremy Corbyn you must accept that “worth” is subjective.

        1. Thanks Sos – yes all is fine. Just been up to my eyes in work for the past 6 months. On a come down now – taking a bit of a break.

      2. Very true, Nagsman, but I do get a bit incensed with false accusations and no sensible answer to a reasonable question.

    2. My membership number is 24692. In a moment of optimism I renewed my membership for five year in 2018.

    3. I often agree with ogga – he makes some sensible observations. However he seems to be rather low on practical suggestions other than not to vote for Lib/Lab/Con.

  53. Well, what a day. Handyman this morning and he made notes on the list of stuff we gave him- it’s all part of the back up here at the Home for Deranged Gentlefolk. So he was here half an hour and I went for a bit of a snooze as I was up at 6, various reasons. Knock at the door a bit later which woke me, GRRR, and it was the handyman back with a phone number of someone who might be able to fix our washer which clapped out on Sunday.
    Just now another knock at the door, husband is now snoozing but you could march a brass band through when he’s sleeping. A lady, who when she saw me, oh no, I’ve got the wrong house. Told her it was fine but she had a little terrier with her….he was so sweet and his name is Baxter. What a great name.
    So on a fairly irritating day, I had a little dog therapy. Anyway, she had walked completely the wrong way so I redirected her.

    1. I dread drivers asking me for direction to other bits of Colchester.
      The town centre is sooooo bluddy awful to drive in that I avoid it. I’m bound to send them down a street that has been one-wayed since I last drove there.
      Ditto parking; does it have a space/how much will it cost/does the park takes coins or is it one of those whizzy things?
      All too complicated; take the bus or go elsewhere.

  54. One of our clients is a charity, a women’s refuge. We have all sorts of things we do when on site, we get out of the way (even sitting in loo cupboards). The lady who runs the place emailed in a very sheepish, very frightened email saying that they couldn’t afford our last invoice and could we put the old kit back if we had ot take what we’d installed away.

    I rang them back and voided it. I see no reason why decent people trying to do good should be penalised by the state. No doubt I’ll get a lecture and may even front the costs personally (our accountant is a vicious bugger) but it was the right thing to do.

    The total cost? Some £600 (and some change). Not thousands, not tens of thousands. £600. That was their electricity bill this month. It was us or the light and heat.

    I hate this government. I hate it’s malice, it’s arrogance, it’s bold faced egotism.

    1. Support of the Ukes ‘a price worth paying’ according to Boris. Not to me it aint, let them get on with their grubby war, alone. It might bring some sense to the table.

    2. Very heartening, Wibbles, as is Paul (Oberstleutnant) who has undertaken to donate to the RAFBF, when I told him how they had helped me in my recent move. He agreed that it was good of decent people to help others.

      1. The UK was a neighbourly place. I don’t mean smiles and chitchat. I mean really helping each other. But now, well , still in places, the untouched places..

    1. Is anyone required to take any oath other than to state that they will tell the truth?

      1. “That my truth matters more than whatever the factual situation is.” © M Markle aka Trash.

    2. So lie then. Make it up entirely. What can they do?

      However, as I understood it, courts are required to allow the juror to swear on whichever holy book they prefer. I asked for book by Christopher Dawkins, for example.

  56. 355144+ up ticks,

    This is not contained in london alone , other city’s towns are suffering the same some with a different format, for example, rotherham / rochdale foreign paedophile mass rape and abuse,etc,etc.

    What type of political rod have the indigenous peoples forged, for there own & many innocents backs may one ask?

    Khan’s London: Fatal Broad Daylight Knife Attack Follows Weekend of Stabbings and Shop Looting

    Just what has been created in the name of DEMOCRACY.

  57. https://twitter.com/ChrisGiles_/status/1559442641187733509

    Interesting numbers if true. Sadly we have a huge number currently on welfare who are not only economically inactive, but economically useless. Individuals who don’t speak English, who have never worked, never wanted to work and would require so much administrative overhead to make them useful it’s almost pointless – and they know it.

    1. I am aware of a number of “oldies” who have gone back to work – for various reasons – including me. The money is useful but the feeling of being useful and contributing is even more important to me.

      2. I have already been reminded this week here that I should stay retired, since no employer would have me because I am far too grumpy about society.

    1. And all so avoidable. Scrap all taxes on fuel and energy. That’s most of the problem there. Then start cutting other taxes like VAT. Energy fuel and water underpin every other cost.

      However, there’s a line in the Wellygraph that said ‘Cost of living worst ever as wages slump’. Now, is it wages falling (not keeping up with inflation – which they can’t due to taxes on business) or is it that our incomes physically buy less due to the debasement of the currency?

    1. Everyone should pass a driving or motorcycle test before using the roads no matter what conveyance they use.

        1. I didn’t actually read the article but if everyone had to study the highway code and pass a test there would be fewer accidents.

          Also if people buy E vehicles from dodgy sources and that includes the chargers for them then fires like that will become commonplace. Paki shops in northern towns have been found selling chargers for phones that don’t meet any EU standard.

      2. …and cyclist should have their conveyance (s) fitted with a number plate, pay road tax and learn to ride in single file on ALL roads.

    2. It has stopped here, Bill, so I walked the dog. We have had enough rain to start ponding on the forest paths.

        1. Heavy drizzle is perfect Bill. When it rains hard the it just bounces off the hard soil taking just a wee bit of top soil with it. A nice steady prolonged period of drizzle gets the opportunity to be absorbed into the soil.

  63. Phizzee, you gave an ebook link yesterday I seem to recall.
    Went and had a look myself and it’s excellent: many thanks for posting.

    1. Was that me? My short term memory is shot. If so you are most welcome.

      I have a suspicion it was Rik.

      ‘WE’ are pleased you liked it.

          2. In 1955, a lady living in a married quarter opposite ours came across to ask my mother for advice on what to give her husband for Christmas.

            Mother suggested a book. “Oh no,” the lady replied, “He already has a book…” True story!

    1. Just had a 40 minute deluge, accompanied by constant rumbling thunder, quite wonderful. It has filled the water butts and now we too have sunshine!

      1. Yes – I noticed that…and how it is moving north-east into the North Sea (as though that NEEDED any sodding water…)

  66. Even Space is littered.

    Back in 1978 NASA scientist Donald J. Kessler postulated a scenario in which the density of objects in low Earth orbit becomes so high that collisions between objects cause cascades in which each collision generates space debris that sequentially enhances the likelihood of further collisions. Now termed the Kessler effect, modeling results indicate that the debris environment is already unstable, with successive collisions generating fragments faster than atmospheric drag can remove them, making the use of satellites difficult for generations to come.

    https://www.takimag.com/article/dodging-space-debris-in-the-depths-of-space/

    1. A lot of Lefties got very angry with me when I said that thanks to their malice, we would never spread out into the solar system. They were bleating that we had to take care of this planet as there was no planet B. I said ‘thanks to your perversion of real science, your assault on education, learning and merit we’ll never get out into space.’

      They couldn’t understand why, but did spend an awful lot of time trying to argue I was wrong. They failed.

      1. They are correct about one thing, there is no planet B, certainly not within distances that humans could traverse and as to making a planet within the Solar system suitable for large scale habitation, it’s a pipe-dream; pure science fiction and nothing to do with politics

  67. Soros, evil made human.

    As Soros awaits death, for him, the whites he killed along the way are the point. They are the victory. He was never looking to build, but destroy. So if he leaves behind a lot of collateral damage—dead Jews, a survivor card rendered powerless—so what?

    As long as lots of whites are dead and their influence diminished, everything else was worth it.

    https://www.takimag.com/article/the-last-living-holocaust-mass-murderer/

  69. Micheal Deacon: talking sense as far as I’m concerned.

    “Why did Cambridge stop producing prime ministers?

    Here’s a curious fact. In the past 100 years, the University of Cambridge has produced only one British prime minister. And that was Stanley Baldwin – who left office all the way back in 1937. Since then, remarkably, the University of Oxford has produced no fewer than 11 British prime ministers. And next month, either Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak will make it 12.

    A surprising pattern. We think of our politics as being dominated by Oxbridge types. Yet that isn’t quite true. It’s actually just Oxford types.

    It wasn’t always like this, however. In the preceding two centuries, these great universities produced prime ministers at similar rates: Oxford 17, Cambridge 13. Indeed, Cambridge had a head start, because the very first prime minister, Robert Walpole, was a Cambridge man.

    So what happened? By other measures Oxford and Cambridge are closely matched. From university rankings to the Boat Race, they’re neck and neck. Yet since the dawn of the TV age, the Cambridge-to-Downing-Street production line has completely dried up – while Oxford has been pumping out PMs like sausages.

    It may seem strange. But I think the explanation is actually quite simple. Cambridge, after all, has always been celebrated for its mathematicians and scientists. That is, people who deal in facts and reasoning and evidence, who believe that every last figure must be scrupulously double-checked and every assertion rigorously tested. Naturally, such people are hopelessly ill-equipped to succeed in the fraudulent world of modern politics, where an insistence on factual accuracy is regarded as a sentimental and almost certainly fatal weakness.

    Oxford, meanwhile, has always been particularly strong in humanities and PPE: academic fields in which students grow highly skilled at constructing an argument that is eloquent, polished and irresistibly persuasive – even if they themselves don’t believe a single word of it. The perfect preparation for a career in modern politics.

    I don’t know whether Cambridge feels embarrassed to have fallen so far behind Oxford in the prime ministerial league tables. But if so, perhaps it could boost its record by encouraging its maths and science undergraduates to show a little more creative flair. For example, by writing a thesis explaining that two plus two actually equals 37.9, or arguing that water is composed not of hydrogen and oxygen, but cheese.

    It’s Cambridge’s only hope of closing the gap.”

          2. One has to encourage the pushy one to do a bit of readundery before she clogs up the blog. Anyway, have you done anything useful this afternoon? What about your tigers – do they earn their keep in this heat? I at least have spent some useful time talking to Nagsman about our next potential luncheon date….and the state of the nation. So there.

          3. I went out in the rain to see whether the cubitainer by the garden shed was filling. It was. Odd wearing a coat, let alone a waterproof one!

            G & P missed the rain completely – being dead to the world on the sitting room carpet. They contrive to lie so as to obstruct the way through (surprise, surprise).

            Most of the signs of rain have now evaporated.

            I don’t do lunching out. Why waste a perfectly competent live-in cook?

          7. Me neither. I have gardeners, window cleaners and a Mrs Thursday. How anyone could expect me to do all that work is beyond me. I would never have time for cocktails !

          11. During the huge thunderstorm on Sunday night my old man woke up to discover that the security light on the garage had been forced on by the lightning. So off he toddled at 3.04 am in his pyjama shorts, wellies and a rain jacket! I was too slow out of bed to get a photo!
            .

          13. No, as he pointed out to me, lightning can have the effect of forcing it to stay on. Engineers! Doncha love them?

          14. Unlucky
            Ours turn on and off constantly during thunder storms, I’ve had them close the circuit breakers but never stay on.

          17. When I was still living at home, my dad went out at night in his pyjamas to throw a bucket of water over two squalling cats. ‘Twas a windy night and the wind was agin him. He came back in soaked. Lots of laughter but alas no photo.

    2. Burgess? Maclean? Philby? Blunt? Cairncross? Cambridge Treason University does have recent(ish) form for producing treachery.

      1. …plus others who came under suspicion and have never been entirely cleared. On the other hand, Trinity College has produced more Nobel prize winners than all of France so that must be worth something.

      2. Recent?! Mind you there is the loony evangelical Welby, who assures everyone he can speak in ‘tongues’

      3. The traitors succeeded, they got Oxford’s secret socialist placemen everywhere, including at least 8 of the last 10 PMs

      4. The traitors succeeded, they got Oxford’s secret socialist placemen everywhere, including at least 8 of the last 10 PMs

  70. Posted without further comment as words have failed me…………

    “The RAF has effectively paused making job offers to white male

    recruits in favour of women and ethnic minorities to meet “impossible”

    diversity targets, defence sources have claimed.

    The alleged move

    has prompted the head of recruitment for the Royal Air Force (RAF) –

    herself a senior female officer – to resign in recent days in protest

    amid concerns that any such restrictions on hiring, however temporary

    and limited, could undermine the fighting strength of the service, the

    sources said.”

    https://news.sky.com/story/raf-pauses-job-offers-for-white-men-to-meet-impossible-diversity-targets-12674409

    2. Surely as head of recruitment she makes the policy or is she following orders from above

      1. Orders. Likely the MoD has imposed these moronic policies. It has no idea what the military do.

        1. Oh, they know alright. The Military exists to provide cushy – and very well paid – jobs for snivel serpents. Followed by seats on the board of armament companies.

    4. How will they a wheel-chair into the cockpit (if that word is still allowed) of a fighter jet?

          3. I think he does, unless I am missing your point.
            I quote from flight training manual:

            A vertical tail on an aircraft provides control and stability to an aircraft as the air flows around it. A rudder and trim tab is usually incorporated into it to provide yaw control during takeoff, cruise, and landing. The control is provided by the pilots using their foot pedals & auto flight systems.

            Douglas Bader’s artificial legs. meant he could pull more G and not black out, but he still needed his artificial ones for control.

    5. Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, the head of the armed forces, used his first public speech in-post last December to stress the importance of striving for better diversity.

      He said this was not “about wokefulness. It is about woefulness. The woefulness of too few women. The woefulness of not reflecting the ethnic, religious and cognitive diversity of our nation.”

      The MOD has announced it aims to increase the ratio of female recruits coming into the armed forces in general to 30% by 2030 from around 12%.

      (Blooming WUZ, isn’t he )

      3. Sod off, Tony. The military are there to defend this country by killing our enemies. Not to set di-worse-ity targets for who can hire the most useless person.

      4. And woe betide us if the diverse decide that in a conflict that they would rather support their fellow diverse, who we could be fighting, and sabotage our people.

    3. Electric cars have lots of ommph on the start, but aren’t exactly motorway pursuit vehicles. That looks like the £125K BMW. Which means do over 90 mph on a motorway and it’ll stop after 20 minutes and you’re scot (no pun intended!) free.

  72. We have had just enough ‘rain’ to not quite cover the garden path with dampness. I think we live in the driest part of the country.

    1. Oh no you don’t!! We do…

      The deluge that Harry reported a short time ago is passing about five miles to the west of us. We can see the rain, hear the thunder – but not a sodding drop has fallen…

      2. No, no! We live in the driest part of this benighted country I’ll have you know! So there! That is, in the lee of the most easterly wing of that chalky outcrop known as the Chilterns! In fact, so far east it is no longer Chilterns… the air was damp for a few seconds, that is all we have had!!

    2. Oh no you don’t!! We do…

      The deluge that Harry reported a short time ago is passing about five miles to the west of us. We can see the rain, hear the thunder – but not a sodding drop has fallen…

    3. Passed us by as well here in W’boro’. Places to the east and north-east in a strip from Thrapston to King’s Lynn have had a pasting.

      1. Apparently some 10 miles east-north-east on the A14 just beyond Cambridge in the Newmarket direction it was torrential, our painter who is supposed to be painting the outside of our house buggered off today to obvs attend to someone else’s, reported that he could not see the road in front of him. But here in the lee of the most easterly wing of the Chiltern’s chalky outcrop, virtually (but not quite)….zilch. The painter stopped by 4.00 pm to say he won’t be coming tomorrow as heavy rain is forecast. Should we be so fortunate.

        1. Another deluge this evening that passed us by to the west! We caught the edge of it, maybe 10-12 mm. The day’s records: South Newington (Oxon) 41, Waddington (Lincs) 33.

    1. Par 4 for me.

      Wordle 423 4/6

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

      1. Par Four for me too …

        Wordle 423 4/6
        ⬜⬜⬜🟩🟨
        🟨🟨⬜🟩⬜
        ⬜🟨🟩🟩⬜
        🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

        1. One would have thought that a thoughtful policeman would have gently but firmly encouraged her to stop being silly and go home – rather than arresting her.

          3. Or even considered getting her psychiatric help.

            My superintendent once sent an officer to my home address, late one evening, because he knew that “I like rock music”. When, quite flabbergasted, I asked why, the officer told me that they had found a young woman walking around the town in a confused state. She had told the officers that she was waiting for her boyfriend who had arranged to meet her. When they asked her who her boyfriend was, she answered, “Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin“. My superintendent wanted to know how he could get in touch with “Mr Page” (I kid you not).

            I picked up my copy of that week’s New Musical Express, looked through it, and then explained that Jimmy Page was due to go on stage, later that day, at a concert his band was giving … in Vancouver!

            The girl was taken to a place of safety where she received psychiatric counselling.

            Such procedures were second nature to us back when proper policing took priority. Those running the show these days (College of Policing?) wouldn’t have a clue where to start.

    3. Entirely acceptable. Men can be women and women can be men. Well, they can, can’t they?

  77. It is obvious that God is a NoTTLer – he has been following the threads and did the decent thing to divert the heavy rain that Harry enjoyed a few miles to the east of the projected track – so that it fell here…briefly. All water butts will be filled. Hooray.

  78. There is a weird dark thing on the lawn. The MR identified it as a “puddle”…!! Not seen one of them these last three months.

    1. Cats often have that problem. Wait until you find what they’ve left in the flowerbed.,

  79. Beware of ‘thunder fever’: Doctor claims downpours could trigger rare weather phenomenon that makes asthma and hay fever much worse TOMORROW

    3. Our demise started with a plague then a dodgy war. Next came the drought which will be followed by catastrophic flooding. It all sounds a bit familiar.

          2. No chance, he has the constitution of a horse and it was just a poor baby one anyway. Actually, there were hundreds, if not thousands of froglets along the riverbank last week.

          3. My Golden, Fred caught a chipmunk once. Ex said that he would hold Fred’s mouth open and I could pull out the chipmunk. Oh no, other way round I said. It happened and the chipmunk, still alive, staggered away.

      2. 355144+ up ticks,

        Evening M,

        Thinking of horsemen , four to be precise,

        Agents for lab/lib/con current ukip.

    1. There must be a common factor in all these deaths/collapses. If only we could find the link…..

  81. DT headline:

    Council accused of ‘mansplaining’ menstruation after appointing man as ‘period dignity officer’

    The move by the SNP-led Dundee City Council has been described as ‘peak gender idiocy’ and ‘ridiculous’

    Just when you think wokery couldn’t get any worse, the Scottish Nasty Party proves you wrong.

  82. Just done my Bob-a-Job. The rain left a huge puddle on the road at the end of the drive. There is a gulley and a surface water drain.

    The gulley is blocked because the useless council employ a fuckwit contractor with a digger to “clear the gulleys” – which means he shoves about a ton of earth INTO the gulley and so blocking the three inch pipe that is meant to take water from the road to the ditch the other side of the hedge. I tried to sort that out a bit – so that at least there was room for water to accumulate off the road.

    The drain is blocked because no one these days thinks of “rodding out” a drain. Too much Elfin Safety I shouldn’t wonder. I may have a go tomorrow if I a feeling strong.

    Pity Robert isn’t nearby – right up his street!!

    Good to know how the Council Tax is not spent…

    1. We have a similar problem at Le Grand Osier and have been banging on at the mairie for a couple of months. They use a mechanical tractor-mounted clipper which trims the hedges but the trimmings – which are often quite dense – fall into the ditch which becomes blocked and there is a risk that our students’ house will be flooded which has happened in the past. It is the mairie’s responsibility to see to it that the drains and ditches are unblocked but if we are flooded will they pay for the damage? So what is to be done?

      1. Every year, twice a year, our Mairie ensures the verges/trees/ditches are clipped, then, once a year, they clear out the fosses and then they clear all the drain tunnels to ensure the water flows where it should.

        This year, being a “decimal” year, they dug all the fosses down to the bed-level, shifted all the soil/debris to provide soil to strengthen the verges and ensure the road isn’t mis-shapen and then re-marked all the white lines. They also replaced worn drain tunnels and re-marked all the stream points.

        That even applies to les chemins rurale like ours.

        And, for the benefit of our non-French readers, to put that into perspective, our chemin rurale normally has grass growing in the middle of the road. They resurface our road every ten years or thereabouts!

          1. We’ve had it ride very close by twice since we’ve been here.
            One year the individual time trial was held on “our” lower road and it was a splendid experience, we watched on and off during the day from the sweeping lorry first thing in the morning to the “circus” to the riders going through to the clear up crews.
            We attended the local cycling club’s (VTT) dinner in the evening and we were placed on the top table very near a man who had finished eight tours as a domestique, and his wife. It was fascinating listening to his recollections and to be able to ask questions.
            The locals even managed to procure three jerseys for our grandchildren.

            We try to integrate as much as we can and it was evenings like that that told us our efforts were not in vain!

          2. Well done, nice to see some entente cordiale. Yer Frog can be quite pleasant, especially if an effort is made.

          3. It was a very special evening for us, second only to the one where the matriarch of the village asked HG to dance. Later that evening I was then able to invite the matriarch to dance and she accepted.

            The VM was genuinely adored by the villagers and that evening was the one where we knew we had been accepted, even though we were, and remain, the strange Anglais who live in “la belle maison”

            The VM stood about 4 foot 8 on tip toe.

            Every time we went up to the village she would rush out to greet us, it made us feel very, very welcome. We miss her, RIP.

          4. Wonderful! At our last house the Jim Clark rally went past the bottom of our garden, in a blur. At the present house The Tour of Britain cycle race went past on the road outside our house. We are on a hill, and a bend in the road. The hill is short but turns up very steeply to the bend. Throughout summer we see Lycra-clad cyclists struggling slowly to get over the steep bit. The Tour professionals went up at great speed, almost a blur. That’s when you see and appreciate the difference between good amateurs and highly trained professionals.
            Eight Tours as a domestique. Chapeau!

          5. The beauty of the time trial is that you get to see the cyclists in all their pomp, on the stage races the peloton passes and is gone, leaving a foul smelling cloud of sweat and urine.

    3. A few years back having received the invoice for a Dyna Rod call out, accompanied by the offer of defibrillation, I decided to invest in a set of drain rods. Used only a couple of times since in the ensuing decades but the savings from not having to call out Dyna Rod virtually paid off my mortgage!!

  83. That’s me for this curious day. Sun, heat, rain, sun, downpour, flood – and now pleasant evening sun. Time for some medicine.

    Have a jolly evening.

    A demain.

  84. We’ve just had some quite heavy rain – and even a rumble of thunder. There’s a torrent running down the lane outside.

        1. No Sue it was quite nice up here. Hope it’s nice for the next few days – I have family coming

    2. Yesterday late in the afternoon I had a delivery of 5 tons of bone dry top soil. By the close of play approximately 4 tons had been shifted into its final resting place. However, with the downpour experienced today the last ton will now probably weigh twice as much – so twice as much effort will be required to shift it to its final destination. More rain is forecast for tomorrow…so I’m going to have a day off at the local dry dock watching a vessel being shot blasted before receiving an epoxy coating. All in all just marginally better than watching paint dry or shifting ultra soggy top soil!

  86. LAST POST – IMPORTANT NEWS

    Boss of water regulator Ofwat denies network is in meltdown as he blames new pipes for leaks that have DOUBLED in heatwave

    Wrong sort of pipes, yer see.

  87. The only useful part of suffering covid is as you get better and are still feeling exhausted, it’s so easy to drop off to sleep again and again.

  88. I’m putting my feet up with some tunes on the hifi and a glass or two of fall over juice.
    Spent all day building a bloody Ark because the met office and msm said we were all going to drown: what have we had, an hour of light drizzle.

      1. You haven’t seen the queue waiting outside our front entrance.
        I gave them all a copy of Gideons bible and told them it all works out well in the end.

          3. I can’t stand the blighters. I was very happy to blow the head off a rattle-snake in the Sonora desert with a .375 rifle.

          4. I remember meeting a False Horned Viper on Jebel Harim (Musandam) said hello and gave it a very wide berth.
            They are like Tiger Sharks, one bite and you’re almost certainly dead.

          5. Australia, home to most of the most venomous creatures in the world, snakes, sea snakes, shellfish, jellyfish, spiders, you name it, if it’s Australian and even remotely venomous, it’s bad news!

          6. Ha, sea snakes and box jellyfish can be rather rude and hostile, they have no manners when meeting strangers.

          7. I’ve swum with sea snakes, they are not really equipped to bite humans, but if you do manage to get bitten you ain’t long for this world…
            Box jellyfish, on the other hand, are fully equipped to do one a mischief!

          8. Yes getting bitten by one is quite rare, but because they can be quite colourful, children are most at risk I seem to recall.
            The box on the other hand: I’ve seen someone get entangled with one of those and no amout of hydrogen peroxide or vinegar will help. Fortunately she lived, but it was a close run thing.

          9. I’m told that the best immediate response is to urinate on the stings;
            Even the small stingers that arrive are extremely painful, the BJF is reportedly worse by a huge factor than even the “bluebottles” that are quite common

          10. I’m not sure where that remedy came from (was told the same thing) but in all the resulting panic, who would be able or willing to pee on someone else.
            I always carried H.P and or vinegar with my dive kit.

      1. I met them in the southern deserts of Oman and they are not stupid enough to be taken in by a little rain.

      1. One politician, another politician, does it matter? They. Are. All. The. Fucking. Same.

        1. We wouldn’t get these uniformly lousy WEF puppets if the mainstream media didn’t big them up and scupper anyone who challenges the agenda.

        2. Again NOPE
          Blair created a cesspit from which I doubt we will escape.
          Blair was the worst PM Britain has ever had and in all probability the worst Britain will ever have.
          The damage that that bastard and his wrecking crew wrought is what we see today, AND it will get worse because his acolytes have been planted everywhere.

          3. In 1968 I was a 16 year old taking EPA (Economics and Public Affairs) for A Level. My teacher, Robert Godber (who went on to be Headmaster to William Hague at the same school) was the PPC for the Liberal Party at the time. He arranged for Edward Wainwright, the local Liberal bod to come and give us a talk. Towards the end, he asked us all which way we would vote. I was one of two who didn’t put ur hands up.
            When he asked me why, I said because there is nothing to choose between any of you.
            I’ve voted Conservative ever since. And frankly, I wish I hadn’t bothered.

          4. We had similar talks on a Friday afternoon. If I remember correctly they were “the three sixths” lectures, and very good most of them were.
            One of the very best was by John Timpson of BBC fame, explaining why he eventually ended up as a broadcaster.
            Another that I was enthralled by was given by Chris Bonington.

    6. So very heartwarming to hear our fellow countrymen chant “Land of Hope and Glory” as they make their way on their weekly pilgrimage to the benefits office. Allah is Great, almost as munificent as the British Tax Payer

      1. Roses are reddish
        Violets are blueish
        if it wasn’t for Christmas
        We’d all be Jewish!

    3. How about inconsistencies in uniform itself, men with rainbow hat-bands, blue nail-varnish and rainbow high-heels.

      Charge the lot of ’em with being ‘Improperly dressed’.

  92. Nah, of course climate change has nothing whatsoever to do with that big orange thing;

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-11116681/Cannibal-explosion-sun-hurling-Earth-trigger-radio-blackouts.html

    ‘Cannibal’ explosion on the sun could disrupt GPS systems on THURSDAY when billions of tons of plasma and particles are hurled to Earth
    A ‘cannibal’ coronal mass ejection is set to impact Earth on Thursday
    A coronal mass ejection is a large cloud of energetic and highly magnetized gas that erupts from the surface of the sun
    This ejection is the second to be released from a sunspot, but it gobbled up the first that was released on Sunday
    The ejection is now a combination of the two tangled magnetic fields and compressed plasma that are known to cause strong geomagnetic storms
    The shockwaves have a 10% chance of producing X-class flares and a 30% chance of M-class – both have the potential to trigger radio blackouts

    2. I’ve often wondered if a large CME in the past scored a direct hit on the Earth causing one of the mass extinctions?

  93. It’s coming home:
    Woke eats woke.

    ‘A shame to target one of the good guys’: Stars defend Graeme Souness against ‘ridiculous lightweight activism’ after he called fiery Chelsea vs Spurs clash a ‘man’s game’
    Graeme Souness has received backlash for describing football as ‘man’s game’
    It came after Chelsea and Tottenham drew 2-2 in a feisty encounter on Sunday
    But ex-Chelsea doctor Eva Carneiro today joined those backing Souness
    Souness defended his comments after criticism from Lioness Bethany England

    Bring on more, much more.

    1. It seems it’s all about defending wendyball, whether male or female – just think about it, it’s not a sport anymore – it’s a business and the devil take the hindmost, those ‘fans’ who pay fortunes to see twenty-two eejits try to best each other with the greatest number of fouls that they might force on the other side.

      And Rugby (Union) is getting just as bad.

  95. ‘We can have cake and eat it’, said Boris,
    Who claimed that the quote comes in Horace.
    He said too that Ovid
    Knew all about Covid,
    So Classics and Cake give us solace.

  97. “If we shadows have offended,
    Think but this, and all is mended,
    That you have but slumbered here
    While these visions did appear.
    And this weak and idle theme,
    No more yielding but a dream,
    Gentles, do not reprehend:
    If you pardon, we will mend:
    And, as I am an honest *uck,
    If we have unearned luck
    Now to ‘scape the serpent’s tongue,
    We will make amends ere long;
    Else the *uck a liar call;
    So, good night unto you all.
    Give me your hands, if we be friends,
    And Robin shall restore amends.”

    (With apols to William S)

  100. Margaret Thatcher appears to Boris Johnson in a dream…

    “Privatise the NHS and paint the Houses of Parliament green!” she says to Johnson

    Johnson looks confused; “Why green?”

    Thatcher smiles, “I knew you wouldn’t object to the first part”

  101. “Poor old fool,” thought the well-dressed gentleman as he watched an old man fish in a puddle outside a pub. So he invited the old man inside for a drink.

    As they sipped their whiskeys, the gentleman thought he’d humour the old man and asked, “So how many have you caught today?”

    The old man replied, “You’re the eighth.”

  102. Tis now the very witching time of night
    When churchyards yawn and all hell itself breathes out
    Contagion to the world; Now could I drink hot blood
    And do such bitter business as the day would quake to look upon…..

    Partial Hamlet soliloquy.

    Goodnight Y’all. Sleep well.

    4. I know it’s a lot cooler now, but somehow the season for quaffing hot blood of an evening isn’t quite here yet for me.

  103. I been getting messages from friends all over regarding storms etc. We in Mid Herts have just had a gentle shower. It’s probably steaming out side. But I can’t wait to get to sleep again. Probably for the tenth time today.
    So….. it’s good night from me. 🤗😴

  104. Goodnight folks. Thank you for the humour something which appears to be desperately lacking in a somewhat po-faced World.

    1. Are you saying that if we can’t laugh at ourselves we can always laugh at Phizzee or BT?

  105. Migrant, 21, is arrested after ‘launching frenzied attack on two Border Force officers and a security guard after coming to Britain in small boat from France’
    A migrant, 21, allegedly arrived in Ramsgate from France on small boat on Friday
    He allegedly bit the guard, hit female officer and injured male officer’s shoulder
    The man – one of 40 who had crossed the Channel – was arrested by Kent Police
    Border Force staff now fear someone may be killed following violent attacks

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11117267/Migrant-arrested-Ramsgate-attack-Border-Force-officers-coming-UK-France.html

  107. I too am saying Goodnight and God bless, Gentlefolk. I may well be around tomorrow, late morning.

    1. Well if we are talking about British workers lacking skills, we could start with the talentless, clueless bunch in the House of Commons…oh wait a minute, they’re not workers.

    2. What has she done and going to do about our continual dumbing down of our education system so that everyone can pass.
      What a load of unemployable morons we have in HoC.

  111. Crikey. That Liz Cheney woman is a crackpot.

    Her election pledge appears to be that the 2000 election was not stolen and that Trump
    Is the most evil threat to their ‘democracy’ by claiming otherwise. Yet still some foolish people will vote for Cheney. Where have these empty headed goons, women especially it seems from interviews, been in recent years?

    Good grief, how does a dementia riddled decrepit corpse of a man operating from a basement somewhere project his winning personality on the American voter. The answer is of course that he did not. Trump won with a landslide and the vote was so massively rigged as to reverse the numbers by ten million votes at least.

    Trump has an uphill task for sure.

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