Saturday 19 July: How Labour stands to lose out from its changes to the electoral system

Posted on by Geoff Graham

An unofficial place to discuss the Telegraph letters, established when the DT website turned off its commenting facility (now reinstated, but we prefer ours),
Intelligent, polite, good-humoured debate is welcome, whether on or off topic. Differing opinions are encouraged, but rudeness or personal attacks on other posters will not be tolerated. Posts which – in the opinion of the moderators – make this a less than cordial environment, are likely to be removed, without prior warning.  Persistent offenders will be banned.

Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here.

585 thoughts on “Saturday 19 July: How Labour stands to lose out from its changes to the electoral system”

  4. Good Morning All. 18c Humid, Heavy rain showers but not an amber warning.
    Met office wrong again.

  7. Good morning, chums. And thanks, Geoff, for today's NoTTLe site. Did Wordle today in 4 (a Par).

    Wordle 1,491 4/6

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

    1. Good morning Elsie and all
      I did cheat a bit because I know your starting word…
      Wordle 1,491 3/6

      ⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜
      ⬜🟨🟩⬜🟩
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

      1. Well, oddly enough, the second letter in my starting word was NOT the second letter to be highlighted in yellow – i.e. the right letter in the wrong place – there were two different letters in yellow in MY starting word, so you have baffled me.

        1. I use a different starting word, but I put the two starting word patterns together which save me a guess, if you see what I mean.

  8. Morning all – grey and cloudy.
    Just been reading a good piece on TCW about the use and misuse of our language.

    2. Our political classes are absolutely useless self centered pointless are souls.
      Charlie needs to send in the troops and clear that Wastemonster
      shiite hole out.

    3. Just like the hunting debate; nobody there to listen to the arguments but they all piled into the lobbies to vote for a ban.

    2. Lord Farquard
      13h
      who?
      Anyway – Instead of giving votes to 16 and 17 year olds, indoctrinated by years of Guardian-reading union-member "teachers" and many having a natural preference for a Father Christmas Big State that hands out free stuff, how about REMOVING the vote from the millions of unwelcome chancers colonising our homeland that clearly don't belong here?

  17. Morning all 🙂😊
    Raining but not the thunder storms they forecast and three hours later. I wonder how much else they keep getting wrong ?
    Frankly speaking it's not just one parties privilege to change the way British people can vote.
    It should be an agreement between the collective political parties and the Lords.
    not a decision made by a bunch of 'here today gone tomorrow' dissidents because they know they will lose the next election unless they involve children. It is not democratic in any way whatsoever.

  19. 409613+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    I do believe that a fall back, safety net party has to be in place instead of ALL the
    freedom eggs being in one basket, and with that basket having, what one would believe, a major fault within.

    A repeat of the treachery witnessed in the past forty years whilst in the last chance General Election hotel, would herald a loud gurgling noise as the nation finally went down the cesspit drain.

    Camilla Tominey
    Reform have shown they still cannot be taken seriously
    Zia Yusuf’s childish attacks on the Tories shows they remain most interested in scoring cheap political points

    1. The hereditaries are the only way to get an honest man into the House of Liars these days!

  22. Good Morning Folks,

    Raining here but none of the promised amber warning thunder storms yet

  23. Saturday 19th July, 2025

    Ndovu

    (aka Jules)
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6504935849df4def7e81d3e15c51da48552c23fd5b1fc1cb0847fe88cabc6e8f.png
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f15108925be65a9a2608d8e25edca14c950fe7218c958fddb1d38927a117d0b9.png
    (Welcome to the Sunset Strip!)

    With very best wishes from

    Caroline and Rastus

    P.S.And have an impressively good day!
     https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/39e4a7ebdce8361ca38ca67b80be51ddce2d929ef8b8cf04bfa122afe06c0333.png

    6. Thankyou Rastus and Caroline and everyone for your good wishes.
      It's our wedding anniversary too so something to celebrate 🍾 ✨ 💓

      2. Double good wishes!

        (We got married on April 2nd – exactly a week after Caroline's 26th birthday.)

      3. Hippo Birdie to ewe 😀
        I hope the weather is set fair for you to have a lovely day.

    8. Remember, Jules, that under my age counting sysytem , where life begins at 50, you are a mere 27 years old

      Have a happy Birthday and 364 Happy Unirhdays, til your next Anniversary, when you will be 28

    9. Have a wonderful day, Jules and a very Happy Birthday to you! 🍾🥂🎂💐

  24. 409613+ up ticks,

    There has surely got to be accommodation space betwixt "miranda, the lying tool & coopers, housing stock, for a token gesture of unity with the herd and take these peoples in.

    Dt,

    Afghan migrant brings 22 relatives to UK
    Security fears after family members rejected for asylum are allowed in after data breach

  25. So it doesn't look like multiculturalism is going to well in Syria at the moment, so why do we keep importing that here?

  26. From today's Telegraph, two headlines:
    Afghan migrant brings 22 relatives to UK
    Security fears after family members rejected for asylum are allowed in after data breach
    The Afghan heroes left behind while bogus asylum seekers flock to Britain
    Genuine claimants stuck in Afghanistan are furious at how some of their countrymen have been able to exploit the MoD’s data leak

    The balls-up just gets worse.

    1. 409613+ up ticks,

      O2O,
      I believed we tried to match that with 4/5 that volunteered to go…. for a price.

        1. Many happy returns, Jules. I hope you have a lovely day together celebrating.

    2. Yuk and double Yuk!

      They say that once a knight's enough but this odious man is far more than enough. The
      idiot wielding the sword should have used the it in the way that our newly imported immigrants often seem to use knives!

    1. 409613+ up ticks,

      O2O,

      It will last as long as the herd see fit to allow it to last.

    2. Surely everyone must now realise that we no longer have democracy, the checks and balances are broken, our uni parties are all working for the same globalist agenda

      1. 409613+ up ticks,

        Morning B3,
        The last serious chance we had that I was comfortable with was the fruitcakes under Gerard Batten
        leadership, that was kicked into touch via the lab/lib/con coalition party also input from “nige” 2019.

        The coalition has been supported
        via the polling stations these past thirty plus years.

        An ex long term fruitcake.

        1. Kein Verantwortung. Had to edit it because my spellcheck doesn’t speak German.

      1. If the Afghans were 'executed' (as in killed, not decapitated) they were not murdered.

      1. 409613+ up ticks,

        Afternoon C,

        I do believe he is asking you.
        How long will this social contract hold ?
        I would say via weight of numbers as long as we the people want it to,our lack of united action is a sign of
        collusion.

  30. Happy Birthday to you Jules 🐘 🦔 I hope you have a lovely day today 🤗😊🥂🍾 cheers.

      2. Happy Birthday Nd and of course have a further 364 Happy Unbirthdays, til your next Anniversary

    1. Similar here, lots of thunder and lightning, but not as much rain as you. It was strong rain but each shower passed over quickly

    2. 5 inches to people like me. We are collecting rain water off our (newly refurbished) corrugated patio roof (until the guttering gets fixed back on, whereupon it drains into the water butts). We are getting wheelbarrow -loads!

      Off in a minute to Kenilworth for a reunion with old friends.

    4. Much greener than it is here Caroline.
      I'm hoping my storage butt's and pond might be filled from garden shed roofs.

        1. The maintenance of the pump which automatically draws up the water from the well and the installation of a de-salination system has cost over £2,000 over the last 36 years – but this is far less than water rates would have cost us.

  32. Italy has rejected the WHO health regulations amendments (aka global one world government via a series of "health emergencies")
    https://jamesroguski.substack.com/p/italy-rejects-the-ihr-amendments?publication_id=746475&post_id=168693462&isFreemail=true&r=28gmek&triedRedirect=true&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

    The US, Israel and Italy have now explicitly opted out – Austria is still dithering. The deadline is today – if countries haven't opted out by the end of today, they are automatically opted in.

      1. 409613+up ticks,

        surely this is on par with the fire service stopping at a garage for some fire boosting juice on the way to a fire.

      2. As I said yesterday, the right course of action would be for the "proper" protesters to involve (a) their MP and (b) the (useless) Crime Commissioner.

        The MP should be invited to ask the Home Secretary (the Pencil Monitor) what is her reaction to the perlice bussing in rioters.

        It is pointless just posting video on social media.

        1. (b) is precisely why videos are being posted.

          Isn't your MP the old fart under examination for financial dodginess?

          1. Except that the PCC won't see them….

            "My" MP is a useless eco-freak limp dumb posing as a conservative – but I know of know financial allegations.

          2. Ours is now a Labour apparatchik without an original cell in her brain.
            Can't be RRsed to waste my time.

          5. The MP round here is Jess Phillips. Can't wait for her to knock on my door…

      3. Plod strength lies in their tactics and communication. You don't go for one on one, you get 6 or 7 people to surround each officer and isolate them from the rest. Two arms around yours will immobilse that arm.

        Plod are just doing a job, but they are increasingly the force wing of an unwanted fascist state machine.

    3. The need to protect Muslim votes colours everything this government does and the police are an arm of government. It's time for the people to revolt.

      1. 409613+ up ticks,

        Morning DB,

        That is the only option left every day the odds get worse.

    5. It's always the oxymoronic 'socialist worker'' placards, all very organised and deliberate. You'd think the security services would clamp down on that hard Left organisation first, then the hate no hopers and all the other Left wing groups deliberately causing trouble..

  34. Oh well I must get on, cuppa tea finished, 'onwards and upwards' but down to the kitchen and my weekly treat. Three rashers of decent bacon and a fried egg, sandwiched between two large and lovely slices of home made Bloomer. And a proper coffee. Probably watching the recording of yesterday's open golf ⛳
    Slayders.

  35. A couple of pictures taken at the same spot, 50 years apart:
    Mit Wasserkraftwerk https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/147ba067458f8a532f307ecaa907651f8fb84b95fb83081442606c3baab39d6b.jpg Ohne Wasserkraftwerk https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/fc0342c00368fe60329a491aa547643a36d8cac18b215f585dcaeb164014be29.jpg One of the turbines:- https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/540e52180dd338d27d123b6b43c3224c426102b670ed568158deb15f5eb97fbf.jpg A bit of atmosphere on the river https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7b36073855cfee8801a713338b94fee9aab694ebd9735b7c9429a0381776b874.jpg And some old buggers getting drunk:- https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b5a846ef5b6dea2f5f1a057b901a46cdced83ddcc4d966234eb3872529407724.jpg

    4. Why has the Wasserkraftwerk gone? I'd have thought it would be worth a few windmills!

  38. 'Morning All
    Weekend Medley
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0c222c254fa43279572a7ace2d2dbf99e202ad3278aa133c9576ceff38d962ff.png
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d5fb445a939f712dd0ce1f64779e1aad378bdd4e1f2d52478823b831f664ecc0.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4db0ff34747bd3339f5df23bb39e71d05865c4e16c91b2931a4f83a15a5555d8.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c96e9cdc76d8a3c3ec6747252fd005227f8818ac03ffa822dfde11d595bdad68.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0364dd4b28e5d677c19717ec10077a9d14d00cc8d867112f4c4f83ae2db8869b.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f2b2fc792ff19376058a273eede8e686fcce9749ad0f7dd5e04ac80ebd12f211.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/36fd2a18205947bd0dd5b285c19772181903b14468920aeec04139bf09e4cb9c.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/03703520ad3247ed1af8bc1f24b21e1545dd9b8a416ff4f85bdeef44379a911d.png

    1. Last one…..I dont want to give the drongos in Wastemonster any ideas, but how long will it be before more than four white people together will be considered as offensive
      and racist ?

    2. Re the last meme:
      An academic once remarked to me: "In every population, society, culture that I have ever studied, lighter skin is preferred over darker skin."
      Then he remarked "But the question is, why?" (words paraphrased after many years).
      And the 2nd telephone meme; it was supposedly Buckminster Fuller who asked an audience as to which was (and still is) the most important part of a motor vehicle. Answer: the road.

    3. Re the last meme:
      An academic once remarked to me: "In every population, society, culture that I have ever studied, lighter skin is preferred over darker skin."
      Then he remarked "But the question is, why?" (words paraphrased after many years).
      And the 2nd telephone meme; it was supposedly Buckminster Fuller who asked an audience as to which was (and still is) the most important part of a motor vehicle. Answer: the road.

    5. If you model the demographic change you see white folk leaving an area as it turns black and brown. The retreat from the diversity can literally be seen in imaging.

      1. White flight. I remember my neighbours complaining about where they used to live being taken over………and that was in the 1970s.

  39. Slowly but surely.. Ai creeps in, and issues you a huge big fat bill. Hertz & Asda..

    Upon picking up the car and exiting the facility — high-powered cameras took a 360 picture of the car. Upon returning the car, a similar process took place.
    2 hours later, I received a notification that damages were found which highlighted the areas. One small ding on the roof (but possibly just dirt or anything else that could throw off a camera) and one similar artifact on the hood. Nothing any human would detect or reasonably consider "damages".
    The automated messaged said that I owed $190, but if I paid today, it would be only $125. This fee is literally the price of the entire 4 day rental minus $5.
    To protest this fee, it is an automated AI chat experience that does not break to go to a human interaction no matter what choices you make. You are only given explanations for why you still owe $190.

    Asda has begun trialling Live Facial Recognition at five stores in Greater Manchester to assess how this technology can be used to improve colleague and customer safety in store.

    Phew, it's to improve colleague and customer safety.

    1. "Slowly but surely.. Ai creeps in"

      It will accelerate to 'warp speed' before we know it.

    1. You have to hand it to mememeisters. They never sleep.
      p.s. squeeze is the wrong sex ….. or is they?

      2. We always used to refer to that road sign as “man having trouble with his umbrella “.

      3. Don't. They're digging our road up again – second time in 4 months – to lay electrical cable – again.

    1. One wonders why it's so easy for Turkish barber shops to spring up everywhere.

      Do you think they might not follow the rules, play the race card and make a lot of undetectable/declarable money on the side?

      1. Nearly thirty years ago I knew of a bakery on a busy London street. It was completely unknown to the authorities – no tax, no rates, no hygiene inspections. Don't know how long it lasted.

      2. Drug money greases a lot of wheels and simply ignoring the regulation helps tremendously. When they are inspected and the paperwork requested it's all a bit Jack Burton 'The cheque's in the mail'.

        The state is so incompetent, so lazy that it just does nothing for months and months on end. When you're laundering 10K a day that's a lifetime and in that time you've set up another dozen laundering factories.

        I asked a council wonk why they were not suspicious that a barbers in a small town had closed for a long term loss and yet the new drug laundering one was making a comfortable £3-4000 a day, despite, from video footage across the road, having 2 customers a week.

        His response was that they 'couldn't do everything'. Well then, I said, perhaps you'd stop hiking council tax and do your jobs.

  45. Well, the promised torrential rain and thunderstorms never materialised. It rained from 5 am for fours hours – not hard; put a few inches in the waterbutts but none is filled, worse luck. Now it is just cloudy.

    1. Torrential here. I’d happily swap. Got soaked coming back from the GP surgery this morning. Standing at the bus stop and some clown drove fast through a pothole. The water went right up over my head.

      1. Driving through rain-filled potholes.That happened to me years ago whilst waiting for a bus on Queenstown Road. The bastards do it deliberately. A Jaguar driver in my instance.

        2. Wile i make no claim to being a saint, I deliberately slow down near bus stops.

          Admittedly this is usually because in Soton you're sat in a traffic jam, but hey ho. If you can do the right thing, may as well try.

          1. Same here. I always slow down to crawl pace when passing walkers and dog walkers on our very narrow country lanes.

            Others do not slowdown but accelerate, the worst offenders being young women drivers and what appear to be kids driving mammoth tractors and other farm vehicles.

    2. Ditto. Just a fraction cooler – 25 instead of 26 and muggy.

      As usual, the 'climate change' obsessed modelling was wrong.

    1. How did Obama ever get into his position.
      He was never able to prove he was actually born on US soil. Which I believe is an essential part of becoming president of the USA.

      1. Wasn't he born in Hawaii?

        I recall a move afoot to get Boris Johnson to run for the presidency. I think he had to renounce his citizenship in order to avoid that humiliation, but he was born in New York.

        1. I see your point…..
          So the paper work says. But his father was African and his mother was white English.

          2. Although a splendid personality, Boris's ancestry is part Turkish and part Russian Jewish.

          6. I think he was like Belloc's Lord Uncle Tom with an English father and an African mother. (See above)

          7. Indeed. His mother’s family settled in Hawaii. She was originally from Kansas, and is of English/Welsh/Swiss/German/Irish descent.

            His father was there on a scholarship from his native Kenya, where they met, got married and Barack was born in 1961. The couple divorced three years later, and Obama Sr. returned to Kenya. The family went to live in Indonesia, the home country of his stepfather, which is where Barack was schooled before returning at the age of ten to Hawaii to live near his maternal grandparents.

      2. That may have been another distraction. Obama is now thought to have been adopted and groomed to be President by some oligarch(s).

        1. When he made his inauguration speech, I informed poppiesdad that the Western world had another Blair on its hands.

      2. I was working in Egypt when he was elected. My Egyptian colleagues were delighted. I asked why: "Because he is a muslim" was the reply.

      2. From whom? Plod? They're the ones who'll go for him.

        After all, there's not enough crime in Great Yarmouth as it is (it was a toilet in the 80's. I doubt it's improved with the diversity).

  50. One needs a heart of stone not to laugh.
    I went to the BBC website for the Lions rugby and clicked on "watch and listen"
    The only commentary is in Welsh.
    There are no Welsh players today, the first time in 129 years.

  51. Morning all. Have just got back from a visit to the post office to collect a parcel that was to be delivered yesterday. Owing to the fact that they emailed rather than texted me, I wasn’t in earshot when it was due to arrive. Hence my trip into town.

    Labour deserves to be annihilated but will it be replaced by anything better? Even my non political dressage client mentioned the Afghan scandal and is wondering where is best to emigrate to.

    1. I hate when they email me an hour before they deliver and I'm already at work and won't see my emails until the evening!

          4. I have cameras and fingerprint entry. The cameras come in handy when Yodel said they delivered and they clearly didn't.

          5. Our neighhbourhood WhatsApp group is good for that as quite often they get the wrong house or door. So people share the photo to find out where it’s been left. Since my complaint to Yodel a few weeks ago they seem to know where our house is now.

        2. It wasn’t the post office but a courier. Normally they dump deliveries on the studio veranda just beyond the garage.

      2. A very chatty young, black post lady came here yesterday – OH had called out of the window that i was in the garden but I was hidden behind the bushes. She found me eventually and we had a chat about tomato plants. We never seem to see the same one twice these days.

  52. There is some debate below on this forum as to Barrack O'Bama's antecedents I have heard some speculation elsewhere that he is of Irish descent but one Nottler thinks that one of his parents was English.

    Lord Uncle Tom : Hillaire Belloc

    Lord Uncle Tom was different
    From what other Nobles are
    For they are yellow and pink, I think,
    But he was black as tar.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/718dd9f8b70f92ddce9d450eb329e3a28b46bcdec42db46b3800e0259165af0d.jpg

    He had his father's debonair
    And rather easy pride;
    But his complexion and his hair
    Were from his mothers side.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4466bac390b560f0a69d51bf43f3ca5c82bcdaed192d23069319bcd91cb80477.jpg

    He often mingled in debate
    And latterly displayed
    Experience of peculiar weight
    Upon the cocoa trade.

    But now he speaks no more. The Bill
    Which he could not abide,
    It preyed upon his mind until
    He sickened, paled and died.

    1. If a god existed – and doesn't – they're almost certainly able to infer intent from simply saying it.

    3. As a number of people have pointed out the questions are biased and heavily loaded with the presumption that any criticism is racist and phobic!

    4. Is the Conservative Party, the Reform Party – or any other political party – prepared to oppose the new definition and to commit to putting it it to a referendum vote if there is significant popular opposition to it from the majority of ordinary British people?

  56. I can't begin to get animated about who is allowed to vote when there's only one party we can vote for anyway.

  58. 409613+ up ticks,

    Will any innocents besides Putin in westminster be pre-warned ?

    Dt,

    why Putin should fear Britain’s next fighter jet
    The early signs suggest Tempest is being designed for missions deep into enemy territory

    1. Ready in 2038, 20 billion over budget and only one delivered that doesn't actually take off from the creaking carriers we still have. Oh, and it won't be able to carry any modern weapons because the mounting wil have changed.

      I think Putin can be quite safe. The MoD is incompetent.

  59. That's a new shower cartridge fitted, 1/2 hr job, plumber would have take longer and charged a couple of hundred smackeroonies

      1. I'm sure Spikey will tell you but I think it's what we used to call a washer? We just had one replaced in our kitchen tap – an expensive "improvement" to what used to be a simple system!!

        1. It's the device in the mechanism that responds to the position of the temperature control, and also balances the pressure when external changes occur, e.g. when someone flushes a toilet while you are in the shower, thus reducing cold water pressure. They develop a tendency to "stick" as they age, especially in hard water areas.

          1. The shower that a local tradesman fitted for my father at a cost of 7000 pounds a couple of years ago didn't have one then, because everyone was strictly told not to touch any tap while he was in the shower for fear of scalding him.

            It was a rotten job, done with the cheapest materials, pipes hanging out etc. But he was very keen to blame my father for everything being out of date in the house. I was furious but had no say in the matter.

          2. Colchester is notorious for hard water. We've had shower cartridges replaced several times.

  60. The weathermen can't win. Even though the timing of the rain was correct, it wasn't as heavy as expected but was more widespread.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8j1nvp9440o

    "It follows the agency issuing a more severe amber thunderstorm warning for London and south-east England which ended at 11:00 on Saturday, though the "torrential downpours" forecast were not as bad as feared."

    1. Tipping it down here now. On the upside, the ground desperately needs the rain.

      1. Too late for a lot of farmers who are bringing in early some low-yield crops.

  61. Laurie Wastell
    The people of Epping are fed up of being ignored
    19 July 2025, 8:30am

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/GettyImages-2224903244.jpg?resize=1536,1024
    Epping protestors confront a police officer (Getty Images)

    ‘We are facing a long, hot summer’, warned a report social cohesion on Tuesday, ‘with a powder keg of tensions left largely unaddressed from last year that could easily ignite once again’. It only took two days for the first sign of this grim prediction coming true.

    This time, though, the expression of public fury at migration failures was not in ‘left-behind’ northern towns like Hull or Hartlepool – or even like last month in Ballymena, where tight-knit loyalist communities have a history of kicking off to defend their interests. Thursday’s protests – and later clashes – at an asylum hotel were in the quiet Essex market town of Epping, population 12,000, mentioned in the Domesday Book and a well-heeled part of the London commuter belt at the terminus of the Central Line.

    The trigger was an alleged sexual assault by a migrant. On 7 July, Hadush Kebatu, an Ethiopian asylum seeker, is alleged to have tried to kiss a schoolgirl as she ate pizza on Epping high street. He had arrived in the UK via a small boat only eight days previously. He has denied three charges of sexual assault across two days, and the protests coincided with his appearance in court for a hearing ahead of a two-day trial next month. He spoke via an interpreter, and according to the prosecution has ‘no ties to anyone or any place in the UK’.

    The site of the protests was the Bell Hotel, where Kebatu had been living. Having been used to house male asylum seekers in Epping for several years, and sitting less than 500 yards from a coeducational secondary school, it was already a major local grievance. Following the alleged sexual assault, the leader of Epping Forest District Council called for the Home Office to close the asylum hotel ‘without delay’. He was joined two local Tory MPs – Epping Forest’s Neil Hudson and Alex Burghart of Brentwood and Ongar.

    Commentator Adam Brooks, who was at the protest, reported to GB News that it began entirely peacefully – ‘great-natured’ with grandparents and children. ‘People attended the earlier protest and did so peacefully, lawfully and responsibly’, an Essex Police official said, adding: ‘I’d like to thank them for expressing their views this way given the strength of feeling locally.’

    In Brook’s view, it was only when so-called anti-racism protestors arrived and were allowed to march by the demonstration, flanked by police, that tensions flared, with many local youths coming out to confront them. Some were later escorted away in riot vans.

    During the Southport riots last year, it was often claimed that much of the disorder was the result of opportunist ‘thugs’ who had arrived from out of town to stir up trouble. At yesterday’s protest, it seems it was after the arrival of these left-wing protestors, often masked and with ‘Refugees Welcome’ placards, that disorder began.

    While Essex Police made a point of describing earlier protestors as ‘legitimately protesting’, there is evidence of apparent harsh police treatment of some involved. In social media footage, one police van appears to hit a man and push him down the street before he gets out the way.

    Another clip shows a man confronting police apparently being hit in the face with a riot shield. Essex Police said it believed several suspects were responsible for damaging police vehicles, the hotel, preventing access to Epping High Road, and assaulting officers, with one left with a minor injury to the neck. ‘We know the people who carried out these crimes do not represent Epping or Essex’, it added.

    While parts of the press are presenting those involved as ‘far-right supporters’, or an ‘anti-immigrant mob’, in footage of protesters, they seem more to be ordinary locals who are simply fed up with being ignored by the political class. ‘We’re good, local, taxpaying people’ says a smartly dressed mother-of-three in a speech through a megaphone, standing on the back of a van adorned with St. George’s crosses. Why were the police ‘allowing agitators to come and fight against us?’ she asks, eliciting a cheer, before voicing her typical concerns about illegal migration.

    Unvetted men are coming across the channel every day who ‘don’t share our values’, she said, who ‘don’t respect women’ and ‘don’t respect children’. The UK, she laments, is ‘a soft touch’ for migrants. Apparently entirely impromptu, her speech is heartfelt, patriotic, and potent: ‘Every child’s right is to walk to school and not fear that they are going to be sexually assaulted or raped. We do not live in a third world country. This is the United Kingdom the last time I looked.’

    This fed up, outspoken Essex mum doesn’t care that the ‘anti-racism’ types and left-wing media will try and smear people like her: if she’s ‘far-right’ for standing up for schoolgirls’ safety, she says, ‘then so be it’.

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

    Mrs R
    4 hours ago edited
    God help the British people. It appears successive governments have been working directly against their interests. Every day the news – what we are allowed to see of it – gets worse and more threatening to any semblance of hope for the future peace, prosperity and security of this country. They talk about wars abroad while daily sowing the seeds of unimaginable trouble ahead right here. It won’t be them that face the consequences but our children and grandchildren. I feel so ashamed at the depth of betrayal of all our ancestors fought and struggled for. Deeply depressing, we are in a hopeless situation and our establishment adds daily fuel to the fire.

    Anitawales
    3 hours ago edited
    The government seems to be standing squarely against British citizens, ignoring their entirely reasonable democratic instructions, coercing the police into implementing two-tier justice and taxing us to death for the privilege.

    Lucy Connelly sentenced to almost 3 years in jail while Kneecap gets off scot free. And let's not forget Peter Lynch.

    How much further can the idiot Starmer stretch the patience of the British?

    Alastair Harris
    4 hours ago
    we are facing an increasing gap between the views of the public and the views of those in government. Never goes down well, but it is the shouty lefty types who stir up trouble! Those folk who do not engage with reality!

        1. Don't, Bill. Even the ability to vary words but keep the meaning has been lost. The number of threads I receive that are utterly unintelligible due to cant/wont/ill, the lack of capitalisation or worse, the wrong things capitalised, missing apostrophes is depressing.

          We've a spell checker that enforces grammar on our bug reporting and one customer doesn't even know how to use that. Thus when he starts a ticket with 'ill'. I reply with 'get well soon'.

          1. They didn’t teach it when I was still at the chalk face. It made teaching modern languages even more difficult.

          2. School essays. Marked out of 20. Lose one mark for every grammar or spelling error.

            Having Latin grammar pounded into us from age 11 helped teach the concepts of grammar in general.

          4. 'Clause analysis' it was called at my school. Dropped after the first year.

          5. After the first year they reckoned we’d got it. So much so that I transferred Latin grammar to my English lessons.

          6. If they were encouraged to read decent literature it would help. Good sentence construction would become habit if they read the classics but of course they consume only the literary equivalent of fast food trash.

          9. We used to read to our boys every night when they were little. I used to read to one in English; Caroline used to read to the other in French and we 'swapped' boys when a book was finished. Both our children were fluent readers at the age of 4 and had reading ages several years ahead of their chronological age.

          10. It's regarded as being elitist, like correct spelling, good (legible) handwriting and polite manners.

          11. Grammar is essential. Many of us here learnt French and Latin from about the age of 8 and we had to understand how the languages are structured to make any progress.

            Caroline concentrates on grammar on our French courses. Far from being dispirited by this virtually all our students are both enthusiastic and grateful and are often pissed off with their schools for not having done the job properly.

            If any of you have a grandchild or friends with children or grandchildren who are studying French at "A" level this would be a very useful present.

            https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/43126d094957703edf9c0bd06f449f4e5e60ba4d54ccceacef8982f22b8d7152.png

      3. Apparently common usage these days. Heard it many times on British TV programs.

    3. A much more truthful report than can be found on the BBC. The BBC didn't even show the videos of the troublemakers being bussed in by the police.

    1. we tend to do it more in the tourist season – but you're right, it'll come

  64. Wound not healing. Getting these sort of bursting feelings above my right eye. Back hurts. Did my walking yesterday and turned into a puddle. They're swabbing for infection but I'm fair convinced I have one. I simply cannot seem to cool down.

    2. Would a cold flannel on the back of your neck help? May I ask what is the wound, seem to have missed things.

      1. Bit of surgery to remove an abscess. Apparently they got a golfball of pus and infected blood out, so I'm some sort of record.

        1. If it's not getting worse, it's healing. But if you were on the continent they'd give you IV antibiotics.

      1. The nurse took a swab at last dressing as they suspected that was the reason. Although from my walking I think it's a given. Even the warqueen complained I was a bit hot to touch.

    4. Poor you. If you ring 111 or whatever it is, they're bound to send you to A&E. I know you haven't got time, but your health is of the utmost importance.

      Meanwhile, my go-to in hot countries is a cheap spray bottle filled with water, which I keep close to hand and use on any available bits of flesh. Face, wrists, ankles at a minimum.

      Good luck.

  66. I well remember the atrocities against the Druze and Christians by the evil dictator Assad
    Oh Wait,they were just fine
    Now the rapes,the beheadings,the massacres are well under way as Al-Jolani (funded by us) and his ISIS AlQueda buddies get free rein the ethnic cleansing begins in full force
    https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!qVNQ!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Feb09334e-8d69-46e3-971f-5e3b60130f02_668x661.jpeg
    The hypocrisy, double standards and malevolence are off the scale.

    "Syrian government forces carried out a four-day massacre this week of the Druze minority in Suweida, a Druze town in southern Syria. An estimated 300 Druze were slaughtered in a series of barbaric atrocities perpetrated by troops loyal to the new Syrian president, Abu Mohammed al-Julani."
    https://melaniephillips.substack.com/p/a-lethally-distorted-prism
    Sigh the propaganda war against Assad was decades long and they finally got their way I hope they rot in hell for what they've done
    https://x.com/stuckgear/status/1946533483897053439

    1. This odious woman is aiming to win the Theresa May Prize for being this year's most evil female politician.

      Bridget Phillipson, Yvette Cooper and Angela Rayner were also nominated – and indeed their level of sheer evil is certainly worth a mention – but will the British girls be able to compete against such a strong German/EU contestant?

    2. Like Saddam, Gadaffi and Assad; removing a strong man who kept the factions in check was a disaster.

    3. Seeing Lammy as foreign secretary hasme wonder if I am dreaming. A bigoted, spoiled, spiteful, desperately racist, unpatriotic whelp 'representing' Britain globally – and worse, he's black. It's as if we're a third world country.

    4. Has Assad established his planned clinic in Moscow yet. He had a good reputation as a doctor at the Western Eye Hospital in Marylebone. It seems doubtful that Muscovites need hesitate.

  67. John Torode ‘used n-word directly towards crew member’
    Australian chef sacked from BBC show over racist language allegations
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/07/19/torode-used-n-word-directly-towards-crew-member/

    "John Torode used the n-word directly towards a member of the MasterChef crew, it has been claimed."

    So it doesn't matter if it is true and it does not matter who reported it. If you want to destroy a person's reputation all you have to do is say that he or she used a naughty racist word.

    BTL

    Would it be racist to say what Agatha Christie's novel which in now called '"And Then There Were None" was originally called?

        1. Back when we were first here, use of that well known phrase got an Aussie exec shipped home pronto. I felt a bit sorry for him, as that expresion was pretty common in Oz and in Britain at that time. Before the invasion, that is.

          1. The Aussies had a name for everybody else but themselves.
            From pommies to Spags. Even their own people who lived on nearby islands.

        2. Bob of Bonsall is handy with a chain saw and has made plenty of places for him in the last few months.

      3. I am black, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon.

        Look not upon me, because I am black, because the sun hath looked upon me: my mother's children were angry with me; they made me the keeper of the vineyards; but mine own vineyard have I not kept.

        [The Song of Solomon]

        As Nottlers know I am very enthusiastic about the songs Jeremy Taylor.

        Here is one he wrote in the 1960s which is still in my repertoire. It is called: Confession

        Everyone I just don′t know why I'm singing you this song
        God knows that I wouldn′t hurt a fly and I never would do you wrong
        But society keeps telling me, I simply don't fit in
        I wasn't you see, cut out to be, a respectable citizen
        At balls and dinner parties I′m always the only one
        Who is quite unable to make polite conversation
        My questions are too simple to be misunderstood
        Like "What′s your name, do you smoke a pipe or do you believe in God?
        Not to be sensible is a sin that's reprehensible
        And that is why the say that I am not respectable
        Mr. Jones, I′ll make no bones, please listen to my plea
        I love your daughter Sally and I'm sure that she loves me
        And if you agree I′m sure that we could very soon be wed
        I promise to love and honour her until the day I'm dead
        This marriage said he is a certainty, provided you can guarantee
        To give your wife an easy life and lots of security
        Now in truth I was unable to fulfill this demand
        And straightway was the victim of a severe reprimand
        And as he took his shotgun from off the kitchen wall
        I quickly beat a swift retreat and vanished down the hall
        The next night as I lay and cried, Sally came to my bedside
        And now I′m guilty as you see, of immorality
        Well one fine day I'll make my way to 10 Downing Street
        Good day, I'll say, I′ve come a long way, excuse my naked feet
        But I lack you see the energy to buy a pair of shoes
        I lose my zest to look my best, when I read the daily news
        ′Cause it appears you've got an Atom Bomb
        That′ll blow us all to hell and gone
        If I've got to die then why should I give a damn if my boots aren′t on
        Three cheers for the Army and all the boys in blue
        Three cheers for the scientists and politicians too
        Three cheers for the future years, when we shall surely reap
        All the joys of living on a nuclear rubbish heap
        I would fight quite willingly in the forces of Her Majesty
        But not to the price of sacrificing all of humanity
        When Adam loved Eve they said that he was very much to blame
        But if it had been me beneath that tree, I would have done the same
        Psychiatrists always insist there's something wrong with me
        My eyes won′t rest on a woman's breast with equanimity
        Forgive me madam, if I stare, but I love the colour of your hair
        My soul is quite out of control, my heart beyond repair
        Now the vicar and congregation of the local parish church
        Show an inclination to leave me in the lurch
        Ever since at Sunday School, I couldn't tell right from wrong
        And rated higher than the book of Isaiah, the Song of Solomon
        I know that I didn′t aughter, fall in love with the Vicar′s daughter
        Now that she has wounded me for all eternity
        My song is done there's only one more thing to say
        Forgive me if I′ve bored you stiff, I'll soon be on my way
        For bye and bye I′ll have to die and leave the things I love
        And in disgrace come face to face with the Good Lord up above
        Who knows if he won't punish me with a million years of purgatory
        For blasphemy, impurity and general insanity
        But when amongst the Angels we come to take our place
        I hope you will not think it too much of a disgrace
        If I present to God on high a humble offering
        Of 20 years of sweat and tears and the songs I love to sing
        And if in heaven it should prove true that God likes the musicians too
        We′ll sing and play and dance all day and no-one there will say us nay
        And all our troubles will melt away, we'll never again be blue

    4. I thought, for one awful moment, that Torode had called someone a " Pommie"…..

  69. Sunny now – and a medium breeze which is drying out the soil – dagnabbit.

  71. If you’ve ever thought all those “NO METAL” signs around MRI machines—on doors, walls, and even in the waiting room—seemed a little over the top, here’s your proof they’re not.

    Today in Darwinism…a 61-year-old man was critically injured Wednesday after an accident involving an MRI machine at a medical facility on Long Island, according to the Nassau County Police Department.

    The incident occurred around 4:30 p.m. at Nassau Open MRI in Westbury, New York. Authorities say the man entered the MRI room without authorization while the machine was operating, according to Fox 8.

    Police reported that the man was wearing a large metal chain around his neck, which triggered a dangerous reaction. The powerful magnetic field of the MRI machine pulled him toward the device, resulting in a severe injury.

    Fox 8 writes that the man experienced a "medical episode," police said, and was transported to a nearby hospital in critical condition. No further details about his condition or the circumstances were immediately released.

    MRI machines rely on extremely strong magnets to scan the body and produce images of soft tissues. According to the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, “The magnetic field extends beyond the machine and exerts very powerful forces on objects of iron, some steels, and other magnetizable objects; it is strong enough to fling a wheelchair across the room.”

    No other injuries were reported in the incident, and the investigation is ongoing.

    2. Yikes! Yes, it’s necessary to strip off completely and wear only the cotton gown(s) provided. The technicians stay in the control room while the machine is switched on. I hate it. Especially when the cannula for the contrast dye mucks up my arm. Grrr. GP Practice Nurse dressed it this morning, gave me a new dressing for tomorrow and will see me again on Monday afternoon. I’m being looked after so no complaints on that front.

      1. Had a MRI about 18 months ago. Of my head…
        When I asked "What did you find?" the answer was "Nothing!".
        I hope that was a medical joke…

  73. Happy Birthday and Anniversary, dear Jules! Wishing you a wonderful day and a year of being as happy as the animals you help.

    (Sorry I'm late to the party. Being four hours behind most Nottlers and going out dancing until the not-so-early hours will have that effect…)

    K x

      1. I suspect Ashes has been chatting up her plumber – getting him to show her his range of spanners!

          1. Ashes has a strong grip too. She took control of me. When showing me the stances. Ahem.

    2. Thankyou! I've only just seen this…….. went out and did the shopping.
      Had lots of good wishes from friends……. some cards……. phone calls from my sons……. it's been a good day apart from the dripping hot water tank over our bedroom.

        1. Not so steamy when you get dripped on and fall over the bucket on the way to the loo in the dark.

          2. My Number One lesson from getting older – have a night light in the bathroom. The main bedroom has one, in the form of a mildly illuminated thermostat – it only really lights up when you touch the screen.

      2. Haven't read the to the bottom today, sorry. Hope you're having a lovely birthday!

  74. Just been out to do more physical labour. It's 28C, very humid, and the air is filled with cleggs. Bitten twice, so I quit and have come back in. Not used to these hardships, I'm become all soft and perflibbub in my old age!
    Edit: Incidentally, the Weegie for "clegg" is "klegg". Easy, eh?

      2. Ah yes but a clegg is a nasty bugger, teeth like a crocodile, and a sound bite like a hippo's fart….

    1. Ascended Master
      3h
      Remainers like Starmer spent YEARS telling Brexit supporters that we “didn’t know what we were voting for”. Yet now sixteen year olds can decide the fate of the country? Logic is not a part of socialism.

      1. Deep Woods Deet, that's the stuff when venturing into the great outdoors.

        All we get are zillions of gnats, plus oversized mossies. They do not like Deet.

        Plus of course multiple vatieties of wasps, hornets and bees – especialy the big, black carpentet bees that burrow into any woodwork they can find to lay their eggs.

      1. What: "Nasty buggers, they are. Teeth like a crocodile, and a bite like a hippo."?

    2. An old one but the one about Corbyn reminded me of it.

      Why are there no Muslims or Jews in Morris Dancing sides?

      Because Morris Dancers are complete pricks.

        1. When he employed a eunuch to look after his harem when the sheik went away to his dismay when he returned all the women had become pregnant.

          The eunuch clearly was not cut out for such work.

  78. Just seen an advert for Sainsbury's where they say they sell a range of meats kiIIed in the traditional lsIamic way.

    Ноw thе fuсk dо уоu ѕtrар а ruсkѕасk оn а сhісkеn?

    1. A duck walks into a bar…and orders a bottle of scotch.
      The bartender says, "That's gonna be pretty expensive. How are you gonna pay for all that liquor?"
      The duck replies, "Just put it on my tab."
      A nearby bar patron cheekily says, "Don't you mean 'put it on my bill'?"
      The duck says to the bartender, "Okay, as he says, put it on his bill."

      1. A duck walks into a bar and says 'Got any bread?' The barman says 'no'
        The duck says 'Got any bread?' The barman says 'No!'
        The duck says 'Got any bread?' The barman says 'No, we have no bread!!'
        The duck says 'Got any bread?' The barman says 'For the last time, we have no bloody bread, OK???'
        The duck says 'Got any bread?' The barman says 'Right that's it, if you ask for bread again I'll nail your bill to the bar!!!'
        The duck says 'Got any nails?' The barman screams 'NO!!!!!!!!!!'
        The duck says 'Got any bread?'……

        1. As it's Saturday, we're going out for a pelican curry. I'm expecting a big bill…

          4. I relabelled all of the jars in my wife's spice rack. I'm not in trouble yet, but the thyme is cumin.

          9. I'm having a Chicken Tarka tonight – it's like a Tikka but it's a little 'otter…..

  79. Came over very dark just now and now it's raining. Got back from the shopping just in time.

  80. Wordle 1,491 3/6

    ⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜
    ⬜🟨⬜🟨⬜
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    Wordle 19 Jul 2025

    A cutlass for Birdie Three?

    1. Well done, par here.

      Wordle 1,491 4/6

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

    2. Likewise

      Wordle 1,491 3/6

      🟩⬜🟩🟩⬜
      🟩⬜🟩🟩⬜
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    3. Well done, unremarkable par here…..

      Wordle 1,491 4/6

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

    4. Well done. Par for me.

      Wordle 1,491 4/6

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

  81. Of course it might be my age but you know what, I don't recall ever being asked if I want my country swamped by third world savages.
    Perhaps they haven't asked because they know the bloody answer.

    1. You are not alone. I am just thankful that I am old and will soon be forgotten. My grandchildren will be the ones forced to fight for their survival – and I do not look forward to that.

      1. Glad all of mine are here. At least if things go pear shaped they can arm themselves. In addition to the AR15's and shotguns, that is.

        Here in WV, we have about 2% ROPers. I like living in a 95% white and very much majority Christian state. Even if some of the latter are a bit odd, ranging from good old fashioned hell and damnation preachers to "serpent" hsndlers.

        1. What is WV?

          No amount of guhnz makes a wit of difference when your enemy has missiles, tanks and worse, doesn't use them but just kills your kids in school or on buses or just uses a plane to slaughter thousands.

          The enemy has changed. The only way to fight them is to contain them – where they are and never, ever let them get to where we are.

          8. When that stadium was new, they flew him in to play for the crowd. The Governor sent a state helicopter to get him as he otherwise could not have made it on time.

          9. Great gesture and certainly one of the best States to live in, amongst several excellent ones.
            In my experience, sticking to the main cities gives a false impression of the USA, get away from the centres and one can really appreciate what a wonderful country it is.
            Shame about the politicians.
            of BOTH sides.

          10. I suspect if the chips were down the WV National Guard – which includes combat aircraft – would put their state first. After all, this is the place where the miners fought a pitched battle with the "forces of law and order" that the mine owners had set upon them.

        1. From what I read – Oz is beginning to go in the same direction…. {:¬((

          4. My recently deceased great old mate Brucie told me a couple of years ago about gangs of Somali shop lifters who drive to areas out of their own district to commit the crimes, making them difficult to chase and catch.

          5. Shopkeepers should be allowed to taser shoplifters, tie them all up and then the police can collect them at closing time.

          6. Including myself when we were there I knew a lot people who had fire arms of different sorts.

        1. Friedrich Merz: Germany ‘cannot cope’ with asylum seekers
          The chancellor is jettisoning his predecessor Angela Merkel’s liberal policies and is stepping back from his country’s ‘welcome culture’ towards migrant

          https://www.thetimes.com/world/europe/article/friedrich-merz-germany-migration-9bxpzwj79

          While Merz was addressing the world’s press, his interior minister, Alexander Dobrindt, hosted a migration summit near the top of the Zugspitze, Germany’s highest mountain, with his counterparts from France, Poland, Austria, Denmark and the Czech Republic. Magnus Brunner, the European Union’s Austrian home affairs commissioner, also attended.

          Dobrindt’s spokesman said the purpose of the meeting was to “turbocharge” Europe’s migration policies through measures such as Rwanda-style offshore processing centres for asylum seekers.

          Germany’s regime of controls across all of its land borders has caused a considerable degree of friction with its neighbours. However, Berlin now hopes to capitalise on the momentum and persuade its neighbours to join an alliance pushing for fundamental reform of the European asylum system.

      5. They'll adapt, Bill. They will never know our country as we knew it. Their reality will be different from ours.

        I never knew London as my mother experienced it in the 1950s – by the 90s it was already dirty, grotty and too expensive to have a decent life unless you were very rich or on welfare.

    2. No one was. The diversity shouldn't be here. At every level massive uncontrolled gimmigration is a disaster.

      It must be undone and reversed. They, and the Lefty hangers on whinging about the 'diversity strength' drivel must all be expunged and the country washed clean.

  82. Time to open a bottle. The rain came and went. Not nearly what was foretold by the Wet Office. But what do they know, anyway?

    It may rain some more tomorrow – or not. At least what fell today has given a tiny boost to our many hydrangeas that were (are) suffering.

    Have a spiffing evening.

    A demain.

    1. I watch women's golf but only when Paige 'isn't my top tight and my skirt short?' Spiraniac is playing.

      1. I thought she had given up professional golf?

        A very good looking woman though.

        2. Most of the legal players are.
          I have been a scorer at several LPGA tournaments and oh my most of them are completely lovely.

    1. They do not like the truth that it is a con and has very limited applications.

    2. Even the most zealous will back off? Nonsense. The hard left will keep pushing tax payers money into unreliables at any cost. They simply don't care.

      The problem with discussions over energy is that for the sane mind, it's about energy and thus efficiency. Unrealibles are hilariously expensive and utterly inefficient. Thus rational people think they're a waste of time and money – which they are.

      However, the Left wing mind is not rational. It's utterly insane. For it, control is all that matters. If people can do what they like, when they like that's a bad thing and must be stopped. The 'green' con is just that. A con. It's a tax scam designed to control people. The Left will never, ever let go of that weapon.

      Discussing unreliables in a rational manner to a Lefty greeniac is impossible. You're trying to explain rational concepts to the insane.

    3. Just look at where world investment is (gold, war etc). Still in the oil producing countries.

    2. There's some poetic justice in the cheating couple becoming a new universal meme.
      That is very funny and so predictable…has a Prime Minister ever been the butt of so many memes as Starmer?

  87. Lord Hermer moist at the very thought.. just a question of how much compo.. Trillions£ or Billion Trillion£ or all the money in the world.

    Sinn Féin Leaders Call for United Ireland Referendum Within Five Years..

    1. Addendum.. for security reasons Sir Keir pays for the hand over of Isle of Man, then leases it back.

      1. He might face opposition to that, but it'll be a free Rockall with every packet of cornflakes.

  88. Down with the middle class
    Rod Liddle

    I suppose this magazine is probably not the best forum to launch a movement to sweep away the British middle class, much along the lines of Pol Pot’s adventure in Kampuchea in the late 1970s, but one can only play with the cards one has been dealt. The more one reads the newspapers, the more inescapable becomes the conclusion that these are the people who are responsible for almost all that is bad, verging on wicked, in our society. Not the lower-middle class, incidentally (the petit bourgeoisie so despised by Marx they were denied even agency), but the comfortable tranche above them. The middle-middle. The professions, by and large. And, dare I say it, the people at Glasto (frankly, on stage and off).

    I have been reading the excellent report by Penny Mordaunt and John Mann into anti-Semitism in this country, which the two authors say left them ‘stunned into silence’. My only quibble with what is, frankly, a harrowing report which shames our country is their apparent surprise that anti-Semitism has been ‘normalised’ among the British middle class. They wrote: ‘We heard about the noisy demonstrations and how intimidating people find the current environment, but as we dug deeper what really scared us was the increasing normalisation of far more extreme, personalised and sometimes life-changing impact directed at individuals purely and simply because they are Jewish. Worrying dilemmas of where Jewish professionals believed that their professional body was actively discriminating against them but where they required membership from this body to be able to work and acquire the necessary protections.’ They concluded with a plea to those in the middle-class spheres of activity – so the arts, most obviously, but more obviously still, the BBC – to undertake some kind of training programme. I would have them hoeing rice paddies in 35°C heat, in shackles, but perhaps that’s just me.

    Did they think that among white Britons it was the working class that harboured anti-Semitic tendencies? That may have been true among a minority in the 1930s, but surely not since. It is our country’s insufferable chattering classes who reach for their keffiyehs on their way to Waitrose. There is no aspect of wokedom which these morons will not swallow, be it the post-rational trans idiocies, cringing before the Black Lives Matter flag and denouncing Israel without having the slightest idea of what is actually going on in Gaza and with no appetite to learn.

    The working class don’t do any of that stuff. Nor is it much use insisting that many anti-Semitic attacks come from Muslims. Of course it is true, but it is also beside the point. The hatred in a fairly large-ish swathe of British Muslims for Jewish people is a given – but is also given legitimacy by the actions of the affluent white folks who presumably think it wrong to murder homosexuals but when Muslim countries do it, it’s fine. The problem is, these people – the middle-middle – have an influence way beyond their number. They run everything: our courts, our schools, our universities, our broadcast media, our arts establishment, our museums. Their visceral (and in the end suicidal) loathing of Great Britain and its history is matched only by their gullibility when faced with anyone who speaks Arabic or who claims that they have been subjugated as a consequence of their race. Except Jews, of course, except Jews.

    Let us move away from anti-Semitism for a moment and consider the case of Courtney Wright, aged 12, from Bilton (near Rugby) and what happened to her when she wore a Union Jack dress to her school’s ‘Culture Day’. What happened was this: she was taken from her classmates and kept in isolation, while the rest of the school pandered to all the other thrilling, vibrant and diverse cultures present. Other kids wearing St George’s flags were similarly segregated and told that their choice of dress was ‘inappropriate’, while those in burqas, niqabs and Nigerian costume were cheered to the rafters by the thick-as-mince teachers. Courtney’s dad, Stuart Field, said: ‘She should not be made to feel embarrassed about being British. And she shouldn’t be punished for celebrating British culture and history; nobody else I’ve spoken to can quite get their heads around it.’

    It is our insufferable chattering classes who reach for their keffiyehs on their way to Waitrose

    The school later offered an unreserved apology and said that it was considering how the incident could have been ‘handled better’. Well, you handle it better next time by sacking the idiots who told pupils and staff that the Union Jack is the symbol of our cultural heritage and if you don’t like it you might be better off living somewhere else. Or how about this? Don’t have a bloody ‘culture day’ – instead concentrate on getting the kids through their examinations with decent grades, seeing as the school’s academic record is predictably awful and well below both the national average and the average for the area.

    Pol Pot had the teachers working in the paddy fields. It seems a rather extreme answer to the problem, but so widespread is this pseudo-progressive mindset that I’m really not sure what alternative will do the trick. Either with the teachers or the middle- class anti-Semites.

    But back to Glastonbury for a moment. As might have been predicted, various deputy heads at the BBC have been sacked as a consequence of that debacle with the tuneful and likeable rap band Bob Vylan. But the point I tried to make when writing about the festival two weeks ago remains true. It is not, as the BBC thinks, a coming together of the nation. It is instead a mass rallying point for the middle-middle and a forum for their stupid politics. The overtly political nature of Glastonbury was not denied by the festival founder Michael Eavis. He said: ‘If you don’t like the politics of the event you can go elsewhere.’ Is that clear enough for you, Tim Davie? Next year, go elsewhere.

    1. There is no aspect of wokedom which these morons will not swallow, be it the post-rational trans idiocies, cringing before the Black Lives Matter flag and denouncing Israel without having the slightest idea of what is actually going on in Gaza and with no appetite to learn.

      Sadly, he's right. There is something wrong them. It's almost as if there's a sense of guilt in the Left wing mind, that success is bad and should be atoned for – but they don't believe any of it. They won't do anything about it themselves. They like their Tuscan villa, their second home they rent out. They are hugely wasteful.

      These are the luxury beliefs they have but don't really care about to make themselves 'feel' better rather than actually doing anything. It's pathetic. It's hypocritical. It's comedically, obviously, Left wing.

    2. So Rod Liddle has been absolutely fine with the managerial class despising the lower middles and working class for years, but when they despise the Jews by God that's a step too far?
      Hypocrisy, thy name begins with RodL and ends with iddle.

      1. Maybe he's seen the light since his days as editor of the Today programme.

    1. She wouldn't be allowed to drive if she were narcoleptic so either she is lying or … no, she's lying.

      Bint here had a kid. Parents unmarried. No home. Claims to be 'adhd'. Has a 27 plate car. Getting a free house on me.

      I'm sick of this. They shouldn't be having children. They shouldn't have a free car. Welfare is far too generous and must be withdrawn, starting with the travesty of 'child benefit'. If you can't afford children, you can't have them. As for getting a house, up yours. Earn it, spacker.

      1. As soon as you are on benefits, your biggest asset is "My Diagnosis."

        If anyone thinks I'm being too unsympathetic, almost everyone in my family struggles with some kind of condition that makes life harder. Guess what, we just get on with it. Nobody to my knowledge has ever been on disability benefits.

    1. Starmer will leap at it though because his hated EU masters have told him to sign it.

        1. It really is long past time that the state were collared and chained, unable to do anything without our permission.

  92. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/07/19/reform-target-miliband-expensive-wind-subsidies/

    Bet you absolutely anything – anything at all, including our house and all in it on two things:

    1 that the green lobby pour absolutely billions into hard Left promotion, into Labour, into scaremongering, anything they can to keep the trough open and Reform out.

    2. As soon as they enter office, Reform will volte face and keep the trough going.

    It's as predictable as needing bog roll after a poo. The lobby first tries to buy the scum off – and these people are easily bought, you offer, say, 100,000 for 'campaign' and a cushy after office job on 500,000 (Osborne got one) and if that should fail then it buries the state in lawfare, using public money. Tice has no idea, none just how cancerous the green con is. It infects every part of the body politic. It's everywhere – intentionally as it's the greatest system the Left have to force socialism so they made sure to entrench and protect it from annoyances like politicians.

      1. He may be, but like everything Reform they just don't know what they're doing.

        There's no awareness of the laws that need repealing, of the fight they'll get from the quangos – how will they shut those down as sure as hell you've got to cut the green blob off from public money first. Then there's the department for destroying the environment, then there's acres – acres of legislation forcing 'net zero' as afundamental part. Then there's the EU, where all this crap comes from. That's bound in treaty, which would need to be renegotiated. That also means leaving the ECHR, because 'green' is chained in that as well.

        It's all very well ripping up the contracts, but the hard Left will never, ever let go of their weapon so easily. It'd take multiple ministers years just to face down the blob, let alone cut the cancer out and even then build power stations to reduce energy bills.

        I get it. He wants a headline. However the blob are far more motivated – hell, their very existence depends on tax payers money continuing to flow into their pockets. Tice, like Farage hasn't got a clue of the opposition he'll face.

        1. Apologies for the inception but I have to ask. I know this stuff from reading around the topic. I'm a dippy nitwit with a mouse and keyboard. I'm not a legislative expert, not a lawyer, just a womble.

          Why doesn't Tice understand the absolute monolithic juggernaut winding up against him?

          1. He knows. He has no intention of changing it, apart from one or two highly publicised "wins" to keep the people onside.

          2. Maybe you could send the man an email and ask? JUst a thought – there must be a Reform.uk web address that has a "Contact Us" link?

    2. Reform will keep the trough going because they are controlled opposition and that's their job.

  93. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/07/19/reform-target-miliband-expensive-wind-subsidies/

    Bet you absolutely anything – anything at all, including our house and all in it on two things:

    1 that the green lobby pour absolutely billions into hard Left promotion, into Labour, into scaremongering, anything they can to keep the trough open and Reform out.

    2. As soon as they enter office, Reform will volte face and keep the trough going.

    It's as predictable as needing bog roll after a poo. The lobby first tries to buy the scum off – and these people are easily bought, you offer, say, 100,000 for 'campaign' and a cushy after office job on 500,000 (Osborne got one) and if that should fail then it buries the state in lawfare, using public money. Tice has no idea, none just how cancerous the green con is. It infects every part of the body politic. It's everywhere – intentionally as it's the greatest system the Left have to force socialism so they made sure to entrench and protect it from annoyances like politicians.

  94. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/07/19/reform-target-miliband-expensive-wind-subsidies/

    Bet you absolutely anything – anything at all, including our house and all in it on two things:

    1 that the green lobby pour absolutely billions into hard Left promotion, into Labour, into scaremongering, anything they can to keep the trough open and Reform out.

    2. As soon as they enter office, Reform will volte face and keep the trough going.

    It's as predictable as needing bog roll after a poo. The lobby first tries to buy the scum off – and these people are easily bought, you offer, say, 100,000 for 'campaign' and a cushy after office job on 500,000 (Osborne got one) and if that should fail then it buries the state in lawfare, using public money. Tice has no idea, none just how cancerous the green con is. It infects every part of the body politic. It's everywhere – intentionally as it's the greatest system the Left have to force socialism so they made sure to entrench and protect it from annoyances like politicians.

  95. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/07/19/reform-target-miliband-expensive-wind-subsidies/

    Bet you absolutely anything – anything at all, including our house and all in it on two things:

    1 that the green lobby pour absolutely billions into hard Left promotion, into Labour, into scaremongering, anything they can to keep the trough open and Reform out.

    2. As soon as they enter office, Reform will volte face and keep the trough going.

    It's as predictable as needing bog roll after a poo. The lobby first tries to buy the scum off – and these people are easily bought, you offer, say, 100,000 for 'campaign' and a cushy after office job on 500,000 (Osborne got one) and if that should fail then it buries the state in lawfare, using public money. Tice has no idea, none just how cancerous the green con is. It infects every part of the body politic. It's everywhere – intentionally as it's the greatest system the Left have to force socialism so they made sure to entrench and protect it from annoyances like politicians.

  97. Dare I confess … I have just finished watering the garden , oh yes I have .

    Prawn cocktail, small salad and baked potato on the menu for supper , and the baked potatoes will take 10 minutes to cook in the microwave !

    1. I am not hungry so I thought a pasta salad would be ok. I was doing well until the Warqueen put the oven on for 2 baguettes of garlic bread and a couple of sausage in breadcrumb larks I'd made mid week for next week.

    2. Me too, but then we have no restrictions, and since our (very small) community is all well and septic, it's a moot point.

      As it is, I always tell people we don't use water, we just recycle it. I draw from a deep well one end of the property and it goes back into the septic field at the other end, 300 odd yards away. And makes its (filtered) way back into the aquifer. Zero bills, of course.

    3. We had 5 hours of continuous rain today. There was an empty bucket outside of the back door and it has 5 inches of water in it now.
      Pond topped right up as well. Plenty of small frogs.

    4. Didn't water ours this evening. We did have a drop of rain earlier – not much but enough to moisten things a bit.
      We've just been out for a meal at a local pub we haven't been to for a while. He thought we wouldn't need to book……. but we were lucky as the people who booked our table had decided to sit outside.

      Dare I post the unflattering photo I took just now?

    1. Reminds me of Angus Mac Alister, Lord Emsworth's gardener, when he had a grievance. It was not difficult to distinguish between him and a ray of sunshine.

      1. He's calm and careful, keeping to the facts.

        (Unlike me, where my missives are mostly a rant).

    3. He is good, have bookmarked his channel. However, he is delulu if he thinks inflation and interest rates are going to fall!

    4. Actually, I take back my earlier comment. Just watched another of his videos – it sounds convincing but he is cherry-picking facts. To be fair, he's just regurgitating the mainstream media, Keynesian line on everything.

      For example, he noted that the world is selling US Treasuries – but he didn't ask what they are buying instead.
      He expressed concern that the "trustworthy" US dollar is losing its dominance, apparently without realising that there is another asset that is more immeasurably more trustworthy than the US dollar and that central banks are buying it in record amounts as we speak.

      Also, he pushed the climate scam and thinks that the world economy will have to deal with a hotter climate and more unpredictable weather events and apparently unironically, he showed a slide of a field of solar panels and no visible plants whilst talking about taking care of the environment. There was no context about Britain losing farm land, silver prices rising or anything else around solar panels.

  99. It may be yesterday's editorial but it's worth posting. There is a faint echo of the Telegraph of old in it.

    Votes for 16-year-olds won't improve politics

    No doubt Labour expects that this act of constitutional tomfoolery will favour the party

    Telegraph View
    17th July 2025, 7:33pm BST

    Extending votes to 16-year-olds at all UK elections must be one of the most short-sighted and desperate measures ever to be brought before Parliament.

    It is not as if the country were so well governed that we could afford the risk. Yet the Labour Government is embarking on the dangerous experiment of handing power to teenagers who for almost all other purposes are deemed by the law to be children. Worse: like almost all constitutional changes, this one is likely to be irreversible.

    Perhaps we should not be surprised that a Prime Minister who until recently seemed confused about the biology of sex should also be in a muddle about the physiology of adolescents. It is true that at 16 one may well be physically able to serve one's country, often with conspicuous courage. A handful of prodigies can astonish us with their talents, too. Yet it is no less a fact that the brain continues to develop well into one's twenties. Children of 16 are generally less capable of thinking ahead or of assessing danger than adults.

    Sir Keir Starmer is untroubled by such realities. For him, apparently, the only relevant criterion is that 16-year-olds may pay taxes. But it does not follow from this that they should be entitled to vote. Otherwise, by the same logic the millions of people who do not pay taxes would lose the vote.

    Children are represented by their parents in many fields until they reach adulthood. They also require protection: one reason why the age of consent for marriage has been raised to 18 (not that Angela Rayner had noticed). However precocious, a voter of 16 lacks the experience to detect the fools, frauds and fanatics who are unfortunately ubiquitous in politics.

    No doubt Labour expects that this act of constitutional tomfoolery will favour the party, because young people are assumed to lean to the Left. But this gimmick is no great cause célèbre. Unlike women in the early 20th century, who fought hard for the suffrage, fewer than half of the Welsh 16 and 17-year-olds invited to vote for the Senedd could even be bothered to register.

    It is no accident that few other countries have lowered their voting age below 18. In Austria, which did so in 2007, the effect has been polarising: the younger the voters, the more attracted they are to extremes, especially on the Right. The beneficiaries have not been the older centrist parties, but the anti-immigration nationalists of the Freedom Party.

    Here, too, Sir Keir may well find himself hoist by his own petard. What if the newly enfranchised boys and girls reject his bribery and cast their ballots for Kemi Badenoch or Nigel Farage?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2025/07/17/votes-for-16-year-olds-wont-improve-politics

    If we do have an election at which children swing it in favour of a proper government, I want the BBC cameras right up there in the faces of every multi-culti loser of any party, especially the current member for Yardley. As for the Stockport Slapper, it's taken me a while to place her character in British culture. She is, of course, straight out of Viz.

    1. Even children have realised that voting makes no difference.

      It is nothing but desperate vote rigging. Polluting the country with diversity had them turn away from Labour and form their own, dindu parties.

    2. "… the current member for Yardley" is the local MP here. Can't wait until she calls…

    3. There's some interesting points!
      It is no accident that few other countries have lowered their voting age below 18. In Austria, which did so in 2007, the effect has been polarising: the younger the voters, the more attracted they are to extremes, especially on the Right
      and
      It is true that at 16 one may well be physically able to serve one's country, often with conspicuous courage. Followed by Children of 16 are generally less capable of thinking ahead or of assessing danger than adults. I wonder if the two statements are cause & effect?

  100. Off topic
    Women's Euro Wendyball.
    I'm sorry, I doubt that that was a deliberate hair pull.
    Some of these players have very long hair swinging all over the place.
    It must be very difficult for defenders to avoid touching hair that's anywhere within their "space"
    The rules need to be changed so that the hair is tied up or bathing caps worn.

    1. I was wrong.
      Having seen it in slow motion the stupid German did pull the hair deliberately and a penalty was appropriate.

      BUT,
      if that had been her shirt rather than her very long hair would it have been a red card?

      I doubt it.

      The long flowing hair needs to be resolved.

      1. Both goalkeepers resemble men, the German with a pronounced Adam’s Apple and 5 O’clock shadow.

        A German, Hoffmann, should have been given multiple yellow cards and sent off for persistent barging of French women off the ball.

        The German manager is wide eyed, overly aggressive and probably mad.

      2. What about compulsory hair nets or bathing caps for footballers and rugby players of both sexes with long hair?

      1. Thank you Belle
        Curiously if you were standing on the tow path you wouldn't hear the diesel tractor engine at all as it has a hospital silencer exhaust. A lot of folk ask me if it is an electric boat because they can't hear the engine..

      2. Thank you Belle
        Curiously if you were standing on the tow path you wouldn't hear the diesel tractor engine at all as it has a hospital silencer exhaust. A lot of folk ask me if it is an electric boat because they can't hear the engine..

  102. Our Gallic neighbours have instructed us in the ways of many things. I’m thinking particularly of white Burgundy, champagne, béchamel sauce, mistresses and surrendering.

    More recently the UK’s political leadership has taken on President Macron’s habit of hugging everyone. Thus Sir Keir Starmer can’t see the likes of President Zelensky across a crowded room without clambering over a sea of suits to give the guy a hug. And last week Sir Keir was with Europe’s great hugger-in-chief and thus enveloping 47-year-old Emmanuel Jean-Michel Frédéric in his arms.

    But here’s another thing: as bold as Dijon mustard, as sensible as the line judges at Roland-Garros and as perky as garlic, it has just been announced by the French Prime Minister François Bayrou. He’s ditching two bank holidays.

    “The entire nation has to work more,” he said this week, adding, “so that the activity of the country as a whole increases and so that France’s situation improves.”

    Bayrou’s plan comes as he attempts to lower the country’s spiralling public deficit and debt and, in next year’s budget, save €43.8 billion. His plan is, he says, the “last stop before the cliff edge”.

    And sounding more like Idi Amin, the Ugandan president of the 1970s, than a centrist European politician of the 2020s, he is insistent that, “everyone will have to contribute to the effort”.

    The immediate practical problem, aside from the cacophony that is the sound of 68 million grumbling frogs, is which days to scrap. France has 11 national holidays and Bayrou has suggested scrapping Easter Monday (fair enough in a nation of croissant-munching atheists – only 5 per cent attend Mass on Sundays) and May 8, which is Victory Day. The latter should logically be renamed Surrender Day, occurs on June 22 (the date in 1940 of the Armistice) and on which the nation should definitely be put to work.

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    The plan may sound harsh, particularly for a people famed for their love of leisure – most people take a month off in summer, they must work a maximum of 35 hours a week, lunch for a minimum of an hour and can dwell over a coffee long after it has gone cold. And indeed politicians, left and right, were spitting out their vins de table in rages this week.

    “[It’s] a direct attack on our history, our roots and on working France,” said Jordan Bardella of the far-Right National Rally. Fabien Roussel of the French Communist party described it as “an organised hold-up”.

    But hang on, it’s actually a fabulous idea. And one that we should embrace as firmly as a Starmer/Macron hug.

    The UK has eight bank holidays. There’s Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Year’s Day, Good Friday, Easter Monday and then a load of early summer ones that charge at you out of the blue normally when a heatwave has come and gone and it starts to rain and a random one at the end of August that enables people at the tail end of the Notting Hill Carnival to smoke cannabis in the street without impunity before a few stabbings at dusk.

    And they are now – in concept and practice – out of date and a contributor to national decline. And, before you squeal about the idea of my tearing apart a cornerstone of Britain’s cultural history, they are relatively new. It was 1871 that an Act of Parliament was passed officially designating a number of days that workers should have off and on which banks would be closed. The man behind the Bank Holidays Act was the liberal reforming MP Sir John Lubbock who believed that religious holidays should be formalised. There was otherwise no way to ensure that a factory worker wasn’t forced to toil, in gruelling conditions, for six days a week.

    The “St Lubbock’s Days”, as they were called for a while, reflected the shift in Victorian England to more formalised leisure. But that was then. More than 150 years later and Britain dwells in a state of lugubrious idleness at which Lubbock himself would raise an eyebrow.

    Indeed post-Covid, most of the UK enjoys a four-day jolly every weekend. Offices are lucky if workers deign to join them Tuesday to Thursday and they can only tempt them in by offering free cereal, table tennis, comfy sofas in so many break-out areas, a drinks trolley on a Thursday afternoon (non-alcs catered for so as not to offend the Gen Zs) and a promise not to send the poor lambs too many emails on a Monday or Friday. Because the end of the week is firmly the beginning of the weekend and Monday is a recovery day and who wants to get on a horrid train when you can Zoom from home in your jim-jams.

    A one-off holiday to celebrate something as momentous as the King's Coronation is wise, but otherwise bank holidays are an expensive waste of money
    A one-off holiday to celebrate something as momentous as the King’s Coronation is wise, but otherwise bank holidays are an expensive waste of money Credit: Richard Pohle/AFP
    Our work patterns are also considerably less Victorian. Almost 7.5 million people now freelance – full- or part-time – and bank holidays lurk around the corner for them as pestilent days of childcare and lost revenue.

    Each bank holiday costs the nation some £2.4 billion in economic output so while politicians publicly support occasional additions such as that for King Charles’s coronation in 2023, privately they shudder at the damage it does to the nation’s books.

    And they are patently not “bank” holidays of course, because nowadays you can bank online 24 hours a day. Furthermore, most high street banks are now upscale bars and people only wander into the remaining banks by mistake when they’re drunk.

    Bank holidays are no longer precious, quiet days, and they are conspicuously not religious. The only notable religion featuring being that of unabashed consumerism.

    That France is enacting this policy while, according to the Office for National Statistics, actually being more productive than us should shame us into working more. So let’s scrap two of them, the random May one and the August one, the extra days worked can merit a proportionate pay rise and hospitality need not grumble because, with more money in one’s pocket, we can all afford to nip to the pub after work.

    Comments

    In the Middle Ages we had considerably more holidays than we have now. Then came the Reformation which resulted in a vast reduction (consider the Commonwealth Parliament that banned Christmas and Easter). The Industrial Reformation actually made matters worse, hence the introduction of bank holidays. We have the fewest bank holidays in Europe. Far from reducing the number, we should be increasing them. How about one on 11 November? I am sure the British Legion would appreciate the gesture.

    1 hr ago
    France is not "ditching bank holidays", as wrongly stated in your inaccurate headline.

    The minority French Government has proposed to reduce the number of public holidays, but the Leftist coalition of parties and the Rightist National Rally Party have both indicated that they will reject the proposal.

    This means that the proposal has no chance of being enacted.

    The DT standard of journalism is in free fall.

  103. Afghan migrants have brought as many as 22 family members to the UK after relatives previously rejected for asylum were allowed in following a military data breach.

    The disclosure could raise fears that national security may have been compromised in the confusion that followed the most damaging data breach in British history..

    Government sources say Afghans who were flown to Britain brought an average of eight family members with them, leaving officials scrambling to find accommodation for them.

    Ministers were even forced to consider “knocking two houses into one” on military bases to accommodate individual families.

    But the public was kept in the dark because of a super-injunction that was extended at Sir Grant Shapps’s direction shortly before last year’s general election.

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    Sir Grant has now been accused of “trying to rewrite history” after he claimed on Friday he was “surprised” that the super-injunction stayed in place for so long after it was granted in September 2023, when in truth he successfully appealed against a judge’s decision.

    In March last year, the Government set up an emergency scheme, called the Afghanistan Response Route, to airlift people named in the data breach to the UK.

    Whitehall sources have told The Telegraph that one person who came to the UK was allowed to bring 22 family members, while others were in the “high teens”.

    Defence ministers had wanted to restrict arrivals to married couples and their children, but UK courts repeatedly expanded the eligibility criteria, citing the European Convention on Human Rights.

    There was a dramatic change in the criteria last November, when High Court judge Mrs Justice Yip ruled, in a case brought against the Foreign Office by an Afghan already living in the UK, that family members did not have to have a blood or legal connection to the applicant.

    Her ruling stated: “The term ‘family member’ does not have any fixed meaning in law or in common usage. Indeed, the word ‘family’ may mean different things to different people and in different contexts. There may be cultural considerations … there is no requirement for a blood or legal connection.”

    1. There may be cultural considerations … there is no requirement for a blood or legal connection.”

      If that is the case why should we accept anyone on the basis of a so-called blood or legal connection?

      Silly me, everyone on the planet has the absolute right to come to the UK and for the UK taxpayer to support them.

  104. Germany has deported dozens of Afghans back to Kabul, including sex offenders and violent criminals, as part of an indirect deal with the Taliban.

    Early on Friday morning, 81 Afghan citizens, including some with criminal convictions, were loaded onto a Qatar Airways flight at Leipzig airport.

    The flight is understood to be part of a Qatar-mediated deal between the German government and the Taliban, which could lead to regular deportation flights.

    Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, has vowed to get tougher on mass migration in response to a series of terror attacks committed over the past year by rejected Afghan and Syrian asylum seekers.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/07/18/germany-deports-afghans-after-striking-deal-with-taliban/?recomm_id=f9e9351b-59f7-4a26-a953-de842c1a8039

    It comes as ex-Tory ministers face questions in the UK over their unprecedented use of a super-injunction to cover up a 2022 data leak, which led to the government relocating at least 15,000 Afghans to protect them from the Taliban.

    Alexander Dobrindt, the German interior minister, said Friday’s flight sent a clear sign that his government had zero tolerance for asylum seekers who commit crimes.

    “We have succeeded in organising another deportation flight of Afghan criminals, and in doing so, we are delivering the changes pledged in our coalition agreement,” he said. “Serious criminal offenders have no right to reside in our country.”

    The German government did not provide a breakdown of how many Afghans on the flight had criminal convictions, and what type of crimes they had been convicted of. However, Spiegel, a German news magazine, said “many” of them were violent criminals and sex offenders. All of them were said to be legally obligated to leave the country.

    Germany’s previous government, led by chancellor Olaf Scholz, negotiated a similar deportation flight to Afghanistan in August 2024, which caused outrage among human rights groups.

    Amnesty International warned at the time that any Afghan deported from Germany back to their home country risked being tortured and possibly executed by the Taliban-led government.

    “It is alarming that the Federal Government is ignoring these obligations and deporting people to Afghanistan. Nobody is safe in Afghanistan. Extrajudicial executions, enforced disappearances and torture are commonplace,” said Julia Duchrow, the NGO’s director in Germany.

    “If the Federal Government deports people to Afghanistan, it risks becoming an accomplice of the Taliban,” she added. “The Government must take its obligations under international law seriously and must not allow itself to be driven by anti-human rights positions in the election campaign.”

    Real prospect of torture
    Under the European Convention on Human Rights, it is forbidden to deport someone to a country where they face a real prospect of being tortured upon arrival.

    Since the Taliban regained power in Afghanistan in 2021, the German government has been indirectly negotiating with its leaders on the issue of returning foreign criminals.

    The talks have reportedly been mediated by the Gulf state of Qatar, which has hosted a delegation of the Taliban in Doha since around 2010.

    It is unclear how many Afghan citizens are being held in German prisons, but government statistics show that around 11,000 Afghan citizens in the country are under deportation orders.

    Several recent and high-profile terror attacks in Germany were committed by rejected Afghan and Syrian asylum seekers, such as a car-ramming attack in Munich in February, and a mass stabbing attack at a music festival in Solingen last summer.

    Richard Thomson
    8 hrs ago
    Germany’s first responsibility is to ensure the safety of its citizens. If illegal immigrants endanger that principal having already committed crimes in the country then they have to be deported. This safeguarding principal is more important than considerations about what might happen to these immigrants when they are returned to their own country. It’s as simple as that. And if Germany can do it why can’t the UK?

    Comment by Lou Reads.

    LR

    Lou Reads
    9 hrs ago
    The Government needs to look again at the Afghans they've let in due to the leak and deport those who would have been rejected if the list hadn't been leaked. The Taliban may be psychopathic but they're not stupid. They know that most of those people didn't help the British Army. At the very least, any Afghan allowed into the UK who turns out to be a criminal, on the leaked list or not, should be sent back to Afghanistan. Anything else is a crime against the British people.

    Comment by Clara Stephenson.

    CS

    Clara Stephenson
    9 hrs ago
    Looks like some EU countries refuse to follow ECHR law, and yet the UK government follow every other nations rules and regulations. I expect Germany was easily able to negotiate a return policy because authorities in Afghanistan know these criminals will eventually land up in the UK.

    5. Happy Birthday, and many happy returns of your anniversary to you both, Ndovu! Make sure the celebrations last all weekend!

    7. Wishing you both a very happy anniversary and N to you a happy birthday as well.
      Our son’s 25th anniversary next week and our daughter’s 35th in September.

  106. That's me orff after a long day. I've never seen the film before but I was sort of trapped into watching the Titanic.
    The golf came in handy, there must have been more than 45 minutes of advertising during the process.
    Good night all Nottlers sleep well 😴
    Glad you had a good day and evening Jules (Ellie) 🤗🐘 best wishes to you and yours. 🙂

      1. Yes all those poor people who were left to drown or died in the freezing water. Not enough life boats for the plebs. But plenty of upper class and very snobby accommodation on board.

    1. No, you are correct and I have to say I made the same observation earlier.

      The effing Germans played for penalties and inevitably got them. The game was a disgrace. “Vorsprung durch technique” is the phrase that springs to mind. A truly manufactured victory.

      The French tried to play football, the Germans just barged and bullied them. Disgraceful.

      2. No they trail hunt within the law. Even that is too much for Labour’s spite. They want to ban that as well.

  111. I will say this only once.

    I one of the younger of the NOTLers

    I appreciate all of you, and the mutual support network you provide.

    Arriba y adelante

    2. I will only say this once , we were all young Nottlers when Geoff progressed us and processed us over from the DT comments years ago , when the DT became difficult and changed their comment forum , ie monitoring everything and wiping good conversation out!.

      We have all got older , and in those early days . like you, some of us were moderate youngsters.

    1. It is misleading. You need permission in certain circumstances. Like a conservation area.

    2. How could ever be justified, surely the court of human rights would back up the right to fly the British flag. Its not a protest it's a statement of pride.

Comments are closed.