Thursday 17 July: Shame on those who abused their power to cover up the Afghan fiasco

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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545 thoughts on “Thursday 17 July: Shame on those who abused their power to cover up the Afghan fiasco”

        1. Former academic, associate fellow at Chatham House, served on the Social Mobility Commission, Special advisor the the House of Commons Education select committee etc. Somehow gets loads of media coverage. We’re supposed to think “yes! one of us is being given all these plum jobs by the establishment, we are represented at the highest level!”
          I’m afraid I just think “controlled opposition.”

        2. During the run up to the referendum he was very scathing about leavers for a start.

    2. Leave the European Convention on Human Rights. End mass uncontrolled immigration. Stop welfare benefits for foreigners. Slash taxes. Control the borders. End Net Zero. And put British families and our children first.

      Yes, of course I would like to see as many good, sound, and reliable people involved as possible —from Suella Braverman to a number of other talented people who have stood up to The Blob, and are standing up to it today.

      But if that doesn’t happen, then it doesn’t happen. Those decisions are not mine to make. I just want us all to do what we can do to turn Britain around and put the British people, and the country, first.

      What does he see as not happening? The people involved, or the necessary changes needed?

      I don't see Farage offering anything new. He's edge fiddling rather than reforming. I simply don't think he has a handle on the scale of damage done to the UK.

    3. But surely, Matt, you can see that there is a a stinking and corrupt pustule of mendacity at the heart of the Reform Party?

      Both Farage and Yusuf must go or the party will sink back into obscurity as fast as it rose on the false wave of enthusiasm.

    1. 409500+ up ticks,

      O2O,

      I can see it as a gigantic, massive problem,

      "Cor blimey mate" "wotcha cock"
      is what I want to hear loudly echoing
      over hills and through the valleys of England, IN BLOODY ENGLISH not
      a great multitude of foreign tongues.

      1. Speaking foreign should be outlawed. If you want to live in this country your native language must be abandoned. I'm sick and tired of foreigners gabbling away treating the UK as a doss house.

        1. When the English composer (who is ethnically Jewish/Irish) Alma Deutscher settled in Vienna, her visa condition was that she should speak German fluently. Despite being a voracious reader of books, for a year she only read in German. Before long, she spoke the language as well as a native and is now trilingual (English, Hebrew, German).

          This foreigner has a pale skin, but nevertheless had to do precisely what you propose. If we are to have laws applied without favour and discrimination, why make a special case based on the colour of someone's skin?

        2. I’m sure the Welsh would love to do that; of course, “foreign “ would mean English.

    2. Farage Red Flags# in the twenties now.

      The biggest worry is Mohammad Zia Yusuf running the show firing off his mouth in all directions.

      1. When the support for Farage begins to leak away the leak will soon become a flood. More and more people are beginning to see that he is like Arthur Daley – a used car salesman – who may have a certain charm but certainly should not be trusted or relied upon.

        I repeat what I posted yesterday:


        Zia Yusuf has torpedoed the Reform Party and hit it below the water line.

        This is not accidental it is deliberate.

        I cannot help thinking that Yusuf has something very sordid and very nasty on Farage and if he steps out of line all will be revealed and that will be the end of the Reform Party and the end of Nigel Farage.

        1. Could be.. may be.. nah.
          If he has then it would be better for Farage to come clean and pitch for forgiveness. Then embrace Habib, Lowe & Tommy. The crowds would love it. Then Mohammad becomes the villian.

          1. Publish and be damned. We don’t have people like the Duke of Wellington in charge any more.

      2. I can't help thinking that Yusuf took over Reform in order to dilute some of its policies. Some of Farage's recent statements seem to confirm this.

    1. Good morning Jules, and apologies to you all for neglecting the rather nice bunch that you are by spending time on the increasingly toxic TCW.
      We were speaking about the censorship of comments a couple of days ago. A couple of examples of non-immediately censored posts which today reference the grooming gang cover up and the article on Iran … so not immediately censored as it would be if a particular word had triggered an algorithm, but marked as "pending" after a pause long enough to read it:
      Reference to Lowe's enquiry on the gangs:
      ****************
      What happened? How did it happen? Why was it allowed to happen?
      Who knew – and what did they do about it?
      It is not enough to seek out the alien and his culture, which is all I fear this will become.
      I am willing to wager that none of these letches, gangsters and losers these were on Epstein's Lolita Express. My point is that immoral and ammoral men who can have s3ks with under-age girls with guaranteed impunity will do it.
      So who knew in social services, the police, the CPS and anyone else in officialdom.
      It takes a lot of non-moving parts to smother something like this. What did they not do and why did they not do it?
      *************************
      On Iran:
      Why was this revelation not released earlier?
      I know of a woman who waited for the week before her former husband's new wedding (to a sane woman) to allege that he had sxully (sic – you have to misspell stuff to get it past the bots) assaulted her during their relationship.
      He was suspended from his job and has been under investigation for months.
      Why wait, indeed?
      Could it be because this is the best time to make manipulative allegations?

      As for the Skripal case, it makes no sense to me.
      Two people of very different size and weight were given just enough of a deadly poison to put them to sleep, at the same time, but not kill them.
      A pretty useless assassination attempt, or a very measured attempt at something else.
      *********************
      This one Jules and another managed to like before it was removed.
      Many other posters have complained about the sometimes arbitrary removal of posts. We do not know if it is someone at TCW, other readers vexatiously flagging them, or people at Disqus.

      Again, apologies for using this site to reference another. I won't make a habit of it.

      1. I regularly visit TCW – indeed there is an article by in it today by Matt Goodwin which is well worth reading.

        My posts are often marked as 'pending' or are removed altogether as they are in the DT. However I do feel sorry for Kathy Gyngell who is terrified that her site will be taken down by Ofcom.

        1. Quite. Me too.
          And I understand that with respect to posts which may be described as anti-semitic. But there is a real movement of other forms of communitary hatred which is freely expressed.
          Furthermore, there is a lot of stuff removed without rhyme or reason.

        2. I read TCW every day. I am on the 3 network for broadband. 3 have made access very limited ie I cannot read the comments, only the articles themselves, unless I use a VPN due to complaints about the site's "far-right" nature. It is possible to get this restriction lifted but the phone call I made was tortuous and long winded with no satisfactory result. Therefore, I use a VPN.

          1. I think we're pretty 'far-right' here on the whole, and also FSB. We're none of us lefties.

        3. I read TCW every day. I am on the 3 network for broadband. 3 have made access very limited ie I cannot read the comments, only the articles themselves, unless I use a VPN due to complaints about the site's "far-right" nature. It is possible to get this restriction lifted but the phone call I made was tortuous and long winded with no satisfactory result. Therefore, I use a VPN.

        4. I visit most days to read the articles. I read the comments too but seldom make a comment now. I think they've loaded disqus with a lot of "trigger words" to keep the comments pending. As there's only one mod it makes a lot of work for her.

          I long ago deleted all naughty words on Disqus on Nottl and we very seldom have trouble with trolls or bots these days. Most of the words had American meanings which are not English.

      2. I regularly visit TCW – indeed there is an article by in it today by Matt Goodwin which is well worth reading.

        My posts are often marked as 'pending' or are removed altogether as they are in the DT. However I do feel sorry for Kathy Gyngell who is terrified that her site will be taken down by Ofcom.

  8. Good morning.

    From California – surprise, surprise….lawmakers have passed a bill to seize fire-ravaged Palisades land and turn it into taxpayer-funded low-income housing.
    Just don't mention directed energy weapons!

  9. 'Morning All
    What other horror stories are lurking under superinjunctions??Even Cynical Rik is staggered at the absolute betrayal nay treason of both the main political parties
    I am literally lost for words…
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/282e773c99e890bdacbd8a3c5d32f8c586e96c158fa3f3bf6a75358604a3609e.png
    https://www.freespeechbacklash.com/sites/default/files/styles/headline_thumbnail/public/assets/images/headlines/1752710401-4.jpg?itok=9YT-G4pe
    https://x.com/cold957/status/1945528150059810839
    https://x.com/addicted2newz/status/1945532990865510507

    1. Re the last cartoon…

      Now that's what I call 'a Coalition of the Swilling!'

      Morning folks

  10. Morning All 🙂😊
    Grey start but warm.
    S drama suspends mps because 'zay doo not obey zee orders'. Time to hold another general election.
    Und Herr kutz at 8:30 for me.

  11. Just a thought – did Ali Baba and his 40 thieves refer to them as welfare recipients?

    With ref to this article: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/07/16/mod-warns-lawyers-will-fight-hard-afghan-leak-compensation/

    And the MoD's 'we will fight them hard' – I simply don't believe it. The state will cave because it's lazy and feather bedded. There're no consequences for it's failure so it simply doesn't bother. See rapists being let off because they don't want to shave.

  12. Can it get worse? Course it can..

    Thanks for saving us, now we'll sue you.
    Ambulance-chasing lawyers move in for the pay day.
    Chance to spaff another billion.. nay a billion billion.

    Fcuk it, better idea, why don't we hand over the country.. we'll pay for the privilege.. then rent it off you.

  13. Good Morning!

    Today Frederick Edward asks a very important question: Is Trump – the ultimate disappointment? , the answer to which is of vital importance to all of us. Read the article, vote in the poll, and let us know how you see Trump's performance so far.

    Graham Wood, in HUMAN RIGHTS – A WILL-O-THE -WISP , Graham Wood looks at what these rights might be and asks where, ultimately, they come from. This is an important question and not just an intellectual exercise as, if the answer is that they come from the government, then that gives the government the right to take them away.

    Energy Watch: Over the last 24 hours: Britain's electric power was sourced from Gas, 28.8%; Solar, 9.7%: Wind 12.2%; Imports, 21.7%; Biomass, 10.4%; Nuclear 14.3% and Miscellaneous, 3.1%.

    1. We cannot judge Trump yet. I think he is doing what he said he would do. in most areas. We should give him support as he is our best hope to free the West from left wing evil. iwish we were doing what he is doing, if you cannot see that i am supprised

      1. Read the article Johnny. It makes valid points and there is an interesting debate under it. I’m not fully persuaded either way, but am veering towards disappointment.

  14. I hear on the radio that Two Tier is meeting with his German counterpart today so I'm entering Thursday working on the expectation that he's going agree to hand over the East Riding and Humber and then lease it back at £4bn a year.

    1. I dunno, Merz is pretty incompetent too. I reckon it'll be a contest between the two of them who can give away the most of his country.

        1. And you are keen on putting dissidents in gaol so we’ll throw in Celle as well.

      1. 409500+ up ticks,

        Morning KB,

        Have such tales of heroism a tell by date on them then?

    2. I have never considered black people evil, although I have seen propaganda saying that white people are evil since the 1980s and for some reason it's not considered bad to say that.

    1. The third cartoon alluding to 1944 was a deliberate and brilliant military ploy.

      The D-Day plan for an invasion launched from Dover under the leadership of General Patton was well leaked through official channels that included King George VI. A large number of tanks and preparatory forces were camouflaged, but not quite enough to fool German spy planes. As a result, a large number of panzers were sent to Calais to greet the anticipated invaders.

      The master stroke was then to leak to Germany's top spy in London, whose cover was never known to have been blown, the plan to invade through Normandy, just three days before D-Day. Hitler deduced that this must be a last-ditch attempt at disinformation in order to leave the route through Calais clear of enemy resistance. The panzers were staying put.

      1. They couldn't hide the evidence of preparation for invasion – the massing of landing craft, warships, cargo ships Mulberry harbour sections, soldiers in camps and the rest, so the only thing to do was to effectively acknowledge there would be an invasion, but to cleverly direct attention elsewhere. Prestidigitation. And the shortest crossing would seem logical…
        Clever one, the double-bluff.
        Where are these guys now we need them?

  18. Thursday thought.

    “There is an aphorism that you cannot buy the loyalty of an Afghan, but you can rent it.”

    — Frederick Forsyth

    1. We are told so many lies that it is hard to believe anything – even the truth.

  20. Spiked

    The Afghan data breach was disastrous. The cover-up was worse
    The years-long conspiracy of silence over the Afghan relocation scheme is an anti-democratic outrage.

    Tim Black
    Associate editor
    16th July 2025

    So we now know that, in February 2022, a Royal Marine twice accidentally sent a datasheet to contacts in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, containing the names, addresses and phone numbers of nearly 19,000 Afghans who were applying to the UK for asylum. These were mostly people who had helped Britain during the disastrous two-decades-long occupation of Afghanistan. They served as soldiers, translators, administrators – in short, they were our allies. And in an instant, the British state had unwittingly betrayed them. With their identities revealed, their lives were potentially at risk, certainly if the Taliban got hold of that datasheet.

    The data breach was horrendous enough – the most serious of its kind in the UK’s history, according to the Telegraph. It is certainly of a piece with the British state’s inept and brutally careless approach to its forces’ withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021. Ministers and senior civil servants remained on holiday as Kabul fell to the Taliban. Foreign Office staffers continued to work from home while sticking strictly to nine-to-five work hours, as desperate Afghans sought help. There was no urgency, no appreciation of the gravity of the situation. It was a moment in which the absence of serious, capable people at the heart of the British state was felt all too acutely.

    Yet as catastrophic an error as this data leak was, the state has somehow managed to compound it with a series of decisions that made a terrible situation even worse. Successive Conservative and Labour governments effectively mounted a cover-up of both the data breach itself and the response. They slowly undertook a secret evacuation and relocation programme for the Afghans without telling even the Afghans affected about the data breach and the fact their lives were at risk. At the same time, they sought to hide all this from the British public, too, even while thousands of Afghan refugees were quietly being deposited in hotels and in military accommodation across the country. All with no explanation.

    It is this de facto cover-up, this attempt on the part of ministers and senior officials to hide state errors and actions from public view, which is the most disturbing aspect of this whole sorry affair. They set about shielding a data breach followed by a costly, large-scale asylum scheme from any form of accountability, criticism or debate. And they did so by exploiting a legal tool that has never been used before by a British government – namely, the superinjunction.

    This effective cover-up did not happen immediately. In fact, it wasn’t until early August 2023, a whole 18 months after the data breach took place, that the leak was finally brought to the attention of officials. A support worker responsible for settling Afghans in the UK emailed Luke Pollard, Labour MP for Plymouth, and James Heappey, the then Conservative defence minister, warning them that he’d seen the database circulating online. Days later, journalists also became aware of the leak. It was this that finally prompted the Ministry of Defence and the government to launch a covert mission, codenamed Operation Rubific, to shut down the leak and help Afghans put at risk get to the UK (after being vetted in Pakistan).

    It was at this point that the authorities took the unprecedented step of applying for a superinjunction. This legal tool doesn’t only prevent journalists from reporting on the subject of the injunction. It also prevents anyone from acknowledging that the injunction even exists. Ministers argued that this extreme free-speech-defying measure was necessary to prevent the Taliban from becoming aware of the datasheet’s existence. Granted in September 2023, the superinjunction acted like a form of legal dark magic, rendering the data breach and the government response to it invisible. It insulated both from even the possibility of scrutiny.

    Members of parliament could have still used their parliamentary privilege to speak up. But since all reporting had been prohibited, MPs found themselves in the same place as the wider public – in the dark. For nearly two years, then, we have all borne blind witness to the state’s conspiracy of silence. Until this week, that is, when defence secretary John Healey decided the superinjunction was no longer necessary.

    This government-sponsored omertà has done grave harm on both the overseas and domestic front. It has certainly not helped Britain’s Afghan allies, despite ministers’ claims to the contrary. After all, the datasheet had already been flapping in the virtual breeze for a year and a half. Those it put at risk should have been notified immediately. As one anonymous source told The Times, the Taliban clearly had hold of this de facto ‘kill list’ by August 2023 – as attested to by the subsequent murder of countless Afghans who had worked for the Western-backed Afghan National Security Forces during the occupation. ‘Lives could have been saved if everyone had been told about the leak back in August 2023’, the source said. ‘It would have enabled them to flee into Iran or Pakistan, which would have bought them some time.’

    The decision to hide all this from the British public has had dire domestic consequences, too. It has exacerbated pre-existing social tensions generated by Britain’s persistently high levels of immigration and our dysfunctional asylum system. After all, this is a system that has been tearing at the social fabric for years. Successive governments’ attempts to tackle the huge backlog of asylum applicants by putting tens of thousands of them, at great public expense, into hotels, student accommodation, military sites and even leisure centres in some of the most deprived areas in the UK has proven as socially disastrous as you might expect. So the decision to secretly fly thousands more Afghan refugees into Stansted and RAF Brize Norton, before silently dispersing them throughout the UK – without explanation or justification – has only deepened those antagonisms.

    Most have been moved to the UK using the existing Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP), which was set up in anticipation of the West’s withdrawal. But many others are in the process of being resettled under a top-secret evacuation and resettlement plan, devised by the Conservative government and eventually signed off by the current Labour administration in October 2024. According to defence secretary John Healey on Tuesday, this hitherto covert scheme (which has now ended) will eventually lead to the relocation of nearly 7,000 Afghans in the UK.

    Quite how many Afghans have been granted asylum in the UK because of the data breach remains unclear. Some estimate that 24,000 in total will have arrived here by the conclusion of what amounts to the largest covert evacuation operation since the Second World War. And it will have cost nearly £7 billion in public funds.

    The scale and expense of the government’s response to the data leak is one thing. But it’s the surreptitious nature of the relocation of Afghan refugees that has caused the most problems. The unexplained nature of the influx in certain areas was only ever going to heighten existing tensions. As the Mail reported on Tuesday, a behind-closed-doors briefing on the secret evacuation and resettlement plan last October warned that 15 out of the 20 areas worst afflicted by the post-Southport riots were in the ‘local authorities with the highest numbers of supported asylum seekers and Afghan resettlement arrivals’.

    Hiding what was happening from the public was a terrible mistake. Many Brits would have understood the need to give refuge to those Afghans – properly vetted and provided for – who had helped British forces during their time in Afghanistan. They would have sympathised with their plight under the violent, repressive Taliban and understood the obligation we as a nation have to them.

    But thanks to the superinjunction, not one politician put the case to the British public. As a local councillor from Bracknell in Berkshire, which has received a lot of Afghan migrants over the past year, put it: ‘[Politicians] need to explain all this to people, not brush over any inconvenient truths, because that is what fosters resentment.’

    But no one explained anything. There was just secrecy and silence from Conservative and Labour governments alike, as the state once again appeared to be placing the burden of a broken asylum system on those who can least bear it.

    What happened in February 2022 was a terrible error all too typical of the state’s brutally incompetent handling of the withdrawal from Afghanistan. But what has happened since has been an anti-democratic disgrace. Decisions that affect the lives of Afghans and whole communities in the UK have been entirely insulated from public debate. And now we all have to live with the consequences.

    Tim Black is associate editor of spiked.

    1. Captain Hindsight
      7h
      Interestingly, Cummings says this isn't even the worst data breach seen under the last government and the press should keep on digging.

    2. How come 19k morphed into 24k? And “mostly” assisted the British? What did the rest do?

  21. Morning, all Y'all.
    Very sunny – for now. Downpour during the night, 32C the day's forecast. Summer!

        1. I am only slightly green. I am considering lighting a fire as it’s so chilly and damp. I burned some rubbish in the dog grate and thought “ah, warmth!”. Tempting.

  22. Two podcasts (both available as YouTube for those with the time to watch).

    One is Peter Boghossian talking to Peter Pilkington which is very bleak on the future of the UK:
    https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/conversations-with-peter-boghossian/id1650150225?i=1000717537175

    The other is Andrew Gold talking to Montgomery Toms (the lad that was arrested by 9 police officers at a Pride rally for a sign reading: “The trans flag = mental illness”) who restores your faith in the proper (read: native) youth of today:
    https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/heretics/id1515932214?i=1000717131697

    You can follow the links and read the transcripts

    1. Her arithmetic may be faulty.
      Sum is certainly closer to twelve thousand million pounds per annum for Universal Credit. And that ain't all.

  26. Ernest Nowell
    10h
    Any news about Miliband’s instructions to NESO to have enough new gas power stations ready by 2030, to cover when the wind don’t blow and the sun don’t shine? NUT ZERO unraveling?

    Ian wragg
    Ernest Nowell
    10h
    It seems speculators are falling over themselves to install gas turbines. They will be filthy open cycle units probably not efficient CCGT plants. They're getting 15 to 25 year contracts to be instantly available. Subsidy sucking ventures. Follow the money.

  27. Lord Farquard
    7h
    Does a religion that mandates the death penalty for apostates, blasphemers, non-believers accused of a misdemeanour, is behind 1000s of barbaric blood thirsty crimes, and discriminates against women on every front possible need the law to change to criminalise those who criticise, mock or question it, or should the law change to protect the apostates, blasphemers, non-believers accused of misdemeanours and the unfortunate women held in its grip?
    Does Labour have a moral compass? Because it appears to be siding with the former.

        1. Will boost the Muslim vote considerably, do you think they will vote labour or for their own Support Gaza crowd? Maybe another big mistake by the stumpy, fat civil rights lawyer. And of course, we will be the ones taking the consequences. Just when you thought you could not despise Labour any more.

    1. Joseph Kagan's company making Gannex raincoats is now defunct.

      Harold Wilson was an enthusiastic client of the company but where do the members of Starmer's Labour government now get their over-wear or, come to that, their underwear?

      Of course Jeremy Corbyn is a disciple of Michael Foot so he probably has a collection of duffle coats.

  29. Mr Blue Sky
    7h
    Oh my days…..
    Labour donor and windmill owner Dale Vince wants to make "climate denial" a criminal offence.

    If your opinion doesn't fit……..

    2. We'd better take this threat seriously. They are going to make "ecocide" a crime. This could be anything from cutting down a tree to keep warm to breathing.
      It is all part of this nasty pagan superstition that humans are inherently wicked damagers of the sacred planet.

      1. Is that an offence to cut down trees except the millions that are cut down for Drax?

          2. I haven’t come across that, but mature trees were felled and established hedgerows were grubbed up to build a massive housing estate on green fields up here. Then Militwat thought up a scheme to spend millions on a “carbon capture “ machine!

          3. I have used the Cherwell Valley services on the M40 over many years, and a good while ago there used to be a line of medium-height trees and hedging between the main car park and the lorry park. A few years ago they were all felled and the hedging removed in order to install the current row of EV charging points.

          4. Which no doubt are not used to capacity – probably due to incompatibility with fittings.

        2. Exactly! They started it with that ridiculous hoo-haa over the felling of a sycamore tree last year. They’ve also tried saying that people shouldn’t grow their own vegetables because it “uses more CO2” than factory farming. These sinister, anti-human ideas need to be heartily ridiculed and shot down as soon as they appear!

        3. Cut them down, process them into wood pellets – which requires significant energy, then ship them across the Atlantic in ships running on bunker fuel, the "dirtiest" hydocarbon out there, then diesel hauled trains to Drax. Utter stupidity and the antithesis of "green". It would be greener to re open the mines Drax is sitting on.

    5. He needs to understand that just because he bribed Labour with 5 million pounds, which probably came from taxation on the first place, doesn't give this aging, anti Semitic hippie any special rights. Needs to get a decent barber and keep his opinion to himself.

  31. 409500+ up ticks,

    May one suggest that as we are going through the replacement era that the word LYING can be, if needs be, a choice and replaced by starmer.

    "You are telling me starmers" "little white starmers"
    "You're stamering through your teeth" " you starmer bastard"

  33. Interestingly, i think tomorrow is the anniversary of the murder attempt on the soldier at the Brompton Barracks by one of our Diversity Strengths. Then 23rd July is Harehills and Manchester Airport. And 29th July the Welsh Choirboy had his turn.

    2. It's notable how little discussion there is about Harehills. I wonder why…

    1. It's pretty obvious that our political idiots don't appear to be living in the same worldly environment as the rest of us have to. If they ever try to make such a claim because of what they are doing and have done to our country. They must be even more stupid than any one could ever imagine.

          1. That is the greatest problem of the age, stupidity, they all appear to be as shallow, greedy and ill informed as each other. No hope!!!

          2. Their overall lack of standards and fairness seriously need adjusting, nearly everything they do is about them jointly.

  37. Good morning all

    Muggy , sticky morning , very warm night , sleep was elusive , but Moh can sleep anywhere , and in any climate .

    Gawd , the news , what on earth is going on.

    I cannot recall ever ever a conversation about compensation that I feel my family and others affected by the Suez crisis in 1956 should have received .

    My mother, my younger sister and I were evacuated , we were given short notice to leave Moascar ( the garrison village nr Ismalia , Egypt in late 1956, where we and other British families whose fathers were contracted by the British government to work out there , dad was a surveyor working for the a large British company based out there ( He had been in the Fleet Air Arm during WW2 )

    My mother me and sister packed light baggage , and we couldn't take family artifacts, and valuables , toys and books , and were flown to was it Cyprus , I was too young ( 9 years old ) by flying boat , after a long coach ride to the Bitter lakes , where the Shorts Sunderland flying boat was based .

    My father and hundreds of other white British male expats , Suez Canal pilot boat staff, admin , engineers , teachers , doctors etc including 2 padres and others , were rounded up 24 hours later by the Egyptians , sacks put over the expats heads and transported , interned to a Cairo camp where they remained for nearly 3 months until their release on Christmas eve 1956 .

    We lost everything , and the fate of the 2 pet dogs that we inherited from the Army withdrawal a year before the trouble escalated , an alsation and daxsie , haunts me forever .

    When I was there , the rising troubles and riots and disrespect by the Egyptians for the white residents was frightening , and the only advice given was hide under the bed , during that period we attended an army school , still army personnel out there , but our school bus had armed guards and was convoyed by armed truck .

    My father suffered hugely , as did all the other interned expat males .. Muslim countries are cruel , dirty fly ridden places .. they have no love for any of us apart from an upturned palm .. bucksheesh !

    1. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3b06e80b40b0f96240a569924dd04e21a539976f61902e570dd8f78ebfbecb49.jpg
      My father showing his pass to the guard !

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e9a68062593bef0a7b2b4234c51b2c8c51bf89921c10d3c3ec77b412a0ea3d63.jpg

      Before everything blew up!

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/685f474a29509265d5e968904deedee1d04a42b54724309345e641d500b9d2c2.jpg Expats released 3 moths later , on their way to ships , to take them home .

      1956 remains engrained forever .. what a mess , incompetence personified !

      1. I think I remember petrol ration cards being reissued.
        I suspect they'd been in storage since the war.

        1. I still have some somewhere (did I mention I was a hoarder?). It was at a time when I was travelling regularly up to Hull.

          1. Thinking about it, Suez was too early for me to be going to Hull. That must have been another petrol crisis.

        2. They were for Suez. My father worked for HMG and was issued extra coupons as he was deemed essential. We actually found some when we cleared out our parents' house after my mother died.

    2. Goodness, Belle. You did live in exciting times!
      Horrible experience for your Dad and you all – not knowing where it would be ending up. Glad it turned out mostly OK – except for the loss of loved animals and items, of course.

    3. My father was in the desert campaign in WWII, his opinion of Arabs was very low indeed, and his word of advice, never trust them.

      1. One uncle was in North Africa for four years during the war and another in Egypt during National Service.
        Both routinely referred to arabs as "w*gs". I've worked with Egyptians on both Egypt and Algeria. While outwardly friendly and hospitable, they would stab you in the back as soon as look at you.

        1. That sounds about right. Dad said they were a bunch of thieving b…., B……s, amongst other choice descriptions, I'll leave you to fill in the dots.

  38. Unemployment Rate Hits Four-Year High After Reeves Raid

    The Barbarian
    1h
    I see the BBC has already relegated the story – if it was indeed even a headline.
    If it had been the Tories, it would have been the main headline, with screeching lefties bussed in to be interviewed on the breakfast show as a worried home owner (whilst failing to point out they were a union rep)

    Norm
    The Barbarian
    1h
    Look on the bright side – a certain J Torode is about to sue the scum for unfair dismissal.

    Notional Trust
    2h
    I don't really understand this, there have been fourteen new barber shops opened in my town this year alone. Business must be booming.

    1. Good luck to the Mighty Midget! I hope he can take the BBC to the cleaners.

      John Douglas Torode is an Australian-British celebrity chef and TV presenter. He moved to the UK in the 1990s and began working at Conran Group's restaurants. After first appearing on television on ITV's This Morning, he started presenting a revamped MasterChef on BBC One in 2005. Wikipedia
      Born: July 23, 1965 (age 59 years), Melbourne, Australia
      Spouse: Lisa Faulkner (m. 2019), Jessica Torode (m. 2000–2014)
      Children: Casper Torode, Lulu Torode, Marselle Torode, Jonah Torode
      Parents: Anne Torode, Douglas Torode
      Height: 1.52 m

      (In fact this statement about his height – that he is only 4'11" tall – is probably incorrect even though it is frequently found on the internet.)

    2. If it were the tories they'd make it a headline for months, dining out it joyously.It'd be mentioned in every single broadcast with vicious glee.

      Every single economic indicator is in the toilet – inflation soaring, unemployment soaring, bond costs hilarious and what do we get from Al Beeb? Nothing. Silence. They practically chanted for Truss to go when the markers were half what they are today.

      It's utterly putrid double standards.

  39. LISTEN: Diane Abbott Takes Back Apology for Observer Racism Letter
     https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/660206d9d18f2866ca4cade1c544f5f59431e8276e9f8876a62357a026d78816.png
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/567fef2b310d0e307dfb8feaffa818ed61c0be3834c560de453e969fdec0e7f6.png
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/cbaa54742b797c1849f1bcd6fa11b98b39b0da5a4ca35e720317f5b94315635d.png
    Colin Fisher
    1h
    We all know this is nearer her true feelings. Her article was exactly what she felt and the forced apology was clearly insincere. But why now suddenly retract? She may not be the brightest button in the box, but she is a sly politician.
    I think she has deliberately done this to dare Starmer. If he removes her whip, how long before she rejoins her ex darling Jeremy, and possibly brings a few of the other recently disinherited with her?

      1. Just as they found no incidence of antisemitisim, two tier law (despite obvious, overwhelming evidence) they won't find any where.

        Hypocrisy is rife in the Left. They only see what they want to.

    3. I wonder if Diane Abbott's affair with Jeremy Corbyn was so sexually unfulfilling for her that it left her with a profound contempt for white men and a conviction that they were inadequate in everything they tried to do?

    4. A classic example of what is wrong with our country. People in politics obsessed with extreme self awareness, who are obviously not quite in tune with the type of work and effort they are expected to achieve.

    5. Blacks have the highest single parent and welfare dependence. They are over 100 more likely to carry knives and stab other blacks (and other people, but blacks are their main target) due to this lack of family disicpline.

      There is nothing the diversity have to be proud of.

      1. Same here. Despite all the BLM nonsense, most black male murder victims are killed by other black males.

  40. Keir Starmer is to meet with his German counterpart today to discuss bi-lateral agreements on migration and industrial cooperation. Alongside these talks there will be parallel meetings between our Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs and their Federal Minister of Agriculture, Food and Regional Identity to discuss closer cooperation on the production of dairy products and processed meats. There is a fear that this could lead to up to 10,000 job losses here but that is apparently a wurst käse scenario.

  42. Starmer Humiliated After Jaguar Land Rover Slashes 500 Jobs
     https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/15ecb5e7f2827c8cce6e06ddb7813b2432e24e06d72a8f4b863d1aad95b5dfa3.png

    Erastus☻
    1h
    This Picture seems to explain everything.
    Jaguar's Director of Marketing, Santino Pietrosanti.
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f05dfa81d752432e8f4b5bcf12bc24c35ea0511953130de0b1e42a430b76c0d2.png
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e86be2cfcc91b908c5618977ad8aa8850db1f38a488b7a7c4bdf7f4cfd39c1c5.png

      1. In the early 70's porn baron Paul Raymond had a primrose yellow E-Type with the registration number FU 2 which his then girlfriend, porn star Fiona Richmond, used for driving around Soho. It caused a sensation at the time and had a lot of press coverage.

        1. I wonder if this was the same car before or after a pink respray, whether it just looked pink under street lighting – or if the number plate was sold?

    2. To be fair all car companies are in deep do-do.

      Honda betting the company on hybrids and no EVs!
      China car giants numbering 90 top brands with state of the art manufacturing.
      Nissan about to dissolve.
      BMW, Mercedes, Toyota, Ford & VW all carrying a stack of debt on balance sheets.
      Germany & US struggle to copy BYD blueprint.
      Ford CEO Jim Farley; The apocalypse is coming.

    3. To be fair all car companies are in deep do-do.

      Honda betting the company on hybrids and no EVs!
      China car giants numbering 90 top brands with state of the art manufacturing.
      Nissan about to dissolve.
      BMW, Mercedes, Toyota, Ford & VW all carrying a stack of debt on balance sheets.
      Germany & US struggle to copy BYD blueprint.
      Ford CEO Jim Farley; The apocalypse is coming.

    4. One of our neighbours bought a brand new Jaguar plug-in hybrid SUV a while ago – the first rainstorm showed that it leaked! Major effort IIRC to get the thing sorted and it had another more technical snag soon afterwards which also took a while to fix. Not very impressive!

          3. I know I am mathematically challenged but I don’t think there are quite enough letters for that 😀

    6. How, exactly, did he do that? He's the cause of their problems in the first place!

    8. Jag are doomed. I'm surprised Tata have not pulled the plug. When I was dealing with them in India, a seeming lifetime ago, the execs impressed me as very talented people.

      As for the Jag marketing director, Bill Lyons must be turning in his grave.

      And I wish I still had my 3.8 Mk2…

  44. Busy at t'market. The MR was nearly knocked off her feet by a wazzock wearing one of those stupid backpacks – when he suddenly turned round. Then, when I protested, had the cheek to say she should not have been standing behind him. Grrr.

    Warm out, too, and nary a drop of rain on the horizon.

  45. Good Moaning.
    (Remember I am a Temperate Zone Gal)
    As the smell of new paint fades, so do my delusions of regal grandeur.

    1. Someone once wrote that Her Majesty must think that the whole country smells of new paint, since everywhere she went was newly done up.

      2. I was in Germany when Princess Margaret visited the base – it was during a hot summer and where the grass was getting a bit brown those on jankers had to paint the grass green

        1. Cat haters of the world unite! I am a dog person myself but I don’t hate cats.

  47. Just when you thought that the news couldn't possibly get any worse… Lab confirms that 16 year olds will get the vote at the next election.

    1. This is clear gerrymandering aimed to benefit Labour. I did not obtain a right to vote until I reached my majority at the age of 21.

      When the age of majority was reduced to 18 the age of voting was reduced to 18.

      Only adults should vote. Are 16 year olds adults or children?

      NO TAXATION WITOUT REPRESENTATION

      How about:

      NO REPRESENTATION WITHOUT TAXATION

          1. Mmm. What about when they suggest that people who contribute more tax should have more votes?

          1. The old Babylonian religion worshipped the earth and believed in rule by a small elite, with the majority of humanity considered no better than animals. They had a god that had male and female characteristics and they indulged in sxual crimes and the sacrifice of children.

            Any of that sound familiar?

      1. Quite. All new born babies should automatically have a vote – for Labour (as their mother (sorry – birth person) will have just been through it….

    3. They have been angling for that for years on the grounds that the young have no experience and have been brainwashed. Alongside that should come conscription for 16 year olds and the lowering of the age at which they can be sent to the front line.

      1. Starmer blithers on about folk having a say in how their taxes are wasted. Why doesn't that apply to adult tax payers?

        1. Come now, wibbles! Starmer lies through his teeth. If his lips are moving he’s telling porkies.

        2. After many years, I have come to the conclusion that only tax payers should vote. After, why should people who contribute nothing decide how money paid in taxes by others is used?

    4. So they are deemed old enough to vote but not old enough to purchase alcohol or tobacco, get married without parental consent, obtain a credit card/loan or be tried in an adult court of law.

    5. There should be a referendum for the current 12 to 14 year olds to say if they are in favour of that come 2029. Got to have at least 50% turnout in the referendum for it to happen.

      1. And then the result will be ignored if the answer isn’t what they want. That’s the way they do it, isn’t it?

        1. Agreed, but my point was you'd not get 50% of the kids to vote in the referendum.

          3. As high as that for the last election? I am surprised. I know that people who hadn’t voted before did so in the referendum. They mistakenly thought it would count.

    6. I wonder whether they realise that far from giving Labour more voters it will actually reduce the relative number of Labour supporters and lead to far more Muslim MPs.
      And probably a new Muslim party will appear, along the lines of Reform, but for Sharia etc. which will drain Labour support even further.

      Unless, of course, they do realise and it is yet another part of their plot to destroy Britain.

      2. I don't think Labour will care. As far as they're concerned the more damage done to Britain the better.

    7. One chap has written that unless his children vote Reform they will have to find somewhere else to live…..

  50. The British public will never forgive the elites for this monstrous betrayal

    We have been lied to one time too many. This will go down as the week the old order perished in disgrace

    Allister Heath • 16th July 2025, 6:29pm BST

    There are scandals, there are conspiracies, and then there is the great Afghan cover-up. It is the ultimate in betrayals, a heinous abuse of power by a self-righteous caste blinded by its own stupidity, an explosive concoction of every pathology, every lie, every error, every cross-party ideological perversion that has brought down our great nation.

    The country I thought I knew, characterised by a love of fair play, free expression and accountability, is no more. Labour and Tories alike, with a small number of exceptions, believe that they have the right, the duty even, to wield the abominations that are super-injunctions to control information and conceal their blunders. Like Platonic philosopher-kings, they are convinced they know better what is good for us, that their untruths are somehow noble.

    Rishi Sunak's government, and then Sir Keir Starmer's, didn't want voters to find out about the leak of a spreadsheet listing applicants to a resettlement scheme for Afghans who had helped Britain, putting many at risk of Taliban reprisals. The data breach led the Government to launch a covert relocation scheme, potentially costing billions, secretly airlifting to Britain thousands of Afghans, some of whom are heroes who deserve to be here but others who I suspect are not and do not. Labour claims all have been vetted; I hope the Government knows what it is doing, but fear the worst. All the arrivals will be entitled to "family reunification", will be housed at taxpayer expense and will be able to sue for tens of thousands of pounds of compensation.

    This incendiary saga weaves together every debacle, every infamy of the past 20 years – our failed adventurism in Iraq and Afghanistan, the massive increase in immigration and often insufficient integration, the grooming gang monstrosity, the rise of technocratic, anti-democratic governance dressed up as "human rights", the war against free speech, the lockdown power grab, the welfare dependency culture, the ruinous economic and financial mismanagement – into one meta-indictment of our ghastly ruling class, of the useless Tory-Labour uniparty, of our failed state.

    Watergate was nothing in comparison, a small, parochial contretemps. The Afghan data breach is the scandal to end all scandals, the encapsulation of all that is wrong about Britain, the logical end-point of the implosion of our democracy.

    By ticking every box, it could have been designed to drive Middle England crazy. It will extinguish what is left of trust between ruler and ruled. It will discredit official pronouncements and statistics, especially on immigration. It will turbocharge Reform, and accelerate the demise of the old parties. It will radicalise the centre-Right against the ECHR. It will make it even harder for Rachel Reeves to fleece taxpayers again at the Budget. Even the hapless BBC played its role to perfection, downgrading such a massive story on its website and the News at Ten.

    Super-injunctions must be abolished. They don't happen in America, and they shouldn't exist here. Free speech is essential: there can be no taxation without representation, and we cannot have billions spent on refugee programmes or anything else without debate or scrutiny.

    The public sector must no longer be protected from its clownish incompetence; this is a form of two-tier justice, of indefensible double-standards. Private sector workers are rightly dismissed every day for minor infractions, such as turning up late too often. Why have no officials been sacked or prosecuted for this egregious failure yet? Vital data shouldn't be kept in shareable spreadsheets, but in secure databases. This is a managerial and systems disaster. There ought to be high-level dismissals in Whitehall, and the relevant operations placed into special measures and run by outsiders parachuted in from business.

    Afghans who risked their lives to help Britain should be allowed to move to the UK. This must include members of the Afghan special forces, bodyguards, translators and various others. The question is: how many people fit into these narrowly but fairly defined categories? Arrival numbers to date seem high. Have we already and are about to again – let thousands in who shouldn't be eligible, while still freezing out some who ought to be? Have all family members been vetted, even though they have a "right" to come here too? We need an urgent, independent investigation; sunlight and transparency are necessary for public confidence to be restored.

    The danger otherwise is that the covert resettlement scheme will fuel a perception that the British state is keen to cite a duty of care, informed by "human rights" laws, when dealing with foreign citizens – such as Afghans at risk from the Taliban, or young men crossing the channel from France – but is apparently less interested in doing so when it comes to British citizens, such as girls raped by gangs. Labour already stands accused of being deeply suspicious of veterans who served in Northern Ireland, while simultaneously being quick to give the benefit of the doubt to foreigners who, in some cases, have at best a tenuous connection to the British Armed Forces.

    Many in the main political parties and civil service are social democratic universalists who believe that the British state should care as much, or more, about the "human rights" of the whole world than about the interests of British citizens. Putting Britain and Brits first is a form of "racism" or xenophobia, they profess.

    This belief system, which sounds kind, liberal and generous, guarantees dystopia. It implies a welfare state of first resort for anybody who can get here. It is destroying our polity, fracturing our society and bankrupting our economy.

    The Brexit referendum was won partly because of the rise of such an ideology, and because of the associated financial cost, including vast gross and net cash transfers to Brussels. The billions secretly earmarked for the resettlement scheme, coming as they do at a time of "austerity" and tax increases, will prove politically just as catastrophic for our ruling class.

    This was the week that the old order died in disgrace, after one provocation too many. The next general election cannot come too soon.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/07/16/british-public-never-forgive-elites-for-afghanistan-leak

    When will that election be? No government in modern times has been forced out of office by events before its time was up (unless you include Callaghan in 1979 by a vote of no confidence with only four months left). It's easy to muse on the Apocalypse from the comfort of one's armchair but only something hideous will unseat this Labour government. It would require almost 90 Labour MPs to vote against Starmer to force an election before 2029.

    1. Or a modern day Guy Fawkes. Where are the masses on the streets? Where is the will to become ungovernable? Whatever the provocation it seems people are just shrugging their shoulders and doing nothing.

      1. They're working, Conway..trying to keep ahead of inflation. Those not working are on their keyboards, similarly to you n me. Unless it's 'River to the Sea', of course.

          1. Sorry to read that…not too chipper myself. Cheering up watching my favourite entomologist Trevor Pendleton.

          3. Sorry to hear that, Sue. London is a city too far for me now. Gone are the days when I bused down for the Countryside Marches.

          4. I used to go to London for Marches against trophy hunting, ivory and other animal causes – last time was in 2019. The lockdowns put a stop to those activities.

          6. Like Katie Hopkins’ comedy event in Rugby on Saturday evening.

            And Tousi TV’s event on 9th August.

            Spineless venues. Spineless Plod.

          7. I am planning on going… need to find out what i need to do. Unfortunately bool club at mine in the evening so i also need to be there for that!

      2. Well, unfortunately i’m at work. But i do my bit, at the weekends, if i can.

        Unfortunately the unemployed far-left “activists” have more time on their hands and are better funded.

      3. People have had easy, peaceful, comfortable lives for too long on our once safe island. They cannot believe that which happens in other countries around the world will happen here, they cannot see nor understand the trajectory of events. They think the present disturbances are just a blip and that life will return to 'normal' at some stage.. The media soothes and ignores any rumblings of discontent on behalf of the government – it rabble-rouses when necessary when government demands it to support its agenda. If the media told the truth then many, many more of us would be concerned, but without that media 'heads up' the vast majority are happy to continue to graze.

        1. Surely walking down the street or using public transport would give them an inkling.

    2. The self-styled elite figure they have the masses by the short and curlies and really don't care what we think of their evil. Even if an early election was on the cards, we can't vote our way out of this.

      1. You can vote your way onto socialism, but you have to shoot your way out.

        As the old saying goes.

      2. Exactly, it's a numbers game, elections always are. Reform and Labour strange bedfellows but on the same side when it comes to keeping Conservatives from power.

    3. The biggest problem is there is no real retribution for all the damage they are deliberately inflicting on our culture and social structure.

    1. My father always thought that Neville Shute's voting system had its merits:

      In this story, Neville Shute describes a multiple voting system introduced to the British Dominions. The prime speaker here is an Australian pilot. (Interestingly, Australia has now moved ahead and introduced an enlightened form of proportional representation [PR] voting, termed the alternative vote system [AV]. Each voter is permitted to indicate a second choice if the first choice is not elected.)

      from In the Wet by Neville Shute [first published 1953]

      [p.91]
      He hated these people [of Britain] for their lack of spirit, for their subservience to civil servants, for their outmoded political system of one man one vote that kept them in the chains of demagogues.

      [p.104/6]
      ‘How does your multiple vote work? It's quite an issue here in England, as perhaps you know.’

      The pilot raised his eyebrows. ‘I didn’t know that. You don’t have it, do you?’

      ‘No. How does it work out in practice?’

      ‘I don't really know,’said David. ‘I've never thought about it much.’

      Captain Osbome asked, ‘Have you got more than one vote, yourself?’

      The pilot nodded. ‘I'm a three vote man.’
      […]
      ‘What do you get three votes for?’ the captain asked.

      ‘Basic, education, and foreign travel.’

      ‘The basic vote – that’s what everybody gets, is it?’

      ‘That’s right,’ the pilot said. ‘Everybody gets that at the age of twenty one.’

      ‘And education?’

      ‘That’s for higher education,’ David said. ‘You get it if you take a university degree. There’s a whole list of other things you get it for, like being a solicitor or a doctor. Officers get it when they’re commissioned. That’s how I got mine.’

      ‘And foreign travel?’'

      ‘That’s for earning your living outside Australia for two years. It’s a bit of a racket, that one, because in the war a lot of people got it for their war service. I got mine that way. I didn’t know anything about the Philippines, really, I when I came away, although I’d been there for three years, off and on.’

      ‘You had a wider outlook than if you’d stayed at home,’ the captain said. ‘I suppose that's worth something.’

      ‘I suppose it is.’

      ‘So you’ve got three votes. How does that work out in practice, at an election?’

      ‘You get three voting papers given to you, and fill in all three, and put them in the box,’ the pilot said.

      ‘You're on the register as having three votes?’

      ‘That’s right. You have to register again when you get an extra vote – produce some sort of a certificate.’

      They sat in silence for a time, looking out over the crowded harbour in the sunset light. Rosemary came to the saloon ladder and spoke up to them. ‘You can get more votes than three, can't you?’ she said. ‘Is it seven?’

      David glanced down her. ‘The seventh is hardly ever given,’ he said. ‘Only the Queen can give that.’

      She nodded. ‘I know. We get them coming through the office. I should think there must be about ten a year.’

      ‘The others are straightforward,’ David said. ‘You get a vote if you raise two children to the age of fourteen without getting a divorce. That’s the family vote.’

      ‘You can’t get it if you’re divorced?’ asked Rosemary smiling.

      ‘No. That puts you out.’

      ‘Do you both get it?’

      ‘Husband and wife both get it,’ David said.

      ‘What’s the fifth one?’

      ‘The achievement vote,’ said David. ‘You get an extra vote if your personal exertion income – what you call earned income here – if that was over something or other in the year before the election – five thousand a year, I think. I don’t aspire to that one. It’s supposed to cater for the man who’s got no education and has never been out of Australia and quarrelled with his wife, but built up a big business. They reckon that he ought to have more say in the affairs of the country than his junior typist.’

      ‘Maybe. And the sixth?’

      ‘That’s if you're an official of a church. Any recognized Christian church – they’ve got a list of them. You don’t have to be a minister. I think churchwardens get it as well as vicars, but I’m really not quite sure. What it boils down to is that you get an extra vote if you’re doing a real job for a church.’

      ‘That’s an interesting one.’

      ‘It’s never interested me much.’ said the pilot. ‘I suppose I’m not ambitious. But I think it’s a good idea, all the same.’

      ‘So that’s six votes,’ Captain Osborne said. ‘The basic vote and education, and foreign travel, and the family vote, and the achievement vote, and the church vote. What’s the seventh?’

      ‘That’s at the Queen’s pleasure,’ said David. ‘I’'s a bit like a decoration. You get it if you’re such a hell of a chap that the Queen thinks you ought to have another vote.’

      ‘Aren’t there any rules about getting it?’

      ‘I don’t think so,’ said the pilot. ‘I think you just get it for being a good boy.’

      [p.124]
      ‘You’ve experimented in your States, and found what seems to be a better system of democracy.’

      [p.241]
      There was much talk in the Conservative papers about electoral reform, and there were bitter articles in the Labour papers about an audacious attempt on the part of the Tories to kill democracy and to regain an obsolete form of government by privilege. It was all rather unhappy reading, a record of disunity on fundamental principles that he could not recall in his own country; he put the papers aside with a sigh, nostalgic for the country on the far side of the world that he had left so recently. […]

      [p.242/3]
      ‘I’ve been reading the weeklies to find out what’s been happening while we’ve been away. There seems to be a lot going on about this multiple voting.’

      She nodded. ‘I think there is.’

      ‘The Government seem very bitter.’

      ‘Yes,' she said, ‘they are. People are usually bitter when they see something threatened that they believe in with all their hearts and souls. And this Government believes in the old principle of one man, one vote. They believe in that very sincerely.’ […]

      [p.272]
      There was to be a Governor-General in England as in all the other Dominions, a buffer between the elected politicians and the Queen, selected by the Queen for his ability to get on with the politicians of the day while serving her. Somebody who could take the day-to-day hack work of Royalty off her, who could open the Town Halls and lay the foundation stones and hold the Levees and the Courts and the Garden Parties, and leave the Monarch free for the real work of governing the Commonwealth.return to index

  52. New Judge Ruling:
    Conspiracy theorists claim French first lady Brigitte Macron was born a man..

    (In the voice of Allaster McKallaster)
    Globalist progressive liberals never lie.. never have.. never will.

    2. Must have been a painful birth for her mother.

      "Is it a boy or a girl, nurse?"

      "It's a man, and you need a lot of stitches."

  54. Britain forced to pay EU under Starmer’s Brexit reset
    New documents demand financial contributions from UK for first time since leaving bloc
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/07/17/britain-forced-pay-eu-under-starmer-reset-deal/

    If the King had any love of his country, courage and integrity he would summon the Royal Guard and have Starmer clapped in irons and then conveyed to the Tower of London and put in its deepest and darkest cell on the charge if High Treason.

    But I fear we have a monarch who is not just a blithering idiot but a traitor with it.

  55. Just spent about two hours trying to figure out how to order some dollars from Barclays for my next trip before the exchange rate drops any further. Last time time I ordered it was sooooooo simple. Eventually I had to ask Google. Still couldn't find the right bit on Barclays website, logged in or not. Eventually I found an offshoot and ordered it and it seemed to work. What a waste of time.

    Now trying to find a phone number for the plumber who last came here in January '24. Life doesn't get any easier, does it?

    1. My experience of Barclays when closing my late mother’s accounts was overwhelmingly negative – appalling service

      1. They were very helpful when my mother died. I've banked with Barclays since I was a teenager and won't bother changing now. The website was annoying today though.

    2. I have an account with Wise. You can top up with Sterling from you English bank and then convert any of that amount to any currency eg Euros or Dollars. When you present your card (and you need only one) for payment, it recognises in which currency to pay. Simple AND cheap.

      https://wise.com/

      1. She is not an attractive woman and I suspect that she is just as unattractive as she looks.

  57. EnglandLaments
    3h
    Hereis the treachery in plain sight!
    Extract:

    "If you’re looking for a story that sums up why Britain is in such a godawful mess, try this. At an Oxford college dinner in spring, 2011, the political author David Goodhart found himself seated next to Sir Gus O’Donnell, at that time the most senior civil servant in the land.

    Mr Goodhart happened to mention that he was writing a book about immigration. And here’s what he says Sir Gus – now Lord O’Donnell – told him: “When I was at the Treasury, I argued for the most open door possible to immigration,” he said. Why? “I think it’s my job to maximise global welfare, not national welfare.”

    That last sentence – reported in The Road to Somewhere, Mr Goodhart’s acclaimed book of 2017 – is critical. Because it’s the key to understanding the mindset of our 21st-century elites – not just in Whitehall, but in Parliament, broadcasting, academia, the public sector and the arts.

    To put it simply: these people don’t think of Britain as a country. They think of it as a charity."

    1. Michael Deacon wrote on this yesterday. I think the fundamental problem is the lack of control the tax payer has over the state. Thus these wasters are attracted to the ability to abuse power (and money) for their own purposes.

      The solution is simply stopping them having that access.

  58. Sea_Warrior
    3h
    The Republic of Ireland seems to be leading the way in 'civil unrest'. I can only imagine that it will get worse.

    Truth Hurts
    Sea_Warrior
    3h
    NI is not far behind!

    Joris Bohnson
    3h
    Given Labour's previous, can someone explain why the financial markets haven't responded to Reeve's obvious lies and ineptitude in the same manner as they did with Truss? It's almost as if there's another agenda at play here. The stench of WEF is in the air…

    It doesnt add up
    Joris Bohnson
    2h
    30 year gilts yield 5.5%. Much higher than under Truss.

    1. At one level, these huge investment banks hold much of the UKs debt. It's in their interest to get high returns from a failing government.

      They went for Truss because she set to overturn the apple cart. With fracking, lower taxes the economy would have grown, there'd be long term less debt and the green con would be disintegrated. Banks are making a lot of money out of scamming the taxpayer.

  60. Foulan
    2h
    There is one, and only one, reason why Labour wants to give the vote to 16-year olds, namely that they are likely to vote Labour having been brainwashed by the NUT and Unite which, unbelievably, is allowed into schools to 'teach' children about 'union activities'. Nothing whatever to do with the best interests of the country, of course.
    By the way, Rayner says they can get married and join the armed forces. Even that is only partially true.

    She conveniently forgets that:

    At 16 they:
    • can't drive
    • can't have a mortgage
    • can't buy alcohol
    • can't join the arm (w/out parental consent
    • can't serve on the front line
    • can't get married (w/out parental consent)
    • can't serve on a jury
    • can't stand for an election
    • can't consent to a medical study
    • can't carry an organ donor card
    • can't buy cigarettes
    • can't gamble
    • can't buy fireworks
    • can't watch an 18 or R18 film
    • can't get a tattoo
    • can't make a will

    A few more years of Rayner and the country will be truly finished.

    1. People tend to vote as their parents and family do. I doubt that lowering the voting age will have much effect. 33 percent possible labour votes. 30 percent Reform or Tory Not much new here.

        1. Were you ever that young? At 16 you might be very much under your family’s influence.

          1. No I didn’t agree with taking things that people had worked for and giving them to those who couldn’t be bothered. Plus when I was 19 I went to the old Soviet Union and that put me off Communism for life.

          2. Most people didn't need to travel to USSR ro be out off by Russian Communism. Some went and thought they had a vision of the future and it worked

          3. I was studying Russian. It gave me an entree (admittedly closely controlled by Intourist and Komsomol) to ordinary Russians.

          4. It must have been an interesting experience. I knew a guy who spent a year in Kiev then part of the USSR also studying Russian. His stories were fascinating but he wasn’t anti Communist as such although I really couldn’t figure out why not. Like Graham Greene he seemed to believe in the future of Communism when the state has withered away.

    3. A good list which underlines the idiocy of reducing the voting age.

      That said there does need to be a rationalisation of the various age limits – 16 is currently the age of consent so 16 year olds can legally procreate even if they cant do any of the above!!

      I think there is a strong argument that, if any age limits are to be changed, they should only ever be increased.

      We are all living longer and that should be reflected in the limits – for example, the age at which you qualify for a State Pension is constantly being revised upwards. Everybody understands why, and this logic should be applied everywhere else.

  61. Madeline Grant
    Life is good in Starmerland. It’s a shame about Britain
    16 July 2025, 2:41pm

    It was clearly hot in the House of Commons today. The Lib Dem benches were a sea of pastel colours, light pinks and summer suits. They looked like the LGBTQIA+ sub-committee of the Friends of Glyndebourne. Which, in many ways, they are. Rachel Reeves, in contrast, was wearing severe black, as if she were going to a funeral. Presumably for the economy.

    Members on the Labour backbenches fanned themselves with order papers and squirmed. Given that these are people who give the impression that they are kept in tanks needing only a coco fibre brick, a heat lamp and the odd handful of dried locusts to keep them going, then it must have been warm.

    A generous explanation of the fever dream which Sir Keir inflicted on the House in his answers at Prime Minister’s Questions would be that the heat had gone to his head. Sadly, however, the picture painted by the PM – of an unrecognisable nation – is consistent with the government’s constant and singular inability to realise just how much trouble Britain is in, and just how much its people now hate them.

    Sometimes I wonder which country the Prime Minister thinks he is leading – Lilliput? Barataria? Oz? Certainly, it isn’t Britain, but rather a Utopia that exists exclusively in his head. In Starmerland, working people are finally able to prosper due to the generous rise in National Insurance placed upon them, businesses are confident, public services are thriving and immigration is a side issue that barely needs to be mentioned.

    The Leader of the Opposition tried to drag the PM into reality, quoting rises in unemployment and inflation as well as drops in market confidence. How, she asked, were they going to go back to their constituents and explain what a complete hash they’d made of things?

    Sir Keir actually took this as a spur for confidence. He was looking forward to placating a country poorer and angrier than it’s been in generations with some extra NHS appointment slots, thank you very much. He tried to rouse some cheers from his backbenchers with limited success. Behind him, the bug tank looked glum. Some of them weren’t looking forward to a summer with the electorate at all.

    From the Tory backbenchers came a cricketing theme: Sir Desmond Swayne’s MCC tie shone almost as brightly as his eyes as he directed a furious question about prosecutions of veterans to the PM. Lincoln Jopp asked Sir Keir if he would take some inspiration from the England cricket team and deploy ‘more pace, less spin’.

    The Prime Minister, who does not strike me as someone you’d want even doing the scoring at a cricket match, did not find it funny. ‘He needs a break’, oinked the PM.

    Then the full horror dawned on me: these people would now be at large. Imagine, feeling into the chest freezer to grab a Cornetto and finding Kim Leadbeater taking her annual cryogenic death rest amongst the Soleros. Or going abroad with the lurking knowledge that your safety there is technically in the hands of David Lammy.

    Or, perhaps worst of all, going to the beach and finding the Prime Minister himself, fanning his trotters in the gentle sea breeze. Surely, with this high risk of encountering members of the worst cabinet​ on record, there can only be one piece of advice for the British public: stay indoors.

    *****************************
    Matt
    a day ago
    Maybe he could distract from this by telling us if there is a super-injunction in place over why Nick Brown was suspended from the Labour party.

    Or if he has a super-injunction in place over the Ukrainian arsonist rent boys.

    Or if the government or anybody in Cabinet, or anybody connected to them such as Lord Ali have any other super-injunctions.

    Rockette
    a day ago edited
    My sister is a Labour Party member. She hates Trump and Israel, and Reform , thinks Sir Keir is much vilified while doing a good job, that benefit claimants are in the great majority of cases deserving, that we should welcome asylum seekers on the small boats and stop discriminating against the majority of devout law abiding Muslims (challenged about grooming gangs she says more attention should be paid to paedophiles in the Catholic church). She is an avid Remainer.

    She says the many problems in the economy are caused by the domination of rich white men like hedge fund managers and wealthy land owners and that they along with professional and middle classes should pay more tax. We were not raised in a left wing family, she has been like this since teacher training college.

    1. There must be no benefits for gimmigrants for at minimum 10 years have passed. Nothing. No free house, no child benefit, no universal credit. They must also be expected to speak English and to contribute toward schools (if they've children) and their own health care.

      They should not receive the state pension, either. No welfarist should.

      Yet we live in this insane time when socialism is the norm, where work is punished, where effort derided and indolence rewarded.

      1. There needs to be a moratorium on all incomers to the U.K. for at least 5 years. Nobody should be allowed into this country.

        1. You're right, but we must also reverse the generous welfare given to gimmigrants and just deport them. All those muslim living high on our money, with bennies for each of their 3 wives needs to go.

  62. Ross Clark
    Britain can’t afford to let migrants live on benefits
    16 July 2025, 10:52am

    When the history of the next election comes to be written, we may end up asking: was the turning point for its outcome the moment that Keir Starmer’s government backtracked on its welfare reforms in the face of a backbench revolt? The fiasco, which eliminated the government’s hopes of saving £5 billion a year, has made any welfare reform during the current Parliament impossible.

    The cost of that is becoming more evident by the day. Figures revealed this morning show that there are currently 3.6 million people receiving Universal Credit who are under no obligation whatsoever to look for work. They have been effectively written off as unemployable and will be in receipt of benefits for the remainder of their working-age lives. That is nearly half the total of 7.9 million people on Universal Credit.

    What’s more, 1.26 million claimants of Universal Credit are non-UK citizens. It is hard to imagine a more powerful form of recruitment for Reform UK. As Nigel Farage put it this morning, ‘These figures go completely against the lie we have been told for 25 years that all immigration is positive because they work and contribute to society.’ Britain, to use a phrase that is steadily gaining political traction, has become the benefits office of the world.

    The case for mass migration relies on the assertion that it is helping to staff our hospitals, care homes and other places of employment which are desperately short of staff. There is a lot of truth in this, although it is undermined by today’s figures. There is also the idealist Statue of Liberty argument: the idea that the rest of the world is sending us its huddled masses who, given a chance, will turn out to be full of entrepreneurs who will found and build new businesses.

    It is a lovely idea. The trouble is that 2020s Britain is not 1880s America – the decade in which the Statue of Liberty was built. The big difference is that modern Britain incorporates a huge welfare state, and a non-contributory one at that. You don’t have to build up entitlements to benefits over a number of years – you can arrive in Britain one day and be in receipt of benefits the next.

    This was the issue, indeed, on which David Cameron’s pre-referendum negotiations to reset Britain’s relations with the EU fell down. The EU refused to compromise on free movement, beyond a few token gestures, and David Cameron refused to countenance the wholesale redesign of Britain’s benefits system to make it harder for migrants to claim benefits. The result was that Britain voted for Brexit, partly in the expectation that migration would be slashed.

    But it didn’t happen. On the contrary, migration surged. What’s more, the move to Universal Credit has fuelled the growth in the number of people who are paid out-of-work benefits but are not required to look for work. The pandemic played a role in this, in that it meant fewer Work Capability Assessments were carried out face-to-face. Yet the growth in people not required to look for work began a couple of years before Covid, and has continued to grow ever since.

    Labour’s failure to reform welfare ought to benefit the Conservatives, yet Universal Credit was very much their baby. Moreover, it was under their government that migration as well as the number of people on out-of-work benefits began to surge. That is a very big problem for them. Reform UK, on the other hand, has no baggage such as failed welfare policy.

    No country with a benefits system as generous and as extensive as Britain’s can afford an open borders policy; that much should be obvious. A country of 34 million workers cannot support the virtually limitless numbers of people around the globe who could potentially claim UK benefits. Just as the Leave campaign won the Brexit referendum on the back of a few simple messages, Reform UK is more than capable of winning the next election by continuing to drum into the public that Britain’s benefits system, and in particular the number of migrants who are living off it, is unsustainbale.

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

    Cooper
    a day ago
    It is extraordinary that anyone of any political colour could believe that this is a sustainable situation. The fact that so many politicians and civil servants seem to believe that continually kicking the can down the road is a responsible solution really makes me think we need a whole new system of government. One where government actually practices it's first responsibility which is to protect it's citizens, not everybody else's.

    Andrew Cowan Cooper
    a day ago
    Because Politicians and Civil servants have gold plated pensions and the 'blob' jobs for life. These new 'Aparatchiks' have zero empathy for the Proletariat they pretend to serve as long as they are financial secure.

    Burkean
    a day ago edited
    Most strikingly, of the 3.6 million people receiving Universal Credit, a third are foreign, which shows at least that whoever devised the title "Universal Credit" knew what it would be used for: it means what it says on the tin. That statistic alone should kill off, once and for all, the Blairite claptrap about immigration being good for the economy. The country does not (yet) have a population of which a third are foreigners, so foreigners are a massively disproportionate burden on Universal Credit. It needs to stop being universal.

    Alastair Harris
    a day ago
    it is right to call out those in receipt of cash benefits, but what about access to free education, healthcare, housing, policing… Our welfare state is enormous, as the spend testifies. When are we going to have a sensible discussion about what is actually affordable. How about a discussion about the welfare trap. This is perhaps an even bigger hole!

    1. Unwinding an army of more than a million foreigners who expect to receive UK welfare until the day they die will be like coming off anti-depressants. If done too quickly, it will kill us.

    2. Appalling though the figures are, Burkean has misquoted them. Foreigners account for one-sixth of claimants, not one-third.

    3. The people of France gave the USA the Statue of Liberty to commemorate their Revolutions. 1776 and 1789. Just saying…

  64. More photographs of HillbarnCottages swifts by Peter Orr
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8113d01c37c0e116dbdced496151883737480ad29a4f972a08b6db4dedcc4779.png
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3a4659a772dee70129e501a40f69ce5acf09b0a307ebaeac640c8be553c7c200.png
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/fa2661c3e8b8059941d23b0fb1f8113f9c430674002a22dedd4f7f37e2c369bd.png
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1bed0a11558a2ce72ddbed15b863a05a8dc43180ff06baf83c58630592e35867.png

  65. What's the betting that Cur Ikea's "team" will devise an "app" specially for the 16 year olds to "help them know how to vote"…..

    1. I shouldn't worry. In 4 years time there won't be anything left to actually vote for…… :-(((

        1. No am planning to do some more shortly. Now that the schools are breaking up for the summer hols the Weather should be a lot, lot cooler!!

          2. Well one has got to rope them in somehow to explain to them the odious nature of capitalism and why when they soon get the vote they should always vote Labour (who are very kind to kittens)..

    2. Should be a very simple app:

      Q. Do you think you should keep the money you earn, or should it be handed out to people to lazy to work?

    1. Well, yes, that's what they wanted. Isn't that obvious? Diversity is the opposite of. It's the suppression of choice.

      War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength.

  67. I know the government rushed out this announcement today to take the news away from the super injunction scandal.
    But what is the point of lowering the voting age when government has the power to impose super injunctions, thus denying the electorate the ability to cast their vote in full knowledge of what our government and politicians have been up to when in power and in opposition.
    We might as well be living under the North Korean system if we don’t know what our politicians stand for.
    If anyone from around the world can come here and get a house and benefits without the knowledge of the tax payer we might just as well open up the vote to the whole planet, for it will affect them too

    1. I think we do know what our politicians stand for- self interest and hatred of the indigenous people and their culture.

  68. How DEI unleashed the monster of anti-Semitism
    A new report has found that Jew hatred is rife among Britain’s lanyard classes.

    Brendan O'Neill
    chief political writer
    15th July 2025

    ‘Anti-Semitism is a very light sleeper’, said Conor Cruise O’Brien. Indeed it is, and it has been stirred from its thin slumber these past two years. Since Hamas’s pogrom of 7 October 2023 we have witnessed the violent rebirth of English anti-Semitism. And this is one breed of fanatical prejudice that cannot be libellously pinned on the ‘gammon’, on those lower orders who are so often written off as bigots. No, it is in polite society, among the hoarders of virtue, that the revived Jew hate is most prominent and most vicious.

    A new report has found that anti-Semitism has been ‘normalised in middle-class Britain’. Wariness of the Jew is rife in the very institutions of bourgeois society that pride themselves on their anti-racist credentials. At universities, in the arts and in the NHS, the report found, anti-Semitism has become ‘pervasive’. The same lanyard classes that organise training sessions on ‘white privilege’ or ‘heteronormativity’ to enlighten the oiks on their inner bigot have created a climate in which Jews feel ‘marginalised’ and ‘tolerated rather than respected’.

    The report was commissioned by the Board of Deputies of British Jews. It was written by Lord John Mann of the Labour Party, who advises the government on anti-Semitism, and Dame Penny Mordaunt of the Conservative Party, who was defence secretary under Theresa May. They describe themselves as ‘two non-Jews from opposite sides of the political spectrum’ who were ‘stunned into silence’ by what they heard from Britain’s Jews. We’re ‘hard-nosed politicians’, they write, but still they were shaken by reports of surging anti-Jewish violence, censorship of Jewish artists and even the belittling of Jewish patients in the NHS.

    Their report is a difficult read. It reminds us that Britain suffered a historic spike in Jew-hating crimes in the aftermath of 7 October. No sooner had that neo-fascist militia visited its violence on the Jews of southern Israel than its sick mimickers in the UK were visiting abuse on the Jews of Britain. There was a ‘vertiginous growth in anti-Semitism’, the report says. There were a record 4,103 anti-Semitic incidents in the UK in 2023, most of them occurring after 7 October. The fascistic menace persisted into 2024, when there were 3,528 incidents of Jew hate – the second-highest annual total.

    Synagogues were desecrated, Jewish kids were roughed up, posters featuring Hamas’s kidnap victims were rabidly ripped down or daubed with Jewphobic graffiti. One especially grim symptom of the post-7 October mania was when pupils at the Jewish Free School in north London were given permission to remove their blazers on their way to and from school. Literal children encouraged to hide outward signs of their Jewishness lest some Hamasnik should target them for violence – we forget at our peril the darkness that befell Britain in the weeks after the slaughter of the Jews in Israel.

    The most valuable thing about the report is that it shows how institutionalised anti-Semitism has become. Every recent conflict involving Israel has been accompanied by a rise in Jew hatred, the report says. The minute Israel takes action against the armies of anti-Semites that surround it, a digital ‘sewer of hate and disinformation’ will wash over our societies. But it’s been ‘different this time around’. Post-7 October, anti-Semitism has ‘crept into civil society’, including ‘the workplace, cultural spaces and even the NHS’. The chilling result is that Jews have ‘almost nowhere they can turn… where anti-Semitism does not seem present’.

    The report paints a grim picture of how suffocating the cult of Israelophobia has become. It tells of Jewish musicians elbowed out by venues that once hosted them. And Jewish students seeing their disabilities liaison officers, the people they trust with their health records, screaming for an ‘intifada’. And Jews waiting years for the professional bodies they work for to investigate incidents of anti-Semitism. And Jewish academics watching as studies into anti-Semitism were ‘heavily edited’ to avoid offending other minority groups. Sidelined, censored and gaslit – that’s been the experience of our Jewish compatriots since the October pogrom.

    And much of the animus has come from that section of society that fancies itself as being on ‘the right side of history’. The preening grad classes who say ‘Black Lives Matter’ and ‘transwomen are women’ are the ones marginalising Jews. Israelophobia and its less guarded cousin – anti-Semitism – have become the dinner-party prejudices of our age. That was clear in the sick spectacle of middle-class youths at Glastonbury chanting for the death of the Jewish nation’s soldiers. Educated elites who for years posed as anti-racist now gleefully partake in mob orgies of Israelophobia that often cross a line into something even darker.

    It seems to me that the latent anti-Semitism of England’s middle classes has found a fresh outlet in Israelophobia. Under the faux-political cover of hating the Jewish nation, some are giving vent to that old, regressive loathing of Jews. And this is where the report falls down – with its solutions. It calls for the boosting of DEI – Diversity, Equality and Inclusion. Educational institutions and public bodies must ensure, it says, that DEI includes ‘education on anti-Semitism’. This strikes me as a staggering moral contradiction – because it is precisely DEI that helped to birth the new Jew hate.

    It is not a coincidence that it is in the very institutions that are rife with DEI that anti-Semitism is now ‘pervasive’. And not just in the UK – on campuses across the US, where DEI is a neo-religion, Jew hatred has surged. We’ve seen students at Columbia call the Jewish nation ‘the pigs of the Earth’ and openly dream of death for their Jewish colleagues. At Penn University, Jewish students have been told to go back to ‘fucking Berlin where you came from’. There’s even been the daubing of ‘swastikas and hateful graffiti’ on campus. In America as well as Britain, the creep of the fascist imagination seems most pronounced in those zones where wokeness rules and diversity is sacralised.

    DEI is Dr Frankenstein to the monster of the new Jew hatred. It is the very racial conspiracism of this bourgeois cult that has made life hard for Jews. For this hyper-racialist ideology ruthlessly sorts all ethnic groups into boxes marked ‘oppressed’ (meaning good) or ‘privileged’ (meaning bad). And it views Jews as the most privileged, the people with the most to atone for. It hangs a target sign round their necks, marking them out for the righteous opprobrium of self-styled defenders of ‘the oppressed’. An ideology that damns Jews as unjustly advantaged, and the Jewish State as uniquely barbarous, is an ideology that sooner or later will let the world’s oldest racism off its weak leash. And that has happened.

    Anti-Semitism is not only a light sleeper – it’s a shape-shifter, too. There’s been religious anti-Semitism, racial anti-Semitism, and now woke anti-Semitism: a swirling bigotry fuelled by the blind righteousness of a half-mad activist class that genuinely thinks history is on the side of its hatreds. We don’t need more DEI. We need Jews and their allies to prep for the fight ahead. Because while history doesn’t ‘take sides’, it does contain lessons, and none as important as this one: Jew hatred must always be strangled at birth.

    1. I'm shocked that Brendan O'Neill would use a slur like 'gammon'. I'm fairly sure he wouldn't write 'nigger'. But insulting white people is OK.

        1. I’m still shocked. Moreover, he uses it as though it is a term that he himself might use in private.

      2. "And this is one breed of fanatical prejudice that cannot be libellously pinned on the ‘gammon’, on those lower orders who are so often written off as bigots. No, it is in polite society, among the hoarders of virtue, that the revived Jew hate is most prominent and most vicious."
        Brendan is deliberately exposing the language of the middle-class anti-Semites. That is the term they would use for the despised whites trying to do their best for themselves and their families; even worse, they actually love their country.

        1. He is too familiar with the term. Merely putting it in inverted commas and using it is just condoning and ratifying its use. He should have shown a little more shock and disgust. Perhaps this term is common in the circles in which he moves – I’ve only seen it used on the internet by the most unpleasant, bigoted, spiteful activists, who also refer to white people as “pork.” What are pork and gammon? They are dead meat.
          This is not just another lefty insult; it’s part of the dehumanising phase that precedes a genocide.

    2. Oh – they've stopped slashing the boats, then…. Funny that it only happened while Toy Boy was hugging Cur Ikea.

  71. It never works out like you planned.

    Labour could gain half a million votes from 16-year-olds..

    250,000 votes will go to Union Jack Girl and her mates..
    250,000 votes will go to Jezbollah & Independent Gaza MPs.

    1. Dear beady-eyed wanker..
      in fact the only way you will bolster your support is by cancelling all elections..

      2. National Emergency booked for Autumn, 2028.
        All elections cancelled for the foreseeable future.

    2. I'm more worried about them all voting Reform! They are young enough to believe in saviours!

  72. It never works out like you planned.

    Labour could gain half a million votes from 16-year-olds..

    250,000 votes will go to Union Jack Girl and her mates..
    250,000 votes will go to Jezbollah & Independent Gaza MPs.

  73. While spending an hour watering the tomatoes (etc) I was able to reflect on this excellent news that teenagers will be getting the vote at 16. In my view it ought to be much earlier – the day they start primary school, for example.

    But my really good idea is that, at the same date, the vote should be withdrawn from everyone over 60. I mean, lets face it, what do old people know about anything? They have trust treadmilled their way through a boring, empty life and have reached an age when – incredibly – they think they have "experience". Cancel the lot of them, I say – put your faith in Starmer's Babies.

      1. i would say you need to pay a minimum amount of tax. Some benefits are taxable so you could still be in the position you take a hige amount out and only put a minimal amount in.

        I don’t know how you would arrange it so pensioners who only get state pension get a vote because otherwise i would say you need to be a net tax payer i. e. Putting more in than taking out. But as the state pension is a taxable “benefit” my approach needs work.

        1. It could go on past contributions, which would qualify most pensioners I would have thought. After all, pensions always used to be based on contributions.

    3. Good idea. Why vote when you have no future, all hope has been abandoned and everyone s just waiting for your demise and your house empty.

  74. Wordle No. 1,489 3/6

    ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
    ⬜🟩🟨⬜⬜
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    Wordle 17 Jul 2025

    Tuneful Birdie Three?

    1. Still bumbling along with another par

      Wordle 1,489 4/6

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

      1. Snap.
        Wordle 1,489 4/6

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

    2. You did well there – another 'unusual' word that I eventually entered with a degree of trepidation, even though there were no alternatives!

      Bleedin' Bogey!!

      Wordle 1,489 5/6

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

    3. Well done. Psr here.

      Wordle 1,489 4/6

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

    4. Well done. Par for me.

      Wordle 1,489 4/6

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

  76. Still waiting for a journo to ask the questions: "Why were we in Afghanistan? Who took us there?"

    1. The demented George W Bush. How he ever managed to get into politics bewilders me.

      1. I know it was Bush who initiated it and yesterday I described his ventures with the same adjective.

        We didn't have to follow…

        1. One of the few good things Wilson did was keep out of Viet Nam. A bit like Gordon Brown and the euro.

      1. It was the previous administration under Trump that ordered the withdrawal. It was the Biden administration that fucked it up.

        When the Taliban realised the Americans were not going to fight anymore they flooded over the border from Pakistan and swamped the place.

        Meanwhile the stooge they put in to govern the shithole escaped in two helicopters stuffed with sacks of cash.

        He even had to leave millions behind because they couldn't cram any more in the space.

        I expect he is living it up in Dubai now.

        1. It was Biden who screwed up the withdrawal from Vietnam. And he knew what he was doing back then.

      1. Under the Taliban (warlords) opium production was controlled. Even hippies went there on holiday and had a pleasant time.

        The West needed to create an instability where the warlords would be challenged and so they trained the rebels who became the Mujahideen, referring to those engaged in jihad, which broadly means striving or struggling in the path of God.

        In a more specific context, particularly during the Soviet-Afghan war, it denotes the various Islamist militant groups that fought against the Soviet-backed Afghan government and the Soviet Union.

        This birthed more Islamist military networks including Al Qaeda.

        We have now just repeated all that shit by training the Afgaffs yet again in modern military weaponry and warfare.

        And now they are here being flown in, in secrecy by our own deathwish government.

        My opinion.

    5. Troops are disposable for the parasite class and there was a big, fat money washing machine spinning.

  77. Only a secular Jew like the brilliant Tom Lehrer could have written National Brotherhood Week and put this verse in it :

    Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics,
    And the Catholics hate the Protestants,
    And the Hindus hate the Moslems,
    And everybody hates the Jews.

    1. Sorry to disagree Rastus but I don't find it particularly clever or funny! I'm tired of people talking about hate whilst hating like billy-o themselves; people being victims; people talking up conflict.

  79. "Watching children bundled into dinghies, French police admit they’ve lost control" (D Telegraph online headline).

    They never HAD control. They didn't want it, either.

    1. I wouldn't mind betting the French state are giving the traffickers the rubber boats for free…..Cheaper than paying for 4 star hotels and indefinite amounts of pocket money….

      1. They know where the boats are stored. They know where the boats are inflated. You need compressors for that. They know where the queues form beyond the beach.

      2. Simple enough to create obstacles; for example, the French could create a regulation to license outboard motors (engines) and/or insist that every outboard is insured via a keeper, a registered address and a valid ID. Could be linked to vehicle or household insurance, so it would be more about compliance than extra expense.

        1. The French already have laws about who can captain a boat in their waters. They are not enforcing it.

      1. A piece of propaganda when all this took off there was the suggestion that the brain cannot be considered mature until at least 25 years of age. Factor in the low IQ and you have people with no set boundaries in fully formed male bodies.
        Now we are reaping/raped by that thinking.

  80. That's me for today. Market. Gardening. Reading. Crosswords all done + other puzzles.

    Have a jolly evening.

    A demain, on espère…

  82. Britain forced to pay EU under Starmer’s Brexit reset

    New documents demand financial contributions for first time since UK left bloc

    Joe Barnes
    Brussels Correspondent.
    James Crisp
    Europe Editor

    17 July 2025 11:59am BST
    Britain will be made to pay into the European Union’s budget as the price for Sir Keir Starmer’s reset deal.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/126070e56cefd6d7

    1. I wonder – does Farage understand this? More, does he know what would be needed to be done to undo this appalling nonsense? As it chains us to the pointless and destructive 'green' scam.

      'Climate change' is a weapon the Left use to hinder progress and wealth. Their desperation to enforce a communist construct is plain dangerous.

      1. I am sure he does understand. But he intends to be sitting on top of the shit heap.

  83. What happened to the Rolls-Royce civil service? It's all very well hanging Tory ministers out to dry (there will be millions of volunteers) but how did this happen? Johnny Mercer claims to know the individual concerned. Was he a senior CS or a junior desk jockey? If this was a genuine mistake, can we look forward to a calamity on Max's watch? He'll still say "Oh, the civil service declined under the Tories." Did it? I thought it controlled them!

    1. Just like with the NHS, all senior managers in the CS should be forced resign en mass.

      2. Not a bad idea Obs.
        I really don’t think or even imagine how or why anyone at all would possibly take the slightest bit of notice of any thing she actually says.
        She seemed to be suggesting that gypos and Jewish people were members of a race.

  85. Labour to train & mobilise all high school teachers in preparation for GE2029 to groom.. indoctrinate.. bribe.. bully the UKs 900,000 16-17 yr skoolkids into voting for the most hated man in the world.

    1. I think they have started already, that poor school girl kicked out for wearing a patriotic outfit.

      1. It is about Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. Which doesn't include our culture. In our country.

    2. I think they have started already, that poor school girl kicked out for wearing a patriotic outfit.

    3. yes but kids always do the opposite of what the adults want them to do….somehow the left never seems to understand that.

  88. This will be of interest to one of our regulars.
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f045f61cbca18d1c6b3d7bbdca1d2549f5aae3efdccf07c2446481ae333b1c99.png
    Wyn Davies (Wales, Newcastle Utd, both of the Manchesters), one of the great centre-forwards of the mid-20th century, has died at the age of 83.

    https://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/wales-newcastle-united-legend-dubbed-32077889
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/c89e291l80eo

    1. That's a hopeless "Spot the Ball". It's bleeding obvious…. Any fool can see it…I did.

      2. Ha ! you wouldn't have won Spot the Ball with that observation.

        That was a Alien space ship.

    2. I remember Wyn Davies (and Ron Davies of Southampton, both in the Wales side at the same time)

      They used to say that if he could have strapped a boot to his head he would have been world class!

    3. Aye yae yae yae Marshall is better than Yashin
      WYN Davies is better than Eusebio
      And Sunnerland are in for a thrashing!🎶
      St James Park circa 1969!

      1. The teams have met on 156 previous occasions, with Sunderland gaining a massive 53 wins in that time compared to Newcastle’s paltry 53.

  90. I was never much one for poetry. School did that to me.

    This by Pablo Neruda made me emotional.
    …………………………………………………………………

    Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

    Write, for example,’The night is shattered
    and the blue stars shiver in the distance.’

    The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

    Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
    I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

    Through nights like this one I held her in my arms
    I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

    She loved me sometimes, and I loved her too.
    How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

    Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
    To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

    To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
    And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

    What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
    The night is shattered and she is not with me.

    This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
    My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

    My sight searches for her as though to go to her.
    My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

    The same night whitening the same trees.
    We, of that time, are no longer the same.

    I no longer love her, that’s certain, but how I loved her.
    My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

    Another’s. She will be another’s. Like my kisses before.
    Her void. Her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

    I no longer love her, that’s certain, but maybe I love her.
    Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

    Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
    my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

    Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
    and these the last verses that I write for her.

    1. That,s very good, I liked it, but Neruda is/was a very controversial figure – politically and more generally……

      1. I only heard of him because of Star Trek. His poetry features in a couple of episodes.

        Is he better or worse than Starmer do you think?

          1. Not something he'd admit to – after all, he helped cover up all those others who were committing them.

          2. Well I suspect he’s also defended murderers in his time – but that doesnt make him a murderer!

            Look, I’m not defending the guy, I cant abide him, but occasionally there needs to be a little perspective…..

          5. Aiding and abetting comes to mind. Especially in view of the prosecutions when people protested.

          6. The problem you've got with that, Conners, is that if you extrapolate that view for all the crimes committed, then you have a complete breakdown of the legal system.

            Now you and I may consider that not to be a bad thing but we're lurching perilously close to anarchy – and I'm not sure I'm ready for that (just yet).

          7. I think the legal system is in meltdown anyway. Two tier justice is no justice at all.

          8. Yes, I agree, but it paints a pretty bleak picture for all of us going forward……..

          10. Try not to be miserable, buddy, there's great stuff going on all around us if we just look for it!

            Plus the fact we've got the Lions v Australia on Saturday (just showing how shallow I am)….

          11. As I'm not a rugby fan, that leaves me cold. I'm not particularly miserable, just fatalistic. Que sera sera.

          12. As i said i nothing about this person though Starmer probably enjoyed being anally raped by Ali and the Three Ukies.

            Sounds like a song !

    2. My father gave me a love for poetry and English literature.

      Some teachers tried to stamp it out but others were inspirational.

      1. My English teacher at a bog standard Comprehensive managed to inspire me enough to pass my O'Level.

        The only one i got BTW.

        And she was Irish.

  91. Watching the War of the Roses. Actually it's Yorkshire vs Lancashire T20. Good stuff.

    2. This is one of those times when you hear somebody has died and you are quite surprised as you thought they were already dead!

      Who's sorry now?

  93. UK special forces, MI6 spies and military officers named in Afghan data leak
    The Times has analysed the data which is also understood to have revealed the whereabouts of Afghans seeking sanctuary in the UK

    More than 100 British special forces troops, MI6 spies and military officers were named in the data leak along with the whereabouts of Afghans seeking sanctuary in the UK, it is understood after a government U-turn.

    The Times has seen and analysed the dataset which put up to 100,000 Afghans at risk and wanted to report what was in it accurately so the victims could take appropriate steps to protect themselves.

    The Times also wanted to expose how the UK government had lost information on UK special forces which could have put them at risk.

    https://www.thetimes.com/uk/defence/article/injunction-government-afghan-data-leak-npsdns3pg

    John Morgan
    5 hours ago

    The British state is a people smuggling gang.

    They are bringing 100,000 or so Afghans to the country.

    They filed a super-injunction so that you would not know about it.

    They are being paid by you.

    If Keir Starmer wants to smash the gangs, start with smashing foreign office

    Reply

    Recommend (35)

    Share
    G Frame
    4 hours ago

    It’s difficult to smash the gangs when the government is the biggest gang

    Reply

    Recommend (22)

    1. I'd have thought any native helping UK agents overseas will now be thinking twice. What an absolute ******* shambles.

      1. The absent little twerp Harry , did himself a huge favour by admitting his Taliban kill rate..

        I suspect he would be a very desirable target.

    1. Macron should really be in the Dock of the European Court standing trial. But as he's only following orders from his Brussels mafia, so that won't happen will it.

    2. More to the point, why is nobody being prosecuted for risking childrens' lives? Is someone hoping that a child will die to stop opposition to the invasion?

    3. Latest newsflash…Starmer taking UK back into EU….if true, they'll all be legal and more will make the journey.

  95. This morning after my very early much needed hair cut, instead of ringing my good lady who dropped me off. Because of all of the traffic, with my single stick I decided to try and walk home, it's just over a mile. And I did it. But of course only four weeks after the knee op it started to ache. But it's an achievement that I will build on.
    I'm watching the English girls seemingly throw away their chances of beating Sweden in the quater final of the football. After two almost gifted goals. Socks up and pulling comes to mind.
    So I'll bid you all good night, sleep well all. 😴

    1. Watching through fingers here, Eddy. Turned to my phone to play mahjong…saw an ad for chair yoga – might that be worth looking into for you? a mile's pretty good, build up your strength gradually, good luck. I love walking, especially with my dog 🙂

      1. We had a lovely black Lab for over 11 years. Between us we walked many miles each week. We are surrounded by countryside. She was such a good friend. And companion. We had to have her put to sleep just over 3 years ago. She had an in-operable tumor in the roof of her mouth. So sad to lose her.

        1. Labs have such a lovely nature, so sorry to read she was put to sleep – my other dog, also a terrier, was euthanised end of May, liver cancer. They say you’re a dog person or a cat person – I’ve had a dog since I was four years old (now 76), my dad fetched home a pup, mother went mad (total silence for days)….

        3. Our fox-red Labrador Amber had exactly the same – a tumour in the roof of her mouth. She was diagnosed at the age of 11, and we decided not to put her through any treatment as it would have caused too much distress to her. She survived for another 18 months before we had to have her put to sleep – a huge wrench, but something which we knew was inevitable. She was a month past her 13th birthday.

          1. My wolfhound x GSD had squamous cell carcinoma in the roof of his mouth. We kept him going on prednisolone for about a year.

          2. So sad but such wonderful memories.
            My own thoughts were it could have been caused by carrying balls in her mouth and after the balls had been rolling anywhere, infection set in.

  96. RICHARD MORRISON
    English Heritage and the National Trust are on the brink — this is why
    The country’s greatest homes and gardens are in chaos with closures and redundancies looming — the sums simply don’t add up any more.

    With the UK struggling on so many fronts right now I’m sure I’m not alone in seeking solace in the beauties of our countryside and the wonders of our historic built environment. If all else fails we still have inspiring landscapes, magnificent coastlines and an array of architectural masterpieces to rival any other nation’s. We can surely be confident, can’t we, that this heritage of natural and man-made glories will always be available for us and future generations to enjoy?

    Well, I hate to be the bearer of yet more bad news, but the answer to that assertion is either “not necessarily” or a blunt “no”, depending on how pessimistic you want me to be. And after the announcements of the past few weeks I’m veering down the unremittingly gloomy route.

    The National Trust (NT), which looks after about 500 historic properties and thousands of square miles of our most cherished landscapes, is making 550 of its 9,500 employees redundant, apparently to control soaring costs. English Heritage (EH), its rival for visitors, donations and members (why the two can’t agree on shared membership I have never understood), is up a very similar creek. It is mired in what contacts tell me is a bitter internal process to make 189 employees redundant out of a workforce of 2,535 people. It is also closing 21 of its 400 properties over the winter months and reducing opening hours elsewhere, all to cut costs.

    • Keeping Wentworth Woodhouse afloat: ‘It’s £3.5m a year just to be here’

    It needs to. Last year it raised £141 million in income (no small achievement, I would say) but spent £155 million. And whereas the NT has more than a billion pounds in its reserves, EH has just £50 million. So it will be bankrupt by 2029 if it runs up that sort of deficit every year. Whether that partly explains why Nick Merriman has resigned as EH’s chief executive after just 17 months in the job (the official explanation is “personal reasons relating to family health”), there can be no doubt that his successor, yet to be appointed, faces a mountain of problems.

    More woeful news comes from the Canal & River Trust (CRT), which is responsible for 2,000 miles of our inland waterways. Most are 200-year-old relics of the Industrial Revolution, but their 20th-century rebirth as leisure destinations has been spectacularly successful and they bring huge health and recreational benefits to millions.

    Yet I wonder if they will last another 20 years, let alone 200. At a time when climate change is making it more and more challenging to keep them in good nick (or even full of sufficient water), the government has announced that the CRT’s annual grant will be reduced by 40 per cent in real terms in the ten years from 2027. And that comes after six years when it has been frozen (at £53 million a year).

    Little Moreton Hall, a half-timbered Tudor manor house in Cheshire, England.
    Little Moreton Hall is one of around 500 historic properties managed by the National Trust

    So, three trusts doing vital work to preserve our heritage and countryside, all in financial trouble. Do they have the same problems? And how can their future be assured?

    The answer to the first question is “partly”. The government’s decision to increase employers’ national insurance contributions and the legal minimum wage has hit the whole heritage sector hard (the NT estimates the changes have added £10 million to its annual wage bill). Covid and a couple of wet summers also depressed visitor figures, and there was nothing the heritage industry could do about that.

    However, I do think that each trust has also made things worse for itself by misguided policies. The NT, for instance — which last year lost 89,000 members — surely needs to go back to basics and concentrate on conserving its buildings and landscapes and giving its visitors a great day out. Too often in recent years its bosses have seemed perversely determined to infuriate their traditional supporters — the people whose membership fees keep the NT going — by endorsing trendy social justice and eco-warrior causes.

    EH hasn’t gone down that route but it has its own existential issue to deal with. About 13 years ago its leadership struck a deal with the government, which then subsidised the organisation. The government gave EH a “gift” of £80 million to pay for urgent maintenance projects, and in return EH agreed that its annual subsidy would be reduced, year by year, until it disappeared altogether by 2023 — by which point EH was expected to be entirely self-financing.

    I wrote at the time that this was a “massive gamble”. But my forebodings were waved away by EH’s chief executive then, Simon Thurley, who declared that since EH’s earned income was increasing by 8 per cent a year under his brilliant guidance, the organisation would be quite capable of standing on its own feet by the 2020s.

    • Tate director Maria Balshaw: ‘Even £10 a ticket is too much for some people’

    Well, clearly it is not. It never will be, for an obvious reason. Only about 100 of EH’s 400 sites charge for admission, and of those only 20 or so earn significant amounts of income. Yet all 400 need to be regularly inspected and maintained. And in a similar way CRT is clearly never going to earn enough income from selling boating and fishing licences to maintain 2,000 miles of leaky canals on a diminishing subsidy.

    The harsh truth is that we have deluded ourselves or been hoodwinked. The thesis that the government could simply wash its hands of a huge part of the UK’s heritage, leaving its upkeep to be financed entirely by admission fees and donations, was always grossly wishful thinking. Only a philistine would argue that the British Museum should lose all its state subsidy. Yet EH, which is in effect a giant museum spread across the country, is now in that hopeless position.

    I know we are going through an economic horror show right now, but there’s no doubt in my mind that the government urgently needs to start thinking seriously about how to rescue our heritage sector. Otherwise, what? Sit back and watch as our history literally crumbles into heaps of rubble?

    W Smith
    3 hours ago

    Not a lot of interest. Thousands of members however have left because NT has moved away from its primary purpose of preserving properties for the public to enjoy to other things such as investigating slavery

    As the article says it should be merged with EH and they should revert back to what people want : the opportunity to see our great heritage

    Thomas Muldoon
    31 minutes ago

    The National Trust has been extremely keen to ensure that all its visitors be aware that being British classes you as being Racist and a thoroughly bad person, many like me have simply given up on enjoying the many beautiful properties and grounds. Perhaps simply replacing the current NT board and Managers with people similar to who ran this organisation 30 years ago would see its fortunes turned whilst the anti-British descriptions on every item are removed.

    Then the National Lottery might even hand over millions in annual funding with prizes of annual memberships granted in their draws. Just a thought.

    1. I suggest they get rid of about 99% of their overpaid, arrogant DEI hires who hate Britain and it’s treasures!

    2. The NT could save money by not giving free entry to immigrants. I avoid NT properties like the plague if I can. They aren't very dog friendly, either. I have just joined Historic Houses. Just under £70 a year.

      1. Looks good. I left the NT years ago because of it high handed attitude to everyone. They have totaly lost the plot.

        1. I had a real set to with a woman attendant four years ago. It meant I didn’t visit the next NT property the following day which I had originally intended to do. They missed out.

          1. I don't visit NT properties any more. They don't want my kind of person, it's clear.

    3. “At a time when climate change is making it more and more challenging to keep them in good nick..”

      “Climate change” is not the problem here…

    4. For what it's worth there are 7 Boat Hiring companies between Devizes and Bath If that section of the canal is closed it will lead to the loss of a couple of hundred jobs with knock on effects to the dozen or more canal side pubs which are frequented by boating holiday makers a number of whom travel from across the world to enjoy this particular canal.
      And then there are the folk whose only home is their boat. Many of these have children. If they have a leisure mooring they can cost around £5,000 pa. I suspect many will not be able to afford a doubling or tripling of their annual licence possibly rendering them homeless and a burden on the local authorities.

      This isn't special pleading on my part as if the worst came to the very worst I could scrap my craft. A waterless canal with scores of abandoned craft wouldn't be the best advert for tourism in an area of outstanding natural beauty….

    6. The National Trust and English Heritage – two organisations that do more harm than good to the English countryside. English Heritage is responsible for the Great Listed Building Fraud that is doing for most of our churches.
      Anyone with a friend on the Council can demolish a listed building – but people without a friend on the Council can't even make any alterations "because it would affect the view from a listed building."
      Churches are treated by them as primarily of architectural interest, instead of being buildings erected to the glory of God. So congregations are forced to pay artificially high amounts to repair and preserve the architectural interest instead of the basic sum needed to provide a place of worship. Churches should be exempt from listing.

    1. I'm surprised he got prosecuted for that – he must have been fairly careless. I once worked with someone who kept two jobs going until one of them sacked him. He called in sick often and turned up at the other job.

  99. This is Starmer's most unforgivable Brexit betrayal to date

    The Prime Minister's dynamic alignment with the EU is nothing short of mad

    Iain Duncan Smith • 17th July 2025, 4:10pm BST

    The truth is out. Keir Starmer has signed the UK up to be a rule taker from Brussels – and even worse, expects us to contribute to the EU budget.

    That is because, buried in the small print of this new agreement, Starmer's subterfuge has been laid bare. The financial contributions that the UK will now make are, as the Telegraph has discovered, the result of aligning UK food standards with EU standards and the carbon market rules that Britain will have to follow.

    Of course, as has now become the norm when dealing with Starmer & Co, none of this was even mentioned when he came back to the Commons to trumpet his agreement. Neither have we had any chance to vote against this shabby betrayal. In one arrogant swish of his pen he has demeaned the UK by placing it in the worst situation possible – having to accept rules and financial contributions to the EU budget without any say in what the rules should be or how much we should pay.

    The EU has exacted revenge on the UK by spelling out that one of the great trading nations of the world will have no right to involve itself in deciding the rules or even being involved deciding the amount we will have to contribute.

    What is absurd is that this cave-in should have been unnecessary. The EU has for a long-time imported lamb and other meat products from New Zealand without being forced to suffer delayed checks at the border of its phyto-sanitary food rules. That is because as part of their deal with NZ they allow compliance checks to be carried out by local vets prior to their despatch. This could have been a model for a future relationship had the Prime Minister bothered to place even the slightest degree of pressure on his idolised friends in the EU.

    As if that wasn't bad enough, it calls into question our ability to strike trade deals with the rest of the world. After all, this makes it impossible to negotiate a third country agreement because we will not be able to change any of these regulations, instead having to defer to Brussels. This is a shameful and humiliating position for the UK to be in, and a slap in the face to the people of these islands.

    Ironically, handing back this power to the EU at a significant cost to UK taxpayers actually now favours the EU producers and hardly helps us. The EU exports €54 billion of agricultural products to the UK, whereas we export only €15 billion. When you look at the detail our exports are largely things that require no animal health paperwork, such as whisky.

    It is also worth noting that this deal will also be at the expense of our own food standards. The reality is that the UK had throughout our time in the EU had higher standards than the other member states, a situation which post-Brexit still continues.

    As Churchill once said, "This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year…" For this is only the beginning of the betrayal. After all, Keir Starmer called for the British People to be forced to have another referendum because he disagreed with the original result. He is also surrounded by people who are for the most part in favour of re-joining. Together they will find further reasons to cave in, as they have done on extending access to our fishing waters.

    Remember, Starmer wouldn't have been able to agree a trade arrangement with the US if Brexit hadn't happened. Dynamic alignment will lose that hard-won victory.

    This is not what the British people voted for. They voted for the UK to make its own rules and take back control, not hand it back.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/07/17/this-is-starmers-most-unforgiveable-brexit-betrayal-to-date

    1. This is all very well Iain D.Smith. But …. When did your Conservative government implement a proper Brexit? You are responsible for all the actions now taking the U.K. back into utter secondary position on everything to do with the EU. And having to lay for it, too.

      1. Why is IDS responsible? Tories who wanted the UK to leave were actually in a small minority in the party!

        1. He was part of the government, I’m not saying he’s personally responsible for non Brexit, and the vast majority of MPs at the time were dead set against us leaving. And everything possible was done, ever since the vote, to prevent leaving.

  101. This voting fix will backfire on Labour

    Only desperate Left-wing strategists and A-level Politics teachers want this change

    William Atkinson • 17th July 2025, 12:18pm BST

    If in doubt, gerrymander. That is the logic underlying Labour's announcement today that the voting age will be lowered to sixteen at the next election. Having reached, within a year, depths of unpopularity and incompetence that it took the Conservatives fourteen years to plumb, Keir Starmer has now accepted that his only hope of getting re-elected relies on trying to rig the electorate in his favour. This is why he has smashed the glass marked "Votes at 16".

    There is something uniquely moronic about calls to lower the voting age. It is a policy that only interests desperate Labour strategists and A-level Politics teachers. The arguments for and against it are well-rehearsed, as each of us who chose that benighted subject have written half a dozen essays on it.

    Proponents will argue that it is expanding democracy; opponents will point out the long list of responsibilities politicians deem 16-year-olds too irresponsible to be trusted with – from driving a car to getting a tattoo.

    Many sixteen-year-olds don't want the vote, with a Merlin Strategy poll suggesting only around half of 16 and 17-year-olds back their enfranchisement; in the elections for the so-called Scottish and Welsh "Parliaments", the turnout of the young consistently trails that of older voters. Not to mention that for the young – just as for this Government – there are much more pressing issues.

    But might this decision backfire for Starmer? That same poll found that while a third of teenagers would vote Labour, 20 per cent would choose Reform. The next election is four years away. This Government will only become even more unpopular; Nigel Farage's TikTok mastery will only grow. The last time a Labour Government lowered the voting age, in 1969, it found itself swept away at the next general election. On current polling, it would be no surprise if history repeated itself.

    In the meantime, one hopes Starmer's newfound ardour for youthful responsibility will encourage his Government to relax a few other joyless restrictions on a generation already hampered by Covid-addled educations, screen addiction and an inescapable anxiety that their lives will be far worse than their parents'.

    If they can vote, then let them also be able to drive, get tattoos, and be able to get hypnotised on stage. It would make sense for Starmer; hypnosis might be the only way to get more people voting for Labour. Or lower the voting age to 14, in the hope they are even more gullible.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/07/17/labour-votes-for-16-starmer

  102. 18th July 2025

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e6ff219e068c614e529c9f23fad2ceaccda7cb104e29c8c79dc53ddcb8def5d4.png https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b0728270923d80a6c3036b2bae850f586f5433cbf9bb09b7bb55b1712b9dc561.png
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f15108925be65a9a2608d8e25edca14c950fe7218c958fddb1d38927a117d0b9.png
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/bc481a5d8eb53da0de5ec1c011baf3aa0e7d637d17397ce098173854d1332850.jpg
    A very early birthday picture?

    With very best wishes,

    Caroline and Rastus

  106. Redduke Teleman
    11h
    I see the Manchester martial arts duo didn't know the men and women they were kicking shyte out of were the police. The trouble is that that excuse might actually get them off in the topsy turvey world of placemen judges.

    Lord Farquard
    Redduke Teleman
    10h
    To be fair L*mmy couldn't spot a policeman standing a few yards away, perhaps B*MES have some sort of visual defect when it comes to identifying officers of the law. Seems a plausible excuse.

    They need to get 10 years each at least.

Comments are closed.