Wednesday 21 August: A tax-happy government will stifle Britain’s entrepreneurial spirit

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.

674 thoughts on “Wednesday 21 August: A tax-happy government will stifle Britain’s entrepreneurial spirit”

    1. So how much tying down the use of Vlodomir's weapons with red tape are we? Excellent! I don't fancy ending my days with (Nuclear) World War III.

      I wrote this comment badly, but now (9.35 pm) I have tried to clarify what I meant to say.

    1. Summed up in one eloquent headline phrase as: 'Drop the Dead Donkey!'

      Good morning Michael and all

  7. Prison works – if Labour abandons this principle our streets will descend into chaos. 21 August 2024.

    I know that it is hard to believe it sometimes, but crime has actually fallen over the last decade, by about 50 per cent on a like for like basis. No, I’m not joking; I’m quoting the Office for National Statistics. Indeed, the Chief Inspector of Policing himself said last year, that “England and Wales are arguably safer than they have ever been”.

    This is quite simply because people have stopped reporting crime. It is a pointless activity.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/08/20/prison-works-labour-abandons-principle-chaos/

    1. People don't report. But when they do the police don't investigate. Wow, look at those wonderful statistics !

      Now why would so many countries around the world be telling their citizens to be cautious if traveling to the UK?

  8. 'Morning All
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3809a71dc330a87c69b045425c981b20103ea0beedf97f7c09ffb50bb873e63b.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/bd6ba37e870fc27cc8174758f96b4e0695f2fd5051bff221e63caee207ab9718.jpg
    http://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/589379ad3068bb521fe5a94447638681789a8b85b92811cf7a6bb3519d047448.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c774f4482869cad72cee3308e3dd682a27a6f68c4a502c8b1c6ba7234e519c4a.png
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/769f06884b9bf24530c360570b8a42e5f1a7b9ef1313b2def77f8be6e03e383f.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/628a4fd7cfcddb53a995f9c6c91b3fde7f71325e51a00f6184ffcae3ef714eda.jpg
    Finally for gawds sake don't let Dolly or Sparty see this…….
    https://x.com/chiweethedog/status/1825987054569697460

    1. Daft as it sounds, that is believable.
      The only human beings Spartie doesn't like are small children.
      And big dogs tend to defer to him.

      1. Dolly and Harry don't like small children either. But then, neither do I, so that's all right then.

        Dolly can also turn at speed on a sixpence. Those great big dogs chasing her end up crashing into the shrubbery wondering what the hell just happened.

    2. All these cartoons illustrate well the consequences of social mobility, which we are told is a good thing.

  9. Good morning, chums. I hope you slept well. And thanks, Geoff, for today's NoTTLe page.

    Wordle 1,159 5/6

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

    1. Morning Elsie
      Wordle 1,159 4/6

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

  10. 392077+ up ticks,

    Then this odious collection of political dangerous misfits will reside in a state of happiness for the next five years unless…

    Their main aim is to return these Isles via WEF /NWO odious guidance to the era of when UGG was the morning greeting and, make no mistake it has support, indigenous and building daily through the DOVER "government" controlled invasion build.

    Wednesday 21 August: A tax-happy government will stifle Britain’s entrepreneurial spirit

  11. Iran could wait a ‘long time’ before retaliating against Israel. 21 August 2024.

    Iran could take a “long time” before retaliating against Israel, a spokesman for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has said.

    “Time is on our side, and the waiting period for a response may be long,” Ali Mohammad Naini told a press conference on Tuesday.

    The Iranian's have thought better of it. A wise decision.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/08/20/israeli-hostage-bodies-idf-khan-younis-gaza-abraham-munder/

    1. It reminds me of my brother who has a feisty Italian wife. I saw her relatives in a wedding photograph, and I've never seen a more sinister bunch of hoods in my life. He loves it, and wonders why I should choose to live in a nice English village rather than being alive to the excitement of Italian politics.

      There are limits even to an Englishman's patience though, and during a bout of crockery throwing where even their large labrador hid under the wardrobe, he threatened to leave her.

      Most sensible women would go all tearful and plead "please don't leave me; I cannot live without you". Not her though. With a steely stare she declared with the soft Latinate tones of a Hannibal Lecter "if you leave me, I will kill you". And meant it.

      He told her he'd think about it a bit longer.

    1. …we will end up in a very dark and dangerous place

      Successive governments have driven the Country to the precipice of that dark and dangerous place and it will only take a nudge or two to catapult the Country into the abyss.

      I can't remember an incoming government, and its PM, making such a mess of things in such a short time. The adverse criticism on social media is immense.

      1. 392077+ up ticks,

        Morning KtK,

        The rot openly set in on the
        24 /6 /2016 in an anti Brexit mode
        The wretch cameron passing the baton to treacherous treasa on her placement via the leadership farce, she continues the pro eu treachery until burn out, well compensated through for services rendered, then johnson, a victim of the gove assassin, was given the leadership it was all based on a three/ four tier rocket aimed at a
        returning to brussels.

        The only true fact was THEY were all in it together.

      2. "I can't remember an incoming government, and its PM, making such a mess of things in such a short time. "

        I can. It was in 2022, and that Government lasted about 42 days and social media was discussing whether it would last longer than the national lettuce.

        They bear an uncanny resemblance to each other; it's as though any alternative has been extinguished in the cause of "Change UK plc".

  13. Brilliant idea…

    Hire more of our members to avert strikes, union chiefs tell rail bosses

    Aslef says LNER could avoid industrial action by hiring drivers being let go by Royal Mail

    Christopher Jasper, TRANSPORT INDUSTRY EDITOR
    21 August 2024 • 6:00am

    Union chiefs who have called three months of rail strikes on London North Eastern Railway (LNER) are lobbying to have Royal Mail train drivers they also represent hired on the East Coast main line.

    Train drivers’ union Aslef said LNER could make strides toward avoiding industrial action by hiring experienced crews, including those currently being let go by Royal Mail.

    Aslef, which has about 450 members at LNER, claims the company is short of dozens of drivers, something union chiefs argue is to blame for the breakdown in relations between the two sides.

    Union bosses have suggested LNER could address the issue by recruiting from the railfreight sector, particularly given Royal Mail is set to scrap its dedicated postal trains from October and leave many drivers out of work.

    The call for new jobs for these members comes after Aslef announced last week that drivers on LNER expresses between London and Edinburgh will walk out each weekend between the end of August and mid-November, citing what it claimed was the persistent breaking of labour agreements by the company.

    The industrial action caused surprise given the Government had offered Aslef an industry-wide 15pc pay hike earlier this month.

    The dispute with LNER is separate and revolves around the company’s deployment of managers to cover for striking drivers during the two years of walkouts. That practice has now become an everyday occurrence in breach of roster agreements, according to Aslef.

    Written assurance that LNER will end the custom would most likely be sufficient for the union to enter negotiations. A commitment to bring driver numbers up to required levels could form the basis for a long-term agreement.

    Royal Mail’s plan to halt postal train operations by October 10 after almost 200 years will lead to redundancies at DB Cargo, which provides around 20 drivers for Royal Mail’s postal trains who are also Aslef members.

    This provides an immediate hiring opportunity for LNER, a spokesman for the union said.

    DB Cargo said consultation with Aslef on redundancies will begin this week. The company also laid off around 90 drivers last year as cargo volumes struggled to recover from Covid, some of whom may still be available for recruitment, according to a spokesman.

    DB Cargo, a division of German state railway Deutsche Bahn, told The Telegraph that not all of the drivers involved worked exclusively on Royal Mail contracts, with some required through the autumn for the operation of leaf-blasting services for Network Rail.

    Royal Mail crews are mostly qualified to drive on the West Coast main line and would require retraining, though some have experience working on the East Coast to a depot near Newcastle.

    LNER declined to comment on Aslef’s claims regarding understaffing and the deployment of managers to drive trains.

    Reiterating comments issued after the strikes were announced last Friday, it said: “We are surprised and disappointed to hear this news following recent constructive conversations. We will continue to work with Aslef to find a way to end this long running dispute.”

    Transport Secretary Louise Haigh last weekend called on LNER and Aslef to “get around the table, negotiate in good faith and stop this action before it starts.”

    The Government may have a more direct role to play in the dispute, however, given that LNER has been under state control since 2018. Virgin Trains handed the route back to the Government amid financial difficulties.

    OLR Holdings, which runs LNER and a clutch of other nationalised train operators on behalf of the DfT, didn’t respond to questions regarding any role it might have in ending the dispute.

    Aslef said that recruiting from the rail freight sector could help provide a wider solution to passenger operators facing driver shortages.

    Under Labour’s pay deal, drivers at LNER stand to see their salaries rise to £81,000, ranking them second only to counterparts at Eurostar in terms of pay across the UK rail sector. Even the best-rewarded freight-train drivers get at least £20,000 less than that.

    1. "The industrial action caused surprise given the Government had offered Aslef an industry-wide 15pc pay hike earlier this month."

      Surprise to whom?

      "IT IS always a temptation to an armed and agile nation
      To call upon a neighbour and to say: –
      "We invaded you last night – we are quite prepared to fight,
      Unless you pay us cash to go away."

      And that is called asking for Dane-geld,
      And the people who ask it explain
      That you've only to pay 'em the Dane-geld
      And then you'll get rid of the Dane!

      It is always a temptation for a rich and lazy nation,
      To puff and look important and to say: –
      "Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you.
      We will therefore pay you cash to go away."

      And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
      But we've proved it again and again,
      That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
      You never get rid of the Dane.

      It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
      For fear they should succumb and go astray;
      So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
      You will find it better policy to say: —

      "We never pay any-one Dane-geld,
      No matter how trifling the cost;
      For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
      And the nation that plays it is lost!"

      1. Good morning, Anne

        Always good to start the day with a Kipple!

        I wonder where the committee which decides which books should be read by schoolchildren would put Rudyard?

  14. Scotland’s disability benefits shake-up triggers threefold surge in claims

    Approvals surge at a much faster rate than in England and Wales since Holyrood’s reform

    Eir Nolsøe
    20 August 2024 • 7:24pm

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/08/20/scotland-disability-benefits-shake-up-surge-claim-claims/

    ********************************
    Carpe Jugulum
    11 HRS AGO
    You start by allowing education 'theorists' and examination board liberals to denigrate our country and focus on perceived wrongs.
    You continue by attacking resilience and creating a 'rights' culture of dependency.
    You erode the concepts of national pride and work ethic.
    You armour dependency with phrases like 'society's most vulnerable'.
    You eventually create a societal underclass of non-working para sites that further erodes the work ethic and morale of the entire country's workforce.
    Well done our self-righteous political classes, you have ruined the country.
    Reform is now the last and only hope.

    Stan Blog
    10 HRS AGO
    1 in 4 – claiming disability benefit – I’m sorry but that is embezzlement/fraud on a giant scale with the express permission of the state. Why? Are those in charge deliberately trying to destroy the state? What is going on in the UK – I am flabbergasted

    A Fisher
    11 HRS AGO
    Paid for by English taxpayers !
    Scrap Barnett!!!

  15. Good Morning Folks,
    Bright start here

    Not looking good for the Bank Holiday
    Plenty of cloud seeding going on.

    1. Good Morning. I thought of you yesterday as I fell off a ladder whilst picking plums. Nothing broken but some squashed plums and bruised ego.

      3. Seriously, I'd try to see a doctor. I didn't and over the following seven years my pore old spine has become increasingly curved. And painful. I wish I'd thought of having a check at the time (when GPs were accessible). I was just so relieved at NOT being dead that I did nothing.

      4. Other (safer) types of ladder are available. Cheaper than creating a new spine.
        Tactful suggestions include: safety step ladders, tripod ladders, dwarf fruit trees, or simply leave the high fruit for younger people, birds and wasps.

    1. I couldn't stomach the massed triumphalist party gloating in the hall to celeb disco muzak, as tasteless and horrible as anything Trump can put on.

      If we have to be like Americans, then for as long as there is an off button, I'll use it, and when they abolish off buttons, then I'll have an axe sharpened and ready. I'm sure they are letting a few burglars and shoplifters go free to make space for me in their re-education asylums.

  20. Good morning all. I hope everyone had a peaceful night.
    A bright start with a light hazy cloud coming over. A tad below 7°C on the Yard Thermometer.
    I'm planning on "doing" Falstone and Glendale Shows over the weekend so getting van sorted to head up to Dr. Daughter's in Newcastle tomorrow.

    2. In Starmer's new version of Newspeak the term 'illegal immigrants' will be redefined as 'the white indigenous population' who should be deported for the gross historical crime of thinking they belong to their homeland and their homeland belongs to them.

    3. BTL Comment:-

      R. Spowart
      just now
      Message Actions
      Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
      {Breathe}
      Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
      {Breathe}
      Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
      {Breathe}
      Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
      {Breathe}
      etc.

    5. She's not quite the full shilling is she ?
      I expect Ed might have been guiding her on public opinion
      Politicians don't like public opinion.

  22. 392077+ up ticks,

    In regards to the lad that got twenty months for shouting at a police dog,I believe he had been reading up on " dog therapy"and was sensitive to the dogs inmost THOUGHTS that was, at that moment in time, prior to the shounting ( in defence), that looks a tasty throat.

    There are going to be another million such stories in our once fail land.

    Tactical voting can,will. and has BIG TIME, become a dangerous health hazard.

  23. Labour’s war on history is a war on the nation itself

    The fear is that Wales will turn out to be a prototype for the rest of the country, with sinister consequences

    ROBERT TOMBS
    20 August 2024 • 6:52pm

    When Bridget Phillipson, Secretary of State for Education, made her acceptance speech when re-elected as an MP last month, she praised “our country with its proud history”. I was so surprised I wrote it down. She is now responsible for the history taught in schools, and has since commissioned a review of the national curriculum, so we may see in due course what exactly she is proud of.

    But I am not optimistic. A company providing teaching materials to schools recently instructed teachers to “avoid presenting the British Empire as an equal balance of good and bad… Instead, teach colonialism as ‘invading and exploiting’ other countries, and present the British Empire as you would other global powers that committed atrocities, eg Nazi Germany.” Few readers of this column need me to explain why this is appalling history as well as damaging to children. If Britain is like Nazi Germany, then the traditions we were once proud to uphold – respect for the law, let’s say, or our peaceful political culture – are mere hypocrisy. No one will need reminding how damaging such beliefs can be.

    I hope that Wales under its Labour administration will not turn out to be a prototype for Labour’s England. Readers may recall Cardiff’s policy of making Wales “an anti-racist nation” by 2030, using local authorities, museums, art galleries and even pubs to promote “the right historic narrative”. Those who run our cultural institutions hardly need such prompting, but having the political wind behind them encourages ever more absurd examples of wokeism.

    The latest concerns Wales’s public libraries, whose staff are apparently so sunk in racism they need training to counteract the “dominant paradigm of whiteness”. We learn they are also so hyper-sensitive that training sessions must not be held in buildings with a “racist legacy”, whose noxious vibes might upset the trainees.

    The problem is not just the government, but organised campaigns openly run by the professional bodies of the staff of libraries, museums, ancient buildings and art galleries. Once – in the distant past before about 1990 – such people devoted themselves to scholarship, to the transmission of knowledge and culture, and to the preservation and display of historical treasures in their care. The aim was education in the broadest sense: to help the public appreciate our inheritance, and understand the crucial difference between the past and the present. This is apparently too boring for the current generation of cultural entrepreneurs, who want to be both activists and public entertainers.

    Those of us who take a morbid interest in the excesses of today’s museums and galleries know that those running them either don’t know what is true about the past, or don’t care. They prefer to ask the opinions of local “communities” or commission school children to write captions. After all, if history is just a lot of “narratives”, why not pick the ones that serve your purpose? Why not liken the British Empire to Nazi Germany if you want to? The first abolished slavery, and the other enslaved Europe. But you can if necessary find people, even tame academics, who will rubber-stamp your propaganda. And, astonishingly, government bodies that will fund it, under the Conservatives or Labour.

    What is going on? I admit to being cynical. Most of it is virtue signalling and careerism on the part of the activists, and cowardice on the part of the rest. If you want promotion, or even to keep your job, you go with the flow. Who in the cultural field, whether an actor, an academic, or a Welsh librarian, wants to risk being called racist, or even just old-fashioned?

    But let us assume that there is some coherent aim somewhere behind all this, and not just opportunism. The target is our history: not just the shameful episodes, but all of it. So Nelson, Wellington and Churchill of course are defamed, but so is the progressive hero William Ewart Gladstone, supporter of democracy, emancipation, and liberty. The library at Hawarden in Flintshire, Wales, is frowned on because Gladstone’s father owned slaves.

    All I can think is that the ultimate goal is to trash our national history and promote a post-national “ground zero”. Starting again from scratch is an old revolutionary fantasy, ever since the French Revolution proclaimed itself Year One. Ms Phillipson, it ended badly.

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

    Ian Ryder
    11 HRS AGO
    “other (global) powers that committed atrocities,”
    I don’t particularly have a problem with that if the teaching includes the Zulu colonialism in Southern Africa, the Muslim colonisation of North Africa, the slave trade of the Ashanti and the Oba of Benin, the Barbary corsairs enslavement of English people, the Mughal colonisation of the Indian subcontinent etc.
    But just focusing on the British Empire’s warts and all is not presenting a balanced view of history. It’s holding white British people to a higher moral standard than their contemporaries. Surely any suggestion that foreigners are excused a lower moral compass by virtue of their ethnicity is to portray them as inferior. And that would be racist wouldn’t it?

    John Stephen
    3 HRS AGO
    Not only is the 'narrative' damaging it is also wrong.
    Where I live, Singapore, there was no invasion and no exploitation.
    What actually happened was that a couple of adventurers thought that this empty, swampy island looked like a good place to build a port that was equidistant between China and India. Consequently, they ambled ashore, met up with the local Sultan's representative and leased a plot of land as far as a cannon ball could fly.
    The island though, actually belonged to the Dutch who were quite miffed by this. Through a long series of machinations, an agreement was reached in London five years later after some horse trading was complete, and island fell under the administrative ambit of the East India Company.
    Fifty or so years later, after it had grown enormously it converted to become a Crown Colony and remained one until 1965.
    If ever there was a colony that complied with John Seeley's claim that the British empire was acquired in a fit of absence of mind, it is Singapore, and you could probably add Malaya to that list too.
    In terms of exploitation it is the opposite.
    The seeds that formed the rubber industry and that brought enormous wealth to the region were brought to Singapore from Brazil, via Kew, and cultivated under the expert eye of local botanical experts.
    I love Robert Tombs' articles and long may he continue to beat the drum because the claims of these absurd and hateful people are not only nasty and slanted, they are often just plain wrong — they have to be in something as diverse and complex as the British empire.

    1. If patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel then national self-loathing is the prime opportunity for the despotic socialist.

      In just a few weeks Starmer's tyrannical government has shown its hand – it wants to extinguish our national amour propre and rob us of our freedom of speech.

    2. The Elgar Memorial Trust that at the turn of the millennium built a new research centre and recital room behind the composer's birthplace, fell to the ravages of old age. Nearly everyone on the committee were over seventy and they were dying off one by one, until there was no-one left with the energy to keep it going. So they turned to the National Trust.

      They brought in young managers to "curate" the place and give it the "OMG Wow! 1857 Experience" to bring in normal people. They got rid of the books about Nimrod and Enigma, closed the research room sending the archive to London, and replaced it with a Starbucks style cafe with Starbucks prices, and the standard Chinese-made souvenirs found in every NT establishment to rationalize (sic) costs. The old cottage was stripped out and replaced "sympathetically" in keeping with a Victorian dwelling with plasterboard and LED lighting (for health & safety) and seven coats of lime plaster on the walls (even I know that 19th century cottages were lucky to have two, so perhaps they employed enterprising contractors?). The manager explained to me that nobody comes to Elgar's birthplace any more because they are interested in music.

      The Elgar Festival is held elsewhere these days.

    3. A vast improvement for Wales would be to simply starve it of funds. This would remove it's ability to continue this appalling socialist nonsense.

      Yes, as big government always does it would hammer front line services first but when it does that enforcement must be used to punish the centre for such behaviour.

      Yet we have an absurd situation where those who would have to enforce the cessation of wokery are themselves the sponsors of it.

  24. Fraternal greetings comrades,

    Our glorious government has arranged light cloud at Dwelling Unit A101101 (it was re-numbered overnight) which, in solidarity with the engineered South -West breeze, is setting temperatures to the globally agreed norms. As I type I can hear the patriotic music coming from the telecranium summonings comrades to listen to the daily bulletin of our Dear Leader's thoughts. We must praise providence for having given us such a wise and energetic leader. Today he will advise architects on the redesign of the new People's Chamber in Westminster.

    I must go. Duty compels me.

  25. From the 'first letter'

    Most politicians have never worked in a private business,

    May I fiddle

    Most politicians have never worked ………..

    1. Most of them wouldn't hold down a job in the private sector.
      That's why I call it Wastemonster.

  26. From The Critic

    The NHS need not depend on immigration

    The shortage of British trainees is the result of a political choice

    ARTILLERY ROW
    By Sam Bidwell
    20 August, 2024

    If, as Voltaire once wrote, the Kingdom of Prussia was not a state with an army, but an army with a state, then modern Britain is surely not a state with a healthcare system, but a healthcare system with a state.

    Despite the declining quality of care, the National Health Service remains unassailable within the British political establishment. Often, entire policy agendas are justified with vague, almost pagan appeals to “Our NHS” — whether smoking bans, sugar taxes, or poisonous Covid-era lockdowns.

    Unfortunately, such appeals are now also a feature of our national debate around immigration. Those of us who seek to reduce overall levels of migration are often told that this simply can’t be done — after all, the impact on Our NHS would simply be too severe. Even Reform UK, supposedly the fearless champions of the restrictionist agenda, promised to maintain visa access for foreign doctors and nurses in their 2024 manifesto.

    Fortunately, we can afford to ignore this argument outright; it simply isn’t true that our healthcare system needs to rely on foreign labour.

    Let’s start with a basic point — most immigrants do not come to the UK to work in the NHS. It’s perfectly possible to reduce our current levels of migration, even dramatically so, without turning away a single nurse or doctor. In fact, less than 3 per cent of the 1.22 million migrants that came to the UK in 2023 came here to work as doctors or nurses. Our current policy of mass migration is not driven, exclusively or even primarily, by a need to support Our NHS.

    But perhaps it’s still fair to say that our system is still “dependent” on migration? After all, we simply do not have enough people training to be doctors and nurses here in the UK. It’s inevitable that we have to prop up our system with foreign-trained practitioners — right?

    In reality, this is an entirely artificial problem. In consultation with the British Medical Association, the Government caps the number of training places at UK medical schools. Currently, this stands at 9,500 trainees per year, though there are indications that this might be increased over time to 15,000.

    When the cap was temporarily lifted in 2020/21, demand for medical places shot up — before the cap was reimposed in 2022. This whole absurd system stems back to 2008, when the BMA voted to cap the number of medical places and ban the opening of new medical schools. At the time, they cited a fear of “overproducing” doctors, which risked “devaluing the profession”. Of course, maintaining the cap suits the BMA and its members just fine — fewer doctors trained here in the UK means less competition for highly-paid consultant roles.

    Truth really is stranger than fiction. We cap the number of medical training places for medical students, which creates gaps in the healthcare service — rather than training more people, we import foreign-trained doctors to fill those gaps. We’re then told that we “need” migration to keep the system going.

    Clearly, this isn’t true. The obstacle to a self-sustaining NHS workforce is the UK Government’s unwillingness to make a long-term investment in the UK’s domestic workforce. Between 2010 and 2021, 348,000 UK-based applicants were refused a place on a nursing course. A House of Lords report from late 2016 found that, in 2016 alone, 770 straight-A students were rejected from all medical courses to which they applied. Without the BMA’s absurd protectionist cap, these students would now be entering the NHS workforce.

    And it’s not as if we’re trading low-quality domestic trainees for high-quality foreign imports, either. Foreign-trained doctors are 2.5 times more likely to be referred to the GMC as unfit to practice than British-trained doctors — and there’s plenty of variation depending on national origin. Bangladeshi doctors, for example, are a staggering 13 times more likely to be referred to the GMC than their British counterparts.

    Granted, training takes time. Gaps in the healthcare system would not be filled immediately by new trainees. In the short term, there is an argument to be made for a special, time-limited visa route for medical practitioners from certain approved countries. While we’re in the process of training our own workforce, there is a case for paying a premium to early-career doctors from trusted countries, without provision for dependents, and without an automatic right to settle. That said, a policy of using migrant doctors to fill short-term gaps obviously does not require us to open our borders in perpetuity.

    As far as our healthcare system is concerned, then, we absolutely do not need to be reliant on foreign labour. This is, and always was, a political choice. Rather than making long-term investments in our domestic workforce, politicians of both parties have preferred to rely on immigration as a stopgap solution. They have been encouraged to do so by a medical establishment that cares more about protecting doctors’ salaries than about the sustainability of our healthcare system. Any Government, at any time, could simply have chosen to ignore the BMA, and invested in the training and placement positions that we clearly need.

    So the next time somebody says that Our NHS “needs” migration, feel free to dismiss them out of hand. It doesn’t have to be this way — we are here because of the choices that we’ve made. It’s time for our politicians to choose differently.

    1. They won't though. They've got their 20% mandate to do what they will. Not even the King is permitted to intervene.

      1. He could. He can dissolve parliament.

        However, you're right. The fundamental and utter lack of democracy is the problem.

        1. I remember the King's namesake tried to dissolve parliament, but he ended up minus a head.

    2. "At the time, they cited a fear of “overproducing” doctors, which risked “devaluing the profession”.

      H'mmmmm ………..

    3. But, but, but, we need all those foreign doctors and nurses to diagnose, treat and care for the tens of thousands of mentally deficient, disabled and pox ridden immigrants and their financially dependant wives, children and aged relatives which arrive on our shores each year. To do otherwise would be blatant racial discrimination. Have a heart you cruel Anglo-Saxon oppressors. Think of the poor Pickaninnies dying in the thousands waiting for their aunts and uncles to escape the five star detention hovels and start a lucrative NHS contract in Birmingham, Bolton and Bury . . . and Civil Service consultation/advisory posts crying out for diversity enrichment personnel. Don't be so selfish!

    4. It's quite clear that when a union says 'do this' the sensible choice is to do the exact opposite.

  27. Coming up for that vibrant festival time of year..

    Most people had a fantastic time at Notting Hill carnival …
    30 Aug 2023 — Sir Mark Rowley

    Notting Hill Carnival is the worst event for crime.. 97 police officers injured, six hospitalised. Ten stabbings.

    They deserve each other, & trust they manage to love each other to death.

    1. .. and those figures are carefully managed and confined to about 1000 metres of road.

    2. Yep, the incomers had a fantastic time at Notting Hill carnival

      Poor old whitey though…….

    3. Will perpetrators of theft and violence quickly be seized?
      Will they be tracked down and arrested within days?
      How many will be placed before the courts and "advised" to plead guilty within days?
      Will they too get draconian sentences?

      I doubt it.

      1. Violent demonstrations threaten the orcs state, but ordinary crimes only hurt individuals and their families.

    4. My enduring memory of last years “carnival” was the urinal trough set up along the pavement in front of the shops in Notting Hill (which I viewed from a bus) and the state of undress of many of the females. Skimpy top and a g-string in some cases. Mind, I guess the imposition of sharia law will put an end to that.

      1. Good morning Sue and everyone.
        As I understand it the foreign word 'sharia' means 'law'. Let's rename it Cheria law.

  28. The Democrats have worked out that non-stop insults from their "big beasts" will make him lose is cool.
    That can only benefit Harris, if she stays silent on personal attacks, which she probably won't as she's a puppet..
    She's the candidate that the blob selected.
    I hope Trump's advisors see through it and keep him attacking her record and lack of achievement.

    Michelle Obama delivers a series of blistering insults of Trump and gives a brutal one-liner about 'black jobs' in speech to roaring Democratic convention

    Barack Obama sets internet alight as DNC viewers accuse him of making very crude joke about Trump's privates

    Kamala takes the crown: Harris celebrates being nominated by trolling Trump in arena that hosted the Republican convention…

    2. "That (Trump insults) can only benefit Harris".

      I disagree. Trump thrives on insults, and if people ignore him for too long, he engineers a wind-up guaranteed to keep the invective flowing from his opponents, and him in the news. I think Trump can handle insults better than most, and no doubt will give as good as he gets as soon as the Democrats dry up.

      1. You have to look at a bunch of people who can't present a positive image of their own party (because there isn't one) and resort to insulting their opponent.

        The problem is, for Trump it's the same Left wing attitude: play the man, not the ball – because they can't play the ball.

        1. I don’t think this exclusively a Left Wing attitude, since the same thing comes from the Right. It is the mark of the useless, who get into power because (as Margaret Thatcher once said) there is no alternative, because all the alternatives have been swept away.

          Those who are genuinely on the Left have an interest in making their socialism work, and that it can face any competition from the Right fair and square. As you say, they need to play the ball, especially when others aren’t bothering.

          I don’t think the US Democrats to be any more to the Left than Starmer’s ReBlairite Party, and both are considerably to the Right of where they should be. They are gloating horrible authoritarians, both of them.

          The test of a truly Left Wing programme is whether it is universal or selective. Cutting the universality of the Winter Fuel Allowance says it all. Left in name only, same as the outgoing Conservatives were in name only.

          1. Oh politicians insult one another all the time, but the Left always play the man, not the ball. This is because their economic proposition, once you actually think about it is useless and destructive, same for their social policies.

            Yet you sum up the problem with the Left: socialism can not, does not and never, ever will work. It falls apart at the simplest, most cursory examination and questioning.

            I agree that politicians these days, in most countries are Lefties. It attracts their type: power without responsibility. The few who are not either have small government, controlled by the public or are heading that way.

      2. Good at it he may be but it will still go against him in the eyes of the undecided potential Republican voters.
        The USA needs a President who isn’t a ranter.

  29. Good morrow, Gentlefolk, today’s (recycled) story

    Car Crash

    A rabbi and a priest get into a car accident and it's a bad one.

    Both cars are totally demolished, but, amazingly, neither of the clerics is hurt. After they crawl out of their cars, the rabbi sees the priest's collar and says,

    "So you're a priest. I'm a rabbi. Just look at our cars. There's nothing left, but we are unhurt. This must be a sign from God. God must have meant that we should meet and be friends and live together in peace the rest of our days."

    The priest replies, "I agree with you completely. This must be a sign from God."

    The rabbi continues, "And look at this. Here's another miracle. My car is completely demolished but this bottle of Mogan David wine didn't break. Surely God wants us to drink this wine and celebrate our good fortune."

    Then he hands the bottle to the priest. The priest agrees, takes a few big swigs, and hands the bottle back to the rabbi. The rabbi takes the bottle, immediately puts the cap on, and hands it back to the priest.

    The priest asks, "Aren't you having any?"

    The rabbi replies, "No… I think I'll wait for the police."

  30. All right Starmer.

    If the beastly British colonialists invaded the countries it colonised to exploit its resources then at least they have all left the indigenous people to look after themselves. I do not hear many left-wing voices saying that the British should stay in the countries they colonised.

    So if immigrants invade Britain to exploit our benefit system and our infrastructure then by the same token shouldn't they go back to their own lands as the British colonists have done?

    1. Good point Richard but you know what the political classes are like.
      Useless and wreck everything they come into contact with. No chage there.
      And almost everyone one of these illegal immigrants has come from a country far larger in area than ours.
      But have been far too lazy to improve and put their 'own houses' in order.
      And of very little use to us here.
      By our previous Government and now currently we have been scammed into accepting the consequences of
      the stupidity of our government's for decades. The overall result as we are now more than aware of, is a disaster.

    2. Secretary of State for Justice Shabana Mahmood

      Shabana Mahmood was born on 17 September 1980 in Birmingham,[4][5][6] the daughter of Zubaida and Mahmood Ahmed.[4] Her parents are of Pakistani descent with roots in Mirpur, Kashmir.[7] She has a twin brother.[8] From 1981 to 1986 she lived with her family in Taif, Saudi Arabia, where her father was working as a civil engineer on desalination.[4][8] After that, she was brought up in Birmingham, where, having failed the eleven-plus, she attended Small Heath School and King Edward VI Camp Hill School for Girls.[9][10][6][8]

      Her mother worked in a corner grocery shop that the family bought after returning to England.[8] Her father became chair of the local Labour party,[11] and as a teenager, Mahmood helped him with campaigning in local elections.[12] In an interview with Nick Robinson in 2024, Mahmood said that although politics "had always been part of [her] life", her ambition when younger was to be a barrister, and cited the example of the fictional Kavanagh QC.[13]

      In a 2024 interview with Gabriel Pogrund of The Sunday Times, Mahmood was described as a "devout Muslim". She said, "My faith is the centrepoint of my life and it drives me to public service, it drives me in the way that I live my life and I see my life."[8] She lives next door to her parents.[8]

      Mahmood was sworn into the Privy Council on 6 July 2024, entitling her to be styled "The Right Honourable".[61]

      I meant to add , will she be on line to be the first Muslim Labour PM?

    3. Doublehink is the hallmark of the Left. They'd just say 'that's different' and 'it's our fault'.

      They're insane.

    4. I was listening to a podcast, this morning, by 'The Lotus Eaters', a group well worth listening to, lead by Carl Benjamin. The topic was the lefts interpretation of British/English history. In essence we have no history, we are not a people, there are no indigenous peoples in the British Isles, just a bunch of immigrants with little history to speak of. So, in fact, anyone who comes, this is their land regardless of creed or colour. This is what our children are being taught, many of whom are now adults in their 30s.So good luck with sending them back where they come from, they are home already and blissfully ignorant of the truth but well trained in hatred of anyone who contradicts their truth.

  31. Morning all 🙂😊
    Lovely sunny start, but a bit nippy outside.
    Rain later, well sometime soon.
    Government has had to borrow 3 billion extra, despite ripping off the elderly. Possibly the after effect of awarding train drivers and many others, millions nore in pay rises. And more likely paying around ten millions a day to house cloth and feed all the illegals and many more millions to people who have never worked a day in their lives. And never will.
    And of course it's everybody else's fault. But the government.

      1. They'll be after a pay rise Soon.
        Although their expenses claims recently have been huge.

    2. It never occurs to them to spend less. Just to tax more. Labour scum, to coin a phrase

      1. Of course not. The money is there to take, those who own it can't stop them, so they just take it. The consequences of that theft are irrelevant. They want, so they take. The Left are just thieves.

      1. Yo Alec

        I read it it quickly as:

        " a forecast of yellow rain "

        I thought you were taking the P**s

  33. SIR – At the height of the pandemic, with the help of the military and other professionals,

    What is this 'military' thing.

    Has not HMG slowly got rid of Service Personnel, their Armament and their expertise over the last few years.

    On 10 July 2024, there were approximately 138,120 active personnel in the armed forces of the United Kingdom,

    75,320 of which were in the British Army,

    30,800 in the Royal Air Force

    32,000 in the Royal Navy.

    1. Almost makes me wonder if they have downgraded the military so they could not stage a coup. The way our governments have been behaving is very strange. And now this one – its behaviour beggars belief.

  34. Gareth Roberts
    Why the ‘sensibles’ aren’t happy now the Tories are gone
    20 August 2024, 12:26pm

    I have to confess that, like many other commentators, I thought that the coming of the Labour government would mean – at least for a bit – that things might get a little quieter, at least on social media. I was quite looking forward to that. But it all seems to have got even madder.

    When Twitter first materialised in the late noughties under a Labour government, it was – honestly, straight up – a quite sociable place. People pottered about on it, in an innocently affable manner, despite the pressing issues of the day. Jokes in incredibly bad taste were made, and people either laughed at them or ignored them, because it was still understood in 2009 that not everything had to be taken literally. Significantly, the CPS prosecuted a man in 2010 for an obvious joke about blowing up an airport. The conviction was later quashed by the High Court, but sources at the CPS told the Guardian that the appeal was ordered to be fought by the then Director of Public Prosecutions, one Keir Rodney Starmer.

    The socials got steadily crazier and more headbanger with the coming of the Tories into government. Users got into a Tory-hating frenzy, with more and more unlikely celebrities – Carol Vorderman, Gary Lineker, Jedward – frothing themselves up into an incredible lather about the dark ‘far-right’ deeds of the (actually incredibly timid and centrist) Conservative party.

    What a naive hope it was, to imagine that such sensibles might wind it back a bit with the Tories gone.

    In the six weeks since Labour slipped back into power there has been, if anything, an increase in head-banging from these people. It’s as if there’s been a horrified realisation that the Tories getting voted out doesn’t actually matter very much. Chris Packham has told Barclays customers to stick their heads in a bucket of fuel and set themselves on fire. Carole Cadwalladr has returned to the pages of the Observer with a breathless, boggle-eyed ‘join-the-dots’ screed that is less journalism, more the kind of ramble you might hear being shouted by someone at a provincial bus depot before a policeman kindly moves them on. And astonishingly Carol Vorderman has come out swinging at Nigel Farage’s pay packet from GB News. The twenty-first century has brought many signs and wonders, but the sight of Carol Vorderman criticising somebody else for being overpaid for their television work – that’s surely the most stupefying of them all.

    Of course much of this hysteria has come about because of the riots. The sensible class, including the new government, has decided that Elon Musk was the spark that ignited them, sending them into a spittle-flecked red mist rage and flouncing off X in disgust. They seem to have forgotten that a dance class of little girls were stabbed. Do they really imagine that the riots would not have happened if not for Musk? (Here I add the usual caveat for the hard of understanding, that the riots were bad and were rightly prosecuted with the full force of the law.)

    Imagine the current sensible regime reacting to people talking about earlier public ‘disorder’. Actually, we don’t have to. The government in 1819, after the Peterloo massacre, had a remarkably similar response. Don’t address the issues underneath, and have a blue fit about people even talking about it in the new media, which in that day was national newspapers. The Home Office responded to a report in the Observer detailing the events, telling their lawyers ‘as it cannot be otherwise than grossly libellous you will probably deem it right to proceed by arresting the publishers’. Reformist Sir Francis Burdett was jailed for three months for publishing a ‘seditious libel’.

    The quiet we all hoped for – that ‘sensible’ people from Anna Soubry to Andrew Marr to Krishnan Guru-Murthy were looking forward to basking in after the election – has not come. Things have got more febrile.

    It turns out things are a little more complex than the final scene of a pantomime, with the villains booed off and everyone in Storyland singing a jolly song, happily ever after.

    ****************************
    Richard Vine
    15 hours ago
    The major problem for the Left is that they are all capable of holding 16 self contradictory points of view simultaneously, but are only able to talk about one at a time. Open Borders but a more generous welfare state. Open Borders but cheaper housing. Higher taxes but economic growth. Gender self identification but criminalise misogyny. The list can go on forever but one has to conclude that those on the Left are not really capable of rational thought.

    1. The Left DO NOT CARE about the deaths. They simply hate, without thought or awareness. They are the most evil people on the planet. Black kids getting stabbed Irrelevant. Stop and search profiling blacks? Oh, now that's wrong. Women raped every day? No interest from the Left, but as soon as you demand immigration be stopped (as they're the usual rapists) suddenly the Left are screaming. Children raped by pakistani muslims? The Left don't care. Protest about it and they're everywhere.

      The Left are nasty, evil cruel people who have no interest in victims, their only care is to destroy those they hate – and that's everyone, practically They are a deranged, mental, twisted, hypocritical bunch of vile, petty, malignant vermin.

    2. Gareth Roberts "The quiet we all hoped for – that ‘sensible’ people from Anna Soubry to Andrew Marr to Krishnan Guru-Murthy were looking forward to basking in after the election – has not come"

      Sensible people? The man must be nuts! It turns out he really is. He is a self-confessed rabid poofter working for the BBC. He is one of the scriptwriters for the Dr Who series . . . no doubt responsible for the one legged, black female gender bender that recently crept from the Police Box shouting 'Exterminate, exterminate . . . exterminate Farage and his Reform Cybermen!

      1. Gareth Roberts writes very good pieces, You obviously didn’t notice the inverted commas surrounding ‘sensible’.

    1. 'You want some advice? Don't eat yellow snow.'
      Not sure of the origin, but it hasn't dated.

    2. 'You want some advice? Don't eat yellow snow.'
      Not sure of the origin, but it hasn't dated.

    2. People who are paying for a police force have the right to expect reasonable protection from a man hanging around acting in the way described.

    3. While I understand and sympathise with his anger and frustration, this chap had me … rapt … right up until he went on about "… the police having reformations in the 1960s under Home Secretary, Roy Jenkins".

      What page of the Guardian (or Daily Worker or Morning Star) did you get this from? Roy Jenkins was utterly useless and did fuck all to improve the lot of the police, who remained at the bottom of the country's pay scale throughout the 1960s and well into the 1970s.

  37. If only the Conservtives had been conservative.

    The rot started with Major and was greatly augmented by both Cameron and May. Boris Johnson was an incompetent buffoon and Sunak did not have the strength, charisma or vision to see what needed to be done.

    1. All the leaders you mention have the same drawback – they took their orders from a higher authority that is not the British people.

    2. As BB2 has said, they were told what to do by others. This is part of the problem with politicians. Unchecked by any form of democratic accountability they are simply bought and paid for stooges.

        1. Quite possibly, if the lockstep reaction to Covid, closely followed by net zero, is any indication.

  38. There was a report the other day [in the Starmergraph] that more pensioners will now claim pension credit, to which they are fully entitled but so far haven't bothered to claim, as that means they will keep winter fuel allowance. The article suggest that not only will this wipe out any saving from WFA but it will actually cost an additional £4Bn! Well done Rachel!!

    1. Economics has never been a strong point of Lefties. For example, scrapping the taxes on fuel would negate the need for the WFA. That would also mean windmills would have to exist in a market. Both of these things are good as they deliver lower prices and cost control by the customer having choice but for ideological reasons the state will not countenance the obvious solution.

      1. According to the government wind generated energy is cheap and making a significant contribution. Yeah, right.

    2. I read her background in finance was a very lowly position. This is incredible; that such a no-mark can have access to our country's and its citizens' finances. This is really bad. And her unsuitability is only matched by some of the other prominent cabinet members. How has the UK been reduced to this?

  39. The EU is planning to introduce its €7 EU visa waiver for British holidaymakers by next summer.

    The scheme, which the EU confirms on its website , externalwill start "in the first half of 2025", will cover people from more than 60 non-EU countries including the UK.

    In comments first reported by the Times, external, EU home affairs commissioner Ylva Johansson suggested the visa waiver may be in place by the May half-term holiday in 2025.

    She was speaking as she confirmed the Entry/Exit Scheme (EES) – which will require non-EU travellers to register fingerprints and a photo instead of having their passport stamped – will start on 10 November.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx29nzd1drgo

    What will UK holidaymakers have to do?
    Passengers will need to apply online or via a mobile app. The form – which the EU describes as a "necessary and small procedural step" – will take no more than 10 minutes to complete.

    The details needed for the application form will include passport information as well as background questions about criminal records or medical conditions.

    More than 95% of applications will be approved automatically within minutes. However, some cases may take up to 72 hours, the EU warns.

    Applications can also be denied or take up to four weeks to process in exceptional circumstances.

    The fee will apply to anyone between the ages of 18 and 70, but the waiver will be free for children and the over-70s.

    1. Funny that this buggerment ONLY applies to decent, law-abiding, tax-paying citizens wishing to visit an EUSSR country to enjoy themselves
      and NOT to millions of illegal "undocumented" unwanted blacks and slammers.

      2. If you have Irish, or other EU member ancestry, apply for a passport. My paternal ancestors were Irish and, although my father died just before I was born, I qualified for an Irish passport,. I believe that grandchildren qualify too but I don't know beyond that.
        No need for a visa or fingerprinting etc. Straight through customs.

          1. German, Croat, Spanish, Greek, Welsh? You must have some foreign blood in you somewhere.

            Sorry, discount Welsh. They aren't back in the EU – Not yet!

          2. Back to 1500. Only Devon on my mother’s side. Welsh on my father’s. (Though I keep quiet about that…!!)

          4. Nope. All English (even the Welsh were originally Anglo-Saxons). May have a Huguenot somewhere on my mother's side way back, but the Dane was only by marriage, not blood.

      1. Gosh; I used to.love having mine stamped! I felt really sad when that started to disappear.

      2. I have, lots of times. Netherlands, Soviet Union, Poland, USA, Australia to name but a few.

    1. In the current climate of fear engendered by the Two Tier Soyatollah, that comment could be construed as inciting riot in Rotherham. Oh well, see you in Hollaway. Well I guess you won't be there unless you decide to identify as female…

        1. A quick look on satellite suggests that not a lot has happened since then. Maybe Mrs Balls will use it to house asylum seekers as a warning to the local erstwhile Labour supporters who lent their vote to `Comrade Jez.

      2. 392077+ up ticks,

        Morning BB2,

        Been in the "villa" working, boilerhouse converting coal to oil, lunch time use to sit on crippens church pew (in the boiler house).

  43. I can't sit about here all day enjoying myself – tree work calls. Back later. Possibly!

  44. There's an essay regarding complex systems not surviving incompetence. As the state continually hires more and more of the weakest, most incompetent and unproductive – the diversity – it has become clear that it simply has no idea what it's doing and sees it's only role to expand, not to provide a service.

    Thus we get Labour. A bunch of fools who know nothing taking advice from other fools who know nothing. The failure is self reinforcing. With no checks – such as bankruptcy or the need for customers to stop it, it never changes, self perpetuating incompetence and stupidity. We, the public, pay the price of that gormless, bloated malice.

    Big fat state is dying, and the sooner we are put out of the Left wing state's misery, the better.

    1. Khan is not an elected MP and could not simply become one, let alone PM. While getting rid of Starmer is a good thing, we also need to get rid of every other Labour MP as well. And the tories, Lib Dems.

      1. A little like Trump accelerating the demise of sleepy Joe, be careful what you wish for.

      2. Ditto Wibbling. I don't think we have to worry about that but I would not be surprised to see him replaced. Angela Rayner?

      4. After being selected as Party Leader, he could be slotted into a safe Labour seat by the simple expedient of the current MP standing down and a by-election being held.
        I wonder if that is why Dianne was permitted to stand again?

  48. Why the state should not run social media. Spiked. 21 August 2024.

    At the weekend, former Guardian editor and current Prospect magazine editor Alan Rusbridger issued a rallying cry for an alternative to X. ‘A reliable, decent, honest, well-tended platform that can never be taken over by a billionaire man-child’ is how he described it. Clive Lewis, backbench Labour MP and former BBC news reporter, has even grander plans. He requested that our Ministry of Fun – the Department for Culture, Media and Sport – establish ‘a democratic, open-source, transparent, public, bottom-up, cooperative-based, social-media platform’.

    Lol. Edited by Tony Blair no doubt. I’ll stick with Elon Musk.

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/08/20/why-the-state-should-not-run-social-media/

        1. A good question. I would say in principle not, provided there are plenty of independent options available. Equally, for so many decades the BBC was highly regarded world-wide and with good reason – it did genuinely impartially report rather than create the news. This of course made it a perfect target for the bad actors because there was a massive amount of good will available which has run out only recently.

      2. I can think of plenty of reasons but no good ones. By default the government and in particular this one, wish you ill.

      4. The state can think of many reasons why they should run social media but the rest of us know that this would be the end of free speech for ever.

        New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern once said, "We will continue to be your single source of truth," and that, "Unless you hear it from us, it is not the truth."

        She may no longer be the NZ PM but she is still working her undemocratic poison at the WEF.

        1. She’s also working it at Harvard. Sher really is a wicked creature. It was she who invented and instigated the smoking ban in NZ by year of birth, quite rightly abandoned by the current government there, but to my complete astonishment adopted by Sunak. I think that tells us all we need to know about him.

          1. If you want to define wickedness, consider the people who gave Jacinda

            a well paid job at Harvard.

          2. They would have to be as wicked as she is. All the once influential institutions have been well and truly infiltrated and corrupted.

          5. Yes, so a young Briton could now join the armed forces and later be severely wounded fighting for his country, but not be allowed to smoke a fag whilst waiting for medical treatment.
            There are about 1,000 Hin dus and 450 Musli ms in the Army, out of a total combined South Asian population of c 5 million in Britain, no wonder that Mr Sunak wasn't bothered.

          7. Don't despair. If you need a fag there are plenty going free at the BBC, your local library, most schools and universities, The list is long and growing daily.

          9. She did. From WIki: “Ardern moved to London, England, in 2006,[41] where she became a senior policy adviser in an 80-person policy unit of the United Kingdom Cabinet Office under prime minister Tony Blair.

        2. 🎵 Who do you think you are kidding Mr Goebbels
          If you think Jacinda's done?🎵

          with apologies to Dad's Army

      6. The state should confine itself to essentials and not interfere in things a) it knows nothing of and b) do not concern it.

    2. The perversion of language continues apace. "Democratic, open-source, transparent". Yeah, right.

  49. New EU travel rules to be brought in next year. In simple terms a travel tax. Perhaps it's Time we had a tax on all the hundreds of thousands who have arrived here from Europe after paying us absolutely nothing.
    And expect everything in return.

    1. Someone gives them thousands of pounds to pay the ferryman. Where does that money come from and where does it go to? No-one in "the media" seems to ask, yet it's a key question.

      1. I suspect from our useless governments. I wonder how many time the boats have been used. hey don't seem to bring them over now when they are picked up by the publicly funded charity RNLI Handed straight back to the French police..

      2. It’s seems the media are actually in league with our government’s.
        I think Nigel seems to understand exactly what is going on.
        That’s probably why the media has recently been focusing their attacks on everything he is involved with.
        And with obvious but uncalled for and unessesary vengeance.
        He appears to be one of very few of the members who are working on the side of the British public and essentially the tax payer’s.

  50. A couple of months after being awarded a £370m contract for Elizabeth line trains, there's more good news for Derby but I can't help feeling both were set-ups from the start.

    Alstom wins new £60m refurbishment contract
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwy5j2z28zno

    CrossCountry's Voyager trains were long overdue a refurbishment. I doubt they'll get the improvement they really need – a reduction in seating density to give anyone taller than 5' 6" somewhere to put their legs.

  51. The Queen in jeans – and more ways Camilla stays looking youthful
    As with all her casual outfits, Queen Camilla’s recent off-duty look was modern, practical and far from frumpy
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/fashion/royals/the-queen-in-jeans-and-how-camilla-stays-looking-youthful/

    BTL
    Levis, Wranglers. Gucci or Own Brand supermarket import from China?

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/056770e86651b9da2d01896cd2d802c07a25aba8f533064634ef45aba6eed93d.png

    When our boys were little we paid for all the clothes they needed. However we made it clear that if they wanted an expensive brand we would pay the price of the ordinary item and they could pay the difference. As a result they now go for quality at a reasonable price rather than a hyped-up brand price.

    1. In 2019 they had the opportunity to vote UKIP..

      ..and that would have delivered either a Theresa May Surrender Treaty under a Corby government. Or just plain rejoin under Labour.

      1. 392077+ up ticks,

        Afternoon KB.
        Ukip, the only party that was when called to arms responded in a positive manner hence the referendum victory.
        .lab/lib/con tribal fools returned post Brexit, to supporting the pro eu coalition.

        Gerard Batten had a successful
        build in one year in regards to a patriotic party, financially in the black, led by IMO an honest patriotic broker, GB.

        Treachery struck via the parties NEC along with farage input.

    2. I got used to being called names at school. They can call me 'racist' for as long as they like, it would make no difference.

    1. Ah, Dubbie The Double Headed Eagle (© Eduard Habsburg). Symbol of the Habsburg, Hohenzollern and Romanov empires. The Russian Federation has revived it as a national symbol of course. Naughty Russia. It has a Christian spiritual meaning.

    1. She's not even wearing it properly, trying to be cool. Wretched woman is the epitome of everything wrong with this country.

  55. Well, that's that job done. VERY satisfactory. There were half a dozen hedgerow plants that have grown far too high. I thought it would take ten minutes….when one actually got close to the isshoo – there was a very large amount of tall timber to remove…!

  56. I wonder how many think that the present structure of the Reform Party is right?

    Reform UK row erupts as Ben Habib sends stark warning to Nigel Farage

    x-Reform UK deputy leader Ben Habib poured scorn on his former party today, warning that he now fears for the future of the right-wing insurgency under its current leadership.

    Mr Habib, who was unceremoniously sacked by Nigel Farage last month as part of a post-election reshuffle, slammed the party as "not democratic".

    Criticising Mr Farage's grip on the party, Mr Habib told Times Radio: "The challenge for Reform now is can it go from being an insurgency shouting on the sidelines with two or three, you know, articulate speakers at the top of the party making the case to being a proper political party?"

    "In other words, actually being democratised, behaving like a party as opposed to a company which is, as I mentioned, yeah, yeah, you know, behaving like a political party, democratising itself, giving people the ability to appoint the leadership of the party."
    Referring to the party's slogan of wanting a "proud, independent, sovereign, democratic United Kingdom", he warned against hypocrisy, adding: "You can't stand for a democratic entity that is the United Kingdom, celebrate and champion that democracy, if the party through which you wish to do it, isn't itself democratic."

    He credited Mr Farage for "professionalising the party", but pointed out that democratising it is a different thing altogether.

    Mr Habib claimed: "if that constitution and if these branch structures doesn't remove the control that Nigel has on the party through the limited company structure, where he owns the majority of the shares, and in a private limited company, he who owns the majority has absolute control, if that structure isn't changed, then it won't be truly democratised."
    "I fear for the future of Reform UK, if it isn't properly democratised."

    Earlier this week, Reform UK's long-term Chief Executive Paul Oakden was ousted this week, giving Nigel Farage even more control over the party.

    Unlike most other parties, Reform UK is a private company. The departure of Mr Oakden who had been CEO since the party's creation in 2019 increases Mr Farage's shareholding from 53% to 60%.
    he Mirror reported that Mr Oakden was "effectively made redundant" after the party "made the decision to sunset the CEO position".

    Richard Tice owns 33% of the firm, while party treasurer Mehrtash Azami holds the final share.

    Reacting to this weeks news about Mr Oakden, Ben Habib described the job of CEO as "very big" but "thankless".
    "They're behind the scenes, they're remembered for the mistakes they made, not the successes they have. It's a bit like being a goalkeeper on a football pitch. You're remembered for the goals you let in, not all the many saves you made.

    "Paul is a very experienced political campaigner, organiser, manager of election campaigns.

    "And whilst there would have been complaints, no doubt, from lots of us, because he didn't do this and he didn't help us there during the election and I wanted this done and it wasn't done on time, all that kind of thing.

    "Actually, he's got massive experience having fought dozens of by-elections as well as a number of general elections."

    1. Those of us who were UKIP under Nigel know that he doesn't do democracy; he likes total control.

      1. You were in UKIP? So was Ogga and me. Both of us have a problem with Farage. I think he is a disingenuous egotist.

    2. Madonna looked exhausted as she was helped along the cobbled streets of Terracina by her new love Akeem Morris after long day of Italian sightseeing on Tuesday. He is a Jamaican born soccer paper. They were first pictured together on her Instagram page. (D Fail)

      What is a Jamaican born soccer paper? Some sort of 'bog roll' perhaps?

    2. One usually uses the term: not to be sniffed at to denote that something should not be rejected because it might be quite good. Looking for an antonym to describe Angela Rayner I rejected to be sniffed at as of the very last people whom one would want to sniff is the deputy leader of the Labour Party!

  60. Repulsive, absolutely repulsive.

    A cock in a frock in the supermarket, looked like a prop forward from the extra-B XV and with a five o'clock shadow Brian Blessed would have been proud of.

    3. My brother-in-law was two years in the Sherborne 1st XV and when he left school he did national service and played for his regiment and the his college at Oxford. He then played in Esher's 1st XV for one season being demoted each year until he was in the Extra-B side and he was finally made captain so when I left UEA and was working in London I would sometimes be called upon to make up numbers even though I was a very mediocre player.

      Rugby stopped being Real Rugby when it became too serious and too professional. This book by Michael Green is essential reading for those who mess about in the mud for 1½ hours before heading to the club house for a sing song and several pints of bitter.

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/26e99d53fc2e9a4bb604fd3bd2239bffeac59871a864839a9543f1b4c2651240.png

        1. Michael Green wrote a series of The Art of Coarse .…. books:

          The Art of Coarse Cruising is about sailing in a small boat and hoping the forecast will be so bad that one decides to not go anywhere but stay on one's mooring; The Art of Coarse Acting advises one to learn a multi-purpose facial expression to cover all emotions such as: fear, dread, hope, joy, hatred, love, adoration , and despair.

  61. Looking around………
    Been a long time since I read him but he nailed the current WEF/NWO

    A good and healthy aristocracy must acquiesce, with a good conscience, in the sacrifice of legions of individuals, who, for its benefit, must be reduced to slaves and tools. The masses have no right to exist on their own account: their sole excuse for living lies in their usefulness as a sort of superstructure or scaffolding, upon which a more select race of beings may be elevated.

    —Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Section 258

  62. On the subject of immigration and refugees….
    The recently ousted Prime Minister of Bangladesh is Ms Sheikh Hasina, now a refugee in India. The Indian government will not want the ex PM to reside there permanently, so she will be tempted to seek asylum in the UK and could bring in a few billion pounds of investment.
    Hasina's sister Rehana lives in a house in north London, rumoured to be in The Bishop's Avenue, and her niece happens to be the City Minister Tulip Siddique.

    1. And, of course, the Labour "government" will seize her assets and return them to Bangladesh – whence she stole them….

      (Then I woke up).

      1. Stole? The occasional modest gift and some well-earned introductory commissions, all prudently invested.

  63. For those who intend visiting EU countries in the future you will have to have a visa and be fingerprinted submit to facial recognition.

    The 90/180 day rule means that British travellers cannot stay more than 90 days in any stretch of 180 days. Stay longer and you vill be arrested and fined a large sum. ( I know, it happened to me). Yoo hav been vorned!!!

    Full details of the EUSSR rules are here:
    https://www.msn.com/en-gb/travel/news/europe-visa-when-must-i-apply-for-an-etias-and-how-will-travel-from-the-uk-work/ar-AA1p6r4X?ocid=msedgntp&pc=HCTS&cvid=eb99702beb244f60b0587db296a6d58b&ei=16

    1. Don't underestimate the American peoples ability to be drawn in by such vapid sales pitches.

      after all thirty percent of Canadians voted for Trudeau (and some still would).

    2. Don't underestimate the American peoples ability to be drawn in by such vapid sales pitches.

      after all thirty percent of Canadians voted for Trudeau (and some still would).

    3. Don't underestimate the American peoples ability to be drawn in by such vapid sales pitches.

      after all thirty percent of Canadians voted for Trudeau (and some still would).

      1. I was reading a rather irreverant piece about her sleeping her way to the top and each of these rich influential men left her face looking like a painter's radio.

        2. I always thought it was a plasterer's radio – either way it's a very funny phrase……. and in this case highly appropriate!

  65. Two tier sentencing yet again?

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13762459/Pro-Palestine-protesters-caused-1m-damage-weapons-factory-jailed-five-years-total.html

    A total of £1,130,783 of damage was caused and the premises were shut due to safety concerns.

    Bretherton, of Kilmacolm, Inverclyde, Simmons, of London, Lacy of Edinburgh as well as Hygate and Javaid of Birmingham, pleaded guilty to conducting themselves in a disorderly manner.

    Hygate separately pleaded guilty to a vandalism charge, while Javaid also pleaded to behaving in a threatening or abusive manner.

    All but Javaid received 12 month sentences while she was jailed for 14 months.

    1. As per usual the headline lie it's not 5 years each and don't I remember a copper getting hit with a sledgehammer??
      Pathetic sentencing

    1. That is a superb essay, thank you.
      His cheapest subscription is 7.50 a month though. I want to subscribe to loads of people, but at that price, I'd burn through a lot of money for all the people I want to read or listen to. Delingpole sensibly sets his minimum subscription very low, I wish more would do that, then I could support more people.

    3. The only consolation is that the smoke usually kills them before the fire…

      Anybody deliberately setting fire to a house with people, especially children in it, deserves a noose, in my opinion.

          1. The punishment matching the crime. I agree. Barbaric as it is but…the only way to control savages.

    4. Was the fridge on fire? Did he leave the door open? Did he used to live in a high rise building near Notting Hill? Questions, questions!

    5. Did yet another three small children die swiftly?
      One might as well joke about such events, but not loudly, because if any Briton were ever to even consider protesting to the out-of-touch elitists in Westminster about immigration he would be prosecuted and locked up.

      1. I still belive our government's have committed treason against the general public in Britain.
        They have allowed absolutely any totally unfettered illegal migrants into our country.
        And of course as suggested to try and cover up they are now intent on blaming everyone else for their continuous and terrible mistakes.

  68. Good News! Just Stop Oil can disband! Their fears of global warming caused by fossil fuels is unfounded. Oil is not a fossil fuel.

    See Iain Hunter's excellent new article in Free Speech.

    freespeechbacklash.com

    1. Good article, thank you. I've made that point and been shot down for it even on this forum!

      1. We were all taught at school about ‘fossil fuels’. Then though, they really believed it.

  69. Oh shit. Here we go again!
    No speculation please.

    Two people have been arrested and remain in police custody after a nine-year-old girl was stabbed.

    Officers received a report that a girl had sustained stab wounds at an address in Glider Close, Christchurch, at 17:45 BST on Tuesday, Dorset Police said.
     https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0mnl93ll88o

    1. Let me guess. No mention of the attacker. It's sodding disgusting. Every single day this sort of thing happens. Every day. We protest, the state turns it' absolute fury on us to destroy that. The Left get praised in the press for being violent thugs endorsing, demanding and supporting murder, rape and assault.

      Someone, anywhere tell me this is a hallucination?

      1. Every time a description of the suspected attacker is not given and then withheld then the brain-dead, extreme right yobs will come to certain conclusions.

        If the PTB want to stop the brain-dead, extreme right yobs coming to certain conclusions then might it not be the best policy to be open and honest from the outset?

        1. "Open and honest" Ha, ha, ha, ha. Ease up on reading fairy stories before you put the grandchildren to bed.

      1. Dem is baaned alreddy – hide your machetes and pig stickers coz the fuzz will be calling dem in soon.

  70. Jessica Barnaby from the ONS said: “Revenue was up on last year, with income tax receipts in particular growing strongly. However, this was more than offset by a rise in central government spending.”

    Tax income does not grow strongly. It is theft of earnings. taxation is defacto a bad thing.

    It means simply the state is making people poorer and destroying growth.

  71. Transfer news. Latest confirmed deals:

    Sander Berge, Burnley to Fulham, £25 million

    Georginio Rutter, Leeds to Brighton, £40 million

    Rachel Reeves, Soul to Devil, undisclosed

      1. I thought the two pence was for the Ginger Growler.

        I heard rayner went on the game once and she proudly told her pimp she had earned £35 and two pence.
        Her pimp asked 'who gave you the two pence and rayner said 'all of them'

        I'll get me venereal cream…

  72. Breaking news: Britain's borrowing last month was 3.1 £billion pounds – a bit more than expected.
    UK debt stands at £2.7 trillion (£2,700,000,000,000) give or take a billion or two. We are doing our best said a spokesper/thing. We shall have it down to three trillion or less if the forthcoming series of national strikes are restricted to one year or less.

  73. GBN 14.30:
    Bayesian
    Divers have recovered two bodies, not yet identified. One is described as a 'heavily built man'.

  74. I found this video to be quite illuminatiing mainly because it deals with spotting the sun.

    What is particularly interestiing is the indentification of historical periods of irregular solar activity which have to date eluded scientific explananation. Not only do these periods of solar inactiivity coincide with global cooling but they give credence to the idea that global warming is just another way of experiencing not global cooling – a concept that that will appeal to Nottlers. Yet whilst nttl.blog is Geoff made, not global cooling is most definitely not anthropomorphic:

    https://youtu.be/HvdLnUJahBs?si=u4dAumla8h-4ryxd

    1. Thank you, bookmarked to watch later.
      Solar cycles are very powerful and we're not encouraged to think much about them. Given the effect on the economy that they have, they should be taught in school.
      It is said that millionaires don't have astrologers to chart heavenly cycles either, but billionaires apparently do.

          1. I am very much aware that you did.
            I am just showing the difference between two, vastly different, "disciplines".

          2. I think the popular Mystic Meg stuff is pushed at the plebs. Whether there’s anything in the planet cycles, I don’t know. But some of the world’s richest families who have held onto power undreamed by most of us for centuries apparently think there is. I wouldn’t sneer at it until I knew more about it.

          3. All manner of mumbo-jumbo is used by those wielding — and intent on holding on to — power. This has been the case for millennia.

            Why do you think that politics and religion have so much of a stranglehold over the hoi polloi?

          4. As you are the current resident pedant who replaced Peddy, I would have expected you to know to omit the "the" before hoi polloi.

          6. Equally ignorant.

            I’m surprised that you, of all people, should defend it.
            You are forever appearing on the blog telling us all that new usages of words and expressions and spellings are incorrect.

            It means “the many”
            the hoi polloi means “the the many”.

          11. Your reality is shaped by your consumption of media. They tell you among other things, that the world is overpopulated, that Christianity is silly old superstition and astrological cycles are hocus that can safely be ignored. Yet the behaviour of the parasite class itself is very different. They have a religion, directly opposed to Christianity, they employ astrologers and they themselves have as many children as they want.

          12. If "they" say that "Christianity is silly old superstition"; what do "they" also say about the few thousand other belief systems held dearly by others.

          13. Regimes supported by the parasite class have always sought to get rid of any belief system that raises people’s spiritual health

  75. From Fox News
    Insanity Marches On in Democrat Government.

    The Biden-Harris administration announced Sneha Nair had been appointed as special assistant at the National Nuclear Security Administration in February 2024. Nair believes in eradicating purported "White supremacy" in the nuclear field as well as "queering nuclear weapons" as part of a diversity, equity and inclusion push she believes is essential for deterring threats to nuclear energy facilities in the U.S.

    "Finally, queer theory informs the struggle for nuclear justice and disarmament," she wrote last year. "Queer theory helps to shift the perception of nuclear weapons as instruments for security by telling the hidden stories of displacement, illness, and trauma caused by their production and testing."

    Nair argues that DEI, more broadly, "is essential for creating effective nuclear policy."

    1. Nothing to worry about, after all, it's not as though anything could go catastrophically wrong!

    3. Putin considers this appointment and concludes that this is a golden opportunity.
      He nukes Davos during a WEF gathering and tells the Biden administration that it's a one off, if America tells Zelensky to withdraw and leave the Donbas/Crimea etc in perpetuity to Russian control.

      The Americans don't have an obligation to support Switzerland as they are not a full member of NATO, so agrees to Putin's demand.

      The whole planet breathes a sigh of relief as WW3 is averted AND the WEF and all the globalist leaders are vapour.

    4. "Queer theory" weapons? Nuclear suppositories? Nair is also a brand of depilatory cream.

      1. I am aware of that and that ‘Sneha’ is the Sanskrit for slippery or oil, it is the root of our word ‘snow’. Leads me to wonder quite what this woman is up to.

  76. Are all the rules of Halal strictly observed during this current and ongoing epidemic of random stabbing?

  78. Boris Johnson would be in my Cabinet, says Robert Jenrick
    Tory leadership hopeful tells Telegraph’s Politics Newsletter that ‘Conservative Party right now needs all of its talent involved’

    Dominic Penna,
    Political Correspondent
    21 August 2024 • 3:30pm

    Robert Jenrick has said he would include Boris Johnson in his Cabinet if he became Tory leader and returned the party to power.

    Mr Johnson, the former prime minister, left Downing Street in September 2022 and quit as an MP last June, claiming that a Commons inquiry was determined to find him guilty over partygate.

    In an interview with The Telegraph’s Politics Newsletter, Mr Jenrick said: “With respect to Boris Johnson, the Conservative Party right now needs all of its talent involved. And so if Boris wanted to return to Parliament, I would be pleased to welcome him.”

    Asked whether he would have Mr Johnson in his Cabinet, he replied: “Yeah. I think what we need are the best people who are available in the Conservative family to be on the pitch, supporting us to be a strong opposition, holding Keir Starmer to account for all of the failings that we already see, and ultimately winning the next general election.

    “And if Boris wanted to be part of that, I’d be delighted.”

    Mr Johnson has made millions from speaking engagements since leaving office. Unleashed, a memoir charting his frontline political career, will be released next month.

    He also writes a weekly column for The Daily Mail, in which he has pressured Rishi Sunak and now Sir Keir to change course on issues including net zero, tax and support for Ukraine.

    Mr Jenrick, who resigned as Mr Sunak’s immigration minister at the end of last year, also said multiculturalism was not “working” amid record levels of net migration and concerns around the rise of sectarian politics.

    Asked whether it had failed, he said: “I don’t think it’s working. Of course, there are many successful stories from our diaspora communities. We’ve seen that in the last Cabinet, when I sat around the Cabinet table, and I’ve known it my whole life.

    “I grew up in Wolverhampton, a highly diverse city both then and now. But I am worried that our country is deeply divided. Integration is not working as it should be.”

    Mr Jenrick recalled seeing “segregated communities, inter-communal violence and diminishing public trust” during his time as a Home Office minister.

    “Part of the answer is reducing and slowing the pace of change in our country,” he said. “It is impossible to successfully integrate hundreds of thousands of people coming into the UK every year.

    “We also need the police to be rigorously enforcing the law whenever we see instances of extremism, from whichever quarter they come from, and I’m afraid at times we haven’t seen that.”

    Mr Jenrick argued that the rise of Reform UK, which won more than four million votes at the general election – mostly at the expense of the Conservatives – was “a symptom, not a cause”.

    Saying he had “respect” for Nigel Farage, but that he had chosen to lead a rival party to the Tories, he continued: “The reason that Reform has prospered in recent months, and millions of Conservative voters have deserted us for them, is because we failed to deliver on immigration and on allied issues.

    “I want the Conservative Party to be the natural home for all small-c conservatives in our country and, if I’m lucky enough to lead the party, I will adopt clear positions on the issues that matter to Reform voters and seek to bring home those small-c conservatives.”

    Warning that the Tory party was now in “the most precarious position in its modern history”, Mr Jenrick admitted that the party had a “tainted” brand and its MPs were “divided ideologically”.

    “The principal reason why we failed was because we failed to deliver for the British public over a sustained period,” he said. “I have come to the conclusion, particularly in recent years, that the British political system is just not working for the British people, and I want to change that.

    “That’s ultimately the reason why I’m standing to be leader of the party – to do things fundamentally differently and bring forward serious solutions to the serious challenges facing the country in a way I don’t believe we have in recent years, and I certainly don’t think Keir Starmer is now.”

    Comments ..

    Fillus Flog
    2 min ago
    That's Jendrick out of it . This Johnson lover is a clown as well.

    Comment by Paul Bradshaw.

    PB

    Paul Bradshaw
    2 min ago
    As the Secretary of State for Lies, Laziness, Grifting and Adultery?

    Comment by M J A Church.

    MJ

    M J A Church
    4 min ago
    Presumably he means his ' drinks cabinet '.
    Fancy a glass of wine, Boris.
    Sue Gray is not about. She's too busy stabbing others in the back right now.

    Comment by richard Bottomley.

    rB

    richard Bottomley
    5 min ago
    BJ in your cabinet, even more reason to not vote Tory…..

    Comment by Conte di Faraglione.

    Cd

    Conte di Faraglione
    8 min ago
    Given his track-record of galloping immigration, net zero and wokery, plus his brazen dishonesty over lockdowns, I really don't see how 'bringing in the best talent' has anything to do with Boris Johnson.

    Comment by Dave Langholm.

    DL

    Dave Langholm
    8 min ago
    No accounting for taste…..

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/08/21/boris-johnson-would-be-in-my-cabinet-says-robert-jenrick/

      1. Mr Jenrick has too many ideas , he doesn't cut the mustard ..

        Aiming too high , above his paygrade .

        Where was his voice when it was needed .

      1. I would not vote for any of them.

        The Conservative Party must be allowed to die and its corpse should be cremated and the ashes scattered under a Judas tree.

        1. I hear you, Rastus. However….I hate the thought of a never ending Labour Government, or some kind of coalition with Lib Dems or even SNP or Plaid….unless you’re thinking Reform will step into the breach?

          1. It doesn't matter which politician leads any party any more, They are ALL paid up henchmen of the WEF and will toe their line regardless. That is the irrebuttable presumption of fact of today's politics.

            As usual, they will all sell themselves to you with the same old, same old, "vote for me" sincerity before reverting to type. Just look at all the clueless idiots who put the Labour version of the WEF in power. They voted for change and simply got a different WEF face in front.

          3. What makes you think changing the chairs on the Titanic (leaders of the faux cons) will stop a continuation of Labour's wrecking ball?

          4. Depending on the number you think possible, Conway…they’re all cheeks of the same you know what. For me, Conservatives need to move further right. Where’s the next Thatcher….

    4. Forget Boris Johnson, has he apologised for his part in the betrayal of the country caused by him and his colleagues by not honouring multiple manifesto pledges regarding levels of immigration.
      No, I thought not, off you go sonny, take Boris with you if you can.

      1. Yep , Boris needs his arse kicking , he still hasn't got the message .
        So arrogant and ignorant, his great interlocution skills mean nothing .. that man is all hoof and cucumber and no good , he conned us all with empty promises !

    5. Any Conservative potential leader who would employ Boris Johnson eliminates himself for being not of sound mind.

  79. GBN 16.05:
    Bayesian
    Divers have recovered two more bodies (four in total) – thought to be those of Mike Lynch and his daughter.

  80. A straw-covered Birdie Three?

    Wordle 1,159 3/6
    ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
    ⬜🟨🟨⬜⬜
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    1. Not a word I'm familiar with.

      Wordle 1,159 4/6

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

      2. Down on the farm, synonyms of 'mulch' are: fertilize, enrich, feed, compost, manure, top-dress – or shit – Sue!

    2. How about a par

      Wordle 1,159 4/6

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

    3. Par four here

      Wordle 1,159 4/6

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

    4. Well done, par today.

      Wordle 1,159 4/6

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

  81. Anne commented earlier on blackberry fruit and the the shrivelled state they are in .

    Ditto here , masses of hedgerows, lots of blackberry growth , but they are tiny or dried out and not very healthy looking .

    For those of you who like to pick sloes , the hedgerow fruit is not there .. lot of holly berries and masses of hawthorn and rowan berries, so enough for the birds.

    1. Were there not several letters this week saying how plump the blackberries are? Perhaps Anne looked at them funny. :@)

        1. I'm prepped. She can't get me with her Medusa looks. I'm wearing a blindfold.

          Shakin' a bit though.

      2. 🙂
        The blackberries were early and the best I've seen for years.
        The down side is that by mid-August, they were gong mushy and the replacements berries were like bullets.
        Being very smug, I'm glad I picked and froze loads early in August. AND made a few pots of bramble jelly.

      1. Put then in the deep freeze to crack the skins – don't try to prick each individual sloe – when making sloe gin.

        We made 3 litres of sloe gin last year so we have enough to be going on with for a year or two so we won't make any more this year.

        Thank you again for advice about my eye floater.

        1. Good advice, have done that in the past (and with vodka). Would you repeat the advice re eye floater, please?

          1. Floaters in the Eye
            Hi KJ, Roughcommon here.

            Via email, Rastus asked me to publish the advice I gave him privately on November 15th last year. it is long, but you will see why: it depends on which type of floater you are encountering. Rastus says it works for him too.

            He asked: 'Can they get rid of floaters?I tried to have one fixed 30 years ago but it is still there.'

            Sorry this email is rather long, but when (if) you have read a bit further down this email I would direct you to a Youtube video: 'How to Get Rid of Eye Floaters' by Dr Joseph Allen:

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqCjxlY_H-A
            There are at least 2 kinds of Floaters: in the Aqueous Humour and in the Vitreous Body.

            1. AQUEOUS FLOATERS
            I had experienced Aqueous floaters when I was 17-18 years old, as I was learning to fly planes and was being subjected to all sorts of positive and negative G-forces while spinning and doing aerobatics. These forces are known to cause leakage of e.g. groups of red blood cells from the retinal blood vessels into the Aqueous space between the Retina and the Vitreous Body and these are Aqueous Floaters. For orientation about the inside of the eye see the first 2 graphics in the Youtube film (from about 1min 19sec.).

            The early floaters that I had were in the Aqueous Humour (the fluid-filled space behind the Vitreous Body), so by rapidly flicking my gaze from left to right or up and down I could make the Vitreous globe 'wobble' and this caused the Floaters to appear to to sink out of sight. Actually, since the image on the Retina is upside-down, they were floating UP to the top of my eyes. Being close to my Retinas these Floaters were in relatively sharp focus.

            Those were Aqueous floaters which I lived with for decades. As a career Histopathologist looking down a microscope for up to 6 hours a day I occasionally needed to be able to 'swoosh' them out of my field of view, and the above-mentioned eye-flicking method always worked. Rastus says it works for him too.

            VITREOUS FLOATERS
            After my first cataract surgery in May this year I noticed a larger, fainter, out-of-focus Floater in the operated eye and told the Surgeon. He said it often occurred in the Vitreous Body after Cataract surgery had been performed (mostly in the aged), and that if I wanted he could use a focused YAG* laser to remove it/them. I checked on the web and found the above-mentioned Youtube presentation that shows this method (Laser Vitreolysis) at about 10min 18 sec. This seemed pretty simple and the surgeon said he would do it for free as a follow-up if I desired.

            I also checked with my own NHS Ophthalmologist (who in January 2023 had recommended Cataract Surgery) and he said that, while Laser Ablation of Floaters was possible and quite quick, there were occasionally also side effects such as inflammation and potential small gas bubbles in the eyeball. I told my Surgeon before the second operation and he said yes, it was an uncommon side effect, but that he could fix my larger Vitreous Body Floater if it became a nuisance in the future.

            I know – too much information! But at least you will know a lot more about Floaters.

            Hope this is useful information. You may not like the youthful appearance and manner of Dr Joseph Allen, but he gives a pretty complete exposition in relatively Layman's terms.

            Regards, Roughcommon

            * YAG = Yttrium Aluminium Garnet

          2. ‘Evening Roughcommon, thanks so much for quick and comprehensive reply (and similar to Rastus). I don’t actual suffer too much with them, but my husband does – he’s had several eye operations, having been a Type 2 for many years. He started Carnivore Diet around six months ago, his diabetes measurements (blood sugar) blood pressure medication and the rest all discontinued due to better results. (NB I DO NOT recommending anyone starting this diet without researching it, and confirming with GP before commencing it.) I think I’ve read Grizzly say he does similarly. Husband still has a few eye floaters, does quite a lot of wood-and metal-work, some of it close up, I’ve mailed him your reply and he’ll be sure to read it. Thanks again, have a good evening, Kate 🙂

    3. The blackberries matured well, but very early. I have never before known them to be 'over' by mid-August.

    1. Safe and effective – recommended for use by the practitioners of euthanasia.

      1. I said at the outset that these potions being effective depends entirely upon what you’re trying to achieve.

  83. The immorality of government…

    Taxman pockets record £3bn from NHS backlog

    HMRC reaps the benefits of healthcare tax as thousands are forced to go private

    Mattie Brignal, SENIOR MONEY REPORTER
    21 August 2024 • 5:39pm

    HM Revenue & Customs is pocketing billions of pounds from tax on health insurance as NHS delays force thousands of patients to go private, figures show.

    Insurance premium tax (IPT) receipts hit £3bn between April and July this year, an 11pc rise compared to the same period last year, according to HMRC data.

    Approximately 10pc of this figure was paid by adults with private health insurance, according to analysis by accountancy firm RSM.

    It comes as the hospital backlog in England hit 7.6 million in June. In February 2020, just before the pandemic hit, the waiting list stood at 4.5 million.

    IPT, introduced in 1994, has been described as Britain’s “hidden-in-plain-sight” tax because many people do not realise they pay it.

    It is charged at 12pc on health policies, with a higher 20pc rate for other types of insurance.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/tax/nhs-backlog-nets-treasury-record-3bn-thousands-go-private/

      1. I could once. Now i can't. And after my experiences at the Spire on several occasions …they like to string it out as long as they possibly can under the guise of 'surgery being the last resort'.

        O/T…someone left me with a Tobermory single malt and i still don't know who it was. I'm considering donating it to the homeless.

          14. No the Russians were actually black

            https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cigsspot.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2022%2F04%2F4.jpg&tbnid=LkMzHlagyd-DIM&vet=10CAIQxiAoAGoXChMIqMvU5eCGiAMVAAAAAB0AAAAAEAc..i&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cigsspot.com%2F2022%2F04%2Fa-comparative-tasting-of-sobranie-cigarettes%2F&docid=Hr5SiOisoEcF3M&w=1200&h=893&itg=1&q=black%20russian%20cigarettes&client=firefox-b-d&ved=0CAIQxiAoAGoXChMIqMvU5eCGiAMVAAAAAB0AAAAAEAc

          20. Now that is a good idea. They could use it as fuel for their barbecues in their social housing living rooms. After they had dug a pit through the concrete floor. I do hope they invited their downstairs neighbours.

          1. My dear girl. Why would you possibly think that someone such as I, being so respectful of the weaker sex, to be so disrespectful of Mr Allan?

            I am teaching classes to Andrew Tate…

        3. Is this the Spire in Southampton? I had a spinal operation there (NHS) weekend stay, now 17 years ago.. Couldn't wait to get me out after the op. But on the plus side treatment was good whilst there.

          1. Havant. As i was ushered into my room the director arrived and described to me the lovely view from the window.
            It felt a bit weird. I wasn't there for a weekend jolly or a holiday. I suppose in her inept way she was trying to make me feel comfortable and given the price being paid she felt she needed some way to justify her existence.
            I think i would have much preferred Sybil Fawlty.
            They did manage to do the job though.

          1. Look ! If when you were on duty and someone lobbed a pie at you, you would have caught it and stuck it under you hat for later. This is different ! :@)

          2. Back in the late 1970s my home-town football team, Chesterfield, hosted Glasgow Rangers in the semi-final of a competition called the Anglo-Scottish Cup. I was on duty at the ground and it seems that nearly every Rangers supporter turned up with a bottle of scotch. The Chief Super degreed that they would not be permitted inside the ground with them but, as we could not ‘steal’ them, we should retain them for safe-keeping until after the match when they could be collected by their owners.

            After the match (which Chesterfield won) there was a massive queue of Jocks who had come to collect their whisky bottles. We handed them back, one by one, until there were just two bottles left: a nearly full bottle of single-malt The Macallan, and a nearly empty bottle of Bell’s. The last Jock to appear was offered the Macallan but angrily shouted that his whisky was the Bell’s, which was then handed to him. No one came to collect the Macallan.

          3. A beautiful story. We all know what went wrong later years. What i find difficult to understand is where senior and gold commanders make decisions which are then implemented and serious injury and deaths occur. Then they get even more promotions to the Lords. I suppose i could accept that then they do more of the same.

        5. Give a prayer to the donor, and consume it yourself. It was obviously meant for you. so in respect for the donor, you should drink it.
          Not all at once, obvs.

          1. I suspect the donor is trying to kill me.

            On and off topic…. It was mentioned by one guest that there seemed to be bottles everywhere. When i mentioned to Rik i wanted a fully stocked cocktail bar he said i had probably gone beyond.
            And could start my own before the floor collapsed under the weight.. He will deny it of course but then he had tasted my homebrew brandy…….. Ahem.

      2. Not sure I trust UK private health insurance anyway. It's only there to cover extras, and anecdotally I've heard that getting them to pay out is like getting blood from a stone. Very few people in Britain have actual comprehensive private health insurance. The split between NHS facilities and private facilities is an absurd piece of socialism. Hospitals should just be able to bill whoever's paying, whether that's public or private.

        1. They usually exclude ‘chronic conditions’. A friend had an acute knee problem requiring surgery and his insurer refused to pay on grounds that he had arthritis,. The friend knows a lot more about these things than the person paid to say ‘no’ at the insurance company and was livid.
          In general, once you hit the age when you are more likely to need medical care, they hike the premiums up so much that people give up the policy.
          In any case, many may not realise that insurers don’t cover out-patient medication. When I worked in a General Practice in a very affluent area, there was a stream of rather assertive patients presenting private prescriptions at reception and demanding they be converted to NHS one immediately.

          1. Lesson Nr 1 with private health insurances is never, never to admit that you ever had a twinge of pain before you took out the insurance. I warned all our au pairs about this. They were all pretty smart, apart from one, who went to the hospital complaining of undefined pains, and then told them she’d had them since she was a child! Yours truly got the bill for a three day hospital stay and multiple tests. Fortunately, she had had to give in adoctor’s certificate stating she was in perfect health in order to be accepted as an au pair. So I countered with this certificate, and the insurance coughed up. Sighs of relief all round.

          2. It's the same with pet insurance. Once your animal reaches a certain age you are better off putting the premium in a savings account and paying the bills as they come in. Pre-existing conditions are not covered and the excess is usually more than the bill anyway so you end up paying.

    2. Introduced by Kenneth Clarke, a vindictive incompetent POS who is more suited to socialism than conservatism.

        1. I didn't think that was a fashion crime, as I look over shoulder at my shoe cupboard.

      2. On two occasions when I worked at Raleigh Cycles in Nottingham (in the 1990s) a current politician turned up to gain succour with the management of the company. On one occasion it was Tony Blair, when he was still just an opposition spokesman. And the other occasion it was the local MP and prospective leader of the Conservative Party, Ken Clarke.

        Two more slimy pieces of excrement it is difficult to imagine.

        2. Heselslime would have run them close! But Grease-Smogg would not have offered any serious competition.

          The nastiest, most oleaginous MP in Parliament at the moment is that former Anglican bender priest Chris Bryant. I am delighted never to have met him.

        3. I agree with the conclusion, but since we are on phrase and expression surely it should read:
          Two slimier… or alternatively two more slimy…?

          1. Indeed he did, as did Alan Sillitoe, the book and film’s writer. The film was mainly filmed in Factory One, which was demolished in the later 1960s (the film was made in 1960).

            It has all gone now; the site was bought by the University of Nottingham and new campuses have taken over from the old factory. What is left of the company moved to an industrial site in Eastwood, where they simply label bikes made in China.

  84. That's me for today. Lots of useful work in t'garden. Another pound of raspberries picked.

    Have a spiffing evening – market tomorrow (and some rain, apparently – funny how they often go together!!)

    A demain

      1. The fact that, if there's only one of you, there are only so many pavlovas, Eton messes you can eat and so many jars of jam you can store.

        1. Hear you..I often give away to family. Pavlova is so yum, as are rasps generally (as the birds testify)….’night Conway, likely see you tomorrow 🙂

          4. Good news, hope that continues to be the case – difficult to function if sleep/rest is poor:-)

        2. The same applies if there are only two. I sometimes marvel at the huge quantities of food and hospitality I used to joyfully and skillfully dispense just a decade or so ago. Now it has become a source of anxiety even when it's just a few.

      1. I was gobsmacked, Paul, when I got the bag of raw onions home from the Coop supermarket. It says they are a "Product of Australia".

        Australia, FFS! Can't Sweden grow its own onions?

        1. Jayzuz! I thought Sweden knew onions… your police are now welcome over here, pistols etc as well.

      2. I was gobsmacked, Paul, when I got the bag of raw onions home from the Coop supermarket. It says they are a "Product of Australia".

        Australia, FFS! Can't Sweden grow its own onions?

  86. Brendan O’Neill
    Yvette Cooper’s chilling crackdown on ‘harmful’ beliefs
    21 August 2024, 10:31am

    Why is there not more disquiet over Yvette Cooper’s promise to crack down on ‘harmful’ beliefs? To my mind it ranks as one of the most chilling political pledges of the modern era. The thought of a Labour government, or any government, imperiously decreeing which ideas are ‘harmful’ and which are benign leaves me cold. It’s a first step to tyranny and it needs to be walked back.

    The Home Secretary has commissioned a rapid review of ‘extremist ideologies’ as part of a new government counter-extremism strategy. She has vowed to come down hard on people who push ‘harmful or hateful beliefs’. The aim is to tackle head-on any online or offline activity that ‘promotes violence or undermines democracy’. Her mission has acquired a new sense of urgency, it seems, following the recent riots, which were in part fuelled by misleading or outright bigoted blather online.

    No one aside from a handful of nutters will oppose feeling the collars of people who promote violence. Inciting violence is illegal. If you do it you’re in trouble. But Cooper’s other categories of ‘harmful’ thought are flabbier and more troubling. Consider her promise to tackle ideologies that undermine democracy. What does this mean?

    I hate to relitigate the recent past – really, I do – but would it mean that Remainers who tried to block the enactment of the largest democratic vote in the history of these isles might get a knock on the door from Cooper’s crusaders against extremist thought? Perhaps Cooper will pop over to No. 10 itself and have a stern word with her boss, Keir Starmer. After all, as shadow Brexit secretary under Jeremy Corbyn he was forever agitating for a second referendum, which would have entailed voiding the first vote. Was that ‘harmful activity’ that threatened to ‘undermine democracy’?

    Of course, Remainers are going to be fine. Cooper is hardly about to crack down on her own dinner-party set, is she? And therein lies the entire problem with censorship, with entrusting officialdom to sort ideas into boxes marked ‘acceptable’ or ‘unutterable’. It gives government the awesome and terrifying power to shape public discourse to its own ideological tastes. Censorship is always dolled up as a heroic effort to protect the public from ‘harmful’ ideas, but in truth it is about ensuring the public is primarily exposed to ideas the government approves of.

    I have no doubt that in the eyes of Cooper’s Home Office, ‘undermining democracy’ is when a couple of thousand far-right oafs gather in Whitehall, not when a hundred thousand nice people from leafy suburbs march to say ‘Stop Brexit’. It is a short step from ‘countering extremism’ to countering ideas the government dislikes while signal-boosting ideas it does like. Whatever their lofty social promises, crusades against problematic speech have a terrible tendency to empower official narratives at the expense of dissenting ones.

    Ask yourself: what is a ‘harmful’ belief? And more to the point, who gets to decide? It is a mere three years since Starmer thundered that it is ‘not right’ to say only women have a cervix. That is ‘something that shouldn’t be said’, he cried after one of his MPs – the heroic Rosie Duffield – committed that very blasphemy of stating basic biological facts. Are we seriously expected to trust a government led by this man to rule on what is a harmful belief and what is an okay belief? Given he once thought basic biology was ‘something that shouldn’t be said’, who knows what perfectly normal, scientifically correct belief he might rebrand as ‘harmful’ in the near future.

    In this era of hyper-fragility, people claim to be ‘harmed’ by words all the time. Say ‘I’m not sure about same-sex marriage’ or ‘I don’t think biological males should box women at the Olympics’ and you will inevitably trigger a million right-on saps crying, ‘Stop erasing me!’ If the government sends the signal that ‘harmful’ beliefs are unacceptable under its watch, we will witness of orgy of grievance-mongering as all sorts of social groups agitate for the crushing of beliefs that make them feel uncomfortable or just sad.

    Indeed, I can envision entire belief systems being reimagined as ‘harmful’. Some already have been. Traditional Catholics, for example. They think marriage should only be between a man and a woman, that sex is determined by God not scalpel-wielding gender surgeons, and that only followers of Christ get to Heaven. That’s homophobic, transphobic and Islamophobic, right? In other words: harmful. Shut them down!

    A war on ‘harmful’ beliefs would give the government a blank cheque to demonise and shush views that are old-fashioned, possibly unpopular or just not very PC. Labour would do well to remember that one man’s ‘harmful’ belief is another man’s heartfelt moral conviction. To the aloof operators of Yvette Cooper’s Home Office, angry public bristling against mass immigration or impassioned agitation against gender ideology might appear ‘harmful’ – but to many others it is legitimate, important commentary.

    The harms of censorship outweigh the supposed harms of controversial speech every single time. I would far rather be exposed to a ‘harmful’ idea than have my eyes and ears covered by Cooper and her fellow paternalists in Whitehall. At least my autonomy and self-respect would remain intact.

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

    There Wolf
    7 hours ago
    Online Commentator: Being gay is a sin and women are second class citizens.

    Cooper: Those beliefs are hateful – homophobia and misogyny.

    Online Commentator: I'm a Muslim, they are my beliefs.

    Cooper: Oh I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be Islamophobic.

    Prince Albert
    8 hours ago edited
    This crew are indeed a bunch of nutcases:-

    – never seen a rule they didn't like;
    – never seen an activity that shouldn't be regulated;
    – never seen an income stream or asset that shouldn't be taxed;
    – never seen a business that isn't exploiting it's workers;
    – never seen an immigrant that shouldn't be given a cuddle, a house and an income.

    and now, never tolerate a view that doesn't conform with their own.

    The next few years are going to be painful in all sorts of ways.

    1. "First step" to tyranny?
      No, it's the near the end of the road to tyranny, just a few yards short of the concentration camps.

    2. Possibly longer than that, Citroen 1…additionally HMG Opposition has absolutely no answer, more or less silence. Hopefully that will change with a new leader (depending on who said leader is, today's fave seems to be Jenrick…)

    3. SWMBO came with the Islamophobia comment above. Smart lady – no wonder I married her!

      1. As I often think about HG:

        A smart lady, but if she really is that smart why did she marry me!

          1. Your SWMBO looks like a horse? I suppose love can be found anywhere if a stable relationship is available. Jesus was happy with one so why shouldn't we be……….

        2. Blinded by some other attribute of yours…? Love of kittens, huge bank balance…?

          1. Warmth, simple as that.

            She feels the cold, I generate heat like a hot spring, and she loves a cuddle.

          2. And of course your unsurpassed manliness in bed.

            That generates enough heat for the pool!

    4. The Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) was a British pro-paedophile activist group, founded in October 1974 and officially disbanded in 1984.[2] The group campaigned for the abolition of the age of consent. It was described by the BBC in 2007 as "an international organisation of people who trade obscene material".[3]

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paedophile_Information_Exchange
      Allegations against senior politicians
      A number of senior Labour Party politicians were linked in newspaper stories to PIE in December 2013, and again in February 2014, as a result of their involvement with the NCCL at the time of PIE's affiliation. The party's deputy leader, Harriet Harman, had been employed by NCCL as an in-house solicitor and met her husband, the MP Jack Dromey, then a member of NCCL's executive committee, while working in this capacity. In addition, Patricia Hewitt was NCCL's general secretary for nine years. The former chair of PIE, Tom O'Carroll, claimed the three had not attempted to expel PIE out of fear for the impact this might have on their careers at the NCCL.[53]

      Harman denied she had supported PIE while at NCCL and the specific allegation that she supported a campaign for the age of consent to be reduced to 10, and expressed regret at the involvement of the NCCL with PIE.[54][55] Dromey also denied the accusations.[56] Hewitt apologised separately, saying she had been "naive and wrong to accept that PIE was a counseling and campaign group".[57]

      My goodness , thank goodness for Wiki , and we must not trust a single word Labour wallahs throw at us.

    1. No, but I used too smoke cigarettes.
      Marlboro Red by choice. God, with what’s going on I think I’ll start again.

        1. You may or not have noticed but there were two guests who i handed little boxes of cigarellos. Personally i am thinking …okay. My cigarette consumption daily is costing me £30. I could just do a deliveroo with much better drugs that last longer. Then again. It is what THEY want.
          So i will just go back to being me.

      2. Rich are you??
        My previous 60 a day habit would now cost me £42 A DAY
        £294 A WEEK
        Rather more than my total income I'll struggle on with my roll-ups (which were a hit at Phils)

    1. Tommy Robinson has spoken extensively about these cruel and unusual practices in British prisons. Of course, his warnings have been ignore. (Far right?)

    2. BTL Comment:-

      "The victim, understood to be Mahir Abdulrahman, had 'kettled' another inmate with boiling water.

      Four other prisoners entered his cell and kettled him in revenge before 'beating him to a pulp', the Times reported."

      No great loss and the other four appear to have done Society a favour.

      1. Possibly true, but how will that poster react when 40 or 50 of the Southport / northern town protesters suffer the same fate?

  93. They didn't care when the young man who was imprisoned with a bunch of muslims for putting bacon on a mosque was murdered. He was effectively executed by the State, weapon of choice young muslim criminals.

  94. I ate the last one in the jar only last week. I cut it into quarters and placed the bits on some Ritz crackers with some Primula cheese and a few roasted salted peanuts. [A favourite snack].

  95. How intermittent fasting may raise risk of colon CANCER and the foods you should avoid on the diet

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-13762751/how-intermittent-fasting-cause-cancer.html

    As a side observation to this popular dietary regime, I do wish that researchers would be consistent in their pronouncements.

    "It's not necessarily true, it's only been tested on mice"
    "Of course it's safe it's been tested on mice"
    "Tests on mice suggest it should be safe for humans"
    "Tests on mice suggest it isn't safe for humans"

    It strikes me that in the rush to patent and release the latest miracle cures and make their fortunes and their companies' fortunes that doctors and scientists overlook the old adage;

    first do no harm.

        1. I said to a friend over coffee this afternoon that I used to be a conspiracy theorist, but now I've turned out to be merely prescient.

        1. You got me!
          We are all products of our enviroment. The more the enviroment is manipulated the more insane creatures become.

          On a personal level i am at the point where …i think i will have another garden party. Purely for scientific reasons of course. They enjoyed the last one so much i will now make them do it every week. What do you think?

          4. I did thank you – very few narrowboat owners can claim an indoor swimming pool (unless of course sunk in a lock….)

          5. I loved one of the comments BTL that he should be at the Fringe, as his one liners were so much better than any of the so-called comedians! He sounds like a real character!

          8. This time might even include the comfy chair !

            Oh..i did that one.

            Well……………………when this one fails.

      1. What a beach! Looks like one of the Northumberland coast beauties! Probably a bit warmer, though!

        1. Don’t know about you, Sue – but I love the seaside in winter, the wilder the better :-D!

          1. Oh me too! That feeling of being alive on an empty windswept stretch of sand! Elemental I think!💨🌊

          2. Yes, staggering along, barely able to stand upright for the wind, and laughing our heads off :-DD (and occasionally turning our backs to the wind thinking it might help although knowing it never does, and for some reason holding onto our hair)…

      2. Prefer a mountain, myself.

        It’s a little test i do.

        If you had to choose between never seeing the sea again, or the mountains, what would you chose?

        Most people say the sea. I am unequivocally mountains.

        1. One of the reasons I am not agitating to move to Hungary is because it is landlocked. i need the sea.

        2. The sea for me….a visceral thing, where we came from….:-) but I like a good mountain too, colours always good because of cooler air.

        3. I am forests and fields. I was born pretty much as far from the sea as you can get and never acquired the taste. As for mountains, they're everywhere here – common as muck and hard to climb.

        5. It's many years since I last saw the sea. We live on a hillside, though it's hardly a mountain.

    2. I'd be casting a lure just beyond those breaking waves for a bass if I was there now, Maggie.

      1. There were no books in my family home as a child. There was a regular three monthly newsletter from the church to my mother.
        The only books i got to read as a child were books i pinched. I have already told Geoff i stole a book from school assembly which had Christmas carols for carol singing to neighbours and no word of a lie the Wickham Convent…. to get money.

        I then found a book my mother had read and left lying around about Marie Antoinette.
        Then i began to realise there was life outside the hot sweaty abusive hovel i lived in. There were 8 of us in a three bed.

        I didn't understand anything of what i was reading. Then i came across one day in the life of ivan denisovich.

        Not long after i came across The Guardians.

        Then !!! Romeo and Juliet.

        My parents worked so hard for the family but i find it difficult to forgive them.

        1. Phizz you have shared so many horror stories from your youth it makes me want to adopt you and make it all OK. But you've turned out rather well after all, haven't you? Big hugs x

          1. I am at least able to tell. This site has helped me and others by just being able to speak. And others to hear or scroll without abuse.
            The village i lived in also had a children's home. None of those had mums and dads. They had house mothers. From what i knew of them at school they were as happy as we were.
            and as sad as we were when well when.

            I am still available for adoption ! Though it might be a bit awkward with two Chihuahuas and fifty five Louis Vuitton suitcases. Not to mention my wardrobe !

            I sincerely thank you for the hug.

          3. I think you will find that now under our new old new labour regime i can self identify as anything i want to be. Including a horse's arse.
            What do you think my chances are at the next race meet?
            I think i might beat your best horse because i'm a donkey and cannot under any circumstances be discriminated against.. Just post me my winnings.

          4. My "best" horses seem to be going through a losing patch at the moment, Phizzee, so you'd be home and hosed.

          8. I've had jockeys say, "I made a mistake; I should have stayed where I was and got the run."

          9. Sigh. I know. But usually they do their best, to the best of their lights. Trainers, on the other hand…

          10. I have every sympathy. Decisions have to be made in split seconds while travelling at 35-40 mph on a half a ton of horse. The most successful jockey is the one who makes fewest mistakes (even Ryan Moore gets it wrong sometimes).

          11. You are most welcome (plenty more where that came from)

            My son has severe learning difficulties and lives in a care home. One of the young men who works there grew up in "care" and told me that the reason he likes working where son lives is that it is the only care home he has ever come across that actually is a "home" and that does actually "care". He is in his late 20s (this young man) and is both deeply scarred and deeply compassionate.

        2. You are a great clever lad , and an achiever , survivor with a terrific sense of humour … and have overcome huge difficulties even now ..

          We are a result of an amazing happening and a mixture of genes ..

          Your parents knew no different , thank goodness you do .

          Hugs to you.

      1. Played every Saturday morning on "Children's Favourites" with Uncle Mac.

        Ah, memories.

    4. They are allowed to as the Blob isn’t fighting them every step of the way. It’s appalling

    1. Wasn't there a clip of them laughing together? I thought QE2 looked to be enjoying his company, breath of fresh air (in a suitably subdued manner…)

      1. Yes.
        I commented that smiles are easy to, but laughter is very difficult to fake.
        Trump was/is incredibly gauche and I suspect the Queen would have recognised that and allowed for it.

        2. A big man with a warm heart. I'd bet the Queen found him both refreshing and entertaining

        3. I suspect you’re right, and I think she saw he was acting genuinely – she’ll have been a past master at that..similarly with the chap who broke into her bedroom and she (a lifelong non-smoker) rang for cigarettes – that is still something to contemplate.

    3. I don’t believe a word of it, and she certainly wouldn’t have seen anything like that!

      1. I think she may have been there, but I very much doubt she had the full picture, being a few bricks short of a load.
        After all, who was her husband?

  100. I loved one of the comments BTL that he should be at the Fringe, as his one liners were so much better than any of the so-called comedians! He sounds like a real character!

  101. I meant that, being as dim as she is, she wouldn’t recognise ‘a flash of anger’ if it bit her!

    1. I'm so very lucky where I live in the village. The local Spar shop houses a sub post office. At peak times the queue can sometimes be two or three deep…..

        1. They had one once a couple of years ago and as a result had to significantly improve their external security….

      2. You retain a shop? And a post office? Now that is what I call posh! All of that is long gone for us. When I first moved here a few decades ago there was a shop, a post office, a church, a village hall, a village school, a playschool/nursery, a petrol station/garage, a farriers shop/blacksmith, a village green, a playground and a pub. The church, village hall and pub limp on, and the play area is subject to reclamation attempts from dogshit-capital-of-the-universe status. That's it.

        1. And a GP practice, dentist, pharmacy and Cafe…..two pubs, two churches and a thriving primary school….

          1. Luxury! (But methinks yours is not a village, more of a small town, one of which we have five miles down the road with some of those things)

          2. We don't have a Car Park so we can't live in a town…

            PS We are just about to celebrate the 54th Village Show….

    2. The other day as I was walking past our post office a woman looked through the door, saw the queue and walked away saying she wasn't going to wait all that time. I told her, "just wait until the bank closes – they'll be down the street and round the corner!"

  104. Jacob Reese-Mogg together with David Davis made a powerful tribute to the late Mike Lynch on JR-M's prog just now (21.00).

    They paid tribute to Mike Lynch's courage in taking on – and winning – his US court case following (absurd) extradition to face Hewlett-Packard.

    Lynch refused plead guilty and seek plea-bargaining; only 3 percent take this line.
    He was acquitted on all counts, by a jury.

    Upon winning his case, Lynch telephoned David Davis to lobby for 'equalisation' of the one-way US – UK Extradition Law – a Tony Blair legacy of the 9/11 era.

  105. Labour may be plotting a devastating plan to make millions tax prisoners in their own homes

    Political outriders are laying the ground for a new assault on property

    ALLISTER HEATH • 21 August 2024 • 7:58pm

    This is the point of maximum danger for anybody who owns property in Britain. The Labour government is desperate for cash, and will never be as powerful as it is today. Rachel Reeves is expected to raise inheritance and capital gains taxes, but she is being urged by a bevy of influential voices to go even further, and to impose Britain's first annual wealth tax on unsuspecting homeowners. This would be a calamity, the most explosive assault on private property since the 1940s, and must be opposed by all right-thinking people.

    There has long been an influential body of opinion across the political spectrum that maintains that residential property isn't taxed enough. Such people now believe that this is their moment, their once in 50 years opportunity to revolutionise Britain.

    They are desperate to whack "rentiers", to hammer "unearned" wealth and "landlordism", to penalise "unfair windfalls" from rising house prices, to wipe out second home-owners, all in the aid of renters and "working people" (who, apparently, are defined as never aspiring to own anything). They dream of a Lloyd George-style "People's Budget" for the 21st century; unlike in 1909, prosperous Middle England would be the principal target for punishment, not just large landowners.

    The policy could take the form of a revaluation of council tax bands to clobber millions in the South, London and gentrified areas, or the replacement of council tax and stamp duty by a proportional, graduated annual levy on the value of all homes (forcing many to pay £10,000, £20,000 or more a year), or a "mansion" tax on homes deemed expensive, or a "garden tax" on land values.

    The status quo is broken, but all of these "solutions" would be worse. Infused by flawed classical, Marxist or Georgist economics that claim, without a shred of evidence, that taxing property is necessarily less damaging than taxing income or consumption, they would ruin Britain's residual attractiveness to global capital and talent.

    The total value of all UK homes is £8.7 trillion; as if by magic, confiscating just 1 per cent of this wealth annually would exactly eliminate Britain's budget deficit, expected at £87 billion for this year. The coincidence is freakish, especially given the dire fiscal context. The Tories turned on the spending taps, to no avail, in their last few months, and since then Labour have awarded scandalously high pay rises to their public sector cronies. Day-to-day central government spending surged 5 per cent between April and July; tax receipts "are, if anything, slightly behind" predictions, the Institute for Fiscal Studies notes, despite stronger economic growth than in other European countries. Borrowing is higher than forecast.

    As if on cue, a series of articles and pamphlets have made the case for a radical "reform" of property taxation. Writing in the Financial Times, Charles Goodhart, a brilliant former central banker whose lectures at LSE I very much enjoyed in 1996-97, makes a sober case for a land value tax; he even believes it could raise enough to replace income tax. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has ridiculed council tax bands based on home values "when Mikhail Gorbachev was president of the Soviet Union and Chesney Hawkes topped the charts".

    Tim Leunig, economist at Onward and a former adviser to Rishi Sunak, wants to replace council tax by a 0.44 per cent levy on homes worth up to £500,000, with a minimum payment. He wants stamp duty to be replaced by a 0.54 per cent annual tax on homes worth above £500,000, with an extra 0.28 per cent supplement on values over £1 million. Welsh Labour, which is revaluing council tax bands, is keen to see its policy adopted by Reeves.

    Labour last plotted to wage a war on wealth 50 years ago; the seminal text is A Wealth Tax Abandoned: The role of the UK Treasury 1974-6 by Howard Glennerster. By 1964, a Labour internal report came out "in favour of an annual Wealth Tax", influenced by the Left-wing economist Nicholas Kaldor.

    The party introduced a tax on capital gains in 1965, but soon wished to go further. Its 1974 manifesto was terrifying in its socialist honesty: "We shall introduce an annual Wealth Tax on the rich; bring in a new tax on major transfers of personal wealth; heavily tax speculation in property – including a new tax on property companies." In more moderate form, all three of these ideas are being discussed again by commentators today, including the concept of a "gift tax", higher CGT on buy-to-let and of course the various annual property levy ideas.

    The first law of taxation is that taxes are inevitably introduced at a low, manageable level, often on a "temporary basis", keeping the useful idiots on side, but are soon jacked up. Inheritance tax in its modern form was just 7.5 per cent when it was introduced in 1894; it had been hiked to 40 per cent in 1930, 65 per cent after the war and a top rate of 75 per cent in 1949. Does anybody really believe that an annual property tax would stay at 0.5 per cent or so? It would soon turn into a historic exercise in expropriation.

    The second iron law of taxation is that "wet" taxes – on income, on spending – are better than "dry" taxes – on existing wealth. The former are better aligned with people's ability to pay. Many pensioners are asset-rich but cash-poor. They would find it impossible to pay a new wealth tax, and would be forced to sell. Some people would end up paying more than 100 per cent of their income in tax as a result of quadruple or quintuple taxation. What is left of the City would shrivel; several European countries were forced to abandon their wealth taxes after massive capital outflows. In America, property taxes lead to social segregation: those on low incomes cannot afford to live in rich areas, even if they have paid off their mortgage.

    Most important of all, wealth taxes would dramatically change our relationship with the state. Freehold ownership would be effectively abolished; we would all become leaseholders, paying a fee for the privilege to stay in our homes, with the state the ultimate landlord. An Englishman or woman's home would no longer be their castle. Reeves has tough decisions to make, but she mustn't listen to those calling for the legalised plunder that are wealth taxes.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/08/21/your-home-not-safe-with-labour-prepare-assault-on-affluence/

    1. Just what I need! Admittedly my house is probably not worth over £500k, but it does have a garden. I wonder if I can turn it into a smallholding?

    2. I wonder. If you have to pay tax to live in your home, at what point do property prices fall to below the level? Surely the market collapses at some point?

      1. If, despite her financial 'background', Reeves doesn't understand the difference between income & expenditure and assets, then she is certainly stupid. If she does, then she is plain nasty.

    3. What they propose to replace council tax with would effectively have me once again paying monthly what my mortgage used to cost. As if the property is never paid for and I’ll be a perpetual tenant. You vil own nuffing etc.

      2. If people are forced to sell their homes, who does Reeves imagine will be able to buy them?

        1. The state (with tax payers' money) – just think of the capital gains tax and stamp duty.

          1. Don't think there'll be much CGT when they compulsorily purchase at way below market value

          6. Quite. They will take everything from us but there are internal things of much greater value that they cannot take. Boy, does that piss them off.

  106. Evening, all. Have just filled in another set of pages of the response to Labour's plans to cover the country in housing – I'm losing the will to live. I've still got pages left to do. When they read it, I expect to have a knock on the door in the night, frankly!

    Labour has always been tax and spend wastefully while trying to control every aspect of the plebs' lives. They don't like entrepreneurs; their preference is for unions and nationalised industry.

    1. I wouldn't bother, Conners. They will not read it but will use it as evidence of "consultation". You are fcked every which way and that is the way it is designed to work. It is also a war of attrition – they are using your money (you pay them whether you wish to or not) to fight you -and to ruin your life.

      1. I've mentioned that several times, reminded them they are trying to control every aspect of our lives and they should not meddle. Also that their targets are inachievable, they should reduce demand by not increasing the population and that "green" generation is not, as they claim "cheap". I know they'll ignore it, but at least I'll have tried. They can't then say nobody bothered to respond.

        2. No – what they will say is that they had numerous responses and consulted fully and hence came to their decision. Your response, however negative, becomes a part of their lying evidence. I know how this works from bitter experience. Writing to your councillors or MP in strong terms and copying to the press might be more effective. But there again it might not.

          1. I expect to be no-platformed for dissident speech. I might even be sent to prison for hateful opinions (i e the truth).

        3. We had our meeting on Monday , I feel numb .

          I had intended to tender my resignation , and walkaway from every government body and consultation ( had hundreds of them )

          A couple of us chatted about the fields behind our house that have just been harvested .. Will the fields be planted again, will we hear sheep and their lambs in December .. will that witch of Salem throw at us 1,000 homes as promised ?

          Since we have lived here in the village (25 years nearly ) the village population has doubled .. a new housing estate was built 15 years ago .. it went to appeal and the landowner won!

          What a mess.

          1. Under the new proposals if the local authority doesn't comply with govt numbers, the decision will be made for them. How, not if, developments are to take place.

          3. Building more houses when the birthrate is dropping is crazy, more houses , more people, they grow old , more carers are needed , more imports , more houses , carers become older , more carers needed ..

            Bit like new roads, more cars , and more cars , and so it goes on .

          5. Well, you were looky. i went to one of those that was housed in a purpose built soulless building, designed to be crucifyingly hot in the summer and icily cold in winter – buildings not designed to age well. nor to enhance learning.

    2. Thank you.

      I have just met up with two friends form my Birmingham days. One now lives in Cambridge and the other near Fleet. It’s been a nice evening and we had a lovely time at a place in the Inns of Court.

      The problems with this country is that it does old-fashioned beauty wonderfully. It’s a real treat (as a Wulfrunian) to be in the Temple area.

  108. Another contender for the Darwin Awards:…

    Man, 53, mauled to death by his own XL bully
    Lancashire Police destroyed the animal to prevent it from injuring more people….

  110. And that's me off to bed.
    Off to Dr. Daughter's tomorrow and then up to Falstone Friday.
    TTFN All.

  111. Good night, chums. Sleep well and I hope to see you all refreshed and ready to enjoy the day, tomorrow.

  112. The BBC news .. 10 black Met officers complained about racism from other Met officers.

    Gawd , if they were back in Africa , it would be tribalism and no one would bat an eyelid .. people just stick to their own tribes and don't venture forth.

    1. This is getting beyond parody. If they are not put on a pedestal and indulged in their prejudices it is racism? Actually, so what if it is.

  113. Ministers could back under-30s free movement deal to reset EU relations
    The policy would grant 18 to 30-year-olds visas for up to three years to work, study or volunteer in the UK, with a reciprocal agreement for young Britons.

    https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/eu-free-movement-young-people-mobility-scheme-pvw0slfhh
    Ministers are prepared to allow young Europeans to come and live and work in Britain as part of a wider reset of relations with Brussels after Brexit.

    Labour has repeatedly insisted that it has “no plans” to agree a youth mobility scheme that could give young citizens of EU members states the right to work in the UK for the first time since Brexit.

    But government sources have told The Times that ministers privately recognised that they would have to “give ground” on the issue as their opposition would be a stumbling block to a broader reset of relations.

          1. That's what they call them nowadays. It doesn't matter how long they have been on mainland Europe.

  114. Labour may be plotting a devastating plan to make millions tax prisoners in their own homes
    Political outriders are laying the ground for a new assault on property

    This is the point of maximum danger for anybody who owns property in Britain. The Labour government is desperate for cash, and will never be as powerful as it is today. Rachel Reeves is expected to raise inheritance and capital gains taxes, but she is being urged by a bevy of influential voices to go even further, and to impose Britain’s first annual wealth tax on unsuspecting homeowners. This would be a calamity, the most explosive assault on private property since the 1940s, and must be opposed by all right-thinking people.

    There has long been an influential body of opinion across the political spectrum that maintains that residential property isn’t taxed enough. Such people now believe that this is their moment, their once in 50 years opportunity to revolutionise Britain.

    They are desperate to whack “rentiers”, to hammer “unearned” wealth and “landlordism”, to penalise “unfair windfalls” from rising house prices, to wipe out second home-owners, all in the aid of renters and “working people” (who, apparently, are defined as never aspiring to own anything). They dream of a Lloyd George-style “People’s Budget” for the 21st century; unlike in 1909, prosperous Middle England would be the principal target for punishment, not just large landowners.

    The policy could take the form of a revaluation of council tax bands to clobber millions in the South, London and gentrified areas, or the replacement of council tax and stamp duty by a proportional, graduated annual levy on the value of all homes (forcing many to pay £10,000, £20,000 or more a year), or a “mansion” tax on homes deemed expensive, or a “garden tax” on land values.

    The status quo is broken, but all of these “solutions” would be worse. Infused by flawed classical, Marxist or Georgist economics that claim, without a shred of evidence, that taxing property is necessarily less damaging than taxing income or consumption, they would ruin Britain’s residual attractiveness to global capital and talent.

    The total value of all UK homes is £8.7 trillion; as if by magic, confiscating just 1 per cent of this wealth annually would exactly eliminate Britain’s budget deficit, expected at £87 billion for this year. The coincidence is freakish, especially given the dire fiscal context. The Tories turned on the spending taps, to no avail, in their last few months, and since then Labour have awarded scandalously high pay rises to their public sector cronies. Day-to-day central government spending surged 5 per cent between April and July; tax receipts “are, if anything, slightly behind” predictions, the Institute for Fiscal Studies notes, despite stronger economic growth than in other European countries. Borrowing is higher than forecast.

    As if on cue, a series of articles and pamphlets have made the case for a radical “reform” of property taxation. Writing in the Financial Times, Charles Goodhart, a brilliant former central banker whose lectures at LSE I very much enjoyed in 1996-97, makes a sober case for a land value tax; he even believes it could raise enough to replace income tax. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has ridiculed council tax bands based on home values “when Mikhail Gorbachev was president of the Soviet Union and Chesney Hawkes topped the charts”.

    Tim Leunig, economist at Onward and a former adviser to Rishi Sunak, wants to replace council tax by a 0.44 per cent levy on homes worth up to £500,000, with a minimum payment. He wants stamp duty to be replaced by a 0.54 per cent annual tax on homes worth above £500,000, with an extra 0.28 per cent supplement on values over £1 million. Welsh Labour, which is revaluing council tax bands, is keen to see its policy adopted by Reeves.

    Labour last plotted to wage a war on wealth 50 years ago; the seminal text is A Wealth Tax Abandoned: The role of the UK Treasury 1974-6 by Howard Glennerster. By 1964, a Labour internal report came out “in favour of an annual Wealth Tax”, influenced by the Left-wing economist Nicholas Kaldor.

    The party introduced a tax on capital gains in 1965, but soon wished to go further. Its 1974 manifesto was terrifying in its socialist honesty: “We shall introduce an annual Wealth Tax on the rich; bring in a new tax on major transfers of personal wealth; heavily tax speculation in property – including a new tax on property companies.” In more moderate form, all three of these ideas are being discussed again by commentators today, including the concept of a “gift tax”, higher CGT on buy-to-let and of course the various annual property levy ideas.

    The first law of taxation is that taxes are inevitably introduced at a low, manageable level, often on a “temporary basis”, keeping the useful idiots on side, but are soon jacked up. Inheritance tax in its modern form was just 7.5 per cent when it was introduced in 1894; it had been hiked to 40 per cent in 1930, 65 per cent after the war and a top rate of 75 per cent in 1949. Does anybody really believe that an annual property tax would stay at 0.5 per cent or so? It would soon turn into a historic exercise in expropriation.

    The second iron law of taxation is that “wet” taxes – on income, on spending – are better than “dry” taxes – on existing wealth. The former are better aligned with people’s ability to pay. Many pensioners are asset-rich but cash-poor. They would find it impossible to pay a new wealth tax, and would be forced to sell. Some people would end up paying more than 100 per cent of their income in tax as a result of quadruple or quintuple taxation. What is left of the City would shrivel; several European countries were forced to abandon their wealth taxes after massive capital outflows. In America, property taxes lead to social segregation: those on low incomes cannot afford to live in rich areas, even if they have paid off their mortgage.

    Most important of all, wealth taxes would dramatically change our relationship with the state. Freehold ownership would be effectively abolished; we would all become leaseholders, paying a fee for the privilege to stay in our homes, with the state the ultimate landlord. An Englishman or woman’s home would no longer be their castle. Reeves has tough decisions to make, but she mustn’t listen to those calling for the legalised plunder that are wealth taxes.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/08/21/your-home-not-safe-with-labour-prepare-assault-on-affluence/

    1. Trudeau has been mulling over the idea of a wealth tax on home owners.

      Nothing that would impact the poor working classes, they would charge something like on percent on homes values at over one million dollars. What they have forgotten is that even the shabbiest, smallest homes in Toronto and Vancouver are well over a million nowadays!

      Strangely the idea has disappeared from the news, maybe feedback was not what was needed.

    2. One of the hazards of waking up in the night and unable to get back off to sleep again, worrying, is that working through my feelings becomes yesterday's news, and falls off the bottom of the scrolling system that automatically cancels any comment more than a day old. It is the chit-chat way of discussion, whereby we can talk among ourselves like endangered sparrows, but nothing will be heard when the day is over.

      The threat posed by the joyless automaton that is programmed to be our Chancellor of the Exchequer, who more than resembles Commander Data's daughter from Star Trek, is that the fictitious android had considerably more humanity.

      I am really dreading 30th October, which has all the indications of being the most vindictive, confiscatory and frankly nasty budget at least since the small businesses were nobbled in 1981, and up there with Osborne's "Pasty Tax".

      The Left's redeeming feature in the past was that the whole nation would benefit from better and universal public services, properly funded and properly run for the good of the public. This offsets the extra taxes needed to pay for them. However, this time, I see little prospect of public services improving and all we get would be the pain without the gain. And does Starmer's bot care? I doubt such a creature is programmed for that.

      Remember, this is being done with a 20% mandate. They should be reminded of this each time anyone talks of the legitimacy of Parliament.

      I now have the task, and precious little time, to prepare for what's to come. Making my home habitable obviously and getting out of a tenancy before I am further punished for landlordism. There is no time left though to issue a Section 21, put the place on the market and bank its value before the Grab.

      I wonder how many of those who failed to vote Conservative are in the same boat? And yet, would it have made a lot of difference voting for Sunak's party at the last election? Where I live and vote is a safe Tory seat and remained so. My mother voted Labour, I think, but regrets it. Here MP in a safe Labour North London constituency is capable and conscientious as far as her neighbour's programme for zombification and "appropriate" programming allows her to be. In truth, we have both been robbed of our capacity to affect Government democratically.

      That leaves us with King Charles – a good man, public spirited, conscientious, wise and thoughtful, who has done a lot of good throughout his life, whatever his detractors may sneer at his tree-hugging. But his power is seriously curtailed by the machine, and there is a limit to what he is permitted to do.

      If it were otherwise, then we may be fortunate with this present king, but ponder if Andrew or Harry got to the throne…

  116. from Coffee House. the Spectator

    Putin is biding his time to seek revenge for Kursk
    Comments Share 21 August 2024, 4:13pm
    Vladimir Putin, it seems, is procrastinating. Just when the war in Ukraine was going his way and the Russian army doing what it does best – pummelling its way forward like a leaden-footed but seemingly unstoppable heavyweight boxer – Kyiv has sneaked in a powerful side punch. By launching an incursion into the Kursk region, Ukraine has not only breached the borders of Mother Russia – the inner sanctum of what is still a regional empire of control and influence – but also opened a second front.

    For days Ukrainians braced for a spiteful rejoinder. Perhaps Putin would lash out with withering rocket attacks, a devastating bombing raid against a major city, or even (Heaven forbid) a small nuclear strike against Kyiv’s forces.

    For now, Putin has resisted the temptation to lash out
    But so far the Russian president has done remarkably little. On Tuesday he toured a factory in the Russian regions that makes sugar-free apple-flavoured sweets.

    The Ukrainian move into Kursk has doubtless created problems for Putin. First off he must ensure that the blame for the egregious failure to predict the offensive doesn’t land at his feet. In the eyes of many Russians, Putin is still the Tsar and, while he can suggest that corruption and inefficiency are the fault of his self-serving and corrupt boyars, it is nevertheless his job to keep Russians safe – especially from foreign invasion.

    Just as it was Stalin’s task to push back the Nazi menace, whatever the cost in lives and destruction, Putin will be expected to retake Kursk and reestablish the sanctity of Russia’s frontiers. But given how stretched the Russian military is – almost all its significant resources are now deployed in eastern Ukraine – that will take time.

    Putin could, of course, redeploy his existing forces. But Kyiv has widely telegraphed the fact that getting Russia to pull forces out of eastern Ukraine, where they have been advancing steadily for months, is one of the primary aims of the Kursk attack. Doing so now would be an admission that the Kremlin has been outmanoeuvred.

    Such a move might also mean an end to advances in eastern Ukraine this year. With the important Ukrainian transport hub of Pokrovsk looking set to fall in the next several weeks and the Russians making slow if bloody progress towards the key towns of Chasiv Yar and Kostyantynivka, that would be a bitter pill to swallow for the Kremlin.

    Putin has decided, so far at least, not to make that move. Open source intelligence reports say that while some experienced Russian units from southern Ukraine have been sent north, other troops sent to the Kursk salient have been from the Kaliningrad enclave in the west and even from Moscow’s aerospace forces.

    Young Russian conscripts doing their military service have also been sent into staunch Ukraine’s advance, though that too presents a challenge for Putin. Russian law actually forbids sending conscripts to fight abroad. And while the Kursk region is undoubtedly part of Russia, and therefore not subject to the prohibition, there is still a sense that fighting there is overspill from Russia’s expeditionary invasion of Ukraine.

    For now, then, Putin has both resisted the temptation to lash out and to compromise on his main effort in the Donbas. Perhaps wisely. Firstly, he will have calculated that the risks and difficulties are not only on his side. Ukraine, short of manpower and materiel, is even more ill-equipped to fight on two fronts than Russia. The withdrawal of some of its most battle-hardened troops from the east is already taking a toll and Ukrainian villages in the Donbas have been falling like dominos these past two weeks.

    Secondly, an escalatory move might change the rules of the game at a time when, in the big picture, Putin is winning the war. It could, for example, draw the West further into the conflict.

    But is it wisdom alone that is staying Putin’s hand? We know from his long years in power that Putin, despite his bare-chested strongman image, is prone to procrastination. In 2004, he hesitated for months – to the bewilderment of the hawks in his entourage – before finally moving against Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Russia’s richest man who had openly challenged the Kremlin’s authority. In 2014, long after the pieces were in place to seize Crimea, he sat on his hands. Even after Yevgeny Prigozhin’s coup attempt in 2023 he, at first, seemed ready to accommodate the Wagner leader and some of his grievances.

    But the record of the former KGB agent tells us something else too. At some point, when he considers the moment right, he will strike. Khodorkovsky went to prison. Crimea became Russia. Prigozhin is dead.

    For now Putin is procrastinating. Before he makes a move he will want to ensure that his position at home is secure. But, meanwhile, he will be stewing over how best to exact revenge on Ukraine. Even if that revenge, when it comes, is served cold.

  118. 392153+ up ticks,

    I do not know if a serious opposition in one form or another is going to be triggered but I DO KNOW that our odious future is being engineered on a daily basis VIA DOVER.

    The governing bodies currently are only interested in supporters black/white/ green/ foreign supporters, being supplied on a daily basis.

    Record number of migrants granted asylum
    Figures show 67,978 claims were granted in the year to June, more than triple the 21,436 in the previous year

Comments are closed.