Tuesday 18 October: How much longer can the Government continue with a Prime Minister who isn’t in charge?

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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575 thoughts on “Tuesday 18 October: How much longer can the Government continue with a Prime Minister who isn’t in charge?”

        2. Good day. The MR is on the mend. I am not….yet.

          Still, at least I don’t have to chair a Cabinet meeting….

  3. How much longer can the Government continue with a Prime Minister who isn’t in charge?

    But hasn’t that been the case for decades

    1. 355260 + up ticks,

      Morning B3,
      Could very well prove to be a blessing in disguise.

      Those over decades seemingly found favour with the electoral majority.

    2. It certainly was while we were in the EU – regardless of who was in No. 10, the orders came from Bruxelles.

  4. MPs are entitled to select a new prime minister. 18 October 2022.

    So Tory MPs may soon have to face down objections from party members about being “undemocratic” and insist on a leader who commands their own clear support. This will probably be best done by a so-called “coronation”, in which they informally agree one candidate so that no contest is needed.

    If they do this, they should probably do something else which sounds pointless, and almost like life in a Communist country, but isn’t. Both in the parliamentary party and the rank-and-file, they should hold a vote for the single, chosen person. Then MPs would have to give their clear personal endorsement.

    Some object to this idea, asking, “But what if it turns out that lots of people won’t vote for the chosen X?” I’m afraid the answer is, “Well, if that is so, you know you have a party that cannot be led. In which case, goodbye.”

    Almost? What would be the actual difference between this and the Chinese Communist Party who have just voted Xi Jinping President for another five years? The answer is none at all and for much the same reasons. None would dare vote against the Party nor the Party go to the people and ask for their votes!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/10/17/mps-entitled-select-new-prime-minister/

  5. Bye Farewell Lady

    Oozing charm from every pore
    He oiled his way across the floor.
    Every trick that he could play,
    He used to strip her Office away.
    And when at last the Chance’ was done,
    He glowed as if he knew he’d won!

    1. I think Hunt has fiercely bullied LT into surrendering. She looked totally shocked by the events as she sat in the HoC yesterday afternoon., All Hunt has done has returned to the financial mess Sunak has made.

        1. Hunt is the foremost of the desperate and determined Rejoiners.

          As soon as Liz Truss stated that she wished to make a success of Brexit then she got the everlasting bitter enmity of

          the Tory Remainers who are quite determined to wreck this nation’s economy so that we collapse back under Brussel’s control.

          Remember that when we rejoin the EU we will be joining the Euro, and as previous politicians have pointed out, our

          gold reserves will be sent to Frankfurt.

          Remember that when we rejoin the EU they can help themselves to our gas reserves.

          1. The Tory remainers are so dedicated to staying in the EU that they are prepared to destroy the Conservative Party completely so that a Labour government can take Britain back into it under far worse terms than before.

            They would probably even try to argue that they are destroying the Conservative Party in the best interests of the country.

          2. They’ve already kept hold of Northern Ireland. In EU immigration rules, it’s ranked, not as part of the UK, but comes under the same regulations as the EU.

        2. And yet they are busy passing legislation to stop us being horrid or saying hurty words to anyone, on pain of imprisonment

  9. 355260+ ip tricks,

    Morning Each,

    Tuesday 18 October: How much longer can the Government continue with a Prime Minister who isn’t in charge?

    Could it prove to be for the better, we are witnessing ./ suffering the odious consequences of a godfather in place, besides the supporting proven fools are to have NO SAY in the mafia structured political placements, that is on the table is it not ?

    Repress,replace,RESET foundation stones are being firmly set in place

    The Forth Re… is in the final stages of construct, for idiot types needing conformation please check out 1930 ongoing Pathe newsreels and the so obvious parallel, you could be saving your child’s life and certainly saving them from a life of incarceration.

  10. Jeremy Hunt: ‘We must take decisions of eye-watering difficulty’. 18 October 2022

    On Monday, the new Chancellor warned MPs that decisions of “eye-watering difficulty” would be needed and declined to rule out scrapping the pensions triple lock or introducing a new windfall tax.

    The Telegraph understands that Mr Hunt will ask that savings are even found in the health and defence budgets, despite protests from Cabinet colleagues.
    The “eye watering” will not be on the part of the Government or its Agencies. The lachrymosity will be on the part of those who are unable to object.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/10/17/jeremy-hunt-must-take-decisions-eye-watering-difficulty/

    1. I do not have the economic nous to understand these things more than instinctually. I do know that sooner or later the piper had to be payed.
      But I think it would have been better to do it back in 2008, let more banks than just Lehman crash and build back better at that time rather than wait to have wrecked our productive economy (i.e. not the plate spinning in the City) with the lockdowns and then made energy so expensive with this insane war.
      Now, I can’t stand Remainer Hunt, but will he be cynical (and sensible) enough to stop us freezing to death by opening up the gas reserves and fracking, or is he going to carry on digging us into a pit?
      Why would this be cynical? – brecause we could start providing the Europeans with energy – if they can afford it. And please God, let him not bring us back into the EU where they can just help themselves to wage more war on their huge bear of a neighbour.
      Then there would be some sense to the war-mongering. Criminal, and worthy of hanging, but at least it would follow some sort of logic.

    2. But I bet he won’t look for savings in the foreign aid budget, gimmegrant care, cash and arms to Ukraine, and other left wing sacred cows.

  11. Good morrow, Gentlefolks. Today’s funny – the fifth part sums it up neatly:

    Five Surgeons

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/99baaac666bee8a9bf78de8d343e0333529a34c9d6f97a07bf29eff87ab27123.jpg

    Five surgeons are discussing who the best patients were to operate on.

    The first surgeon says, ‘I like to see Accountants on my operating table because when you open them up, everything inside is numbered.’

    The second responds, ‘Yeah, but you should try Electricians! Everything inside them is colour-coded.’

    The third surgeon says, ‘No, I really think Librarians are the best; everything inside them is in alphabetical order.’

    The fourth surgeon chimes in, ‘You know I like Construction Workers. Those guys always understand when you have a few parts left over at the end, and when the job takes longer than you said it would.’

    But the fifth surgeon shut them all up when he observed, ‘You’re all wrong. Politicians are the easiest to operate on. There’s no guts, no heart, no balls, no brains, and no spine, and there are only two moving parts – the mouth and the arsehole – and those are interchangeable‘

  12. Diehard proponents of Project Fear are failing to grasp the real crisis

    The end of cheap money has unleashed a global meltdown that will wreak havoc on governing parties

    SHERELLE JACOBS
    17 October 2022 • 8:50pm
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2022/10/17/TELEMMGLPICT000313044528_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqA7N2CxnJWnYI3tCbVBgu9T0aesusvN1TE7a0ddd_esI.jpeg?imwidth=680
    A currency trader talks on the phone at the foreign exchange dealing room of the KEB Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, Oct. 17, 2022

    There are simply no other words to describe it: the country is being gaslit by the proponents of Project Fear. We are told that Remainers have been vindicated; that the Truss “experiment” is a cautionary tale in the dangers of ideological extremism; that her foolhardy mistakes trace back to the hubris that Brexit unleashed. Apparently, it is now up to “grown-ups” like Jeremy Hunt to take back the reins from libertarian “jihadis” and pursue sensible economics anchored in sound money.

    Since there is now a dangerous power vacuum in Downing Street, such a bold attempt to rewrite history is unsurprising. Yet it both denigrates the facts and trivialises the tectonic economic shifts that have plunged this country – and soon much of the West – into turmoil.

    First, to be clear, the notion that this crisis was caused by Brexit is bunkum. Britain has been tipped into an inflation nightmare by Covid lockdowns and the accompanying splurges of government funds aided by excessive money printing, as well as the energy turmoil wreaked by the Ukraine war.

    Nor is the fiscal strategy of the new Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, a return to economic prudence. His announcement today was a victory for the destructive neoliberal orthodoxy that favours austerity and balancing the books over generating growth. By sacrificing almost all of Liz Truss’s tax cuts on the altar of market stability, Hunt has ensured that the country will suffer a longer and harder recession. By pursuing spending cuts at the same time as raising taxes, he has allowed the country to be tipped into a doom loop of drained public services and stagnant growth.

    Far from escaping the clutches of ideology, Hunt is now doubling down on a neoliberal dogmatism. It started with Osborne’s failed austerity gamble, which had little basis in mainstream macroeconomics, and reached new heights with Theresa May’s decision to make net zero commitments law without bothering with proper costings. It culminated in the last government’s arrogant technocratic belief that it could shut down the economy and then reset it through quantitative easing.

    Europhiles may like to quip that Brexit has eaten its own children, but in truth what has just happened is much more profound: technocratic neoliberalism has devoured its supposed mother, Thatcherism. Under the watch of New Labour and then the Tories, liberalisation has unwittingly spawned an overcapitalised economy prone to systemic catastrophe. The principles of sound money have metamorphosed into the elite cults of mass privation and managed decline. Values of freedom and personal responsibility have been distorted into the virtues of unfettered globalisation and collective sacrifice.

    Most importantly, the belief that the nation state is sovereign has been usurped by the fundamental tenet of neoliberalism, which is the absolute sovereignty of global financial capital.

    In this context, it is more useful to see Liz Truss’s rise and fall as symptomatic of an identity crisis among free-market policy-makers across the West, as they wake up to a world in which they can exist neither as competent technocratic administrators nor as a radical liberalising movement.

    This new world is one in which both Thatcherism and the Blairite Third Way are dead. What those commentators suffering from Brexit Derangement Syndrome appear to have missed is that the country is reeling from what many hoped was a transitory crisis, but now seems to be a permanent economic paradigm shift: one in which high inflation is endemic and the welfare capitalist model that has been propped up by cheap credit for the past 20 years is vanquished.

    Experts warn, with increasing alacrity, that inflation seems to be endemic and domestically generated. Moreover, any attempt to kill it is being undermined not only by the strength of the dollar, but the financial industry’s vested interests. As the LDI pensions panic and fears of a full-blown shadow banking meltdown suggest, asset managers have recklessly concealed leverage and risk in opaque derivative structures, making large interest rate hikes almost impossible to implement.

    With the public unwilling to countenance an official return to austerity, the only scenario left is giving in to endemic inflation, while timidly attempting to hike interest rates without breaking the entire system. It is not just the UK groping towards this grim new reality. The ECB concedes that it is now locked in a battle against a “self-reinforcing” inflationary spiral. The US Federal Reserve also appears to be losing its battle as core inflation soars and Biden’s landmark “Inflation Reduction Act” tanks.

    The consequences for our own country will be shattering. Government departments face a double whammy of permanently reduced spending power on top of severe budget cuts. The British public will be permanently poorer. As public sector workers battle for pay rises, there will be industrial-scale unrest.

    This spells a nightmare for Labour, which may soon find itself in power but paralysed by its pledge not to borrow to fund spending. Starmer will be under huge peer pressure to stand up to the markets so that he can boost emergency handouts and public spending. He also faces being steamrolled by trade unions over pay disputes. Arguably, though, Labour can survive if only by “soaking the rich” and reframing the political conversation from recovery to redistribution.

    The Tories, on the other hand, have nowhere to go. There is only space for one party of redistribution, which means they need a proposal for growing the pie. The problem is that they have run out of plausible strategies. Sunak’s pitch of prioritising inflation is unachievable. Nor can the party position itself as a slightly less high-tax version of Labour. After all, their unstoppable decline in the polls, including among Red Wall voters, began with the announced increase in national insurance.

    More than anyone, Tory Wets and Remainers are one step behind in realising that the world has changed. The Brexiteers and Thatcherites may have been sidelined but there is no going back to the status quo. We are in uncharted territory now.

    3. It is unfortunate that no one with a big opinion appears to understand how our system works; although it never seems to stop them from broadcastIng them.

    1. “When the reptilian Peter Mandelson gloated in the wake of Labour’s 1997 landslide that ‘the era of pure representative democracy is coming slowly to an end’, even he couldn’t have foreseen how prescient his remarks would eventually prove.” Littlejohn

      1. That implies that it happened by accident rather than design. It was intended to come to an end.

  15. RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Not even Wallace and Gromit can save the Tories now… When I wrote that the Conservatives appeared to have a death wish, I wasn’t expecting them to commit hara-kiri quite so quickly

    When just shy of 14 million of us handed PM Boris Johnson an 80-seat majority, did anyone seriously suggest what we really wanted was Jeremy Hunt running the country?

    Then again, who could have imagined that within two and a half years of that historic election triumph, Tory MPs would hound Boris from office and install Liz Truss?
    *
    *
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-11325507/RICHARD-LITTLEJOHN-Not-Wallace-Gromit-save-Tories-now.html

    1. Good Moaning.
      This activist of 40+ years is now past caring. I am aware of the repercussions, but feel totally disenfranchised.

    2. It’s such a shame that when a government is forced to move over the new opposition doesn’t lose at least half its ‘workforce’. Why should the taxpayers be expected to support the obviously useless.

  16. Yesterday in Parliament

    The House: ^Where’s the PM?”
    An Honourable Member: “She’s under the table!”
    A PM (during :sniggering from the House): “The PM is not under the table!”
    The PM (after delayed arrival): *…”

  17. Yesterday in Parliament

    The House: ^Where’s the PM?”
    An Honourable Member: “She’s under the table!”
    A PM (during :sniggering from the House): “The PM is not under the table!”
    The PM (after delayed arrival): *…”

    2. Apologies to Winston Churchill – Never, in the field of human existence, was so much inconvenience caused to so many by so few.

      Vegans, LGBTQWERTYUIOP, Transgenderism, BLM, Extinction Rebellion – you name it, a tiny minority are calling the shots.

      1. Good morning, Aeneas

        The Conservatives are jumping on the bandwagon – all the things you mention are unpopular and yet get their way so they have chosen the most unpopular and most despised MP in the HoC in the hope that he will generate the same influence.

  19. 366260+ up ticks,

    Gerard Batten
    @gjb2021
    ·
    9h
    Oh dear, that was a mistake. Politics is like a Roman gladiator match, the crowd want blood, & if a contestent is wounded they bay for more.

    It would have been better for her to say something like, ‘I want to give take cuts to help grow the economy, but the dark forces that want Globalism have temporarlily thwarted me. I need the public behind me on this to continue the fight.’

    The crowd admires a gladiator that strikes back even when they are on the floor. But since she lost her nerve, sacked Kwartang & intalled Hunt, its to late to get the crowd behind her now.

    PM Liz Truss says sorry for ‘mistakes’ in first few volatile weeks in office — Sky News
    PM Liz Truss says sorry for ‘mistakes’ in first few volatile weeks in office — Sky News

    The prime minister, Liz Truss, has apologised for the “mistakes” she has made in her first few volatile weeks in office.

    https://gettr.com/post/p1umr6h021b

  20. Good morning all.
    A bright & dry morning today. Clear sky at the moment with 1°C outside.

    4. Asperger’s may cause difficulties in the following areas:

      emotion regulation and interpretation
      verbal and nonverbal communication
      social interactions
      behavior

      I think the majority of MPs are in that zone .

  23. One for the blood pressure.
    But at least his pension’s safe.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/10/17/revenge-porn-gp-can-keep-job-tribunal-rules-regret-genuine/

    “GP who sent pornographic pictures to man’s wife and family told he can keep his job

    Tribunal concludes Dr Jonathan Darby’s behaviour was ‘not so egregious’ as to warrant being stripped of his licence to practise

    17 October 2022 • 4:40pm

    A GP convicted of revenge porn offences has been allowed to keep his job after a tribunal decided the regret he showed over the incident was “genuine”.

    Dr Jonathan Darby, 62, was given a suspended sentence and a two-year restraining order against four people after he admitted disclosing private sexual photos without consent, also known as revenge porn.

    He had appeared at Kidderminster Magistrates’ Court and admitted disclosing private sexual photos without consent in October last year.

    The long-serving family doctor, who had also worked as a script adviser for BBC daytime drama Doctors, was sentenced to 26 weeks’ imprisonment, suspended for 12 months, and given a two-year restraining order against four individuals.

    But Dr Darby avoided being thrown out of the profession following a misconduct hearing at the Medical Practitioners Tribunal, after the panel ruled his behaviour from March to May in 2020 was “not so egregious” as to warrant being stripped of his licence to practise.

    Instead, Dr Darby has escaped with a six-month suspension.

    Explicit photos sent to man’s family

    Dr Darby had sent explicit photos of a married man to his wife and family to take “revenge” against him, including sending the man’s spouse information gathered by a private investigator as well as sexual images of him to her on WhatsApp.

    The GP even arranged for lewd photographs to be posted to the man’s children, the tribunal heard.

    The tribunal heard Dr Darby, who qualified in 1984, worked as a GP Partner at Halesowen Medical Practice, near Birmingham from 1989 and had an unblemished career.

    In May 2020, Dr Darby’s victim – named only as “Mr A” – reported him to police, complaining that letters, messages, and emails featuring sexual photos of him had been sent to his family.

    The nature of Dr Darby’s relationship with Mr A was kept hidden at his tribunal, however it was heard the offending related to his personal life.

    It heard Dr Darby was in “emotionally challenging circumstances” which were “deeply personal” and involved his own family, and that his “judgment was clouded by his heightened emotions”.

    ‘Clear evidence’ of intention to cause distress

    A tribunal report said there was “clear evidence Dr Darby intended to cause Mr A distress by sending indecent pictures to his family”.

    The report said: “Having previously forwarded material gathered by a private investigator to Mr A’s family by post, Dr Darby later discovered the sexual photographs of Mr A… and copied them.

    “He sent these to Mr A’s wife via WhatsApp. He also arranged for the images to be posted to Mr A’s adult children.

    “It was the tribunal’s view that these actions were calculated to cause distress and demonstrated premeditation.”

    The report added: “Dr Darby told the tribunal that it has not been easy for him to make reference to Mr A in these proceedings.

    “He stated that, at the time of the events, his emotions were complex, and he was struggling.”

    ‘I regret this’

    In his first police interview, Dr Darby insisted that he was the “victim”.

    He later apologised to Mr A and his family, claiming he has “reflected a lot” and will attend a “professional boundaries course”.

    At the tribunal, he did not dispute that his “actions were aimed at taking revenge”.

    Dr Darby said: “I cannot begin to describe how much I regret this and the obvious impact this has on the wider profession of doctors…

    “To say the events of the past few years have been a learning point would be an understatement; if I could go back and change what I did, then I would undoubtedly do so.

    “With the benefit of hindsight, I fully see that my actions were entirely misguided and that I let my own personal situation cloud my better judgment.

    “Clearly, as a doctor, it is vital to be able to separate one’s personal and professional life.

    “In this instance, I failed to behave in the way that I would have expected of myself as a professional and this clearly has a wider impact in terms of my standing as a doctor.

    “I have truly lived to regret this ever since. I would wish to apologise wholeheartedly to all involved in this matter. This includes not only the family of Mr A, but also my regulator.

    “I am mortified that the GMC has now spent time in investigating and preparing this case and further that the matter now also goes before the [MPTS tribunal].”

    ‘His regret is genuine’

    Jayne Wheat, chairman of the MPTS hearing, said striking Dr Darby off the medical register would be too harsh.

    Mrs Wheat said: “The tribunal was of the view that, given Dr Darby’s developing insight, together with the other mitigating factors… erasure would be disproportionate in the particular circumstances of this case.

    “The tribunal was satisfied that the actions resulting in his conviction were not so egregious as to warrant permanently depriving the public of an otherwise clinically competent doctor.

    “Although his insight into the circumstances leading to his conviction is not yet complete, the tribunal was satisfied that, if a similar situation arose in future, Dr Darby would not act in the same way.

    “It took the view that his reflective statement demonstrates that he is shocked at how he acted and that his regret is genuine.”

    Dr Darby was given the suspension despite retiring in August this year.”

    1. Licence to practise?
      I’m no expert when it involves spelling but ?
      I can’t understand how he actually got away with it. It’s absolutely disgusting.

          1. Working, but I’ve yet to find out how all the ‘smart’ features work. I spent fruitless hours yesterday trying to connect it to the t’iternet but got bogged down trying to work out which passwords were needed at each stage. WiFi, Virgin. Samsung, Google, email etc. It kept asking for a Microsoft password too but I can’t recall ever setting one up.

      3. That was my reading of it.
        Like most of us, I’ve had times of ‘heightened emotion’ but it hasn’t prompted me to distribute lewd pikkies

  24. Morning all 🙂
    Fog at first but sun burning it orff.
    Tuesday in our road….garbos including garden watse and kitchen waste. Trucks up and down. Noise well before 8 am. 3 houses down on the opposite side, they are having their front garden completely removed, appropriately to form a new driveway. Digger, petrol angle grinder and truck grab loading the waste. Next door but one ourside chain saw massacre of a long established conifer. The home of squirrels. Both recently new residents. In their ‘must have’ 40s
    Why did these people not consider all these annoying factors before they purchased and moved in ? My wife is on line looking at houses for sale.

  26. Well I’m off to Matlock for an hour or so.
    Very tempted to visit the Tory Offices up Bank Street and ask then WTF their party is playing at.

  27. Update on Poppie – I replied to Conway late yesterday so for those of you who didn’t see it, here it is again.

    “We have not long collected Poppie from the vet. Blood tests done, ultra sound scans done, chest x-rays done… diagnosis: congestive heart failure, leaky mitral valve. We have come away with a bag of medication that would do any pensioner proud. Prognosis: she might only last a couple of months, or she could go on for several years yet. ‘No-one knows’ said vet. The good news is her breathing is more settled already and has halved its rate per minute. No more chasing squirrels, though, and no more walks off lead and no more than half a mile walk daily.” She is 13 years and three months.

    Moral: once again, if you have a health problem, see a vet. All sorted in six hours.

    1. Delighted you now know what is going on with your little treasure, and that she is being looked after and loved! I’m sure it cost an arm and a leg but well worth the money to have everything done in one place, and results delivered, if not immediately, then pretty quickly and no delay adding to the worry! Best wishes to you, OH and of course Poppie! Enjoy every moment with her! 🌹💕

      1. Thank you, Sue – yes, it did cost an arm and a leg, and it will be an ongoing arm and a leg – I said to myself ‘just hand over the credit card, don’t wince, it is only numbers!’ You are right, just worth it to have everything done and sorted on the same day! Would that the nhs worked as quickly. Obviously it can be done but the will isn’t there. Today we have been looking after our younger grandchild whilst the parents worked from home upstairs – I would sooner have been at home with Poppie to enable her to come to terms with what has happened in her own doggie way but sadly it wasn’t to be – we had to be 20 miles across Cambs and into Bedfordshire by 9.00 am – younger grandchild (aged 18 months) has hand, foot and mouth disease so couldn’t go to nursery, was fractious and from time to time could hear a parent upstairs and just knew they were in the same building. It was difficult, but Poppie is very tolerant of him. He is a lovely child, very smiley, just not very well and really just wants his mum. And it is the same tomorrow. Thanks so much for your good wishes. xx🤗💕

        1. Oh blimey, pm! Hand, foot and mouth must be doing the rounds – our youngest grandson, who’ll be 2 next week, had it when they came back from holiday! The blisters were absolutely everywhere, and he was miserable! It’s a horrible thing! I remember our elder daughter having it!
          Wishing you much happiness with Poppie and I’m sure she’ll embrace her new situation! 🌹

    2. Morning poppiesmum.

      So pleased you have had swift results and prognosis for Poppie .. at least you know .

      I am in a similar position with Jack , aged 14 years 7 months .. we have to persuade him his pills are nice, so we have encouraged him to take his pills with pate, or cooked chicken , salmon , ham etc ..

      We are on borrowed time with him, he sleeps down next to my side of the bed on his comfy bedding .. some times he snores alittle , then nothing , and I feel myself stretching my arm down to feel him to see whether he is breathing .. He is my shadow, deaf as a post , but still has an incredible sniff where is she habit .. even when I am in the bathroom .

      We love our dogs dearly , don’t we.

      1. Good morning, Mags. PILLS. I know how you must be suffering. A previous cat, Mousie, used to pretend to take a daily tab – which we’d find in a corner or under the washing machine.

        Gus and Pickles have a quarterly treatment for worms. Initially it was a nightmare. Then the vet prescribed “palatable” tablets. They really ARE palatable. Pickles fights to get to them.

        Might be worth asking your vet whether there are “palatable” versions…..

        1. Dogs are pretty easy to dose.
          Time to air an old favourite.

          Worming a cat:

          “Pick cat up and cradle it in the crook of your left arm as if holding a baby.

          Position right forefinger and thumb on either side of cat’s mouth and gently apply pressure to cheeks while holding pill in right hand.

          As cat opens mouth pop pill into mouth.

          Allow cat to close mouth and swallow.

          Retrieve pill from floor and cat from behind sofa.

          Cradle cat in left arm and repeat process.

          Retrieve cat from bedroom, and throw soggy pill away.

          Take new pill from foil wrap, cradle cat in left arm holding paws tightly with left hand.

          Force jaws open and push pill to back of mouth with right forefinger.

          Hold mouth shut for a count of ten.

          Retrieve pill from goldfish bowl and cat from top of wardrobe.

          Call spouse from garden.

          Kneel on floor with cat wedged firmly between knees, hold front and rear paws.

          Ignore low growls emitted by cat.

          Get spouse to hold head firmly with one hand while forcing wooden ruler into mouth.

          Drop pill down ruler and rub cat’s throat vigorously.

          Retrieve cat from curtain rail, get another pill from foil wrap.

          Make note to buy new ruler and repair curtains.

          Carefully sweep shattered Royal Doulton figures from hearth and set to one side for gluing later.

          Wrap cat in large towel and get spouse to lie on cat with head just visible from below armpit.

          Put pill in end of drinking straw, force mouth open with pencil and blow down drinking straw.

          Check label to make sure pill not harmful to humans, drink glass of water to take taste away.

          Apply band-aid to spouse’s forearm and remove blood from carpet with cold water and soap.

          Retrieve cat from neighbour’s shed.

          Get another pill.

          Place cat in cupboard and close door onto neck to leave head showing.

          Force mouth open with dessert spoon.

          Flick pill down throat with elastic band.

          Fetch screwdriver from garage and put door back on hinges.

          Apply cold compress to cheek and check records for date of last tetanus shot.

          Throw Tee-shirt away and fetch new one from bedroom.

          Call fire department to retrieve cat from tree across the road.

          Apologize to neighbour who crashed into fence while swerving to avoid cat.

          Take last pill from foil-wrap.

          Tie cat’s front paws to rear paws with garden twine and bind tightly to leg of dining table.

          Find heavy duty pruning gloves from shed.

          Force cat’s mouth open with small wrench.

          Push pill into mouth followed by large piece of fillet steak.

          Hold head vertically and pour 1/2 pint water down throat to wash pill down.

          Get spouse to drive you to accident and emergency of the local hospital, sit quietly while doctor stitches fingers and forearm and removes pill remnants from right eye.

          Stop at furniture shop on way home to order new table.

          Arrange for R.S.P.C.A. to collect cat and call local pet shop to see if they have any hamsters.”

      2. Hello Belle, thanks so much for your reply, we have been out all day looking after grandchild (18 months) who has hand, foot and mouth disease whilst his parents work (from home today, upstairs). They can’t work and look after a fractious toddler…. unfortunately the toddler from time to time knows that a parent is on the phone or moving around upstairs. Today I just wanted to be at home with Poppie and sit in the conservatory (her favourite place) with her but it was not to be. So she had to come with us when really I felt she needed some time to come to terms – as best a dog can – with her new way of being.

        Jack has done well, hasn’t he? I didn’t realise he was 14+ Our dogs are such characters, and like you Poppie sleeps with us, on the bed or underneath it if she chooses sometimes. Amazingly last night was the most peaceful night we have had for some time despite the diuretics and other tablets she is now on. The vet was surprised, he thought we’d be up and down with her to let her out….

        Poppie is my shadow too, she checks on me when I go to the bathroom (what can I be up to?) – she is my life and I would give my life for her if I thought it would help (as I would for our two sons). Yes, we love our dogs dearly. We know that day will come sometime, it is inevitable, but we must comfort ourselves with the knowledge that we have done our best for them and that they have had happy lives. xx

      1. It could be worse, it could have been lung tumours which was going to be a possible diagnosis. Unfortunately we are babysitting today and Poppie is snoozing on the sofa, I think she and us would sooner be at home today. We have another vet check up in half an hour, the vet is in Biggleswade where we are babysitting. Despite the diuretics she is on we all had a peaceful night.

      2. Somewhere around our patch, lives an elderly black poodle called Reg. He has a bad back and is ‘walked’ in a doggy pushchair.

        1. One of my friends takes her dog out in a buggy. Dog loves it. I tried it with Charlie and he refused to get in!

    5. A mixture of good and bad news.
      But not unexpected.
      Best wishes to all of you – particularly Poppy.

      1. Thank you, Anne. I have been thinking of Kipling’s poem today. “Those who would give their heart to a dog will surely have it broken.” (Or words to that effect).

  28. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

    Moment kufi-wearing white Labour council leader jokes he has the ‘worst tan possible for a black man’ and ‘the passion for African rhythm’ as he hosts Black History Month event: Politician faces probe after sparking race row

    Darren Rodwell is the leader of Barking and Dagenham Council in East London
    He told a Black History Month event he had ‘worst tan possible for a black man’
    Local activists are said to fuming, with one accusing Rodwell of ‘pure racism’
    The councillor is a frontrunner to replace Margaret Hodge as the MP for Barking

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11325361/White-Labour-councillor-tells-Black-History-Month-event-worst-tan-possible-black-man.html

    1. That label reminds me of an early Shadows record which bore the words: “Vocalist: C Richard”

      1. A reminder that I saw the young Cliff Richard “move it and groove it” at Newcastle City Hall in 1959/60 …. such raw sexuality, eh? …. two of the Shadows were from the N’cle area …

        1. Bruce Welch, the Shadows’ rhythm guitarist and Hank B. Marvin’s closest friend, was engaged to Olivia Newton John and he was completely heartbroken when she dumped him.

    2. My wife is not English but she speaks English beautifully and with no trace of an accent. Indeed, most people think she must have gone to a leading girls’ private school – not that that is as telling as it used to be! From the way she speaks, in France everyone thinks she is French born and bred and it is the similar in Spain and Holland when she speaks their languages. Indeed she would have been Henry Higgins’s star pupil.

      Liz Truss’s voice is terrible and at the risk of sounding horribly snobbish there is no other word to describe her voice other than common. She should have had elocution lessons and there would have been no shame in this because many parvenus and arrivistes used to do so in order to further their social acceptability and advance their careers.

      1. I find the BBC argument that the politics matters more than the nation insulting. We know that’s how they think, but not what the country needs.

  30. I see that Dead Woman Walking Untrussworthy was mad enough to give a telly interview last night.

    Can’t someone put her out of her (and our) misery pronto?

    1. I have never seen a better candidate for “leave the revolver and a large whisky on her desk … and close the door chaps”.

    1. The perlice will be after them with an armed response unit. And they’ll be banged up for years.

  34. BREAKING NEWS.

    I reported two weeks ago that I had down-loaded Adblocker Ultimate – which was a free, er, ad blocker. It said that I was to have a 14 day trial and then I’d have to pay. My IT guru said that was bollocks. It was free and permanent. Well – it HAS stopped and asks me to buy a licence to continue!

    I have asked IT Tim for advice – and will report…

    1. Grab uBlock Origin if this is a browser based approach.

      If it’s a tablet or such… errr….

    2. I have ordinary Adblock which does the job and it’s free – why go for the ‘Ultimate’?

    2. Herr Schwab prefers the title of Supreme Minister. It’s more fitting for his position at WEFminster.

  37. What is it like to be a male sex symbol? Paul Newman’s eye-popping posthumous memoir tells all
    Woven out of recently unearthed, confessional transcripts, this book strips down a celebrated star persona with astonishing naked honesty
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/what-to-read/extraordinary-life-ordinary-man-paul-newman-review-nakedly-honest/

    Apparently Paul Newman’s marriage to Joanne Woodward was one of the most stable in Hollywood.

    BTL

    “Why go out for a hamburger when you can have fillet steak at home?”

    This was his answer to a journalist who asked him whether he found it difficult to resist all the beautiful women who would have liked to seduce him.

      1. He said that it was difficult being ” the most handsome man in the world ‘
        Yes he was handsome but I think that Gregory Peck was more handsome with his dark eyes and dark hair . Maybe Mr Newman wasn’t very modest .

        1. I never rated Paul Newman. Far too blond, bland and smooth except in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Much preferred Clint Eastwood.

  39. Nobody can deny that Liz Truss was driven by an absurd ambition to become prime minister.

    Personal ambition has always been held in contempt.

    Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar was deemed guilty of ambition by Brutus, Cassius and the Gang who decided he must be killed for the good of the country before his ambition ran havoc. They compared Caesar with an embryonic snake which should be crushed while it was still in the egg because it is the bright day which brings forth the adder.

    In his eulogy for the murdered Caesar Mark Antony goes to great lengths to show that Caesar was not ambitious. “Was this ambition?” he asks the crowd as he recalls the generosity which Julius Caesar had lavished on the Roman people.

    “Ambition should be made of sterner stuff.”

    I don’t know what Truss’s ambition was made of but the substance was more like putty than anything a bit sterner!

    1. Not fair, rather like born again Christians are more profound with their beliefs,
      Liz Truss wasn’t always a Conservative is a Thatcherite . She truly believes in being pro Business, for growth and lowering taxes. She isn’t good at communicating and is truly niave. She has made mistakes but it’s hyenas in her own party that’s making her a scapegoat for their mistakes and their agenda’s who are disgusting. It’s Sunak with the blind ambition to be PM and he is In a way, through Hunt .

      1. Thatcherite, but without Thatcher’s attitude towards giving out a million visas a year and letting a-1000-a-day-if-we’re-lucky illegally land on our southern shore and commandeering a high proportion of the UKs 4-star hotels to ensure these completely unidentified young foreign men suffer no cold this winter and can check that there are no sexual predators on local streets and parks.

    2. Not fair, rather like born again Christians are more profound with their beliefs,
      Liz Truss wasn’t always a Conservative is a Thatcherite . She truly believes in being pro Business, for growth and lowering taxes. She isn’t good at communicating and is truly niave. She has made mistakes but it’s hyenas in her own party that’s making her a scapegoat for their mistakes and their agenda’s who are disgusting. It’s Sunak with the blind ambition to be PM and he is In a way, through Hunt .

    4. She is so dim that she really believed she could be a “leader”.

      That is her over-riding problem. Utter stupidity combined with complete self-delusion.

      1. Not if she was surround by sycophants who, for their own advantage, told her she could do it.
        That is what I believe happened and feel quite sorry for her.
        She’s way out of her depth, made worse by those wanting her to drown.

        1. She wouldn’t been there in the first place (and so HAD no sycophants) unless her dimness had driven her on.

    1. The PayPal meme is spot on.
      How wonder how many have taken note and begun to ponder more deeply on convenience v. freedom?

    3. To the last image:
      Roza is showing the deeply engrained transphobia inherent to the green movement by assuming that these cows identified as… erm… cows.
      Maybe they were bulls born in the wrong bodies.

    4. To the last image:
      Roza is showing the deeply engrained transphobia inherent to the green movement by assuming that these cows identified as… erm… cows.
      Maybe they were bulls born in the wrong bodies.

      2. The suspension of her(?) Twitter account does seems to be a clue? If she(?) were really woke…

  41. Those treacherous Tory parliamentary party members who have no respect for democracy or the choices of the party membership remind me of the poem
    Hollow Men

    ‘ We are the hollow men
    We are the stuffed men
    Leaning together, headpiece full of straw, alas!
    When we whisper together
    Are meaningless
    As wind In dry grass
    Or rats feet on broken glass in our cellar “

  42. Zelenskiy: 30% of Ukraine’s power stations destroyed since 10 October. 18 October 2022.

    Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said on Twitter that “since 10 October, 30% of Ukraine’s power stations have been destroyed, causing massive blackouts across the country”.

    Describing the Russian strikes on power supplies as “another kind of Russian terrorist attacks”, Zelenskiy said there was “no space left for negotiations with Putin’s regime”.

    Russia has repeatedly denied targeting civilian infrastructure. Some areas of Kyiv are without electricity and water

    Vlad’s getting down to business!

    !https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2022/oct/18/russia-ukraine-war-live-russian-plane-crash-death-toll-rises-to-13-zelenskiy-urges-troops-to-take-more-prisoners?filterKeyEvents=false&page=with:block-634e69048f08e58d7b1a44a4#block-634e69048f08e58d7b1a44a4

    3. We were taught that in training – “Up straight, chin in, chest out”. Didn’t think the drill pig was a bender though.

  45. Cheer up!

    Pimm’s at Henley
    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/f603979bd8d231681bd49f78e948c7c8489f5e26/640_0_4438_3641/master/4438.jpg?width=445&quality=45&dpr=2&s=none

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/9713e73d0cbc241194d60deeec26c709505c90a9/0_371_5568_3341/master/5568.jpg?width=620&quality=45&dpr=2&s=none

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/37bbeedd6876a35c2cb99076a4cd55bdc5964dfc/0_0_5568_3712/master/5568.jpg?width=620&quality=45&dpr=2&s=none

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/35da68fc6fa856b69e497ea53c924ba5af8df95e/0_8_5568_3704/master/5568.jpg?width=620&quality=45&dpr=2&s=none
    The King’s Uppers.

  46. The ‘ Conservative ‘ parliamentary party just love their little game of Russian Roulette,
    why should members even bother voting if they don’t even know if their choice will be there In two months time because the parliamentary party throws its toys out of the pram and wants to remove the democratic choice. Liz Truss is the most Conservative Prime Minister for decades and the Blairite faux Tory MPs are running around like headless chickens.

      2. They’ve chopped of Liz Truss ‘s hands just In case she cleans out thr toxic leftist Blairite waste . How dare she be above her station as first minister and not realise who has the true power.

      3. They’ve chopped of Liz Truss ‘s hands just In case she cleans out thr toxic leftist Blairite waste . How dare she be above her station as first minister and not realise who has the true power.

      4. The only way for the Conservative Party to survive – and under a new name – is if there is a mass revolt of Conservative MPs who resign their seats and stand under new colours in the resulting by-elections.

          1. It’s because he lives in France – with its calm, steady, reliable and wholly acceptable political scene…..

          2. “… calm, steady, reliable and wholly acceptable”
            You would of course be referring to Mrs T, Caroline.

  47. CAUTIONARY TALE

    I was fooled into thinking that “Adblocker” was the same as “Adblock”…..

    One should always read the label…..

      1. Nothing to do with him. His advice was spot on. T’was I – as usual – who cocked it all up.

  48. “A few rows back, Theresa May could not contain a smile.”:

    As the sun shone over the banana republic of Great Britain (yes, we have no bananas, but we are governed by a lovely bunch of coconuts), citizens gathered around their TV sets for an emergency broadcast by Jeremy Hunt – our fourth chancellor in as many minutes.

    “Turn it up,” said mother.

    “It is turned up,” I replied. “He’s just very, very quiet.”

    That soft voice, those intense eyes – Matt Hancock later described “El Chancellero” in almost sexual terms as “ironclad fiscal” discipline “in a very velvety glove”. But there’s no denying that Mr Hunt does encourage one to sit back and relax.

    He demonstrated that reading a speech from a sheet of paper is far more authoritative than reading from an autocue (the latter makes a politician look like they’re handing out Oscars), and if only Kwasi Kwarteng had delivered such a reassuring televised statement before or after his own Budget, he might still be in office.

    But then, he was too busy shredding orthodoxies. Now Jeremy shredded him. Adios, tax cuts. Hola, austerity.

    “A central responsibility for any government is to do what is necessary for economic stability,” he said. That was when the real chaos began.

    Labour asked a question: “What the Hell is going on?” The person it was addressed to was Liz Truss, still the official face of the regime. Yet at 3.30pm, it wasn’t her at the despatch box, but Penny Mordaunt. “I’m afraid you’ll have to do with me,” she joked.

    In fact, she gave one of the most impressive performances I’ve seen under pressure – like watching a drowning woman conduct Brahms – listing Labour’s own U-turns to a chorus of cheers from the Tory benches.

    What an “enormous asset” you are, said Alberto Costa, which translates from the original toadying as “You should be PM!” Indeed, this was clearly an audition, and the better she got, the more noticeable Ms Truss’s absence was. This led to some bizarre accusations and surreal denials.

    There has not been a coup, she told one Labour MP. She is not “hiding under a desk”, she told another. Then where is she? Taking care of some “very serious matters”, Ms Mordaunt insisted.

    This triggered a run on the imagination. “Is she on her way to the palace?” asked an MP.

    Suddenly, Ms Truss was in the chamber – for the Chancellor’s statement at 4.30pm. The Prime Minister walked like a zombie. She resembled the Soviet leader Konstantin Chernenko, when they pumped him full of drugs and dragged him out his hospital bed to vote in a fake election. She sat next to Mr Hunt, her face immobile.

    A few rows back, Theresa May could not contain a smile.

    Mr Hunt revealed that we are now run by something called the Economic Advisory Council, which contains graduates of BlackRock and JP Morgan. Mel Stride said that he hoped it would not challenge the Bank of England or the Office for Budget Responsibility but work with them – which, haha, I feel sure it will.

    Sir Edward Leigh asked: “What is our vision?” If the goal is merely to manage decline, “what is the point of the Conservative Party?”

    The answer, unstated, is the one every junta gives: to stay in power as long as humanly possible.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/10/17/zombie-trusss-cameo-hunt-penny-show-revealed-really-running/?li_source=LI&li_medium=li-recommendation-widget

    1. This is a very popular BTL comment:

      Martha’s Vineyard
      15 HRS AGO
      Someone please remind me, for I age and history becomes fuzzy: who was it who came up with gazillions of borrowed money to pay for furlough? who was it who was the BBC’s poster boy for eat out to help out, with more borrowed money? who was it who lumbered the UK with even more borrowing to fund the ludicrous test and trace? who was it who promised that this would all be OK and the markets would be sympathetic to all this unfunded borrowing? I recall his cheesy grin all over the papers as he flew back in from California with his green card intact, but for the life of me I cannot remember his name.

      REPLY
      3 REPLIES
      304

    2. Austerity would be cutting expenditure. What they are going for is Labour’s speciality of Tax and Waste.

  49. 366235+ up ticks,

    The vine chap is on about the bbc centenary celebrations coming up and any rejoicing comments would be welcome.

    How about, 100 being a nice round figure we close it down ?

    Of course ALL staff top to bottom receiving a porg chinaman,
    ( a wee kin lieu)

    Ps
    Excepting for Sue that is.

      1. 366260 + up ticks,

        Afternoon N,
        I am sure she would and if left to me I would make sure she got it.

  50. God it gets worse over here. The Canadian Senate just passed Bill S-209, which would establish March 11 as Pandemic Observance Day. suggesting that the day could be used to reflect on “the various forms of inequality in Canada,” and “historically disadvantaged groups”.

    Needless to day they have started the scare campaign for covid. It looks like every9ne will have their very own virus strain for Christmas.

  52. Scraped by with a 5 today.
    Wordle 486 5/6

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

    2. A lucky birdie.

      Wordle 486 3/6

      ⬜⬜🟩🟩🟨
      ⬜🟨🟩🟩🟩
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

  53. Lovely day out there – I’ve been pottering outside and planting some crocus, then I picked the last of the green tomatoes, and dismantled the plants into the compost bin.

        2. The whole kit and caboodle from root to tip of stem. Everything apart from the actual fruit.

          Putting in compost encourages blight to mature and infect the rest of the compost…..

          Hence BURN IT.

    2. I’ve cut back some of the stems of flowers that have gone over and done some dead-heading of shrubs. I bought 80 daffs today, but haven’t put them in yet. I harvested my last cucumber. Amazingly, my Rouge Cardinal (clematis) is in flower and there are nearly a dozen blooms on my Polish Spirit (ditto).

      1. I bought a new clematis in the spring to replace Ernest Markham, which died last winter. I put this one (John Paul 11) in a large pot so it’s mobile if necessary. It cost me about £1 from Morrisons. I didn’t expect any flowers this year but it’s produced two, and the second one is still open. I was about to post a photo but it doesn’t seem to be possible in a reply from notifications.

        1. I’ve got an Ernest Markham on one of my arches. It seems to be surviving so far. I buy my clematis from supermarkets, too.

          2. That’s why I bought it, but I do have what I call “wishy washy” ones, too. I have several white (Wada’s Primrose, montana grandiflora alba, Destiny and Miss Bateman among others), but I do like reds and purples. My Polish Spirit has about a dozen flowers on it at the moment.

  55. https://twitter.com/Nigel_Farage/status/1582324171748519937

    Plus this

    Thirty former RAF pilots are paid £250,000 each to train Chinese to shoot down Western aircraft in possible threat to national security
    British fighter pilots are training the Chinese to shoot down Western aircraft
    Officials warned up to 30 pilots have moved to China after securing contracts
    The former British pilots will be paid £250,000 to teach Western procedures

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11325717/Thirty-former-RAF-pilots-paid-250-000-train-Chinese-shoot-Western-aircraft.html

    They are all traitors

    3. Playing devil’s advocate here:
      ‘shoot down Western aircraft’ who says?
      Not that long ago this headline would not have been made.
      If they are the enemy, then why are so many Chinese still in our universities, surely there is no real difference, other than country of location for those imparting their knowledge?
      It’s all beginning to remind me of ‘Reds under the bed’ and the McCarthyism from the 1950’s.

    4. Nigel Farage needs to be asked why he does not , as far as I know, publicise the parties which could take on the Conservatives and get Brexit done.

    5. 366260+ up ticks,

      Afternoon TB,
      Those that live by the sword……….

      By the by regarding treachery what is the average yearly wage ( without stringed instruments) of an in-house MP.

    6. The MoD is looking to close Larkhill point-to-point and eventing venue. What do they hope to gain?

  57. BBC giving lots of publicity for ‘road blockers’ and oil protester. Police Chief of the area said he was really worried about the protest – if it rains the protester could suffer some discomfort and possibly catch a cold. We have blankets and emergency food and medicine supplies in case they are needed. Currently interviewing (live) an American activist who is several hundred feet up on the bridge cables.

    My heart bleeds for them!

    1. They should suffer the full effects of their stupidity. Maybe then they will realise that actions have consequences.

  58. To change our future, we should change how we teach history to children. Yuval Noah Harari
    18 October 2022.

    Another thing we cannot shield children from is exposure to false historical narrative. From a very early age, the young are bombarded with myths and disinformation, not just about current events, but also about the basic storyline of humanity itself – who we are, where we come from and how we got here.

    In my home country of Israel, for example, even secular schoolchildren typically learn about the Garden of Eden and see colourful images of Noah’s Ark long before they hear about Neanderthals or see the cave art of Lascaux and Sulawesi. This has an impact. It’s possible to trace a direct line from the Genesis decree of “fill the earth and subdue it” to the Industrial Revolution and today’s ecological crisis. Another direct line of influence can be drawn from the historical narratives Russian children learn in school, to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and the ensuing global food crisis.

    It seems strange that someone as celebrated as Hariri could talk such utter bollocks. Who for example, in the first sentence, is to decide what is “false” in history? The very idea of teaching children what to believe is to open the door to political propaganda. The story of the Garden of Eden and Noah’s Ark are actually attempts to explain the world with the then limited knowledge available to the compositors of the Bible. Hariri’s view of the past is no more valid (Hariri is Jewish) than that of his ancestors. This is true of all history; it is why it is always being revised as more information becomes available. Children should be taught the legends that preceded the present narrative because only that way can they understand that what we believe now is an agglomeration of the past. Those seeking to change it must prove that their vision is the true one!

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/oct/18/change-future-teach-history-children

    1. Harari is presumably a secular Jew who’s adopted the current political belief system. As GK Chesterton put it, “When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.”

          2. He’s Klaus Schwab’s little familiar, and according to Rafi Farber, his name means “Reset” twice over, which is rather a coincidence.

    2. You can climb mountains in the middle of a desert, a thousand miles from the sea, and find seashells embedded in the rocks – it must have been under water and that must have come from rain because the sea can’t reach that far up. The science is settled!

      2. “At the end of forty days Noah opened the window of the ark that he had made and sent forth a raven. It went to and fro until the waters were dried up from the earth.” The “40 days” here is after the tops of the mountains were visible over seven months after the flood began. A raven was released and apparently never returned.

        Why did the raven not return? Died of excess CO2 caused by the opening of the window in the ark. Some people never learn – CO2/global warming – the science is settled.

      3. The ground under the deck in my house in NC was sand- beach sand. It used to be ocean floor.

        2. Oil production facility I visited often in Libya was surrounded by seafloor sand & seashells.

    3. “Another thing we cannot shield children from is exposure to false historical narrative.”
      Oh, for a moment I thought we were talking about “Black History Month.“

        1. Are there a few letters missing at the end – er fluckers…for example?

          Are you & the MR feeling a bit better?

          1. Thank you. The MR about 60% – me about 25%+ Will be MUCH better tomorrow, she instructs me to say…

  59. I drove 1,000 miles in an electric car and won’t be ditching petrol just yet

    https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/science-technology/1683383/Hyundai-IONIQ-5-road-test-EV-charging-UK?int_source=amp_continue_reading&int_medium=amp&int_campaign=continue_reading_button#amp-readmore-target

    I’ve driven 61 miles in an electric car and I’ve already ditched diesel because I traded it in for the EV.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/66f773460edc73c0370164ee003e9a32358c3316c9040b2a02a1253990b89788.jpg

    I’ve since gone an extra 50 miles getting to the holiday lodge in MOH’s petrol Subaru Foester by being the pasenger.
    However I do have to reminder the driver that the recommended top speed in 5th gear is 150 mph!

    P.S. It hasn’t put anything on my electricity bill!

    1. Remind yourself, Angie, that the max speed limit in the UK is 70 mph so you’re never going to test that speedo.

          2. That comes in handy when you descend a near vertical slope without a parachute when regenerative braking recharges the EV battery pack.

    2. You did the “extra 50 miles” in a proper vehicle because your electric car ran out of juice. Come on – admit it!!

          1. I had wondered where you were. For today;s funny, you’ll have to go to what I think is the second page – or sort by best it already has 23 upticks.

          3. I can now having logged out of every thing, cleared history and run Ccleaner professional

          5. Been working, me.
            Achieving, well, that’s a different story… how’s you doing today, Tom?

          6. Bad to bluddy awful but hopefully sleep might help – if I could get some.

            Sorry, my father always said the definition of a bore was that, when you asked them, “How are you?” they told you.

      2. Great and Little Snoring – both in Norfolk.

        There’s also Godmanchester in Cambridge, which my father always referred to as ‘Christliverpool’

        1. The Snorings are just down the road from me. Sleepy little places. Though Little Snoring church has a round tower.

          1. As has Holy Trinity, just over the border in Bungay Suffolk. Indicator of an Anglo-Saxon church.

      1. Already done to no avail. I’m one of the ancient sick that they’ll happily let die, according to the whims and wishes of their WEF masters. NHS sucks.

    1. I’ve advocated this for ages but I’d have 2nd thoughts about UKIP these days, after what they did to their former leaders.

      1. 366260+ up ticks,

        NtN,
        The nige / hamilton duo a treacherous duo from hell what we were succeeding to build for Country they destroyed for self interest.

        lab/lib/con/current ukip coalition.

      1. He is one scary bloke. He knew everything that was going on- an informer in every influential household.

        1. With the Spanish, French, Dutch, Scots not forgetting the Pope, all working against England, maybe he needed them.

          2. You’re right and I hope we still have those types who have the best interests of ‘England’ uppermost in their minds.
            But: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
            A sad requirement these days.

          3. I give you Kim Philby……. No one “custodied” him until it was all too late….and he was in Moscow.

          4. Sir Anthony Blunt KCVO, being the more Insidious. Kept in place because of the position he held.

          5. You’re right and I hope we still have those types who have the best interests of ‘England’ uppermost in their minds.
            But: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
            A sad requirement these days.

  65. Listening to the end of ‘The World at One’ on Radio 4, I heard a plea in support of men in the modern world. The interviewee was Richard Reeves, talking about his book of ‘Of Boys and Men’. He observed that “We’ve created a new script for women but not for men.” He was going so well until this:

    “…there are many problems facing men, especially working class…if we don’t address this, enter the populist right, who can turn the genuine problems of boys and men into grievance and then weaponise that grievance to fuel reactionary politics. We can see that in the US, the UK, East Germany and in other countries where there is a big gender gap in support for populist far-right parties…the cost of this is not small…it could threaten liberal democracy.”

    Dear Richard, liberal democracy is already dying because of the corporatist, globalist, socialist left.

    Listen here from 40:18 to 44:45: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001d5gl

    Here’s a review of the book in the Guardian:
    https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/oct/03/of-boys-and-men-why-the-modern-male-is-struggling-by-richard-reeves-review-the-descent-of-man

    1. Would threaten liberal democracy. Liberals don’t believe in democracy. Therefore what he really means is ‘If young boys have a strong family, a clear father figure, are taught how to behave with courtesy, strength and courage then we won’t get our own way.

    2. “…there are many problems facing men, especially working class…if we don’t address this, enter the populist right, who can turn the genuine problems of boys and men into grievance and then weaponise that grievance to fuel reactionary politics.

      Is he talking about BLM?

    1. No, it doesn’t. Cruelty would be if we forced them up there and stopped them coming down.

      Cruelty is where you prevent others from acting as they wish. You can express your care for another by setting them free from your own dogmatic ego – it is not for others to say how one should live.

      Down that roads leads oppression. Far better to allow people to act as they wish but when society – the rights of others – is disrupted, the individual is restricted. As soon as one person puts their will above another you have not society, not a co-operative of individuals, but merely egocentricity where one puts themself above others.

    2. They are the ‘Storm Troopers’ of the Eco-fanatics. Sturmabteilung Öko-Fanatiker. They need stopping before they get out of hand.

    4. I wonder how this wazzock would deal with a gang of black yoofs armed to the teeth with machetes etc. Invite them to join him in prayer, I suppose.

    5. Nick Riddlle, so it’s not inhuman and uncaring to block people going about their normal business?

      It’s not inhuman and uncaring to prevent the sick being transferred to hospital?

      It’s not inhuman and uncaring to prevent the fire service attending and helping people caught in a fire or other life-threatening situation.

      Do you think these ignorant busybodies care? They don’t; therefore treat them with the contempt they deserve.

    6. Have these protestors not realised that government cannot give in to
      blackmail? What would happen if they did cave-in to their
      demands? Should that happen, the next group of idiots would see
      that they could get their own way by being a nuisance and we’d be in
      never-ending disruption as mob after mob tried their luck.

      As it is, hoping that a spell in prison might bring them to their senses.

      3. Islam knows that it will get whatever it demands because they go all choppy choppy. Naturally they keep demanding.

    7. Regarding the protesters who shut the bridge with their antics – they couldn’t get down because the ropes they used were too short so they asked the police for help. The police should have said they can’t get the cherry picker through because of demonstrators and in any case it’s hydraulic eg operates on oil so they are going along with the ‘no oil’ scam. They should then have opened the bridge to traffic and told the press to ‘depart’ therefore denying them the publicity

    2. Man wins the lottery.

      He rushes home, opens the door and shouts to his wife, ” I won the lottery! Big win, enormous. Start packing your bags!”
      She shouts back, “Wonderful! Are we going to the Seychelles, or Hawaii?”
      “I don’t give a cuss where you’re going. Just start packing.”

  74. Rik…..

    I watched the film ‘Everywhere, everything, all at once’. It got 89% on Rotten Tomatoes. It made me burst out laughing.

      1. Unlimited free lettuce and clean straw….what more could a bunny ask for? Maybe a girl bunny?
        Don’t even think about it, you lot.

        2. Pam Ayres wrote:

          “I am a bunny rabbit living in a hutch.
          I don’t like this end
          Or the other end very much.
          Thank God tomorrow’s Friday
          ‘Cos with a little bit of luck
          If I remember rightly
          it’s the day they pass the Buck…”

  77. Neil MacGregor – Hero of the BBC – Close friend of the traitor Anthony Blunt, Director of the National Gallery, Director of the British Museum, chair of recent Booker Prize awards. Rabidly anti-British. Proudly named in The Independent‘s newspaper’s list of “most influential gay people.

    How come these people, Blunt, McClean, Burgess, MacGregor etc get appointed to top positions in British institutions? Can’t possibly be because they are all jovial, happy people (or whatever they are called nowadays) could it?

    2. There should never have been a certain % of GDP for overseas aid. It should revert to an ad hoc basis as it used to be.

        1. For a lot of folk the State Pension is paid directly into bank accounts, so I guess the additional run to pay £10 isn’t that costly. What would be interesting to know is how much in total is dished out in these £10 payments. Given that the £10 buys just about 10 1st class stamps I suspect most folk (excepting those in direst poverty ) wouldn’t miss it if it were stoped.

          1. A sad fact, £10: a bit like shops offering a 10% sale discount. Unless one is looking at a purchase of more than £1000, it’s not worth getting out of bed for these days.

    3. Those in work can do overtime in many instances or seek out a better paid job (or take on two jobs). Pensioners don’t have any of these options.

    1. You jest.
      If the BoE really ever believed that inflation was transitory, why does its staff pension scheme provide index-linked pensions?

    2. Highways Act 1980, Obstruction of – Legislation.gov.ukhttps://www.legislation.gov.uk ›
      (1)If a person, without lawful authority or excuse, in any way wilfully obstructs the free passage along a highway he is guilty of an offence and liable to imprisonment.

      Perhaps those officers should be disciplined for failing to uphold the law?

      2. It is fairly easy to understand: the WEF wishes to hurry along the Great Reset and mass immigration. This message has clearly been passed from Schwab to British politicians who have passed on the message to the police to do nothing to interfere with environmental protesters who disrupt people’s lives, to take the side of illegal immigrants and to come down heavily on anyone who does not support attacks on British history, culture and heritage. The police have also been told to take the side of gender trans loonies in any disputes with those who are not of their persuasion. And course Covid and the Big Pharma jabs have been a key part of WEF’s strategy

        The cancer is being injected into the police in the same way that the poisonous Covid gene therapy has been injected into gullible people.

        2. Somebody is funding these twerps. I imagine Soros or a similar evil bastard is funnelling cash to them via some ‘not for profit’ or other.

          Edit: I agree with your summation.

    3. Since when does the right to demonstrate trump the right to work.
      What a perverse and perverted police farce we have.

    6. The nutter is mentally deranged and uninformed. The pollution that is wrecking our world and its eco system may be found in renewables. Wind turbines that rely on occasional wind whose blades are too costly to recycle and are buried in landfill, blades that endanger rare birds such as eagles, solar farms that cover vast acreages thereby blighting the ground and rendering it infertile for a generation, panels made in China and whose constituent parts are rare metal pollutants and unable to be recycled but dumped on some unsuspecting Third World country.

      Without massive subsidies by corrupt globalists and boughten politicians none of the supposed alternatives to oil would be supportable. The fools advocating the green agenda are advocating alternatives far more damaging to the environment than oil without which they would be running around naked and freezing in winter.

  88. I see the perlice – after doing SFA at Dartford – and closing the Bridge for nearly 2 days – are looking to see whether they can find out who aimed fireworks at the wazzocks in the wire……and prosecute them.

    Come, come, orficer, I was just having a peaceful demonstration….

    It really is about time the perlice were replaced by strong and armed vigilantes.

    2. Ultimatum. Come down or we will shoot you down with a tranquilizer dart. Your decision as to whether you want a safety net in place …..

      2. No, Steph: allow them the freedom to fail, freeze, fall and die.

        And let the police start pursuing criminals …

    3. The Wazzocks in the Wire should be free to demonstrate, fall, freeze, starve or drop dead.

      The ill-directed POLICE are depriving motorists of the bridge and the highway …

      The police have lost all credibility; they are ‘not on our side’.

  90. Evening, all. Why have a government at all? Belgium managed without one for some time and it was an entire disaster.

    1. “Belgium managed without one for some time and it was NOT??? an entire disaster.”

      Not?

      1. Yes, that was what I meant to type, but I a) didn’t proof read before I posted and b) am on the laptop which doesn’t always produce the letters I thought I’d typed.

          3. In my defence, I did go to the opticians this afternoon and have those darned eye drops which dilate your pupils. It makes reading properly difficult at times.

      1. I meant to type “wasn’t” but I’m on the laptop and sometimes the keys don’t produce the letters. Well, that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it 😉

          1. I find when typing, the machine interprets e and a to a and e. Obviously wasn’t programmed for fast typing.

          6. Bizarrely, the =”” are not typed by me, nor visible when I edit.
            See, computer troll! Told yer so!

          7. Mine moves the bloody cursor into a part I’ve already typed. It produces gobble-de-gook.

  91. Well, that’s me for today. Started badly but improved slightly. The MR is on the mend – slowly. It was a lovely, sunny day and another is forecast tomorrow.
    I may risk ladder work. Or not.

    I really cannot believe that Untrussworthy will be doing PMQs tomorrow – but…..

    Meanwhile, have a jolly evening.

    A demain – if I am spared.

    2. At the current rate, you are more likely to be spared than Liz Truss. She may be a numpty (I don’t know her personally) but I wish to see her gain superpowers overnight, just because the people bringing her down are so horrible!

    1. The real reason is to speed up the dissolution of society.

      I have smoked ‘maryjane’ in my youth and i know how debilitating it can be. What made me stop over night was how psychotic some of my friends were becoming.

      If you just had one joint on a Friday night to relax and chill would probably be fine but just like tobacco it becomes a daily fix because of addiction. To now make it available by delivery is a mistake.

      I expect they have even stopped bothering calling it for ‘medicinal reasons’.

      1. We’ve nursed too many psychotics who smoked cannabis during their teens. A potential mental condition was triggered at a time when their brains were developing and more plastic.
        We think the genetic possibility was already present, but possibly if they hadn’t played with cannabis they might had lead a healthy life. And that was back in the days when cannabis was relatively mild.

        1. I saw many of those when I was working at the jobcentre as an adviser trying to get people into work. They were drugged up to the eyeballs and unemployable. Some committed suicide.

  93. Apologies if anyone has already posted this. Pfizer admitted in the EU Parliament last week that they had never done any tests to prove whether the vaxx was effective at stopping infection.

    Real scientists (not vaxx salesmen) said all along that the vaxx wouldn’t do the job. The tweet below shows that Pfizer just made up whatever they wanted as they went along.
    Fines aren’t enough, neither is prison. We need to hang a few billion euro fraudsters – after they’ve had a fair trial of course.

    https://twitter.com/DrEliDavid/status/1582256734264926208

    1. In the States the CDC are intending to grant Emergency Use Authorisation for their latest Covid ‘vaccine’ to be administered to children under five years of age and to wrap the injectates in along with the other jabs given to infants such as polio and MMR.

      By this means the Pharma companies are evidently relieved of all liability for adverse reactions (and death).

      We are witnessing the single largest medical disaster yet foisted on the world population. It makes other dangerous drugs (Thalidomide etc.,) mere blips by comparison. The depth of the corruption of the Pharma companies, the medical profession and the government agencies is unfathomable.

      2. The childrens’ parents should refuse that concoction and demand the usual MMR vaccine. Their immunity systems could be damaged. The UK should not allow this concoction to be used in the UK.

  94. To the title – we’ve had a prime minister who was not in charge since Brown, I think.

    1. All the while the UK is beholding to the Money Markets for funds to keep the show on the road we will not be a sovereign nation.

  95. Evlyn Hall ………….who knew

    Nigel Farage reacts as the Director of British migrant charity is linked to Iranian regime – YouTube
    Iranians want to influence what our kids wear at school and separate male and female classes
    I can’t provide the link, it changes format from email to here. grrrr

    https://youtu.be/TjkdfYh9k2U?t=3 hopefully got it

  96. Out and about in town and saw an old boy on a mobility scooter, the brand name of which was Frontier. Couldn’t help wondering if it was his Last Frontier…..

  99. Evening all, a busy day today, I went into Bath to spy out the best begging spot in preporation for what lies ahead for us.

    I guess Bath is little different from the rest of the UK towns and cities, full of charity shops, coffee shops, empty premises given over to temporary pop up shops selling the best quality tat all for about a couple of quid. There is even a large department store now closed and boarded up, just waiting for somebody to turn it all into student accommodation. Minimal signs of anything like manufactoring being undertaken, not unless you count the CCT cameras installed for the CAZ.

    Who would have thought that running the UK economy on this basis would have brought the country to its present economic state. Obviously not our “glorious” leaders for the past couple of decades. Still we have the triple lock to look forward to, at least that will help those that would otherwise have to choose between eat or heat, oh wait………

    1. A spot equidistant between the Abbey and the Roman baths should prove lucrative. Do you need an Agent vvof?

      1. Thank you but I have sussed where is best, outside the Guildhall, plenty of hot air wafting out to keep me warm!

    2. Sounds like just about everywhere around me! I went to Wrecsam on Saturday and even the charity shops had closed down!

    3. In my youth in Bath we had the crane and pump makers Stothert and Pitt (I saw a line of their dockside cranes in Valetta), Sparrows Crane Hire and Pitman Press on Lower Bristol Road, Horstman Gears, CIC Engineering and Bath Cabinet Makers (later Herman Miller) then Rotork Controls and several other famous names.

      We had Colmers and Jolly’s department stores, visited by Royalty, a superb covered market, David Greig and other great shops and fabulous hotels, pubs and tea rooms.

      The rapid development of Bath University was destructive of the city centre, too many ignorant hooligan students as in Cambridge and cities like Norwich.

      Each time I revisit Bath I see more horrors and remember when Southgate Street had style and character, when Ballance Street comprised attractive artisan dwellings on a steep hill as opposed to horizontal balcony access flats, and I recall the cattle market on Walcot Street and the Red House Bakery serving fabulous breads and doughnuts.

      I moreorless despise the twentieth century.

      1. It certainly has had an adverse effect on Bath IMHO, and yes I think all those firms apart from one has now gone.
        It is not the city you and I grew up in.

  100. Just stop, Just Stop Oil: No other country would tolerate them

    The apologetic, perfunctory police response to the activists’ provocations says much about what is wrong with Britain today

    ROSS CLARK • 18 October 2022 • 5:02pm

    Even when the economy is doing badly we still like to think of Britain as a country which wields megawatts of soft power. But over the past week the impression that will have settled in the minds of ordinary people from Beijing to Moscow to Riyadh will be one of a country which has gone soft in the head.

    No, it isn’t the sight of Jeremy Hunt reversing Kwasi Kwarteng’s tax cuts that will have led to this – indeed, many around the world will think our politics restrained in that the Commons didn’t break out into physical brawling, as happens from time to time in many other parliaments.

    The far stronger images, when viewed overseas, will be of traffic stalled on the M25 all day because a couple of protesters had climbed the Dartford bridge, the sight of a vicar sitting in the middle of the road, hands glued to the tarmac as a policeman offers him a drink from a water bottle, ragged activists pouring milk on the floor of supermarkets while no-one does anything to stop them, a man in a dress spray-painting with impunity a car showroom with orange paint, and a pair of girls chucking tomato soup at one of the world’s most valuable paintings.

    Just Stop Oil has become a potent symbol of our national decline. A generation ago Britain, along with other Western countries, won the Cold War because it became plain to the residents of the Soviet Union that their lifestyles were vastly inferior to those in the West. People denied the living standards that we enjoyed were not going to stand for it, however impressive the array of missiles paraded through Red Square.

    How we could do with such influence at the moment to convince the residents of dictatorships about the superiority of democracy. Instead, when they look to Britain they see a decadent country where economic growth has come to a near halt, and where police appear to be tolerating, even aiding, a bunch of activists who actively want to shrink the economy and make people poorer.

    No other country in the world would put up with what Just Stop Oil have been allowed to do over the past week. You wouldn’t get away with gluing yourself to Tiananmen Square, obviously. But you wouldn’t get away with it in Berlin, either. Or just try chucking some potage over the Mona Lisa and see how the Louvre’s security staff react.

    To the rest of the world, Britain has become a country which indulges overgrown kids – and worse, where the kids’ demands are increasingly being met. We scorn a Prime Minister who wants to make it her priority to promote economic growth, and block just about any project which could make us richer. It isn’t just that it has become politically impossible to build new airports or exploit known gas reserves; we won’t allow viable green energy projects either – look at what happened to plans for a Severn barrage, dumped because wading seabirds might have to find somewhere else to wade. [Er,no. It would be enormously expensive for what it would generate, have very high maintenance costs, be hugely environmentally destructive and still suffer from the same fault as wind and solar – not always available when you need it (though tides are at least predictable).]

    It isn’t democracy which is starting to make economic growth in Britain all but impossible; it is the undue influence of groups like Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion, whose preposterous claims of imminent climatic doom have been allowed to seep into the heads of those in power. Eventually, voters will react against the extremist green creed, just as motorists have finally lost patience with the police and have started dragging protesters off the road. But for now, the message for the world’s dictatorships is clear: look at Britain, they will tell their people, and see where democracy would lead you: to the anarchy and unreason of Just Stop Oil.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/10/18/just-stop-just-stop-oil-no-country-would-tolerate/

  101. OK-bear with me; I totally hate the NHS and it gets worse. Remember when I said I was 9 mins late for an appointment? Got there 5 mins early today and waited almost 40 mins. Of course, their time is more important….
    I have to go back on Friday for the final B12 jab and, while we were waiting, I went to reception and asked if I could have an appointment earlier or later than my 5.20 jab appointment, with a doctor. Nasty little man on duty said no I couldn’t do that, I had to call in the morning of the day I wanted the appointment. Said I wasn’t going to waste my mobile £ on that- he said why don’t you use the land line? Because it all costs us money you stupid man. ( He must have been to the same training school as the cow in the other hospital. )
    Anyway, eventually got my penultimate jab and the nurse there booked me in for an appointment 50 mins earlier than my jab with a doctor on Friday… where I can get some answers about my knees and also the huge red spot which appeared overnight on my right arm. It’s the size of a half crown.

  102. Oh dear.
    After my run in to Matlock, I got home and went straight up the garden to do some wall building.

    Spent 3h up there and, when I got in had a phone call asking me if I was t’Lad’s father. Turns out he’d been heading home from work on his motorbike when a car pulled across him and he’d run into it.
    The person, one of his managers from Royce’s, told me he thought he’d been taken to Nottingham QMC and, eventually, I managed to get it confirmed.
    He’s not as bad as he could be, damaged thumb, smashed kneecap and assorted bruises, abrasions etc.

    DT & Self have just got back from taking him some clothes in as the ones he was wearing had to be cut off him.
    Other than his injuries he’s ok, but HIGHLY pissed off as he’s due to start a new job next month at Nottingham Uni. He’s even more pissed off that his BMW R100, which he’s done a HUGE amount of work on, is probably written off.

    Apparently, the car driver did a runner.

    I’m not very impressed by QMC. He’s on a trolley in the corridor and has been since last night.

      1. Was told at the hospital reception that he was in a corridor so I made a comment about it not being surprising given that the NHS management would rather spend money on Diversity Managers and Alphabet Soup initiatives.
        The look I got from the lass I was talking to was one of “Ah! Someone who understands!”

    2. Oh Bob, that’s dreadful! Hope the hospital at least get their act together. Appalling.

    3. What a thing to happen. Still, as you say, it could have been a lot worse. A&E is a nightmare.

          1. Found it, spoke to the recovery office and it’s a total write off. Very little, if anything, will be salvageable.
            I could weep, the amount of work he’s put in to that bike.

          2. That is heart-breaking, but console yourself with the fact t’Lad will be okay. As my Head of Dept was bemoaning the fact someone had rammed her (fancy sports) car up the rear, I asked her if she was okay. When she said yes, I pointed out the car could be repaired or she could get another one.

    4. Sending all good wishes to your lad, and to the rest of the family. I hope you get some sleep and that your son gets a bed! 😘

    5. As a fellow bike rider I’m relieved dor you both his injuries were not more serious.
      Sending wellwishes via the Kawasaki spirits.

    6. What a terrible shock for all of you , and especially so for your lad now lying on a trolley.. I do hope he is being looked after properly.

      Motor bikes , dear me , son no 1 has a great bike , but I worry so much about the lousy vehicle drivers on the road .. the standard of driving is terrible these days .

      I think motor bike riders love their ride , and take care of themselves and their bikes.

    7. Bob – so sorry to hear this, your poor lad on a trolley in a corridor. What a shock. Life is all shocks at the moment. I hope he gets a good night’s sleep, there is nothing like sleep for assisting the healing processes. Best wishes for a speedy recovery for him.

    8. Has he had some treatment for the injuries? At least he’s not still outside in the ambulance. They just don’t seem to have enough beds. OH spent a night on a chair and that was a year ago. Let’s hope he’ll be OK to go home tomorrow for some tlc.

    10. Oof! Poor lad, but that God he’s come out of it without major injury. Sad news about the bike – R100 is superb! Hope it gets put back together.

  104. Goodnight, all. I’m off to luxuriate in a hot bath and then off to bed. The hot water bottles are already warming it up.

  106. To understand our current crisis – and why orthodoxy needs to be abandoned – read Adam Smith

    The writings of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment economist and philosopher explain the causes and dangers of today’s asset bubble

    JOHN LONGWORTH • 18 October 2022 • 1:39pm

    Adam Smith, the eighteenth-century guru of modern capitalism and free market economics, should be essential reading for our politicians.

    Prior to the eighteenth century and its Enlightenment, the vast majority of people in the world were subsistence peasants who had no means to grow their wealth beyond being the servants of the rich. It is the application of Smith’s ideas in his twin works Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations – not the ideas of Marx – that have, via an invisible hand, lifted the world out of poverty and servitude,

    As Smith observed, it is through economic growth via the reward for the ideas and labour of the masses – not the accumulation of wealth of property owners – that wealth is created.

    Since the eighteenth century, it has been the creative destruction of free markets, of competition and innovation that have marked progress and wealth creation for all. Where this was not allowed to happen, as over centuries in China, the rich property owners remained privileged and the mass of the people remained in poverty.

    To paraphrase Smith, where there is great property, there is great inequality; today we have seen this on the back of excess Quantitative Easing inflating asset values and producing conditions that diminish enterprise.

    Throughout the history of the world, progress has been made mainly by those who rejected the prevailing orthodoxy. This has been true in the fields of philosophy, science, and the arts.

    The economic orthodoxy of the era of Smith was the mercantilist approach, particularly beloved of the French. It was a “I win, you lose” philosophy of the exchange of goods. This is an approach which still underpins the trading position of the France and Germany today and therefore the EU, an approach in which a hitherto free market Britain was imprisoned for forty years. It has infantilised our political class and protected property owners and multinationals.

    Smith challenged this eighteenth century mercantilist orthodoxy and would no doubt have been been considered, in modern parlance, a pedlar of “crank, think-tank economics” – and been ignored. These are the words of our new Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt.

    All of the troubles of the current government stem from it clinging to today’s version of the old mercantilist orthodox: the prioritisation of the preservation of wealth over enterprise; the making of money from the leveraging or sale of assets rather than from economic activity, innovation and production; and the growing belief amongst the asset rich that growth is no longer a priority, or even necessary, in fact that growth is bad. This orthodoxy has culminated in the unwarranted demise of Kwasinomics and the budget of Mr Hunt.

    The accumulation of wealth and the leveraging of assets – which has been a feature of the U.K. since the 1970s – has accelerated in the last twenty years, making our balance of payments dangerously unsustainable and the markets nervous.

    The financial crisis, which stemmed from the “city boys” gambling with our money and losing, led to QE on a grand scale. Property and other asset owners benefitted hugely and the wealth gap widened – the punishment for profligacy was reward. In the words of Smith: “The problem with fiat money is that it rewards the minority that can handle money, but fools the generation that has worked and saved money”.

    During this whole period the Department of Trade focussed not on supporting trade but on selling assets via inward investments and its virtue signalling overseas development arm gave away taxpayers money for no benefit. The period of overblown and unnecessary lockdowns saw huge amounts, over £400 billion, paid out to encourage people not to work.

    The Treasury mantra has been tax and spend interspersed with austerity. The orthodoxy is risk averse; there are no “brownie points” for mandarins in the Treasury or officials in the OBR to stick their necks out and go against the orthodoxy. Our debt to GDP ratio is the second lowest in the G7, so why did markets panic at the thought of growth? The straw that broke the back was not the funding of a growth environment, but unpredictable and unproductive spending.

    The debt pile was added to by Mr Johnson’s adoption of a Net Zero religion, with targets across all department costing hundreds of millions, the cross subsidy of uneconomic and unreliable energy sources and the driving out of fossil fuels. This produced the first energy price cap, before the Ukraine war, costing billions and the latest iteration by Ms Truss with an uncosted amount of around £150 billion on the cards and no end in sight. It was this that spooked the markets and threw away the chance for growth, instead returning the Treasury to the orthodoxy of austerity, tax and spend.

    In the words of Smith: “Virtue is more to be feared than vice because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience”. Well-heeled virtue signallers take note, Mr Hunt’s revision of the energy support package will lead to citizens feeling the economic horrors of the failure to provide a home grown fossil fuel bridge to the nirvana of Net Zero. Meanwhile we import from China and elsewhere masses of goods produced by burning coal.

    Climate change orthodoxy, supported by the Treasury, is suppressing enterprise and production at home, impoverishing our people while asset owners continue to accumulate wealth. What’s more it has led to austerity rather than economic growth.

    Unless a government revisits the growth agenda and abandons orthodoxy, which in the short term would require the domestic production of gas, oil and possibly coal, we now face another decade of austerity and low growth. This will no doubt play into the hands of those who wish to demonstrate wrongly that Brexit is an economic failure. It will not affect the protected wealthy of the asset owning class but it will affect grievously those who earn wages, profit or rent, the three sources of Smith’s wealth of nations.

    Even a change of government to Labour will not affect this unless Labour has the courage to adopt growth. They will have to be even more austerity orientated in order to reassure markets. They will use tax to shore up public spending and in so doing further depress enterprise.

    For all of the intrigue so loved by politicians and the media it is time for a wake-up call. The future wealth of our country is being played with and will gravely affect people’s lives. It is our money, generated by us, not the property of government or the accumulated “pieces of metal” held by the wealthy. Our leaders and their hangers on could do worse than spend a weekend reading Adam Smith and resolving to abandon orthodoxy.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/10/18/understand-current-crisis-why-orthodoxy-needs-abandoned/

    1. Most economists, including so-called “experts” seem to be Keynesians and think that inflation’s just going to go away.

  107. Orff to bed now.
    I’ve just been chatting online with a lifelong friend, Sharing important addresses with each other, places that bring back many memories and names.
    And looking at the homes etc. on google earth. As I said I’m off the bed and have left him with 7 Silver Leaves Avenue Phillp Island Victoria. The large beach fronted house has been extensively altered and renovated by my old mate Brucie. I planned to win the euro millions and buy it. It’s shortly coming on at 2.5 million Dollars. Anyone interested ?

      1. I usually do but missed the chance yesterday. I’ve got one now.
        I won 30 quid last week 😉😂

      1. It’s easier said than done. Having been a teacher and librarian I thought I could cope with anything. It appears not.
        Two flooded bathroom floors- fixed thanks to MH and the washer throwing another wobbler. Guy coming to sort it on Thursday.
        Maybe one’s tolerance decreases as one gets older….I wish I knew but I find I am so cross these days about everything.

        1. My sympathies, Ann. Crossness drains the energy more than anything else, increasing one’s crossness. Unhelpful.
          Hope you soon get a happy event that brings joy to the heart & lifts the spirit – like a beautiful dawn, a patch of bluebells, a flock of starlings… even a butterfly or two, if it’s not too late.

        2. Anxiety makes one more irritable about everything, LotL – when it’s at a continuous low level you don’t even realise you are anxious, all you know is that everything is annoying – certain sounds, the swish of traffic, other people… it is also exhausting. It is the anxious times we live in, it is difficult to deal with.

          1. I don’t give a damn about politics – it’s the stuff affecting us personally that is getting to me. Selfish maybe, but right now, we come first.

          2. I have just been called an exceedingly selfish person on Twitter for saying that we should put our own people first instead of the rest of humanity…. How can we look after others if we don’t care for our own first.

            It’s not the politics I meant, it’s the result of that which affects us over which we have no control that makes us anxious.

  110. OT – I love Bach but nothing soothes my soul and angst like Vivaldi. Sheer soothing bliss.

  114. I have 2 estate agents on the road where I live. Hanging around for a vacancy at the barber’s nearby, I passed a moment glancing at the estate agent’s windows. Normally, for most of the last 10 years, that shows about 100 properties, with only 3-5 unsold. Well, blow me, suddenly there are 20 properties for sale, a number of which I know were “sold” a few months back. The same pattern also applied at the other estate agent, 15-20 properties for sale, instead of the usual 3-5.

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