Monday 26 August: It’s perfectly natural to be wary of Britain’s drift towards automation

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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560 thoughts on “Monday 26 August: It’s perfectly natural to be wary of Britain’s drift towards automation”

  1. Good morrow, Gentlefolks, Today’s recycled story. Yes, I’m back, smut and all.

    The Word It Hinges Upon

    A blonde walked up to the clerk at a hardware store and says, "I would like to buy a set of hinges."

    So, the clerk says, "Would you like a screw for these hinges?"

    "No," replies the blonde, "but I'll blow you for that toaster up there!"

    2. G'day Tom 🤠

      That's a bit like the bus driver who's looking under the bonnet because the engine has broken down. The conductress says "Do you need a screw,driver"? He replies, "No better not, were 40 minutes late already".

    4. Good to see from you, Tom! Morning (well, it's afternoon now, but you get the idea…)

  3. Good morning, chums, and thank you, Geoff, for today's NoTTLe site.

    Wordle 1,164 6/6

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    1. Good morning Elsie. Don't you just hate words like this!
      Wordle 1,164 5/6

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      1. Yes, BB2, but – like Grizzly – I'd love a different but similar-sounding word. (Good morning, btw.)

      2. I was characteristically slow on the uptake this morning.

        Wordle 1,164 5/6

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    2. Your journey is actually helpful to those seeking the true word.

      Wordle 1,164 3/6

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  5. British safety adviser killed in missile strike on hotel in Ukraine. 26 August 2024.

    Ryan Evans, who was part of a six-person Reuters team covering the war in Ukraine, was killed and two Reuters journalists were injured in a strike on the Hotel Sapphire in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk, the news agency said on Sunday.

    Evans, 38, a former British soldier, had been working with Reuters since 2022 and advised its journalists on safety around the world including in Ukraine, Israel and at the Paris Olympics.

    Former British soldier? You have to wonder here. Was he drawing two salaries? Was the hotel actually a military communications centre? We shall never know of course but suspicion abounds. The Russians seem to have thought so. One doesn’t launch half a million pound missiles on a whim.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/08/25/reuters-journalist-missing-after-russian-strike-kramatorsk/

    1. When I worked in the Far East on contract we were provided with minders by the company who advised us on how to keep safe. One such Singaporean I will always remember had a scar from ear to ear, and our Saudi minder would appear out of nowhere from time to time and then disappear, seemingly to confirm that he was keeping an eye on our safety. Interesting characters to say the least. They often warned of the dodgy bars nearby, which as pilots we duly noted. So Once they had cleared off, there was a rush to see just how bad those bars actually were!

    2. So the missiles hitting hospital, schools , kindergartens and all civilian targets were not launched "on a whim" but with deliberate aim.

      1. I think that is a generalisation too far. The truth is that we know very little of what is happening in Ukraine. This one is an oddity in that we have some personal information.

  6. This is a real humdinger…

    Teachers will be trained to challenge ‘whiteness’ in schools

    Guidance aims to encourage ‘anti-racist’ teacher training to maintain diverse educator workforce

    Craig Simpson
    25 August 2024 • 2:23pm

    Teachers will be taught to challenge “whiteness” in lessons, The Telegraph can reveal.

    Guidance has been created for teacher-training courses, to ensure future educators are “anti-racist” and prepared to implement this in the classroom.

    Teachers will be instructed in how to “disrupt the centrality of whiteness” in schools, according to a best-practice document.

    The term “whiteness” in critical race theory refers to social attitudes considered normal by white people, and guidance suggests that concepts including “meritocracy”, “objectivity” and “individualism” should be questioned.

    Documents state that student teachers – if they happen to be white – should also be helped to develop and project a “positive white racial identity”.

    ‘Impact of whiteness’
    Separate guidance has been developed in Scotland and England, and both documents have been endorsed by universities offering teacher training, including Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Newcastle, along with the National Education Union.

    Documents claim that encouraging “anti-racist” teacher training will help to maintain a diverse teaching workforce, and will help to close the attainment gap between white and non-white pupils.

    The Scottish “anti-racism framework”, drawn up by the Scottish Council of Deans of Education and endorsed by 10 universities, states that changes to the way in which teachers are taught will “disrupt the centrality of whiteness and enable different ways of seeing, thinking and doing”.

    This process may involve more references to colonialism and racism in lessons, and instilling an understanding of the “impact of whiteness”.

    This, it says, will help teachers project a “white racial identity grounded in reality and allyship” in the classroom, free from “false notions of superiority”.

    The national anti-racism framework for initial teacher training, launched in 2023, states that those teaching future teachers should “debunk the myth of objectivity” in scholarship, and instead examine how some views are “silenced” in academic work.

    Those educating teachers have been urged to strive for racial justice “through activism” and teacher unions, according to the guidance.

    ‘Tools of whiteness’ [Could this be a subtle reference to Starmer and/or his Dad?]
    A parallel anti-racism framework for teacher training was commissioned by the National Education Union in 2023, and funded by the University of Newcastle, was developed for England.

    It states that “teachers working with all age groups” are “crucial to anti-racism work”, and directs tutors to academic literature on how to deal with “whiteness”.

    The term “white” has nearly 400 mentions in the guidance, the term “whiteness” features 121 times.

    The assorted academic literature sets out the importance of dispelling “notions of objectivity” along with what are termed the “tools of whiteness”, including “individualism” and “belief in a meritocracy”.

    The framework also directs tutors to passages that claim “white privilege” includes the “right to enjoyment”, and that “emotions are themselves racialised”.

    Scottish guidance aims to tackle racism in education, and to create a more diverse teaching workforce.

    It has been made available by higher education institutions providing teacher training, including the universities Aberdeen, Strathclyde.

    A Newcastle University spokesman said: “As we saw with the recent public unrest across the UK, racism is pervasive in our society. The way that we educate current and future teachers will play an important role in breaking this cycle and the framework was developed to provide practical guidance on this.”

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

    Is there any other government that hates its white population as much as ours ? One minute you are a law abiding, compassionate, hard working, pragmatic individual the next racist, fascist, mysognistic, bigoted scum. What on earth have we done to deserve this?

    Frank Healy
    16 HRS AGO
    Teacher has 30 White faces in front of her – what is the challenge? Teacher has 30 Black faces in front of her – what is the challenge?
    Teacher has 30 children of various and mixed races in her class – what is the challenge?
    The above is what teachers face every day – My daughter, a classroom assistant has only children from Bangladesh in her school The only white faces are those of the staff.
    Methinks some people do not uderstand that is an everyday thing depending where you live, not just in the country but City – Town or Village.
    Personally when I read of such proposals I think someone has a plan to spread racism.

    B Seage
    12 HRS AGO
    White and proud of it! Son of a steel worker and a welder who took their opportunity to establish a business. They were keen on education so I passed 11 plus, and leaving school had three careers before retiring at 70. I admire all people who make the best of themselves regardless of colour, creed or politics. But I do deeply believe that folk who come to UK as immigrants should respect our way of life and leave their problems behind them. Here in deepest Cornwall we are very white, welcoming and proud of it.

    1. Never mind, all the Young Pioneers will lap it up.
      Or will they be renamed the Young Toolmakers?

        1. As the old saying implies, "Father forgive them for they know not what they are doing"
          Problem is they know exactly what they are doing.

    2. Does this encourage youngster's to risk skin cancer by spending too much time in the sun ?

      1. Probably not. Neither Meghan nor Kamala have a tan but both get away with identifying as black.

        1. We have an elderly lady friend who is whiter than white. But her grandfather was a black Caribbean man. There are of course certain implications, but she is quite adiment he was part of her bloodline.

          1. Possibly grandfather wasn’t 100% black. Kamala’s dad looks very much like there’s a white slave owner or three in his family tree.

    5. Over 80 years ago, Orwell wrote a scathing essay which contained the following:

      "In intention, at any rate, the English intelligentsia are Europeanized. They take their cookery from Paris and their opinions from Moscow. In the general patriotism of the country they form a sort of island of dissident thought. England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality. In left-wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution, from horse racing to suet puddings. "

      Nothing has changed.

    6. Over 80 years ago, Orwell wrote a scathing essay which contained the following:

      "In intention, at any rate, the English intelligentsia are Europeanized. They take their cookery from Paris and their opinions from Moscow. In the general patriotism of the country they form a sort of island of dissident thought. England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality. In left-wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution, from horse racing to suet puddings. "

      Nothing has changed.

  7. I want this
    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/6f6da0e5f234d6693d7dfec978e34e876d4b3246/0_111_4288_2573/master/4288.jpg?width=965&dpr=2&s=none
    An unusual road sign on Raasay in the Inner Hebrides

    A contender should be Calum’s Road on Raasay, built by the islander Calum MacLeod. According to Wikipedia, locals spent decades campaigning unsuccessfully for a road, so he took matters into his own hands, with the help of Thomas Aitken’s manual Road Making & Maintenance: A Practical Treatise for Engineers, Surveyors and Others. Replacing the old footpath – mainly using only a shovel, a pick and a wheelbarrow – took a decade. By 1974, he had constructed nearly two miles of road between Brochel Castle and Arnish. It’s a great drive and includes unusual road signs

    1. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4a03adee5330e7f4ff3db6bcaf2dee373e341e5cebb005acc0bfa920c77f0036.jpg A Swedish friend used to have a business contact in Australia. Goods from the Swedish firm this friend worked for were packaged in crates and sent out down under.

      Inside one such crate was a Swedish road sign warning of moose on the road, which the friend had 'borrowed' from its roadside post late one night.

      That moose sign was erected on a post in a remote bush town in New South Wales and it has remained there for at least three decades to the puzzlement of visitors and the ongoing merriment of the townspeople.

      1. Add a few tattoos, and that warning could apply to any town centre on a Saturday night.

    2. They'll have to leave out the bit about her tiny hand being frozen. That goes against global warming.

  10. 392460 + up ticks,

    Morning Each,
    Monday 26 August: It’s perfectly natural to be wary of Britain’s drift towards automation.

    The march in step is not recommended by a force crossing a bridge and it is certainly NOT recommended for the herd these past forty years doing the same, in neglecting the peoples defence of the realm in regards to political enemy / enemas
    within.

    Now we really are sampling the odious fruits of the polling stations and family tree, best of the worst, spite filled voting mode

    I do believe mass UNITY is the key instead of marching auto fashion to the drumbeat of the odious ( elected) overseers.

    In short, either quit the shit and face facts, or accept we are heading for serfdom at a fast trot, breaking into a gallop.

    If ever a convoy (rubber duck inclusive ) was called for it would be one with a DOVER destination.

  11. Good Moaning.
    Plenty of time to improve the score.

    "A 32-year-old woman stabbed at Notting Hill Carnival is in a life threatening condition in hospital, the Metropolitan Police said.

    She was one of three victims who were stabbed at the west London event on Sunday.

    A 29-year-old man was also taken to hospital with non-life threatening injuries, while the condition of a 24-year-old man remains unknown, the force said on Sunday night."

      1. Yes, they must face the full force of the law, be fast tracked through the system and get long prison sentences.

          1. Their brothers and cousins will have to be freed and returned to society their sh*tholes to make room for them.

    2. Were these classed as mainly peaceful stabbings? It's an important factor as aggression is so far-right.

    3. Yes, but yesterday was the 'Children and Family Day' at the Notting Hill Carnival. The main parade is today so I'm sure they'll improve.

      From the same article:

      A police spokesman said: “Hundreds of thousands of people came to Notting Hill Carnival today to enjoy a fantastic celebration.

      “Our officers have been on duty working to keep them safe as part of a very carefully planned policing operation.

      “Regrettably, a minority came to commit crime and engage in violence.”

      Police have made 90 arrests across the carnival, including for possession of an offensive weapon, assaults on an emergency worker and possession with intent to supply drugs.

      Arrests have also been made for assault, theft, sexual offences, possession of drugs and robbery.

      Fifteen officers have also been assaulted, the force said.

      1. Working hard to keep them safe from what exactly ? it's a celebratory carnival. What sort of people would cause so much trouble I wonder ?

    4. Jamaica has one of the highest murder rates in the world, so the odd knifing along with the jerk chicken adds a bit of authenticity to the event.

  12. Ukraine will defeat Putin – as long as we support it. Andrew Mitchell. 26 August 2024.

    We have been here before. At the Munich conference in 1938, the British and French leaders who agreed to hand Hitler part of Czechoslovakia believed they were securing peace. But the most catastrophic conflict of the twentieth century followed. The lesson that should have been learned is that bullies cannot be pacified. Give them an inch, and the tanks will roll in before long.

    Words from the Westminster Junta who seemed to have learned little in the interim. Nothing of the recent Show Trials or the imprisonment of individuals for the heinous crime of speaking their minds. What difference here to the Third Reich?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/08/26/ukraine-will-win-the-war-as-long-we-support-it/

    1. I see little connection between the paragraph in brackets and the following paragraph in plain type.

      I have made the connection myself between Crimea and the Donbas and the Saar and the Sudetenland. Furthermore, thus emboldened by silence from the Western allies, eager not to get into a war they were not ready for, Hitler invaded Poland, with the support at the time of Stalin. In a modern context, Putin attempted an invasion of the rest of Ukraine, with support from Iran, although unlike the Soviet incursion from the East into Poland, Iran has made no territorial gains, even though they supply weapons.

      A similar scenario is playing out on a smaller scale in the Middle East, with Gaza and the West Bank playing the role of Sudetenland and the Saar, and the Western allies (and for that matter the Muslim ones) being mute to atrocities there. Indeed, the US and Britain are supplying the aggressors with arms.

      The situation with Starmer's Stalinesque mass arrest of political opponents (aka "Far Right") has nothing directly to do with either conflict above, and more over public disquiet about the seeding of Islamic State militants into the flood of "asylum seekers" crossing the Channel and then leapfrogging their way, via their lawyers, into preferential treatement under the local social welfare system. If there is a land invasion, it is yet to come. At the moment, they seem content to a campaign of stabbing at public celebrations in order to soften morale in their targets. Starmer's response to them is to shorten their prison sentences or even to turn a blind eye for the cause of "diversity and inclusion".

      1. I didn't know that Britain and the US were supplying Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and the other with arms.

      2. Good morning Jeremy and everyone.
        Release the hostages, ever so simple.
        Just imagine that one morning a group comprised of Mexican thugs and assorted civilians were to cross the border into the USA, r*pe torture and kill 38,000 US citizens, including children and babies, and then kidnap 8,500 others to use as hostages. Would the United States of America be dropping a) food parcels or b) bombs?
        (No disrespect to Mexico or Mexican people intended, only used as a location for comparison with the Israel/Hamas conflict.)

        1. If anyone had broken into the USA and kidnapped a number of citizens, I certainly would not have let them back over the border with their prisoners. Weren’t the border posts manned? The border between Israel and Gaza is about 20 miles long. Surely not all the IDF were occupied with festivities? Or maybe they felt their efforts better spent escorting settlers raiding villages in the West Bank?

          Hamas would be idiots to let the hostages go right now – it’s the only bargaining chip they have. Without them, the whole place would be obliterated with no restraint by the Israelis, and nobody would care or ask difficult questions of Netanyahu and his henchmen coalition partners.

  13. Ukraine will defeat Putin – as long as we support it. Andrew Mitchell. 26 August 2024.

    We have been here before. At the Munich conference in 1938, the British and French leaders who agreed to hand Hitler part of Czechoslovakia believed they were securing peace. But the most catastrophic conflict of the twentieth century followed. The lesson that should have been learned is that bullies cannot be pacified. Give them an inch, and the tanks will roll in before long.

    Words from the Westminster Junta who seemed to have learned little in the interim. Nothing of the recent Show Trials or the imprisonment of individuals for the heinous crime of speaking their minds. What difference here to the Third Reich?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/08/26/ukraine-will-win-the-war-as-long-we-support-it/

      2. A tribal spokesperson said it was OK until the far right Yaxley clan came down and beat up the nature loving Celtic Bards Club when they were peacefully sacrificing and drinking the blood of the usual white virgin from Wigan. The far right are just ignorant savages said the spokesthing.

      2. More medals than His Excellency, President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hajj, Doctor Idi Amin, Dada, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of all the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular?

    3. Things are done in the name of the crown. It has nothing at all to do with the reigning monarch. I do wish people would learn something about the legal institution called 'The Crown'. The monarch only has three powers nowadays, to warn, to admonish, and to advise. That is it, he/she has no say in anything else.

      1. 392460+ up ticks,

        Morning JR,
        That is all I’m requiring him to do,as in,”this is a warning, I am advising you NOT to take that WEF route or I’ll cut your bleeding heads off”, no matter I’m pro WEF
        do as I say, NOT as I do.

    4. Things are done in the name of the crown. It has nothing at all to do with the reigning monarch. I do wish people would learn something about the legal institution called 'The Crown'. The monarch only has three powers nowadays, to warn, to admonish, and to advise. That is it, he/she has no say in anything else.

  19. Morning all 🙂😊
    Lovely sunny start again but…….
    A huge sulphur dioxide plume makes its way across parts of southern Britain today. Apparently caused by volcanos in Iceland. Not drifting out of Wastemonster because they haven't been there. Con trails ?
    What else have the media been holding back on recently ? Trouble at 'ting Hill ?

    1. I'm more inclined to think that the toxic plume is generated in Westminster with its epicentre at 10 Downing St.

  20. 392460+ up ticks.

    Someone has to die before an in your face problem is recognised, then a lot more for true recognition, then some.

    breitbart

    Germany Mass Stabbing Suspect Had Deportation Order But Was Not Removed: Report

    1. have you a link where that's substantiated? It's entirely likely, just needs a source.

      2. Only the army and the Elitists will have horses. Incidentally the British army has more horses than tanks, the estimate is 492 against 213.

      3. I wonder if that’s why the broadcast media is majoring on the ‘E list celebrity goes on on a trip’ genre. Every time I turn on the box there is another trailer for a smug nonentity travelling to foreign parts, all expenses paid and with a production crew doing the hard graft. Sometimes there are 2 of them!
        Is watching re-runs of this garbage going to be the proletariat’s future substitute for travelling anywhere themselves?

  22. The Surrey school meltdown: How Starmer’s VAT raid will overwhelm Home Counties education
    Affluent Surrey has limited state school places – so how will an influx of priced-out private pupils affect education provision in the area?
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/08/26/how-starmers-vat-raid-will-affect-home-counties-education/

    No BTL comments allowed under this article. Why?

    Is it because the VAT raid on private schools will raise money? No, it has nothing to do with raising money – it will lose money.

    Is it because it will benefit children in the state sector? No, their schooling will be badly affected by overcrowding.

    Is it because children with special needs will benefit? No, many special services run by private schools will disappear.

    The simple truth is that the Labour government is motivated by spite , sadism and envy and the Daily Telegraph has become such a patsy that it does not want this truth illustrated by the comments of its readers on this issue.

    1. And the damage done by their childish spite will be irreparable, just for the sake of enforcing vacuous leftie points.
      Pathetic people.

    2. I noticed the inability to comment as well. I would have posted this: "…the Government is effectively flying blind given the lack of impact assessments…"

      That applies to other government activities as well, notably energy security.

    1. a couple of things..

      dont join the military.. let the shitLibs fight their own war. in any case "eventually" you will be ordered to quell riots & beat up yr family and neighbours.

      secondly, if you scroll down the depressing Tweets you'll come across the story of.. Zahra of Nandos.
      what to do, what to do.. for the Met?
      it's rock, paper, scissors. both parties are ethnics. one a Labour voter..
      of course Allahu Akbar pulls rank and wins.. and smashes plate over infidel woman waitress.
      The Met 'bravely' retreats.

      The question is.. will the shitLib still vote Labour? Of course she will.

      1. Apologies, but I'd ask you to write using proper grammar. Capitals, full stops.

        Also, stop swearing. It's unnecessary and vulgar.

  24. Red Sea crisis drives surge in Russian railway freight. 26 August 2024.

    Freight companies operating between China and Europe are increasingly turning to rail lines that run through Russia as Houthi rebel attacks on ships travelling through the Suez Canal trigger delays and higher costs. The volume of goods transported from China to Europe via the Eurasian Rail Alliance (Era) – a Russian freight company which uses Russian rail lines – has more than doubled since the Red Sea crisis began at the end of last year.

    Lol.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/08/25/red-sea-crisis-drives-surge-russian-railway-freight/

    1. So what you are saying Minty is that China's Belt and Road initiative*…is paying Dividends? Well I never….

      *The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI or B&R[1]), known in China as the One Belt One Road[a] and sometimes referred to as the New Silk Road,[2] is a global infrastructure development strategy adopted by the Chinese government in 2013 to invest in more than 150 countries and international organizations.[3] The BRI is composed of six urban development land corridors linked by road, rail, energy, and digital infrastructure and the Maritime Silk Road linked by the development of ports.

      1. Morning Stephen. I was having a snigger at the hypocrisy of it all. They are promoting this war and yet, in another example, use the gas that actually passes through the front lines, thus financing both sides.

      2. Morning Stephen. I was having a snigger at the hypocrisy of it all. They are promoting this war and yet, in another example, use the gas that actually passes through the front lines, thus financing both sides.

      3. Morning Stephen. I was having a snigger at the hypocrisy of it all. They are promoting this war and yet, in another example, use the gas that actually passes through the front lines, thus financing both sides.

      4. Morning Stephen. I was having a snigger at the hypocrisy of it all. They are promoting this war and yet, in another example, use the gas that actually passes through the front lines, thus financing both sides.

      5. Morning Stephen. I was having a snigger at the hypocrisy of it all. They are promoting this war and yet, in another example, use the gas that actually passes through the front lines, thus financing both sides.

    1. Morning Rik

      They're all on the gravy-train. Lest we forget, Mr Rachel Reeves is also handsomely rewarded (£170,000 – £174,999) by the taxpayer for shuffling paper at DEFRA. And he got gonged (Companion of Order of the Bath)

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3725ee6455adadb335c5e6008a61597e6242bcc823bd2c22dc3fd74d98dbc31f.png

      Nicholas Beverley Joicey CB (born 11 May 1970) is Second Permanent Secretary and Group Chief Operating Officer at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. He was briefly Director General of the Cabinet Office's Economic and Domestic Secretariat, having previously been Director General for Finance at the Department for Work and Pensions, and before that, Director General for Strategy, International and Finance at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. He previously worked as private secretary and speech writer to United Kingdom Chancellor Gordon Brown, as a journalist at The Observer newspaper and as director of the International Department at HM Treasury.

      Early life
      Joicey was born in Guisborough in North Yorkshire, to Harold Beverley and Wendy Joicey. He was educated at Wintringham School, Grimsby.[1] He studied for an undergraduate degree in history at the University of Bristol and then completed a PhD, also in history, at Peterhouse, Cambridge, in 1995.[2]

      Career
      From 1995 to 1996, Joicey worked at The Observer newspaper. He then moved to the Treasury, working as Private Secretary and Speech writer to Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown between 1999 and 2001. Joicey was part of a United Kingdom delegation to the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Washington from 2001 to 2003, heading the EU policy team from 2004 to 2006.[2] He was Director for International Finance at HM Treasury, before joining the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in January 2014 as Director General for Strategy, International and Biosecurity. Joicey was appointed Department for Work and Pensions Finance Director General in July 2018.[3]

      He then served as Director General of the Cabinet Office's Economic and Domestic Secretariat, before being appointed to his current position of Chief Operating Officer and Second Permanent Secretary at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in 2023.[4] In 2024, his salary was between £170,000–£174,999.[5]

      Joicey was appointed Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB) in the 2019 Birthday Honours for services to the environment.[6]

        1. Tim, he didn't actually.
          You read: …was born to Harold Beverley and Wendy Joicey.
          I checked and Harold Beverley Joicey married Wendy Ranson in Q3 1965. Nicholas Beverley Joicey's birth was registered in Q3 1970.
          But Wikipedia says he was born on 11 May 1970. Wonder why the delay in Registration?

        2. Tim, he didn't actually.
          You read: …was born to Harold Beverley and Wendy Joicey.
          I checked and Harold Beverley Joicey married Wendy Ranson in Q3 1965. Nicholas Beverley Joicey's birth was registered in Q3 1970.
          But Wikipedia says he was born on 11 May 1970. Wonder why the delay in Registration?

      4. It's just a revolving door of incompetence. What has he ever achieved? What has he actually done to say 'this is of public benefit'? Bugger all. He just goes to endless meetings and shuffles paper, like all civil servants.

    2. I love the picture of the spirited OAP posted above by Rik!

      This song by Jeremy Taylor shows a poncy, patronising interviewer's superficiality and sums up the indomitable nature of Mrs Harris who refuses to be an object of pity. Jeremy's Mrs Harris and Rik's OAP are worth more in spirit than every single member of the Labour Party in this repulsive government.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnpZ85uFZVE&list=OLAK5uy_mTBGMzwJ7v8Hs60nftXNQzCZOAS31MpZM&index=13

    3. Not to mention that minister of age discrimination will probably be taking home more in expenses each fortnight, than poor old Doris gets PA.
      It's not an unusual occurance amongst our political classes.

  27. Got there eventually:
    Wordle 1,164 5/6

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

  28. Got there eventually:
    Wordle 1,164 5/6

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

  30. Good morning, all. Bright sunshine here at the moment with sunny intervals forecast for later.

    From Wayne's X feed. USA focussed but with many situations which resonate with us in the UK.

    https://x.com/wdunlap/status/1827919597724660069
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/394917d65bf22d2edc502c5245d8a9829c4d1d86634148cd2af454ef035a40d6.png

    Shameful!

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/52f12bb7c03c6f7e64f862357d33e0a135c6dd4a56c63854964922b74a29245c.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/981fd20c7a17d4d7d4c115e890044245b75419a61c04e3b4cf4b89fa1074a569.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/cb75bbed3dedae655c0b835c4c76beb779a6fc21a94fa3859fd98aa714388341.png

    1. A translation into standard English of what Elon Musk uttered (above) would be:

      “At their heart, social justice warriors are divisive and hateful. They give malicious, small-minded people a shield to be ungenerous, ungrateful and cruel, armoured in false virtue.”

      1. Or.
        🎶 You put yer left arm in, yer left arm out, you do the Dopey Wokey and shake it all about, that's what it's a about…..oh do the Dopey Wokey 🎶 etc..

    2. Not enough money to be made?
      Too many people remembered the last time it fleetingly appeared? And who it particularly affected?

    3. I imagine they're waiting. Chances are the virus is already here brought in by the criminal gimmigrants.

    4. Too much scepticism, perhaps. Last time they imposed lockdowns was at the depths of the solar minimum when people are quieter. Now we're at a solar maximum when people are usually more active, more people would rebel.
      solar max = (civil?) war distraction not lockdown distraction at a guess.

  33. Good morning all ,

    Yesterday I visited a friend who lives near Sherborne , we started our nursing training 59 years ago , her poor husband died of MND nearly four years ago .. https://www.visit-dorset.com/sherborne/

    The countryside on route looked stunning , glorious , and many villages as they always have been .

    We had a great catch up , and despite the fact we are older and have had different life experiences , reminiscing brought back lots of happy memories , and sadly discussing the present changing times which are horrid .

    The roads were busy , very busy , the weather was chilly, and the wind was quite penetrating if you weren't wearing warm clothes . Thankfully I was well wrapped up.

    Hey ho, piles of stuff to catch up with today .

    1. Catch up. That's always a good thing to do. TB
      We have our old friends leaving Perth WA about now. Nearly an 18 hour journey. Fortunately they are hiring a car at the airport for their stay. And we don't have to go through the hell of the A1 M25 to pick them up. Or drop them off.

    1. Should have advanced some. That telegraph pole is restricting the turning of his turret.

  36. Good Morning all. This disgusting article is in todays Telegraph. I reproduce it in full so that those who have no access to the newspaper can read this attack on us, the native people.
    Teachers will be trained to challenge ‘whiteness’ in schools
    Guidance aims to encourage ‘anti-racist’ teacher training to maintain diverse educator workforce

    Teachers will be taught to challenge “whiteness” in lessons, The Telegraph can reveal.

    Guidance has been created for teacher-training courses, to ensure future educators are “anti-racist” and prepared to implement this in the classroom.

    Teachers will be instructed in how to “disrupt the centrality of whiteness” in schools, according to a best-practice document.

    The term “whiteness” in critical race theory refers to social attitudes considered normal by white people, and guidance suggests that concepts including “meritocracy”, “objectivity” and “individualism” should be questioned.

    Documents state that student teachers – if they happen to be white – should also be helped to develop and project a “positive white racial identity”.

    ‘Impact of whiteness’
    Separate guidance has been developed in Scotland and England, and both documents have been endorsed by universities offering teacher training, including Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Newcastle, along with the National Education Union.

    Documents claim that encouraging “anti-racist” teacher training will help to maintain a diverse teaching workforce, and will help to close the attainment gap between white and non-white pupils.

    The Scottish “anti-racism framework”, drawn up by the Scottish Council of Deans of Education and endorsed by 10 universities, states that changes to the way in which teachers are taught will “disrupt the centrality of whiteness and enable different ways of seeing, thinking and doing”.

    This process may involve more references to colonialism and racism in lessons, and instilling an understanding of the “impact of whiteness”.

    This, it says, will help teachers project a “white racial identity grounded in reality and allyship” in the classroom, free from “false notions of superiority”.

    The national anti-racism framework for initial teacher training, launched in 2023, states that those teaching future teachers should “debunk the myth of objectivity” in scholarship, and instead examine how some views are “silenced” in academic work.

    Those educating teachers have been urged to strive for racial justice “through activism” and teacher unions, according to the guidance.

    ‘Tools of whiteness’
    A parallel anti-racism framework for teacher training was commissioned by the National Education Union in 2023, and funded by the University of Newcastle, was developed for England.

    It states that “teachers working with all age groups” are “crucial to anti-racism work”, and directs tutors to academic literature on how to deal with “whiteness”.

    The term “white” has nearly 400 mentions in the guidance, the term “whiteness” features 121 times.

    The assorted academic literature sets out the importance of dispelling “notions of objectivity” along with what are termed the “tools of whiteness”, including “individualism” and “belief in a meritocracy”.

    The framework also directs tutors to passages that claim “white privilege” includes the “right to enjoyment”, and that “emotions are themselves racialised”.

    Scottish guidance aims to tackle racism in education, and to create a more diverse teaching workforce.

    It has been made available by higher education institutions providing teacher training, including the universities Aberdeen, Strathclyde.

    A Newcastle University spokesman said: “As we saw with the recent public unrest across the UK, racism is pervasive in our society. The way that we educate current and future teachers will play an important role in breaking this cycle and the framework was developed to provide practical guidance on this.”

    1. Taken to an extreme, anyone who chooses to marry a person with light skin is racially prejudiced.

    2. “Notions of objectivity” is priceless. See that spanner? It identifies as a banana so get chewing! My bookshelves condemn me I’m afraid. Curiosity, you see. “Race Differences in Intelligence” is an interesting concept, so I bought the book. The young black lass in Waterstones who sold me a copy of “The Bell Curve” had taken a look at it too and was interested. After the 7 Oct massacre I bought and read Twain’s “The Innocents Abroad” because what he saw on his travels in the Levant sheds light on relevant issues. All curiosity is to be quashed? (I hesitate to say “intellectual” curiosity, since I’m talking about myself!)

      1. You can buy "The Bell Curve", in Britain, I'm surprised. And we have already talked about Mark Twain on NOTTLERS.
        I was watching 'The Lotus Eaters' this morning. If you are not familiar with them, I suggest you watch on You Tube. Todays topic was 'Liberals Are Losing Their Mind Over JD Vance', Carl Benjamin was saying how he liked to view politics from a mythical point of view. He suggests that what is playing out in the West and in particular in Anglo-Saxon cultures is the story of the 'Lord of the Rings'. Sauron has his eye on us and we, the shire, are his target. He did not elaborate on that but I found his interpretation of events compelling. So here is the link, if you want to listen. Benjamin elaborates on his idea toward the end. But, perhaps you will find the whole programme of interest. For me, Sauron is Allah and the Orcs are his followers. Our shire began to be threatened when an ally of his ascended to power as Prime Minister in 1997 and betrayed us by letting the Orcs into the Shire. But it seems, we are still asleep although some of us are waking up.

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BV7V_aPD9c

        1. Waterstones will have The Bell Curve printed to order. Amazon had taken my order but reneged on it. Thanks for the video link.

      2. Anyone who looks at my bookshelf would condemn me as a colonialist white supremacist (history, art, technology, dictionaries …).

    3. Any potential teacher who is being subject to this blatant discrimination and being forced to take part in courses etc. should film all proceedings. I expect in due course, there will be litigation proceedings made against establishments which enforce this. Any written documents should be meticulously kept and stored.

      Teaching assistants should surreptitiously film any lessons where it is being conducted too with sympathetic medias forwarded recordings. Parents should politely contact headteachers and teachers and film/record conversations. I think consent has to be sought but the fact you are asking might make them a bit less zealous. Challenge politely and constantly.

    4. The sad thing is it doesn't occur to them that this is, by definition, racist. It also completely ignores that the UK is a white country by dint of weather. That our history is thousands of years old and theeffluent of 'diversity' only forced on us in the last 50 years or so

  37. Oh dear more inadequate, possibly illegal cladding has caught Fire, destroying a block of flats in 'East London'.
    Formerly Dagenham Essex.

  38. The whole virus story is a dud. They could try super mutated mosquitoes and a 100% deadly new strain of malaria but even then, a can of Raid would sort it. They’ll try and poison our food of course but even that has to be pretty blatant before it gets past what the human body can conquer. It’s a bloody good design, the human body.

    2. They will probably tell us its been caused by climate change.
      Or that 70s American band/singing group.
      Have our zoos closed yet ?

  40. Morning Nottlers.

    Free Speech carries two new articles by Paul Sutton today on what, if any, limits there should be on free speech and on the sinister, totalitarian implications of Starmer's recent speech. Please read and leave comments telling how you see it.

    freespeechbacklash.com

  41. Just back from the dentist, and on the way out I went back to push the door open for a tall, well built and heavily laden young lady. “Oh thank you” she exclaimed! “You’re a wee scone!” I was slightly taken aback, as that expression is normally reserved for white haired little old ladies! Little I may be, old – well I suppose so, but I had to check as I had neither a shopping bag on wheels, nor a Pac-a-Mac/Rain Mate! Ah well, Monday morning, I suppose!

          2. Dyslexics of the world untie, indeed.

            My friend had to that on a badge. It took me years to work out why it was funny!

          4. Bet you didn't know that it was the very wonderful and funny Sir Denis Fatcher who was responsible for Clairol at The Burmah Oil Company

    1. On my list of things to do today is to write to the horse who represents me in Parliament and tell her that I do not approve of the way the new Government is acting. There is no point asking her her opinion as she is a Non-Lib Non-Dem and undoubtedly in lock-step with Starmler and his Starmtroopers. However, she needs to be told, so I will. I am probably going to do this at least monthly for the course of this parliament. I don’t want her to be under any illusions as to what her constituents think.

      1. I agree with you. These creatures live in a self-reinforced bubble of nonsense. They have to be de-culted. The only way is to regularly contact them, politely but persistently, pointing out the errors and consequences of their policies. And contact needs to be fact-based. They hate facts as they are the only things which punctures their brainwashing. Facts are our weapons. This is why wokusts hate facts and ignore/cancel them – because they are a known technique to get through to the brainwashed.

        1. If facts dented the Left wing mind there would be no Lefties. Remember, these are people who think massive subsidy makes energy cheaper and that business pay tax.

          Doublethink is natural to them. Their entire mindset is a complete mess of contradictions, all ignored because they don't suit the narrative.

      2. I applaud your intention. I fear, however, that she will file it under "delusional correspondence" and continue on her merry way. PS Incitatus would do a better job.

        1. Sometimes you just have to do it, even though you know you would have more success literally banging your head against a brick wall.

  44. 392460+ up ticks,

    Dover dictates we cannot go on saying , we cannot go on saying ,we cannot go on saying, we cannot…………

  45. Cotswolds' ruin

    SIR – It's people like Jeremy Clarkson who have ruined the Cotswolds (report, August 24).

    My wife and I recently visited for a quiet weekend. In Chipping Campden we found car-lined streets with nowhere to park unless you had an app. Bourton-on-the-Water is an overcrowded theme park with an ice cream van on every corner. Our accommodation in a small village was fine, but the gastropub where we had booked dinner let us down big time.

    Stow-on-the-Wold has somehow managed to remain as it was. However, I do not think we will be going back.

    Duncan Rayner
    Sunningdale, Berkshire

    I have to admit it's 15 years since I was a regular visitor to Chipping Norton and other points westward so I don't know how bad it is now but Mr Rayner (whose location rather gives him away) is surely part of the problem as a tourist. Did he expect to have B-o-t-W to himself?

    It's been swamped with visitors since the 1980s, Mr R.

    1. His complaint struck me as ludicrous and terribly self unaware when he complained about his precious gastropub. I tend to doubt that said pub catered to the local farmers.

    2. Who does Mr Rayner think he is if not a tourist himself? He can hardly complain about Jeremy Clarkson's new venture, which (apparently) has a huge parking area with an additional overspill facility, thereby not clogging up nearby towns or villages. If anything, Clarkson should be thanked for drawing a proportion of the ovine tourist masses away from these places.

      1. I expect he views himself as a visitor not a tourist.

        Duncan Rayner, 70, a retired coffee merchant from Sunningdale, Berkshire, is at his computer by 8.30am most mornings, scanning the paper for topics to write about. "You have to be quick to get your oar in," he says. "You know that there are other people making very similar points."

        https://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/letters/6711588/Daily-Telegraph-letter-writers-Dear-Sir-we-are-not-alone-in-thinking.html

        Boring old fart.

  46. Cotswolds' ruin

    SIR – It's people like Jeremy Clarkson who have ruined the Cotswolds (report, August 24).

    My wife and I recently visited for a quiet weekend. In Chipping Campden we found car-lined streets with nowhere to park unless you had an app. Bourton-on-the-Water is an overcrowded theme park with an ice cream van on every corner. Our accommodation in a small village was fine, but the gastropub where we had booked dinner let us down big time.

    Stow-on-the-Wold has somehow managed to remain as it was. However, I do not think we will be going back.

    Duncan Rayner
    Sunningdale, Berkshire

    I have to admit it's 15 years since I was a regular visitor to Chipping Norton and other points westward so I don't know how bad it is now but Mr Rayner (whose location rather gives him away) is surely part of the problem as a tourist. Did he expect to have B-o-t-W to himself?

    It's been swamped with visitors since the 1980s, Mr R.

  47. I would write to my Labour MP but it would be a waste of my time. We have already received an insufferably smug leaflet through the door, trumpeting how wonderful the new administration is and what a terrible legacy they are picking up from the evil Tories.

    1. Well this has previously been my view. But they need to be told. I will not want a reply and will say as much.

      1. I'm still in a Tory constituency. Sadly I don't have a Labour MP to insult or abuse. All I can do is complain to my MP that the Tory Party are a bunch of tossers who seem to be doing nothing but lollygagging around (had to get the word in there somehow, it's delightful)) like a bunch of useless muppets.

    2. That is precisely why you should write, Lola Sapola. They are brainwashed and constant contact with the grounded, armed with facts, is the only way to get through to them.

      It kind of reminds me when Fraser Nelson, of the Spectator, did a Spectator TV interview about a year ago. On it he said that the UK was happy with the present levels of immigration – and immigration in general. His evidence, he stated, was that there was no rioting in the UK about immigration. These people really do not have a clue and must be confronted with their delusions.

  48. Mr Rayner objects to all those bloody tourists infesting tourist hotspots.
    He and his missus are not amongst that horde of unspeakable peasants daring to enjoy themselves.

  49. Irish escapade

    SIR– Sixty-five years ago a friend and I, in full Scout uniform, cycled from Wolverhampton to Holyhead, took the ferry to Ireland and did a circular tour from Dún Laoghaire, via Cork (Letters, August 24). We climbed Carrantuohill and kissed the Blarney Stone. On the way home we climbed Snowden. We slept in a small tent and cooked on a single primus stove. We had no contact with our parents for more than two weeks. We were 15.

    Steve Burgess
    Shepperton, Middlesex

    And on your return home I'll bet they had no more close contact with you until you'd had a bath.

  50. Russia strikes half of Ukraine in massive onslaught. 26 August 2024.

    On Monday, Russia deployed drones, cruise missiles and supersonic missiles in what appears to be Russia’s biggest attack on Ukraine in weeks.

    Three people were killed, including one in the western city of Lutsk, one in the central Dnipropetrovsk region and one in Zaporizhzhia region in the southeast, and thirteen others were wounded.

    Energy facilities in at least three Ukrainian regions were hit, causing power cuts across the country as far as the capital Kyiv and disruption in water supplies.

    I thought that the "Kursk Buffer Zone" had cured all this? I haven't attached a Lol because we are taliking about the death of men.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/08/26/ukraine-russia-war-latest-news21/

    2. The Ukrainians are a joke. If it were not for the West propping them up this war would be over. I suppose Zelenskyy will continue as long as he can so he can stash as much money away as possible before he goes off to exile.

  51. Power of the tides

    SIR – Reluctant as I am to disagree with my old boss, Lord West (Letters, August 24), nuclear power is not the only viable, carbon-neutral energy source that can operate day and night in any weather. What about tidal power? This option has been ignored.

    Tony Ray
    Plymouth, Devon

    Ignored for good reason, Mr Ray. It's simply impractical.

    Any electricity generating function that is dependent on the clock, the calendar or the weather is an expensive indulgence.

      2. But he was promoting nuclear power and bemoaning the loss of the UK's expertise.

      3. Years ago, when we began to see small boats/dinghies crossing the Channel, I’m pretty sure he said we should tow them back to France. Only the once, mind. IIRC he disappeared for a long time. Think he was sat on rather heavily!

    2. The worlds first large scale tidal power plant in Brittany took 20 years to recover the cost of construction. Today electricity production costs are lower than that of nuclear power generation (1.8 ¢/kWh versus 2.5 ¢/kWh for nuclear). However, the capacity factor of the plant is 28%, lower than 85–90% for nuclear power. There aren't that many locations where these plants could operate profitably.

      1. You've got me hooked… It's one thing corralling electric eels behind a barrage but I have no idea how you connect them to the grid.

    5. It's been tried. The cost was over £267 per MW/h. Google Bristol tidal power. I think that was the first attempt. I'd have to find the chapter in Ross Clark's book, Not Zero. Compared to gas at 60 per MW/h, Nuclear at £48, wind at £150 (reduced thanks only to subsidy and taxes on coal and gas).

      It's simple: we should have a mass of nuclear power stations around the country – 100-150 or so. Then we should get fracking to provide gas power for heating and some gas for electricity. Add in coal for variety. End ALL windmill subsidy and all taxes on gas and oil but first and foremost repeal the damned 'climate change act'. That appalling legislation makes it law to reach 0 carbon by 2050. A legal enforcement. Not literacy, not poverty, energy. Damn them to hell and back for that miserable arrogance.

      Have Milioaf chained to a windmill in the sea. In fact, do the same for the entire cabinet, the climate change committee – a bunch of troughing wasters. When greeniacs whinge send them out there as well.

  53. Just done an hour's ladder work. Wisteria cutting back. My God – you can almost watch it growing…. Another hour after lunch.

      1. Nope. Do as China.. avoid. don't engage, don't employ, don't go near, don't offer rental accommodation, don't sit opposite.. most of the time they're ok.. can get feisty near feeding time.

      1. "Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt hath lost its savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men."

        (Matthew V. xiii)

          1. In a similar vein, little Mary went to her mother and said "Little Johnny next door has a willie like a peanut"
            Her mother said "What, very small?"
            "No" said little Mary "Salty"

    2. Hey Ped, good morning ,

      I was searching for some of the baddie socialists in Europe ..

      I grabbed this from Quora .

      "I was born and raised in Romania, and my parents were in Timișoara when the Revolution broke out. My entire family watched the ordeal live.

      In the famous last speech, given on December 21, 1989, people booed Ceaușescu because they were cold and hungry and angry. Things had been getting worse for Romanians for over a decade. He had exported goods to the Soviet Union, forcing Romanians to wait in line for rations, sometimes for hours in the freezing cold.

      There were food rations, gas rations, clothing rations. There was general corruption and discontent. People had gotten fed up with the regime’s lies. That speech was the last straw: he kept on going on and on about how great things were, and the chants grew violent to the point of frightening the old man, because everyone could see through the sham and the charade. Within a few days, of course, he was dead and the regime had collapsed."

    3. From Coffee House, the Spectator

      The government’s latest attack on academic free speech
      Comments Share 26 August 2024, 10:10am
      In an extraordinary outburst, a government source has described the new Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act, introduced by the Conservatives, as a ‘hate-speech charter’. This is an outrageous distortion of the new laws that aim to guarantee free speech within universities. The best that can be said about that phrase is that, so long as we retain free speech, people are free to describe it that way. But doing so raises worrying doubts about what the new government thinks free speech means.

      Universities have a special role in the promotion of free speech. They are, or should be, places where those teaching and those taught can try out ideas, some of which may on closer examination turn out to be misconceived. In a history department, half-finished ideas about, for instance, the role of profits from slavery in the Industrial Revolution may legitimately be put forward for open discussion; but they must not be imposed on those who differ. Challenging orthodoxy can lead to greater precision, so long as the challengers themselves are challenged to produce hard evidence.

      Take the absurd, unsubstantiated statements made by participants in a seminar at Churchill College, Cambridge in 2021 about the very person after whom the college is named. The starting-point for denunciation of Winston Churchill was not hard factual evidence, but an ideological position that demanded that ‘the British Empire was far worse than the Nazis. It lasted far longer; it killed far many more people… the Nazis were copying large elements of the British Empire. And that’s just fact.’ Critical Race Theory, with its willingness to retell past facts as ‘my truth’ rather than ‘the truth’, has corrupted the teaching and research of one of the world’s greatest universities.

      Once one could debate openly with Marxists and others with whom one disagreed, and engagement with opinions one did not hold was stimulating and worthwhile. Now, when speakers attempt to put forward views with which radical activists disagree, for instance on biological gender, they are shouted down by an angry mob banging on the doors; or, just as bad, opponents book most of the seats and then stage a walkout, depriving others who would have wished to attend of the opportunity to do so. Speakers are prevented from visiting universities by the authorities as well as by protesting students. Security is an issue, the hosts are told, and they will have to provide costly protection for the ambassador of an unpopular country (no prizes for guessing which one heads the list). Protestors occupy university premises in partly fake ‘encampments’ (often spending the night curled up in a comfortable college bed) that make other students feel not just uncomfortable but intimidated. Meanwhile the protestors show off their ignorance by not even knowing which river and which sea they are shouting about. Moreover, they commit serious acts of criminal damage for which, despite good evidence, no one is arrested.

      This steep decline in the ability of universities to act as places of open debate, apolitical in character, where people do feel happy to say out loud that they supported Brexit or that they sympathise with Israel, has made ever more urgent the implementation of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act, signed into law last year by King Charles. In a manoeuvre that has astonished the more than 500 academics who signed a letter to the Secretary of State for Education, the government has ‘paused’ its implementation a matter of days before its provisions were to click into place. Unlike the letters about Gaza or just stopping oil, the signatories are real academics, many of them very senior, not post-docs and graduate students with little real clout.

      Over the past year, under the leadership of the Director for Free Speech, Arif Ahmed, the DfE has produced an impressive set of guidelines offering thirty examples of what is expected of universities, and where appropriate of student unions. Its starting-point is a crystal-clear statement: ‘Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.’ The guidelines consider complaints about interference with events on campus; complaints of being forced into line, for instance a block on academics being promoted unless one has submitted what is regarded as an acceptable 500-word statement on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion; and anonymous online denunciations of lecturers who express views with which students disagree.

      Now the DfE has, in a move of dubious legitimacy, decided not to put the act into effect. Bizarrely, the DfE is supported by the Union of Jewish Students and the Board of Deputies of British Jews. It is asserted that the Act would somehow unleash a torrent of antisemitic abuse, even Holocaust denial, on campus. This is a total misunderstanding of what is permissible. Under the Equality Act of 2010 and other legislation speech conducive to hatred and violence is unlawful. Expressing support for Hamas is unlawful. The expression of Neo-Nazi views is unlawful. And the torrent has already been unleashed in demonstrations that have included calls for the extirpation of the State of Israel. The Act would not and should not prevent people from arguing publicly in support of the Palestinians, for instance condemning the Jewish settlers on the West Bank in strong terms. But it would also ensure that events supportive of Israel and the trauma it suffered last October can go ahead with security paid for by the relevant university. It provides mechanisms by which no-cost complaints can be made if these conditions are not fulfilled, and enables sanctions to be imposed on universities or student unions that have failed to comply with the act. In short, the Act would greatly improve a situation for Jewish students which has turned from difficult to atrocious since 7 October.

      As for the DfE, this anti-free speech move is from the same government department that proposes children as young as five should be taught ‘critical thinking’. The cascade of disastrous, unthought-out, decisions emanating from the DfE in the last six weeks has shown all too clearly how the application of crude ideology is a source of danger to all of us.

    4. Dear Citizen Ped,

      You are required to report to the Greystoke Under Lyme Assessment Group (GULAG) to determine which re-education camp you will be required to attend.

      You are to bring:

      Photographic ID (which will not be returned)
      First aid kit
      Bread and water
      A Palestinian flag at least 1m x 0.5m in size
      A Pride flag
      Rainbow shoelaces
      Purple hair colouring
      A copy of your last 50 postings on social media or other forums where the far-Right lurk

      Do not bring:

      Any sense of belonging to a nation
      Any fascist flags or signs (Union Jack, St George's Cross etc)
      Evidence of any affiliation to the Crown Imperial Forces or links to colonialism
      The Bible

      Pictures of our Dear Leader (Sir Keir Starmer – may Allah bless his soul!) will be provided

      Signed

      Citizen Josef

      Department for the Extinction of White Supremacy (DEWS) c.o. The Starmer Terror (Left Division)

    2. However, Secretary of State for Business and Trade Jonathan Reynolds celebrated the development in a newspaper article this weekend.

      Writing for the Observer, he said: "It will mark a major milestone in our journey to full membership of a bloc that will boast a combined GDP of £12trn after the UK joins."

      He said the accession was a "real win for big-hitting British exporters", but would also offer a boost for smaller businesses who are keen to break into these markets for the first time.

      Mr Reynolds' government could do a lot for all businesses, exporters or not, trade deals or none, by persuading his dimwit Chancellor to cut taxes and regulation.

    3. However, Secretary of State for Business and Trade Jonathan Reynolds celebrated the development in a newspaper article this weekend.

      Writing for the Observer, he said: "It will mark a major milestone in our journey to full membership of a bloc that will boast a combined GDP of £12trn after the UK joins."

      He said the accession was a "real win for big-hitting British exporters", but would also offer a boost for smaller businesses who are keen to break into these markets for the first time.

      Mr Reynolds' government could do a lot for all businesses, exporters or not, trade deals or none, by persuading his dimwit Chancellor to cut taxes and regulation.

    4. I seem to remember it was Kemi Badenoch who did the work on that and nothing to do with current government.

        1. I’m not a party member but I think she would get my vote if I were. She’s bright and feisty.

          1. I joined specifically to vote for her, cost £39 p.a. (I may not renew it). Others just don’t cut it, for me, bright and feisty every time :-))

  57. Sigh
    HOW BLOODY DARE YOU
    Plead not guilty in this glorious socialist Starmageddon??
    The sheer bloody cheek of it don't you realise the state always knows best by now we'll bloody welll show you that judgement by a jury of your peers is an expensive luxury
    A six months expensive luxury………
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5b0d2efa2a4d4cdec9d2bd334ed3bb4dbb106b3998793640c01193c60cb72332.jpg
    My real thoughts on this would put me in a cell alongside him

    1. It always was that bail would be granted exception for serious crime, protection of the public, likelihood of absconding or crimes being committed whilst on bail. Some of these worries could be covered by conditional bail.
      I find this very very worrying, justice is being perverted as we watch.

    1. It's border farce who keep bringing the criminal gimmigrants in. They could take them back to France. France should be preventing them leaving. Hell, the Italians should be sending them back.

      But the staff there are corrupt – on both sides of the channel. No one does anything about the criminals. No one is willing to change the laws to stop the invasion. The UN is actively for massive uncontrolled gimmigration.

      It is only the people affected by it – the public – who want massive unwanted criminal invasion to end. The state doesn't care. Starmer doesn't even understand what the problem is. He abjectly refuses to link massive unwanted criminal invasion with the deaths of the children, the murder of the Ariana Grande concert, the July the 7th bombings. He just can't do it.

    1. From Coffee House, the Spectator

      In defence of Kirstie Allsopp
      Comments Share 26 August 2024, 8:45am
      The jibe, commonly attributed to Napoleon, that England is a nation of shopkeepers, was at least a sort of compliment. Britons embodied, it seemed to suggest, the bourgeois virtues of thrift, industry, self-reliance and pragmatism. But what would a latter-day Napoleon see if he looked at us now? A nation of busybodies, bluenoses and snitches intent not on minding the shop but on minding each-other’s business. That’s the only conclusion to be drawn from the news that Kirstie Allsopp has been reported to social services for allowing her 15-year-old son to travel round Europe with a friend to celebrate the end of his GCSEs.

      Allsopp shared her pride in her son’s adventures on Twitter – he having, be it noted, arrived safely home with a spring in his step and a rucksack full of happy memories.

      There was a bit of back-and-forth online, as there always is, about whether you or I might do the same thing. Would we be scared stiff of what could happen? Would we take the risk? I detected in some of the responses, including my own unspoken one, admiration mixed with mild envy: Allsopp had had the confidence to let her boy that far off the lead; and she has evidently raised a son in whom she was right to have such confidence. Good on her.

      These things are judgment calls. I’ve had a version of the same conversation with my youngest son about when he could become an ‘independent walker’ to and from his primary school. Every parent makes their own assessment as to how likely their child is to walk backwards into the path of a speeding pantechnicon, and weighs that against their child’s desire for more freedom and the companionship of his friends, and says no until, one day or another, they say yes. We reach different conclusions. Mostly, those conclusions turn out to be about right – because no sane parent wants their kid to be run over, and every sane parent knows their child better than anyone else does.

      Most popular
      Sean Thomas
      It’s time to get rid of your pet

      Astonishing, then, and depressing, the spite and pettiness and entitlement that will have led some perfect stranger off the internet to try to get Kirstie Allsopp in trouble with the social services. That Kirstie Allsopp, they’ll have thought. Muckety-muck. She thinks she’s all that. Well, I’ll show her. Never mind that they don’t know Allsopp, have not the first acquaintance with her son or sense of his maturity and capacity, and can’t point to any law that has been broken. Never mind that the supposed offence was done and dusted, that no harm was suffered, and that the complaint will waste the time and money of already overstretched social services for no reason other than to satisfy the anonymous complainant’s spite. Never mind that Kirstie Allsopp’s parenting, like everyone else’s parenting, is ring-fenced – where it doesn’t involve criminal abuse – by a mighty forcefield of feel-free-to-mind-your-own-sodding-business.

      At fifteen, if you have your head screwed on, you’re pretty capable. My father was years younger than that when he travelled the breadth of South Africa alone by train to go to boarding school. Time was when 15-year-olds could lead armies, rule empires or apprentice to steeplejacks. Most of us will probably agree that these are not ideal recreations for adolescents; but it doesn’t follow from that conclusion that the average switched-on teenager, with a friend in tow, should not be perfectly able to navigate the European transport system without a chaperone.

      And isn’t that sort of thing – stretching your horizons, having some real-world experiences that will challenge you but are highly unlikely to imperil your life – exactly what we can all agree adolescence should be about? Not an extension of infancy but a bridge to the adult world? I would further submit that this young man – connected as he will have been to his parents by a mobile phone – will have been in far less danger than the teen travellers of my generation who may have been a year or two older but who went to the other side of the world for months with nothing but a sheaf of blue aerogrammes and some poste restante addresses at which to receive missives from their parents every few weeks.

      Allsopp has always, and admirably, stood against the drift in the culture towards a neurotic aversion to any real-world risk or exertion for young people, and their concomitant abandonment to a digital realm of proven toxicity. She got some stick a few years ago when she announced that she’d killed her children’s iPads with a hammer, but I think most of us will have registered a sneaking approval for the project. There’s a reason, I think, that The Dangerous Book for Boys was such a runaway bestseller a few years ago; and that ‘touching grass’ has become shorthand for everything that the internet fails to give its users.

      It is a matter of record that – thanks, it’s suggested, to a combination of the pandemic and the poisonous quasi-introversion of screen-addiction – the mental health of the generation now entering their teens is in some sort of polycrisis. Self-harm, cyber-bullying, suicidal ideation, eating disorders, identity crises of all sorts: the version of ‘safety’ we have been offering our children seems to have produced a full English breakfast of misery.

      So when someone does something that seems to go in the opposite direction – when someone trusts her son to have an adventure in the real world, where they will meet real people and experience a different world that isn’t virtual but material – it’s a matter for celebration rather than priggish and cowardly denunciations. I’d much rather have my 15-year-old travel unaccompanied through a French railway terminus, personally, than travel unaccompanied through the festering algorithmic swamp of TikTok or Instagram.

        1. Yes, but those are right minded philosophies. The Left would prefer you told children what to think and that big fat state controlled their lives.

          The really, really sad thing is that many 'parents' think the same thing.

      2. On my first day at school, aged 5, I was escorted there and back. Thereafter I made my own way there and back, accompanied if at all, by friends the same age.

        The point about leading armies is true. When Edward III married Philippa of Hainault in York Minster in 1328, they were aged 15 and 14 respectively and the wedding took place in York not London because Edward was busy leading his army against the Scots. Philippa was gifted Knaresborough Castle in her marriage settlement and ran her own household there.

        1. I went to school by myself from the age of six. My dad signed me up to the YHA when I was thirteen and little by little I went on excursions to the country sometimes alone. The first time I went abroad was the north coast of France with a friend for a week when I was fifteen. I hitchhiked to Paris the following year. A long time ago, times were different I know.
          The only people who did trains, inter rail and euro rail,
          were Germans and North Americans as far as I remember.
          I hitchiked all over France when I was a teenager and so did a lot of other kids my age. Great times.

        2. People of today think they are so much 'better' than those of the past, and it only proves that they have so much to learn

      3. When I was six years old we lived in St Mawes and I felt my parents were treating me harshly and so, as soon as I woke up, I decided to run away. I got dressed slipped quietly out of the house , went of the house and then wondered where I should go.

        I decided the best place to go was to to my pre-primary school in Gerrans which was run by a very fierce Scot called Mr McGregor. In spite of his violent nature he was much loved by his pupils and indeed he used to chastise us by smacking us on our bare fingers with a wooden 12" ruler and I believe that at the time I held the record for number of rulers broken on my hands. I never held it against him as I thought it was probably good for my character and taught me not to be a cry baby cissy.

        Be that as it may I set off to walk to school which was over five miles away. When I got there, to my great disappointment Mr Mc Gregor telephoned my parents who were not in the least bit worried as they had not noticed that I had gone. The upshot was they came and collected me, took me home, gave me a good breakfast and then took me back to school.

        So much for my bid for freedom.

        https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f06dd89fe52a9dd4593ff9ddf9bc1413149c3578f02b2b8256ff4b9ff808f8b4.png

        1. Yet your memory isn't of his teaching, but being hit with a ruler.

          My mother would hit my brother and I with a rolling pin. One day I took it off her. She had no other way to engaging with us and I laughed in her face.

          When she started on my cat I could quite easily have killed the damned woman with very little remorse.

          1. He was a marvellous story teller and kept us enraptured. I remember him with affection.

            Nobody left his school without having learnt the three Rs very well. Indeed when I arrived at prep school aged 8 my reading, writing, and arithmetic were far better up to scratch than many of my contemporaries.

            He was a disciplinarian – but we respected him and it would never have crossed our minds that he was anything other than kindly in intent.

          2. Talking of the three Rs, we had a laugh over coffee after church yesterday; we were reminiscing about schooldays and one chap said that in his school, they all left with FOUR Rs – Reading, 'Riting, 'Rithmetic and Ringworm!

    4. Remembrance Sunday celebrates militarism? Dear freaking life. The indoctrination of the state never ends.

  60. Jeremy's pub. Here's a piece on it:

    'Jeremy Clarkson's pub is the highlight of our holiday'
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpvylp09pddo

    It starts with an error. The pub's not in Asthall. That's a very small village about 3/4 of mile to the north. It has its own pub and it looks rather like one of the pretentious places that JC is trying not to be.
    https://threehorseshoesasthall.com/

    Minster Lovell is a sizeable village a mile or so to the east and already has three pubs.

    Of course, The Farmer's Dog was once a farm, Barrow Farm.

  61. Good morrow, Gentlefolks, Today’s recycled story

    Be Careful What You Think

    This woman goes to her doctor complaining of stomach pains, so the doctor lays her down and conducts an examination of her stomach area.

    Once he's finished, he asks the woman, "Well, I hope you don't mind changing nappies!"

    "Ooh! Ooh!" says the excited woman. "Am I pregnant?! Am I going to have a baby?!"

    "No," the doctor says. "You have colon cancer!"

    1. Too cruel to be funny.

      We have a dear old friend of 89 who has had to move into a nursing home in the last three weeks. He is completely incontinent, has to be washed and dressed each morning and has to wear nappies. It is no joke.

      1. No, it isn't.

        Much depends how you approach it. A friend of ours has a stoma due to Crohn's disease. One day while out shopping he pootled back all innocently and said 'I've got a bit of a problem. I've lost me bag.'

        It took a moment to twig he meant his stoma bag. We spent 15 minutes searching the shop, enlisting staff to help. They were amazing. Discreet, polite, calm. Chum took it all in good humour. The joke 'unidentified item in the bagging area' still makes us chortle.

    2. Not funny Tom – but glad to see you here. I wondered how you are as I hadn't seen any post from you for a couple of days.

    3. Good to see you back, Tom. Maybe rewrite the punchline. Could be funnier if the doctor had shat his pants.

      1. Trainee passenger services staff at the airport I once worked at were asked to make an announcement on the Tannoy system asking for a passenger to attend the ticket desk to see Mike Hunt.

  62. Yo and Good Moaning all, from Costa del Skeg

    Self Checkouts

    Do I get

    Staff Discount?

    Staff Parking?

    Use of Staff Canteen?

    Invites to Staff Chrimbo Party?

    Thought Not!

    1. As I have said before, if it is self checkout and/or card only payments, I will fill my trolley with perishable goods and leave it at the 'till.

      The staff NOT working the till(s) can put the food back on the shelves

      1. In Spencers they offer to put things through for you. I said 'Wouldn't it just be easier to have a manned till?'

        The lass said 'I hear that a lot.'

        Credit to them, it can't be a fun job.

      2. I did that in a Co-op in Norwich. The checkout girl refused to accept my pre-paid token for a discount on The Daily Telegraph. Her 'supervisor' informed me that the Co-op did not accept those tokens. I simply shrugged, and left an unpaid trolley full of perishables at the till.

    2. Are you certain sure you want to use the Staff Canteen (and toilet/s), and also go to Staff Chrimbo Party, OLT? Good luck…you may need it..

    3. Whenever supermarket staff urge me to use self-checkouts, I simply give them a withering stare and tell them: "This supermarket cannot afford my daily rate."

      1. I tried that once 'To whom do I send the bill for my time?'

        The little – well, not so little. She was very busty and cute as a button – got very flustered.

      2. How's your Swedish? I speak French fluently but with a strong English accent which, even after 35years of living here, I cannot lose – nor – to be honest – do I want to lose it. Indeed many French people, especially French women, find the accent charming

        Sometimes I play the role of the eccentric Englishman when I go to a manned – or womanned – supermarket checkout and address the cashier – and the people in the queue – on how these automatic checkouts are going to steal their jobs and they ought to go on strike. This goes down well and is sometimes even greeted with applause, laughter and agreement

        1. Jag blir mer och mer duktig på att läsa svenska; men mina verbala färdigheter är fortfarande mycket dåliga. Den lokala skånska dialekten är lika ogenomtränglig som den i Fife i Skottland.

    4. I have no objection to self-service tills. I do a small shop frequently and it's usually quicker than waiting in a queue of trolleys loaded to the gunwales.

      I would object to the withdrawal of cash payment.

      1. I have no objections to them provided there are also some normal manned checkouts. I don't know of any shops without and the queues are no longer than they used to be – usually shorter because all the other customers are weighing and bagging their purchases and muttering loudly about how bloody inconvenient it is to have to do it oneself.

        1. "I have no objections to them provided there are also some normal manned checkouts."

          Quite.

          However, our local Sainsbury's has muddled matters recently by separating trolleys and baskets in the self-serve area, with both cash+card and card-only tills in each lane. I can't remember seeing anyone pay by cash for a trolley-load. The consequence is a smaller number of basket-only tills and some cash payers crossing the queues to get to the trolley cash tills with many 'excuse me's , much tutting and a slower throughput.

        2. "I have no objections to them provided there are also some normal manned checkouts."

          Quite.

          However, our local Sainsbury's has muddled matters recently by separating trolleys and baskets in the self-serve area, with both cash+card and card-only tills in each lane. I can't remember seeing anyone pay by cash for a trolley-load. The consequence is a smaller number of basket-only tills and some cash payers crossing the queues to get to the trolley cash tills with many 'excuse me's , much tutting and a slower throughput.

        3. "I have no objections to them provided there are also some normal manned checkouts."

          Quite.

          However, our local Sainsbury's has muddled matters recently by separating trolleys and baskets in the self-serve area, with both cash+card and card-only tills in each lane. I can't remember seeing anyone pay by cash for a trolley-load. The consequence is a smaller number of basket-only tills and some cash payers crossing the queues to get to the trolley cash tills with many 'excuse me's , much tutting and a slower throughput.

  63. Ukraine will defeat Putin – as long as we support it
    I remember the late, great former MPs who served in the Second World War. We musn’t forget their lessons

    Andrew Mitchell : https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/08/26/ukraine-will-win-the-war-as-long-we-support-it/

    Mindless abuse may not be very edifying or effective but I can understand this BTLiner's antipathy towards Mr Mitchell; this poster is doubtless a mere pleb in Mitchell's eyes.

    BTL

    I cannot make up my mind as to whether he is a worse journalist, worse politician or a worse human being.
    However my mind is made up that he is a completely worthless person and would be useless in any sphere of activity.

  64. We can’t stop progress, and, as time goes on, life will become increasingly reliant on technology, to the detriment of those who ignore it.

    It is just not tehnology.

    The uncontrolled influx of immigrants, from countries who have different lif-styles, religion, diets etc, is also greatly affecting our lives and any comments against these changes is liable to put you in prison.

    I will avoid places that use technology as an excuse to control how I spend my hard earned money

    1. Technology will also leave many behind. The state, for example. A 486 could do what it – all of it – does far better.

      The uneducated, the non-computer literate will be left behind. I don't mean those who use but dislike computers or who don't replace their telephone every 2 months, the genuine left behind. Those without access to information, who can't get to digital money. Who're forced to use the national currencies – which are worthless paper sustained by a fiction. The folk who work 'somewhere', same as factories couldn't escape the greed of the state before, so too will the manufactories suffer again.

      Government is already in it's death throes. It is sustained only by massive transfers of other people's money to buy a client state.

      When the money runs out and is revealed as worthless – likely soon due to state debt, waste and devaluation: I expect hyperinflation under Starmer due to the moron Milioaf – genuine poverty will crash home and like all dictators Starmer will do what he knows: control everything but the real wealth will simply move away from him, unchained from failed currency, unmoored by needing to make a tangible product.

      It's ironic: true globalism will both completely destroy the concept of national taxation and government but also reinvent the idea of nationhood.

      1. I can't care any more. The Left seem to rejoice over the bodies of dead kids. They'd prefer that rather than accept the problem of high welfare, unemployment, massive drug addiction and production. If the 'caring, sharing' mentalists would prefer bodies over admitting their failure, so be it.

    2. Scumbaggery, lawlessness, ill-discipline and criminal activity have now been rebranded as "carnival".

      1. As my better half just said, Grizzly ' Who the eff would want to be there'(excuse his French…)

    3. Street parties and village fetes have been canceled because they couldn't afford Marshalls or didn't fit with H&S requirements.

      Who is paying for the 7000 officers?

          3. I had a Marshall (given away now to a better guitarist), Spikey, but my brother has a Vox AC30 valve amp, which he loves.

          4. That’s the one I had in the 60’s – it handled 2 guitars and a bass guitar easily, the tone was great over the whole sonic spectrum

      3. I'll give you two guesses (bearing in mind the govt has no money, only what it takes from taxpayers and the perlice are funded from council tax).

    4. And it is not over yet – wait till the drurgs and machetes are out once it is dark….

    5. 2TMet 2TMSN 2TK declare the Mogadishu stabby twerkin shitting in the garten fest safer than The Hay Festival of Literature..
      Altogether now.. "mostly peaceful".

      Like going to the zoo, except the animals aren't in cages.

        1. Why?

          Why the F*** do people wish to congregate together in this manner? Leave me alone, in a sun-dappled beechwood, with the song of wood warblers, pied flycatchers and common redstarts any day.

          2. Like those hordes of dim-witted clowns who insist on crowding together on a beach in order to turn lobster red?

            I only walk on beaches in winter.

          6. What's the point? There are so many other, much better and more interesting things to do on holiday. I have my cocktails after a delicious supper.

          10. 'Peach Bellini' is a tautology (I love this 🤣). You can't have a Bellini without peach.
            Harry would have a smile on his face.

          12. Grizz, the picture will be claimed by the 'woke' as diversity working its "magic"- although pure white faces are in the minority – but your, and many others' ideal day, will be declared racist/white supremacist. The 'woke' have forgotten that free choice remains, at the moment, one of our rights.

            I've just returned from lunch in a pub on the edge of Constable Country and drove through the latter on the outward and homeward journeys, can't remember stumbling on any diversity whether walking on the bank of the Stour at Mistley or in the pub at Brantham.

          14. It must be well over 35 years since I was last in wonderful Constable country, Korky. I can remember going into a decent pub in Dedham, but I can't remember its name.

          15. The Sun, now an upmarket inn and restaurant and the Marlborough opposite the church remain as far as I can find. The Lamb, up the hill on the way out to Colchester is now a private residence.

        2. Those police officers with the red-and-white chequered headbands are not Metropolitan Police officers. They must have been drafted in from the nearby City of London Police, a completely separate force, who wear those colours.

          2. I've got a red-and-white "duty" armband from the City of London Police. It was gifted to me (along with a tiepin) when I drove a contingent of them around the pits during the miners' strike in 1984. Lovely people, we got on really well.

            I couldn't say the same thing about those from the larger force who attended. Bunch of loutish criminals they were.

          3. The Met have lowered the bar. They now take people with a criminal record. And now we hear of rapes, murders and abusing vulnerable women.

  66. Remember the Surrey oil and gas drilling court ruling? Campaigners in Rutland are hoping to use the same tactic to prevent an expansion of Ketton quarry, from which limestone is extracted to make evil cement powder.

    The story was on BBC East Midlands recently. I wonder if Mr Eatough is really a secret sceptic who just doesn't want the dust on his property.

    I'd support the scheme. When the quarrying's finished in 30 years time, the hole can be filled with water and joined to the big pond next door.

    Campaigners oppose quarry expansion plans
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c70jnyn4g9zo

    1. This is why the net zero idiocy must be repealed. It lets fools take the government to court on that basis rather than rational, fact based ones.

    2. Indeed, why not import cement from Africa, Australia and America instead, That will reduce the UKs noxious emissions and contribute to net zero. Why didn't they think of that before?

      1. Transportation costs prohibitive. In many developing countries the cement concession is often owned by the President's son-in-law or the son of the president's mistress, if you know what I mean. {:^))

      2. Transportation costs prohibitive. In many developing countries the cement concession is often owned by the President's son-in-law or the son of the president's mistress, if you know what I mean. {:^))

      3. After all they import Wood chips from Canada.

        Worldwide noxious emissions are irrelevant as long as the UK can boast about being eco-friendly.

        Some wicked people whose brains need sorting out even think that carbon dioxide is beneficial and necessary and that Net Zero is a complete scam!

        2. Probably before your time at the tail end of the Bobby Sox era of songs which started with Frank Sinatra (Bobby Vee, Frankie Avalon, Bryan Hyland etc.) Late 50s and early 60s when I was 12/13/14 and you would have been 8,9,10 or so.

          You must remember this Sam Cooke classic from1959:

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqivat7_oiQ

          1. NOW we're talking. Sam Cooke had one of the best black voices ever, IMHO. I rate him alongside Nat King Cole, Tony Williams, Levi Stubbs, Ben E King and Billy Eckstine.

          2. NOW we're talking. Sam Cooke had one of the best black voices ever, IMHO. I rate him alongside Nat King Cole, Tony Williams, Levi Stubbs, Ben E King and Billy Eckstine.

      1. You can see why he chose that for a professional name. His real one isn't so cool.
        Jaten Colin Dimsdale.

  69. Taken from today's DT

    Sexually frustrated dolphin blamed for 18 attacks on swimmers
    Beachgoers in Mihama, Japan, warned to stay out of the water when solitary male bottlenose is on the prowl for a mate

    A lonely dolphin acting out of sexual frustration is believed to be the culprit behind a spate of attacks on swimmers in Japan this summer.

    Since July this year, 18 people have been hurt in dolphin attacks near the seaside town of Mihama, with some requiring dozens of stitches.

    Posters warning beachgoers of the menace feature an open-mouthed dolphin baring razor-like teeth. It says that the mammals “are known to be dangerous to humans” and to get out of the water if they are seen nearby.

    Stressed by crowds of bathers
    Wild dolphins rarely attack humans but have been known to bite or pull people underwater if they feel threatened or harassed.

    This was reportedly the case when one man was killed in 1994 in Sao Sebastiao, Brazil, after an initially friendly dolphin called Tião reportedly became stressed by the attention of crowds of bathers who wanted to play with or even torment him.

    Like Tião, Japan’s problematic mammal is believed to be a solitary male bottlenose dolphin, who may also be responsible for injuring swimmers in 2022 and 2023, and trying to press his genitals against them.

    Recommended

    Eight things you didn't know about dolphins
    Read more
    Putu Mustika, a lecturer and marine researcher at James Cook University in Australia, told The New York Times that dolphins can inadvertently harm humans by dint of their sheer strength when acting out mating behaviours.

    “Dolphins, when they are mating, can be very wild,” she said, adding that the act of lunging on top of a human could be seen as a sexual act and a sign that the dolphin was “horny, lonely”.

    This dolphin could also be naturally aggressive or aggravated by humans trying to touch it, she said.

    Broken ribs and bites
    At least six people were also injured in the same area last year, with one man in his 60s suffering broken ribs and bites to his hand after he was rammed by a dolphin.

    Giovanni Bearzi, a zoologist and president of the Dolphin Biology Conservation in Italy, told Live Science at the time that humans tended to see dolphins as “invariably ‘nice’ animals”, overlooking the fact that they are extremely powerful.

    “Our unaware or overly ‘friendly’ behaviour may trigger aggression,” he said.

    The Japanese authorities have tried a number of measures to try to stop the attacks, including installing dozens of underwater acoustic devices designed to deter dolphins or limiting swimming hours on some beaches.

    Now there's a headline you don't see every day.

        1. Too true! —"The penis length of the mature humpback males examined range from 3.2 to 6.2 ft."

    3. His delights were dolphin-like; they showed his back
      Above the element they lived in.

      (Antony and Cleopatra : Cleopatra eulogising about her dead lover, Antony.)

      If you think of the way in which a dolphin moves through the water this is a particularly sensual image

    2. I have “Patronising Bastards”, a book by Quentin Letts. It’s about the same bastards.

      1. Are you perhaps in Iceland, 'mum…where we'd need to be, I reckon. (The country, not the frozen food store…..)

      2. Are you perhaps in Iceland, 'mum…where we'd need to be, I reckon. (The country, not the frozen food store…..)

    1. I don't belive anyone could imagine or be convinced that any of the political classes is capable of uttering a word of truth.

      1. From the Daily Telegraph

        Nurses have written an open letter to Sir Keir Starmer warning that the Lucy Letby case has left them “terrified” to continue working in the NHS in case they are wrongly blamed for deaths in their care.

        The group of 19 nurses has come together to argue that the recent convictions of Letby had “implications” for the nursing profession.

        They have called for the Government to establish a Royal commission to conduct a forensic examination of the evidence presented in the case.

        In August last year, Letby was convicted of the murders of seven newborns and the attempted murders of six other infants at the Countess of Chester Hospital. A retrial in July found her guilty of the attempted murder of another child.

        But several scientists and doctors have since questioned the evidence, and there are concerns that not enough weight was given in the trial to levels of understaffing, poor practice and cramped conditions in the baby unit.

        ‘Blamed for a failing system’

        The group of registered and retired nurses, plus other healthcare and medical professionals, have written to the Prime Minsiter “to communicate our growing concerns” about “the evidence presented and used to convict Ms Letby”.

        The letter continues: “All of us are worried that this conviction is unsafe and as a result we and many of our colleagues are now terrified to continue working in the NHS as we believe that next time it could be one of us who blamed for a failing system.

        “We believe that flawed and unreliable scientific evidence was used to convict Ms Letby, and this is having a huge impact on the nursing profession.”

        The nurses said they had a “duty of candour” to speak out about their concerns and have called for a forensic review or Royal commission and cross-party working group to be established to look into the case.

        The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) states that nurses, midwives, and nursing associates have a professional duty of candour to be open and honest with patients and their families when something goes wrong with their care.

        The nurses raise nine areas of concern about the case, including the fact that a report by the The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health from 2016 – which outlined failings in the neonatal unit – was never shown to the jury.

        The report highlighted short staffing and that the unit was dealing with more premature babies than usual during the period in 2015 and 2016 when death rates spiked.

        “Clear evidence of suboptimal care on the unit needs to be acknowledged and investigated as many believe that it may have been an important factor in several of the deaths and collapses,” the nurses write.

        Lucy Letby
        Several scientists and doctors have questioned the evidence presented in Lucy Letby’s case Credit: Chester Standard
        “During the trial experts repeatedly misrepresented the health state of the babies, repeatedly describing them as ‘well’ and ‘stable’ when many of them were extremely premature and vulnerable.

        “Most of the babies required respiratory support and ventilation and other medical interventions, some were being treated for infections.

        “We request, a scientifically rigorous Royal commission/independent review where real experts, such as forensic pathologists, medical specialists, and scientists, can conduct a detailed and meticulous forensic assessment to re-examine the evidence in this troubling case.

        “We believe this is crucial for nurses, and healthcare practitioners alike, so that we can feel confident and safe in our work.”

        ‘Nurses resigning from baby units’

        In a recent Channel 5 documentary re-examining the Letby case, Dr Svilena Dimitrova, a consultant neonatologist, warned that nurses are resigning from Britain’s baby units because they fear being accused of harming infants.

        Dr Dimitrova, who works as a medical reviewer for the Ockenden independent review of maternity services at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, said NHS problems were “endemic” and nurses were frightened they could be scapegoated for failing wards.

        Speaking of the Letby conviction on the programme, Dr Dimitrova, who is not linked to the letter, said: “What it has definitely led to is huge fear, amid especially the neonatal nursing body. I have never seen so many nurses resign as I have seen in the past 18 months.”

        The nurses who signed the letter come from across Britain, but have chosen to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals from their trusts. They have shown their NMC registration numbers to The Telegraph to verify their positions.

        ‘Hypotheses were implausible’

        Last month, The Telegraph reported how nurses were warned by NHS trusts not to talk about the case or give evidence on Letby’s behalf.

        The nurse who is acting as spokesman for the group said: “The group was formed so that we could discuss the case in safety, and we looked at each case individually, keeping a very open mind.

        “And after each case it became apparent that we were talking about babies born barely viable for life, with pre-existing congenital medical conditions as well as a lot of sub-optimal care.

        “The hypotheses put forward by the prosecution were just implausible and the way suboptimal care was played down in court is horrifying and it needs to be addressed.”

        She added: “People are afraid because they can see how easily this can happen.

        “At one point in my career I was a nurse specialist and I was working an 80-hour week and living in the nurses home and I would be called in all the time. If there had been a cluster of deaths the finger would have pointed at me. And clusters do happen.”

        The letter will be made available on the Science on Trial website for nurses to add their names.

        1. Letby didn't advance her case by writing all the weird things she wrote about the dead babies and herself.

          On the other hand, I (a mere civil lawyer – never had anything to do with yer crime) simply could not understand why the rial took so long. I troubled me that there might be something wrong with the Crown case.

          2. Interesting. I had the felling there was a plot to "get her". By the end of the trial, the poor jurors must have forgotten why they were there.

          3. As I've said previously Bill, I read Dr David Livermore prior to general public knowledge, his writing convinced me Letby's case needed another investigation. I still believe she's the fall guy.

          4. I am wondering if she was not all that bright, despite her vocation. Timothy Evans' fate was sealed because of his dim-wittedness and lack of social mores.

          5. Definitely naive, Grizzly – typical of an only child/elderly parents. An easy target for others, perhaps.

          7. Exactly, anne. I wonder if it’s similar today (and Morecambe Bay too, there was a class action being set up there at one time, not certain of current status).

          8. It seems there are quite a few disfunctional units. Why is that do you think? Don't answer !

          9. Was every murder charge tried sequentially? I dont think the evidence was straightforward, it was all circumstantial and based on supposition, so needed a good deal of explaining. I have doubts from what I read but the jury did not. But they have been wrong before.

  74. https://youtu.be/hJtiYZoUSII

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/08/26/no-whites-graffiti-investigated-police-birmingham-alum-rock/
    ***************************************

    Kier Stammer
    1 HR AGO
    PINNED
    Is this what they mean when they say teachers are being taught to challenge whiteness?
    It's certainly where it leads. Too stupid for words

    AJ Clemente
    1 HR AGO
    Multiculturalism has totally failed. I remember Britain before Blair when net immigration was never greater than 50k pa. We were united and all rubbed together nicely. Knife crime was rare, young people could get on the housing ladder and start a family, our streets were safe, the Police were respected, and anyone could easily see their GP and get a hospital appointment. Mass uncontrolled immigration has been an unmitigated disaster.

    2. Yes, but will either the Conservative or Labour Party ever summon up enough courage to admit it?

    3. Just imagine the state of twistedness of knickers of the pencil monitor had the second word been "blacks". And Cur Ikea Slammer would also be "coming down heavily" on racists….

      (Yawns and drops off).

          4. I shall be copying you in to the plans for luncheon at Rules. Dates are very fluid at the moment. Hopefully before silly season sets in. We are now six.

  75. I use Behringer studio monitors, Gigging – 2 x Yamaha DXR12s and on my keyboard in my lounge a Turbosound iP2000 column array 😘

  76. A risky Par Four?

    Wordle 1,164 4/6
    🟨⬜⬜⬜⬜
    ⬜🟨🟩⬜⬜
    🟩⬜🟩🟩🟩
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    1. 5 tries for me.

      Wordle 1,164 5/6

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

      1. And me.

        Wordle 1,164 5/6

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

        2. Uh oh,6!

          Wordle 1,164 6/6. Too many possibilities

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

    2. Same here

      Wordle 1,164 4/6

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

    3. Lucky first word here. Same as yesterday.

      Wordle 1,164 3/6

      🟨⬜⬜🟨🟩
      🟩⬜🟩⬜🟩
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    4. Methinks after yesterday, Mr Wordle was having a bit of a laugh at our expense….

      Same outcome for me, however

      Wordle 1,164 4/6

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

  78. Former England manager Sven-Goran Eriksson has died at the age of 76.

    Eriksson, the first non-British manager of the England team, led the Three Lions to the quarter-finals at three major tournaments during his five-year spell in charge between 2001 and 2006.

    RIP

    1. I was always surprised that he found the time to coach Engerland – what with all his domestic commitments!

    4. I wonder why people insisted upon calling him "Sven", when his name was properly Sven-Göran [pron: "Sven-Yur-an"].

      No one would call a Sally-Anne just "Sally".

      1. It never occurred to me to call him other than Sven-Goran, although I admit that I tended to pronounce it Sven-Yorran"

    1. And we’re also being told horses shouldn’t be ridden (which is crap – a horse that wants to evict its rider, damn well will). I guess the incoming troops are all infantry and can’t be expected to ride, drive or fly.

          1. Imagine trying the same tactics now. Bank holiday traffic and the tanks would throw their treads because of all the pot holes.

    2. Why not? Canada has hung on to the US coattails since for ever, why shouldn't the UK?

    3. 1/The RN carriers were Gordon Brown's make-work for Clyde (and Forth) shipbuilders.
      2/The F-35 B is an overpriced, under-performing aircraft.
      3/The decks of the RN carriers have no 'Cat and Catch' mechanisms.
      4/ With conventional C&C decks we could have afforded large numbers of well-proven and widely used F-18s.

      Duh.

      1. I was on 892 NAS, when they embarked on the "old Ark Royal" with 12 Phantoms, back in the laate 60's, for Air Defence

        We also had
        12 Bucaneers (conventional anf Nuclear bombers
        5 Scimitar To In flight refuel the 2 above
        5 Gannets Aircraft Early Warning (and mail)
        some Sea Kings Anti sub
        3 or 4 Wessex Air Sea Rescue, just in case when aircraft crashed , when launched from the Cats.

        Phantooms went from zero to over lots of knots in 220 feet

  80. That's me gone. Three hours of ladder work – house foliage cover looks much better and the wisteria growing under the roof tiles is no more!
    Very satisfied! And the MR is chuffed that I can still do this at my advanced age! My reward was a haircut – always a delight.

    Now to think about a little drinky-poo in 24 minutes…..

    Incidentally, everything we ate for lunch (apart from the cheese) was grown in our garden….

    Have a spiffing evening sharpening your machetes.

    A demain

    1. There 's nothing 'brave' about the 'new world' that has now been foisted on us without consultation.

      1. Prospero saw the the deluded optimism in his daughter's remark:

        Miranda: O brave new world to have such people in it!
        Prospero: 'Tis new to thee.

    2. I personally think that with all these predictions in the past, they should have been taken into account.
      As were many previous historical and biblical forecasts. As I've said so many times, everything our political classes come into contact with, they seriously eff it up and big time. They don't have a clue about anything at all.

      1. Calling the histories of England, Great Britain and Europe "White Supremacy culture" sorts all that inconvenience out.

  82. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4TRuyFfFiI
    "We're treating minorities in this country…like the slowest kid in the class. Despite the stabbings and the sexual assaults, the 90 arrests and the boarded-up shops, it's been a great success and you've all done really well. The Guardian says it's been a big ball of happiness and a great day out."

    Mayuran Senthilnathan, Sri Lankan, Reform candidate for Epson & Ewell. Speaks English better than The Stockport Slapper and The Reiver.

    The establishment is either unaware of its double standards or is scared to admit to them. That is, a higher standard of behaviour is expected from the white underclass than from, well, you know who.

    PS The subtitles are entertaining…

  83. Good Gawd Almighty, we're about to get a hagiography on Zelensky on the Bog Brush Channel.

  84. What an execrable embarrassment 'The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo' has become. Can't watch any more.

  85. Evening, all. Cool, but at least the sun broke through the cloud briefly. I went to a planthunters fair, but only managed to get one of the items on my list and paying for that was a hassle. The woman wouldn't take cash because she hadn't got a pound to give me change, so I decided, since it was what I'd gone for and nobody else was selling one, I'd pay by card. It took me about four attempts before it accepted it.

    When I got back, I decided to do a bit in the garden, but I made the mistake of sitting down while I chopped up the prunings – Kadi woke me up barking because his tea was overdue.

      1. Once the chimneys have been swept on Thursday I am going to light the Rayburn and I doubt it will be going out until March!

    1. An architect has posted a cross section plan of the tower block on X that he says shows only one central Fire escape stairwell!

      1. The problem is Steph,
        It's the residents that cause the fires, and nothing else can start them, even electrical faults would trip out and shut down.

    4. On one tower all the cladding had already been removed.. scaffolding still up with screening. Everyone out and accounted for, too.
      What a coincidence. Two fires in multi-storey blocks. Both in Labour ethnic enclaves. Predictable uproar.
      Survivors of the Grenfell tragedy demand more compo for the anxiety. 2TK agrees.

  87. Well, chums, it's been a tiring day for me. So, exceptionally, I shall head for bed at this moment (8.35 pm). Good night, chums, sleep well, and I hope to see you all hale and hearty tomorrow morning.

  88. I wonder what the final score card will be after this year's NHC and just how many of those arrested will find themselves in prison this time next week?

    It will be a good test to see whether there really is two tier policing and criminal justice.

    1. Previous years.
      Interesting that the response is limited because the data is available elsewhere.
      Why oh why won't these people in charge give all the information requested if they know the answers?
      https://www.met.police.uk/foi-ai/af/accessing-information/published-items?q=Notting+Hill+carnival
      This gives many other avenues to pursue.

      https://www.met.police.uk/foi-ai/metropolitan-police/disclosure-2023/november-2023/notting-hill-carnival-data/

      I appreciate that they don't want to waste time repeating things, but surely it's nearly as easy just to supply what was requested rather than lots and lots of links?

      1. Of course it is but they just want to obfuscate, distract and delay, otherwise refuse to give the information requested. You only have to read a few lines of the ‘explanation’ for not giving the info.

        1. There's another one down below, Mola (as they say in the trade) where they all look very anxious and glum – hordes of them – doesn't look much fun at all. Presumably the pharmaceuticals have now circulated.

  89. I'm getting very dismayed about the way our country is rapidly losing its social structure and cultural identity.
    The army needs to be employed for a serious clear out in Westminster.
    I fear for my lovely innocent grandchildren.
    Off now, I'm very worried but, losing interest in all the damage caused by manufacturered political occurrences set in place by the majority of our deliberately wrecking political idiots.
    Some one has got to stop it.

        1. Closer to Himmler or Geobbels, methinks. Idi Amin lacked the bland banality, although he had the evil and insanity in Spades.

  90. Just read on Twitt that a new law saying that gene edited food will be sold in Britain unlabeled has just received royal assent.
    This won't bring any benefits to the useless eaters ordinary people

    1. Possibly being prepared to be sent to some peacekeeping mission somewhere else. Some UN contracts are (or were, 30 years ago) shared out to avoid giving all the profit to one enormous supplier of vehicles. edit: e.g. the Wilker Group produces ambulances in Ireland
      "Wilker was founded 60 years ago in Clara, Co. Offaly Ireland and has grown to become an internationally recognised vehicle conversion specialist, with production facilities in both Clara (Ireland), Sandbach and Manchester in England.
      Wilker builds specialised vehicles for the Ambulance Services, Fire Services, Police Services and Military, as well as customised vehicles for the Commercial & Industrial sectors. Our extensive customers base extends throughout Ireland , England, Scotland and Wales, the Isle of Wight and Jersey, with exports to Cyprus, Trinidad & Tobago, Quatar, Folkland Islands (sic), Tasmania, Abu Dhabi and others."

    1. No wonder there is such an overreaction whenever the word "monkey" is used in any context.

    2. I think that was last year, but there is an offence of outraging public decency. Dont suppose that will be applied given that it seems normal behaviour amongst the NHC crowd.

Comments are closed.