1,001 thoughts on “Monday 12 August: Power cut has highlighted the precariousness of Britain’s energy system”

  1. Jeffrey Epstein and the age of hysteria. Spiked. Brendan O’Neill. 12 August 2019.

    Reason has been eclipsed in the 21st century. It has surrendered to paranoia, rumour, comforting fantasies about the faceless people who secretly govern the world behind our backs. Bush did 9/11. The royals killed Diana. Russia is behind Brexit. Zionists puppeteer Western politics. A VIP paedophile network in the UK murdered young boys for fun. And now alleged trafficker and sexual creep Jeffrey Epstein was got at somehow, murdered in his Manhattan jail cell, by shady powerful forces who feared what would be revealed about them when Epstein ended up in the dock. Don’t ask for evidence; just feel the theory, let it wash over you, nod along to yet another fact-free story about the shadowy networks that can knock down buildings, commandeer people’s minds, and bump off princesses and perverts at will.

    Morning everyone. There is a problem to this approach in that it is as irrational as that which it criticises. By grouping all conspiracy theory, which is itself now a pejorative term, as false, it denies the very possibility of conspiracy. Brendan is in effect saying that all is coincidence and there are no conspiracies and by extension that there have never been such. This is not simply wrong and a denial of our everyday experience but absurd; it would destroy our understanding of modern politics and History would have to be rewritten. Politics is conspiracy. It is its very essence and always has been. The Brexiteers in Parliament did collude between themselves to get us out of the EU in opposition to the Remainers who wished us to stay. Guy Fawkes certainly did conspire with Catesby to blow up the same organisation and Gavrilo Princip really was a member of the Black Hand and killed the Archduke Ferdinand; all this while H1tler and the Bolsheviks plotted to take over their respective governments and eventually did so. The countless schemes, revolutions and uprisings that have occurred since humanities beginnings are all the result of cabals of like-minded men conspiring to overthrow the existing order for their own ends. Nothing more useful or reassuring to anyone engaging in such activity could be imagined in that any discovery or exposure will be dismissed out of hand as the ravings of the deranged. O’Neill’s error is to form them into a genre when what is needed is to examine them individually. When this is done Epstein’s death is suspicious, now this may be due to the lack of solid evidence to the contrary but it is the job of the authorities to dismiss such speculation by furnishing the truth.

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2019/08/11/jeffrey-epstein-and-the-age-of-hysteria/

    1. There is no doubt that powerful forces are deciding what we can hear, see and think on mainstream news media.Just wonder how we aren’t hearing anything from the street protests and police brutality in France our nearest neighbour with close EU ties and links but we get daily reports from Hong Kong, half way around the world. Why is that, how come all our great political commentator minds are not noticing?

      1. Morning Bob

        I suspect we are only seconds away from civil unrest here in Britain , that is why the media are restrained.

        When the riots in Croydon and elsewhere in that area erupted a few years ago, many people including me became really anxious wondering whether the yob mobs involved would climb on a train and invade us down here .

        Silent but unthinkable changes are happening here in rural Britain .. We don’t have sufficient rural police to deal with criminals and their nasty activities.

        1. Belle, perhaps this headline will help ease your concerns.

          Army pulls thousands of troops out of Germany in major plan to base armed forces in UK

          Operation Faran – which aims to get soldiers, civil servants and families back to the UK for the start of the new school term next month – has been billed as “the biggest relocation exercise in UK modern history”.

          Between 50 and 150 families a week have made the journey home since June.

          The move is part of a plan to withdraw 20,000 British troops from Germany, as laid out by David Cameron in 2010.

          Daily Express – Army Pulling Out of Germany

        2. Those were the ignorant masses. The failure was of the state to act decisively, viciously to crush the threat to civil society. They were allowed to behave that way. Such just reinforced their belief that they were free to behave how they chose.

          Yes, they’ve improved their tactics since then, but not kettling. Those thugs needed beating, isolating into small grounds, cuffing together around a lamppost and hobbling. The ring leaders, those throwing petrol bombs should have been shot.

          The rest of society deserved better. The police are there to uphold the law. A bunch of rabid monkeys smashing the place up don’t need arresting the next day – they need a broken arm.

          2. Wibbling, had I read your post a few decades ago, I would have dismissed you as a hard-right insensitive dinosaur. Sadly, I now totally agree with you that the only way forward in this country is for the authorities to act forcefully and decisively. Compare the behaviour of police forces here and overseas at football matches. The behaviour of fans is certainly moderated when they realise that police in Europe will not hesitate to use their batons, the arrest and imprison fans who start trouble.

          3. ‘Morning, Elsie, the more I see of these mindless, rabid, anti-social mobs, the more I find that I have moved from centre right and am fast approaching extreme far right with a desire to actually slaughter this bunch of no-hoper, no-goods, for the good of the rest of mankind.

            I shall now go and lie-down in a darkened room until I get over it.

      2. Morning B,
        The establishments overall use of the D notice type tool tells a story in its self, and does give credence to any news that does get through.
        “Our great political commentators minds are not
        noticing”
        Being that they are all bent as nine bob notes,
        AKA political scrotes answers that.

    2. In 1973, conspiracy theorists would have been the object of derision if they’d stated that Ted Heath & Co. were lying to us about the real political agenda behind the ‘Common Market’.

    3. Problem is, nobody believes the authorities any more, due to their detected lies and half-truths.

    4. I’d dispute the conspiracy theory, but surely there’s negligence if Epstein was killed before standing trial.

      What bothers is when there are such failures there are never any consequences.

      The Russians had nothing to do with Brexit. The remoaners tell themselves this because they can’t believe people think differently to them, so needed an excuse. That’s just desperate conceit.

      There was an organsation systematically raping young girls. They were called Muslims, and the state wasn’t interested in stopping them.

    5. Ok, despite the fact that Epstein’s lawyer warned that his client would be killed in jail, and despite a supposed previous suicide attempt two weeks ago (though there’s also been a claim that Epstein said he’d been assaulted and hadn’t tried to kill himself), he was taken off suicide watch, the guardian failed to check on him, his cellmate was moved out of the cell so Epstein was on his own, and the video surveillance system “failed” just at the time he hanged himself, presumably after the prison had removed all items that he could behave used to hang himself…

      Perhaps Brendan could explain how another associate of the Clintons could be decapitated by “natural causes”, or at least three others could comment suicide by shooting themselves in the back of the head…??
      Brendan is usually a good commenter, but in this instance, I think he’s off the mark. As Steve Turley says, if you believe Epstein committed suicide and there’s no conspiracy, I have some beach-front property in Kansas I can sell you.

      https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JSGnVB39n8g
      https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bqqihoU3Bs0

      1. So you’re saying, Eddy (© Cathy Newman) that there is no such thing as Climate Change? ;-))

        1. Correct Elsie, in fact:

          I don’t need sunny skies for thing I have to do
          ‘Cause I stay home the whole day long and have a brew.
          As far as I’m concerned each day’s a rainy day
          So It might as well rain until October the 31st.

  4. Morning thinkers

    Sitting here with a fleece jacket on , feels so cold . Damp and overcast outside. The berries on the elder bush are darkening , and a pair of woodies are enjoying an early breakfast.

    1. Sitting here in a t-shirt, no heating & drinking really cold goat’s milk.

      My elder berries are still small & green. I’m just thankful that they weren’t stripped off by the gales.

      1. Sitting rather baggy t-shirt,with a nice cup of espresso, thinking how wrinkled my prunes are.

        5. Sitting wearing a fleece and drinking a hot drink to warm up. Also reminding myself that it’s AUGUST and I am NOT going to give in and put the heating on!

      2. I’m still ripping out 40y growth of brambles and have uncovered some currant and gooseberry bushes. I actually found 3 gooseberries yesterday!

          1. I found a couple of dozen white currants when I uncovered those bushes!
            Very tasty too!

          1. No, but I’ve noticed a couple of giant puffballs up the hill above the garden.

      3. Young man, we have no desire to be informed that they are still small and green. Kindly keep your posts clean on this site! :-))

        EDIT: Moving further down this column, I see that my joke has already been made – by several NoTTLers.

      4. Our elderberries are ripe and the woodies have been enjoying them for the last week or so.

    2. I must admit I prefer the cool and dark. Some days with unrelenting heat and blazing sunshine are just a migraine in waiting.

      Here’s to darker mornings: no more waking up at 4:30.

      1. Good morning W

        The dogs always wake me up , I stir, then turn over and am greeted by ‘She’s awake ‘.. then they fuss and fiddle around needing to be let out into the garden .. 05.30.. all I want to do is close my eyes again !

        1. At about that time Missy jumps on the bed at my feet and, because she knows all about gravity, walks along my legs, hips & side, descending at about chest height, from where she inspects my face to see if I’m awake. I speak to her in Swedish (N.B. which I mustn’t repeat here) & she curls up & goes to sleep. I go back to my German thriller.

          1. Morning Peddy ..

            She cares for you and is pleased to see you are still breathing , of course she may just be telling you it is breakfast time!

          2. Our cats are like that with food. Especially when their biscuit bowl is empty…

          3. Spartacus has a built-in watch.
            Yesterday afternoon I felt ropey and, v. unusually, took myself off to bed for a couple of hours.
            He had the decency to wait until 5.15 before he bounced all over me.

          5. Yes.
            Very odd; easy day, pottering around … and then, suddenly I felt as if someone had pulled the plug on me.
            A few hours reading and dozing sorted it.

      2. It seemed to be late getting light this morning, but that was partly due to cloud cover.

    3. Woody from “Toy Story” has a twin? Or is the other one Woody Harrelson? :-))

  5. ‘More than half’ of anti-terror pupils being put through the Prevent deradicalisation programme are far-Right extremists. Mail. 11 August 2019.

    In 2017-18, there were 2,426 Prevent referrals from schools and colleges for extremism made by concerned teachers and staff about students.

    The last polities that had programs like this were the Third Reich and the Soviet State!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7345433/More-half-anti-terror-pupils-far-Right-extremists.html

    1. I would like to see how they classify far right extremism and what these children have done, would we have all been on the programme 50 years ago?

      1. It’s Orwellian, and whatever the state wants it to be. If it isn’t, the school will find some evidence to get the answer it wants.

        In my youth I was a raging firebrand, mad unionist and great believer in the ‘greater good’ that government should ‘do something’.

        I grew up as soon as I started paying taxes and realised how ineffectual, inefficient, incompetent, lazy and stupid government is and how important it is to shred it, bring the useless thing to heel and make it subservient.

        1. Friends of ours laughed like drains when their daughter opened her first pay slip.
          I gather her reaction was not ‘Oh, goody, please can I give some more to the government’.

    3. “Prevent experts say that the type of far-Right extremism that students show in schools and colleges is more ‘identitarian’.

      This phrase describes the far-Right belief that Britain’s racial map is changing irrevocably with more immigration, and advocates that white British people must live and marry ‘their own kind’, while black and Asian Britons should do likewise.

      Prevent officials believe that very few pupils show signs of white neo-Nazi extremism, which wants Britain for whites only, and often advocates attacks on non-whites.”

      If the Left keeps pushing its identity politics for everyone else, why are they SOS surprised that native Brits do the same??
      And how on Earth can they say it’s a “far right belief” that the UK’s racial map is changing irrevocably when it’s blatantly obvious that it’s true? It’s not a belief, it’s in the population statistics, and the census figures.

    5. First laugh-out-loud moment of the day: I misread your quote as “the Prevent Decimalisation programme”!!! :-))

    6. This is because ‘prevent’ is designed to find what the state wants to find.

      It defines things how it chooses to define things. You won’t find a teacher recognising that they’re Left wing, after all.

  7. Caroline Lucas is trying to form a ” Cabinet of Women” including Nicola Sturgeon, to prevent Boris Johnson exiting the EU without a deal. BBC Radio 4 News. On the BBC Radio 4 News later, Dominic Grieve was interviewed by N Robinson on the possibility of stopping Brexit, Grieve hypocritically corrected Robinson by saying he wanted to delay Brexit. After trawling through the possibilities to delay Brexit and their flaws Grieve said they would fall back on the deviously wrong tactic they used to stop Brexit on March 29 2019. Grieve is determined to thwart the will of the people and for the UK to remain in the EU.

    1. Morning, clydesider.
      If DG wishes to join the all woman Cabinet, I am sure 17.4 million voters would be delighted to help him fulfil his ambition.

    2. From the Daily Telegraph June 14 2018

      Tory rebel Dominic Grieve has private meeting with Remain group intent on blocking Brexit

      Dominic Grieve
      Dominic Grieve has been criticised for meeting prominent Remainers Credit: Rick Findler/PA

      By Anna Mikhailova, Political Correspondent
      14 June 2018 • 10:38am

      Dominic Grieve has been criticised after meeting prominent Remainers on Wednesday night, hours before the Government was due to table its new Withdrawal Bill amendment.

      The Tory rebel was seen entering the European Commission’s London headquarters to attend a private meeting of campaigners intent on blocking Brexit.

      The meeting included Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s old spin doctor, a number of Remain-supporting peers and representatives from Best For Britain, the anti-Brexit group backed by George Soros.

      Jacob Rees-Mogg warned Grieve that he was “supping with the Devil” by meeting with the pro-European campaigners.

      1. Grieve the Traitor has nothing to lose now, it’s sh*t or bust time. He knows full well that applying to his association for his job isn’t likely to end well.

        ‘Morning, Polly.

        1. Plus once we leave, his investments in the EU might devalue and he wouldn’t want that, would he?

    3. “Caroline Lucas is trying to form a Cabinet of Women including Nicola Sturgeon…” Blimey, that really is the stuff of the most terrifying nightmares!

      To get the kind of vote through that the traitorous Grieve is after would require, at the very least, a compliant Speaker…oh buggah, we really are done for, in that case.

      ‘Morning, Clyde.

      PS Have just had the misfortune to hear the Abbopotomus being interviewed on Toady. If she is to be part of the Cabinet of Wimmin….

      1. Morning Hugh – Caroline Lucas needs some heavyweight politicians if her “Cabinet” has to make some impact. DA would be such a person.

    4. Surely Robinson said, at least once – you’ve been de-selected. Why are you still in government when your constituents have asked you to leave?

      Or even – you profit from the EU personally. Do you think it’s fair to ignore your constituents vote in favour of your own greed?

  8. Morning, Campers. At a risk of upsetting NOTTLers in soggier parts of Blighty, what a welcome break are these grey skies and general dampness.
    Signed,
    Smug East Anglian.

        1. Me as well.

          Morning Anne ..I hate anything above 23c.. just a total misery when temps go up.

          Much prefer spring weather .. and I always have ..

    2. ‘Moaning, Annie. I was in Suffolk and north Essex last week, and noted that the ground was like concrete, and every promise of rain from the Met Office failed to materialize. A visit by General Dampness will be welcomed, I’m sure.

  9. Putin began by embracing the west. Now, he wants revenge. Mon 12 Aug 2019 06.00 BST

    This, I believe, is Putin’s current modus operandi. He regards what he does as a mirror image of what the west does to Russia and around the world. The irony is that, in burnishing his image as a strongman, he betrays his vulnerability. His paranoia about permitting free elections and his thuggish recent crackdown on pro-democracy protesters are evidence of his weakness. The more he entrenches, the clearer it becomes that he is terrified of losing control – and of the retribution that may follow. He has now created a police state that brooks no dissent, buttressed by a media that glorifies his every word in true Soviet style.

    This like the rest of the article is the most complete tosh!

    Putin Reminds Russians He Can Do Suppression. Moscow Times. July 29 2019
    .
    https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/07/29/putin-reminds-russians-he-can-do-suppression-a66616

    20 Years of Vladimir Putin: The Rise and Decline of a Regime. Moscow Times. August 9 2019,

    https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/08/09/20-years-of-vladimir-putin-the-rise-and-decline-of-a-regime-a66782

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/12/vladimir-putin-west-russian-president-20-years

    1. “He has now created a police state that brooks no dissent”

      Hmm. Sounds like Rooshia over the last 300 years, rather than a new phenomenon.

        1. Indeed. Good morning, Our Susan. Prom any good?

          When the bloke started singing the other night, did the band play on?

          1. No, Salonen stopped the band and restarted the piece. The Mahler 4 last night was nice but not the best I’ve heard it. Joyce DiDonato singing Berlioz Summer Nights, on Sunday morning, was lovely. The USA Youth Orchestra were very good – but they wear a uniform of black jackets and bright red trousers! Loud.

          2. Just can’t be doing with Mahler…

            Miss Didonato always seems, very modestly, to thrust herself to the fore… Only natural in a performer, I suppose!

          3. Before I had my angiogram in the Spring, they asked me what music I would like to listen to .. I said anything classical.. believing the NHS choice would be limited .

            As my procedure got under way, Mahler’s Adagietto from his 5th symphony slowly permeated the space I was in.. Tears rolled down my eyes .. it was the pain not of the procedure but the choice of music that hit me hardest of all .

          4. I did this review about Mahler’s 6th symphony, which was performed in Flensburg after the world premiere of Alma Deutscher’s new symphonic overture ‘Siren Sounds’:

            ‪…What can be said of the Mahler that followed? Only that when I looked round, both Alma and Guy [Alma’s professor father] had fled after the interval, knowing what was coming.‬

            It started solidly enough, with repeated crotchets similar in style to that used in Hitchcock’s ‘Psycho’ during the famous shower scene, but with full-blooded orchestra, rather than the screeching of the upper strings. Well, it’s distinctive and symphonic, and clearly intended to be the work of a serious composer (whereas Alma just does dance music, doesn’t she?). However, after 20 minutes of BANG BANG BANG BANG, I was beginning to weary and wondering how much longer this movement was going to last. Mahler is one who likes to give his money’s worth, so it was a while to go yet. To add a bit of interest, the very large conductor stamped his foot – probably if some unfortunate under his baton missed a bang.

            ‪At last, we came to the second movement. In the pause, I heard a very audible sigh of relief. Maybe this assault can cease and I can enjoy some beautiful slow music. How wrong I was! The second movement was exactly the same as the first, and went on for as long. It felt as if I was inside a blacksmith’s forge, with the industrious hard-working German blacksmith clearly serious about his work. Occasionally, we’d get sparks flying up during the banging, but the fellow was clearly happy in his work and was not going to take a break anytime soon. I began to know what it’s like to be an anvil.‬

            The blacksmith does have a day off for the third movement, and we get to hear the sounds of the village spared of all the banging, but even the village gets bored with tranquillity and surreptitiously at first and then resolutely attempts to restore the cacophony left behind after industry departs. Back at full spate, I don’t even notice or care about the conductor stamping his foot any more. I was yearning for Alma [Deutscher] to return. Please come back to us, Alma!

            ‪The final movement I could not make head or tail of. Was the blacksmith having a nightmare, or were the spirits of the night in the village taking over? The best part, by far, of the whole thing was the last note. That was brilliant, and wonderfully played. With great feeling.‬

      2. Morning Bill. Yes they had lots of newspaper headlines under the Tsar’s and Politburo trashing the Government!

      3. That’s what I thought, Bill; at the first sight of a whiff of freedom it was business as usual.

    2. We took advantage of the chaos after the collapse of the USSR and pushed NATO/EU influence right up to Russia’s borders, effectively poking the Russian Bear with a stick.
      Putin is the reaction to that.

      1. Good point.
        We should have helped the Russians recover.
        Time and again, when the crunch comes, we have been on the same side.

      2. Remember when the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Empire collapsed.

        The politicians all said that this would enable us to spend less on defence and more on other things – they called it the Peace Dividend.

        We have now squandered the ‘peace dividend’ and deliberately weakened our borders so the chest is empty when we need to rebuild our armed forces.

        Do politicians ever get anything right?

    3. Take out Putin and put in May and you’ve got Britain. The Left just can’t see the horror they’ve created.

  10. Good morning all – cool and cloudy in Laure. The promised storm in the night never arrived.

      1. Just looked at the rain radar – there IS rain in the area but it will (as always) miss us.

  12. Please Help a Friend in Need….

    I’m reaching out because a friend of mine needs some help !!!!

    His wife told him to go out and get some of those pills that would help him
    get an erection.

    When he came back, he tossed her some diet pills.

    Anyway, he’s looking for a place to live.

    Can you help him ?

  13. Labour could bring an end to the ‘Glorious Twelfth’ as it calls for review into grouse shooting

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/08/11/labour-could-bring-end-glorious-twelfth-calls-review-grouse/

    The ever-chippy Chris Packham started the ball rolling. The chippy Michael Gove promoted Tony Juniper into his current position to stir the pot. And now Labour reckon that there are votes to be had in anything that smacks of toff-bashing. There are few toffs remaining who can still afford to go grouse shooting; it’s all been gobbled up by City slickers and Ayrabs.

    1. Grouse moors are survivors of the pell mell destruction of the uplands by state and private forestry since the 1920s. All the ones I visit (and I do not shoot, never have and have no wish to) are havens to birds that are in catastrophic decline elsewhere. It is not uncommon to hear or see six species of waders on grouse moors in an hour’s walk. The R.S.P.B. are hypocrites. They jumped into bed with the oddly named British Association for Shooting and Conservation around the turn of the century, as was widely reported at the time. The current campaign against grouse shooting is capricious. Last century I was told by officials of applications made by the R.S.P.B. for licences to kill gulls. These made the R.S.P.B. actually the organisation responsible for the largest culls of birds in the U.K. in those years.

  14. Who would be best placed to lead this Government of National Surrender?
    CHARLES MOORE

    We need someone with a real track record of trying to make the United Kingdom unworkable

    I am enjoying this talk of a Government of National Unity as the solution to our Brexit ills. What would the nature of that unity be?

    Ken Clarke, the current favourite, could say “We’re against the referendum. We’re against the result of the referendum and against the promise we MPs made to implement it. We don’t agree with the 17.4 million people who voted Leave and we don’t think that the biggest vote for anything in our history should be respected. Parliament, including many of us, voted for Article 50 and for the Withdrawal Act, which ensure that we leave if no deal is made; but we’re against them all the same. Unite!

    “We want a second referendum – except some of us, including me, don’t. We want to leave the EU with a deal – except that some of us, including me – don’t want to leave at all. We think this Parliament would vote for a deal – except that most of us threw out Mrs May’s one three times by huge majorities. Unite!

    “The Conservative Party has just voted heavily among both its MPs and its members for Boris Johnson to be leader. We’re against that. Jeremy Corbyn has twice been elected Labour leader, but we’re against that too. And by the way, we’re against the promises made by both the main parties at the general election to ensure Brexit – or at least I am. Unite!”

    Mr Clarke is a man of great political merits, if a little too 20th-century for some. Other candidates mentioned for this great task of bringing us all back together again include Yvette Cooper, Sir Oliver Letwin, Hilary Benn and Dominic Grieve. All are people with remarkable qualities, and one wishes them well. It’s just this name “Government of National Unity” that I don’t get.

    How about deleting the word “Unity” and replacing it with “Surrender”? I think that would clear up any misunderstanding. And how about reaching out to the younger generation for leadership of this great movement? We need someone with a real track record of trying to make the United Kingdom unworkable. I nominate Nicola Sturgeon.

    A Royal mile
    If the Tories lost a vote of no confidence, says John McDonnell, “I would be sending Jeremy Corbyn in a taxi to Buckingham Palace to say we’re taking over.” He puts it revealingly. Mr McDonnell – the real boss – would be issuing orders to Mr Corbyn. And Mr Corbyn would not to seeking the Queen’s invitation to form a government but would be telling her, in a mini-coup, that his party was now in charge. That is how the hard Left thinks.

    But I am more worried about the taxi. Since this no-confidence vote would supposedly take place in September, it is no good Mr Corbyn trying to force entry to Buckingham Palace. The Queen won’t be there. He would have to go all the way to Balmoral, which would take a black taxi roughly eight hours, and cost over £1,000. It would not look good on parliamentary expenses.

    Besides, Her Majesty would presumably have advance notice as the media cavalcade processed sedately behind Mr Corbyn’s cab up the M6. Plenty of time to make good her escape and disappear among the heather.

    The countryside is under siege
    Round us in East Sussex and Kent, the pens of several game farms and shooting estates in which pheasant and partridge are reared have recently been attacked. The assaults are made at night, and are serious. One game-keeper I know tells me that the assailants of his partridge pens stripped off and rolled up an 80 foot by 40 foot net.

    This would have required at least three people. They would also have needed heavy-duty knives to cut the much stronger plastic netting. They systematically smashed the birds’ night shelter, snapping off sturdy posts at their base. These were not casual vandals. In his case, more than 2,000 partridge were released. Seventy-five of them died immediately because they huddled in fear of their attackers and suffocated.

    A bout of (unpoliced) thieving in the countryside amounts to the rural version of “hate crime”
    The keeper has already picked up a hundred other corpses, and reckons that about half of the “liberated” chicks will die quickly because they are still too young. (They are kept in pens not as a permanent habitation, but to grow up in safety.) They will prove too weak and inexperienced to overcome lack of food and water, or evade attacks by foxes and tawny owls. At night, he says, partridges fly blind, like human beings running in the dark. His mostly fled to a neighbouring valley where there is precious little for them to eat. So far, the police have just shrugged and handed out crime numbers.

    Yet these attacks are a) cruel to animals b) a real threat to livelihood (the damage and potential lost business runs into five figures) c) an intimidation of those who care for the game-birds, who usually work alone in quite remote places. They are also the rural version of “hate crime” – motivated not by love of the birds, but by a prejudice against anyone who shoots.

    Imagine the justified protests in a suburban street if maniacs opposed to pet-owning (a growing band, by the way) “freed” everyone’s dog. The police would act fast. Under modern interpretation, rural crime too often means someone finding the dead body of a buzzard and the police rushing it for autopsy in case poison is found. Pheasant and partridge, in their thousands, are given no such consideration.

    1. How about deleting the word surrender which implies that a battle has taken place
      when the word submission would, IMO be much more apt.

    2. “Who would be best placed to lead this Government of National Surrender?”

      Obviously Goldfinger.

      That would fit perfectly. He’s spent vast sums of money on his globalism project and in a sense has already bought Britain.

    3. Some years back, a pack of beagles were ‘liberated’; I think they belonged to a university pack.
      It is difficult enough to conceal one beagle, let alone a number of them. Nothing was ever heard of them again in the media. By now, all the dogs would be dead, but does anyone know where they went or who ‘re-homed’ them?

      1. On the old AOL message boards there was an Animal Rights commentator going by the name of Rea Wales who gained a beagle shortly after that raid.

          1. The mink didn’t make it to North Shropshire (we do have the Cheshire Minkhounds close by); we have voles aplenty (well, at least in comparison with the rest of the country).

    4. Last paragraph is way off beam. The police don’t look for lost children, so won’t be looking for dognappers. Nor do the police rush to hunt down poisoners of protected birds. Videos showing these crimes have been declared inadmissible in court. The police may not be interested in dead partridge chicks, but they are not much interested in any stuff that’s more than 5 minutes from a Macdonald’s. So, get it straight, crime is crime.
      The problem is the inconsistent and generally tepid police response to it.

    1. Chuckles. There may be something in that. I once sent a Spanish woman packing who started screaming & shouting into her phone in the IP lounge at Heathrow simply by belching very loudly. She withdrew very quickly

        1. That is one disgusting old woman. I feel embarrassed for the rest who have to be filmed with her.
          She has gone downhill since her Spanish Infanta days.

          1. The only reason why I still retain a small (very small) amount of respect for her is because of her deep love for (and promotion of) Charles Dickens.

    3. There once was a fellow called Carter
      Who was a phenomenal farter
      He could play every tune
      From ‘Sleepy Lagoon’
      To Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata

      1. The bos’uns name was Larter,
        By God he was a farter,
        When the wind wouldn’t blow
        And the ship wouldn’t go,
        They’d get Larter the farter to start her.

        1. The young boy on the clipper
          Was an awful little nipper
          He stuffed his arse
          With broken glass
          And circumcised the skipper

    4. I remember having a severe attack of flatulence in a crowded bar, The music was very loud and I realised I could let it all go in time with the music and thus gain relief. This I did and everyone started looking at me….I then realised I was listening to my Walkman

  16. Morning all

    SIR – The power cut last Friday was waiting to happen. For over 25 years, successive governments have failed to support a reliable means of meeting this country’s energy requirements.

    The green lobby has persuaded officialdom to build solar farms and wind farms. But there is a big problem: the sun doesn’t always shine, and the wind doesn’t always blow.

    We have to stop closing conventional power stations. They are desperately required if we are to prevent power failures from becoming a regular occurrence.

    Edward Lawrence
    Woolwell, Devon

    1. SIR – If ever there was a good reason for not buying an electric car, the power failure was surely it.

      Terry Gabriel
      Herne Bay, Kent

      1. I disagree with Terry Gabriel’s logic but do think the drive for all-electric is utterly bonkers and has more to do with our impractical political class than with common sense.

        Will we ever be ruled by people who know how things work?

      2. Battery electric cars are a dead end. The only sensible approach is to have induction loop things in the roads. Cars with batteries and induction pickups. On main roads the cars pick up electricity to run, and to charge battery. On side roads cars run on battery. The technology exists. It needs to be developed.

        1. And what would induction loops do to people with pacemakers, hearing aids & metal inserts to repair broken bones?

        2. We could have pantographs on the roofs to take their power from overhead lines. We could call them trolley cars. 🙂

          1. With a little box on the back to carry a couple of horses in case of power cuts?
            But seriously, power supplies can be beneath the surface of the road and power can be picked up.
            I do not know why this is not being tried out and tested. Battery cars are self evidently not the way to go.

  17. SIR – Charles Moore attacks the suggestion that we should limit our red meat consumption in order to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.

    Global food production is responsible for 30 per cent of greenhouse-gas emissions, and red meat production is by far the largest culprit. Any responsible individual will accept understand the need for a degree of restraint.

    Peter Taylor
    Tipton St John, Devon

      1. When you look down the hill to our village as you come down from Lulworth , a stranger would assume we have several large glistening lakes .. What are they… solar farms ..

      1. Dear Peter

        Get lost!

        Good morning everyone. Bit cool today and someone said to me on Saturday “Autumn’s on its way”!

        1. I’ve heard several people today commenting that it has an autumnal feel to it. Whatever happened to summer?

  18. Sadiq Khan wants a slavery museum in London.
    Some tw@t on LBC is trying to explain why it’s a good idea. Because we’re apparently all unaware of the bad chapters in our past, like the Left doesn’t talk about it constantly.
    I wonder if it will include the white slave trade by the Musselmen. Or how much this country paid and did to end slavery worldwide.

    1. The idiot Khan has been watching Poldark .. sadly has become rather tedious and left led .. focussing on slavery issues , yet not one mention of the Barbary raids on Cornish fishing communities ..

      1. Completely off topic, Belle. I remember you going into raptures over your pressure cooker.
        Which one did you choose?
        I’m looking at an electric one that is also a rice cooker and a slow cooker.

    2. Will it have copies of the contracts in place at the Gambia slave museum??You know the ones signed by the local chiefs to deliver their war prisoners and local ne’er-do-wells to James Island??
      No thought not…………
      I ruined the holidays of two Afro-American ladies who were there doing the “Roots” thing when I told them not to miss the museum,it wrecked the narrative

      1. Were the two ladies thinking of down-sizing and going back to their ancestral lands?
        A sort of ‘Home in the Sun’ with added dust and monkeys?

        1. Ah,so you’ve visited the “Kunta Kinte” village as well have you?
          I think they ended up with an “Ali”
          Thank gawd someone dragged my great great etc grandpappy onto that boat

          1. When we were in Gambia – 1981, I think as we returned to the news that the Yorkshire Ripper had been arrested – the Roots thing was just about taking root.
            There were outings to the island, but we didn’t bother.

    3. Apart from any such museum presumably being mandatory for schoolchildren to have to visit, wonder who else would want to attend?

    4. a) Which country did most to destroy the slave trade?

      b) Which races have been the most barbaric exploiters of slaves?

      c) Why doesn’t this silly little man concern himself with the realities rather than trying to stir up ‘white guilt’

    5. I’ve been thinking about writing something that points up the benefits of slavery to slaves.

    6. Another example of ‘learned and rehearsed history’. Several well paid black commentators in the U.K. claim to be descended from slaves from the plush surroundings of broadcast studios denied to the majority. Join the club. My people were serfs for 350 years. But that was a long time ago, so let’s look at what cushy lives we all live now beginning with Khan the Magnificent.

      1. As a Celt I know that my ancestors were pushed to the margins by invaders. Where do I get my apology and compensation?

        1. By a stroke of luck the people that did this to your tribe are very successful at making money and sympathetic to scroungers.

    1. Everything really hinges over how long they can keep up Project Punishment without upsetting German car makers, French cheese makers, Dutch horticulturalists, Danish pig breeders, Polish plumbers and dentists, Romanian pickpockets, Greek and Spanish hoteliers and Irish storytellers.

      1. I’ve been checking the source of many items, particularly food for at least a couple of years.
        I wonder how many others are doing the same?
        Would the MSM ever give us the figures? Would the EU states ever give the MSM the figures?

    3. I have rated both Ruth Lea and Kate Hoey very highly for many years. How we have needed people like them in government – not because they are women but because they are intelligent, clear-headed and competent.

      Do feminists really think they are serving the feminist cause by pushing airheads like Nikky Morgan and her ilk forward? By all means lets have competent women in important positions because of their competence and not just because they are women.

      1. Even though it doesn’t need people going on school strike to waste everybody’s time.

    1. ‘Morning, Caroline,

      For those who don’t have Premium:

      No wonder they’re worried about exams – we’ve robbed our children of the gift of independence

      Helicopter parenting has created young people who are neurotic about failure and struggle to deal with it
      The A-level results come out this week and, naturally, many young people are feeling anxious. But maybe it’s not the high-stakes tests, or the students themselves, that are to blame. Maybe it’s not even the parents, though we love blaming them for most things.
      Maybe the real problem is that society has all but eradicated childhood independence, leaving young people no way to build the confidence that comes from handling some problems and pressures on their own.
      This is a new development. Think back to your own childhood: chances are there was a time when something you did went spectacularly wrong, and even though you were scared and young, you had no choice but to deal with it.
      At my talks, I often ask the audience to tell me stories like that. At a recent education conference, one woman remembered how she and her friends were taking turns riding their bikes down a hill that ran straight into the street. This hill was covered with pine needles, so her bike practically flew down, and just as she was about to career into traffic she jammed on her brakes to stop – and the handlebars came off. She had a nanosecond to fling herself into the bushes – ¬and did, emerging grazed and bleeding.
      Another audience member recalled when he and his friend got so lost on a group trek that they had to hitchhike back – the one thing they had been warned never, ever to do.
      A third man talked about the time he and his friends were playing mumbly-peg (one person throws a pocket knife into the ground and the other has to extract it with their teeth – it always seemed like a very silly game to me). Sure enough, one child accidentally flung his knife into another friend’s foot. The whole gang surrounded the injured boy and carried him upstairs to the bathroom, concealing his injury from his parents. Then they had to wash and bandage the wound.
      The one thing these three folks had in common (aside from all becoming school administrators) is this: they never told their parents, because they didn’t want to lose their freedom.
      Somehow they understood that without the chance to have adventures, screw up and fix things themselves, not only would they have a lot less fun, they would also be losing out on something important: developing the “muscle memory” of dealing with disappointment and disaster.
      That is the very opportunity many of today’s children are denied. The school day ends, but adult supervision does not, as they are shuffled off to extracurricular activities, sports leagues or tutoring. Even kids whose families cannot afford extra classes often attend after-school programmes where an adult presides over homework help and whatever activity comes next. Afternoons, weekends and whole summers that might have been spent playing mumbly-peg (or perhaps something less insane) are spent with adults calling the shots and solving the problems. And even if the parents aren’t around, they are monitoring the kids electronically.
      Why does this matter? Consider this analogy. Some things are fragile, like a wine glass. Drop it on the floor, it breaks. Then there are things that are resilient, like a plastic cup. Drop it on the floor, nothing bad happens – but nothing good happens either.
      But then there are the things that are anti-fragile, things that actually need a bit of stress to toughen up. These include the immune system, which grows stronger by fighting off some germs. And bones, which grow stronger with some resistance exercises. And children.
      This is not to say that children benefit from facing trauma or abuse – not at all. But the developing brain expects to be called upon to deal with some frustration, fear, betrayal and disappointment. When these growth opportunities don’t materialise, the brain misses out. Fragility never gets a chance to transition into anti-fragility.
      Later on in life, when perhaps you are confronting some big test results, it helps if you can remember that you are the girl who jumped off her bike at the last minute and emerged scared, scraped, bloodied – and ready to do it again. That is a gift we have to give back to our children. It’s called independence.
      
Lenore Skenazy is president of Let Grow, an organisation dedicated to restoring childhood independence

      2. An analogy from 1987 comes to mind.
        After the hurricane, a local wood was devastated – apart from the trees growing round the edge.
        The trees inside had grown spindly and not bothered to put down proper roots because the trees on the periphery had protected them from strong winds. The protected trees were absolutely flattened.
        The trees on the fringes had put down deep roots in order to survive normal English weather and this sturdy reliance had let them survive a once in 300 year event.

      3. Our eldest girl scraped her leg. She had been trying to climb tree apparently. Some years later we learned from another child what really happened. She had come home from school but forgotten her key again and wanted to get into the house. She had fallen off the roof. We also learned that she had subsequently improved her climbing skills for later similar occasions.

        1. Sylvia, our eldest came home, aged about 13 or 14 after a country day out with her older cousin, with a bloody scar down her back which she blamed on a bramble. Years later she told me that she had got it scrambling under a barbed wire fence but hadn’t dared tell us because her Mama would have insisted on an ant-tetanus shot. Sylvia was more afraid of needles than a mere barbed wire fence!

        2. We were amazed how quickly our sons learnt to drive.
          We discovered years later, that at around the age of eight, they’d been nipping into the local builders’ yard and driving the dumpers trucks around.
          (Ah, for the days when we left keys in our vehicles!)

      5. As a Father of two girls born in 1966 and 1970 respectively, my then wife and I agreed that the best things we could them were a good education and independence. They have both thrived in their own, separate ways.

      6. I rode horses throughout my childhood; they are a great leveller and things were always going far from to plan! You picked yourself up, got on and rode away – and you didn’t let your mother know you’d cracked a rib or you would never have been allowed to ride again because she was terrified of horses!

      1. So that’s what Uncle Bill looks like!

        PS – Who is the chap holding him up?

        :-))

  23. Power cut:

    Our energy systems are not precarious..
    They are designed to be fail safe so when the system cannot cope with demand the grid will shed load through the use of predefined area circuit breakers thus ensuring that working generators are not compromised by loss of synchronisation with the grid.

    What is of concern is the rollout of Smart meters which are basically domestic circuit breakers which could become part of a nationwide load shedding system over which customers have no control.

        1. Potential spies, Tony.

          It wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to look at a smart meter recording and to extract a regular occupancy pattern (out at work, for example).

    2. No it should switch in standby capacity. Are you seriously trying to say that we did not have enough capacity to meet demand on a hot summer day?

      What are we going to do when the Winter comes if that is the case?

      1. If the standby is in the wrong place, it doesn’t help, by making the grid unstable.
        Edit:
        Also, if the standby isn’t running, it can take quite a while to come on stream. Coal, for example, is slow to start. Dinorwig pumped storage is almost instant – that’s its purpose.

        1. The purpose of the UK National grid is to move the power to where it is needed and if The Wind Turbine brigade are telling the truth we should have had plenty of that capacity to switch in

          At this time of year we are only using a tiny fraction of our total energy capacity. The loss of two modest sources of energy should not have shut down a significant part of the UK

    3. The grid can become unstable due to imbalance with feeds and loads. It will try to isolate these too.

    4. I read a couple of weeks ago, just a snippet, that the Government has “quietly shelved” the rollout of smart meters. Sorry I don’t have a link. But not before time – they are a complete con.

      1. There are still “happy happy joy joy save the planet” adverts on TV for smart meters. In blatant defiance of ASA rules as smart meters won’t save the planet -“honest and truthful”?

      2. All I could find after searching Smart meter rollout was a June 2019 Ofgem open letter where the Government accepts that consumer engagement strategies bordering on harrassment are necessary for power companies to reach their rollout targets and avoid being fined:

        While consumers are not obliged to have a smart meter installed, suppliers should consider
        appropriate re-contact strategies based on customers’ preferences, contact history and
        reasons for not previously accepting a smart meter. As previously stated, overly repetitive
        and coercive approaches, as opposed to innovative and tailored re-contact strategies, can be
        counterproductive in delivery of the rollout obligations.

        https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/publications-and-updates/smart-meter-rollout-energy-suppliers-progress-and-future-plans-open-letter-june-2019

        1. Thank you Angie, I’ll try a search of my own, tho I’m not saying it will be any more productive than yours. Can’t remember where I read it but could have been neighbour’s DT which he passes to me with the sudoku when he’s finished with the paper.

    1. There’s a firm of eastern Europeans round the corner from here which may be able to help – Flag Poles Ltd.

  25. Norman Lamont talking sense on Radio 4.

    How did that get passed the BBC control freaks…

    1. I said before, the voters are not stupid. Promises galore that are neither affordable nor likely to be fulfilled are just teaser bribes and make Johnjid and Javson look stupid.

    4. £350M a week goes a long way.

      However, why is the money tree currency red? Are those Chinese bank notes?

    5. Let’s not forget that we pay the EU a lot of money which can stay at home and if we get out with “no deal” (ie WTO rules) we immediately save £39bn.

  28. A French port chief has emphatically dismissed alarmist claims that there will be massive delays between Dover and Calais if the United Kingdom leaves the EU Customs Union in a no-deal Brexit. “There are certain individuals in the UK who are whipping up this catastrophism for their own reasons. This has provoked a lot of concern but basically ‘c’est la bullsh**’,” Jean Marc Puissesseau, the president of Port Boulogne Calais, told The Telegraph on Sunday.

    Mr Puissesseau has been saying that his port is ready for No Deal and that there would be no delays to freight since January, and dismissed allegations that his British colleagues are not ready, either.

    “The British authorities have been doing a great deal to prepare. People say they are asleep but I can assure you that they are highly professional and they are ready,” he said.

  29. Noel Gallagher vows to leave London for good after stabbings on his street

    Rocker Noel Gallagher says a housing estate war near where he lives means he has to leave London behind.
    The former Oasis star revealed there have been two stabbings on his street recently – and he can’t have his kids growing up with such violence on his doorstep.
    He is so sick of the current situation in the capital that he thinks it’s best for Anais, 19, Donovan, 11, and Sonny, eight, if they move elsewhere.

    The 52-year-old has put his mansion up for sale – but accepts he may lose millions on the £7,950,000 property.
    The singer and his family are set to move to the country and it appears he can’t wait to get the keys to their new place.
    Noel told the Irish Independent : “We’ve had two stabbings outside our house

    “I live, as you can imagine, in quite an affluent area. At one end of the street is one housing estate and the other end is another housing estate. They are currently at war.

    “One guy was tabbed in the middle of the f***king day and an air ambulance had to come and land in the middle of the street and all the streets were taped off.”

  30. “The Government will give broadcasting watchdog Ofcom new legal powers

    to police, investigate and fine video-sharing and live-streaming

    platforms to protect children from “harmful” content including violence, child abuse and pornography.

    The regulator will be able to penalise firms that fail to establish robust age verification checks and parental controls”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/08/11/instagram-facebook-youtube-could-fined-millions-pounds-showing/
    Oh how we laffed
    Right you can’t stop a tech idiot like me bypassing a ban on book sites like library genesis within 5 minutes but you’re going to control tech savvy youngsters??
    Now about this bridge I’ve got for sale…………………..

    2. It’s not about them. It’s about us. They want to know who we are without having to track us. They want online businesses to keep lists. Logging into “Going Postal?

      1. I enjoy GP,I think it’s also a useful Bellwether,when they go after GP we wont be far behind

    3. Government is still rooted in a ‘our country, our rules’ approach. It’s odd, as they mst know about the rest of the world because they’re always so eager to have it control us yet when it comes to the internet they’re utterly stupid.

      However, they obviously want the great EU firewall. That’s why they really want to ban encryption – money moving out of the country, content going overseas – if they can stop it, they can control it.

    4. When I tried to access library genesis (rus), I received this message from TalkTalk.
      “Access to this website has been blocked under an Order of the Higher Court.”
      I don’t understand it as we do not have a “Higher Court”.
      Oh, and how much do you want for the bridge -asking for a friend?

    3. Win10 I found to be better than 7, and free upgrade then, too.
      It’s almost identical GUI, too.

    5. When I upgraded from Win 7 to Win 8, it was a horrible experience. I am not a tech guy, like everyone else is, but I ended up uninstalling lots of their files before I could use my scanner, printer, and a few other things. They ignored me when I said I did not want a google e-mail address. The whole system seemed to be re-arranged either to spy on me or to sell me something.
      Having cracked it, I am still happily using Windows 8.1. When Windows 10 came out, 90 per cent of people who fell for the advertising found that installing it was twenty-five times more awful than a trip to the dentist for seven extractions on the same day without anaesthetic.
      I kept out.
      The next version Win 11 ? will use a chip off the old block.

      1. They’ll prise Win7 out of my cold dead hands,what “updates” do you need??
        As for “Microsoft security” I’ll trust my anti-virus thanks

        1. I do suspect a lot of these security features are backdoors for the Government agencies to be able to get in and pry, but have to be changed around each time the criminal and commercial hackers get wind of them. Government security is notoriously leaky when it comes to the business interests of villains.

          1. I use both of those, Superantispyware daily and Malwarebytes weekly.

            I also use Ccleaner every time I’ve deleted the ‘History’ of my browsing and it also gets rid of those ad cookies attached to your browser.

            For safety’s sake I’ve also paid for the ‘Avast’ upgrade which comes with a powerful VPN. as far as the snoopers are concerned I’m in London.

        5. I’m using Win7 – it took quite a bit to wean me off XP! I’ve had a go on MOH’s Win10 machine. I don’t find it at all user friendly.

    8. Much depends on what you do.

      I can’t recommend linux for a normal person, it’s just too much work.

      That means either staying with Windows 7 (behind a typical home router and using a modern browser such as Firefox or Chrome) you should be ok.

      Windows 10 is an abomination, so you could look at Mac OS and a second hand device there, but it does mean a bit of a change. Macs are expensive but you do get what you pay for.

      1. Thanks wibbling, I’m definitely not normal!

        I’m using Chrome ….my techy knowledge is on par with my nursing skills….zilch!

    9. Persevere with Windows 10 would be my advice, just ensure your system is capable of running it. Depending on your needs a Chromebook (Android OS) might be a cost effective alternative.

    10. If you can afford to switch, going Apple or a chromebook are probably the easiest way forward. Linux and so on are OK when running but not for the non techie of heart.

      Windows 10 has been an absolute nightmare when trying to install the regular upgrades on an older (huh, maybe six or seven years) machine, in the end I had to completely reinstall Windows. Supposedly it is now stable but I will believe that when the upgrades work smoothly.

      The statistics that I get from a web site that I maintain shows a lot of very old operating systems users out there. Never mind Windows 7, there are Windows 95 and older systems still running. Staying on old windows is an option but it leaves you open to virus thingys. If you go that route you need a decent third party virus checker and I would bet that Microsoft do their best to make new software incompatible with the old stuff.

    11. I have a mac, using the last stable version with a decent mail interface and disk utility, which is 10.6.8 Snow Leopard. I do also run Windows XP via an emulator, which has a better File Manager and also runs a number of legacy applications that have been dumbed down in later versions.

      I avoid the cloud, have a couple of decent malware programmes, and log out of the internet when not in use, and also before shutting down. I also backup regularly on local media, both with Time Machine, and the entire XP disk image (about 40GB). If Windows gets corrupted, then I simply replace the .pvm file with the backup.

      One day they will write an operating system with a decent interface that is not a screen and memory hog, demanding relentless scrolling, and auto-installing all sorts of malware, and yet does all the things that XP did nearly 20 years ago. Then I’ll upgrade.

        1. You don’t..? I don’t use iCloud either. It’s just pushed on you. You push back. At least with a Mac you can see that you’re not using it rather than having azure lumbered on you in the background.

    12. I have decided to move to 10 from 7, which can be done free of charge, as long as the current Windows 7 is genuine. This can easily be confirmed.
      https://helpdeskgeek.com/windows-7/check-if-windows-7-is-genuine/

      I have researched other alternatives such as Linux but I think the initial difficulty of getting used to 10 will be far easier than moving to a new system.

      https://windowsreport.com/windows-10-free-upgrade-2018/
      https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/upgrade-to-windows-10-free

        2. I find Windows 10 to be a hindering annoyance.

          I’ve never known an OS actively fight me.

      2. Windows 10 is a decent operating system, far better than windows 7 and not hard to use at all. Windows 7 goes out of extended support early next year, it won’t even get updates to protect from nasties such as Wannacry.

        If you hate windows 10 that much the alternative is to buy a Mac which generally have a 5 year lifespan before they no longer can be updated.

        Windows 7 has had it’s day. Windows 8 shouldn’t be used it’s absolutely awful on desktops and not much better on tablets.

        What problems are you having with windows 10?

        Linux is fine as long as you are fairly technical minded. MacOS is largely a very tied down version of Linux designed to take a lot of the hassle of operating system management away.

  32. “The European Union has trade agreements with countries as distant as

    Canada and Korea, as small as Panama and Peru, and as poor as Ecuador

    and El Salvador. Yet for the United Kingdom – on the EU’s doorstep, the

    world’s fifth-largest economy, and the continent’s most capable military

    power – Brussels refuses to negotiate a trade deal unless it can

    control our laws.

    This is the reality of the humiliating Withdrawal Agreement”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/08/11/shelving-backstop-will-not-enough-must-also-avoid-fatal-trap/
    We noticed Nick,maybe you could let the Al-Beeb and Sky know too??

    2. I have a bald patch and a thick luxurious beard, so I like to say that my hair has slipped down a bit with old age. This fellow looks as if it’s slipped upwards though!

      I anticipate being stopped by posse of plod encamped on the A40 between Ross and Monmouth. I might be gone some time.

      1. Slammer, I see.

        I have often wondered what happens to slammers who want to be butch and brave with their great black beards -when they won’t grow….

        Presumably they become misunderstood and unhappy and miserable and turn to bomb-making.

      2. Hi Anne,
        like you, I spotted the pointy hair boss similarity almost immediately, but the PHB avoids the goatee trap. People of African origin can be quite self conscious about their noses and also their hair, just like the rest of humanity.

    4. After all that was said about the hairstyle of that recently promoted female police officer.

    3. Is he old enough for an Old Fart’s card?
      Asks a taxpayer covering his expenses… um … either way ….

  35. Drug crime mapped: Gangs operating away from home cities

    Drug crime is increasing in many small towns and villages even as it falls significantly in city centres, the BBC has found.
    Police data shows drug crimes in England and Wales have fallen by more than 50,000 in the past five years.
    But national averages hide a major shift in where drug crimes are being committed.
    It comes as the government pledged an extra £85m to prosecutors to help deal with a rise in violent crime.

    1. Time to stop talking about making drugs legal.
      Make drug crime legal instead.
      The drug takers will be happy.
      The criminals will be legal.
      Redundancies in the police force can be blamed on Brexit.

  37. Scottish government ‘ready’ to nationalise Ferguson shipyard

    This potentially put them at risk of breaking EU law and facing a substantial fine it also means if they but it it will cost Scotland a very large some and the business is but and has little future workload

    The Scottish government is “ready and willing” to take Ferguson shipyard into public ownership, Economy Secretary Derek Mackay has announced.
    He said this was to avert the yard’s closure with the loss of 350 jobs, and to complete two ferries being built there for Cal Mac west coast services.
    The move follows legal notice being served that the business faces administration by the end of this week.

    Under European Union rules it is illegal for countries to give financial help to some companies in a way that would give them unfair advantage over others.

    1. ‘Under European Union rules it is illegal for countries to give financial
      help to some companies in a way that would give them unfair advantage
      over others.’

      Unless they are French owned.

    2. Yes, this is true, however what the EU also does is rig the market so making it easy to move those jobs elsewhere (promoting the one country nonsense) and also prevent us scrapping all sorts of taxes against those companies to make it easier for them to survive.

      However, one wonders if we couldn’t have done the same to the Welsh steel works and the northern one – if we had left the EU.

      As for the fine, Scotland can’t afford that. We’ll be lumbered with it.

    4. We should be clear that we have so few shipyards that every one must be regarded as a strategic asset. The EU rules need to be flouted by us in the same way that they have been flaunted by every other member State with shipyards.
      British shipyards suffered badly because we followed the EU rule to put work out to tender. So yards in Poland, Finland and other places got work that should have been done in the UK, UK shipyards went out of business. This was exactly the same pattern as happened with the fishing industry.
      And has happened with other industries. Ill-natured complaint because this yard is in Scotland reveals a plain anti Scottish bias, does it not? To protect our fish after October we should be building patrol boats in every yard in the land, as well as frigates for our world-wide shipping. How do we do that if all our yards are closed down?
      Finally, “unfair advantage over others”? Look about, look across the EU. Places like Latvia and Poland did not pull themselves up. We poured money into them via the EU. How much over 20 years? Hundreds of millions of pounds. During which time our country has been on the skids.

      Edited to correct predatory testing

          3. They’d need a death wish. I heard last night that a fishing boat moored in the river upstream of the harbour broke its moorings. Probably a tree coming downstream, there have been quite a few. Once the bow rope went, the stern rope followed and the boat was washed out to sea. Fortunately there’s been not much wind, so the sea wasn’t bad. They launched the lifeboat and recovered it four miles off Boulmer.

          5. Don’t think they do that these days, but there might have been some bonus from the insurance company.

            I’ll ask.

  39. I am against any new laws, particularly ones motivated by chippiness. This is an interesting article from the Spekkie.
    Maybe NOTTLers from Midge Central can give us the benefit of their wisdom and insight.

    https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2019/08/rewilding-our-grouse-moors-would-leave-landowners-and-the-public-better-off/

    Rewilding our grouse moors would leave landowners and the public better off
    Ben Macdonald

    Labour has said it will open a review to decide whether grouse shooting should be illegal. Here, Ben MacDonald argues that grouse moors have left our countryside immeasurably poorer:

    “Britain’s hunting estates were once beautiful. Walking through the New Forest, we can all appreciate how the purchase of land for hunting can radically protect our countryside. Almost a thousand years after William the Conqueror set aside this wooded wonderland, we can still enjoy its aged oak pastures, Britain’s largest herds of free-roaming grazing animals, and a chorus of birdsong that has been lost in most other corners of our land.

    Britain’s original royal forests model is recognised around the world as a commonsense approach to hunting. From Alaska to Scandinavia, hunters, alongside ecotourists, invest huge profits to sponsor the natural world. Hunters take a quota of animals from these special places — and leave the rest. This approach, known as ‘sharing’, ensures landowners make enormous profits, enjoy the respect of society and bequeath to the nation extraordinary biodiversity. A Finnish hunting estate will be hunted for elk, boar, deer and grouse. It will also abound with eagles, cranes, four species of grouse and thousands of wading birds. This is the kind of paradise that any British landowner would love to own.

    Sadly, 150 years ago, our hunting estates made a terrible mistake. They decided to turn red grouse into the equivalent of living clay pigeons — and shoot them, without skill, in their thousands. To do so, they created grouse farms in our uplands: wastelands, scorched to feed just one bird.

    After more than 100 years of destroying our national heritage, grouse moors have left our countryside immeasurably poorer. Our upland wildlife — an ecological gallery of wildcats, eagles, hen harriers and many other iconic species — has been relentlessly wiped out. One shooting estate’s infamous record illustrates the industrial scale of the killing. On Glengarry Estate in the Highlands, between 1837 and 1840 alone, 27 white-tailed eagles, 15 golden eagles, 18 ospreys, 275 red kites, 63 goshawks, 462 kestrels, 285 buzzards, 63 hen harriers and 198 wildcats were killed. To put this in perspective, just 35 wildcats remain today.

    Extraordinary acts of desecration are usually repaired a few generations later, especially in a country as cultivated as our own. But the grouse moor debt has never been repaid. Now, amid the burned wreckage, we are supposed to be thankful for the grouse that are sustained by what was once an extraordinary landscape.

    Yet it is the staggering economics of our hunting estates that would make any Conservative financier see blue. For the 8 per cent of British land that grouse moors use, they contribute one job for every 6.5 square kilometres. In all, English and Scottish moors together contribute 0.005 per cent to Britain’s GDP. Astonishingly, they create 0.008 per cent of its jobs. These are economic deserts without parallel.

    Grouse moors claim they boost local economies. Those economies beg to differ. In all, 16 per cent of shooters spend just one night in a B&B each year. The RSPB’s tiny but popular reserves brought the same income to the UK economy in 2009 as all our grouse moors combined. The English adult population makes more than three billion visits to the natural environment each year, splashing £21 billion in the process. In Scotland, nature-based tourism is estimated to produce £1.4 billion per year, along with almost 40,000 jobs. Britain’s grouse moors, meanwhile, account for just over 1,772 jobs directly involved in the industry.

    Grouse moors are running at an epic loss, while destroying both jobs and wildlife. Unsurprisingly, there is now increasing pressure to call it a day. But there could be a very different route — which would be to follow the older royal forests model. What I suggest is simple: landowners must rewild these estates.

    Our hunting estates, empty and depopulated, are suited to extraordinary acts of natural restoration in a way that no other British land is. Rewilded estates are beautiful and their opportunities diverse. Running costs are far lower, being governed by free-growing trees and free-roaming animals, which help maintain those crucial open habitats for birds such as curlews. Famous and profitable estates such as Knepp, in Sussex, are already revealing the astonishing biodiversity seen when herbivore rewilding takes place. But in our uplands, it could take place on a different scale altogether.

    In the past, landowners have acted with extraordinary vision. More than a century before the RSPB came into being, the enterprising Marquess of Breadalbane reintroduced the capercaillie to Scotland. This irate turkey still rampages through our Caledonian woodlands.

    Imagine, then, the steps that could be taken to rewild a large hunting estate in northern England. Defying our country’s savage bureaucracy and the small-minded people telling you ‘no’, you could regrow birch and pine forests, reintroduce black grouse and capercaillie, and release wild horses and free-roaming cattle on to the hills.

    Millions would pay to photograph elk rutting on your land — but first you would need to put them back. Needless to say, the hunting bounties on an animal that last walked Britain in the Bronze Age would be enormous. In Finland, spectacular banquets of the day’s hunt — elk, boar and grouse — are served. Impressive animals are harvested from impressive landscapes. Grouse moor owners, meanwhile, can only flaunt their tracts of burned heather.

    Those who have the time and money to hunt also have the capacity to undertake epic endeavours — and to oversee acts of restoration. Britain’s landowners have the power to change past mistakes. Just 175 people in England own all our grouse moors. They could transform our country for ever.”

    1. Morning Anne,
      IMHO ALL of the 48% of the UKs “grousers” should be terminated, if not physically then rhetorically.

          2. M,
            Not hard is it to those that wish to see.

            Ps also,
            Mice won,
            The result of the football match betwixt
            mice v elephants.

      2. It has always struck me that the antis are innately much more violent and cruel than the huntsmen and women who blend seamlessly into the countryside with their beloved animals at their side.

        1. Afternoon E,
          I do agree with your sentiments as in the animal rights brigade do get animals terminated.
          The context I used “grouse” in was one of whingers / whiners, ( grousers).

        2. I’m sure that is true. Of course the rich have always been calm in their supreme self-confidence, overweaning arrogance, and certainty of the protection of the law. .

    2. I also don’t know of any “hunting estates” in Norway, at least.
      Landowners permit hunting on their land, and there are quotas for animals set each year. If you have a hunting permit, you can buy a day/week/season ticket on the web for much land – see http://www.inatur.no
      The hunting group that Firstborn is a member of doesn’t allow anyone not a relative to hunt on their collective land.

    3. Instead of game shots they could introduce peasant shoots.

      Only an h missing but it would see the introduction if an activity that appealed to the feral youth that run rampant through the cities.

      Makes it multicultural as well, bonus!

      1. And needn’t be confined to ex-grouse moors (happy and contented moors?). Much more challenging if carried out round the purlieus of bog standard estates and from vantage points in tower blocks.

    4. Yo Anne

      It’s a re-issue of Ben’s Speccie piece of 11 May 2019 (I haven’t checked it word for word but Ben has a book to sell). He’s very selective with his ‘facts’ as the following DT piece shows.

      Daily Telegraph – 6:30PM BST 23 Apr 2008

      The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds has been accused of hypocrisy after its flagship reserve in Cumbria was officially revealed to have the lowest numbers of moorland birds in the region.

      However, a survey of 17 moorland areas by the Government’s conservation advisers, Natural England has found that the RSPB’s 12,000 acre reserve at Geltsdale, Cumbria, had lower-than-average densities of all important moorland birds, compared to neighbouring keepered moors.
      Lapwing density was lowest of all the 17 moorland sites of scientific interest (SSSIs) surveyed by Natural England and for golden plover, curlew, black grouse, snipe and redshank, it was only just above last place.

      The only birds that was more plentiful on the RSPB’s moor were the carrion crow – a predator species culled on most grouse moors – for which Geltsdale had double the average, grasshopper warbler and reed warbler, which are not typical moorland birds.

      The Geltsdale reserve is surrounded by famous grouse moors, including Blubberhouses, where the record number of grouse were shot in a day in 1888, Gunnerside, Bollihope – belonging to the Maktoums, the rulers of Dubai – and Allenhead. All had larger populations of moorland birds.
      The RSPB admits that its Geltsdale reserve has not had any breeding hen harriers since 2006, due to breeding failure.

      The survey has reignited criticism of the RSPB’s management of its reserves that was sparked most famously two decades ago by its failure to control foxes and crows at its Abernethy reserve in the Cairngorms, where the population of endangered capercaillie was declining as a result.

    5. Banquets of the day’s shoot? Nobody would do that. The animal needs to hang for 40 day-degrees to be tender enough to chew & swallow.
      Makes you wonder how much of the rest of it is bollux.

        1. Me neither. Like LACS Ltd’s deer “sanctuary” where deer are suffering and overcrowded, the RSPB’s nature reserves are not exactly shining examples of encouraging the breeding of rarer species.

      1. How sad that this poor child should have been used so cruelly in a cause that will bring misery to so many people in the future. What will she think when eventually she wakes to the realisation that she has been manipulated and used in furtherance of a grotesque lie whose purpose she is shielded from?

  41. “UN Climate Change Learn: For Primary and Secondary Schools

    Harwood Education has teamed up with the United Nations Institute for

    Training and Research (UNITAR) to develop and deliver an innovative

    Climate Change Education Programme for primary and secondary schools in

    the UK. This ambitious multi-annual project will seek to develop a

    comprehensive package of interactive classroom materials on climate

    change for school teachers and children:

    1) UN Climate Change Learn: Specialist E-Course for Teachers

    2) UN Climate Change Learn: Interactive Teaching Programme for Children

    Although climate change has been around for decades, climate change

    education has not. Our mission is to teach children how to understand

    and live in a world affected by climate change, but without fear. We

    want to spread this message to as many organisations and individuals as

    possible through the UN system. We believe that it is necessary to

    engage children and youth in changing societal attitudes and behaviours

    through their schools, families, and communities.

    One of the programme’s goals is to kick-start an international

    climate change youth dialogue that fosters direct discussion between

    school children around the world through the concept of ‘Climate Change

    Diaries’. The UN Youth Climate Dialogues-inspired documentary TV series

    will showcase how children around the world are coping with climate

    change in inspirational ways. The campaign will be promoted

    internationally through online channels and on social media.”

    https://harwoodeducation.com/un-cclearn/
    How very Jesuitical…………………..

    1. How dreadful is the hold these Lefties have on children. My grandson, aged 17, is quick wiitted and open to argument but tells me that should he raise questions about warming he would be called a ‘moron’.

    3. This is a truly shocking revelation, which could have come straight out of the Hitler Youth manual.

    4. Rik, I mention above that Emma Barnett interviewed an advocate of this teaching of CC. Your comment is more detailed than mine as I only caught a segment of the broadcast. Thanks for link.

    5. Could children not just have ordinary pen-pals like we had?

      PS. Climate change has been around for ever, and is nothing to do with us.

    6. Although climate change has been around for decades, climate change

      education has not

      The untruth of climate change having only been around for decades immediately reveals their duplicity, it’s climate alarmism that’s only been around for decades!

  42. Article from TCW:

    https://www.conservativewom…

    Why force feed us this anti-family feminism?
    August 12, 2019

    FEMINIST literature does not feature on the national curriculum, so after studying at an all-girls grammar school I often question why it was force-fed to us. Growing up without the self-imposed ‘feminist’ label, the only ‘glass ceilings’ I knew were in the realm of my own personal growth and development, rather than the divisive gender-based distinction with which they are now widely associated.

    The two most prominent texts studied were Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Angela Carter’s anthology The Bloody Chamber.

    The former focuses on Gilead, a dystopian patriarchy controlling female life. Atwood’s accounts of ‘parts of women’s bodies, turning to black ash’ at the women’s march is an image widely recognisable and identifiable with the 21st century feminist movement, supporting the author’s claim that these extreme acts lead to a lack of support for the original cause. This is a warning for modern society, and for a novel written over 30 years ago, the message is clear: feminism, at present, does not work.

    I believe society resonates with Atwood’s warning that control over women’s bodies via feminist extremes is undesirable, counter-productive and destroys power that women hold in the relationship with males.

    A Refinery29 and CBS News poll showed that 54 per cent of young women in the USA agree that feminism has been largely taken over by far-left wing activists. I fear, however, that for many teenage girls this battle cry of ‘taking back ownership’ of their bodies has become such an integral part that the true feminist message is becoming completely misconstrued.

    Biological function is the key theme to feminist texts that I believe has the most propensity for divergence of the feminist cause. The Handmaid’s only role is to mother children – to be a ‘worthy vessel’; a woman without children ‘has failed’. This power dynamic subjected women to servitude. However, this simply isn’t true.

    More than 43 per cent of college-educated women between the ages of 33 and 46 are childfree, and more women are choosing careers over childbirth.

    In today’s economic and employment related climate, women are freer than ever – the choice is theirs. So why are these texts focusing on the negative repercussions of having a family? Patmore’s 19th century poem The Angel in the House focuses on his wife, a model for all women, claiming that ‘man must be pleased; but him to please is woman’s pleasure’. The 2008 US study The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness has shown that as the relative freedoms of women are increasing, levels of subjective well-being and happiness have fallen considerably. Is it possible that the core tenets to feminist doctrine are responsible for the demise of female happiness? Feminism, giving women the freedom to make their own choices without restriction and judgement – but still circulating the apparent dangers of following your maternal desires?

    The teaching of such literature seems to revolve around creating stereotypes in an effort to drown out the heroines of our childhood readings. The philosophical feminism that our sisters and daughters are becoming familiar with is becoming an identity; young women are becoming a collective – a tribe.

    It is this faction of the feminist movement which is becoming so angry within society – to the point where no real change or developments are being made – feminism is rapidly radicalising, and approaching nothing more than a virtue signal.

    To this, I respond with Gandhi – ‘Be the change you wish to see in the world’. Feminists of the past worked towards the changes that they wanted to see. Josephine Butler campaigned for the inclusion of women at Cambridge University, Emily Davison died for the vote – yet 21st century feminism seems more concerned about changing society’s perceptions of women, rather than changing women. To change a stereotype, one must not adhere to it. Perhaps, if feminists focused less on the ideas of gender conflict and the perceptions of centuries past, their cause would have increased support from young women such as myself.

    The marginalisation of women in eras past was frequently justified by the suggested notion that they were more in touch with their feelings and emotions than they were with education and their motivation to be engaged with business and a professional life. More recently, we have seen the exclusion of women from the movement, including Margaret Atwood – accused of being a ‘bad feminist’. In history’s cyclical nature, contemporary feminists have reverted to the stereotypes once placed upon them – over-emotional and concerned with how the movement is viewed, as opposed to the change that they are fighting for.

    In an age where the true nature of feminism has been misconstrued, focusing on literature with a feminist undertone when teaching young girls carries the risk of more danger than fruitful discourse. What we now need to be asking ourselves is: should we be drip-feeding such texts to young women, or should we be focusing on the real feminist issues, and ensuring that the next generation of females is educated and empowered.

    Feminist literature does not breed feminists. An understanding of the history of feminism, and a desire to be the change is what will breed successful, empowered young women.”

    1. Tosh. Queen Alexandra described Davison as “a brutal lunatic woman”.
      That anyone can refer to Davison in laudatory manner renders all their other comments meaningless.

      1. As far as I am aware, Queen Alexandra did not favour giving women the vote. One should not confuse suffragettes with suffragists. The former chained themselves to railings while the latter worked within the law.

        2. Exactly.
          The suffragettes’ behaviour merely confirmed the low opinion of women’s intellect. Their antics were lethal.
          They held back the cause of women’s suffrage.

    1. Haven’t the EU apparatchiks and their Irish gob-shite the Tea-Cosy confirmed on more than one occasion that the WA is sealed, settled and not able to be re-negotiated? May promised them total control over our lands and chattels and they will not give that up easily.

    2. The EU will NOT negotiate if a No deal is not on the table. I strongly suspect that they will negotiate at the 11thg hours as the EU has far to much to loss

      We are the 2nd Largest Economy in the EU

      We are the third largest contributor to the EU budget

      We are the EU’s single biggest export market

      We are Germans Largest export market for Cars by a very wide margin

    3. So the no-treaty lovers (a mere 46%) are in a minority when you add the ignoramuses (14%) to the procrastinators (12%) and the scaredy-cats (29%)

  44. Indoctrination of our children re Climate Change continues apace. Caught a segment of the Emma Barnett programme as I drove around doing errands. She was interviewing a very earnest woman – South African if her accent was anything to go by – on the UN’s scheme to “teach” CC. It would appear that 3,000 or so schools in the UK have taken the scheme on board and it is being pushed hard. Teachers are being offered courses and are being encouraged to place their new “knowledge” into areas of the curriculum e.g. geography, history, maths etc. The hope is that each school will have a CC teacher on staff. One school in Derbyshire is rolling out the programme to four year olds. The globalist cabal have got their grubby claws well embedded into the UN, it would seem.

    1. This is dreadful news and must be fought against. I cannot imagine how it would be possible for a school to teach physics and this agenda at the same time. CO2 cannot possibly do what is claimed for it even were it to be many times higher than it is.

  45. As far as I’m concerned the Johnson Government (just think of ALL those political pundits who said he’d never make it to No.10 or, a couple of months back, that he’d fatally stumbled in the Leadership contest) has made and is making a difference:

    Boris Johnson follows in a long line of new prime ministers eager to place law and order high on their policy agendas. This has been interpreted as a certain sign of preparations for an early general election. But the two key announcements on stop and search and additional prison places are necessary as anti‑crime measures, not gimmicks to win votes, even if that is the consequence.

    Inevitably, the announcements are facing criticism from the usual quarters that oppose any crackdown on crime or always find excuses for offending. Expanding the prison estate by 10,000 places is a reversal of a policy advocated just weeks ago by the previous justice secretary, David Gauke. He was proposing to let more offenders out of jail and extend non-custodial sentences in order to reduce pressures on the prison population and promote rehabilitation. Encouraging prisoners to go straight is always a legitimate aim of public policy, provided it is remembered that the principal function of prison is to punish. It is also true that short sentences make rehabilitation harder; but that is no reason to remove incarceration as a penalty or to reduce the terms set by the courts.

    Mr Johnson said that the investment in new places was “long overdue” and that too many serious violent or sexual offenders were coming out of prison long before they should, and tougher sentences were needed. However, it is well known that the sentences handed down by magistrates and judges are not what prisoners serve. Most are only inside for half the term specified or even less, because of long-standing early release provisions introduced after past population crises. Supposedly temporary measures turned into permanent features of the penal system.

    The idea of honesty in sentencing is an old one and has been promised by successive governments without ever being fulfilled. Public confidence in sentencing policy is undermined when a serious criminal jailed for, say, eight years is back on the streets after four, even if it is under licence. The next penal reform the Government should embrace is greater transparency in the system to ensure the prison term handed down by the courts bears a passing resemblance to the period served.

    It is extraordinary to see the reaction to Mr Johnson’s proposals from campaign organisations opposed to getting tough on criminals and making the streets safer. The new Prime Minister knows whose side the public is on.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2019/08/12/pm-right-focus-law-order-next-priority-must-restoring-public/

        2. How would you like it? Birch, belt or something really adventurous and naval like the Cat O’ Nine Tails? of course some are pricier than others.

          1. I was merely reflecting that the IoM was a place where juvenile offenders were frequently birched.

            I suppose ‘Uman Oits have stopped that common-sense approach.

    3. Expanding the prison estate by 10,000 places is a reversal of a policy advocated just weeks ago by the previous justice secretary, David Gauke. He was proposing to let more offenders out of jail and extend non-custodial sentences in order to reduce pressures on the prison population and promote rehabilitation.

      Gauke calls himself a Conservative as well!

      1. And everyone else calls him ….. (answers to be suitable for reading in a family newspaper).

    4. A Prime Minister who implements what the public want? Just who does he think he is? A breath of fresh air after his bluddy liberal predecessor.

      2. Firstly it won’t happen unless Javid releases the funds for it to happen, then the DoJ will ask all the usual construction companies to put in bids. Takes years to go from idea to manned prison. At the moment it’s nothing more than a soundbite.

    5. The principle function of prison is not to punish at all, it’s to segregate criminals from law abiding people and to give a chance for rehabilitation. If we wanted a punishment system we’d look a lot more like Saudi Arabia.

  46. Not being a poetry buff, I had never come across this chap before.
    The poem is quite spare, but for me, it pack an incredible emotional punch.
    Visually, it reminds me of paintings by Eric Ravilious.

    (I hope this doesn’t start the week on a too downbeat note.)

    “Eden Rock. Charles Causley

    They are waiting for me somewhere beyond Eden Rock:
    My father, twenty-five, in the same suit
    Of Genuine Irish Tweed, his terrier Jack
    Still two years old and trembling at his feet.

    My mother, twenty-three, in a sprigged dress
    Drawn at the waist, ribbon in her straw hat,
    Has spread the stiff white cloth over the grass.
    Her hair, the colour of wheat, takes on the light.

    She pours tea from a Thermos, the milk straight
    From an old H.P. Sauce bottle, a screw
    Of paper for a cork; slowly sets out
    The same three plates, the tin cups painted blue.

    The sky whitens as if lit by three suns.
    My mother shades her eyes and looks my way
    Over the drifted stream. My father spins
    A stone along the water. Leisurely,

    They beckon to me from the other bank.
    I hear them call, ‘See where the stream-path is!
    Crossing is not as hard as you might think.’

    I had not thought that it would be like this.”

      1. Heyup!
        I’ll be going up Sutton Bank on Saturday and will probably call into the visitors’ centre somewhere about 11ish.

        1. I’ll try and be there Bob from about 10.45.. I think I will recognise you. I am usually in the first car park at the top of the hill and I have a bluish silver Astra with the number plate last 3 letters BGF. I shall meet you in the visitor centre/ cafeteria.

      1. Charles Causley was born in Cornwall and spent most of his life in Launceston. I wonder if our Plum Tart is an enthusiast of his thought-provoking poetry.

        When I did my PGCE for English at Southampton University in the 1970’s we looked at many poets whose work was recommended for children. Causley’s Timothy Winters was very highly rated by us all.

        The Wikipedia entry on him is well worth reading.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Causley

  47. Mr Google

    I’ll be heading to the big city shortly and have sought the help of Mr Google’s satellite and street views to get me to where I need to be.

    Last year, I visited a far-off relative of mine for the first time since I sold my car and the aforementioned Mr G was invaluable. Train and bus stations/stops, landmarks and street names must have saved me ages over the old-fashioned “excuse me, can you tell me…..” method.

    I was a bit suspicious about the maps when they first appeared but now I’m sold on them.

  48. “Consequently there was a long period during which nearly every
    thinking man was in some sense a rebel, and usually a quite
    irresponsible rebel. Literature was largely the literature of revolt or
    of disintegration. Gibbon, Voltaire, Rousseau, Shelley, Byron, Dickens,
    Stendhal, Samuel Butler, Ibsen, Zola, Flaubert, Shaw, Joyce — in one way
    or another they are all of them destroyers, wreckers, saboteurs. For
    two hundred years we had sawed and sawed and sawed at the branch we were
    sitting on. And in the end, much more suddenly than anyone had
    foreseen, our efforts were rewarded, and down we came. But unfortunately
    there had been a little mistake. The thing at the bottom was not a bed
    of roses after all, it was a cesspool full of barbed wire.

    It is as though in the space of ten years we had slid back into the
    Stone Age. Human types supposedly extinct for centuries, the dancing
    dervish, the robber chieftain, the Grand Inquisitor, have suddenly
    reappeared, not as inmates of lunatic asylums, but as the masters of the
    world. Mechanization and a collective economy seemingly aren’t enough.
    By themselves they lead merely to the nightmare we are now enduring:
    endless war and endless underfeeding for the sake of war, slave
    populations toiling behind barbed wire, women dragged shrieking to the
    block, cork-lined cellars where the executioner blows your brains out
    from behind. So it appears that amputation of the soul isn’t just a simple surgical job, like having your appendix out. The wound has a tendency to go septic.”
    Orwell

    1. And I’m calling for those same women to just shut up and go away.
      And take Sadiq Khant with you.

  50. Russell Group universities to admit students with grades as low as CDD

    Russell Group universities are preparing to admit students with grades as low as CDD, by giving them an extra year of tuition to get them up to speed.
    Some of the country’s leading institutions are now adding on an extra “foundation” year to undergraduate degrees to cater for pupils who failed to get good enough A-levels to win a place on the course…

    …The courses – which charge the full £9,250 in tuition fees – are designed to prepare students for the rigours of a university degree.

    So, there’s an extra £9,250 for the ‘Universities’ and another bit deeper in debt for the thickest of undergraduates. Ain’t edookashun wunnerful?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/08/11/russell-group-universities-admit-students-grades-low-cdd/

    1. I went to London University with D and E at A-level.
      I now have BSc MSc Ph.D MBA C.Eng.
      Grades ain’t everything.

      1. Hmm 1st year sixth absolutely no work,the party year after “O” Levels
        2nd year sixth “oh bugger better get down to a bit”
        #Bright but lazy
        (Me)

        2. #Me too, but stayed for 2 terms of a 3rd year sixth to retake physics, & spent my time doing German, French & Spanish instead. Out at Easter.

        1. If you go mad, I’m qualified to sit by your bedside, drop a few pills in you tea and read Chaucer to you.
          Or I could go all Handful of Dust and make it the Complete Works of Charles Dickens.

    2. In some subjects, RG universities have had to add foundation courses for some years now, because of the dumbing down of A levels.

      1. 25 years ago, a Maths prof. told me she spent her first year covering stuff that used to be done in the 6th. form.

        1. I did maths at University. The entire school maths curriculum to A level was covered in the first six weeks.

    3. More to the point they aren’t counted as unemployed people and don’t cost a penny in benefits. It’s really quite the wheeze from the government’s position. They make loans which increases the money supply by money creation effect, they charge massive interest on said loans, and they remove almost 50% of people from being possibly counted as unemployed under the age of around 22. At the same time the loan money is spent in local communities increasing economic behaviour.

  51. Breaking

    Someone in London’s just been killed with a starter pistol . Police think it may be race related ..

    3. Rik, is a “starter pistol” the American version of a starting pistol? In much the same way that a “driver’s license” is an American version of a driving licence? :•)

  52. Slightly off topic,
    Old “nige” is giving the Aussies his slant on the Queen Mother.
    My personal view is that in dire times and when it counted 39 / 45 she did not take flight from the fight, there is the noticeable difference, “nige”

  53. “Police investigating the disappearance of a Vietnamese girl in York have charged a man with child abduction.

    15-year-old Linh Le, who speaks no English, went missing from her

    tour group in Coney Street. She was last seen with an Asian man on the

    bar walls above Station Rise, York at 4.40pm on Tuesday 6 August.

    Detectives say a 25-year-old man has been charged with child

    abduction and facilitating a breach of immigration laws and is due to

    appear at York Magistrates’ Court later.”

    https://www.itv.com/news/calendar/2019-08-12/man-charged-with-child-abduction-over-vietnamese-tourist-missing-in-york/
    Not a teenager,so what’s the excuse this time for no name being reported??

    1. A ‘breach of immigration laws’. Sounds good. Sounds most promising. I wonder what the punishment will be? Hospitality courtesy of the taxpayer?

      Silly me, I didn’t even realise we had any immigration laws whatsoever.

    2. They have said that he was an Asian man. That pins it down to either Uzbekistan (possibly ) or Pakistan (99.47 per cent of the time.

      1. Narrow horizons, Tony?

        There’s more to Asia than Uzbekistan & Pakistan, y’know.

        1. I was going to say Thailand but deterred by the probability that you would come out with some more funny remarks, or a mention of your Thai wife.

    1. I must say he seems to be not half bad.
      Glad I took Gerard’s advice and voted for him!!!!!!!!

  56. Singapore-style reforms can cut through Britain’s tax and trade red tape outside the EU
    ROGER BOOTLE = 11 AUGUST 2019 • 6:00PM

    Now that Brexit is getting closer, more attention is being directed to our future trade relationships, especially with the US but also with the rest of the world. This is entirely appropriate. Trade matters, and the tariff regime and associated trading arrangements have some bearing on trade performance. But nothing like as much as people commonly think. You don’t need trade agreements in order to trade. This is shown by the fact that, despite there currently being no trade agreement between us, our largest single export market is the US.

    Perhaps more surprisingly, important though trade is, successful trading arrangements are not in themselves enough to deliver economic success. For a country like the UK, the domestic economy is far larger than the traded sector. And it is policies that affect the domestic economy that matter the most.

    For the UK, exports account for roughly 30pc of GDP, with just over 40pc of this going to other members of the EU. So British exports to the EU account for not much more than about 12pc of our GDP. This means, of course, that about 88pc of the economy is not accounted for by exports to the EU and about 70pc is not accounted for by exports to anywhere. This 70pc of GDP satisfies demand from households, companies and government.

    In this regard, the UK is far from unusual. Indeed, among developed economies, we are roughly in the middle of the pack. Admittedly, there are some European countries that export proportionately much more. Germany’s ratio of exports to GDP is a staggering 47pc and the Netherlands’ ratio is 83pc. But for France and Italy the ratio is about 30pc, roughly the same as for the UK.

    Given all the attention lavished on trade relations between the US and China, you would think that these countries’ trade dependence is very high. But it isn’t. China’s ratio of exports to GDP is 20pc and for the US the figure is only 12pc.

    Admittedly, some of the extremely successful small countries in the world, notably Singapore, have a very high ratio of exports to GDP – 176pc. And it is difficult to imagine that they could thrive without great export success. Moreover, it is usually thought that success in their export sectors brings benefits to the wider economy. So, however successful these countries also are in the domestic economy, that too can be attributed to their export prowess.

    But this is a gross oversimplification and it can potentially be highly misleading. For the causation runs in both directions. These countries are successful at exporting partly because their domestic economies are run so well.

    Why is it that small territories with no resources, such as Singapore and Hong Kong, can manage to operate very successful economies that deliver high living standards for their populations while resource rich countries, including Russia and many countries in Latin America and Africa, fail to sparkle?

    The answer is all about governance. It is possible that the ready availability of wealth from natural resources, which requires little effort, actually makes matters worse. Easy profits and the battles to secure them tend to corrupt the functioning of both the economy and government.

    This notion is known in the literature as “the resource curse”. By contrast, those countries that have little or no resources must live by their work and their wits.

    This is of key relevance to our economic future outside the EU. Many Remainers, and those who would like to keep Britain as close to remaining in the EU as possible, argue that not only do we need to stay in a special trade relationship with the EU but we also need close alignment on regulation and tax. But why? Over recent decades the EU has been a zone of relative economic failure. This is partly to do with the role of the state.

    There are several possible models for the appropriate size of the state – as evidenced by the different paths followed by Hong Kong and Singapore. Yet whatever the state decides to do it must do it well.

    Much experience suggests that what matters for economic success is a combination of low and simple taxes, a lack of overbearing regulation and effective government in the provision of essential public services, including infrastructure and the maintenance of law and order (which is now coming into question in Hong Kong).

    Putting it more positively, although breaking away from the EU’s protectionist trade policies will bring the British economy decided benefits, this is not the greatest prize.

    If we end up doing better outside the EU, as I believe we shall, it will be primarily because our domestic policies on tax, regulation and the role and effectiveness of the state in the economy are radically shaken up to take account of the opportunities and challenges that Brexit presents.

    So tax and regulatory reform is not an optional extra. It needs to be right at the centre of what a post-Brexit British government seeks to do. This is why the section in Mrs May’s Withdrawal Agreement that laid down that the UK would maintain regulatory alignment with the EU was an abomination.

    In any deal that Boris Johnson does with the EU there must be nothing of this sort included. We must be free to pursue our own course on regulation and tax. Not only will the right policies invigorate the domestic economy, but they will also establish a platform for export success – whatever the external tariff arrangements turn out to be.

    Why do you think it is that over recent decades so many of the countries of Europe have not done very well economically despite their endowments of land, capital and know-how?

    The international evidence suggests that the answer is poor economic governance. Could this perhaps be something to do with the EU? We may be about to find out.

    Roger Bootle is chairman of Capital Economics; roger.bootle@capitaleconomics.com

    2. In the immediate term, I would put interest rates up to 2.5% to stabilise the pound, and to capitalise on its weakness brought on, not so much by failure of the British economy, but rather artifically by a programme of Project Punishment from the EU Commission and their global corporate lobbyists to set an example to other member states thinking about leaving.

      Interest rates could go down again in November following a sterling bounce as folk realise that buying pounds, artificially undervalued and at the bottom of the market, is a rather canny thing to do.

      The biggest change following a proper No Deal Brexit (rather than the No Deal thrown up by the Withdrawal Agreement, where the only “Deal” is the Backstop) is the realisation that we are no longer bound by Napoleonic prescriptive directive, prohibiting anything not officially approved, registered and registration fees paid in full. Anything that does not impinge on the liberties of others becomes legal, and the only constraint is in our imagination and our sense of enterprise and adventure and courage.

      Let us revive these virtues!

  57. From Brian Cates, star of the Epoch Times..

    “Nobody asked for my opinion, but here it is anyway”

    “Mueller’s investigation of a hoax alleging a foreign government attempted to influence the 2016 election by helping the Trump campaign will result in the exposure of an all-too-real foreign bribery industry that the elite establishment created both in Washington and in the mainstream media. These elites created this industry in order to reap massive profits from it as they sold out U.S. interests to the highest bidders.”

    1. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IzF7nBmwPso

      Sen. Cruz Questions Victims of Censorship on Google’s Bias

      This whole video is worth watching, but particularly from about 5:30 when Sen.Cruz questions Dr. Robert Epstein about his testimony regarding how Google can manipulate its users…and voters. It puts the whole “Russiagate” nonsense into perspective, and is probably where the Democrats got their initial inspiration from, ie, to blame the Russians, when Google, Twitter and Facebook were doing exactly that very thing, i.e. manipulating voters.

  59. Off Topic
    Possible security problem.

    It may just be a coincidence but a couple of times today I’ve clicked on video links posted on Nottle and received a message that my firewall was switched off. I had to reset it manually.

    If it really is a security problem be careful when clicking on any links..

    I restarted my PC and it switched on again as usual

    1. Thought I’d check my settings and up popped McAfee with a completely new format that must have been in the latest update. No previous warning of a change. Checked the security and all is well. Thanks for the prompt.
      On security matters I’ve been receiving regular messages that my credit card has had £600 spent against it in a foreign country. It’s a scam, of course but I think I’ve noticed a change in the “instructions” to stop the transaction. I’m sure that the original instruction was to dial #1 but yesterday’s message requested just the digit 1. I’ve banned originating # calls on my phone and I wonder if the scammers have discovered that intended victims are having that facility activated? Everyone has to be made aware of what these crooks are up to.

      1. I agree.
        If ever something odd happens when on a site I try to bring it people’s attention. My security often used to block links from some posters, it happens less frequently, thank goodness.

  60. Good afternoon,

    For all you fans of Highland League football. It’s official, Fort William FC is the worst football club in Scotland! They’ve not had a win in over two years and they finished bottom of the Highland League fourteen times in the last twenty years. They ended last season bottom of the table on minus seven points, after fielding an ineligible player.

    Long may they continue. They make “The Lilywhites”* look good.
    :¬))

    * Clachnacuddin FC

    4. Didn’t they win against some better team recently although they’d borrowed players fro Caley Thistle?

  61. Seven Sisters Road: Man, 25, suffers ‘life changing injuries’ after stabbing in north London

    A man has suffered life-changing injuries after being stabbed in north London this afternoon.
    The incident happened on Seven Sisters Road at around 2.19pm.
    An air ambulance reportedly landed at the scene, at the junction of St Ann’s Road.
    Scotland Yard initially said the victim’s condition was life threatening, though hospital staff have now said they are life changing but he is expected to survive.

  62. In light of their abandonment of white non-metropolitans, it won’t be long before Labour add coarse fishing to the list of proscribed activities…

    I’ve voted Labour all my life but their latest attack on the countryside is a step too far
    PATRICK GALBRAITH – EDITOR OF SHOOTING TIMES – 12 AUGUST 2019 • 1:50PM

    The latest eco-illiterate policy has permanently fractured the relationship between field sports enthusiasts and the Labour Party

    It’s hard to believe but once upon time, carrying a Labour party membership card in your hunting breeches or tweed plus fours, wasn’t uncommon.

    After all, Engels regularly wrote to Marx about long days in the saddle with the Cheshire Hunt and one imagines, during the season, he’s up there looking down on the likes of the Banwen Miners’ foxhounds with a comradely smile. Meanwhile, I’ve heard old countrymen say the only good thing about the miners’ strikes is that it meant there was more time for fishing.

    I write this as a person who shoots regularly and has voted Labour ever since I was old enough to put pen to ballot paper but I’m afraid such a position is no longer tenable. I used to argue social welfare was more important than Labour’s increasingly barmy views on field sports but their eco-illiterate call for a review on grouse shooting, and their talk of a ban, would be so destructive to rural communities that I’m afraid I’m out.

    Those opposed to moorland management regularly claim land is drained in preparation for the shooting season. There is no denying that in decades gone by, drainage for agriculture has been a problem. The reality, though, is that gamekeepers on sporting estates are at the forefront of reversing the harm. As of 2019, shooting interests have lead initiatives to plug over 4,000km of moorland drainage ditches and more are planned.

    A further claim is that keepers wage war on species that predate on grouse. This is a more complicated one. Carrion crows, foxes and mink aren’t particularly welcome on estates because of their appetite for Britain’s fastest gamebird but the populations of those species is on the increase nationally.

    The silver lining, when it comes to predator control, is endangered wading birds do well on managed moorland while their numbers are plummeting elsewhere. For example, The Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust has found that curlew and snipe numbers have risen by 10 per cent and 21 per cent on moors where grouse shooting has been reintroduced. Meanwhile these birds are facing declines of up 90 per cent elsewhere.

    Then there’s the big one, the much-loved hen harrier, that totem of the anti-grouse shooting movement. The charge is that keepers kill harriers because of their voracious grouse habit. The sad truth is that this does go on but these crimes are carried out by an increasingly small minority and are anathema to everything the vast majority of those who shoot believe in.

    I have previously reported raptor persecution and was pleased to hear from the RSPB that similar calls from other members of the shooting community are not uncommon.

    Crucially, this year, 21 hen harrier chicks have fledged on moors managed for grouse shooting, which is over 60 per cent of the total across the country. It would appear they do better on shooting estates than bird reserves due to gamekeepers culling more foxes.

    So the environmental argument is weak, but for Labour it doesn’t seem as though it’s about that. The Shadow Environment Secretary, Sue Hayman, comments that “for too long the Tories have bent the knee to land owners and it’s our environment and our people who pay the price”.

    Meanwhile, Luke Pollard, MP for Plymouth – that grouse stronghold – appeared on Radio 4, with a sense-challenging argument that leapt from the badger cull to climate change. Chaotic as his contribution was, Mr Pollard did provide one crucial giveaway when he invoked the image of “grand country estates”.

    It doesn’t matter that their attack is ecologically illiterate, this is a class war designed to unite the troops when the camp is in disarray over a summer of Brexit pussyfooting and unconvincing attempts to weed out anti-Semitism.

    But at the end of it all, grouse shooting is an industry currently providing over three thousand jobs in rural Britain as well as up to fifty paid employment opportunities on each estate when shooting is happening during the season. In Scotland alone, that erstwhile Labour heartland, grouse shooting is worth £32million to the economy.

    Fifteen years ago, under Tony Blair’s government, fox hunting was banned. In short, a rural industry was crushed to win urban votes. Blair later admitted it was a misstep and confessed he didn’t understand the issue. Frank words but the damage was done.

    I usually remember the twelfth because I’m up in the hills but I’ll remember this one as the day I stopped voting Labour. I hope that at some point we end up with a Labour party who realise the countryside isn’t just a place to go picking low hanging fruit.

    Patrick Galbraith is editor of Shooting Times magazine

    1. There was never any reasoned argument and certainly not a welfare one to justify ending hunting with hounds. It boiled down to class war and “pay back for the miners”. The whole legislation is a dog’s breakfast and full of inconsistencies.

  63. Some unnamed person shot a gun a few times in a misque closeish to where I live, on Sunday. He has been arrested, but tellingly, there’s no description given . So, not a white supremacist right-wing Nazi, then.
    Is it Slammers squabbling amongst themselves?

        1. I read some early reports yesterday of him being described as “white” by witnesses, but until I saw the Reuters link did not hear or see anything other than the claim he was inspired by the NZ attacks and had reportedly posted on social media to that effect.
          Interestingly, Reuters commented:
          “Reuters could not independently verify that the postings were made by Philip Manshaus.”

    3. A misque? Are you channelling Clouseau or the English gendarme in ‘Allo, ‘Allo? 🙂

  65. British diplomats to pull out from EU decision-making meetings within days

    British diplomats will pull out from the EU’s institutional structures of power in Brussels within days, under plans being drawn up by Downing Street.
    In an attempt to reinforce the message that the UK is leaving the EU by 31 October, “do or die”, the UK would stop attending the day-to-day meetings that inform the bloc’s decision-making.

  67. Goldsmiths university bans sale of beef as part of steps to save the planet

    More total nonsense. The entire planet is Carbon base and beef contributes little to it, it is actually cereal that generate the most CO2. They also use huge amount of water and pesticides and insecticides and most have to be shipped half way around the world to the UK

    1. It occurs to me that if the eco-warriors’ push to drive down the consumption of beef is successful, then by the laws of supply and demand there is bound to be a surplus of beef coming on to the market. To support the Scottish beef industry, I feel duty bound to do what I can to take up the slack by eating even more steak than I do already.

      It’s a dirty job but somebody has to do it.

  68. Breaking News:

    Dominique Grieve to join Caroline Lucas’s Cabinet as Minister without….

  69. I was watching Sky News earlier on & Kay Burley was interviewing Jim Gamble the ex-police officer who still claims that Madeline McCann is alive and can be found and that her parents were not involved in her disappearance, well my money is on her being dead, for me the two blood sniffing dogs Eddy & Keela proved that beyond a shadow of a doubt & as for her parents involvement my money is also on them being involved .

    1. I still prefer the scenario of Kate giving Maddy a sleeping pill which unfortunately was an overdose, and Gerry, to save his career, taking her out through the window and burying her where nobody would find her. Her bones, when found, will be older now.
      Her parents did nothing to attract sympathy.

      1. I one gives a pill and the other does not know it, and then gives another pill …

    2. I’ve always thought similar to be honest but police have been unable to uncover any real evidence.

      The parents are at the very least negligent. What sane parents sod off to a boozy dinner leaving three children under 4 all alone in a hotel room?

      2. Did the police ever carry out an audit of drugs in the hospitals where they worked?

      3. What i found strange was that children, even a baby is often seen late into the night when people are out dining in the warmer countries. Why didn’t they just take them with them? The staff always fawn over the little ones.

      4. My grandchildren are of the same age as the McCann children.
        My son and D-in-L used to choose Warners because they ran children’s clubs and provided child care every evening – bar one, which was a Thursday.
        However, if you wanted to go out on the Thursday evening, Warners would find a vetted babysitter; for whom the parents would pay.
        The McCanns and their friends were all young professionals who could well afford baby sitters. Or, they could have stayed in for one evening out of the week.

  71. Man, 29, appears in court charged with attempted murder of a police officer

    A 29-year-old man appeared in court today charged with attempting to murder a police officer who was run over while trying to stop a suspected car theft.
    Mubashar Hussain allegedly hijacked a police car in Sparkbrook, Birmingham, and reversed into the officer before driving over him as he lay under the vehicle.
    Hussain, of Hall Green, has been charged with 13 offences including the attempted killing of traffic officer PC Gareth Phillips, 42, on Saturday afternoon.

      1. Methodist getting shirty with a Baptist.
        You know what those non-conformists are like; can turn on a sixpence.

  72. I don’t usually bother reading Tom Harris…

    Thank the Lib Dems that Boris Johnson is all but guaranteed to deliver Brexit by October 31
    TOM HARRIS – Tom Harris 12 AUGUST 2019 • 2:59PM

    *
    *
    *
    If the FTPA had not been conceded by Cameron in order to please his junior partners, the situation facing the country would be little different. Boris Johnson would still face the prospect – even the likelihood – of defeat at the start of next month. The main difference is that he would no longer have that precious two-week period in which to try to stitch together a new majority; he would have to announce a new general election then and there.

    Would he still be able to name a date for polling that meant parliament wouldn’t be meeting until after Brexit day on October 31? Perhaps. But the FTPA, the unwanted love child of the coalition, has written in black and white what, until 2010, required a constitutional expert’s analysis to establish: that Johnson need not resign his office unless and until an alternative figure can prove that he has the support of a majority of MPs.

    This is all so disconcerting to Remain-supporting MPs, especially LibDems who so enthusiastically supported the FTPA’s journey onto the statute books. But it is perhaps entirely appropriate that the party that was first out of the blocks, in 2008, with a demand to hold an In/Out referendum on our EU membership, can now take the credit for a constitutional mechanism that all but guarantees Prime Minister Johnson can take the UK out of the European Union, despite the objections of the Commons, on October 31.

    BTL:
    Sandy Man 12 Aug 2019 4:09PM
    Thank you Lib Dems. Bless your little socks and sandals.

  73. Just imagine if we had our news coverage back at the start of WWII

    Here is the news – The German army is marching across Poland, but we don’t think that it is war related.

    1. BBC report:- Smoke rising from various buildings in Auschwitz region; believed a result of Jewish provocation.

      1. Last night the people of London heard the noise of aircraft overhead, at the same time there were hundreds of gas explosions all over the city, Fire Investigators are blaming faulty fridges.

  74. History of slavery in the Muslim world

    Slaves were widely employed in irrigation, mining, and animal husbandry, but the most common uses were as soldiers, guards, and domestic workers

    Many rulers relied on military slaves, often in huge standing armies, and slaves in administration to such a degree that the slaves were sometimes in a position to seize power. Among black slaves, there were roughly two females to every one male.

    Two rough estimates by scholars of the number of slaves held over twelve centuries in the Muslim world are 11.5 million and 14 million,[while other estimates indicate a number between 12 and 15 million slaves prior to the 20th century.

    1. Slavery is still a problem today. It’s widespread in Birmingham …. the slaves have to wear large black bin bags.

  75. Derby Telegraph reporter wins bid to name school where teacher jailed for sex with pupil worked

    According to the Derby Telegraph, Mark Fidler, 49, worked as a music teacher at Belper School in Derbyshire when he had sex with a teenage pupil.

    Fidler from Heanor, pleaded guilty to one count of sexual activity with a girl while in a position of trust and one count of possessing 13 indecent images of the victim at Southern Derbyshire Magistrates’ Court last month.

    3. I am not defending the actions of the teacher, but reading the reports I got the impression the girl involved may be over 16 and that the teacher fell foul of the extra protection that has been put in place to govern the relationships between older pupils and persons with authority or influence over them.

        1. Fully agree. The man is a bloody idiot.
          But from reading the reports, she was not an unwilling partner and, if there was 1 to 1 tuition, the case highlights to dangers that teachers must be aware of and guard against.

  76. Why is pig stealing not also a problem? Why is it always lamb?

    A man has been arrested in a series of police raids probing the illegal killing and butchering of sheep.

    Earlier this week, thieves stole 65 ewes from a field in West Haddon, Northamptonshire, which police are linking to other attacks at farms.

    Officers from Northamptonshire and Warwickshire raided four properties in Coventry on Saturday.

    The 39-year-old man from Coventry was arrested on suspicion of theft and criminal damage.

    Police are connecting the West Haddon theft to a string of incidents in Northamptonshire, which has seen 81 lambs and sheep killed and 258 stolen since February.

    Officers believe the animals which have been killed – many of them butchered in the fields where they were grazing – are then being sold illegally to restaurants and shops.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-northamptonshire-49310737

    3. These are the same people that are leading the climate change scam and using children to promoted it

  79. Afternoon, all. Those of us who are not signed up to the green agenda have been pointing out the lack of capacity and back up in the National Grid, as well as the inefficiency and unreliability of alternatives, for some time. Let’s hope we don’t have a cold winter.

    1. All our winters will be cold now. Thanks to Global Warming. As this last year, they will start earlier and finish later. Get used to it.

        1. Cyclical variation – looked at over the last ten thousand years – nothing to get steamed up about – unless you are a Libtard/Green/Ecofreak, of course.

    1. If you’ve ever been to the Strasbourg parliament (used a few days a year), you would no doubt have been astounded by the costliness of the materials and the sheer chutzpah of the décor. It’s our money they are spending, after all, so no expense spared.

      1. According to the DT, it’s the inside of the Europa building in Brussels. Where our rulers live, I assume.

        The thing in the middle is the new energy efficient light bulb which we’d have had to have fitted in each house were we not leaving.

  81. Just back from the garden – mostly cleaned up. Another half day will bring it up to speed.

    I went down to avoid the visit of the “surveyor”. Nowadays, sellers have to produce a report saying that their house is free from termites, has an energy rating and that the electrics and gas are OK.

    As every house in Laure is constructed inside of large amounts of wood, and as the village is surrounded by vineyards, and as termites thrive on vines and then move to places with nice dry wood – it is always an anxiety. One normally discovers an infestation when part of the roof falls in – the 12″ rafters having been got at….

    The MR came down to to the potager to tell me that we passed with flying colours. No termites. VG energy rating (ours is one of the few houses with double glazing), gas and leccy fine.

    So I am celebrating with a glass of anaesthetic.

        1. Sounds good.

          My last one went on the market just as they were handing out tea and buns to the queue around Northern Rock. Fifteen months later………

      1. VERY good, PT. Go up one!

        In fact I did discover a seven yard strand of trombetti hidden behind the spare door (don’t ask) which is now proudly exposed to the light and will produced trombetti volontiers.

    1. Rioters in the streets protesting against, er, bad government letting them down? Great idea….{:¬((

  83. Hmmm

    1IntroductionThere is an aphorism, which applies to both business and economic policy, that when a dealis too good (or bad) to be sustained, the only question is when and how it breaks down. Thisapplies to the auctions to supply renewable energy under the UK’s Contract for Difference(CfD) contracts.∗The headlines following the announcement of the results of the allocationround in 2017 highlighted dramatic reductions in the strike prices for three projects dueto come on-stream in 2021 and 2022 relative to the strike prices for the previous round ofoffshore wind contracts.Shortly after the CfD strike prices were first announced, Capell Aris, John Constable and Iwrote a paperOffshore Wind Strike Prices: Behind the headlines1questioningthe assumptionthat the capital costs of offshore wind were falling rapidly and suggesting that offshore windwould be unviable at these low strike prices. More recent data on the capital costs of theTriton Knoll, Hornsea 2 and Moray East projects appear to support our conclusion on costs,yet project managers seem undeterred. How can investors justify going ahead with projectsthat appear to have no prospect of covering their cost of capital?TheMorayEastprojectistheprimaryfocusofthisNote. Ithasreceivedalotofpublicityinrecent months as Moray Offshore Windfarm (East) Ltd has announced financial closure andthe award of multiple contracts for construction and the establishment of bases for manag-ing construction and, later, operation. Almost no attention has been paid to whether theCfD contract is sustainable and what will happen if it is not. It seems that officials and politi-cians are making the somewhat naïve assumption that because a project is being built, thedevelopers are planning to operate it on the terms stated.In fact, this is a very high-stakes game of poker. As in any game of poker, the first ques-tion that a participant or observer should ask is: who is the patsy? Who is most likely to payfor the winnings of the successful gamblers? For Moray East the range of possible outcomesis quite stark. Either, a consortium made up of large overseas energy companies and finan-cial institutions is deliberately planning to lose money, or UK electricity customers will findthemselves having to pay much higher prices, so as to permit lenders to recover their loansand the developers to earn some kind of return on their equity.Arguablythereisevenmoreatstake. TheUKGovernmentisbeingpressedbylobbyiststoadopt low-carbon policies, justified by reference to CfD auction prices that are patently un-sustainable on the terms presented, but which are really a one-way option on higher marketprices in future. In other words, low CfD prices are a way of creating positive public relations,and are offered in the expectation that developers can get out of the contracts, because theGovernment is committed to the future of offshore wind and will therefore have to bail outthe industry with a high carbon price in order to save face

    https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2019/07/WindPokerWeb.pdf?utm_source=CCNet+Newsletter&utm_campaign=6ff2c7e9ce-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_07_28_09_58_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_fe4b2f45ef-6ff2c7e9ce-36465045

  84. HAPPY HOUR – Fave films

    The Deep Blue Sea
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b884031e204e2df73181c0c07e1310dfb6c17c247560550b843635fe4da5f085.jpg
    The story centres on the tragic realities confronting doomed Hester who walked out
    of her passionless marriage for an intense, disastrous affair with a dashing young air pilot.

    Several NoTTlers revealed how their hearts had been broken at an early age my own included.

    Little did I realise it wouldn’t be the last time…..

      1. Not Pelican Brief
        Or Twelve Angry Men
        Or Judgement at Nuremberg
        Or A Man for all Seasons
        Or in your case
        The Devil’s Advocate

        1. Twelve angry men is probably my favourite B&W film. So many strong actors, such a good story and tension maintained throughout.

          1. The Cruel Sea was one of mine, for similar reasons.

            But I’m now questioning my memory whether it was in B&W

          2. I haven’t seen that in years. It is a B&W film. Didn’t it have Donald Sinden in it?

        1. That is a terrible thing to do, Bill. You ought to be ashamed of yourself posting that Spoiler.

          1. Good grief, Harry – I honestly had no idea that it was still running – in its hundredth year….

          2. Don’t know whether or not it’s running in London, but there’s certainly a version touring the country. I have never seen it, but in the 1970s (I think) Time Out magazine’s “review” of the play read “If you don’t know that the murderer in this play is ……….. then you will probably never watch it” (or words to that effect). It put me off ever watching it. So can I ask you please to either delete your post or edit it to by removing the second word. Incidentally, if anyone has seen a performance recently can you please tell me whether or not they still use the recording made by the late Derek Guyler as a BBC announcer when the actors switch on the wireless radio.

          3. I saw it 2 years ago in Milton Keynes, Elsie, fortunately unspoilt.

            I can’t tell you anything about the BBC announcer.

          4. Anyone who has ever heard Derek Guyler (later in his career he played the school janitor on TV’s “Please Sir”) will ever forget his wonderful Scouse voice.

          5. He was a good xylophone player if I remember rightly.

            Edit: washboard, not xylophone!

          6. If you don’t know the difference between a washboard and a xylophone I wouldn’t trust you to do my washing. (Variation on an old letterbox and elephant joke!)

          8. Hah ! When ever i walked passed St Martins and there was a queue i always said to every other person…give me a tenner and i won’t tell you who did it. A lot of disgusted looks but the yanks always paid.
            Always made enough for me to go to Raymond Revue Bar and pick up a floozy.

          10. There have always been many types of floozy.

            The Duke of Wellington, you say. Never done any business there. However, Soho and Old Compton St provided a great deal of business for me when i lived in Cascades at Canary Wharf. Signage, Improving their electrical systems for the load they needed to carry, Personal security and alarms. I was even on Sky News once…briefly. The Pink Pound was good for me and it made a change from catering.

          11. In my days as a cinema manager i often walked along the queue and spoiled it for them, for example when screening Saving Private Ryan I would tell them that Hitler lost the War, and for Titanic I told them about the iceberg and what happened when the ship hit it.

            :-))

        2. You’ve already upset me with your post, Uncle Bill. But don’t worry, Time Out did it first!

          :-))

    4. Haven’t seen it. Have read the rarest Biggles book, Biggles and the Deep Blue Sea, though. Possibly the worst of the lot!

      1. The Deep Blue Sea

        Adapted from Terence Rattigan’s original 1952 play, the film captures the austerity and devastation of the early post-war years.

        1. I was talking to the directrice of Rattigan’s Flare Path last week. Interesting woman. She took her cast to Cosford and they talked to ex-WW2 airmen. They expressed themselves surprised that the WW2 bods used the same slang as Rattigan! There is a touch of authenticity because Terence was an air gunner and he wrote Flare Path in 1944, I believe. Shortly before the end of the war, anyway.

          1. Terence Rattigan was a successful screenwriter and privileged to adapt his own stage work to the big screen.
            I guess he went out of fashion wth the arrival of John Osborn and the Kitchen-sink-dramatists.

          2. I have a box set of his plays on DVD. The Browning Version, and The Winslow Boy and Separate Tables are in the collection

    6. Fred: Is there anything I can do to help?
      Laura: Yes, Fred. You always help.
      Fred: You’ve been a long way away.
      Laura: Yes.

    7. Sorry, Plum-Tart, I just can’t enter this Happy Hour contest. My list of favourite films would run to a thousand or so. But here are some: The War Lord, Brief Encounter, Pelham 123 (the original with Robert Shaw), High Anxiety, North by Northwest, etc. etc. etc.

      1. The remake of Pelham 123 isn’t bad but it does lack Walter Matthau who could make just about anything watchable.

      1. ”I saw a production of this Rattigan play at the Northcott Theatre in Exeter about 40 years ago” #Me Too…..!

        The Lovely George…….thanks for posting

    10. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/64bd83c7f62d81ed85f082addedb8b730b219affa34bcc7031593da279af8e2f.jpg

      I’m not normally one to put forward “new” films, as I love so many old ones, but I came across this extraordinarily powerful film a few weeks ago. Here is the caption:

      “Hacksaw Ridge is the epic and inspiring true story of Desmond Doss an army medic and conscientious objector who, during the bloodiest battle of World War II, saved 75 men without firing or carrying a gun. Also starring Sam Worthington (Avatar), Vince Vaughn (True Detective), Hugo Weaving.”

      I think it was the island of Okinawa where this event took place. There was a failed attack on a ridge that you needed to climb ropes to get up to. After the retreat he stayed behind and found any wounded men. He carried them, one by one, to the ridge and lowered them on a rope, then went back for more. In the dark, with the Japanese moving around, he saved 75 men. The other surviving men in his unit did not know he was up there, so he was all alone.

      It is not often that I find myself needing to blow my nose in a manly way as a film is playing, but it happened a few times with this one. It is quite beautiful although the violence is extreme and very graphic (it is a war zone) and makes Saving Private Ryan look like Mary Poppins. A slowish start for some, but it is worth the wait.

        1. Yes – I have seen Letters from Iwo Jima and it is an excellent film. Ken Watanabe is very good in everything that I have seen him in. He has tremendous depth in his soul.

          I would not call Hacksaw Ridge “schmaltzy” as that brings to mind some very low-grade efforts. It is a different type of film with a lot of backstory. I enjoy films like that. 🙂

          Films set in the 1930’s and 40’s have a nice “air” to them.

          1. In my honest opinion Letters is one of the three greatest ‘war’ films of all time. The other two that run it close for the title are Saving Private Ryan and Das Boot.

            Hacksaw Ridge did tell an important story, it was interesting, but I feel it could have been done much better than it was. Mel Gibson was a far better actor than a director and he wasn’t all that great an actor.

            I would struggle to list my top 250 films of all time, I really do watch far too many movies. I have close to 5000 rated on imdb and I only started rating films there about ten years ago rating them after watching them.

  85. That is me for today. It is about to rain.

    Cook is making polpetti to be served with our own beans. (We had trombetti soup for lunch).

    A demain – which I hope will be an even happier day for us all.

    4. If there really was such an Allah he/she/it would have struck down everyone who did not believe.

      It hasn’t happened.

      There is no Allah

      QED

      1. …Theresa May working for the eu instead of the United Kingdom for years.

        We had the Cambridge 4/5 working for the USSR many years ago? How many has Oxford produced for the EUSSR?

        1. We would appear to have several hundred of our MP’s who are more interested in pursuing the globalist agenda than serving the interests of the people of the United Kingdom. Although at the rate that they are jamming the “new arrivals” into our country, we might be in the minority in another 30 years.

          The eu will either have self-destructed or morphed into a full police state by then, so the change for us could come more quickly than that. They will need to prop me up in a corner at that age, but given a clear field of fire I’ll go down shooting. 🙂

          1. Soros has a majority of MEPs on his books ($$$$). How many of our remain MPs does he have?

  89. Has anyone commented in the Nick Timothy article – “you thought the backstop was bad but the rest of the Brexit deal is worse?”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/08/11/shelving-backstop-will-not-enough-must-also-avoid-fatal-trap/

    Can’t reproduce it as it’s premium. (BTW I don’t “rate” NT but this is the best article of his I’ve ever read). It’s about time the awfulness of the WA was publicised, it’s not only awful, it’s diabolical. How it can be said that TM negotiated it I don’t understand. Problem is, if the backstop rubbish is dispensed with the WA will be agreed by Parliament and we’re stuffed. and Boris has had a meeting with Leo recently, hasn’t he.
    Apologies if it’s been discussed elsewhere.

    1. If the WA greement with one or two alterations is used in any way, the jackboots will be coming on Eurostar and the country is finished. Peddy will make a fortune giving German lessons.
      Theresa May will be given a whip to look after the Leavers in the punishment camp.

      1. Is Johnson stupid enough or to put the question another way, does he think the Leave electorate is stupid enough to swallow the idea of him trying to swing a slightly modified WA into law by claiming a new acceptable deal? Farage and TBP would have a field day debunking any such claim and it’s been reported that 60 or so Tories of the ERG have declared that they will not support the WA in any shape or form.

    2. NT’s problem is that he was such an arch flucker when he “served “Treason – that it is difficult to take seriously anything he says or writes.

    3. You thought the backstop was bad, but the rest of the Brexit deal is worse
      NICK TIMOTHY

      The overlooked document would tie us to EU laws, and being overseen by the ECJ, in perpetuity

      The European Union has trade agreements with countries as distant as Canada and Korea, as small as Panama and Peru, and as poor as Ecuador and El Salvador. Yet for the United Kingdom – on the EU’s doorstep, the world’s fifth-largest economy, and the continent’s most capable military power – Brussels refuses to negotiate a trade deal unless it can control our laws.

      This is the reality of the humiliating Withdrawal Agreement negotiated by Theresa May. The backstop – or the “anti-democratic backstop”, as Boris Johnson calls it – is effectively a customs union. It can be applied to the whole of the UK, killing off an independent trade policy, or it can be applied only to Northern Ireland, imposing an internal border between the province and Great Britain.

      Together with its requirement for Northern Ireland to follow EU rules for goods, the backstop would give Europe’s capitals – Dublin included – more say than London or Belfast over swathes of laws in Northern Ireland. The backstop is therefore not only anti-democratic, it is a monstrosity that would make us a European colony and quite possibly destroy the Union.

      Even worse, it is a trap from which we would be unable to escape. As an EU member state, the UK was – supposedly at least – always free to leave. We will see on October 31 whether the Remainer Commons, its Remainer Speaker and the Remainer Lords will allow Brexit to finally happen, but the Treaty on European Union at least made provision for member states to leave. The backstop has no such provision. Unlike any other trade agreement anywhere in the world, the UK would not be allowed to withdraw from the backstop without first gaining permission from Brussels.

      The only route out of the backstop, the Agreement makes clear, would be a new treaty governing the future relationship between the UK and the EU. Of course, with the backstop the only alternative to this treaty, Brussels will have us exactly where it wants us. No deal, to update Mrs May’s abandoned promise, will be every bit as bad as the bad deal they will present to us. We will be given a choice between two different – yet equally demeaning – forms of colonial status.

      That this is the EU’s intention is clear from the Political Declaration that accompanies the Withdrawal Agreement. Amid the scrutiny of the Withdrawal Agreement – and in particular the horrors of the backstop – the Political Declaration has been overlooked. But as the Eurosceptic QC, Martin Howe, points out in a new pamphlet, it is “utterly wrong” to believe the Political Declaration is not legally binding. The Withdrawal Agreement – which is a formal treaty and therefore a legal instrument – obliges the UK and EU to use “best endeavours in good faith” to negotiate a future relationship that reflects the details of the Political Declaration.

      And, surprise surprise, the Declaration seeks to tie the UK to European laws – and the rulings of the European Court of Justice – in perpetuity. It requires “ambitious customs arrangements that… build and improve on the single customs territory provided for in the Withdrawal Agreement”.

      In other words, the UK must accept a permanent customs union with the EU, in which Brussels negotiators would surrender access to the UK market in return for trading rights with third countries that suit the EU, but not us. The only country outside the EU but in its customs union is Monaco, a tiny principality whose population could not fill a Premier League stadium. The idea of being in the customs union but not the EU is so mad that not even Norway, which is in the single market, has contemplated it.

      The Political Declaration also says the UK should “align with” EU laws. It asserts that the future relationship “must ensure” a level playing field on state aid, competition, social and employment laws and “relevant tax matters”. It demands fishing quotas granting European trawlers access to British waters. It insists on “mobility arrangements”, a not-so-subtle code for a form of free movement. And it proposes “social security co‑ordination”, meaning once more that in-work benefits would draw low-paid, low-skilled immigrants to Britain, while family benefits would be sent to European countries for children who have never lived here. And overseeing all these laws, predictably enough, will be the European Court of Justice.

    4. Here, here.

      The backstop has always been a diversion to try and get our eyes off the fact that the WA was a total humiliating disaster quite apart from the backstop.

      What I find seriously worrying is that so many members of the government – including Boris Johnson and Judas Grease Smogg – actually voted for it the third time it was presented.

      How can anybody take Judas seriously? He pointed out that the WA would turn Britain into a vassal state. He explained this very clearly and very thoroughly. Anyone with half a brain understood just how great a surrender Traita May was trying to effect with her WA. And yet he then went and voted for it. His credibility is surely broken beyond repair?

      (Amongst the very few Conservative MPs I trust are: Baker, Paterson, Francois, Redwood, Cash, Drax – that’s about it)

      1. I wouldn’t trust Owen or Bill, rastus. That only leaves four and that’s only because I haven’t caught them out saying one thing and doing another (yet).

      3. ?Priti Patel. I may be grasping at straws but I’m hoping that JRM will revert to his original views and also that Boris means what he says about 31st October. But he took a little while before deciding to come out in favour of Brexit in the first place (BJ I mean). I suppose I’m half hopeful that it will all happen on Hallowe’en but half fearing it won’t. How can BJ make it happen with all those idiots in the HoC?

        1. Boris is a concern. On the day that he surprised almost everyone (including himself it seems) by saying that he wanted to Leave the eu, he was interviewed and asked what would it mean if we did vote to leave. I still remember his answer:

          “If we vote to leave then that gives us a really strong hand to go back to the eu and get a really good deal for Britain WITHIN the eu.”

          If Boris decides to trap us in the eu with some “transition period” that lasts for years as we work out a new deal, then that will not be leaving. That is when the “Boris bounce” becomes a death plunge and it will need The Brexit Party to save the country. We would have been lied to by 3 Conservative leaders by that point and people will not trust them again on this issue.

          Country comes first before party. Especially if that party has been taken over by pro-eu Liberals.

          So it would be a REALLY good thing if Boris is not on the same team as Theresa May, as he will actually take us out of the eu in October. There is little we can do about it now if he is on “team globalist” after all.

          1. Didn’t know about what’s in your 2nd paragraph- that is a worry. We’ve been in a transition period for over 3 years, more than enough. We want OUT. The remoaners still haven’t come up with an argument to support staying in either. That’s because there isn’t one! OUT, OUT, OUT.
            Sorry for shouting!

          2. Yes – There is NO good reason for staying in the eu, which is in race to see whether it will collapse from an economic implosion first or a religious war for survival. These politicians must know this, so they are actively colluding in the destruction of the United Kingdom.

            I would happily see many of these MP’s have their assets seized and then be placed in a cold prison cell for the rest of their lives as a reward for their actions.

          3. The second paragraph sounds like Boris licking his finger, holding it in the air to see which way the wind is blowing; to check on what is best for Boris and running with the hare and hunting with the hounds if he cannot decide, or until he can decide. I am hoping that what Boris considers is Best for Boris coincides what is best for the United Kingdom (failing that, England and Wales). I am really hoping that he wants his name to go down in the history of this country along with Churchill, rather than being an addendum footnote 7 clause (b) in an obscure history textbook. What Boris is not (so far on available empirical evidence) is a conviction politician. Having said all of that, he may have been manoeuvring himself into position in order to present his convictions as such.

            An enigma….

        1. Yes, he has.
          His baptism of fire was when, in 1992 as a new MP, he was bullied unmercifully by the whips over the Maastricht vote.
          It is rumoured he was reduced to tears. I think after that disgusting display of contempt from his own party, the iron entered his soul.

    5. vw – yes I did read it, quite revealing although I’m not convinced that Boris won’t go for whatever he can scrape through Parliament. Here it is……….

      You thought the backstop was bad, but the rest of the Brexit deal is worse
      The overlooked Declaration would tie us in to EU laws and the perpetual oversight of the ECJ
      Nick Timothy

      The European Union has trade agreements with countries as distant as Canada and Korea, as small as Panama and Peru, and as poor as Ecuador and El Salvador. Yet for the United Kingdom – on the EU’s doorstep, the world’s fifth-largest economy, and the continent’s most capable military power – Brussels refuses to negotiate a trade deal unless it can control our laws.
      This is the reality of the humiliating Withdrawal Agreement negotiated by Theresa May. The backstop – or the “anti-democratic backstop”, as Boris Johnson calls it – is effectively a customs union. It can be applied to the whole of the UK, killing off an independent trade policy, or it can be applied only to Northern Ireland, imposing an internal border between the province and Great Britain.
      Together with its requirement for Northern Ireland to follow EU rules for goods, the backstop would give Europe’s capitals – Dublin included – more say than London or Belfast over swathes of laws in Northern Ireland. The backstop is therefore not only anti-democratic, it is a monstrosity that would make us a European colony and quite possibly destroy the Union.
      Even worse, it is a trap from which we would be unable to escape. As an EU member state, the UK was – supposedly at least – always free to leave. We will see on October 31 whether the Remainer Commons, its Remainer Speaker and the Remainer Lords will allow Brexit to finally happen, but the Treaty on European Union at least made provision for member states to leave. The backstop has no such provision. Unlike any other trade agreement anywhere in the world, the UK would not be allowed to withdraw from the backstop without first gaining permission from Brussels.
      The only route out of the backstop, the Agreement makes clear, would be a new treaty governing the future relationship between the UK and the EU. Of course, with the backstop the only alternative to this treaty, Brussels will have us exactly where it wants us. No deal, to update Mrs May’s abandoned promise, will be every bit as bad as the bad deal they will present to us. We will be given a choice between two different – yet equally demeaning – forms of colonial status.
      That this is the EU’s intention is clear from the Political Declaration that accompanies the Withdrawal Agreement. Amid the scrutiny of the Withdrawal Agreement – and in particular the horrors of the backstop – the Political Declaration has been overlooked. But as the Eurosceptic QC, Martin Howe, points out in a new pamphlet, it is “utterly wrong” to believe the Political Declaration is not legally binding. The Withdrawal Agreement – which is a formal treaty and therefore a legal instrument – obliges the UK and EU to use “best endeavours in good faith” to negotiate a future relationship that reflects the details of the Political Declaration.
      And, surprise surprise, the Declaration seeks to tie the UK to European laws – and the rulings of the European Court of Justice – in perpetuity. It requires “ambitious customs arrangements that… build and improve on the single customs territory provided for in the Withdrawal Agreement”. In other words, the UK must accept a permanent customs union with the EU, in which Brussels negotiators would surrender access to the UK market in return for trading rights with third countries that suit the EU, but not us. The only country outside the EU but in its customs union is Monaco, a tiny principality whose population could not fill a Premier League stadium. The idea of being in the customs union but not the EU is so mad that not even Norway, which is in the single market, has contemplated it.
      The Political Declaration also says the UK should “align with” EU laws. It asserts that the future relationship “must ensure” a level playing field on state aid, competition, social and employment laws and “relevant tax matters”. It demands fishing quotas granting European trawlers access to British waters. It insists on “mobility arrangements”, a not-so-subtle code for a form of free movement. And it proposes “social security co‑ordination”, meaning once more that in-work benefits would draw low-paid, low-skilled immigrants to Britain, while family benefits would be sent to European countries for children who have never lived here. And overseeing all these laws, predictably enough, will be the European Court of Justice.
      While an apparently neutral arbitration panel would be established, it would be bound to respect rulings made by the European Court. As Howe notes, “this extraordinary mechanism is totally contrary to the international treaty practice of the UK,” which does not submit itself to the courts of another treaty party. “The only places where the EU has been able to impose this dictatorial solution,” he adds, are “the desperate former Soviet republics of Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia.”
      Desperation is what forced those countries to prostrate themselves before the imperial panjandrums in Brussels, and it was desperation that caused Mrs May to do the same. Never believing that Brexit was more than a problem to manage and mitigate, she broke every rule in the negotiator’s handbook. She agreed the EU’s sequencing of the talks, allowing them to use the Northern Irish border to snare the UK in the backstop. She gave up her leverage – on security, on trade deals with other countries, on Britain’s so-called divorce bill – in return for nothing. And, as the former ambassador Sir Christopher Meyer noted, she negotiated “on the basis of an EU text”, which he called “a breach of one of the first rules of negotiation”.

      As a result, she has left Boris Johnson in a dreadful position. Until now, everybody has focused on the backstop, but if it is ever signed the Political Declaration will be every bit as problematic. If the UK seeks to negotiate a future relationship along lines different to those in the Declaration – such as a Canada-style free-trade agreement – the Europeans will insist we are breaching our commitment to negotiate in good faith. And our only alternative will be the backstop, from which we will have no legal means of escape.
      We need to bin the backstop, tear up the treaty and ditch the Declaration. Otherwise, as Boris knows, lasting subjugation awaits us.

      1. Totally agree. But will we do it? If we don’t the Con party is finished IMO. Thanks for posting.

        1. Hi vw. I hope that Boris understands that this is about more than the backstop. But I’m not holding my breath.

          It was a pleasure to meet you and gg on Friday, by the way. Next time, the coffee’s on me…

          1. Hi Geoff
            The pleasure was all ours, especially actually meeting “the Boss”! Look forward to next time.

  90. Brexit breakthrough: Only TWO conditions now stand in way of Brexit trade deal with Trump

    2. Forget it. We don’t want a trade deal. We want out. Then peace and quiet while we learn how to live again.
      Like I feel after retirement.

      1. Our exports to the U.S have just outstripped our exports to Germany. Just imagine us introducing to the buying public in America… Real Cheeses. Real Chocolate. Real Tea. Real Bacon. Real bread. The list is endless.

        1. An dem dere Yankies wudda kno how to cope.

          Too much of a good thing for them.

          But you’re right, if that market, with possibly the highest per capita disposable income anywhere, gets hooked, the sky’s the limit for our exporters

          1. I have no probs with Americans. The braggadocio can grate sometimes but they are like us and we are like them. They are a bit forward and we are a bit backward. Sounds like a marriage.

          2. I like Americans.
            Every time I’ve been there (and I’ve been there many times) they have always made me welcome; whenever I stopped the car to read a map someone has appeared to help.
            Every bar/restaurant/hotel/guesthouse, it’s always been the same, they cannot be more welcoming.

            Wonderful people.

            The only exception is the border/customs ones, but even they are only doing their job.

          3. There are videos on YouTube of Americans experiencing British food for the first time. (I have too much time on my hands.) They do it with lots of other cultures trying each others foods as well.

            There was this one American who was trying a Full English Breakfast for the first time. He picked up the fried bread and looked at it doubtfully. Then he took a bite and chewed.

            The dawning look of sheer joy on his face was nice to see. He said to the woman with him “Try this! I think it is bread fried in beef fat!”

            A life without having tasted fried bread… Some people do live in a cold grey world.

          4. After living in the US for the last 40 years, fried bread is but a distant memory! But think of the cholesterol!

          9. I have never been to the U.S. But there is definitely a large market that would benefit both our country.

            Not everyone there shops at Walmart and buys things laughingly called American Cheese.

            A friend not long ago arrived in Dallas. On business. They were in a company flat and they needed to buy in food stuffs. They finally managed to find a supermarket miles away and was confronted with aisles and aisles of things which we would consider not food. Where is the butter? where is the cream? where is the bread?

        2. Hi Phizzee, I can get real cheeses imported from UK, real chocolate went to hell after Cadbury’s sold out to Kraft, real tea, loose leaf and teabags, real Bacon, that’s a no, real bread can be found. Say hello to Dolly for me.

          1. Hi Jill.

            There is no reason why America cannot produce Cheeses similar to Europe on their own. It must be a closed shop thing with the big players dictating what is made.

            We have seen an explosion of micro breweries here producing wonderful variety of Gins and Ales and sparkling wines.

            Dolly is snoozing off her supper of porky trimmings from lunch. Thank you . :o)

          1. $3.50 for a tin of spaghetti hoops(!) Still, they are heavy and need to be shipped and stored in a small shop and not a gigantic supermarket. Good luck to them. I have seen online stores here in the United Kingdom that sell all sorts of American foods.

            It must be nice to have the taste of home if you have been away for a while. 🙂

  91. Russian films can be good; I’m sure most of you have seen Battleship Potemkin. Further down the scale is a Soviet anti-war film which I think is still available on DVD called The Cranes are Flying. Then there is the 2016 epic, a smash hit in Russia,called Viking.
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3b8948c680dfc90a88b2bdc982ff3c557bf5482a1f5c685068da7088aa5ccfc7.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/39db42dd976a978917399f1a036cb597dc97911e85f86e3bb90edcf8571f9046.jpg

    This one is available here with Swedish sub-titles only unfortunately.

      2. Rah Rah.
        I quite like Boney M. Like ABBA you could sing along to the songs. His prancing dancing is carp though. :o)

    5. They lost four more through dislocated necks due to trying to lick their……
      No , it is just too ghastly to contemplate.

    6. Jesus H.
      My father’s first job was with the Wiltshire police.
      Maybe things have ‘moved on’ since 1933.

      2. By ‘moved on’ I understand you to mean ‘gone down hill’ rather a long way. These morons are fortunate that the really biting satire programmes of yesteryear are no longer allowed to be made.

    9. Gosh, I don’t want 20,000 more of these – an utter waste of space and public money.

    10. I’m surprised at Wiltshire constabulary, there’s so many levels on which the eternally offended ones could take offence from that.

  93. I have just returned from a business meeting to see the smugly arrogant Caroline Mucus on the BBC News. Is this pathetic woman for real? A cabinet of ‘white women’ must be a hate crime in modern parlance surely?

    Apart from this surely Diane Abbott, a mathematician of distinction, is available to join the cause.

    Most of what Mucus says is indigestible but at least it was not given or posted in Swedish.

    Message to Peddy: Please forget our recent altercation old chum. I still admire and respect your comments, just keep the German and Swedish to private conversations otherwise we ignoramuses have no idea what you are going on about. This will also save some of us having to go to Google translate and if I have to refer to my wife (and report her comments) will save all from embarrassment.

    2. Mucus needs to be spat out.

      BTW. Pedant possibly didn’t see your comments because he has blocked me.

      Long may it be so. The bloody tea leaf.

      1. Dear Phizzee, better to forgive and forget. Everyone necessarily will have often opposing views. I questioned your colour-sense but we remain friends.

        You have presumably inadvertently annoyed me from time to time but for goodness sake this is argument. If we fail to argue we are dead of mind.

        Just saying.

        1. Good advice.

          I understand from what you do and your views. I thank you and people like Scruton to protect our built enviroment. There are so many ugly buildings and structures designed without thought the human element.

          I can forgive but not on the behalf of someone else.

          BTW. My Lime green which was supposed to be pistachio has been a bit of a talker in the Grove. I even had a Christmas card last year from neighbours i didn’t know. We now go out to lunch lol.

    3. The spirit of your message is accepted – we are after all adults.

      Jag har inte skrivit på svenska eller tyska idag – I haven’t written any Swedish or German today.

        1. Kolla detta om du inte tro mig – check it out if you don’t believe me. Now you’ve got me going.

          1. A mischievous post by me, Pedrick, given the topic matter! “Was?”[“Voss?”] is the Tysk for “What?”

          2. Ach so, I thought yo were using the past tense. I nearly came back with a “vad?” or better still, “vad sa du?”

            Bra att veta att jag har vänner till.

    4. On your last para – 150% agreed.

      It is pretentious and boring. If people want to communicate in furrin languages – then do so in private on another channel.

      1. Stop stirring the pot, or have you nothing better to do like spoiling plays for people? You’re not above making comments en francais de temps en temps.

        1. No, he’s right.

          It is beyond tedious. It was amusing two years ago but the lustre has gone.

        3. I thought we were entitled to express our views here.

          Yes, I use the odd French word but only in an English context.

          As to The Mousetrap – (a) I thought it had long since stopped; (b) I have never seen it but was told 45 years ago whodunnit. I assumed that NoTTLers knew, too.

          1. I thought we were entitled to express our views here.

            So I expressed mine. Cori & I were on the point of burying the hatchet, but you wanted to dig it up, if I’m not mistaken.

      4. Well, I think I started this while others bit their tongues. But seems there is a limit.
        I write things in English, hoping desperately that people will understand me.
        They seem to, mostly, which has never happened on American forums.
        Peddy posts things in other languages which he hopes they will not understand, to satisfy his superiority complex.
        A slight difference.

          3. You are new and welcome to this forum. The small disagreement I had with Peddy is hopefully resolved. Humble pie is part of my diet if it smoothes over disagreements, provided a serious point is registered.

            This places the onus on the rest of us to rub along together. Yes, we casually disagree from time to time but essentially we seem to be a group.

          7. It is resolve as far as I’m concerned, but the wolf pack won’t let it rest. Talk about “Lord of the Flies”…

          10. I am sorry Peddy. I am not usually a focus for comments. I try to stick to my own subjects of expertise viz. Art and Architecture. Please accept my apologies. I bear you no ill will.

          11. At least it’s revealed a few false friends. Some not unexpected, but there are one or two Bruti.

          12. Do tell. I think i can take a guess at the false ones, you know, the ones that actually met you. The Bruti ones are now the woke ones. Laura Ashley and Jampots might mitigate somewhat.

        3. Be fair. Everything you assume is possibly a bit innocent. I do think that you should have a better reception as a visitor and hopefully a permanent contributor to this site.

          I am a mere observer but have contributed for years. Others will make their own judgement as time will tell.

          2. Not entirely, no. But not terribly familiar with on-line boards. I do know how to deal with bastards in real life. My usual method is to wait until they upset someone bigger than me, then relax and read their obituaries with a smile on my face.

          3. That made me laugh.

            We are one of if not the most betterer of sites to put a view forward.. Provided of course one can substantiate with facts or links. We also accept a posters opinion even if we disagree with it. :o)

          5. Did someone say something. I got all goospimpled then……………………………. :o(

      6. Ta Bill. The point I wished to make earlier, which caused a few ructions, was that this is an open forum where we are expected and it is polite to post in English.

        Others posting in foreign languages are making themselves exclusive. This is necessarily alienating others and annoying folk like me.

        My wife agrees. My wife states that German is by no means a straightforward language in interpretation. There is Hoch Deutsch and colloquial. The peasants speak colloquial and as in England can be identified by their accents.

        As with English it is absurd to assert that there is a correct way of speaking. We are a mixed lot.

  94. An article about university entries and the fact that we are about to enter the “A” level results season has prompted me to beat my old drum about iniquitous student loans on the new Nottlers’ site. Here is a comment I left under a DT article:

    The scandal which guarantees that many of those unfortunate people with student loans will never get out of debt is that the interest rate charged on students’ loans is ten times the BoE base rate. This is usury. This is sheer theft.

    Student loans should be repaid but they should be interest free as they are in many rather more civilised countries than Britain has become. In addition tax incentives should be given to graduates with outstanding loans and to employers who employ them.

    Don’t pay off students’ loans for them – but at the very least stop stealing from the poor blighters with usurious interest rates and taxes until they have got themselves free of their debts! Having young people irreparably in debt into late middle age will merely breed resentment which is the last thing we need in a new dynamic post-Brexit Britain!

    2. I have some rather good Venofye ® that could sort her face out but i have nothing to reduce the bile.

    1. Also known as:

      Please don’t bomb us, shoot us, stab us or mow us down in cars, vans and trucks during your festival of cruel slaughter of animals.

      1. Nice one.

        We do have muslims that have integrated and retained their religion but they aren’t the third world neanderthals that we now seem to have in abundance.

    1. Trucking in the forces from outside the region because the locals are hesitant to use lethal force on their own people? They did the same thing just before the “incident” in that square a few years ago.

      What a world. Those who crave power just won’t leave people alone to live their own lives the way that they want to.

      1. ” Those who crave power just won’t leave people alone to live their own lives the way that they want to.”
        Not the EU again, surely.

        2. Tony – I think you will find that people who want power over others for its own sake are all over the world, not just the eu. The eu is small fry on the global chessboard for world domination. Don’t tell them that though. They like to think that they are big and powerful.

          They will be wanting an army next.

    2. And what the foxtrot, short of starting WW3, can we do about it?
      And should the PRC decide to assert it’s claim over Taiwan? What then?

      1. The whole ‘China situation’ needs to be considered in the round. The aggressive stance of China is worrying and the future of ‘cordial relationships’ looks to be challenged. China needs to be contained on many fronts and I have to question if/when/how that will happen.

      1. We can’t be seen to do nothing. The agreement with China over HK was for 50 years, if we ignore what they’re doing we are letting down the entire population of HK.

        I don’t know what we should do, but it has to be a diplomatic (non violent) solution and quickly. I wouldn’t rule out military support.

        On another front, China and its global aggression (political, commercial and financial) needs to be contained asap.

  101. We must be mad,literally mad

    “Record numbers of Albanian criminals are filling up Britain’s jails despite a deal in 2013 that allowed them to be sent home to serve their sentences.

    Just 24 have been repatriated since the agreement was signed, while

    the total in prison has risen more than fourfold to reach 876,

    representing the largest number of foreign criminals in UK jails”

    .https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/08/12/24-albanian-prisoners-have-sent-home-six-years-cost-keeping/
    For Christ’s sake get a grip,someone get on with it FFS

        1. The good news is Albania has no pickpockets now as they have all emigrated to the UK

        2. You like houses without windows and with outside toilets ? I have an Albanian friend wh can sell you one. You pay in Euros to his Tirana bank account, yes?

          1. HOuses without windowa can be good, yes? Ta heats can be so bothersomes ams of corse the flysing things. I am locking at a bitch with a big front. I like to paddle a lot.

    2. I doubt the information is available but I strongly suspect that most of the UK’s crime wave is down to mass migration. Going by the press reports it seems to be about 9 out 10 crimes reported in the media appear to be committed by migrants

  102. I’m sooooooooooo pleased they’ll be safe,now what about the rest of us??

    “New anti-terror measures are being introduced at Westminster to prevent “lone wolf” attacks by vehicles smashing into Parliament.

    Roads will be closed for three months as iron posts are driven two

    metres into the pavement on the west side of Parliament to prevent a

    repeat of the attack by lone terrorist Khalid Masood who killed four

    civilians with his van on Westminster Bridge before stabbing PC Keith

    Palmer to death”

    .https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/08/12/new-anti-terror-measures-protect-parliament-lone-wolf-attacks/

    1. I’m wondering whether we should all be given air raid shelters in our back gardens to prepare for the UK-EU war next year ?
      The brick ones, with bunks, like in WW2

      1. The kitchen table was good enough for Protect and Survive along with fly swats to control the inevitable swarms.

  103. Just been watching a lady on BBC2 who is a civil engineering historian discussing the background to the recent failure of a major road bridge in Italy – Genoa?

  104. Labour politician wants to do away with countries. These people are mad totally mad

    2. The women are smiling because he’s just told them he also needs the support of his braces that he left at No 10.

    1. The Brexit party has become almost invisible . They still have no real published policies and no organisation. The prospective MP’s also need to be making an impact in their constituencies but as far as I know there is no published list of them and the constituencies they are standing in

      1. They are keeping their powder dry. You will hear plenty from them when the right time comes.

    2. I think it’s incredible that Labour are on 27%. Don’t those people know anything about Marxist Corbyn and his communist puppeteers? Don’t traditional Labour voters understand how they’ve been betrayed by the very people who purport to support them?

      It’s one thing for IDs before they vote but what about IQs?

      1. I just Googled “We always vote Labour”, to quote friends of mine. Google returned all-labour-positive results!

      2. There are many people introduced to an ideology from their parents voting habits. What i don’t understand is that same thinking destroyed the industry that their parents gave them employment. The very worst of which in either America or the United Kingdom are places where the Left/ Democrat are the utter worst places to live.

        1. Lacoste will start stalking you. I won’t be his target….I will leave a lot of frilly tennis outfits outside your house. That’ll do it.

    4. Thanks for this.

      Joe is an amazingly good player of guitars. mandolins and a range of stringed instruments. He is clearly a very warm and decent man.

      I love his version of Sea of Heartbreak – a song written by Paul Hampton and Hal David and originally recorded by Don Gibson. (Listen to Plum-Tart’s excellent link and you will come to it)

    1. Ha ha pussy. We now march against you. Our numbers are vast and you will submit on pain of pain, and making you look stupid!

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