Thursday 18 August: Universities’ skewed admissions priorities will leave the country poorer

Posted on by Geoff Graham

An unofficial place to discuss the Telegraph letters, established when the DT website turned off its comments facility (now reinstated, but we prefer ours),
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Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here.

575 thoughts on “Thursday 18 August: Universities’ skewed admissions priorities will leave the country poorer”

    1. Morning Bob – Very red sky early this morning here in N. Yorkshire. I don’t know what the warning is for.

  3. Universities’ skewed admissions priorities will leave the country poorer

    That was always Blair’s plan wasn’t it?

    1. To wreck the education system is to wreck the country’s future. Blair did more damage than the Luftwaffe.

    1. What that Tweet actually says is “There are 10 000 days to go until we have reduced your status back to the nineteenth century. Suck it up, peasants!”

    2. Simpleton – Married to a climax activist with the IQ of a slug – and no, the spelling is correct.

    3. I’ve answered his twit tweet as follows. as usual:

      “Has nobody told this deluded man that CO² makes up just 0.04% of our atmosphere. It is a Trace gas. 78% of our atmosphere is Nitrogen, 21% is Oxygen and 1% trace gasses such as Argon, Neon and CO².“

  5. A cost-of-living crisis made by our elites. Spiked. 17 August 2022.

    Decades of complacency and groupthink are coming home to roost.

    Britain is in a serious crisis. And while Russia’s shock invasion of Ukraine may have sparked this crisis, the rot had set in long before. Worse, this rot is not a product of random chance or neglect. It is largely down to decisions made by our governing elites over the past few decades, which dealt blow after blow to our economy, energy security and the soundness of our money. And pretty much all of these decisions were supported by a consensus among technocrats, experts and politicians.

    Another Nottler convert!

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/08/17/a-cost-of-living-crisis-made-by-our-elites/

    1. 355198+ up ticks,

      Morning AS,

      If I may add, a continuing cast of supporters / voters who in a short space of time could see the direction these
      party’s were taking .

      No matter the consequences the name / party came first.

  6. Good morning
    Here’s the latest video by Parallel Mike – he is an Englishman who lives in Poland in a sort of off-the-grid community – has a financial background.
    The first part is about gold price fixing, and fairly technical – if you jump in at about 20 minutes, there is an interesting analysis of the 80 billion dollar increase in the American IRS budget. I didn’t know that the IRS have been buying huge amounts of ammunition as well. The US government seems to be creating a private government militia. separate from the army to target its own citizens. Could never happen here, or…..?
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIJgzvM3FL0

  7. The only chance that a white man will get a job interview with the RAF is if he changes his name to Winston or Mohammed or transitions into a women.
    Or if he does all three

    2. I’m proud to have signed a new landmark agreement with our Pakistani friends to return foreign criminals and immigration offenders from the UK to Pakistan.

      You have to laugh.

    3. 355198+ up ticks,

      O2O,
      The way I read that is homeland visitation for felons,
      could very well be viewed sympathetically on home turf and before you can say pretty awful be back on the English Channel shuttle.

      1. Morning Oggy. The only thing you’ve missed out there is the wad of cash required to seal the deal!

      1. “This deal shows our New Plan For Immigration in action, as we deliver for the British People”. Just like the old plan did, then? I don’t know whether to laugh, cry or throw up at such crass, hubristic bollocks.

        ‘Morning, BoB.

  9. Hostage’s breadcrumb of evidence helped police name IS ‘Beatles’. 18 August 2022.

    Snippet of conversation at far-Right EDL march was ‘invaluable in helping us zero in on them’, say officers.

    The “very significant” breakthrough came when one of the freed hostages told officers they had heard one of the men mention being arrested at an English Defence League (EDL) march in London.

    Investigators discovered that Kotey and Elsheikh had been detained on Sept 11 2011 when supporters of Anjem Choudary, the hate preacher, clashed with thugs from the EDL near the US embassy in Mayfair.

    The pair were part of a group arrested on suspicion of involvement in a stabbing at the march, but had been released without charge.

    Just to clarify. This pair of Jihadist thugs were supporting Anjem Choudary while opposing a quite separate march of EDL patriots.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/08/17/how-beatles-boasting-led-police-solving-crucial-piece-terror/

    1. Hmm.

      supporters of Anjem Choudary, the hate preacher, clashed with thugs from the EDL

      Remind me again, which group did these terrorists belong to? Very prejudicial reporting by the Telegraph.

    2. Yet somehow, due to legacy media doublespeak one gets the impression from the above that the EDL are the bad guys…

        1. That is hardly the point, they have caused a lot of offence by being on the streets while white and working class!

  10. Good morning all. A dull but currently dry start this morning with 11°C outside.

    Falstone Border Shepherd’s Show this weekend, right up the North Tyne valley, so the van is loaded and off to Dr. Daughter’s in Newcastle for tonight, then two nights at Falstone.

    https://www.falstoneshow.com/

    1. Enjoy the show! I’ve been reading and enjoying “The Shepherd’s Life” by James Rebanks, and would join you if I were nearer.

      2. Wishing you a very Happy Birthday, ashes! I hope you have a wonderful day! 🍾🎉

      5. Happy Birthday, atd, Wishing you a very jolly day and a further 364 Happy Unbirthdays..

  12. Today’s leading letter:

    SIR – The folly of Britain’s myopic drive for “diversity” and equality is well illustrated by the discrimination against hard-working, high-achieving, middle-class pupils in favour of “disadvantaged” students and those from overseas (report, August 16).

    Excellence should be the sole criterion for admission to university. By ignoring this and favouring foreign applicants, in particular, our top universities betray their function: to bring on Britain’s best to become tomorrow’s leaders in the public sector, the private sector and academia.

    “Disadvantaged” students should be put neither first nor last but judged on their exam performance, like everybody else. If they are not, the exam system loses legitimacy.

    Picking winners on social or economic grounds is a very poor idea. It does not lead to a socialist nirvana – but, like all forms of positive discrimination, will simply lower the bar. All nations are led by elites, whose education is of huge importance. In a competitive world, Britain’s elites must be drawn from the best performers, not at the whim of some Left-wing don.

    Gregory Shenkman
    London SW7

    Hear, hear Mr Shenkman! Unfortunately this is just another manifestation of the urge to dumb everything down in this wretched country, it’s like a sickness that destroys everything we once did so well.

  13. SIR – What a wonderful idea to impose speed limits on cyclists in urban areas (report, August 17). I suppose the new laws will be enforced by the same police forces that do such a good job enforcing the existing laws for cyclists stopping at red lights (not to mention those for bicycle theft).

    Bernard Kerrison
    London SW4

    Quite so, Mr Kerrison. I hope you saw Dan Wootton on GBN yesterday evening when this subject was discussed? The cocky spiv defending law-breaking cyclists seemed to me to be typical of the breed and therefore very well chosen.

    2. Cyclists ‘jumping red lights’? Mr Kerrison wants to be out and about in Colchester after 9 pm and see the car drivers ignoring the lights, speed restrictions and common courtesy on the roads. That’s not to say that cyclists aren’t a pain much of the time.

      1. ‘Morning, Korky. You would think that a sense of self-preservation would persuade cyclists (in paricular) to observe red lights…

        1. As a youngster I was quite reckless; climbing trees, roller skating down Colchester’s two steepest hills etc. However, I recognised that recklessness can have consequences and I grew up. Many, but not all, cyclists haven’t made that leap to being sensible when they’re out on two wheels.

  14. SIR – Clearly many people in Britain work as hard as they can. But there must be a reason for the present unfilled vacancies. Why is it that we relied on EU labour for fruit and vegetable-picking, cleaning and waiting in restaurants?

    Perhaps there are some who are too choosy – or cosy – to apply themselves.

    Stephen Howey
    Woodford Green, Essex

    “…too choosy – or cosy – to apply themselves”. Blimey, I think he’s on to something!

    1. “Don’t be ridiculous, I can’t possibly apply for a fruit picking job. I have a degree in Community Studies and I’m a Diversity Officer.”

        2. Fortunately, blickberries are too shrivelled to pick this year, so all their lives are saved.

        3. I thing that Henry T Ford was a racist and he only supplied “Tin Lizzie’s” in a single colour – black. Lol.

      2. Exactly, they are far too self important and just had lots of botox treatment and paid a fortune for their shiney inch long finger nails.

      3. There is a difference between raspberries and blueberries.
        Is this the moment to mention colour?

    2. Why put yourself out going to work when you can get more living on benefits (particularly if you pop out a sprog or two)?

    2. No doubt there’s plenty of the government’s Kool Aid on tap in his sustainable restaurant.

    4. Plum might advise as to whether Desperate Dan and his cow pies have been cancelled yet for fear of terrifying the young.

  17. SIR – When I left my job, I was required to work out my notice.

    If I left at once, it would (understandably) mean no pay. So why is Boris Johnson not at his desk?

    Marina Marshall
    Barnet, Hertfordshire

    He’s done enough damage when he was ‘at his desk’ so the longer he’s away from it, the better. Besides, unlike yer average employee Johnson will be paid his PMs salary for the rest of his days.

    1. When I was made redundant in 1975, I had four months notice. I asked to leave straightaway – and to be paid the redundancy pay each month. That cushion enabled me to set up business on my own account – and I never looked back.

      1. I applied for redundancy three times, all unsuccessful. I then suggested that I would resign, but with some assistance – I pitched my bid at 12 months’ salary but no lump sum, keeping the car, desk, fax and phone. They agreed, and thus began nine years of happy and profitable self-employment. Should have done it well before then!

  18. Oh joy, oh bliss, the world is woefully unprepared for yet another “we’re all gonna die” event.

    There’s a one-in-six chance of a massive world-altering volcanic eruption this century and humanity is NOT prepared for it, scientists warn
    A magnitude 7 eruption is a possibility for this century, a new study determined
    Similar eruptions have caused abrupt climate change and wiped out civilisations
    But one of the UK’s leading volcanologists says we are ‘woefully’ underprepared

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11121999/One-six-chance-massive-world-altering-volcanic-eruption-century-scientists-warn.html

    2. 355198+ up ticks,

      S,
      All I can advise now is peoples invest heavily tn
      OGGA1s BIG lid co.

      ‘

    3. That’s if the imminent arrival of ‘Chernobyl 2’ doesn’t get us first!

      ‘Morning, sos,

    6. I hear that the sun will become a red giant and consume the Earth soon, well, in a few billion years. But its coming….. Better get ready.

  19. SIR – The Chief of the Air Staff seems determined to expose the RAF to criticism and ridicule.

    He is planning to ditch the mandatory fitness test for “digital specialists” who do not have frontline combat roles (in which case, they should be civilians); the Red Arrows are two aircraft down due to a pilot being sacked and another resigning; the pilot- training pipeline is in crisis; and one of the top priorities of the RAF is to achieve its diversity targets (report, August 17).

    All of this suggests that the RAF is not getting the military-style leadership it needs to focus on its ability to fight and win – which is what the public expect and pay for.

    Rear Admiral Philip Mathias (retd)
    Southsea, Hampshire

    The absence of military-style leadership has been the case for some years now. Far more important is the constant virtue-signalling and the latest fiasco where white men applying to join the RAF will be shunned in favour of ‘diversity’. If they want to be the best they need to select the best, irrespective of all the trendy crap that prevails now.

    This BTL comment, although made from an Army standpoint, applies to all three armed services:

    AC Long
    6 HRS AGO
    Our civil service is in dire straits and key public services are failing badly thanks to lazy WFH attitudes and bonkers wokism.
    Reminds me of an Army officer I used to work with back in the 80’s whose attitude I’ll never forget.
    He had a tray on his desk labelled ‘Too Difficult’.
    I asked him what he put into it.
    He said – “…Anything that isn’t directly related to ensuring the combat efficiency of the unit. That is because, in the military we have a job to do and if we don’t have enough tools and resources we don’t stop, we don’t whinge and we don’t cry. What we do is, we improvise, we overcome, we adapt and we deliver. Therefore, what goes into that tray is anything that gets in the way of delivering my primary remit of having combat ready, 24/7, a unit of soldiers in the most professional Army in the world…”
    Unfortunately, there are too many in the public sector who, unlike the Major, are happier to deal with all the extraneous tasks and leave the job of delivering the public services languishing in their ‘Too Difficult’ trays.
    For the sake of the country bring back the Major.

    * * *

    Unfortunately that isn’t possible, all the while over-promoted social justice warriors like Radakin are being selected to ‘lead’…

      2. They very often deserve it! Although I suspect the RAF could respond by pointing out that the idiot Radakin isn’t one of theirs!

    2. The writing has been on the wall for some time, but it’s been particularly noticeable in recent years. You only have to look at the posters on the walls in RAF stations.

      1. Try the RAF Museum at Hendon…the wokeists have really go their claws into that…I never realised how many blik female aircrew there are now!

  20. SIR – Many years ago, my eldest son was in a restaurant in London, and Jeremy Paxman was on the next table.

    When the time came to pay, for some reason the restaurant’s machine would not accept my son’s credit card. Mr Paxman heard what was going on, leaned over and said: “I’ve had similar problems in the past. Here’s my card.” He added: “You know where I work – send me the cash when you get sorted.”

    What a kind thing to do. My son duly paid him back.

    John Dakin
    St Buryan, Cornwall

    Like many others, I imagine, I have been saddened by Paxo’s slow but obvious decline, and the thought of UC without him isn’t a happy one. I hope I’m wrong but somehow I suspect that the BBC will not be picking his replacement on the basis of the most able person for the job – if you get my drift.

  21. SIR – My wife and I recently spent a most enjoyable day visiting the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust centre in Barnes, south-west London – a fascinating place and a great monument to the vision of its founder, the late Peter Scott.

    It was interesting to learn that the centre was built in 1995, on the site of four former reservoirs, which were decommissioned having been deemed surplus to requirements.

    Kevin Richardson
    London SE13

    Yes, that sounds about right, Mr Richardson. That’s the way we do things now in this country.

    1. Same old story Mr Richardson everything our politicians think they know at any one time, turns out to be another of their gross tactical errors.
      But the wildlife is thriving.

  23. SIR – Our council house – one of those put up by the thousands immediately after the Second World War – was not only the best (and cheapest) we ever occupied (open fires, lavatories up and downstairs, rudimentary central heating), but it also had as standard a galvanised metal tank in the backyard to collect and store rainwater (Letters, August 15).

    How come the post-war government saw the wisdom of water conservation years before the mass immigration that put such heavy demand on our infrastructure began in earnest? Sir Keir Starmer should act more like that old-style Labour government.

    Richard Lennox
    Langholm, Dumfriesshire

    You should be ashamed, Richard Lennox – storing rainwater damages profit margins, thus preventing the water suppliers from awarding massive and unjustified bonuses to their directors just for turning up. I stand guilty as charged on this basis – yesterday my water butts were filled with 650 ltrs in very short order, which will be enough for about 3 weeks of garden watering if there is no further rainfall in that time. I intend to add another 220 ltrs, thus further damaging SE Water!

    1. I wouldn’t be surprised if it soon became universally illegal to collect your own rainwater.

      2. Water was nationalised in the 1970s IIRC which meant that the moment that rain hit the ground, it belonged to the state owned Water Boards.

  24. Good morning, all. Cloudy and dull in N Essex. After yesterday’s afternoon rain I do not have to water the garden this morning; housework beckons in its place.

    When a narrative being pushed is in fact a lie it becomes very difficult to maintain the consistency of the lie over time. A case in point is the “fact-checker” lie relating to the Pfizer CEO, Bourla, refuting the claim that Bourla had not taken his own product and was therefore unable to visit Israel – a country almost exclusively inoculated with that potion.
    A journalist, Emerald Robinson, reported that fact and was barred from Twitter and also attacked from many sides. Now, in a biography, Bourla admits that at the time of the planned visit he was, in fact, not inoculated. In this era of the internet a year or so isn’t a long enough time to support a false narrative with lies.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/06f633058c24f9f1ce8c91c671fbf522307fe19b89b77334ed61281274eb05c8.png
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2caa05dfa41b246a5ca44eb4a5061d9465c8ec2eb4098667d5fa354df52b720b.png

    Emerald Robinson’s substack article is here

    Many politicians, journalists and other promoters of the potion, here in the UK and around the World, must be sitting on very squeaky bums as their lies/misinformation become exposed and the narrative collapses. The use of deflection tactics i.e. the Ukraine/Russia conflict, the energy problem, potential food shortages etc. is in full swing but the excess deaths keep mounting, and remain unexplained: that is unless anyone believes the many nonsensical explanations that the government and MSM are promoting. The web of lies and deceit keeps growing and as it grows so the control must weaken.

  27. Good morning all

    Dull dark sky ,loads of cloud cover , no rain overnight, 15c.

    Why is UCAS a charity?

    UCAS, the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service, is an independent charity, and the UK’s shared admissions service for higher education.

      1. and here – just finally finished clearing the fallen trees from the wind in February and planted some Olerea Macradonte bushes in their place, I’ve got to plant a couple of Olerea Albida bushes yet

    2. If a alert came from the government or plod I’d ignore it by default. As for obeying what a telephone tells me… don’t be stupid.

      I got someone with this one over the covid nonsense. She fervently obeyed anything the NHS thing told her to, so with a bit of fiddling I had it say something very naughty and lo! The dim bint comes over and shows me it, dropping to her knees like a good little drone.

      At that point I told her that she should stop obeying a bit of software she didn’t understand simply because it told her to do something.

  30. Entitlement Britain is becoming a poor country and too many people don’t care. 18 August 2022.

    When did we become so entitled, so self-satisfied, so allergic to any kind of constructive criticism? What hope is there for Britain if it is now politically incorrect to explain that hard graft at school and at work is a crucial route out of poverty? Why isn’t it obvious that we need to massively and urgently do whatever it takes to improve Britain’s dire productivity rate?

    That would be during and after Blair’s tenure as Prime Minister!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/08/17/entitlement-britain-becoming-poor-country-many-people-dont-care/

      2. Actually teachers do get support from the government. They shouldn’t, of course, but they’re paid by it – this is why education is teaching climate change and di-worse-ity than mathematics and literacy. Kids are taught how to feel about something, but not how to balance a budget, or how taxation is so destructive to the economy.

        Universities want foreign students because they pay twice as much rather than home students. Sorry, I’ve worked with a room full of young folk at a university teaching enterprise networking and they were all foreign. This isn’t a bad thing. It was a free class for minor credits with some paid practical work at the end.

    2. 355198+ up ticks,

      Morning AS,

      That is a question best asked via a lab/lib/con coalition current supporter / vote I believe.

    3. He’s right, but the massive expansion in welfare, the arrogance of ‘I’ll do what I want’ and ‘I know my rights (no kid, you really don’t), the utter lack of consideration for others have created an egocentric world. It is a lack of guilt and shame. A terror of losing status.

      If you correct someone’s grammar, or suggest they do better for themselves they do not say ‘Actually, yes, I have endless luxury and while I’m not keen on this, I can’t do better.’ their default response is to attack you because you have made them feel bad for their inadequacy. However, they can’t cope with that feeling of guilt and shame and so go on the offensive to make you feel bad to redirect their shame. I meet this sort of poster all the time – whining, spoiled, lazy and rather than doing something, they just whinge about the work of others.

      We’ve become a culture which never takes responsibility.

  31. Reposted from late last night.

    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. Many happy returns 😊 Ashes! Have a super happy birthday 🎂 🥳 🎉 🎈 🎁 🎊 🥂🍷

    4. Grattis på födelsedagen, Katie.

      Wherever you are today, on your peripatetic ramblings, and whatever you are doing, I hope that the day is a smashing one and I shall raise my glass to you, 😘👍🏻🎂🥂😊

    1. Why would they want to avoid the Navy – the Navy and the Border Farce/RNLI are delivering them here?

      1. Straight on shore then vanish into the illgal migrant underworld, probably as slave labour.

    2. Why would they want to avoid the Navy – the Navy and the Border Farce/RNLI are delivering them here?

    1. Or in this case with a closing down sale…’The Chickens are coming home to roast…..’

      Morning Rik and all….( I’ll fetch my coat!)

  35. A very fine soldier and a great life:

    Major General Andrew Watson, soldier of the Black Watch who served in Malaysia and Northern Ireland and as military attaché in Washington – obituary

    When Franco threatened to invade Gibraltar, he and his men dug in to ensure that the invasion never happened

    ByTelegraph Obituaries17 August 2022 • 2:33pm

    Major General Andrew Watson, who has died aged 95, was a highly experienced soldier whose successful career included accelerated promotion to command of a brigade.

    Andrew Linton Watson was born on April 9 1927 in Meerut, near New Delhi, in India. His father was an officer in the Indian Medical Service and his mother had served as a nurse during the First World War. The family lived at Abbottabad (now in Pakistan) and young Andrew went to school riding on a pony and wearing a solar topee, or pith helmet. He kept a mongoose as a pet.

    He returned to England to go to preparatory school and then to Wellington, where he spent many nights sleeping in bomb shelters. During one bombing raid the headmaster was killed.

    Watson joined the Coldstream Guards and served in the ranks for nine months before being commissioned into The Black Watch in February 1946. In 1950, he was in charge of the bearer party at Field Marshal Lord Wavell’s funeral.

    At the coronation of Princess Elizabeth in 1952, he carried the Queen’s colour of the 2nd Battalion. It poured with rain, the colour became saturated, the harness supporting it broke and it had to be held up throughout the march, a considerable test of stamina.

    Shortly after he was married, he was serving in West Germany and living in married quarters. Late one night, hearing an intruder, he crept down stairs and seeing a shadowy figure, he whacked it with his swagger stick, snapping it in two. His wife, Ginty, hearing the thud, rushed down shouting, “You bloody fool! You’ve killed him!” He had not – but he had given the au pair’s boyfriend a considerable shock and the young man never came in through the bathroom window again.

    After serving in British Guyana as adjutant of the 2nd Battalion followed by attendance at Staff College and a spell as brigade major, from 1960 to 1962 he commanded a company in Cyprus. In the winter, the house was so cold that he and his wife spent every evening huddled in the bathroom. Watson returned to Cyprus later as part of the UN Peacekeeping Force.

    In 1967, he was posted to Seremban, Malaysia, as General Staff Officer Grade 1, 17 Division. Two years later, he assumed command of 1st Battalion The Black Watch (Royal Highland Regiment). This involved two emergency tours to Belfast and Londonderry and a four-month tour in Armagh. When General Franco threatened to invade Gibraltar, the battalion moved there at short notice and dug in. The assault never materialised.

    In 1971, on his rapid promotion straight from lieutenant-colonel to brigadier, he assumed command of 19 Airportable Brigade. From 1975 to 1977, based in Washington DC, he was Commander British Army Staff and military attaché. His duties included organising the state visit of the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh for the bicentennial celebrations of American independence. He secured a month’s attachment for his son, Patrick, at the West Point Military Academy.

    There were military tattoos and contributions from some of Britain’s great military bands but American battle re-enactment groups were pressing for staged engagements of British soldiers in 18th-century uniform showing them being mown down or surrendering to American militiamen. For the small British contingent at the Academy, it was payback time.

    At Muster Parade, at West Point, on July 4 1976, America’s finest cadets looked up to the ramparts of Fort Putnam where, to their horror, they saw not the Stars and Stripes but the Union Flag fluttering over them. Attached to the base of the flagstaff, in bold lettering, was the message, “It has taken us 200 years but the Brits are back!” After a brief panic, a detachment was assembled and the flag lowered with due ceremony.

    During Watson’s time as GOC Eastern District, based in Colchester, the Army was drafted in to fight fires using the force’s “Green Goddesses.” In 1980, he became Chief of Staff at Allied Forces Northern Europe (AFNORTH) based at Kolsas, near Oslo.

    He loved many aspects of life in Norway, particularly cross-country skiing – in which it was not unusual, on mountain paths, to pass women naked from the waist up – but he never felt comfortable being entertained by neighbours and having to join them in the sauna. Nor did he take to the cumbersome nuclear, biological-chemical clothing that he had to wear during simulated nuclear attacks.

    Appointed CB in 1981, he was Lieutenant Governor, The Royal Hospital Chelsea, from 1984 to 1993 when he retired from the Army. In retirement, he lived in the grounds of Garrick’s Villa at Hampton in Middlesex, where he enjoyed golf, classical music and extensive travel.

    He advised Jason Clarke for his role in the film The Aftermath (2019), set in the bitter winter of 1945 in the British occupation zone of post-war Germany.

    Well-known for his smile, the twinkle in his eye and his habit of laughing uncontrollably at his own jokes, he was the best of company. From 1981 to 1992 he was a much loved Colonel of the Black Watch.

    Major General Andy Watson married, in 1952, Mary Elizabeth (Ginty) Rigby. She survives him with their two sons, Alastair and Patrick, both of whom served in the Black Watch, and a daughter, Shane, who is an author and Daily Telegraph columnist.

    Major General Andy Watson, born April 9 1927, died July 12 2022

    * * *

    A good obit, but a pity that the DT has given 1952 as the Coronation year when it was 1953. 1952 was the Accession of course.

    1. That is the precise reason why the moronic clowns changed the name, from the trite “Global Warming” to the vapid “Climate Change”, in order to hedge their bets.

    1. Good morrow, Elsie, I too was late on parade, so I’ll extend that to all the Gentlefolk NoTTLers.

  38. I suppose the definition of insanity is to keep on doing the same thing hoping for a different result. I keep banging on about the sheer raw theft of The Students’ Loans scheme but without any response from the PTB.

    Is it time for the Bank of Mum and Dad? Finance tips for university students and parents
    With A-level results day here, tough conversions about managing money while at university will need to be tackled
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/education-and-careers/2022/08/18/university-finance-tips-how-students-parents-save-money-2022/

    Here is the BTL comment I have posted:

    The best advice is not to go anywhere near the criminal Students’ Loan Scheme. It charges usurious rates of interest – many many times the Bank Of England base rate – so that students can never pay off their loans but are enslaved for most of their working lives. It is a disgrace.

    For example when the bank rate was under 1%, interest was being charged at over 6%. In any fair system 5/6ths of the repayment should have been considered repayment of capital and just the bank rate, 1/6th, the interest payment. (In fact when the bank rate fell to ¼% students were still being charged 6% – 24 times the BoE base rate).

    Indeed in more civilised countries Student Loans are interest free.

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

    1. You are completely right, and more kids should listen to your advice to avoid being sucked into the scam!

    2. Yes, I agree entirely. Student loans should be a fixed interest rate, front loaded and no more. You borrow at the offered rate with a proportion of margin for the managing company.

      There should also be multiple loan companies, not just one AND you should be able to move your debt between them.

    3. But, but, but… how else is the Government to find the cash for illegal immigrants, funds for the Ukraine government, HS2, etc. etc., Richard?

  39. I am having a bit of a bash. A copy of the Wife of Bath, first edition, first printing, the Warqueen’s favourite book came up at auction and my bid won, significantly under the price my book man said it would go for!

    1. The conclusion of Chaucer’s Wife of Baths’ Tale is that what women want is, above everything else, to have the maistrie, dominance or control in their relationships with men .

      1. I think – from both failed relationships and the Warqueen – that it isn’t one upmanship but partnership. As soon as one person sets out to demolish the other – in their interests, pleasures, character or attitudes you end up with misery and the relationship fails. I read somewhere that in marriage, she expects him to change and he hopes she won’t. I think what works for us is accepting that we both will.

      2. Mistress Philippa Chaucer died aged 41. She seems to have had 4 surviving children but I wonder how many she actually bore. That doesn’t appear to be known. Her master apparently died in 1400 aged 50+.

        1. Phillipa Chaucer was the sister of Katherine Swynford who became the mistress and ultimately wife of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. Their four children, the Beauforts, are the ancestors of many of the following royals of the time.

    2. The original 14th Century Ellesmere manuscript? Lucky!. I’ve only got the audiobook he did at the same time, but his accent is a bit difficult to understand.

      1. Crikey no, but one of the first printed – Ricardi press editions.

        If she wants to read it she can buy the paperback at Waterstones!

  40. On the news just now…

    Rail union motormouth and bigot:

    “Our members work twenty four seven, round the clock, every day of the year.”

    Sounds like modern slavery, although quite a well-paid version!

    What a pillock.

    3. Have a good trip, BoB. Drive safely and enjoy your time with Dr Daughter and the agricultural/livestock(?) show.

    2. Sorry Phiz, not to ‘make’ but to ‘refine’.
      Bones were ground up to use in a filtration process, thereby refining cane molasses into white sugar.
      Or they could have used sugar beet, I suppose.

      Bones were also used to make glue.

    1. I did wonder if border farce are on strike. They’re certainly not doing their jobs. I am sorry this chap was injured. He shouldn’t have been. However, he also shouldn’t have been bringing foreign criminals: murderers, rapists and thieves into this country.

    1. Are you suggesting spraying the gimmigrants with gas? Personally I’d just go for an impromptu archery club. I don’t care any more. The state is forcing criminals: rapists, murderers and thieves on us. If wee don’t get rid of them now, then we never will.

      1. Why do you think the vast majority of guns are now in the hands of agents of the state or criminals?

  46. Logging off – soon to see Moffat Nurse – not our Nursey, for dressing inspection and another INR.

  47. The news of the planned American government militia of armed IRS agents is very worrying. People are speculating that they may be used to squeeze the middle classes dry, but what if it’s even more sinister than that?
    What if they plan to close down youtubers and independent journalists, or anyone who challenges the government by accusing them of tax evasion?

    1. Desperate government always seeks to take as much as it can, regardless of the consequences. It is really rather worrying. It has been proven, over and over and over again that the best way to grow an economy is with a pinned standard, such as gold or precious metals and to align the currency with that, never debasing, and keeping taxes low and government small.

      Biden seems determined to do the exact opposite.

      1. I also read that it is a standard tactic of a government running out of the ability to print money – but if they award themselves this power to persecute citizens, I can’t believe they won’t use it to silence political opponents too.
        Once the government starts down this route, there aren’t any exits really.

        1. Usually you get civil war. Americans, despite their obsession with guhnz cannot stand up to a military that has missiles.

          They’re stuffed. As you say, they’ve no way out – either side. It’s almost as if, so desperate to undo Trump’s economic repair are they that they’re doing as much damage as possible, as quickly as possible.

    2. Surely they can do that anyway, if they want to.

      I can’t see any justification to arm these people unless they are proposing to tax drug dealers rather than arrest them.

      1. Not necessarily with local police forces. Bypass the police and the army and anything is possible.

  49. Agony and ecstasy for Generation Covid after biggest ever drop in top A-level grades following end of teacher assessments – leaving tens of thousands of students battling for university places
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/index.html

    When we ran our first residential “A” level French courses in 1990 we bought The Daily Telegraph Schools Guide to get the contact details of the best schools and to see how each schools’ pupils had performed in the recent “A” level exams.

    The top school then was St Paul’s Girls’ School and I am delighted that over the years we have had more than 30 Paulinas (as the Girls are called) on courses with us.

    According to the league tables published in the MSM the results that SPGS achieved in 1990 were the best in the country. However those grade statistics would place them about 250th in today’s league table.

    There are two possible conclusions to draw from this:

    Either:
    i) Schoolchildren are far more intelligent than they used to be and they work far harder than they did before;
    or:
    ii) Grade inflation has been so rife that modern “A” level results give us very little idea of who is academically bright and who is not.

    2. Continually changing the baseline hasn’t blasted helped. It’s made the dim or unmotivated look bright and dragged the capable down. After all, if an A is now 63% someone who is getting 90% is ‘just as capable’ as the chap who got 64.

      One alternative is to move to a scoring system whereby the total number of marks you get is your grade. Get, say 80 points of questions right, that’s your ‘grade’. Get 15 and that’s your grade. If you’re a nutter like the Warqueen who did 5 A levels and whizzed them all, you’d be looking at 450-480 points so your super achievers are easily to identify and your err, me with err, 30 would be much easier.

        1. It frustrates that grade inflation is for government to say how great it’s schools spending is, when really it’s just throwing money away on nonsense.

          Education should be about the student, not the state machine.

          1. Most of what government does should be about the indigenous electorate but rarely, if ever, is.

      2. We need far harder exams.

        The trouble, as I pointed out yesterday, is that exams which are too easy favour the earnest plodder over the truly clever student.

        Basically we need exams where the best student will struggle to get more that 60% but the dullard will score virtually nothing.

    3. Our youngest granddaughter has been caught in this whirligig of inconsistency.
      She’s done all right but … her parents did stretch themselves to send her and her brother to private school.
      How very dare they!!! They should be dossing at home and spending our cash on tats and phags – in-between whinging to TV cameras and nipping down to the food bank.

    4. International Baccalaureate? There are 41 independent schools listed as offering IB within the United Kingdom.

  50. O’Sullivan’s Law strikes back in the publishing world’s woke takeover. 17 August 2022.

    Bitter experience over the decades working in and with a variety of institutions has taught me the immutable truth of what is known as O’Sullivan’s Law, laid down by my friend the writer John O’Sullivan in 1989 to explain why organisations such as Amnesty, which were created to be impartial, go nuts: “All organisations that are not actually Right-wing will, over time, become Left-wing.” It’s to do with the Left always being more driven, single-minded and intolerant than the Right.

    You learn a little every day!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/08/18/osullivans-law-strikes-back-publishing-worlds-woke-takeover/

      1. The ubiquitous Rajan – who can never keep his gob shut…

        Seems ideal……(sarc – in case you wondered!!)

    2. “I won’t stop thinking today about my late, beloved Dad whose devotion to education brought him to England…”

      He wouldn’t come for it now…

    1. Wordle 425 4/6

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      1. Wordle 425 5/6

        ⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜
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        🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

  54. Daily Quordle 206
    4️⃣7️⃣
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    quordle.com
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    🟩🟩⬜⬜⬜ ⬜🟨⬜⬜🟨
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    ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    2. They look incredibly healthy!
      I’m just preparing a little soup with homemade chicken stock; home grown leek and Waitrose (reduced – use by today ) mushrooms. It will be served with home made 60-40 seeded bread!

    3. Picked a colander full this morning and they are gently stewing with some fresh basil before being liquidised for cooking stews etc. Very sweet this year, both from the greenhouse and the garden/pots. Yours look very healthy, well done.

      2. You should make tomata = tomato sauce to keep and use next winter. The MR makes pounds of it.

    5. Ours are disappointing this year. Wonderful plants, grown from seed – came to not very much.. Both outdoors and in the greenhouse. Dunno what I did wrong…

      2. Mine the same, plants from seed grew well and seem to stall in the GHouse. Fruited quickly but the plants already over. Global warming obviously.

          1. I bought F1 Premio. Grafted. I bought two small plants. I have already picked 5 lbs and there is another 10lbs ripening on the vine. It did say on the label that they are prolific.

      4. I have a decent crop or tomatoes (several varieties) but they won’t ripen despite plenty of sunshine and regular watering/feeding. Some of them are huge, but green!

        1. Ours are ripening – slowly. The MR has made one pound of tomata, so far.

          The interesting thing (looking back at the thread about seeds etc) the best ones are from very old seed sent to me six years ago by a very agreeable NoTTLer called Martyn (former airline pilot) who died a year or so after the gift. The seeds were saved from an unnamed Greek variety that he grew in pots on the terrace of his holiday home in, er, Greece.

        2. Put it in a bowl on the kitchen window ledge. In a week, it’ll be red.

          But you knew that…!!

  56. Well, it’s stair rods time here at the moment. Looked threatening for some time, then bingo!

    If anyone thought that the government’s attack on small businesses ended with the end of lockdown it appears that the new wheeze to cripple that sector is the energy price hike. The new PM must act, if that person doesn’t act then we will know that the globalists are still in control and attempting to foment unrest.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/502964f83aa8899da1cd7c84e0524732a05c6b7ad77da4d68893ede4d2d17465.png

    1. You are working for the tax man and the pointless climate change levies, the EU’s green nonsense, May’s miserable net zero nonsense.

      Energy and fuel should not be taxed. These are the basis of the economy. I hate this government. It is awash with our money and it wastes well over 80% of it.

  57. Just watching those girls hanging upside down on the climbing wall in the Euro finals and I was struck by how white and European they all are! Not much diversity there!

  58. “Scientists say they have solved an evolutionary mystery involving a 500 million-year-old microscopic, spiny creature with a mouth but no anus.
    When it was discovered in 2017, it was reported that the tiny fossil of this sack-like marine beast could be humans’ earliest-known ancestor.
    The ancient animal, Saccorhytus coronarius, was tentatively placed into a group called the deuterostomes.
    These are the primitive ancestors of vertebrates – including humans.” (particularly politicians who are known for talking BS…..)

  59. Amol Rajan announced as new host of University Challenge

    I’ve already stopped watching A Question of Sport and Mastermind. I have watched University Challenge since the days of Bamber Gascoigne but when Jeremy Paxman goes I shall be a non-starter for 10.

    Is it true that they are planning to replace Victoria Coren with Diane Abbott on Only Connect?

    3. Has anyone watched “Amol Rajan Interviews”? It appears to be billed as on a par with Joe Rogan yet that seems unlikely.

      1. One or two were not bad. He talks far too much and interrupts – but we quite liked parts of them.

        Clearly sees himself as the new Botney.

    4. It was inevitable that the BBC would give the job to a non-reflective.
      They seem to have a death wish.

      1. I find it quite funny that the students often fail completely to answer the woke and diversity questions that the producer seems to think they ought to know!!

  60. Ref Jason MacPeriod – that Scots bod…. Interesting comment BTL in The Grimes:

    “The man has been appointed to his last three roles by the same person to whom he was also a personal trainer.

    This was a Jason job creation scheme.

    It was never about or for women.”

    Another triumph for the SNP…..

    1. A former BBC colleague who was a Business Affairs Manager at the time asked one of the directors at a staff away day jamboree why it is that if we recruit staff there is a formal process we have to follow for advertising the post and interviewing the short list, yet James Purnell has risen through the ranks without ever submitting an application form. The director in question squirmed, wriggling in his seast for what seemed like an age before replying, “I’m sure there was a process”. Fiona, the Bus.Manager, was the hero of the day.

      1. Sadly, I think there are many people who get into post without capability or qualification.

        1. What they lack in the ability department they certainly make up for it with unbridled ambition!

    2. Nepotism, corruption and non-jobs. A classic example of a massively over funded organisation.

      1. The Obamas did the same when he was a governor – basically created a post for Michelle Obama to fill. Champion of Diversity or some such thing.

        1. It truly is putrid. They have too much of our money. Taxation underpins everything. Without it, they’re powerless.

        3. Obama was never a governor as far as I recall, he was Illinois State Senator before being elected to President. Michelle was a respected Chicago lawyer before giving it up to be first lady.

          7. I think, like the Blairs, it was the case of the wife being the brighter person and a better lawyer.

    3. tch tch his red polo shirt clearly made him the best qualified candidate for the job….!

    4. Here’s a dispassionate assessment of the current state of the SNP

      Wings Over Scotland

      Home Of The Deranged

      Posted on August 16, 2022 by Rev. Stuart Campbell
      It’s not exactly a secret that Nicola Sturgeon’s grotesque and diseased perversion of the SNP is home to a motley collection of fundamentalist lunatics allied with the most extremist wing of the Scottish Greens, whose only interest in independence is to use it as a tool to facilitate the “queering” of society.

      For anyone with the slightest remaining grip on their critical faculties, the cat was truly let out of the bag on the day of the First Minister’s infamous “broom cupboard” video last January, in which she abjectly grovelled at the feet of a tiny handful of adolescent transactivists who’d left the party in a loud and choreographed public tantrum because it still hadn’t burned Joanna Cherry at the stake for believing in human biology

      https://wingsoverscotland.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/leeze28.jpg

      One of those she was abasing herself to that day was the repulsive and now mercifully deceased drug dealer and abusive racist misogynist Leeze Lawrence (above, left), but he was only the tip of a filthy iceberg.

      One of many other lows was the attempt to appoint a man who’d relentlessly abused Cherry as the party’s Complaints Officer, which could only reasonably be interpreted as deliberate trolling, but a whole string of figures from the party’s quasi-fascist youth wing have now been successfully and quietly manouevred onto the payroll, particularly at this year’s council elections.

      Being seriously mentally disturbed is now a positive career advantage in the SNP (it’s seemingly almost as much so as being a creepy sex pest with a fondness for younger men), as the party’s selection rules give explicit priority to people who have – or who claim to have – conditions like Borderline Personality Disorder, which might seem to a dispassionate observer like the most absolutely catastrophic match possible for a job as intrinsically antagonistic and adversarial as being a politician.

      1. BTL in the Grimes.

        “The man has been appointed to his last three roles by the same person to whom he was also a personal trainer. This was a Jason job creation scheme. It was never about or for women.”

        “So I did some digging on FB / LinkedIn / Google etc and it turns out he’s been “the best person for the role” for the last three completely different roles Katie Baxter of the Period Dignity Working Group has been involved in hiring for.

        2019 where she used his PT business at the college, then in 2020 when he appears to have had a career change and she took him on at the college (funny how this would have been when the colleges were closed and PTs across the country were out of work?) and now again, another career change later, in 2022.

        I have to wonder how this works… like does he go to her Stars In Their Eyes style with a “Tonight Katie, I want to be…. A PERIOD DIGNITY OFFICER” and she magics up some funding and creates a job for him? Or do we think he’s just THAT fantastic at being multi-disciplined that she thinks up the stuff she needs and he comes back 5 working days later (amount of time the job was advertised for) as an expert at it?”

        Best I can do.

  61. 355198+ up ticks,

    Just a though,

    I do believe the time is nigh, or nigh on nigh for a very LARGE assembly of people’s to gather on parliament green with a very sinister audible drum beat and an accompanying mantra chant, grill,grill,grill

    sound /travel distortion will do the rest to a guilty mind.

    Ps,,
    study the bow legged gimp as many a politico leaves parliament tis known as the walk of the sticky underpants.

    1. I am enjoying this new sport; see how many references to vaxx fraud, side-effects, climate change scam etc you can slip into the conversation with a normie.
      You gain points for every reference, and you lose points if you overdo it and they protest. You lose the round outright if they say the words “conspiracy theory.”
      I find that they will accept a lot if you deliver it confidently.

    2. I am enjoying this new sport; see how many references to vaxx fraud, side-effects, climate change scam etc you can slip into the conversation with a normie.
      You gain points for every reference, and you lose points if you overdo it and they protest. You lose the round outright if they say the words “conspiracy theory.”
      I find that they will accept a lot if you deliver it confidently.

  65. Just tried out my new chair. I’m going to call it Zippy. Dolly approves too. She ran circles round me, yapping.

    Poutine for lunch. Saw it on Masterchef the other day. Who would have thought that the national dish of Canada is cheesy chips and gravy !

          2. Has its own battery pack. I also have an assault spray if any of the buggers want to spend the next two weeks bright green. It doesn’t wash off !

  68. No good turn goes unpunished.
    SWMBO helped an old lady get home a few days home, now the old lady calls several times a day for SWMBO to do stuff for her. Insisting we take her shopping tonight, for example.
    Sigh.

    2. The you say no. I have always said to my neighbour if they needed anything they should only say so and I’d get it when I next went shopping. There’s a difference between kindness and being taken advantage of.

    3. Mobile or landline? Don’t you have a system for identifying callers before you answer? Or something?? (I have none…!!)

    5. It helps if you are genuinely fond of the old person whom you are helping.

      We have an old Irish friend called of 87 and he comes to supper and stays the night every Saturday when we are at home. When we have other friends with us he still comes as he loves to feel part of our social lives. Caroline also helps him cope with the day to day tedious paperwork and computer work and accompanies him when he has to go to the doctor because he does not understand things very well. Caroline first met him when she played the organ at his wife’s funeral and he burst into tears and now there is nothing we would not do for him.

      He does not exploit us – we do what we do for him because we want to do so and mainly because we are very, very fond of the old chap.

    1. They’ll go the “uni” (ugh- awful word) to study slavery and the ghastliness of the imperialist white supremacists among whom they are forced to live….

      1. I’m sure the majority will go on to be decent,, productive citizens.

        But Blair and Neather have a lot to be guilty of – genocide of our society and culture for one.

    1. Bad? It’s idiotic. The communist attempt at forcing the destruction of our way of life must end.

      1. Fascist, I think – the merging of the state and big corporations.
        Hope we can defeat the CBDC, because it’ll be game over if we can’t.

        1. Effectively that’s all that money is. A figure in a register. It’s no more real than the cash equivalent.

          This is where the entire system is broken.

          Is CBDC better than cryptocurrency? CBDCs are more stable than cryptocurrency, since they are fiat

          (That makes them *less* stable as they’re worthless.)

          , but cryptocurrency has the advantages of being decentralised, trustless and private.

          (Yes, all good things. You trust the originating block server as it can’t be fiddled)

          The CBDC vs crypto debate will likely become louder in the years ahead.25 May 2022

          There is no debate to be had. Government control over money must end. If the state persists, people will move away from it. Government’s are incompetent, stupid, pointless, spiteful and destructive. The less of them, the better.

  72. An enormous rain cloud has just moved slowly north east over the house. Not a drop……grrrr

  73. I have been with Moh on a visit to Poole where he needed his specs adjusting ..

    My goodness the roads were busy , and everyone seemed to be either sailing / sailboarding/ jetskiing / paddle boarding and just generally messing around on the water . We came back home across the harbour on board the Sandbanks ferry.. abit quicker than driving all the way around the road way .

    Isn’t it funny how nature sorts its way out by greening up so quickly after the rain we have had recently .

    Our garden lawn has magically gone from parched yellow to patches of green , just like that .

    Amazing really . Moh has raked the very dry dead looking grass , and the stimulation must have been good for it .

    Towels and clothes have dried beautifully on the washing line , sun has been warm.

    Weather looks abit iffy now though .

    Moh is snoozing so I have enjoyed watching the chaps diving .. I think everyone of them is a champion … and I also love watching the climbing .. the participants are so brave .. .

    1. ‘Evening, Maggie, are you sure that all those messing around on the water were normal, natural Brits, or were there a few illegals avoiding the RN patrols in order to sneak ashore?

  74. People share vintage photos of stomach-churning recipes of the past https://mol.im/a/11116623 via
    @Femail https://twitter.com/True_Belle/status/1560182011427524610

    StarGazy pie being one of them .

    I can remember some food horrors years ago .. one was a lime jelly full of tiny mixed vegetables layered with tuna/ salmon mousse and sliced hard boiled eggs .. served with a few bits of lettce and a dollop of mayonaise. Seventies food I think , and the other was Steak Tartare… groan .

    1. Steak tartare is not, as is popularly believed, just raw steak. It is chopped and mixed with chopped mushrooms, onions, capers, pepper and Worcestershire sauce and other seasonings. This seasoning mix causes a chemical reaction (similar to cooking, but without the heat) that also does what cooking does, alters the nature of the food to make it more palatable. Carpaccios of meat or fish are the same and are delicious.

      As for the jelly: substitute the fruit jelly for a tomato jelly and you have a delicious salad.

      1. I agree 100% about steak tatare.

        I don’t think I’d know what a carpaccio was if it hit me in the face. Perhaps I’ll Google it, ‘cos Italian is not a strong point here.

          1. Keep the parmesan, Philip – a cheese I disdain because of its awful smell. A little ripe brie with a few rosemary, thyme, salt and pepper sautéd potatoes.

          2. Sounds good.

            You get different grades of Parmesan. They aren’t all stinky old sock. Some a very mild and taste creamy.

          5. Too right! When we lived in Cap d’Ail, the MR sent me to Ventimiglia market for the weekly shop and, the first time, said, “Pick up a piece of parmesan.”

            At stall No 24 (to become my favourite) there were about 20 different types of parmesan…… I asked the lady which was best. “What for,” she replied. She took pity on me and proffered a medium one…. And she had a customer for life (well, 2 years and then three times a year)….

          6. If I were permitted just three cheeses for the rest of my life, those would be: Gruyère, Roquefort and Parmesan. I simply couldn’t live without those three. A good Comté would be a passable substitute for Gruyère, as a (Colston Bassett) Stilton would substitute for Roquefort. Parmesan (Parmigiano-Reggiano), though, has no acceptable substitute.

          7. I would go for English cheeses. Whatever was available. The French do not deserve our support.

          8. The smelly one is the dreaded ready-grated Buitoni aka desiccated vomit.
            A proper chunk grated as you need it is quite different.

      2. Not heard of the addition of mushrooms but i’m sure it would work. Shallots not onions. And you missed out the cornichon/gherkin. You would normally find a dash of tabasco too.

        1. I suppose it depends where you are in the world as to what they put in it. I know the classic is as you say but … anything goes.

      3. Do you not add raw egg into the mix to bind? I suppose that’s verboten these days.

    2. William Brown wanted to organise a feast and so he asked his fellow outlaws: Ginger, Douglas and Henry, to bring things they particularly enjoyed to The Old Barn. When they met they got a large tin and mixed all the ingredients together and discovered to their great surprise that the mixture of chocolate, peanuts, sardines, marmalade, kippers, potted meat, bullseyes, condensed milk, cheese biscuits and treacle did not taste as good as they hoped considering that each ingredient on its own was so delicious.

          1. She wasn’t good at it. When she discovered rice, we got a dollop on the plate- no matter what the main course was. I taught myself to cook having failed DS O level.
            I haven’t done much cooking of late as we have had so much else to deal with. However, I have made a large salad with leaves, homegrown toms, cuke, chunky spring onions, corn, green olives and feta. To go with steaks which we were too tired to eat last night.
            The salad looks nice.

    3. I think it was Prue Leith and Mary Berry who recreated a 70’s party using the ingredients they had then. Like asparagus from a jar. They said of the time that it all seemed quite exotic. This time they turned their noses up at it all.

      1. Once upon a time I knew a cook whose mother had starved to death. I have a healthy respect for all types of nutritious food, however humble or unfashionable, and for all those who produce and provide comestible substances.

          2. I grew 8 roots. This year was my first harvest. One bunch of 10. :@(
            Still…early days.

  77. The EU’s idealism has been exposed as a sham

    It is undermining scientific cooperation with the UK amid a grubby power play over Northern Ireland

    NOEL MALCOLM

    In the run-up to the Brexit referendum, Project Fear took many forms. For university academics, its key claim was that if we left the EU, our brilliant scientists and researchers would no longer be able to take part in the programme of research funding known as “Horizon Europe”. And that would have been a great blow, since this was one of the largest research programmes in the world, with a budget of nearly £80 billion over a seven-year period.

    My university, Oxford, wrote to every member of academic staff, saying that it wished to “affirm the value that the UK’s membership of the EU provides to the University”, and citing the £66 million in European funding received in the previous year. It didn’t actually say “Vote Remain!” but the message was clear.

    On this point, those of us on the other side of the debate – a tiny minority in the academic world – found ourselves in the curious position of defending the EU, both on a matter of fact and on a question of principle. The factual point was simple: far from excluding non-members from this programme, the EU encouraged many non-EU states to join as associated members. Some, such as Israel, were not geographically European. Tunisia, which when I last checked, was not even in the Eurovision Song Contest, joined the scheme years ago. These countries were not free riders; they paid subscriptions, based on their GDP. So there was a simple model for us to follow.

    But the question of principle was also important. The EU had created this ambitious programme, allowing neighbouring countries to participate, because, as it said, it wanted to make Europe a global centre of excellence in research. Scientific collaboration, which is essential, needs to cross borders because ideas do so all the time. And in promoting pan-European research, the EU was not just benefiting the scientists. It was also expressing its idealistic vision of cooperation for the common good – indeed, for the global good, as scientific progress benefits everyone.

    Even without the idealism, it was also obvious that keeping the UK on board would be in the interests of the EU researchers. According to one recent survey, the top 30 universities in the world include six in the UK but only one in continental Europe (and that’s in Switzerland). We have 90 Nobel prize-winners in chemistry, physics and medicine: Germany has 79 and France 34. So the EU has good reasons to cooperate with what is, in fact, the academic powerhouse of Europe. If Moldova is welcomed with open arms, how could the UK possibly have the door slammed in its face?

    And so, when the Brexit deal was settled, it duly included an agreement on associated status, and the Government pledged £15 billion for our seven years of subscriptions. This was not money just “given to the EU”; it was expected to match fairly closely what our researchers would get from the scheme in grants. If we were not in the scheme, a similar amount would be spent by the UK on its own research. But the benefits of international collaboration are real.

    That was more than 18 months ago. Today, the Horizon programme is up and running, but we are not included. And the reason has nothing to do with science: it would seem Brussels is using the issue as leverage to pressurise the UK on a different matter, the dispute over the Northern Ireland Protocol. Exasperated, the Government is finally launching proceedings against the EU for this unreasonable behaviour.

    For academics, this should be an Emperor’s New Clothes moment – the time we realise that all that idealism was a sham. The EU has always presented itself as rising above the grubby world of national political interests to pursue higher ideals and values. Now we see the reality behind that rhetoric: the unscrupulous manipulation of a scientific project for political purposes.

    Well, cynics will say, politics is always about the hard-nosed pursuit of interest, so we should not be so surprised. But the sad thing about this huge act of pettiness is that it is really not in the EU’s long-term interests. It may serve the short-term purposes of politicians such as Emmanuel Macron, in his anti-Brexit vendetta; but European science, and scientists, will be the ultimate losers.

    Sir Noel Malcolm is a senior research fellow at All Souls College, Oxford

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/08/17/eus-idealism-has-exposed-sham/

  78. Gary Linekar has asked to be represented by Ryan Giggs’s PR team.

    Apparently he’s amazed that after all the allegations of violence,
    bullying, controlling behaviour, and womanizing, Giggs still manages to be
    more likable than him.

    1. Lineker once said that he preferred football to sex – does this suggest that Giggs is more rounded?

      1. Giggs has long had a reputation as a womaniser and a bully. You have to ask yourself why women are queuing up to date him.

        2. Giggs is a pretty foul man – he had an affair with his brother’s wife which broke up that marriage.

          2. Fake nails, fake tan, fake hair, fake face, tightened fanny, boob job, bum lift… designer everything…fake everything really. Very high maintenance.

  79. The irresistible rise of Amol Rajan – and what his BBC critics think
    Armed with brains and ambition, the journalist and presenter now bestrides the British media world – but is his judgement always sound?
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/0/irresistible-rise-amol-rajan-what-bbc-critics-think/
    The comments section under this article have been truncated and stopped so I cannot add my comment.

    My WIWGTS (What I Was Going To Say) BTL would have been.

    If the BBC is so determined to promote diversity shouldn’t they employ more white presenters to even things up a bit?

    1. The Telegraph headline writer said it all, but I missed it. Irresistible or resistible, it’s Arturo Ui .

  82. That’s me for today. No rain – a lot of sun. Back to the watering regime.

    Have a jolly evening.

    A demain.

    1. Set up a sprinkler system or buried hose pipes with holes in them.

      Have a nice evening.

  83. At the start of the School summer holidays I noted how the weather had turned for the worse and said in effect never mind it will improve when the schools go back (in September). I admit I was completely wrong because as you know we’ve had five weeks of unrelenting sunshineness! It’s what makes the weather In Britain so interesting. Almost 4 years ago I recorded this in my journal:

    “Friday 24th August dawns clear with a fine day in prospect although there has been a considerable drop in temperature. In one of the first physical signs of Autumn, on the river bank just in front of boat every time the gander honks it exhales a miniature cloud of steamy breath that condenses instantly.”

    Autumn Fires

    In the other gardens
    And all up the vale,
    From the autumn bonfires
    See the smoke trail!

    Pleasant summer over
    And all the summer flowers,
    The red fire blazes,
    The grey smoke towers.

    Sing a song of seasons!
    Something bright in all!
    Flowers in the summer,
    Fires in the fall!

    Robert Louis Stevenson

    (PS Paul Carr, composer has set this poem to music, but not yet recorded)

          1. That’s probably because the four voice parts come in at different times so some of the lines are repeated. The entire piece is delightful.

    2. When I was working, I could put money on the weather being brilliant the moment school started again! Still, at least I could rely on good weather for my birthday (I’m a pedantic Virgo).

  86. Entitlement Britain is becoming a poor country and too many people don’t care

    Liz Truss is right: it will take hard graft and an end to wilful denial if we’re ever to escape this disaster

    ALLISTER HEATH

    Recent immigrants to Britain are often taken aback by our poor work ethic, lack of entrepreneurialism or respect for education, and the widespread sense of victimhood, in which people blame their problems on others rather than take personal responsibility for self-betterment. But they are also stunned by how high our taxes are, the wastage at the heart of the public sector, and the fact it is so hard to build anything or get anything done.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/08/17/entitlement-britain-becoming-poor-country-many-people-dont-care/

    Those immigrants who are taken aback are those who come to work and can afford the appallingly high housing costs of an overcrowded country without living like slave camp labourers. Too many come here simply to take advantage of the Entitlement Britain that has been more 50 years in the making.

    Heath makes many accurate observations about the UK’s failings but he hardly mentions the effect of adding 8 million to the population through immigration. Instead he offers this:

    We wouldn’t be stagnating if a few million acres had been handed over to housing…or if the Oxford-Cambridge-London triangle had been turned into a giant high-productivity science enterprise zone.

      1. Grizzly used to say that Johnny Norfolk and the other chap (goodness I can’t remember his name) used to remind him of Statler and Waldorf.

          2. Gavin had plenty of ding-dogs with people but JN and Geoffrey really were like the real thing. However, you and your counterpart are catching up.

          3. The difference is that BT and I have a lot in common and most of the exchanges are very tongue in cheek.

          6. You’re absolutely right, Ann. My goodness, my memory really is having to work hard these days.

        2. If I had to guess it might have been The Central Scrutiniser. It wouldn’t have been one of the current regulars, because I don’t recall JN having ding-dongs with anyone recently.

          1. Have to say I miss TCS, whether you agreed with him or not, he always did his research, a bit like Jennifer SP

          2. Agreed.
            He has appeared a few times, but he is very busy with the restoration of the property.

      2. Yes
        Geoffrey Woollarddid not like the truth, but I have no idea what it was. I did not dislike GW at all but his logic was not sound in my opinion.

      1. Not nearly enough when you and Waldorf are on stage. The edit was because I couldn’t remember how his name was spelled.

    1. “I’ve also found, by actual test, that a wet dog is the most lovingest.” Applies to cats too.
      Ogden Nash.

  89. Take the NHS, smash it apart, and then build a real health service that concentrates on health care and health care alone

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-11122945/Fury-sexist-NHS-job-ad-says-preferably-identifies-woman.html

    Fury over ‘sexist’ and ‘woke’ NHS job ad: Health chiefs seek ‘candidates who identify as female’ for £100,000-a-year director of operations role
    £100,000 director of operations role was posted by Barts Health Trust this week
    Ad particularly interested in hearing from candidates who ‘identify as female’
    Charities and experts have slammed the NHS ad for being discriminatory to men

    1. Any men applying can just self-identify as ‘female’ if they have any sense. Hoist by their own petard?

    2. The NHS ‘administrators’ who negotiated purchase of contaminated blood products in the 1980s should be prosecuted for incompetence and malfeasance – and punished accordingly.

    2. BoB’s attention to the details is one of the aspects of his cartoons that I enjoy: “Pfruit” on the vending machine being a typical example as well as Jamal being in a skirt.

    3. Very clever!
      Bob is really going world wide now – his drawings turn up on all kinds of websites from places like India and the US.

  91. https://dailysceptic.org/2022/08/18/1200-scientists-and-professionals-declare-there-is-no-climate-emergency/

    1,200 Scientists and Professionals Declare: “There is No Climate Emergency”

    by

    Chris Morrison

    18 August 2022 3:14 PM

    The political fiction that humans cause most or all climate change

    and the claim that the science behind this notion is ‘settled’, has been

    dealt a savage blow by the publication of a ‘World Climate Declaration (WCD)’

    signed by over 1,100 scientists and professionals. There is no climate

    emergency, say the authors, who are drawn from across the world and led

    by the Norwegian physics Nobel Prize laureate Professor Ivar Giaever.

    Climate science is said to have degenerated into a discussion based on

    beliefs, not on sound self-critical science.

      1. I’m going to write to my local MP Jacob RM enclosing a copy to tell him he and his party can abandon the Net Zero bollocks…

        1. Good luck with that.
          Unfortunately, I fear that those Spartans have about as much chance of being listened to as the covidivax critics

    2. Baah, 1,200 scientists – a mere drop in the ocean of indoctrinated scientists. Unfortunately, at least one of those scientists will be found to be telling woopsies about something and the media will focus on that!

        1. That is likely to get them banned from government funding for any projects they want to take on.

          They already have to conform to a lot of diversity stuff and promise to recruit quota matching scientists to work for them

    3. Considering they go on about the science being “settled”, how can it be self-critical?

      2. He had a great time. Oscar was fine with his little brother. His owner has come out of hospital now and is able to have him back (until the next time – and he’ll be mine permanently when the inevitable happens).

        1. That’s good to read, I wonder if the little brother might be the final piece in your and Oscar’s jigsaw.

          1. I think Oscar is starting to realise what a good billet he has. He seems much more relaxed and chilled now – although I did have to muzzle him this morning when I trimmed his beard (which made getting at the matted bits very tricky!).

  93. Good night, everyone, I’m off to bed now. If I stay up much longer, I shall start to nibble food and bang will go my waistline!

  94. Another disaster by the Stick Insect.

    What is the point of the Modern Slavery Act?

    With little clarity on the Act’s practical purpose, reports that it is being exploited to facilitate illegal entry should be acted upon

    TELEGRAPH VIEW • 18 August 2022 • 6:00am

    The Modern Slavery Act was first proposed almost 10 years ago by Theresa May when she was home secretary. The rationale behind this measure was that people, mainly women, were being trafficked from Europe and elsewhere to the UK either to work in the sex industry or forced to labour for nothing apart from rudimentary board and lodgings.

    Bringing someone illegally into the country for any purpose has long been unlawful. The Modern Slavery Act did not serve any obvious additional purpose beyond demonstrating the Government’s abhorrence of the practice – legislation used as virtue signalling, in other words. Since no-one was prepared to risk being accused of supporting slavery by questioning whether there might be unintended consequences, it was given widespread political support.

    Yet we now discover that the Act is being exploited to facilitate the illegal entry of economic migrants arriving on boats from France. Those who have come from countries like Albania who cannot legitimately or easily claim political asylum say that they have been brought into the country by modern slavers.

    Chris Philp, the Tory MP who was immigration minister until recently, wrote in this newspaper that the threshold of proof required for a successful modern slavery claim had been reduced to an to “an absurdly low level”. The system is so lax that the approval rate is now over 90 per cent and once accepted the “modern slave” cannot be removed, even if they are a dangerous foreign criminal who has paid for a passage to the UK. This measure needs to be amended to make it work as intended, and if that is not possible, repealed.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/08/18/what-point-modern-slavery-act/

    1. I would question the governments abhorrence of the practice Such moves are only for virtue signalling and vote harvesting.

  95. Evening all!
    A decent run up to Dr. Daughter’s and am now ready for bed. Feel totally knackered.

    Good night all.

  96. I too am going to bed. Had a week of very early starts this week and am tired.
    Hoping for a sleep in tomorrow and no interruptions.
    Sleep well Y’all and a happy tomorrow.

  97. Just to say, that I am not around very nuch at the moment. Our younger grandson (14 months) is in hospital accompanied by his mum. We are acting somewhat in loco parentis and looking after our elder grandchild (aged 5 yrs) whilst his dad – our son – keeps his job (design engineer) and the family washing etc etc revolving. Our mornings are early, indeed tomorrow will be a 6.45 am start out-of-the-house. Little grandson’s tests have been normal but he has to stay in for an MRI scan within the next few days. I have a gut feeling that this will be normal, and will be met with “We are baffled. It’s a mystery,” I think I know what the problem is, but how to tell the parents? After all, I do not wear a white coat…. No, little grandson has not had the jab, but his breast-feeding Mum has. Night-night everyone, I will look in when I can.

      1. Thank you, Ndovu, all this flared up immediately after the MMR jab. I can’t remember whether I have said this or not, my mind is all askew at the moment. We should know more next week.

      1. Thank you Stormi. Our son is holding things together and running on nervous energy now. Fortunately his work has told him to take what time he needs, and it is the sort of job whereby he can work from home so he is doing what he can.

      1. Thank you. Never thought we would live through times such as these, but one has always to have it in one’s mind that systems can go rogue.

    8. Good luck with it all Poppy- it’s all so worrying in these times. You never stop worrying when it comes to your kids or grandkids.

  98. Just to say, that I am not around very nuch at the moment. Our younger grandson (14 months) is in hospital accompanied by his mum. We are acting somewhat in loco parentis and looking after our elder grandchild (aged 5 yrs) whilst his dad – our son – keeps his job (design engineer) and the family washing etc etc revolving. Our mornings are early, indeed tomorrow will be a 6.45 am start out-of-the-house. Little grandson’s tests have been normal but he has to stay in for an MRI scan within the next few days. I have a gut feeling that this will be normal, and will be met with “We are baffled. It’s a mystery,” I think I know what the problem is, but how to tell the parents? After all, I do not wear a white coat…. No, little grandson has not had the jab, but his breast-feeding Mum has. Night-night everyone, I will look in when I can.

    2. Many happy returns Hugh – and thank you for all the letters that you post. Your pithy comments at the end are often the best part!

  101. In a piece about Amolovertheplace Rajan…
    ” The family moved to Tooting, south London when he was three, where Rajan’s mother worked as a dinner lady, a nursery teacher, and eventually at the Foreign Office, while his father was a general manager at a small trading company. He’s proud of their struggle. In 2020 he posted on Twitter: “Happy Father’s Day to my ultimate hero, the cleverest man I’ve met, born into unconscionable poverty, who with his glorious wife (also one of 11 siblings) sacrificed everything to come to [the] UK when I was 3, so that his kids may at least live a fuller, happier life than he did.” ”

    If they had nothing in India, exactly what did they sacriice?

    1. His parents had twenty siblings between them? No wonder World population growth is the Indian in the room….

    1. At one time wasn’t the exchange rate $4 to £1 sterling? If the $ has lost 97% of its purchasing power what does that make the ‘Farthing in your pocket’ worth?

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