Friday 2 September: A parliamentary resolution to mitigate Russia’s gas-price manipulation

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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468 thoughts on “Friday 2 September: A parliamentary resolution to mitigate Russia’s gas-price manipulation”

  5. ‘Morning, Peeps. Some gentle rain during the night, and now a fresh-scented 17°C. I shall make the most of it with yet another garden brekker.

    Today’s leading letter:

    SIR – The quadrupling in the cost of gas, caused by Russia’s war policy, falls within the provisions of the Civil Contingencies Act 2004. This defines disruption of a supply of energy or fuel as an emergency when it threatens “damage to human welfare”. So, with a simple parliamentary resolution, the Government may use its emergency powers to mitigate the consequences.

    Ministers could suspend the contractual link between the price of gas, which accounts for 35 per cent of electricity supplies, and other energy sources. They could waive the “ready to burn” rules which now restrict supplies of logs for home fires.

    Such measures will need no subsidy. Pre-empting energy contracts to mitigate Russia’s manipulation of gas prices offends free-market principles far less than another misguided cap, let alone nationalisation.

    Nick St Aubyn
    Dunsfold, Surrey

    Sounds like a reasonable plan, Nick St A. If our idiot politicians would also like to remove Net Zero from the statute books at the same time…

    1. I think Nick has missed the point though – the quadrupling of the gas price surely has less to do with Russia than the incompetence [at best] of many of our so called “leaders”?

  7. 355616+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Why are we taking this route when we could be witnessing benefits on opening a shale gas front and gaining an independence stance on one segment of energy.

    Is it the johnson squeeze that is the problem ?

    Friday 2 September: A parliamentary resolution to mitigate Russia’s gas-price manipulation

    1. ‘Er Indoors plus her stonkingly rich entitled chums; throw into the equation the Maybot, Windmill Dave, Cleggover, Millipede Jnr, Blair and Brown, the Bonking Major and all their lickspittles.
      Since 1st, January, 1973, it has largely been the job of British governments to betray this country. That is why Maggie had to be knifed; she spotted one or two problems with the agenda and wasn’t afraid to expose them.

      1. 355616+ up ticks,

        Morning Anne,
        Precisely what I have been accused of repeating via rote,
        for years.

        The minute Maggie was knifed
        repress,replace,reset, was triggered.

        What followed on was fools holding allegiance, via its name, to a party that no longer existed Conservative party in genuine form was erased by a political ringer party, a few vows.promises, & pledges ( fodder for fools) and Heigh – Ho down the reset path of destruction we go.

  8. The aftermath of war? No, a national act of self-harm. 2 September 2022.

    It is difficult to be optimistic about the short term. However, I have long been of the belief that nothing in our complacent society will change until some kind of crisis shatters our modern delusion.

    Perhaps, as people sit at home in supposedly one of the world’s most developed economies, barely affording to heat and power their homes, their discretionary spending hammered and hardly able to cover the basics, they will begin to wonder whether the people who have been in charge of this country for the past 25 years were anything other than a gang of charlatans.

    Charlatans? Traitors. Liars. Criminals. Cowards all!

    https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/the-aftermath-of-war-no-a-national-act-of-self-harm/

  10. A parliamentary resolution to mitigate Russia’s gas-price manipulation

    Hmmm, they love it really, they have an excuse and a cover for all their mad net zero agenda, that would have come in regardless of Putin.

  12. SIR – The energy crisis has not been mainly caused by Covid, the Russian attack on Ukraine or an act of God. It is due to decades of neglect by governments of both parties, which have shut down coal mines, run down nuclear power stations and reduced gas storage capacity.

    Their aims have been directed solely towards winning the next election, and this short-termism has led to people such as my wife and I, who between us have paid income tax for more than 100 years, having to choose between heating and eating.

    Leonard Macauley
    Staining, Lancashire

    Yesterday our clot of a PM apparently discovered nuclear energy…better late than never I suppose. What next, coal? Short-termism by myopic governments will be the death of this country. Nearly there!

    Edited for finger trouble.

    1. The lead time for building new nuclear generation is measured in generations, not years. Boris is an ill-educated arse.

    2. But only BIG Nuclear. He seems to want more Chinese power stations and not our Rolls Royce developments…

    3. But only BIG Nuclear. He seems to want more Chinese power stations and not our Rolls Royce developments…

  13. SIR – “Net zero is written into law,” you note in your Leading Article (August 30). What is to stop Parliament unwriting it from law?

    Dr David Pound
    Charwelton, Northamptonshire

    Ha ha…great minds etc. What’s to stop them? Considering that the legislation went through in around 90 minutes with the smug-o-meter off the end of the scale, an awful lot, I would say Dr Pound. An 80-seat majority will not be anything like enough. The very best we can hope for is temporary suspension or modification.

    1. Never going to happen with the current collection of traitors, scoundrels, thieves, knaves, crooks and hornswogglers in Parliament.

  14. SIR – “Net zero is written into law,” you note in your Leading Article (August 30). What is to stop Parliament unwriting it from law?

    Dr David Pound
    Charwelton, Northamptonshire

    Ha ha…great minds etc. What’s to stop them? Considering that the legislation went through in around 90 minutes with the smug-o-meter off the end of the scale, an awful lot, I would say Dr Pound. An 80-seat majority will not be anything like enough. The very best we can hope for is temporary suspension or modification.

  15. SIR – “Net zero is written into law,” you note in your Leading Article (August 30). What is to stop Parliament unwriting it from law?

    Dr David Pound
    Charwelton, Northamptonshire

    Ha ha…great minds etc. What’s to stop them? Considering that the legislation went through in around 90 minutes with the smug-o-meter off the end of the scale, an awful lot, I would say Dr Pound. An 80-seat majority will not be anything like enough. The very best we can hope for is temporary suspension or modification.

  16. The case for bringing Shamima Begum back is now irrefutable. 2 September 2022.

    The latest revelations about security service collusion in respect of Ms Shamima Begum make alarming reading. It has been obvious from the outset that she and her foolish young friends were groomed. Now we discover that ministers knew she was a trafficking victim, transported by a terrorist group, but chose to strip her of her British citizenship regardless.

    There is a composite picture of Shamima Begum and her two friends passing through the Syrian Border after flying voluntarily to Turkey. There is no one herding or forcing them to do so.

    PS. There are no comments allowed on this article!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/09/01/case-bringing-shamima-begum-back-now-irrefutable/

    1. ‘Trafficked’? I don’t think so! The Maybot has a great deal to answer for…

      ‘Morning Minty.

      1. There are several politicians who fill me with total contempt but I must admit that the totalest contempt I have is for Mrs May!

        There was an interesting “A” level question on Edward Albee’s play, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf this was: “The play celebrates sterility.” Discuss.

        Mrs May was the embodiment of sterility though at the time of her election as party leader she said how sad she was not to have had children when Mrs Leadsom had mentioned the fact that she, like Mrs Thatcher, had had children. A banker friend of ours had dealings with Mrs May at the outset of her career:- she disliked children intensely and said she was committed to never having any. Indeed, our friend thought it was not unlikely that she had deliberately had herself sterilised.

        (They made a very noisy film of the play starring Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor).

    2. She’s just a handy distraction to wheel out when the government wants people not to notice other stuff.

    4. The DT letters sensor must have got tired last night of deleting Begum comments. A rash have appeared under todays letters. The A star pupil was clever enough to evade UK authorities, used a false passport and travelled into a war zone. If she was groomed by anyone it was the purveyors of islam.

    6. It took her highly-remunerated lawyers enough time to come up with “it was the Canadians wot dun it” defence.

    7. Britain has given up. Our politicians will only ever put up a token resistance before capitulating.

      So any bets as to when Shamima Begum will be back in Britain? My guess is that it will be before Christmas this year.

      And any guesses as to how much money she will be paid by the MSM for her story? She is probably going to be financially secure for the rest of her life.

      Remember the multi-million pound ransom Boris Johnson paid for the ‘repatriation’ of that truly repulsive and ungrateful woman, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe? It wouldn’t surprise me if the British state coughs up more millions for the ‘release’ of Shamima Begum.

  17. This is Biden’s press secretary telling journalists that if you’re not with the majority, you’re extreme (guess how they define the majority)
    https://www.reddit.com/r/Wallstreetsilver/comments/x3j9oo/if_you_are_not_with_the_majority_you_are_extreme/
    And here’s where Biden talks about coming after American citizens
    https://www.reddit.com/r/Wallstreetsilver/comments/x3oigi/i_really_wish_i_lived_in_a_country_where_the/
    Biden gave a speech yesterday on a weird set that looks like something out of 1930s Germany, where he said that supporters of his main political opponent are a threat to democracy. The photo in the Daily Mail doesn’t give an idea of what the backdrop really looked like.
    https://www.reddit.com/r/Wallstreetsilver/comments/x3qyg7/i_think_its_safe_to_say_we_need_to_buy_more/

    2. Karen Jong-Perrier, as Diogenes’ Middle Finger has dubbed her, is even poorer than her inept predecessor Peppermint Patty was and both fall a long way behind the excellent Kayleigh McEnany – who was always well briefed, with facts to hand to rebut the meeja clowns, rather than KJ-P’s tactic of merely repeating the BS in her ‘presentation’.

      I realise that it’s a different role, but similarly here in the UK no Speaker of the House of Commons has met the standards set by Betty Boothroyd – authoritarian with a dash of humour. We all suffer through their incompetence.

      The DMF article; https://www.diogenesmiddlefinger.com/2022/08/just-get-used-to-it-you-little-semi.html

      1. She’s terrible, but I guess she matches the President for incompetence. It’s painful watching her. A testament to “positive discrimination.”

  18. SIR – If Liz Truss is seriously considering “suspending” renewable energy subsidies her first act must be to cancel those paid to Drax Power, £893 million last year and £6.5 billion to date, to burn woodchips that create more carbon-dioxide pollution than the coal it used to burn.

    Richard Morris
    Lutterworth, Leicestershire

    Fat chance, Mr Morris. Drax is our largest power station and we are going to need every ounce of its nearly 4,000 MW output. Drax has us over a barrel. The fact is that it should never have been permitted to burn biomass on this scale and to land the consumer with enormous bills and similarly enormous pollution.

      1. You know that, I know that…I was thinking more of the products of wood combustion like carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, sulphur dioxide, particulates…and all on a massive scale unless ‘scrubbed’ between furnace and chimney. Not to mention the exhaust fumes from bunker fuel hauling it halfway wound the world.

        ‘Morning, DB.

    3. A BTL poster sums it up nicely:

      AC Long
      7 HRS AGO
      Totally agree with the letter that says this energy crisis is more to do with years of crazy green energy schemes at the cost of efficient coal and nuclear.
      If we had kept them then we would not be suffering as much from the sanctions on Russia.
      As for the £billions being given to burn wood chips. Well, to me, that just illustrates that the green agenda is all about big business and money and sod all to with climate control.

      1. The fundamental problem continues to be these wretched contracts for difference. The desperation to make energy expensive, pleasing the producing, wrecking the market was an act of malice beyond measure.

        If folk want to pretend to be green and use unreliables, fine. Go pay £600 per MW/h. I want to buy nuclear and pay £60 per MW/h Or coal, or gas. The state broke the market. The current cost of energy is the consequence.

        And fools want to nationalise energy?

  19. SIR – If Liz Truss is seriously considering “suspending” renewable energy subsidies her first act must be to cancel those paid to Drax Power, £893 million last year and £6.5 billion to date, to burn woodchips that create more carbon-dioxide pollution than the coal it used to burn.

    Richard Morris
    Lutterworth, Leicestershire

    Fat chance, Mr Morris. Drax is our largest power station and we are going to need every ounce of its nearly 4,000 MW output. Drax has us over a barrel. The fact is that it should never have been permitted to burn biomass on this scale and to land the consumer with enormous bills and similarly enormous pollution.

  20. SIR – If Liz Truss is seriously considering “suspending” renewable energy subsidies her first act must be to cancel those paid to Drax Power, £893 million last year and £6.5 billion to date, to burn woodchips that create more carbon-dioxide pollution than the coal it used to burn.

    Richard Morris
    Lutterworth, Leicestershire

    Fat chance, Mr Morris. Drax is our largest power station and we are going to need every ounce of its nearly 4,000 MW output. Drax has us over a barrel. The fact is that it should never have been permitted to burn biomass on this scale and to land the consumer with enormous bills and similarly enormous pollution.

      1. I think it’s just the end of a long economic cycle, combined with the death of fiat currencies worldwide. And a bunch of fascists trying to enslave us, of course.

          1. I’m not qualified to give financial advice…
            Some people I know are buying gold and silver (the latter is probably the most undervalued asset on the planet right now). Some people are buying uranium, copper, platinum. Some people are opening Swiss bank accounts (you have to be careful with the rules and what you can take out, but the accounts are quite handy and can be used like current accounts, I’m told. Just avoid Credit Suisse!). Some people are buying property or land if they can do so outright. Some people are investing in their houses (home improvements). Some regard Bitcoin’s current doldrums as a buying opportunity (but it will probably go down below 10K at some point).

            I think the common theme here is getting one’s wealth out of the fiat currency system and banks, or at least spread around a bit, and one has to think about the possibility of raising a bit of cash if needed or having an income…
            It’s hard to know what to do – most of us have substantial exposure to the stock market and government bonds. I’m not expecting my pension to be worth much when I get my hands on it…:-)

    2. America’s answer to the destruction of the British Empire with the Marshal Plan to restore the despotic Germany at the expense of the British lend-lease policy. Pay up and pay now – not a word to Germany who set the destructable ball rolling.

      Oh no, we fear the British Empire as a force against us. Let’s destroy it, never mind it standing alone against the German despots.

  22. Not sure why it is considered perfectly okay to openly criticise Qatar for the cultural behaviour towards women and gays and slave labour that is mostly based on their interpretation of their religious belief ideology.

    When to criticise people living in this country that follow the same belief system is considered intolerant, far right and racist and could get you arrested for stirring up hatred.

    1. Ah, but we only get nice enlightened RoPers.
      Their very presence in this country turns them into veritable angels.
      Just don’t mention 1500 years of Christianity.

    2. We are now past the point of no return and we have lost the war because nobody in politics or the civil service have any interest in defending our laws and mores.

  23. 355616+ up ticks,

    Is this battle of the political treacherous giants to be the last? will the curtain finally descend, having run these last near forty years, ( longer than the mouse trap ) on the self inflicted, audience participation again& again,
    biggest political shiteshow in town.

    Gerard Batten,
    ·
    7h
    Of course they are going to bloody lose! They have totally betrayed their 2019 voters. What do they bloody expect!

    It doesn’t matter which WEF puppet gets the job they are going to get wiped out. And it doesn’t matter how bloody useless Labour are, they will win because they are not the Tories.

    previewImg

    https://gettr.com/post/p1pah2n0da5

    Tory MPs in ‘Blue Wall’ fear election wipeout under Liz Truss and think she ‘doesn’t give a dam

    The Conservative leadership front runner claims she will beef up her party’s defence against Lib Dems but some back benchers fear political ‘headwinds’ in 2024

    apple.news

  24. SIR – The leadership election for the Conservative Party has been a self-indulgent disgrace. Tone deaf and arrogant, it has embarrassed party members across the four nations.

    Whatever the rights or wrongs of the Conservative MPs’ decision to force the PM to resign, the affair has dragged on far too long at a time when our country is challenged by war in Europe, an energy crisis, a failing health system, strikes and steep rises in the cost of living. Over this long and troubled summer the PM, still in office, has been disallowed from making significant policy decisions, while 160,000 Conservative Party members take time to decide who to vote for.

    The fault for this timetable lies with senior party officers. Perhaps all Westminster parties should commit to a pact: in government not to choose a new leader by an interminable election by their membership. It is an affront to the rest of the country, and a danger to our nation.

    James Bulloch
    Marlborough, Wiltshire

    Very well said, James Bulloch! To have a leadership election process lasting a couple of months is ludicrous. Not to shorten it with a simple rule-change at a time of national emergency is insane.

    1. Indeed. This Hobson’s Choice of an election was never going to deliver anyone better even than Boris after Kemi Badenoch was knocked out of the contest. They may as well have tossed a coin for all the good it will do the country,

      We’ll have to go through it all again in 2024, with a choice between one brazen no-ideas, no-hope for anyone outside Davos, hypocrite and the other.

    2. It is a farce. They waffle on and say what they’ll do but in reality they will do nothing. It won’t be politically expedient to make the root and branch reforms, the quango closures, the significant and deep tax cuts before an election.

      Whoever wins will swan into campaigning for the next election.

      This wretched party has done nothing for 12 years except hike taxes an waste public money, passing moronic law after moronic law to the detriment of everyone.

  25. Good Moaning.
    How many times have MB and I watched “North by Northwest”?
    But still we hold our breath during the scene out in the deserted cornfields and still we cringe and wince as Cary Grant and Eve Marie Saint slip and slide round Mount Rushmore.
    Brilliant filming – particularly the long silences and the gradual build-up of traffic sounds that only emphasise the emptiness of the landscape.

    1. Did you see the little boy extra with his fingers in his ears in the cafe scene where CG is shot?

  26. SIR – Admiral Lord West (Comment, August 31) argues well for carriers, but he would not need to if we had three or four nuclear-powered medium-sized ones, which could probably have been built at the same cost and would not need tankers running after them.

    Major Chris Grover RM (retd)
    Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire

    Quite so! A combination of gas turbine and diesel engines in this day and age does seem more than a touch outdated.

    1. Ah but.

      If it is guaranteed never to leave port, that makes it a carrier of net zeros.
      Tora Tora Tora

      1. It’s sad really. When you consider that the carriers were never a military project but always a job creation scheme the whole farce of using them in combat collapses.

  28. ‘Morning All

    The Al-Beeb continues in fine form,I flicked on the radio on the way back from the shops to learn from the news the Uke Nuke plant was being shelled while the UN inspectors were there,what was singularly missing was WHO was shelling the plant!!

    The Ukes of course………

    Meanwhile it seems a Uke commando attack on the UN inspectors was thwarted by Russian forces which is strangely absent from the MSM

    Listen as an UN spokesman umms and errs and confirms this

    https://twitter.com/jaccocharite/status/1565443353616998401?s=20&t=0mjtDOszhtofUB-19UGFgA
    I foresee a meeting without coffee in his future

    2. ‘Morning, Rik. I can’t help thinking that Ukraine hasn’t had much luck with nuclear-powered generation…one disaster might have been unlucky, two will just be bloody careless…

  29. Good morning all.
    A bit of a dull, cloudy start but dry with 13°C on the yard thermometer.

  30. Morning all😃
    Problems in our neighbourhood, someone has stripped our immediate (it’s not on our adjoining boundary) next door neighbour’s apple tree. I have access to feed her fish and two years ago I asked permission to take some for my cider making. Which I did rather than see them rot. They live in France and she has just been home for a few days. And seems to believe I took them. Both sides of the fence ? I don’t think so. Totally innocent. It’s her other neighbour who must have stolen them. I heard one of his little daughters shout “daddy there’s still another apple on the tree”.
    He’s had building work, a huge extension, taking place for nearly 10 months. But moved out so every else has had to suffer.

    1. Many years ago our neighbours had a single pear on a very old pear tree ripening on our side of the fence. They hadn’t been gone more on holiday for more than 15 minutes when a grey squirrel came bouncing along the top of the fence and reached up with the biggest squirelly paws I have every seen and plucked said prize pear and proceeded to chomp it until all that was left was a thin core. I never knew whether or not my neighbours believed my account of the theft!

      Morning folks,

      1. My reply has vanished???
        I suspected our local greys they steal my grapes and Hazel nuts.
        But I think those apples would have been far too large for them to remove all of them. There is absolutely no wind falls which is usual to the smallish tree.
        I’m quite convinced that the builders have slid the wooden fence panel up in the grooves of the concrete posts. And been under to take the apples on the opposite side. They probably did it while we were away for 8 days at the beginning of August.

        1. Our remaining apple tree has quite a lot of pretty red fruit but they are quite inedible – very soft and stodgy – but the birds love them. They are welcome to them and nearly all have gone now.

          1. About six weeks ago I discovered we have a “Beauty of Bath” apple tree in our garden. This variety was propagated in the neighbouring village of Batheaston. Because it crops early and is a relatively soft apple, the local birds made short work of the entire crop before I had woken up to the fact that if I didn’t get my skates on they’d have the lot. Which they did. I won’t let that happen again next year!

      1. Well he’s certainly made at least 4 alterations that are not on the original drawings. But as we live two properties away we were never considered importnt enough or worth obeing consulted before the work was carried out.
        But had to suffer the slings and arrows.

  32. I hear from the fawning Auntie that we have not done enough for Pakistan as we were leaders of the industrial revolution and are almost entirely responsible for the floods. No ifs or buts, its climate change. I dont expect that so many people lived in the country a century ago so floods would have not affected millions in the past.

    1. On the other hand Kaypea the BBC has been noticeably silent on the large number of Pakistanis in this country who are unwilling to contribute

      towards the rescue efforts in their own country.

      1. I’m sure they will each have volunteered to take in several of their relatives, provided the UK taxpayers pay for transport and living expenses.

    2. There are plenty of rich muslim countries who can help. Nobody gave us any assistance when we suffered all our floods. Some people’s homes are uninsureable now.
      The other reason why Pakistan has suffered loss of life and flooding in the coastal regions is because they have never bothered to carry on with the river mouth dredging the brits use to do off shore. Too lazy.

      1. Dredging forbidden under the EU – thus the flooding. We could dredge rivers now, but the rivers authority has been told no. Could that be because if we install a process that EU has forbidden, it might hinder the mandarins getting back into the EU?

        2. This was over-interpretation of EU law by our sainted civil servants. Owen Patterson told them to get stuffed and start dredging. Whatever happened to him?

    3. Morning, all. The weather is…

      The first figure is, I believe, for what is now Pakistan i.e. excluding what was then East Pakistan, now Bangladesh. A >7 fold rise in 75 years is not something to be sniffed at.😲

      At the time of independence in 1947, 32.5 million people lived in Pakistan.

      The current population of Pakistan is 230,158,265 as of Thursday, September 1, 2022, based on Worldometer elaboration of the latest United Nations data.

      1. Can you imagine how many extras associate themselves with their wonderful country and its world changing achievements. (Sarc)

    4. The best way to help out Pakistan with their floods is to send back all their grooming gangs, along with their entire families, and instruct them how to dig drainage channels. Once they have finished we can then tell them that they may all remain there, for good, in their newly-drained country.

      1. And in the intervening period, after days of clearing sludge, they will be too bloody knackered to indulge in a little light underage rapine.

    1. I may wrong but it seems to me that it’s only the UK that is suffering these outrageous price rises.
      But why is the cost of electricity rising along side gas ?

      1. Contracts for Difference were imposed to peg the sale of electricity at the cost of the highest producer. That was always wind. Now, gas is incredibly expensive due to a shortage – EU nations have been forbidden fracking and Germany didn’t go down the nuclear route.

        As a consequence, everyone is buying lots of gas at incredibly high prices (restarting economies, no reserves, no storage, a demented green agenda designed to run down other energy generating methods).

        Putin was a strategic genius in seeing our weakness and exploiting it.

        1. Putin was a strategic genius in seeing our weakness and exploiting it.

          Well all credit to Vlad Wibbles but he has simply taken advantage of the situation.

          1. I think he saw where we were heading, the very publicised green agenda and chose a good time to exploit it.

    2. It is important to note that the cost of generating electricity was rigged specifically to allow windmills to compete. They are (were) always the most expensive option, thus everyone else was pegged to them. The point was specifically to make wind energy competitive by making everything else expensive. And there’s a confusion further down: unreliables do NOT give money back to the consumer. They are given money BY the consumer. Theirs is the only energy generator which has a fixed floor for it’s energy, regardless.

      A windfarm can sit idle and do nothing all day long. It still gets paid that fixed sum from bills in subsidy. The difference is now they’re making a fortune because gas is so expensive (and because our government wanted to run down the use of gas, it deliberately set about destroying all forms of storage, production or management).

      No unreliables are not ‘much needed’. The Contracts for difference (which the article doesn’t name) are the reason energy is so expensive. What is needed is a scrapping of those contracts entirely, and a complete end to all unreliables subsidy. Don’t tax a market because government has broken it. Stop breaking the market. Let coal, gas and nuclear charge their costs and assign a fixed profit of say 5% – otherwise get the state out of energy entirely.

  36. It’s September, so time to buy in as much as possible this month.

    They are keeping inflation down this month in order to diddle the pensioners and welfare claimants. We can be certain that they will make up for it in October. Pensions until next March are still based on prices in September 2021, when the energy cap was around £1000 for the Government Standard Household. CPI was 3.1% and it is 3.1% that is still the working rate this winter.

    Why else are they doubling the price of fuel in October, rather than September? And again in January, before any pension rises take effect.

    Executive pay, unlike pensions, are based on market values and their 20% pay rise is applied immediately. We love the “market” and would have it no other way.

  37. Well possums I tried to access my Premium Bond account this morning, prompted, I have to admit, by Bob’s winning vast sums yesterday. I only do this very infrequently because with no wins it is a pointless exercise unless you are the sort of person inclined to gloat. It was hopeless. I got into a complete tangle. They’ve introduced a new validation system of two further checks which requires a mobile phone. Now though I have one it is old and for emergencies, heart attacks; or like last year, my blood sugar spiking into double figures. The result is that I am effectively cut off from my own account. I find it difficult to believe that Premium Bonds require this level of protection. I already have a register number, a password, my email address plus three identifying characteristics: My grandfather’s Christian name, my dogs surname and where I live. This latest move cannot possibly be necessary! It looks more like enforced digitisation by stealth!

      2. This is the first month for over a year when I haven’t won anything. Last month was £150 so I expect Ernie thinks I’ve had enough

    2. Yes, it is VERY tedious. I don’t care if someone hacks into my account to see what I hold or what I have won, the only time you need additional security checks is to access personal information such as email/phone/bank details.

      You don’t need a mobile phone number. You can put in a landline number, you will then get a phone call with a six digit code to enter into the website (unlike the mobile phone option, when the website gives you the number and you enter it into the phone).

    3. These aren’t imposed by Premium bonds, they’re lumbered by all finance houses. It’s for fraud protection. Not yours, obviously – theirs.

    4. Same here. I have moved so many times over the years that I can’t remember which address mine are registered under and so I can’t get myself verified.

  38. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3023022e176a0133177d591973b1ee111d562c994e92eaa0dabeb289abe2289b.png When my brother and I were toddlers we were bathed in the big ceramic kitchen sink. We would sit on the draining board with our feet in the sink while mum washed us. Once or twice a week we were treated to a “big bath” where we would luxuriate in the bath tub (I always got the tap and plughole end!) and have our hair “shampooed”. The “shampoo” mum used was Fairy soap flakes (remember them?), which she would sprinkle atop our wet heads and massage in. I always wondered if that was one reason my brother and I became baldies in our 20s. ☹️

    1. The “shampoo” mum used was Fairy soap flakes (remember them?), which she would sprinkle atop out wet heads and massage in.

      Morning Grizz. Lifebuoy toilet soap. It really hurt!

      1. Morning, Araminta. I used to love Lifebuoy, when it was still available. I think it is still made in India but impossible to get hold of.

          1. I buy Wright’s coal tar soap – I love the smell. I used Vosene shampoo the other day – never used it before if has the same smell. Can anyone tell me what thatvsmell is?

        3. Lifebuoy ceased to be carbolic a while ago, but Jupiter Soaps started up production of the old Lifebuoy, renamed ‘Redbuoy’, which is available online.

    2. Washing hair with fairy isn’t good – it’s an incredibly potent detergent designed to scrub away bacteria left by food, not bodily fluids (which are milder).

      1. Yes, we know that, but you’d be hard pressed to explain common sense to my mother when all she was bothered about was the cheapest way of doing things. BTW: my mother didn’t use Fairy liquid, she used Fairy soap flakes.

    3. My mother used Vaseline shampoo; it was a powder that came in paper sachets and had to be mixed with boiling water.
      Preparation of the shampoo was always a tense moment for my brother and me. Would she remember to add some cold water after the powder had dissolved?

          2. Do you remember the definition of a desperate hope?
            A pregnant schoolgirl rubbing her belly with vanishing cream.

      2. I was just thinking of that only a few days, I was sure the name was Vaseline but couldn’t think why as it bore no resemblance to the goo in tins and tubs. If I remember correctly there was a lot of green background on the sachets.

  39. Having betrayed Britain, the Tories deserve a 1997-style wipeout. Nigel Farage. 2 September 2022.

    One lesson I have learned from my political career is never to trust the Conservative Party.

    From mass migration to the energy crisis their weak leaders have left the country facing disaster.

    Though I wouldn’t disagree with this. It is too restrictive. The truth is that the entire Political Class are in thrall to Cultural Marxism. It is a matter of degree not difference!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/having-betrayed-britain-tories-deserve-1997-style-wipeout/

    1. As though Labour will be any better.
      We haven’t had a break from WEF governments since 1997 – some would say since 1992.
      I’m fed up with people pretending that we’ve got two parties.

    2. Yes, sadly.

      Although I honestly think it’s simpler. The political class are useless. They’re glorified salesmen. The thing is they’re kept running in circles by the administration that has implemented so many blocking and hindering laws that Ministers can’t do anything the country would want without it taking longer than a term, so they look for quick, cheap wins when we need structural reform – the last thing the state machine wants.

      Brexit has been deliberately undermined by a fifth column in the country, continually fighting against it and the state itself, refusing to take advantage of it all the way to intentional malice.

      I don’t trust MPs because they lie habitually. I’m sure they don’t mean to, but admitting that they’re pointless puts them out of a job and exposes the edifice of the state and it’s monolithic, towering disinterest in the public good in favour of ivory towers, technocracy and government by inertia rather than direction.

    3. Nigel Farage talks well, but look at his history.
      Stood down from UKIP Leadership FAR too early, admittedly for understandable reasons
      Stabs his former party in the back over Gerard Batten’s leadership
      Gives Boris a free pass in the 2019 election and get SFA in return

      1. Nigel was never a team player. It was all about him. He did his best to destroy UKIP in my view – Bolton was a disaster and he slagged off those loyal activists who had worked for him.

  40. Spoke to family yesterday over house buying. It’s all incredibly complicated and I don’t pretend to understand it. I wish I did. In fact, what I’d like to do is hand it off to the Warqueen and get some measure of input. We’ve about £80k in equity – £90k if we get a reasonable price. It’s just achingly pushy, with ‘the market’s slowing, you won’t get that, who owns that, ohh, that kitchen work won’t complete in time….

    However the kitchen needs re-work and everyone says don’t bother, but that could be the ten for the cost of £5k. However, that’s due to be done in October.

    We’ve put an offer in on a big repossession but I feel we’re just being manipulated by the agent.

    I don’t expect them to be moral saints, but a sense of ethics would be nice. Presenting all the charges rather than sliding them out as gotchas. We’re not sitting on huge piles of cash – hers are in Switzerland where they stay for a year for reasons I don’t understand and thanks to stupid government there’s taxes if we take more than a certain amount out.

    It is causing me sleepless nights and bugger all is happening. It was 3am when I went downstairs to fuss Ozzie in his bed and was soon joined by the other great beast. I came to when Junior came down for his porridge 9which wasn’t made because I wasn’t abed to hear the alarm going off.

    1. Wait for the crash. There will be more than a few repossessions. £5k for a kitchen! Gosh are you DIY?

      2. One of ours is also house moving!
        The other does his best but is not the practical one.
        Grandson is v. useful, but returns to school on Monday!

  42. Can you mitigate Russia’s manipulation of gas prices by turning down the flow temperature of your gas boiler?

    Derek, the gas boiler trainer, spells out the issues arising from doing just that under the recent Part L of the Building Regs This 20 minute video is so full of intractable solutions to saving energy in existing CH heating systems that you moght just as well take Boris’s advice and buy a new kettle, make a cup of rea and sit down to listen to https://www.classicfm.com/events/classic-fm-live/

    https://youtu.be/SbcVKU1QxJ4

    1. The problem I have is tracking down a Gas Safe engineer to service my 1994 Halstead LPG combi boiler. What I really need is someone to optimise the gas burner pressure settings, which is not something I am either qualified to do, or have the tools for.

      They are quite happy to charge for the call-out, but then I am told that they don’t do LPG, and always it’s “you want a new one, mate” and refuse to make the adjustments.

      I’m keeping it going as long as I can, but without any confidence in the professionals, that’s the best I can do.

        1. She was a lot better last night after a thorough clear-out both ends. I suspect she swallowed a germ, and her body naturally gets rid of it by the quickest route. Cutting out the Anadin. The doctor threatened to send her to hospital, and she’s determined to avoid that.

      2. I had the same “you want a new one, mate” problem from a Gas Safe technician. There was very little to go wrong with my1976 Potterton but British Gas flatly refused to tell me its efficiency and for decades told me I needed a new boiler because of unavailabikity of replacement parts.

        It turns out that it was 75% efficient but in modern boiler terms it didn’t even appear on the gas boiler efficiency scale.

        After 40 years of use I got a local firm to do a direct swapover to a Baxi system boiler with even greater kW rating which heats up the house a lot quicker and provides all the needed daily hot water in summer to a storage tank in just 30 minutes.

      4. Finding an air pump engineer is even more difficult. Ours comes from an hour’s drive away (for which he charges a very

        reasonable sum).

        Don’t purchase an air pump until you’ve tracked down a suitable engineer.

  43. vw thought we should stock up on candles pending power cuts. Delving into the under sink cupboard I found a box of 12 candles bought from International Stores, remember them from the 60’s?
    They still had the price sticker on for 1/9½d. Long burning candles most be over 50 years old.

    1. I’ve got candles, and just bought a solar power bank which you can charge up in the sun, and then use it as a torch, or charge your phone from it.

          3. How much wood could a woodchuck chuck
            If a woodchuck could chuck wood?
            As much wood as a woodchuck could chuck
            If a woodchuck could chuck wood.

      2. If it makes you feel better, I have 8 kg of same upstairs. Egg farming has been attacked in the US, I expect that to come here at some point. Also, an abbatoir near Gloucester has just been forced to close, I read yesterday, and I’ve read that they are going to step up the attacks on the dairy industry this autumn. So all sources of protein are important.
        The ones I bought weren’t expensive, it doesn’t matter if I never need them. But will probably use them up slowly for pancakes and things anyway in order to avoid waste.

  46. We have so much not to thank Johnson for. How anyone can still support him, shows just how good a con man he is.He could have gone either way but he picked the dark side.

    1. Johnson’s main virtue is that, for all his faults, he is still better than Truss or Starmer.

          1. Corbyn wouldn’t have done any worse, let’s face it.
            Truss is probably the least bad option – at least we won’t have to put up with fake Churchillian antics while she sells us down the river to the WEF.
            But what we really need is a political revolution.

        2. Johnson is a philanderer, a betrayer, a pathological liar, greedy, cunning, conniving in his private life – why should his public life and values be any different, is the way I look at it. And actually, they were’t any different.

      2. Not being the worst
        Stands in some rank of praise.

        When faced with the choice of having to stay with his repulsive daughter, Goneril, or going to his other foul daughter, Regan, King Lear hopes that Regain will not be quite as horrible!

        Boris Johnson’s time in office has not been a good advertisement for adultery. The fact that Adultera Truss at outset tried to pep up her political career by betraying her husband and baby daughter, Frances, by having an affair with Mark Field an influential senior Conservative does not bode well for her honour or integrity.

        My rather old-fashioned view is that once you are married you agree, as far as sex is concerned, to forsake all others. A man or a woman who can betray his or her own spouse or children is probably quite happy to betray the electorate.

        1. I’m sorry to say that your, and my, point of view is not terribly current. Not that that makes our view invalid, of course, just that over the years the state has actively discouraged family life as you and I know it. I believe we are now the minority in the U.K., i.e., married!

        2. The last known adulterer who became PM kept so quiet about it, none of the tabloids twigged, and Spitting Image thought it so preposterous, it became a regular feafure of their show… except they got the wrong one. The lady herself used the experience to pen a steamy novel, and still nobody twigged.

          I don’t think Ted Heath was ever unfaithful to Morning Cloud.

          1. John Major and Edwina Currie?

            Harold Wilson and Marcia Williams?

            Harold Macmillan’s wife, Dorothy, and Robert Boothby?

          2. Boothby was a nasty piece of work. A philanderer with an alleged taste for young men into the bargain.

          4. And vicious gangsters too.
            There are stories about Boothby, Driberg and the Krays being at “parties” in certain brothels where children were provided, courtesy of certain London Children’s Homes.

          5. I’d read about his links to the criminal underworld but not to the children. With all the rumours, both here and in the USA, surrounding paedophilia and child trafficking, it appears that the situation hasn’t improved but on the contrary, it has worsened. I’m not a religious person but I can see evil when it is abroad, and it is everywhere at the moment.

        3. Tony Blair was a happily married man whilst Prime Minister, he also was a lunatic who deliberately changed the face of this country. It was also Tony Blair who made us all huggy and politicians should be our friends .

          2. A few years ago, after a 3 day drive. We arrived at Stigliano HPB in Tuscany.
            The story was that the previous day the Blair’s had arrived and demanded (Google it its a lovely place to stay) accommodation. But were told it was private. But had a meal at a restaurant not far away. We also ate there The day after.
            It was suggested they had been staying with that nutty ex Italian PM and left early. And were on the way to Pizza to fly home.
            As we had to do, our car had broken down.

          4. Don’t you mean Mandy ?
            Didn’t his daughter catch them at it and then tried to commit suicide.
            ‘D’ notices apparently use to flow from his office.
            And Didn’t he fiddle with the treason laws so he couldn’t be prosecuted and
            taken to court ?

      2. I don’t think we would enjoy having Klaus Schwab with us as a house guest at Le Grand Osier!

    4. If he had gone the right way there would be statues of him in nearly all cities.

      Instead he decided to go for woke and broke.

      I hope that the PTB reward him enough.

  47. We shall be staying in a little cottage in the lovely villiage of Baconsthorpe ( Norfolk ) from Monday for a few days. It’ll be changeable weather but looking forward to a few days walking by the Cromer coast, visiting Holt and some of the little villages nearby.
    It’s so peaceful and beautiful there and good for blowing away cobwebs .

    2. We are heading that way in October for a few days, to Holt, for a bit of cobweb blowing. A little cottage for two and a well behaved dog.

  48. Boris Johnson was has been treated like the scapegoat in my opinion, he’s the sacrificial lamb for Conservative MPs to feel cleansed after getting rid of him. It was a plot between Remainers, the Media , press and the left, to hound him from day one. And now the press and the BBC believe they have the power to remove a Prime Minister. People are aware of his flaws, he made mistakes and is a fool but most of all he was too trusting and surrounded himself with vipers. Sadly his ex wife was the one who kept him grounded. Boris Johnson was and is no worse then anyone else and he is still able to reach ordinary people – many red wall voters feel cheated – they say he was there Prime Minister too . There should have been a general election and the people should have been allowed to vote for someone else .
    Damn those out of touch politicians who are still trying to remove him from parliament with the most undemocratic witch-hunt. I’m not a Boris Johnson devoted fan and never have been but every thing stinks and neither Sunak or Liz Truss have what it takes .. especially Sunak

    1. I like the last one. Might try that. In the jewellers we used to send a new one out to buy a new bubble for the spirit level. The hardware stores were all in on it.

        1. My first camp and my best friend was sent looking for a sky hook. I’m ashamed to say I went along with it. Apologies, somewhat belated, PRT-J….

      2. And naive young workers on construction sites were sent to the builders’ merchants’ to buy sky hooks.

      4. I got caught as a naive school leaver in my first job as a lab technician. I was sent off, all togged up in the maximum PPE available (leather smock and apron, gloves. face mask and tongs to get some of that highly toxic and corrosive material “Fire Polish”. How my lab mates laughed! Fire Polish was a weak alkaline solution used for cleaning lab ceramics. At least I didn’t fall for the ‘box of benzene rings’ though 🙂

    2. Number one……but you people eat frogs legs, fattened snails, fattened goose livers and all the old shit the Napoleon’s marching army wouldn’t touch.
      A wonderful Legacy.

          2. Thank you. When i dropped Dolly off with where she came from (Rachel breeds chi’s and has won an armful of Crufts trophies) She was ecstatic. All the other little doggies, brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts. Rachel also has two teenage daughters who adore her.

            She never looked back. sobs. :@(

          3. Used to leave my first dog at a kennels just outside Holmfirth. The two girls there adored him and he was always somewhat reluctant to come home.

          4. I have checked out the local kennels. I wasn’t impressed. More like Alcatraz. I’m sure the people running them are kind to animals but my gut feeling was not to use them.
            I did have a friend who took her in to her home with her little doggie but so sad, Nikki died. She was only 52.

            I probably won’t need kennels in the future. I think this will be my last trip abroad. I will staycation in dog friendly cottages and hotels.

          5. The last time I used a kennels was in CT and it was an emergency as my parents had died. We had to return to UK pdq as my brother was on his own dealing with stuff. It was attached to the vets surgery so that made it slightly better.
            It was the last time as from then on we had a dog sitter or my son looked after said dog.
            I won’t be going anyway overseas either. I won’t be allowed into the US as I am not vaxxed to the max. I don’t think I could do a long haul flight anymore.

          6. Given my health condition i don’t think a long haul flight would be a good idea.
            Sorry about your parents. We all lose them eventually. Sadly.

          7. #MeToo, Philip, as one who has been around the world twice – once in each direction, I would never subject any animal to a long-haul flight.

        2. Bluddy awful stuff, George, and I agree with Philip. It’s the beans I cannot stand – akin to Mexican refried beans – awful.

    1. But they are not “migrants”, are they? They are illegal immigrants and we should call them that.

  51. https://twitter.com/RonaldA56496400/status/1565649691936804871

    Active Patriot
    @ActivePatriotUK
    ·
    3h
    EXCLUSIVE

    ALBANIANS coming to the ENGLAND via small boats are not only brining DRUGS across inside them

    They are buying all the cheap houses in the UK and turning them into HMOs and renting them back to the Home Office to house MIGRANTS that they’ve trafficked into the country
    Patricia @Rubiespal
    @Rubiespal
    ·
    2h
    @pritipatel

    @Conservatives

    @trussliz
    When are you going to get a grip on this? Are your heads so stuck in the sand, you’re unaware of these criminals. Stop foreigners buying houses. Many countries do this. Our own first !!!!
    Ronald Armstrong
    @RonaldA56496400
    Replying to
    @Rubiespal

    @ActivePatriotUK
    and 3 others
    Always said foreign house buying shouldn’t be allowed, used to watch homes under the hammer 80% of buyers can hardly speak english,but they would find a fiddle if that became law
    11:35 AM · Sep 2, 2022·Twitter for Android

  52. Wordle and quordle today. Wordle 440 2/6
    🟩🟨⬛🟨🟩
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    Daily Quordle 221

    4️⃣6️⃣
    7️⃣8️⃣

    1. Took me four today but it was done quite swiftly. I often stare at it nonplussed til the penny drops!
      Wordle 440 4/6

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

  54. With regards to overpopulation in Pakistan, Mother Nature is drowing the b*ggers as fast as she can and to be fair, when left to her own devices, she’s much more efficient at depopulation than the WEF. The Industrial Revolution raised the standard of living for those who survived what nature does. It didn’t upset the balance. Socialsim in the last century has done that. As I write, the folks in the work canteen downstairs are playing, “Riders on the Storm”.

  56. 355616+ up ticks,

    Thats better, the down voter has returned, as a being on target monitoring it is unbeatable, why the silent gap ? in transit / holiday maybe.

  57. “ Experts warn Britons could face energy rationing to avoid blackouts – as ministers draw up plans to ‘dim the lights’ this winter”! What a joke. Don’t think ministers need to “draw up plans” – it’s going to happen whatever they do.

    ETA: In fact it’ because of them .

    1. “Experts warn Britons could face energy rationing to avoid blackouts”. Er.. what form would the ‘energy rationing’ take? It wouldn’t be – blackouts – would it?

      1. Back to the three day week, blackouts, strikes and no TV after 10pm (about the only good thing!).

    1. When he was a puppy Rumpole had a horrible skin complaint which we had to treat with a very strong shampoo and a shower. This worked very well and Rumpole was restored to full health with a glowing coat.

      We tied him to a tree and showered him with the garden hose and always to begin with he tried to get away and escape it but once he had been under the spray for a couple of moments he changed his mind, entered in the spirit of the thing and loved it.

  59. 355616+ up ticks,

    Wacky, Wokery, dad / mum out the window, the reset way,is either a brace of wooley woofters, or a pair of on yer bikes.

    No longer a childhood no more hopscotch,skipping ,scrumping, elc etc
    replaced by a gauntlet of abuse & terror from the womb to early adulthood
    some will find peace of a kind in a mental institutions.

    Nearly Half of UK Children Growing Up Outside of Traditional Two-Parent Household

    These political govmental chaps / parties, these last forty years of open treacherous Country degrading rot has been given leave to operate ,NOT ONCE but time & time & time again via the polling booth.

    Will the electorate majority’s eyes finally open when their heads hit the bottom of the basket ?

  60. Extinction Rebellion protesters superglue themselves to Speaker’s Chair in Commons
    Five demonstrators were pictured in the chamber demanding a citizens’ assembly to discuss the climate crisis
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/09/02/extinction-rebellion-protesters-superglue-speakers-chair-commons/

    How the hell did they get in?

    Why weren’t they forcibly removed and locked up immediately for high treason?

    Why is the DT referring to the climate crisis when this does not exist?

    1. Are the MP’s back yet?

      Apparently they were on a tour.
      I did one once and you had to go through an airport style security check and armed police were lurking about all the time.

      1. They won’t though will they. They’ll just go on their merry ways and fade away. (I wish). Anyway Untrustworthy has taken up the mantle with a vengeance. I’m assuming all at the behest of the Americans who want to try and crush Russia.

    3. Lock the door, throw the key away and see what they look like in October when the dregs of society return from their summer break and conference season.

      1. 355616+ up ticks,

        Afternoon Atg,
        We could be doing a wrong un by turfing them out, they would prove an improvement on what’s in there.

    4. But, but, if we had real democracy with a citizens assembly and actually let the people decide, these people would be banged up, at the very least. Their behaviour couldn’t be any less democratic. Narcissists R US with additional irony bypass.

        2. Make sure they have some water though, wouldn’t want them to dehydrate.

          Oh, pee their pants you say…

  63. – Latest Breaking News – Just to cheer people up this Christmas and boost mid winter spirit they are making a new version of The Snowman where the snowman stays inside the house all night and doesn’t melt.
    Thus proving that all outcomes of Net Zero are not a disaster for all concerned.

    1. Oh and I forgot to mention that the part of the Snowman will be played by Lenny Henry and the boy will be in the process of transitioning

  67. Talk about cultural appropriation…

    “‘Be embraced, all you millions!’ Since the earliest days of the Proms, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony has had a special place in each season – and with its climactic choral ‘Ode to Joy’, it’s one of those works that takes on a new meaning every time it’s played. This year, it’s performed by Chineke! – Europe’s first majority Black and ethnically diverse orchestra….”

    2. Oh spare me. I have one more Proms ticket, for the Beethoven Missa Solemnis next Wednesday (John Eliot Gardiner and the Monteverdi Choir), then it’s back to the Wigmore Hall on Thursday to hear Regula Mühlemann (white, Swiss, soprano).

      1. It’s still sitting on the lounger doing just that. It didn’t seem at all perturbed by my collecting it and photographing it.
        If you right click and open link to a different tab you can see considerable detail.

    4. Hi Sosra, you might want to glance at youtubby, try “The Process Of Making Friends With The Giant Mantis” by a Korean person whose pseudonym is PleaseBe. (1.2 million subscribers)
      He (probably not a she) likes to befriend and care for assorted insects and invertebrates.

      2. Thank you

        I can associate with that; apart from moles, and hornets nesting near the house, I’m very much live and let live.

        I’m not anti hunting, they eat what they catch around here, I’m not pro greeniacs protecting some creatures at the expense of others, and I accept farmers need fertilisers and some level of bug killers but I prefer harmony in my garden.

        A “real” gardener would hate my place, yet if we were in the UK I can almost guarantee my small piece of Heaven on Earth would be a site of special scientific interest, on several counts: Orchids, reptiles and amphibians, butterflies and moths, owls and other birds of prey, bats rodents. Almost “you name it”

        I am always amused by the the BBC Spring/Autumn/Winter watches. Apart form very specific creatures, fish, wading birds, very large mammals etc I can almost get more in my garden than they can muster by going round the UK.

        1. I think there are places that cry out to be left alone!! We gave up trying for the perfect garden many years ago, and now, we sit and marvel at what Mother Nature gives us each day, but I do think we may have to cut down a few trees soon.

          1. I cut trees that are harming the buildings or looking diseased and that, together with falling branches, should keep us warm for a few years yet.
            As I wrote recently, my cut wood is probably worth more than my car.

    5. If it grabs your finger in it’s grabbers, you’ll know about it – like shutting your hand in the door, so it is.

      1. It didn’t show the slightest interest in grabbing or biting.

        It changes colour slightly as it moved around the chair and into the green vegetation; fascinating creature, the eyes seemed to open and close, but it was probably my poor eyesight that made it look that way.

  69. Never in the history of parliamentary democracy have two insignificant candidates competed for so long – for an endorsement from an insignificant number of nobodies …

  70. Oops

    “Nord Stream has been suspended indefinitely, Gazprom has announced.

    Malfunctions were detected on the last remaining turbine, Rostekhnadzor issued a
    warning to the company. Gazprom sent a letter to Siemens about the need
    to repair the turbine.”

    – Inter Slava Z
    Perhaps trying to put a price cap on Russian oil wasn’t the brightest idea ever or maybe they’re just really really hacked off by the games at the Uke nuke plant………

  71. Golly Gosh.
    Who’d ‘a thunk it? Truly we are going through a time of corruption that rivals C15 England.
    Sounds like a case where you would like both sides to lose.
    (Yes, yes; I know about presumed innocence, a principle that the police and the judicial system has ignored for at least two decades.)

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/09/02/met-officer-behind-anti-drugs-strategy-smoked-cannabis-cressida/

    Met officer behind anti-drugs strategy ‘smoked cannabis every day’

    Commander Julian Bennett is said to have been using drugs at the same time as Cressida Dick was praising him for his performance

    2 September 2022 • 3:13pm

    Commander Julian Bennett is accused of taking drugs while serving in the force Credit: ZUMA Press, Inc. / Alamy Stock Photo

    A high-ranking policeman who drew up an anti-drugs strategy for the Metropolitan Police is accused of smoking cannabis every day while Dame Cressida Dick was praising him for his performance, a tribunal heard on Friday.

    Commander Julian Bennett, who has served in the force since 1976, is also accused of using LSD and magic mushrooms.

    The officer was nicknamed “Sacker” for taking a tough approach to rogue colleagues when he presided over disciplinary hearings, but could now be booted out of the force himself.

    The officer is also accused of failing to give a drug sample after suspicions arose he may have used cannabis on July 21, 2020 and lied about why he failed to provide one.

    The officer claimed he had taken cannabidiol, a form of medical cannabis, to treat facial palsy, which an earlier hearing was told he “knew to be untrue”.

    John Beggs QC, his lawyer, said on Friday that Cdr Bennett had been taking the medical cannabis “from Holland and Barrett and the like”.

    Case could be thrown out as witness failed to turn up

    Cdr Bennett is accused of breaching the force’s standards for discreditable conduct, honesty and integrity and orders and instructions.

    A disciplinary hearing at the Met’s Empress State Building in West Brompton, west London, heard the case against him could be thrown out because the key witness, a nurse who was his lodger for seven weeks and is planning on writing a book about the claims, has not turned up to give evidence.

    She said she was unwell when the hearing began on Tuesday (Aug 30) and was “resting” on Friday. Her illness was not said to be a long-term condition.

    Mr Beggs said the fair thing to do would have been to adjourn the hearing again but now wants the case dismissed because the officer was being treated unfairly, accusing the force of seeking to obtain an unfair advantage to get a conviction.

    He added: “This man has a long and distinguished career in the force.

    “This is not a man, to use a topical example, who is a junior officer accused of sending some offensive WhatsApps.

    “This is an officer who was regularly praised by the most senior officers in this force.

    “His high performance was being commended in the weeks he was allegedly smoking cannabis on a daily basis.

    “This was a period when his high performance was so impressive that the then Commissioner [Cressida Dick] was passing on her thanks.

    “It almost seems to be a performance-enhancing drug given the comments by Cressida Dick and others.”

    Mr Beggs said the key witness backing up the force’s allegations intended to write a book about the claims.

    He told the hearing: “The [witness’s] book is going to be a better seller with certain bits of spice added to it.

    “She has a distinct and at times sarcastic and nasty antipathy to my client.

    “Not a soul ever smelt the slightest hint of cannabis in that period. He denies ever taking cannabis or any controlled drug.

    “Had he taken a drug test on July 21 2020, he might well have tested positive for an entirely innocent reason. He recognises he should have taken the drugs test.

    “He had been taking cannabis tinctures and oils from Holland and Barrett and the like.

    “He was taking them because he had a very unpleasant medical condition.

    “The oils alleviate the deeply unpleasant and embarrassing symptoms on the face and can give false positive results.

    “He joined the Metropolitan Police in 1976 when Harold Wilson was handing over to James Callaghan. He deserves total fairness from this panel.”

    Over a year’s worth of Whatsapp messages missing

    The top lawyer said more than a year’s worth of WhatsApp messages from December 2019 to February 2021, which the force are said to be relying on as evidence, are missing.

    The messages are said to also involve someone called “Mario”, the court heard.

    He said it was unjust that she is the one being relied on to disclose messages, asking “the complainant to become the disclosure officer.”

    He added it would be unfair to rely on her evidence as hearsay evidence, which would not require her to turn up to the hearing, because he could not then cross-examine her.

    It is also odd that the force did not want to “fast track” the case- meaning there was little or no dispute about the facts- but were now effectively seeking to go ahead with the case without the main witness, which would put the tribunal in a similar position to if it had been fast-tracked, according to the lawyer.

    He even compared the Met’s handling the case to that of Liam Allan, a criminology graduate who was accused of rape before his case was dropped three days before trial.

    The Met had to apologise to him for its handling of the case following a review.

    The lawyer called for a similar review to be carried out into this case.

    Commander Bennett wrote the beleaguered force’s anti-drugs strategy for 2017 to 2021 called “Dealing with the Impact of drugs on communities”.

    It set out the force’s plans to ‘”raise awareness” about the dangers of drug use, but it is not clear whether a new strategy is now in place.

    He was suspended in July 2020 on full pay when the allegations came to light.

    Officer sacked 56 cops between 2010 and 2012

    Freedom of information requests show that, between 2010 and 2012, he presided over 74 misconduct hearings involving 90 officers and sacked 56 cops- more than 75 per cent.

    He chaired 69 of those hearings and booted two cops out of the force for drug misuse during that time.

    When he was suspended he was a lead for the force on criminal justice, which includes managing prosecutions.

    He served in a number of high-profile roles including operations to tackle moped gangs in London and planning for the 2012 Olympics.

    He chaired the panel who sacked PC Simon Harwood, the Met police officer who struck and pushed Ian Tomlinson as he walked away from riot officers on the fringe of the G20 protests in London.

    He also headed a misconduct panel which dismissed misconduct charges in 2019 against five officers involved in an incident that led to the death of black musician Sean Rigg.

    His sister attended the public gallery today.

    The tribunal, which is being chaired by Akbar Khan, continues.

    If the three-person panel find him guilty of gross misconduct, he will be barred from serving in the force for the rest of his life and his pension could be cut.”

    1. Sounds like payback…

      What about the bogs in the House of Commons testing positive for cocaine in 9 out of 10 cases? With that amount of drug abuse all politicians should undergo mandatory drug testing as in the Armed Forces.

    2. Sound like a put up or shut up case to me.

      I wouldn’t be surprised if 90% of the Met didn’t test positive for drug-taking. Their past performance highlights this issue.

    1. Baker needs to get his thoughts in order.

      Pakistanis are corrupt takers rather than givers and they are NO allies of ours.

    2. I used to think he was a potential Conservative Party leader – I have changed my opinion.

      The Conservative Party is coming to the end of its era but goodness knows what will replace it.

    3. Perhaps all those Pakis on benefits could send some back or even better go back and rebuild their sh1thole.

    4. All it will need is another Covid-style lockdown and we will be FUBAR, until Islam takes over.

          1. Yes! Sue M will know – Legend has it that up Newcastle way there’s an ancient saying that: “They should be bloody well hung like a Norse!”*

            * Humph….

          1. So that was what was being referred to as ‘Cakeism’ in an article I didn’t read in the DT earlier…

    1. We have roe deer visiting our vegetable plot. They rejoice in eating our runner beans and trampling down our broad beans.

      1. Yes, the deer are a bit of a pest, even if they’re lovely to look at. A few years ago they killed a cherry tree by eating the bark.

        I gave up trying to grow vegetables in the garden years ago. There’s no way we can keep the rabbits at bay, let alone anything else! Earlier this week we were visited by a wild boar who tore the grass up. I try to have some fruit trees but the only really successful thing is the walnut trees and Rastus’s laurel hedge which gives us our winter wood.

        1. I’ve found that chicken wire keeps most smaller things out of the vegetable patch, my garden is entirely fenced with 5 foot wire with a small trench between the “Badlands” and the fence, just sufficient to stop deer leaping and firm enough to encourage the sangliers to try elsewhere.

        2. We don’t have rabbits and that is one hell of a blessing. We have wild boar but none in the immediate vicinity. Yesterday I went to harvest some hazelnuts from our large hazel tree only to discover that the nuts have all been attacked by nut weevil grubs.

          Ah, well!

          We have apples, pears and plums and my friend, Bertil, is enjoying a massive harvest of damsons. We’ve already made 11 jars of damson jelly and I shall harvest some more for crumbles and damson vodka.

          6. Tell me little woodworm
            Eating through the wood,
            Surely all that sawdust
            Can’t do you any good.

            Heavens, little woodworm,
            You’ve eaten all the chairs!
            So that’s why poor old Grandad’s
            Sitting outside on the stairs.

            Spike

    4. Foxes, an urban scum, similar to grey squirrals. I wouldn’t hesitate to act to the desecration of these pillagers.

      1. In my part of the world they help keep down things like rats, so I don’t mind them, the locals shoot them because they attack the domestic fowl.

          1. And I would say that you are the type of rat that needs to be dealt with.

            Do you ever think before you post?

          2. Of course I do. Consider the blight of urban foxes on smallholders’ chickens and the predation of red squirrels by greys. Not worth thinking about?

          3. There is an enormous difference between “urban” and “wild” foxes and if you really think that calling a fellow poster out as being part of a problem of wildlife scum, as you put it, you really need to take some time out to reconsider your approach.

            And yes, I do appreciate that I can be bloody rude, but generally only when provoked.

          4. I don’t think the greys predated the reds – but they are more robust and the reds are prone to disease.

      2. They are part of our native wildlife and have a place in it. Squirrels, invaders as they are, are here so we have to live with them.

        1. Greys squirrels are not really native.

          If the will was there I am fairly sure they could be eliminated but it would be a massive task and I wonder what ills might befall other creatures/plants if they were removed after all this time?

          1. They’ve been here too long to eliminate now. The red ones have gone, apart from isolated pockets like the Isle of Wight, Brownsea Island, parts of the Lake District and Northumberland.

          2. I fear you are almost certainly right, particularly as I think that if one put a bounty on them people would breed the damned things for a profit.

          5. And hedgehogs in NZ – they are regarded as a pest because of the ground-nesting birds. Introduced species always cause havoc with the natives. Just look at this country now……..

          7. We don’t have grey squirrels in Brittany. We have two families of red squirrels – one lives in a walnut tree to the front of our house, the other on the back in another walnut tree .

            Anyone passing this way is welcomed to some walnuts!

          2. I don’t agree with about 60% of the stuff on here which is why I do not comment on a lot of stuff. I enjoy the comments, the humour and the back and forth. And I take none of it seriously.

          4. That would have to be wives as I’ve had two.

            I doubt I could sympathise with any poor wives of yours.

          7. Read the exchanges and then ask yourself why I reacted as I did.

            You might like to be referred to as scum on what was until that point a perfectly normal thread, I don’t.

          9. Most of the time, I would agree with you wholeheartedly, but if one allows the snide digs to continue without challenge I find that they don’t decrease, they increase.

    6. Saw a fox when i was driving home from shopping this evening. We have deer as well but don’t see them so often. I know when Mr Roebuck has been round as he eats my geraniums.

      1. I find it continually furstrating that so much can be taken from so many and so little returned and people not have slaughtered those robbing them.

        A tax system that has the productive leaving the workforce, capital flight, spiteful, ignorant children demanding ever more tax from the very people they’re already over taxing and driving away, thus proving the Laffer curve – while those demandees deny it! It’s astonishing the greed, idiocy and sheer, unadulterated waste, incompetence and hubris of the state.

        The whole lot of them need to go.

    2. The sad thing is the Left always brand themselves as the heroes. The great and virtuous champions of ‘democracy’ – while happily fixing elections, freedom (while removing them), wealth creating (while making everyone poorer) and making a more ‘progressive’ (while driving society backward), fairer (while making the world utterly unfair) world.

      They are the epitome of Big Brother and ‘the Party’ The mantra war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength (except in our world of course, it’s diversity).

        1. The “Left” is the oolie-oolie bird of politics, it keeps turning left until it vanishes up its own fundamental ( in the Islamic sense) orifice.

          2. Good one.
            I’ve seen my version called lots of names over the years, but the end result is the same.

            A fair while ago Rastus posted a few limericks about the creature.

  76. We had a nice chicken caesar salad with a couple glasses of chilled white wine In the garden for lunch, very enjoyable. We have spent lots of time having the odd lunch during the week in the garden with some nice wine; probably more then most summers. It’ll end soon, when we start having soup, jacket potatoes or toasted sandwiches for lunch, and the wine will be the odd red on a Saturday evening.

      1. The first item on my bucket list is to actually play all the LPs that I’ve collected / been given at least once. I’ve recently started this mammoth tusk by playing Sibelius’s symphonies 1-7. No 2 is on the turntable as I type….I’m accompanying the music on a ‘Singleton’…..

        1. I inherited a great many classical LPs from my mother. I also have the ones I bought. Not sure we still have the equipment to play them. We have quite a collection of CDs as well.

          1. I’ve only recently assembled the stereo system. The turntable and Speakers are over 45 years old. The Kenwood amp ? 25 years or more. All working perfectly….

          2. We have a Pioneer downstairs which came with OH when we moved here 27 years ago – and my younger son left his hifi with turntable when he moved out in ’99. For CDs we have a Bose compact player.

      2. We’ve not heard one. But might pick up the Mozart one on iplayer now we have iplayer back again. Any other recommendations?

        1. Been thinking and I might be referring to past Proms on You Tube. The Mozart one was the only one so far this season. And if they bugger up the Last Night- they can forget it.

      1. Probably my favourite Shakespeare play.

        Cassius persuading Brutus in the “Tiber” scene.

        I cannot tell what you and other men
        Think of this life, but, for my single self,
        I had as lief not be as live to be
        In awe of such a thing as I myself.

        It applies in so many walks of life even now, the pity is that we (the people) see it, but don’t react.

        1. Boris Johnson was on a flood tide with an 80 seat majority but he omitted to take the current when it served, and the voyage of his life ended up in shoals and miseries and he lost his and our ventures!

  81. Having shot themselves in one foot it seems the ‘Leaders’ of the West have just shot themselves in the other!

    “Russia said Friday that it won’t sell oil to nations that impose a price cap on its oil. “We simply won’t interact with them on such non-market principles,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a conference call, adding that Russian oil will find alternative markets”.

    Net Zero here we come…!

    1. Russian oil will find alternative markets

      No, it will find the same markets, but it will be sold to China, India and the like, and they will then sell it on to the former markets but at a huge mark up.

  82. Evening, all. If the idiots in charge here had fracked and made us self supporting instead of relying on imported gas, there would be no need to worry about what the Russians did.

    1. Yes and no.
      I suspect that if Boris had been in charge of those resources he would have given them away to Europe and used the income to support the war in Ukraine, but that’s probably because I’m a cynic!

      1. I suppose I naively supposed that anyone who had the commonsense to make us self-sufficient in energy would also have been on our side 🙂

    2. Or if the West hadn’t sanctioned Russia and used the dollar as a weapon, that might have worked too. Good evening, and good night, Conway!

      1. The weaponization of the dollar may yet backfire horribly and your prognostications over Gold and other precious metals become very true.

        1. The petrodollar is shot. The evil globalist swine in America led by Obama with a ranting debilitated Biden as stooge have inadvertently destroyed the US Dollar as the World Reserve Currency.

          In future Russians will only sell gas, oil and coal to those paying in Roubles. The Russians will starve Germany (Europe) of oil and gas, selling instead to China and India.

          The BRICS consortium will in future control the petro-chemical markets.

          1. No fiat currency in history has ever survived longer than it took the country’s leaders to print it to the moon. Ours won’t be different. This moment was inevitable from the point in 1971 where they took the dollar off a meaningful commodity standard (gold), because a deal to defend Saudi Arabia is hardly the same as having a vault full of gold or another commodity.
            The Saudis now have the same deal with the Russians.

            I have a theory that the US election was rigged, but by Trump because he didn’t want to be the one left carrying the can, and the only idiot they could find to volunteer for the job was the senile Biden!!

          2. I fear so.
            No doubt the idiot Greens think the world will put paid to fossil fuels through renewables produced by “the white West” failing to appreciate that without cheap and reliable energy there won’t be any chance of improving them before the West is a busted flush.

  83. Been a good day- got some stuff done and chopped a lot of those lovely tomatoes for sauce. Ate at least, me alone, half a dozen of the small ones- oh yum. Sat in the sun for a while this pm and had a nice supper of crusty bread, cold meats and, er, tomatoes. And other stuff. MH has a pork tenderloin marinating for an oriental meal tomorrow.
    Having had little or no appetite for ages, I am encouraged by what I have shovelled in today and long may it last.
    Going to bed but later than the last several days which is also good. KBO.
    Sleep well Y’all and try to be good as I always am……;-))

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