Wednesday 17 August: Giving up coal at a reckless pace compromised Britain’s energy security

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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558 thoughts on “Wednesday 17 August: Giving up coal at a reckless pace compromised Britain’s energy security”

  1. Good morning all. A wet and overcast start to the day with 11°C following a much cooler night with a fair bit of rain.

    1. Misty and damp in the New Forest, but without yesterday’s red sunrise, so hoping to be out and about without getting too bedraggled.

  3. Good Morning Folks,

    Cloudy cooler start here.
    The lawn is turning green already, although it might be the weeds.
    Which is a nuisance really, I was getting used to not having to cut it.

    1. Good morning, Bob3. I think you are suffering from the British weather complaint syndrome: Complain about the lack of rain, then when it rains complain about having to mow the lawn! Lol.

  4. Giving up coal at a reckless pace compromised Britain’s energy security

    Well that’s scientists experts for you.

    1. Thank goodness scientists don’t advise closing down an entire economy and wrecking children’s education because of nasty cold …. um …. er …….

    2. Good morning, Citroen 1. So you’re saying (© Cathy Newman) that the solution to the lack of rain is to invest in a few zebras? Lol.

  6. John Wayne was the original Oscars disgrace. 17 August 2022.

    Off-screen, Wayne is now remembered as a monstrous bigot, whose nastiest views came out in a 1971 interview with Playboy. “I believe in white supremacy until the blacks are educated to a point of responsibility,” he argued. Taking land back from Native Americans was justifiable, too, because they were “selfishly trying to keep it for themselves”.

    It’s Whack a Whitey Week. This said Wayne is not one of my favourite actors; the only DVD’s I have of him are Stagecoach and The Searchers. The rest are mostly pantomime. Though he had his faults he was not a “monstrous bigot”, he held views that were largely main stream in his lifetime and it is worth bearing in mind that his three wives, who were all, oddly enough, from ethnic minorities, never found him insupportable. If Wayne could ever be said to stand for anything, it would be decency; something that no longer exists either in Hollywood or the West at large.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/john-wayne-original-oscars-disgrace/

    2. Wayne used precisely the same reasoning that BLM settlers are applying today in my country – the indigenous folk are selfish keeping their green & pleasant land for themselves, and should hand it over to the most pushy settlers and be grateful for their privilege.

      I’m afraid that my sympathies lie with the beautiful girl standing in for the Godfather all those years ago, not because I am woke or because I find brown skin attractive, but because incomers should not have it so easy pushing out those who have created their homes over many generations, because there is money to be made.

    3. Good point, Minty. I, too, have a DVD copy of STAGECOACH but have not yet seen him in THE SEARCHERS.

      1. Good morning Auntie Elsie.

        Having read Alan le May’s excellent book The Searchers, I was underwhelmed by John Ford’s film. The book’s main character, Amos Edwards, had his name arbitrarily and unnecessarily altered to the clownish “Ethan” Edwards for the film. As usual John Wayne played John Wayne, and a lot of what occurred in the book was destroyed by Hollywood hyperbole.

    4. Good morning, Araminta.

      I have always been of the opinion that once you have seen John Wayne in a film, you have seen him in ALL his films. The most one-dimensional actor in history.

  7. Good morning, all. Grey. Cool. Dry – The rain overnight missed us by a couple of miles. None in view today. Blast.

    1. Good morning Bill.
      It’s been raining all night here. Reduced to a light shower now.

        1. Er, Priti is a British politician, Annie, and she wasn’t standing in the race to No. 10. Lol. (Good morning, btw.)

          2. I don’t think it says anything about Priti Patel on her grandfather’s birth certificate, Tom. At the time she hadn’t been born yet! Lol.

      1. Good morning, Korky. The plum crumble I made with the kind gift of your small plums is dee-licious (see last night’s post). Thank you once again.

      2. Good morning, Korky. The plum crumble I made with the kind gift of your small plums is dee-licious (see last night’s post). Thank you once again.

  9. Quite right too. The same law ought to apply to any NoTTLers foolish enough to be on Twitter. {:^}}

    Saudi woman given 34-year prison sentence for using Twitter

    Salma al-Shehab, a Leeds University student, was charged with following and retweeting dissidents and activists

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/c2af968f3e4891bc881803e6e19fa506728bd599/0_69_2502_1501/master/2502.jpg?width=620&quality=85&fit=max&s=63bf6424347f7f5a9a3f4190c98e2a8b
    Salma al-Shehab, 34, was accused of ‘assisting those who seek to cause public unrest and destabilise civil and national security by following their Twitter accounts’.

    2. Well, that’s me buggered, then! 🤣 I hated the idea of it, but found it an invaluable source of information suppressed elsewhere during the last couple of years. Ah well; sure I’ll be banned permanently soon.

      1. I hate to say it, but I get a lot of financial information from Twit, and Delingpole’s page is good value for keeping up with alternative trends. I have managed to avoid posting much though

    3. Are you sure it wasn’t just 34 months or even just 3 to months, given our corrupt judiciary.

  10. Blair is back, He’s saying we should go back to wearing masks and having another jab.

    He reminds me of the old women in the woods offering rosy red apples to children.

    1. 355168+ up ticks,

      Morning B3

      Think anthony charlie iynton AKA the bog man, Bow street Court.

      As a character ref.

    4. The unflushable turd – he should really be in prison but I doubt I’ll ever see that!

    5. Was he wearing a mask when he made the comment? I imagine not because masks are only for the plebs.
      An evil man.

  11. 355168+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Wednesday 17 August: Giving up coal at a reckless pace compromised Britain’s energy security

    That is only one odious issue in regards to action taken of a great many odious issues in regards to action taken,

    The continuing contest to put a lab/lib/con close shop coalition party regardless of near guaranteed odious consequences into power has cost these Isles dearly and yet it continues.

    Wednesday 17 August: Giving up self respect, integrity, patriotism & common sense at a reckless pace compromised Britain’s standing in the democracy department.

    Seems like a bumper harvest these past couple of years as reaping what has been sown shows, society cannot get much lower than an 80 year old
    mobility chair user fatally stabbed to death in london.

    1. Agreed, ogga1. I was going to add “Good morning, ogga1” but then I realised that would simply be repeating my “Good morning, ……” which I’ve been doing a lot of late just as you keep on repeating your own message about people repeatedly voting for the Llib/Lab/Con party. So I am wondering if it might be better in future for me to simply greet all NoTTLers and leave it at that. What do NoTTLers think? Do you like my individual wishes for you to have a good day?

      1. 355168+ up ticks,

        Top of the morning EB,

        To give individual greetings, my way it also gives the digits a work out.

        The reason I repeat the same message daily is to counter in a small way the odious treasonable voting pattern these last 30 plus years and the, so bloody obvious damage it has done to both Country & peoples especially children.

        No way will I be asking if that is right or wrong it is my feelings alone.

      2. No problem, Elsie, but, if I greet at all, which I didn’t this morning, coming in late with a visiting podiadist house visit this morning.

  13. To itch or to scratch?

    SIR – I have been through my summer wardrobe and cannot find one
    T-shirt or dress without a label on the back of the neck that rubs
    uncomfortably (Letters, August 15). It doesn’t help when you end up resorting to scissors and exchanging the label for a hole.

    Jennifer Cottom
    London NW5

    SIR – As well as the difficulty of removing labels without cutting a
    hole in the garment, there’s the problem of over-stitched seams –
    usually in nylon thread that hardens as soon as it is anywhere near an
    iron. And for those of us with hypersensitive skin, wouldn’t it be
    possible to have the softer material on the inside next to the skin?
    Vanity comes a very poor second to comfort.

    S P Cokyll
    London NW1

    I end up wearing my old T shirts inside out. I was having the same problem with underwear. Solved that one by buying silky drawers. :@)

    Good morning.

    2. Good morning, Phizzee. My problem with clothes labels is that they are printed in such small print that I just cannot read the washing instructions.

    3. Hi Phizzy

      Many items of clothing purporting to be cotton are scratchy itchy fabrics .

      My skin is so sensitive , and lock down and buying on line proved to be an absolute disaster , and especially so with items I bought from M+S.

      Impossible to return stuff.. and I still haven’t got around to sorting things for charity shops.

      1. Ah, the delights of ‘polycotton’, which means 80% plastic, 10% cotton, 10% industrial shredded paper.

        I buy cheap t shirts. The same ones over and over. They’re £8 each and I wear them until they disintegrate, then a bit more. Each lasts about 3-4 years and I consider that a good return.

    4. Yes. I remove most of my labels. I buy woollen polo shirts locally, and have been trying to persuade the factory owner to sew on labels with wool and to stop using nylon. When I buy something it is sent back to the factory to have the label removed.
      Like SP Cokyll, I wear my T-shirts inside out. Even from new the seams are rough. I buy cheap T-shirts, and my most recent from Tui?Sainsbury, made in Bangladesh, were particularly rough.

      There is a dressmaking gadget specifically for removing stitching. It’s called a “stitch-ripper”.

    5. Wear right-way round, wear backwards, wear insde-out, wear backwards inside out.
      4 days wear, no need for laundry.
      What’s not to like?

    7. …and the origin of the silky drawers? Asking for a new-found friend, you understand.

    1. Good morning, Hugh J. (PS – are you the same person as “the artist formerly known as Hugh Janus”?)

      1. ‘Afternoon, Elsie. Possibly…

        Meanwhile, and to update my earlier whinge about no rain, our drought ended this morning – a brief storm, accompanied by torrential rain, with all water butts over half full in less than 30 minutes. It’s going dark again as I type so with any luck a lot more on the way.

  15. Hundreds of thousands of UK households ditch Amazon Prime. 17 August 2022.

    Almost 600,000 British households cancelled their Amazon Prime subscriptions ahead of a price rise as the cost of living crisis hits streaming companies.

    Hopefully the damned thing will collapse entirely. When I buy anything on Amazon (apart from books) I have to check carefully that I am not unwittingly signing up to an offer for Amazon Prime although this is better than the original where they put you in without bothering to ask! I used to have to google “How do you cancel your Amazon Prime account” when this happened and which still required the eyes of a hawk to implement!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/08/17/hundreds-thousands-uk-households-ditch-amazon-prime/

    1. I gave up Amazon when they required me to link my bank account a few years ago. Previously, I’d just bought vouchers and used them. I expected to miss Amazon, but in fact I’ve managed perfectly well without them up to now.

      1. I don’ like going into town. I don’t like the traffic, the parking, the people. I don’t like that they probably won’t have the book I want in stock, or that someone has bent the cover. When I buy a book off Amazon I get that precise book. Any problems and I send it back, no questions asked.

        However, the downside is the drivers are, increasingly (as they’re all invariably foreign) atrocious. Bang on the door and run off. Leaving things out in plain view. Worse was some oaf who moved a bin to cover a parcel. Yes, they’d specifically moved a bin, making it look obviously out of place to hide a box.

        1. We had a delivery placed in the bin. We received an email confirming delivery. The search then began. We have had deliveries made to a house in the next village. What fun!

  17. Today’s leading letter:

    SIR – In 2015 Amber Rudd, who was then the energy secretary, announced plans to close coal-fired power stations by 2025, but said: “Energy security comes first and I am determined to ensure the UK has secure, affordable and clean energy supplies that hardworking families and businesses can rely on.”

    I was not convinced that this was a good idea. We know that coal is dirty, but closing every station leaves us vulnerable to gas-supply shortages.

    Could the Government explain how this was allowed? Meanwhile I am stockpiling candles. This winter, the few remaining coal-fired power stations will just about make the difference in keeping the lights on.

    Ed Abbott
    Wrabness, Essex

    I doubt it, Mr Abbott – West Burton (Notts) closed half its 2GW capacity in March this year, and its remaining 1GW his due for closure in March ’23. Kilroot (NI) with 0.52 GW, is to be converted to gas in ’23. Ratcliffe on Soar, 2GW, is due for closure next month. With typical peak demand in winter nudging 45GW, blackouts are on the cards if the wind doesn’t blow. Pray, therefore, for no high pressure weather systems…

    1. Although it could well kill many, I do pray that we get a very cold, prolonged period with a high pressure system, plus of course lots and lots of cloud and that Putin cuts all the gas as well.
      Only then will the people who remain turn on the Greeniacs.

      2. The green tyranny is simply a symptom of a bigger issue, namely that big government is controlling our lives to our detriment driven by a small, obnoxious, anti social clique.

        By all means, live a life without energy or fuel. That’s your choice and, arguably a worthy one. However leave other people their own choices, as demanding someone else live as you do, believe as you do is tyranny.

    2. It was done to meet the pointless climate change targets. After all, if there is no energy generation then there is no ‘carbon’ and thus no energy.

    3. Pray, therefore, for no high pressure weather systems..

      Because it will be cold, probably very cold, and the wind will not be blowing? On the other hand if we get a continuous run of very vigorous low pressure systems it’ll be cold and the windmills will be shut down. Heads we’re in the mire, tails we’re in the mire. This is deliberate policy by politicians from all parties, incompetence doesn’t come close to an excuse.

  18. Good Moaning.
    I will indulge in a generalisation.
    As we show friends round our intended Dower House – which, in a break with tradition, will contain a living male – we have noticed an irritating phenomenon.
    All the silly, niggley criticisms with accompanying suggestions for ‘improvements’ (plain daft / troublesome / unnecessary or just a complete waste of money) come from men who do the square root of fook all around their own homes.
    End of rant.

    1. Morning Anne

      Years ago when we thought we would like to move , we showed potential buyers around , and I have to say I would never do that again.

      People just made so many horrible comments .. change this that and the other , why they even bothered to view our property , heaven only knows .

      1. I sold my four bed detached in Birmingham. When ever potential buyers turned up i told them to go have a look and if they had any questions i would be in the conservatory.
        Good morning, Belle.

      2. Are you suggesting you never made any alterations to your current house and that other people have a vision for another way do arranging it.

        1. Of course we have changed things …

          I have better manners than most .

          A viewer suggested ripping our large Purbeck stone fireplace out , rearranging walk in cupboards , knocking rooms into one.

          I didn’t want to hear stuff like that .. they can keep their ideas to themselves untill they have bought the property .

          A home is a nest , a personal space , has nice memories etc.. I didn’t want a stranger spouting forth in front of me .

        1. Folk are truly moronic. One bloke came around and his wife said ‘Oh, I don’t like that dog bed. And that table takes up far too much room.’

          I mentioned that they wouldn’t be here when they moved in as they were ours.

      4. People are plain bloody rude.
        We’ve looked round houses that are not to our taste, but we would never – ever – make disparaging remarks in front of those for whom it was their home.

    2. A couple of our bowls club members moved and were horrified when the new owners started to pull the house to pieces. She said there was no need to do anything to the house as it was perfect. She was most distraught.
      I didn’t have the heart to remind her that she no longer owned it.

      1. We invest a lot of ourselves in our homes. They’ve been ‘ours’ for years, after all. That wall where Junior decided was an alien. The other wall… Mongo’s favourite place to sit (on the concrete beside the fridge), the step that’s annoying beyond measure, the roof tile that’s always been wonky, the attic ladder with two missing rungs, the possessed oven

        1. I agree with all those things but when you put your home up for sale people are going to come and look and say what they might do if they bought it. I’m sure we all do the same.
          We know that other people would want to change our home but if we put it up for sale then it will eventually not belong to us.

      2. The two sons of the previous owners of a house in our road have been absolutely sickened by what the new owners have done to it. And so are almost all of the residents. The work has been going on for more than ten months. And to add insult to much inconvenience and injury they moved away while their dwelling has been doubled in size. And have recently proudly returned. The event had become almost Napoleonic in style.

    3. When we were selling Laure, one viewer said that the house was very nice but she didn’t like the colour of the paint in the spare room….

      1. 3 bed-semi with a v. nice bedroom conversion in the attic (already bagged by youngest granddaughter).
        Oh, and a stonking extension to the kitchen. A real break in tradition for us.

    1. Good morning DB

      Have you had any rain over the past 24hours.. We have had a minimal amount , nothing since lunchtime yesterday, and that was drizzle .

      Not too sure whether we will have any today .

      West Dorset had a deluge yesterday , but our area here seems to have it’s own micro climate .. so all the campsites will be happy !

    2. Good morning. I get my new wheelchair tomorrow. Need to buy some whiplike aerials for my penants. Going to paint it red with go faster stripes.

      5. Will your “whiplike aerial” support a CB radio? “Come on, come on, good buddy!”

  20. Disappointing news in the Telegaffe today – May’s modern slavery legislation is apparently now a major loophole that stops us deporting illegals; the RAF is leading the recruitment diversity drive [“targeted interventions” and “positive actions” which apparently means if two candidates are judged to be equal the minority one gets the promotion – bad news for all white men {although there are suggestions that the RAF is “pausing” recruitment of them to meet diversity targets!!}] and rail users face unprecedented cancellations!

    1. Ludicrous, isn’t it? Now we have specific and institutionalised racism endorsed and forced by the state.

  21. I enjoyed the Talking Pints slot on GB News last night. Nigel’s guest was Tony Abbott ex PM of Australia. He was born in London, A brexiteer and an obvious anglophile. He would make a good PM for the UK Prior to talking with Nigel, Mark Steyn had reminded TA that it was possible for him to be the UK PM. I was impressed by him and the GBN item is worth a watch.

    1. Yes, his name floated around before the last election. Too bad it didn’t happen. We foolishly all but abandoned the Commonwealth and sucked up to the EU. The members of the Commonwealth had to double down on building up trade and their place in the world. Tony Abbott would have experience of this, and that would be very useful to us now. Instead a few Tories will choose between two politicians who are no more than board game players.

  23. The £100,000 “interim” payment to the infected blood transfusion sufferers is likely to be considered to be awarded to others who suffered from the loss or hardship caused by an infected relative. BBC Radio 4 News. This payment could go on and on. The blood came from the USA. Will the Government sue the USA? I doubt it.
    Solicitors will be eyeing up those people, who because of late diagnosis of cancers etc, are seriously disabled or died prematurely.
    The taxpayers will get the bill.

    1. I have no idea what to say to this. Was the blood not tested? Obviously you can’t test everything, but what about at source? When it arrived? It wasn’t from the EU so could have been checked (the EU forbade any checks on equipment from it, thus why a chum had dangerous breast implants).

      What the hell is wrong with this country? We’re horrifically over taxed, crippling the economy. We’ve too many people on welfare yet business cannot employ. Our roads are crumbling, our police don’t, the health service is utterly inefficient, despite mountains of cash shovelled into its furnace. The civil service is grossly overmanned and underworked, we’ve left the hated EU but still face massive costs from that useless organisation and our mandarins are adhering to every EU law with toddler like ferocity.

      We’ve no money to hep veterans or the homeless, yet hundreds of millions to house and feed rapists, murderers and wasters from Sudan and Eritrea.

      On top of that, demented Lefties whinge and whine and set about destroying our culture that allows them their bitter bickering snipes. When will we throw off these hated vermin and restore this country to greatness?

      1. The blood was taken from prisoners in the USA , some of whom had these diseases. I don’t know if the blood was tested for these diseases. I suspect not. Did the USA warn the UK blood transfusion service? I don’t know.

      2. The NHS managers and medics, and our Health Ministers were responsible. The notion of buying blood/blood derived products from darkies, druggies, alcoholics, loonies and allsorts in the USA should have been killed instantly. It was not. Instead the corrupt stuff bought and imported and was injected into people who had been damaged by illness or injury.
        If those in public positions, politicians, doctors were heavily fined and sent to prison for this kind of deliberate malfeasance we might see a turn-round in these appalling failures.

  24. BBC managed to present another article on inflation and not once mention the punitive level of taxation in this country, nor the EU’s policies for it, nor the intentional erosion of living standards. It was all ‘what should the government do’.

    Well Mr Robinson, the government should scrap fuel duties, energy taxes and levies, repeal the climate change, race relations and equalities acts. It should permanently bin all taxes on gas, coal and nuclear and all subsidy on wind. Then how about halving VAT.

    But no. It wouldn’t present such obvious, common sense rational policy.

    1. Already revenues from taxation are desperately short of expenditure and have been since the 1990s. How is this shortfall to be made up with the Magic Fairy calls in her debts? Must it be raided from the piggy banks of life savers, thrifty over the years, in order to finance ever more profligate borrowers playing the market or simply frittering it away, by inflation that is way above interest or wages of non-executives?

      What we have now is that any money restored by cutting taxes is a tiny fraction of that lost by spiralling prices, which are blowing any tax cutting policy out of water. It is like taking £4000 with one hand and giving back £150 with the other. It won’t wash any longer.

      1. That isn’t because not enough is raised though. Vastly too much is taken from the worker. The state borrows because it wastes money hand over fist doing things the pubic do not want or need promoting causes that are at least pointless, at worse destructive.

        Foreign aid, for example. The solution isn’t taking more. It is cutting state spending by 40-50%.

        1. The Tories were elected in 2010 on a specific manifesto pledge to cut state spending to repair the damage done by the Great Fraud bailouts from 2008 that enabled the banks to keep paying bonuses as usual.

          They have had twelve years to honour this pledge. Has it happened?

          When Covid broke out, and it was obvious that a great deal of public money was needed to handle this emergency, was there any slowing up, or even mothballing of prestige items such as HS2 that could wait a couple of years? If I recall, they doubled up the work done by contractors to clear SSSIs and other sensitive sites while objectors were curfewed at home.

          Was anything done to curb fraud on a huge scale in the NHS (Test & Trace or contracts to supply protective equipment) or to limit the payouts under PFI contracts initiated by Blair, but following Thatcherite deregulated Free Single Market principles, adding profiteering and fraud to the already bloated cost of the items themselves.

          Considering it was the Tories that did this, should we expect any better from Labour?

        2. The UK has spent mant decades supporting the rest of the world with foreign aid. Its just encouraged them to be reliant on our generosity. Meanwhile they have done diddly squat to better their own situations. Until however they started arriving in their thousands in rubber boats and virtually doubling the first amount of money they already cost us.
          Now we’re in deep doodoo (we’ll only the ordinary people on the street) who will send us help ? …………..hello anyone out there ?

    2. Best thing to do wibbers is send them an email and reliably infom Robinson what a total and utterly dispicable agitating w^nker he is.

  25. And meanwhile, in cat news – it was quite funny last night. Because it has been dry here since May, G & P had obviously forgotten what rain – and being wet – was like! They were thoroughly put out! Sulking in the porch when we went downstairs….

  26. The UK is expected to take delivery of a shipment of gas all the way from Australia next week, as the pressure on European energy supplies grows.

    The liquid natural gas (LNG) is due to arrive on 22 August, according to commodities analysts Kpler.

    Australia doesn’t usually sell gas this far afield, but European countries have been seeking alternatives to Russian gas following the invasion of Ukraine.

    The UK stopped importing gas from Russia in April.

    While the UK bought only a small fraction of its gas from Russia before the conflict began, the country is connected to the European gas network. Continental Europe is much more reliant on Russian gas, and deliveries via the Nordstream pipeline have already been curtailed.

    Moscow has been accused of using gas as a political weapon and there are fears it could cut supplies to European countries altogether, if there is no resolution to the crisis. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-62570900

      2. Let’s hope that the tanker has a natural gas powered engine.

        I’ll get me bell-bottoms.

        1. LNG tankers use boil-off from the cargo on the outward bound journey – then the crew has to row on the return trip

        2. LNG tankers use boil-off from the cargo on the outward bound journey – then the crew has to row on the return trip

      4. Ah, but it’s all about the pretence. If it’s not generated here then the state can say we continue to meet our targets. It’s irrelevant how absurd it is, the farce is what matters.

        1. To my understanding, Drax Power Station in Yorkshire was deliberately sitied over 300 years of coal, yet to be mined.

          What does it run on? Yep, wood pellets, chopped and pelleted in Washington State at enormous (to greenies) carbon cost and then shipped, via the Panama Canal, on an oil-burning vessel (more carbon cost) all the way to the UK..

          As they used to say with a little caroon character in the corner, “Daft, isn’t it?”

  28. British ‘should graft harder like Chinese’

    LIZ TRUSS said British workers should show “more graft” like the Chinese, in a leaked recording.

    The Tory leadership frontrunner suggested UK staff lacked the “skill and application” of foreign rivals.

    Speaking when she was Chief Secretary to the Treasury, she also suggested London was richer than the rest of the country because of its workers’ “mindset or attitude”.

    It follows the furore over a book Ms Truss co-wrote in 2012 in which UK workers were described as among the “worst idlers in the world”. She said last month that the passage had been written by her co-author, Dominic Raab.

    In the recording leaked to The Guardian, Ms Truss said: “I once wrote a book about this which got mischaracterised – British workers produce less per hour than… and that’s a combination of kind of skill and application.”

    She went on: “If you look at productivity, it’s very, very different in London from the rest of the country. But basically … this has been a historical fact for decades. Essentially it’s partly a mindset and attitude thing, I think. It’s working culture, basically. If you go to China, it’s quite different, I can assure you.”

    “I don’t think people are that keen to change that… But actually what needs to happen is more … more graft. It’s not a popular message,” she added.

    Asked about the leaked comments at a Tory leadership hustings in Scotland, Ms Truss said: “The point I’ve always made is, what we need in this country is more productivity across the country and we need more economic growth.”

    Yesterday Ms Truss’s hopes of winning the leadership contest received a boost after 11 Tory whips declared their support for the Foreign Secretary.

    The British will not “graft harder” because they have had work (and common sense) bred out of them. The brave, hard-working, self-sufficient and redoubtable generation of WWII somehow curiously contrived to be overprotective and made their offspring weaker, cowardly and more self-interested. This trend got successively worse and the latest generation are a flimsy crowd of pathetic nonentities without any moral fibre, hard-working ethic, courage or sense of duty. A weak and stupid population with an even weaker and stupider leadership is the recipe for disaster.

    1. I recall being horrified by my first working trip to the USA. Even the graduate research staff were supposed to start work at 8am!. That made me decide that while the odd trip or three across the pond on expenses was quite fun, as a permanent work place, it was a no-no…

      1. I started at 7.30 in GA when I was librarian….7.00 if there was a faculty meeting.

      2. Normal office hours in Norway: 08:00 to 16:00, 30 minutes break for lunch.
        10 hour days for site work
        12 hour days plus for offshore.

    2. My son starts work at 7am .. half an hour for lunch .. he leaves the house at 6am .. home by 6pm .

      His job is physical , he works like a dingbat . He is a true grafter. He is 53 years old .

      1. My jobs have been non-physical, but other than a temporary period where I had to get up early to make a journey across London involving several tubes, I’ve made a point of ensuring that I live somewhere within 30mins drive to work. I am not a morning person. Which reminds me, time to pour the breakfast tea…

        1. I’m not a morning person either. I would get up at 6am. Do my ablutions and go to work. By 9am i would wake up. 12 hour shift. Then home to bed. Rinse and repeat.

          I would also sometimes work weekends as well if we had an event booked.

          Hot kitchens and heavy hot pans was tiring but you establish a rhythm.

      2. My jobs have been non-physical, but other than a temporary period where I had to get up early to make a journey across London involving several tubes, I’ve made a point of ensuring that I live somewhere within 30mins drive to work. I am not a morning person. Which reminds me, time to pour the breakfast tea…

      3. Every mother is going to stand up, stamp her feet, and indignantly defend her son. That’s what mothers do, Maggie.

        Having said that, you still cannot deny that my general point is pertinent and correct. The truth is glaring visible and omnipresent, wherever you look.

        1. I agree with your general point – but there are exceptions and I will stick up for my two very industrious sons who are working far harder in their 20s than I did when I started.

        2. I understand what you are saying and it is true BUT life was hard work and every parent wants a better life for their kids. Miners did not want their sons to go down the mines etc. Our generation saw manual work as being low paid and menial (probably a mistake in hindsight) and wanted our kids to be better off in cleaner less arduous jobs. In their turn our kids have wanted more for their kids – and so kids have got softer and often feel they are entitled to be what ever they want to be – and if that is not available then the state should support them.

    3. The WWII generation knew how to look after their workers. There were off-ration staff canteens, so that workers could concentrate on their work and get into a rhythm that improved performance, rather than constantly having to divert to looking after themselves. There was also the domestic backup that no longer exists today.

    4. Yeserday watching the young fellow crawling about amongst insulation foam, sweating horribly as we punched down 48 connects by a hung lantern, in a hot, stinking attic I think we put our time in. Truss, now… she’s an MP. Tell, me, what ‘graft’ do they do? Oh, I wrote a book. How hard was that? Were you laying bricks all day in the rain?

      How about you do something about over generous welfare. We’ve an entire sub culture who produce nothing. Who never will. Who have no skills, no value who soak up billions providing almost nothing, robbing those people who, by accident of birth or circumstances find themselves stuffed – temporarily or permanently unable to find work but who want to. The wasters rob the decent of the money they rightfully deserve to get back in to work and live their lives with dignity.

      Ms Truss, do not think to lecture others from your pristine, expenses laden ivory tower. You’re part of the problem.

    5. I’ve worked in places. In factories that hummed as workers went about their tasks. One factory where workers worked non-stop between breaks, manual work that required skill and concentration, hour after hour. Two fifteen minute breaks, morning and afternoon, and one hour lunch break. Day after day.
      When I worked in offices the work got done well , to a high standard. In an efficient office the day’s work is done half an hour before closing time. The office may look idle, be idle, but everything has been accomplished.
      I’ve never seen many “idle” or “lazy” workers. But I’ve come across a fair few lazy, idle, useless politicians. Looking at you, Ms Truss.

    6. I think that many people in the public sector have abandoned even the pretence of work altogether but there are still those who run their own businesses who work like beavers because they want to achieve something, they respond well to challenges and, if the fail, they will go under.

      Mind you, it is easier to work hard in a job which one loves and in which one does well. Working in a monotonous, dead-end job which is tedious, and mind-numbingly dull must be difficult to do with any enthusiasm.

    7. No mention of the hard work put in here by the illegal gimmegrunts, in their efforts to get here, in order to be put up in 4 & 5 star hotels, paid benefits and the rest of the slammers, the majority of who seem only capable of driving taxis to lure young white girls fo raping or copulating with their wives to produce more child benefits. Now there’s lazy, idle, detestable people; all of whom should have their benefits cut, unlesss they can produce their grandfather’s birth certificate shewing that he was born in Britain.

    8. The productivity problem is simply a lack of investment. We prefer buying 2nd/3rd/umpteenth properties. The Chinese are not so afraid of investment.

  29. Morning all 😃
    I’m rather disappointed with the very slight amount of rain fall.

    2. As we arrived back at Alfreton station yesterday afternoon, the heavens opened! We stayed in the waiting room for about 20 minutes until it eased a little and even then I got quite wet just sprinting to the car! Sadly we didn’t get as much rain at home, although still more than a mile or so away where the roads were dry!

        1. Not on the online booking platforms and timetables – they all seem to use just Alfreton, but the plaque inside the waiting area/ticket office records the opening of Mansfield and Alfreton Parkway.

          1. I once had to go to Brissul by train. The first available one stopped at “Bristol Parkway”. Fine, I thought and jumped on. Turned out that that station was MILES from Brissul and I had to get a cab which cost as much as the train fare…!

          2. I’m guessing they dropped the ‘Mansfield’ bit after Mansfield people complained bitterly about “their ” station being nowhere near their town. In any case, Mansfield got their own station on the “Robin Hood” line not long afterwards.

    4. Hot and sunny here now but I got drenched 50 minutes ago when I made the 15 metre dash between our house and the students’ house to take Caroline her cup of coffee.

      1. Did you keep the saucer over the cup to prevent it being diluted by the rain? A bit like the egg and spoon race? (Just asking out of devilment.)

        1. I did indeed. I often put a saucer over Caroline’s coffee mug because we have suicidal flies who want to drown in coffee and Caroline prefers her coffee without them as they do not improve the flavour.

  30. SIR – Why should harder A-level marking make a difference? Universities aim to pick the most able students for their courses.

    When I entered medical school in the 1970s, the majority of medical schools requested BBB. This was because an A grade was only awarded to about 10 per cent of candidates.

    The universities will still be looking for excellence, but the required grades will reflect the number of candidates able to achieve the higher grades. The universities need to be able to differentiate between candidates, and 48 per cent getting an A does not allow them to do this easily.

    Dr Ian Morgan

    When everybody is somebody, nobody is anybody.

    The standard of “A” levels has collapsed but this has been happening for at least 30 years. When I took my “A” levels in 1964 I got B, C, and D grades and after spending a couple of years sporting with Amaryllis in London rather than scorning delights and living laborious days I ended up at UEA rather than Cambridge where my father was a foundation scholar of his college and got a double 1st.

    C grades in the 60s and 70s were very respectable – indeed my niece got into Oxford in 1975 with A, B, C grades. Standards then began to slip but Caroline assesses that a student with a C grade in French in 1990 – when we started running our courses – would be heading for an A grade today. But C grades today should not get you into any respectable university.

    A point that is not often made is that exams which are too easy punish brighter students. A brilliant student who is not stretched may make careless mistakes and not get the top grade while the earnest plodder, who could not cope with more difficult questions but who has learnt how to tick all the boxes, will get a top grade and be preferred to the cleverer person.

    As I said in a post yesterday we are now scrambling to achieve mediocrity.

    1. Good morning, Rastus.

      The government are determined to create a mediocracy, to be ruled over by their hypocracy.

    1. I’m not sure humans are ready for robots. We’re not advanced enough intellectually and socially. Far too many people in the world still believe in a great sky man, using their fantasy as an excuse for all sorts of appalling behaviour. Intellectually and socially we’re a backward species.

      While initial robots will be primitive, eventually they’ll advance and someone, somewhere will write a bit of code that emulates a real neural net creating the first primitive AI which instead of needing 5 years to grow to maturity will do so in 5 hours, then 5 minutes, then 5 seconds.

      I think where we go wrong with AI is trying to program how to do things. We impose our own knowledge. Instead, let the machine learn for itself as a baby does, through exploration.

  32. I understand that times are tough, and people are worried about increases in prices that countries around the world are facing.

    Although there are no easy solutions, we are helping where we can through a £37bn support package, with further payments for those on the lowest incomes, pensioners and the disabled, and £400 off energy bills for everyone in the coming months.

    Getting inflation under control is my top priority, and we are taking action through strong, independent monetary policy, responsible tax and spending decisions, and reforms to boost productivity and growth.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/08/17/ftse-100-markets-live-news-inflation-wage-growth-energy/

    Giving people their own money back is idiotic. Inflation is out of control because of taxation, borrowing and monetary expansion. Your responsible tax and spending decisions involve more spending and more tax.

    The solutions are simple: cut our fecking taxes you [beeeeeep]. Scrap all energy taxes. Scrap all fuel duties. Scrap water taxes. Halve VAT. You see? You, the state will have to do more with less. In return, government will have to shrink, radically. The sort of spending reductions you’re not used to as you keep spending more and more assuming it’s going on forever. The state is going to have to take the pain with real terms cuts to spending and the closing of entire departments.

    1. The whole situation lends itself beautifully to their plans for the great reset. Where we are all dependent on the state for everything and totally under control. CBDC; where, when and if we are allowed to drive our cars and what we do for an”living”. Grim prospect huh.

    2. Well Truss is looking to make a few of your dreams come true.

      We’ll see how well your tax cuts theory stands up in the real world. I predict poor person and pensioner poverty levels rising dramatically as no matter how big a tax cut those groups get it’ll never get close to covering the extra 4k+ expenses. She will be forced to give handouts even though she has said she wont.

      The only real beneficiaries of tax cuts are those with huge incomes that don’t tax plan very well.

      Inflation is out of control because of energy costs, low unemployment, and a lack of logistics particularly truck drivers.

      Want to get inflation under control? Throw 10-15 million people out of work, that’ll kill it.

      1. Energy costs are out of control because of subsidies to the rich for useless wind turbines, green taxes, VAT on domestic fuel, closure of coal fired power stations, refusal to increase natural gas and oil production from the North Sea, some demented belief in Net Zero, meddling in the energy market to try, very unsuccessfully, to control prices, some belief that a few caws and a few cars etc are causing climate change despite historic evidence to the contrary. Importing hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants who are being supported by the taxpayers and making the NHS more overloaded than previously and are very unlikely to work along with the majority of the Pakistanis who don’t work. Spending billions of ££ on the Scamdemic for no reward, spending billions on PPE that isn’t up to the job, spending billions on injections that are not in any way vaccinations.
        The list of incompetence is never ending and the current crop of MPs are most likely unemployable elsewhere.

        1. Yet we’ve done all that for years without any inflation so it’s none of that. It’s expensive because we have to go to other countries for our needs putting us at the mercy of global prices and geopolitical situations.

          1. Yes the stupidity of the climate change scam and net zero together with ignoring history and science.

      2. What a gay, happy, smiling old dog you are – spreading warmth and happiness where ere you go.

        1. I spread realism wherever I go. You can go on believing in the fairies and tax cuts if you like but we’ll soon see who’s right.

  33. The radar is telling me that there is no rain for miles. The sky, on the other hand, is dripping…quite hard!!

    1. It’s five past ten, and here the outdoor thermometer says the temperature is 14.3c… I am shortly hibernating until next spring.,

    2. It’s five past ten, and here the outdoor thermometer says the temperature is 14.3c… I am shortly hibernating until next spring.,

  35. ‘Morning All

    Modern Life……

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5c5a9b78c202ce4fd1c015ef9322f26e2d1bc672e6fa38da887bb696f8ea1c0f.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1879fe9c7908e91ed6d2b000d40ad68b49695492ff0b58e57f6e46c79d9942ac.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b9d3229c6c4dc76908c371439449af077ba67c8d33aa4b2d4f235384c7510ab7.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/97af6055d63dee3d779fdc4f4c5d808bf05219afa97f6330893e5bce884d6158.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/84a5cf9e091d1f0e5c75be4b837119408bc5c95377cdbc7f3c6640423972b443.png

      1. When the Mayflower settlers landed, the natives took pity on the clueless strangers and tried to help them. Where have all the flowers gone? Long time passing…When will they ever learn?

    2. On the IQ of a crayon – we went shopping the other day and as we pootle round the Warqueen’s adding up the prices in her head.

      We get to the till, she reminds me of the vouchers, we go all the way through and low, something’s been counted twice. She was right. Was some 60 odd p out. ‘It helps me relax’ she says. However she did challenge me with my own obsessions ‘How many Landrovers or the most evil one ‘how many missing spaces.’

    2. Comp parts are really difficult to get hold of now. It’s a silly thing, but we’re given lead times of 3 months + for some of the basic switching kit by Mikrotik and Aruba.

      The really big chaps we put in, the high end Cisco devices are much higher than we would usually pay. Thankfully no one’s asking for such deployments.

    2. In other words, Ladies make youselves smell like a Cli*oris or a C**t.

      How delightful, I need a full-blown meeting and mutual attraction (generally via perfumes and personality) before I’ll venture to those parts for our mutual delectation.

  39. The rescue puppy, Ozzie continues to eat and is gaining weight. He’ll never be as big as Mongo who at this age was 40 kilos and knee height but big is relative for Newfies. I am worried about him though as aside from coming out to eat, he stays in Mongo’s bed most of the time hiding behind the flaps. A nervous Newf is not good news.

    I’ll ask Marion, Mongo’s breeder what she suggests. Until then I try to sit by him when I can so he’s not alone. He won’t play with Junior or Mongo though – his eyes have followed the ball a few times when we sat outside (had to carry him and even then he cowered) and he’s absolutely terrified of the Warqueen.

    Any folk suggestions for nervous puppies? He’s 5 months old (we think) and we need to get him to the vets for vaccinations and sorting out various bits and pieces.

    1. Wibbling

      A rescue pup?

      It will take a good few weeks for him to decompress and settle down .. if only pups could talk..

      He probably had a very harsh start in life .. I am sure once his confidence grows , and he learns to love and trust , all will be well .

      Just leave him be to get used to sounds and smells … and VOICES..

      Be very patient .. I mean it .. we are talking about weeks and weeks of very slow progress.

      https://dogtime.com/advocacy/dog-adoption/35621-tips-decompressing-new-rescue-dog

      1. Much obliged both – I had a call from Marion that a Newfoundland had been returned to a shelter (bloody lockdown puppies! Bastard humans! and could we take it on as we’re a known quantity with a small child used to dogs, WFH most of the time and so on.

        We picked up Oscar (‘Ozzie’ now) and brought him home. He soiled himself in the car journey and his first vet visit pronounced him underweight, some 3 kilos or so so he has had double helpings and has been bottle fed a lot of this vitamin thing. His coat is nearly Mongo’s level, but he’s not inquisitive, adventurous or exploring where Mongo was everywhere. He would be carried on my shoulder a lot less he was left out.

        Aye Phizzee, Mongo has a bed in the kitchen, but he mostly sleeps with Junior. Ozzie tends to look shy and scared of being around us – and we lost him in the cupboard. He’d climbed in to hide behind the endless bags she has and we’d closed the door by accident, so I moved downstairs with him for the first few nights.

        He’s sleeping ok, and both Junior and Mongo are being both gentle and quiet around him. He accepts brushing, but is rigid as anything. I wonder if he’s been hit although what sort of a person hits something as beautiful as a Newfie puppy?

      2. Sounds like a good idea and, although dogs live in the now, they still remember who mis-trated them and what scared them. That takes, as you say, a long, long time.

        They don’t understand words but go by the tone of your voice, hence commands need to be given an authoritive tone but praise must also be heaped on them when they’ve done something well, maybe even deserving of a small treat.

    2. When i first got Dolly i had her with me in bed until she settled in. She has two beds now. One in my room for when she wants company and one in the living room if she fancies being by herself.

  40. A reference in one of today’s Nottler posts to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest led me to see if Evelyn’s Waugh’s Mr Loveday’s Little Outing could be found on line and I came across this video adaptation with David Warner, Andrew Sachs and Prunella Scales.

    How long before all Evelyn Waugh’s brilliant stories are cancelled?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjukuOGikx4

    2. Penguin Classics seem to be still publishing them without trigger warnings. From memory, Decline and Fall features the N word and as for Scoop…
      Time to buy copies of any titles I don’t already have I guess, just in case.

        1. I wonder what happened to the Edwardian thunderbox? Now in the Halberdiers museum perhaps??

  41. UK inflation: what goods and services have risen in price and by how much. 17 August 2022.

    Food
    Low-fat milk 34.0%
    Butter 27.1%
    Pasta and couscous 24.4%
    Olive oil 23.6%
    Margarine and other vegetable fats 22.5%
    Jams, marmalades and honey 21.2%
    Sauces, condiments, salt, spices and culinary herbs 21.2%
    Cheese and curd 17.9%
    Ready-made meals 16.0%
    Potatoes 15.7%
    Eggs 14.6%
    Yoghurt 14.2%
    Pork 13.2%
    Edible ices and ice-cream 12.9%
    Fish 12.8%
    Bread 11.0%
    Pizza and quiche 9.9%
    Fruit 8.5%
    Rice 6.7%
    Sugar 5.1%

    Drinks
    Mineral or spring waters 22.0%
    Fruit and vegetable juices 14.8%
    Coffee 12.0%
    Tea 10.2%
    Soft drinks 7.7%
    Beer 3.2%
    Spirits 3.1%
    Wine 2.5%

    Electricity, gas and other fuels
    Liquid fuels 114.1%
    Gas 95.7%
    Electricity 54.0%
    Solid fuels 26.9%

    The only solution here seems to put the kettle away and like our ancestors drink beer for tea!

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/aug/17/uk-inflation-what-goods-and-services-have-risen-in-price-and-by-how-much

    1. Does the Guardian then suggest a solution to this hike being to cut taxes, abandon the green agenda and the forced rewilding of farm land, end the windmill subsidy and climate change nonsense, scrap VAT and fuel duty?

      Or does it say ‘government isn’t doing enough, and what needs to be done is for people to be given (their own money stolen from them by the state – my words) back?

      I did look at getting a little oil lantern for a couple of rooms for when it’s cooler, but not cold enough to turn the heating on.

    2. Low-fat milk 34.0%
      Butter 27.1%
      Pasta and couscous 24.4%
      Olive oil 23.6%
      Margarine and other vegetable fats 22.5%
      Jams, marmalades and honey 21.2%
      Sauces, condiments, salt, spices and culinary herbs 21.2%
      Cheese and curd 17.9%
      Ready-made meals 16.0%
      Potatoes 15.7%
      Eggs 14.6%
      Yoghurt 14.2%
      Pork 13.2%
      Edible ices and ice-cream 12.9%
      Fish 12.8%
      Bread 11.0%
      Pizza and quiche 9.9%
      Fruit 8.5%
      Rice 6.7%
      Sugar 5.1%

      Drinks

      Mineral or spring waters 22.0%
      Fruit and vegetable juices 14.8%
      Coffee 12.0%
      Tea 10.2%
      Soft drinks 7.7%
      Beer 3.2%
      Spirits 3.1%
      Wine 2.5

      That’s better. Get rid of all the crap non-food and then people can see the wood for the trees.

    3. Low-fat milk 34.0%
      Butter 27.1%
      Pasta and couscous 24.4%
      Olive oil 23.6%
      Margarine and other vegetable fats 22.5%
      Jams, marmalades and honey 21.2%
      Sauces, condiments, salt, spices and culinary herbs 21.2%
      Cheese and curd 17.9%
      Ready-made meals 16.0%
      Potatoes 15.7%
      Eggs 14.6%
      Yoghurt 14.2%
      Pork 13.2%
      Edible ices and ice-cream 12.9%
      Fish 12.8%
      Bread 11.0%
      Pizza and quiche 9.9%
      Fruit 8.5%
      Rice 6.7%
      Sugar 5.1%

      Drinks

      Mineral or spring waters 22.0%
      Fruit and vegetable juices 14.8%
      Coffee 12.0%
      Tea 10.2%
      Soft drinks 7.7%
      Beer 3.2%
      Spirits 3.1%
      Wine 2.5

      That’s better. Get rid of all the crap non-food and then people can see the wood for the trees.

        1. Are you in good health NTN?

          Are there some good GP’s and dentists in Moffatt?

          I am sure you will settle down nicely . There must be several veterans associations to join , and as you seem to be quite mobile , lots of exploring to be done .

          1. Already been seen twice by the nurse for dressing changes and an INR. Another INR tomorrow.

            Mobile exploration costs lotsa wonga for fuel. I only use the car for major shopping in Lockerbie (Tesco) or Dumfries Toyota recall and odd items of furniture at the British Heart Foundation (BHF).

            I shall survive but I’m still missing Judy.

    3. Weather forecast: Avoid Lincolnshire, the BBC has just told us that all ‘Yellowbellies’ are going to drown in the next 24 hours – If they haven’t already died from sunstroke and dehydration.

    1. I fear it will only be settled by violence. A trivial incident somewhere followed by a ‘nuclear’ societal reaction. No government drawn from our current political class would have the courage to deal with the problem through peaceful and legal means.

    2. I know it’s had it’s recent problems, but every day i am so saddened that I came back from Australia, it makes me so sick the way this nation has been wrecked by the scum we have had in politics for the past 35 years.
      I think I’m starting to feel how the indigenous Americans must have felt.

      1. The same here , RE.

        All the things that so many fought hard for have been trashed .

        Belonging to a political party , putting in leg work and walking miles canvassing , and leafletting for many years has been worthless , pointless and self defeating .

        No one cares , and even the infrastructure of Britain is ruined ..

        1. Our wonderful brave hard working parents generation would be turning in their graves.

    3. When every country they’ve passed through has flouted international law on processing immigrants, why must we tolerate them?

  44. Why all the fuss? Some half-chat gay-boy dies in in (non)mysterious circumstances in an expensive apartment next to a psychiatric clinic in USA and the British press have devoted the front pages and most of the inside to the story. No one knows (or is saying) how he snuffed it. Never heard of the boy but he must have been well known in BBC circles. Anyone know what happened to this unfortunate lad?
    https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-ydriczk/images/stencil/608×608/products/67680/67489/ss3457350_-_photograph_of_darius_danesh_available_in_4_sizes_framed_or_unframed_buy_now_at_starstills__24078__31843.1394501016.jpg?c=2

    3. Slow news day – silly season – no project fear stories to invent (they know they get found out and we don’t believe them).

    4. Never heard of him. However his family will be upset and I do mean that. I must say his hands are very elegant and graceful. Is that weird of me? OK, so I’m weird, I don’t deny it. Just sayin.

  45. LABOUR MEMBERSHIP DOWN 91,000, LIBDEMS DOWN BY 25,000

    Both Labour and LibDem membership numbers have taken a hammer blow, according to their accounts published today by the Electoral Commission. Labour is down by 91,000 members, from 523,332 in 2020 to 432,213 as of 31 December 2021. In August 2021, Labour’s membership had only fallen by 1.7%.

    LibDem membership had already plummeted between 2020 and 2021. Last August, Guido calculated numbers had fallen by 22.5%, from 126,724 in 2019 to 98,247 in 2020. Today that number makes for even grimmer reading: down from 98,246 to 73,544. A 25% fall from last year, and down by 42% since Sir Ed took over.

    The Labour Party’s accounts, partly thanks to declining membership, are also deeper into the red. The party made a £5 million loss last year, with the Treasurer describing 2021 as a “difficult and demanding year”. Sir Keir’s first year as leader in 2020 saw a party deficit of £1 million – already a massive fall from the surplus of £17,000 left by Jeremy Corbyn. It seems, for Starmer’s Labour, the cost of living crisis begins at home.

    *The Tories do not publish membership figures in their accounts – spoilsports – however they did manage to scrape a £300,000 surplus in 2021.

    https://order-order.com/

    2. Both could up their membership and increase their debt by paying the Dover arrivals to sign up. Debt doesn’t seem to concern them much and anyway they can offset it by charging their paying members double. That’s how globalist socialism works, isn’t it?

      1. Funny how he never talks about the disaster that is the DVLA (for which he is ultimately responsible…

        1. Perhaps there should be an investigation regarding how he became so wealthy are his stint as housing minister……just sayin’

      2. In a local news paper a few years ago he arranged him self in a Pub with and inch of so off a pint of beer and said he was having a drink with his mates…………..errr on his own ?

        1. They prolly scarpered when the camera came out – who’d be associated with that plonker in public?

    1. She was, and still is, lots of different things, many not suitable for discussion on a family blog such as this.

    2. What if she was? The woman who would have been her mother-in-law was a thick, gormless, talent-free nonentity when she married the Prince of Wales.

  48. Just looked at the DE headline. Tiny Bliar wades into politics AGAIN urging compulsory face masks to avoid disaster.

    I wish he would put one on. And keep it there permanently.

    1. It’s 2 weeks to my optician’s appointment,. They’d better not re-invoke the covid stuff before I’ve been there. Otherwise I’ll…. That’s the trouble, we have no power….

      1. All you need to do, if it is brought in, is tell them you are exempt. Politely of course. If you read the government’s exemptions on their website, as I did at the beginning of all this, you will see that it’s says something like anyone who is severely distressed by wearing a face nappy does not have to. I actually printed it off and took it with me at first. I still have it in a drawer somewhere.

      2. The last time I went to specsvers I asked the optician to take his mask off so I could hear what he was saying – and the dispensing optician too. They politely did.

      3. Oh, we do, they want the business, so read the earlier posts. We have consumer spending power. It trumps all.

    1. Me too.
      Wordle 424 4/6

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

      1. A little birdie three here

        Wordle 424 3/6

        ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟩
        🟩⬜🟩⬜🟩
        🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

          2. Good start with 3 vowels. I mostly use IRATE or ORATE but recently started changing things up.

          3. Good word. Three vowels and popular consonants. Quite and quote are good for vowels but the Q isn’t helpful!

      1. Well done. I know we don’t usually do this but may I ask what. You started with? My first word was “dream”.

    3. Double Bogey Six …

      Wordle 424 6/6
      ⬜⬜🟩🟨⬜
      ⬜🟨🟩⬜⬜
      ⬜⬜🟩⬜🟩
      ⬜⬜🟩🟨🟩
      🟩⬜🟩⬜🟩
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

      1. Let us hope that when (if) a new PM arrives – this daft bint will be on the scrap heap.

  53. Hooraaaaaaay, plenty of rain hammering down with thunder around. I can hear the garden heave a huge sigh of relief.

    2. Just had a reasonable twenty minutes long shower here. Trouble was I had decided to pick some dwarf beans and raspberries and down it came. Forecast, for what it’s worth, is for showers and possible thunder until eight this evening. If it dries out I’ll definitely get the raspberries in.

      1. Still raining here, thunder and lightning snd a large puddle in our driveway.
        I can hear the plants and grass cheering.

    5. Same here (sarf coast) and the garden is slurping it up. First proper rain in over 3 months.

      1. Hope it’ll be in time to set the flower heads on the camellia for next year. I think camellias need rain in August according to our gardener. He comes to us for 2 hours every fortnight and gets so much more done than I do. He’s invaluable.

  56. Looking at the number of apparently random murders and stabbings in London I am starting to wonder if these things are gang initiations, rather like Mafia men “making their bones” to go further in the organisation and gain respect therein.

    What possible reason could there be for stabbing an old man on a mobility scooter?

        1. It could have been. They are shadowing the banks. If they see a cash withdrawal they phone a mate.

    2. They do do initiation ceremonies like that. Threaten to cut off a kids finger is he refuses to be a mule.

    3. Could just be greed for drug money. Innocent victim unable to fight back.

      It’s getting toa point of needing martial law and executing Khan. Have him kneel on the floor, apologise for his utter failure, greed and corruption and shoot him in the back of the head them lock the entire city down and execute the criminals.

          2. But if the armed forces get involved – they are also pi55ed off at the way they are being ‘diversified’.

            Great traditionalists, the armed forces.

          3. The forces are commanded by very woke individuals and I really don’t see the ranks staging a large scale mutiny.

            In the long term I can see low level civil war on a racial or religious footing and a situation similar “the troubles” where the forces could be used to keep the factions apart.

            I am extremely pessimistic for Britain’s (and for that matter America’s) long term future.

          4. Precisely because they are commanded by “very woke individuals” that is what pi55es them off. The Wodneys and the Wuperts who don’t understand the antipathy of the other ranks.

            I guess you’ve never served, Sos, if you had, you’d understand

      3. What a pity that bastard wasn’t shot by a responsible citizen with a gun, subsequently dying slowly, messily and painfully on the pavement, crying for his mother.

      2. No, let’s not find him. Let’s keep the African gimmigrant out of the country in the first place. Ah, the comedy of his wearing a mask.

        When we find them, chain them together by the neck and drop them into the sea.

    2. That poor horse. it can’t see through the water so ha no idea where it’s feet are and thus is likely to break an ankle.

      That said, it’s a horse. They break if you leave them alone.

  58. Suspected illegal immigrant panics and crashes car in Derbyshire after spotting police – who found huge five-figure sum in his boot
    A suspected illegal immigrant was arrested after crashing on a busy Derbyshire A-road – with officers discovering tens of thousands of pounds after searching his vehicle.
    By Tom Hardwick
    Tuesday, 16th August 2022, 2:57 pm
    https://www.derbyshiretimes.co.uk/news/crime/suspected-illegal-immigrant-panics-and-crashes-car-in-derbyshire-after-spotting-police-who-found-huge-five-figure-sum-in-his-boot-3807940

    1. A couple hours community service and he’ll be on his way with an apology for having made him crash!

    2. Wonder if it’ll be anything more than 3 points on his licence, should he ever bother to get one?

    5. Bloody hell. Plod caught a criminal. I suppose he helped them by having the accident himself. No doubt not taxed or insured, either.

      1. It must have been an accident – they have been taught at Hendon how not to catch criminals.

        2. ” Officers found that the driver had no licence or insurance, and had entered the UK illegally. ”

          Don’t they have ANPR systems linked to DVLA? Good grief. This is the problem. They’re all here illegally. If border farce won’t do their job, they need to be disbanded and sacked.

          Or better yet, for every criminal foreigner a Home office mandarin is jailed.

          1. Try reading the link provided … properly. You will then see that it was use of ANPR that alerted the officers to the vehicle.

        3. Plod are probably consulting the Ladybird book on how to arrest someone in three easy steps.

        4. It’s Derbyshire, my force, and we are a cut above the others. Hendon is a local school for London Metropolitan officers only. All the other, regional, training centres are of a much higher standard.

          1. “Peelers was the name given to the first police officers. They were named after Sir Robert Peel who introduced them, first in Ireland, and then in England. They were also known as Bobbies in England.”

            Not a lot of people know that!

            The original concept was a force of the community, for the community, firstly formed – in England in London: as ‘The Met’.

            Circa 1997, things began to change for the worse: black shirts, baseball caps, hand guns and tasers.

            – And Cressida Dick.

            It is high time to start afresh …

          2. Although Not a lot of people know that!, I suspect the Nottler who doesn’t is in a minority on the blog!

  59. FFS what the hell are these incompetents paid millions for!!

    Pollution warnings are in place for dozens of beaches in England and Wales after

    untreated sewage was discharged into the sea around the coast.

    Official data shows there have been a number of discharges since Monday, which

    Southern Water says are to protect homes and businesses.

    The pollution follows a period of heavy rain across southern England, after a spell of extremely dry weather.

    https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/84EF/production/_125913043_gettyimages-640964756.jpg

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-62574105

    Heavy rain following long dry period obviously unprecedented in the UK !!!

    1. That’s truly disgusting and yes, what do we pay them for. Fining isn’t enough. There should be jail terms.

    3. That wasn’t taken yesterday. The background is too green. It’s a stock picture (Getty Images). And the pipes look temporary.

    4. Hmmm…. Water companies complain when there isn’t enough rain, and complain when there is too much rain. You’d think they would make it their business to plan for these two occurrences – after all, they are WATER companies.

      2. It falls from the sky, doesn’t cost them a penny the charge us for it.
        Do you know any other business where their product, raw material, is free.

        Edit – their for there.

  60. What a day! Hospital appointment for MH at 11. Got there at 10.45 and were seen promptly at 12.15. They’d double booked all the appointments, silly sods. It’s not great news except for the fact that apparently MH has grown 1/2 an inch since they last measured him;-)
    We were in that bloody place for 2 + hours.
    Decided to go to the pub for a much needed drink and then got the bus home just before the rain began. Made it home and we got a good, healthy soaking. The best tomato plant in the world is loving it.
    Maybe more later as I am knackered. Going to do some washing up and assemble a salad to go with the steaks MH bought in the Coop- they look nice.
    Enjoy the puddles.

    1. The NHS should be billed for your time. They seem to think everyone is there for their benefit, not the patient’s.

      1. Their time is more precious than ours- naturally. Was a long day, Wibbs- glad it’s almost over.
        Good luck with Ozzie.

  61. That’s me for this chilly day. Odd to be wearing a pullover! Trombetti for supper.

    Have a jolly evening.

    A demain.

    2. Good night, Bill. Enjoy your trombetti and I hope that you and the MR sleep well tonight.

      1. I adore French onion soup; somehow, ‘trombetti’ doesn’t convey the same sense of délicatesse ...

  62. 355168+ up ticks,

    May one ask,

    If this thing running away with a knife from the scene of a fatal stabbing

    In Greenford turns out to be an illegal is there not a case to bring lab/lib/con
    Greenford MPs to court charged with harbouring an illegal potential dangerous felon,to start with.

  63. Management & I decided we need a shed to store the bikes and garden tools (so that I can garage my motor!). The shed will be built as a lean too on the (distaff) side of the house where a fence panel used to be.We have a couple of spare solid doors so I plan to hang one at the front and the half glazed one at the back. Yesterday I was shopping for 5 lever dead locks and one supplier offered a 55% discount (via Amazon), so two for less than the price of one. They’ve just arrived. If it rains tomorrow I’ll fit the dead locks to the two doors. if it’s fine I’ll carry on shifting top soil….

      1. Saw a narrowboat at Froud’s Bridge Marina, named Dread Locks. It was rather rusty – a Rustafarian in fact

  64. A bloke in Småland, Sweden, seems to have been so badly damaged by a wild pig that he died.
    Nasty buggers, those boars. Bad eating, too: apparently, even dogs won’t eat them, the taste of bollock is too strong.

    1. “Boar tang” (or “boar taint”) is what chefs call it. They’ll only eat vildsvin if it’s female.

      We have dozens of them around here. The biggest danger is when a family of them stampede across the road in front of your car. I had it happen to me once and it’s more than a touch scary.

      1. Brittany is riddled with them – I once hit one which dashed across the road in front of me – fortunately it did not damage my car and the brute ran away. Mind you the Breton boars are good to eat but they need marinating and long, slow cooking..

        2. Same here in the Dordogne, la chasse even gets a special dispensation to hunt them out of season.

          They are incredibly destructive, they even make taupes look benign!

      1. I suspect that in his/its case, mother nature will have been having a good gnaw at it!

    4. Wow that is serious. So serious that we must look at locking down the borders and quarantine for all travellers. Can’t just look at gays of course, that’s discrimination and don’t call it monkey pox for fear of upsetting monkeys.

      By the way, where did he stick his nose?

      1. I wonder how many other degenerates he’s infected, let alone the poor sods who though he lurved them…

  66. 355168+ up ticks,

    NOT known to tell porkies,

    Gerard Batten
    @gjb2021
    ·
    1h
    What does this mean for us? Well obviously it means we’ll pay an average of 10% more on our expenditure. And that is just the start.

    The Climate Change legislation, the Covid lockdowns, the Ukraine-Russia War, & the destruction of energy, fertilizer, food production, & supply lines means the Great Reset is on the way.

    The next thing will be Central Bank Digital Currencies giving Globalist puppet governments complete control of you & your expenditure.

    The WEF did tell us “You’ll Own Nothing & Be Happy”. They mean the first bit, they don’t care about the second bit.

    What can we do? Not much, but at least try not to willingly comply, & for God’s sake stop voting Tory, Labour, Lib-Dem or Green. At least don’t give them your approval to destroy your lives.

  68. Hard work used to get you into university – today that couldn’t be further from the truth

    Bright teenagers from middle-class families are no longer in a fair fight for university places

    ALLISON PEARSON

    We can, I hope, agree that young people have had a rotten time of it. Their lives were unfairly derailed by a virus which posed slightly less risk to them than a wayward skateboard or the common flu. Those who open their laptops with sleepless trepidation early on Thursday morning, to get their A-level results, will have had to contend with Zoom lessons and constantly shifting syllabuses. Those same youngsters were sent home to isolate for weeks at a time because one snotty kid sneezed three classrooms away and keeping teachers “Covid safe” was apparently much more important than educating the next generation.

    This year’s candidates are the first to sit exams since 2019 and to receive marks from actual examiners (the classes of 2020 and 2021 were graded by teachers). Just to add to the now-traditional fiasco, results are expected to be much lower with a “dramatic swing” back to less generous grades. School-leavers, according to the Government, can expect their papers to be graded at a “midpoint” between the inflationary largesse of the pandemic and normal 2019 levels.

    Universities are supposed to “adjust accordingly”, although I bet you my AAB at A-level that the pass rate will drop dramatically and many kids will lose the place they have set their heart on.

    If the poor darlings even managed to get an offer, that is. As the Telegraph reported yesterday, teenagers from the most affluent backgrounds are the least likely to have received a university offer for the first time on record. Clare Marchant, the chief executive of UCAS, the universities admission service, said proudly that disadvantaged pupils have been “put first” by universities making offers.

    Oh, that’s a genius move! If the masterplan is to hasten this country’s slide to the bottom of the international league table. When I was at school (a comprehensive), the cleverest kids got offers from the best universities and the less academic found a place in one of many good alternatives. It felt fair. Now, hard-working, high-achieving sixth formers, the talent which the UK so desperately needs to be able to compete globally, find themselves shut out from the top degree courses.

    In the past few weeks, I have heard disturbing reports from many ordinary parents, not fully-paid-up members of the Range Rover classes, that their gifted son or daughter can’t get a sniff of an offer.

    “Our son had to wait until the last few days to receive only one offer from his preferred but highest grade course, A*AA, and to be rejected from the lower insurance places,” commented one reader. “Now he is contemplating the possibility of a gap year and joining the Army.”

    A despairing mother posted this cri de coeur: “My son is predicted 4 A* and has had three rejections, including Oxford. Where do you go from here with a disappointed and disillusioned teenager? A wasted gap year of nothingness and try again next year, it’s a complete farce. He has 10 GCSEs at grade 9 (the highest possible) and he can’t get a university place in the country he was born in. My son wants to study medicine, he wants to work for the NHS when they are crying out for staff. Unbelievable discrimination taking place behind the scenes. Complete farce of a country which puts overseas students first.”

    Mum is referring there to the higher education double whammy. If your child isn’t being discriminated against because you were stupid enough to have a successful career and go to a private school or buy a family home in a leafy postcode (NB: remember to purchase flat on sink estate next time), then the few remaining stellar university places they might have had a shot at will be snaffled by a Chinese or Indian student.

    I can’t believe I am writing this, but data this weekend showed four out of 10 British students are being rejected by Oxford and Cambridge in favour of overseas candidates who pay up to £24,000 a year (£15,000 more than a domestic applicant). A study of undergraduates at the Russell Group of leading universities found that a quarter were from overseas. Over 40 per cent of students at the hugely popular St Andrews come from outside the UK. It’s worse in science and engineering.

    Simon, a senior lecturer who taught the Master of Science (M.Sc.) course at one of those Russell Group universities, told me, “Of the 1,200 enrolled students, 900 were from People’s Republic of China. Tutors were told not to discuss Hong Kong or Taiwan in class or refer to them on maps. I criticised the leadership for this censorship and was cancelled as a result. My ex-colleagues kept their mouths shut for fear of being disciplined.”

    According to Simon, who won a prestigious post overseas after he was driven out, universities like the one he worked for “have become drunk on Chinese money”.

    At least you know that when Freddie and Olivia, garlanded with glittering grades, fail to get a single university offer, it’s no reflection on their ability. They just have the misfortune to have grown up in a country so warped by liberal guilt and Marxist educationalists that it prefers to engineer admissions for kids from areas of “socio-economic disadvantage”, rather than improving the school system which failed them. Either that, or Freddie and Olivia’s place will have been sold to the highest bidder from Beijing or Mumbai.

    The idea that this anti-meritocratic, socially-engineered, greedy, biased-against-British-children, classist university sector is flourishing under a Conservative government would defy belief, save we have grown bitterly accustomed to nothing Conservative ever coming from them.

    I write, by the way, as someone who applied to university while living in a hard-up, single-parent household. I would have benefitted if children from better-off homes had been discriminated against to ease my passage to a great university. That thought would have repelled me forty years ago, as it repels me still. All that kids from my background ask is to be given good enough schooling to compete with our privately-educated peers. And to win our place in a fair fight.

    Bright teenagers from middle-class families, who get their A-level results tomorrow, are no longer in a fair fight, although our preening, prolier-than-thou authorities like to call this new bias “fairness”. Damned by the Original Sin of their well-off parents, they must brace themselves for rejection by universities who see no hypocrisy in admitting thousands of wealthy youngsters from overseas.

    It stinks. Places for foreign students at the UK’s elite universities should be capped immediately at 10 per cent. Make no mistake, they are being allowed to buy the science, maths and engineering places that are our most brilliant children’s birthright. And the future wealth of us all.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2022/08/16/hard-up-child-who-got-cambridge-repulsed-todays-social-engineering/

  69. Breaking News – White flight has been cancelled.

    – The RAF are no longer employing men with pale skin

  70. The boss has decided that since she has to get rid of her car when we move, my car has to go as well. Both cars are to be replaced by our car! Don’t even ask why two year old my car cannot just be renamed as our car – I made that mistake!

    So we went shopping yesterday. If you want something in less than six months, just forget it. Come back in 2024 if you want a Hybrid! Kia were the worst of the lot. They are so backed up that dealers are not allowed to place orders at the moment.

    It felt like we had to put the Kia sales rep on suicide watch, he had all of the brochures but nothing to sell and no possibility of finding anything.

          3. It was, Sos. In the first half of the film HAL explains to the astronauts that the scientist who designed him first taught him to sing the song. In the second half, as the two astronauts start to dismantle him one piece of memory at a time, he regresses to his “childhood” and begins to sing “Daisy, Daisy” once again.

        2. What is it with NoTTLErs?!?!? Everyone seems to have broken into my photograph album and stolen one of my photos taken as a young woman. Lol.

          2. The front, Sos, the front. The person on the back is sporting a beard. I am not a bearded lady. Lol.

          4. Some of my admirers have been known to say that, Sos. I couldn’t possibly comment! Lol.

          6. You, Sir, are a total bounder and a very silly sausage. Go to your room without any supper!

    1. Islam is a complete and utter denial of Christianity. If one is a Christian, the only conclusion is that Islam is a satanic concoction.

      1. If I may:

        If one is a Christian sentient human being, the only conclusion is that Islam is a satanic concoction.

        1. To atheists, all religions are bunk. However, Islam denies the divinity of Christ, which is the central tenet of Christianity. To a Christian, it should be obvious that the two religions are incompatible, and that Islam must therefore be satanically inspired.

          1. I don’t argue with that.

            But anyone, Atheist, Hindu, Jew, Sun worshipper should realise that Islam is a one way street, either you submit or you’re dead or if lucky, enslaved.

            On second thoughts, if Islam rules the world you’re better off dead.

  72. End the scourge of bogus modern slavery claims

    Our good intentions are being abused by illegal migrants using the system to avoid being deported

    CHRIS PHILP

    Last week the Telegraph exposed the record numbers of modern slavery claims by illegal immigrants seeking to avoid return to their home country [the Albanians]. The story was painfully familiar to me as a former immigration minister, where I saw this play out across thousands of cases.

    Combating modern slavery is an important and noble objective. It is right we identify and protect victims as well as prosecute offenders. But the UK’s modern slavery laws have inadvertently turned into one of the biggest loopholes in our immigration system, allowing illegal immigrants and foreign criminals to remain in the UK.

    Unfortunately, successive governments have been persuaded by self-appointed campaigners to lower the threshold of proof required for a successful modern slavery claim to an absurdly low level – a vaguely plausible sounding claim with no supporting evidence whatsoever is now simply accepted. This even applies in cases where the person had previously been explicitly asked on arrival in the UK whether they were a victim of modern slavery and they clearly answered that they were not.

    The system is so lax that the approval rate for claims is now over 90 per cent. Crucially, once someone’s modern slavery claim has been accepted, they cannot be removed from the UK – even if they are a dangerous foreign criminal.

    Immigration lawyers cottoned onto this loophole some time ago, and as a consequence the number of modern slavery claims has ballooned – increasing from around 3,000 mostly UK citizens in 2015 to being on track for 16,000 cases this year, with the majority coming from non-UK citizens.

    The most frequent referral route for modern slavery claims is now through the immigration system. Often, it is made shortly after meeting an immigration lawyer for the first time. Legal professionals know they don’t need to provide any real proof – it is enough to submit a story that is roughly consistent with known modern slavery patterns for the claim to be accepted. In some cases lawyers even submit copy-and-paste claims for different clients without bothering to change the details. It is making a mockery of Britain’s goodwill.

    I saw case after case where serious foreign criminals – including sadistic rapists and brutal murderers – used last-minute modern slavery claims to prevent deportation back to their home country. This often followed years of repeated asylum and human rights claims that were eventually dismissed by the courts.

    Modern slavery claims were also routinely used by illegal immigrants who crossed the Channel in small boats when we tried to return them to a European country in which they had previously claimed asylum under the Dublin Regulation we were then part of. This was despite having told officers on arrival, in answer to a standard question, that they were not a modern slavery victim. The modern slavery claim usually came shortly after meeting an immigration lawyer.

    The UK, along with other countries, has signed the ECAT Treaty pledging to combat modern slavery. But the UK is applying the treaty in an incredibly naïve way that no other European country does – which is why the UK has around 10 times the number of modern slavery claims compared with France or Germany. Our system has been so overwhelmed that it takes well over a year for cases to be decided.

    Genuine victims of modern slavery of course need to be protected. But we are letting down those real victims as the system cannot cope with floods of bogus claims designed to frustrate immigration proceedings.

    There is a simple solution. We should raise the proof threshold at which modern slavery claims are accepted, to require more than just a vaguely plausible sounding story with no supporting evidence. We should require hard corroborating evidence before allowing the claim. We should not allow a claim when someone has previously expressly said that they are not a victim and we should draw a strong adverse inference where they have had ample reasonable previous opportunities to make a claim but have not done so. A similar approach should be applied to asylum and human rights claims, which are often also abused to prevent immigration enforcement.

    What started out as a well-intentioned policy on modern slavery has ended up being exploited and abused to prevent the UK policing its borders. The real victims of modern slavery, who are lost among the flood of bogus immigration-related claims, are being let down as a result. Reform is long overdue.

    Chris Philp MP is a former immigration minister

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/08/16/end-scourge-bogus-modern-slavery-claims/

    Day after day I am more and more depressed by news like this. Our country is being eaten from within by maggots.

    1. Change the rules slightly:
      Start from the premise: “why shouldn’t we deport you?” and make them make the case. If they can’t tough, they’re out.

    2. If Chris Philip knew, as an Immigration Minister, why the fuck (excuse my language) wasn’t he jumping up and down doing something about it! I detest these people who bleat about things once they have left post. Why wasn’t he agitating for the law to be tightened up? Who passes these laws? Isn’t it the MPs?

    1. Well if we are 8%, that is a minority. White Rights matter!

      They have just unceremoniously dumped some famed white female news anchor from one of our TV channels, a suitably hued replacement is expected soon.

      1. They are indeed… the gates don’t fit as well, the bolts mismatch with their home, and the cobble path to the front door is subsiding.

    3. Well, at long last we had a downpour today for a couple of hours. I was at a meeting with a dozen other u3a members, and only one had a big brolly. So I borrowed it, came back with a big brolly from my car, and then between us we escorted the other one at a time to their cars in the relative dry.

      1. An inch and a quarter here, a combination of slow drizzle and two heavier downfalls. I like to think that the drizzle may have softened the ground slightly prior to the heavier rainfall.

        Phew.

  75. Evening all – I think I’m rejoining the land of the living……… the last few days have gone by in a bit of a blur! I’ve been reading the comments but didn’t feel up to saying much.

    Anyway – after the most painful throat infection ever, I’ve actually been able to swallow a little bit of chicken and rice. I was quite hungry after three days of eating nothing but egg. Now having a bit of icecream with strawberries. OH has been looking after me.

    4. “…after the most painful throat infection ever…”

      I had a nasty 3-in-1 package last month – tonsillitis, laryngitis and bronchitis.

      1. Ooh! very nasty! I don’t know which bits were the most painful but I had a job to swallow anything. Even water felt as though it was full of razor blades.

        1. Probably doing the rounds. Almost certainly bacterial, not the Wuhan bat virus.

          1. I assumed it was viral but not the bat flu – as I’ve got no test kits I’ll never know.

  76. I’ll tell you what, when the greeniacs convert horseshit into something useful, other than rose manure, I might believe them.

    Balls in sport: Their impact on the planet and searching for sustainable solutions

    This article is horseshit a bull would be proud of.
    https://www.bbc.com/sport/62022644

    1. A BBC Sports reporter desperately scrabbling around to find a story connecting sport and climate change. What a load of balls.

      1. Quite
        Do you ever get the impression that there might, just might, be an agenda here? /sarc

      2. I see they’re all going to fly into Sharm el Sheikh for their next hot air COP. How convenient in November. What do these huge jamborees ever accomplish but a load of bullshine?

        1. “Bullshine”? I think you may have been sicker than you realised…you’re being far too polite;-)

      3. I see they’re all going to fly into Sharm el Sheikh for their next hot air COP. How convenient in November. What do these huge jamborees ever accomplish but a load of bullshine?

  77. Off to bed now Y’all. Worn out. Plumber tomorrow am which I could happily do without but it’s good to get things fixed.
    See you tomorrow. I will take responsibility for any loud snoring.

  79. Thursday 18th August 2022

    ashesthandust

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e281877e66f9640965428cfaf7612b736a56b10f037dc7830d6ff3f7e0f8aba9.png

    and many more sparkling birthdays.

    With very best wishes,

    Caroline and Rastus

    I would rather be ashes than dust!
    I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot.
    I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.
    The function of man is to live, not to exist.
    I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them.
    I shall use my time.

    [Jack London]

    “My candle burns at both ends;
    It will not last the night;
    But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends
    It gives a lovely light!”

    [Edna St Vincent Millay]

      1. Thank you!! I treasure my solitary, sparkling card, have co-opted my neighbour’s fridge for the chilling of generous bubbles, and am plotting to steal his dog as a present to myself (though I may have made a tactical mistake in telling him so…).

        1. Not surprising you only got one card you gadabout. Do the camp sites accept post for guests? If people know in advance where you are going to be you might get more post !

          1. I don’t need cards – it really is the thought that counts. One stands for all. And yes, I have irritated family and friends around the world by swanning around with no fixed address 🤣

    4. Merci à vous deux.

      I live by the Credo and appreciate the St Vincent Millay. In thanks, a Mary Oliver from a book of Poems for Unreal Times I found yesterday:

      The Journey

      One day you finally knew
      what you had to do, and began,
      though the voices around you
      kept shouting
      their bad advice –
      though the whole house
      began to tremble
      and you felt the old tug
      at your ankles.
      ‘Mend my life!’
      each voice cried.
      But you didn’t stop.
      You knew what you had to do,
      though the wind pried
      with its stiff fingers
      at the very foundations,
      though their melancholy
      was terrible.
      It was already late
      enough, and a wild night,
      and the road full of fallen
      branches and stones.
      But little by little,
      as you left their voices behind,
      the stars began to burn
      through the sheets of clouds,
      and there was a new voice
      which you slowly
      recognised as your own,
      that kept.you company
      as you strode deeper and deeper
      into the world,
      determined to do
      the only thing you could do –
      determined to save
      the only life you could save.

          1. Seize the day, have fun and we will raise a glass to you tonight! Happy birthday!!

  80. Good night, everyone. Sleep well. And a very Happy Birthday to ashes and dust. Today has been a long and tiring day, so I am happy to be heading for bed.

  81. Good night, everyone. Sleep well. And a very Happy Birthday to ashes and dust. Today has been a long and tiring day, so I am happy to be heading for bed.

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