Tuesday 11 June: Europe’s complacent elites need to start listening to their voters

Posted on by Geoff Graham

An unofficial place to discuss the Telegraph letters, established when the DT website turned off its commenting facility (now reinstated, but we prefer ours),
Intelligent, polite, good-humoured debate is welcome, whether on or off topic. Differing opinions are encouraged, but rudeness or personal attacks on other posters will not be tolerated. Posts which – in the opinion of the moderators – make this a less than cordial environment, are likely to be removed, without prior warning.  Persistent offenders will be banned.

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

808 thoughts on “Tuesday 11 June: Europe’s complacent elites need to start listening to their voters”

      2. Without a doubt you were the first, D-Cup. "Sort by Oldest" is clear on that.👍🏻

  2. Good morrow Gentlefolk, today’s (recycled) Story
    Clever Monkey

    A guy walks into a bar with his pet monkey. He orders a drink and while he`s drinking, the monkey starts jumping all over the place. The monkey grabs some olives off the bar and eats them, then grabs some sliced limes and eats them, then jumps up on the pool table, grabs the cue ball, sticks it in his mouth and swallows it whole.

    The barman screams at the guy, "Did you see what your monkey just did?"

    The guy says, "No, what?"

    "He just ate the cue ball off my pool table – whole!" says the bartender.

    "Yeah, that doesn`t surprise me," replies the patron. "He eats everything in sight, the little twerp. I`ll pay for the cue ball and stuff."
    He finishes his drink, pays his bill, and leaves. Two weeks later he`s in the bar again, and he has his monkey with him. He orders a drink and the monkey starts running around the bar again.

    While the man is drinking, the monkey finds a maraschino cherry on the bar. He grabs it, sticks it up his butt, pulls it out, and eats it.

    The barman is disgusted. "Did you see what your monkey did now?"

    "Now what?" asks the patron.

    "Well, he stuck a maraschino cherry up his butt, then pulled it out and ate it!" says the barman.

    "Yeah, that doesn`t surprise me," replies the patron. "He still eats everything in sight, but ever since he ate that damn cue ball, he measures everything first!"

    2. I wonder what he wrote before the DT Letters Ed amended it to be more to his liking?

      1. The text of my letter in the DT was posted yesterday on the forum. The letters eitor

        Britain is always out of step with the rest of Europe.

        And now that the elections have shown that most EU countries are moving firmly to the right the British will vote for a party of the Left which wants to get back into the EU.

        So when UK is back in the EU we shall once again be out of step with everybody else!

        The DT seldom lets what one writes stand as sent – as Grizzly will confirm..

        Here is what the DT published:

        SIR – Britain is always out of step with the rest of Europe. The elections have shown that EU countries are moving to the Right; the British, meanwhile, are about to vote for a government of the Left that seeks closer ties with the EU.

        Once this has been achieved, we shall discover that we are – yet again – out of step with everybody else.

  6. Europe’s complacent elites need to start listening to their voters

    Listening to voters, that would make them far right populists, wouldn't it
    Cameron let the cat out of the bag for what they think of the public, knuckle dragging closet racists, wasn't it.

        1. Are you eating dust all the days of your life, though? Is the offspring of the woman striking your head and you his heel?

    2. I still find it astonishing that they use "populist" as a term of abuse. What do they think democracy is? Most of them seem to think it's rule by Those Who Know Better.

      1. Peter M May writes from Southampton, Western Oz:

        “Sir – The rise of populism and demagoguery should have us all frightened. The lessons of history need to be remembered.”

        The way I see it, “history” shows us demagoguery is indeed dangerous: but we don’t have this here – what we have is politicians refusing to respond to voters’ repeated concerns about immigration and Wokeism. I don’t see any particular parallels with 1930s Germany and am getting fed up with such inferences by people who should know better, and other idiots. Of course, I may be wrong.

  7. Good morning, unsurprisingly another wet start in Co Antrim. I'm thinking of building an ark.

      2. Great Financial Crisis (2008)
        When they give it a name like that, you just know that there’s a bigger one round the corner!

  11. Ian O’Doherty
    Sinn Fein’s immigration stance has blown up in its face
    10 June 2024, 11:45am

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/GettyImages-2063146039.jpg

    It’s been three days since Ireland went to the ballot box to decide the local and European elections and, much to consternation of pretty much everyone, we’re still waiting for the final results. The exit polls though show a remarkable collapse in support for Sinn Fein.

    This has been a rancorous and remarkably bad-tempered campaign. The rise in popularity in the polls of supposedly anti-immigrant parties such as Irish Freedom and Ireland First (neither of which even existed when we had the last local, European and general elections) had seemed to indicate that this new right-wing movement was enjoying a surge in popularity.

    As we see from the exit polls, this might not necessarily be entirely the case, with neither party doing particularly well so far. The Irish are fundamentally conservative with a small ‘c’ and they tend to avoid changing their vote to what they may worry is an extremist party. But there has been an undoubted shift to more anti-immigrant points of view.

    There is a huge anger and sense of despair, even a feeling of abandonment, in Ireland at the moment. People have been leaving the country in levels similar to the 1980s, when the Irish economy was in the tank, there was an ever-present threat of nuclear war and the only sensible option for many people was to ‘bug out’ to Australia.

    Under such circumstances, Sinn Fein had, for a time, been lording it in the polls, reaching at one point a 40 per cent approval rating. Sinn Finn forming a government, which a generation ago would have been unthinkable, seemed a viable proposition.

    Sinn Fein’s rise came after the catastrophic economic crash of 2008, when the needlessly punitive limits placed on the government sentenced every Irish taxpayer to an estimated 40 years of inherited debt.

    The anger, as you can imagine, was palpable. In a country which had become so prosperous, cash machines suddenly stopped operating and the Taoiseach at the time, Enda Kenny, solemnly warned that the government was considering the previously unheard idea of deploying soldiers outside banks.

    The scars of those dark days of ‘the Crash’ remain with many, if not all, Irish people.

    Sinn Fein, to their credit, were more adept than other left-wing parties – who just blamed everything on capitalism – at harnessing the justified anger of so many Irish people. This was particularly the case for those in their 20s and 30s who now know that they will never be able to buy their own home.

    Sinn Fein’s campaign mantra for the last few years been as simple and concise as all such slogans should be: ‘Time for Change’. That resonated with many young voters, particularly those born after the Good Friday Agreement, who simply saw Sinn Fein as the party who would give them free houses.

    Yet from their highest polling of 40 per cent, Sunday night’s final tally showed them trailing in at a dismal 12 per cent, and they have been virtually wiped out in the local election results.

    The reason?

    Well, Mary Lou McDonald, leader of Sinn Fein essentially adopted an open borders policy which would allow mass immigration into Ireland.

    Mary Lou McDonald’s attempts to become respectable with the overwhelmingly liberal and middle-class Dublin mediocracy quite simply blew up in her face, as rising non-EU immigration has come to dominate the political agenda.

    But she’s not the only victim of this electoral splatter.

    Ireland’s national broadcaster, RTE, faced remarkable public outrage when it refused to platform the European election candidates Ciaran Mullooly or Niall Boylan on their live TV debates. Both candidates are well known broadcasters in Ireland, with both also standing for a new right-wing party, Independent Ireland.(Interestingly, Mullooly recently left RTE in acrimonious circumstances, fuelling the conspiracy theories about an apparent RTE bias.)

    Now, at the time of writing, it looks like both Mullooly and Boylan will be booking their flights to Europe while Mary Lou McDonald and the rest of her party look on the smouldering wreckage of their disastrous campaign.

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

    Vaucluse Vanguard
    18 hours ago
    Wouldn’t be the first time something a Sinn Fein member had constructed accidentally blew up in their face.

    Fanny Craddock
    18 hours ago
    So everywhere is voting against third world immigration, who would have thought?

    Sunny Smith Fanny Craddock
    15 hours ago
    Well not the Tories, Labour, Lib Dems, the Greens, SNP, the BBC, Home Office, Channel 4, Sky, academia, and so on and so on.

  12. Good morning all,

    Sun before seven rain after eleven .. brilliant sunshine just now , blue sky 9c.

    Well done Rastus for a good letter in the DT.

    I also liked this comment re DT letters.

    SO

    Simon Olley
    11 MIN AGO
    Everyone celebrates multiculturalism until they come face-to-face with a machete.

    1. Old American saying: a conservative is a liberal who has just been mugged; a liberal is a conservative who has just been arrested.

        1. I read the report; the poor lad who was murdered was from Anguilla and over for cataract surgery. Aged 19. The boys that did the murdering – there must be something wrong with them; and usually that means horrific upbringings. But again, I may be wrong.

  13. Good morning, chums, and thank you Geoff for today's NoTTLe page.

    Wordle 1,088 5/6

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  14. Farage is more English nationalist than patriot. Charles Moore. 11 June 2024.

    Mr Farage, on other hand, is more of an English nationalist than a patriotic Brit. In consequence, he raises no objections to a united Ireland and has expressed some sympathy with the Sinn Fein president, Mary Lou McDonald. He says he understands the “emotions behind” Scottish nationalism. He is always inclined to make apologies for Putin, whom he once described as the politician he most admired. He has a bit of a yen for the continental nationalist politics of the sort described above. If I had to find a single word for his politics, I would say they are a bit unBritish.

    A Globalist speaks.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/06/10/nigel-farage-reform-party-uk-general-election/

    1. EXPOSED: Civil servants call for 'VIOLENCE' and 'ARREST' of Nigel Farage branding Reform 'EXTREMIST'
      Home Office demands arrest of Farage, or a physical attack.

      Charming.

      1. .. according to Steven Edginton of The Telegraph, the Home Office is counting on a Sir Keir victory to complete Tony Blair's masterplan.. and doesn't want another brexit messing things up.

    2. EXPOSED: Civil servants call for 'VIOLENCE' and 'ARREST' of Nigel Farage branding Reform 'EXTREMIST'
      Home Office demands arrest of Farage, or a physical attack.

      Charming.

    3. Morning AS. Moore is one of the worst. He dresses ever so slightly to the right on some things but is establishment through and through. His smugness is obvious but here his sheer nastiness and mendacity in effectively calling Farage a fascist is deeply unpleasant.

  15. The Euro-'elite' needs to start listening to their electorate? Of course they should, but we all know that they won't, don't we. Instead, they'll carry on importing a new electorate and attacking voter's freedom. Expect opposition parties in France and Germany to be the subject of lawfare and proscribed as 'far right' extremists.

    1. I find the desperation to import the alien savage truly bonkers. It is an act of genocide. Does the state really need 30 million as a client base just to justify it's continued, pointless existence.

    2. "The Euro-'elite' needs to start listening to their electorate?"

      I don't think they are elected are they, so why listen?

  16. 388391+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Tuesday 11 June: Europe’s complacent elites need to start listening to their voters

    The United Kingdom has no worries in that department, individual politico's or as a group their actions matter little as it is, up until today, the party title that is the vote magnet.

    What is embedded in the majority voters minds these past thirty plus years is "yer gotta vote tory to keep out labour" regardless of consequence.

    The proof of this political pudding is, without this continuing voting pattern we would never, as a nation, have got to where we are today.

    1. That's been the slogan. I wonder if a vote for the Lib Dems would be described as a vote for Labour?

  17. Two miles above ground: Donn Delson’s aerial photographs – in pictures

    At 75 years young, Donn Delson specialises in large-scale, often abstract aerial images shot from ‘doors off’ helicopters at heights up to 4,000 metres (12,000ft). Strapped into a doorless helicopter over two miles above ground, Delson has spent more than 300 hours watching the world from a bird’s eye view

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/2b2adf9cd8e07f498288e2a8b19be9ac1059a794/0_0_2700_1620/master/2700.jpg?width=980&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=38b5d1cbe5892e12885f36710d4b6816
    San Francisco & Oakland

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/ee419d2557173b36c83f738666720c6d3d6c3cd8/0_0_3600_2400/master/3600.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=6dcf9d6af09f6540f2519ac972a24c64
    San Francisco

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/b47ee2c7486315641c00f2e9c9e378d081d783f0/0_0_2699_1800/master/2699.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=613fa3ff85459e2670154fd88a1abe44
    Near Palm Beach, Florida

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/dbd184c02a097008794e3b3b4dc9645778ede00f/0_0_1920_1280/master/1920.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=1567dbd62429c39751fff0cb960ce6cc
    The City, London

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/3701a357267d9cae51ee525307d9d75336fa590a/0_0_1920_1280/master/1920.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=8c18166bff54855e6dd51ff788b3ef59
    Piccadilly Circus

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/b601c1c9b9eb067c5415f9d7c952b63605121e13/0_0_1920_1280/master/1920.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=0e74f40bd90096dc6ccf250386392f3b
    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/06103e1d2f6779c9f697b8f152eae2a11f15077c/0_0_1920_1280/master/1920.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=2632adb1dc343f714731abaa1f47f59e
    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/826a7e00a9e90ef2344d6e2998af45f03ad367c8/0_0_1920_1280/master/1920.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=5b01dd70f70b05e1203211afb30e3d33
    Dead Sea, Israel

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/899270c59fd8778c1850331c08bcaa4243abe375/0_0_1800_1200/master/1800.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=bef1c8ddc6ed94fe03fe747ed20d64bc
    Negev Desert, Israel

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/c63f4ac154af7c6f839f109a8b84ea76250ae9a4/0_0_1920_1281/master/1920.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=ba016aefbf051972ad2acecdd31616f8
    Tokyo

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/47b6dc0938606786a050b240338f5ccd42b92674/0_0_2700_1800/master/2700.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=040d843d8963744afc77a063c6bbda08
    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/4a0ecc290cee9577fd2fb51e78f50c1f44e67d2a/0_0_1920_1280/master/1920.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=10502eeb1f72ae62a0055eaf0312d04e
    Kyoto

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/01fe152cf049b5928ab38b14b9f1ce2a798237ee/0_0_2700_2025/master/2700.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=9e78b909982b4fff110683897ade50d5
    Parasole, Puglia

        1. I do wish people would not use metric at all; it's meaningless for me (and I can cope with non-decimal bases).

      2. Original article says "4,000 metres" which does approximate to 12,000' or roughly 2 miles!

        2. Very rough indeed. 12,000' is 3657.6m almost 10% out. 2 miles is 10,560' or 3219m, almost 20% out.

  18. The good news just never stops…

    Gold Telegraph ⚡
    @GoldTelegraph_
    BREAKING NEWS
    GOLDMAN SACHS IS WARNING THAT TAX RISES ARE INEVITABLE UNDER THE NEXT GOVERNMENT IN THE UK BECAUSE OF HEAVY LOSSES CREATED BY THE BANK OF ENGLAND’S MONEY PRINTING SCHEME
    Welcome to Hollywood.
    12:54 AM · Jun 11, 2024

    —
    Meanwhile reform of the world reserve currency system is moving forward slowly…the end to this madness is in sight.

    1. I've been predicting the demise of the dollar for more than twenty years.

  19. Good morning, all. Dry at present – rained overnight – more on its way. Chilly.

  20. Two interesting facts:

    1. After the coming election a significant share of the Con survivors will be of darker hue (Patel, Braverman, Badenoch).

    2. A helluva lot of recent Labour literature is dominated by pictures of white workers and families.

    1. When you look at the Commons it is hilariously, disproportionately infested with foreigners.

      1. That's why I say that candidates must have at least one British Grandparent and may prove it with Birth Certificates.

      2. Not hideously white … like the BBC (Greg Dyke) and countryside walks then ..

      3. PM: Coloured.
        Welsh First Minister: Coloured
        Scots First Minister: Coloured
        Irish PM is, or was, coloured.

  21. I'm surprised how few people understand the EU. It is designed, from the ground up to exclude the voter. It's set up so that the parliament has absolutely no power whatsoever and to centralise power with the commissars. It doesn't matter what the political situation or public will.

    It will continue rolling on useless dogmatic ideology that local administrations will be forced to implement – and the EU knows this. The only way to change that abusive, authoritarian relationship is to leave the damned thing – and then have to fight the administration and Left at every step.

      1. Yep, designed that way from it's origin. The idea was – if you want to believe that – noble: to prevent war that had riven Europe. The reality was far simpler: keep power away from the people and in the hands of the bureaucrats.

    2. At a Wigmore Hall dinner for Friends members, just before the EU referendum, I found myself sitting next to a man who’d studied history at Oxford under AJP Taylor. In the course of the conversation he dropped in, “Of course the EU was never designed to be democratic”. I think I was the only person at our table who noticed. The rest were such determined remainers, they seemed not to hear.

    1. Is that the park at the back of where the old Tyrell & Green's building used to be?

        1. Apparently it's the section of park behind the old Debenhams, adjoining Hoglands where the old T&G used to be.

    2. Hmmm…Ozbeg Teymuroglu…sounds as if he might come from the Welsh Marches…must ask Conway…

    3. A quarter of the population is foreign. They congregate together. The areas are horrible.

      This is why I drove the Warqueen to the train station in the morning. The council wants to get people out of cars (by shutting down the road network) yet this is the end result.

        1. Oh you railway station! Oh you Pullman Train!
          There's my reservation for my destination,
          Far beyond the western plains
          To see my home in Pasadena.
          Home where grass is greener
          Where honeybees hum melodies
          And orange trees scent the breeze.
          I'm gonna see a home-sweet-homer
          And there I'll settle down
          Beneath the palms
          In someone's arms
          In Pasadena town.

          https://www.google.com/search?q=Oh+you+railway+station+ph+you+Pulman+train.+&sca_esv=ee8b71f1efd28755&ei=7xBoZrWzLq6lkdUP-9C30AQ&ved=0ahUKEwj15rnjltOGAxWuUqQEHXvoDUoQ4dUDCBA&oq=Oh+you+railway+station+ph+you+Pulman+train.+&gs_lp=Egxnd3Mtd2l6LXNlcnAiLE9oIHlvdSByYWlsd2F5IHN0YXRpb24gcGggeW91IFB1bG1hbiB0cmFpbi4gMgcQIRigARgKMgcQIRigARgKMgcQIRigARgKSJqEAVDjB1jYbXABeAGQAQCYAdgCoAHrFqoBBzAuNS42LjK4AQzIAQD4AQGYAg2gAsMVwgIKEAAYsAMY1gQYR8ICCBAAGIAEGKIEwgIKECEYoAEYwwQYCsICBBAhGBWYAwCIBgGQBgKSBwcxLjUuNS4yoAfBMQ&sclient=gws-wiz-serp#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:cb0bd3b9,vid:iDfhK7HAxPk,st:0

          1. I sang that in a piano bar in Los Angeles, which is only ten miles from Pasadena. The pianist had never heard of it!

    4. A quarter of the population is foreign. They congregate together. The areas are horrible.

      This is why I drove the Warqueen to the train station in the morning. The council wants to get people out of cars (by shutting down the road network) yet this is the end result.

    5. Why Sweden's high number of reported rapes might be a positive sign

      Statistics serve a vital purpose, but when taken at face value, they sometimes fail to tell the whole story. For example, countries that step up their efforts to prevent rape may see a rise in reported rapes rather than a decrease—but this is not necessarily bad. The key is to examine the cause of the increase.

      It may be that a new, broader definition of rape is enabling more sex-related crimes to be categorized as rape. It may be that types of rape that previously went untracked (such as male-on-male or rape between a groom and his betrothed) are now being counted. It may also be that the legal system is getting better at catching and punishing rapists and/or society is doing a better job of supporting rape victims, so those victims are more likely to come forward and report the rape in the first place.

      In each of these examples, the overall number of rapes will appear to rise statistically. However, the key to interpreting that statistical rise is to examine its real-world cause—which in some cases is an improvement in real-world policy regarding the definition of and systemic response to rape.

      Sweden's seemingly oversized rape rate is perhaps the best-known example of this scenario. During the years 2013-2017, Sweden averaged 64 reported rapes per 100,000 inhabitants—a rate that tied for the highest in Europe. However, when the data was examined, it became clear that Sweden's high numbers were fueled in large part by Sweden's broader definition of rape and more inclusive reporting rules compared to other European countries. When the data was recalculated using Germany's narrower guidelines, for example, Sweden's average reported rapes per 100,000 people fell from 64 to 15, a decrease of 76.56%.

      https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/rape-statistics-by-country

      I wish these people who love to use Sweden as a yardstick for the "worst" of … everything … would examine — and study —the facts first.

  23. Good morning all.
    A late start after a rather disturbed night but it's a bright and dry morning with a tad under 7°C on the Yard Thermometer.

    1. US-Linked Ukrainian NGO unveils an interesting "hit list" of foreign journos & politicos.. mostly American.

      The Ukrainians seemingly love to make lists of their "enemies." One of their most notorious of these is the infamous "kill list" put out by the Mirotvorets Center in Kiev. From that list several have already been murdered by Ukraine, including prominent Russian journalist Daria Dugina.

  25. SIR — Why is everyone saying “outside of ”? Don’t they know that in English we simply say “outside”? Americans say “outside of ” but we should not.

    Please will people who broadcast on television, radio or the internet set a better example?

    Joan Freeland
    Bristol

    You've clearly not been paying too much attention, Joanie, to the high degree of vapid and trite Americanisms that have now routinely supplanted standard English in every sphere of British communication. "Outside of" is as vacuous as "meet with" and many other abominations.

    It is abundantly clear that proper English has been discarded on television, especially the BBC, and in the mainstream press (Including, sadly, the Daily Telegraph, once the bastion of clear and correct English).; the knock-on effect is its now routine use by Joe and Jane Soap.

    I wouldn't bet against Americanese being taught, already, in British schools. Standards in everyday life are declining at a rate proportionate to the diminution of mankind's intelligence. I am persuaded that, at the rate human stupidity is increasing, amœbæ may soon be eligible for degree courses.

    1. It's a laziness brought about by illiteracy. It's the same reason people start a sentence with 'so' or 'I was doing'. They don't know how to write.

      I worked for a chap who's emails and documents were just a long unbroken stream of consciousness. Unreadable pap. 7 or 8 lines of one sentence. Tenses back to front. No punctuation except ellipses.

      That said, I'm pretty dreadful. At least I know I am!

      1. There was a move afoot, some years ago, to provide all snivel serpents with a copy of Sir Ernest Gowers' The Complete Plain Words in an attempt to curtail the endless streams of gobbledegook despoiling their official missives.

        I wonder what happened to that?

      2. There was a move afoot, some years ago, to provide all snivel serpents with a copy of Sir Ernest Gowers' The Complete Plain Words in an attempt to curtail the endless streams of gobbledegook despoiling their official missives.

        I wonder what happened to that?

      3. ‘Whose’ not ‘who’s’ – I apologise for my pedantry but the subject demanded it.

    3. way to go..
      let's do it.. and knock the ball out of the park..
      I'm all set.. good to go.

      (that's enough).

    4. way to go..
      let's do it.. and knock the ball out of the park..
      I'm all set.. good to go.

      (that's enough).

    6. I cringe at the low standard of spoken English in the media, especially television advertising. There are quite a few regular ads that need to be re-voiced by someone who can speak properly without, for instance, dropping a t and every soft g. Mornin'!

    7. There is no such thing as "proper English". English is in a constant state of evolution. At one time we sounded more like the Americans. At another Americans tried to speak like us. Now it is going toward American English again. It is the natural way of a living language. There is nothing "vapid" about American English. But there is plenty to be said for the English propensity to try and preserve a marvellous language in aspic and thereby kill it. Neither American English or American English is the right way and neither way is wrong but parochialism makes it so.

      1. I disagree entirely with that and I've explained why on numerous occasions. English used to be an evolving language, especially between the times of Chaucer and Kipling. It continued to improve through Shakespeare, Donne, Jonson, and Marlowe (among others) and reached a peak with Austen, the Brontës and Dickens.

        Since the turn of the 20th century though, it reversed its fortunes at an accelerating rate and it is now in a clear retrograde devolution. We are already well on the road back, at this rate of deterioration, towards a full return to primordial grunting.

        1. All languages are in continual evolution. New words are introduced, older words and expressions acquire nuances never before imagined. Compiling a tome of correct usage could be compared to taking a picture of the Clapham omnibus as it thunders by.

          1. "All languages are in continual evolution."

            No one denies this but many decry the bad use of English. Slovenly speech and grammar is excused – and usually by people who have a very good command of the language.

          3. "Compiling a tome of correct usage could be compared to taking a picture of the Clapham omnibus as it thunders by."

            Frankly a rather silly analogy. There is no one correct way but there are many that are incorrect. Grizzly is correct to say the language is going backwards because the bad habits are becoming more common. Those who dare to speak out about them receive the usual 'living language' taunt.

          4. It’s not a taunt. Long ago GH Vallins wrote ‘Usage is the supreme arbiter of the English Language.’
            Nowadays there are many more influences than in the 1950s. Music, TV, the internet to name but a few. Everyone’s speech and writing evolves because we all imitate the language which surrounds us.
            Those who speak out against new usage are eventually forced to rectify.
            Bad habits are becoming more common? Since when?
            Correct and incorrect are subjective concepts. More important in writing and speech is the communication of ideas, emotions, descriptions.

          5. "Correct and incorrect are subjective concepts."

            Jesus, what nonsense. Tenses, singularity and plurality, positive and negative – are these to be what anyone wants them to be'?

          6. I don’t think I would argue that grammar doesn’t matter. I think it is a most useful tool when writing.
            Good usage is the key. And usage changes. The language evolves and the way we speak now may not be the same as fifty years ago. But that doesn’t make it incorrect.

          7. To my mind, declining language is where usage causes meaning and/or precision to be lost. By that yardstick, modern English is certainly declining.

          8. It’s an analogy used by legal writers when trying to define the law. I thought it that it could also be applied to the concept of what you call correct and incorrect Language.

          9. You did not 'correct' me. You cannot 'correct' someone by uttering a clear falsehood that can easily be demolished by sensible intelligent discourse.

          12. That’s lovely, Grizz. I just don’t understand.
            This is, I know, a theme dear to your heart.
            Actually I too feel very strongly about the snobbery so often shown about American usage.
            I think I mentioned in another exchange of posts how when I was a kid recently arrived in England people tended to ridicule my Americanisms. Nevertheless some years later my contemporaries were eager to use these same words to demonstrate how modern they were. Even I cringed when at Uní they called girls ‘chicks’. Journalists even talked about getting a ‘raincheck’ Instead of postponing.
            I decided to always use Americanisms if I could. The British would eventually catch up with me. And indeed that is what is happening.

          13. All I see is more and more idiotic slang replacing good words that have stood the test of time. I’ll wager that Elizabethan chimney Sweeps and Victorian street urchins had a larger vocabulary than most ‘educated’ people of today possess. Crass innovations such as ‘text speak’ and ‘Rap music’ are the zeitgeist of today. That, coupled with a plummeting decline in educational standards clearly show that you are wrong in thinking that English is ‘evolving’, when the reality is that it is clear and blindingly obvious that it is deteriorating. Prior to 1965 the word ‘fuck’ had never been aired on radio or television. These days it is de rigueur to have it peppering every sentence uttered in every film and drama broadcast. Inarticulacy is, these days, lionised.

            On the topic of adverbs, it seems that our Yank friends have consigned them to history. When asked how they are, they invariably reply, “I’m good, real good.” To correctly use ‘well’ and ‘really’ would be beyond them.

          14. I think you would lose your bets.
            When I was very young until I was ten I lived except for the summer and autumn of 1959 in the Upper Midwest. Here one never heard a discouraging word. The worst my contemporaries ever uttered was ‘Heck’.
            Not so when in 1965 I arrived in London. Words from little children I had never heard in my life.
            And a few years later working as a builder I would hear your word used in all its grammatical forms. A cover of course of a limited vocabulary.
            My grandparents who hailed from the north of England and had lived in London for some years in the 1930s had always said Londoners spoke very badly.

      2. We should delight in the fact that we have a language spoken by so many people and cherish the differences.

      3. Goodness. I never thought I'd see a member of the Living Language Loony brigade on here.

        1. No. I simply do not believe in this silly snobbery the English have about the language. It is a looney attitude if anything is.

      4. I like to hear English well spoken. I have a ULCI in spoken English.as I wus taught proper.

  26. SIR — Why is everyone saying “outside of ”? Don’t they know that in English we simply say “outside”? Americans say “outside of ” but we should not.

    Please will people who broadcast on television, radio or the internet set a better example?

    Joan Freeland
    Bristol

    You've clearly not been paying too much attention, Joanie, to the high degree of vapid and trite Americanisms that have now routinely supplanted standard English in every sphere of British communication. "Outside of" is as vacuous as "meet with" and many other abominations.

    It is abundantly clear that proper English has been discarded on television, especially the BBC, and in the mainstream press (Including, sadly, the Daily Telegraph, once the bastion of clear and correct English).; the knock-on effect is its now routine use by Joe and Jane Soap.

    I wouldn't bet against Americanese being taught, already, in British schools. Standards in everyday life are declining at a rate proportionate to the diminution of mankind's intelligence. I am persuaded that, at the rate human stupidity is increasing, amœbæ may soon be eligible for degree courses.

  27. SIR — Why is everyone saying “outside of ”? Don’t they know that in English we simply say “outside”? Americans say “outside of ” but we should not.

    Please will people who broadcast on television, radio or the internet set a better example?

    Joan Freeland
    Bristol

    You've clearly not been paying too much attention, Joanie, to the high degree of vapid and trite Americanisms that have now routinely supplanted standard English in every sphere of British communication. "Outside of" is as vacuous as "meet with" and many other abominations.

    It is abundantly clear that proper English has been discarded on television, especially the BBC, and in the mainstream press (Including, sadly, the Daily Telegraph, once the bastion of clear and correct English).; the knock-on effect is its now routine use by Joe and Jane Soap.

    I wouldn't bet against Americanese being taught, already, in British schools. Standards in everyday life are declining at a rate proportionate to the diminution of mankind's intelligence. I am persuaded that, at the rate human stupidity is increasing, amœbæ may soon be eligible for degree courses.

    1. 388391+ up ticks,

      Morning TB,

      Lost, not taken away by force, but given away via the polling stations by fools.

    2. I remember our family dog used to sleep in the middle of the junction of our road.

  32. 388391+ up ticks,

    Tis not stretching the imagination to far to see where this could lead, with children running the guantlet from the womb on account of mass uncontrolled immigration / party controlled morally illegal immigration, and the parties introduction of foreign paedophiles, daily topped up at the Dover invasion beach.

    A child up for adoption could very well become a rarity on account of the need of them as blood milch cows, for the satisfaction of the progressive" society.

    Couldn't happen here , NOT MANY BENNY.

    https://x.com/LeilaniDowding/status/1800429838454722708

    https://x.com/LeilaniDowding/status/1800429838454722708

        1. Billy Connolly's parents were the first to smear their doorknobs with Vaseline.

    2. Low academic attainment due to broken homes, lower expectations (because standards are lowered to accommodate their failure), the promotion of diversity, putting the weak in roles in which they cannot cope.

      In the UK the family forms the bedrock of society. Black culture just doesn't have that. It has the tribe. As Western society is built upon the stronger system, the weakest one fails but has not been forced to adapt because welfare has stepped in to protect it.

      If you find successful black famillies it is because they have naturalised. You'll find two strong parents – a father and a mother who likely hold deeply Christian values.

    3. They actually look and behave as if they had just been introduced to civilization.
      But, to be fair, it is only a certain low class type of black that behaves this way.

  34. Labour’s deputy leader pledged that her party would “end the marketisation and privatisation of our education” in a clip that has emerged from 2018.

    That'll go down well in Islington.. and the civil service.

    1. She's a staggeringly stupid woman. Truly, utterly moronic.

      The market delivers far higher results at lower overall cost to society than the state sector ever can. I hate Labour. They're wrong in everything they say, do and think. It's a razor blade to the wrist of society that this gormless, stupid woman can get away with saying this sort of thing and she is not villifed across the media.

      However, she plays to the prejudices of her followers – themselves uneducated, cretinous, welfare dependent, spiteful, envious failures.

      1. I wish people on this site stopped beating about the bush and say what they mean..

  35. Why Keir Starmer’s wife is being kept off the campaign trail
    Labour MPs think the sassy, no-nonsense Lady Starmer could boost the popularity of her husband, but any request has fallen on deaf ears
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/06/10/why-lady-victoria-starmer-is-being-kept-off-the-trail/

    BTL

    Starmer would sell anyone and anything for political gain. I wonder if he would sacrifice his excellent and well-liked Jewish wife in order to gain more Muslin votes and Muslim support?

    1. Richard, good letter over in the DT. Well done getting something sensible in that playground for lamestream ideas.

  36. Not easy:
    Wordle 1,088 5/6

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    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

  37. Not easy:
    Wordle 1,088 5/6

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

      1. When Macron came to power he said there was no specifically French culture as culture was universal.

        Macron is the most dangerous sort of politician – intelligent but still an idiot who tries to do things!

        My Dutch father-in-law used to say there are four sorts of people in public life:

        i) The competent, intellligent and zealous;
        ii) The incompetent, stupid and zealous;
        iii) The competent, intelligent and lazy;
        iv) The incompetent, stupid and lazy.

        And by far the most deadly and dangerous are ii) The incompetent, stupid and zealous.

          1. Hang on, Raynor's got a Level 2 Health and Social Care NVQ and Lammy won a bag of tokens from Harvard. What could go wrong?

    3. Wonderfully said and so obvious to those with functioning grey matter.

      Where is the UK's Marine Le Pen?

      1. Hey Beatnik, we need folks that know about life at ground level- down in those freight yards and riding those box cars, Dude. No chance, your cosseted wannabe billionaires living high on the hog slurping from the trough know about life, Hombre.

        1. Hey, Dean. I see where you're coming from; you speak with straight tongue, Man. We need a lot more up-and-comers from the wrong side of the tracks and far fewer Boss Hogg's, Brother. Time that ol' wall at Eton met the wrecking ball, Dude.

      2. 388391+ up ticks,

        Morning G,
        The lab/lib/con coalition member/supporter/ voters, won't put a head above the parapet.

    4. Yes – she's right – but what has the UK government done with the freedom we voted for?

      1. Thanks to successive 'conservative' PMs and ministers, and snivel serpents, we didn't get a proper Brexit, just Brino.

        1. Just endless rows over "cake" and lockdown tyranny and jabs leading to excess deaths. A pox on the whole lot of them.

      2. Thery would take us back in for there own self interest, at the drop of a hat. The eu is an evil dictatorship.

  39. Gosh – it is unbelievably cold here. Stove going. Wearing a fleece. Still frozen….

    1. That's global warming for you.

      Maximum today predicted to be only16 C. in spite of the fact that the sun often appears from behind white, billowy clouds.

    6. I'm similar; Rayburn is well alight and I'm still wearing a fleece lined cardigan.

      1. Well done. Can't even be bothered to think of a joke for that. He/it just makes me feel ill and want to hasten to other posts about something else.

        1. What gays get up to in their own lives is their own business – but why do they have to force everyone else to celebrate it for a whole month?

          1. Quite honestly, I find "What gays get up to in their own lives" decidedly repulsive. It was one thing for their behaviour (in private) to be made legal, but we don't need to have it shoved in our faces everywhere we go. Are there still any tv soaps or dramas where alphabet/rainbow people and effnics aren't massively over-represented?

          2. Quite. It's their business and I don't want it shoved in our faces all the time. I don't know about soaps and dramas as I never watch them – I used to watch Eastenders until about 10 years ago but none of the others. These days I can hardly be bothered with telly at all. I'd gladly get rid of it and the licence, but for my OH who does watch sport, and of course he uses the telly itself to monitor all the bird box cameras.

            I grew up with no telly and my Mum refused one for her whole life. I find that now I'm nearly as old as she was, I get more and more like her.

          3. Quite. It's their business and I don't want it shoved in our faces all the time. I don't know about soaps and dramas as I never watch them – I used to watch Eastenders until about 10 years ago but none of the others. These days I can hardly be bothered with telly at all. I'd gladly get rid of it and the licence, but for my OH who does watch sport, and of course he uses the telly itself to monitor all the bird box cameras.

            I grew up with no telly and my Mum refused one for her whole life. I find that now I'm nearly as old as she was, I get more and more like her.

          4. What I really dislike is the “Story-hour” pushing of obscene phantasies to young children. And the dressing up in leather gear in the streets….. quite a lot i think is beyond the pale, really.

          5. Until the relatively recent splurge of filth from that quarter, most people weren’t really bothered, or offended, by the ‘gay’ people because they mostly just went about their lives without trying to draw attention to their ‘ways.’
            Many years ago, I often used to see an unusual man in the local pharmacy shop. This very tall, well-built man was dressed as a woman (and probably thought he was a woman), high heels, wig, make-up, and somewhat tarty clothing. But he didn’t seem to bother anyone, and nobody really batted an eyelid – at least, not after the initial surprise of seeing an obvious man dressed as a woman.
            The exhibitionist and provocative behaviour of ‘them’ these days has probably reignited many ordinary people’s negative feelings towards them.

          6. I had a trans customer at work ( JobCentre Adviser) who I got to know quite well – he had a definite chip on his shoulder. He had surgery to remove his Adam’s apple – I don’t know about the other bits – I didn’t ask. Some of the get-ups transpeople wear are decidedly not what normal women would wear.

          7. And I agree. I would vote for homosexual acts to be made illegal again…….not particularly because I want the buggers in prison, but because it would force them to shut up and be discreet.

          9. Pride month is just tolerated by the majority. By drawing attention to their sigh, boring sexuality it just puts people off. They ought to just stop or keep it to one day.

      2. Well done. Can't even be bothered to think of a joke for that. He/it just makes me feel ill and want to hasten to other posts about something else.

    2. The waster on the right is not remembered for a single moment. He's reviled for a lifetime. The cap on the left is remembered every day we get to complain about this stupid government and pointless election!!

    1. Religion of Peace, innit. The louder our “elites” shout it, the less I believe them…

      1. Problem is, its expanded way beyond the middle east now.
        And It seems to promote an easy way of life for those who travel.

  46. Morning all 🙂😊
    Had to go to QE2 WGC for another blood test.
    I only had one last week in St Albans.
    The different hostpital trusts in Hertfordshire no longer communicate with each other, leading to terrible difficulties for the patients.
    The place was packed and short staffed.

    The elderly couple I was chatting with, had travelled from Hemel Hempstead just for a single blood test. About 30 mile round trip.
    There is a large hospital in their own town.

    It's been pretty obvious for decades that 'elite's'
    aka the 'THEY'. Are perminately stone deaf and have no interest in the welfare of the general public. They don't give a shonet what goes on outside their comfortable environments.

  47. Our building manager has put the bloody “pride” (sic) flag out. I had hoped we’d got away with it, but no. There it is, in Reception.

    1. Never understood what there is to be proud of. Do they want other people to endorse their life choices?

      2. Yes, which infers that they are not really 100% secure about their life choices. They are accepted now but why do they go on and on. Do the rest of us have one month long hetero celebrations?

      1. Bit it’s a 👎 to Morrisons (and everyone else with the ridiculous flag). Refer also to Phizee’s post with the “one day”/“one month” meme.

      2. WHY do businesses feel the need to 'celebrate' this nonsense? Their customers' bedroom preferences are irrelevant to virtually every business.

        1. If normal people boycotted such stores they might start to realise that the majority aren't included.

          1. I certainly wouldn't choose to use them. Same with any that promote the evil of blm.

          2. I boycotted a local charity shop because they had ramadan cards during Lent. I still haven’t been back.

          4. We see relatively few slammers here (though more than we used to). The most visible is the Big Issue seller.

          5. We’ve recently seen a couple of dubious-looking black people (young adult males) wandering along the main street in our small village. I’m fairly sure they are not from the long-established, respectable, black family who live here. It’s a worrying trend.

    3. Given what it symbolises it would be entirely appropriate if you could show your respect by wiping your bottom on it.

  48. Also, i have just been for a gander round the Royal Courts of Justice. Didn’t have much time as it was on a whim and I was only supposed to be going to post some letters, so will be a bit more organised next time. Couldn’t obviously see the Steyn case though.

    1. The verdict will have been decided before Steyn even set foot in there today. I doubt proceedings will be fair. Guilty as charged m'Lud.

      1. Noooo, the approval of Azov has just moved them to the centre so all others are now off the scale to the right.

        1. I knew there was something funny about West country folk. They are almost as bad as people who live in East Anglia.

        2. Or one of the roads to dead slow and stop as the summer solstice approaches and assorted loonies congregate at Stonehenge.

    4. It would appear that Biden's Puppeteers are determined to poke the Bear into defensive action – leading to WWIII.

    1. It seems we're fighting a losing battle, Sue.

      Grunting has already replaced beautiful prose and swearing (I know, mea culpa) is already the currency of debate and has replaced reasoned intellectal discourse.

  51. Oh dear.

    Freedom claims from the party that locked the nation down; ruined small businesses; supported medical tyranny e.g. "vaccine" mandate and the threat of covid passports; incarcerated elderly people in 'care' homes where many died a lonely death as family and friends were excluded from their lives. And as the truth is revealing, all based on a scam of global proportions. And as for the vac…

    Add in the Tory support for the wholly tyrannical WHO and freedom within the Tory party is barely existing on starvation rations

    I predict that Starmer & Co will bring on another disaster before the people finally wake-up to the fact that the current political set-up is not geared up to work for the people.

    Manifestos, the publications where promises, pledges and the truth go to die.

    https://x.com/JuliaHB1/status/1800448897393029345

    2. Trouble is there was no clear space between any of the parties that gave us the covid tyranny for two years.

  52. The Warqueen had one of her brainwaves yesterday and looked at houses that no one wants. Specifically places which you can buy for a few pounds and have almost nothing except the amenities.

    Now, for us, we could all work remotely so all we really need is an internet connection. Even including fees she worked out we could buy them – and the house next door for about £8000.

    It's an idea we need to think about. Will talk to solicitor man about the real costs and if there's silly second taxes on it all.

    1. Unless you're selling your current house and moving in there will certainly be second home taxes.

          1. 3 months was enough for her. The living room we heated to 18'c – 5kw oil radiator on the wall. Was ok, heats about the place ok.

            But the hall remained at 9.8. Then at 5 we headed out to various places so turned it off. 2 hours later she's home with Junior in tow and the the living room is 12.9. The upstairs rad that the timer set to come on got the bedroom to 15. We got into bed and the window side was like an ice sheet. Not 'oh, this is a bit chilly' but like pulling ice over your self.

            Moving the bed didn't help so we changed ends (sides) and I woke up in the early hours with a numb arm.

            I'm pretty much resigned to making a loss on selling. It is my fault but I see no other choice. I'm annoyed with myself for not properly checking everything for what I now know I should have (water pressure, central heating, carpets, insulation, utilities, fuse box, bathroom (which looked ok until she pointed out that it was leaking).

            Nigh half a million went into here, a lot of our savings. Any excess from the deposit went into repairs and maintenance.

            Now it's fine – 20 in my office bit, 21 in the bedroom and in Junior's room where Mongo is but come Winter it's intolerable – even for me who went Fjord climbing in a t shirt while she bundled up like Mr Blobby.

          3. You're right – the fundamental problem is the heating – or lack of.

            We're currently weighing up a heat pump option but it's a question of installation costs – still £9000 including the grant. That's why people don't take the blighters.

            If that comes through we can invest in the insulation internally – a builder suggested that if we could heat the rooms then it makes sense to stop the heat getting out but it's not worth doing if we can't get some help with it.

            The living outside it is funny – we had a shed built and did all sorts of insulation with multiple layers of weatherproofing and it's warmer than the house – with no heating. Yes, there's a pile of comp kit in there (thus the weather proof) but still.

          4. And – as many people will tell you – they DON'T do what they are supposed to do.

          5. I did some maths (and I am bad at maths) that if we did nothing about the insulation after 10 years we'd be paying so much in electricity we could have paid for gas to come in.

            As a technology they sort of work, but they're not designed for heat on demand – which is what the UK needs. Our homes simply aren't designed for them.

            We're hoping to get some help with the pump. Heck if it all falls over there are electric boilers. If nothing else it buys time.

          6. Well, it’s up to you, of course. I’d tend to cut my losses. You are shovelling good money after bad for no guaranteed return.

          7. What heating system do you have? Ours is oil-fired. The core of the house is an old stone cottage but various bits added on means the system has 14 radiators and not all the house is warm at once. But we do have a wood burner too in the sitting room.

          8. I have read quite a bit about heat pumps and a recurrent theme is that they are very expensive to run unless your house has been designed specifically for them. That means underfloor heating and exceptional levels of insulation.

          9. I had internal insulation in my house (solid brick walls) on the external walls. Didn't cost a fortune and made a difference to the heat loss. Would suggest a log burner as well – one with a flat top, a fan and a back boiler.

          10. Sounds like you should indeed cut your losses. If the next/renovation place is uninhabitable, and there is space outside, put most furniture into storage and get a caravan for the duration of the works

          11. Cant' remember if it was in the Letters or elsewhere but these people had a cold North facing wall in their house so covered it in book shelves and filled it with books.
            Prior to doing that you could line it with polystyrene tiles.

    2. I thought that you already have a house that you dont want. I would hesitate to buy another that no one else wants. The vox pop may be trying to tell you something, however, I may have missed something..

    3. Checkout IHT whilst you're at it, wibbling? You may be worth more than you think, as I recently found out, just in time to take action.

  53. Good day all,

    I'm here a bit late today due to having a few things to deal with first. It's cool and showery at McPhee Towers (10℃ at 1240) with the wind in the North-West although the day started brightly enough despite the early morning chem-trails which I snapped at 0655.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/32dc32bcbeab1453173300c5676629e0ea73c8990c4e89e7b6f64c07db7e066b.png
    Anyway, this is far more interesting. A Doc Malik podcast with Dr Jerome Corsi who has written a book which will put to bed forever the argument over whether or not JFK was assassinated by the 'deep state'. The proof of a false narrative concerning Lee Harvey Oswald and the proof of the cover-up is undeniable. LBJ was probably in on it too. Apparently he and JFK loathed each other.

    Trigger warning: There are some gruesome photographs which are not for the faint-hearted or squeamish.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b59d1c531593b8c91bc309c725ae428562c5cbe31607496973916021c18cfff6.png https://substack.com/home/p…

    1. Something I read few months ago linked JFK's murder to an elephant-hunting guy but I can't remember the details.

        1. no – an American whose name escapes me now. The story sounded plausible and I believe LBJ was involved.

          1. I think it's Netflix, Ndovu, ages since I watched it – either a film or a short series, quite detailed. Yes indeed seemed like Reps involved. Have you seen RFKJr…respect, really like the guy.

  54. Good afternoon friends,

    Well the weather outside is frightful- well not quite but it is grumpy – but for the time being dry,

    I am having a good day and Fidget is practicing I think for the Edinburgh festival and is very entertaining.

    I am avoiding as much of the election stuff as psssble it appears to have no relevance to anything I believe in or want to see happen.

    1. Yoohoo!

      If you're feeling up to it, the washerwoman is hoping to stop in to see you later today when she goes to Wootton Basset. Hear ye! Hear ye! She's taking a belt of mine to Timpson's to make it two notches tighter.

  57. Oh the irony! Oh the fucking irony!

    I still get emails from The Consumers' Association (publishers of Which? magazine) asking me to vote on this, that and t'other. Today's plea was for me to give support for the installation of a 'Fraud Minister'.

    They state that since Fraud is now the most common crime in the UK, a dedicated governmental position of Fraud Minister will go a long way to deal with this modern-day scourge.

    I'm tempted to ask them how they would go about appointing a Fraud Minister from among the most corrupt cartel of chancers the country has ever suffered being governed by.

    Poachers elected as gamekeepers or what? Or is it just a Fraudian slip?

          5. He was a good painter but his famous 'portraits' were really no more than studio nudes. The ones of his daughter were downright creepy.

          6. I pinned up one of his "Benefit supervisor" up in the canteen at work (Jobcentre/benefits office) and it was torn down as being pornographic! His model did indeed work for the DWP or its predecessor.

          7. A friend is responsible for art in a big building occupied by a US multinational company. She can’t even put up Bridget Riley prints, as the colours (black/white) would apparently constitute a racist micro-aggression and might trigger people…

    2. They are all frauds so the Minister would be able to lead them all to new frauds.

    3. The leftie CA are just trouble makers and are very select in whst they test.

    3. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/06/11/vegan-activists-vandalise-portrait-of-king/

      A couple of BTLs under the DT account of the event

      Julia Kawecki

      Send them to work in an abattoir for a week and promise to repeat that if they are ever caught again causing any criminal damage. That should sort them out.

      Percival Wrattstrangler

      I would have more respect for the Vegan Vandals if they had smeared excrement on the walls of a Muslim halal abattoir and clipped the tip off a mosque's minaret.

  59. And moving on from half a giraffe….

    "Catapult shots ‘as heavy as a panda’ found from 1266 castle siege" (The Grimes)

  60. Classic rant here from Dr Vernon Coleman.

    https://mail.google.com/mail/u/1/#inbox/FMfcgzQVwxCxvdclVrKpSnSQZgQPRsNq

    By Dr. Vernon Coleman

    Hello, it’s June 2024. Welcome to video 337.

    The covid conspiracy is beginning to unravel. Researchers from the Netherlands analysed data from 47 Western countries and discovered that there had been more than three million excess deaths since 2020. Gosh, they’ve begun to notice – though I think their figures are still far too low. Writers in a British Medical Journal offshoot called BMJ Public Health have asked governments to investigate possible vaccine harms. They say that excess mortality has remained high in the Western world for three consecutive years and they note that this has happened despite the implementation of covid-19 containment measures and covid-19 vaccines. `This is unprecedented,’ they say, `and raises serious concerns. Government leaders and policymakers need to thoroughly investigate underlying causes of persistent excess mortality and evaluate their health crisis policies.’ I’ll forgive them the split infinitive because this is vital stuff.

    1. The underlying causes are Bill Gates, Klause Schwab, Tony B lair and Brown Envelopes.

      1. Bill Gates funds 10% of WHO. WHO advocates his vaccines. Right little merry go round of gladhanders, methinks. Whilst being lauded for doing good. Vom.

        Gates also 'donates' to the Telegraph. Why would a bona fide, upstanding citizen do that? So yes, for all we know, the Telegraph might be only publishing sympathetic stats (to Gates).

    2. I saw that last week, but didn't get around to passing it on.
      Well done.
      Everyone should see that.

    4. And it's only classed as a death by vaccine if it occurs two weeks after the vaccine is given (the theory being that it takes two weeks for the vaccine to kick in, or some such). They don't ever mention that. Now, I had the vaccine and was struck by how ill it made me within a few hours. I remember thinking, 'someone frail might not survive this'. So yes, I suspect it is a lot more than three million, too. Death by other causes would have been recorded for them.

      1. I had two AZ jabs but had no noticeable side effects at all so I’ve been lucky. what I’ve learned since has put me off ever having any more jabs for anything. I’ve had very many for travel, which are nearing their expiry dates, but too bad.

        1. Against my better judgement, I had two AZ jabs, on the basis that vaccine passports seemed inevitable. I developed a problem with my right hand. Similar to Guillame-Barré syndrome, but thankfully wore off after a few months. Hed we been allowed to sing in church (yeah, I know) I'd have had to step down as organist, since it's hard to play with a right hand that can't feel anything much.

          Since then, I've declined any boosters, flu jabs, or anything else.

          I know of one person who died "from Covid" – namely my ex's former husband. From what I know, he died not from Covid, but from being placed on a ventilator.

          Throughout lockdown, I continued to travel by public transport. It was good to have a train carriage to oneself, though iIt seemed to me that I was more likely to develop natural immunity if I ventured out among the 'great unwashed'.

          Finally, the week before last Christmas, I had a mild cough for a week. A church colleague emailed me to say that she had 'tested positive for Covid'. We were due to go carol singing at one of the local care homes, so it seemed prudent to do a lateral flow test. Quelle surprise! Positive, but negative by Christmas Eve. I think it detected the Common Cold…

          1. I had my first "common cold" at the end of April, after the train journey to Derbyshire which was standing room only. The first bug of any sort since January 2020. No testing then.

  61. From the DT, whowoouldathought it… Machete killer, 12, inspired by drill musician who rapped about ‘ripping through guts’.
    Drill rap, a vile sub culture allowed by those in thrall to diversity, but should be regarded and treated as a terrorist ideology.

    1. the two killers were white.. I'm surprised the MSN has plastered this all over. Then again.

    2. And yet say one word out of sync with the Hate Speech Rulebook and it's a fine for you. Meanwhile, these 'songs' are celebrated for their cultural vibrancy.

      1. We were walking somewhere at the weekend, can’t remember where now, somewhere beautiful in London oh yes it was Richmond! and a black couple had a big boom-box (or whatever they are called these days) and the “lyrics” I overheard blasting out into the peace and quiet of the day were all “nigger” this and “nigger” that and a little part of me died that even beautiful Richmond is infected by rude, anti-social people who know they are untouchable.

          1. Upon Thames. Normally i would be more specific, out of deference to the original Richmond, but i was in a hurry

    4. Shackle what is left of his miserable carcass in a dank cellar and leave it there to die in intense pain and abject agony.

    1. No mobile phones 50 years ago when we were married in August 1974.
      One of my BiLs came a cropper when was using his handheld movie camera after we had left the church for the official photos. He backed up to get everyone into the shots of the movie and backed into a old low wall around the boundary and disappeared from sight. Poor chap fell down into a growth of shrubbery. No harm done it just look very funny from our prospective.

  64. In the post today I received a letter from the NHS. telling me in no uncertain terms, before the end of June to register for the spring covid booster vaccination. All in Large very solid looking black print.
    It's in the bin.
    They really should get their act together.
    I had my previous doses of 'vaccine' on 6/02/21 and 1/05/21.
    Since then I suffered from afib until 26/07/23.
    It must have cost the NHS at least sixty thousands pounds in treatment expenses.
    Surely both myself and the NHS need to try to avoid any further damage and especially costs.
    I've probably saved them a lot of money.

    1. My OH was a fit tennis player. He had two doses of Phizer early in 2021 and before I could stop him, a booster later that year. After that his heart troubles began…..

      1. MB's myocardial infarction was a fortnight to the day after his first convid jab.

    2. I got my Covid-19 Booster Reminder letter yesterday and it, too, ended in the bin. Having been a Cell Biologist and Experimental Pathologist for almost 20 years I do not want any boosters and have several times told my local Surgery that I do not intend to take any. I live near Canterbury, but the letter was mailed from London N17. I give up.

    3. I see "THEY" are now pushing a "combined flu and covid" jab – apparently it's much more effective now that they've combined the two!! I'm sure they must be right! /sarc

      1. I didn’t add what also happened, shortly after my second covid jab I had a flu jab. Afib set hard in my system.

  66. I'm saving them money – I keep away from the surgery. I'm 76 next month and take no medication.

    2. Same here. Been asked ten times to go for booster. Did you read about the chap who never had the vax but GP record showed he'd had four? GP said he had no idea how or why….

        1. Something along those lines….I don’t trust the NHS much, sorry to say….and I think GPs have a lot to answer for, still not seeing patients as they should. My local practice is now a ‘business’ with GPs as Directors of a Limited Company, or so I’m told – they’ve even incorporated their Victorian stone-built property onto their company books.

  69. That's terrible.and some of them still try and deny the many problems it all caused.
    My two were Astra Zeneca.

    1. So were mine. It seems to have been more damaging for young people who got the blood clots etc.

    1. That, I would say, is another matter. But to criticise American English as such, as if it were unique in that is just plain silliness. Exactly the same charge could be leveled at British English.

  71. he NHS keep sending them and never from our GP. He knows we do not have these or flu. and was pleased when we told him during the scamdemic.. They are trying to bump off all the old people.

    1. My GP agreed with me when I told him that I will be not having boosters or anything else like it.

  72. 'One poll published on Sunday showed that 32 per cent of 18-34 year-olds voted for the RN in France'

    Interesting article in the Telegraph today, about how Europe's youth are increasingly voting for 'right' wing parties (of course, 'right' in MSM speak really translates as 'centre' in ordinary speak).

    Now that, to me, is a staggering statistic. So often, the older generation is verbally abused as being far-right, out of step with modern youth and unintelligent compared to their younger more educated, open-minded, urbane counterparts. When the youth are increasingly instep with the older generation's views. Five years ago, the French youth overwhelmingly tended to vote green, but not anymore. Their votes seemed to have switched to Le Pen's RN. This is amazing. Of course, the BBC and the majority MSM will still try to cosh the populace into believing that the older generation's views are out of date. Increasingly, it's the the BBC (with its staunchly middle-aged majority staff) and the majority of the MSM (again with a majority of older middle aged staff) who are wedded to views which are rapidly becoming seen as passe and ruinous amongst many of the younger generations. Greta does not speak for the majority of them.

      1. Portrait "designed"??? Call me old-fashioned, buy I'd have thought "painted" was nearer the mark.

        1. It does have a design, separately from the painting. He's good at capturing a likeness, but terrible at portrait design imo.

      2. Stupid people. It's like beating up your own grandad because you don't like your neighbours.

    2. "Creepy satanic portraits"?

      What are you smoking? I'd leave it alone if I were you.

      1. You know that BB2 is an accomplished – nay, distinguished – artist, don't you?

          1. You shut up! I grant you he can get a good likeness but the portrait's still creepy! Satanic red and paedophile symbol.

            I bought a lovely painting of Hamburg in a car boot sale at the weekend by a painter called Henry Brockmüller. Here's a similar one by him:
            https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/70473ec2b2aeaf34c05e9300146aa2b8295d49bc4d9602227930e890e69f5082.jpg He died in 2019 apparently.
            I have a lot of landscapes, but this is a completely different mood and I love it.

          3. Yes, except that he painted variations on the same painting for his entire career! Still, I don’t mind that because it means he’s instantly recognisable so his work will hold its value because ordinary people like it.

          4. Reminds me of the style of Charles Pears or Marin Marie. Both painted seascapes.

            Charles Pears founded the Royal Society of Marine Artists and ended his life in Cornwall. I have one of his works – an oil painting of St Mawes – hanging in my study..

            My father took up painting after he retired and submitted a couple of his pictures to the RSMA for their annual exhibition. He was surprised and delighted to hear that they had both been selected for the exhibition and he went to see them hung on the first day of the exhibition. Imagine his surprise and delight to discover that one of them had a red sticker on it – it had sold in the first half-hour.

          5. Seascapes are always popular, especially when painted by someone with a true love of the sea.

          6. Reminds me of the style of Charles Pears or Marin Marie. Both painted seascapes.

            Charles Pears founded the Royal Society of Marine Artists and ended his life in Cornwall. I have one of his works – an oil painting of St Mawes – hanging in my study..

            My father took up painting after he retired and submitted a couple of his pictures to the RSMA for their annual exhibition. He was surprised and delighted to hear that they had both been selected for the exhibition and he went to see them hung on the first day of the exhibition. Imagine his surprise and delight to discover that one of them had a red sticker on it – it had sold in the first half-hour.

          7. “You shut up!”?

            That command alone has left me ‘gobsmacked’ and speechless.

            I have to admit, though, that Brockmüller seascape is rather admirable.

          8. It’s lovely, isn’t it? Mine is very similar to this one.
            You can hear the command in a joking voice!

      1. I would be OK with that. The face of Charles could be cut out and re-framed in a smaller picture, as it is the only good part of the painting. Then kept in a dark cupboard.

  74. Is that Gordon Brown envelopes? AKA Daft Vader.
    There was never any real or satisfactory explanation of where all our gold ended up was there.

  75. Shocking. My worst fears have been met. When it all started after much research we smelt a rat. ( as we did for the flu jab). So refused all offers of tests and jabs , and it made life difficult for us. No one would listen to us at all. but then in the end we were right and they were wrong. Interesting for all the doctors Mrs N worked for in different parts of the county, not one doctor she knew took the flu jabs.

    1. I’ve never bothered with the flu jabs, and nor did he. But the propaganda got to me in 2020 and I did have one then. No more – not for anything.

      My friends still obediently go for their boosters – and then they say how rotten they feel afterwards…..

        1. And not just American ones, Ndovu. First time I read about it was black mothers in London refusing the MMR vaccine to be given to their babies, and how that would cause a tsunami of infections. RFKJr believes the vaccines are harmful, and that the minimising of infections is due to improved living standards, also says the mercury in vaccines is harmful. I’m no medic, plus I’m old – but if I were in the position of being a young mother, I’d be trying to find out more info. I have stopped having the Covid vaccine after three doses which made me not want to repeat the experience. Have now been texted 10 times by surgery asking me to go yet again (no chance).

          1. I think back to my childhood – I had the smallpox jab, and probably the diptheria one. I went for the polio one when I was seven or eight. I reacted to the TB test so didn't have that one. I don't remember having any others – instead I had whooping cough, measles, ear aches, tonsils out, appendix out; chicken pox at 12 and mumps at 25. I survived them all.

            My elder son was chased round the surgery by an incompetent nurse trying to give him the measles one. My younger son had a strange reaction to the first dtp one at four months old but stupidly I let him have the rest – but he survived.

          2. Me2 🙂 I had one thing after another, living conditions not great post-war so I think RFKJr possibly onto something. I had the same ops as you, mumps earlier not in 20s. I think mumps are dangerous for adult men, risk of sterility? Also had shingles, that’s nasty. Funny picture with incompetent nurse but not surprising – Better Half has to have blood test now and again and they’re generally poor at getting that no matter the amount of water he drinks. Good to know son survived! We live and learn 🙂

          3. Mumps was very painful and nasty – my three year old and three month old both got it too. It left me severely depressed for a long time.

            Shingles I had five years ago – very painful but I didn't feel ill at all. Took more paracetamol that week than I would in years….. also had the anti viral five a day tablets which are supposed to stop you getting the post-herpetic neuralgia – my aunt had that for the rest of her life so I was glad to avoid it. I haven't seen a GP since then for myself.

          4. I do recall being in bed in a darkened room for what seemed a long time…I’m so sorry to read of your depression, it seems to be more understood today or at least medicalised – plus I have a friend in Talking Therapy, not too sure about that, I can understand the initial lift from talking about it but wonder if repeating it weekly doesn’t re-inforce it…but what do I know. There seems to be medication for every darned thing now – Better Half is type 2, recently discovered he was on 13 different medications, that’s cut back now to around seven following my alarm. I’m afraid I have no faith in GPs now, or the NHS generally. Stay well, Ndovu 🙂

          5. You too, KJ.

            I eventually realised, as the depression slowly lifted after a year or so, that I wasn’t a miserable person, but it certainly cast a heavy shadow. That was 50 years ago and I’ve not experienced anything similar since. I had no medication for it, but people tend to get hooked for life on anti-depressants, so I’m glad I didn’t.

          6. Very pleased to read you didn’t go down the tab route, Ndovu – it’s big business and medics facilitate it because it’s easiest option. Mind, I know someone alcoholic and replaced that with gym – sounds like hard work to me 🙂 All the best, Kate.

          7. Thankyou – I’m quite averse to medications of any sort, though I have had a couple of bouts of breast cancer and was glad to come through those. I had oestrogen suppressant tablets for five or six years each time following the surgery, but escaped chemo.

          8. Very glad to read you came through your bouts, and also swerving chemo which seems very debilitating. So far I’ve escaped it but I know a number who haven’t. In men, prostate cancer numbers seem to be on the rise. I wonder at the causes – do the numbers seem higher due to population numbers, lifestyle/diet (little to no exercise/processed foods), contraceptive pill – many women have taken and continue to take. Add in that we’re living longer, more chance for cell replication to go awry.

          9. Husband has prostate cancer but so far it seems to have been kept at bay by a three-monthly hormone jab, which has had the side-effect of producing hair-growth on his bald patch…. he was always active and sporty so I don’t think lack of exercise was a factor there.

          10. Mine too, and a number of others I know. So far, keeping tabs on tests. Hair growth interesting, I’ve heard of women facial hair too. Something’s causing this rise in numbers, eventually the truth will out.

  76. Bill Gates funds 10% of WHO. WHO advocates his vaccines. Right little merry go round of gladhanders, methinks. Whilst being lauded for doing good. Vom.

    Gates also 'donates' to the Telegraph. Why would a bona fide, upstanding citizen do that? So yes, for all we know, the Telegraph might be only publishing sympathetic stats (to Gates).

  77. No reminders this time round – and I now officially qualify for this latest shot. Last two times the local vax centre rang and I told them where to go (in the politest of terms) so maybe they have now got the message. I know the weather this June has been diabolical but don't think it qualifies as a common cold/flu risk time.
    As it happens my GP surgery (from a doctor I have never ever seen) just sent me a couple of blood forms for cholesterol and diabetes and requested some blood pressure readings. It seems ages since my blood pressure was taken by a nice smiling nurse, now you either use their automatic machine or your own meter. As for the jabs, my mild AFIB started after my two AZ shots in 2021, that will be reviewed in a couple of months. But rejoice, I am living and seem to be in excellent health.

    1. I had three very nice old friends with underlying health issues, who all died very soon after Covid started. I cannot be sure if they had any jabs.
      But I would imagine very likely.
      It’s not the sort of questions one asks at a funeral.

      1. More than three in my case. As you say you will never know and nobody will admit it. First case was a cousin who suddenly collapsed from a heart attack soon after the first batch of vaxes started. Then a chap at church, healthy and my age, a sudden stroke, and a couple of other stroke victims. Know nobody who died of covid.

    2. I prefer to do my own BP checks.
      I have the white coat syndrome in spades.
      I react as if I've been sent to the headmaster's study.

      1. When I went for my heart checks last summer on the second appointment I thought it was just going to be a chat with the consultant to discuss the echogram I had had the day before. Oh no, I was wired up for ECG, auto blood pressure machine, oxygen level and everything else. When the consultant came in a bit later he commented that my blood pressure was 180/90 or something, rather higher than it had been reported by the surgery, which happened to be my readings. Well I said, if you suddenly attach all these things to me what do you expect! Thankfully when a bit later he sounded my heart he gave me the thumbs up, the old ticker was doing fine thankyou.

  78. Another excellent substack: Aayan Hirsi Ali aka Mrs Niall Ferguson. Ferguson is the favourite historian of billionaires, biographer of the evil bastard Kissinger and one-time Davos attendee. No podcasts (yet) but very good reads. Aayan is very strong on the threat of Islam being an ex-Muslim herself. In this one she refers to Yuri Bezmenov so maybe in the Ferguson household there's a bit of a change underway, an awakening even.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8a3a23dc603fc87cf92859e72f3031645595a4568c4ffa903aad8040202bf1d9.png

    https://substack.com/home/post/p-145409347

    1. Thanks, didn't know she was his missus 🙂 she writes on Unherd sometimes, excellent (recent example re her conversion to Christianity).

      1. I didn't know it was a woman 🙂 If she's converted to Christianity, why doesn't she have a Christian name?

          1. When you are baptised you are given a Christian name. In the old days there was no such appellation as “forename”, it was Christian name because the majority of us were Christians.

          2. I’m sure there will be many Christians world wide with many different names. I think at one time missionaries gave native peoples Western style names and that may continue but some will want to keep their existing adult name, as she seems to have done.

    2. Ayaan is always pretty much on the money for me. Her very existence and thus being ignored by so called "Feminism" was a real eye opener for me in terms of the philosophical legitimacy of the broader Left.

  79. We have the surveyors coming around to see if the house can accept a heatpump and solar.

    This is good news. It might not save money, but it will smooth out the costs and, hopefully, will warm the house a bit.

    1. Would it be less expensive to have chimneys installed and an Aga to heat radiators?

      1. A Rayburn would heat the water as well as run the central heating (and as a bonus, cook the meals). Mine is lit now – until the chap comes to look at restoring heating the water by oil I've no hot water if the Rayburn's off. Because the water is so hard, immersions don't last long.

    2. We have had solar panels quite a few years, very successful. Might think to be careful with heatpump tho..I know an installer, says people wanting to go for one without fully investigating it.

    3. "…to see if the house can accept a heatpump and solar."

      It appears that you are asking the wrong question, wibbles!

    4. Here goes.
      1) you and your wife need to talk to a builder*, not a surveyor
      2) generally avoid purchasing any residential property without access to mains gas or which does not have at least one a chimney, unless it already has modern oil fired central heating. An external oil fired boiler might be worth considering (zero oil smell indoors).
      3) get an estimate or quote for K-Rend & external PIR insulation. NB check the pointing and gutters and downpipes.
      4) improve the loft insulation
      5) there are still grants available of circa £5,000 for biomass boiler systems IF YOU HAVE NO EXISTING CENTRAL HEATING, but you will need to submit an Energy Performance Certificate (for the house, not the hound). A Biomass boiler is basically a sophisticated woodburner that will heat radiators etc.
      6) solar PV systems are now affordable if you avoid the subsidy conmen, but in the UK, PV winter output is approximately 20% of the summer level.
      7) Leave heatpumps for politicians and people who live abroad.
      https://www.find-government…
      * engineer, tradesman, plumber, electrician etc, but always someone local with existing customers and experience and a reputation.

      1. Good advice, Tim. And I speak as a retired surveyor (quantity, ergo number-crunching, rather than building, admittedly).

        I moved to a 1970/80s retirement bungalow in 2020. Owned by a small, local housing charity (17 dwellings in total). While the PVCu windows and doors are getting rather tired and draughty, it has cavity wall insulation (yeah – I know there can be issues) and 200 mm of loft insulation. EPC rating of C. I should prolly mention that said charity was largely established by Lord Taylor, of Taylor Woodrow fame (he lived nearby, and I know his daughter, and son-in-law through the church). No prizes for guessing the builder, and it's really well-designed. And built.

        The last place was a 3-bed 1930's detached house, somewhat exposed to the elements on a hillside. unfilled cavity walls, minimal loft insulation, Crittall metal windows which were rusting away in places. Suffice to say that my energy bills are around 25% of those at the last place.

        I have a friend who moved to a "zero-carbon" "eco-home" in 2019, with my encouragement.. It's impressive, not least for the high quality of finishes. Solar panels, Tesla Powerwall in the garage, Heat recovery ventilation system (which has already needed a new fan motor), much insulation, including triple glazing (it's a shame that the insulated steel front door doesn't actullay fit the frame, but I digress).

        All things considered, I'm happy where I am.

    5. Here goes.
      1) you and your wife need to talk to a builder*, not a surveyor
      2) generally avoid purchasing any residential property without access to mains gas or which does not have at least one a chimney, unless it already has modern oil fired central heating. An external oil fired boiler might be worth considering (zero oil smell indoors).
      3) get an estimate or quote for K-Rend & external PIR insulation. NB check the pointing and gutters and downpipes.
      4) improve the loft insulation
      5) there are still grants available of circa £5,000 for biomass boiler systems IF YOU HAVE NO EXISTING CENTRAL HEATING, but you will need to submit an Energy Performance Certificate (for the house, not the hound). A Biomass boiler is basically a sophisticated woodburner that will heat radiators etc.
      6) solar PV systems are now affordable if you avoid the subsidy conmen, but in the UK, PV winter output is approximately 20% of the summer level.
      7) Leave heatpumps for politicians and people who live abroad.
      https://www.find-government…
      * engineer, tradesman, plumber, electrician etc, but always someone local with existing customers and experience and a reputation.

    6. Here goes.
      1) you and your wife need to talk to a builder*, not a surveyor
      2) generally avoid purchasing any residential property without access to mains gas or which does not have at least one a chimney, unless it already has modern oil fired central heating. An external oil fired boiler might be worth considering (zero oil smell indoors).
      3) get an estimate or quote for K-Rend & external PIR insulation. NB check the pointing and gutters and downpipes.
      4) improve the loft insulation
      5) there are still grants available of circa £5,000 for biomass boiler systems IF YOU HAVE NO EXISTING CENTRAL HEATING, but you will need to submit an Energy Performance Certificate (for the house, not the hound). A Biomass boiler is basically a sophisticated woodburner that will heat radiators etc.
      6) solar PV systems are now affordable if you avoid the subsidy conmen, but in the UK, PV winter output is approximately 20% of the summer level.
      7) Leave heatpumps for politicians and people who live abroad.
      https://www.find-government…
      * engineer, tradesman, plumber, electrician etc, but always someone local with existing customers and experience and a reputation.

    7. Here goes.
      1) you and your wife need to talk to a builder*, not a surveyor
      2) generally avoid purchasing any residential property without access to mains gas or which does not have at least one a chimney, unless it already has modern oil fired central heating. An external oil fired boiler might be worth considering (zero oil smell indoors).
      3) get an estimate or quote for K-Rend & external PIR insulation. NB check the pointing and gutters and downpipes.
      4) improve the loft insulation
      5) there are still grants available of circa £5,000 for biomass boiler systems IF YOU HAVE NO EXISTING CENTRAL HEATING, but you will need to submit an Energy Performance Certificate (for the house, not the hound). A Biomass boiler is basically a sophisticated woodburner that will heat radiators etc.
      6) solar PV systems are now affordable if you avoid the subsidy conmen, but in the UK, PV winter output is approximately 20% of the summer level.
      7) Leave heatpumps for politicians and people who live abroad.
      https://www.find-government…
      * engineer, tradesman, plumber, electrician etc, but always someone local with existing customers and experience and a reputation.

  80. Hope he's made/will make a full recovery. Think mine lasted around a year, memory still not quite intact but then I'm a few years older.
    '

    1. He's 81. We both made wills some years ago but they need updating. Last Wednesday we went for a cardiac follow-up appointment and all was well – he's been signed off back to GP care.
      Did you have memory loss? I'm noticing his lapses more and more now. Not absent-mindedness, but gaps in his recall.

      1. We made new wills recently – was astounded at the amount of IHT we might fall for. Definitely worth re-visiting. Good news on the cardiac follow-up, hopefully continue to progress:-) I do indeed have memory loss, there are a number of blanks where family comment on something of which I have absolutely no memory – usually an occurrence of the last few years. I think it’s slowly, more so some days than others, improving. I just turned 75 btw, so not far behind him in age. Best thing is to keep busy/occupied and not dwell on it, for me anyway. Good luck to both 🙂

        1. Thankyou – I will be 76 next month and have always had a much better memory than him – and almost total recall of events and dates. Though when I'm away on a trip I do write a blow by blow account for posterity.
          We will get caught for IHT as his beneficiaries are his niece and nephew. Mine are my sons. Not sure what we can do about it. When we made that will the solicitor mentioned tails and dogs…

          1. Someone my daughter knows has cancer, and I asked her to pick a card…she reminded me family said no cards and I’d forgotten, thankful I thought to ask her. It’s a good example of my memory loss. On to IHT…we’ve been ‘co-habiting’ for almost half a century, never saw the need for marriage (neither of us wanted more children) – until our assets were valued, and IHT was assessed, at 40% it would have been crippling for us, so marriage negated that or at least that was the advice we were given. Fab day all round, and on my birthday too, lots of laughter lots of love – a day to remember for that more than the saving of tax. (I understand many couples are falling into the IHT web, but I couldn’t speak to their circumstances). Our solicitor and IFA were both a bit useless, we found out just by chance aquaintance. Good luck, Ndovu:-)

          2. We got married on my birthday in 1997! So our 27th anniversary is next month.

            IHT hits families who want to leave their assets to anyone other than direct descendants. My husband has no children of his own so his share will go to his niece and nephew, whereas I do have two sons.

          3. Wish you all the best with many more, both birthday and anniversary x I’m hopeless at dates and numbers, as numerous people have discovered. Once worked with a couple of Jehovahs, they do things spontaneously rather than to dates, or so they told me – both very relaxed people. I’m relaxed now our IHT sorted 🙂

          4. I’m virtually innumerate but dates and numbers I find easy to remember for some reason.

          5. Can’t do anything without a calculator, shame it can’t remember birthdays etc for me…

    7. Is it a bird, is it a plane or is it Ed Davey up to another infantile stunt?

  83. Call me callous – but I think there is a touch of overkill in the reporting of the unfortunate death of Dr Mosley. He appears to have had the attributes of Mother Theresa, Princess Diana and Dr Christian Barnard.

    1. I think he was a fool to try and walk so far in that heat. Plus it keeps the real news off the headlines.

    2. Oxford PPE, banker, followed by a medical degree but he never practised as a doctor, instead he joined the BBC.
      Perhaps I am overly cynical, but that reads like the CV of a propagandist.
      His posts over covid were insane, making up statistics on the spot to blame the unvaxxed.

        1. So he wanted to be a medic so much that he left a lucrative career for six (?) years of poverty – and then he never practised as a doctor, but instead got an offer to join the BBC? Ahead of all the people competing to become BBC trainees?

          There is a woman broadcaster who followed the same strange career path, I can't remember her name. Also qualified as a medic, never practised but became a broadcaster.

          Both were at the forefront of the covid propaganda campaign. Stinks of being recruited, imo.

      1. The irony is that he had spent 20+ years telling the great unwashed how to take care of themselves…

      2. On Symi, the normal way to reach other beaches, Agia Marina, and the Monastery of Panormitis is by boat or 'water taxi'.

        Other than a road from Symi Port to the Monastery, there are no proper roads or walkways.

        To attempt to walk from from Pedi to Symi Port unaccompanied – without a map & compass (there are no signposts), mobile phone, adequate water (and salt) – in 40°C+ was at the very least, extremely unwise . . .

    4. I've been thinking exactly the same. Why is some obscure chap,, who got invited to spout off on the telly, worthy of such extensive coverage?

      I wasn't aware of his existence prior to his disappearance, why do I need every bit of minutiae of his life spread across every bloody newspaper page? I have no interest in the bloke, dead or alive!

      1. One of the things he was known for was when he gave dietary advice he had done it himself. I think you have to watch daytime UK tv to know who celebs are now.

          2. You're quite partial to 'long pig' are you? You're not from New Guinea by any chance?

        2. I was aware of this guy but found that his televised medical experiences of trying to kill himself through extreme activities were a bit over the top.
          However, the BBC has just continued broadcasting his message into his after life.
          I think he leaves message to us all that there are limits to experimentation with what some people get kicks out of.

          2. There comes a time in life when you feel that you have experienced so much that you wonder what else there could be to fulfil yourself. If that involves using a leather belt and an orange then you might find that quite a peeling

          4. I can’t imagine what you’d do with a fruity orange – would you squeeze it with your leather belt or perhaps just be taking the pith?

    5. It’s just a cover for slipping out bad news. Nothing to worry about, move along there. And it’s no worse than reading about yet another new idea from the Con party (that they could have pursued over the last 14 years,).

    6. It's because he was a TV pundit, etc. Anyone else it would have just been a sad story of someone who took a silly risk.

    7. The key point is that Michael Moseley (whom I rather liked and whose family deserve sympathy but then to be left alone) was a member of the MSM elite and, as such, his death receives massive coverage day after day after day. Take the case of Alan Hansen whose admission to hospital has received a bizarre level of coverage that his family could probably do without. I imagine (but don’t know) that he has cancer and has been admitted for terminal care but why is this front page news?
      The BBC is particularly shocking at raising anything about one of their own to a level of importance that eclipse s national and international events of major significance. Basically they are right up themselves.

        1. Up to a point. Jill Dando was murdered in what seems to have been a professional hit-job and, at the time, that was highly news-worthy. But certainly the continued obsession is because she was one of the media’s own. It is like the way that Esther Rantzen’s experience as somebody with incurable cancer is so much more important than the experience of the vast numbers of people facing this every day.

    8. Michael Mosely was the sort of person, qualified by his nature and knowledge, who could have been a regular guest on the JY Prog. I respected and admired MM's enthusiasm, his communication skills and his desire to encourage less-than-healthy people to make an effort to look after their own bodies. He and his wife worked hard, brought up four children and generally tried to improve the lot of their fellow humans. The slight overkill can be forgiven, because the event was the unexpected and sad death of a man who was well-liked and who will be greatly missed. His podcast "Just one thing" might be worth sampling, especially as I failed to locate your cousin's memories of the South Hams evacuation. Professor Tim Spector wrote an appreciation of MM in the Telegraph. And for those of you Englishmen who go out in the midday sun, water alone will not prevent potential collapse; you will need a sachet of rehydration salts, aka electrolytes, costing perhaps 30 pence.

      1. I don't doubt any of what you say. I didn't' know of him. I just do not think it is necessary for broadsheets such as The Times to have two or three pages devoted to the man day after day.

        His family must be going through hell anyway; do they need to see the story everywhere they look?

        We must agree to disagree.

      2. Since my only interraction with the Biased Broadcasting Cult is to have Alexa play News Briefing at 5.30 am, I try to be in the kitchen, preparing the new NoTTL page. whilst sorting out meds and breakfast. Should I stay abed on Saturdays, Dr MM would follow. Fair enough. I could do with taking much of his advice. But not entirely.

        His pro-vaxx history is worth exploring. But RIP, regardless.

    1. Fact over here in trudum land.

      The liberals introduced a ban and mandatory buyback on guns.

      Trouble is that the rcmp said that they wouldn't collect the guns, the local police forces said no and the post office said no to the idea of gun owners just mailing their guns in to Ottawa. So we now have all of these legally acquired guns sitting in the permit holders homes, they cannot be used or moved because the guns are now illegal. Stalemate!

      At the weekend there were at least three shootings in Toronto, probably using guns that were illegally smuggled over the border. The liberal response – their gun control policy is working!

  86. Here we go with more political bs!

    The liberals have introduced a bill that would change capital gains taxes. They claim that it will only effect the top .01% of Canadians. That's total rubbish but that's not where it goes weird.

    The Finance minister is claiming that if the bill is not approved, there will be civil war when the masses revolt against those few megarich. Naturally, failure to pass the changes could also impact the governments ability to pay pensions.

    If that's not divisive enough, they are claiming that the conservatives will oppose the change because they only care about the rich, not working people.

    You thought that the scum in your political elite were bad!

  87. People are either easily shocked or stuck for alternative words. I've just read that the RSPCA is shocked at the defacement of the King's new portrait. I'm not even surprised, just unamused at yet another juvenile prank in support of a cause which its protagonists think can only win support by such actions. Perhaps there are people out there who cannot be won over by explanation, persuasion and argument but only by puerile acts of vandalism, hence tactics such as this. As for shocked, no, but I'd be surprised if, in this day and age, no attempt was made to get in the news in this manner.

    1. What is the thinking here? If we vandalise this portrait people will rush out and become Vegans? This seems to me to be a very doubtful proposition. I think the whole operation is an example of the calamitous decline in Western thought and reasoning.

    2. What is the thinking here? If we vandalise this portrait people will rush out and become Vegans? This seems to me to be a very doubtful proposition. I think the whole operation is an example of the calamitous decline in Western thought and reasoning.

      1. Certainly there is no respect any more. The respect is not due to Charles personally but to his position representing the Crown.
        These kids owe more loyalty to the rainbow flag than to the Crown.

  88. It's cold out there! More like April than June. Just planted out a couple of fuchsias I bought last week from Morrisons.. having picked them over as they let them die. These two look healthy anyway and good value at £1.30. A bit of tidying up and weeding and I've had enough for now.

    1. Was damned chilly this morning, somewhat better now, with sunshine, needing short sleeves.

  89. A lowly Bogie Five!

    Wordle 1,088 5/6
    🟩⬜⬜⬜⬜
    🟩⬜⬜⬜🟨
    🟩⬜🟩🟩⬜
    🟩⬜🟩🟩🟩
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    1. Par today.

      Wordle 1,088 4/6

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

      1. Wordle 1,088 4/6

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    2. I share your pain

      Wordle 1,088 5/6

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

    3. A few choices.

      Wordle 1,088 5/6

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      🟩⬜🟩🟩⬜
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      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    4. Me too.
      Wordle 1,088 5/6

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

    5. Me too, that's three bogies on the trot….

      Wordle 1,088 5/6

      ⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜
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      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

  90. Leftie Stu Grant taking up the advice issued by The Home Office.. and swapping rocks for milk shakes now.

  91. Spent three hours in garden/greenhouse. The sun was out and, despite the very strong northerly wind, it was tolerable. Put up the frames for the "extra" tomatoes. Noticed the potatoes have blight – bastards. Will spray with Bordeaux Mixture tomorrow and try to make sense in the greenhouse.
    Strawed the strawbs – and covered wit a large Haxnicks tunnel. Time to rest my pore back. 59 mins to drinkypoo time.

    1. We're out this evening – early meal of scrambled eggs coming up, then we're off to the local cinema for the final streaming from the ROH – Jonas Kaufmann in Andrea Chenier. The Graun gave it a 5* review. The last night of Pappano's tenure there.

      1. Pappano has been a dream conductor at the ROH. Not an opera I care for, but if Kaufman is in form – you'll have a cracker of an evening.

      1. We both thoroughly enjoyed the opera last night! Kaufmann and the other principals were all in fine voice and it was the last performance for Pappano as Music director, so quite poignant for him. Next season looks good too. I’d forgotten how enjoyable it is to have a night at the opera for a fraction of the price at CG. J managed the 10 minute walk from the free car park & back too. Only the steeply sloping bit got him a bit out of breath.

  95. Don't forget that as well as the money they take from taxpayers, they also have a history of magicking funds up from nowhere by "Quantitative easing" …..money printing and causing inflation.

  96. Alan is economically illiterate..

    Nation's economies are not like a household. The state always has the power to fund anything. He has the process backwards. Government spending creates the circulation that generates the matching funding. Just like any bank creating and deploying money.
    That's not the question. The question is whether the resources are there in the first place to buy.

    It is economic nonsense the idea that the nations money supply is somehow your money. Just as it is economic nonsense the deficit is something that should be paid off, and the idea that a sovereign government in any way borrows in their own currency. Neither are correct.

    1. Ahem. Only if the government has a friendly central bank that magics up money. Endless spending wouldn't fly in a sound money environment!

      Also, taxpayers are on the hook for repaying the debt created by creating new debt-based currency.

      1. Nonsense..
        People that worry about 'debt' forget that for every debt there is an asset.
        On a balance sheet you'll find the assets on the left.

        And btw, the people 'lending the money' is the Bank of England via the Ways and Means Account. (Go look it up). Everybody else can either spend their £ or keep it in a bank account somewhere.
        The Bank of England is owned by HM Treasury. Do the group accounts and work out what that means (or look up the Whole of Government Accounts to see). It means that what you think of as 'debt' largely doesn't actually exist. It is an accounting artefact.
        Please don't get it into your head that the government that owns the currency has to owe any of it to anybody. It is a simple public monopoly and you should learn how to use it as such.

        1. What is the asset on the Bank of England’s balance sheet for the debt they issue as currency?

        2. Tell that to the Germans, the Zimbaweans and every other country that has benefitted from the joys of hyperinflation.
          You can print as much as you like, but if it can't be changed for something tangible such as food, it isn't worth the paper it's printed on.
          The balance sheets might well have "balanced" but those countries and their peoples were still bankrupt.

      2. Nonsense..
        People that worry about 'debt' forget that for every debt there is an asset.
        On a balance sheet you'll find the assets on the left.

        And btw, the people 'lending the money' is the Bank of England via the Ways and Means Account. (Go look it up). Everybody else can either spend their £ or keep it in a bank account somewhere.
        The Bank of England is owned by HM Treasury. Do the group accounts and work out what that means (or look up the Whole of Government Accounts to see). It means that what you think of as 'debt' largely doesn't actually exist. It is an accounting artefact.
        Please don't get it into your head that the government that owns the currency has to owe any of it to anybody. It is a simple public monopoly and you should learn how to use it as such.

      3. Nonsense..
        People that worry about 'debt' forget that for every debt there is an asset.
        On a balance sheet you'll find the assets on the left.

        And btw, the people 'lending the money' is the Bank of England via the Ways and Means Account. (Go look it up). Everybody else can either spend their £ or keep it in a bank account somewhere.
        The Bank of England is owned by HM Treasury. Do the group accounts and work out what that means (or look up the Whole of Government Accounts to see). It means that what you think of as 'debt' largely doesn't actually exist. It is an accounting artefact.
        Please don't get it into your head that the government that owns the currency has to owe any of it to anybody. It is a simple public monopoly and you should learn how to use it as such.

  100. Welsh Labour is writing the white working class out of history. 11 June 2024.

    What is the “right historic narrative”? It is “a decolonised account of the past, one that recognises both historical injustices and the positive impact of ethnic minority communities”.

    Commemorative items in public view – presumably pictures in galleries, statues, commemorative plaques, street names and it seems even pub signs – must not “insult or hurt”, and must project “present values”.

    Soon to be followed by UK Labour I suspect.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/06/11/welsh-labour-coal-mines-white-working-class-history/

    1. The historic narrative will soon have it that black people were working the mines in Rhondda and other valleys. I've seen the proof.😎

      Welsh Labour have completely abandoned their working class roots. My Welsh socialist father would be horrified. Little wonder that he left the Labour party as far back as the '60s.

  102. Can anyone remember, who was that woman broadcaster who had a similar career to Mosely, going back to university to study medicine and then joining the BBC (?) as a "Dr" and proselytising for the jabs? I'm half remembering something I read.

  103. 'Night All
    Not a lot of comments from me as I'm fighting godawful feelings of foreboding looking around too many things don't like they will end well
    http://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0868013c0cc1eb182cc2280ba2bca6652e133bf1f5743aa8a35fca737ef7b3d5.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9b020c670123ac7c4deb062e811564588c68b20705a1ba9e139d4315b79fccb1.jpg
    https://x.com/Artemisfornow/status/1797189688643522867?t=aFfm2kMnQbECM17ZR0IC_Q&s=19
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/61b5538bda28540e58b4e3ac514d6ad0e30c4f41d6388bf4c06eea9df6bc780c.jpg
    https://media.gab.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=568,quality=100,fit=scale-down/system/media_attachments/files/162/411/137/original/d416bfea638f3894.png
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5083cb4f8b6f6f44e036d69f7ac0f1eec700d2ac45fe56fb95197fca474816a0.jpg

      1. ERII could assert that "Recollections may differ" because everyone believed Her.

  105. 388391+ up ticks,

    May one ask,
    Who's welfare is he talking of cutting is it the indigenous, or those hitting the beach as in the invaders, he obviously realises that no welfare, no invasion troops so it cannot be them and that only leaves ……..

  107. from Coffee House the Spectator

    Avoid the Maldives
    Israelis, you aren’t missing much

    Comments Share 11 June 2024, 5:01am
    On reading that the Maldives are to ban Israeli passport holders from entry as an alleged protest over the war in Gaza, I hooted with laughter. That dump – I wouldn’t go there if you paid me, – which is exactly what happened in 1995, when the Sunday Times sent me abroad for the very first time. I was 35, and due to a combination of being very keen on London, where I lived, and not wanting to have extra sex with my first and second husbands (which I’d heard was probable when one went en vacances) I’d never missed visiting the rest of the world. If I wanted to swim, I’d go to Brockwell Lido; if I wanted to sunbathe, I’d go and play sardines in Soho Square. But in the honeymoon stage of my relationship with my new young mistress, I was keen to show her a good time.

    It really isn’t worth the punishing ten-hour flight, let alone the subsequent fortnight’s boredom
    We’d have been better off staying in Kensington. Used to the hustle and bustle of our over-stimulated media whore lives, the isolation of the Maldives was about as welcome as the sensation of a cold, damp swimsuit working its way up one’s nether regions. There was no television, no radio, and no mobile phones back then; I remember I had a Walkman and an audio book of The Picture Of Dorian Gray which I became increasingly addicted to as the endless fortnight wore on; ‘No gentleman looks out of the window,’ Oscar once said, referring to the shallowness of a beautiful view, and here I was, desolate, having abandoned the tattle of my brilliant friends for the banal romance of the most beautiful view on earth, allegedly. I found myself comparing the Maldives unfavourably with Butlin’s of Bognor, where I’d spent many idyllic holidays as a child and – unfairly – blamed my young paramour for being insufficiently scintillating; whatever, the relationship was basically over before we were through Arrivals at Heathrow.

    It’s not that I don’t love beaches; I’ve lost count of the time I’ve winced my way through the feet-tearing pebbles on Brighton so-called Beach, keen to frolic among the excrement in our churning sea. I’ve got nothing against lying still and reading a book in the sunshine; once I actually took a tanning holiday in Tenerife solely in order not to rock up pale in Barbados a fortnight later. But a country needs something more than beaches if it’s not to be boring – and the Maldives does not. This is because they isolate their tourists, seeing them as somewhat less than human.

    Only Muslims are allowed to be Maldivian citizens; no tourist may practise their religion in public. Capital punishment is a legal punishment for defendants over seven years old – though, to be fair, no one has actually been executed since 1952. However, things are getting worse rather than better. In 2013, a 15-year-old girl was sentenced to 100 lashes after being raped by her step-father; in 2015, a woman was sentenced to death by stoning after she was convicted of committing adultery (although the sentence was later overturned), leading Eva Abdulla, a Maldivian MP, to say:

    We need the British and all other tourists to be aware of just where they are going to when they book that ticket to the Maldives…visiting tourists need to be aware of the institutional discrimination against women within the judicial system. Consider the statistics on flogging: that 90 per cent of the cases are women. Consider the statistics on rape charges: 0 per cent success rate of prosecution, with the latest being the release of four men accused of raping a 16-year-old, on the grounds that there wasn’t enough evidence.

    Only a half-wit would claim that any Islamist country treats women decently, and the same goes for our LQBT cousins, no matter how much Queers For Palestine may stamp their little feet and wave their little banners. Homosexuality is criminalised by Maldivian law. Under Shariah, which is part of the country’s penal code, gays face fines, prison sentences, and lashings. But don’t think that being extravagantly straight is going to get you into your island hosts good books, you heathens; in 2010 there was a shocking – if hilarious – incident when, to quote the Daily Mail:

    Renewing their wedding vows in the exotic surroundings of the Maldives was meant to be a memory one couple would savour forever. But this hapless pair were instead humiliated when the man presiding over the ceremony took advantage of the language barrier to publicly brand them ‘pigs’ and ‘infidels’.

    The supposedly spiritual service was captured on video and beamed around the world via YouTube. In the 15-minute clip, employees at the Vilu Reef Beach and Spa resort abuse the couple in their native Dhivehi tongue. The hotel’s food and beverage manager Hussein Didi is heard hurling insults at the pair as he conducts the service pretending to be the celebrant. He even declares their marriage to be illegal.

    Chanting in a tone favoured by religious scholars, Didi says: ‘You are swine. The children that you bear from this marriage will all be bastard swine. Your marriage is not a valid one. One of you is an infidel. The other, too, is an infidel and, we have reason to believe, an atheist, who does not even believe in an infidel religion.’

    The unfortunate woman, wearing a white dress, and her husband, also in white, smile at each other lovingly and remain oblivious as Didi calls for the marriage to be enshrined in Islamic law. Despite more than ten employees watching, none of them attempts to stop the event and some even take photographs. As the bride bends down to plant a coconut tree, a man shouts: ‘Can see her breasts!’

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    But the ghastliness of the Maldives doesn’t just extend to disapproval of the way visiting foreigners may choose to live their personal lives; law-abiding Maldivian Muslims have also had what little freedom they enjoyed trampled all over in recent years, as is generally true of Islamic countries, where democracy is seen to be a decadent remnant of western influence. Going right back to the depopulation of Havaru Thinadoo in 1962, when ethnic cleansing killed two-thirds of the 6,000 islanders through murder and starvation, the Maldives are a savage patchwork of violent suppression behind the commercial facade.

    The democratic stirrings represented by the election of Mohamed Nasheed’s Maldivian Democratic Party in 2008 were dashed by his arrest and the subsequent state of emergency declared by the military coup. This led to a scuffle between no less than Amal Clooney and Cherie Blair – as the Independent put it in 2015: ‘The pair of international human rights lawyers have clashed repeatedly since Mrs Blair began acting for the autocratic government that helped organise the overthrow and prosecution of the country’s first democratically-elected leader.’ Mrs Clooney added that it was “very sad” that the wife of the former prime minister was “working against the people of the Maldives”.’

    The Maldives was forced to convert to Islam in the 12th century, but only began to suffer from an extreme version of the religion since 2004, when a Saudi-funded influx of preachers arrived to tell them that the tsunami was their fault for not being devout enough. It’s all been downhill since then, with the reversal of progress which can principally be seen in the way women who once let the sun shine upon the bodies the Lord gave them now scurry about in shrouds. And now Israelis are to be banned from entering this heavenly hell-hole in a ‘protest’ over the war in Gaza.

    So let me assure any Israelis – or indeed readers of other nationalities – who’ve always fancied the Maldives that it really isn’t worth the punishing ten-hour flight, let alone the subsequent fortnight’s boredom. There are loads of lovely cities where the beaches are fine and where the culture isn’t brain dead, like Tel Aviv and Barcelona. If really gorgeous beaches are what you’re looking for, there’s beautiful Barbados – wonderful people and the perfect blend of Christianity and hedonism; or the Bahamas – especially the Pink Sands Resort on Harbour Island; or gorgeous Mauritius, which is like the Maldives but run by people who don’t hate everyone who’s different from them. The Maldives proper have always been like a beautiful dining companion who doesn’t have any bantz; if they’re going to start banning Jews, its collective IQ will fall a few more much-needed points. Trust me, as one who’s been to this ghastly place, you’ll have more fun at an Ultimate 1980s Long Weekender at Butlin’s.

    1. Ah yes Ms Burchill, always worth the time. Especially appreciated the comparison with West Hartlepool.

  109. Just listening to the local news whereby the nurseries are claiming they don’t have enough money to be viable.
    What I don’t get is why not pay a parent or grandparent to stay home with the child until it is of secondary school age and then run an after school service for children up to the age of sixteen?
    It would be a heck of a lot cheaper and increase family ties.
    there would still be two incomes if the family needed them; more if granny was the paid help and both parents went back to work. It would keep grandparents young and give those with not so much money a purpose in life and some more disposable income to have more of a social life.
    Why does everything have to be put in the hands of organisations or “experts “.
    Make use of the family in a positive way and let children grow up in their own environment.
    After all, vey rich people hire nannies at home for their children, so what’s sauce for the goose!
    They wouldn’t dream of dumping them with a bunch of children they knew nothing about.
    Some of the owners of these places are starting to sound like care home owners. Government money is not enough to run the “business”, so those that can’t make up the difference don’t get a place.
    If the needs of children are to become a business, give the contract to those who are most invested in the child.

    2. That it would take control away from the state and strengthen the family are the very reasons it wouldn't happen, despite it being a sensible and relatively inexpensive idea.

    3. 100% agree – Grandparents across the country provide thousands and thousands of hours 'free' childcare for their Grandchildren – we do, and we absolutely love it, but if somebody wanted to pay a nominal sum, I wouldnt say no!

    5. TPTB have been busy systematically deconstructing the family unit for years, they don’t want family unity. All to destroy our harmony and divide families, making it easier for them to control us once we feel we have no familial ties.

  110. Just listening to the local news whereby the nurseries are claiming they don’t have enough money to be viable.
    What I don’t get is why not pay a parent or grandparent to stay home with the child until it is of secondary school age and then run an after school service for children up to the age of sixteen?
    It would be a heck of a lot cheaper and increase family ties.
    there would still be two incomes if the family needed them; more if granny was the paid help and both parents went back to work. It would keep grandparents young and give those with not so much money a purpose in life and some more disposable income to have more of a social life.
    Why does everything have to be put in the hands of organisations or “experts “.
    Make use of the family in a positive way and let children grow up in their own environment.
    After all, vey rich people hire nannies at home for their children, so what’s sauce for the goose!
    They wouldn’t dream of dumping them with a bunch of children they knew nothing about.
    Some of the owners of these places are starting to sound like care home owners. Government money is not enough to run the “business”, so those that can’t make up the difference don’t get a place.
    If the needs of children are to become a business, give the contract to those who are most invested in the child.

  112. Signing off, now. Have made up my mind (what is left of it) to attack the vegetable garden and the greenhouse tomorrow so that there is more space to be able to sow seeds to replace what has been ravaged by limaces. No wonder there is a world shortage of slug pellets. We have lost 40 dahlias, a bed of parsley, 60 oeillets d'inde, four trays of basil to these bastard invaders. And there is blight on the potatoes. AND our 15 yard hedge" of lavender – half the 40 plants have died. Died. Just like that. There are times when one wonders why one bothers…..

    Have a spiffing evening – drinking hard.

    A demain.

    1. Aren't slugs attracted to beer? You put beer in a saucer and they die from it, or something. Have a slug party.

      1. They are attracted to beer, but what you do is put some in a jam jar, bury it in the earth with the open top at soil level then they crawl in and are too paralytic to crawl out.

    2. I commiserate, Bill. I had similar problems with my tomatoes and cucumbers. Have you tried copper strips?

    3. Have a spiffing evening yourself, Bill – I like the exhortation to drink, but I dont understand all the other stuff you're going on about… is it called 'gardening'??

    4. Daughter just showed me a video on her phone, entitled "You don't have a slug problem – you have a duck deficit."
      Would love to have ducks but fear our garden is too small.

      1. Just about to suggest that. We have 3 Indian Runners and slugs and snails are their favourite food, as well as sliced cucumber.

        1. Do they need water to splash around in? Don’t they fly away? How much garden do they need? What fencing? Are cats a threat?
          We have an abundant supply of slugs and snails….

          1. They have a very small pool, a plastic one tucked away at the bottom of the garden with a couple of wooden ramps. They don’t use it much, but they need access to water all the time to wash their food down so there are containers of water around the place. They can’t fly. They chase cats out of the garden as well as pigeons. Years ago a fox took one but no problems since then. They have about 25 yds by 20yds of lawn/shrubs and a corner of wild plants and nettles by their little pool.. We cordon off the vegetable patch from them. Very low fencing to keep ’em out.
            They get perhaps a pint and a half of duck food put into their small food trough. Otherwise they just forage all over. Good for the lawn as they root out the larvae of grass root eating cockchafers and love catching flies and anything that moves and they can swallow.
            Our 3 are all female. one of them is still laying but they are all getting on a bit now. 2 sisters of perhaps 9 years and white Tufty who has to be about 11 years old.

          5. Another thing. They have a straw lined raised hutch that is secure for the hours of darkness.

  113. Evening, all. Been a funny sort of day; dull and threatening rain, then the sun came out. I did venture out on the trike and had the same steering problems as on the bike! The only difference was that I didn't fall off the trike! Clearly it's a case of rider error and I am going to have to get a lot more practice in before I risk going out in traffic. It's strange, because I rode a trike as a child and I rode to school for years on a bike without major problems. Perhaps it's old age.

    The EU (rather than Europe, I suspect) elites are, by nature, deaf to the voices of the plebs. It's designed to be undemocratic and that's the way they like it.

    1. A friend of mine tragically broke his neck playing Rugby – I was playing in the same game, unfortunately – and, as part of his rehabilitation he did a sponsored 'Trike Hike' (he couldnt balance a bike) raising thousands for the Southport Spinal Unit who treated him.
      He always said it was a bugger to balance and he fell off regularly!!

      1. NOW he tells me! Actually my neighbour told me a friend of his had a racing trike and he kept swerving into the kerb. Unfortunately, he, too, waited until after I'd bought the thing before he told me 🙁 I am sure it's just a matter of practice. A bit like pumping up the undercarriage on the early Spitfires (and setting up a porpoising motion).

        1. Well, it stands to reason doesnt it? My mate, Nick, said that when you corner you cant 'bank' like you do on a bike, and if you go too fast, you just tip over!

    2. Please translate 750kg into:

      #Nationality/ name of wine, strength, no. of cases, Oberst!

  116. Hardly a life-threatening incident but the next one could be. The suspect was a scrawny opportunist – a determined street thug would have been prepared and armed with something dangerous. The chase and arrest was almost comical.

    Watch: Protester throws 'coffee cup and wet cement' at Nigel Farage
    –
    A 28-year-old man has been arrested after the incident in Barnsley
    –
    Neil Johnston, SENIOR NEWS REPORTER • 11 June 2024 • 6:06pm

    https://youtu.be/yH4KyUjVtsU
    Nigel Farage has said he is having to "think twice" about what he does after he was attacked for the second time in a week on the campaign trail.

    The Reform party leader said that attacks on him during the election campaign were an extension of cancel culture as he warned he could have been put in hospital by the latest incident. Police arrested a man in Barnsley, South Yorkshire, on Tuesday after he allegedly threw objects at Mr Farage while he was campaigning in the town.

    Mr Farage was waving at a crowd of supporters in Barnsley town centre from the top of the Reform battlebus when a man appeared to throw something towards him. The Reform UK leader, 60, could be heard shouting "Oh" before a loud thud as the object hit the vehicle.

    A man wearing a red hoodie and backpack was seen reaching into a bin before launching another object towards Mr Farage.

    Speaking to reporters in Kirkby, Ashfield, the constituency of Tory defector Lee Anderson, Mr Farage said he was worried about Tuesday's incident and another last week when he was doused with a milkshake in Clacton-on-Sea, Essex.

    "I'm having to think twice about what I do," he said. "Now, I've been doing this forever and there have been incidents over the years that have happened. They were isolated incidents, they were horrible. If I give in to these people, who else is going to stand up? You know, I'm sometimes brave to the point of total stupidity. I'm genuinely very, very thoughtful now. I'm not going to stop but my modus operandi may have to change."

    It is thought the suspect was on his own but Mr Farage said that he had been warned about a "Left-wing mob" in Barnsley. He said it was too early to tell whether the incident would affect others in his party on the campaign trail. But he said it was worrying after people had "written off what happened in Clacton last week as being a one-off".

    He said: "The whole point of democracy is we can have very, very vigorous disagreements, but there has to be a line as to what's acceptable. I'm not scared off, I'm going to continue but of course I'm worried about it. That was bloody cement that bloke chucked and stones were chucked at the bus. It's very difficult to talk to people who don't want to listen. Very few of them, by the way, came from Barnsley, mostly from Surrey and Cheshire with names like Jocasta and Sebastian.

    "That's the problem. I worry that we're producing people in university who don't know what critical thinking is. They just believe in one particular set of views and anyone that disagrees is evil. Honestly I would have been completely happy if they sent a representative to debate with me in public in the square. I'd have loved to have done it but they weren't in the mood to listen."

    Asked if he believed shutting down his campaign was effectively cancel culture, he said: "Yes, I really do. It is an attempt to stop me campaigning in a general election. I won't have it. I'll find different ways of doing it."

    Posting the video of the incident on X Mr Farage, who is standing as an MP in Clacton, wrote: "My huge thanks to South Yorkshire Police today. I will not be bullied or cowed by a violent Left-wing mob who hate our country."

    Speaking later on Tuesday in Barnsley, he said: "Had I got off that bus I'd probably be in a hospital. Thank God for the local police. I was on an open-top double-decker and I was going to get off and walk through the main square in Barnsley.

    "The police did tip us off very early that would not be a very good idea."

    Asked if people who throw things at politicians should go to jail, he said: "Yes, absolutely."

    South Yorkshire Police confirmed that a 28-year-old man had been arrested on suspicion of public order offences.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/06/11/police-protester-nigel-farage-campaign-visit-barnsley/

    1. I guess all that is perfectly allowed, as he's apparently "far-right".

      Asked if people who throw things at politicians should go to jail, he said: "Yes, absolutely."

      Why just politicians? Why not everybody? Fuck politicians, most are the cause of all the problems.

    2. They really need to come down hard on this sort of thing, but they wont.
      Other idiots watching the relative 'success' of these clowns – that slapper was boasting about the £40,000 she'd made from additional subscribers to her OnlySlags account – can only feel empowered to go further and further, until something particularly tragic happens.
      Problem is, given the leaden speed of our broken 'Justice' system, it is highly unlikely that any sentences will be passed prior to the Election – I'm absolutely sure this wont be the last attack on Farage……..

      1. "They really need to come down hard on this sort of thing, but they wont."

        Not until the next public murder by 'the mob', GGGGr.

      2. Isn't that money acquired as a result of criminal activity? A proceed of her crime?

        1. I think in law it may be difficult to prove a direct causal link, even though that obviously is the case. The best approach would be for Farage to take out a civil case against her and sue for 'damages' – but he clearly is not going to do that.

  117. Hardly a life-threatening incident but the next one could be. The suspect was a scrawny opportunist – a determined street thug would have been prepared and armed with something dangerous. The chase and arrest was almost comical.

    Watch: Protester throws 'coffee cup and wet cement' at Nigel Farage
    –
    A 28-year-old man has been arrested after the incident in Barnsley
    –
    Neil Johnston, SENIOR NEWS REPORTER • 11 June 2024 • 6:06pm

    https://youtu.be/yH4KyUjVtsU
    Nigel Farage has said he is having to "think twice" about what he does after he was attacked for the second time in a week on the campaign trail.

    The Reform party leader said that attacks on him during the election campaign were an extension of cancel culture as he warned he could have been put in hospital by the latest incident. Police arrested a man in Barnsley, South Yorkshire, on Tuesday after he allegedly threw objects at Mr Farage while he was campaigning in the town.

    Mr Farage was waving at a crowd of supporters in Barnsley town centre from the top of the Reform battlebus when a man appeared to throw something towards him. The Reform UK leader, 60, could be heard shouting "Oh" before a loud thud as the object hit the vehicle.

    A man wearing a red hoodie and backpack was seen reaching into a bin before launching another object towards Mr Farage.

    Speaking to reporters in Kirkby, Ashfield, the constituency of Tory defector Lee Anderson, Mr Farage said he was worried about Tuesday's incident and another last week when he was doused with a milkshake in Clacton-on-Sea, Essex.

    "I'm having to think twice about what I do," he said. "Now, I've been doing this forever and there have been incidents over the years that have happened. They were isolated incidents, they were horrible. If I give in to these people, who else is going to stand up? You know, I'm sometimes brave to the point of total stupidity. I'm genuinely very, very thoughtful now. I'm not going to stop but my modus operandi may have to change."

    It is thought the suspect was on his own but Mr Farage said that he had been warned about a "Left-wing mob" in Barnsley. He said it was too early to tell whether the incident would affect others in his party on the campaign trail. But he said it was worrying after people had "written off what happened in Clacton last week as being a one-off".

    He said: "The whole point of democracy is we can have very, very vigorous disagreements, but there has to be a line as to what's acceptable. I'm not scared off, I'm going to continue but of course I'm worried about it. That was bloody cement that bloke chucked and stones were chucked at the bus. It's very difficult to talk to people who don't want to listen. Very few of them, by the way, came from Barnsley, mostly from Surrey and Cheshire with names like Jocasta and Sebastian.

    "That's the problem. I worry that we're producing people in university who don't know what critical thinking is. They just believe in one particular set of views and anyone that disagrees is evil. Honestly I would have been completely happy if they sent a representative to debate with me in public in the square. I'd have loved to have done it but they weren't in the mood to listen."

    Asked if he believed shutting down his campaign was effectively cancel culture, he said: "Yes, I really do. It is an attempt to stop me campaigning in a general election. I won't have it. I'll find different ways of doing it."

    Posting the video of the incident on X Mr Farage, who is standing as an MP in Clacton, wrote: "My huge thanks to South Yorkshire Police today. I will not be bullied or cowed by a violent Left-wing mob who hate our country."

    Speaking later on Tuesday in Barnsley, he said: "Had I got off that bus I'd probably be in a hospital. Thank God for the local police. I was on an open-top double-decker and I was going to get off and walk through the main square in Barnsley.

    "The police did tip us off very early that would not be a very good idea."

    Asked if people who throw things at politicians should go to jail, he said: "Yes, absolutely."

    South Yorkshire Police confirmed that a 28-year-old man had been arrested on suspicion of public order offences.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/06/11/police-protester-nigel-farage-campaign-visit-barnsley/

  120. Vegans are slowly killing themselves
    –
    There's nothing healthy about ultra-highly processed fake "meat" products
    –
    JAMIE BLACKETT • 11 June 2024 • 6:08pm
    –
    Ultra-highly processed (UHP) vegan food can increase the risk of heart failure, according to research published in The Lancet. Surprise, surprise: veganism is not healthy. It is time the government and its health agencies stood up to "Big Food" and celebrity proponents of veganism and finally called out the diet for the damage it is doing.

    Thanks to the NHS, all taxpayers are stakeholders in the wider health of our nation. This involvement should make us less tolerant of any section of society creating a healthcare burden through any promotion of ignorance.

    Governments should legislate to label all foods properly with their quantities of available nutrition: that is to say, the nutrients that the human body is able to absorb from the food. We have known for some time that this absorption is best achieved when food is either in its whole state or minimally processed. Ingredients based on extracts of foods don't pack the same punch when processed into unnatural compositions, and may actually be harmful.

    Many of us believe that UHP food manufacturers are in the same position as the tobacco companies were in the 1960s. If this is the case, certain vegan foods should carry health warnings or even be banned altogether if they contain products known to have a propensity to increase the risk of heart disease.

    Full transparency would expose the myth that vegan foods are good for you – I am not talking here about whole grains, fruits, nuts and vegetables, which are perfectly healthy in a balanced diet with meat, fish, eggs and dairy products – but highly processed compounds of them, often laden with colourings, emulsifiers and flavourings.

    These health metrics especially matter when it comes to arguments about climate change. Kilo for kilo, vegan plant "milk" manufacturers are able to say that their products have lower carbon footprints than cow's milk. But when you measure CO2 against kilos of available protein, dairy milk has a third of the carbon footprint of almond "milk" and a quarter that of oat "milk".

    Moreover, we are just beginning to understand the importance of the highly complex proteins in cow's milk for human health; the caseins, whey proteins and mucins. We have discovered 4,654 of them so far, against a handful found in plant "milks".

    Better nutritional education and a switch from the current absurd labelling legislation, which focuses on calories (irrelevant), and crude macro-nutrients such as proteins, fats (wrongly demonised) and carbohydrates (wrongly praised), to one that provides information on micro-nutrients like vitamins and minerals would have far-reaching benefits.

    I don't subscribe to the NHS-in-crisis narrative: it works daily miracles that would have been inconceivable a generation ago. But improved diets – and the subsequent reduction in the rate of obesity, diabetes and heart disease across the general population – would better help the nation's health (and pockets) than blowing billions of pounds of taxpayer money on increasing capacity.

    Does any party's manifesto include a commitment to fix the health system by tackling poor diets, I wonder?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/06/11/vegans-are-slowly-killing-themselves-processed-food/

    1. The "Health Advice" over the last 50 years driven by "Big Food" buying UNI studies that show sugar laden cereal as a "healthy breakfast" etc etc have given us an obesity and type2 diabetes epidemic all to be treated by their buddies in "Big Pharma"
      They are poisoners and should be tried as such!!

    2. A vegan colleague at work has been off sick for some time now. The nature of the illness hasn’t been disclosed but is clearly severe. Another colleague declared herself tickled when I pointed out that our absent workmate has achieved the remarkable feat of being an overweight vegan. How the hell do you get fat eating grass, I asked. Those not very healthy sugar laden cereals may well be the answer. The patient is a young man who’s already had a hip replacement, which is sad in itself?

  124. Battery red lining, I'd better go before I run out of power.
    Actually that would be a suitable phrase for Richie.
    Goodnight all 😊

  125. The majority of the lovely people who attended my veterans meeting and lunch today say they will give the Lib dems a chance on July 4th.

    These are retired ex service men , who then developed careers after their service life , had businesses and skilled jobs in all areas of life ..

    These people are now in their nineties , and the younger ones who fought in a different war are now in their eighties ..

    Illegals, conscription, crime and the NHS were a good talking point .

    Ed Davey appears to have empathy and honesty , their opinion okay ..

    They believe that Smarmy is chasing the Muslim vote , trying to make amends by supporting Palestine , and poor old Sunak has been abandoned by disloyal selfish egoists , who shouldn't have been politicians in the first place .

    Older people worry , we all worry about bills and the cost of living and many even worry about the cost of maintaining a car .. and the standard of driving on the roads …yes , younger people have appalling driving manners.

    1. Remind them the LDs were responsible for high fuel bills through the Climate Act, they want to take us back into the EU single market and Ed Davey was in charge of the Post Office scandal.

      1. That discussion arose Conway.

        I sense they are fed up with everything , perhaps those who live out of this part of Dorset don't have a choice of candidates.

        South Dorset has a Reform candidate. . He comes from Derbyshire .

        That is not a popular choice down here .

        1. I sympathise with their being fed up, but endorsing poor and damaging policies by voting for them only gives ideas like rejoining the EU single market legitimacy. A Derbyshire candidate is surely better than a Dorset dork.

    2. Ask them if they are aware of an alternative party such as Reform UK. I'm sure they would appreciate a little common sense.

  127. And that's this evening's delivery safely made.
    Also, two lots of washing for stepson done, once lot hung out and the other will be hung out tomorrow morning.

    He is now being held under Section 2 of the Mental Health Act for assessment, initially for up to 28 days.

    1. That gives you a bit of breathing space, thankfully, Bob. You know he's safe and being looked after for four weeks at least.

    2. In my "gap year" I worked in an old fashioned care home for the mentally ill, everything from aged people who just couldn't cope to potentially extremely violent youngsters who were held/living on the secured wards, where the staff patient ratio was nearly one to one.

      You have my admiration.

  129. Another good one from Alison.

    What bribes or blandishments is the Conservative Party offering us today, brought out and hastily dusted down from the Cabinet of Broken Promises? It really doesn’t matter. However cynical they are, Tory voters are more cynical still. The manifesto could have vowed to give every man, woman and child free pizza, a Labrador puppy, £30 billion in tax cuts, zero potholes and at least 17 illegal migrants on a flight to Rwanda in July (well, OK, July 2031) and the response would have been the same eye-roll: “Yeah, right, that’s never happening.”

    We look enviously across the Channel at the French, who are somehow able to arrange a general election in three weeks without Sir Ed Davey bungee-jumping like a loon from the Eiffel Tower. Our ponderous process will take double that, and was a foregone conclusion from the start. I said the Conservatives would be lucky to save 100 seats, and have placed a bet on 80. Latest polls put Reform just a single point behind the Conservatives. Delay is only giving more time for the anti-Tory rebellion to build. My friend Nicky, a lifelong Conservative, is a prime example.

    Last week, after our Prime Minister decided he had a better offer so would not be attending the climax of the commemoration of the most heroic and heartbreaking episode in our nation’s history, Nicky told her family she had made up her mind: she was voting for Reform.

    “I always thought you were a bit of a racist, Mum,” said her son Jack with a wolfish grin.

    Nicky was hurt, but she stood her ground. She said she couldn’t stop thinking about the young soldier whose story she had heard on the news, a boy the same age as Jack. D-Day was the first time that boy had seen the sea. For many ordinary British lads like him it was also the last time they saw the sea, a sea red with blood (“the multitudinous seas incarnadine”, Macbeth says, and that nightmarish vision came true on June 6 1944).

    Is there anyone – Spreadsheet Sunak aside – who doesn’t well up thinking of the sacrifice they made for this country, hurling their young lives into the maw of one of the greatest evils the world has ever known? If we still believe in something, we believe that they died for us, so that, 80 years later, grumpy 22-year-olds (the great-grandchildren those boys would never have) can take their freedom entirely for granted, and call their mothers racist.

    “I am not racist,” Nicky told her son. “I am voting for you and your friends to live in a country that doesn’t discriminate against you, that helps and supports you to make a good life. I’m voting for all the things I love about Britain that I would like to continue after I’ve gone. And a vote for Reform is the best way I can find to make my point.”

    Millions feel as Nicky does – and that sense is growing, I think. Mainstream Conservatives are disgusted with a party that stole our votes on false pretences. We are no longer going to put up with being stigmatised as “far-Right” when our young adult children can’t afford a place to live or endure finger-wagging lectures by One Nation “centrists” – aka supercilious, semi-skimmed Lib Dems who make Tony Blair look like Margaret Thatcher.

    The great immigration betrayal must rank as one of the most unforgivable things any political party has ever done to its supporters. It’s at the root of so many problems: housing, hospital queues, welfare benefits, crime. Having broken their promise in every Conservative manifesto since 2010 (David Cameron said numbers would come down to the “tens of thousands”), a self-soothing globalist elite set about limiting the topics it was permissible to discuss. A “bit of a dog whistle” could swiftly shut down anyone who demurred.

    Now that same lofty cabal informs us that it is all our fault the Tories are heading for a historic defeat. We are the stupid, short-sighted peasants who are going to usher in a Labour government because, strangely, we refuse to vote again for the party that has kicked us in the teeth – while simultaneously flooding the country with so many people we can’t find a dentist to get those teeth fixed.

    The Tory wets warn that the “dangerous demagogue” Nigel Farage lacks “nuance” and cannot grasp the “complexity” of the modern world they control. Note that they offer no explanation for failing to use an 80-seat majority to reform the NHS, which is causing thousands of avoidable deaths, or for faffing with irrelevancies like the International Baccalaureate when military veterans say our once world-class Armed Forces are now too weak to take on Turkey let alone Russia.

    Oh, and these are the same strategic masterminds who told us to “stick with Rishi” when it was already clear last autumn, when I called for a new leader, that the PM had all the political nous of a mini Battenberg (my apologies to Mr Kipling, I’m sure your exceedingly good cakes would have stuck around for the world leaders’ team photo at Omaha Beach).

    Where is what Angela Rayner would call the “abstract” apology (it’s “abject”, Ange, love) the British people deserve for more than two million people being added to our population during the course of the last Parliament alone, when public services were already struggling to cope?

    Perhaps I am too thick to understand the “complexity” that William Hague and other Tory grandees urge on us, but I can read ONS projections which show a UK population increase of 6.6 million by 2036, of which 6.1 million will be due to immigration. Annual net migration of 315,000 (half what it is now under a fake “Conservative” government) will lead to a projected population increase of nine million people by 2046. That’s eight cities the size of Birmingham. Perhaps the Sunaks could buy a couple of islands to put them on as a parting gift?

    If we continue at this rate, according to Migration Watch, the independent think tank, “a child born today to an indigenous British couple would be in a minority in the country of his or her parents by the time they reach their 40s”. Did anyone vote for that? Is anyone busy figuring out how multiculturalism is going to fare under that kind of strain? Problems with the education system or the economy can be corrected or reversed in one generation. Mistakes with immigration can endanger a culture it took a thousand years to create.

    In his interview on Monday night with Nick Robinson, a rattled Sunak protested that immigration was coming down. But net migration of 500,000-plus is not sensible, centrist, One Nation Conservatism; it’s a national suicide note. And if pointing that out is far-Right, go ahead and call me Marine Le Pen.

    Suella Braverman, an actual Conservative forsooth (good people of Fareham, please do vote for her), told me she was “massively alarmed” by the numbers when she was home secretary, but Rishi Sunak was “not interested”, preferring to abide by the Treasury orthodoxy that more migrants were great for the economy. “Rishi and Jeremy [Hunt] would say to me that if I wanted to cut legal migration, that would take £3 billion off GDP, which would mean they wouldn’t be able to cut taxes,” Braverman recalls.

    It is that attitude – selling our birthright on the QT for short-term brownie points – and not anything that Nigel Farage has said or done which has led the Tory faithful to abandon their party in vast numbers and with huge and justifiable anger.

    The Europeans, so adored by Tory Remainers, have given up saying “our poor country” and this week did something about it. Millions voted against the globalist consensus, enforced by the media, whereby anyone who steps outside the centrist position – on gender, immigration, welfare, leaving the European Convention on Human Rights – is hung out to dry as a fascist or racist. How long do you think the BBC’s affronted Katya Adler will be able to keep calling Le Pen “hard Right” when she’s had such a crushing victory across French constituencies? Are they all “fascists”, or did they simply opt to put their own people first?

    I expect that, sooner or later, we will see a similar “I agree with Nigel” moment here, much to the horror of the establishment. Farage was the clear winner of Friday’s BBC Debate – coming top of a snap YouGov poll as well as being miles ahead in The Telegraph one. I agreed with virtually everything he said – on the NHS, net zero, Armed Forces and immigration – as did one former Cabinet minister who texted me ruefully: “Lots of Tories tonight will be thinking, ‘I wish he was our leader.’”

    You know, I think Nigel Farage is already the leader of the Conservatives. He certainly makes a better, more convincing Tory than Rishi Sunak. The polls bear that out. According to the latest findings from strategic consultancy Redfield & Wilton, Reform is in second place (behind Labour) with voters aged 45-54 and 55-64 (that’s the age group of the Tory “base”) and is even second among 18-24s. The Conservatives are in a miserable fifth place with that younger age bracket.

    It’s not hard to see why. On the same day my friend Nicky told Jack she was voting Reform, my own son went to look at a rental property for him and his girlfriend in London. The market is so crazy he had no time to lose. There were snails in the hallway and my boy’s trainers made squelchy imprints on the tropically damp staircase carpet as he ascended to the top floor. The one-bedroom attic flat was cramped and the ceiling hung low in parts as if people in hammocks were encased in the plaster. He needn’t have bothered. The agent said a previous viewer had just offered £200 over the asking price: £1,700 a month.

    “Why is everything so expensive, Mum?”

    “I’m sorry, my darling boy. A Conservative government I voted for has shafted your generation by allowing shocking levels of immigration.”

    These are the facts. Last year, we built 171,000 houses in England and about 204,000 in Britain, well short of the Government’s target of 300,000 homes – a target that was based on the assumption that the UK has a net migration rate of 170,000 a year. That’s a figure we haven’t seen for more than a decade. Today, Britain needs to build at least 515,000 new homes each year just to keep up with the extra demand.

    On Tuesday, instead of saying he would drastically increase the housing supply, which would bring prices down, Sunak announced tax breaks for landlords, which might encourage them to sell and make more houses available. What good is that for my son, for Nicky’s Jack and millions like them who will never be able to save for a deposit? They can’t afford to go out – not at nine quid a drink – so they play board games and inhabit fantasy worlds where the monsters aren’t landlords. Increasingly, as I know, those young people, running short on hope, a commodity that comes as a free gift with youth, turn to their elders and ask, “Where can we go?”

    Why should they have to consider leaving this country, the green and pleasant land all those young men died for on D-Day? They were fighting the real far-Right, and their victory was for all time. Not to be squandered and sold out. So, yes, vote Reform on July 4 – or vote for any party or any individual who cares about our culture, who puts British people first, who wants our young to have hope. Whatever you do, don’t blame us for a landslide Labour victory. If we Conservative voters have found ourselves politically homeless, it’s because the Conservative Party has trashed our home.

    1. Console yourself that all the multi-cultis will be busy stabbing each other in their thousands.
      OK, whites will be the minority, paying the taxes, picking up the pieces, but they'll get front row seats for the Khanage.
      What more could they want?
      /sarc
      And on the off chance you missed it /sarc stands for sarcasm, the lowest form of protest.

    3. I hate break it to Allison, but the Nazis were socialists and therefore hard left. The clue’s in the name.

    5. Alison Pearson needs to stop pretending that this isn't part of a global plan to destroy the West.

  130. How an 'anti-woke' UK police chief turned around a failing force in just three years
    –
    Stephen Watson inherited Greater Manchester Police in disarray, but his back-to-basics approach has radically improved the force
    –
    Charles Hymas, Home Affairs Editor • 11 June 2024 • 7:00pm
    –
    In three years, Stephen Watson, the Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police (GMP), has turned a failing force that was on its knees into the one rated most improved by the official police watchdog.

    However, Watson, 55, is clear that he is not finished. In the two years he has left on his contract, he is aiming to transform GMP into the best force in the country. That means being rated by HM Chief Inspector of Constabulary as "good in all things and outstanding in some," he says.

    His back-to-basics approach has been hailed by the former Conservative home secretaries Priti Patel and Suella Braverman – as well as James Cleverly, the present Home Secretary – as a model for restoring the public's faith in policing even though he was appointed by Labour's Andy Burnham, the Greater Manchester mayor who sacked his predecessor.

    Watson's strategy of getting bobbies back on the beat has seen him courted as much by the Tories as Labour, sparking speculation within police circles that he could, once his term in Manchester is complete, be in line to become Britain's most senior officer: the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.

    In recent months, he has adroitly steered GMP through the tricky waters of an investigation into Angela Rayner, the deputy Labour leader, and the fall-out from GMP's wrongful conviction of Andrew Malkinson who served 17 years in prison for a crime he did not commit.

    We meet in Watson's airy fourth floor office where a portrait of Elizabeth II hangs between two windows looking out towards the city centre skyline. The force's crest is pinned to the wall between a Union Jack and GMP flag alongside sailing pictures that reflect his favourite way to relax off-duty.

    Wearing his full police uniform, he has the bearing of a military man and would have followed his father and grandfather into the Navy had he not chosen policing. As he sits at his office's pine conference table, he rattles off statistics to explain how his back-to-fundamentals, anti-woke approach has transformed the second biggest force in England and Wales.

    When he arrived in the summer of 2021, GMP had been placed in "special measures" after failing to record 80,000 crimes – a fifth of that year's total. Emergency 999 response times were the worst in the country, with serial warnings that it was failing domestic abuse and sexual assault victims.

    Now, says Watson, every crime is investigated, emergency response times are among the best in England and Wales, arrests of domestic abuse perpetrators have doubled in a year and overall crime is down by 7.7 per cent. Since he took over, stop and searches have quadrupled to 46,029 in a year, a key reason, he believes, behind sharp falls in robberies, firearms offences and people presenting at hospitals with knife injuries. "It is about leadership and having an effective plan," he says.

    Reading from his notes, Watson reels off the force's successes: "In 12 months, neighbourhood crime is down 15.4 per cent, burglary is down 24 points, vehicle crime is down 16.2 per cent, robbery is down 11.2 per cent, theft from the person is down 3.9 per cent," he says.

    His plan was to shift the entire force from being "reactive" to crime to "proactively" pursuing and preventing it. "We pick up the phone, we get to people quickly, we make accurate records, we investigate all reasonable lines of inquiry. We bring people to justice," he says.

    He is clear it is not about "going down all manner of contemporary rabbit holes," responding to woke causes or being distracted by "the fluff and nonsense" of social media.

    "Whether it be through adulterating the uniform with pins and badges and having all manner of florid social media accounts – these are all things that I don't think have a place in policing," he says.

    He summed up this approach three years ago when, in reference to the controversy over the police kowtowing to Black Lives Matter, I asked him if he would ever take the knee in uniform. "No, I absolutely would not. I would probably kneel before the Queen, God and Mrs Watson, that's it," he replied.

    Instead, he believes it is about investigating every crime no matter how minor and thinking about crime "through the prism of the victim's experience rather than the prism of some sort of Home Office classification."

    It echoes the US-inspired "broken windows" philosophy on tackling crime. "I expect my officers to enforce moving traffic offences, litter and graffiti, right the way up through the spectrum. It's as much about the small stuff as it is about the big stuff," says Watson.

    "There's no doubt in my mind that if you don't tend to anti-social behaviour, which is symptomatic of crime, eventually things will deteriorate to the point where you get embedded endemic, deep-rooted crime and anti-social behaviour."

    He cites Manchester's Cheetham Hill district as an example of this decline. Half a mile from the city centre, it earned a reputation as the counterfeit capital of the UK, where you could find fake Apple airpods sold for £20 rather than £250 and counterfeit Nike Air Max 95 trainers for £30, instead of £165.

    Once home to a thriving rag trade, it had become a hub for organised crime and illegal migrant workers, and an "enormous" generator of illicit money, largely because of police turning a blind eye. "Cheetham Hill literally was allowed to decline over a period of 30 years," says Watson.

    "The GMP has turned that around in eight months. It seems to me to be a great example of the power of what can be done."

    Through multiple raids and putting officers back on the beat, 218 premises selling illegal goods have been shut; nearly 240 suspected criminals arrested; and officers have seized over 1,000 tonnes of counterfeit goods, £560,000 in cash and over 100 vehicles. "It was the counterfeit capital of Europe, it now just no longer exists," he says.

    Watson and his deputy chief constable Terry Woods have just completed their annual round of face-to-face strategy briefings with more than 5,000 of their staff to set out their vision for the next year.

    When they launched these briefings three years ago, they called them "giants", a nod to the fact that GMP was a "sleeping giant". This year they have dropped the "sleeping" part because, says Woods, "we have woken them up."

    Part of the reason for their success in driving through reforms is that they have brought the workforce with them. Woods says the staff know they have not forgotten what it is like to be on the front line dealing with a violent incident. "They get a sense that we are still connected to what happens at three o'clock in the morning," he says.

    Nothing symbolises that connection better than one of Watson's first acts: replacing officers' "scruffy", "cheap" kit from which they had even removed the force insignia to save money. He invested in a new uniform with the GMP logo and introduced a strict dress code.

    "If you turn up to work, if you're a female officer, you tie your hair up, if you're a man you've had a shave, you press your clothing, you polish your boots, you look smart, and you look professional. We're very uncompromising on that," says Watson.

    "When you see the Grenadier Guards outside Buckingham Palace, there's never a problem with smartness or with uniform standards. I think we can take a leaf out of that book."

    Watson says he would have followed family tradition and joined the Royal Navy had it not been for a chance meeting in a Manchester street with two "cheery" GMP officers when he was considering his career options.

    "They just put it into my head that it might be good, it might be fun. I thought it was an honourable calling. I joined almost by accident. I enjoyed it and I was reasonably good at it. And I'm very proud to be a police officer," he says.

    Warrington-born Watson grew up in Rhodesia where his father was a naval officer before he and other British families had to leave in 1981 when Robert Mugabe came to power. He completed his education in South Africa before returning to Britain at the age of 18 with a view to pursuing a career in the Navy.

    Instead, in 1988, he joined Lancashire Constabulary as a probationer, telling his cousin at the time that his ambition was to be GMP's Chief Constable. His determination served him well, as he rose through the ranks to become staff officer to Pauline Clare, then Lancashire's chief constable and the first woman in Britain to hold such a senior post.

    This key job at the heart of the force gave Watson an insight into how to run a constabulary, from ensuring Clare was fully briefed for every meeting, to liaising with senior officers and writing speeches. "He was very good as a staff officer because of his work ethic," recalls Woods, then a sergeant working alongside Watson. "We'd be in at 5am in the morning and we'd be there until 11pm at night."

    What he learned from Watson has remained with him through his 25 years of policing, he says. Now reunited as chief and deputy at GMP, Woods recalls: "His sense of vocation and values resonated with me for the rest of my career. It is the idea that policing is bigger than a job. It's public first, but Stephen's duty is to the Crown."

    The pair are very different. Watson is well-spoken, middle-class and privately educated; Woods, in his own words a "broad Boltoner". But, he says: "The sense of why we were put on earth is the same. Everything is about keeping people safe and if you don't think that, don't be in policing."

    In 2006, Watson left Lancashire after being appointed the chief superintendent of Merseyside police, in charge of one of the toughest areas of the city. Five years later, he moved to a similar job as a commander in the Met Police.

    A qualified firearms and public order commander, he worked on high-profile operations including the Vauxhall helicopter crash in which two people died after an aircraft clipped a construction crane. He had a key role also in restoring public confidence after the 2011 riots. A year later, he was awarded a Commissioner's Commendation for his role in the successful delivery of a peaceful London Olympics.

    He was then promoted to deputy chief constable in Durham Police, rated the best performing force in England and Wales, before taking over as chief constable for the then "failing" South Yorkshire force.

    Here he applied the same principles that he has at GMP: prioritising neighbourhood policing, pursuing every lead and enforcing a smart dress code with no visible tattoos. "I have nothing against tattoos, but I'm absolutely sure the public are not ready for a police officer to have a tattoo on their face or neck," he says.

    Where there were police failings, he was honest about admitting them. On his arrival at South Yorkshire in 2016, he had to deal with the fall-out of the Rotherham child sex abuse scandal, which happened before he took on the role. He said at the time that the failure of the police to help victims was "totally inexplicable and unforgivable".

    Yet, by the time he left South Yorkshire, it had been rated the most improved police force three years in a row. His success made him an obvious fit when he applied in 2021 to work for GMP, then a force in crisis after the removal of its chief constable over a failure to get a grip on crime.

    An avowed family man, with an adult son and daughter, Watson has always kept a base in neighbouring Lancashire where he met his wife, Jane, a former traffic officer in the county who now runs her family's firm which provides equipment and supplies for ships.

    Despite his "posh" background, colleagues say he has no pretensions. "He doesn't try to be something he's not," says Woods.

    To those officers, he is seen as a faithful boss. "He's very loyal and by that I don't mean blindly loyal," says one senior officer. "Policing can be choppy waters. We've all made big calls. If I do the right thing, even if it creates a storm, he will back me. And if I do the wrong thing and I'm honest, he won't cast me out."

    When he took over the force, Watson admits GMP was propping up the bottom of the league table at 43rd out of 43 forces in England and Wales, with all their performance ratings from independent watchdogs set at "inadequate" or "requiring improvement" – the bottom two grades used by HM inspectors.

    Today GMP has among the fastest response times for 999 calls, down from 25 seconds when Watson arrived to just four seconds now. The number of burglaries solved has doubled after he became a "beacon" force for the country by guaranteeing to send an officer to the scene of every break-in.

    "We are midway through a journey. We aspire to be outstandingly good at serious and organised crime, neighbourhood policing and child protection," says Watson.

    "And we want to be outstandingly efficient, because money is likely to tighten up and, given the macro economic situation, we have to drive inefficiencies out of our organisation to sustain our momentum.

    "Ultimately, we want to see ourselves as the most improved force in the country for the third year running."

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/06/11/how-manchester-anti-woke-police-chief-tackled-crime-rates/

    2. Just finished watching the police and customs raids on the counterfeit businesses in Cheetham Hill on 5 Star channel

    4. It sounds good, but the acid test is, do they police muslims as well as everyone else?
      Not sure if it is still the case, but for ages there were no arrests of rape gangs in Manchester, which is frankly, unbelievable given how widespread they are in towns and cities in the region.

    5. The only surprise is that people are surprised his approach works. Grizz among others has been banging on about this style of Policing for years.

  131. And I'm off to bed.
    Not a lot planned tomorrow, so I'll probably get on with sorting one of the compost bins out.
    How long should it take twigs etc to rot down????

  132. We've just got back from our trip to the cinema – I'd forgotten how enjoyable it is to have a night at the opera for a fraction of the price at Covent Garden – they were all in fine voice too.
    Put the heating on when we got in. It's damned chilly for June.

    1. I believe that London theatre prices are stratospheric. I go to local productions now and again. Not cheap, but nothing like a night in the smoke.

      1. It's a long time since we went to London- but we did see Dmitri Horostovski in Faust, and Juan Diego Flores in La Fille du Regiment. Good memories.

  133. From the Spectator magazine

    Parents, trust me, your kids are better off without television
    Screens are a solution that create more problems

    Comments Share 11 June 2024, 4:59am
    Last year, we got rid of our television. Pretty much, anyway: it lives in the attic of our increasingly cramped two-bedroom maisonette. The TV only comes down for mummy and daddy’s Friday night date nights and for occasional family film time.

    Any time gained by putting the television on was almost invariably lost (and then some) by arguing about switching it off
    With three kids under five, we did not come to this momentous bit of Ludditery lightly. However, our three kids had never really had that much screen time anyway: YouTube, tablets, and phones are verboten, and we have never opened the entertainment sluice gate by just ‘sticking the telly on’ and subjecting them to what we unapologetically call ‘twaddle’. Our television wasn’t even connected to the aerial. Generally, TV was for carefully chosen movies, Attenborough, and, most crucially, ‘witching hours’.

    Parents of small children know that of which I speak – those times when, bless them, it just seems unreasonable to expect the kids to do anything other than flop onto the sofa and zonk out to a few episodes of Octonauts or Bluey. The run up to tea-time, the end of a long day at school or nursery, the morning after a late night – these are the ratty fag-ends of a young family’s day, when tempers fray, energy levels plummet, and emotions run high. In such times, the screens reign. These are also usually times when mummy and daddy really need to ‘do jobs’: get the dinner on, have a quick tidy, put the washing on the line. During these vital windows, television-wielding parents can neutralise their little adversaries into a semi-catatonic state more effectively than James Bond choke holding a cohort of unobservant henchmen as he infiltrates Blofeld’s lair.

    Why on earth, then, would a screen-lite family jettison their already minimal television time? Expressing concerns about television use in 2024, when most kids are drooling over tablets and phones, can seem a bit like fretting to Tim Berners-Lee in 1989 about being at the mercy of the telephone – count your blessings. But in short: it caused more problems than it solved. Now, of course, parenting is often the practice of choosing which set of problems you are most willing to put up with, but that was just it: having a television was causing more of exactly the problems we were using it to solve.

    Our chief reason for having the telly was a sincere belief that, if we didn’t, we would spend the next hour locking horns with children who couldn’t entertain themselves and insisted on arguing with us. But regular TV use makes both of those things worse.

    First, if you constantly resort to the television when you think your children can’t entertain themselves then (and it sounds obvious when you say it out loud to yourself), they will never learn to entertain themselves. ‘The child is the father of the man,’ said Wordsworth, and if a childhood is spent constantly following the path of least resistance when you’re a bit tired or grumpy, what kind of adult are you going to end up with?

    Second, any time gained by putting the television on was almost invariably lost (and then some) by arguing about switching it off, whatever warning we gave. This was especially the case with our eldest son, approaching three at the time. Learning self-control will eventually be an essential part of his growth into manhood. But given what a television actually is – a loud and luminous dopamine machine dominating the living room like an oversized household god – is it really fair to, on a daily basis, hook a two-year-old and then cut off his supply?

    A chief vice of modern parenting is expecting both too much and too little of our children. We ask too much when we expect very young ones to switch screens off without a fight; yet we ask too little when we think they can’t survive without them. We were stunned by how easily our eldest two accepted things (the baby kept his thoughts to himself). Within days, witching hours had basically vanished. I hate to make them sound like cherubs in a Titian painting, but they really did just take themselves off to play, devising some new game called ‘Not Nice Cats’ (which I gather involved pretending to be cats who were not very nice). They dug out things they hadn’t played with in ages, and their games got noticeably longer and more involved. Our eldest boy still likes to argue the toss as much as the next fiery young lad, but he swiftly adjusted to the novus ordo around the television.

    So parents: it might involve a few days of whinging and remonstrance, but it is actually possible in 2024 to live without a television. Your kids will probably be better off for it. And (whisper it) you may actually find that you are too.

    1. I had parents like this. We spent a few years without TV.
      You forgive them because you love them.
      And because they rectified their ways and bought a new TV.

      1. I grew up without a telly and would gladly ditch it now if OH didn't watch sports. There's not much on that grabs my attention these days.

    2. I had parents like this. We spent a few years without TV.
      You forgive them because you love them.
      And because they rectified their ways and bought a new TV.

    3. Not being a Luddite at all. Propaganda, entrainment etc. Children are better off without it.

    2. It is a wonder how they have voted for him twice. If there is a 3rd term, they deserve everything they get. Unfortunately, it strengthens the WEF and the like.

  135. They won't listen to their voters. The voters are drunk and uncouth. They pick their noses and scratch their balls.

    1. ' Morning, Geoff, thank you and well done for all the efforts you have lavished on us, on our behalf.

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