Tuesday 8 November: Britain is in no position to sign up for gimmicky climate reparations

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here.

596 thoughts on “Tuesday 8 November: Britain is in no position to sign up for gimmicky climate reparations”

  1. Good morning all.
    After a bloody wet night, the rain has stopped and it’s 5½° outside.
    Still very dark, but looks cloudy.

  3. 367419+ up ticks.

    Morning Each,
    Late running, up half the night tending me sick camel, gout suffering.

  5. A run to Derby today.
    I’m hoping someone from the Salvation Army Housing Association, Step-son’s landlords, FINALLY arrives to do something about the damage from the upstairs water leak.
    They said I had the choice of a morning or afternoon visit, but would not give a specified time. So I said I’d be there for an hour from 13:00 hrs and if no one turned up, I’d be bogging off.

  6. Good Morning Folks,

    Wet and windy here, was on my way to golf as the forecast was good for the morning, then it rained.
    They’ve even closed the course.

  7. Rishi Sunak to strike gas deal with US to ease energy crisis. 8 November 2022

    Rishi Sunak is poised to announce a major gas deal with America after the Cop27 climate change summit, The Telegraph can disclose.

    Talks about the “energy security partnership” are in their final stages, with the US planning to sell billions of cubic metres of liquefied natural gas to Britain over the coming year.

    This is a “partnership” where the US having abolished the competition has agreed to sell gas to the UK and Europe at a vastly increased price that will render their industries non-viable on the World Stage!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/11/07/rishi-sunak-strike-gas-deal-us-ease-energy-crisis/

    1. Doing a deal with Biden, what could possibly go wrong.
      He wants to close down all the USA coal production, apparently

      1. Morning Bob. The US has effectively created a cartel. The gas producers can charge what they like. It also gives them massive Political Leverage. Do as we say or Freeze! Oddly enough isn’t that what they said about Russia?

      2. Morning, all. Overcast and showery here in N Essex.

        Not only did Biden state that coal production was to cease he later went to say that there would be, “…no more drilling.” What’s the point of making a deal for fossil fuel with a country whose “leader” is planning to curtail the production of that product? Confusion within the ranks or just more bullshit to create a layer of obfuscation on their desire to make our lives as uncomfortable as possible?

    2. Does the UK have sufficient receiving terminals? Can the gas grid take all the gas from those terminals to storage and consumer? It’s set up for receiving gas on the East coast, by pipeline, not so much by LNG tanker.

      1. Isn’t the lack of liquid LNG terminals part of the reason for the recent drop in energy prices? Too many LNG tankers waiting to unload?

    3. Reportedly, US gas delivered by ship to Germany costs up to 40% more than the gas piped through the Nordstream pipelines. Which of course adds credence to the idea that Russia blew up the pipelines. Oh, wait…

  8. Britain is in no position to sign up for gimmicky climate reparations

    Giving money to poorer countries while letting the developing countries burn as much fossil fuel as they like was always the plan from the outset.
    The thinking was always to punish those that industrialised first for their historical greenhouse gas production.

    1. Indeed – how do you think they will spend all this extra money borrowed by tne young of Europe to pay for the sins of their long-dead ancestors?

      One thing is certain, it will be neither on measures to reduce material consumption at the expense of the climate and depleting natural resources, nor on supporting the poor who will be sent to “seek a better life” abroad rather than to be spared any of this BLM-inspired largesse.

      The man I would trust most to spend this money wisely is our own King Charles, but he’s not there. Instead, we must follow the example of footballers’ wives, who are admired far more by popular opinion and influencers as role models.

    2. Just make the cheques payable to Mercedes, Gulfstream and Kalashnikov. That’s where the money will end up anyway. Send to Switzerland.

    3. Rishi virtue-signalling at Cop27 is even more futile when China, India and Russia, correctly in my opinion, ignore the whole eco-beanfest and carry on regardless as Western leaders hamstring their own countries competitive industrial efforts.

    1. First day of big woolly sweater. Sewn into it for the duration now… very cosy, so it is.

  10. ‘Morning, Peeps.

    Wet and windy here, although very mild at the moment. Yet more leaves to clear…

    Today’s leading letter:

    SIR – Has this country – or at least its politicians – gone mad?

    There are British people going cold, short of food and in ever increasing debt. Food banks are overstretched.

    Why, then, are we, the public, considered an inexhaustible source of cash to support our leaders’ “good causes”, of which the idea of climate reparations appears to be the latest (report, November 7)?

    Ian Robinson
    Brecon

    I think it is not merely madness, Mr Robinson, but a rising hatred of this country by our own politicians and everything we once stood for. To think that we should now be punished for the industrial revolution and the prosperity it brought while annually shovelling vast sums of money overseas defies any kind of logic. I can’t be alone in despairing of yet another crazy scheme in the pursuit of the mythical MMGW. It is a depressing prospect when Blair v2 is so out of touch as to support something like this. He shouldn’t have been allowed to attend the CON27 jamboree in the first place if this is what he thinks of hard-pressed taxpayers and those who can barely scrape any kind of an existence.

    1. Has this country – or at least its politicians – gone mad?

      Well Mr Robinson to put it succinctly. Yes. Mad with Power and Mad with Belief.

    2. He wouldn’t let the King go – because he would have been upstaged? King also can’t give away riches like the politician can.

      1. I very much doubt that the PM had anything to do with Charles’s decision not to go! More likely Charles was mindful that his butt will not be safely parked on the throne until he is coronated…

          1. Prime Ministers are coronated; kings are crowned.

            There is a veiled threat in the second verse of the National Anthem that suggests that if ever the King were not “to give us cause to sing with heart and voice”, his head may be as temporary as the wallpaper in 10 Downing Street.

      2. Not to mince words our new king is a dud. But he is not just a dud – he is a dimwit, a dolt and a dullard.

    3. The anger in many of the BTL posts today is  palpable:

      Kevin Bell7 HRS AGO

      I dont think Rishi Sunak, parading at COP 27 like the good Davos man he is, sees the outrage that the proposal to pay reparations for climate change – who to and for exactly what? – added to the millions paid each day to house illegal immigrants in four star hotels will provoke in working people faced with higher and higher taxes and worse and worse public services.

      I dont know about you but I am sick of it. We are being taken for a ride by these virtue signalling idiots,

      Wal Nuttwipp1 HR AGO

      Mike McKone: “I am all for taking steps to prevent further climate change… “.

      Then you are a twit.

      The earth’s climate is entirely natural and humans, even if we wanted to, have no effect on it whatsoever. We’re far too insignificant.

      Stop watching the BBC and do some proper research.

      There is no climate crisis, except in the minds of the snake oil salesmen who are becoming very rich by suggesting there is and in the imaginations of lefty eco-loonies and gullible BBC viewers.

      John Langdale1 HR AGO

      Let’s just hope that the news revealed in this paper today that China has pumped out more Carbon emissions in the last eight eight years than Britain has in the whole of the period since the now much ( and preposterously ) maligned Industrial Revolution puts an end to the ludicrous ideas of us paying so-called climate reparations because it most certainly ought to.

      Given the figures shown in that article, any British politician who pledges to give away money from British taxpayers for such spurious reasons at a time when the Government says we are broke and taxes need to be raised and spending cut, is an enemy of the British people.

      3. Is it not logically absurd to want to stamp out meat consumption and CO2 when vegetables are dependent on CO2? The PTB clearly want us to starve.

  11. Well said Angus Long & Michael Staples

    Angus Long
    7 HRS AGO
    In my view the COP conference is a CON conference.
    The unrealistic Net Zero targets will wreak our economy and cause untold hardship to this generation.
    Furthermore, it will achieve a NET ZERO impact on our ability to control the climate. Not that we could, nor ever will, control the climate

    MS Michael Staples
    6 HRS AGO
    I see detailed critiques from scientists exposing the science behind Anthropogenic Climate Change, but never see any response from those who believe in Global Warming, simply assertions that it will get worse. Where is their case? We cannot damage our economy and people’s lives without proper evidence. EDITED

    WN Wal Nuttwipp
    1 HR AGO
    Marxists don’t ‘do’ evidence. You have to “believe”

    1. People should wake up fast, to the fact that scientists can be bought as easily as politicians or journalists. For some incomprehensible reason, the public appears to believe that scientists are incorruptible truth seekers!

  12. Sanitary insanity at the library. 8 November 2022.

    I finally asked one of the librarians why the library was offering sanitary towels. He replied that it was because the subject of periods was ‘in the shadows’. This was news to me. This is Surrey in 2022. I have not seen evidence of shame and stigma around periods, or of girls and women being unable to access sanitary products. The librarian changed tack, and said it was about the patriarchy, and mentioned that he had a sociology degree. He explained that the patriarchy was a state of affairs where women do not have rights. I said, ‘I am a woman. You are a man. What rights do I not have that you do have?’

    He was speechless for what seemed a long time. I thought I must have asked the most terrible question ever asked in Thames Ditton library, possibly in the whole country, perhaps even as terrible as Matt Walsh’s question, What is a woman? In true Matt Walsh fashion, I could have said, You’re a sociologist; you must have some idea. But there was no opportunity to say anything more. The librarian, looking disgusted, turned away and retreated behind the bookshelves.

    I thought this a pretty good example of the way these people parrot these deeply stupid Cultural Marxist memes without ever having given thought to their reality!

    https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/sanitary-insanity-down-at-the-library/

    1. Come now – you must appreciate enough about the state of poverty in Thames Ditton to realise that if it were not for the free sanitary towels, women would be ripping out pages from the books to stuff up their innards. Times are tough!

    2. That could have been written by SWMBO, that. Just the approach she would take to idiots like that.

    4. Sanitary products are free in schools in Scotland. Well they’re not ‘free’, the taxpayer as usual pays

  13. We were broke yesterday now Sunak wants to give away billions to other countries. When will this nightmare end.?

    1. Much to my amazement, our Labour Prime MInister, Jonas Gahr Støre, told the UN to shove it, we’re not paying. Wonders will never cease!

        1. The Norwegian royals are up to their necks in the WEF, he probably had permission to say what he did.

          1. The King is much in the same mold at Queen Elizabeth, and knows his place. The People like him, as long as he stays there. If he were to become too uppity, they’ll be gone – they have only been on the throne for a century or so, and the first modern King, Haakon, was elected as a Prince from Denmark. Harald is only the 3rd modern King, so needs to tread carefully.

        2. Yes. The latest opinion polls show the opposition parties would be in the majority were we to have an election.

          1. Perhaps that is the root cause of his current stance? Relinquishing power to your opponents is as good a reason as any to temper your ardour for unpopular policies; well, in the short term, anyway.

    3. See yesterdays rant, the answer when it ends will be when they are ALL kicked out of office.

      1. I suspect their termination may have to be with extreme prejudice, not a retirement cheque.

    4. The nightmare will not end until people wake up to what our political class are up to. None, not a single one, of the main parties has the wellbeing of the people at the heart of their policies. They have been captured by the “green lobby” and have set us on a path to perdition.
      The USA, under Biden, is moving in that direction but today the people have a chance to start reducing the pace of destruction by voting the Republican/MAGA cohort into power in the Senate, the House, governorships etc. Currently, we do not have that option.

  14. We were broke yesterday now Sunak wants to give away billions to other countries. When will this nightmare end.?

  15. Williamson’s record
    SIR – Whether or not Gavin Williamson is “arrogant”, or even “potty-mouthed” (Letters, November 7), this surely misses the point. The mystery is how on earth he ever emerged to have any power whatsoever.

    This, lest we forget, was the defence secretary whose infantile contribution to world affairs four years ago was to tell the Russians to “go away and shut up”.

    Gordon Bonnyman
    Frant, East Sussex

    Couldn’t agree more, Mr B. The man is an over-promoted cretin who should be nowhere near high office. Futher evidence of our PM’s pitiful judgement.

    1. Which PM would that be/have been? There’s plenty of candidates for “pitiful judgement”.

    2. The man is an over-promoted cretin who should be nowhere near high office.

      I fear Williamson is not the only member of the political class, let alone the Tory party, with such qualifications. The dearth of honourable, educated politicians who are capable of formulating ideas to improve matters and who display the leadership qualities to put those ideas into action, is palpable.

      1. It seems to go with the reducing age of those at the top of the political tree. Lack of life experience is a problem. Seen also in the board rooms of large corporations – if you haven’t made CEO by 45, you ain’t going to, ever. That means that pretty well none of them have had to manage their way through a recession – hell, in the UK, never managed their way through a Labour administration! Look back at the likes of Healey, Benn, Whitelaw, Callaghan (spelling?) and others – they had all fought a war, so knew something of the world.
        The children are in charge of the kindergarten.

          5. The exception that proves the rule. US presidents are only ancient because they have to get the money to buy their way into the presidency (JFK was rich already and came from a dynasty).

      2. It didn’t happen by accident! Step forward M. Gove and D. Cameron and the magic A-List of “acceptable” Conservative candidates.

      3. As Saggy May’s Chief Whip, the cur Williamson will have had access to the dirt on all of his colleagues. Honour and education do not concern him, only leverage. Thankfully, he appears too dim-witted to have made use of his exposure to others ‘weaknesses’.

    3. The man knows where the bodies are buried and he probably has something on nearly all of them, he was chief whip.

  16. Humph.
    Travel to work somewhat buggered up this morning – the underpass at the station flooded last night, looks about waist deep. Not worth trying to ford, so changed station to the next up the line. Somewhat delayed, and at he station where I switch to bus, the atmosphere was rancid with the stench of cacked pants, cheap stale burger fat, and heavily-used grinding wheel. Ukk several times over…
    Morning, all Y’all.

  17. 367419+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Tuesday 8 November: Britain is in no position to sign up for gimmicky climate reparations

    THEY ARE ON THE WEF AGENDA,

    Am I the only one that finds it ironical that the electoral majority have succeeded in, over the last three plus decades, democratically voted us into a dictatorship.

    Tis well past time that current lab/lib/con/ukip members extracted their heads from their rear exits and faced reality, then triggered the peoples RESET, starting with “YOUR MP” & potential upcoming MPs, starve the
    odious political knotweed of fresh blood,

    Alternative’s for a more comfortable demise for those NOT on the
    RESET reconstruction program inquire via westminster palace
    needle & jab office.

      1. 367419+ up ticks,

        Morning W,

        Are you saying that you allow your downstairs staff to run your household
        as they like & without your consent, I hardly think so.

  18. Morning all, a windy night with a line of heavy rain that passed through but all the fence panels are just still standing. Now because of this can I claim my climate change repatriations or does you have to be bleck and live in squalor?

  19. Couple paid £7,000 a month in benefits left children living in filth with 35 dogs. 8 November 2022.

    Judge Stephen Mooney said that the couple, who were jailed for six years each, had “frittered away £7,000 a month which should have been spent on the children”.

    The couple, who were recorded spending £1,600 a month in mortgage repayments, would have received £84,000 a year in benefits.

    The Failure of Socialism in microcosm!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/11/07/couple-paid-7k-month-benefits-left-children-living-filth-36/

    1. I don’t understand these figures – how on earth were they getting 7 grand a month, even in London? Aren’t bennies supposed to be capped at the average wage for where you live?

      1. It is the average wage in London, once you take the hedge fund executives into account.

      2. When I see how those dogs were kept, it’s heart breaking. I might be weird, but I love both of mine deeply, probably more than the humans.

        When Ozzie went to the cleaners I stayed with him so he’d not be so worried and he came out looking like a ruddy prince and seemed to feel it too. Our pets deserve unconditional love. It’s all they give us.

        1. I’m the same. Oscar gets reassurance for the things that worry him and rewards if he manages to cope calmly with them.

    3. Tragic story aside, what kind of a system allows the payment of SEVEN THOUSAND POUNDS A MONTH in benefits?

    4. Tragic story aside, what kind of a system allows the payment of SEVEN THOUSAND POUNDS A MONTH in benefits?

    5. It’s long past time to scrap child benefit. As for 6 years – that’s not a bad return. They’ll be out in two and will carry on. I can’t think how their current life is much different from prison except they get given meals rather than having to make them.

  20. Headline in today’s DT:

    ‘Thousands of Tories’ have quit party since Liz Truss was replaced by Rishi Sunak

    Conservative members said to be furious over ‘debacle’ of leadership election that saw them denied a vote

    * * *

    Only when the party sponsors walk away will this shower take any notice.  And by then it will be too late.

    1. They might get a warning if local constituency party members refuse to turn out to help with the canvassing at the next local elections.

    2. I think we’ve gone beyond the point where they care about what the people think. All the signs are that everyone who holds any power in the UK is in thrall to a bigger agenda than what the common man thinks.

    3. Our MP has a Facebook profile it seems he’s ‘getting it in the neck’.
      Es been accused of, Not responding and achieving very little.
      Which is basically what he’s done on the FB page.

    4. When the state set about removing a democratically elected PM and imposed their own globalist stooge anger was inevitable.

      What’s infuriating is that nothing can be done to stop the assault on Truss and push her reforms through.

      1. “When the state set about removing a democratically elected PM and imposed their own globalist stooge” Memories of what the US and EU did in Ukraine?

  21. Mourning All….Following the earlier threads on Taxes I thought I would cheer you all up with that other certainty – Death.

    The funeral business is booming. And not because of Covid…
    ALEX BERENSON
    NOV 2
    How bad is the rise in mortality?

    So bad funeral companies are starting to worry.

    Today Service Corporation International, the largest for-profit funeral operator in North America, had its quarterly earnings call. SCI had another great quarter, you’ll be pleased to hear! So far in 2022 the company has made almost $500 million in profits – and its stock rose more than 10 percent today after its earnings report.

    (Death is your best investment!)

    SCI’s management seems fairly open with investors. For many years, much of the company’s growth came from buying family-run funeral homes as their operators, umm, died out. The underlying funeral business is slow growth and very predictable.

    At least it used to be.

    As Thomas L. Ryan, Service Corporation’s chairman and chief executive, told investors Wednesday morning:

    If you go back in this industry and particularly with SCI, year-to-year you would see the numbers of deaths — probably in one year you may be down 1% or 2%, in the next year you’re up 1% or 2% which you could predict was pretty good accuracy over a year and over a big footprint like ours what was probably going to happen… 2020 comes along, Covid, game-changer, right. We’re having to do at one point of time 20 percent more funerals which is unheard of in a year versus, let’s say, a year or two before.

    So Service Corporation expected that once Covid passed, its business would go back to normal…

    What we would have expected is, why wouldn’t we go back towards, let’s say, a 2019 level, maybe you get a percent or so growth of 2019, I would expect that. So that would be a reasonable level that we think would stabilize. And that’s kind of what we anticipated…

    Only that’s not what has happened.

    What we’re telling you is, the third quarter of this year, we did 15% more calls than we did in the third quarter of 2019. That is not what anybody would have anticipated and that has just a very de minimis amount of Covid deaths in it.
    Covid is gone. But people keep dying. Why?

    Unsurprisingly, Ryan did not mention mRNA vaccines anywhere. Why would he? Doing so would only make for headaches he and Service Corporation do not need.

    But, earlier in the call, he did point to “more cancer deaths” and more broadly a decline in overall health:

    We believe these excess services are more permanent in nature into a combination of aging demographics, higher risk, less healthy lifestyle developed during the pandemic.

    Ryan also suggested delayed medical care might be an issue.

    These explanations are… strained, at best. Aging demographics are hardly new, and the lockdowns that drove a “less healthy lifestyle” ended as early as mid-2020 in most red states and by early 2021 almost everywhere. Opioids and overdoses generally remain a horrendous crisis, but deaths appear to have peaked in early 2022 and fallen slightly since. And for all the discussion of delays in medical care, hospitals and doctors offices have functioned essentially normally for at least 18 months.

    In any case, the United States is hardly alone in seeing a large and so far unexplained spike in deaths in 2022. Countries from Germany to Australia to Taiwan are seeing similar trends.

    They all have something in common. No points for guessing what.

    In any case, Service Corporation is expecting business to stay good for years to come.

    Meanwhile on the other side of the equation Life Assurance companies are taking a big hit:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/dcb49444a6147597e8d61fa4212ca1be4649123df81741d72856e91396daa5cf.png

  22. The USA today, the UK tomorrow.

    Which brings us to what the election is really all about: the failure of a regime, and of the president, party and philosophy steering that regime.
    In a republic such as ours, the government has many major duties.
    High among them are resisting foreign invasions, securing the nation’s borders, protecting the value of the currency and securing the rights of citizens, first and foremost, the right to be free from domestic violence.
    The Democratic Party that controls both houses of the Congress and the presidency has abjectly failed in all of these fundamental duties.

    The president is thus failing abysmally in one of his foremost duties — to secure our borders. And neither Biden nor Vice President Kamala Harris has shown the least interest in protecting that bleeding border, or even visiting it.
    As for protecting the value of the U.S. dollars that constitute the wages, salaries and savings of our people, that value has been eaten up for a year by a cancerous 8% inflation that began soon after Biden began to implement his policies.
    As for protecting the rights of citizens of this republic to be free from domestic violence, the Biden years have been witness to a pandemic of murders, rapes, robberies and assaults. Media reports and videos of the new savagery in our society have converted “crime” into one of the primary national concerns in a nation we used to call “God’s Country.”
    This, then, is what Tuesday’s election is really all about.

    For Democratic party and republic read the Governing parties of the UK since Blair.

    https://www.takimag.com/article/democrats-not-democracy-at-risk-today/

    1. That state of affairs could start to change today. Steve Bannon, an America First/MAGA presenter, has a wonderful turn of phrase for his hopes today, “The Democrats are going to get a DEMOCRATIC SUPPOSITORY.”

      1. The problem is that even with a huge GOP majority the Democrat’s policies will still wreak havoc at the local levels.

        If I was to place a bet, I would put money on Harris taking over very soon.

  24. As predicted on these pages yesterday (i think)
    Page 10 of today’s Terriblegraph

    “ SUPERMARKETS could face a shortage of eggs as bird flu sweeps the UK, says farmers.
    Avian flu, rising costs and the war in Ukraine have created a “genuine threat” to the industry, meaning some have paused production.
    Ashford, Kent, and Bristol are among areas with empty egg shelves.
    “There is grave concern,” said Ben Pike, of the British Free Range Egg Producers Association (BFREPA).
    “There are fewer eggs available this year. I don’t know where retailers will get them from. As for the farmers, it’s upsetting, as the production is now completely out of their control.”
    The cost of buying a flock, around 32,000 hens, has increased by 15 per cent. Cost of feed is up 50 per cent and labour costs have risen by 7 per cent.
    Farmers were pausing production and not restocking flocks amid the financial pressures, said Mr Pike, with the average BFREPA farmer losing £10 per hen. In a survey of 157 BFREPA farmers, 33 per cent said they had reduced or stopped their egg production because of unsustainable losses.”

  25. As predicted on these pages yesterday (i think)
    Page 10 of today’s Terriblegraph

    “ SUPERMARKETS could face a shortage of eggs as bird flu sweeps the UK, says farmers.
    Avian flu, rising costs and the war in Ukraine have created a “genuine threat” to the industry, meaning some have paused production.
    Ashford, Kent, and Bristol are among areas with empty egg shelves.
    “There is grave concern,” said Ben Pike, of the British Free Range Egg Producers Association (BFREPA).
    “There are fewer eggs available this year. I don’t know where retailers will get them from. As for the farmers, it’s upsetting, as the production is now completely out of their control.”
    The cost of buying a flock, around 32,000 hens, has increased by 15 per cent. Cost of feed is up 50 per cent and labour costs have risen by 7 per cent.
    Farmers were pausing production and not restocking flocks amid the financial pressures, said Mr Pike, with the average BFREPA farmer losing £10 per hen. In a survey of 157 BFREPA farmers, 33 per cent said they had reduced or stopped their egg production because of unsustainable losses.”

      1. It wasn’t when I posted – heavy showers. Now we have blue sky, puffy white clouds and sunshine. English weather, innit?

        1. We’ve alternated this morning with sunshine, gales and rain. Typical English November weather.

  27. Morning all 🙂
    Bright and breezy.
    I’m still wondering how all these ‘stop oil’ imbeciles manage to get themselves
    around the country. Greased lighting ?

  28. A moment for feeling humble – an obituary from The Times, yesterday:

    Professor Richard Pollock

    “It was one of the more celebrated encounters of the Cold War, with lasting consequences for Europe and the world. When Margaret Thatcher declared, at the end of Mikhail Gorbachev’s first visit to Britain in 1984, that she liked him and “we can do business together”, she did not know that this would become a crucial relationship in bringing the Soviet Union in from the cold. Thanks to her celebrated friendship with the Soviet leader, arms control, the withdrawal of Soviet troops from eastern Europe and German reunification all became possible. And the man who, more than any other, made that relationship work was Rick Pollock, her skilled and knowledgeable interpreter.

    Pollock was with the prime minister on her first state visit to Moscow in 1987 and throughout her dealings with Gorbachev. Conscientious and dedicated to the accuracy not only of the translation but also of the tone and mood of those speaking, he had a ringside view of the delicate diplomacy needed to build trust between the West and the new Soviet leader.

    In an interview in 1990, Thatcher paid tribute to this skill. “He would listen very carefully not only to what I was saying, but to the intonation of my voice, and so he would follow in his interpretation the precise intonation which I had used. That was marvellous! Mr Gorbachev would get not only the meaning of the words, but the emphasis which I placed upon them. Otherwise, if they just do what I call a ‘deadpan’ interpretation, you miss the emphasis and you miss the real importance of what the Russian counterpart is saying.”

    The two leaders spoke at length during Thatcher’s visit to Moscow in April 1987. They were so involved in talks about arms control during the interval of Swan Lake — the obligatory visit to the Bolshoi served to almost all visiting western statesmen — that the second half of the ballet had to be delayed for half an hour. But it was clearly a breakthrough. Time magazine showed a smiling Thatcher and Gorbachev on its cover that week, headlined “Maggie in Moscow” and quoting her saying: “I would implicitly accept his word.” Between the two, discreetly in the background, stood the tall, bespectacled figure of Pollock, the essential go-between.

    Pollock was chosen to interpret for Thatcher because the longstanding government interpreter, Tony Bishop (obituary, August 10, 2012), was away at the time. Pollock was then a senior lecturer at Bradford University, and he had been invited by William Whitelaw, then deputy prime minister, to interpret for him on a trip to the Soviet Union in 1984. The impression he made on Whitelaw persuaded him to recommend Pollock to Thatcher.

    Like many of his generation, he learnt his Russian during National Service. Born in West Bridgford, Nottingham, in 1935 to Jean and Frederick Pollock, a Baptist minister, Richard William Wakefield Pollock grew up in Swansea and then Bristol, where his family moved at the end of the Second World War. He was educated at Bristol Grammar School and then Mill Hill School in London. He excelled academically, entering the sixth form aged only 14. The following year he went on a classics trip to Rome, which persuaded him to read classics at Peterhouse, Cambridge. After graduation, he joined the Royal Navy and was chosen to be trained in Russian.

    In 1958 he gained a diploma in education at Merton College, Oxford, and a year later began teaching at Marlborough College, a public school that was one of the first to offer Russian. The caretaker there was a displaced person from Crimea who had arrived in England at the end of the war. His limited English inspired Pollock to develop his knowledge of Russian, and in 1959 he took part in a six-week delegation of teachers of Russian to Leningrad and Moscow, then rarely visited by tourists.

    On the train journey across Europe he met Catherine Janette Miller, a fellow teacher from Scotland. She accepted a cigarette from his silver cigarette case, explored Berlin with him on a stopover, and by the time they reached Leningrad a romance had begun. On arrival back at Victoria station he faced a dilemma: return home alone, or accompany Miss Miller to Scotland. He tossed a coin. Miss Miller won. Engagement in late 1960 led to marriage the following August, and his wife went back with him to Marlborough, where she joined the staff. Later she developed the Russian department at Manchester High School for Girls. Janette died in 2011. They had a son, Alasdair, and three daughters, Sheena, Catherine and Eleanor, all of whom are keen linguists and have pursued careers in education in the UK and abroad.

    Pollock faced another dilemma in 1964. Should he continue teaching or should he embark on university lecturing in Russian? The issue was solved by a colleague from the navy who was lecturing at Salford University, who told him a post was vacant there. He applied, was accepted and moved to Manchester. There, in 1969, he gained yet another degree — a master of science, the same qualification his grandfather had won. Two years later Pollock moved to Bradford University, where, as a senior lecturer, he developed modern language courses in interpreting. The emphasis was on spoken language skills, rather than the study of literature that dominated most university language degrees. Proficiency in usable and practical skills was the focus: the abilities he himself showed when he began interpreting for the government.

    “His Russian was very good, with excellent pronunciation,” a former ambassador to Moscow recalled. Pollock and Bishop shared the tasks, but Pollock then remained the personal interpreter for Thatcher, while Bishop worked with the foreign secretary, other ministers and subsequently Tony Blair and Queen Elizabeth II. Following a Buckingham Palace garden party to which Pollock had been invited in 1990, he recalled a conversation with the Queen. “I wonder if you could interpret for the Archbishop of Canterbury . . . but do finish your coffee first.” To which he replied: “But Ma’am, your need is greater than mine.”

    Diplomats remember him as a reserved man who was sometimes nervous before a big meeting, but astute in sizing up those whose words he translated. He later provided the government with notes on the atmosphere at Thatcher’s meetings in Moscow, including the formal dinner, the restricted talks with Gorbachev and her meeting with Nikolai Ryzhkov, the last chairman of the Council of Ministers. During the Bolshoi performance, for example, he noted that Thatcher and Gorbachev discussed the merits of Tchaikovsky and Mozart and the formative influences on Gorbachev’s tastes. He noted also the active involvement of Gorbachev’s wife, Raisa, over dinner, her stories about the visit to London and the more relaxed atmosphere. Pollock found her engaging and “chirpy”. For the restricted talks the next day, “Gorbachev at start seemed keyed up, sitting back somewhat tensely, hands clasped across his midriff, notes on table between him and PM.”

    Pollock also noted that Gorbachev (obituary, August 31, 2022) could display a range of emotions, from animated concern to flippancy, but never unleashed the acrimony that he had shown in 1984 when questioned in the House of Commons on human rights. But Pollock found that Gorbachev tended to talk excessively, speaking for 65 minutes in his opening remarks after lunch. “Some evidence of general garrulousness by nature,” he recalled. “He scarcely ever invites even his principal guest’s views.”

    These notes were confidential and restricted to a few in Downing Street. Pollock kept complete discretion over all the occasions when he interpreted; his wife and family would be assured of safe arrival at his professional destination only when the news was broadcast on television. He remained professor of Russian and East European studies until taking early retirement in 1992, but continued to interpret for the UK Atomic Energy Authority, British Nuclear Fuels and others.

    He suffered a mild stroke in 2014 but kept up his appetite for languages. His home library had books on over 40 languages and cultures. He and his wife also travelled widely around the Black Sea, acting as lecturers on cruises. He never missed an opportunity to create puns in other languages and send multilingual texts to his children. In his seventies he was attending Turkish and Finnish language courses; in his eighties he travelled to Finland three times to visit his son and friends.

    A family man, Pollock was proud of his heritage. His ancestors included Joseph Priestley, the discoverer of oxygen, and his great-grandfather Herbert Knott established a cotton mill in Stalybridge, Manchester, and kept his workers on during the Depression. His uncle was the playwright Frederick Knott, who wrote, among other things, Dial M for Murder and Wait Until Dark.

    Pollock had a strong Christian faith, and incorporated Russian proverbs into his beliefs. Two favourites were “God loves the Trinity” and “With God go over the seas; without Him go not over the threshold”.

    Professor Richard Pollock, translator and lecturer, was born on May 7, 1935. He died of undisclosed causes on October 1, 2022, aged 87”

    1. I’m all for practical languages rather than the study of literature (although I did both). One reason I only have a degree equivalent in French (Institute of Linguists Final Diploma) is because it did interpreting as part of the exam. I subsequently worked as an interpreter as well as teaching.

  29. Energy crisis? What energy crisis? Spiked 8 November 2022.

    This week, Rishi Sunak, like Callaghan before him, has escaped the winter weather, rampant inflation, strikes and the threat of power blackouts to soak up the Egyptian sunshine at the COP27 climate summit. His complacency about the energy crisis – and its cause – is as bad as Callaghan’s, if not worse. The truth is that Sunak’s commitment to the COP agenda betrays an indifference to the energy crisis. After all, climate-change policies are one of the leading causes of the current energy shortages. And if we go much further down the Net Zero pathway, the crisis will become permanent.

    For nearly 20 years now, Britain’s political leaders have used international climate summits to declare that they are ‘leading the world on climate change’. Each time they have returned, they have announced new laws to double down on Net Zero or other emissions-reduction targets. Last month, knowing that COP27 was on the horizon, Sunak reintroduced the government’s ban on shale-gas extraction, or fracking. The damage was done before his plane had even taken off.

    It’s worth reflecting that we are in the position we are, not because of Vladimir Putin or indeed Communist China, but because of our Leaders and the Elites that have supported them. Almost everything done for the last twenty five years, every decision, every policy has led us up a Blind Alley from which there is now no escape. The UK is on the cusp of total Economic, Political and Societal Collapse. Its politicians are corrupt travesties of their predecessors. Cowards and traitors. Its institutions are dead. Zombie entities devoid of life; unable to carry out the simplest of their functions.

    It can of course lurch on in some semblance of being, but all that made England and the UK what it was is now done. Its Achievements and People have already passed into History.

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/11/08/energy-crisis-what-energy-crisis/

    1. We are still owned by the descendants of the Committee of 300, Minty. They got too rich and too powerful during the years of the British Empire to give all that up when reserve currency switched from being the pound to the dollar. They just joined forces with the US elite, and at some point, they decided that world government was more efficient than nation states.
      How anyone can still believe that Britain is a democracy and mass migration, Net Zero etc just happens because politicians are stupid, innocent or naive beats me!

    2. The lens the political class see everything through is the reason why everything is distorted. They are told to believe in the green con, and thus they do, ignoring common sense, rationality, economic practicality. They just don’t care about anything apart from their own demented ideology.

  30. 367419+ up ticks,

    Border Force officers could join French patrols to tackle migrant crisis
    Britain and France reach ‘final stages’ of deal to combat illegal crossings as Prime Minister uses Cop27 to discuss the ‘shared challenge’

    Before our very eyes, importing kapos for future use is about to go into overdrive.

    1. For goodness sake. They’ll deliberately go the wrong way and the french will hinder any attempt at stopping them.

      We’ve got to use force to deter the vermin, and immediately remove all those here.

  31. A fascinating obituary of a hugely capable and fearless leader.   As a BTL poster put it:

    Carl Hewitt8 HRS AGO

    A proper officer, gentleman, knight and peer of the realm. Few are thus ordained. Even fewer actually deserve it. Thank you Lord Boyce for fighting our corner.

    * * *

    Admiral of the Fleet Lord Boyce, Chief of Defence Staff and a ‘burr under the saddle’ of the Blair government before the Iraq War – obituary

    He was determined, he said, to ‘tell the truth as I saw it, even when it was not always convenient’

    ByTelegraph Obituaries 7 November 2022 • 3:46pm

    Admiral of the Fleet Lord Boyce, who has died aged 79, was the Chief of the Defence Staff from 2001 to 2003, and challenged the Blair government’s legal authority in the run-up to the Iraq War.

    In 1997-98, Boyce was Commander-in-Chief Fleet, Commander-in-Chief Eastern Atlantic Area and Commander Naval Forces North Western Europe, taking up these offices shortly after Tony Blair had become prime minister. For a few weeks in early 1998 Boyce also became acting First Sea Lord while his predecessor Sir Jock Slater was ill, and he formally became First Sea Lord in late 1998.

    Boyce found this period “comprehensively knackering”, but was successful, through the Labour government’s Strategic Defence Review, in helping to shift British defence policy towards a maritime, expeditionary role and away from land-based campaigning with a defensive position on the central front in Germany.

    Blair authorised several small-scale military interventions, and in a speech delivered in Chicago in 1999 he announced what would become known as his “ethical foreign policy”, advocating greater use of armed forces to protect a civilian population, rather than exclusively to protect national interests. Boyce thought that Operation Palliser in May-June 2000 – British intervention to end the civil war in Sierra Leone – was an exemplar of this new policy: “a quick in and out, and not too much mission-creep”.

    However, funds to achieve the SDR were being starved by the chancellor, Gordon Brown, and as First Sea Lord Boyce was determined to win sufficient funding for the Navy, an ambition which he extended to cover all three services when he succeeded General Sir Charles Guthrie as Chief of the Defence Staff in February 2001.

    The flamboyant Guthrie’s style, some said, had been to cosy up to Blair and his advisers, while Boyce was determined to “tell the truth as I saw it, even when it was not always convenient”.

    He was “irritated but not bothered” that in retirement Guthrie continued to be consulted by Blair and his communications director Alastair Campbell: Boyce was confident that his own instincts and his interpretation of the intelligence would prove to be right.

    He was undeterred when during the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan he was ridiculed by US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for contradicting Rumsfeld’s view that the war would be over by the following year (it lasted 20 years); he spoke out against the US’s proposed ballistic missile defence shield; he thought that the so-called war on terror was a distraction from the long-term threats provided by Russia and China; and he warned that participants in the 2nd Iraq War in 2003 would not be greeted as “liberators with flowers on the end of rifles”.

    Boyce also reported to the Blair government that neo-conservatives in Washington were being misled by Iraqi exiles who were promising that a flowering of democracy would follow any invasion, and he warned about the dysfunction he found in Washington.

    There was, he said, “poor communication between the Pentagon, the State Department and the White House, and I often found myself briefing my American counterpart on what was going on in State rather than him actually finding out directly”.

    But it was at home that Boyce, in his own words, made himself “a burr under the saddle” of the Blair government. Boyce thought that Gordon Brown’s lack of understanding of defence amounted to contempt and put service personnel in danger by refusing to fund training and equipment.

    “Getting money out of the Treasury is like getting blood out of a stone anyway,” Boyce said. “The Treasury didn’t think we were on a war footing [in 2003], a new accounting method introduced by Brown meant the Ministry of Defence was discouraged from holding large stocks, and as a result, the MoD adopted a policy of ‘just enough, just in time’ for equipment delivery.”

    Of the Iraq War, Boyce later told the Chilcot Inquiry that the government was without any cohesion in the way it approached the 2003 invasion. “What we lacked was any sense of being at war,” he said. “There was no sense that we had a war cabinet or that we had a cabinet that thought that we were at war. I suspect if I asked half the cabinet whether we were at war, they would not have known what I was talking about. There was a lack of political cohesion at the top – in Iraq’s case, possibly because some people were not happy about what we were doing there.”

    Boyce was alarmed that the prime minister had gained an appetite for intervention and had given unconditional support to President Bush in his response to the September 11 attacks. But Blair had not told his cabinet or his party of this commitment, while Boyce was restricted to high-level planning rather than detailed preparations for war.

    Even several months later, Geoff Hoon, the defence secretary, instructed Boyce not to discuss the possibility of war with his chief of defence logistics, as it could be unhelpful to the efforts to secure a new UN Security Council resolution if it became public that military planning was under way.

    As CDS, Boyce’s initial plan in May 2002 was for the deployment in Iraq of a Navy task force and special forces, but after Blair and President Bush met at Camp David in September, he was called upon to prepare a much larger-scale operation, and at divisional strength, not least in order to maximise British influence over US planning.

    Although Boyce continued to be concerned that the defence budget was too small, by March 2003 British forces were preparing to enter Iraq from the north through Turkey, until Turkey vetoed that plan. Nevertheless, some ships had been sailed “not knowing whether they were going to turn left or right when they got to the Mediterranean”.

    Meanwhile, there were growing anti-war protests in the UK, and the three service chiefs presented their concerns about the legality of the war to Boyce. Boyce himself was concerned for the morale of the Armed Forces and for his servicemen and women and for their families, some of whom were being abused by protestors.

    So, in the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq, Boyce pressed for an assurance from the attorney general in “clear and simple words” whether the proposed military action would be lawful or not.

    Some thought that the opinion which was eventually wrung from the attorney general was equivocal, but it did not matter to Boyce, who “wanted to make sure that we had this anchor which has been signed by the Government law officer … It may not stop us from being charged [in a court of law] but, by God, it would make sure other people were brought into the frame as well.”

    Asked if he meant the prime minister and the attorney general, Boyce replied: “Too bloody right!”

    The normal length of appointment of a CDS is two or three years with a short extension, but Boyce’s outspokenness had prompted Alastair Campbell to question whether he wanted to be sacked: meanwhile, Boyce resigned himself to winning the Iraq war. Victory was declared on April 9 2003.

    Michael Cecil Boyce was born in Cape Town on April 2 1943, the son of Commander Hugh Boyce and an Afrikaner mother, Madeleine, née Manley. His father recalled the prophetic words of the doctor who announced the birth of his first-born: “This little admiral is doing well!”

    Mike inherited his faith, his self-restraint and his work ethic from his parents who, with their free church backgrounds, were firm believers in self-improvement, and skimped themselves to achieve good educations for their three boys: Philip Boyce became a professor of psychiatry in Sydney, and (Sir) Graham Boyce a diplomat.

    Mike was educated at Fernden School, Haslemere, and Hurstpierpoint College before joining Dartmouth in 1961 under the short-lived Murray Scheme, the last time the Navy attempted to give its officers a complete education.

    During his fourth year under the Murray scheme, Boyce spent two weeks in the submarine Auriga, where he was “impressed by the mixture of professionalism and piracy” on-board, and, when an emergency occurred, the quickness and competence with which the incident was handled.

    So in 1965 he volunteered for “the Trade” (as the Submarine Service was nicknamed), and also specialised as a torpedo and anti-submarine warfare specialist. In 1970 he served briefly in the diesel-engined submarine Oracle, commanded by the future Admiral Sir Hugo White, whom he described as a “remarkable” role model.

    In the early 1970s, Boyce stood by Conqueror, building in Cammell Laird’s yard at Birkenhead. Conqueror’s construction was delayed by industrial action and by sabotage of the ship’s gearbox before she was commissioned on November 9 1971, the last nuclear submarine built by Cammell Laird.

    Boyce was also qualified as a shallow-water diver, and to fulfil his compulsory minimum diving hours per month, he would drive to the Lake District and sit on the bottom of Windermere for the necessary time.

    He was fortunate to be selected early to attend the “perisher”, the make-or-break course for potential submarine commanders. The teacher was Commander Terry Woods OBE, a hard-playing submariner from whom the austere and abstemious Boyce learnt much. Years later he would recall: “The highlight – bar none – of my life is still that moment in 1973 of assuming command of HMS Oberon as a lieutenant, fresh from the perisher.”

    Then, as a lieutenant-commander, he commanded Opossum (1974-75) and he would later choose for the crest to his personal coat of arms “Mouse Opossum Argent … and claws Azure”: in other words, a tiny mouse hanging by its tail from the stock of an anchor (a detail often too small to see), while his heraldic motto is Ipsis Fretus Impedimentis Possum, or “I can trust myself with hindrances”.

    In 1977-79 he was the first appointee as Staff Warfare Officer (Tactical Systems), responsible for introducing into the submarine service a new tactical data-handling system; his shrewd insights into software and mathematical problems which Ferranti had sown into the system, made him, in Ferranti’s eyes, a difficult customer.

    As a newly promoted commander, he was given the nuclear-powered attack submarine Superb (1979-81). When he was appointed OBE for special operations against the Soviet navy (vividly described in Peter Hennessy’s 2015 book The Silent Deep) Boyce observed: “I wear the medal, but it is for the whole crew.”

    Boyce enjoyed close links with the Special Boat Service. As a junior officer in the submarine Ocelot in the Far East he had been responsible for liaison with a young Paddy Ashdown, the future Lib Dem leader, with whom he formed a lifelong friendship. While Ashdown was conducting trials in clandestine operations, in particular covert landings from submarines, Boyce was infused with huge admiration for the Royal Marines of the Special Boat Service (SBS).

    Much later, as CDS, Boyce preferred to use in operations the reticent SBS over more publicity-hungry forces – for example, in November 2001, sending C Squadron SBS to seize the airfield at Bagram in Afghanistan.

    In 2003-04, Boyce sympathised when the SBS sought a more independent identity as a service not exclusive to the Royal Marines but a tri-service organisation open to all. Subsequently, he accepted the honour of becoming colonel commandant of the SBS. In retirement he advised Ashdown on a book about the SBS, which after Ashdown’s death, was completed by Saul David as Silent Warriors (2021), for which Boyce wrote the foreword.

    Boyce was never overtly ambitious: “I just did whatever job I was given well, and people gave me a better job to do,” he said, and he rose swiftly in general service. Promoted to captain in 1982, he commanded the frigate Brilliant (1983-84). He was a calm and understanding captain in charge of submarine sea training 1984–86, a leading student at the RCDS in 1988, and a successful Senior Naval Officer, Middle East, in 1989.

    Subsequently, when his first marriage was breaking up, Boyce was Director of Naval Staff Duties (1989–91), when he became renowned for working late, sitting at his desk in darkness except for a banker’s green-shaded desk lamp. He said it helped him to concentrate and avoid distractions.

    Promoted to rear-admiral, he was Flag Officer Sea Training (1991–92), and as a vice-admiral Flag Officer Surface Flotilla (1992–95), and as a full admiral, he was Second Sea Lord (1995–97).

    Created a life peer on retirement in 2003, he sat as a crossbencher, speaking out about the risk to service personnel facing liability for their actions for which he claimed politicians are ultimately responsible.

    He gave evidence to the Iraq inquiry, and, though a member of the Top Level Group of UK Parliamentarians for Multilateral Nuclear Disarmament and Non-proliferation, was a strong advocate that the UK, as one of the P5, should retain a nuclear deterrent. He also launched scathing attacks on the government for Britain’s “anorexic” fleet of warships.

    Boyce’s appointment in 2004 as Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports was inevitably greeted by the headline “Admiral sails into Cinque Ports”. His was a surprise appointment, coming two years after the death of the previous holder, the Queen Mother, and followed a threat by the mayors of the Channel ports to march in full regalia on Whitehall.
    It was a surprise to Boyce, too: “A letter came through saying that Her Majesty would like me to be Lord Warden … I had only a vague schoolboy history of the Cinque Ports.” He never learnt why he was chosen, but liked to think that it was an opportunity for royal recognition of the Navy and of the Armed Forces for their successes in Afghanistan and Iraq.

    His being made Knight Companion of the Order of the Garter in 2011 and his promotion to Admiral of the Fleet in 2014, after the five-star rank had been suspended, were other surprises for Boyce, which he also thought of as the Queen’s recognition of the Navy and Armed Forces.

    Boyce was involved in some 60 charities and voluntary associations – “Too many,” he said, “but I lost the ability to say ‘no’. ” Becoming chairman of the RNLI was very special to him, and other chairmanships which gave him much pleasure were those associated with the Cinque Ports, the preservation of HMS Victory, the London district of St John Ambulance and medical sciences charities, and the Worshipful Company of Drapers.

    But he was most keen in his support of ADVANCE, the Armed Services Trauma Rehabilitation Outcome Study, which investigated the long-term physical and psycho-social outcomes of battlefield casualties. Boyce’s interest and involvement was always helpful and appreciated.

    He was a superb field athlete and champion hurdler, played tennis and squash hard, and later took up another solo sport, windsurfing.

    Working for Boyce was not always easy, as he set and expected the highest possible standards, and those who did not know him well thought him severe, aloof, austere and patrician. It was certainly difficult to gain his confidence, but those who knew him well loved him. Even when he was ill and unable to stand for more than a few minutes so as to work a room, something he had always been able to accomplish gracefully, he gave his time generously to others. But he had no interest in writing a memoir.

    In 1971 Boyce married Harriette Gail Fletcher; they separated in 1994 and divorced in 2005, and in 2006 he married the South African widow of Vice-Admiral Malcolm Rutherford, Fleur (née Smith), who was his companion while he was First Sea Lord and Chief of the Defence Staff.

    Fleur died in 2016 and Mike Boyce is survived by a son and a daughter of the first marriage and a stepson and stepdaughter.

    Admiral of the Fleet Lord Boyce, born April 2 1943, died November 6 2022 https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/95c0561d66b23b59166745dfee6f63c406c011a1a14b498b381c914c517d42c6.jpg

      1. You are very welcome. They are an uplifting ray of sunshine amongst an almost overwhelming sea of dross from so many third-rate people.

    3. A great tribute to a man I met several times – truly an officer and a gentleman, even if he was a submariner!! There seem to be a couple anomalies in the Telegaffe obit though – for example “before joining Dartmouth in 1961 under the short-lived Murray Scheme” – surely not that short lived, I was one of the last Murray Scheme entries and I joined in 1971!

  32. Now we know how easy it is to fool the remaining British public. I wonder how bird flu suddenly arrived on our island. Again.
    As did, out of the blue, BSE did a few years ago.
    Let’s face the facts, in open door Britain, it would be extremely easy for someone to turn up in the UK and infect a few poultry farms. It would soon spread. And add chaos, shortages and hardships for farmers. As did the terrible cattle disease.
    Just a thought.

    1. Well, that farmer said that the supermarkets were talking up bird flu when reality is that they don’t want to pay the true price of eggs. So it’s hard to know exactly how much of it is around.
      In the US, “bird flu” has already been used as an excuse in some places to ban home chicken keeping.
      But egg packing plants have also mysteriously burned down.

      1. Similarly, people are talking up the war in Ukraine, suggesting the cost of sunflower oil is affected. Hence the two pound a litre rise in the cost of Olive oil…………..

    2. I have thought the same about some of our tree diseases. It clears the land making it ready for development, especially in areas where the trees are protected.

    1. Reject is a bit harsh. But he would have been a lot happier had his expectations been tailored to his abilities.

        1. lol No, but I do think he would have been happier if apprenticed in an honest trade at 16 years old, with no nonsense about him being a Prince, a Royal Highness or a mighty leader or a great star or anything else above his paygrade poured into his ears!

          1. Princess Margaret’s eldest became a chippie. I met him once – had an obsession with lining up the slots in the screwheads of his furniture so they all faced the same way.

            Many might argue that the Earl of Wessex was much better as a prince than as a TV producer.

          2. “Princess Margaret’s eldest became a chippie.”

            Was his cod well-battered and did he serve decent mushy peas with his chips?😉

          4. I agree about Edward, but he is a different character from Harry. Edward has demonstrated that he’s loyal and capable of putting his own ego on one side.

      1. And as they say in the ring: Seconds Out!

        I suppose the difference between goods which are seconds and goods which are rejects is that companies might still be able to flog off seconds but not rejects.

        I remember an excellent line from As You Like It. Phoebe, a rustic maid, is scorning the love of the rustic Silvius. Looking at the rather plain young woman Rosalind advises her to: Sell at once. You are not for all markets. – in other words grab him when you can you won’t find anything better. Of course Migraine did far better than she deserved – she did not merit even a reject – let alone a substandard second.

    4. Perhaps ‘Shirker’? After all, he threw off the duty of his birth to trough on it by treating his family like manure, all to cash in.

    1. Accepting responsibility is beyond them. That implies shame and worse, responsibility. Neither of which MPs are capable of feeling.

  35. Must try harder
    Wordle 507 6/6

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    1. No country – NO COUNTRY – that makes nuclear weapons and has a space programme should have ONE PENNY of UK taxpayers’ money.

    3. I doubt very much if many of the people in the UK, or any where else on the planet, who have suffered flooding, as I don’t, give a Tom Pitt. It seems nobody can win. Pakistanis can always go and live in Africa if things don’t suit them in wet Pakistan . Alternatively no body is stopping them from flying out and helping.

    4. How many billions in aid have we sent to these so called developing countries over the years and nothing seems to have improved one jot.

      They’re not developing any more than Kodak is since mobile ‘phones included cameras.

  38. ‘Morning All

    Funny Old World……….

    2.5 Billion in tax cuts produce horror in the markets and a coup against the PM

    17 Billion (so far) in Climate Con giveaways and the Al-Beeb is in an orgy of delight

    https://twitter.com/Antiochean/status/1589683549002924033

    https://twitter.com/PrisonPlanet/status/1589738741286916097?s=20&t=rmxHVisVxDcZBtLOcTQ_ZQ

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/16acb77bd88e931b89cf79ad8119a0d51e8853d4ef2bedff878d7801ebd86c12.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b78cddfe2c0a46850df620b1c794d9e152358411f4ecab3431ed973a148dd0ab.jpg

    Finally “Ain’t THAT the truth”

    https://twitter.com/BurnsideNotTosh/status/1589715237099360256?s=20&t=VGdsB1yx7EC1AlPgJCej-A

    3. As someone who was a member of a golf club for 25 years and had played for for more than 35 years. Still on occasions.
      I understand both points of view. The guys really shouldn’t have messed up the golf game.
      But on the other hand over that period of time I found golf club members are often way above their station, usually due to their unrealistic expectations. It’s only a game.
      The balls could have easily been replaced, no problem. But having said that those idiots were probably trespassing and not very intelligent.
      But I’m not suggesting golfers are particularly intelligent.

        2. I remember when mobile phones started to appear and be used on trains a person with an especially annoying voice carried out a long, loud and tedious conversation without regard for the other passengers. He was asked to stop but he didn’t. An exasperated passenger went up to him, grabbed the phone and threw it out of the window.

          Where do your sympathies lie?

          2. One journey a woman was going on about how she wanted some underling sacked and she wasn’t concerned how or why, just so long as he was gone!

        1. I remember playing with a senior banker (no w) one Sunday morning. He drove into the rough off the 18 tee. Still 200 yards from the green on the par 5. He got his 5 wood out of his bag. I said what are you doing ?
          Use you 7 iron put it on the fairway and you’ll have a shot in. He gave me a very funny look but he did and only bogied the hole. Thanks for that he said. And we became friends.
          He became a better golfer.
          No harm done. 🏌‍♂️

    4. Before you pull a silly stunt, think of the possible consequences. Not everyone has the same sense of humour… or tolerance. Creeping into someone’s back yard with a basket full of fireworks and pointing them at the porch – like the USA and The Ukraine, for instance.

    6. Over reacting, Rule 9-6 alliws him to replace the ball with no penalty.

      I hope that he didn’t break his club, no relief there.

  40. As pointed out below it was always going to be the Life Assurance companies where the real truth emerges……

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8c4caffa874f54beeb6e3bd518fe9f2ca079b730d06fa746543f8990236966b7.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d73aa5f9cf53fcdfa4134812f07bb0dccef856ccf70603d9e883883b08b35f77.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f8d5e665e53c8550b0e5055b71ff56ad1af7b6cf2bc9a76e4931c241fd8f5951.jpg
    “I’ve got a (not so) little list”

  41. One of Today’s DM headlines:

    Has Cleopatra’s tomb been FOUND? Tunnel carved in rock deemed a ‘geometric miracle’ is discovered 43 feet below an ancient temple that may lead to the long-lost burial site of Egypt’s last queen and her lover Mark Antony
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-11400503/Tunnel-temple-lead-tomb-Egypts-pharaoh-Cleopatra.html

    I studied Antony and Cleopatra for “A” level many years ago and it had a profound impression on me. I suppose it made me a hedonist rather than a prim and proper puritan as I found that the portrayed Egyptian world of lust, luxury and sensuality was, to a 17 year old, far more attractive than the austere world of Rome represented by Octavius Caesar.

    However, unlike modern politicians, Octavius kept to his word if Shakespeare and the Daily Mail are correct. When Cleopatra had died of self-administered snake venom he said:

    She shall be buried by her Antony:
    No grave upon the earth shall clip in it
    A pair so famous.

  43. Government Minister backs Eco-loons:

    “Mel Stride, the Work and Pensions Secretary, discussed the protesters during an interview on Sky News. When asked if the environmental protestors had a point, he said: “Well, they do in [a] sense.

    “Couple of points… one is absolutely we are all determined, and this Government above all else is absolutely determined, to bear down on the use of fossil fuels.

    “Second point I would make is that we do have to strike the right balance between the right of individuals to express their opinion and protest, which is absolutely fundamental to a civilised democracy – which is what we have in our country – and at the other time, making sure that we don’t inconvenience the public or indeed endanger the public in some circumstances.”

    But he added there is a “major issue” when individuals can “go on to motorways or even just outside Parliament, in fact, periodically, at will, just sit down in the middle of the road and disrupt the traffic,” and that emergency services can be caught up in the action. “

    2. Tell you what Stride. You do without fossil fuels first. All you MPs. Nothing made from or using fossil fuels. See how you get on.

    3. It’s not a “major issue”

      It’s against the law.

      Mel Stride either upholds the law, or quits the Government.

  44. Children of Russia’s top politicians hang up phone when asked if they will fight in Ukraine. 8 November 2022.

    Mixed response to journalists’ challenge only the latest clash between high-ranking officials’ rhetoric and their offspring’s lifestyles

    Of course when some journalist rings you out of the blue you just say the first politically embarrassing thing that comes into your head!

    I’m old enough to remember the Vietnam War where the sons of the Washington IIluminati (Clinton, Bush et al.) avoided service there like the plague.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/11/07/children-russias-top-politicians-hang-phone-when-asked-will/

    1. What one must remember is that the children of such people will be in even greater danger from their own side than they would be from the enemy.

  45. Dept meeting yesterday, I put the potential nurses’ strike on the agenda to draw up a contingency plan.
    Consultant said that she doesn’t usually support striking but that she would support nurses’ striking for a pay rise.

    Stony silence from the rest of the room 🙂

    1. One of my friends who works in the NHS on the front line is all against striking. “It isn’t what I joined for”, she said.

      1. 367419+ up ticks,

        Morning R,

        Rhetorical, I do agree, the side effect possible is it has gone, on hearing himself, physical.

        1. I was a little disconcerted to hear an elderly man’s carer refer to his Tena pants as a nappy while she was changing him.
          Somewhat humiliating for the old boy who, whilst incontinent, has certainly not lost his marbles.

      1. 367419+ up ticks,

        Afternoon KP,

        He’s a veggie, more like someone has fed him a PORK CHOP & he rushes out to rinse out mouth with battery acid as demanded by the brotherhood party supporters.

          1. 467419+ up ticks,

            Afternoon W,

            Howdo or Hindo something like that,

            I do believe he doesn’t believe in the indigenous English.

          3. 367419+ up ticks,

            W,
            Join the dots, outcome inevitable.

            Near future ” I am writing to my local imam”……….

  47. Been listening to halfwits on the radio this morning phoning in to moan about the stop oil protesters.

    Then they go on to say when asked that they really believe something has to be done to cut our greenhouse gasses to save the planet.

    People appear to be totally brainwashed on the issue.

      1. Well done. My wordle and quordle attempts were abject failures today. On the plus side, I got Yeardle in three.

    4. Par 4.
      Wordle 507 4/6

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

      1. Par Four – two shots in the rough!

        Wordle 507 5/6
        🟩⬜⬜⬜🟨
        🟩⬜🟩🟩⬜
        🟩⬜🟩🟩🟩
        🟩⬜🟩🟩🟩
        🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

      2. Another lucky birdie for me.
        Wordle 507 3/6

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

  50. Labour revives ID cards idea to reduce irregular immigration. 8 november 2022.

    In an interview with Times Radio, Kinnock revealed an identity scheme was being considered “very, very carefully indeed”, adding it would be “so helpful” in reassuring the public that “we have control of our borders”.

    It would? How? You have to wonder if all these people have contracted some mind virus that has turned them completely doolally!

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/nov/08/labour-revives-id-cards-idea-reduce-irregular-immigration-stephen-kinnock

    3. Urged by whom?
      A universal basic income is a very short route to food stamps and travel restrictions.

        1. The morality of UBIs and the kind of restrictions that they will put on CBDCs are a huge can of worms.
          If my CBDC income disappears if I don’t spend it at the end of the month, I’ll stop working when I’ve earned just enough to get by.

        2. Quite
          You and millions like you and at that point the whole house of cards falls apart and anarchy will reign.

          1. Even The Critic magazine last month ran an article trashing Ayn Rand yet this is precisely the scenario she warns of in Atlas Shrugged.

          2. Absolutely agree, Sue. Read it and The Fountainhead, years ago and it confirmed my belief that socialism, like communism, is pure evil.

        3. Isn’t that what happened during the lockdowns? People stayed at home and got paid for doing nothing. No matter that the billions spent on furlough and other things like track and trace have buggered the country’s finances. It’s no wonder that now the country is bankrupt and we are threatened with increased taxation.
          And now Rishi wants to send even more of our money to poorer countries to line their despots’ pockets.

        4. Isn’t that what happened during the lockdowns? People stayed at home and got paid for doing nothing. No matter that the billions spent on furlough and other things like track and trace have buggered the country’s finances. It’s no wonder that now the country is bankrupt and we are threatened with increased taxation.
          And now Rishi wants to send even more of our money to poorer countries to line their despots’ pockets.

    5. It’s not radical. All socialist countries have tried it. It’s followed by economic collapse, incredible poverty, massive unemployment and business collapse.

      The statists continually forget that they are, in every way possible, obnoxious unwanted vermin.

  53. I have now reached my conclusion on politics.
    Voting is now similar to putting your car into a garage for a service.
    When arrive to take it back, the tyres are nearly flat. The windscreen has been badly scratched. The oil is dripping out from the gear box and sump. And after a massive increase in milage, the fuel tank has been emptied. And Grant Shapps is standing grinning and handing you the bill, to be paid and which must be paid before you are given the keys.

    1. Your car no longer belongs to you either, they have sold it to a billionaire overseas, and you’re now expected to pay rent for it.

      1. Something else i thought might have been a tad too enthusiastic. Later that week two speeding tickets and a couple of parking fines.

      1. Oh he has. Grizz too. Most of the electorate are either stupid or ignorant or both. My boss is an intelligent man. He trained as a medic then decided it wasn’t for him and became a lawyer instead. A couple of weeks ago I explained CBDC to him. He’d never heard of it. Didn’t take it on board as a possibiltiy, much less a threat. He’s probably already forgotten what I told him about how it works in China. Doesn’t think it’s relevant.

        1. Paper qualifications and a good job do not give you common sense and awareness of the world.

        2. Yeah, I’ve been told that too. “That’s China – it could never happen here!”
          In our software team, three of us are unvaxxed that I know of – two young colleagues and me (the young man obviously fancies the girl, I can’t help wondering if they will get together!)
          One of my older colleagues has an incredibly high IQ – you can ask him a small detail about something he worked on ten years ago, and most of the time, he knows it immediately.
          He swallowed the whole covid/vaxx thing hook, line and sinker! I have given him various bits of information from time to time, but he always rejects them as unreliable conspiracy theories. I really thought he would take heed of howbadismybatch.com which is mathematical analysis done by a software developer, but no. Still waiting for the mainstream media to give him permission to admit that the vaxx isn’t safe or effective as promised!

          1. Bearing in mind that the majority of the UK’s adult population who are 60+ are chronically ill, and therefore vulnerable to germs, I was initially neutral about the vaccines; however, when I chatted with a hospital doctor who was about to be dismissed for not submitting, it became clear that the jabs were as much about control as healthcare.

          2. Guess it’s hard to admit you have been fooled. Especially if you pride yourself on clarity of thought.

        4. It is disheartening Sue, people will spend their time between now and the next GE moaning about taxes, immigration, woke nonsense and all the rest and then the great majority will vote as they normally do, happy to accept the same political farce even if the political party colours is different. Red, Blue, Yellow or Green, they are all doing this country down.

          3. Ok thanks. I saw reference to it further down. FWIW (and separate to the posts yesterday) from this week i am only using cash – which caused chaos in Tesco Metro yesterday. I told the young guy who eventually took my cash why I insisted on using cash (to keep cash being used to fight against a potential future where there is no cash) and he looked at me as if i was bonkers.

  54. The actor Leslie Philips has passed away at the grand age of 98.
    A life well lived . Old school charming gentleman who played the cad in more gentle times . Rest in peace

    1. Sad news, but he had a sparking career. Ding Dong. The father of Five children. Born in Tottenham. RIP.

  55. The actor Leslie Philips has passed away at the grand age of 98.
    A life well lived . Old school charming gentleman who played the cad in more gentle times . Rest in peace

    2. “Other examples of temporary cultural fads in teenage orcas include playing with prawn and crab traps, and wearing dead fish on their heads as hats. ”

      Just a phase they’re going through.

    3. Orca attacks have been going on for some years between Gibraltar and along the western coast of the Iberian peninsular up to La Coruna. The orcas are certainly intelligent enough to work in teams and they specifically target boats’ rudders in order to incapacitate them. There have been many reports in the Yachting Press and the Cruising Association bulletin.

      I last sailed down this coast in 2004 and at that time orca attacks were unknown but now they are a serious problem. I have never carried a gun or used one in anger and in the past ‘yottie’ opinion has been very divided as to whether or not to carry firearms on your boat if you are going through waters which might have pirates and drug dealers infesting them. But it strikes me that if it comes to a question of my life or the orcas’ I would choose my own and shoot the animals that attacked me – but I would have first to buy a gun in order to do so! Now that we have sold Mianda the question is a hypothetical one.

        1. Totally illegal, I’m afraid… you get into big trouble if you set off flares if you’re not sinking.

          A chap in Fethiye set off a red flare in celebration of Ataturk’s birthday and set the hillside alight: he ended up in prison three years!

      1. With ones wrong glasses on, the large animal resembles the Space Shuttle coming in to land!

    1. 367419+ up ticks,

      O2O,

      Showing HS2 1942 addition, fast track ain’t new.
      Railways, Tommy Robinsons etc,etc.

    2. What Lefties forget is that it was intolerance of difference that drove the Nazis. Different opinions, ideologies, thoughts.

      They cannot stand other people to have a different opinion to them, yet their own zealous self righteousness prevents them acknowledging the rights of others who think differently.

      The literally refuse to see how evil they are or the history of their attitudes.

  62. I am a Covid Vaccine Denier.

    I am a man-made Climate Change Denier.

    I am a Global Warming Denier and I deny that CO2 is a problem to the atmosphere.

    I also deny the Infallibility of the Pope and the Divine Right of Kings.

    Any other suggestions of things I should add to my denier list?

          1. I Ladder, I ladder I ladder I aye,
            I Ladder, I ladder I ladder I aye,
            I Ladder, I ladder I ladder I aye,
            I ups and I shows ‘er the East Anglian Way.

            The new group from Norwich , The Trombettis, have made a new version of the old west country song.

    4. A few of things the UK needs to deny.
      Legal aid, foreign aid, Invader aid. None contributary Benefits, free NHS for those who have never contributed.

  63. Just in from some useful garden tidying. What was one ten minutes job – trimming the top of a 30 foot long hedge where the MR had done the sides – turned into a half hour one because Muggins here cut the cable on the hedge trimmer…… Took twenty minutes to redo a join. Then another ten to find which damned fuse has failed…. , ,Still all done now and it is about to rain. So well pleased.

    Also picked the very last of the trombetti

      2. I grew a couple of those once; seeds from a gourd my aunt had given me. Triffids!! Hilarious. You could almost see them growing. Sixty feet down the garden, 120 fruit in three different shapes and colours. Wonderful!

    3. Bill,

      If you wrapped yellow tape around the black hedge trimmer cable , so there is a stripey effect , that may stop an further accidents .

      Moh did that to his cable , yards of the stuff .

  64. The gale continues and the house feels cold.

    We took the dogs out in the car late morning , blue sky, within 2 miles the sky darkened , we thought we would get away with whilst letting them have a sniff and a gallop , the gale roared in and we got wet, made a dash for the car , old dog Jack ambled along as if saying what a fuss .

    The wind is ferocious now and the rain is intermittent .. when it does it is sheeting down .

    The garden is sodden , squelchy in parts , but thank goodness we are on a slight slope .

    Just watching The Repair shop .. two elderly ladies have brought in a home made radio .. The Germans confiscated all radios when they occupied the Channel Islands .

    Looks like as if it was made in a tin can with various valves etc , the little radio was concealed under floorboards to avoid detection by the Germans .

    I wonder how the team will repair it?

    1. You had to be careful.
      If a search found it, or a neighbour denounced you, you would be shot.

  66. – Have you noticed that politicians put up their Christmas Reparations earlier and earlier every year.

        1. I just checked out the Beresford Hotel in Newquay. Nice seafront views. No bookings available, ‘Sold Out’.

          1. I expect SERCO will be demanding the National Trust must release grand historical homes and cottages and small places of great importance , don’t you?

      2. Of course not., Foam-flecked, far-right, extremist fascists might go and indicate disapproval. Can’t have the incomers disturbed.

    1. I send quite a lot of my money to Kenya – but that’s because I want to, not because the government says so. It pays for my trips and also I support the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust.

    2. At least we have a choice with a Nigerian prince and the share in a legacy. This lot just rip you off without asking.

      1. It’s the lying that is so harmful. The constant pretense that it’s our fault that these countries aren’t as prosperous as western Europe.

        1. Once all African countries gained their independance it was down hill all the way.

          My late father worked for British civil engineering companies in the Sudan , Egypt , Nigeria and South Africa, early days before those countries cast us aside , ungrateful idiots .. I have my father’s year books that show how prosperous the countries became , and how well they functioned with roads , universities , hospitals clinics , water works , sewerage , electricity, exports etc and keeping the peace .. and many Africans were so pleased with us being there ..and they loved the Queen and us .!

          1. We met an old beekeeper in Uganda – he spoke very good, correct English – he said he learnt it at his British school.

          2. We met an old beekeeper in Uganda – he spoke very good, correct English – he said he learnt it at his British school.

    3. At least we have a choice with a Nigerian prince and the share in a legacy. This lot just rip you off without asking.

  69. Double bogey today

    Wordle 507 6/6

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

      2. My thoughts exactly, now if they could target a few more like him it would almost worthwhile to see the disruption. I nominate Ed Davey followed by Ed Millipeed.

    5. “The continued protests are deeply embarrassing for police, who were dodged again by men and women able to climb motorway gantries to shut the road…”
      It’s not the eco nuts who are shutting the road; it’s the hysterical police and ‘elf’n’safety who shut the road.

      1. Probably better than having one of they silly buggers fall through your windscreen at 70+ mph.

  71. Today my Telegraph sub expires. I shall not be renewing since these far left rags should not be encouraged.

      1. Fell for that last year so they are playing games offering a sub at 189 so they can come down. Won’t work again…

        1. I’m paying £1 for 3 months. I rarely read the lefty dross, but some sport and comment is good!

      2. I had a ridiculously priced reminder today. (Your annual payment will be: 329.00 GBP) Yeah, right.
        Too busy to sort it, but I will be making a firm phone call tomorrow.

  72. From the DT

    Cop27 negotiators ‘starved into submission’ by lack of food

    Climate summit beset with catering issues, forcing delegates to ‘subsist
    on Tracker bars’ and miss sessions in the hunt for a meal

    1. Oh dear, never mind.

      Can they not just go outside and eat grass or something sustainably green.

      You can bet that the posh knobs are not starving, they will have flownin with copious
      food andboze supplies.

  73. That’s me for this dark evening. The MR has a PCC meeting so I shall profit by watching the (execrable) SAS “drama”. The first episode was tolerable as total fiction – I imagine No 2 will be much the same – if not worse!

    Have a jolly evening.

    A demain.

    1. I amuse myself, Bill by watching, on YouTube, the complete series of Foyle’s War. Quite entertaining.

      1. Well, something was submitted to the Gates-funded MHRA that convinced them to give it the go-ahead, and HART would like to see exactly what that was.

          1. They have now vaccinated the entire control group of the original test study, even though it isn’t due to end until 2023, when no doubt, they will try to say that it has been completely successful despite the absence of a control group.

    2. “Conclusion:
      The government has invested millions of taxpayers’ monies to develop and market the AZ product. A large percentage of its population have been injected with a liability-free vaccine and we therefore require complete transparency. It would show utter contempt for our democracy, if the British people are denied access to this information.      ”

      Shirley, showing utter contempt for our democracy is de rigueur for our politicians.
      Edit; My bold.

    3. Very gradually the truth will eventually come out. Too late for many people who have been injured or killed by the clot shots. I had mine in February and April 2021. I’m one of the lucky ones. I certainly won’t be having any more.

      1. It’s not the clot shots that’ll see me off. It’s more the loneliness and isolation. I have always refused to covid vax.

  75. Well that was not a surprise.
    After telling the Salvation Army Housing Association, Step-son’s landlords, I’d at his flat for an hour from 13:00 hrs, no one turned up, so I bogged off at 14:00 as I’d stated.

    The weather turned rather nasty, so I cancelled possible meeting with stepson.

      1. I was half expecting it.
        Not a total loss, managed to get into the town centre and pick up a powered cool box I’ve been wanting for when I’m camping in the van.

        Parked van at t’Lad’s and was able to see how he was.
        Getting better but still spitting feathers over the accident. Apparently a driver who turned out of a side road “thought” he’d caught the crash on his dash cam only to withdraw the claim and refuse to cooperate with the police.
        Obviously he’d recognised the driver who ran away and decided he had better things to do than upset the local pikies.

    2. Rats. That used to be a good, cheap hotel when travelling via Dover – about a third of the price of Holiday Inn, and nice staff too. Wondered how long it would be before they got invaded.

    3. The whole of the Conservative Party should be arrested locked up and stand trial for treason.
      They’ve inflicted mental health issues on, every once kind and rational member of the English public.

    1. How can they sue the Home office? So many things are so easy to undo it’s no longer comical. The state *wants* the tide of filth to continue.

    1. One populated by fools! £25 for a pork pie?! You can get the M&S one for £2. 4 scotch eggs are £3 in Tesco and we all know they’ll be exactly the same – or perhaps… eggxactly?!

    3. Wonderful, Maggie, if you could afford to be so profligate. Off course the elites wouldn’t flinch at the prices.

      1. Grizzly

        I was horrified when I saw the FM ingredients .. and what idiots pay all that money for something like that.

        Your offerings look so tasty .

  81. Oh, I do hate Microsoft, but sadly Excel has a couple things that I use a lot that aren’t on any of the other options! Today my MS apps decided that they needed to be “activated” despite having been working perfectly yesterday. Sadly, activating them didn’t do anything and they refused to save! About 2 hours later, on chat to MS most of that time, having uninstalled and then had an epic getting the apps back, they eventually “verified” and once I signed back in [only using my old email, as despite me updating it the new one wouldn’t work] they began to work again. Two [expletive deleted] hours lost due to Microsoft being morons!

    1. Many years ago I transferred from MicroSod to Apple but had numerous Word & Excel files. About 5 years ago I purchased for a small fee, the software that runs these two on Apple. Every couple of months MicroSod insists on ‘verifying’ these products. So far so good.

      1. Like you I have many Word & Excel files which I need to keep – today I suspect it didn’t “verify”. They [MS] really are carp!

    1. I think many people are beginning to see that Truss and Kwarteng, whatever their faults, would have been far better for Britain than Sunak and Hunt,

  84. LittleBoats 🇬🇧NI🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿En
    @LittleBoats2020
    305 hotels are now on our “Map of Shame” 5 are in Eastbourne, the Palm, Majestic, Citrus, Strand & Carlton

    Locals now have a 400 strong Muslim enclave

    As always some will be predators & target women & children

    Malignant Islam will soon take hold

    This is a hostile! takeover

    https://twitter.com/Scott29293043/status/1590025312725004288

    Click on the link and see the pure anger..

    1. TB, this is just between you and me, but some of the hotels being used to house ‘refugees’ are ultimately owned by an Israeli based company.

    2. Paying guests have been turfed out of a Shrewsbury hotel to accommodate “asylum seekers” and have been left stranded with nowhere to continue their stay. I find that utterly disgusting. In the first place they are not seeking asylum (only benefits) and secondly they are illegals. They should NOT get priority over paying customers.

  85. I realise it’s quite early, but reading some of the comments along with my knee and back ache it all is making me very depressed.
    So it’s good night from me. 😣.

  86. Sir Gavin Williamson has resigned as a government minister after bullying allegations, saying he aims to “clear my name of any wrongdoing”.
    He said he “refuted” how his “past conduct” had been characterised but said the allegations were becoming a distraction for “the good work the government is doing”.

    His time in office will be remembered like the plastic bag that is stuck high up in a tree where people seeing it wondered how the fuck it got up there but no one could be arsed to get it down….

    1. From the government or being an MP? As frankly, it’s a decision for his employers, not for him. If his behaviour is appalling then his employers – us – dock his pay.

    2. What personality type is a shaman?
      Classic shamanism

      A given shaman is usually known for certain mental characteristics, such as an intuitive, sensitive, mercurial, or eccentric personality, which may be accompanied by some physical defect, such as lameness, an extra finger or toe, or more than the normal complement of teeth

      1. “Mr Durek – an African-American who describes himself as a “6th Generation Shaman” – has claimed to have risen from the dead and to have predicted the 9/11 attacks in the United States two years before they took place.
        He has said the criticism he faces is due to racism, saying he has “never experienced as much as racism” as when he came to Norway. He has also compared himself to the likes of Albert Einstein and Thomas Edison, claiming they were “geniuses” and “misunderstood”.
        On his website, he describes himself as a “visionary for the ‘Now Age'” who “demystifies spirituality”. He said his work had influenced actresses Gwyneth Paltrow and Nina Dobrev.”

        On the above evidence I think he must be a complete Shaman.

  90. All being well, this time tomorrow Biden will be a lame duck President.

    Unfortunately, it might be the signal China awaits before invading Taiwan!

    1. Don’t bank on it:

      “”Protest, Protest, Protest!” Trump Calls For Action Over ‘Complete Voter Integrity Disaster’ At Polls….

        1. Apparently there are lots of issues with the voting machines not working in several places…

          1. Oops.
            And when it turns out that they really are fraudulent what will the Democrats do then?
            They can’t deselect Biden, nor can they rerun.
            The shit will not just hit the fan it will break the fan

      2. He’s rich telling Santos not to run in ’24. Santos is the best candidate by far and Trump really has baggage.

    2. I hope so, but never underestimate the Left’s desperation to keep power – to them, the end justifies the means. They really don’t care.

      1. He’s been banging his head against the wall over the inefficiency of a social housing organisation…

        1. I must have missed those posts; we’ve been entertaining local friends for supper.

          HG is an embarrassingly good cook, so meals tend to last for hours as the greedy people (me, me, me AND them, them, them) fill ourselves with food and drink.

        2. They are beep wording useless. No one – and i mean no one – will do anything unless you kick them so hard they can’t ignore you.

          Getting my brother into supported living was a continual fight against uninterested, lazy frustrating people. I’ve normally a fair bit of patience but 4 months of delays, hassle, incompetence and demands for the same information over and over again (such as a passport and driving licence, neither of which my brother has), then losing mine had me thumping walls in anger as brother spent another night in tears weeping at the black mold, the cold shower (his boiler had broken) and a broken fridge.

          As always when I completely lose it, the Warqueen stepped in, threatened to sue them if accomodation wasn’t provided within 5 days – and hung up on them. 3 days later brother was housed.

          It shouldn’t have taken that long. It shouldn’t take a threat. They should do their damned jobs better, more efficiently and with some measure that they’re beeping people over.

          Apologies for the late rant. Maybe it explains my abject hatred and complete lack of respect for government of any sort.

      2. I bet 75% are there at taxpayers’ expense – whatever happened to Zoom and Workspace … not as much fun and not the photo-opps, I presume.

  94. So – Cur Jim has fallen on someone else’s sword: Nice BTL commet in The GRimes:

    “Out of the frying pan back into the fireplace”

      1. 367419+ up ticks,

        S,
        Could that be what made sunak fleet of foot early doors.

        “Who is he taking down with him?”

        A domino effect would suffice.

    2. Drag. One’s sex, like one’s race, is a protected characteristic so why, pray, is it OK for men to dress up as women but heaven forfend if a white person dressed up as a black person.

  102. The London Mayor
    @SadiqKhan
    is at pains to point out his worries of “climate change,” & the sacrifices we all need to make.

    But, it has not stopped him flying 361,146 air miles during time as Mayor. The same as travelling round the world 14 times using 200 tonnes of CO2.

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