Friday 21 February: The dredging after the last floods is what has saved Somerset this time

Posted on by Geoff Graham

An unofficial place to discuss the Telegraph letters, established when the DT website turned off its comments facility (now reinstated, but not as good as ours),
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Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/02/21/lettersthe-dredging-last-floods-has-saved-somerset-time/

765 thoughts on “Friday 21 February: The dredging after the last floods is what has saved Somerset this time”

        1. Oh, so you are both living in the Seine are you? And here’s me thinking you lived together in Cambridgeshire!

          :-))

  4. Government to ban coal & wood for domestic heating by 2023 to cut air pollution

    Sales of the two most polluting fuels will be phased out in England to help cut air pollution, the government says.

    Bags of logs sold in DIY stores, garden centres and petrol stations often contain wet wood – a type of wood which produces more pollution and smoke.

    The public should move to “cleaner alternatives”, the government says.

    Plans for the ban were first announced 18 months ago, but the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has now confirmed it is going ahead.

    The government said wood burning stoves and coal fires are the largest source of PM2.5, small particles of air pollution which find their way into the body’s lungs and blood.

    2. A rather negligible worry in the face af the amount of particulate matter that will have been produced by the Aussie Bush fires.

  5. Morning all

    SIR – Contrary to a suggestion in more than one letter (February 20), very few new houses are built in flood-risk areas in the face of opposition by the Environment Agency. Where new housing is allowed in such areas, it is normally because the Environment Agency does not object, owing to the presence of adequate flood defences.

    The flooding we see on television seems always to be of well-established historic towns and villages, not of new housing.

    It is interesting how often reports of flooding include mention of previous inundations.

    New housing is allowed in unprotected flood-risk areas only in the most exceptional circumstances, and then there are restrictions limiting the use of ground-floor areas likely to flood: no living accommodation or bedrooms for example, and flood resilience, with no timber floor or walling, and electrics to be raised, rather than being at skirting level.

    As a town planner I have worked with these sorts of sensible criteria for many years.

    R T Britnell

    Canterbury, Kent

    SIR – When I managed a farm in the Midlands years ago, the field behind the house became boggy. Thinking the field-drains which drained into the river Swift were blocked , I called in a drainage consultant.

    Walking into the field he said: “It’s not the drains that are the problem, it’s those.” He pointed to the hedgerows. He explained that he meant about 30 dead elms. They had been drinking the water but now they were not. A mature elm would drink enormous amounts of water a year.

    The ancients knew what they were doing when planting hedges.

    D H Todd

    Ripon, North Yorkshire

    1. The new housing may not flood but its presence on the flood plain contributes to the problem in other areas. If the excess water can’t get to its natural overflow areas, it must go somewhere else, namely towards the older properties that haven’t good such good flood defences because they didn’t need them…because there was a flood plain.

    2. Does he not realize how much building is going om in these towns. As for his claim that few houses are being built o flood plains, the data shows most new homes are being built on flood plains and even if they are not they are adding to the volume of water going into the rivers

    3. When you see aerial photos of the historic towns and villages under flood, it is often the ancient centre that is not flooded, but all the modern add-ons.

  6. SIR – It seems nothing changes in Cambridge. When I was there (1958-61) a car was hoisted on to the roof of the Senate House (above) ; a line of rugby jerseys was slung between the towers of King’s College Chapel and 300 trees were planted in Trinity College’s lawn.

    The police were nowhere to be seen, apart from one famous occasion, when a gang of council workmen set about digging a hole in the road. They were warned that undergraduates masquerading as policemen would try and stop them.

    The police were then phoned and told that a gang of undergraduates masquerading as council workmen were digging up the road. I gather that the subsequent encounter, when genuine police met genuine workmen, each thinking the other lot were undergrads, was a sight to witness.

    Clive Williams

    Upper Basildon , Berkshire

  7. During QT last night I kept thinking that George Eustice looks as though he could be the younger brother of Geoffrey Archer.

  8. US intelligence warned House members Russia is working to get Trump re-elected – reports. 20 February 2020.

    The Washington Post reported that Trump had been under the false impression that the briefing had been provided exclusively to the House intelligence committee chair, Adam Schiff, who had acted as chief prosecutor in the president’s impeachment trial. Trump is said to have become convinced that the briefing would be used against him in the election.

    No shit Sherlock Trump!

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/feb/20/russian-interference-2020-house-warned

    1. Judging by the little I have seen of recent Democrat campaigns, I thought it was the Democrats working to get Trump re-elected. I don’t think the Russians will need to lift a finger.

  9. Flooding Prevention

    Most rivers in built up areas are man made in that they have been narrowed , straightened and have had the banks built up. Naturally rivers meander and are not a fixed width. They are narrower in summer and wider in winters and also have flood plains. In the urban areas at least they are enclosed in a narrow channel with built up walls to contain them. That’s fine under normal conditions but when you take tides and wind and rainfall into account you end up with to much water coming down the river and the height of the water builds up as it cannot cope with the volume of water and the weakest point is found and the water spills over the banks at quite a force and floods the streets

    One think that sounds daft that might alleviate it is perforated banks or small sluices in the banks. When the waters level start building up the water can be allowed to spill off in a controlled manner preventing serious flooding. Well that’s the theory. Where there is open fields etc more water could be allowed to spill or, i urban areas less. Pumps could also be installed at vulnerable areas to try to safely drain off some of the excess water

    1. You are basically describing water meadows. Fine for flood plains in the countryside that wants lush grass for grazing. Bloody useless in built up areas. Again the answer is to hold the water back in the upland areas to keep rivers at manageable levels in the more built up lowland areas. Proper flood plains are essential also. Even overflow lakes bypassed into river systems. There’s much we can do with some joined up thought. The problem is short-termism, a lack of investment, and politicians being in the construction, and farming industries’ pockets stop any joined up strategies from arising.

  10. SIR – Sir Iain Duncan Smith got it right on the BBC’s World at One on Wednesday: it wasn’t a scarcity of British people able to do skilled jobs that led to a labour shortage. It came about because companies found it cheaper to employ people from abroad and stopped training our own tradesmen.

    In the construction industry, in which I worked for 40 years, companies stopped training carpenters, bricklayers and others over 30 years ago. The outcome was what we see today: nearly 40 per cent of the workforce in London comes from abroad. This was obvious to us in the industry all those years ago.

    As Sir Iain said, more labour from abroad led to greater demand for housing and infrastructure, which led to increased need for labour to build them.

    Instead of blaming the Government, industry needs to get back to proper training programmes with five-year apprenticeships.

    Anthony Marlow

    Leatherhead, Surrey

    1. Morning E,
      316504+up✔s,
      Make Tony right, the political rubber stampers in the governance parties of the day back the mass uncontrolled labour intake to the hilt.
      Finding support / votes as in vote tory/keep out labour mode.
      In the construction industry also, we had spanish fire watchers on each floor that could not speak English they
      could have shouted fire right up until until we were all consumed in flames.

  11. SIR – Laura Freeman’s article (February 19) on munchers and crunchers at the theatre had me nodding rather furiously.

    What is really shocking is the reaction of those whom we challenge. The man at the Olivier Theatre looked bewildered when I asked him whether eating his Pringles after the interval was a joke. A man at the Royal Opera House felt it appropriate to join in with the Toreador Song; when I told him curtly to shut up, the look of disdain on his wife’s face was fearsome. The young couple canoodling in the row ahead of us at another theatre were quite put out when my wife suggested they save it for later.

    Alan Frost

    Bournemouth, Hampshire

    SIR – I agree that other people can spoil one’s enjoyment of the theatre.

    Towards the end of a particularly atmospheric performance of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, my husband left his seat to go to the lavatory.

    Then, in the last minute of the final scene, just when we could hear the blood running on to the floor from Dr Jekyll’s cut wrists, the door at the side of the stage slowly opened. There was a collective intake of breath. We all looked towards the door.

    It was my poor husband, who had returned through the wrong door at precisely the wrong moment.

    Needless to say, this isn’t the first time I’ve told this story.

    Judy Parsley

    London W4

  13. Good morning all

    How dare they ?

    Homeowners will be stopped from buying coal and wet wood logs from next year as part of a Government clampdown on toxic air pollution.

    An estimated 2.5million homes in the UK have hearths with open fires or woodburning stoves.

    But from 2021, traditional coal and wet wood, used by thousands across Britain, will be phased out amid concerns that tiny pollutant particles emitted when they burn can lead to serious health conditions.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8026987/Ban-sale-wet-wood-house-coal-hits-2-5m-homes-Government-clamps-air-pollution.html

    3. I wonder if they’ll try to stop the collection of logs from neglected woodlands like the one around me?

      1. Morning Bob

        What about the 110 broad leafed woods that are going to be destroyed thanks to the crazy spendthrift plans for HS2..

        Politicians are stark raving bonkers .. they live in a sheltered political bubble!

      3. Next, they’ll declaw any dogs living near woodland to deter peasants rambling around and collecting twigs for their fires.

      4. Morning Bob – be unobtrusive and carry on. You will be OK. No doubt you stack and season your firewood.

        1. I’ve five stacks of between 1½ to 4 cubic yards each.
          At the moment, I’ve one of the larger stacks unused, one and a half refilled after being used, one to fill and one being emptied with about two weeks of logs left in it.
          I plan getting the chain saw resharpened, fueled and oiled up this morning, then, if I can persuade the bloody ECU on the van to stop pissing about and get it started, I’ll be up the road cutting & loading.
          Then it’s unload, chop & stack. With a bit of luck I should get the ½ stack fully filled and a start made on the empty one over the weekend.

      1. We have a coal fireplace .. and a back boiler .. and gas central heating but no heating upstairs.. and live in the countryside where power cuts are frequent. I have just had a my coal bunker topped up with nice shiny house coal .

        What can the government be thinking .. as they cruise around in their tax payer expense account freebie air trips polluting the skies with contrails.. and puffs of boosy rules and jobsworths .
        China is building more and more coal fired power stations .. Britain is not a major polluter.

        I feel very uneasy about this government now.

        1. Morning TB.
          One of my nephews like thousands of others, lives in a remote area in the north Pennines. They have an oil fired cooking range it use to be coal. They paid around 30 thousand a few years ago to have a wind turbine installed on their property. A great investment.
          It also supplies enough electricity for the neighbours cottage down the track.
          They also get credit from the grid electricity supplier.
          But the supplier tried to renage on that. But my nephew won the lengthy legal battle. They also used for 25 years free water from hill side springs. But the local authority made them install a filter. They are not connected to main sewers and have to be careful what sort of washing powders they use. And the septic tank lasts for a few years before It needs to be emptied.
          The local infant and junior school was considered ‘lacking in diversity’ and was closed around 5 years ago.
          Instead of a healthy two mile walk to and from, the local kids are now taken by bus or car to the next village.
          They also have log burners and the tree people are currently planting thousands of trees all over the vast area.
          This way of life has existed for hundreds of years.
          It seems to be the case that mass migration and subsequent ‘diversity’ is the enemy of the green life.
          And has increased the carbon footprint of the UK many times over.
          It seems that the people who think they own the world and strictly control people’s lives with ever increasing rules and regulations. Are setting it up in a similar structure to film Logans Run.
          What’s going to happen in the future god only knows.
          Common sense and justified reason has flown the nest.

          2. Incineration will be the next target. I guess in the future when we die we’ll be left to rot piled in tanks and the gases used to heat blocks of flats.

            I’ve just watched a daft person on the bbc news spouting complete bolero about coal and wood burning. I hear the echo of the expression ‘you couldn’t make it up’. She did, it’s clearly some sort of moronic speel from a well rehearsed far left agenda.
            She claimed that thousands of people a year die from inhailed particles from coal and wood burners.
            She needs a trip to China and the rest of asia and South America, tell them to stop them burning coal and forests.
            Bonfires, bbqs next ?
            Breathing ?

    6. Digging through the the hyperbole reveals the ban on coal will not apply to the smokeless variants which are widely available and as a bonus much easier to light. We’ve had smokeless zones for ages following the horrors of the December 1952 smog ( now that was a real problem).This proposed legislation looks like a clever bit of ecoloon pleasuring and it should have no real effect.

      1. We have smokeless coal; in fairness, it does produce greater warmth and we have to leave the fire for a couple of days before we can safely rake it out.
        As BoB mentions time and again, he cuts wood and then leaves it to dry for at least a year, as do any savvy owners of wood burners. Nothing new about that.
        However, such nannying sits ill with a Conservative government.

        2. And they are scarcely going to be able to police everyone in rural areas who either cut or collect their own wood and are usually sufficiently organised to let if dry for a couple of years.

  14. Maybe always worth a think when objecting to a crazy new government policy..

    Who admits to “leveraging” government policy and “forming strong relationships with politicians and officials” ?

    Open Society.

  15. Britain First leader Paul Golding charged by anti-terror police. 21 Feb 2020.

    Paul Golding, the leader of the fringe far-right group Britain First, has been charged with an offence under the Terrorism Act after refusing to give police access to his phone.

    He was stopped at Heathrow airport in October while returning from a trip to the Russian parliament in Moscow by officers from the Metropolitan police’s counter-terrorism command.

    He refused to give the Pin codes for a number of his electronic devices. Golding, 38, is charged with refusing to comply with a duty under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act.

    Bit of harassing here while the “far right” is in the news. Ask to look at someone’s phone and when they refuse charge them. Tommy will probably get the same treatment when he comes back from Russia. Assuming he manages to get there of course!

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/feb/21/britain-first-leader-paul-golding-charged-by-anti-terror-police

    2. Morning all.
      It stinks doesn’t it.
      Between them all the ‘authorities’ took 17 years to jail the migrant men child (and still it goes on) rapists gangs and serial abusers and now they still insist on continuing along this invented ‘far right’ line.
      A bit like the Youtube video clip posted last week about the ‘far right’ BF member whose range rover was stopped for no particular reason, because the reg was flagged up on their faked up system.

      1. “...the ‘authorities’ took 17 years to jail some of the migrant men child (and still it goes on) rapists gangs and serial abusers…
        Also no one seems to be interested in prosecuting the customers, who are surely numbered in there tens of thousands.

          1. As I wrote before – the women are simply glad that their master’s attention is off them and they don’t have to suffer a hairy, stinking, quasi-rape from him that day (hopefully). What’s not for them to like that some white kuffir girl-child has to put up with him instead?

        2. No of course not, it wouldn’t be PC.
          It would contradict the recently invented ‘hate crime’ laws only applicable to Segs Blancs.

      2. Who would have thought that, in our lifetime, Russia would become a potential country for political asylum?

          1. A thought that has probably crossed rather more minds than in the days of Sidney and Beatrice Webb’s Stalin worship.

  16. New homes in flood-risk areas not covered by insurance scheme

    It shows the inadequacy and madness of out planning system. The UK and in particular England is a very overpopulate country and e have pretty much run out of land. Local councils are pressurized into building more homes but do not have the suitable land to do so. The planning system is weak and not fit for purpose as it allows councils to ignore flood risk and lack of infrastructure such as roads , schools public transport etc. Most new estates for example are built where there is no public transport , so you have the situation where politicians are saying you should use public transport yet there is none to use

    It is the same with schools , There will be no schools so the children have to go by schools bus or taxi to a school several miles away

      1. The big problem is for the buyers of these homes. If the area is classed as of High Risk of flooding the government insurance scheme does not apply to new builds . So people will either have to be uninsured or pay thousands a year in premium. These home may be difficult to get a mortgage on as well and may be very hard to sell

          1. Interesting point.
            Ultimately, it is an investment for the mortgage lender.
            But then was political pressure brought to bear, like the pressure the US government exerted on lenders to provide mortgages for the unemployed and unemployable?

      3. I think I can say this without much fear of contradiction.
        As we have all been aware of and witnessed most of our lives. In one way or another our supercilious trough loving political knowalls usually eff up nearly everything they come into contact with.

  17. June Brown QUITS EastEnders after 35 years of playing Dot Cotton

    She has only very occasionally been in it for some years but at 93 she has cecided to call it a day

    1. “… It is racist, whether or not it feels racist, the truth is our Prime Minister’s a real racist,’…”

      Is unintelligible bilge. It’s also slander and what is this ‘it’ referred to at the beginnning?

    2. The little twerp in the photo didn’t waste any time in “establishing his credentials” after he was given his award.

  19. I see we have he usual moans fro the hospitality and care home, takeaways etc that they will not be able to find staff if we do not allow unskilled migrants in.

    These businesses used to manage fine a few decades ago so what has changed? The answer in my view is pay and conditions have gone down or at very least have been frozen for over a decade

    Pat and condition will have to improve and they will have to run the business more efficiently rather than just rely on cheap labour and frequently a very high turn over of that cheap labour

    In many cases the tax payers are subsidizing these business with the low pay they offer being propped up by tax payers

    WE probably have an excess of hospitality business and hotels etc as well as an excess of takeways and coffee shops

    WE have plenty of spare labour in the UK s well

        1. Somewhat happened 50 years ago? Are care homes the inevitable result of both parents having to work?

          1. Apologies for the rant, but I have seen families destroyed by the presence of one demented relative living in the house.
            Have you any idea of what a demented – often violent – person can be like? I have seen a senile little old woman demolish a ward dormitory. I received more injuries on psycho-geratric wards than on the locked ward. I have a dodgy back thanks to lifting heavy patients who couldn’t move or who would fall to the ground while nurses were helping them to walk. And that was in situations where two people were available; that is often not the case at home.
            Few ‘stay at home’ women (and it is wives or daughters who are usually expected to shoulder this burden) can deal with the work caused by by confused, doubly incontinent relatives. Nor should they be expected to do so.

          2. I understand what you say, and don’t mean to minimise anything, except my typing ( the bulb has gone and I can hardly see the keyboard0. What are the proportions of dementia to others?
            What really happened 60 years ago? Why did we allow the change to working mothers from stay at home mothers.
            The arguments for cheap immigrant workers mirror the argument for working mothers.
            The demos is not in control, we are controlled by an “elected” clique. Who controls the clique?

          3. Is there also an effect that modern medicine can keep people alive too long. May seem harsh but some of the descriptions of AnneA suggests the patients could have benefitted from a holiday in Wuhan.

          4. Should have read further down!
            The same also applies to many cancers. Until roughly a century ago, most people didn’t live long enough to develop what is, basically, the wiring going wrong because it’s out of date.
            And deaths were often registered with very vague wording because the cause wasn’t understood.

          5. Sadly, one of the main drivers of increased dementia is medical advances.
            People are now kept alive long enough to develop dementia.
            A quick trawl through the interwebby produced this nugget of information:

            “Life Expectancy in Britain in the 20th Century

            By the 1950s it had risen to about 65. Things improved more slowly in the late 20th century but by 1971 life expectancy for a man in Britain was 68. For a woman it was 72. In 2015 life expectancy was 79 for a man in the UK and 83 for a woman.”

  20. ‘Morning All

    Nicked

    “A further statement from The Far Right Council of Great Britain.

    With Farrightphobia now an accepted part of the political discourse in this
    country, more and more members of the ‘far right’ feel marginalised and
    there is a real danger that due to this unchecked farrightphobia, that
    some may become radicalised and seek revenge.

    We are calling on
    the government to make any criticism of the ‘far right’ every bit as
    much a hate crime as racism, sexism or Islamophobia and call on the
    Prime Minister to assure the ‘far right’ that they will no longer be
    persecuted for their beliefs”.
    Worth a try,it worked well for the Moslems,after all it’s sooooo fashionable to be the victim

    1. How will removing illegal immigrants and encouraging employment by reducing the supply of labour possibly have the opposite effect?

  22. The terrifying county lines gang members Kent parents must keep their children away from

    Gosh hostile environment for them. Dont let Diana Abbot know that

    Gangs often deliberately take advantage of vulnerable children, forcing them to shift their illegal drugs

    Detective Superintendent John Coull of the Kent and Essex Serious Crime Directorate previously said: “The organised supply of heroin and crack cocaine is a national issue and the increased prevalence of county lines drug-dealing and the associated violence it brings is not unique to Kent.
    “We work tirelessly with our partners to ensure gangs cannot take a foothold in Kent and continue to see great success in tackling county lines through our dedicated Operation Raptor teams, who have ensured a significant number of offenders are now behind bars and helped create a hostile environment for those seeking to commit offences in the county.”

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6900c06dbb23cd71ca2df32ccf21659c46809b73b0144cd2b85b0ae6c6f15431.png

    1. “We work tirelessly with our partners to ensure gangs cannot take a foothold in Kent and continue to see great success in tackling county lines through our dedicated Operation Raptor teams, who have ensured a significant number of offenders are now behind bars and helped create a hostile environment for those seeking to commit offences in the county.”

      I wonder if they have scriptwriters to produce this sententious twaddle?

      2. How well is ‘Operation Raptor’ named? Raptors hunt, kill and eat their prey very effectively: they are also very attractive looking animals unlike the shower pictured above.

          1. Horace, of course they are. In your initial comment on the OP you quite rightly want these criminals hunted etc, however, with our ‘justice’ system the criminals will be quickly back on the streets and continuing their ‘business’. The prey of a raptor rarely gets a second chance and I thought that using raptor was a bit of naming overkill bearing in mind the outcome of the hunt.

      3. The constant thing seems to be the vast majority of these criminals are not British. Given about 80% of the population is white British is seem strange that about 90% of the criminal come from the 20% group.

        In pure numbers you can of course say most criminal are British because the majority of people are white British but on a percentage basis the picture appears to be very different

        1. Most people are innumerate and do not really understand how percentages work.

          When, for example, VAT moves up from say 20% to 22% the politicians will say that VAT has only risen by 2% – in fact the rate of the tax rise is 10%.

      4. With many senior officers appearing as more politician than policeman it’s very likely that they have speech writers.

      5. If you have ever had to make a statement to the police, you would know they invariably rewrite everything you report in a very strange police version of stilted English. They must get special training at police school.

      1. TBF – the chap in the top line isn’t getting his fair share of sunshine. Maybe he’s working long hours.

        1. He also appears to be wearing his hair in “girls tiny pigtails” which ought to be made an arrestable offence in itself.

  25. The usual political contradiction

    Whilst telling people they should drive less and use public transport the same politicians are cutting back om public transport so actually forcing people to drive

    2. “What’s worn under a Scotsman’s kilt?”
      Ooops, if I answer that my front door is imperilled.

    3. Well given a hate crime appears to be anything you are offended by they will be logging everyone. If I say I dont like bagpipes or haggis that could be a hate crime

      I could baffle them though by saying I dont like people who dont eat pork. What will they do then ?

  27. The government is forcing people to buy expensive electricity which will be the only monopoly , due to the coercive removal of competitive sources of energy , coal, wood and gas.

    1. Here is a recent btl comment on that article:
      tom_toms, Manchester, United Kingdom, 36 minutes ago
      “Absolutely. These poor girls were driven all over the country. It’s organised and
      nationwide, they have only scratched the surface and I only hope behind the scenes they are on it.”

    2. Jan Moir started out as a restaurant critic on the DT. How that qualified her to pontificate on political matters in the Daily Fail is beyond me.

      1. With regard to the BBC legal drama, The Split (report in Moir’s piece), I attempted to watch the first episode last week, but I had to switch off after suffering, for twenty whole minutes, the BBC’s whole armoury of wokeness and diversity crammed into those opening scenes.

        I was reduced to running around the village screaming AAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!

      2. I am capable of deciding whether a restaurant meal is up to scratch.
        Heck, I can even bake a decent Swiss Roll.
        Does this disqualify me from deciding that raping young girls is wrong?

        1. You’re not getting paid for your opinions: Moir is. One expects a degree of qualification in a topic to become a journalist, as opposed to a layman.

    3. JAN MOIR: Why don’t posturing pop stars ever protest over grooming gangs?

      Daily Mail copyright, reprinted for educational purposes.

      The awards season is over, which should mean a welcome respite from celebrities lecturing us on our bad attitudes towards the environment, gender politics, sexual harassment, #MeToo and #MooToo — the oppression of defenceless cows for their milk, as highlighted by Joaquin Phoenix in his Oscar acceptance speech.

      Have I skimmed, have I missed something?

      Oh yes, racism. We are all racist now, apparently.

      At the Brit Awards this week, award-winning rapper Dave accused Boris Johnson of being a racist.

      His argument? ‘It is racist, whether or not it feels racist, the truth is our Prime Minister’s a real racist,’ he rapped. And it must be tru cuz he said it.
      It’s so exhausting, isn’t it, being guilty of everything all the time?

      Being such a perma-disappointment to the woke generation with their burnished morals and burning zeal to expose any instance of modern oppression and right every historical wrong in the dankest corners of society.

      Yet there is one area of widespread persecution and criminality in the UK on which they all remain silent — the abuse of white working-class girls by Asian grooming gangs.

      Over recent years, hundreds of vulnerable girls have been traumatised, broken, abused, raped, left unable to get on with their lives — but no high-profile crusader speaks for them, do they?

      No actor dedicates his or her trophy to them, no duchess pops a concerned head over the parapet of their anguish.

      No one is starting a hashtag or opening a pop-up shop or pleading for justice for them.

      In fact, few celebrities have anything of note to say on the subject, even though this week saw more convictions of Asian men of mainly Pakistani descent for what have become known as grooming gang offences.

      Usman Ali, Banaras Hussain, Abdul Majid, Gul Riaz and two other men were jailed for a total of 55 years for what the judge called ‘vile and wicked’ repeated sexual assault and the multiple rape of two under-aged white girls.

      These offences took place in Huddersfield, but we have been here before — in Rochdale, Bradford, Rotherham, Oldham, Halifax, Nottingham, Telford, Newcastle, Derby, Bristol, Birmingham, Peterborough and elsewhere.

      It is a contagion, a disgrace — yet don’t expect the ongoing trauma suffered by these girls to get a mention when there are far more fashionable causes to get angry about.

      Such as the transgender social justice initiative currently tearing the Labour Party apart or the continued insistence by some that the Grenfell tragedy is a race issue.

      If you really want a race issue, consider a report published last month into a grooming scandal in Manchester, which concluded that 57 young girls were thought to have been exploited by up to 100 Asian members of a gang, despite the fact police and social workers knew what was happening.

      Or note that in Oxford this month, three Asian men were jailed for a total of 49 years for raping and sexually abusing a schoolgirl, the third trial in a series of linked cases going back years.

      Naim Khan, Mohammed Nazir and Raheem Ahmed — all in their 40s — were found guilty of 35 offences against the girl when she was aged between 13 and 15.

      ‘My life has been destroyed,’ she said in her victim statement. In many of these cases, the victims were not believed at first, only to be later left with shattered lives freighted with eating disorders, depression, PTSD and drug dependence.

      It is not helpful, some say, to think of this national scandal in terms of race because white men are abusers, too. Indeed they are, but on this scale? Operating with such impunity in so many cities?

      We all know what we can see, which is that these girls and their families have been let down and that there is still little evidence of efforts in British Pakistani communities to confront the problem.

      So you must forgive me for feeling rather cynical when Dave the rapper gets into his solid groove about the race issues affecting this country today.

      For if these victims had been black schoolgirls targeted by gangs of white men, there would be rioting on the streets. Or a few verses from Dave or Stormzy at the very least.

      Perhaps a calming bananagram from Meghan, an invite to stay in Lily Allen’s party barn, a message of sympathy from Oprah.

      When he was a Labour MP, Tom Watson’s West Bromwich constituency was in the absolute heartland of grooming gang territory, but if he ever got involved in the scandal, I must have missed it.

      Watson had a long-standing interest in abuse cases, but only if the abusers happened to be members of a Tory paedophile ring — which, in the end, turned out not to exist and were the ramblings and imaginings of a known fantasist.

      Meanwhile, the abuse of hundreds of girls went on unchecked.

      How did we get here? The problem is that they are the wrong kind of victims and the wrong kind of offenders — resulting in few declarations of solidarity from feminists and little acknowledgment of their plight elsewhere.

      All the stars are too busy being groovy to concern themselves with troubled, white, working-class girls from failing families whose tormentors happen to be embarrassingly and overwhelmingly of Asian origin.

      So say nothing, and sing a different song instead.

      1. “…there is still little evidence of efforts in British Pakistani communities to confront the problem.” What problem? It is not a problem. It is an intrinsic part of their culture in line with the Q’ran. It is accepted. Does anyone think that all this could go on without the muslim women knowing about it? How many convictions have come about following a report from a muslim? How many? I can’t hear the answer…

    4. Morning Anne,
      316504+up✔s,
      Lest we forget lab. politico’s were conversing with PIE years ago & bringing down the age of consent.
      Also media stars have had a hand in the odious sex under age issues, we had savile & glitter for starters.

    5. Just look at the vilification that Laurence Fox suffered because he did not conform to the clichéd philosophy of the brain-dead slebs.

    6. “Over recent years, hundreds of vulnerable girls have been traumatised, broken, abused, raped, left unable to get on with their lives — but no high-profile crusader speaks for them, do they?”

      There was a live interview 4 or 5 years ago with the female government minister who had been sent out to the media studios to try to defend the governments actions in this area. She did her best but was clearly not happy herself at what had happened. They were focusing on Rochdale when the interviewer asked “How widespread is this problem?” In an unguarded moment she answered with “It is happening now in every town and city with a large population of muslim men.”

      That is how you can tell that it was a live interview as they would never have allowed that comment to go out if they could edit it. At the time there were 1,400 girls that the gangs had abused in just Rochdale alone. We have since had gangs found in an ever increasing list of towns and cities. So this lady was telling the truth when she said how widespread it is. This will come as no surprise at all to anyone who has scratched the surface of what islam really teaches.

      When “we” have a rapist, it is a sick and twisted loner out acting on his own. All of those who read about his actions are rightly disgusted by them. These islamic men are in packs of 30+ and obviously all know what they are doing and have no problem with it at all. This is because they are committing no crime under islamic law. They are ALLOWED to treat these girls as disposable sex toys and abuse them. They are doing nothing wrong in their culture.

      My main point for this comment was that the very good article above that is linked to says “hundreds of vulnerable girls were abused” when there were 1,400 in Rochdale alone. Across the country that will mean 10,000’s of them will have been abused in this way. When that scale is comprehended, you can see just how far the media, social services, police and government have gone to not talk about it or to hide this issue.

      If they told the truth then it would be impossible for them to pretend that islam is anything other than the predatory ideology that it is.

      1. The only ones ever charged are the pimps. Even then, they receive prison sentences that fall far short of the maximum.

  30. Irish premier Leo Varadkar RESIGNS

    Irish leader Leo Varadkar resigned tonight after suffering a crushing defeat in a parliamentary vote.

    No clear successor emerged from political wrangling today designed to decide who will lead the country following a near three-way tie in a general election two weeks ago.

    Varadkar lost a vote to remain taoiseach today, and told parliament he would resign as a result.

    The Fine Gael party boss added he would stay on as caretaker leader after he tended his resignation to Irish President Michael Higgins.

  31. Bakerloo line staff set to start strike today in dispute over timetable changes

    So now timetables can be changed without the drivers going on strike. What stress they are not changing their terms and conditions ?

    He said: the “RMT is angry and frustrated that hard work by our reps aimed at reaching a negotiated solution to this dispute has been wasted as the company have played us along and failed to make any kind of serious progress.

    “That failure by London Underground chiefs mean that the action goes ahead as planned and even at this late stage we would ask the mayor to intervene to get his officials back around the table with a serious offer.”
    He added: “Drivers voted overwhelmingly for action in this dispute which is all about the management imposing timetable changes on the Bakerloo line without any serious recognition of the stress impact on the operators expected to implement them.

    “You cannot place intolerable stress and pressure on Tube drivers that impacts on their safety-critical role, and that is what this dispute is all about.”

    1. Diversity is strength, war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is valued (I’ve fiddled this one).

      Until the statists learn that 1984 was a warning, not a guidebook nothing will change. They don’t want it to change.

  33. Ten dead after far-Right terror attack in Germany. 20 February 2020.

    Ten people were killed overnight in Germany by a far-Right gunman who attacked two shisha bars in the western town of Hanau before turning his gun on himself.

    The victims reportedly included a pregnant woman. The gunman, a 43-year-old German national who was named on social media as Tobias Rathjen, left behind a 24-page manifesto which made clear that the motives behind the killings were racist.

    Racist? They didn’t have anything to do with his beliefs that children were being sacrificed at Black Masses then, or perhaps he couldn’t find any Satanists? What about his not having the leg over for 18 years or living with his mum at 43; you don’t think that played a part in it?

    What we have here is a Teutonic Thomas Mair. A socially dysfunctional human being haunted by his own inadequacies. He has no friends. He is a member of no party or political grouping. He’s a nutter! This of course makes him an ideal candidate for a “far right” plot to take over the world! With enemies like this the world is in no danger!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/02/20/germany-shooting-terror-attack-hanau-shisha-bars/

    1. This is why the small people are so very grounding. Around them, when the biggest worry is getting junior to his Tai Kwon Do group you stop worrying bout the absurd idiocy of the political environment.

    2. This man is definitely being used by the media for the standard “he is far right” propaganda exercise. The media love it when they get the chance to pretend that the minuscule number of actual Nazi’s in the world pose a comparable threat to the vast numbers of those who follow a certain cult that believe that all infidels should be killed.

      But the best argument in the world can be let down by this comment: “What about his not having the leg over for 18 years… you don’t think that played a part in it?” This puts FAR too much importance on sex. It is very nice when you are with someone and you are in love, but it really is not important compared to the things that matter. 🙂

      I certainly won’t have sex again unless I get married, and at 50 years old I am getting too set in my ways for that now. If I live to be 80 that will be 30 years “without getting the leg over.” I doubt that this would turn me into a gun-toting maniac. There are far quicker ways to do that. 🙂

    3. “What we have here is a Teutonic Thomas Mair.”
      Absolutely spot on.
      Maybe Peddy could tell us the German for “Don’t Care In The Community”.

  34. TfL complaints soar to record 110,000 over past three years

    Passenger complaints about London’s transport network soared to a record high of more than 110,000 over the past three years, official figures show.
    Poor service complaints increased from 15,826 during 2016/2017 to 25,667 for 2018/2019 — a 62 per cent rise.

    Complaints against staff across the Tube, bus, DLR and London Overground rose by nearly 20 per cent over the same period — from 38,416 to 45,943.

    For September last year alone — the most recent month covered by the figures — there were 3,961 complaints about staff, 2,652 regarding poor service, and 500 over fares and ticket issues.

  35. The light turned yellow just in front of him. He did the right thing, stopping at the crosswalk, even though he could have beaten the red light by accelerating through the intersection.

    The tailgating woman was furious and honked her horn, screaming in frustration, as she missed her chance to get through the intersection… dropping her cell phone and makeup.

    As she was still in mid-rant, she heard a tap on her window and looked up into the face of a very serious police officer. The officer ordered her to exit her car with her hands up.

    He took her to the police station where she was searched, fingerprinted, photographed, and placed in a holding cell.

    After a couple of hours, a policeman approached the cell and opened the door. She was escorted back to the booking desk where the arresting officer was waiting with her personal effects.

    He said, “I’m very sorry for this mistake. You see, I pulled up behind your car while you were blowing your horn, flipping off the guy in front of you and cussing a blue streak at him. I noticed the ‘What Would Jesus Do’ bumper sticker, the ‘Choose Life’ license plate holder, the ‘Follow Me to Sunday-School’ bumper sticker, and the chrome-plated Christian fish emblem on the trunk, so naturally…

    …I assumed you had stolen the car.”

  36. On the News today, the Government is to ban the use of domestic coal and non kiln-dried wood in fireplaces and Agas.
    Now what exactly is in non kiln dried wood that is an evil pollutant
    Oh yes,water,which is driven off when the wood is kiln dried,a bit like it is in a woodburner or fireplace

    Do we produce enough “approved” coal in the UK or will it be shipped here like “biomass” in filthy polluting freighters??
    Virtue Signalling Fuckwits
    Everywhere

  37. National Newspaper Circulations to January 2020

    Circulation continue to show steep falls

    The Daily Star on Sunday down 20% to 162,235 copies a week
    The Guardian down 6% to 132,641

    Only 4 papers now have circulations above 1 Million. If you take out the bulk copies which are usually free then the Sun on Sunday is below 1 Million

    Many of the titles are owned by a few groups and they are merging staff across the titles. The next step may be to merge some of the titles. With circulations falling as they are they cannot carry on much longer as they are

    Ignoring the Scottish titles and other oddities the paper with the smallest circulation is theGuardian

    Metro FREE 1,426,535 0%
    The Sun 1,250,634 -11% 66,859
    Daily Mail 1,169,241 -6%
    The Sun on Sunday 1,042,193 -12% 66,861

    1. Everybody ignores the Scottish papers. They are filled with political rants, most emanating from the insane Scottish Government

    2. The ‘Colchester Gazette’ now thinks we are interested in chip pan fires in Basildon.
      Besides having the slowest, clunkiest website in the world.

      1. Given these local papers pretty much do not employ journalist any more they have to pad the paper and web site out with something

      2. I bet the Birmingham Mail could give the Gazette a good run for the “..slowest, clunkiest website in the world.”

    1. I was musing this morning and this video promote my memory. If you phone a hotel to book a room and they tell you that they have “no vacancies” then you have to go elsewhere.
      You do not arrive at the hotel anyway, push your way in, sleep in the lounge and go to the dining room for free meals.

    1. I like Michael Portillo as does the Sultana. His programmes are gentle and informative, and have railways. Much better as a presenter than as a politician. His analysis was excellent, well prepared with figures, giving good overview, incisive, clear and well delivered.

      3. Interesting that there were very few interruptions and when there was he would calmly put his hands out, effectively saying wait, and not take his eyes off the audience he was addressing. A masterclass in broadcasting.

    3. It is time to pat the BBC kindly on the head as fond memories of 30 years ago come back into focus. Then lead it out behind the woodshed and a gunshot can ring out across the prairie.

      If the BBC are as good as they think that they are, then they don’t need a mandatory licence fee to succeed. Let them thrive as a subscription-only service.

  43. UK says Russia’s GRU behind massive Georgia cyber-attack. 20 February 2020.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d7f17af33d8082537486ac9bd15f72f1af9c26483943c4f9a7bb0523a22693da.jpg

    This is the latest element of an ongoing campaign of pressure by the UK against Russian intelligence since the poisoning of the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal in Salisbury two years ago. The aim is to try and deter Russian activity by exposing it.

    A notable aspect of this attribution is that it relates to events which took place relatively recently, in October 2019. One of the targets was Georgian broadcasters.

    The GRU’s targeting of broadcasters goes back at least to 2015 and a takedown of the French TV5Monde channel. That led to concern about what they might do against other broadcasters in other countries.

    I see. So they hacked into the Georgian television network and put up a sign in English so that everyone would know that it was the Russians? You’re right it does have strong links to the Skripal operation. It was obviously dreamed up by those same numpties at MI6 who thought of that!

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-51576445

  44. Mail to Sir JR…….

    Don’t you think the time has come to tell your readers and the public about ”Open Society” and George Soros, and the influence they claim over government which, they say, stretches back ”three decades” ?

    This therefore includes the ERM and Maastricht period of British history by their own admission, ie 1992.

    Polly

    2. Well the house itself isn’t flooded, so I don’t know what the fuss is about. As it’s built on an island in the river, one assumes it is surrounded by water all the time.

  46. I keep hearing about Climate Change. I just looked out of the window and wondered what has happened to Global Warming.

      1. I’d change my doctor too.

        Fat is good for you and doesn’t make you fat or clog your arteries. Only sugar does that. :•)

        2. When I was diagnosed Type 2 a few years ago, they told me to give up fatty meat. So I did, and my sugar level levelled out and they were pleased.
          At my latest blood test they told me I had become anaemic.

          1. Well try it, Tony, and, if you check back on yesterday’s NTTL, sort by best, then see what happens.

          2. If you check back, you will find that I have upvoted nearly all of your jokes. Even the ones that my great-grandmother told me.

    2. Woman without her man is a savage.

      Should you punctuate it like this:

      Woman! Without her, man is a savage.

      Who is the savage – the man or the woman?

      ( I wonder what Coleridge’s woman beneath a waning moon who was wailing for her demon lover was like.)

      1. She stood on the bridge at midnight
        Throwing snowballs at the moon.
        She said, “Jack, I’ve never had it.”
        She spoke too effing soon.

        1. I think that Kubla would have been a better mayor of London than Sadiq is. Perhaps Genghis would have been even better

        2. She stood on the bridge at midnight
          Picking blackheads from her crutch
          She said “I’ve never had it”
          I said “Not f***in’ much”

      2. Good morning, Rastus.

        In the example you give the man is savage. However, in the following example it becomes the woman who is savage:

        Woman, without her man, is savage.

  48. Men’s mag + TV + travel ABCs circulations

    Sales of technology magazine Stuff fall by a quarter in the second half of 2019, the biggest year-on-year decline among men’s titles. Stuff sold just over 30,000 copies over the six months to the end of December last year, the latest ABC figures show.

    Mens Health 120,,273 -18% 40.5368 Free copies
    Esquire 49,765 -16% 22,733 Free Copies
    Stuff 30,329 -24%

  49. BBC to make Watchdog part of The One Show

    The BBC’s long-running consumer rights series Watchdog is to end as a standalone programme, instead becoming part of The One Show.
    Watchdog began in 1980 as a strand of Nationwide, but proved so popular it became a separate programme in 1985.

  50. The weather.

    Below is a link to a little video from the BBC giving a very brief summary of how wet the winter has been so far. It would have been better had it included autumn months as well. Indeed, this habit of separating the months into arbitrary blocks has more than once left the Met Office looking foolish. The winter of 13-14 was at the time described as THE WETTEST EVER AND PROOF OF CLIMATE CHANGE until researchers pointed out that there were three-month periods from the past (before WW2) that were the equal but which included autumn months. For the water companies, the ‘winter’ is the period between the equinoxes when they hope that rainfall will restore the level of groundwater on which our water supplies largely depend.

    Stephenroi has written about his monsoon months (London? SE?) but here in Northants, while wet, it’s hardly been exceptional compared with much of the country. Multiples of the long-term average:

    Sep – 1.44
    Oct – 1.34
    Nov – 1.7
    Dec – 1.22
    Jan – 0.84
    Feb – 1.84 (typically the driest month of the year)

    Four of our last five 6-month ‘winters’ have been below average. Overall, we’re about 35% up this time around.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/features/51579555

    Interestingly, the presenter talks of the ‘very cold air trapped over the Arctic and very warm air elsewhere over the northern hemisphere’ but doesn’t tell us how these compare with the long-term averages. Isn’t the Arctic supposed to be at its warmest ever?

    2. WS, your last paragraph links to a statement I heard a ‘weatherman’ make on Al-Beeb about an hour ago. Said ‘weatherman’ claimed that the temperature of the atmosphere has risen and therefore holds more moisture, therefore leading to more rain. “Basic physics,” he called it but I can’t recall if he made mention of what was causing the rise in atmospheric temperature, leading listeners to come to the obvious conclusion, I suppose.

      1. It’s the contrast between cold and warm air that drives the weather. Has that contrast increased i.e. has the temperature of the warm sector increased by more than that of the cold?

        I don’t know when the term ‘jet stream’ was first used but the phenomenon was known about in the early days of trans-Atlantic aviation and the formation of Atlantic depressions was basic knowledge in O- and A-level geography in the 70s.

        1. Not forgetting the circumpolar westerly vortex caused in part by the Earth’s rotation and the coriolis effect…..

        2. The Gulf stream and North Atlantic drift was part of geography lessons in the 1960s. Also the fact that the Western side of the UK was a high rainfall area. Hurricane season in the autumn has always been a feature of Eastern Atlantic weather.

          There have always been floods and “weather events” we just keep hearing about them more now.

      1. We desperately need some politicians who will have the guts to challenge some of this nonsense…fat chance of course. They are all signed up to this rapidly-spreading religion, more’s the pity. I fear that there is no hope.

        1. It’s all those little men with boards saying ” The end of the World is Nigh ” who have scared them stiff. They are incapable of logical thinking themselves, so are following the crowd.

    2. Also from the GWPF:
      “No Raw Data, No Science: Another Possible Source Of The Reproducibility Crisis
      Date: 21/02/20Miyakawa, T. No raw data, no science: another possible source of the reproducibility crisis. Molecular Brain 13, 24 (2020)
      I propose that a lack of raw data or data fabrication is another possible cause of irreproducibility.

      Abstract: A reproducibility crisis is a situation where many scientific studies cannot be reproduced. Inappropriate practices of science, such as HARKing, p-hacking, and selective reporting of positive results, have been suggested as causes of irreproducibility. In this editorial, I propose that a lack of raw data or data fabrication is another possible cause of irreproducibility.

      As an Editor-in-Chief of Molecular Brain, I have handled 180 manuscripts since early 2017 and have made 41 editorial decisions categorized as “Revise before review,” requesting that the authors provide raw data. Surprisingly, among those 41 manuscripts, 21 were withdrawn without providing raw data, indicating that requiring raw data drove away more than half of the manuscripts. I rejected 19 out of the remaining 20 manuscripts because of insufficient raw data. Thus, more than 97% of the 41 manuscripts did not present the raw data supporting their results when requested by an editor, suggesting a possibility that the raw data did not exist from the beginning, at least in some portions of these cases.

      Considering that any scientific study should be based on raw data, and that data storage space should no longer be a challenge, journals, in principle, should try to have their authors publicize raw data in a public database or journal site upon the publication of the paper to increase reproducibility of the published results and to increase public trust in science.”

      https://www.thegwpf.com/no-raw-data-no-science-another-possible-source-of-the-reproducibility-crisis/

      This is not directly related to the climate change science community, but to Western blotting (a widely used analytical technique in molecular biology, immunogenetics and other molecular biology disciplines to detect specific proteins in a sample of tissue homogenate or extract.)
      It does illustrate though, how researchers are driven to publishing scientific papers regardless of their research results, if any. Publishing papers becomes an end in itself, part of their career purpose and personal ego.
      Or in other words, scientists can be as fraudulent or as useless as everyone else.

    1. This “knives out for Priti Patel” has been going on for a few days now, with allegations of her bullying staff, I suppose due to the fact they couldn’t use racism. However I’m pleased to see that some attempt to support her is now in the DT. Link below although I can’t provide the whole article, sorry.

      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/02/20/top-civil-servant-accused-obstructing-home-secretaries-clashes/

      I hope she is not thrown to the wolves by this government as she seems to be quite promising – I.e., trying to do what maybe the majority of the population want in terms of limiting immigration.

      Edit: Sorry, forgot to say good afternoon all, although only just.

      1. Thank you for the link. I think her job is safe – she has a mind of her own and fits in well with Boris’s current behaviour pattern of ” bugger what they think, lets get things moving.” Her critics are mostly just rule book followers.
        As I see her, anyway.
        Yep, good afternoon . The days and weeks are passing quickly.

      2. If the Guardian and left-wing press are going after her, it means she’s probably doing her job properly.

    2. “Matters came to a head last week when a senior official collapsed after a meeting with Patel following an all-night effort to reverse a high court ruling barring the deportation of 25 foreign criminals to Jamaica.”

      An all-night effort led to their collapse you say? From sitting at a desk with tea, coffee and snacks on demand? What a group we have in the civil service, who never tire of trying to obstruct or delay our countries progress. They should try working a few triple-shifts when its all hands on deck to keep your jobs when something goes wrong in the real commercial world.

      1. Probably ran out of custard creams around 11PM and had to make do with hobnobs until the morning tea lady came round.

        The all night work sessions used to be so productive, most managers had disappeared and any that remained went out of their way to be helpful.

      2. All night?
        Try working all day Saturday, all night Saturday, all the following day, getting a couple of hours sleep on Sunday night, before getting up for work again Monday morning ( my first weekend on call. I was getting calls every two hours or less, and it took 40 minutes or more for each lab request. No wonder I started to twitch every time I heard a bleep go off…even when on holiday and standing in a takeaway burger place in America…)

  53. Angelina Jolie says it’s in America’s best interests to ‘stand up for the underdog’ in Syria conflict. 20 February 2020.

    Angelina Jolie has said it’s time the world steps in to help with the Syrian conflict as she reflects on the lack of action since her first visit to the border in 2011.

    The UN Special Envoy calls out politicians for failing to step in like other conflicts in the Middle East and questions when America stopped rooting for the ‘underdog’ as reflects on the hearbreaking things she’s witnessed over the past 10 years.

    In a Time essay titled ‘The Cost of Inaction in Syria is Too High’, the actress says America helping other countries in the past has been ‘for our own interests’ and that stepping in after a purported 500,000 Syrians have perished, would be no different.

    Morning everyone. There is a slight problem with this Angie in that the Americans have been standing up for the underdogs in Syria! They are called Jihadists and they are an offshoot of ISIS the very same people the US has been bombing in Iraq! Without the assistance of the US and its proxies the so called “rebels” would have collapsed five years ago and the country would have been at peace! I know this isn’t like Hollywood but that is the way things actually are. The sooner Assad wins the better for everyone!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8026315/Angelina-Jolie-says-Americas-best-interests-stand-underdog-Syria-conflict.html

    1. But, but, but, you have to realise, Minty that Angelina Jolie is a totally knowledgeable and powerful politician, with a firm grasp of real-politik and is well qualified to take her own country to task over its thorough-going laziness.

      ‘Morning.

    1. Over recent years, hundreds of vulnerable girls have been traumatised, broken, abused, raped, left unable to get on with their lives — but no high-profile crusader speaks for them, do they?

      No actor dedicates his or her trophy to them, no duchess pops a concerned head over the parapet of their anguish.

      No one is starting a hashtag or opening a pop-up shop or pleading for justice for them.

      Yes the crime so dreadful that none dare speak its name

      2. Personally I’m finding the MeToo people toxic. They’re prostitutes. They sold their bodies for a part in a film. Now they’re ashamed they want to get back at the man they blame.

        Yes, what he did was egregious, yes he likely took advantage of women and yes likely Hollywood is a cesspit for this sort of nastiness but it doesn’t make what happened illegal. Wanting justice for your shame is inappropriate, regardless of how many people approve of it on twitter.

  55. Interesting that just as the right are getting a strong following in German politics that a strange incident like this attack happens.
    And also the fact that they are reporting it on our mainstream news when they ignore so much else that happens on the continent.

    1. Just caught the end of Ferrari (LBC) interviewing a specialist on terrorism – I’ve heard the Welsh Dr before but can’t recall his name – and he’s the first expert I’ve heard who gave a balanced opinion on the rise of the ‘supposed’ extreme right wing, islamic terrorism and immigration. The Dr cited the example of where he lives in South Wales, there isn’t very much immigration there but the people are becoming concerned that decisions re immigration are being taken that they cannot control.
      The politicians, via their proxy, mass immigration, sowed the wind and now are seeing the whirlwind emerging. All going to plan, however, the best laid schemes o’ politicians an’ men…

    2. I just wish the BBC would stop reporting the ‘Right wing xenophobic extremist’ and start to investigate the why, rather than just the action.

      Do they not realise that all such utter lack of nuance does is further annoy people and encourage them to ever more extreme measures? Is there no consideration that if we talked about the problem like adults we would all learn to accept one another as individuals?

  56. Oh the joys of a forum with the well educated NOTTLER folks:

    The latest competition asked for application letters for a job at No. 10 from a fictional character of your choice.

    ————————–

    Adrian Fry/Holden Caulfield
    All resumes are phoney. I could quote you my qualifications, my lousy childhood and all that David Copperfield kind of crap but it wouldn’t mean a thing. I guess you’re pretty sick of phonies in button-down collars who’d sooner lay down the rules than play the game. I never want to end up talking in paragraphs or caring about my pension and all. The way I see it, if a Government man can’t negotiate a pretty smart trade deal with Europe and still have enough spirit left in him for a ride on the carousel, laughing his head off the way my little sister Phoebe sometimes does, he’s lost. This country has plenty of phonies dickering with infographics and all. What it doesn’t have is folks willing to get right out into those fields of rye and actually catch kids before they fall off the goddamn cliffs nearby.

    D.A. Prince/Winston Smith
    I wish to apply. I am steeped in Doublethink and rejoice in holding two opinions simultaneously and accepting both of them. Thus the viability and unviability of, for example, the HS2 rail line, is normality. It is no more than the fluidity of answers to two plus two or the malleability of Truth in the pursuit of Untruth.

    I know the object of Power is Power and that rewriting the Past will write our Future. Now that the Party has the Leader it craves I believe that Power can never slip away, nor should the Oldspeak of the print and broadcast media ever disseminate their oppressive messages again in their failed attempts control the masses. Their former Thoughtcrimes are repulsive to me but soon they will exist only in the mind.

    Our Leader exists in the endless present and is always right. I love Big BoJo.

    George Simmers/Clarissa Dalloway

    Dear Mr Cummings

    What a lark, I thought, to work in Whitehall! To leave one’s home on a fresh morning, to share briefly the vitality of the streets, and then to enter, purposefully enter, the dignified doors behind which work is done of such enchanting seriousness. How strange and wonderful it must be to mix with those whose whole existences have been lived breathing that office smell of paper and floor polish. Men like dear Lady Brabourne’s nephew, perhaps. How superior such men are to the mere ebb and flow of things! How practical they are! But I too could be practical. I know that, as one knows things instinctively,without having to think them through. Have I not experience? I have handled cooks, and dealt with German governesses. I am, if need be, a woman of action. On some mornings I go to buy the flowers myself.
    …………………….

    Hamish Wilson/Uriah Heep

    I write, dear sir, with regard to the position of personal assistant advertised by your esteemed and excellent self. I am currently in the employ of Mr Wickfield, for whom I work as an articled clerk. Before chancing upon the situation offered, I was agreeably content to continue in the employ of said Mr Wickfield. I know my station and have ever been thankful for it. However, I marked the specified need for ‘cognitive diversity’ and for a candidature reaching perhaps beyond the narrow groves of academe. In this respect, I may indeed possess the very qualities you seek. There are people enough to tread upon me in my lowly state without my doing outrage to their feelings by possessing learning. In short, kind sir, I won’t provoke my betters with knowledge.

    I am available for interview at your convenience.

    Your obedient and umble servant,

    Your next challenge is to submit a poem entitled ‘Lines on a Young Lady’s Instagram’.

    https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2020/02/spectator-competition-winners-i-love-big-bojo-winston-smith-applies-for-a-job-at-no-10/

  57. Update: I have had an acknowledgement with respect to my recent letter to my MP re: Extinction Rebellion – from his parliamentary caseworker assuring me that he is keen to help and has passed my comments to the Home Office to ensure they are addressed and will be back in touch when he has anything further.

    I look forward to hearing that Priti Patel has re-purchased Boris’ water cannon and they will be used with vigour on the next bunch of arrogant virtue-signalling hypocrites; one can only hope that Emma Thompson will fly over to be in the vanguard of the next ‘protest’.

      1. Ims2, it could well have been along the the lines of this letter, originating from VVOF or Alf The Great as he’s now known:

        My reason for writing is to do with Extinction Rebellion (XR) antics in Cambridgeshire. I was astonished that the local police force appear to be aiding, rather than stopping, them. It is beyond my understanding that roads XR are occupying, have been closed by police under ‘Emergency Powers’, thus completing their work for them. Why are these people simply not arrested and roads re-opened?

        Does it therefore follow than any citizen with a grievance may force a road closure? If not, why not, if the precedent has been set?

        I also notice that XR have been allowed to vandalise Trinity College Lawn, without the police seeming to want to intervene. During XR’s London demonstration we saw police dancing and cavorting with them, rather than throwing them off the streets and letting Londoners go about their lawful business.

        Who is behind deciding police policy and how is it that he or she has seemingly not been held to account?

        Please kindly let me have your responses.

  58. Hello folks – from a sodden Wiltshire.

    Can anyone please tell me what Boris and Co are up to with this ban on woodburing and coal?

    As I understand it we will still be able to burn dry wood. Definition please. Who will say if my wood is dry enough to burn? How will they know that I have not burned any wet wood?

    How will they stop people with saws going out into the woods and helping themselves?

    Coal I understand will still be available from the coal merchant but not in small easily handled bag from the garage. Does this not discrinate against the elderly, the infirm and the poor?

    I had (stupidly it seems) hoped for a little more in the way of thought through policy – instead it is SNAFU.

    1. “How will they know that I have not burned any wet wood?”

      It’ll be like the BBC tax, you are expected to self-declare your guilt.

      1. Job creation for ex-Capita goons who will be round to stick a meter in your logs
        It will also be a godsend for the pikeys flogging illegal lumber

      2. They’ll find out when they have a chimney fire caused by the tars in unseasoned timbers and their insurance company will have nothing to do with the claim.

    2. It illustrates their complete ignorance of science. The ‘smoke’ that comes from burning wet wood is 98% water vapour, which would have been released into the atmosphere if the wood had been dried. The other 2% is unburnt carbon and other cr*p, which eventually falls back down onto the ground.

      1. According to some minister on LBC this morning, burning unseasoned wood or coal releases arsenic, mercury, etc into the atmosphere.
        Which makes me wonder how the mercury and arsenic get into the wood in the first place.

        Seasoned/kiln dried wood is ok. It’s the unseasoned wood that they want to ban, “to improve air quality.”

      2. Only selfish idiots would burn wet wood.

        Much more carbon monoxide is produced. More particulates are produced.

    4. The sale of wet and unseasoned wood is to be banned, along with high carbon coal in small bags.

      It’s probably a salami slicing exercise ramping up over the coming years leading to a ban on the sale of all coal and wood for burning, and a ban on the sale of logburners..

          1. Both our neighbours spent quite a lot of money installing wood burners Bob.
            I love smell of it on still winter nights.
            Right now I could fill our garage with logs from the surrounding woods.
            But we are storing furniture for number two, wife and new baby for their proposed move.

        2. My son who until recently was a fireman was sick and tired of being called out in the middle of the night and other unholy times (his station was ‘retained’, not full time) to deal with chimney fires.

          These fires were rarely in chimneys attached to old fashioned coal fires. They were almost all for fashionable wood-burners and caused by the combustion of wood that wasn’t seasoned. Apart from the particulates that are so exciting the government at the moment, the wood was giving off large quanities of tars, which unburnt condensed on the inside of the flue. Once the tar had built up to a decent layer all it took was heat at a later date to ignite it, drawing more air up the flue to feed it and burning not only the inside of the flue, but sometimes an entire roof.

          Often they had to break in through the brickwork of a chimney breast to put it out before it spread. Very messy.

          2. I remember my father piling the logs on our fire one boxing day years ago. Someone knocked on our door to tell us there were flames leaping out of the chimney pot.
            We called 999. One of the fireman who arrived was our opposite neighbour Bill. Just a quick upward spray did the job. Mince pies and cups of tea all round.

      2. Unseasoned wood will not be able to be sold in bags at the garage or supermarket but you will still be able to order from the merchant and store it for use when dry, I do not understand how they can possibly police this system. To me it is illogical and an attack on those who do not have the ability to store large quantities or handle heavy weights.

        1. As I said before, a few years ago one of my cousins said Boris Johnson is a buffoon. I said I think he’ll be Prime Minister.

          I think we were both right.

      3. ‘High carbon coal’?

        Wrong.

        The highest carbon coal is anthracite, a smokeless fuel with a carbon content of over 90%. Most household fuel is bituminous, aka ‘steam coal’. Perfectly good and useful coal, but not as pure as anthracite. It differs in having a much higher ash content, but also in having a higher Volatiles content. The volatiles include water and gases, some inflammable, some not, which when the coal is burnt form the smoke.

        The result of the higher volatiles is lower carbon.

        It is not ‘high carbon coal’ they are seeking to ban, quite the opposite.

          2. I admit that I have not majored in coal studies but am merely a coal student coached by the Daily Mail.

          6. One of life’s great pleasures is the scent of freshly-hewed coal, straight out of the seam. Another is the feel of the sharp, crisp, freshly broken edges. Neither property survives the trasit from seam to coal shed.

            Only a privileged few encounter it.

        2. Do you burn coal in your house? If so, where is your coal mined? Near to me there are a significant number of older ex-council properties that still have open grates and the householders use them. In recent winters they have been burning some absolutely filthy coal. No longer that sharp tang of sulphur but a pungent, putrid smell rather like burning plastic. There’s clearly been a change of supply.

          1. I spent my entire working life involved in various ways with getting coal out of the ground. Sadly, no longer.

            Our house is heated by gas, but I’ve kept the fireplaces open.

            Most of our coal is imported these days. When I was working we imported none and exported quite a bit.

  59. All is not well in the Labour Party

    I dont think Labour are going to win back voters like this. It seems to be a party for the vocal minorities that want to trample on the rights of the majority. To claim that the woman group as a trans phobic exclusions hate group is ludicrous. It seems Labour when things are not going their way through a tantrum. Perhaps she should reflect on her behavior and consider that genetic woman also have rights

    Labour leadership candidate Lisa Nandy has vowed to redouble her support for trans rights after being targeted by hecklers

    She said she will not stop regardless of attempts to “shout me down” when she was repeatedly heckled at an LGBTQ hustings in Manchester on Thursday evening.
    The Wigan MP said she and fellow contender Rebecca Long-Bailey backed pledges from the Labour Campaign for Trans Rights that call for the expulsion of transphobic members from the party.

    The commitment also describes organisations including Woman’s Place UK, a group that calls for biological sex to be acknowledged as part of maintaining women’s rights, as a “trans-exclusionist hate group”.

    1. Dear life. When does this nonsense end? A biological woman is a woman. Anything else is not.

      People can call themselves a Dutch Elm if they want to. It won’t change reality.

    2. Surely it’s a case of merely showing good manners; on both sides of this argument.
      There is a sadly grotesque tranny working in a local charity depot.
      In fairness, as he/she has settled in, he/she is doing a far better job than most of the other volunteers. Politeness and reasonable efficiency reigns.
      In exchange, the customers ignore the lacy black bra peeping over the top of his/her summer frock and conduct a normal shopping transaction.

  60. Woman charged with plotting to bomb St Pauls Cathedral. Islamic state supporter.
    That sort of confirms and old suspicion as to what could have happened at Notre Dame in Paris.

    1. Oh, you mean she threw a fag end into a bucket of oily waste rags while repainting the ceiling?

      1. Is that how the Notre Dame fire started ?
        I thought a fridge caught fire in the middle of the night.

    2. “So I said to the mechanic at the tyre centre ‘Can you get the fork off my tyre?’ ……”🤔

  63. Before making changes to the BBC, why not make public who influences the content of BBC programming ?

    Namely… Open Society.

    1. They’ve already done that, Treaty of Rome, and taken shedloads of money without doing any repairs.

  66. Ironic(Nicked)

    Although I haven’t personally witnessed any rise in either “racism” or
    “far right” activity I have witnessed a huge rise in people telling me
    that both “racism” and the “far right” are on the rise. I remain to be
    convinced. The guy in Germany, Far Right or not, was completely off his
    trolley. I thought it ironic that, for probably the first time in a long
    time, the description of a “terrorist” murderer as a “mentally ill lone
    wolf with a mother complex” was correct.

    1. It was a rather forceful protest against smoking. Most cafes and restaurants don’t allow it as it is illegal. There are exceptions to the law, small places were the proprietor is the staff, and special small rooms set aside for the purpose, places where no food is served.

  67. One person said: ‘17.4million voted for Brexit. Most of the opinions of

    these people, on many subjects, would lose them employment in the

    publicly funded arts sector in the UK’.

    A vivid example was given by a respondent

    who reported being ‘reprimanded, threatened, screamed at, shouted at,

    bullied by my ex-boss because of my public online, published writings,

    media interviews and comments in support of Brexit’,

    According

    to one respondent, non disclosure agreements – often used by

    organisations to ensure silence in return for a financial settlement –

    are sometimes included in contracts issued to artists by England’s

    National Portfolio Organisations.

    Other

    topics which caused individuals to fear self-censoring include fear of

    attack from trans activists, fear of being accused of racism for holding

    right-wing views, and fear of losing funding if criticising funding

    bodies.

    The report states: ‘These

    findings cast serious doubts over any moral high ground that the sector

    may claim around tolerance and respect.’

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8028351/One-six-arts-workers-say-theyve-given-gagging-orders-curb-dissent.html
    That’ll be the kindly,open Left at work then??

    1. The predominantly Left-wing, Remainers types have been shown to be significantly less tolerant of opposing views than Leavers and the centre right

        1. Can’t have wood fires any more she’ll have to be roasted in an oven.

          Edit. She’ll for I’ll

        1. I’d have thought reading a mirror version would be more accurate, i.e. whatever the Guardain says, assume the opposite.

    4. Is there no German/French/Ducth/Italian/Spanish equivalent of “Cutting ones coat to suit ones cloth”?

  73. In response to this post, six hours ago, by Cochrane:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d24af8f37aed845ba690a2f6f963d02eab4f1b3f0913a596a187c77420ee487c.png

    I responded with this:

    Do you realise that people who walk to their newsagent’s purchase a copy of the Daily (and Sunday) Telegraph, every day of the year (excepting Christmas Day), currently pay a whopping £926·60 for the privilege. The cover price is currently £2·50 for the weekday and Sunday paper and £2·80 for the Saturday paper.

    Here in Sweden I pay a subscription that permits me to read all those newspapers and supplements in “virtual paper” mode (I simple swipe my trackpad to turn the pages) online. This costs me £26 per month (£312·00 per annum) which is a third of the price that it is for someone in the UK who traipses in the rain, daily, to get his soggy broadsheet.

    I also watch all the BBC’s content on iPlayer via a VPN and I do not pay a licence fee. That VPN costs me £5·99 a month (or £71·88 a year).

    A VPN is cheaper than a licence fee. Get it yet?

    I thought it might get lost in the winds of time.

    1. It’s also not compulsory to pay the £300+ subscription if you want to read other newspapers, and be taken to court if you don’t.

        1. I don’t know, but I suspect not.

          Rastus is the one to ask, or possibly HardcastleCraggs.
          They are fiddling around with the two property taxes at the moment, so it might change anyway.

    1. “It’s been a tough 24 hours here, fighting hate from all around the world…”

      Funny how they equate people taking the mickey with hate. They really don’t like it when the public push back, do they? No sense of humour or proportion. They’d have done well working for the Stasi.

  77. EU budget chaos: Danish PM says special summit to end with NO agreement as leaders clash

    EUROPEAN leaders will not come to a final agreement on the EU Budget this weekend, claimed Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen as she arrived in Brussels for the second day of the negotiation

    Speaking to reporters at the European Council, Ms Frederiksen claimed there will probably be another summit in March to reach an agreement on the future EU budget as leaders across the bloc continue to clash. Denmark is one of the countries so-called “frugal four” who have been strictly opposed to the European Council President Charles Michel’s proposals. She said: “I think the group of four it’s quite clear in how we see the discussions about the budget and we have said that yesterday to all our colleagues and also Michel.

  78. The recent disastrous flooding would appear to be down to the staggering incompetence of the Environment Agency, but that’s not the whole story. It’s scarcely a unique example of the deterioration of standards in the UK since we were placed in thrall to Brussels.

    For decades, supine British governments have been falling over their feet in the rush to enact the endless flow of diktats emanating from the ‘Jacks-in-office’ of the European Kommission, without thought or consideration of the consequences for the UK. We have payed – and continue to pay – the price of that folly.

    “Britons never shall be slaves”? Don’t make me laugh. We’ve been slaves ever since that two-faced arsehole, Edward Heath, took us into the so-called Common Market on a lie.

    The French, on the other hand, have always ignored all European rules and regulations that don’t suit them and when they are fined for their disobedience, they simply refuse to pay.

    1. The fact that the Somerset Levels have not experienced significant flooding this Winter since they were dredged should be used to counter the climate change excuse.

      1. There is absolutely nothing wrong with building on a flood plain providing the foundation is a raft structure and the connections to mains and sewage are flexible to allow for the property to rise and fall with the level of the water. I believe the Dutch have been experimenting with this practice for some time.

        1. The Dutch seldom suffer from flooding because they have the necessary infrastructure in place to deal with it.

          1. The majority of Holland was ‘planned’ and ‘reclaimed from the sea’. It was a bare canvas. The real problem Holland faces is keeping the sea out. It’s a delta area for the Rhine and associated river systems. On the whole they don’t suffer too much from river flooding, because they had a bare canvas and weren’t stupid with town and road placement.
            The UK suffers from river spate flooding mostly. We have the Thames Barrier to protect London from storm surges in the North Sea. We have removed the features that hold the water in the uplands. Soil run-off has increased. Vegetation is routinely removed. Fallen trees are removed to speed water flow. In the lowland areas we have built on floodplains. The rivers need somewhere to go when levels rise and levels rise faster than ever because of terrible land management.
            In most cases dredging isn’t the answer. We need to be holding the water back not racing it through as fast as possible, and we need to give rivers places to go in flood.

        2. Yeah, but what are the chances??

          From today’s CW website: https://conservativewoman.co.uk/todays-hot-topic-flooding-the-housing-market/
          Today’s hot topic: Flooding the housing market

          THOUSANDS of homes are due to be built on land recently submerged by floods, it is reported.
          In one case, the developers of a 1,300-home development in an area listed by the Environment Agency as a flood risk claim that their drainage plans mean the scheme will not be subject to ‘significant’ risk.
          Should developers which build on flood plains and/or councils which give permission be forced to provide insurance against flood damage for the buyers of these homes? Discuss!

          Comment btl:
          In a high rainfall country like the UK, this is utter stupidity. Indeed news like this reminds me of how happy I am to have retired from the madness that the UK’s Town Planning system has become. For after almost deciding to do research in a branch of the Earth Sciences, I swiftly retrained and then spent my entire working career as a chartered Town and Country planner. Career opportunities led me to specialise in designing and steering large scale projects, including new settlements. How one handles water, in engineering terms, is a major component of town design, in our damp, cool temperate country, with its high rainfall Atlantic climate. So politically driven madnesses like this fill me with horror, if not a loathing of the irresponsible politicians and civil service mandarins who are driving this forward, forcing often reluctant local councillors and officials, into contemplating approving such madcap schemes – what a mess !

          During the nineteenth century, faced with the unhealthy overcrowding of our northern industrial towns, British Town Planning set new world standards in imagining, designing, financing and building, not just new towns and villages, but far more importantly, creating completely wholesome new communities with schools, hospitals, playing areas and fields, allotments, churches and social clubs. Places like Bournville and Welyn Garden City set new standards for industry based, healthy new towns. The post war early British new towns attempted to emulate these initial high standards. I used ideas from the best examples of these places in my work. Yet now, because of the idiot politicians, we see decisions that will encourage, if not force, unsuspecting people to buy and rent homes on land that should never be used for housing. It is, well, almost criminally irresponsible. At the bottom of this is a population boom that is out of step with the country’s physical size.

          Amongst anyone with any common sense, it goes almost without saying, that a cardinal, unbreakable rule is never to build anything that cannot be readily abandoned in times of high rainfall, on flood plains. So agricultural sheds for equipment or a raised clubhouse for a boating club may well be fine near the river. Once I gave the “OK’ to a well designed specialist two story office building, built on short pillars (to reduce water displacement), with a ‘floodable’ cricket club and car parking area on the ground floor, all to remove an ugly local eyesore near a popular riverside walk. But homes, hospitals, schools (people sensitive places), or sprawling single story factories are an absolute ‘no, no’.

          It is all very basic hydrology – flood plains are meant to flood – that’s nature’s design ! Moreover by erecting structures, and therefore displacing the volume needed by future flood waters, you reduce the capacity of the flood plain to accommodate the flood waters, unwittingly displacing more water further downstream, thus exacerbating flooding lower down the river catchment basin. So towns lower down get it in the neck – even worse ! To defy nature never ends well. Lowland flood plains were created by the meandering, earlier phases of each river. Before we drained them, to improve the land for agriculture, many flood plains were for much of the year, marshy, boggy areas. They will always flood, because that is how it is meant to be. If we have any wisdom, we should never tamper with that basic gravity-driven, hydrological design.

          But here we see decision makers, these politicians, idiot people, living far removed from nature stumbling about like fools. These are the actions of an arrogant, post-Christian government that thinks that Creation (or nature, if you prefer) can be ignored and defied. In their rush to import as many tax payers as possible, they foolishly condemn millions of future residents to risk, misery and hardship. This is a government that cares not for its people.

        3. There are already houses in the Amsterdam suburb of IJburg which are actually floating in the waters of the IJmeer (lake). They are fully connected to services as you describe.

      3. Rik,
        Your slipper post of four hour ago, my reply was found for some reason not to be acceptable.
        If apologies are in order regarding yourself so be it but, is there a reason ?

    3. “We’ve been slaves ever since that two-faced arsehole-dilator, Edward Heath…”

      There you are, Duncan. Proof-read at no extra charge.

    4. That’s precisely why the EU works well for France and has always been a disaster for Britain.

    5. Afternoon DM,
      Not a lot of people want to know that, I
      judge it to be self inflicted slavery vie the polling booth.
      We had a bloody narrow squeak on the
      24/6/2016 as in 48% / 52% & treachery
      is still thick in the air.

    6. And when Owen Peterson pointed this out to Cameron he was sacked.

      I would have far more confidence in Boris Johnson if he put Owen Paterson in his cabinet.

      Mark Francois and Steve Baker looked at one time as if they would be prominent in post Brexit politics and the fact that they capitulated to Johnson (just as Farage did) and even so have not been rewarded for doing so does not auger well. I fear that Boris Johnson, for all his bluster, is determined to get BREXIT in Name Only.

    7. Like they refuse to fight when there’s a War on, and then blame us for coming in and doing their job for them later than they wanted…

  79. Female Islamic State supporter admits plot to try and blow up St Paul’s Cathedral. 21 February 2020.

    A supporter of the Islamic State terror group has pleaded guilty to plotting to bomb St Paul’s Cathedral and a hotel.

    Safiyya Amira Shaikh, 36, from Hayes, Middlesex, admitted preparation of terrorist acts and dissemination of terrorist publications at a hearing at the Old Bailey.

    The charge states that Shaikh made contact with someone who could prepare explosives and went on a reconnaissance trip to scope out the historic site and a hotel as locations to plant bombs.

    How odd! She doesn’t live with her Mum. She’s not a Satanist. She’s not alone. She’s planning to bomb St Pauls Cathedral. She has support from organisations and individuals. She’s distributing propaganda. She’s clearly mentally ill!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/02/21/st-pauls-cathedral-bomb-plot-islamic-state-supporter/

    3. Afternoon AS,
      316504+up ticks,
      Do you not have to have a dead count
      before being judged mentally ill ?

    1. ”

      He said: “The problem we have today with this, is that we have more
      and more teachers who do not speak French, and for whom our national
      education is not relevant.

      “I am not comfortable with the idea
      that in a school in the Republic, women and men are able to teach
      without [the] national education [system] having the slightest control.
      And we have no control, either, on the curricula that they teach.”

      He will have the Human Rights brigade after him, for starters.

      1. I am sure Rastus or his wife can correct me, but I doubt the French State pays the slightest attention to such creatures, let alone funds expensive lawsuits.
        Once issued with a deportation order, you’re out.

    3. Saw this on RT yesterday. They noted that he’s nicked most of it from Marine. The difference of course is that she might actually act on it and not just spout hot air to garner votes.

      1. I think that to all intents and purposes she’s a socialist.
        Macron has queered his pitch so badly that France may yet get a red in tooth
        and claw socialist as their next President, it’s unlikely to be M le P.

    4. Now, is this a genuine concern of Macron’s or is it an attempt to preempt the Front National and spike le Pen’s guns?

  82. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/02/21/coal-wood-fires-banned-fight-cut-emissions/
    Coal and wood fires banned in fight to cut emissions
    End of the roaring hearth as fears are raised that pollution move will hit rural homes

    So that will be the end of a centuries old way of life which will drive people from the country into towns just to keep warm as they have no gas on tap and erratic electricity supplies. Of course this will increase pollution.

    Why is the government so determined to infuriate ordinary people and back loony eco-warriors most of whose ‘proven science’ is sheer bunkum?

    1. Not a problem, smokeless fuel and dry wood would be unaffected , typical click bait hyperbole, as Anne has said the biggest concern is the “nannying” government

      1. Morning D,
        316504+up✔s,
        I would say it is more political
        muscle flexing ( control of the peoples) these politicians have had one hell of a fright on the 24/6/2016 and they are trying to reinstate their stance of the servants of the peoples, rule the peoples.

        1. As I said elsewhere to me it looks little more than pleasuring the ecoloons as it’s a big headline grabber but in truth it’s net effect should be minimal.

          1. D,
            316504+up✔s,
            I do agree, these governance parties have, sad to say,
            submission, PCism, appeasement inbred IMO.
            To me they are political “tryons” as with the wood burning stoves they insert the thin end of the wedge to be worked on at a later date when needed,as a diversionary tool to divert the eye from yet another (scam) issue.

      3. Like many people living in the countryside I have wood-burning stoves and I get all the firewood I need by coppicing my laurel hedges which regrow very quicky. I saw all my logs by hand which keeps me fit and I stack them and store them carefully so that they are properly dry by the time I come to burn them. I do not have machines to measure humidity but my general rule is to wait for a year before burning logs with a diameter of 2″ or less and I wait a year or two longer for fatter logs.

        1. If you cut the wood at the end of winter, it is at its dryest. Dry under cover in a breezy place. Split first, if you can, the drying goes better.

      4. It’s the mind set behind it that worries me.
        If the Conservatives are thinking that way, what the hull are the rest aiming to inflict on us?

    2. Morning R,
      316504+up✔s,
      As I posted earlier I believe it has been
      brought into play at this moment in time as deflecting from the HS2 white
      elephant herd & the treachery within the already done & dusted
      eu deal,IMO.

      1. Don’t give them ideas. Think of the number of jobsworths currently poking their noses into matters that, in our childhood, would have been unthinkable.
        In fact, our parents would have uttered the words Russia, Soviet Union or Communism.

        1. Already 80% of the County Council’s budget is going on Statutory Social Care, to rules and specifications drawn up by central Government, not by elected councillors.

          There is a precedent therefore for the regressive Council Tax to be taxation without representation, since there is no need for those imposing the tax to be accountable for their spending – they can simply blame national Government for piling on the requirements, which they can do also with impunity, since it is not they that are actually sending out the bills.

          Woodshed inspections would thus be another intrusion over which, through this method, there is no democratic control or accountability. We have no option therefore but to resort to direct action and hold government at both local and national level in contempt.

          Is this really how we should run a nation post-Euronanny?

          1. Roughly speaking, the direct council tax you pay only covers their pension liabilities (25% of the money they receive to spend on services).
            The other 75% that they actually spend on things that matter to voters comes from national government coffers.
            Borough council tax demands are mostly for money to be passed on to the county council. Metropolitan councils’ financial management is obviously different.
            If local council of all types had to raise the whole of the money they need, the turn-out at local elections would go up.
            But I doubt national government tax demands would go down to compensate!

          2. Does it though? I recall a budget sometime in the mid-2010s whereby George Osborne announced that he would drop the national grant to councils by 10% each year, until it was zero by 2020. As part compensation, he would allow councils access to the National Business Rate, currently going to the Treasury. I don’t think Philip Hammond reversed this move, only to remove the NBR going to the councils.

            Government tax demands did go down a little – it enabled them to raise the Income Tax threshold at the lowest level, to drop Corporation Tax, and the indulge on a Spending Spree over lucrative prestige infrastructure projects, such as Sizewell 3 and HS2. Also to bail out NHS trusts, which are being bankrupted by PFI contracts raised mostly under the Blair/Brown governments.

            I am arguing that it is not the remit of local authorities to raise money for things that are decided nationally, and that there is no business of National Government to put the burden of these onto Council Tax, rather than paying the councils direct from the Treasury for these services.

          3. What I’ve never understood is why there are so many layers of blasted government. City, county, central. All incompetent, expensive and inefficient.

          4. You’re surely not suggesting that local government is incapable of managing a guaranteed, fixed, force backed income, are you?

            Council tax is set to rise by about 6% this year – disguised in amongst the ‘adult social care’ funding, which is always the maximum yet there’s never enough money. Oddly, there’s always enough money for councillors pensions and executive officer salaries to rise though.

            I’ve often said that if council tax should increase only by an amount the salaries of executive pay is reduced by – to a factor of ten.

          5. I once worked for a County Council’s Legal Section. Its main role was to employ bailiffs to raid the assets of pensioners in order to fund their “care”. Forced house sales (where nice profits could be made selling on) helped keep up the revenue stream for funding officers’ salaries and pensions.

            The obvious thing for councils pleading poverty to do is to axe all statutory services, maintaining just the optional ones the district, borough or county they serve are willing to pay for.

            What do you think national Government would do about it?

    4. I’m sorry, but I am one of these loony eco-warriors who has a wood burner, where everything cut from the hedges I planted and the the thinnings of the little wood I planted in the garden is kept for winter fuel. Anything thicker than my thumb ends up on the wood burner. My neighbour works in the woods, and gets me a trailer load for a year in return for helping him out with the road and the septic tank.

      I already pay £200 each year out of my pension just for the police (more than I pay for the BBC, which for all its faults provides me with more than the police ever do) – it is one of these regressive taxes so beloved of our policy advisers in the City. Yet the village police house is long gone, the front desk in the police station in town closed a couple of years ago, and the most senior officer serving a large part of rural Worcestershire is now a sergeant.

      How on earth are they going to have the cars burning up fuel around the countryside to police eco-loons like me chucking sticks on their woodburners, and still have enough left over to raid the homes of those twittering inappropriately or looking at naughty pictures that are not the right sort of diverse? As for catching burglars and armed robbers – forget it!

    5. As many people have written, the long term goal is to make as many people as possible across the world dependant on their governments and the state. They want us all to use resources that can be switched off remotely by pressing a button. This is the stick to force people to behave themselves. This will take many years to achieve, but we will see increasing restrictions on what you are allowed to do as those years roll by. Unless we get politicians who start working in our benefit. This step along the path to finally banning wood burners (which is the obvious conclusion of this process) is a bad sign.

      The idea that people can live happily by themselves in the country with their petrol cars, and be warm and cosy using natural local resources such as wood or coal, makes those who want to control everyone unhappy. We must all conform and be dependant. One of the future policies to watch out for is the advancement of the idea of a “cashless society” where all of your decades of hard work and savings can be nullified and put on hold as your card is frozen.

      You go from being a financially secure individual to being penniless at the flick of a switch. Forced to beg for food because your payment cards do not work anymore. A system with physical currency makes the citizen free of this control, so they will try to get rid of it at some point.

      We could really benefit from some politicians who stood up and said no to this ongoing process. These policies harm our people and will not change the environment of the planet. Those in India and Africa are not going to stop burning wood just because we are forced to down the line. I suspect that China will still be burning coal in the future as well.

        1. I am with you on this. I believe you use cash when ever possible. I think we should start a campaign – one day each week when we use nothing but cash.
          Why? Well, it would screw up the data gatherers and make the use of bank Branches and STMs more prominent.

          Imagine, one day each week when “they” cannot track you via your debit/credit card. Joy!

      2. And remember Meredith, that the Japanese government has just announced that they intend to build 22 coal-fired power stations.

  84. The real battle starts,,,,,,,,,,,,,,who rules,elected ministers or snivel serpents

    “Priti Patel’s fury at official blocking police from eco mob

    crackdown as Home Secretary says staff are dragging their feet on

    tougher action just days after officers let Extinction Rebellion tear up

    Cambridge lawn”

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8026547/Priti-Patels-fury-official-blocking-police-eco-mob-crackdown.html
    The establishment have the knives out for Priti

  86. What’s with disqus (again) the new comments bar seems to get tired after a time and just doesn’t respond to the click-on to go to the next ‘new’ comment!

    1. Refresh the page by going to sort by newest/oldest. It’s always done that after about 250 comments.

    2. #metoo.
      I also find comments not fully accepted, being greyed text, until I edit & save the edit.
      :-((

    1. “The Arctic Ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and
      in some places the seals are finding the water too hot according
      to a report to the Commerce Department yesterday from the
      Consulate at Bergen, Norway.

      Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers all point to
      a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard of
      temperatures in the Arctic zone.

      Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been
      met as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes.

      Soundings to a depth of 3,100 meters showed the gulf stream
      still very warm

      Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and
      stones, the report continued, while at many points well known
      glaciers have entirely disappeared.

      Very few seals and no white fish are found in the eastern
      Arctic, while vast shoals of herring and smelts which have never
      before ventured so far north, are being encountered in the old
      seal fishing grounds.

      Within a few years it is predicted that due to the ice melt the
      sea will rise and make most coast cities uninhabitable.

      ”
      From the Washington Post, November 2nd, 1922.

    2. Hislop from being an incisive and witty satirist has become a remainer establishment sycophant who is good for absolutely nothing at all. HIGNFY has become almost totally useless as satire – it is toothless and pathetic.

      1. Agreed Richard,the question is what pressures bought about such a dramatic change………………….

  89. Tonight will be sheer torture!

    I am entertaining friends and I am making them one of my favourite sweetmeats for afters: cherries in a cherry jelly topped with an almond panna cotta decorated with amaretti biscuits. It is simply divine.

    Trouble is, I’m on a carb- (and sugar-) free Keto diet so this pudding, for me, is verboten! I’ll just sit back, sweetly nibbling on a handful of raw almonds as they enjoy their sweet delight.

    [Sob!] :•(

    1. Console yourself with the thought that if they eat all that stuff, your friends will become diabetic too.

  90. Cricklewood incident: Man in his 40s dies after being found with neck injury on north west London street

    A man has died after being found in a street in north west London with a neck injury.
    Police were called by London Ambulance Service just before 7am on Friday after a man was found lying on Anson Road, Cricklewood.
    The man, believed to be in his 40s, was pronounced dead at the scene about 45 minutes later.
    Police say there have been no arrests and officers are keeping an “open mind concerning motive”.

  91. What those mangy coated law makers within the HOL
    should bring in is the “Dickoff” law prerequisite to a male prisoner transferring to a female prison.

    316504+up ticks,

    1. I do believe law is made in the Commons and only ratified or amended ( amendments that are not binding, only advisory) in the Lords

      1. Morning Ntn,
        316504+up ticks,
        Yes I realise that but seeing as I truly believe, that most in the Hoc will be in time sufferers of the “Dickoff” law I went straight to the top of the mangey crew.

  92. Jonathan Dews murder: Trio beat friend to death and set house alight

    Three men who battered a friend to death then set fire to his house in a bid to cover up the murder have been jailed.
    Jonathan Dews, 42, was found dead in the cellar of his home on Brighton Street, Wakefield, on 6 September 2019.
    Jordan Metcalfe, 24, Nathan Redmond, 21, and Scott Crutchley, 24, were all convicted at Leeds Crown Court.
    Metcalfe and Redmond must serve a minimum term of 27 years, and Crutchley 21 years.
    All three denied murder but were found guilty by a jury on Thursday following a trial.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/de4736d3be31f56932d68f27c6772148aec1d7108b844186708b3a82d5240351.jpg

  93. Why are investors betting against shopping centres?

    While the troubles facing well-known retail names on the UK’s High Streets have been much publicised, the plight of landlords has received less attention.
    However, two of the UK’s biggest retail landlords have seen a combined £573m wiped off the value of their shares this year.
    Hammerson and Intu, which own huge shopping centres, have had their rental income squeezed as shops try to share some of the pinch they are feeling. Some investors are fleeing and others are betting against them.
    On Friday, Hammerson announced it had sold seven of its retail parks as it retreats from the sector. Meanwhile, Intu – which owns the Lakeside shopping centre in Essex, the Metrocentre in Gateshead, and the Trafford Centre in Manchester – is reportedly seeking to raise up to £1bn to shore up its finances.
    Hammerson and Intu are the two most bet-against property stocks in the UK by investors, according to a report by the Estates Gazette. Investors use a method called short selling to profit from falls in share prices.

  94. Oh the joys of a forum with the well educated NOTTLER folks:

    The latest competition asked for application letters for a job at No. 10 from a fictional character of your choice.

    ————————–

    Adrian Fry/Holden Caulfield
    All resumes are phoney. I could quote you my qualifications, my lousy childhood and all that David Copperfield kind of crap but it wouldn’t mean a thing. I guess you’re pretty sick of phonies in button-down collars who’d sooner lay down the rules than play the game. I never want to end up talking in paragraphs or caring about my pension and all. The way I see it, if a Government man can’t negotiate a pretty smart trade deal with Europe and still have enough spirit left in him for a ride on the carousel, laughing his head off the way my little sister Phoebe sometimes does, he’s lost. This country has plenty of phonies dickering with infographics and all. What it doesn’t have is folks willing to get right out into those fields of rye and actually catch kids before they fall off the goddamn cliffs nearby.

    D.A. Prince/Winston Smith
    I wish to apply. I am steeped in Doublethink and rejoice in holding two opinions simultaneously and accepting both of them. Thus the viability and unviability of, for example, the HS2 rail line, is normality. It is no more than the fluidity of answers to two plus two or the malleability of Truth in the pursuit of Untruth.

    I know the object of Power is Power and that rewriting the Past will write our Future. Now that the Party has the Leader it craves I believe that Power can never slip away, nor should the Oldspeak of the print and broadcast media ever disseminate their oppressive messages again in their failed attempts control the masses. Their former Thoughtcrimes are repulsive to me but soon they will exist only in the mind.

    Our Leader exists in the endless present and is always right. I love Big BoJo.

    George Simmers/Clarissa Dalloway

    Dear Mr Cummings

    What a lark, I thought, to work in Whitehall! To leave one’s home on a fresh morning, to share briefly the vitality of the streets, and then to enter, purposefully enter, the dignified doors behind which work is done of such enchanting seriousness. How strange and wonderful it must be to mix with those whose whole existences have been lived breathing that office smell of paper and floor polish. Men like dear Lady Brabourne’s nephew, perhaps. How superior such men are to the mere ebb and flow of things! How practical they are! But I too could be practical. I know that, as one knows things instinctively,without having to think them through. Have I not experience? I have handled cooks, and dealt with German governesses. I am, if need be, a woman of action. On some mornings I go to buy the flowers myself.
    …………………….

    Hamish Wilson/Uriah Heep

    I write, dear sir, with regard to the position of personal assistant advertised by your esteemed and excellent self. I am currently in the employ of Mr Wickfield, for whom I work as an articled clerk. Before chancing upon the situation offered, I was agreeably content to continue in the employ of said Mr Wickfield. I know my station and have ever been thankful for it. However, I marked the specified need for ‘cognitive diversity’ and for a candidature reaching perhaps beyond the narrow groves of academe. In this respect, I may indeed possess the very qualities you seek. There are people enough to tread upon me in my lowly state without my doing outrage to their feelings by possessing learning. In short, kind sir, I won’t provoke my betters with knowledge.

    I am available for interview at your convenience.

    Your obedient and umble servant,

    Your next challenge is to submit a poem entitled ‘Lines on a Young Lady’s Instagram’.

    https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2020/02/spectator-competition-winners-i-love-big-bojo-winston-smith-applies-for-a-job-at-no-10/

    1. Anyone who turns up with a translator should be disqualified from getting a residence permit. They obviously have too poor a grasp of English, ipso facto.

    1. Not so according to a friend who was dragged up there by here husband only last Monday – she said it was full of Chinese and Japanese flush with money. And outrageously expensive.

    1. That’s the Guardian these days. The only articles open for comment feature topics of global importance like restaurant reviews. Reason is I assume, that idiots like Jones and Hirsch would get the on line drubbing they richly deserve.

    1. I hope she has a good upper cut.
      The kind that cuts out swathes of uppity upper civil servants.

  100. Cambridge Extinction Rebellion protesters have climbed on to the roof of a Shell petrol station

    The police are continue to all the ER mob to run riot. I seem to remember the name Tilly Porter. I am sure she was one of those arrested and supposedly banned from Cambridge

    Extinction Rebellion protesters have climbed on top of a petrol station in Cambridge during a demonstration.
    Today (Friday February 21), Extinction Rebellion (XR) protesters set up a blockade at the Shell garage on Newnham Road.

    Demonstrators blocked any cars from entering the petrol station by holding up a large banner displaying the message ‘Life or Death.’

    One demonstrator – Tilly Porter – poured molasses onto the shell logo from the roof, giving it the appearance of being coated in oil.
    Another protester has reportedly glued themselves to the roof of the building.

    The samba band is also playing loudly outside the station as the protest continues.

    1. Tilly Porter, 21, Annie Hoyle, 26 and Donald Bell, 64, all from Cambridge were charged with criminal damage in connection with the Schlumberger building protest.

    3. The moon shines bright on Tilly Porter
      And caught her
      She washed her drawers in dirty water
      She didn’t oughta
      The dirty bitch.

    4. Leave the glued protester on the roof overnight regardless of the weather. Let nobody supply him/her with food or drink.

      Is it the same filling station which they blockaded 2 or 3 weeks ago?

    1. Evening LD,
      316504+ up ticks,
      It was in the public arena on the
      26 / 8 / 2014 via the Jay report,
      everybody who wanted to know knew by then.

  102. Four arrested in fraud investigation in Wisbech – one is also suspected of people trafficking

    Warrants were carried out at four addresses in the town on Wednesday (19) in connection with fraudulent bank activity.
    Four men, two aged 32, one aged 36 and the other aged 42, were all arrested on suspicion of fraud by false representation, with the 36-year-old also being arrested on suspicion of people trafficking and exploitation.

    The 42-year-old man, Igors Kublickis, of Alexandra Road in Wisbech, was charged with two counts of possession of class B drugs. He was remanded to appear at Cambridge Magistrates’ Court on Thursday (20) where he pleaded guilty to the offences. He has been further remanded for sentencing on a date yet to be set.

  103. Jeez,,this link comes with a health warning
    Nope not going to post it,it’s too vile
    Stomach turning acts by a community police officer

    1. So she does hypocrisy too; you wanted “not to be Royal” so just suck it up – you wanted it, you got it!

    4. I’m betting Harry regrets not insisting on a prenuptial agreement.

      He’s going to be taken to the cleaners.
      On his plus side I suspect he’ll be welcomed back as a prodigal son.

      2. My feeling is that the end game had been decided upon by the RF before the wedding…. the Queen’s face on the wedding day in the Chapel of St George published by the DM was that of one very angry elderly lady. Prince Harry (and my apologies for this analogy…) fell on his sword to save the Monarchy and thus he in turn will be saved by that Monarchy.

  108. “Social media erupted with a flurry of posts that said Sainsbury’s in
    Kiln Lane Epsom has been evacuated along with the supermarket giant’s car
    park. One commenter warned to avoid the area. The post read: “We are
    aware of an incident at Sainsburys Kiln Lane. The store and car park is
    being evacuated. We have been informed it is due to a bomb scare.”

          2. The MSM only ever mentioned the ‘club fee’ less the rebate. They didn’t mention the share of VAT or the tariffs applied to non-EU goods coming in. An example of the latter is Tate & Lyle:

            The ship will arrive here at the dock in East London and as we are unloading it, before we are allowed to sell the sugar in the market to consumers, we have to send a cheque of around €3 million to Brussels.“

            Tate & Lyle Tariff Payments

          4. There were additional payments into other schemes to keep the scam afloat. We are well out of it and they will feel the pinch: Eire has been told that they will have to pay more in and get less out. Varadkar is not a happy bunny, I’m trying not to laugh too much.

          10. Actually, top-slicing VAT and external tariffs is one of the ways the UK contribution is made to Brussels. It isn’t ‘extra’ money. That’s why the UK contribution had to be adjusted retrospectively each year to account for the delay is working out how well the UK economy was doing.

    4. The graphic used to show the difference between 1% and 1.08% gives the impression the latter figure is 1.8%. Oops!

    1. The lack of snow means this winter has been very dark for a long time. The dark has got to me for the first time in 22 years; added to the stresses of trying to biild a business, and I get stressed too much. Roll on spring!

      1. Absolutely Obers….I can’t wait for lighter nights. I hate it when it is light until after 10.30pm and around 5am……a happy medium would be nice. Stress is not good at all…it comes out in many ways which you may not be aware of until much later….so take care.

        2. Try Singapore then Jenny – or any other country slap bang on the equator – every day, all through the year, it gets dark at 18:00 and light again at 06:00. It’s bloody boring since the light and dark happen very quickly.

      1. Осторожнее, товарищ! Вы, возможно, сказали слишком много.

    3. Let’s still hope that he wins the Democrat nomination, and he and his socialist ideology gets buried by Trump in the election in November. If Bernie is swindled out of the nomination, his followers will continue to feel aggrieved, just as they did last time. They need to realise they represent a very small minority.

  115. Immigrants.

    Gawd, I get sick and tired of people stating that all immigration is essential and beneficial.

    If ever there was something that Pareto was the arbiter, it’s immigration.

    20% of immigrants give 80% of the benefits. Thus, why not refuse access to the UK for that 80% of immigrants who only provide 20% of the benefits?

    2. Me too. I am sick and tired of being told that I am likely to be a burden on the state, having bought my own house, accumulated savings and worked for 47 years for a miserly state pension, alleviated only by my own small private pension.

      I have witnessed the private care system and paid heavily for it for close relatives. Some foreign carers were great but others less so. The main beneficiaries were the money grubbing owners of the care companies who chose to employ an odd mix of competent carers and quite a few incompetents, most from Eastern Europe.

      I hope to see the wealth of the UK devoted to the interests and wellbeing of the citizens of the UK. All too often we have witnessed enormous sums being wasted on foreign aid to corrupt countries whose leaders despise us and the seemingly bottomless pit of support for the EU supplicant nations. Meanwhile our own infrastructure is falling apart and we now resemble a third world country.

      The streets of our capital city, our second, third and fourth cities resemble, in parts, downtown Beirut. Hideous mosques proliferate apparently with no planning constraints whilst our indigenous peoples are totally ignored. Nothing good will come of this.

      1. Krill? Let’s hope the Japanese and their ‘research’ excuse for slaughtering whales is shoved down their throats.

      1. It does rather stymie my plan to rescue the UK economy by opening up the South Atlantic oilfield…

  117. 316504+up ticks,
    May one ask, what with the opposition to multi fuel fires
    now, along with common sense in many other issues, could this Conservative party be forming an international hybrid party along with the Democrats and
    coming out as the Condem party ?
    After all this boris chap is a native New Yorker is he not.

    1. Richard Seymour, Marxist, Momentum supporter and Corbynista – typical Guardian writer.

      I would just love to rearrange his face. It might give him an entirely new perspective on things, but I’m willing to bet that he wouldn’t carry himself with the same fortitude as Simon Weston.

  119. MH370 SEARCH COULD BE RENEWED, HINTS FORMER AUSTRALIAN PM

    MH370 remains unfound to this day – but the search for the missing airliner could now be renewed, former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has hinted.

    https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1245102/mh370-news-tony-abbott-malaysia-airlines-flight-370-missing-plane-australia-spt

    What a good idea! Maybe the British Government will take note and renew the search for Glenn Miller’s aircraft, which similarly disappeared in unexplained circumstances.

    2. Rik – what can one possibly say. I cannot uptick your post as an acknowledgment and thus leave it as that, so I choose not to uptick and say this: thank you for drawing our attention to the utter grotesqueness and barbarity of this culture which has settled amongst us, biding its time. My heart goes out to the mother of the child and may the child, at the end of his short little life, rest in peace. Words have failed me.

      1. And when such news is presented to the apologists, what do they say? “Bigot! It just shows that Muslims are a greater danger to other Muslims than they are to us. Stop worrying!”

      3. Mallorca is the largest island in the Balearic Islands and is known for its landscapes and festivals. One of the most popular festivals is called the festival of Es Firó. This is a celebration of the region’s defence against Moorish invaders in 1561.

        Es Firó draws in thousands of costumed revellers to the Port de Sóller to reenact the unsuccessful Moorish siege of the island. The celebration involves a mix of song, dance, wine, and fireworks. This is definitely one of the noisiest festivals that bring the island to life.

        The festivities may fall on the second or third weekend of May, culminating on Sunday and the following Monday. The main event, which is the famous beach battle, takes place on Monday afternoon or evening. If you plan to visit Mallorca, be sure to join this energetic event.

    3. “Saudi Arabia’s predominant branch of Islam is Sunni, accounting for around three quarters of the population. Human rights groups say practitioners of other forms of the faith – including Shia – are persecuted.”

      By “persecuted” they mean murdered on sight once you are identified as not being Sunni. This was done to a little boy next to what they laughingly call “holy ground.” These true believers do this to those people that they consider to be “the wrong type of muslim.” Imagine what they dream of doing to infidels such as us, once they have the numbers here to act openly.

        2. I am just off for the night now to clear my mind of all thoughts of that cult. There will be time enough for them later. I did find this page on wikipedia before I leave:

          “Islam is the largest and the state religion of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Pakistan has been called a “global center for political Islam”.” About 97% of Pakistanis are Muslims. Pakistan has the second largest number of Muslims in the world after Indonesia. The majority are Sunni (80%) while Shias make up between 15–20%. Smaller minority Muslim populations in Pakistan include Quranists, nondenominational Muslims, and Ahmadis (considered by the constitution of Pakistan to be non-Muslims) are 1%.”

          Have a good night from someone here who is not, and never will be, a follower of that cult. 🙂

          https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0b317425954298d409eb97563622ae9f296de3ea7d00eb00ee2471915b8f77b0.jpg

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

          1. Wow , thanks for your info, well done for researching stuff.. Do we assume that the illegals who come ashore here are Shia..

            There will be internicene war here before long at the rate the divisions are growing !

            Hope you can relax… by the way , I have been searching every where for a jar of Pork seasoning herbs … can I find it… nope , nowhere .. I expect it has been withdrawn from all spice shelves in various supermarkets.

          2. Very sage of you, Belle. Must confess that sage in minced pork is my main herb when I make my once a year batch of sausage rolls at Christmas.

      2. That Richard Burton must have been very lucky to get away with visiting Mecca in 1853, must have been his sunni disposition.

  122. Royal Mail to increase price of stamps

    The Royal mail seem determined to price themselves out of business. At one time no one gave a thought about the cost of posting a letter. Now you think twice it only seem a short will go that they last went up

    Royal Mail has said it will increase the price of first class and second class stamps.
    The postal firm said the price of a first class stamp will jump 6p to 76p and the price of a second class stamp will rise 4p to 65p from March 23.
    The company said the price increases are “necessary” to ensure the sustainability of its universal service.
    Royal Mail said it is “operating in a challenging business environment” and is likely to be loss-making in the next financial year.
    Stephen Agar, managing director of letters at Royal Mail, said: “We are operating in a tough market at present, under the threat of making a loss by 2021.

    1. It’s not putting the price of stamps up. It’s putting up the cost of using it’s services. The Post Office is moving quickly to electronic services, and putting do-it-yourself machines in Post Offices to get rid of employees.
      The postal services are actually first class. But courier services are mostly superb and better. With couriers and e-mail, they have a problem ( same worldwide). To maintain the universal service the Post Office, like the BBC, will need a Government subsidy, which could be paid for in the same way as the HS2 – on the never-never.

      1. The logical thing would be to move to alternate day delivery starting in the rural areas. There are alternative option if you do need a faster service
        This would almost substantially cut costs although the First Class stamp would go

        1. I just said, the stamp is an illusion. In fact they are saving money by getting rid of stamps and using bar codes.

          1. Yes. I wrote to the Scottish Secretary, Vince Cable and the Scottish papers on that, demonstrating that the volume figures* used to justify the sell-off were deliberately misleading.
            Nobody cared. It was a swizzle and some pals got rich, I suppose.

            *I looked at figures back to 1950. theses told a very different story.

    4. That’s a lot more than here – a first class stamp works out to about 42p. The US mail suffers from the catastrophic fall off in mail use generally – email, and online bill paying are essentially wiping them out. That having been said, we still have two local post offices, one less than 2 miles away and one about 7 miles away.

  124. The Telegraph gets worse. Today, an article by someone purporting to be their ‘Chief Sports Feature Writer’:
    “Despite Lewis Hamilton’s six world titles, F1 retains a monochrome image – it cannot endure as a bastion of rich white privilege”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/formula-1/2020/02/20/despite-lewis-hamiltons-six-world-titles-f1-retains-monochrome/

    Bonkers. I’m glad my sub has run out…
    PS, and there was of course, Force India, with their bejewelled boss Veejay Malia. He’s still on the run somewhere I think…

      1. Especially as the cost of the paper version has just gone up by 25%! Pushing the subscription option hard!

    2. Given the fearful cost of getting anywhere in motor sport these days, I am not surprised. The Bernie Ecclestone era drove costs sky high for all sectors of motor sport – worse now the big manufacturers are essentially in control. Gone are the days when talented amateurs could buy a car like a Formula Junior and a van to haul it around in, all on an almost normal income, and if they were good, someone would sponsor them to some extent in the next level of the sport.

      I had a couple of pals who did just that when in their 20’s – one hauled his FJ around in an ancient ex-removal van, the other a trailer which he hauled behind an old (’50’s) Riley 2.5 litre. Neither “made it” but one did end up in a couple of Grand Prix events.

  125. Reading Spectator hard copy. How I liked this:

    “If I were in charge of deportation, it would be like the Berlin airlift: one plane leaving every 30 seconds”

    Rod Liddle, The Spectator, 15 February 2020

  127. DM Story

    Defiant Meghan Markle tells friends there’s nothing ‘legally stopping’ her and Prince Harry from using their Sussex Royal name, despite Queen banning them from using it

    It should not have been too difficult to Suss Ex Royal Markel – but Harry has failed to suss her! The poor chap is so stupid (like his official father) that he does not even begin to realise that this scheming piece of trailer trash has wrecked his life.

      1. i’ve just bought a horse, and named it “Sussex Royal”. I have a contract with an American businessman, and we are going to market, for sale to Americans, bottles of ” Sussex Royal Droppings “.
        I have the Queen’s consent.

    3. The Sussex titles should have been removed as part of the exit deal. And poor Harry is just feline whipped.

    4. Scheming piece I agree with, but not trailer trash – she has none of the tattoos or chavmarks I’d associate with such trash. Indeed, despite my misgivings about her personality, I’d rate her slim and pretty …. I reckon she’s very much a package like my first wife – so Harry is VERY much in the very-cold-very-hot machine and he must sometimes reckon it was more relaxing in Afghanistan.

      3. It’ll be worse than Afghanistan for Capt.Wales.

        He’ll have been very ‘well-minded’ during his tours ….. but now, who’s going to protect him from his wife?
        :¬(

  128. The BBC normalised racism last night, pure and simple. 21 February 2020.

    Yet Question Time then saw fit to clip the 82 seconds of hate, accompanied by a succinct summary of the audience member’s rant. Lies and hatred, uncorrected and unchallenged, rippled across social media from the account of the BBC’s self-described “flagship political debate programme”. At the time of writing, the video had been viewed more than 2 million times. By sharing the video, the BBC seemed to imply that this wasn’t racism – it was simply someone’s opinion for us to agree or disagree with, in much the same way that we might debate the top rate of tax, or whether the railways should be renationalised. Who’s to say who is right and who is wrong? This was just another valid perspective to roam free in the marketplace of ideas – or such was the implication.

    I’ll only make one observation here and that is that Jones exemplifies the Left. No one else should be allowed to speak unless they agree with us and if they do we should make sure no one else hears it! For a fuller critique I can recommend Brendan O’Neill’s article on Spiked!

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/02/21/why-they-hate-that-question-time-woman/

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/feb/21/normalise-bbc-racism-hate-crimes-question-time

    1. “Hate crimes have doubled in just five years” according to Jones. He ignores the inconvenient fact that the definition of ‘hate crime’ has been extended several times in the past five years, so an increase is not surprising.

      2. Could we please have sight of the short list of the things that are not “hate crimes”.

    2. I just watched it and if she’s a racist then there are an awful lot of racists in the country.

        2. Where on Earth does The New European get its money from? It can’t be sales. (Innocent look.)

    3. O’Neill writes:

      “Her angry comments about closing the borders and putting a complete stop to immigration, alongside her haughty disdain for immigrants who cannot speak English, are not being treated for what they are: a hardline outlook which, as poll after poll has demonstrated in recent years, is not shared by the majority of British people.”

      Who says it’s not? Few would be brave enough to say it. Hell, some of them might not even be white!

      1. If Jones is a ‘treasure’, it’s a great pity that he hasn’t been buried, in the traditional fashion.

    5. Owen Jones is as intolerant as Paul Joseph Goebbels. His idea of what constitutes diversity is at odds with the views of most sane people in the UK.

      Any person disagreeing with Owen Jones’ perverted views and opinions is called a racist or homophobe or worse. Most of us have taken enough of the LGBTQ shite and antiquated Corbynism.

    2. ‘Morning, George. May I wish you Many Happy Returns and a great day. I hope your meal and company last evening were enjoyable too.

      Something of a strange day for me always. It’s my (late) father’s birthday too. Almost 30 years a copper in the Exeter City Police Force (a short absence in the RAF for the last two years of the war, once he was permitted; reserved occupations and all that!) I grew up in the police family before Blunkett devalued the term.

      It is also my (late) mother-in-law’s birthday, along with her daughter: my sister-in-law. F-i-L should have died on this day too, but they kept him going to the 23rd!

      So, very much a day of mixed emotions for us.

      Your loins (the pork ones, I mean 🙂 ) looked great. You can keep leg as a roast – give me loin or belly any time! Mind you, a slow-cooked (8-10 hours) hand and spring is a treat for the whole family.

      1. Thanks for that, John, it is much appreciated. The only police connection in my family was a great grandfather who was a sergeant in the Sheffield and Rotherham police in the late 19th century.

        I agree fully about the best cuts of pork, I find leg of pork a tad too dry. Funnily enough I think the same about leg of lamb, shoulder of lamb is by far the tastiest joint.

        Do you know, none of my Swedish guests were in the least bit interested in my crackling! Bugger, I had to scoff it all!

    1. Ben Wood 21 Feb 2020 10:36PM

      I agree entirely. It seems the Marxist desire to control and enslave people and destroy simple pleasures is alive and well.

      No doubt the police will enjoy threatening ordinary people while the burgulars and rapists go free.

      I thought Boris was a true abrit. Clearly not, just another wolf in sheep’s clothing. Or is his idiotic ‘woke’ girlfriend now running the government?

      1. I put it down to simple cluenessness about the world and the way things work.

        The whole rotten bunch of them have spent all their lives avoiding maths and the sciences in their pursuit of arts degrees, then they assume that they can tell engineers who actually bothered to find out how systems work that they know better concerning things of which they themselves know south of bugger-all.

      2. I put it down to simple cluenessness about the world and the way things work.

        The whole rotten bunch of them have spent all their lives avoiding maths and the sciences in their pursuit of arts degrees, then they assume that they can tell engineers who actually bothered to find out how systems work that they know better concerning things of which they themselves know south of bugger-all.

    3. In full…

      The ban on coal and wood drives away the very people who trusted the Tories

      CHARLES MOORE

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5e000409475d8b06c197b5feb440f563bc06f47aade5ae24d393b505d0a24941.jpg
      This pointless policy might pacify the city-dwelling green lobby, but it will alienate everyone else

      Everyone – even Greta Thunberg – has a metaphorical carbon footprint, but I have a literal one. Each morning during the winter months (in rural areas, that’s late September to mid-May), I descend to the cellar, fill the coal-scuttle, and carry it up to my study. To my wife’s annoyance, my carbon footprint is often visible on the carpet.

      By the warming flicker of the resulting coal fire, I write, among other things, this column. From my desk, I look out on our other source of particular, as opposed to central, heating – our wood-stack. If we did not keep the home fires burning, I would be too cold and therefore too cheerless to keep the supply of columnar ideas coming. So when a Conservative government decrees this week that our bituminous house coal will shortly be banned and my logs carefully adjudicated by inspectors to work out their noxiousness, I take it personally.

      I say to George Eustice, the Defra Secretary responsible: “As recently as last December, I was urging readers to vote for your party because it seemed to take seriously the needs of people outside the metropolitan bubble. Yet this is how you repay me and – much more importantly – them! You invoked the needs of people in the North where, I hereby reveal to you, it is consistently colder than in London. Yet now you are almost literally freezing them out.”

      “You also,” I upbraid him, “are supposed to be the party of rural voters and small businesses. You and your ministerial colleague, Rebecca Pow, sit for rural seats. Do you not realise that the open fire and the wood-burning stove are the centre of country dwellings and country pubs, with the wood usually supplied by local coppicing? Are you unaware that many immobile old people, who inhabit otherwise chilly houses that are expensive to heat, sit snugly by their open fires and are happier for it? Do you not know that houses with chimneys and working fires breathe better than those without, reducing bad air and damp and the respiratory diseases and depression which result?”

      “Mr Eustice,” I rave, “when Good King Wenceslas and his page go out to rescue the poor man gathering winter fu-u-el, they bring him flesh, wine and pine-logs. Under this Government’s provisions, it sounds as if all three characters in the carol will be guilty of multiple crimes.”

      Yesterday morning, to get a calmer view, I rang Steve Buckingham of Wadhurst Coal, our local coal merchant. Steve lugs down our cellar stairs the large sacks of coal on which we depend. He had already been dealing with calls from worried customers wanting to stock up for the coming emergency. He mildly professed himself “rather surprised” by the Government’s decision, which cuts out 30 per cent of his business by 2023. His fuels are 100 per cent British (Scottish, to be precise). He observes that the move away from the more polluting fuels to smokeless ones is happening anyway: it does not need the heavy hand of government.

      Mr Buckingham’s wholesaler, Terry Smith, whose family company, G H Smith & Son, has been in the business for 150 years, expands on this point. Recently, he says, manufacturers have invented “semi-smokeless” fuels. A company called Oxbow has developed Red, a briquette of mixed materials with the “volatiles” driven off it. Customers regard Red as “a very good all-round fuel”, price-competitive with coal. Yet Defra’s new measures mean that Red and its semi-smokeless siblings will fall on the wrong side of the law. The natural move towards less polluting innovation will have been punished, not rewarded.

      Mr Smith adds that supplies of naturally produced smokeless anthracite, mined in Wales, will be exhausted in the next 18 months or so. All the more need, therefore, for new manufactured products, including semi-smokeless. Instead, the government sledgehammer cracking the coal nut will cause needless collateral damage.

      How will the Government police its own rules? Take the new ban on “wet” wood, either soaked or – more relevant – unseasoned. Will officials have to decide whether the bags of kindling sold at petrol stations contain less than 20 per cent moisture, as the new law requires? Will farmers dealing with fallen or felled trees get fingered if they burn the detritus at once? Will the November 5 bonfires, so popular in our part of Sussex, be vetted by men from the ministry before the Bonfire Boys can send them (the fires, not the men) up in smoke? Wouldn’t it be better to recognise that only an idiot burns wet wood, and let common sense do the rest? Will the very name Wadhurst Coal become illegal?

      Obviously, it is better, wherever possible, to use fuels that pollute less and also – though this is more arguable – to seek ones which produce less CO2. (Carbon dioxide, we tend to forget, is not a pollutant, whereas the PM2.5 particles in coal and wood are.) But has proper work been done on actual harm attributable to our use of domestic coal and wood? Has enough allowance been made for the fact that rural communities are small and therefore the danger of concentrated pollution – the appalling feature of the old London smogs – is unlikely? I fear the way the Government is acting is part of a wider picture in which environmentalists, with their remarkable lobby power in Whitehall, are being privileged over citizens.

      The many letters about flooding this week on the page opposite show that readers with direct experience of floods have come to believe that public policy ignores the practical problems. Instead, it is in thrall to wider green doctrines – the idea, for instance, that it is wrong to dredge big rivers. There is a sense that people who know, such as those who run the local Internal Drainage Boards, are ignored in favour of those who do not know, but shout loudly about saving the planet.

      People also notice that almost anything can be done in the name of saving the planet and later rescinded without apology when it goes up the spout. The Renewable Heat Incentive in Northern Ireland paid people to install boilers fired by wood pellets without any ceiling on the amount of energy used and with sums greater than the energy cost. As a result, a province of two million people managed to burn through more than £500 million before anyone protested.

      Similarly, as we are told to stop burning wood at home, the prices for ash trees to supply power stations like Drax are sky high because they count as “biomass” and so are considered virtuous.

      Even more striking is the story of diesel-powered cars, which produce much less CO2 than petrol-driven ones. They were subsidised by Labour governments from 2001 until it was belatedly noticed that their particulate emissions were killing people. Now they are to be banned. But so, by 2035, is the production of all new internal combustion engines. And there is talk of an increase in fuel duty.

      The Leave victory in the 2016 referendum, and its confirmation in last December’s general election, showed how dramatically the “people from somewhere” had rejected control by the “people from anywhere”. Yet the false doctrine of climate emergency is treating people from somewhere as if they were people from nowhere. If Boris Johnson is not careful, he will face both electoral and economic emergencies as a result.

      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/02/21/ban-coal-wood-drives-away-people-trusted-tories/

    1. The outspoken chief executive of the budget carrier made the controversial comments in an interview with The Times.

      Charities and an MP blasted Mr O’Leary’s remarks and accused him of Islamophobia and racism.

      Mr O’Leary said: “Who are the bombers? They are going to be single males travelling on their own.

      “If you are travelling with a family of kids, on you go; the chances you are going to blow them all up is zero.

      “You can’t say stuff, because it’s racism, but it will generally be males of a Muslim persuasion

      https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/11016741/ryanair-boss-extra-airport-terror-checks/

      1. What O’Leary suggests could save the life of a Muslim intending to blow himself up.
        He is a very thoughtful man, and should be commended.

    1. Said it before and I’ll say it again. They’d have to drug me unconcious and put me in a sack to get me on board one of those floating prison camps, marble bathrooms or no.

  136. I use cash almost all the time, especially with builders/tradesmen (nudge-nudge, wink-wink),

    Another reason, I would say the main reason, is that when I use cash I can rip up the receipt, so they don’t accumulate in my wallet or pockets.

    1. I thought the whole point of paying cash was there were no receipts or records – you get a discount and the tradesman gets tax free income.

      1. Not if you’ve bought CDs or books, or groceries in supermarket …. which form the bulk of my transactions. Builders/tradesmen will give you a receipt as a form of record/guarantee … they won’t necessarily show these to the tax inspector …

        1. As a retired F.C.A.,, I have many happy memories of taking cash-job traders to H.M.R.C. to explain their sins, and the fees that paid for our trips to Hawaii and the Far East.

      2. That’s a very dodgy game these days, especially if you shout about it on a blog like this.

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