Monday 26 September: As the cost of living spirals, voters won’t look kindly on the mini-Budget

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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562 thoughts on “Monday 26 September: As the cost of living spirals, voters won’t look kindly on the mini-Budget”

  4. As the cost of living spirals, voters won’t look kindly on the mini-Budget

    After the Swedish and Italian vote we need to find an alternative common sense party here that is not globalist led.

    2. 356573+ up ticks,

      B3,
      Something along the lines of what we were successfully building under the Gerard Batten leadership of UKIP, until the treachery of the
      party nec / nige struck.

  5. Al-Beeb continues to assert that the pound has fallen to its lowest level against the dollar since decimalisation in 1971. Wasn’t it worth about $2.40 then?

    1. Imports more expensive exports cheaper, I suppose.

      Hasn’t the whole reset been about making us use and consume less?

    3. Nearly everything is down against the dollar. Check the pound against the Euro – we are about 5% up on three years ago. But bad news sells better…

  7. Good morning
    A message from Georgia Meloni on her Facebook page to fellow Italians, as they now have a strong lead in the vote:
    “Today, we have made history.This victory is dedicated to all the militants, managers, supporters and every single person who – in these years – has contributed to the realisation of our dream, offering their heart and soul in a spontaneous and selfless way.To those who, despite the difficulties and the most complex moments, have remained steadfast, with conviction and generosity. But, above all, it’s dedicated to those who believe and have always believed in us.We won’t betray your trust. We are ready to lift Italy up.”

  8. US will take ‘catastrophic’ action if Vladimir Putin uses nuclear weapons. 26 September 2022.

    Russia will face “catastrophic consequences” if it deploys nuclear weapons in Ukraine, the US has warned Kremlin officials.
    Jake Sullivan, the US national security adviser, said on Sunday night that the US had “communicated directly, privately to the Russians at very high levels” how it would respond if Vladimir Putin carried out the nuclear strike threat he made during an address last week.

    “If Russia crosses this line, there will be catastrophic consequences for Russia. The United States will respond decisively,” Mr Sullivan told NBC’s Meet the Press programme.

    Catastrophic for whom one might well ask? What this illustrates is that the War in Ukraine has already morphed in the minds of US policy makers into a proxy war between the US and Russia. There’s no doubt from Putin’s recent announcements and the call-up of the reserves that he realises this and is now fighting for Russia’s life. That such an existential struggle will end in a negotiated peace is an illusion. This is now a fight to the finish and the end result may finish us all!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/09/25/occupied-ukrainians-refuse-vote-sham-annexation-referendums/

    1. It will be catastrophic.

      Any limited nuclear war over Central Europe and the Ukraine will put vast amounts of agricultural land out of production.

      The result will be a world wide famine.

    2. The USA mid-term elections for the House of Representatives and the Senate are about six weeks away. If opinion polls turn out to be anywhere near correct both the House and the Senate will fall to the GOP. Only Congress has the power to declare war:

      …provides that the president can send the U.S. Armed Forces into action abroad only by declaration of war by Congress, “statutory authorization”, or in case of “a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces”.

      However, Presidents have circumvented the Constitution in this matter.

      HISTORY – Can Presidents Start Wars?

      Will Biden be ‘guided’, in the next six weeks, to bring things to a head in the Ukraine? We have to be concerned that there is the possibility that the globalists and the hawks in the USA are determined to escalate the conflict to engulf Central Europe
      At the moment Truss seems to be backing the wrong horse when she shouldn’t be placing bets at all. One has to wonder who is leading her by the nose.

      1. After Richard’s huge hint dropping yesterday, I hope I’m right in wishing you a Happy Day, Birthday boy.

        2. Not me, NtN. Thank you anyway. I’m a February boy. I thought the hint pointed to a certain retired lawyer, cats and all.

  9. Good morning all.
    Looks like a light overcast this morning after last nights rain, but the light has a very reddish cast. 6°C outside with a dry day forecast.

  11. 356578 + up ticks

    Morning Each,

    Monday 26 September: As the cost of living spirals, voters won’t look kindly on the mini-Budget

    Deflection all the way we are putting the economy before ALL else, OK, to return the eye to the main ball, the pound in your pocket
    is worth two dozen invasion units.

    Every day as the pound devalues the invasion numbers increase, your indigenous standing in the queue, as we were taught from birth is no longer of value,you are to be found at the rear section of any within society.

    Truth be told a country is now under construction via the polling booth, fit for very active paedophiles, wanna be terrorist, foreign carpetbaggers, welfare jockeys.

    The lab/lib/con master builders in deceit, fear, & treachery as is clearly witnessed in the
    past / present history of the coalition.

  12. The left are so thick they cannot see it is their actions that drive people to the right. They cannot moderate themselves .

    2. It’s like the left, BLM and BAMES are making us all racist, ‘cos we hate them and their stupid ideology.

  13. What the Hell??

    Hundreds of protesters clash with riot police across London over death of woman, 22, arrested in Iran for breaking country’s hijab laws: At least five cops wounded in demos outside Islamic centres and embassy in UK capital as global fury turns violent
    Scotland Yard said the disorder at Sunday’s protest initially broke out at the Iranian embassy in London
    The protest moved to Marble Arch and then to Maida Vale where the Islamic Centre of England was targeted
    Protesters were also seen demonstrating outside the Kilburn Islamic Centre on Kilburn High Road
    Police have put a Section 35 dispersal order in place for the next 48 hours in areas impacted by the disorder
    It follows the death of Mahsa Amini, 22, in police custody in Iran after she was arrested for breaking hijab laws

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11248913/Hundreds-riot-police-clash-protesters-London-demanding-end-Irans-regime.html

      2. I wonder how many of those protesting spend any time haranguing burqa wearers, let alone their menfolk, in the UK?
        Not many would be my view.

    2. Five arrested. The police should have arrested all of them. The police have become used to serving tea and biscuits to those who set out to disrupt our society.

    3. They were protesting because they couldn’t be there in Iran to kill the female upstarts who won’t do as they are ordered by the bearded goons shouting through loudspeakers from their tall pointy houses. Couldn’t we organise some one-way trips to help these thugs return to their sh*tholes.

  14. When will the Tories realise that mass migration is making us poor?

    So why is the Government so keen to increase immigration even further? In part, because libertarians see borders as impediments to free market economics, and countries not as communities but platforms upon which anybody should be free to work and trade.

    Though there are economic reasons for Mass immigration they are mostly spurious. The real reasons are ideological. The Political Elites see cohesive indigenous societies as inherently racist and nationalist. Their aim is one world without borders. That this means the destruction of the West is simply an inconvenience. This is the globalist agenda!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/09/25/when-will-tories-realise-mass-migration-making-us-poor/

    1. Very apt; a good example of how Zelensky’s Ukraine is being manipulated to prolong what should be, this little local disturbance.

  16. At last! About time this appalling charity was investigated and shut down!

    Exclusive: Trans charity Mermaids giving breast binders to children behind parents’ backs
    ‘Massive safeguarding red flags’ over the taxpayer-funded group lead to calls for an immediate investigation by the Charity Commission

    By
    Hayley Dixon,
    SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
    25 September 2022 • 9:00pm

    A transgender children’s charity is giving potentially dangerous chest-flattening devices to 14-year-olds against their parents’ wishes, an investigation by The Telegraph has found

    Mermaids, which receives funding from the taxpayer and runs training for schools and the NHS, offered to send a breast binder discreetly to a girl they believed was only 14, even after they were told that she was not allowed to use one by her mother.

    Evidence obtained by The Telegraph shows that the charity’s staff have offered binders to children as young as 13 who say that their parents oppose the practice.

    Chest-binding has been described by parent groups as a form of “self-harm” and it can cause breathing difficulties, chronic back pain, changes to the spine and broken ribs.

    Dr Hilary Cass, the former president of the Royal College of Paediatrics, who is leading a review of trans children’s services for the NHS, describes it as “painful and potentially harmful”.

    Campaigners and MPs said on Sunday night that there were “massive safeguarding red flags” over Mermaids and called for an immediate investigation by the Charity Commission.

    The Telegraph has uncovered evidence of the Mermaids online help centre offering advice to users who present themselves as young as 13 that controversial hormone-blocking drugs are safe and “totally reversible”.

    In the last month alone, this newspaper has seen discussions in the charity’s moderated forum for 12 to 15-year-olds on how to raise money to start taking drugs and the best way to take testosterone.

    A moderator also publicly congratulated a teenage user for deciding that they were transgender by the age of 13 and deciding that they wanted drugs and “all the surgeries”.

    Children ‘pushed into believing they are transgender’
    Parents believe that the advice from the charity and the forum has “pushed” their children into believing that they were transgender and led them to want irreversible medical treatment to “cure” their issues.

    In an email exchange with an adult posing as a 14-year-old girl wanting to transition to a boy, Mermaids staff agreed to send out a breast binder despite being repeatedly told that the child’s mother would “not allow” it.

    They asked for the name and address the user wanted the package sent to, which would allow them to receive it without their parents’ knowledge.

    The Telegraph has seen evidence that Mermaids has been running a free “binder scheme” since at least 2019 and has offered it to users who say that they are 13 and their parents will not buy them one.

    The most comprehensive study of the impact of binders to date has found that more than 97 per cent of people who use them suffer health problems as a result. The study did not look at the impact on under 18s.

    Stephanie Davies-Arai, the founder and director of Transgender Trend, which campaigns for evidence-based healthcare for children, said: “Mermaids should not be sending breast-binders out behind parents’ backs. Parents are the primary caregivers and they have ultimate responsibility for their health and welfare. To exclude parents from really serious decisions like this is anti-safeguarding.

    “An investigation into Mermaids is long overdue. People have been raising concerns for quite a few years now. The Charity Commission and anybody who is recommending Mermaids or using them for training needs to really seriously think about child safeguarding.”

    Her call was echoed by MPs including Miriam Cates, Tory MP for Penistone and Stocksbridge, who said that the charity “is stating an extreme position on gender ideology and it is going behind parents’ backs to speak to children. This raises huge safeguarding red flags”.

    Mermaids refused to comment on the findings of the investigation.

    In a statement setting out its position on binders, Mermaids said that it took “a harm reduction position” that providing a binder with safety instructions was better than people using other “unsafe practices” or experiencing dysphoria.

    Safeguarding fears abound over charity that doles out breast binders and drugs advice to children
    Mermaids holds a privileged position in public life. The controversial charity is paid to train teachers, police forces, NHS staff and social services on dealing with transgender issues.

    In recent years, it has received more than £20,000 in taxpayer’s money from grants and more than £500,000 from the National Lottery.

    Staff have met government officials, given advice to the NHS and were identified as influential at the soon-to-be closed Tavistock Clinic as it was dolling out drugs to children.

    But while councils, medical professionals and schools continue to send young people to the charity, an investigation by The Telegraph has raised serious questions over safeguarding and the advice it gives to children as young as 12.

    Exchanges seen by this newspaper show that Mermaids staff are sending out potentially harmful breast binders behind parents’ backs and encouraging children to keep their contact with them private.

    Conversations on the moderated forums include teenagers giving advice on lying to medical professionals in order to be prescriped puberty-blocking drugs and on the best way to take testosterone or raise money to go abroad to start hormone treatment.

    An email exchange with the charity, seen by The Telegraph, shows staff offering to send a free breast binder to a user they believed was 14 who told them “my mum won’t let me” have one. Binders are used to flatten the chest to make a wearer appear more masculine.

    Mermaids said the user – an adult posing as a teenager under the pseudonym Kai – had to have been a member of the charity’s online Youth Forum for a month and posted three times before it would supply them with a binder.

    Exactly a month later, Mermaids agreed to send Kai a binder if they provided a size, read the binder safety sheet and sent a “name and address that you want the binder to be sent to”.

    “Once we have all of this information, we will pass it over to dispatch and they will take it from there. If we have one in the correct size in stock, we can send it out, otherwise, you will be put on the list to have a binder dispatched when it is in stock,” the helpline operator said.

    They noted that the risks of binding include “shortness of breath, back pain, chest pain, itching, bad posture, shoulder pain, overheating, and in some cases, rib damage”.

    The charity had been told a number of times that Kai’s mother would not let the child “do anything” to present as a boy.

    At no point did staff raise questions about any underlying illnesses, mental health conditions, or question whether any responsible adult would be informed that the person they thought was 14 was using a binder.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/09/25/exclusive-trans-charity-mermaids-giving-breast-binders-children/

      1. Apparently, reading the article and the back ground piece on her, she was not the founder, but latched onto it to give herself and higher profile, whilst simultaneously giving herself a massive ego boost.

    3. Someone who thinks they’re a dog when they start barking at the doctor will be sectioned. For some reason, when a man goes to a doctor and says ‘I’m a woman’ we’re all supposed to cheer.

      These people are mentally ill and need psychotherapy, not indulgence.

    1. That speech by Meloni is fantastic. She understands everything.
      It’s not “far right extremism”, it’s opposition to the technocracy.

      They will bring her down within five minutes.

  19. Good morning, all. Wet here in N Essex this morning.

    Is the Great Awakening upon us? Rowing back on CV-19 and the “vaccines” is a reality: doctors, scientists, administrators etc. are deserting their pro everything “vaccine” as the data continues its inexorable exposure of the lack of efficacy, and more importantly, the risks to health these serums pose. In addition, the oppressed people also appear to be waking up.
    In the USA the take-up of the “new booster” has all but stalled after a month with only around 1.2% of those available to have it accepting the jab. Now, more doctors are putting their heads above the parapet and speaking about what they are seeing and understanding.
    The nonsense claims re the mounting death toll have become more idiotic as the jab supporters attempt at suppression of facts: doctors claiming to be baffled about the sudden deaths of healthy people all over the World are ridiculed. Below are links to articles:

    Daily Sceptic – Suspend All CV-19 mRNA Vaccines Until Side-Effects are Fully Investigated
    Daily Sceptic – Is it Time to Accept that Omicron is Not CV-19?

    Dr Paul Offit, FDA advisor and supporter of vaccinations has now come out against accepting the new ‘booster’. Appears that he has concerns that the trials were conducted on 8 mice before being given approval. Better late than never doesn’t quite cut it in relation to the damage that has been wrought on the population of the World.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4DnG5Ar1eE&t=155s

  21. Good morning, everyone. DON’T WORRY DARLINGs, if you don’t hear much more from me today – I am off to the Picture House to watch a “Fillum”. Will report back later this evening.

      1. It was called DON’T WORRY DARLING, Annie. Overall I was disappointed with it, as the ending failed (to my mind) to resolve the story.

      1. Totally agree, Phizzee. I was first introduced to the source material, a book called (if I remember correctly) “Their Finest Hour” and was delighted to discover it was to be made into a film with – amongst others – Bill Nighy. My favourite scene was when he walked behind a glass pane and ruined the shot of the beaches of Dunkirk (the people on the beach were in fact small figures painted on said glass pain).

    1. This despite van der Leyen’s threats to hurt Italy if the EU does not like what Italy chooses to do. Surely that makes it clear that if the EU is prepared to punish members, the EU can never be our friend?

      1. For some reason the word Anschluss springs to mind.
        Or maybe just keep fining Italy; money that miraculously ends up in Germany.

  23. Left is marginalised as Starmer allies dominate at Labour conference. 26 September 2022.

    Before Keir Starmer’s tribute to the Queen and the singing of the national anthem, most senior MPs and staffers had anticipated some disruption. But there was not one heckle. “If you want proof the Labour party has changed, that tribute to the Queen was it,” one senior aide said.

    To see these people singing the National Anthem was truly creepy! The only consolation is that they don’t believe a word of it! It is simply a way of garnering support and discarding their toxic image. Behind this Patriotic Posturing still lurks the venomous hatred of the Working Class and its Values.

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/sep/25/labour-left-is-marginalised-as-starmer-supporters-dominate

    2. Alas, neither can the Conservative Party sing ‘God Save the King’ with any sincerity. Elements that have now taken over that party have been doing down Charles for years.

  24. ‘Morning, Peeps. Raining and cool here but the sun will, allegedly, get his hat on later this morning.

    Of the five DT letters today commenting on the budget, four are strongly anti. However, I don’t know why they bothered, given that the propaganda wing of the Labour party (yes, that as usual is the BBC, as if I need to explain this) has come out to bat. One of their frightfully important political motor-mouths – sorry, correspondents – has just reminded us that imports will be more expensive with the low pound. Predictably he omitted to mention that, by the same token, our exports will be cheaper. Must have slipped his mind I suppose…

    Whilst on the subject of the BBC’s visceral hatred of anything that is even remotely right wing, true to form they just can’t help themselves when it comes to the Italian election…”Mussolini” and “fascist” have to be included every time the leading party is mentioned.

    They really are a bloody disgrace.

    1. What exports? We can’t afford to make things any longer?

      As for Italy – has there ever been any sanity in Italian politics?

        1. A new set of teeth and £12,000 poorer. I only just made it back in time before the pound tanked!

    3. It’s not even ‘Right wing’. They just hate, bitterly, relentlessly – anything that challenges their big state, high tax and waste idoelogy.

  25. ‘Morning, Peeps. Raining and cool here but the sun will, allegedly, get his hat on later this morning.

    Of the five DT letters today commenting on the budget, four are strongly anti. However, I don’t know why they bothered, given that the propaganda wing of the Labour party (yes, that as usual is the BBC, as if I need to explain this) has come out to bat. One of their frightfully important political motor-mouths – sorry, correspondents – has just reminded us that imports will be more expensive with the low pound. Predictably he omitted to mention that, by the same token, our exports will be cheaper. Must have slipped his mind I suppose…

    Whilst on the subject of the BBC’s visceral hatred of anything that is even remotely right wing, true to form they just can’t help themselves when it comes to the Italian election…”Mussolini” and “fascist” have to be included every time the leading party is mentioned.

    They really are a bloody disgrace.

  27. SIR – The NHS has many problems, but reducing GP waiting times is not the most difficult of them.

    Alas, declaring a deeply unambitious target of two weeks and recruiting more support staff is not the radical treatment needed. Instead, remove the pension-related disincentives from working longer hours, and drastically cut red tape. Then GPs will resolve the problem overnight.

    James Irvine
    Ashtead, Surrey

    I would like to think so, Mr Irvine, but with GPs leaving and retiring faster than they can be replaced, others going part-time and population growth that is proceeding in leaps and bounds, I’m afraid I don’t share your optimism.

    1. That is a question which should be frequently put to them?

      Just as the question of child rape by a certain religious group should be put to the NSPCC.

    2. That is a question which should be frequently put to them?

      Just as the question of child rape by a certain religious group should be put to the NSPCC.

  29. SIR – Elizabeth Cail (Letters, September 23) is not alone in ruing her visit to Specsavers.

    Three years ago I was sent there by the DVLA for a visual field test. As a result my driving licence was revoked. After another four tests at other opticians produced entirely different results, and a consultant ophthalmologist confirmed there was nothing wrong with my field of vision, the DVLA returned my licence. That was 633 days later.

    Alexander Gordon
    Oswestry, Shropshire

    Yet another complaint about Specsavers’ eye tests. There’s a pattern emerging here…

    Some years ago now I vowed never to return to them after five visits to fix a lens in some new glasses. It was finally resolved when the manager said that the lens would be replaced by one from a more expensive supplier. Bingo! It worked first time.

    1. I think it depends on which branch you visit – they are a franchise so each branch is a separate business. I’ve had nothing but good service from my branch and they even have a mobile unit which comes to the village from time to time. Bad service should be reported to the main company which have the power to remove the franchise.

    3. I went to Specsavers last year after the St Peter’s A&E said I could wait to see an ophthalmologist as it wasn’t urgent. The next morning I booked an eye health check with Specsavers Woking branch who confirmed what I thought, that I had a detached retina, and referred to back to St Peter’s to be seen that day. When I called at 5pm to ask if the ophthalmologist would see me I was told they had all gone home. The nurse I spoke to gave me the number for the emergency eye doctor who called me at 6pm, saw me at 7pm and by 8.20pm had arranged an appointment at St Thomas’s for 10.30am the following morning and I was operated on at 2pm.
      Thank you to the optician at Specsavers who saved my sight. There are good and bad in every profession and it is wrong to tarnish the reputation of all because one case.

  30. SIR – Mick Lynch, general secretary of the RMT union, says the right to withdraw labour is a basic human right (report, September 24).

    It is equally arguable that the right to sack those who go on strike should be a basic human right for employers. Striking on individual days – the current approach – is designed to inflict maximum inconvenience and cost on an employer with minimum cost to the striker.

    It used to be the law that strikers could be fairly sacked while on strike, provided that the employer took them all back after the strike was over and did not discriminate. In view of what now appears to be a coordinated attack by militant trade unions on a Conservative Government, perhaps it is time to revisit this idea.

    John R McErlean
    Elstow, Bedfordshire

    You know and we know, Mr McErlean, that this is a political strike by another name. Political strikes are illegal, of course. There is little prospect of resolving it until the sleepy ACAS – remember them? – gets off its backside and does what it is paid to do. If the current rules prevent its involvement at this stage then change the rules!

    1. Two more letters on this subject:

      SIR – The sad thing about the rail unions is that they talk constantly about workers’ rights but appear not to recognise their duties to the public – who, ultimately, pay their wages.

      Perhaps workers making such items as lavatory paper, mousetraps and egg whisks, who seem to get by without striking, could give some pointers to the large trade unions, whose record of gradually destroying the industries they represent through incessant and excessive demands is considerable.

      Duncan Reeves
      Lindfield, West Sussex

      SIR – Why do the union rank-and-file allow themselves to be led so badly?

      Their bosses should be embracing the future and its opportunities. They should work with employers to define new jobs and make sure their members are trained to fill them, rather than trying to hold back modernisation.

      Chris Lambert
      Tadworth, Surrey

      Well said both!

    2. Two more letters on this subject:

      SIR – The sad thing about the rail unions is that they talk constantly about workers’ rights but appear not to recognise their duties to the public – who, ultimately, pay their wages.

      Perhaps workers making such items as lavatory paper, mousetraps and egg whisks, who seem to get by without striking, could give some pointers to the large trade unions, whose record of gradually destroying the industries they represent through incessant and excessive demands is considerable.

      Duncan Reeves
      Lindfield, West Sussex

      SIR – Why do the union rank-and-file allow themselves to be led so badly?

      Their bosses should be embracing the future and its opportunities. They should work with employers to define new jobs and make sure their members are trained to fill them, rather than trying to hold back modernisation.

      Chris Lambert
      Tadworth, Surrey

      Well said both!

  32. Drip, drip, drip

    SIR – I have discovered a possible reason why it takes such a long time for leakages in the water supply system to be repaired.

    Recently, two of the stopcocks in our street sprang leaks. One was
    repaired by the water company’s workmen, the other by a contractor. It
    took three water company men, with two vehicles, a whole day to sort out
    one leak, with the reinstatement, using a simple concrete filling,
    taking place two days later.

    The two men from the contractor, in one van with a trailer, took a
    little over an hour to stop the second leak, and returned to reinstate
    the pavement the next day, again taking under an hour to cut and fit a
    new paving slab.

    I asked one of the contractors why he and his co-worker had taken so
    much less time. “They’re employees,” he replied. “We’re self-employed.”

    David Thompson
    Ipswich, Suffolk

    Open Reach have been up and down the telegraph pole outside my house twice a month for the last two years. They bring two vans and a cherrypicker each time.

    1. Open Reach have been fiddling about with the conduits in this area for about a month. Lord knows what they are doing.

      1. I’m told it is fibre optic being installed over head instead of buried. Should make things faster in rural areas.

        1. This is definitely underground. It goes down one man (or person) hole. travels underground for several yards then gets pulled up (with blue string) through another. This has been happening just about everywhere.

  33. That this gentleman lived to anything like the ripe old age of 102 must be something of a miracle…

    Peter Heppell, Chindit who took part in fierce fighting behind enemy lines in the Burmese jungle – obituary

    As the Japanese closed in he refused to be evacuated but eventually escaped in two canoes lashed together

    ByTelegraph Obituaries 25 September 2022 • 2:34pm

    Peter Heppell, who has died aged 102, served with the Chindits and took part in some of the toughest infantry fighting of the Second World War.

    In August 1943, at a high-level conference, Major General Orde Wingate won support for his plans to drop long-range penetration groups into northern Burma behind the Japanese lines. Known as Chindits, these special forces were trained for jungle fighting and sabotage.

    Brigades were formed into raiding columns and their mission was to attack road, rail and river traffic, block supply routes and cut the lines of communication serving the Japanese army. The Chindits were supplied by air and fortified bases were established. Many of these were given the names of well-known cities or streets and had to be suitable for turning into airstrips for Dakotas to land.

    Heppell was called up in May 1940 and joined the Royal Engineers. In 1942, he embarked for the Far East with 67 Chemical Warfare Company. His experience included testing rocket-fired gas cylinders but he found that he was prohibited from getting closer than 10 miles of the front because of his expertise in that field.

    He, therefore, volunteered for “Special Duties” and was posted to the 1st Battalion King’s (Liverpool) Regiment in India, part of the 77th Indian Infantry Brigade commanded by Brigadier Mike Calvert. During training, he filled his backpack with bricks to become accustomed to the 70lb load carried by each Chindit when behind the lines. He was a sapper in a section of 82 Column’s Commando Platoon, responsible for booby-trapping and assisting supply drops and river crossings.

    Operation Thursday, a deep-penetration campaign, involved not only flying garrison troops and mobile columns into these fortified bases but also anti-aircraft guns and 25-pounder batteries as well as bulldozers and mechanical graders for constructing airfields.

    Heppell flew into Burma on March 5 1944 by glider, as part of a night assault opening Operation Thursday. His objective was some 150 miles behind Japanese lines in a clearing codenamed Broadway. The landings were unopposed but the strip was deeply rutted and the scene became chaotic as wrecked gliders could not be removed quickly.

    Incoming gliders collided with those blocking the clearing. Some gliders overshot the strip. Others had their wings torn off by impact with the trees. Terrible injuries were caused by heavy machinery breaking free of its mooring during a crash landing and hurtling the length of a fuselage packed with soldiers.

    Heppell recalled those first minutes on the ground: “Something made me run for it. Then another glider hit ours, causing casualties, and the incoming glider’s wing knocked off my bush-hat.” Half his section became casualties.

    The next day, the clearing had been made fit to take C-47 transport aircraft and Broadway, together with White City, became the main Chindit bases for operations attacking and blocking Japanese supply lines and facilities in north Burma. The King’s 82 Column stayed at Broadway to help to defend the base perimeter.

    There was ferocious close-combat fighting as well as relentless attacks from the air. Japanese snipers would lash themselves to trees so that they could continue firing even when they were badly wounded.

    During the ensuing weeks, exhaustion, disease and shortage of food took their toll. Heppell’s health deteriorated but he refused to be evacuated. The monsoon was approaching. The Chindits moved north to establish a new block on the main railway line and road known as Blackpool. Heppell’s column reached Blackpool just as the monsoon broke.

    The clouds closed in. Supply from the air became impossible. Heavy rain turned tracks into torrents and movement in the jungle became very difficult. After nearly three weeks of constant fighting the Japanese captured vital positions inside the defences and Blackpool was abandoned.

    Heppell was wounded by a mortar bomb and had shrapnel in his left leg: “I felt relieved,” he said, “that the fragments had missed the three primed grenades in my pocket. I had just one thought in mind. The only way to get out of here is to walk.”

    He helped to carry out the stretcher cases who could be moved. The very badly wounded were shot by medical orderlies to prevent them falling into Japanese hands. Heppell escaped by river in a boat consisting of two native canoes lashed together and driven by an outboard engine dropped from the air.

    Peter Francis Heppell was born in London on March 5 1920 and educated at Shepperton Grammar School. His father was a successful commercial artist and the director of a large London agency. Young Peter attended art school and joined his father’s company.

    After the end of the campaign in Burma, Heppell was demobilised. He returned to the advertising agency but then moved to Bowaters, first to their London office and then to Rainham, Kent. The family moved to Sittingbourne, Kent, and stayed there for more than 30 years before moving to Fleet, Hampshire, and then to East Grinstead in West Sussex, where he spent his remaining years.

    In 1985, he retired and, in his nineties, he helped his younger son to run 14 community choirs in Kent, Surrey and Sussex. Over the years, the choirs helped to raise close to £20,000 for good causes. He also enjoyed tinkering with old cars, watching cricket and painting country scenes.

    He played an active part as a member of the Chindits Old Comrades Association and the Chindit Society. Aged 101, when he could no longer march past the Cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday, he got out of his wheelchair and shuffled past it carrying the Chindit wreath. He did not sit down again until he was well past the monument.

    In 2006, he and his older son, daughter and granddaughter stood together in the clearing at Broadway. Little had changed over the years. They nailed a brass commemorative plaque on a teak tree and Heppell recited the Kohima Epitaph, which is carved on the Memorial in the cemetery of Kohima just over the border in India: “When you go home, tell them of us and say, for your tomorrow, we gave our today.”

    Peter Heppell married, in 1949, Lucie Jenkinson. She predeceased him and he is survived by their daughter and two sons.

    Peter Heppell, born March 5 1920, died August 7 2022 https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7da44cea4cb53c62c0d03e37aefc9ab7e24784483cba522cb67f9bcf63fbce1d.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/384f4c68920afe882bd2b28493fb5bfb13cce2a626261e4639071db3dc72d540.jpg

    1. Some excellent BTL posts:

      Mark Adams11 HRS AGO

      This is the history that I want in our schools. “Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.” I do not want to see our country represented by ‘One Love’ armbands and kneeling footballers.

      Nate Delo10 HRS AGO

      People like Peter are the men we owe our lives to. They were brave, valiant and noble in everything they did all those decades ago. To ever forget them would be the greatest of crimes.

      I hope that Britons of the future, myself included, can live up to their great name. If there is a Third World War, which becomes more likely by the day, I would hope I would show the same bravery defending my country as Peter and his compatriots.

      But you are right. British spirit and British values were those championed by Peter, not by today’s woke generation.

      1. Agreed but there are thousands of others who gave their lives in order to save us from Nazi rule. And We will remember them. But the next generation won’t remember their great grandparents. They’ll be instructed what to do by the modern day EU Nazis who are now organising the invaders and we are paying for them to come here for their privileged lives. Why ???
        This has to be addressed by our useless political classes and current government and amended.

        1. One of the reasons I sent elder granddaughters scans of my father’s TB paperwork.
          One is a recovery nurse at GOSH, the other is training to become a teacher. They need a longer view than they will get from modern ‘education’.

        2. One of the reasons I sent elder granddaughters scans of my father’s TB paperwork.
          One is a recovery nurse at GOSH, the other is training to become a teacher. They need a longer view than they will get from modern ‘education’.

      2. Good morning HJ

        Todays woke generation are termites feeding off the pile championed by all of our political parties .

        Having said that, untill one is put into a very challenging situation , no one knows where and how extreme toughness and bravery arises from , it just does .

        1. Yes; also, at a personal level, during hard times, I’ve found that the most surprising people turn up trumps.

    2. I was going to comment on that – and the fact the other obituaries today were some actress (correction: female actor) and a 28 year-old “drag queen”.

      It’s enough to make you weep.

    3. People like that make me feel totally inadequate. They really make me wonder if I’ve spent my life taking up space to no real purpose.

  34. 356573+ up ticks,

    The importation via Dover & Dungeness is morally wrong trussless knows this but whatever is the agenda she is working to calls for it to continue no matter what Braverman says.
    I do see much of this rhetoric as staged in party opposition, for & against, it satisfies the supporters rhetorically even though action is never,ever taken.
    Dt,
    Immigration must fall even as Britain pushes for growth, Liz Truss told
    Suella Braverman among Brexiteer Cabinet ministers warning against using migration to help fulfil Government’s ambitious economic plans

    1. Ah, the BBC is painting her as a FAR RIGHT FASCIST – in every, single bloody discourse. For goodness sake.

      The EUrocrats hate her, the Times is annoyed, the graiduan spluttering. Odd, I find myself suddenly a far right fascist too…

      or perhaps it’s not me, it’s them:

    2. Good stirring stuff.

      I like the way she abruptly leaves the stage! If Biden tried to do it he would either go off in the wrong direction or bump into something.

  37. Taking a generation as roughly 25 years “clogs to clogs” in three generations would appear to be coming true for the UK, it’s roughly 50 years since Barber embarked on his boom to bust, so we are entering the third generation.

  40. Given the differential which has merged between tax rates in England and Scotland, I am presuming that SNP MPs are choosing to pay Scottish income taxes.

  42. Morning all 😉
    It hammered with rain last night. Good for the garden and other water courses.
    I’ve got a stinking cold, I think I caught it during the 8 people tour of Henry Moore’s cottage home at Perry Green. Two ladies arrived late and both wore marks throughout except in the crowded lobby entrance hall.
    I haven’t been anywhere else since last Tuesday, or in close contact with anyone.
    Wife had a sore throat for two days but I’ve copped the lot.

      1. I’m having to keep out of the way, our DiL and the little fella are staying over during the day. They are have a new kitchen fitted, rip out today.
        Due to his intensive treatment for leukemia he’s vulnerable to anything.
        Poor little chap.
        So I’m back to bed.

      1. I’m curious as to whether it would test as positive. I might try it later.
        If it does I’ll let you know.

  43. Here’s one for the conspiracy theorists (or “realists”, as they are sometimes proved to be): the pound falls to parity with the dollar, the euro does the same; is this a coincidence, or is it part of the plan for a global currency?

      1. It’s not a bad idea – as long as that currency is kept away from politicians and linked to valuable commodities. If they can’t fiddle it so it’s worthless, can’t expand it, can’t break it, the currency is stable. It’s when that currency can be fiddled about with that we get problems.

        1. When we bought our house in France 1988 there were 12 French Francs to the Pound.

          The French Franc was absorbed into Euros at a rate of 6.56 French francs to the pound in 1999.

          When we bought our house that would have been the equivalent of 1.83 euros to the pound.

          If the pound was at parity with the euro it would mean that since we moved to France the pound has fallen in value from 1.83 to 1.00 – this would represent a devaluation in the pound of 55%.

          And we say how lucky we are to have a proud, independent tumbling pound!

          2. Amended the inversion. What I meant to illustrate was the 55% fall in value of the pound vis-à-vis the European currency since we have lived here.

          3. 55% fall from 1.83 would take it down to about 0.82. It’s a 45% fall to get from 1.83 to parity. And it’s currently about 1.10.

          1. Do Vegans eat crops which have been fertilised with animal dung? Will vegans eat bugs? Is the plan for Vegans to be unable to eat anything at all?

          5. Or pollinated by insects? if that is “exploitation”, then they are going to get really hungry.
            In any case, is pollination by bees “exploitation”? – the bees receive good-quality accommodation, medical attention, food for the winter in return for their pollination and honey. Pretty good exchange, if you ask me.

          6. Yet the governments still allow farmers who need their crops to be pollinated to use neonicotinoids which kill bees.
            There should be a Minister for Bees. Anything that ensures that bees are healthy and multiply is good for the country.

      2. Yes, was rather going to say the same. It’s not the school’s responsibility to provide for the children. What next? Gulags?

      3. Can’t feed? Don’t breed.
        The majority of these cases are not a matter of bad luck but deliberate rutting for cash.

    1. I thought at the time of our first “parole” in June that it must have felt the same after the war – when travel was suddenly a possibility again.

    2. Shades of taking feverish sprog to the GPs – only for the little … darling to recover the moment we walked into the waiting room.
      (Gosh, seeing a GP on the same day as the illness appeared; that really dates the boys and me.)

    3. I remember a work colleague many years ago being told by her GP that on the whole you’ll either recover of die and doctors have very little to do with it.

      1. A former GP of mine (now long retired) told me I’d either be dead or better no matter what she did.

  46. 356573+ up ticks,

    breitbart
    Conservative Giorgia Meloni Set to Become Italy’s First Female Prime Minister.

    Not to be confused in any shape or form with the United Kingdoms governing
    conservative (ino) party.

  47. MANY thousands more immigrants will be let into Britain under Liz Truss’ dash for growth plans.

    The PM and Home Office are planning to massively liberalise routes to allow foreign workers to move to the UK.

    They are expected to extend the number of jobs on the list of shortage occupations – making it easier for foreigners in these roles to come here.

    The seasonal workers scheme which lets fruit pickers come to Britain is expected to be expanded.

    The current cap of 40,000 is expected to be lifted and the six month time limit extended.

    Businesses across Britain have been struggling with a massive labour shortage since Covid.

    https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/19909863/liz-truss-ease-foreign-workers-rules/

    1. If we have to keep the 30,000 who have come here this year then make them work rather than import ‘workers’

          1. Try hundreds of armed soldiers to disperse them. Tear gas, CS gas, rubber bullets and then real bullets.

    2. Labour shortage? I don’t think so. This is what you get when you incentivise millions to only work part-time, and disincentivise millions to create stable family units. And it’s been building for decades.

      1. Put the gimmegrunts out to work (and pay tax and NI) or they get nothing except a deportation order.

          2. It should never have been allowed to happen. That lying bast@rd Cameron was flying them in to RAF base from Syria as well.

      2. It is a pleasant day but with golf yesterday and golf tomorrow, I’m having a day ‘off’. Indeed, I shall be off to my local for a couple of beers later.

  49. ‘I never want to listen to ABBA again’: How Russians tortured British prisoner with pop music. 26 September 2022.

    One of the British prisoners who was captured whilst fighting in Ukraine has revealed how he was forced by the Russians to listen to ABBA and Cher on repeat.

    Shaun Pinner, a 48-year-old army veteran, spoke of how he was forced to listen to the music 24 hours a day, as well as being stabbed and subjected to electrocutions.

    While in captivity he was forced to listen to the soundtrack of Mamma Mia and only given stale bread and dirty water to consume.

    It’s impossible to take any of this seriously! Now if it had been rap I would sympathise.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/09/25/never-want-listen-abba-how-russians-tortured-british-prisoner/

    1. Seeing them on the plane returning home, they didn’t exactly look as if they had been in the gulag on starvation rations.

      2. After the realisation of what’s going on. They may have even surrendered to get out of the mess they were in

    2. One famous ABBA track has already achieved immortality. MONEY MONEY 💰 they weren’t wrong with that one.

    3. Sadly, I’m sure he failed to read the small print, as he dashed of to be one of Truss’ troops, that mercenaries are not covered by the Geneva Conventions and that he’s lucky that it’s only his ears that took a bashing.

  50. 356573+ up ticks,

    Funny old world,
    You have a large number of peoples are against getting cracking with fracking.

    All the while there is a large number of peoples threatening with nuclear firecrackers
    to part us from our knackers, as I say funny old……..

    2. I stopped to buy a gelato in the Summer. The vendor wouldn’t accept my old £20. The lady behind me paid for mine. Aren’t people nice…

    1. Seconded.
      Have good one – even it’s a wet Monday.
      (An excuse to have a second bash at the weekend.)

      1. I had a preemptive evening on Saturday at the Westcoast Fest 2022 in Troon. A selection of gins, tequila and rum were sampled along with a couple of real ales. Next weekend I’m having a quiet one by attending Marr RFC v Currie Chieftains on Saturday afternoon. Improvise and adapt.

  53. Re the “rioting slammers” in Lunnon yesterday.

    I wonder how many of the bottle-throwers were acting on behalf of the Ayatollah and against those who were protesting at the veil…..

    1. I didn’t notice anything in the TV news Bill did the media hide it as they did with the slammers paying (not) their respects to our wonderful long serving Queen,?

      1. The implication in the press is that the nasty, silly, thoughtless, violent women protesters were attacking the poor old plod.

        1. There is no way of camouflaging the process and intentions of these people. It’s perfectly obviously to anyone who has a brain cell, every where these people are and where ever theg go, their objective is to create as many problems as possible.
          And fake innocence by blaming everyone else.

        2. Poor old Plod. Their role is to make sure nasty evil far-right wingers don’t say hurty words about the liberal luvvie and all the “victims” (sic) in modern society, not actually provide any semblance of law and order. That’s sooooooo 20th century.

    5. British Gas have invented a new mathematics.

      They reckon you consumed 1.133TeraWatthrs in a single day even though your estimated meter reading decreased from 02218 to 02216 of unspecified units implying that you were supplying power to the grid.

      It seems that Sir Ed Davey did the calculations.

      1. No it couldn’t possibly have decreased so they have assumed a 1 in front of 02216 i.e. 99998 units.

  55. Giorgia Meloni vows to make people ‘proud to be Italian again’ as far-Right wins election
    Meloni is set to be Italy’s first female prime minister and lead the country’s most Right-wing government since the Second World War
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/09/26/giorgia-meloni-vows-make-people-proud-italian-far-right-wins/

    Ursula ‘Fonda Lyin’ sounds very teutonically menacing in her threat to Italy:

    ” ……the president of the European Commission, said the EU has ‘tools’ to rein in Italy if required.”

    in other words:

    “We have ways of making you squawk.”

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/23e87273ea3eb333c6a7129f51b12aab7f44d45ee6636b354f811904cdf74f74.jpg

    1. Italians vote for moderate, religious Conservative.

      “Voters lurch right” says The Grimes….

    5. IMHO this woman isn’t reading the room very well. People are stirring and change is in the air. Her statement shows how this woman and people of her stripe have no feelings nor respect for the people she is supposed to represent. The latter is, of course, a sham: all she represents is a self-appointed elite class of very dubious merit that is sucking Europe and its people dry.

      3. Macron has already said that he does not dare give the French a referendum on continued EU membership because the French people could very well vote to leave.

    8. The EU has plenty of tools; thahsands of ’em tooling back and forth between Brussels and Strasbourg.

  57. There might be some resistance in the Cabinet but don’t hold your breath.

    Immigration must fall even as Britain pushes for growth, Liz Truss told

    Suella Braverman among Brexiteer Cabinet ministers warning against using migration to help fulfil Government’s ambitious economic plans

    The Home Secretary is insisting that immigration must fall even as Britain pushes for growth, The Telegraph understands.

    Suella Braverman wants the Government to meet its manifesto commitments to bring down net migration, as ministers consider plans to relax visa restrictions on some foreign workers to tackle labour shortages and attract the best talent from across the world.

    Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng, her Chancellor, are understood to believe some sectors may need additional migrants to help fulfil the Government’s ambitious economic growth plans and have ordered a review of current visa restrictions.

    However, Ms Braverman is among Brexiteer Cabinet ministers including Kemi Badenoch, the International Trade Secretary, and Business Secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg who believe this must not lead to an overall rise in immigration and must pass the litmus test of genuinely boosting growth.
    A Whitehall source said: “The Home Secretary does not believe that reducing net migration needs to mean we go to lower growth. You can achieve both. You can solve the economic bottlenecks that need to have higher skills but at the same time bring down aggregate migration.”

    It comes as Mr Kwarteng on Sunday vowed there would be “more to come” on tax cuts, including potentially extending the freeze on fuel duty, despite concern the pound could slump further.

    However, there will be no new spending review despite rising inflation, which means public sector workers will have real terms pay cuts before 2024 and schools and hospitals will have to make tough choices about budgets.

    Ms Truss’s immigration review will consider whether changes need to be made to the shortage occupations list, which will allow key sectors to recruit more overseas staff. It could also endorse a loosening of the requirement to speak English in some sectors to enable more foreign workers into the country.

    Downing Street sources said the Government was not advocating an increase in immigration but changes to the mix. “That will involve increasing numbers in some areas and decreasing in others. As the Prime Minister has made clear, we also want to see people who are economically inactive get back into work,” they said.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/09/25/immigration-must-fall-even-britain-pushes-growth-liz-truss-told/

    1. “Education, education, edu…” That did not work did it? Not if we have to import people to do jobs. We could train people to do jobs. Why do we not?
      According to the Office for National Statistics the rate of unemployment is 3.6%, the lowest figure since 1974.
      Pull the other one! What are they all doing?
      Could it be that all those on benefits are being treated as being “employed” on the government payroll?

      https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peoplenotinwork/unemployment

      1. There is a large contingent who shouldn’t be there at “uni”, racking up humungous debt at taxpayers’ expense (it’ll never be repaid).

    2. How about we start getting those on benefits off their backsides and doing a worthwhile job to earn cash? They’ll need training, of course, and incentives like “no workey no money”.

  58. A long-time troublemaker. Let’s hope he is talking only to the loony fringe.

    Union boss threatens to bring Britain ‘to its knees’ and lead ‘millions’ on strike

    Mark Serwotka, Public and Commercial Services Union’s general secretary, said mass walkouts could cause ‘chaos’ and drive the Tories out

    A union boss has threatened to bring Britain to its knees this autumn by leading “millions” of workers on strike, as a split over pay disputes threatened to engulf Labour’s party conference.

    Mark Serwotka, the general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), said a coordinated mass walkout could cause “chaos” and succeed in driving the Conservatives out of government.

    Speaking in Liverpool at a fringe event of Left-wing MPs, Mr Serwotka said industrial action by civil servants – who his union represents – would lead to cancelled driving tests, huge border queues and problems collecting taxes.

    “We are balloting for sustained action in targeted areas, and I’m going to say it, to cause chaos, to put pressure on the government,” Mr Serwokta told the room to a standing ovation.

    “When we win the ballot the action we will take will be hard-hitting but we believe people will support us because we believe people know that for every union that wins, we all win.

    “If any union is planning a one or a two-day national strike, we pledge that we will join them. And if we get millions of people on strike at the same time, hundreds of thousands taking action, that demonstrates our worth.”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/09/25/union-boss-threatens-bring-britain-knees-lead-millions-strike/

    1. With our leaders stoking a nuclear war and our workers threatening a land of chaos, I suggest large stocks of alcohol, baked beanz and several cats for some warmth.

      3. Iodine tablets, wind up radios, nuclear bunker in the garden, water….

        It’ll be like the 1950s but with more migrants and tattoos.

    4. Civil servants on strike? It would have to be given a lot of publicity, prominence in News reports on TV and in newspapers, otherwise how would we be able to tell?

      1. This has been the case in Britain for years. If you look as though you come from a muslim country then you will be harassed by muslims if you are seen not following islamic customs.
        Happens to men and women. Food sellers refuse to sell or serve them pork or alcohol products, women are scolded for sitting in a cafe or not wearing certain clothes etc.

        1. I wonder how long it will be before this harassment by Muslims for not wearing ‘appropriate’ clothes will extend to non-Muslim women.

          1. It has. There were some incidents last year in London when people in the vicinity of a mosque (and where isn’t) are harassed for short skits (females ) and beer cans (males).

          6. It already has. A friend of mine (black African Christian) was scolded by a muslim man when she walked near a muslim celebration in a public park with her children, wearing shorts.

    3. As I thought – they are the Ayatollah’s supporters – Iran government funded trouble-makers.
      Yer French would have used the CRS – no messing with them.

    4. As I thought – they are the Ayatollah’s supporters – Iran government funded trouble-makers.
      Yer French would have used the CRS – no messing with them.

    5. I can’t help wondering that if the police still carried old fashioned truncheons and were allowed to and trained to use them liberally to crack a few skulls, that episodes such as this would be far less frequent.

    6. GET BACK !
      Exactly, Get Back to where you once belonged.
      Shoot the POs.

      Thanks (sarc) to our stupid idiot political classes. What a mess you have made of this once safe and reasonable country.

    7. Lock both sides up and arm them with sticks and machetes. Leave them there until they have eliminated each other completely.

    1. Is Dr Malhotra new to the resistance? Does he realise that his important research will be buried without trace, and he will probably be called a charlatan as well?
      Kudos to him for bringing this paper out anyway. Let’s hope it is another solid brick in the wall.

          1. People are easily fooled because most people are intrinsically stupid. The PTB know that and use it to their full advantage.

      2. Nah, he’s been on side for a while. Just manages to play it canny in the media.

        (PS owe you an email but haring around to the point where feet not touching the ground.)

    2. Unfortunately everything I try to read on twitter is blocked out by their sign in or else message.
      But I’m sure he’s correct.
      Today I was able to send a written message to my GP practice telling them that after suffering for 18 months, there is no way I’m having any more covid injections.

    1. Taken from that article…….

      The damage done by the delusion, the myth of multi-culturalism – the
      band-aid hurriedly applied when concepts like assimilation and
      integration were seen to have failed – has hardly been limited to these
      islands.

      Not so very long ago, Sweden was regarded as a beacon of
      caring, sharing, liberal leftism. Not anymore. Since 2018 there have
      been almost 500 bombings in the towns and cities of a country most
      people likely still believe, mistakenly, to be a model of safety and
      stability, the home of Ikea and St Greta of Thunberg. It’s not just
      bombs – 47 people have been shot dead so far this year. National Police
      commissioner Anders Thornberg is on record describing, “an entirely
      different kind of brutality” in ghetto-ised suburbs dominated by
      immigrants.

      Since 2000, Sweden’s immigrant population – those born
      elsewhere but now resident – has doubled to 20 percent. Sweden took in
      more migrants per capita than any other country during the wave of
      immigration in 2015. Most of the incomers have been young men. At the
      recent general election, Sweden’s most outspoken anti-immigration party –
      the Sweden Democrats – emerged as the second biggest in parliament.

      Those
      who have voted for the SDs are shouted down – even as news media carry
      reports of a new trend in so-called “humiliation robberies” during which
      victims are not just robbed but also degraded while their attackers
      film the abuse.

      Despite the hitherto unknown levels of violence
      and crime, still it is hard for Swedes to speak out about the reality of
      their situation. Those who point to the existence of ghettoes – of no
      go area’s into which fire and ambulance crews will not venture without
      police escorts – are shouted down as “safety deniers”. Can you imagine …
      “safety deniers” … whatever next?

      When will the shouting down
      stop? Time and time again those calling out real problems, real danger,
      are the targets of tactics shaped always and only to silence dissent, to
      deride and alienate any who seek to give voice to uncomfortable truth,
      even just to ask a question.

    2. I’ve always liked Neil Oliver but after reading all of that I like him even more.
      But I wish he’d get his hair cut.
      I agree with everything he says and I also believe he is the voice of many millions in Britain.
      Not to be shouted down.
      Much of the shouting down is to try and cover up all the stupid mistakes (f#ck ups) made by our idiot political classes, that we continually have to take on the nose.
      And now after getting rid of Bore-us it looks as if we have another problem with our political structure. A weak Truss.

      1. I know it is daft (and hairist) – but I cannot take seriously anyone who has his hair like Oliver does.

          1. Same difference. Oliver has “styled” his hair to look like an idiot as has this chap, whoever he is.

    3. This was up on GB News yesterday – he raises very good points, succinctly, acurrately and precisely.

    1. I’m guessing she means she was smacked in the face with a skillet, while she was trying to get someone’s trousers off?

      1. “A skillet“? Do you mean the ENGLISH version of a frying pan, Sue? Americanisms, tut, tut.

        Yes, it maybe Scottish, I hesitate to say Scotch, as I appreciate your sensitivities, but…

        1. Not just American, Tom! My grandmother used a skillet to cook her ‘Singin’ Hinnies’ when I was a very small child! And I’m not Scottish, so don’t have their sense of persecution!

          2. Just checked with my old man, who’s from Buckie, and his grandmother also called it a skillet!

          3. Aye, I’ve lived in Banffshire – maybe that’s the Doric – ‘ft like the day, quions and mannies’.

            The olnly geordie I have is ‘ hadaway and shite’.

          4. Ah! That well-known firm of Newcastle solicitors!
            Have just Googled and it’s possibly from 15th century Scandinavian! Whatever…

    3. I’ve never heard of Tammy Slaton until now.
      I now wish I hadn’t!

      Pass the mind bleach please!
      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2a6f27e4c276315ea6e4254f5da4d608fe7d1d80eb56d550f44f0317982211e1.jpg
      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3a1214c068fc67a7ff83f9d14e889d8df8723cf04e1b3d2df896d95a790b4c34.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/326b9dad9bd9e721cda44c26fb3ef31e410bdc248d2cc825dddf26cc769ef252.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/eb1e9b56c95d9e8d1f5dfda4b7d0a1a0a1bad113be5e33105a8651adaf504238.jpg

  68. Thought for the day…

    100 years ago, everyone owned horses and only the rich had cars.

    Today, everyone owns cars and only the rich have horses.

    Oh how the stables have turned.

    1. Good one, but actually I think only the rich ever had horses. The rest of the folk had Shanks’ pony or a donkey or oxen.

  69. 356573+ up ticks,

    Business as Usual: New UK PM to Import Even More Migrants Despite Inter-Ethnic Violence

    Despite Inter-Ethnic Violence? they are merely warm ups for the coming shortly, MAIN EVENT.

    If the peoples had the most super efficient
    social services,and what we had prior to entering the eu trap was not bad up until the
    electorate supported role models such as
    anthony charlie lynton / ted heath / then it was downhill all the way picking up speed on a daily basis until……

    Even More Migrants Despite Inter-Ethnic Violence

    1. That’s how the “progressive” mindset works. If what you’re doing doesn’t work then do more of it because the ideology can’t be wrong so it must be that if you do even more of the same, eventually it will work.

      1. 356573+ up ticks,

        Afternoon SE,

        That is only if you seek asylum
        though as the majority of the electorate are, that is the lunatic asylum.

  71. Further attack on farmers in the US, reminiscent of those in other western countries, including Britain.
    https://www.reddit.com/r/Wallstreetsilver/comments/xokzej/commentary_us_farmers_grab_the_lobbying/

    From what I’m hearing at the moment, British farmers are getting the velvet glove, with offers of money to host solar power stations or the “carbon sink” tree scam. This is tempting out the weak hands; the hobbyists and the incompetent. The iron fist cannot be far behind.

    1. It is wonderful hearing our media choking on the success of this far right leader who has a fachist background and is apparently almost as right as mussolini.

      Good practice for when conservatives win our next election.

    2. The man is an Italian fool. Like many, he derides her thinking on God, Nation and Family. Good Conservative values, the values many of us have stuck by.

      I fear his glue has become more than a jot unstuck.

    1. She seems to be playing the usual double game, albeit in a more subtle way than Theresa May. She puts out a bit of conservative window dressing, in the full knowledge that it’s just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic because the fiat pound is doomed; while behind the scenes, the WEF agenda steams full speed ahead.

      1. 356573+ up ticks,

        Evening WS,
        Personal opinion she would never have reached her position of power doing the
        “right via the peoples” first & foremost.
        The hour she took over as leader she should have had naval gunboats in the English Channel.

        I lack trust in truss.

    2. This morning, what should float onto my mat but a leaflet from my energy company telling me what to do in a power cut (including notify them on-line – with no leccy to fire up the PC? Well done!). The heading was about lack of power being due to storms and high winds. Oh yeah? What about the government’s total failure to provide sufficient generating capacity while trying to force everyone to go all-electric? Pull the other one.

    1. Par 4 for me.

      Wordle 464 4/6

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

    2. Par. Too many choices.
      Wordle 464 4/6

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

    1. Popular music doesn’t get better than this. Eric Burdon, Hilton Valentine, Chas Chandler, John Steel and Alan Price. Demigods all.

      1. You may think so, George but, in my heyday, ’twas Elvis, the Beatles, The Eagles and Fleetwood Mac. Born 1944 and in the 60s, I was there, albeit in UK and Germany.

        House of the Rising Sun, Clapton and it went woosh, over my head.

        1. My taste in music is also eclectic to say the least, Tom, and it covers many genres. The Animals emerged with a fresh take on blues-based music just when I was developing my taste for music and this version of an old American folk standard, adapted by Alan Price, helped light my fire in the summer of 1964. This coincided with my first trip to Scandinavia on board the MV Dunera on a schools’ cruise. This song and “It’s All Over Now” by The Rolling Stones got more plays on the ship’s common-room jukebox than any other hit of the time.

    2. Thanks Phil
      The year Maggie and I started going out.
      Great song with Alan Price on keyboards.

  79. We will see how differing approaches to inflation work.

    Your government talking tax cuts, Trudeaus mob are into increasing the carbon tax AND making more handouts.

    1. So, Turdo et al, do still believe in the CO2 threat, despite it being analysed, as just 0.04% of the atmosphere. To help you out in any further arguments, the atmosphere, which extends from 7Km to 15Km above the earth’s surface, is comprised of 78% Nitrogen, 21% Oxygen and the remaining 1% being trace gasses such as Argon and CO2 and others – look it up.

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

      1. CO2 has long been known – and observed experimentally – to be a greenhouse gas. Being a triatomic molecule its radiative impact belies its low relative concentration. An analogy is that it only takes a paper-thin sheet of tinfoil to reflect or absorb 100% of the sunlight that has passed through 14 km of atmosphere.

        The real issue is how much impact man-made CO2 has on the total atmospheric content.

        2. Apparently the amount of CO2 has gone up 50% in relatively few years.
          I have no idea how that compares in millions of years and it may or may not be an issue, but in percentage terms that’s a lot.

          2. It might not appear to be, but for example, if you are taking a medication where 0.04 is ok, but 0.05 is lethal, then 0.06 is overkill. Tiny? Yes, but you’re still dead.

            I don’t believe that what we are being told is true, but don’t assume that apparently tiny amounts of something are harmless.

          3. That’s why they use percentages. It doesn’t help that they are cutting down trees and building on green fields to house the imported growing fecund population (who all breathe out CO2).

      2. CO2 has long been known – and observed experimentally – to be a greenhouse gas. Being a triatomic molecule its radiative impact belies its low relative concentration. An analogy is that it only takes a paper-thin sheet of tinfoil to reflect or absorb 100% of the sunlight that has passed through 14 km of atmosphere.

        The real issue is how much impact man-made CO2 has on the total atmospheric content.

    2. Pity they didn’t have a rope to flick round his legs and bring him smashing to the ground….

  82. That’s me for today. Very strong north wind; rain and bitterly cold. Thank God for the woodburner. Even Gus condescended to come into the house – so it must be inhospitable!

    In process of discovering the weirdest of family “connections”. My maternal grandfather was tenant farmer at Dartington Hall from 1904 to 1921. Carolyn’s maternal grandfather worked at Dartington for a couple of years from 1925. They prolly never met – but still…..

    Anyway – glass of pink medicine in hand – have a warm evening.

    A demain.

    1. I’m delighted to tell you, Bill, that I can trace my Father’s genealogy back to 1580 but, on Mama’s side, I can go back to AD 530. Egil, King in Uppsala, Sweden.

      Thereafter it gets blurry.

    3. We are in Devon on our hols and didn’t go out today – too cold and windy, but only a sense of rain being carried by the wind. Poppie doesn’t like holidays, she likes familiarity and routine. I am beginning to feel the same myself.

  83. Did misinformation fan the flames in Leicester?

    Recent violent disorder in Leicester caused shock and outrage and prompted dozens of arrests, but how much was it fuelled by misinformation posted online? We’ve spent the past week trying to unpick some of the false claims in and about Leicester and tried to see how much they spread both in the run-up to the disorder and the aftermath.

    One false story was referenced several times.

    “Today my 15-year-old daughter… was nearly kidnapped,” read a post uploaded on to Facebook, supposedly by a concerned father. “3 Indian boys got out and asked her if she was Muslim. She said yes and one guy tried to grab her.”

    The post was liked hundreds of times, not on Facebook but on Twitter after Majid Freeman, a community activist, shared the family’s story on 13 September. He also shared a message from the police which he said was “confirming the incident which took place yesterday [12 September]”.

    But there had been no kidnap attempt.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-63009009

    And so it goes on. Maybe it was just the inevitable outcome of foolishly importing into this country an ancient enmity that began more than a thousand years ago in a land thousands of miles away.

    The pointing-of-the-finger tactic is as old the hills. It was almost certainly the cause of the 2005 Handsworth riots where West Indians accused Pakistanis of the sexual assault of a Jamaican girl. Of course, that enmity is much more recent but there is a common factor…

    2. Let’s go back in time a bit when they all lived in their own countries there was never a problem. Let them all ‘clear’ (polite) off back and put their own houses in order. And leave us all alone.

  84. Did misinformation fan the flames in Leicester?

    Recent violent disorder in Leicester caused shock and outrage and prompted dozens of arrests, but how much was it fuelled by misinformation posted online? We’ve spent the past week trying to unpick some of the false claims in and about Leicester and tried to see how much they spread both in the run-up to the disorder and the aftermath.

    One false story was referenced several times.

    “Today my 15-year-old daughter… was nearly kidnapped,” read a post uploaded on to Facebook, supposedly by a concerned father. “3 Indian boys got out and asked her if she was Muslim. She said yes and one guy tried to grab her.”

    The post was liked hundreds of times, not on Facebook but on Twitter after Majid Freeman, a community activist, shared the family’s story on 13 September. He also shared a message from the police which he said was “confirming the incident which took place yesterday [12 September]”.

    But there had been no kidnap attempt.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-63009009

    And so it goes on. Maybe it was just the inevitable outcome of foolishly importing into this country an ancient enmity that began more than a thousand years ago in a land thousands of miles away.

    The pointing-of-the-finger tactic is as old the hills. It was almost certainly the cause of the 2005 Handsworth riots where West Indians accused Pakistanis of the sexual assault of a Jamaican girl. Of course, that enmity is much more recent but there is a common factor…

  85. Evening, all. Oscar is now only half the dog he was (he’s been to the groomers and now looks like a white rat). I keep looking at him and wondering if he really is my dog! 🙂

      1. Of course not. He’s had lots of treats (and we went to his favourite cafe so he could have flapjacks when he had been trimmed – he was so chilled he went to sleep under the sofa and didn’t want to emerge). I keep saying, “Look at you!” 🙂

        1. “he was so chilled”
          Hell’s teeth, what did you expect? You’ve had him stripped of his clothes, you cruel man…

          2. I think you’ve worked wonders with yer hound.

            Perhaps you could consider writing a book about it, I’m sure it might persuade other patient people that the rewards far exceed the efforts.

          3. Thank you for the compliment. He’s come a long way and he isn’t quite there yet; he still forgets and reverts to instinct at times. I don’t think there’s a book in it; persistence, patience and consistency are the ingredients.

    2. Poor old thing, now that the weather is changing he’ll soon grow it all back.
      We get through about three vacuum cleaner bags a year filled with black lab fur. It gets everywhere. But she’s never been up stairs.

      1. We have a permanent layer of yellow lab fur which seems to float over the wood floors downstairs! Having two of them in the house at the moment is unbelievable!

        1. Drives you nuts eh. But they are lovely dogs.
          The hair gets stuck underneath the bottom edge of the doors and looks like a draught excluder.
          I swept the three steps out side our kitchen door Saturday and the broom was full of hair.
          She’s lying on her day bed by my side now.

          6. That’s cheap! Oscar cost £50 – but that would be danger money 🙂 I only have him done twice a year (and I’m hoping in time he’ll trust me enough to let me do it myself).

      2. I wanted to book him in earlier but she’s so good at what she does she’s fully booked up. Oscar has feet that appear to be the size of dinner plates in his fur, but in actuality they are tiny.

        1. I should add that I’ve had to buy him a smaller collar; once he’s been sheared, his old one is too big and slips over his ears!

    3. Isn’t that a major achievement that he let the poodle parlour get that near him and have all his fur off?

      1. He was muzzled and I put calming spray on him. Even so, he was a challenge. It’s his third visit to the groomers (the first time she could only do half of him and he had to go back a few weeks later for round two!). She cannot be recommended too highly!

    4. Dianne’s Grand-dog, Maddie the Schnauzer has stayed here from time to time.

      She’s getting rather old now, and a bit deaf. The same is true of Maddie.

      After the last visit, I filled the Dyson with dog hairs. The navy blue corner sofabed/cushions make it rather obvious…

    6. Two dogs for the price of one! We find this with Poppie – we have this long haired dog, she looks quite plumpish as her coat becomes curly, she goes to the groomer and comes out looking like a shorn skinny lambkin.

          2. True, but he was allowed at least two answers that in the real competition would have been wrong/insufficient.

      2. The lad isn’t thick. He won his scholarships. The problem is that the policies needed to push through the changes the country needs are going to be unpopular – because *people* are thick. An individual might be erudite and pleasant, but on the whole, most people are dumb as rocks.

        Heck, I’m a 486 compared to the super computer of a wife. I can visibly see her thinking of eight or nine other things when we talk.

  87. It seems that some of the doubts were justified. The mentality appears to be that ‘being in control of immigration’ means having the same rules as before but stamped ‘HMG’ rather than ‘CE’.

    BTL there are many amused comments from Remainers…

    When will the Tories realise that mass migration is making us poor?

    Far from growing the economy, it has suppressed productivity, wages and capital investment

    NICK TIMOTHY • 25 September 2022 • 9:30pm

    ‘There will be fewer lower-skilled migrants,” promised the last Conservative manifesto, “and overall numbers will come down.” Yet three years on, Government policy is delivering the opposite. The number of work visas issued last year is up 72 per cent compared to 2019, student visas by 71 per cent, and family visas by 61 per cent.

    Through humanitarian schemes, more than 140,000 Hong Kongers and over 150,000 Ukrainians have applied to come to Britain. More than 63,000 others applied for asylum – up 77 per cent since 2019 – and hundreds of migrants cross the Channel daily.

    These great rivers of people are flowing into Britain because of conscious policy decisions. Universities are dependent on foreign students for income. The new points-based system is obscenely generous. And so the numbers are unprecedented. This huge movement of people is greater than in the post-war period, and greater even than under Tony Blair, who started the most recent immigration wave in 1997.

    The fall of Boris Johnson might have been an opportunity to restore control. But Liz Truss wants to increase the numbers even further. The Growth Plan 2022, published alongside Kwasi Kwarteng’s Budget on Friday, promised “a plan to ensure the immigration system supports growth whilst maintaining control”.

    The Prime Minister and Chancellor want to increase the number of jobs on the shortage occupation list, extend the seasonal agricultural workers scheme, increase visas for other sectors, and relax English language rules for immigrants. As ministers negotiate a trade agreement with India, they are under pressure to further liberalise visa rules for Indian workers and students, and grant a youth mobility scheme similar to that for Australians.

    As a way of driving a wedge through the Conservative electoral coalition, and risking the support of the working-class voters who gave the party its majority at the last election, it is difficult to top. While the Government is offering tax cuts and bigger bonuses to those at the top end of the labour market, it is offering more competition for those at the lower end, bringing job displacement and lower wages for many.

    The problem is not just political. For there are good social and cultural reasons to want to reduce and control immigration. Even liberal academics report that increased diversity inhibits social trust and undermines the solidarity necessary to sustain progressive taxation, welfare systems and public services. As recent communal violence between Hindus and Muslims in Leicester shows, diversity is not simply “our greatest strength” but a challenge that requires patience and stability to overcome.

    Even on its own terms the Government’s policy makes no sense. The Growth Plan argues that immigration, including even low-skilled immigration, “plays an important role in economic growth, productivity and innovation.” It asserts that “significant net inflows from migration” helped to drive “the UK’s growth in the decade after 2008”.

    Yet the Truss and Kwarteng argument is that economic growth has been too low through this period of historically high immigration. Far from contributing to “growth, productivity and innovation”, mass immigration has undermined all three. It has left the British economy addicted to a supply of low-skilled, low-paid migrant workers, with too little public and private investment in the skills and technology that improve productivity.

    Britain is for example the only G7 economy with a robot density – the ratio of robots per employees – lower than the world average. We have a far lower degree of manufacturing automation than countries like Spain and Italy. In farming, a government automation report found “critical elements of the industry have a high dependency on seasonal migrant labour to harvest crops.”

    Technology is supposed to increase economic output per hour worked, but our addiction to low-skilled migrant labour means we are behind other countries, and in some sectors we are going backwards. In the 15 years to 2018, for example, the number of automated car washes in Britain fell by half, while manual car washes – performed by poor migrant workers increased by 80 per cent.

    With a steady supply of cheap foreign workers, there is little incentive to get our own people skilled and reskilled. The Treasury limits the number of medics we train, causing a deliberate undersupply and leading to the import of foreign doctors from poor countries. According to one study, in a single year England recorded 745,000 undergraduate and postgraduate degrees, while only 4,900 learners in colleges achieved post-secondary technical qualifications. There were 81 undergraduates for every person getting a technical qualification.

    There are other costs too. English secondary schools need to find an extra 213,000 places by 2026 compared to a 2020 baseline. Around half of all rough sleepers are migrants from Europe. And the supply-side problems the Growth Plan identifies are made worse by mass immigration. It drives around half of all new housing demand, and pushes house prices up. It creates pressure with social housing, contributing to shortages, and with private rental accommodation, contributing to increases in rents.

    So why is the Government so keen to increase immigration even further? In part, because libertarians see borders as impediments to free market economics, and countries not as communities but platforms upon which anybody should be free to work and trade.

    But there is another reason too. The Treasury has always loved immigration. It reduces debt as a percentage of GDP without the hard yards of fiscal consolidation, reform and improvements in productivity. Set a growth target, it can simply grow the economy by growing the population through immigration. Never mind that it does nothing for GDP per capita, and causes no end of longer term social, cultural and economic problems.

    Truss and Kwarteng insist they are overturning Treasury orthodoxy. But in this case, they are turbocharging it. Mass immigration has already made our economic problems worse: we cannot expect a cause of our illness to be its cure.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/09/25/when-will-tories-realise-mass-migration-making-us-poor/

    1. Think and say what you will, the top and bottom of the equation is that we are accepting far too many young, illiterate, gobshites into the UK and paying them, from the tax-payer’s dole, too much money, as benefits.

      Now, is the time, as it has been for many moons, to call a halt to this largesse. Identify to them that, unless they are prepared to get work, pay tax and NI, the only place open for them is an off-shore, deportation camp (with minimum facilities and no benefits) and, should they fail to meet the strict requirements, there is only one way – and that is OUT.

    3. Immigration in an of itself is an economic argument. Therefore it must have limits and restrictions. Specifically no welfare. No healthcare and no pension. Have a different tax code if necessary but the fundamentals remain that the number coming in must be strictly limited and they must have proof of means.

    4. Nick Timothy – that’s an awful lot of verbiage required to explain why you’re such a political twat!

    5. Many of our politicos read PPE – Philosophy, Politics and Economics – this includes one Liz Truss.

      PPE is a highly flexible degree which allows you to shape your own path through it: you may choose to specialise in two branches at the end of the first …

      When one looks at the state of the UK, and its direction of travel economically… Draw your own conclusion?

  88. From https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/mortgage-halifax-skipton-market-fixedrate-b1028242.html
    “Banks and building societies are withdrawing some of their mortgages from sale after the Government’s mini-budget on Friday sparked massive market turmoil. Three lenders have so far withdrawn some of their products amid the uncertainty, according to reports. Virgin Money said: “Given market conditions we have temporarily withdrawn Virgin Money mortgage products for new business customers. “Existing applications already submitted will be processed as normal and we’ll continue to offer our product transfer range for existing customers. “We expect to launch a new product range later this week.”
    Looks like we sold Mother’s house just in time.

      1. The day we were able to walk into the bank and ask how much we have in our accounts and how much is left on our mortgage? was perfect.
        I had been with Midland Bank since I was 17, woke up one morning and found my account was now with the ‘Hong-Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation’, over a few years, it became obvious that they were less than satisfactory.
        The managers face when we said “clear our mortgage and close our account” made the day one to remember.

          1. HSBC Parliament St York:
            “I need to make a payment into our account and can’t get your machine to work, please help”.
            The answer from one of the floor staff was ” can’t you read the instructions on the screen?” My wife walked out and we later closed the account, paid off the mortgage and never set foot in the place again.

          2. I went into HSBC last week and there were no tellers. I asked how i could withdraw from a savings account with no ATM card. He said i would have to travel to the next town. I went home and transferred everything to TSB leaving 8 pence in the account, I then withdrew everything from TSB in cash.

      2. We paid ours off earlier in error. When interest rates were bouncing around at some point we had omitted to change the standing order, such was the busy-ness of our lives with two teenage sons and my demented mother, we simply forgot. We found we had paid it off five years earlier than we needed to have done.

      3. I cashed in an endwoment which fell short of the mortgage value, added about £14,000 myself and still saved about £7,000 on the overall deal.

        1. My last endowment matured after the mortgage was finished, so some of it went to buy the car I still drive…….. a 2007 Peugeot diesel.

      4. I cashed in an endwoment which fell short of the mortgage value, added about £14,000 myself and still saved about £7,000 on the overall deal.

  89. The Tax System Explained in Beer

    Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer, and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes (by taxpayer decile), it would go something like this:

    The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
    The fifth would pay $1.
    The sixth would pay $3.
    The seventh would pay $7.
    The eighth would pay $12.
    The ninth would pay $18.
    The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.

    So, that’s what they decided to do.

    The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve ball. “Since you’re all such good customers,” he said, “I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20.” Drinks for the ten men would now cost just $80.

    The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes. So the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six? How could they divide up the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his fair share?

    The bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by a higher percentage the poorer he was, to follow the principle of the tax system they had been using, and he proceeded to suggest the new lower amounts each should now pay.

    And so the fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (a 100% saving).
    The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (a 33% saving).
    The seventh now paid $5 instead of $7 (a 29% saving).
    The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (a 25% saving).
    The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (a 22% saving).
    The tenth now paid $50 instead of $59 (a 15% saving).

    The first four continued to drink for free, and the latter six were all better off than before. But, once outside the bar, the men began to compare their savings.

    “I only got a dollar out of the $20 saving,” declared the fifth man. He pointed to the tenth man, “But he got $9!”

    “Yeah, that’s right,” exclaimed the sixth man. “I only saved a dollar, too. It’s unfair that he saved nine times more than me!”

    “That’s true!” shouted the seventh man. “Why should he get $9 back, when I got only $2? The wealthy get all the breaks!”

    “Wait a minute,” yelled the first four men in unison, “we didn’t get anything at all. This new tax system exploits the poor!”

    The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

    The next day, the tenth man didn’t show up, so the other nine sat down and had their beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important: They didn’t have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

    And that is how our tax system works. The people who already pay the highest taxes will naturally get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas, where the atmosphere is friendlier.

    2. This is something Lefties don’t understand. The BBC tried to sail the massive rebate the rich got, but ignore that they also pay vastly more in tax.

      It was especially bitter and gallinng as many BBC ‘celebrities’ use tax vehicles to hide their tax off shore. Hell, if you don’t the state gets more than you. Why shouldn’t you do everything you can to avoid tax?

      But, the BBC wanted to push a narrative. Not the facts, narrative. It suited their big state, Left wing, high tax – but not by them – attitude.

  90. Brrrh, cold autumn winds seem to have come in strongly today. My heating has clicked in twice today. I’m going to put all my short sleeved shirts away for at least 8 months and out come my lined trousers for outdoor ventures (my knees do not like to get cold). Another thing I do is to wear baggy fleeces indoors – totally out of fashion outdoors nowadays, but the warm air layer inside makes them more effective than sweaters alone for keeping warm and comfortable.

    1. Ha, I have a friend who is going to be busy knitting me an Aran sweater with wool I bougt for her to get busy. She’s very good at. this.

    2. I’ve looked at getting some tea light lanterns to dot about the place just to take the edge off without turning the heating on properly.

  93. Not done a lot today, a bit of shopping in Belper and made dinner, a beef stew that was rather nice.
    Been listening to Bruckner’s 3rd and am now off to bed.

    Goodnight all.

  96. Wordle 464 4/6

    ⬜🟩🟩🟩⬜
    ⬜🟩🟩🟩⬜
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    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    Daily Quordle 245
    5️⃣6️⃣
    8️⃣7️⃣
    quordle.com
    ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨 ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨
    ⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜ 🟩⬜⬜⬜⬜
    ⬜⬜🟩⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
    ⬜⬜🟨🟨⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟨⬜⬜⬜🟨
    ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

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

    1. Looks familiar.
      Wordle 464 4/6

      ⬜🟩🟩🟩⬜
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    1. So you’re saying (© Cathy Newman), Conners, that it’s bath night for Oscar and Kadi? Lol.

  98. Good night, everyone. I’m afraid I can’t recommend DON’T WORRY DARLING, the film I watched today at my local cinema. The ending was too abrupt and incomprehensible. Did the heroine survive or not? I wouldn’t recommend it. Hopefully, next week’s film MRS HARRIS (a comedy) will be more acceptable.

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