Monday 3 October: Tories must get behind their leader if they don’t want to let Labour in

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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648 thoughts on “Monday 3 October: Tories must get behind their leader if they don’t want to let Labour in”

  3. Tories must get behind their leader if they don’t want to let Labour in

    Looks like the rot is too well set in, far too many dodgy senior Conservative MP’s appear to think that their globalist interests will be much better served by a Labour government than one led by Truss.

    1. It seems that the whole of Westminster needs a clean out. Most of them are only in it for whatever they can gain. Nothing to with making life easier for the people.
      And it’s been long known that the civil service run the country.

      1. SSadly true, yes. The civil service barely runs itself, though. It’s every action is predicated on how it profits it, not the public.

        1. Problem is there is no one prepared to take on the much needed task.
          I see Gove is poking his nose in.
          WTF has he ever achieved ?
          I would love know how much these scumbags each take home in ‘expenses’.

    2. They needed a clean out at the time of the 2019 election but, as with everything else he has touched, Boris Johnson bungled and bodged it and kept far too many remainers in parliament.

    1. Morning Oggy. None of these people were even in the at risk group! They were far too young to need the vaccine!

      1. 365813+ up ticks,

        Morning AS,
        Some will view it as collateral damage as long as they and theirs are not touched by the odious repercussions.

      2. As Lefties have said, it was for the greater good.

        Yes, they actively argue that people dying from a vaccine is good for the country.

        However – is there evidence that they did die from the vaccine and only from it?

    2. Terrible isn’t it.
      I had some elderly friends who also suddenly died. But there was no autopsy.
      I’m not having any more jabs.
      We had covid in the second week of August. It was no worse than a common cold.

      1. The unjabbed – as we are – have had Covid far more mildly than those pumped full of damaging gene therapy.

        1. My older sister and BiL have had every jab available. And have worn masks, as or more often than probably required. They caught covid in February this year. Out of action for at least two weeks.

          1. Morning Bob. Is this fencing business some sort of Nottler displacement activity or perhaps a Freudian attempt to keep out the world?

  7. ‘Morning, Peeps.  A sensible 7°C here, rising (allegedly) to a whopping 17° later.

    A remarkable obituary for a superb and dedicated aviator:

    Group Captain Thomas Dobie, bomber pilot who became an expert in aviation medicine and a global authority on motion sickness – obituary

    He served in Asia and hunted E-boats in the English Channel and was later able to help dozens of pilots to overcome intractable airsickness

    ByTelegraph Obituaries2 October 2022 • 2:20pm

    Group Captain Thomas Dobie, who has died aged 99, served as a wartime bomber pilot before joining the RAF’s medical branch; he specialised in aviation medicine, becoming a leading authority on the study and treatment of motion sickness.

    After training as a pilot in Canada, Dobie joined 415 Squadron RCAF (Royal Canadian Air Force) to fly Wellingtons in Coastal Command. He flew anti-shipping operations and strike support missions in the area of Dieppe to Heligoland. During the period of the D-Day landings, he co-operated with naval forces hunting for German E-boats operating in the English Channel.

    In August 1944, he left for India to join 436 Squadron RCAF, flying the Dakota on re-supply missions in support of the Fourteenth Army as it advanced from Imphal to Akyab and Ramree in Burma. After V-J Day he joined 10 Squadron at Poona flying support transport routes in India. His accident-free flying of over 500 hours resulted in a commendation. In April 1946 he left the RAF to resume his medical studies.

    Thomas Gow Dobie was born in Dunfermline, Fife, on June 23 1923 and educated at the town’s High School before joining Leeds University Medical School, where he joined the University Air Squadron. He enlisted in the RAF Volunteer Reserve in April 1942, and after completing his initial training he left for Canada.

    In the summer of 1946, he returned to Leeds to continue his medical studies, graduating in 1950. During this period, he served with 609 (West Riding) Squadron of the Auxiliary Air Force flying the Mosquito and later the Spitfire and Meteor jet, from RAF Yeadon (now Leeds International Airport).

    In April 1951, Dobie re-joined the RAF to serve in the Medical Branch. Throughout the history of flight there had been a need to understand the many factors affecting human behaviour in flight and their impact on aircrew efficiency and on safety. This led to the creation of the Institute of Aviation Medicine, where research into the effects of aviation environments upon aircrew, and the development of procedures and equipment to protect them against these issues, was conducted.

    In 1951, Dobie joined a number of medical officers who were experienced pilots at the Institute’s physiology department at Farnborough, where they became Flying Personnel Medical Officers. With the greater performance of modern aircraft, their work concentrated on the effects of altitude on aircrew, the possibility of decompression at high altitude and the need to develop and test appropriate breathing apparatus and flying clothing. Protection was also needed for the effects of high-G manoeuvres.

    In March 1953, Dobie left for Germany, where he served as aviation medicine adviser at the HQ of the Second Tactical Air Force. He was responsible for aeromedical and survival training, aeromedical surveillance and accident investigation.

    He organised the building of an Aviation Medical Training Centre at RAF Wildenrath that held courses in aviation medicine for aircrew. The centre was also equipped with a separate mobile decompression chamber for travelling to all airfields in the Command. He also provided teaching on winter survival courses in Germany and Austria.

    Four years later he returned to the UK to fill a similar appointment at the HQ of Flying Training Command. He was Adviser in Aviation Medicine, including various aspects of physical and psychological selection of potential aircrew trainees, investigation and management of human engineering problems, both in the air and on the ground and accident investigation.

    He became very aware of the extent of airsickness in trainee aircrew and the need to reduce the loss of valuable aircrew who suffered from this debilitating condition. He devised a treatment which exposed the subject to repeated provocative stimuli, as similar as possible to those experienced in flight but graded in duration and intensity so that adverse symptoms were kept to a minimum.

    He used a turntable on which the subject to be tilted to induce symptoms of motion-sickness. Over a period of days, the severity of the stimuli was increased. In successful cases, about two to three weeks were necessary before a satisfactory degree of “acclimatisation” was achieved, and the subject then went on to a course of rehabilitation flying. During his time, Dobie returned 38 pilots, all of whom were regarded as suffering from intractable airsickness, to full unrestricted flying.

    During this period, he was awarded the Richard Fox Linton Memorial Prize for his contribution to the investigation of flying accidents involving injury, and with aircrew emergency procedures.

    In 1962 he became the commanding officer of the RAF Aviation Medical Training Centre, responsible for training aircrew in high-altitude emergency techniques, including exposure to pressure-breathing in a decompression chamber.

    He was responsible for relocating the unit to a new modern facility at RAF North Luffenham in Rutland, which involved the revision of training procedures. For his work he was appointed OBE.

    He later served in the MoD, responsible for all aspects of aviation medicine. In a later appointment there he had the added responsibility for all RAF aeromedical technical matters, which required him to be the RAF representative on numerous Nato and international committees.

    After commanding the RAF hospital at Cosford, he was placed on the retired list at his own request in September 1972. For the next six years he was a senior lecturer at Leeds University and a member of the board of the Faculty of Medicine.

    In 1974, Leeds University awarded him a doctorate of medicine for his ongoing research into motion sickness and in 1992 he received a PhD for his work investigating the indirect measurement of cardiac output in man. The University honoured him again in 2005 when he was awarded a doctorate of science.

    For six years from July 1978 he was the Director of Medical Services for Saudi Arabian Airlines, then in 1984 he went to New Orleans as a visiting scientist at the US Naval Biodynamics Laboratory.

    In September 1998, he was appointed Professor and Director of the National Biodynamics Laboratory at the Nasa base in Louisiana. He continued his motion-sickness research there using a horizontal and vertical acceleration track, along with a six-degrees-of-freedom ship motion simulator.

    Years later, following extensive damage to the laboratory by Hurricane Katrina, he moved his research facility to the University of New Orleans. He then started teaching Human Factors Engineering in the Department of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering while continuing with his motion-sickness research.

    Throughout his career, Dobie wrote extensively and was recognised as one of the world’s leading authorities on motion sickness.

    Thomas Dobie is survived by two daughters from his first marriage, to Josephine Whalley. He is survived by his second wife Adrienne and their two sons.

    Group Captain Thomas Dobie, born June 23 1923, died August 25 2022 https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/763a52dba5ccef74f2edff6e9f62d8688187fe100ba294d258b0d8f7e9580580.jpg

    Lo Co 2 HRS AGO

    Such remarkable lives were lived by such remarkable people in this era. Each one could be its own mini series. So groundbreaking, interesting, brave, selfless and smart. Group Captain Thomas Dobie RIP. We owe you and your generation so much.

    * * *

    I couldn’t have put it better myself.

  8. Helping Ukraine resist Russian aggression must be the West’s top priority. 3 October 2022.

    Since the West has let down Ukraine before by failing to uphold the Budapest treaty guarantees for giving up its nuclear weapons, he has a strong moral case to seek the protection of Nato. But equally, the Nato powers have to consider the implications of offering Ukraine membership.

    Applications have to be agreed by all members and some, like Hungary, will veto Ukraine’s. Other capitals fear that the prospect of Ukraine joining Nato will make matters worse by risking a wider conflict, possibly involving nuclear weapons.

    All this conveniently forgets that one of the founding principles of NATO is that no one can join who is presently involved in a conflict. This is not to say that I don’t think it will not happen. The West is now so morally corrupted that they will find a form of words or indeed ignore the rule altogether if it suits their purpose. War is the aim here and anything goes!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2022/10/03/helping-ukraine-resist-russian-aggression-must-wests-top-priority/

  9. BBC reporting that the decision to remove the 5% on the 45% tax on higher tax payers will be withdrawn. Chancellor to announce this shortly.
    Steve Baker apologising for his attitude to the EU. BBC News.

    1. Steve Baker says “sorry” to Ireland*. Why? Varadkar and his sidekick Coveney did their vicious best as catspaws of the EU to wreck Brexit completely. The Irish did their damnedest to thwart the democratic will of the British people.
      There is much emphasis put on the Protocol to not disrupt the Good Friday Agreement. Yet my reading of the Agreement must be flawed. I can find no reference in it as to how the Border is managed, or to Customs procedures*.
      We now have a Customs border in the UK that mimics the Customs borders with the EU countries. This Customs borders between us and France and Holland for example, has allowed the EU to delay UK exports until they are unfit for sale. Delays run into weeks. Small parcels and letters are needlessly held up. Parcels from the EU can take weeks to travel a few hundred miles to the UK, held up in the outgoing EU Customs.
      Baker should be setting about them, not apologising. He should be wearing tackety boots and giving them a kicking. He should walk into talks on the Protocol with the only word on his lips being, “Good Morning. The Protocol is ended, We resile. It is finished as of lunch time today. The Border is open as it was before. No checks, no Customs. That’s it! Good Day to you.”

      * I have never seen this explained in detail at any point. It is flim-flam?

      *https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-63111685

      1. Steve Baker is a total worm. I am as angry with the little twerp as I am disappointed in him.

        To think how some of us thought he might be a good leader of the Conservative government reminds one that nobody in politics is reliable or trustworthy.

  11. SIR – There is little doubt that, had Prime Minister Liz Truss and Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng properly thought through their strategy to bring growth back to the economy (“We should have laid the ground better for mini-Budget”, report, October 2), and justified it with properly considered consultation, they might not now be facing opposition reminiscent of the kind suffered by Leavers during the referendum campaign.

    The BBC and ITV seem to have shed any pretence of impartiality and appear to be engaged in what can only be called naked anti-government propaganda (speculation and criticism with no mitigating reasoning), which has doubtless influenced recent polls and encouraged the Labour Party’s delusions of power.

    The Bank of England must share some of the blame for the volatile market reaction, but in comparison it seems to have got off lightly.

    David Taylor
    Lymington, Hampshire

    Unlike the BBC, ITV and other ‘news’ broadcasters have no duty to be impartial, Mr Taylor, even though they like to tell us that they are. It’s rather like those countries with the word ‘Democratic’ in their title are anything but. The day of reckoning for the Biased Broadcasting Corporation cannot be far off.

  12. SIR – Surely the Government should challenge energy companies over their standing charges on gas and electricity. After the price rise on October 1, my standing charge is £250 a year. If I didn’t use one KWh of energy I would still have this bill, just to have the privilege of being connected.

    Gary Easton
    Ramsgate, Kent

    The only explanation that I have seen for this rip-off is that the huge increase in standing charges is to fund all the lost credit balances from those suppliers who went belly up. Our energy market is well and truly broken, and when this shambles finally settles down it’s another crazy system that needs a massive overhaul.

    1. Pity the MSM dont go after these energy companies about the SC increases with the same vigour they are addressing the 45p tax rate. Yes, I heard the increase was to cover the billions of consumer credits lost.

      1. Why? Electricity businesses are privately owned enterprises. (Well not EDF, obviously). We should not be allowing themselves to bail themselves out by extorting money from customers. Moreover, it is a de facto monopoly operated by a cartel. Where is the Monopolies Commission?
        Nationalise them without compensation.

        1. The reality at the time was that the surviving energy companies would not have taken the new customers as bills were price capped and they would have to pay the ballooning market rate for their energy. There must have been a deal with the gov to claw back the losses.

          1. Good Point. Except how did we get into this mess? We have had governments that regulated the price of chocolate bars with Resale Price Maintenance.
            The price of chocolate bars, their sale and consumption is of little importance. The ongoing availability of cheap energy is important to the economy, to businesses, to manufacturers, to farmers, to hospitals, to homes and families. I’d hang the whole bunch of them, any MP who has been an MP for more the six years.
            (Our MP maybe seen on televised Parliament sitting playing on his phone. When he turns up.)

        2. Then they die under the weight of the State’s uselessness in running whelk stalls.

          1. Well, they were sold off cheap. The new owners have managed, with government assistance, to botch our energy security and plunge us into misery and poverty. It was not so much of a mess when government controlled. Utilities should be run for society and not for private profit. Water companies are not building new reservoirs or repairing leaking pipes although the population increases every year.

    2. The standing charge is applied by government to pay for subsidy and grid up grades forced by unreliables. They need standby generators, those need diesel, the unreliable production requires different capacitors – the whole works. If the state hadn’t forced the unreliables on us the standing charge could have – and should – go away.

  13. SIR – David Davis (Comment, October 2) is quite right: the only way to save the NHS is an insurance-based system. No political party dares to suggest this, as it is political suicide. It has to be tackled by a cross-party panel, the numbers corresponding to the number of MPs each party has.

    Ann Roberts
    Market Harborough, Leicestershire

    Nice idea, Ms Roberts, but can you imagine the resulting Olympic-standard squabbling?

    1. Is this David Davis the Member of Parliament for Haltemprice and Howden? He may be correct about the NHS but he ought to cast his net wider, much wider and advocate that the Country needs saving from politicians. Full stop!

    2. Could be brought in slowly. Start off with one hospital. Keep the payment source the same, keep the amounts the same, just pay the hospital after it does the work. Yes, the department of health would deliberately ruin it to ensure their own jobs but that’s the only way it has to work. Force hospitals to be more efficient. If they get nothing until they operate, then finding out your pay is related to your work might shock them into achieving.

    3. We came to that conclusion when we moved to France in 1989 and saw how very much better the French system is than the NHS.

      Unfortunately the French system, like the NHS, has declined drastically in the last thirty years.

  14. 365813+ up ticks,

    Monday 3 October: Tories must get behind their leader if they don’t want to let Labour in

    As supple as a slap across the chops with a wet haddock, a reminder to the misguided
    minions, the course to take to assure them that RESET will continue to forge ahead.

    Keep in mind we would never have got to where we are today as a nation without the
    diligent continuing input of the lab/lib/con
    coalition / members / voters.

    1. Spartie does the same with a particular armchair; luckily it’s only cushions he hoofs onto the floor.
      But he always looks for a reaction once he’s done it.

  17. I’ll tighten immigration rules to end ‘out of control’ Channel crossings. 3 October 2022.

    Suella Braverman is planning tougher action on migrants who claim they are modern slavery victims after admitting that Channel crossings are “out of control”.

    On Tuesday, the Home Secretary will foreshadow plans to make it harder for migrants to claim they are victims of trafficking by requiring them to provide hard evidence to support their initial case and to bar late or last-minute applications to avoid being deported.

    Wow! I’m sure that will reduce them to state of gibbering terror!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/10/02/suella-braverman-tighten-immigration-rules-end-control-channel/

    1. The only difficulty with that is that these illegal immigrants will not care a jot. Even if they know about any new regulations, They will ignore them in just the same way they ignore existing laws.
      There will still be lawyers queuing up to prevent deportations. (How about we deny them all legal aid?)

      1. How about the UK leaves the ECHR, and repeals the Human Rights Act?

        That ‘ll take the wind out of their legal sails.

    1. Morning Rik. She’s finished! She might as well quit and Kwarteng too. The party has rejected them!

      1. No, the party is listening to immature, ignorant and stupid people who don’t know the first thing about economics but fixated on ‘da wich’ getting a tax cut rather than the general cuts in all taxes.

      3. I still blame Farage for withdrawing Brexit Party candidates from contesting seats held by remainer Conservatives in 2019 without getting any quid pro quo from Johnson.

        As a result the Conservative Party is is still full of treacherous remainers and the Machiavellian Gove and Johnson saw that they had to undermine Frost at the very last moment as he was holding firm on both Northern Ireland and Fishing which is why they both arrived in Brussels to force Frost to give way at the last moment.

        The Conservative Party traitors are still in place and The Party needs to be purged from top to bottom but it will never happen.

        To borrow from the final words of Sellar and Yeatman in ‘1066 and All That’ : British History has come to a .

        [FULL STOP}

    3. Yes. They should have held course and counter attacked with the number of BBC employees, guardian readers and guardian reporters who avoid tax, as well as the figures of what the tax really raises in real terms and the projected revenue from scrapping.

      The arrogance and ego of the Left is offensive.

  21. Just like people were led by the nose to have their covid jabs we are being led again by the nose by MSM into slavery to the state. Truss is trying to do what has to be done and look at the reaction by the media. Does not look good at all.

    1. A tactical retreat.
      It’s often forgotten that Maggie used to do the same.
      Give the back stabbers a chance to really expose themselves as worms.
      That said, I’m impressed that Truss admitted they hadn’t handled the matter as well as they might have done.

    2. The Left wing media are frantic to keep the state big, expensive and wasteful. How else will they ensure the status quo? The BBC are simply mendacious. Most of them use PSCs to avoid tax and spun a complete pile of excrement to keep taxes high, regardless of how destructive that is.

  22. Is the US pushing Western civilisation off a cliff? 3 October 2022.

    IMAGINE that today you are a German waking up to the reality of destroyed Nord Stream pipelines. They will take years to rebuild. It is very likely that the US sabotaged them. The US will supply you gas at 400-500 per cent more cost, plus the diesel pollution required to power ships halfway across the world. The US has wanted this business for years even though it makes little sense.

    This winter, even if peace is brokered with Putin, there is only a slim chance of heating, businesses will close, lights will go out, food will get difficult to find. There is no firewood available in Germany, and they are talking of cutting down forests to provide it. Worse, you have found out that the US is no friend. It has just sacrificed you on the altar of its mad attack on Putin via the proxy war in Ukraine. Your industries will shut down and might go bankrupt, your banks are in danger, your stock market will be rattled, and the rest of Europe will go into crisis too.

    The crisis will be the destruction of the EU in all likelihood, as Germany is the engine of the EU. Nato, aka the US, has just moved its tactical battle HQ to Germany from Kiev. Clearly it expects Putin to take over the rest of Ukraine. Putin will be very provoked by Nord Stream alone. Now add that the crook Zelensky, put in place as a US puppet by Barack Obama and Victoria Nuland, has submitted a fast-track application to join Nato, one of Russia’s biggest red lines. If Nato says yes that is a very big escalation. (Yesterday Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said that ‘any decision on membership has to be taken by consensus: all 30 allies have to agree to make such a decision’.) US generals in the Pentagon are calling for permanent war in Ukraine. The intention is to break Russia and especially Putin. At which point a US puppet will be put in charge of Russia and the country will be raped by US corporations. To the Pentagon and the military-industrial complex this is an ultimate goal, the destruction of Russia.

    As Europe freezes this winter and the economies crash, the misery caused by the US in a callous move will be felt for decades. The US is not a friend. Into the vacuum what will come next? We know too that Biden is systematically destroying the US economy, and that will be felt the world over. None of this would be happening under Trump; he has even offered to broker a peace deal in Ukraine, though hell would freeze over before the Democrats would let that happen. Is the Western world falling off a cliff edge this morning?

    Sombre stuff! The author a Mr John L Sueur is, we are assured, a private individual. One notes some small errors but on the whole he’s not far amiss for someone who I assume gleans his information from the MSM.

    https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/is-the-us-pushing-western-civilisation-off-a-cliff/

    2. Many pointers are showing that the Democrats (Uni-party) are very likely to lose the House and the Senate in November. If that happens then Biden will become a literal lame-duck President with impeachment on several counts hanging over his head. A little over a month to go before the mid-term elections: what can we expect in escalation – the Nord Stream venture is likely one event – from the rogue administration in the White House aided and abetted by factions in the Pentagon?

        1. Illegal immigration for starters. Add what you take a fancy to: election fraud, inoculation mandates…

    3. The US rebuilt Germany free of charge after WWII.
      Japan had the sense to keep out of bloated ‘trading blocs’.
      Is this payback time?

      1. I remember seeing some comparison photographs of Japan, mentioning they lost the war and most of their infrastructure was flattened. But now looking and standing very proud indeed.
        And some photographs of parts of the US, steel factories and once thriving car industry all derelict along side scruffy looking homes and other suburbs.

  23. Modern Life……

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6afa2e9ace53fb93f72506bd4fd16cec655799782dd316af78b6a8b3ce6cb113.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b77bc68614e9eaea6930bf49bde6d6479388c2a80db61c833c8db90f95dbec72.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9ed2a463e3a56f0b027ee610348889a467d0fedb648673a114f7353b63e6d338.jpg

    https://media.greatawakening.win/post/CLHjKBXmrkcU.jpeg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/764f0515b4cc9fd540d7415666bcc0c2a0bceb00bd33b635d5c117cba8973e06.jpg

  26. Good Morning. I”m not really awake yet. I’ve been typing away on yesterday’s page. Today’s word is “dull”, the weather, and myself.

  28. Geoffrey, a middle-aged British tourist on his first visit to California finds the red light district and enters a large brothel. The madam asks him to be seated and sends over a young lady to entertain him.
    They sit and talk, frolic a little, giggle a bit, drink a bit, and she sits on his lap. He whispers in her ear and she gasps and runs away! Seeing this, the madam sends over a more experienced lady to entertain the gentleman.
    They sit and talk, frolic a little, giggle a bit, drink a bit, and she sits on his lap. He whispers in her ear, and she too screams, “No!” and walks quickly away.
    The madam is surprised that this ordinary looking man has asked for something so outrageous that her two girls will have nothing to do with him. She decides that only her most experienced lady, Lola, will do. Lola has never said no, and it’s not likely anything would surprise her. So the madam sends her over to Geoffrey’s. They sit and talk, frolic a little, giggle a bit, drink a bit, and she sits on his lap. He whispers in her ear and she screams, “NO WAY, BUDDY!” and smacks him as hard as she can and leaves.
    Madam is by now absolutely intrigued, having seen nothing like this in all her years of operating a brothel. She hasn’t done the bedroom work herself for a long time, but she’s sure she has said yes to everything a man could possibly ask for. She just has to find out what this man wants that has made her girls so angry. Besides she sees a chance to teach her employees a lesson.
    So she goes over to Geoffrey and says that she’s the best in the house and is available. She sits and talks with him. They frolic, giggle, drink and then she sits in his lap.
    He leans forwards and whispers in her ear, “Can I pay in Pounds?”

  29. Morning all 🙂
    Bright start but…… now as dull as the news but not quite as dull as the Westminster scene.
    Pathetic and not even worth half of the money we pay for them. Let alone what they steal in expenses. No wonder they got rid of Elizabeth Filkin.

  30. Morning all.

    Well, so we have a Uturn on abolishing the 45p tax rate. All that turmoil and she changes her mind. What hope for any other “policy” she might come up with now.

    1. I expect she’ll agree to the “King” speechifying at the Climate Change farrago….

        1. I know. My point was that the silly cow will do a U-turn and agree to the idiot sounding off….

          1. I don’t think our King will break his promise to continue with his political activities after his initial speech to his citizens. If he does break his promise he will be in trouble.

          3. He’ll meddle (he can’t help himself). but try to justify it by claiming it’s vitally important to “save the planet”.

    2. What hope for any other “policy” she might come up with now.

      None at all VW! She’s going to become aTrans-Johnson.

  31. 365813+ up ticks,

    Rhetorical carrot in place , rhetorical carrot gone,. early doors deflection by the political overseers.

    ALL damping down on reports regarding Dover / Dungeness and the society changing
    morally illegal invasion campaign, there lies
    the main issue threatening these Isles.

    Why would / are indigenous lab/lib/con coalition current member / voters trying to destroy, with some success this Country ?

    Warnings of ‘Orwellian’ Great Reset –
    The Great Reset Initiative is an economic recovery plan drawn up by the World Economic Forum

    1. 365813+ up ticks,

      O2O,
      Won’t be the indigenous peoples worry shortly Og,
      ALL be in the hands of the imams.

      1. As many noticed recently they were all too busy to join in with long established British society in say farewell to our wonderful Queen. And yesterday none were outstanding in the marathon race. Plenty of people wearing strange outfits running for various charities etc. But not a burka or anything else recognisable from the religion of peace.
        Perhaps they are shy and need a little encouragement.

        1. Morning RE

          Moh and I noticed that considering the competing Africans who were amazing runners and winners , whitey were the ones supporting the Marathon on the sidelines .

          As you say , even during the farewell to our wonderful Queen, there was a noticeable absence of you know whats .

          Aren’t they a joyless unsmiling contribution to the UK?

          1. Same old story Maggie.
            Probably too lazy and only join in when it suits their purpose and to further their habitual moaning.

          2. Too busy taking advantage of the enormous police presence at the funeral to commit crime

        2. 365813+ up ticks,

          Morning RE,
          Perhaps for the best, they would demand a “head” start.

  32. I often wonder what goes through the minds of Tories arguing against tax cuts. Are they just riding the coat tails of office, or have they given the slightest thought to reality? Are they just following the moronic zeitgeist of Left wingers demanding that other people pay more tax, utterly ignorant that those high taxes then instantly fall on them?

    1. I’d say spot on.
      My thoughts are….I doubt if any member of Parliament actually knows anymore than the average journolist about the economy. They will have their assistant’s check every thing via the elevant department in the civil service. As in Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister. It was ever thus.

    2. I don’t think they object to tax cuts, but do not want them financed by yet more borrowing at a time when lenders are demanding that their returns at least keep up with inflation.

      Truss’s camp believes that growth, rather than borrowing, will provide the money required. Those opposed to Truss believe that any more borrowing will swallow up in interest demands from lenders any gains made from growth, and that productivity will be cut back simply to pay the bills, resulting not in growth but in further recession.

      1. Yet doesn’t that get us into the same spiral we’re in? If we don’t cut taxes, we cannot grow. If we don’t grow, we can’t pay the bills.

        However yes, you’re entirely right that state spending needs to be cut, and cut radically.

      2. They object to tax cuts for the rich. No matter that it’s the rich who pay far more in tax already.

      1. From Wikipedia:

        In 2003, Izzard received an honorary Doctorate of Letters from the University of East Anglia, Norwich, for her work promoting “modern languages and tolerance of other cultures and lifestyles”, and for having “transcended national barriers” with humour.

        Does Carolyn, your MR, have any views on this, Bill?

          3. One must feel sorry for homosexuals: before the arrival of AIDS they never had to bother with those horrible latex rubber sheaths.

          4. I must protest, Richard. A number of NoTTLers are gay and must find this sort of comment really offensive.

          6. Excluding homosexuals from jokes about homosexuals is discriminatory. We make jokes about heterosexual sex so why should it be anything other than discriminatory to treat homosexuals differently?

          7. I cannot see why this should be considered particularly offensive as it is entirely true – why would anyone, regardless of their sexuality want to use a rubber sheath unless there was a good reason to do so? Jokes about ‘johnnies’, French letters or what have yous have probably existed for as long as the objects themselves. Many people argue that not having to use condoms used to be one of the great advantages of being homosexual.

            I remember in Tom Sharpe’s Porterhouse Blue it was mentioned that a certain Cambridge college renowned for how many homosexuals were in it had installed a Durex machine. This book was written before the AIDS epidemic started and so the implied joke was why should a such a college require a contraceptive machine.

          8. You are, of course, entitled to your view. I just don’t agree with the thrust of your original comment.

            There are occasionally comments on this forum about homosexual people which go beyond the humorous or satirical. When I see one, I try to put myself in the position of a gay man reading it and ask myself whether I would have larfed. Not often.

          9. I cannot see why this should be considered particularly offensive as it is entirely true – why would anyone, regardless of their sexuality want to use a rubber sheath unless there was a good reason to do so? Jokes about ‘johnnies’, French letters or what have yous have probably existed for as long as the objects themselves. Many people argue that not having to use condoms used to be one of the great advantages of being homosexual.

            I remember in Tom Sharpe’s Porterhouse Blue it was mentioned that a certain Cambridge college renowned for how many homosexuals were in it had installed a Durex machine. This book was written before the AIDS epidemic started and so the implied joke was why should a such a college require a contraceptive machine.

      2. I suspect that Eddie is taking the p. Labour are fully supportive of people being able to self declare their sex. Now they are being headed into opposing that view and fighting amongst themselves. Lovely to watch.

        1. That comment is maybe a mite sexist*

          *Can heterosexuals use the word “sexist”, or is it reserved for general bender activists?

    5. I don’t recall any female Labour MPs jumping ship when Jack Dromey – aka Mr Hattie Hatemen – was elected on an all-women shortlist.

      1. He sneaked in by wearing Harriet’s frilly knickers (OK, Harriet never had frilly knickers)

  34. If nuclear war does break out the UK should nuke Dublin, Paris, Strasbourg, Brussels and Berlin. With everything that would be going on, no one will notice that It wasn’t the Russians.

      1. It looks inevitable. The US is certainly not bothered about the destruction of Europe.

        1. From Putin’s speech 30.9.22:

          “Russia is aware of its responsibility to the international community and will make every effort to ensure that cooler heads prevail.”

          5. Exactly. Biden does not know what is going on. He has not expressed any restraint. He has just destroyed Nordstream. An attack not only on Russia but also on the EU.

          6. Just checked on the depth of Nord Stream: between 260′ and 360′. Am I correct in assuming that it would require quite a sophisticated operation to destroy these pipelines? Not just a case of tossing a bag of explosives over the side of a boat. There aren’t many countries involved in this conflict capable of mounting such an operation. I do hope that the UK isn’t involved in any way.

    2. and Bradford, and Rotherham, and Leicester, indeed any town or city with too many immigrants

  35. Good morning all

    Cloudy mild morning .. says 16c.. and it feels like it .

    How many more U turns can we expect , and how much booze will be consumed at the Tory Conference ?

  36. Households will have to ration gas amid bitter winter forecast. 3 October 2022.

    Households should turn down the heating to help lessen the risk of gas shortages in the face of Russian supply cuts, the International Energy Agency has suggested.

    The intergovernmental group warned Europe was still in danger despite high storage levels, and said demand cuts would help it cope with any late winter cold snaps such as the ‘Beast from the East’ storm in March 2018.

    It comes as forecasters warn of an unusually cold, dry winter, heaping pressure on scarce gas supplies and potentially increasing the cost of government energy bailout packages.

    Aside from my doubts about the ability of the Meteorological Office to forecast next weekend’s weather successfully. What happened to global warming? Why does this phenomenon not result in milder winters?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/10/03/households-will-have-ration-gas-amid-bitter-winter-forecast/

    1. They must have got that wrong, ‘cold winter’, surely not after all those conferences predicting a fiery end to our planet.

      1. It’s clear that you haven’t received the memo viz. you are not supposed allowed to think in that logical manner.

    2. Perhaps someone should suggest to the idiots who are, nominally, in charge of our country, I told you so. I wrote to our MP saying if you don’t stop poking the bear it will bite back. Well the bear didn’t bite back but we bit ourselves by imposing sanctions on a country having a scuffle with its neighbour. We send arms to Ukraine and then, for some reason, are surprised when Russia turns off the gas. As Grizzly would say “stupidity” is now a pandemic.
      Words fail me, almost.

      1. As Putin said recently:

        “I am not against the European people; it is the European governments which are against the European people.”

    3. That’s why they cunningly now call it climate change, covers all the bases, as the Yanks would say.

  37. We are a nation divided as never before — by age
    Until 30 years ago, villages and cities had the same mix of old and young; living, working and socialising side by side. Today, generations are increasingly siloed by area, which not only damages society but is dangerous too, writes James Marriott

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/1690b4b2-40d6-11ed-a7af-c587dcb7526e?shareToken=644ac649e380565695ff64458aa0d4dd

    Lengthy article , but an excellent read .

    1. I’ll read it later TB.
      But where we live we have recently had quite a few younger people move in to the cul-de-sac. We have a residents association, it use to work quite well and repairs etc were usually tackled within weeks. But the younger ones have now taken over, nothing gets done. We have to suffer from the loft conversions and huge extensions they almost immediately carryout with no or very little consideration for other residents. Builders vans parked all along the grass verges. Heavy trucks breaking up the road surface. We have installed speed bumps but drivers go out of their way to avoid. Using adjacent driveways to go around. It drives us nuts…..
      Shame really, selfish people seem to be everywhere now.

    2. “There are fixes. Experiments have shown that increased exposure to old people “improves ageist attitudes, improves attitudes to older people and improves people’s attitudes towards their own ageing”.”
      I’m going to hire myself out to help solve the problems. £320 an hour plus my booze.

    3. 20 years ago, I went to Family Communion in the village church. At 46, I was the youngest one there. Yesterday, I attended Harvest Festival there. I was still the youngest one there.

      I put it down to Safeguarding – a deliberate programme by our lawmakers and a large lucrative industry to keep the young away from the likes of me, and to paint me as some sort of ogre to be avoided.

      As they say on TV commercials “always keep away from children”.

    4. We’ve lived in this house for 27 years, and most of our neighbours were already here, so we have all aged together, and the young families have grown up and gone. But last year, a couple in their 40s moved in just across from us – they have two secondary school-aged children and they are also local people, not incomers – so the mix is beginning to go the other way.

      the Jubilee celebrations involved a mix of people, old and young, who all live nearby.

      1. We have lived here in the village for almost 23 years.

        Moh and I moved , because although he was still working , the journey to work from here became less off a strain .

        The Wimborne connurbation we lived in previously became rather congested on the roads , and it would take hime over an hour + to get to work at Portland after his 16 years off shore .

        Our road consisted of prewar bungalows with huge long gardens , the folk who lived in them kept chickens , a few turkeys, goats etc and ducks oh yes and a donkey.. We loved the hee haws and the chatter of chickens and their cockerell..

        We were the youngest living in the road.. we are now nearly the oldest … The previous elderlies died, and all the long gardens were developed into large houses and modern bungalows , people moved in from out of the area .. White flight fits the description .. people who retired , and left their families miles away, the support system is a bit shaky now .

        Social housing has been built nearby so there are young families , and disabled and another handful of elderlies .

        People do mix , and it is quite a friendly village to live in .

      2. I hope you made the newbies feel welcome.

        My cul de sac is all bungalows. All much older than me when i moved here 30 years ago. We lost another one this week but he had been ill for quite a while.

        1. Yes – they are a lovely family and we’ve already done cat-feeding duties when they were away – we’re going to Sheffield next weekend (subject to rail strikes) now only for one night, but Dave is going to feed Lily while we’re away.

  38. Talking of MPs, last Tuesday our new vicarette was induced (or whatever the word is). Amongst the large congregation was the greeniac limp dumb MP (posing as a “Tory”. No one wanted to sit next to him. There was a sort of desert all round him!

    1. Remember Dr Samuel Johnson:

      “Sir, a woman’s preaching is like a dog’s walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.”

      I am saddened to hear that this news has not yet reached rural Norfolk.

    2. To be fair, on his mother’s side he is descended from the Gurney family, who were Quakers and philanthropists and who lived in Norfolk.

  39. Steerpike
    Kemi attacks mass immigration proposals
    2 October 2022, 7:54pm

    To the Think Tent, home of the IEA and Taxpayers’ Alliance. Who would the free market thinkers be cheering this year, now that their heroine is running the country? To no one’s surprise, Kemi Badenoch was the star speaker, following her impressive leadership bid earlier this summer. Some wags suggest that Kemi’s campaign never actually ended, with the Tory rising star keen to boost her credentials as a right-wing tonic to the soggy centrist ails of recent years.

    And the newly appointed Trade Secretary did little to dispel such talk, with a crowd-pleasing speech that contained a pointed critique on the idea of using increasing immigration numbers to boost GDP. Declaring that ‘I love preaching to the choir,’ Badenoch set out to her audience her diagnosis of Britain’s condition:

    “What is the problem that we’re trying to solve? And that problem is an economic and a cultural malaise that has set into this country over the last few decades. It didn’t just happen over the last few decades but the last few decades. It’s a combination of low economic growth, weak culture and values and also a state that is becoming ineffective.We are a country with a high GDP but where GDP per capita is not high. It is 29 per cent lower than the US, it is 17 per cent lower than Germany. We are not producing enough, we’ve become a lower productivity society and when we try and raise productivity, we try and do so through superficial means.

    And one such “superficial” measure, according to Badenoch, is mass immigration. She praised the UK for being a country that is ‘welcome to immigrants’ but followed it up thus:

    “We also need to make sure that the immigration that comes into our country is the right sort of immigration. Simply taking in numbers to boost GDP while not undertaking reform is not the right way to do that. We need to look again at resolving our productivity issues and that means using capital better and not just getting cheaper and cheaper labour. It’s not good for the people that come and it’s also not good for the people who are here already.

    A warning perhaps to those cabinet colleagues privately pushing for more arrivals into the UK. But Badenoch wasn’t done yet, launching another attack on the ‘overstretched’ Treasury which she suggested was culpable for failing to spot last week’s pensions crisis following market turmoil:

    “One of the things I find most frustrating is that people think when we talk about a smaller state, it means cutting public services. It doesn’t. Actually the state is doing many things that it has no business doing and perhaps if we stopped some of those things in the first place then we’d be able to focus on the things that matter. You look at what happened last week with the pension funds for example. We have a Treasury that is completely overstretched, looking at lots of things that it doesn’t necessarily need to look at and that’s why we miss big things that cause big problems. A small and efficient state focuses on what really matters.

    Given that Badenoch is listed as doing six events this conference – more than any other minister – Mr S looks forward to seeing what Kemi does next….

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

    opopanax • 14 hours ago
    No, Steerpike, these are not “jibes” but clearly articulated reasoned analysis from a deep thinker who knows what she is about. The sort of clear, fact-based analysis that previous journalists here and elsewhere were able to provide. Alas, no more.

    alastair harris • 12 hours ago
    It is good to hear cabinet ministers being prepared to debate issues in public. Perhaps something the Spectator might like to report on properly, rather than using it to make cheap points!

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/kemi-attacks-mass-immigration-plans

    1. Lacoste said the other day that she is now not answering phone calls. She seems very depressed following her illness, and her daughter had to return home. Not good .

      1. “…not answering phone calls.”
        No! Not returning telephone calls; so, I gave up phoning her.

        1. So did you manage to speak to her – or was it that you rang and she didn’t answer, or get back to you? Either way, it indicates she’s not in a good frame of mind.

    2. Last Friday (30 September), I had a surprise email from Plum’s daughter, thanking me for messaging her Mum. This was sent from Plum’s computer; I assume the daughter was visiting?
      Anyway, it appears that daughter is ‘minding’ her computer:
      ” … she [Plum] is not really using her PC again at the moment, so I am looking after her emails etc until she decides whether or not to venture back into cyber space!”

      1. Did she say how Plum was feeling? Her decision not to communicate does seem as though she is depressed. I hope she is gradually recovering. Good to know that her daughter is looking after her.

        1. No, her email was a ‘thank you’; she didn’t provide any update of her Mum’s health/ state of mind, Ndovu.

      2. Did she say how Plum was feeling? Her decision not to communicate does seem as though she is depressed. I hope she is gradually recovering. Good to know that her daughter is looking after her.

    1. I remember when I was a child I had a very dear old Aunt Marjorie who never smoked a cigarette in her life and never touched alcohol. Nevertheless she developed lung cancer and the treatment made her grow a moustache and she was very self-conscious and embarrassed by this. I remember being told by my mother that I had to give her a kiss when I saw her as I always had done and I am very glad that I overcame my initial reluctance as it clearly was important to her.

    1. I specifically looked at the crowd make-up in his video – not a burka, hijab or nightgown in sight, no BAMES nor BLMs to be seen; just over-privileged whiteys. Makes yer proud.

    2. Our late and much – loved Queen certainly deserves a statue – but not as a replacement for the crap which is normally showcased on the 4th plinth. She deserves a prominent position elsewhere.

      1. She deserves both, and if she is on the fourth plinth nothing else can be, so yet another service to the nation would have been performed by her.

  48. I see Glove is stirring things again. If he is so clever, why didn’t he stand as a leadership candidate?

    1. Gove has always been better at getting other people elected than either getting elected himself, or doing a competent job when he is.
      If I were Kemi Badenoch, I would take a very long spoon indeed when supping with Gove – as she was reportedly seen having lunch with him recently.

  49. Interesting. Is this from unvaxxed women (would be a little hypocritical to want unvaxxed sperm if you yourself had taken the shot)? Is it because they fear long term medical side effects (currently not ruled out) or because they want a sperm donor who is an independent thinker (a typically masculine trait that is very attractive to women)?
    And does the reverse apply, i.e. do unvaxxed men only want unvaxxed wives?
    None of the above speculations are aimed at anyone personally.
    https://twitter.com/TheFreds/status/1576267291670585349

    1. I was on to this idea for boosting my retirement fund some time ago but I felt that my age I should not apply!

    2. How do you vaccinate a spermatozoan?

      You’d need an infinitesimally tiny hypodermic needle. Or should that be hypospermic?

  50. Good morning all from Corsham.
    First chance of getting on line since leaving home.
    Stopped just North of Kidlington on Saturday night and at Silbury Hill last night.
    Picked up eldest daughter yesterday, had a run up to Newbury and a walk round Speen Moor finishing with a burger & chips in a pub in the town.

    Plan heading towards Weston Super Mud today, but note the operative word “Plan”!

    If I can get online later I’ll give another Progrep!
    TTFN All.

        1. We’re in Glawstershire – near Stroud. The main hospital is at Brimscombe, though Annie works full time so she’s not there during the day. We’re about a mile from her, across the valley.

    1. Guns won’ stop the state machine. People think weapons protect them, but what’s the use of a gun when your opponent can stop your bank account, sell your house under you, put your children in care, take your car and invent whatever reason they like to arrest you?

  53. OT – a bit of cheering news.

    The MR had a spiffing time in Holland. She went to take part in an event to mark the centenary of the British School in the Netherlands, where she taught for ten years in the 1980s.

    Former pupils from all over the World were there. Australia, New Zealand, South East Asia, the USA and South America and, of course, from Europe. She was overwhelmed by dozens coming up to her and saying how much her teaching had meant to them.

    Former staff, too, were delighted to see her and reminisce. One said that seeing her had made his day.

    When she told me about all this over supper last night – I was so proud of her.

    1. Well done! It is indeed very good to be proud of one’s wife and I am very proud of how well Caroline has developed as a teacher since she married me. I taught her not to give up with impossible people!

    2. Well done! It is indeed very good to be proud of one’s wife and I am very proud of how well Caroline has developed as a teacher since she married me. I taught her not to give up with impossible people!

  54. “Kwasi Kwarteng admits ‘with hindsight’ he should not have attended ‘Champagne reception’ for City traders as the Pound tumbled hours after his Emergency Budget”

    Time to be off…..as far away from the government as possible.

    1. In the end, the biggest mistake made by the Ukrainians was not heeding the words of Henry Kissinger, who said, “To be an enemy of America can be dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal.” Zelensky wanted to make a deal with Russia, but he was convinced that Washington was his friend. If he survives the war, he will learn that having America as a friend is like inviting Dracula into your home. At some point, you end up drained of your life force when America no longer needs you.

      Words of Wisdom.

    2. Stupid Truss is wearing a brooch depicting our Union flag and the Ukranian flag.

      Idiotic woman .. Has she thrown away her EU brooch?

      Will she be wearing some Islamic half moon next..

      What is her game?

  57. So we’ve had what seems like months waiting for a new leader if the Cons and now we have to endure days of endless “I promise to … “ , “we promise to …” absolute rubbish. But I suppose we do have endless Uturns to follow …

    What a complete shower they all are.

    1. The mini budget was too much too soon. In the end, 45p tax reduction for the rich was not the ditch to die in. No matter that lower taxes feed into growth of the economy. I think they will wait a while and then try again.

      1. A starting point could have been the stopping of the NI hike and corporation tax.
        Not increasing taxes isn’t lost revenue

        Closing the OBR is a good thing though. It’s interesting that they’ve walked themselves into a corner where government waste continues to expand and can only be met by higher taxing or more borrowing. It never seems to be presented as ‘we’re spending too much, we need to spend less – end of. State spending should not increase continually.

      2. GORDON’S TAX TIME BOMB FINALLY EXPLODING WILL HAVE HIM LAUGHING

        Gordon Brown’s booby trap tax time bomb finally explodes

        Foreign Office Minister Gillian Keegan was spot on when she told Times Radio this morning that the top rate of tax was a political time bomb left behind by Gordon Brown:

        “I always knew that it was going to be a political problem. I mean, let’s be honest, this was a political trap that was set by Gordon Brown in the dying days of his role as PM, right. And I paid the 50% tax. I was in business then. And I remember how devastating it was because actually, it meant you were paying about 65% tax. And there’s something in your mind, which is like, really, you know, only 35% for me? And I’m doing all these hours. I was a business person, then it was set as a political trap…. In theory it [the top rate of tax] should never have been there.”

        There is something immoral about the government taking the majority of your income in tax. It is also a disheartening disincentive; reversing this spiteful tax is the correct policy, though this might perhaps be the wrong time. Getting rid of a political tax that was only set up by Gordon Brown when he knew he was likely to be ousted –to hurt the Tories rather than raise revenue – was the right thing to do. Even the IFS’ Paul Johnson thinks in revenue terms “It might plausibly cost nothing at all”. The tax was not about raising revenue – it was about political positioning.

        Back in Fife, Brown will be rocking in his chair laughing that his tax booby trap, announced only weeks before he left office, and which was expected to cause problems for his successor David Cameron, has finally exploded in the face of a Tory Chancellor. The fuse wire on Brown’s time bomb turned out to be 12 years long…

        https://order-order.com/2022/10/03/gordons-tax-time-bomb-finally-exploding-will-have-him-laughing/

      3. I don’t think they will try again because they’ll remember the furore it caused this time. They should have explained their reasoning behind it and stuck with it, we’d had the bad market reaction and had come out the other side, doing the uturn was a huge mistake. What can we believe they will carry out now when they’ve already reneged on this.

  59. FSU launches campaign against politically motivated financial censorship

    On 15th September, PayPal notified me that it was permanently closing my personal account, as well as the accounts of the Daily Sceptic – a news publishing site I run – and the Free Speech Union. The reason cited in all three cases was that the accounts had violated PayPal’s ‘Acceptable Use Policy’. Not that that really gave any clue as to the specifics of the alleged misdemeanour, because the policy contains numerous prohibited activities including transactions involving illegal drugs and stolen goods.

    PayPal told me it had permanently closed all three accounts and appeals in all three cases had been unsuccessful. It couldn’t quite decide why it had closed the accounts – it alternated between telling me I’d breached its policy about not promoting “hate, violence or racial intolerance” and telling newspapers my accounts had been closed because I was spreading “Covid-19 misinformation”. But it had definitely decided to close them.

    My suspicion is that someone at PayPal simply doesn’t like my politics and had my accounts removed for that reason, without bothering to create a proper alibi. In other words, this was a prime example of someone being punished by a financial-services company for expressing non-conformist views and, in the case of the FSU, defending people for expressing such views.

    That is completely unacceptable, obviously. And I’m not the only one. PayPal has closed numerous accounts because it dislikes the politics of the individuals or organisations linked to them, from Colin Wright, an evolutionary biologist who challenges trans rights dogma, to UsForThem, a group of mums that campaigned against school closures during the lockdowns. So I went to war with PayPal, appearing on GB News virtually every day to tell its viewers what had happened, writing about it in the Spectator, the Telegraph and Spiked, and encouraging MPs and peers to write to Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Business Secretary, and Mel Stride, the Chair of the Treasury Select Committee, urging them to hold PayPal to account.

    Then, on 27th September, PayPal notified me it had restored all of my accounts. After ‘input’ from its ‘customers and stakeholders’– by which I suspect it meant all the people that had cancelled their PayPal accounts in solidarity with the Free Speech Union and the Daily Sceptic – it has decided I’m kosher after all.

    It goes without saying that I won’t be using PayPal’s services again. I made the mistake of trusting PayPal when I set up the FSU, embedding its software into our payment processing systems. Given what I know now – that it can demonetise you on a whim, seemingly without any proper justification – I’m not going to make that mistake again.

    The US company’s behaviour wasn’t some brief moment of madness — an inexplicable yet temporary deviation from standard financial practice. As we hurtle towards a cashless economy, it’s part of a global trend towards weaponising Big Tech and financial services systems to suppress dissent of every kind. We saw it most obviously in the case of Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau shutting down the Freedom Convoy earlier this year. But there are numerous examples of organisations with dissenting views being deplatformed by financial services companies, such as the U.K. Medical Freedom Alliance, an organisation that raises perfectly lawful questions about the Covid vaccines.

    That’s why the FSU will now lobby the Government to develop a legislative mechanism capable of preventing Big Tech companies headquartered outside the U.K. from censoring people or groups in this country for the expression of legal but dissenting views (or, as in the case of the FSU, for simply defending those who express legal but dissenting views).

    If there’s a positive to come out of this unseemly episode, it’s that the publicity generated by PayPal’s actions has brought the wider issue of financial censorship to the attention of both Houses of Parliament. The Telegraph reported that financial services companies could soon “be banned from blocking the accounts of campaign groups for political reasons”. That’s because Conservative backbenchers are apparently “considering launching an amendment” to a Parliamentary bill that would effectively ban companies from freezing campaigners’ accounts. One source quoted in that Telegraph article said that ministers are likely to accept an amendment. If that’s true, then this could be a big moment in the fightback against financial censorship. Needless to say, the FSU will be at the forefront of campaigning for that amendment.

    But legislative work takes time, which means that we need to keep that pressure up, mobilising the extraordinary public opposition to PayPal’s recent behaviour to tell our politicians that we don’t want a Chinese-style social credit system to be rolled out across the West (the only difference being that instead of the Chinese Communist Party enforcing ideological dogma, it’s woke capitalist corporations based in California).

    Use the FSU’s campaigning tool to write to your MP to remind him or her that there are strong feeling on this issue among the public. If you’re as outraged as we are by PayPal’s attempt to cancel the FSU and other groups, please use this tool to send a template email to your MP, telling him or her that we need a change to the law to make this kind of financial censorship illegal. The process only takes two minutes and the link is here.

    If you’re not a member yet, please join the fight against these censorious financial services companies.

    If you’re already a member, make a donation so we can devote the time and resources we need to win this battle. This the new front in the ongoing war against free speech and if we lose this one then free speech as we know will effectively be dead.

    FSU member Simon Isherwood’s remedy hearing begins – a case update

    Earlier this year, FSU member Simon Isherwood won his Employment Tribunal case against West Midlands Trains (WMT). The rail conductor was dismissed for gross misconduct after asking his wife whether indigenous populations in African countries enjoy ‘black privilege’ following a training session on ‘white privilege’ with around 80 other staff members via Teams. He thought he’d disconnected but he hadn’t and one of his colleagues complained. Instead of dismissing the complaint, WMT suspended him, investigated him and dismissed him for ‘gross misconduct’.

    Taking your employer to an Employment Tribunal is a lengthy and costly process (Allison Bailey had to raise more than £500,000 to fund her much publicised recent legal case, for instance). Thanks to our help, though, Simon was able to hold WMT to account for its actions, and his hearing took place before Judge Stephen Wyeth in the Watford Employment Tribunal. In addition to paying Simon’s legal fees, the FSU drafted in leading civil rights barrister Paul Diamond to represent him. Paul has fought landmark cases in the Supreme Court and the European Court of Human Rights, and as might be expected from someone of that calibre, was unrelenting in picking apart the other side’s evidence. He convinced the Judge that the freedom of speech issues in this case required close attention. Indeed, it was for that reason that the judge reserved judgment, rather than giving it extempore.

    In a landmark victory, Judge Wyeth decided that Mr Isherwood had been unfairly dismissed. The judgement reasserted the fact that “freedom of expression, including a qualified right to offend when expressing views and beliefs (in this case on social issues), is a fundamental right in a democratic society”. Particularly important in terms of workers’ speech rights was the clear distinction the judgement drew between the public and the private sphere, noting that in Simon’s case, “the expression of his private view of the course to his wife in the confines of his own home was not blameworthy or culpable conduct that could amount to contributory conduct”.

    This month, the remedy hearing to decide compensation began. Paul Diamond and our Chief Legal Counsel, Bryn Harris, are fighting hard on Simon’s behalf, and prospects are good that we’ll get a good settlement for Simon. That’s great news, but it’s a bittersweet victory. What we’re talking about here is an employee with an unblemished career track record who’s lost his livelihood simply because he voiced an entirely lawful opinion within the confines of his own home that woke activists just happen to regard as ‘offensive’.

    No-one should ever be placed in that position, which is exactly why one strand of the FSU’s Parliamentary and lobbying work is now focused on persuading ministers and senior officials to amend the Employment Rights Act 1996 to make it impossible for companies to discipline staff for saying politically contentious things outside the workplace. You can watch me make the case for this amendment on GB News here. I’ve also written about it for the Mail here.

    Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill – amendments tabled

    The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill will soon resume its journey through Parliament in the House of Lords, and I’m delighted to report that several amendments have now been tabled to make it even stronger. The Bill aims to strengthen protections for free speech and academic freedom in English universities by imposing more robust legal duties on higher education providers to protect the free speech of academic staff, non-academic staff, students and visitors to universities, as well as to actively promote freedom of speech.

    The FSU wholeheartedly supports the legislation. We’ve intervened in many cases involving students or academics where those individuals would have been in a stronger position had this new law been in place.

    That said, unless the Bill’s current free speech ‘protections’ are strengthened there’s a danger they will be undermined by the open-ended definition of “harassment” contained within the Equality Act 2010, which doesn’t make exceptions for discussions that take place for scientific or academic purposes. In other words the Bill as currently proposed won’t be able to prevent higher education institutions from continuing to place limits on academic freedom by invoking their public sector equality duty under section 26 of the Equality Act to protect members of the university with certain characteristics from “harassment”. While that duty might sound uncontroversial, some universities define “harassment” so broadly as to encompass allowing people to express perfectly lawful points of view that some members of protected groups find objectionable. Back in 2019, for instance, two law professors – Rosa Freedman and Jo Phoenix – were no-platformed by Essex University on the grounds that inviting them on campus to argue that transwomen shouldn’t be treated as if they were legally indistinguishable from biological women would have constituted “harassment” of trans students.

    This is the context in which the FSU has been working with allies in the House of Lords to develop an amendment capable of ensuring that – in the amendment paper’s words – “the duties imposed by the Bill are consistent with, and not overridden by, the Equality Act public sector equality duty”. You can read that amendment here.

    We’re also hoping two other amendments are made to the Bill, which you can read here and here. We’re hopeful that all of these amendments will be accepted, and that the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill that reaches the statute books really is a game-changer for academic freedom and freedom of speech at English universities.

    You can find our recent Parliamentary briefing on the Bill here, and our latest research papers here and here.

    Gillian Philips – case update

    Thanks to the generous support of FSU members and supporters, and the sterling work of Gillian’s legal team (Shah Qureshi of Irwin Mitchell and barrister David Mitchell), permission has now been granted for Gillian to bring her case to the Employment Appeal Tribunal. Gillian will now have the chance to persuade a superior court of record that in writing novels under the close control of her publishers she was a worker, entitled to the protections of the Equality Act 2010. This is a timely opportunity to secure protection from discrimination for precarious workers in an increasingly intolerant sector.

    FSU members and supporters may remember Gillian’s case. Gillian is the author who brought an Employment Tribunal claim against her former publishers, Working Partners and HarperCollins, because they terminated her contract to write children’s books after she stood up for JK Rowling on Twitter. She alleges unlawful discrimination and the case is a landmark in the fight for the right of women to state biological facts without fear of losing their jobs. Gender critical writers such as Kate Clanchy, Julie Burchill and Jenny Lindsay have all faced threats to their livelihood as a result of expressing gender critical views.

    An update on the FSU’s current caseload

    Following our resounding victory against PayPal, we’ve seen an uptick in members of the public writing to alert us to similar cases. This includes Conservatives for Women, the campaign group we are currently assisting in their campaign to get their Ko-fi account reinstated after the fundraising service axed them because their gender critical views allegedly “target” and “undermine” trans people. This may well become a legal battle. If you or someone you know has been cut-off by a financial services company because of their views, do please get in touch (help@freespeechunion.org).

    The trans issue continues to take up about a quarter of the time of our case team, with victims silenced by advocates of gender ideology… unless we get there first. We have about 65 live cases open right now, of all kinds – and that doesn’t include the vast number of resolved cases where we’ve helped members in what are often extremely serious difficulties. Members seeking our assistance this month included teachers, civil servants, manual workers, academics and celebrities. The high number of cries for help our case team deals with makes a compelling argument for legislative change to protect free speech for employees and in universities. While most of our case work remains strictly confidential, we anticipate several cases becoming public this month. Be sure to read our weekly newsletter.

    The start of the academic year typically brings a deluge of new cases, from students compelled to take ideological instruction disguised as diversity training, to academics chastised for a toe out of line in today’s intolerant academy. The FSU made major interventions last year to challenge these schemes (as here, for example), and we stand ready to assist any students currently resisting university administrators who haven’t yet got the message.

    The FSU’s packed schedule of autumn events!

    If you’re not yet a member of the FSU, we hope you’ll join the FSU so you can participate in our forthcoming Online Speakeasies. The first is with comedian, writer, actor and presenter Jack Dee on Wednesday 12th October and the second with historian, author and television presenter Neil Oliver on Wednesday 9th November. We also have our upcoming, members-only Christmas party at the Backyard Comedy Club. Members have been sent a separate email containing links to register for these events. If you have not received this, do check your inbox, including your junk folder, and get in touch if you can’t find it, using events@freespeechunion.org.

    You can also see a calendar on our Events page. As that is a public page, you cannot book members-only events via that route, so do join the FSU today to access those invitations, along with all the other benefits of membership.

    We have two excellent sessions at the Battle of Ideas Festival taking place in London on the weekend of the 15th and 16th of October. I will be speaking on a packed panel, debating Online Safety vs Free Speech on Saturday afternoon, and the Free Speech Champions will discuss Winning Young Hearts and Minds on Sunday afternoon, with panellists including Professor Alice Sullivan and Rod Liddle. Members can access special discount tickets (we’ll be sending you an email about that) and a link to register was also in last Friday’s newsletter. Do come and say hello to us at our stall, find out more about supporting the work we do and buy one of our new T-shirts, featuring the excellent work of cartoonist Bob Moran.

    Roger Scruton Memorial Lectures – register for free tickets here!

    Oxford University’s annual ‘Roger Scruton Memorial Lectures’ are fast approaching. All events are free to attend, although registration is required.

    On 17th October, Chair of the Social Mobility Commission Katherine Birbalsingh CBE will be in conversation with the founder of the 30% club, Baroness Helena Morrissey, and Dr Marie Daouda (Oriel College, Oxford). Register here. On 19th October, one of Britain’s most distinguished historians, Andrew Roberts, will be in conversation with Professor Robert Tombs, now Professor Emeritus of French History at the University of Cambridge. Register here. On 24th October, journalist and writer Peter Hitchens will be in conversation with former Conservative MEP Lord Daniel Hannan and Professor Sir Noel Malcolm (All Souls College, Oxford). Register here. Finally, on 26th October, FSU Chairman Professor Nigel Biggar (Christ Church College, Oxford) will be in conversation with the Secretary of State for International Trade the Rt Hon Kemi Badenoch, and Professor Ali Ansari (University of St Andrews). Register here.

    Sharing the newsletter

    As with all our work, this newsletter depends on the support of our members and donors, so if you’re not already a paying member please sign up today or encourage a friend to join, and help us turn the tide against cancel culture. You can share our newsletters on social media with the buttons below and help us spread the word. If someone has shared this newsletter with you and you’d like to join the FSU, you can find our website here.

    Kind regards,

    1. Someone gave us one of those for G & P.

      They ignored it – but loved the box it came in.

  62. The slow decay of the Conservative Party. Spiked 3 October 2022.

    The polls putting Labour ahead by record-breaking margins tell their own story – this Tory government appears to be in its death throes.

    Much of the blame is being heaped on hapless new prime minister Liz Truss and her chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng. Trailed as a sign of the duo’s ‘radical’, tax-cutting intent, their ‘mini-budget’ has appealed to precisely no one. It has plunged the markets into turmoil, it has been feasted on by an already antagonistic media and it has further estranged the working-class, Brexit-supporting voters on which the Tories’ 2019 General Election success rested.

    But the problems go beyond Truss and Kwarteng. For what we are witnessing right now is the decomposition of the Conservative Party itself. The stench is particularly strong at the moment, but it is a process that has been nearly two decades in the making.

    It began under the leadership of David Cameron, who sought to align the Tory Party with the values and attitudes of the new elites, before Brexit ripped that alignment apart. And it has continued under Theresa May and Boris Johnson, who failed to realise the promise of Brexit and take these new elites on. The result is a party that increasingly represents no one at all. And now it has produced a leader and set of policies to match.

    And this must have been written before today’s announcements!

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/10/02/the-slow-decay-of-the-conservative-party/

    1. I was quite pleased with the mini budget.
      The reduction in the higher tax rate was set to bring high earners from around the world to work from here.
      It would have brought in far more tax.

  63. Another diversion from the ghastliness that is the news.

    On the plane back to Narridge yesterday, the MR noticed another passenger was accompanied by a dog.

    The MR asked the cabin staff what they did in case of emergency when oxygen masks were required. Was there one for the dog?

    Neither steward had any idea. “We have never had any training on that”, one said.

    I assume that the dog would be left to die while all efforts were used to ensure that the actual passengers (including the handicapped one) were masked.

    What do NoTTLers think?

        1. They are adjustable. I think they would be long enough. Certainly for Dolly.

          Getting the other Chihuahua this afternoon. He’s 7 months old so not really a puppy anymore.

          1. This is really exciting! Do post photographs. Is this the chihuahua that was following Dolly around whilst you were on holiday? (I may have missed some posts.)

          2. No. It’s another one. The little thing following Dolly around won’t grow any larger as it’s a Teacup. And i don’t want one of those. I will post some pics this evening and or tomorrow morning.

          5. Wonderful stuff Phizzee! I’m sure you and Dolly will make him very welcome! Can’t wait to see him! Does he have a name yet?

          6. Dolly was named after Dolly Rawlings from the TV series Widows. This little fella is going to be called Harry.

    3. Its curious that foreigners let animals travel in the cabin whilst us animal loving Brits dont allow it. There are actually extra masks on some of the oxygen panels. It allows the dollies to breath if they happen to be serving dinner when the worst happens. Not sure that they are dog shaped though.

  65. I found that my new 72 plate EV had a green stripe on its number plates after I traded in my 2009 Mazda 5.
    But I didn’t buy it because it identifies as a green ‘zero emissions’ car – I was being ostracised from the motoring community by the increasing likelihood of being fined for unwittingly straying into a no go zone or even where charges were applicable to EU EuroIV emission class diesel cars.

    …Nissan and YouGov found that 32 per cent of people would be more likely to buy an electric car because of that small green strip.

    https://www.topgear.com/car-news/electric/uk-launches-green-number-plates-help-identify-evs

    1. But they are not green are they? when all costs have been considered. Let alone the child miners for lithium.

      The greeniacs go on about fracking polluting the water table, which it doesn’t, but then have nothing to say about lithium settling beds.

      1. “The most important determinant of the future health of the automotive industry will be whether batteries are manufactured in the UK”

        – The Faraday Institution

        https://cornishlithium.com/

        I’m not aware of any recruitment initiative for child miners by Cornish Lithium Ltd.

      3. Full end to end cost/benefit analyses are avoided by politicians and multinational businesses. Asparagus tips flown in from Costa Rica, Wind turbines made in Denmark using 2m tons of concrete and then transported to the Scottish hills.

      1. I shall be lucky/unlucky if I reach the age at which the EV batteries’ guarantee expires.

    3. I much prefer that green badge to the disgusting blue one with yellow stars it has replaced.

      1. You can swap your EU number plates for ‘green” ones at Halfords for.£36 but you do have to have the ZEV box ticked on your V5. 🤔

          3. Lotl’s even more exclusive – she doesn’t have a car at all 🙂 With apologies to Flanders and Swann.

          4. Nor do I. The car was EU-free when I bought it and the first thing I did when I bought the motorhome was get new, EU-free registration plates.

    4. We just bought (well ordered) a new car.

      We did look at hybrids (no charging points in the condo means no EV for us). Even the battery assisted ones are about ten thousand dollars more than real cars so forget the greenie fantasies, it would take forever to drive far enough to save enough fuel to justify the cost.

      1. OH has a hybrid Toyota – nearly 10 years old now. It’s a bit bit underpowered for the hills around here, but the display shows when it’s being heavy on petrol and when it’s using the generated power.

        1. We looked at a hybrid Rav4. The dealer estimated a year to eighteen months before delivery – pay a deposit now, wait eighteen months and then pay whatever the going rate is on a 2024 model!

          2. Same just about everywhere. Unless you would settle for a ford, you literally cannot walk into a car dealer .round here and buy one from the lot.

          4. My old dad was quoted a six month waiting list last year, and he didn’t fancy that,either!

          5. I have a pure petrol 2006 Rav4 and it’s been a great vehicle, great carrying capacity and even as a local runaround, it returns 30.2 mpg. I wouldn’t be without it.

        2. I was sad to have to say farewell to our diesel which was purchased as a 7-seater for transporting daughter, SIL and two girls when they made regular visits back to UK from Switzerland.
          The crunch came when the diesel engine management fault light came up and the vehicle needed a full static regeneration requiring a full tank of diesel, heating the diesel particulate filter with the fuel to over 500 degC and then a complete oil change. Even then there was no guarantee of success! 😞

          2. My diesel Peugeot 206 was new when I bought it in 2007. It’s a good workhorse and I’ve no intention of changing it till I have to. I don’t drive far these days.

          3. We have a Fiat Scudo diesel minibus which is over 20 years old and still going strong.

          5. I did buy a DPF which was only £400 and already had hydraulically assisted ramps to get underneath. I also had professional OBD2 kit to initiate a parked regenration on the old DPF.

            Howeever, either replacing or regenration had risks in the event of the EGR cunbustion cooling system not working properly as this must be capable of being inhibited to allow further ongoing DPF regeneration at exhaust temperature in excess of 500 degC.

            Anyway MOH didn’t want me frying myself in the drive!

  66. It’s a mark of how the tax debate has shifted leftwards that the Tories can’t reduce the top rate to the level it stood at for all but one month of the last Labour government.

    1. I think perhaps it’s more a mark of the loudest voices shouting “taxes lowered for the rich” brigade. This is why they should never have done the uturn but pointed out your observation about Gordon Brown’s nasty trap.

      1. Pointing out to the BBC that the fault was a big state socialist Labour policy would just give them ammunition. They’d just get ‘You’re blaming Brown after 12 years of government?’

        Which they can and should, because it is his fault but facts don’t step the BBC.

  67. I’m finding I do not get notifications of replies to my posts – anyone else suffer this?

  68. The Tory rebels won’t get behind Liz Truss .
    They have purposely made her a lame duck Prime Minister with the back benchers manipulating the government and the BBC / Media getting rather excited at the thought of their new power removing another Conservative Prime minister.
    We have the Telegraph now claiming that half of all voters want Liz Truss gone and we have Gove and Shapps ( Sunaks guard dogs ) saying they want even more u turns an Sunak himself isn’t attending the Conservative conference – making some point. Whilst 82% of Conservative Party members support the government ; but that doesn’t matter whatsoever. Its all a disgrace and sickening.

    1. They will be killing their own chances of reelection if they manage to defenestrate Truss before she has had a chance.

      2. Perhaps she should call a GE now; Labour would get a landslide and walk straight into the problems created by Covid, Ukraine and the energy debacle and get the blame because I can’t see the UK getting even remotely straightened out in five years, let alone the two that the Tories have at a maximum.

        1. Maybe, but the Tories and Truss herself would probably want to hang on as long as possible in the hope they could turn things round.

        3. Labour would make everything worse but destroy the economy in the process, then blame the Tories.

          Of course, we’re all still trying to recover from labour’s malice from 97 – 2010.

          1. And when they don’t work the Tory opposition can quote them all.

            I’m getting to “point ogga” where I believe that the UK voters should be thoroughly punished for not looking at alternatives!

          2. That’s the point, Sos, what alternatives, the separate vote-splitters or just Independents, or NOTA?

    2. More than once on here we have discussed the need for the PM to have a fixer/hard man looking on, someone who would understand the distinction between policies and politics. He would have warned of the dangers of tax cuts that favoured higher earners. He would have insisted on spending cuts being announced at the same time – ditching HS2 or a few quangos would have given the paper savings necessary to balance the tax cuts. He would have made sure that Fat Gordy’s booby trap got the bad publicity.

      And he would have dragged Gove and Shatts to a dark corner of Westminster and dealt with them…

      1. I wrote here that it was bad politics, and it mattered, when these tax cuts were announced, but was shouted down.
        Looks like I was right, you guys may be getting a general election as a result. That Truss will be replaced by that greaser Sunak is now a foregone conclusion.
        Shortest PM reign ever?

        1. Yes, it was, but as I said at the time, bad politics is good government. Sod the Left, they’re all envious greedy mendacious villains.

      2. I wrote here that it was bad politics, and it mattered, when these tax cuts were announced, but was shouted down.
        Looks like I was right, you guys may be getting a general election as a result. That Truss will be replaced by that greaser Sunak is now a foregone conclusion.
        Shortest PM reign ever?

    3. Malcolm:

      If such a one be fit to govern, speak.
      I am as I have spoken.

      MacDuff

      No not fit to live

      [The Scottish play]

      The trouble started when the Conservative Party at the height of its folly ditched Margaret Thatcher and chose the grey and dishonourably adulterous John Major instead. When it could have recovered after years of Blair and Brown it then made another disastrous choice in selecting David Cameron rather than David Davis to lead it. It has never properly recovered since then.

      And now David Frost might have succeeded to repair the damage – but the dimwits made sure he wasn’t even in the picture.

      1. From his later comments/articles – methinks the Noble Lord speaks with forked tongue.

  69. Wordle 471 3/6
    ⬛⬛🟨🟨⬛
    🟩🟩⬛⬛⬛
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    Daily Quordle 252

    3️⃣5️⃣
    6️⃣7️⃣

    2. A pleasant Birdie Three for me too!

      Wordle 471 3/6
      🟨⬜⬜⬜🟨
      🟩⬜⬜⬜🟨
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    4. A close run thing on both for me.
      Daily Quordle 252
      9️⃣6️⃣
      8️⃣5️⃣

      Wordle 471 6/6

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

  70. Nothing to worry about apparently.

    News has emerged of Chinese police stations operating in Canada. Three have been uncovered in Toronto, who knows about other Chinese dominated places such as Vancouver.

    Nothing to do with Canadian policing, these police outposts monitor Chinese residents in Canada and supposedly monitor behaviour according to Chinese law.

    Not a word from Trudeau and friends about this.

      1. Indeed, their compliance with sharia law is monitored by every mosque. I dont think you ever get far from the ‘elders’ in those communities.

  71. I keep getting these disqus adds all over the screen of my Samsung Tablet,
    this has never happened before. Its annoying and I cannot get rid of them .

      1. I don’t get them on my laptop. On the phone I just get the same ones between the the new post for the day and the comments section. I don’t get them in between comments if that’s what the Lady is saying.

          1. I’ve tried pausing ad-block on here now to see what difference it made and I still see no ads on the page.

    5. I use a combination of DNS level blocking and the Brave browser. It contains a built in ad blocking engine. Give it a try and see how you get on?

  72. Ouch!

    Liz Truss has become another Theresa May

    Last week, Truss and Kwarteng seemed set on setting a new course for the UK economy. Now they are rudderless, being blown around by the Left

    ROSS CLARK • 3 October 2022 • 9:21am

    So, it transpires that, unlike her heroine, the lady IS for turning. At the very first opportunity, Liz Truss has folded on a signature policy – reducing the upper rate of income tax from 45 pence to 40 pence. No one can say there weren’t warnings of her flakiness: during the leadership election she similarly abandoned a policy on regional pay for civil servants after outrage from unions, with result that public sector workers in the relatively cheap North East will continue to be paid wages set at a level to attract workers in the expensive south east.

    But how depressing that Truss and the Chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, don’t seem to have the resilience to withstand a week of negative publicity. As Kwarteng argued on the Today programme this morning the idea that global market turmoil is all down to a small adjustment in the upper rate of income tax in Britain is bunk. Markets have been falling, currencies falling against the dollar, all around the world. Yet he and Truss panicked anyway. Had they stayed the course, in a few months we may well have found that wealthy individuals had started diverting their income to Britain rather than away from it, helping to boost tax revenues, just as happened when Nigel Lawson dumped punitive upper rates of tax in the 1980s. It is the markets which would have ended up doing the U-turn, just as they did in the aftermath of the Brexit vote, when an initial plunge was reversed into large gains. Instead, the Treasury blob has been allowed to have its way.

    It is true that there is far too big a hole in government spending plans. No UK government has managed to balance the books for the past two decades, and the Government seems to have abandoned any intention of achieving this – in contrast to the Cameron and Osborne era. But going back on a tax cut is the wrong way to go about it. What Kwarteng should have done instead is to dump the absurd proposal to subsidise energy bills for the wealthy. For the next 18 months, the Government will be chipping in to pay our gas and electricity bills – not just those of the poor but billionaires who can well afford to heat their homes. Indeed, the bigger your home, the higher you like to turn up your thermostat, the bigger a public subsidy you will receive.

    It says much about the current state of politics in Britain that these handouts for the rich have attracted far less negative comment than the proposal to reduce the 45 pence tax rate. Big government, big taxes and big spending seem to be back in fashion. We have returned to the 1970s when a Labour government assumed the right to tax wealthy people at up to 98 pence in the pound, while giving some of that back through subsidies for the company Bentley and for Concorde. Blair and Brown could see the absurdity and iniquity in this, which is why the upper rate of income tax remained at 40 pence throughout their time in office with few people arguing that it was a disgraceful sop to the rich.

    A week ago, Truss and Kwarteng seemed set – at least on the taxation side – on setting a new course for the UK economy, one which was unashamedly biased towards growth. Instead, we find ourselves with a rudderless Government being blown around by media opinion and the views of a few backbenchers. Much more reminiscent of the Theresa May era than Mrs Thatcher. The proposal to abolish the 45 pence rate may have gone – but sadly the economic rocks are still very much around us.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/10/03/has-liz-truss-become-another-theresa-may

    1. This is, of course, what Labour wanted. Create a massive state, expansive welfare and make any attempt to unravel it unpopular and difficult.

      This will only be solved by keeping to the course and gradually shredding the left entirely.

      1. Why on earth didn’t Bumbler the Bonking Buffoon purge the party when he had the chance?

      2. Why on earth didn’t Bumbler the Bonking Buffoon purge the party when he had the chance?

    2. This is, of course, what Labour wanted. Create a massive state, expansive welfare and make any attempt to unravel it unpopular and difficult.

      This will only be solved by keeping to the course and gradually shredding the left entirely.

    3. Can Adultera Truss not see that this U turn is far more damaging than standing firm?

      She might say, in her defence, that she is listening to people.

      But if this is the case what is going on with the ECHR, the illegal immigrants, EU fishermen plundering our fishing waters and the Northern Ireland Protocol and the EU occupying British territory? If she really wants to listen to people she should be listening to the complaints and worries of those who raise these matters.

    2. I see a different layout (possibly because I don’t have Disqus full-screen) but yes, it’s now littered with ads which I close without reading so no goods or services flogged but it’s certainly irritating.

    4. For a while a few months ago I was seeing adverts for private jets. Not sure that the algy ribbon was set up correctly.

      Most bizarre ad I ever clicked on happened to feature amazonian mountain runners, and one of them distinctly used the f word. They were promoting some sort of wrist watch.

      1. He probably meant to say ‘Fit Bit’ but the eff word might have coloured his thoughts.

    5. Here’s a clue, Bill. I haven’t been seeing adverts (I use Ghostery, but Ad-Block and others all work in similar ways. So I disabled Ghostery on this page and saw no difference. But goinbg to a Disqus profile page (the same will be true of notifications) and ‘trusting’ the site, on reloading, the page was awash with adverts.

      So, if you’re using any ad-blocker, you may need to go to a Disqus (not NTTL) page, and alter the settings…

      Hope this helps.

      1. Thanks, Geoff. I went to Discus settings – the page was AWASH with adverts. I could see nothing there which would enable me to, disable, them…

  74. Standard English Political Party Parliamentary Election Manifesto

    (After the compilers and publishers have been injected with a truth serum):

    Vote for us and we will promise, with all our power, to:

    Lie to you.
    Annoy you.
    Lie to you.
    Hoodwink you.
    Lie to you.
    Rob you.
    Lie to you.
    Cheat you.
    Lie to you.
    Make you poorer.
    Lie to you.
    Get personally richer at your cost.
    Lie to you.
    Permit banks to steal from you.
    Lie to you.
    Increase already abominably high taxation by means of stealth.
    Lie to you.
    Sell off the country’s assets cheaply.
    Lie to you.
    Give away the country’s sovereignty to a bunch of unelected foreigners.
    Lie to you.
    Permit members of neighbouring countries to vote for legislation affecting you with no reciprocal agreement in return.
    Lie to you.
    Allow those neighbouring countries to give their residents free medical prescriptions whilst making English people pay for the same items at a high price.
    Lie to you.
    Pass (and repeal) laws to make your lives more miserable.
    Lie to you.
    Make your country less safe.
    Lie to you.
    Open the borders and give a warm welcome to every criminal and zealot from abroad.
    Lie to you.
    Provide such criminals and zealots with large houses, cars, TVs and huge financial ‘benefits’ so they do not ever have to work and contribute to the society they have enriched.
    Lie to you.
    Permit such people to create ‘no go zones’, to indigenous natives and police, in their neighbourhoods.
    Lie to you.
    Throw money at the feckless, the useless, the hapless, the gormless, the bone idle, the unemployable and the over-fecund.
    Lie to you.
    Give ‘rights’ to itinerants who pay nothing into the exchequer but take the benefits of society at no cost to themselves.
    Lie to you.
    Deprive ordinary hard-working taxpayers of any similar reciprocal ‘rights’.
    Lie to you.
    Squander billions of pounds of your money each year on maintaining third world countries’ leader’s Mercedes pools.
    Lie to you.
    Throw away billions of pounds of your money each year in maintaining India’s nuclear and space programmes.
    Lie to you.
    Make impoverished, hard-working, tax-paying British pensioners choose between eating and heating their homes because of money stolen from them to fund ‘foreign aid’.
    Lie to you.
    Render your homeland unsafe by destroying your country’s armed forces.
    Lie to you.
    Render your police ineffective and make them political puppets.
    Lie to you.
    Make ordinary, heterosexual natives feel decidedly second-rate and denied the ‘rights’ given to those that are not.
    Lie to you.
    Allow your daughters to be raped.
    Lie to you.
    Permit rogue medical staff to murder you.
    Lie to you.
    Permit inept and not-fit-for-purpose social services staff to aid and abet them.
    Lie to you.
    Make false promises to you that we have absolutely no intention of keeping whatsoever.
    Lie to you.
    Be slaves and puppets to the whims of the owners of giant multi-national corporations and dance their tune whenever they call it.
    Lie to you.
    Kill people in other countries in your name.
    Lie to you.
    Do absolutely nothing to make the country better.
    Lie to you.
    Do absolutely everything to make the country worse.
    Lie to you.
    Conceal, hide and whitewash the findings of public enquiries.
    Lie to you.
    Turn corruption into an art form.
    Lie to you.

    Vote for us and for maintaining the status quo. We know we are not the heirs to great leaders like Edward I, Elizabeth I, Churchill or Thatcher, but give us some credit: our ability to hoodwink, cheat and lie to you is second to none!

    Don’t forget to vote for us.

    The modern Con-trick/-spiracy/-merchant

  75. How disappointing that this particular lady clearly IS for turning. Wasn’t the top rate of tax 40% throughout all but the last few months of the New Labour years? Wouldn’t 40% have likely produced more tax in the long term, by encouraging more businesses and wealthy people to invest here? Whatever happened to making the right decisions, even if they might be unpopular in the short term?

    Oh well. I look forward to Kwarteng giving us the long-delayed “Bonfire of the Quangos” (and foreign aid, HS2, BBC, NHS, civil service) which would allow us to ‘fund’ (I hate that word in relation to our own money!) some juicy tax cuts.

    1. Sack every single Public sector worker who is on the 45% tax rate, ditto charities, Quangos, the BBC etc;
      Appoint their deputy but don’t increase their salaries.
      It would save a fortune and hammer home just how many there are bleeding the taxpayers.

      1. Once they hit that level most vanish into service companies. Who would want to pay that much tax?

    2. The politics of envy has always been at the heart of the Labour Party and now, it seems at the heart of The Conservative Party too.

      1. #metoo.
        Was struggling with a mortgage at the time – was looking for a second job, but fortunately, it didn’t last.

        1. When my first marriage broke down, I had three jobs to make ends meet, and also had to remortgage the house for a larger sum to pay off his share. The actual amout was peanuts compared with today’s prices but then my salary was less than peanuts too.

      2. There was a very, very, brief period when that 17% was threatened.

        I’m not sure that more than a tiny number of people actually paid that, and even if they did, it was for a very short spell. Fixed rate mortgages were almost unheard of in those days.

        I was head of the “live” mortgage department of a national building society and we ran change programmes vs potential rates and likely arrears %-ages to see how such rates would affect our solvency. None of those test results would have hit the national press in those days, but our portfolio was healthy. Stress test vs property price falls were a very infrequent game.

        1. I seem to remember 14%. A late first-time buyer, I bought my first house in 1988, and stretched myself to do so. My initial mortgage was around 9%. Negative equity, redundancy and eventual repossession followed. Bought for around £56k, sold by bloody Halifax for £12.5k. Currently estimated value £185k.

          All worked out well, though, ’tis history. Two ‘house for duty’ or rent-free gigs for being an organist, helped. And the ‘new’ place (I’m just into my third year here) was prolly a case of ‘it’s not what you know’…

        2. For most of the life of that mortgage we were paying 12 – 15% though of course the actual sums were low compared to today’s payments. But so were our wages. We were never in arrears.
          I don’t think we ever had a fixed rate on our current property, either, but we cleared the mortgage by overpaying in chunks when we could.

    1. Both concerning indoctrination, I know, I know.
      The 2nd one is just pure evil though, and if the parents know what’s happening then everything has gone to rat shit.

      1. There are times when I actually wish that the slammers were given free rein on these creeps, tall buildings included.

  78. Gosh, a tough news day, today. But then every day seems to have been a tough news day since January 2020 … and most days since May 1997, the rock which was Great Britain seems to lose a stone chip and now its starting to look as crumbly as the coastline to the west of Lyme Regis … landfalls expected …

  79. Maybe just two years before the end of parliament wasn’t the best time to scare the horses with reforms. It’s just the duplicitous behaviour of the back benchers in the hope of
    ‘ Ready for Rishi ‘ will take over. I still hope Liz Truss will stand firm with her other reforms but she might not now .

    { I shall get one of ad blocker thing advised here to stop these blasted ads popping up- I believe my laptop security provider has those ad blockers } it’s a pointless new disqus feature.

        1. Jealousy and the thought of being usurped in your affections. I’m sure you will give her all the hugs and love necessary, without leaving Harry out.

          1. Yes. The breeder told me when you have one Chi they will bond with you. When you have two they will still bond with you but form their own family.

          4. Funny you should say that. Harry’s registered name is Henry. Now there is a Royal connection !

          6. The real reason for all the tantrums? I bet he had a DNA test done. Probably why he feels like an also ran.

      1. Blues are rare and the price justifies that if you want KC Chi’s. Rachel let me have him for £500.

        1. He looks quite black, but then we had a ‘Blue’ Roan cocker spaniel and his patches were black. Perhaps appending the name, black to a dog, even, is seen as waycist.

          1. True, but also not a good pic. I expect i will be posting more in future to catch the colouring.

      1. Dolly is not thrilled but the breeder said Dolly would growl a bit at first to warn off. She also said they would settle and become best buddies. Just hope she doesn’t try and bite the little guy…you know what jealous women can be like………. :@)

    8. Dolly has a very beady eye on him – I sense an upper lip being raised! He’s lovely, so sweet! We’ll look forward to more photographs!

  81. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e95f7812bc80825449407642f4fd0462f41ab85037cb76f17ee608fb42fa194e.png Only last week I bought a box of six of what passes, these days, for a Walnut Whip. They’ve not been made by Duncan for decades. Nestlé ruined them, in the way they ruin everything they acquire.
    The half walnut is on top these days … that is, if you’re lucky enough to get one (There was a period when Duncan put one on top and another inside). The chocolate walls are about 1mm thick and shatter if you breathe too hard on them. Every one of mine was damaged. When Duncan made them they were so thick that you could play cricket with one and it would never break. Also they used to come in two flavours of fondant filling: vanilla or coffee. These days they thick white filling is of unknown provenance and certainly possesses no flavour, apart from sugar/aspartame.

    2. Anyone passing this way please let us know as we have plenty of walnuts to give away.

      My dear old mother used to love walnut whips when she was a girl.

      1. I envy the fact that you have the trees.

        We buy walnuts from one of the market stalls almost all year round. You will know, but others might not, that the Dordogne is one of France’s principal walnut areas.

        We tend to stop buying at this time of the year because we’re not very keen on the “fraiche”, too green. We much prefer the slightly more mature ones. On the plus side, the new season walnut oil is always superb.

        1. There was a walnut tree nearby when I was growing up and I always loved the “wet walnuts” – they are quite different from the old, dry ones, even though they need peeling.

          2. I don’t like anything pickled! Not terribly keen on the old walnuts, though they’re ok in a mixture.

          2. The PT I was referring to is Plum Tart. But TP is also missed.

            On a different topic, this Saturday, in the market crowds, there was a chap wearing shorts, who had had a below knee amputation and a was wearing a prosthesis. HG, as a physio, was very interested and commented regarding how well he was walking, had he not been wearing shorts one would never have guessed.
            I hope that you are moving at least as well, and ideally even better!

          3. Ah. I had a vague idea that Plum had been tracked down, following a lengthy absence, but I’ve just been catching up. Not a good situation. Poor Plum.

            As for ‘your’ amputee – living within a stone’s throw from Aldershot, one sees quite a few BKA’s hereabouts. As a bilateral, I don’t see any point in wearing shorts, since the bits they would expose aren’t actually ‘me’.

            I get around well enough, thanks. My gait leaves something to be desired; I appear somewhat knock-kneed, whereas I wasn’t before the op. I don’t do ladders (Bill please note), because the combination of the suspension sleeves restricting knee movement, plus rigid ankles, means I can’t quite get each foot onto the next rung. Uneven pavements (I’m looking at you, Rushmoor and Guildford Borough Councils) can be unpleasant, due also to the rigid ankles. And there remains an awful lot of South West Coast Path that is now out of reach.

            But I’l happily walk the 1.5 miles from Seale Church, over the Hog’s Back, to the nearest bus stop in Tongham. My phone pesters me to walk 6000 steps each day. Only recorded 2000 today, but – in fairness – the phone was on the shelf for most of the day.

            Covered at least 32,000 steps in 24 hours between the 15th and 16th Sept. Admittedly, I never made it to Westminster Hall, but that was more to do with standing still than walking. Besides, I was getting notifications from the Tile app that my wallet had been found and handed in, so abandoned the queue to try and retrieve it. Once I was moving again, things eased considerably.

            Thanks for asking.

      1. Yes, I’d be very surprised to find a walnut in my bottom. all I get are dingleberries!

  83. That’s me for the day. Nice weather.. The sodding builders didn’t come. “Unwell” – yeah, right. Better job cropped up, I shouldn’t wonder.
    Scrounged a few pounds of potatoes from a field that was harvested last week – and, maddeningly, ploughed the next day…. Still – better than nothing.

    Have a nice evening admiring Young Phil’s menagerie…. Didn’t know he had a cat, too.

    A demain.

      1. Busy day for me; visit to Shrewsbury for the RAFA talk on restoring the Horsa glider, followed by gathering my equipment to start redecorating tomorrow and ending with a Parish Council meeting.

  84. Evening folks:

    This doesnot bode well:

    “Last week, the Bank of England pivoted and returned to quantitative easing.

    Peter called this development “very significant.” Because up until the announcement, Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey was just as hawkish as Jerome Powell. The Bank of England raised interest rates from 0.1% last December to roughly 2.25%, including a 50 basis point rate hike in August. It was the largest BoE rate hike in 27 years.
    He was talking tough about how resolute the Bank of England was to fighting inflation. They’ve got the highest inflation in Europe. It’s way above their 2% target. It’s a double-digit number. It’s above 10%.”

    Bailey even said he was committed to bringing down inflation no matter the cost and said he was willing to endure some pain, just like Jerome Powell.
    Well, that was all a bluff because we got some pain overnight and Bailey folded like a cheap suit. And instead of quantitative tightening, they’re back to quantitative easing. The rate hikes are probably permanently on hold because the Bank of England refused to allow a potential crisis to unfold as a result of rising interest rates.”

    The crisis manifested itself in the UK pension system with plunging bond prices. CNBC summed up the problem:
    In order to top up the collateral on these bonds, some funds had to raise cash. But due to the speed of this crisis, many funds were caught out and were forced to liquidate their next most liquid assets, long-term bonds or gilts, causing prices of bonds to fall even more.”

    In order to stabilize bond prices, the BoE stepped in to buy long-term bonds, creating artificial demand and propping up prices.
    This pension problem isn’t exclusive to the United Kingdom. Pensions systems worldwide face the same issue, including in the United States.

    When interest rates fall to zero, bond holdings in pension funds don’t generate as much interest income. Pensions need this income to pay benefits. So, in order to boost their incomes, pension funds borrow money at low interest rates to buy new long-term bonds using existing bonds as collateral. They make up for lower yields by holding more bonds.

    But when interest rates rise, the value of their bond portfolio collapses even as the interest on their debt rises.

    All of the pension funds that had borrowed short to buy long-term bonds were getting crushed because the value of the bonds they owned was collapsing and the cost of servicing the debt was soaring, and they were in a position where they were going to get margin calls. Those margin calls were going to force an already collapsing bond market to fall even more and that would have wreaked havoc throughout the United Kingdom.”

    In simple terms, instead of raising pension contributions or cutting pension benefits to deal with their shortfalls, pension managers took the easy, but reckless way out and borrowed money.

    On top of that, the newly elected British prime minister rewarded voters with a big tax cut that threw even more gasoline on the inflationary fire.
    Great Britain was looking at a potential crash in the bond market and the Bank of England rode in to save the day.

    The Bank of England folded. They pivoted. They decided to launch a new QE program. Remember, yesterday, they were committed to quantitative tightening. Now they said they will buy whatever it takes. They have committed to another QE infinity in order to prop up the bond market. They now have to print British pounds to buy these gilts. So, instead of fighting inflation, which yesterday was public enemy number one – it had to be brought down at any cost – now, all of a sudden, when you see the cost, well, forget about that. We’re now going to create inflation.”

    The central bankers in England claim this is not a monetary policy decision. It was a move to avert a crisis. But as Peter said, it is most definitely a monetary policy decision.
    That’s the only policy they make — monetary policy. Deciding to launch QE is monetary policy. I don’t care what you want to pretend. That’s what it is.”
    The BoE also said it just wants to maintain an orderly market.

    Well, you can’t fight inflation and maintain an orderly market because the markets have been propped up by inflation. So, if you’re going to fight inflation, you’d better be prepared for a disorderly market. And until yesterday, the Bank of England was bluffing that they were. But now that their bluff has been called, they had to show their cards, and they’re holding nothing. And so, inflation won.”

  85. Been boating these past few days taking advantage of this pleasant early autumnal weather. A few pictures today and a couple more over the next few days…

    Most days there were practically no other boats moving on the Upper Thames…
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/453b9096463d5db92229d9f6d9650936fefbb8dda43441cb17a92b7fcc8d0d1a.jpg
    Approaching Windsor:
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9d28196d0fe56a72d9a4cb4a21928dc7740e795ee0acba2b0182ea27af2a776e.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/481fc77f6643d3690ae11c9dd3d9345d7eb24150b1b593e6317fbe19c8af05c0.jpg

  87. A busy day, grass cut for hopefully the last time this year.
    Washed the bird feeder seed tubes, fed a Robin that followed me around the garden while I cut the grass, meal worms from my hand 🙂
    Now it’s feet up, a glass or three of fall over juice and this on the Hifi.
    https://youtu.be/YOpa5Ec3i4s

      1. I was introduced to his music back in about 1987. A German friends wife recommended his music, along with now ‘Sir’ John Kenneth Tavener.

  88. Good evening all.
    Now enjoying a pint in the Anchor Inn at Combwich, just North of Bridgwater.

    Pick up the lathe tooling tomorrow and then heading back North, generally via the A38 & M5, but will probably take detours and plan to stop off somewhere tomorrow night en route.

    3. Shame we didn’t know you were there we could have got together for a drink. Only a couple of miles from us.

  90. LotL is gonna have to come out of retirement:

    A total of 18 Guinness World Record titles were broken by those taking part in the London Marathon on Sunday.
    Among the other record-breakers was Sarah Dudgeon, who broke the world record for the fastest marathon dressed as a witch (female) in three hours, 11 minutes and 52 seconds.

  92. Do not poke this bear! Think I am calm enough now.
    Had an appointment this pm for 3rd B 12 jab. We left in plenty of time….traffic insane and no bus and then, of course, two came at once. Got to the surgery 10 mins late- Oh, not sure she will see you, she’s fully booked, said the little Hitler at reception.
    She checked with the nurse and then shouted across the waiting room- sorry, she can’t see you. Eff me- how long does it take to stick a needle in someone’s arm?
    Then they had the gall to text me wanting a rating for my visit. I gave them a 4 which is poor.
    The sodding NHS has ignored us for 3 years unless it was covid and now it’s all about them. I shall phone tomorrow and try to change the times of the further two appointments this week- if they cannot accommodate me I will cancel.
    This country is ruined and the NHS thinks it is beyond reproach.
    Sod this government, sod the NHS and I might well consider not pursuing any further treatments. What’s the bloody point?

    1. That’s a real pi$$er, Ann.
      I thought that the NHS will never be improved now that some clown gave it a GC. Untouchable, they are.
      Anyhow, why a jab? Can you not get pills?

      1. B12 jabs- am supposed to get a prescription for Folate but not a word from the pharmacy.

          1. To do with my blood- so they say. Don’t believe anything anymore.
            PS- I rarely get headaches.

    3. Do you have a neighbour who would be willing to give you a ride for your appointments?

    4. Barstewards. How many appointments have you attended on time, only to have to wait 10, 20, 30, 40 minutes or more before you’re actually called in?

      1. Quite a few, especially with MH.
        If they won’t accommodate me, as stated above, then I shall ignore the sods.
        I am beyond caring at times.

        1. Have you thought of buying B12 tablets, which is what we do? We. Recently bought 3 lots for £12 (three for the price of two from Boots) for 540 tablets.

          I’m pretty sure you could “kick up a fuss” quietly in the surgery and simply refuse to leave if this should happen again.

    5. I had the opposite experience for once; my physiotherapist rang me three weeks early (I had a telephone appointment booked for the end of the month) because she’d looked at my MRI scan and now wanted a CT scan because some of it wasn’t clear. She said she rang early because it will take time to get the scan, so now we’re farther forward with the booking than we would have been if she’d waited. I couldn’t argue with that!

    6. I’m off for mine this morning but I’m only having the flu jab. I can turn up when I like!

  93. Here’s a more cheerful post….MH’s son phoned this evening and they had a chat. Then his little grand daughter wanted to speak to MH. She adores him.
    So what earlier was a strong and stoic man, is now a large blancmange all because of a 7 year old little girl. She wanted to tell him she is learning the clarinet!

        1. Maybe she does.

          I do not know the woman. But she is a political lighweight and I think this utterly cynical Tory Party has brought her to the fore because they are more afraid that someone of wisdom character leads the country and upsets the gravy train.

  95. Reduced my stress today by watching a P G Wodehouse Society by ZOOM instead of rushing to London against the clock. Prior to this 14 of my Wrinklies Film Club went to watch MRS HARRIS GOES TO PARIS at a local cinema. We all thoroughly enjoyed it. So today was a fun day with no stress. And now, for my customary evening greeting: Good night, everyone – and especially Conners, Oscar and Kadi.

      1. Indeed, Ann. My favourite Blandings short story is “The Girlfriend”. Having read all the Blandings and Jeeves and Wooster stories (several times) I now need to read all the other ones, of which there are many.

        1. One of my best friends suggested to me when we were young that the best way of judging a person’s personality and character was by looking at his or her reaction to P.G. Wodehouse’s stories.

          You should not bother much with those who think he is just stupid and silly but those who love his books and appreciate his brilliance you should, to borrow from Hamlet: “grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel“.

          This way of judging people has never let me down so imagine my joy when I discovered that the lovely young woman who came to teach Modern Languages in the school where I taught English revealed that she loved ‘Plum’ as much as I did. To borrow from another author: “Reader I married her!”

          I think we have virtually everything he has written in our library and we regularly revisit the Jeeves and Blandings stories reading them in the correct sequence. When we were sailing around the Mediterranean in Mianda and the boys were little we used to read them aloud in the cabin in the evening.

          1. Glad to hear you read them all in the correct sequence, Richard. The first Jeeves and Wooster book I which I read baffled me like nothing else. I can’t remember the name of the novel but most of the characters go to a country house weekend pretending to be someone else. Since at the time I had no concept of who was Stilton Cheesewright, Gussie Fink-Nottle (was he an early NoTTLer by any chance?), Bingo Little and so on, I was totally confused.

    2. Goodnight, Elsie, all NoTTL Gentlefolk and God bless – I shall soon repair to my bed also. Tempus Fugit.

  96. Evening, all. Late tonight because the meeting’went on a bit and I had barely got in when I had a phone call. One of the councillors remarked (before the meeting when we were chatting informally) that he had caught some of the chancellor’s speech and he hadn’t thought things could get more incompetent, but he was wrong!

  99. During my dialogue with my EV sales person about the trade in value of my diesel I supported my case for maintaining its value by remarking that the recent oil price falls were mitigating against the unattractiveness of running a diesel car. With recent reports of public EV electricity prices even reaching £1 per kWh this emphasised the rapid turnaround in the market for. EV versus ICE cars.

    Sanctions on Russia however have forced increased demands by OPEC for raising oil prices . The sanctions themselves have led Russia to call for even bigger cuts in oil output:

    Russia, which has been impacted by Western energy sanctions, is reportedly pushing for a cut of more than 1 million barrels.

    https://www.investopedia.com/oil-prices-surge-as-opec-considers-cut-6746387

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