934 thoughts on “Friday 17 January: The rise of Rebecca Long-Bailey shows that Labour has learnt nothing”

  1. Good morning all.
    Up early for a change after a rare decent night’s sleep!

    Looks like Long Bailey’s attempt at Labour Leadership may be scuppered:-

    Rebecca Long-Bailey’s Labour leadership bid at risk of derailing amid row over abortion law

    Rebecca Long-Bailey’s Labour leadership bid risked being derailed by a row on abortion, as it emerged that she objected to the current law on late terminations.

    Labour MPs accused the pro-Corbyn candidate of holding “absolutely toxic” views after she said she disagreed with the exemption allowing abortions on disability grounds after the 24 week limit for healthy foetuses.

    Amid a growing backlash, rival candidate Jess Phillips appeared to wade into the controversy by declaring that “I always have and always will trust women to make the decisions about their bodies”.

    She was joined by a prominent backbencher, who told The Daily Telegraph: “This is absolutely toxic to Labour members.

    “This puts her in a completely different camp to the vast majority of Labour women who will want to know clearly and unequivocally where she stands.”

    The controversy risks putting Ms Long-Bailey on a collision course with the party’s left-wing membership, just 24 hours after a major poll suggested she was currently on course to beat Sir Keir Starmer, her closest rival.

    The row carries echoes of the fallout over Tim Farron, the former Liberal Democrat leader, who was dogged by questions over his religious beliefs on homesexuality which were at odds with his party.

    Hitting back on Thursday, Ms Long-Bailey’s spokesman suggested a rival leadership team had unearthed the comments, published on the pro-Labour website The Red Roar, in order to wreck her bid.

    They added that the shadow business secretary, who is Catholic, had been expressing her personal view and that she “unequivocally supports a woman’s right to choose” and “only ever voted in favour of extending the right to abortion”.

    At present an abortion is allowed up to 24 weeks into a pregnancy, but can still be authorised up until the full term if there is grave risk to the life of the woman or a severe foetal abnormality.

    But in response to a questionnaire compiled during the election by her local Catholic Church diocese, which was unearthed on Thursday, Ms Long-Bailey said that she did “not agree with this position”.

    In her response to local Catholic priests late last year, she said: “It is currently legal to terminate a pregnancy up to full-term on the grounds of disability while the upper limit is 24 weeks if there is no disability.

    “I personally do not agree with this position and agree with the words of the Disability Rights Commission that ‘the context in which parents choose whether to have a child should be one in which disability and non-disability are valued equally’.”

    She also said people who held “pro-life views” should be allowed to stand for Labour, and that she would ensure the Church’s views “are heard” in a public consultation on new abortion laws.

    On Thursday her spokesman said: “Rebecca’s response to the Deanery of Salford clarified the existing law and current Labour policy, stating that abortion procedures should be properly regulated, and that women’s reproductive rights and the decriminalisation of abortion should be maintained.”

    They added that she had been expressing her own personal view rather than “her view on policy”.

    Meanwhile, it emerged that just 14,700 people had signed up as registered Labour supporters in order to cast a one-off vote in the leadership contest.

    The figure is significantly lower than the 180,000 who signed up in 2016, the vast majority of whom backed Jeremy Corbyn against leadership rival Owen Smith.

    Ms Long-Bailey also faced another setback when the Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association union (TSSA) announced that it would ballot its members on whether to back her candidacy or Sir Keir, who has already secured Unison’s endorsement.

    However, she received a welcome boost moments later when Momentum confirmed it would throw its full weight behind her, after 70 percent of respondents to its members’ ballot confirmed they backed her.

    The pro-Corbyn campaign group, whose founder, Jon Lansman, is advising Ms Long-Bailey, said in a statement that it would now “mobilise thousands” to ensure that she triumphed.

    On Friday evening, she will formally launch her candidacy in Manchester by promising to end the “gentleman’s club of politics” and carry on Labour’s current hard-Left agenda.

    Separately, Sir Keir on Thursday called for an end to Labour’s bitter infighting, telling the BBC that if he was elected the warring factions within party “have got to go”.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/01/16/rebecca-long-baileys-labour-leadership-bid-risk-derailing-amid/

    1. Her position and views as a Catholic are decidedly non-Catholic. Abortion is murder. That is the Catholic view. My view is that no Catholic can vote for any of the main political parties, let alone stand as a candidate.

    2. “It is currently legal to terminate a pregnancy up to full-term on the grounds of disability while the upper limit is 24 weeks if there is no disability.

      “I personally do not agree with this position and agree with the words of the Disability Rights Commission that ‘the context in which parents choose whether to have a child should be one in which disability and non-disability are valued equally’.”

      These are weasel words to disguise a position in which she thinks Abortion should be at the discretion of the mother regardless of medical grounds or the time left to birth. In other words murder on demand!

      1. Just over 98% of abortions are carried out because of “risk of injury to physical or mental health of the pregnant woman”.
        Least the 2% are carried out because of “substantial risk of serious physical or mental abnormality in the unborn child”.
        Only one out of 50 abortions is because something is wrong with the foetus.
        The stark reality is that abortions are carried out on demand. The two doctor authorisation requirement is only honoured in the breach.
        One in four abortions is repeat abortion for the woman. Around 200,000 unborn children are killed each year in the UK because the mother does not want the child.

        1. Abortion used as contraception is obscene. If abortion has to take place I think that at the very least the baby’s life should be humanely terminated before dismemberment commences.

        2. Might not sterilisation of women who do not want children be a better and more humane option?

          1. Wot, when they can ‘ave a good shag and then top any potential sprog? Get outta ‘ere!

      2. A big problem is the term disability is not really defined in the legislation which means a pregnancy can be terminated later for almost anything
        With all the tests and screening done as well it is difficult to see how a deformity can get to almost fall term before being detected

        1. See above. Only one in 50 of abortions is carried out because the foetus is damaged.

          Note: posted the above in the wrong place, I think.

          1. I remember being criticised on this site some time ago for saying that life began at conception. Clearly my misconception was far from being immaculate.

          2. Although I agree with you, Richard, I think that contraceptives should be worn on all conceivable occasions. © Spike Milligna, the well-known typing error.

        2. Ms. Wrong Daily is going to eliminate this difficulty by erasing any conditions at all!

          1. Actually, she appears to think the opposite and that the current situation sits very poorly with her beliefs.
            On this one point I have some sympathy.

  2. Prince Andrew: Home Office ‘recommends downgrade of security’. 16 January 2020.

    The Home Office is said to be recommending a major downgrade of security for the Duke of York after he withdrew from public duties, it has been claimed.

    Prince Andrew was forced to step down from royal engagements for the foreseeable future following a disastrous BBC Newsnight interview about his relationship with the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

    Morning everyone. Are we to assume from this decision that the Home Office thinks that the threats to his life are less now that he has been outed as a Rapist and Paedophile or even that he’s not worth protecting? Perhaps even that Islamic State now sees him as a fellow traveller and thus inviolate!

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jan/16/prince-andrew-home-office-recommends-downgrade-of-security

    1. I know nothing about Prince Andrew’s guilt or innocence but I do know that he has been treated disgracefully by the MSM and the politicians.

      What about habeas corpus and the presumption of innocence?

  3. Good morning all.

    Term has started, so it’s off to Cambridge to hold my German class, followed by lunch at Côte.

  7. The BBC is at it again. Full blown promotion of anti carbon activity. Cities vying to be first with zero emissions. it is all very similar to the pyramid building in Egypt. Vastly expensive and did the inhabitants no good at all.
    On a lighter note the Sultana bought some dates at the local greengrocer. They are “Reeta” brand and come from Iran. There is a competition set out on the box. First Prize is an all expenses paid one week holiday in Teheran, including flights. Second Prize is two weeks holiday in Teheran.

    2. You do realise that your Greengrocer has evaded US Sanctions Horace and may now be terminated by Drone Strike!

      1. Luckily, “local” means six miles away. So we are not bothered…
        P.S The last lot of dates we bought there, before Xmas, were from Palestine and had a wee Palestinian flag on the box. Strangely the shop is not run by people with brown faces, except in the summer…

    3. ASDA is going to sell Cucumbers without the shrink wrap claiming to be going green. The sleeve actually has an important function it increases the shelf life by 14 days wirhout it you are looking at a shelf life of days meaning a lot more food waste

      1. I often wonder how old shrink wrapped supermarket cucumbers really are. Last summer, for the first time, I successfully grew a couple of mini-cucumber plants. Apart from the superior flavour over the shop ones, they seemed to keep crisp and sweet for many days, even at warm room temperature.

        1. They could easily have been in their cold stores for months since being picked. Apples and potatoes are often stored for a year. That would explain why they barely last a week at home. Grow your own and buy local for a better all round product.

    4. On the Today program yesterday the presenter said ‘As animal welfare will fall when we leave the EU… something something, waffle puff’

      It was that ‘when we leave the EU, everything’s going to hell’ attitude. Nothing will change. Nothing. In fact, chances are animal welfare is likely to get better. After all, we wrote most of it. Their relentless miserable lies must be stopped.

      Boris needs to decriminalise not having a licence. That obliterates the threat from the BBC and forces it to produce content people want to watch and pay for.

      The relentless assault of hard Left drivel like climate change will only end when the BBC finds no one is paying for it.

      1. “Boris needs to decriminalise not having a licence.”

        ‘Morning, Wibbles, no, Boris needs to remove the necessity for a licence for TV, coloured, black and white or steam radio. The output is dire and mixed in with a lot of lying. As you say, it will force the BBC to return to unbiased or die.

        1. Whilst agreeing with both NtN and wibbling, I do not see how stopping payments to the BBC will do anything except shut down the BBC completely. Who will pay the cost of their employees and programme makers? Unless, of course they introduce advertisements into their programmes. Could the profits from selling their programmes to other nations combined with DVD sales of once-screened programmes really be sufficient for them to survive?

          1. ‘Morning, Elsie, your question may be answered with another question (© Pretty Polly) – do we want the BBC to survive?

            In its present form, I certainly don’t and removal of the TV licence fees will certainly make it re-organise, review its policies, find other revenue or die.

          2. My fear is that if it fails to survive, then British TV will follow the US pattern and be increasingly filled with advertisements.

          3. It already is, Elsie, all those interminable adverts between programmes for all the BBC ‘delights’ to come. Drives me as mad as the other channels mindless adverts.

            Pre PC there were actually adverts that made one laugh. Now one just writhes with embarrassment and anger as LGBT/BAME/Diversity is thrust down our throats.

    5. Scotland is claiming it will be Carbon zero within 10 years. Now that inn my view is a total impossibility unless thy cheat

        1. And the distilleries. According to a rabidly pro-independence cousin, the whisky industry accounts for a majority of Scotland’s ‘wealth’ and would, post-independence, lead to Scotland’s financial success……

          1. Most of the distilleries, numerically, are owned by international companies, many of them are foreign, such as Pernod. So, while they pay tax, much of the profit goes overseas.
            Historically, the whisky business was cyclical. Which is why there are abandoned distilleries being re-opened.

  8. Costs double for stalled Liverpool and Birmingham hospitals, report finds

    Why do public sector contracts nearly always go horribly wrong. It is not as if they are building a nuclear power station. The costs and timescales and risks with building a hospital are well established. At very worst they should be 20% over budgets. Typically a 10% contingency is allowed and typically you should complete within 6 months of the estimated timescale

    One problem maybe that the public sector cannot resist making constant changes and once you do that cots, timescales and risks increase significantly

    Lessons should be learnt from these two fiasco’s , sadly I suspect they will not

    Costs of building two new hospitals that stalled with the collapse of engineering giant Carillion have almost doubled, auditors have found.
    The Royal Liverpool Hospital is due to open five years late and to cost more than £1bn to build and maintain.
    And the Midland Metropolitan Hospital in Smethwick is due to cost at least £998m, some £300m more than expected.
    The private sector has borne most of the total 98% increase, the National Audit Office (NAO) found.
    Both hospitals are expected to open in 2022, although an opening date for the Royal Liverpool is yet to be set.

    Risks of more delays
    The construction cost of the 646-bed Liverpool hospital is now expected to come to at least £724m, compared with £350m in the original business case, said the NAO.
    This includes an estimated £293m for remedial work with an additional £369m for maintaining the building for a period of 30 years, which was the term of the original PFI contract, bringing the total expected cost to £1,063m.
    However, there were “particularly significant risks” of further cost increases and delays, as there were still “some issues which are not yet resolved”, warned

    1. Why do hospitals have to be individually designed? (the same goes for schools, health centres etc etc)
      Surely a standard modular design with additions / different cladding etc – lessons learned on site 1 being fixed for site 2 etc etc. OK specialist departments might need extras but it cannot be that difficult.

    2. There’s an easy solution to this. When there’s a cost overrun caused by anything apart from an unforeseen design change, the person who wants the change gets the bill.

      When it’s from the builder and their incompetence, they get the bill. At no point is the taxpayer made to pay. Always the inept fool responsible.

  9. Meghan and Harry’s royal family exit plans stall in row over corporate deals

    Sounds as if her main interest is money

    A deal allowing Harry and wife Meghan to leave their royal roles and strike commercial contracts worth millions could take “up to six months” to finalise, say sources close to the round-the-clock negotiations.

    Harry has worked with billionaire TV queen Oprah Winfrey on a series examining mental health set to be released on Apple TV, while Meghan is already rumoured to be lined up for voiceover work with Disney.

  10. EU to mourn Brexit day

    BREXIT day will be marked in by the European Parliament by taking down the Union Jack flying alongside its member state counterparts and marching the flag to the European history museum.

    2. I’d like to point out and ask: why does an orgaisation like the EU have a museum?

      Another pointless waste of money. There are no flags outside the WTO offices because it knows it’s place.

  11. SIR – I read that Lord Hall (report, January 16) is going to devote a large proportion of the BBC budget to producing programmes for 16- to 34-year-olds. I thought he was already doing this, however.

    The BBC’s Christmas schedule on radio and television was mostly abysmal. I can’t see any reason to pay the new licence fee as the corporation really now provides an obsolete service. It has certainly stopped offering older people anything worthwhile to watch or listen to.

    Helen Penney
    Longborough, Gloucestershire

    I wonder what proportion of 16- to 34-year-olds pay a BBC poll tax?

    1. Oh, I thought 16 – 34 year olds were the grown-ups in today’s world? It is only fair that programmes should be made that are attuned to their intellectual level and interests. Currently the BBC output is aimed at teens and pre-adolescents?

      1. Judging by the large wall mural of Duggy the Dog in Television Centre, I thought we were aiming at 16-34 months? (It was put up for the kiddies Christmas party but is still there – the little ones were very well behaved, bless-em.)

  12. FYI the names of Down Voters are now Visible & here are some that have been identified as serial down voters on NTTL and all 10 are likely to belong to Pretty Polly.
    1) Pretty Polly @disqus_r2Mgo00diq https://disqus.com/by/disqu…
    2) Blue Rosette @SirHumphrey123 https://disqus.com/by/SirHu…
    3) Caroline @disqus_xXOfmpxD5V https://disqus.com/by/disqu…
    4) Disqus Poster @disqus_4w96H1cX7k https://disqus.com/by/disqu…
    5) J Bonnington Jagworth @jbonningtonjagworth https://disqus.com/by/jbonn…
    6) Florence in Florence @florenceinflorence https://disqus.com/by/flore…
    7) Elizabeth @disqus_r2NMdf5DxR https://disqus.com/by/disqu…
    8) Gail’s in the Dales @gailsinthedales https://disqus.com/by/gails…
    9) Lucinda @disqus_UgiiPQY3UM https://disqus.com/by/disqu…
    10) Fiona @disqus_atKFy3N7Up https://disqus.com/by/disqu…

    Now for the funnies.

    Moral Test

    Moral Test….Read to the end before making a judgement…Cheers
    This test only has one question, but it’s a very important one.

    By giving an honest answer, you will discover where you stand morally.

    The test features an unlikely, completely fictional, situation in which you will have to make a decision. Remember that your answer needs to be honest, yet spontaneous.
    Please scroll down slowly and give due consideration to each line.

    THE SITUATION:

    You are in London.
    There is chaos all around you caused by a hurricane with severe flooding.
    This is a flood of biblical proportions.

    You are a photo-journalist working for a major newspaper, and you’re caught in
    the middle of this epic disaster. The situation is nearly hopeless.

    You’re trying to shoot career-making photos. There are houses crumbling and people swirling around you, some disappearing into the water.

    Nature is unleashing all of its destructive fury.

    THE TEST:

    Suddenly, you see a man in the water.

    He is fighting for his life, trying not to be taken down with the debris.
    You move closer… Somehow, the man looks familiar…

    You suddenly realise who it is…. It’s the Muslim Cleric, Abu Hamza, the one-eyed, hook
    handed bastard who hates non-Muslims and wants the UK to become an Islamic state!!

    You notice that the raging waters are about to take him under forever.

    You have two options:

    You can save the life of Abu or you can shoot a dramatic Pulitzer Prize winning photo, documenting the death of one of the country’s most despised, evil and horrible men!

    NOW THE QUESTION AND PLEASE GIVE AN HONEST ANSWER

    Would you select high contrast colour film or, would you go with the classic simplicity of black and white?

    2. Bill Deedes put forward the rather good Snob Test:

      It was reported that at the Beckham’s wedding special solid silver goblets were made for drinking the Champagne at the private reception but when the guests left the party it was discovered that over one third of these had been taken.

      Snob Questions: i) Are you surprised? ii) Would you expect your parents’ guests to steal from your parents?

      (I wonder if the Duchess of Sussex’s entourage have similar proclivities to the Beckham’s wedding guests.)

  13. The Nashunal Trust wants to plant forests on its land. Hmm, it will need a herd of lawyers to deal with the tenants.

    1. The NT has long been slated as being one of the worst agricultural landlords in the UK.

    2. And they are not stupid. A friend was reminiscing recently about one the cows on their farm. The cows kept ending up on the wrong side of the electic fencing and no clue as to how, so her father hid and just watched. The chief cow Daisy lifted the electic fence on the stubs of her horns, the herd all trooped under and finally Daisy wriggled herself round and under the fence.

  15. Media race obsession melts away when it’s white girls being raped. Laura Perrins. January 17, 2020.

    There was no mention of the race of the child rape victims and no mention of the race of their attackers. No mention that raping underage girls might just count as misogynistic and that targeting these girls, based on the fact that they are white and vulnerable, is racist and a race hate crime.

    If Meghan Markle suffers online abuse that requires digital analysts at a university to actually go looking for, it’s hold the front page (literally, it was on the front page of their website) but if white girls suffer rape and death at the hands of Asian grooming gangs the silence is deafening. Absolutely deafening.

    The white working class: ignored then, ignored now, ignored always.

    Oggy might be a pain in the neck with his reasons for this but they are not far astray! As long as these people continue to be elected nothing will change!

    https://conservativewoman.co.uk/media-race-obsession-melts-away-when-its-white-girls-being-raped/

    1. The more of these cases that eventually rise from the murky depths, where certain authorities have tried to bury them, the clearer it becomes that someone or some group has imposed their version of omerta whereby these crimes are to be kept out of the wider public domain. Of course their efforts have failed, the scale of the crimes is too great to keep a lid on forever.
      So, when a case does arise, obfuscation becomes the order of the day; the most obvious form is to substitute Asian for Pakistani moslem and thereby trash the reputations of millions of law abiding Asian men. The contempt the compliant MSM and the authorities attempting to cover up or ignore these crimes hold for the public is clear from the continued low key reporting and the use of the all embracing, Asian.

      1. That these things should occur by chance is impossible. It is quite clearly orchestrated!

    2. Morning AS,
      ogga 1 is a firm believer in that some
      lessons are best learnt by rote.
      In many respects we are still dealing with the same deck of treacherous, dirty, deceitful, dangerous, political cads.
      The R is left out intentionally for any
      spelling pit knickers out there, OK.

    2. My consumption of beef requires an area of sixty-two tennis courts to produce p.a. and the carbon emissions are the equivalent of taking seventeen return flights to Málaga, driving well over fourteen-thousand miles in an average petrol driven car or heating the average house for almost two and a half years.

      Well, I knew I had a healthy appetite but even so …………..

  17. Yo All

    Dear Mom,

    Our Scoutmaster told us to write to our parents in case you saw the
    flood on TV and got worried. We are okay. Only one of our tents and 2
    sleeping bags got washed away.. Luckily, none of us got drowned because
    we were all up on the mountain looking for Adam when it happened.

    Oh yes, please call Adam’s mother and tell her he is okay. He can’t
    write because of the cast. I got to ride in one of the search and rescue
    Jeeps. It was great. We never would have found Adam in the dark if it
    hadn’t been for the lightning.

    Scoutmaster Ted got mad at Adam for going on a hike alone without telling anyone.
    Adam said he did tell him, but it was during the fire so he probably didn’t hear him.

    Did you know that if you put gas on a fire, the gas will blow up?

    The wet wood didn’t burn, but one of the tents did and also some of our clothes.
    Matthew is going to look weird until his hair grows back.

    We will be home on Saturday if Scoutmaster Ted gets the bus fixed.
    It wasn’t his fault about the crash. The brakes worked okay when we left.
    Scoutmaster Ted said that with a bus that old, you have to expect
    something to break down; that’s probably why he can’t get insurance.

    We think it’s a super bus. He doesn’t care if we get it dirty, and ifit’s hot,

    sometimes he lets us ride on the bumpers.
    It gets pretty hot with 45 people in a bus made for 24.

    He let us take turns riding in the trailer until the policeman stopped and talked to us.

    Scoutmaster Ted is a neat guy. Don’t worry, he is a good driver.

    In fact, he is teaching Horace how to drive on the mountain roads where
    there aren’t any cops.

    All we ever see up there are huge logging trucks.

    This morning all of the guys were diving off the rocks and swimming out
    to the rapids.

    Scoutmaster Ted wouldn’t let me because I can’t swim,and Adam was
    afraid he would sink because of his cast

    (it’s concrete because we didn’t have any plaster), so he let us take the canoe out.
    It was great. You can still see some of the trees under the water from
    the flood.

    Scoutmaster Ted isn’t crabby like some scoutmasters.
    He didn’t even get mad about the life jackets.
    He has to spend a lot of time working on the bus so we are
    trying not to cause him any trouble.

    Guess what? We have all passed our first aid merit badges.

    When Andrew dived into the lake and cut his arm, we all got to
    see how a tourniquet works.

    Steve and I threw up, but Scoutmaster Ted said it was probably just food

    poisoning from the left-over chicken.

    He said they got sick that way with food they ate in prison..

    I’m so glad he got out and became our scoutmaster.

    He said he sure figured out how to get things done better while he

    was doing his time.

    By the way, what is a pedal-file?

    I have to go now.

    We are going to town to post our letters and buy some more beer and ammo..
    Don’t worry about anything.

    We are fine and tonight it’s my turn to sleep in the Scoutmaster’s tent.

    .

    =

        1. ‘Morning, Anne, may be because I’ve never grown up or, alternatively, I’m in my 2nd (3rd?) childhood.

        1. Also “dumb” for stupid and “neat” for desirable or generally good. (I’m sure assembled company can come up with a few more.) I recently visited what I had taken to be a reputable eating establishment only to be offered “mac and cheese”. It’ll be “Transportation for London” next!

    3. Diversity makes us stronger. No it doesn’t.
      Diversity makes us smarter. No it doesn’t.
      Diversity makes us who we are. He’s right on this one – that’s why London is in such a terrible state.

      1. Morning A,
        I believe he was talking on behalf of the foreign element prior to the overall take over

          1. Morning OLT,
            Much of it brought about by the ballot booth,
            same countrywide, people power abuse.
            By the by in my case it is WASC. ( practising)

          2. I disagree on this occasion. No one voted for mass immigration. That was brought about mainly by Labour under Blair, but started after WW2 by Labour, and they’ve lied about it at every turn. It’s why Labour has finally lost its support “oop t’North” although ten million still voted for them, and I suspect many of those votes came from their imported constituency.

          3. Morning LM,
            No one voted for mass immigration, in my book should read “no one would have voted for mass immigration if they had known initially, granted.
            But once lab lifted the latch the tories not only continued the trend but the wretch cameronn pledged to lower the intake but hiked up the numbers.
            The electorate then obliged by supporting / voting at every opportunity for lab/lib/con the mass uncontrolled immigration coalition party,
            Again,again,& again.
            Hence our current standing as a nation, that is at the bottom of the pan being shit on.
            After witnessing the last couple of decades lab have lied at every turn I agree but by the same token the tories are as treacherous, and much more polished when it comes to deceit & lying.

          4. There was a Youtube clip posted here some time ago from an old TV series (70s/80s?) in which an Eastender was addressing a formal gathering/dinner. He was decrying the Establishment’s attitude to immigration and his complaint was “No-on asked us”.

            Can anybody point me to the clip please?

          5. Afternoon SSa,
            Personally I cannot help, but as I have posted before, to get many of the peoples attention say on any odious issue is to have it in an corrie
            eastenders script, no doubt of that.

      3. Diversity of thought and opinion is what makes a society better, stronger, but those are the very things the far Left try to stamp out.

    4. ‘Diversity’ does none of those things. Individuals do. Thus we should be pushing to get the right people, not the right colours.

      Because, unless you’re a entrenched, abusive racist (aka a hard Left politician with no brain), judging people by colour is wrong.

      1. Being required to undertake an Equality and Diversity course a few years ago, I did some research. Diversity, it seems, is the enemy of equality, though whether the relationship is causal or casual is unclear. Furthermore, within diverse communities, not only is there distrust between the different sub-communities (as any sane person would expect), there is also more distrust within those sub-communities. So, a lose-lose situation.

    6. I am still wondering why, given the Church of England’s position on marriage is that it is indissoluble, Prince Harry was able to marry a divorcee in church. Edward VIII was told in no uncertain terms that he could not marry Wallis Simpson and remain king. He had to choose one or the other. With hindsight, it was the best decision for the country.

          1. Well whether they are constant might be another thing but they will certainly marry divorced people

          2. I think the Catholic church ls has a bit of a fudge. Whilst the Church say divorce is wrong to a degree it leave it to the couple. I think as well they may leave it to the priest as to whether they marry a divorcee

          3. No it doesn’t. Catholics are not permitted to marry divorcees in a Catholic church unless the divorcee’s previous marriage is deemed to have been invalid.

      3. Maybe the Archbishop of Canterbury ought to say that the marriage should not have been held in church and is therefore null and void.

        How is the sad, deluded naive man ever going to escape?

          1. As I observed the other day, our good friend Grizzly has adopted Sgt. Fraser’s philosophy for the human race.

  20. Hong Kong Express Airways says sorry after forcing passenger to take pregnancy test

    Midori Nishida, 25, was flying to Saipan, part of the Northern Mariana Islands, to visit her family. The islands have become a popular place for foreign women to give birth as it makes them eligible for US citizenship.

    Now if we just do that to Channel Hoppers

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/01/17/hong-kong-express-airways-sorry-forcing-passenger-take-pregnancy/

  21. Is the fundamental problem human overpopulation? – David Bassett, Locks Heath, Hants

    a recent major study, by a global group of 11,000 scientists, concluded that the world needs to stabilise its population.
    The study has attracted quite a deal of controversy, but its authors say such action is needed if the world is to avoid what they call “a catastrophic threat” from climate change.

    1. Europe had stabilised its population, until socialist politicians decided to open the borders to mass immigration.
      Any attempt to curb population growth in other regions of the world, e.g. Africa, will just be met with accusations of “racism” and “colonialism.”

      This will not end well. I can see a great deal of violence and bloodshed around the world, which is already happening in many places but is not reported, e.g. Nigeria. The Marxist media just looks the other way.

      1. Indeed. There will be no population reduction in the shutholes they come from, as there they are on full-breed setting permanently.

      2. The problem is compounded by a population move from countries with low population density to those of high population density

        If you go along with the CO2 theory then we have mass population movement from countries with low CO2 emissions to those with high CO2 emissions

      3. And the misguided attempts to “help” poorer nations with dying children by sending Foreign Aid simply allows the children to survive and as adults produce even more children. I am not at all suggesting we stand by and watch innocent children die, but aid must be accompanied by a strong & successful sterilisation drive.

          1. ‘Afternoon, OLT,

            That’s why de Gaulle had Greek Letters round his hat.

            Well French Letters would just be plain daft!

          2. He’s right.

            Although the overall population has increased, the number of poor Africans starving/dying of Aids related and other diseases/dying of sepsis; etc etc as a result of the population increase has gone up even faster.

            If the aid had not been given there is a good argument that there would have been far fewer Africans to breed and die of those problems.

          3. Let’s get this clear, Sos. You say that “the overall population has increased’ and “the number of poor Africans starving/dying… as a result of the population increase has gone up even faster“. Thus “there would have been far fewer Africans” (if aid had not been given). That is exactly what I suggested. Yet your “conclusion” is that “He’s [BJ’s] right” when he says “foreign aid actually caused more deaths”. ?!?!?!?!?

          4. If more people are dying as a result of that foreign aid, then yes it does, in absolute numbers.

            “foreign aid actually caused more deaths”

          5. In 1984, the year of Live Aid, those “poor starving people of Ethiopia” numbered 34,000,000.

            Today there are 110,000,000 of them, a tripling of that country’s population in just 35 years!

            That’s 76,000,000 more “poor starving people” to feed, water, shelter, educate and dispose of their effluent!

          7. Pakistan is a case in point; IIRC, from partition until now the population has more than doubled. I’m sure that they didn’t manage without aid for that period and many of them are here now, claiming even more aid. We are led by unthinking politicos who appear to have no idea of the concept of cause and effect.

        3. …aid must be accompanied by a strong & successful sterilisation drive.

          We’re told we need to build millions of houses and now a sterilisation drive. Where are all the extra bricks to come from?😎

    2. “…the world needs to stabilise its population.”

      Stabilise? I’d say drastically reduce, as I mentioned yesterday or the day before – a visit from one or more of the Four Horsemen might not go amiss.

  22. Yes Minister and Heartbeat star Derek Fowlds dead at 82

    Yes Minister and Heartbeat star Derek Fowlds has died aged 82.
    He’s best known for playing Bernard Woolley in the hit BBC sitcom.

    2. I thought he was best known for playing with Basil Brush (“Boom boom, Mr Derek, Sir!”) Speaking of which, is Basil any relation to Freddie Fox who is currently Jeremy Bamber in the ITV series “The White House Murders”?

  23. ‘Big Ben must bong for Brexit’ campaign raises more than £150,000

    Given the timescales if the news reports are correct it would not really be possible. The reports suggest the floor has been removed making access impossible. I doubt in the times scales a temporary floor could be installed

  25. Retail sales fall sharply in December

    Retail sales fell again in December as a Christmas shopping spree failed to materialise.
    Sales volumes fell by 0.6% from November, the fifth month in a row without growth, the Office for National Statistics said.
    It comes amid worries about economic growth and forecasts that the Bank of England could cut interest rates soon.
    Food stores were hard hit, with the quantity bought falling by the biggest amount since December 2016.
    “Anecdotal evidence from a number of stores stated that goods did not sell as well as expected,” the ONS said.

    1. ” goods did not sell as well as expected,”
      There was a lot of advertising puff floating around pretending that things were going to be great,
      Any fool could tell that that there wasn’t going to be a sudden boom.
      Without advertising and the media, everybody would relax and be happy.

      1. If January is bad as well they are in trouble. It is this period where shops make most of their profits

    2. “…the Bank of England could cut interest rates soon. ”

      There’s nothing much to cut

  26. Flybe: Viable business or destined to fail?

    It is a basket case in its current form. It needs to both shrink and put up fares to have any chance of being viable

    Just a year after being rescued, Flybe’s future is again in doubt.
    Some have blamed fundamental problems with the business model, others bad management, competitive pressures, unfair taxes, or the vagaries of the oil and currency markets. In truth, it’s a combination of all these, and more.
    The firm’s boss Mark Anderson has told staff that the firm still has a bright future ahead of it.
    But Flybe has been in financial turmoil for years, and there are arguments that if current investors Virgin Atlantic (49%-owned by Delta Air Lines), Cyrus Capital Partners, and Stobart Group, can’t make it work, who can?

    The Exeter-based airline’s problems did not just emerge this month. It has long-suffered from overcapacity and rising costs.
    There was a profit warning in 2017, with higher maintenance costs blamed as a major part of the problem.
    Another profit warning in 2018 said Flybe would sink to a £22m loss, with the airline saying falling consumer demand, a weaker pound and higher fuel costs were the cause.
    Flybe, then listed on the stock market, saw its shares tumble 46% in a single day.
    Nevertheless, then chief executive Christine Ourmieres-Widener said: “We continue to strengthen the underlying business and remain confident that our strategy will improve performance.”
    In November 2018, two weeks after that optimistic assessment, Flybe announced it was putting itself up for sale. The airline said it was “in discussions with a number of strategic operators about a potential sale” and could cut more flights.
    Flybe was bought by Connect Airways – the consortium that includes Virgin Atlantic, Cyrus Capital and Stobart Group – in February last year.

    1. If Flybe has to be kept going for social reasons, because it reaches the parts that other lines can’t reach, and is permanently loss making and unviable, and a State subsidy is out because the EU or whoever say so, there is one glaringly obvious solution.
      It’s called nationalisation.
      Where are you when we want you, Mr. Corbyn ?

  27. ehcalmdown has not been here recently but he is hoping to return in due course.

    I received an e-mail from him today saying that he finds the comments of The Duchess of Sussex’s half-sister remind him of the lyrics of the Eagles’ Desperado which he asked me to post – so here it is:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QISy3qDZyCo

  29. I suspect the most likely outcome of the Labour leadership election is Keir Starmer winning and Angela Rayner getting the deputy leadership.

    But it shouldn’t be all that surprising that a party of the political left nominates a left winger in Rebecca Long-Bailey as leader and she has support among the membership.

    It would be a mistake however to view her simply as a “Corbyn clone” though. Corbyn has spent decades as a protester of one sort and another, associating with Sinn Fein and the like. Long-Bailey only joined Labour a few years ago and has previously worked at law firms and at securing NHS contracts as well as a solicitor.

    She seems more like Ed Miliband 2.0 than anything.

    1. OMG..

      I mean it, OMG and more .. Instinct tells me so..

      The mental and physical survival of young females in this country is in peril ..

      Those people are absolute devils .. and in the mean time .. people in authority have been infiltrated , the police, councils , judiciary , social workers, intellectuals, the media , BBC, advertising geeks .

      There is a plan to subsume us all in the mindset of a very radical primitive culture .. We will all soon become prisoners of political correctness . I think we are now actually .

      I cannot believe the powers that be are more concerned about global warming and veganism than they are of the cult that threatens families and the integrity of their daughters.

      Our towns and cities are ruined.

      1. What is almost surprising is that there isn’t a single father in the country who has taken the law into his own hands. Put it this way, if such a thing happened to my grandaughter, it wouldn’t surprise me if my son decided to exact his own penalty on the perpetrators and it wouldn’t be bacon sandwiches.

          1. I know many of thosed raped have been in care, but I’m sure I’ve read some articles where both parents are present and concerned.

        3. I seem to recall that a couple Sikh fathers did take the law into their own hands (in Birmingham?), and were promptly arrested! Obviously they aren’t a protected species.

    2. “True Islam teaches respect for women”

      They lie by omission, they do not explain what their respect truly entails for women.
      The same can be said for the claim that theirs is the religion of peace. It has to be seen in their context i.e. the World is not fully controlled by islam and hence a state of war exists, only when islam controls the whole World will the state of war be replaced by one of peace. Of course, that’s all bollocks, just look at how these people are unable to live side by side anywhere today, let alone over the last 1600 years.

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9a8a98be329de592b9f1f8825433865cc672e816adf74400c05985a5527f40d1.png

  31. “The duchess inquired about the status of our work and what could be done to best support improvement in the lives and rights of girls in poverty.
    “We were honoured that she chose to have this conversation with us and is interested in the work we do.”
    Justice for Girls (JFG) is a non government organization located in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. JFG was founded in 1999 to promote the rights of teenage girls who live in poverty.

    Four fox ache. It would be cheaper for us taxpayers to give money to Canadian charities and cut out the middlemeg.

    1. Good morning

      Are you Boot with a changed avatar?

      The Megane woman has victimhood sussed out to a t..

      Funny how she makes a bee line for victims .. will she be signing up to another cook book ..

      Does her simian grin really soothe victims of this that and the other … after all the woman has escaped Britain and the Royal family/ her father / cousins/ sister/ Trump/ ex husband / media / Is she reinforcing victim hood amongst everyone she meets…

      I expect her mantra is … “Come into my web said the spider to the fly”.. poor old shallow balding Harry will be gobbled up!

      1. Morning Belle!

        No, Bug is Stormy not Boot. (There’s a sentence that would be gobbledygook anywhere else!)

          1. Join the club, Maggie. And, if anyone is reading this, the person who asked why change my avatar when the current one looks good, that led me to Google “avatar”. Apart from a 3D Hollywood film about a planet where blue people live, it is defined as a combination of username and small image. I was mistaken, then. What I am trying to do is change my username and image. If I simply turn the picture of “granny” to, say, that of a horse, but then post as “Henry the Horse” then the post will appear with a picture of a horse but with the name “Elsie Bloodaxe” at the top in red. That would confuse everyone, especially me!

          2. I opened a new email account on Sunday to use with my new Disqus account. I then had to find another image as I got confused as to which account I was using. Disqus seems to have logged me out of the old one but I haven’t deleted it. I was reduced to zero upvotes so thought I would give a new one a try. If you still have your Third Man account, you could use that with your Granny image. It’s not too difficult to change the user name.

      2. ‘Morning, Mags, like you, I am confused by the motorbike avatar.

        I don’t believe it is, Stormy.

      3. Her greatest victim is Prince Harry whose life has been completely destroyed by his ill-judged marriage.

      4. Someone made the point on QT last night, that Megs doesn’t want to shun the limelight but just wants American media attention instead of British.
        I’m not Boot. Think bra size

          2. This is all very well, Hat, but does nothing to advance my campaign to revive Yiddish.

  34. Paying for the big benny bongs via crowdfunding is IMO
    a form of crowd manipulation by the establishment as in
    tell them all to jump when they reply “how high” you know you have control.
    All remain churches, all remaining RN vessels & any remaining trawlers with klaxon,bells, foghorns, etc should sound off at the given time.
    Put the crowdfunding cash total to a church restoration
    fund any spare cash convert into BACON rolls to be handed out at the given time,

      1. It is racist just to mention the ethnicity of any person who is either mixed-race or not white. In fact now any person who is of mixed race or not white can accuse you of racism even if you make no reference to that person’s race at all.

        1. Every single day, more and more evidence of the progressive stupidity of the human species graphically presents itself.

          We are more stupid (as a species) than we were yesterday; but not nearly as stupid as we will be tomorrow.

          1. Surely it’s regressive not progressive unless you are talking about progressive stupidity.

          2. I was, Alf, “progressive” stupidity is regressive.

            It’s a bit like the English language, which is no longer evolving. It is devolving rapidly, back towards grunting.

          5. I thought that’s what you meant but my brain has been dulled by pain following a knee operation last week. An arthroscopy but not for arthritis. From thigh to calf black, blue and yellow in many hues.

          7. I thought that’s what you meant but my brain has been dulled by pain following a knee operation last week. An arthroscopy but not for arthritis. From thigh to calf black, blue and yellow in many hues.

          8. I thought that’s what you meant but my brain has been dulled by pain following a knee operation last week. An arthroscopy but not for arthritis. From thigh to calf black, blue and yellow in many hues.

          15. If only Geoff, if only.

            The real crying shame about humanity’s wish to self-destruct is the fact that no other species in the universe has developed all the wonderful arts and sciences, all of which will be lost when the button is pressed, never to emerge again.

            A far more (properly) intelligent species would have kept its numbers in check (with a breeding season in October), learnt to live and not fight pointless wars, and retained all its art, music, and creative abilities for the benefit of the planet.

      2. A,
        In other words PC / Appeasement as adhered to by the lab/lib/con parties & others,
        ……………..RULES the fools,OK ?

    2. …the ongoing rape & abuse to at least a legal age of consent group…

      Hasn’t it been generally the case that the ages of these young girls, some as young as 11 yo, have not been taken into account in these rape cases. The police have been reported as stating that the girls consented to the actions of the predators but the law indicates that consent cannot be given if the girl is under 16 yo. The claim of consent was the lamest excuse for at best doing nothing to stop the abuse and the worst for condoning what was going on. Does anybody have the number of public servants sacked for not doing their job during these sorry cases? Thought not.

      2. It was not taken into account in one instance but covered up for 16 plus years those establishment figures concerned were never
        charged but moved to different positions.
        As for the laws involvement think lowest denominator, then think PC stephen mcgoldrick and ilk.

      1. Move all the other points down

        Number one aim

        Enforce Sharia Law at the earliest opportunity.

      2. Afternoon SE,
        With the lack of attention given it by the established government parties that is well and truly in the pipeline.

  37. O.J. Corbyn is a new one I hadn’t heard…

    RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Until the Left respect democracy, they’ll just keep losing elections

    Western democracy has always been founded upon the principle of something called ‘losers’ consent’.

    In simple terms, it means that defeated parties accept the result of a legitimate election, until they have the chance to reverse it at the ballot box.

    Unfortunately, in recent years the idea that the will of the people is sacrosanct has gone out of the window — on both sides of the Atlantic.

    In Britain, we have just been through one of the most divisive and destructive periods in our political history as embittered Remainers tried to Stop Brexit.

    The vast majority of the so-called ‘liberal elite’ repeatedly refused to implement the result of the EU referendum, despite promising solemnly to honour it.

    They spent three and a half years using every trick in the book — parliamentary, extra-parliamentary and judicial — to frustrate the democratically expressed decision of the British people.

    It was the ultimate manifestation of the odious Peter Mandelson’s hubristic boast, during the New Labour ascendancy, that ‘the era of pure, representative democracy is coming to an end’.

    They were the masters now.

    Happily, that isn’t how it worked out. When the people did finally get the chance to reassert their sovereignty in the December general election, they did so in spectacular fashion. We all know how well that turned out for the Remainer ultras.

    O.J. Corbyn is still hanging around like a bad smell, mouthing his usual deranged platitudes. On the day Union Flags were being burned in Tehran by demonstrators chanting ‘Death To Britain’, he was at a rally in Trafalgar Square expressing solidarity with the theocratic dictatorship in Iran.

    Meanwhile, the contest to elect his successor is cranking laboriously into gear, featuring a deeply unimpressive collection of third-rate candidates.

    A nation yawns.

    The front-runners are ‘Sir’ Keir Starmer, the Max Headroom lookalike who fashioned his party’s disastrous, deceitful No Brexit policy, and Labour’s answer to Mrs Merton, Rebecca Long-Bailey.

    Asked to mark Corbyn’s performance in the election, which delivered Labour’s worst result since 1935, Mrs Merton gave him ten out of ten.

    Here we go Looby Loo!

    Starmer, as Director of Public Prosecutions, is the man who launched the vindictive, politically motivated witch-hunt against Sun newspaper journalists — which cost £30 million and resulted in zero convictions.

    He also fashioned the ‘always believe the victim’ policy which emboldened Nonce Finder General Tom Watson and Scotland Yard to destroy the lives and reputations of blameless men falsely accused of ‘historic’ sex crimes.

    Bringing up the rear are Lady Nugee, aka Emily Thornberry, last seen sneering at a white van man for flying the Cross of St George, and pretend prole Jess Phillips, a shameless self-publicist who enlivened the last Parliament by screaming like a fishwife at Boris Johnson.

    One thing they all have in common is a tendency to exaggerate their alleged working-class backgrounds. They all seem to be as creative about their past lives as Fettes-educated Tony Blair.

    Neither Nugee nor Starmer use their titles. If Starmer doesn’t believe in political honours, why did he accept a knighthood in the first place?

    He claims to be the son of a toolmaker. I covered a number of strikes by toolmakers in the Seventies, but don’t remember Starmer Senior on the picket lines alongside Red Robbo at Longbridge.

    That’s probably because he owned his own successful manufacturing company in Surrey.

    Phillips puts on the ‘barefoot and pregnant’ routine, but comes from a professional family. We’re told her husband is an ‘ex-lift engineer’, but more recently he’s worked in politics for his wife.

    Similarly, Mrs Merton plays up her previous jobs in a pawn shop and a furniture factory, which is intended to disguise the fact that she’s a lawyer who studied politics at university.

    Needless to say, she’s the official candidate of hard-Left Momentum, which is run by a bunch of wealthy ex-public school boys.

    The field is completed by someone called Lisa Nandy, who most people thought was a popular chicken restaurant. Cheeky Nandy has received a thumbs up from two-time loser Neil Kinnock, who once campaigned to get Britain out of the EU and then spent the rest of his career with his snout in the Brussels trough.

    Cheeky is said to be a Brexit realist, although she has ruled out doing a trade deal with Donald Trump because she doesn’t like his climate change scepticism. Which brings us seamlessly to Washington, where the Democrats seem not to have been paying attention to the fate of their ‘liberal’ counterparts in Britain.

    They are pressing ahead with a doomed impeachment process against Trump, on the basis of scant evidence — most of which would be inadmissable in a court of law.

    Their solemn procession through the Capitol building on Wednesday was like a funeral cortege minus a corpse. It reminded me of John Bercow’s ostentatious parades through the Palace of Westminster, pursued by flunkies.

    The parallels with the shenanigans over Brexit are obvious. The Democrats have never accepted the result of the 2016 Presidential election and, like our own dear Remainers, have exhausted every avenue, legitimate or otherwise, in their frenzied attempts to overturn it.

    Democrats have been trying to impeach Trump since before he was even inaugurated. Like Bercow and the Stop Brexit ultras they have paralysed Parliament in the demented pursuit of their prey.

    But nothing they have thrown at him so far has stuck. This stunt won’t stick either. Trump is the Teflon Don.

    Meanwhile the real scandal is being swept under the carpet. When Joe Biden was the Obama administration’s point man in Ukraine, his son, Hunter Biden, was paid $83,000 a month to act as a consultant to a Ukrainian energy company — despite having zero experience of the energy industry.

    It’s also claimed that Biden threatened to withhold U.S. aid unless Ukraine sacked the prosecutor investigating his son’s links to the company.

    Trump’s ‘crime’ is said to be pressuring the Ukrainians to get to the bottom of this lucrative arrangement. Even if that’s true, surely he was only doing his job.

    Aren’t the American people entitled to ask questions about why Biden’s son was put on the payroll of a foreign company, despite being unqualified?

    Meanwhile, like Labour, the Dems are trying to pick their next leader from an equally unimpressive field, led by Biden — who Trump calls Sleepy Joe — Barmy Bernie Sanders, a socialist Corbyn clone, and Elizabeth Warren.

    Trump’s best gag is saddling Warren with the nickname ‘Pocahontas’, on the grounds that — despite being as white as a loaf of Mother’s Pride wrapped-and-sliced — on her application to Harvard she claimed to be a Red Indian, at a time when the university was seeking to hire more minorities.

    The President eventually shamed her into taking a blood test which showed she was just one in 1,024th Native American.

    For now, there are so many weirdos throwing their rings into the hat that the line-up at this week’s Democratic debate looked like the cast of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.

    They are all suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome, the Siamese twin of Brexit Derangement Syndrome.

    Outside the navel-gazing Washington bubble, the impeachment process is gaining little traction.

    All it will achieve is shoring up Trump’s base and repelling voters — just as the Stop Brexit pantomime propelled Boris back into Number 10 with a massive majority.

    In a democracy, the proper place to remove a President is at the ballot box, not in a bogus impeachment hearing. Americans will get the chance to pass their verdict on Trump in November.

    The Democrats should take heed of what happened to the ‘liberal elite’ in Britain last month. Which bit of democracy don’t they understand?

    Until they accept the principle of ‘losers’ consent’ they will go on being losers.

    1. That is very amusing. Though I do object to Mr Littlejohn misusing, and by implication abusing, certain people and names. OJ Simpson, Looby Loo, fishwives, Red Robbo, fit actors, are all decent hard-working God-fearing people.

    2. The front-runners are ‘Sir’ Keir Starmer, the Max Headroom lookalike who fashioned his party’s disastrous, deceitful No Brexit policy, and Labour’s answer to Mrs Merton, Rebecca Long-Bailey.– Absolutely brilliant!!

      1. That Labour keep pushing this ‘we were right, you were wrong, so we’re going to keep telling you you were wrong’ is rather comical.

    3. I’m not sure why this is newsworthy. The Left have *always* been the oppressor. Always the fanatic. Always the anti democratic fraud.

      They sieze power and keep it for themselves, usually destroying any sense of democracy in the doing. Look at the EU. hard Left communists, fronting a sham of ‘democracy’ but ensuring it is even more irrelevant. Communist Russia, Nazi Germany and oh, yes Lefties. The Nazi’s were your people. Mao’s China. North Korea.

      Everywhere the Left go, they divide, control and then get kicked out by right thinking, Right minded democrats wanting freedom. This is why they always fail. Oppression is all they have against the human spirit.

  38. Amazingly .. I can read all the DT letters this morning .. how and why is that?

    SIR – From the end of January, the most useful service the BBC provides – teletext – will go. Why?

    It includes up-to-date news and sports, headlines, business, weather, travel and lottery updates.

    I am over 75 and face paying the licence fee again, but more than that I am of a generation of people who don’t walk around with tablets or mobile phones all day.

    A recent poll at my bowls club found that 70 per cent of our members used teletext daily and very few were aware that it was closing.

    This is just another example of the BBC not understanding (or not wanting to understand) the requirements of the older generation.

    Geoff Rawnsley
    North Aston, Oxfordshire

    1. Morning, Belle.
      Good Lord. I wasn’t aware that teletext still existed. I thought it vaporised around the same time as the Millennium ‘celebrations’.

      1. I have Sky (for the football) – just a month ago I had log on my TV to the BBC to ensure I would receive Teletext.
        Lots of video as in on-line – it must have cost something to enable all the links – is this going to be discontinued in 2 weeks time? or is it the bare bones text that is disappearing?

    2. In this case, I apologise for being ‘da yoof’ but you’re missing out on a world of content better than, different to the BBC provision.

      A tablet is not expensive. I appreciate the OS is badly designed and awkward, with a stupidly small typing box (my finger usually covers five letters, not one) but it’s time to move away from the one device/provider system.

  39. Freddy Forsyth commenting on more secret manoeuvres by the EU.

    Is a secret EU Army marching up on us, says FREDERICK FORSYTH

    Forgive me for banging on but something weird is being quietly prepared behind the arras. Have you ever heard of the EU External Action Service? No? Nor me until recently.

    It is a very covert body sheltered by the EU Council, another unelected body squatting in Brussels behind closed doors. Unlike the EU Commission ­[politics of total union and ­economies ditto] it is concerned with a European Defence Union – the unification of all the ­continent’s defence structures…

    …If this old codger is being paranoid, so is a raft of former defence chiefs with enough titles, gold braid and experience to sink a freighter.

    I hear they are meeting blank silence and closed doors where they used to be quietly briefed in privacy.

    More silence from our invisible Defence Secretary Ben Wallace who seems to be a piece of furniture parked somewhere in Whitehall…

    Daily Express – EU Army

    1. Good Morning, Korky

      BTL@DTletters

      Anne Sceptic 17 Jan 2020 2:23AM

      After bunging a bob for a Brexit bong this afternoon I watched the latest video by Graham Moore a constitutionalist and English Democrat on YouTube.

      https://youtu.be/_WPDo6cJ8v8

      Apparently Lord James of Blackheath asked a question about the EU army in the Lords first thing yesterday. The first half an hour is not available on Parliament tv for me to check the accuracy of what Mr Moore says. But if we haven’t joined the EU army why is the answer a secret?

      And if we have ceded control of our army to the EU why has this matter of great importance not been voted on in Parliament and what the hell are we celebrating on 31st January? I thought we voted for freedom.

      Mr Moore makes the point that the Bill of Rights 1688 is still in force, (confirmed in Parliament by Betty Boothroyd and is on the Parliament website) which means joining the EEC and signing all the subsequent treaties was in breach of the Bill of Rights and rather than repeal the 1972 European Communities Act it should be made void. Obviously ceding control to an EU army would also breach the bill of rights. Do you want your security reliant on the beurocrat Ursula Von dear Leyen? I don’t, the thought of it makes me feel sick.

      This is part of the Bill of Rights: “And I doe declare That noe Forreigne Prince Person Prelate, State or Potentate hath or ought to have any Jurisdiction Power Superiority Preeminence or Authoritie Ecclesiasticall or Spirituall within this Realme Soe helpe me God.”

      Why don’t the many lawyers in Parliament ever talk about that?

      1. There have been rumours that May had signed away control of our Military before her WA became public knowledge. Veterans for Britain have battled long and hard against this treachery but full details, as Freddy F and others have found, are being kept under wraps. I do get the feeling that Johnson isn’t being completely open and honest with us re his Brexit.

        Just realised you’ve sussed me out.😎

        https://twitter.com/VeteransBritain/status/1217409979382226944

          1. As an MP he would have received the letter from former head of MI6 Sir Richard Dearlove and Falklands hero Major-General Julian Thompson. In that letter they warned that the government has during Brexit negotiations embedded the UK in EU defence and security structures, without seeking proper parliamentary oversight or approval. If he doesn’t know about the position our Military is in re the EU then he shouldn’t be PM.

            ReactionLife – Ex-MI6 Chief and May’s Agreement

        2. I have been saying this for some time. Boris Johnson does not want a proper Brexit and is determined not to let us have one. Had he sincerely wanted one he would have made a pact with Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party.

  40. Over on the “real” online DT, there is a BTL discussion going on following the article about whether or not bells should be rung to mark Brexit.

    One remainiac clown, calling itself “Alexander B Pfeffel” (as a direct piss-take on Boris) uttered the following shite:

    ”Zero serious answers on here to the question: how are Brexiters going to unite our now divided country?

    Brexit has split our nation in half.

    So, serious question, Brexiters – you started the whole Leave debate, you’ve won, so now, how are you going to re-unite our country?”

    I explained to him:

    Why is the country NOW divided?

    Wasn’t it ‘divided’ back in 1975 after the first EEC referendum?

    Isn’t it ‘divided’ after every general election result?

    When is it NOT ‘divided’?

    More hysterical and brainlessly “woke” reaction from a group of juveniles who like nothing better to chuck their teddies out of the cot when they don’t get their own way!

    1. It is not incumbent on people who voted Leave to do anything. The Referendum result was to leave the EU. Democracy works only if the losing side accepts the result, whether it be a Local or General Election or a Referendum. If any re-uniting of the country is to take place, it is the responsibility of Remainers to accept the fact that the UK is leaving the EU, and just get on with life.

      1. “…it is the responsibility of Remainers to accept the fact that the UK is leaving the EU, and just get on with life.”

        That’s the whole point. Traditionally the losing side were equipped with (or acquired through upbringing) stiff upper lips and they just got on with life. This new breed of pampered, spoilt, “entitled” brats have never been given any tuition in pulling their socks up and getting on with it. They expect [nay, demand] that all their whims are met and will thqueam, thqueam, thqueam until they are thick until they get it!

        Time for some boot camps, methinks.

    2. Every time I read that some politician/journalist/member of the public says “we need to reunite the country after Brexit” I think what a stupid comment – all Elections are divisive by their very nature. What should happen is that the still-moaning remainiacs must accept the majority verdict, as they/we have every other decision.

      Good morning everyone BTW. Hooray the 🌞 sun is shining and the sky is clear. Have a great day.

    3. Why should we ‘reunite the country’? It’s not our responsibility to accept the result. we did, wth good grace. It’s yours (theirs) to do the same and work toward a better future.

    1. It certainly was, Sue. He kicked the stool from under the vacuous Lefty bitch who tried to accuse him of racism.

      1. And…….

        The woman, who was not named but later to revealed to be Rachel Boyle, a lecturer in race ethnicity at Edge Hill University on Merseyside.

        2. Those cretins in charge of employing (and paying) creatures such as Boyle to systematically poison the minds of students should be weeded out and shot!

          Failure to do so is to surrender.

      2. A Quasi-University Lecturer. Edge Hill used to be,and still is, a teacher training establishment.

    1. Morning Anne

      I read the articles.. with a sinking heart ..

      Why on earth cannot schools and parents hammer home the message that certain areas of the body are sacred .. no one touches ..

      Are poor working class parents prostituting their children.. it is a horrible thought ,, but it makes you wonder .

      1. Morning TB,
        The rape & abuse issues are down the road or the other side of town so it doesn’t …………..
        That is the mindset of many.

        1. This abuse is so widespread .. through out the country .. that one wonders about morals and parenting skills.. surely the youngsters aren’t kidnapped are they.. ?

          1. TB,
            The way I see it in many respects is that the
            blitz spirit has been been washed out of the peoples & replaced by individualism, ie divide & conquer via the establishment.
            The working mother, the single parent in many cases, plus five other things as in, three monkeys / PC / Appeasement are much used
            but in reality are anti health & safety tools.

          2. Many are in care, so it’s almost as if the councils are complicit. A lot of the girls are being targeted just outside their school gates, so their parents aren’t going to be there to stop it when they’re 11, 12, 13, i.e. old enough to get home by themselves.

          3. Some citizen retribution might be appropriate. Fathers & brothers need to stop this carp so the girls & women can go about their lives safely.

          4. I’ve heard of attempts to grab young girls at the school gates (via a text sent to a colleague by the head teacher of her daughter’s school) so I think yes, some of them are kidnapped.

  43. BBC News at One from Glasgow

    UK reported to be aiming to be carbon free by 2050
    Scotland by 2045.
    Glasgow by 2030.

    Earlier today Angela Ripoff Britain’s programme found that an uncle’s flight to Tenerife would result in almost one ton of CO2 emissions. A visit to a local Heathrow carbon offset company revealed that a 6 foot sapling planted now would take 50 years of unfettered growth to absorb uncle’s CO2 flight emission.

    Uncle was hoping to convince his nephew that his Tenerife flight would be offset by the relatively small voluntary carbon offset payment on his airline booking form.

    I think we must conclude that nephew would not be convinced that uncle was doing enough to save the planet.

    1. Assuming an average life expectancy of about 80 years, has anyone calculated how much less carbon dioxide would be emitted if both nephew and uncle stopped breathing now?

      1. Does anyone believe that achieving these targets are going to have any effect on the way our Earth’s climate seems to be changing?

        Don’t hold your breath!

    2. Don’t these idiots realise that the plane would still be flying whether he was on it or not?

    3. 2050 = 10 Nine at night
      2045 = Quarter to Nine at Night
      2030 = Half Eight at night

      all they have to do now is give dates when/if it will happen

      1. Well at least that is a recognised military format. Parliament approved a Bill in which the time appears as 11.00pm GMT. No colon.

      2. Here in Sweden, 20:30 hrs is “halv nio” (half nine!). They don’t do “half pasts” preferring “half tos”, therefore 8:30 is “half to nine”.

        8:25 is “fem i halv nio” (five in half nine), and 8:35 is “fem över halv nio” (five over half nine). They really are a strange breed.

        4. Ditto in Dutch. Maybe we should divvy Europe up into areas where everybody tells the time the same way? The UK would still have Brexit because in the English language the minutes come first (as they do in Germanic and Scandinavian languages, but then they add their complicated half-hour system), whereas in Romance languages the hours come first.

          1. German is split. You can say fünfundzwanzig nach elf = 25 past 11,

            or elf Uhr fünfundzwanzig = 11.25.

            Both are acceptable. It may be a regional thing.

    4. Let’s cover all unbuilt land with trees. Oh, and cease further immigration as they would then have nowhere to live. Two problems sorted in one fell swoop.

      2. They also want just organic farming but without he use of fertilizers and insect-ices the yield would be very low and some years pests might wipe out the crop

    1. I think the patient was put on the hospital bus because it was feeling a little horse.

      1. Strange you should say that

        A bus had also stopped at the scene and the driver suggested letting the animal inside. After the disabled ramp was put down, witnesses said the horse “trotted” into the bus “quite happily”.
        The horse was then chauffeured to Heath Hospital, accompanied by Ms Stephens and one other passenger.

      3. THe EU will be on the case as the Bus company did not have a licence to transport animals

    11. I wonder, could this be the bus that the Scoutmaster what I wrote about earlier, uses to transport the lads of his troop about in

  47. Roger Scruton’s brand of conservatism became a licence for bigotry. Jonathan Portes. 17 January 2020.

    Writing in Powell’s defence, Scruton once attacked liberal politicians for believing “the proposition that pious Muslims from the hinterlands of Asia would produce children loyal to a secular European state”. He was clear that just being born and brought up here didn’t make someone “one of us”; indeed, for certain ethnic and religious categories, the very idea was laughable. His view that Christianity was an essential component of English identity, and that of other European countries, meant that Muslim immigrants could only be seen as a threat.

    So Scruton’s “conservative” conception of national identity, much praised over the last week, was not just about his love of foxhunting or the countryside. It was explicitly exclusionary. And his views on what that meant for public policy were not confined to architecture, but ranged far wider. He argued that European countries should explicitly discriminate (in jobs, housing or welfare benefits) in favour of “indigenous European communities”, on the grounds that “all coherent societies are based on discrimination”.

    What is extraordinary about this article is that Portes makes absolutely no effort to refute Scruton’s observations.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/17/roger-scruton-conservatism-bigotry-anti-immigrant

    1. They never do. There are two sides to every story. If you are only given one, disregard it.

    2. Portes should be highlighting those successful countries with a truly diverse multicultural population, with cultural values that are in perpetual conflict with each other, before he criticises Scruton for pointing out reality.

    3. One wonders if Portes would defend the rights of other indigenous peoples to self-determination in their homelands while at the same time approving their conquest of Europe.

    1. That’s the clip I was talking about – at least it is the audio from the clip.

    2. O2O,
      Many people will think that mass uncontrolled immigration is a good thing if it means votes and keeping their party in power.
      That is why the electorate have played such a big part in keeping the floodgates open.
      Sod the toxic damage to Education,
      Accommodation, medication, incarceration, the party comes first and rules OK.

  49. Among the many awards the late Sir Roger Scruton received was the international Free Speech Society award. This year the award goes to …..Tommy Robinson! He will receive it in Copenhagen and all seats at the ceremony are sold!

    This will not be mentioned on the MSM.

  50. I have suffered sexual harassment, says minister Victoria Atkins

    What is wrong with her ? The poor snowflake is all upset because someone commented on her shoes

    In one example, the minister revealed, someone had sent her an email “that showed a great interest in my footwear”, after a public appearance.
    “That was something that made me feel uncomfortable,” she told LBC radio.

    3. BJ,
      How is her old man doing in his export
      of medical skunk to America and we cannot get it here when proscribed for children ?
      She cannot comment because of a conflict of interest.
      Did the price of the shoes in question come from profits made by the old mans drug dealings ?

  51. EU citizens will not automatically be deported if they fail to sign up to the settled status scheme by the 2021 deadline, Downing Street has said.

    Well it is automatic unless they can show an exceptional reason for not applying before the deadline and I would have thought it would very difficult to do that.

    The confirmation comes after European Parliament Brexit co-ordinator Guy Verhofstadt said he had been given the assurance by the UK government.
    Under the settlement scheme, EU citizens living in the UK can apply to stay in the country after Brexit.

    Mr Lewis added: “At the end of June 2021, if people haven’t applied and they’ve got good reason for that, we’ll be looking at that and we’ll be looking to grant status.

    1. Most US recipes call for “Kosher salt”! This confuses the hell out of me. How can an inorganic compound (NaCl) be kosher?

      Perhaps Pud can tell us?

          9. Cuts of beef that come from the hindquarters of the animal, such as flank, short loin, sirloin, round, and shank

          10. I think that I speak for many when I say: “We’re with them on that one.”

            (Although it’s probably Bull’s ones that they don’t eat, unless it’s a Trans-cow.)

          16. Food cooked by a non-Jew (bishul akum): this law was enacted for concerns of intermarriage.

            THat one is interesting as in the UK most Kosher food establishments are run by non jews

            Another one says you cannot east fruit from tree unless the tree is over 3 years old

          17. I am sure that you have already heard it said, that if you ask three Jews the same question, you will get five different answers. That is how we have entertained ourselves for two thousand years,

      2. There appear to be a number of different definitions

        Because kosher salt has a flaky, coarse structure, it is particularly efficient at extracting blood. The main difference between regular salt and kosher salt is the structure of the flakes. Chefs find that kosher salt — due to its large flake size — is easier to pick up with your fingers and spread over food.

        Another says it has no additives

        1. ‘Regular’ salt? Is it called that because it comes at precise times each day?

          Or were you trying to be a Yank, i.e. not realising that the word you were searching for is ‘normal’ salt?

        2. Lots of the rules seem to be based on food hygiene. Most of these religions originate in hot countries and food hygiene in general was poor and certain foods were much more likely to go off. The general health of the population was also poor and people would die of food poisoning. In other cases it was because an animal was more use alive such as in India where a cow was a beast of burden and a source of milk

      4. The main difference in the US is that “Kosher Salt” like “Sea Salt” (and unlike common table salt), is not loaded with additives to make it more free flowing, and also is not Iodized. Recipes here usually call for one or the other, as against table salt.

          1. Anti-caking agents use in bags of grated cheese consisted of silicone powder when i worked in the industry.

          2. Salt without an anti caking agent would be difficult to use at least for table salt. Chefs as well will adjust the seasoning after tasting and sprinkle a bit more on so it need to be free flowing

          3. I didn’t know you worked in the grated cheese industry, Philip.

            I grate my own cheese (or ‘plane’ it in the Swedish manner!) 👍🏻😉

        2. Sea salt also has the addition of ‘essential minerals’ in the form of the shite of flamingos and other aquatic birds that feed in their thousands on brine shrimps in the salt pans.

      5. Kosher salt, kitchen salt, cooking salt, flake salt, rock salt, koshering salt, or kashering salt is coarse edible salt without common additives such as iodine. Used in cooking and not at the table, it consists mainly of sodium chloride and may include anti-caking agents.

        https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/07/Comparison_of_Table_Salt_with_Kitchen_Salt.png/1280px-Comparison_of_Table_Salt_with_Kitchen_Salt.png
        Comparison of table salt (L) with koshering salt (R)

  53. Me, being a simple soul, would love to see a list of Name Changes of old Nottlers

    Ie those who have (re)joined under new names aftr the Down Vote Fiasco

    3. I’m not going to change. I am, as JC said, “constant as the Northern Star”

      I’ve had the nickname Rastus C Tastey since I was at university when I first grew my moustache and developed a penchant for pipe tobacco and bright spotted handkerchiefs worn either around the neck for ornamentation or on the pate for protection from the sun’s harmful ultra-violet rays.

      .

    4. I am Jenny in real life and online…it is my middle name…I detest my first name. But what you see is what you get.

  55. New advice on travel to EU released ahead of Brexit Day on 31 January

    Gosh now we are leaving the Travel Industry is giving up on scaremongering

    The travel industry is trying to reassure tourists that their summer holidays won’t be affected by the UK’s departure from the European Union.

    According to ABTA, this arrangement means valid passports can still be used as normal – and coaches and trains from the UK to the continent will be unaffected.

    The cost of making calls, sending texts and using the internet will continue to be the same in the EU as it is in the UK, and European Health Insurance Cards (EHICs) will also remain valid.

    Previous guidance from ABTA had suggested there could be potential changes in each of these areas – and that driving licences and the ability to take pets abroad could also be affected.

  56. Arrived home from Cambridge an hour ago. The Great Ouse has overflowed, the Fens are full & the fields are mainly awash. The foot/cycle path alongside the bus track is under water in many places.

    1. It is no called the Fenlands for nothing. What I find surprising is the Broads do not often flood

      2. The Broads are managed better. Though i have been there when they did have a flood but it was only a few stretches of footpath. Not that it bothered me on my cruiser.

      1. Oh, I’ve seen it much worse. 5 or 6 years ago in Jan/Feb the water was nearly lapping the track.

        1. My friend and I were just saying today how very mild it is for Jan. I never go anywhere for my birthday due to the cold but this time…my daughter is taking me on a train!….so excited.

          1. Bon voyage!

            Opposite my bus stop in Cambridge today I noticed that Pelargoniums were still flowering in every window box on 4-storey building.

    3. Added to the 225%, 250% and 332% of average monthly rainfall for the past 3 months in Sarf London we’ve now received 150% of the average monthly rainfall for January. The weather forecast is such that I anticipate this figure will be over 200% by month end. It is of course all down to Anthropogenic Global Warming. Or, the fact that the Sun is now entering a modern minimum and as a consequence the circum-polar westerly vortex / jet stream is no longer following its long term traditional patterns of behaviour disrupting the marked seasonal rainfall and weather patterns of the British Isles documented by Hubert Lamb in the late 1960’s /70’s.

      1. Britain historically has had unique weather for its latitude. Much milder than it “should” have had. The thing that is slowing down is the Gulf Stream which washes the area with relatively warm water. More freshwater arriving in the north Atlantic is impacting that. If it stops, buy Canadian style winter clothing as you are on the same latitude as Hudson Bay.

        1. p.s. In comparison, we are on the same Latitude as Majorca, and we get serious winter weather.

          1. Up here at the same latitude as Italy, it was -19 this morning.

            I am surprised that the Bay still exists. They’re having their winter sale now so if you want winter stuff you should go there.

        2. “you are on the same latitude as Hudson Bay.”
          In good company then, do they still do furs?

      1. Eeks!!!….ha ha. I rather like the heart shape made by the curled hair at the top.

  58. And now for something completely different; from The Oldie.
    As ever, London is the odd one out.

    https://www.theoldie.co.uk/blog/did-cromwell-ban-christmas

    “Did Cromwell ban Christmas?

    ‘Christmas is Cancelled,’ announce the seasonal cards on sale at the Cromwell Museum in Huntingdon.

    The fenland town, where the Lord Protector was born in 1599, is still abuzz with the question of who is its greatest Member of Parliament – Oliver Cromwell or John Major. Locals also ask, ‘Did Cromwell really ban Christmas?’

    Cromwell was then just an MP turned cavalry officer, playing a leading role in the New Model Army’s victory over Charles I.

    Still, Cromwell must have approved of the ban, because it continued under his rule as Lord Protector of England from 1653 to his death in 1658.

    The attack on Christmas proved to be one of the Parliamentarians’ biggest mistakes. As one pamphleteer put it, ‘Frand festivals and lesser holy days… are the main things which the more ignorant and common sort among them do fight for.’

    The ban was bitterly resented across England and Wales, where the people kept true, by and large, to their Church, its feast days and the Book of Common Prayer.

    Hardline Puritans believed, with some justification, that the celebration of Christ’s birth was no more than an excuse for drunkenness and debauchery. They renamed Christmas ‘Christ tide’, to avoid any reference to the Roman Catholic ‘Mass’ and deemed it an ordinary working day. Eating a mince pie or singing carols was made illegal.

    In London, the Puritan heartland, zealots such as John Barkstead, Governor of the Tower, prohibited festivities with such severity that some wondered whether ‘they shall be suffered to be Christians any longer or no’.

    For four years during the 1650s, the diarist John Evelyn, an Anglican, would scour the capital for Christmas Day services and, in 1652, managed to find an ‘honest’ divine who preached at Lewisham on Boxing Day. He was less fortunate in 1657, when he and his friends were placed under arrest by a troop of soldiers. Why, he was asked, was he ‘at Common Prayers, which they told me was but the mass in English, and [where they] particularly pray for Charles Stuart [Charles II].’

    Despite such crackdowns by the regime, Christmas carried on. Ezekial Woodward, an Essex preacher, admitted that ‘the people go on holding fast to their heathenish customs and abominable idolatries, and think they do well’.

    Such persistence of festivities was noted with some disdain by those few MPs – predominantly Puritan – who attended the House of Commons on Christmas Day in 1656. One complained that he had been disturbed the whole of the previous night by the preparations for ‘this foolish day’s solemnity’.

    Cromwell’s flamboyant and charismatic deputy, John Lambert, warned them that, as he spoke, the Royalists would be ‘merry over their Christmas pies, drinking the King of Scots health, or your confusion’.

    Brian Duppa, one of the few Anglican bishops to keep his post during the Interregnum, observed that his congregations continued ‘to offer up the public prayers and sacrifices of the Church, though it be under private roofs’. He had not heard of any of those present ‘either disturbed or troubled for doing it’.

    Duppa, like many Anglicans, was keen to pounce on the inevitable hypocrisies of the more zealous puritans: ‘Though the religious part of this holy time is laid aside, yet the eating part is observed by the holiest of the brethren’, he noted.

    Hugh Peters, a Puritan preacher with sulphur on his breath, who would be hanged, drawn and quartered at the Restoration of Charles II, was charged in 1652 with preaching against Christmas Day but then eating two mince pies for his dinner.

    Though churches and shops were forced to close by the authorities, in 1652 the newsletter, Flying Eagle, reported that ‘taverns and taphouses’ were full on Christmas Day, with ‘Bacchus bearing the bell amongst the people as if neither custom or excise were any burden to them’. The poor, it was claimed, ‘will pawn all to the clothes of their back to provide Christmas pies for their bellies and the broth of abominable things in their vessels, though they starve or pine for it all the year after’.

    In 1654, the Weekly Post reported the decoration of churches with rosemary and bays. That year, Francis Throckmorton, a student in Puritan Cambridge, paid sixpence for music and gave Christmas boxes to his servant, tailor and shoemaker. Three years later, he spent Christmas at a country house in Worcestershire, where he exchanged presents and gave money to musicians and mummers. In 1657, Evelyn invited in his neighbours after Christmas, ‘according to custom’.

    Old habits flourished the further you got away from Whitehall. The Welsh, tucked away safely in one of the darker corners of the realm, kept stubbornly to their unrepentant Christmas celebrations. ‘Where is there more sin to encounter with, where more ignorance, where more hatred to the people of God? where the word saint more scorned? than in Merionethshire,’ complained the Puritan John Jones in 1651.

    The Puritans and their leader Cromwell, a man of Welsh roots – his real surname was Williams, no less – never really knew their people.”

    Paul Lay is author of Providence Lost: The Rise and Fall of Cromwell’s Protectorate.

    1. “The fenland town, where the Lord Protector was born in 1599, is still abuzz with the question of who is its greatest Member of Parliament – Oliver Cromwell or John Major.

      No contest – the Electors of Huntingdon must have contracted some community madness to even think of Major as a ‘great’ MP.

  59. The Myth that the UK has very low unemployment

    The politicians like to claim with have very low unemployment as they use this to trey to justify mass migration but when you look at the data we have large numbers of people economically inactive and living om benefits. WE also have significant numbers on zero hours contracts ts as well as those notionally self employed but not earning a living wage such as big issue sellers and many private hire drivers they just do the minimum hours need to claim benefits

    3. Enough to make you want to rub shit in their shit-eating grins. (Sorry, Grizz – Americanism.)

  61. ‘Calling me a white privileged male is racist – YOU’RE being racist!’ 17 January 2020.

    Actor Laurence Fox was involved in an extraordinary slanging match with a BBC Question Time audience member last night who said Meghan Markle was hounded out of Britain because of racism.

    The woman, who was not named but later to revealed to be Rachel Boyle, a lecturer in race ethnicity at Edge Hill University on Merseyside, called the star ‘a white privileged male’ when he denied her claims.

    A visibly exasperated Fox, star of ITV drama Lewis and former husband of actress Billie Piper, looked to the sky and hit back: ‘Oh my God. I can’t help what I am, I was born like this, it’s an immutable characteristic: to call me a white privileged male is to be racist – you’re being racist’.

    I’m sure it’s just a coincidence she was there! Lol!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7898147/Question-Time-guest-Laurence-Fox-gets-Meghan-racism-debate.html

    1. As most of you on here know, I do not own a TV set, but coincidentally last night I clicked on the James Delingpole podcast where he was interviewing Laurence Fox. It had been drawn to my attention by Grizzly and I found it fascinating. Today, on this site, I watched clips of Laurence Fox’s Question Time performance available on the Daily Mail site. My admiration for this man’s (son of actor James Fox and nephew of actor Edward Fox) good sense – whom I had never really known – has grown and grown.

      1. Hi, Elsie.

        I nicked it from yesterday’s NTTL forum. Johnny Norfolk kindly posted it on here late last night.

        [Thank you. John].

    2. There are more plants in the Question Time audience than there are at the Eden Project in Cornwall!

    3. “to call me a white privileged male is to be racist – you’re being racist'”

      Well, that’s just being silly.

    4. A comment in the DM ‘you simply can’t fix stupid’. In case there is any doubt at all, the commenter was referring to Rachel Boyle.

    6. Sat next to him was Chubby Chakrabarti, looking as though she’d been sucking lemons when Fox threw back her question: “What about the women [Labour] candidates?”

      A slightly more balanced QT panel than is usual.

      1. I would like to see a bout of fisticuffs between Laurence Fox and Hugh Grant who are, of course, both white former public school boys. (Harrow and Latymer Upper respectively). I trust that the Harrovian would triumph – after all he was at Churchill’s old school.

        1. Latymer Upper is a public school now, is it? It was a Grammar School back in the 1960s, otherwise it surely wouldn’t have contemplated games against my scruffy South London Grammar school!

          1. Both Latymer Upper and Godolphin and Latymer were very academic state grammars until the 1970’s.

            If you remember, Shirley Williams, who was at the forefront of the Labour party drive towards comprehensive schools, was discovered to have daughters at G&L and she had to remove them..

            My niece was head girl of G&L at the time and she married the deputy head boy of Latymer Upper. Since then both the boys’ and the girls’ schools have become private.

  62. Flights into Heathrow stopped from landing after RAF airspace request

    Very odd

    Incoming flights heading to Heathrow airport were paused from landing this morning due to the RAF requesting use of its airspace.
    Some flights were diverted to nearby hubs due to the delay in being able to land.

      2. An unscheduled special movement at Northolt which stops flights, yep, I would say so. Guess he is still HRH.

    2. I keep my computer hub upstairs in the small box room I use as a study. Must pop upstairs to see if any RAF jets have landed there.

      :-))

      1. Hope so…I love this little cottage. I am having my cottage painted this colour – it is a rose pink shade at the moment…lol.

          1. Pistachio? Were the decorators having a piss-take? :•)

            [An old friend was once telling me that his favourite ice-cream flavour was mint choc chip (which is green). He said that he went to an ice-cream vendor and saw some green, which he took to be mint choc chip so he bought it, but when he tasted it he said it wasn’t what he thought it was, it was a piss-take.]

          2. Kale ice-cream?

            It certainly wasn’t pistachio. As described. It was from a supposedly reputable company and i have also seen it in Eastern Europe and locally on blocks of low rise Flats on the seafront at Lee-on-Solent recently.

            Even so. It became a talking point where i met new people and personally for me…anything but beige/magnolia.

          3. The side door and conservatory doors on my converted cow-shed (honest, I’m not joking) are a similar shade of green.

            I have two properties on my land. The “old house” is currently not used as living accommodation (although it makes a useful large store). I live in an adjacent building that has been (variously in its history) a cow-shed, a cobbler’s shop, and a smithy. The old smithy is now my woodworking workshop and art studio. Also on the ground floor is the dining kitchen and the conservatory. Upstairs is the lounge, bedroom, shower room and walk-in wardrobe.

  66. I see Oxo beef stock cubes are going to offer meat-free stock cubes…where will it all end, I ask myself!

    2. I think that there are already plenty of vegetable stock cubes certainly Knorr and Maggi produce them in France.
      But if you want a laugh:

      Correction: We previously listed Oxo vegetable stock cubes here, but have since found out that they are NOT vegan due to containing the ingredient “Disodium 5′-ribonucleotides” which turns out to be known as E635. This can be derived from both plant sources and animal sources.Jul 29, 2018

          2. That’s the one in the Bleu lane.

            Oddly enough I find that your choice tends towards English “well done” over here.

            But that might be because there are so many Brits here in Dordogneshire.

            Saignant tends to be medium rare/rare.

            Bleu is chase it around the restaurant and eat it before a vet revives it.

            Never, ever, order bien cuit, unless you enjoy well burnt shoe leather. They save the worst steaks just to serve them that way to the Enlish and Americans.

      3. Yes, vegetable stock has always been around, and let’s face it, it ain’t difficult to make!! But to me the Oxo brand was always beef and chicken when I was learning to cook, remember the ad “Oxo gives a meal man appeal” Can’t say that now!!

  72. Emily Thornberry vows to be an ‘unashamedly socialist’ Labour leader if she wins the battle to take over from Jeremy Corbyn as new poll shows Sir Keir Starmer beating Rebecca Long-Bailey 63% to 37% in final round

    Starmer was trailing a long way behind in the first round poll now in the second round poll he has a strong lead,. Something seriously wrong with these polling methods. You dont get massive swings like that over a few days

  74. Even Trump met us’: Harry Dunn’s parents say Boris Johnson has no ‘wish or intention’ to see them

    I think Boris is right whilst legal proceedings are underway it is why to stay out of it

    Ms Sacoolas is accused of driving on the wrong side of the road when she collided with Mr Dunn’s motorcycle last August.
    She claimed diplomatic immunity, but has now been charged with causing death by dangerous driving.
    Asked whether Mr Johnson would meet the family, a Downing Street spokesman said: “The legal process is ongoing and the UK has submitted the extradition request.

  75. Owen Jones tells court he’s faced daily death threats and ‘unrelenting’ abuse from far-right sympathisers

    He has an over inflated ego Most people do not care what he thinks

    Guardian columnist and left-wing activist Owen Jones has been the subject of an “unrelenting” campaign of abuse by far-right sympathisers, including daily death threats, a court has heard.
    Mr Jones, 35, made the comments at a hearing of a man accused of launching a homophobic attack on him in a pub last year.

    James Healy, 40, allegedly targeted Mr Jones because of his media profile as an LGBQT rights campaigner and left-wing, anti-racism and anti-fascism activist.

    Healy admits the “frenzied” attack outside the Lexington pub on the Pentonville Road in Islington, north London, but denies it wa

    1. Given the half truths and stupidities he spouts on the Graun, I’m surprised it’s taken this long for someone to thump him.

    2. Well it’s not me! I made a New Year Resolution I will not send death threats to Owen Jones in 2020.

      So far, so good but it hasn’t been easy ……….

      2. The threats are not even from the imagined far right. They are all from people that think he is a smug twat.

    2. Ignore the grass roots at your peril.
      I suspect that RLB will have far more support outside the London bubble than Twatman.

      2. Oh that’s nice….thank you. I was just joshing about the puns…..they amused me so much….xx

    2. Oddly enough, when I was on exchange with the USN a lot of years ago, the African American sailors we spoke to were really against quota systems for promotion – they reckoned if there were only, say, 4 slots for them but 5 or 6 good candidates, the extra 1 or 2 would dip out, so that another group, arguably not so talented, could fill their allocation. They had some seriously smart people too!

    1. I really feel sorry for the servants.. to be laid off , just like that.. How many staff does it take to look after a place like that ..

      I mean what do these people do when they are working.. How much looking after do people need ?

      1. I get the impression that a number of them were temps and not on the Royal pay roll.
        It must have come as a nasty shock – contradicting what they had just been told.
        It’s only my personal opinion, and I have to be careful what I say here, but I do not think that Harry and Meghan
        have behaved very well.

        1. Everyone is shocked by M+H’s behaviour.. loutish scamming pair .. they have scuttled and cleared off.. I hope she is looking after that baby, but I DOUBT it very much… she just didn’t look the maternal type .. that baby is a project , a hobby , her jewel in her future plans.. a weapon!

          1. All the photos of her holding the baby had the look of him having been handed to her just for the photo opportunity.

            She seemed to be clutching him as you might a sack of potatoes rather than holding him properly supported.

          2. Exactly ..

            We have seen more pics of Harry holding Archie than her ..

            We shouldn’t really concern ourselves, but we appear to be on high alert , the way things were during the on going Diane drama, which ended badly.

          4. I wonder if H. does more of the child care – he seems to be very good with children from some of the videos I’ve seen.

          8. As a woman, you will see it more clearly than me, but I am sure that you are right. And all that racism stuff – I think it was overstated. She just did not come over as ” nice ” from the beginning.As for Harry…. ” some mothers do ave ’em ” ….

      2. I read somewhere this morning that the 2 core members of staff had been found “alternative employment” on the Windsor Estate.

        1. Apparently M+H were not too brilliant at hanging onto staff.

          I do hope the Canadians aren’t hurt and used either.. but I expect we will hear a few stories in the weeks to come .

        1. Can’t help thinking that if only the prince had turned into a frog when Meghan first kissed him, it would have saved everybody a lot of grief.

    3. Not so long ago, 1000+ was a typical day.
      We’ve attracted so many trolls that regulars have left and that’s why we no longer see the higher numbers.
      }:-((

      2. Though a lot of those comments were going round in never ending circles over Brexit. No longer a topic of much debate.

      4. Hopefully the trolls are gone…we shall survive and be strong again…we can do it…….

  85. I never cease to be amazed at the wonder of the internet.This evening I stumbled across Arvo Part’s Da Pacem – One hour of sublime choral music freely available on You tube (here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOpa5Ec3i4s ) but with adverts!) So for less than 800 pennies I was able to download the entire recording via iTunes and no vinyl (apart from my debit card) was damaged in my acquisition!

  86. What diversity really means:

    Diversity (n.) Etymology:
    Mid-14c., diversite, “variety, diverseness”quality of being diverse, fact of difference between two or more things or kinds; variety; separateness,” from Old French diversete “difference, unique feature, oddness:” also “wickedness, perversity” (12c., Modern French diversité), from Latin diversitatem “contrariety, contradiction, disagreement;”
    A negative meaning, “perverseness, being contrary to what is agreeable or right; conflict, strife; perversity, evil” existed in English from late 14c until the 17c.

    Specific focus on race, gender, etc., “inclusion and visibility of persons of previously under-represented minority identities” is by 1992.

    “Conflict, strife; perversity, evil” Looks like we have regressed c400 years.

    1. “You’ve spent such a long time trying to open that jar of bird food mummy that we are all now frozen stiff!”

      1. Lol……I remember Januarys just like that. It is almost tropical now. Oh now…are we really getting warmer?……ha ha ha.

  91. There is a very unsavoury conversation on Sky news at the moment and I can’t get up to turn it off. Hubby is upstairs. Gross!!!!!

    1. I have really cut back on watching the news now, but I did notice something on Sky last night and this morning. Three separate times they started showing the footage of President Trump for the impeachment story. Each time they began the story with the words:

      “Donald Trump is guilty.”

      Then went on to detail what the next stages of impeachment were and what was going to happen next. That was beyond biased even for Sky News. I thought once was bad enough, but there it was again the next morning, and then again 30 minutes after that.

      1. I don’t watch TV much at all so I don’t even have a remote handy. That said, I know exactly what you mean by bias….

      2. The Americans should be aware of the saying

        Be careful what you wish for.

        If Cow Clinton gets in, thr US will be more awash than ever with ‘refugees/spongers/etc’

      3. The Americans should be aware of the saying

        Be careful what you wish for.

        If Cow Clinton gets in, thr US will be more awash than ever with ‘refugees/spongers/etc’

      4. Even that’s not as bad as David Shukman ranting on about climate change every night on BBC.

    1. And the Brexiteers are told not to be triumphalist over Brexit while the Remoaners can be as sour-faced, vindictive, spiteful and mean-spirited as they like.

      It is high time Boris Johnson rallied the troops – confidence in his determination to see through a proper Brexit is definitely waning.

      1. My mistake. I thought Vazolene was the bangee. Why else give stimulants to rent boys? Don’t answer that !

    3. Reinstate the floor? Striking mechanism? Bollocks to that. No imagination, these people. I could arrange it for a tenth of the price being quoted. I have the phone number of a (80-odd year-old) steeplejack somewhere, and can loan him a lump hammer. And a watch. Our former church architect once bet him a substantial sum that he wouldn’t ride a bicycle around the parapet of the tower of Guildford Cathedral. He lost the bet…

    4. Reinstate the floor? Striking mechanism? Bollocks to that. No imagination, these people. I could arrange it for a tenth of the price being quoted. I have the phone number of a (80-odd year-old) steeplejack somewhere, and can loan him a lump hammer. And a watch. Our former church architect once bet him a substantial sum that he wouldn’t ride a bicycle around the parapet of the tower of Guildford Cathedral. He lost the bet…

    1. Quieter night tonight weather wise.. Had to go outside to refill the coal scuttle .. it was very dark and spooky as I groped around with the shovel in the bunker…

      Night night .. sleep well. You have been very entertaining ..

      1. Oh thank you TB……that is so sweet and will send me off to sleep smiling. Yes – very quiet tonight, lovely. Goodnight….xxx

  96. Labour has learnt nothing indeed. They are finished….gone to the great Parliament in the sky.

      2. When Corbyn won the leadership, the social media sites were swamped with ‘RIP Labour’ posts – they were not wrong. Long Bailey will be the final nail in the coffin.

    2. They’ll be back, sadly.

      I thought no same person would ever vote for a left wing Labour government again after the complete mess both Wilson and Callaghan made of the economy back in the ’70’s. But they did, mainly I suspect because the left dominated education system skips over those eras in favour of lambasting Thatcher for all perceived ills, whereas in reality she yanked the country out of a terminal decline.

      Regular nationalized industry strikes, political miners strikes designed to bring governments down, a sugar shortage (another strike) and so on. And the country being de facto “run” by the TUC. Who would vote for that? No wonder there was a “brain drain”.

      1. The eternal problem is that each generation has to make its own mistakes. Many of today’s voters weren’t around/ not old enough to take on board the previous socialist disasters.

        2. That’s why schools teach history – or at least why they should. The funny thing was, sometime back I made a similar comment on the Graun, and was roundly taken to task by commenters for being untruthful about those governments. Their need to go to the IMF for huge bailouts is something the Left seem to be in total denial about.

          1. What they should teach is ‘Politics’ as a topic on its own so they can understand the ideologies.

  97. Good night all.

    I shall sleep easily in the knowledge that a PIA disruptor has removed herself from my German group.

    I criticised her apostrophes. 😉

  100. Rebecca Lost-Baby woman appears to believe that it is acceptable to abort a healthy or unhealthy foetus at any stage of a pregancy, ie even in the third trimester.
    There are certain cultures which believe that male babies are more desirable than female babies.
    Is she fishing for votes from immigrants?

      1. She said she believed the decision should always be left with the woman.

        My view is that if the woman allowed the pregnancy to advance to 9 months and then decide to abort that makes her a murderer.

        It’s not as if contraceptives aren’t available for free.

        She is also a Catholic which says a lot.

          3. They let Tony Blair convert to Roman Catholicism (for some reason) and he is a borderline satanist, if he is not a fully paid up card-carrying member.

          5. Apparently there are three and the third is yet to come. I would say he is definitly a number two.

          7. I remember him claiming that personally he was against abortion but if the Labour Party voted in favour of abortion he would too.

            He must be one of the foulest people ever to be in British political life. It is beyond astonishing that anybody still has any time for him at all.

          15. I think she’s been trying to backtrack on something she wrote ages ago on FB or twatter in line with her religion and now she’s trying to undo the damage to her campaign whilst selling her soul to the devil.

          23. ‘Evening, Geoff.

            On a point of order – if Long-Bailey supports abortion then, under canon law, she has incurred automatic excommunication “latae sententiae”.

        2. I agree. If she says she is a Catholic, methinks she is not aware of what that really means.

          1. Her preferred religion is in doubt at the moment. I thought she had said she was a Catholic. Teach me for believing what a politico was reported as saying.

          5. Geoff

            Was I being rude about R/Cs..

            I apologise.. I was referring to the so called religious fervour in Rebecca L B’s heart.. and the rubbish her followers are being persuaded to believe .

        3. Ignoring religion there is birth control and pregnant woman have regular health checks so and deformity or serious health condition of the baby would be picked up long before 8 months

          1. Yes Bill but you can’t ignore religion. Catholics are not supposed to use contraceptives.

          2. I thought they had sort of fudged that by saying the church is against it but it is a personal decision

          1. Some friends of ours went to see it and both fell asleep as it was so boring. My wife and I then decided not to bother.

          5. The W-E scene is a law unto itself.

            The “theatre” of it was excellent.
            The music, apart from a few, was dirge-ish.

            A matter of taste I suppose.

          6. I’ve only heard a couple of the songs. The WE production was on PBS here but I never watched it, I have to admit. It does all sound a bit downbeat. Oklahoma! it’s not.

          7. I’ve only heard a couple of the songs. The WE production was on PBS here but I never watched it, I have to admit. It does all sound a bit downbeat. Oklahoma! it’s not.

          8. My first WE musical was Camelot, watched from the “god’s” at Drury Lane in 1964 (?). If I remember correctly I got a schoolboy ticket for 2s/6d

            From then on, I was hooked on musicals.

          9. I loved Richard Harris singing Camelot. Saw Phantom of the Opera in London…amazing.

          10. So many famous actors and singers performed songs from Camelot that it’s hard to choose a favourite.

    5. There are many unprincipled blank eyed monsters who purport to need to be in power positions .

      These devil people have been around for centuries .. everywhere..

      We don’t approve of the likes of her.. vote catching little bint, isn’t she .

    6. Evening T,
      Surely that is almost like saying the
      islamic ideology vote should be encouraged by sweeteners like a mosque building program or lowering the age of consent to 0.
      The governance politico’s would not do that would they ?
      NOT BLOODY MANY BENNY.

      1. O1

        My attention was drawn to Historic England’s new project the other day, featuring the photographic collection of my erstwhile employer, John Laing (see – I’m a rough-arsed builder, too). Note the image at the head of the front page, if you will. Regent’s Park Mosque. The Christian aspect (the stonemason in the video,Ted Drinkwater, working on Carlisle Cathedral, is a former colleague) is well down the page. Notwithstanding the fact that Sir John William Laing, CBE, was staunch Plymouth Brethren.

        https://historicengland.org.uk/images-books/archive/new/breaking-new-ground-project/

        2. I knew a somewhat laid back chap who went off to join the PB. I surmised what he must have been thinking: ‘If God had wanted me to work he would have given me a conscience….’

        3. Evening GG,
          Duly noted,
          I was passing Coventry Cathedral the day they nearly had a mishap with lifting the spire on.
          I was in Poland for Laings on a PVC plant with a russian behind every tree, 250 zloties to the £1 on the black, 56 in the UK bank, pevo 8 z a pint.
          Laings said no politics, whoops ,next thing all the English heading for the gate, working in the rain dispute, few days later a shop steward statement in the animals bar, tomorrow the best 42 men are leaving this site on Lot airline.
          So ended my stint with Laings.
          I still hear echoes of hundreds of Englishmen full of very cheap pevo in the animals bar singing “we are sailing”

  101. Emily Thornberry vows to be an ‘unashamedly socialist’ Labour leader if she wins the battle to take over from Jeremy Corbyn as new poll shows Sir Keir Starmer beating Rebecca Long-Bailey 63% to 37% in final round

    Starmer was trailing a long way behind in the first round poll now in the second round poll he has a strong lead,. Something seriously wrong with these polling methods. You dont get massive swings like that over a few days

      1. I doubt that the typical Labour Party member would care much about that. How long before they decide the baby can be killed up to 24 hours after birth if it is deformed ?. I know ikt sounds madness at present but thats the direction they are moving towards

          1. “Very sorry, but the baby was born dead”. Or, “It did not breath”. The old ways of dealing with cases of severe deformity.

          2. My Grandfather, a doctor during the 1900s had to do that if the child would have had no quality of life.

    1. Ooh, thank you DK. My first birthday greeting. 🙂
      I’d be quite happy not to have any more – birthdays that is, not greetings.

      1. Happy Birthday, Stormy! Hope you have lots more – think of all the prezzies & drinkies!
        🍻😁

        1. Thank you Obers.
          Off twerk this morning, malheureusement, but I’ll be having a meal with family this evening ☺

  104. Just watching Scrum V on BBC2 Wales

    On the subtitles

    Abba Raven (Aberavon)
    Bedworth (Bedwas)

    The BBC can get nowt right

    Winkers

      1. The Gov keep saying they don’t have a money tree…so I thought I would see if they exist…and they do!….lol.

      1. I have money plants – they have been cut and replanrted many times over 20 years…the same plant. They are amazing.

      2. I have Pennywort growing in a pot …. it is a fascinating plant. I have seen it growing on walls .. how and where and what it takes nourishment from heavens only knows . But mine just appeared.. from where I have no idea.

        Amazing that your pic shows it growing in a grassy area.

        1. It’s common here along shady lanes and is mainly on the growing on the sides of ‘Cornish hedges’, lane walls and banks, appears to need little soil. I always enjoy seeing the green flower spikes growing in the summer, which often don’t appear connected to the leaves.

          1. Mine is growing in a spare pot in the area where we have the coal bunker and bits and pieces .. very sheltered and shady ,near the garden wall with ivy on it . Might it have been seeded by a bird , like a pigeon?

        1. I liked the kitten, but that guy was as depressing as hell. It is sad to see someone struggling with reality like that, and to be so unaware of how to get himself out of it and get on with life. He says towards the end:

          “That’s what this guy is [the kitten.] He is just a reminder that where you start out and where you end, you really don’t have any control over. You just gotta roll with the punches and keep an open and positive mindset to everything.”

          What kind of a mindset is that? The human race would still be living in caves if people had not actively tried to change the world around them and make life better. You can see why so many people such as him have real difficulties in life, because they have nothing real to believe in. Just empty fuzzy words such as “keep an open and positive mindset to everything” which sounds nice, but is so wishy-washy it is almost meaningless.

          2. ” A legal secretary”- well, it’s those ambulance-chasing lawyers who jumped on the ‘uman rights bandwagon who started this nonsense in the first place.

          4. “That’s what this guy is [the kitten.] He is just a reminder that where you start out and where you end, you really don’t have any control over. You just gotta roll with the punches and keep an open and positive mindset to everything.”

            That does seem to be the mindset these days. It looks like the Project, whatever the Project is, whoever is running it, is succeeding.

  113. DT Story

    Labour leadership:

    Rebecca Long-Bailey says politics comes before her Catholic faith as she tries to extinguish abortion row

    Why pretend to be a Roman Catholic if you believe that abortion is not murder of the unborn child? You can’t have it both ways.

    I posted earlier that Blair also put the Labour Party ahead of his religious belief and said that he would vote for it if that was the party line.

    Are all Labour Party members who aspire to high political office sheer hypocrites?

    I am not a Roman Catholic but my wife is and her views on some matters is different from mine and I respect her right to her views. Also I do not agree with Jacob Rees Mogg on many things but I do believe that he is sincere in his Roman Catholicism and I do not think it is right for him to be pilloried and told he is not fit to hold office because he adheres to the tenets of a religion that has formed the ethical foundations and laws of the civilised world.

    1. As I explained to a couple of blow-ins to our village, our C12 parish church was catholic for almost five centuries before it was anglicised.

      They are intending to put a kitchenette and bog beneath the tower in order that their clique can meet up and be independent of the nearby village hall which has both toilets and catering facilities. Church events include a Jazz night and not a lot else. They can hardly hold Bingo nights or Pop-Up Quiz and Beer nights. These fit perfectly with our existing village hall.

  114. Saturdays letters include this offering:

    SIR – On my 75th birthday my 11-year-old grandson gave me a flat dish he had made at school. On it was inscribed: “Grandad’s toast”. I think he intended the conventional – rather than the slang – meaning of the word.
    Huw Wynne-Griffith

    I have read this story before on NTTL within the past few months but can’t remember who wrote it. Either Mr WG is one of us or, quite possibly the story may belong in the Apocrypha.

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