Monday 15 June: The futility of trying to hide away monuments that reveal the dark side of our history

Posted on by Geoff Graham

An unofficial place to discuss the Telegraph letters, established when the DT website turned off its comments facility (now reinstated, but not as good as ours),
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Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/06/14/lettersthe-futility-trying-hide-away-monuments-reveal-dark-side/

581 thoughts on “Monday 15 June: The futility of trying to hide away monuments that reveal the dark side of our history”

          1. Well…
            It’s a pretty pass when such a thing could be true. I struggle more and more to spoof the nonsense going on. It’s difficult to do.

  3. SIR – The police are rapidly becoming a laughing stock. This is not down to the actions of individual officers, who without doubt do their duty in an exemplary fashion; it is down to the fact that they now appear to be led by senior officers who have little regard for maintaining law and order.

    Robert Courteney-Harris
    Stone, Staffordshire

    1. The individual officers, of whatever rank, who ‘took the knee’ added evidence to the laughing stock argument. They should be weeded out as an example to others. All officers have attested that they will serve the monarch, act with fairness, impartiality etc: pledging support to a clearly revolutionary group by ‘taking the knee’ surely breaks their oath. You cannot serve two masters.

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/766291aee90ca50a7f0a6296278c416bb58af0f7c2527c4a8bf07c361e395b57.png

  4. Not sure that the Churchill monument that was erected to commemorate his role in the second world war reveals a dark side in our history.

    1. 320146+ up ticks,
      Morning B3,
      Only during the blackout, ” put that bloody light out”

    2. Morning, Bob3.

      The revolutionaries have focused on the famine in Bengal in 1943. Churchill had to decide on prosecuting the war against Germany and Japan or diverting scarce shipping and equally scarce food to aid Bengal. It must have an awful decision to take but Churchill took the pragmatic view that defeating Germany and Japan was the correct option and would save more lives over time. Of course, there was not a single decision or cause that gave rise to the famine. The Japanese occupation of Burma, lack of shipping, the weather etc. The revolutionaries are not interested in the whole picture but by being extremely selective they attempt to blacken the reputation of a great man.
      Yesterday, Maajid Nawaz, a LBC presenter, gave an impassioned defence of Churchill’s decision and Nawaz’s family was involved in the famine. Such was Nawaz’s defence argument the caller to the programme ended the call. The full story and facts do not sit well with these disruptive people.

      1. I forget the details, but ISTR that a ship carrying grain from Australia to Britain shortly after the end of the war was diverted to drought-stricken India.

      2. I’m surprised they didn’t focus on his correct appraisal of islam. They are ignorant enough to think that an ideology is a race.

  6. I suppose we can all now assume that our government is covertly supportive of BLM just as it is for XR and they are a tool in their agenda for bringing about the change they want.

    2. ‘Morning, Rik, I can’t help but agree with you.The first step is to repeal the Human Rights Act, which is just used by the traitors as a ‘Get Out of Jail, Free’ Card.

      Enough, already.

    3. I never thought that in my lifetime Russia or the Ukraine would seem such attractive places for relocation.

    1. They keep being described as ‘Anti-Racists’ when in truth they are the racist fascists.

      I know it, you know it and for some reason best known to themselves the Mostly Shit Media know it but continue to distort the truth.

  9. Another Clinton Story

    One winter, the President was out for his daily run when he saw some writing on a nearby snowdrift. Taking a closer look at the yellow snow, he was enraged when he saw that it spelled out BILL CLINTON SUCKS!

    As soon as he got back to the White House, he ordered the Secret Service to find out who was responsible.

    Two days later, as Clinton sat in the Oval Office, the head of the Secret Service came in and announced, “Sir, we’ve finished analysing the evidence. I have good news and bad news.”

    “What’s the good news?” asked Bill.

    “Well sir, It’s Al Gore’s urine.”

    “What?” Bill screamed. “That’s the good news?! What the hell’s the bad news?”

    “Well sir, our handwriting expert says it’s Hillary’s handwriting…

  12. Morning all. Here’s the first lot,,,,,

    SIR – As a past student and staff member at St Thomas’s Hospital, I am dismayed by the cowardly decision of the Guy’s and St Thomas’s NHS Foundation Trust to bow to public pressure and remove the statues of Sir Thomas and Sir Robert Clayton from public view, “due to their association with the slave trade”.

    Perhaps next they will acquiesce to renaming St Thomas’s Hospital itself, or renaming Clayton ward – where I did my house jobs.

    No one doubts the importance of the message that “black lives matter” – but trying to airbrush history, good or bad, is not the way forward.

    Dr Michael Hellier FRCP

    Marlborough, Wiltshire

    SIR – Many schools have sidelined the teaching of history in recent years.

    Is it time to make it compulsory for all school ages in order to engender the understanding of our past that feels so lacking in society today?

    Judith Barnes

    St Ives, Cambridgeshire

    SIR – The statue of Winston Churchill and the Cenotaph at Whitehall have been boarded up.

    My late father would be appalled. He gave four years of his young life to defend the freedoms and liberties that this country upholds. One of the proudest moments of his later years was marching at the Cenotaph with the Royal Naval Association.

    Rosalind Godward

    Royston, Hertfordshire

    SIR – I am a veteran and proud of that fact. The veterans’ groups heading to war memorials across the country do not represent me or the many thousands of other service veterans who deplore the targeting of such memorials by any extremists.

    You can’t prove the other side wrong by making them right. These thugs and activists rely upon the general population to bulk up their numbers and thereby legitimise their cause.

    Deny hardline activists the numbers they seek, and their threat is lessened. Such a move also makes it easier to identify and control them.

    Alec Richardson

    St Martins, Shropshire

    SIR – There are some people who, no matter what your opinion of their cause, hold genuine beliefs and sometimes demonstrate in support of those. They have a legal right to do so.

    Then there is an ignorant, violent underclass who will attach themselves to genuine demonstrations solely in order to get drunk, fight the police, deface monuments, relieve themselves in public, and then crawl back under the rock from which they came.

    To assume they have any informed motivation is a grave mistake. They don’t care what you think; they won’t change, and they will despise you if you try to analyse their motives.

    Alisdair Low

    Richmond, Surrey

    SIR – The police are rapidly becoming a laughing stock. This is not down to the actions of individual officers, who without doubt do their duty in an exemplary fashion; it is down to the fact that they now appear to be led by senior officers who have little regard for maintaining law and order.

    Robert Courteney-Harris

    Stone, Staffordshire

    SIR – Should this climate of protest continue, it is hard to imagine any new statues being erected in future.

    However, one possibility comes to mind: a tribute to Dame Shirley Bassey, a fan of James Bond and a friend of comedians Morecambe and Wise. This should be placed outside the Welsh Parliament in Cardiff – near where she was born. Of course, on the plinth there ought to be a reminder to all passing politicians of a lyric from one of her hit songs: “Hey, big spender”.

    Martin Everett

    Tintern, Monmouthshire

    SIR – All I ask is for a Government that governs.

    Rupert Behrendt

    Bingley, West Yorkshire

  13. SIR – I am glad to live in a country that allows adults to choose what gender they wish to adopt (Letters, June 13).

    I am a woman of 88, as well as a daughter, widow, mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. For much of my life, I have sought to support the health and legal rights of women. These rights are not only for those living in Britain, but also for the rest of the world, where many women have fewer, if any, rights.

    Rights, however, come with responsibilities. Many generations have worked hard to achieve what we have, but the treatment of J K Rowling following the publication of her piece on the subject of gender identity has illustrated how far we have to go. We welcome those joining us, but also ask them to recognise their privilege to be here, accept their responsibilities, and show understanding and respect for the concerns of other women.

    Edwina White

    Porthcawl, Glamorgan

    SIR – I found J K Rowling’s statement thoughtful and informative. Erasing the male and female experience is not what trans rights and solidarity should be about. There should not be censorship of the two sexes. After all, if the two are not allowed to exist, how can there be good outcomes for both?

    The abuse Ms Rowling has suffered from some Twitter users, who are trying to grind her into submission and in some cases wish violence upon her, contains disturbing echoes of what she has experienced in the past. If, when I start a family, I have daughters, I worry about what they may have to face.

    In this country, where people feel increasingly reluctant to speak out, I salute Ms Rowling for her authenticity and bravery.

    Madeleine Fitch

    Attleborough, Norfolk

    SIR – If the actress Emma Watson so abhors J K Rowling’s views, perhaps she should hand back her earnings from the Harry Potter franchise, or donate them to a suitable charity.

    Stuart Gould

    Peterborough

    1. Oh dear Stuart Gould, you’ll be in trouble – Emma Watson is almost certainly an actor! [Except when collecting awards, if any]. Apart from that I agree entirely!

      2. ‘Morning, Bleau, a little correction, Emma Watson purports to be an actress.

        If there is any gender in the English language this is one whole area that has been stamped upon

        1. I presume a male impersonator, such as Vesta Tilley, would be classed as an actress, and Dame Edna Everage would be the creation of an actor.

    2. Information gathered about Covid-19 indicates that men who menstruate are less likely to die from the virus than women with penises. How odd.

    3. Edwina White, you have evidently been “got at” by the cretinous Common Purpose faction. Any woman declaring that, henceforth, they are a “man”, and vice versa, is showing nothing more than a symptom of mental illness.

      If this madness proliferates we will soon be having blue whales re-categorised as “parrots”; cauliflowers described as “pine trees”; and armchairs renamed as “kitchen sinks”.

      You are as potty as those whose idiotic witterings you avidly follow.

    4. Perhaps Emma Watson has not forgiven J K Rowling, when casting Hermione Granger with a black actress for a stage production, said in interview that she never intended the character to be forever typecast in the image of Emma Watson?

      On reflection, I had no difficulty in reconciling this clear clash of characterisation here. At some time, someone had put a spell on her and turned her black. In real life, it happens to a lot of people just spending too much time on the beach in summer, and some folk go orange (possibly the Scottish genes?). Didn’t someone put a spell on Michael Jackson and turned him into a ghost prematurely?

    5. Oh Mr Gould. You poor fellow. What you’re relying on there is guilt. A sense of shame in letting someone down.

      No, my dear chap, these people don’t think like that. Far better to be lead by ego, to make what you want the only thing. To agree with the crowd. Far less confusion once you erase annoyances as integrity and responsibility.

    6. Why would anyone be proud to live in a country that allows people to delude themselves, try to hoodwink others and fly in the face of biology?

  14. SIR – Like Chris Jackson (Letters, June 11), I joined my two grandsons in playing the online war game Clash of Clans several years back.

    Sadly, they grew up and gave it up a while ago. I’m 76 and still playing.

    Steve Webb

    Southwell, Nottinghamshire

          2. Dutch is very much like German. Just with softer words but never
            get the languages mixed up or tell a Dutch person they sound German,
            they’d not like that at all . I found that out when living there eons ago.

          3. I find Flemish easier to follow than Dutch, although I can get by in the latter.

  21. Maria Ressa’s conviction should matter to everyone who cares about democracy. Mon 15 Jun 2020.

    To reach her verdict, the judge had to accept the prosecution’s breathtakingly thin arguments. First, that the website had violated the “cyber libel” law, even though the story was published four months before the law even existed. The judge agreed that Rappler had “republished” the story, when it corrected a spelling error in 2014, thus making it subject to the law. The judge also accepted the prosecution’s theory of “continuous publication”, to get around the fact that the statute of limitations on libel in the Philippines is just one year.

    Why would anyone worry about Democracy in the Philippines when they live here in the UK where a similar trial is taking place about the Blogger Craig Murray for reporting on the Alex Salmond trial?

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2020/jun/15/maria-ressas-conviction-should-matter-to-everyone-who-cares-about-democracy

    2. And, at the bottom of the page is this “That’s what the Guardian’s here for. As an open, independent news organisation we investigate, interrogate and expose the incompetence and indifference of those in power, without fear. Our journalism is free from political and commercial bias –” Shurely some mistake!?

      1. I guess they think that being funded principally by an off-shore trust and sales of their own assets therefore not having to be reliant on newspaper sales – which would finish them off – counts as not being driven by commercial concerns?

    1. How do you know he was a yob, Sosy ?

      He might easily have just had too much to drink, as some individuals do, and didn’t realize it was a memorial.

      Alternatively of course, maybe having too much to drink is a definition of yobbery.

      I suppose that is a possibility !

        1. ”having too much to drink is a definition of yobbery”.

          Yes, that looks so very true in some cases, Sosy.

    2. At least he has realised what an arsehole he made himself look and owned up to what he did.
      A stern talking to should be sufficient to bring the matter to a close.

      1. Well, they had to make an example of someone at the demonstrations. Have they completely missed the irony implicit in all this? It’s ok and we will stand by whilst you blacks and supporters topple and damage statues, but heaven forfend a whitey and rightey should have a quick tiddle at the side of one. The be-wigged ones must be falling about laughing their socks off.

    3. What makes you think that it’s real Sos? Nothing has come out to contradict your or my view!

        1. “It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.”

        1. We know it was him but was he acting alone or as part of a conspiracy to blacken the protesters characters? Does he for example know the photographer?

          He’s just facing a simple charge of public indecency at the moment, were it to come out that he’s part of a leftist plot to smear the “far Right” the Manure would hit the Fan. Better just to keep his gob shut and admit to the lesser charge!

          1. Possible, but the photo appears to be genuine, not photoshopped or otherwise altered, not withstanding your Paint work yesterday.

            Eirther way it might serve him right if he was told he was in line for a heavy sentence. If it was a set up he might spill the beans as mitigation.

  23. Good morning from a Saxon Queen with Longbòw and Axe in handbag .

    A bright and sunny morning and quite warm for a change

    The husband is doing the vacuum cleaning and I am about to do a spot of writing
    ( avoiding all news as it’s all chaotic and depressing )
    Listening to Bach on Classic FM atm .

    1. I give you the Bell Curve Grizz
      If I could i’d vote for Candace for President,actually bugger that,I’d rather vote for her as Prime Minister!!

      2. Just as well I scrolled down, Rik! I was about to say exactly the same. Interestingly, The Bell Curve is apparently unavailable at present though the Waterstones website states that it is being reprinted.

      3. The BBC wouldn’t know what to do with her. Black, female. Ticks two of their beloved biases.

        However she would disagree with their statist philosophy. She wouldn’t be made a victim.

        Perhaps that’s why the Left refuse her a platform.

    2. Maybe all are really like her, Drizzly ?

      In which case, shouldn’t borders be opened immediately ?

    3. Candace Owens is first rate and should be an inspiration to us all – black and white.

    5. There’s as much a range of blacks as whites, greens, gingers, puce, orange (Cheshire).

      However if I might propose – the Rwandan genocide. Islamic state. Zimbabwean destruction. These protestors – the first thing they do is loot and steal. What is it that creates this character type?

  25. Good morning all

    Is English Heritage fit for purpose , and what exactly does it represent?
    Black Lives Matter: Plaque review may question Monty’s views on African ‘savages’

    Blue plaques will be reviewed for their “problematic connotations” as the spotlight of anti-racism campaigners widens from statues to other memorials.

    English Heritage told The Times that it was assessing all 950 of the plaques it maintains in London to determine which ones celebrated figures who were racist or who had links to the slave trade, for example.

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/black-lives-matter-plaque-review-may-question-monty-s-views-on-african-savages-72wchr5zh

    1. We don’t need Monty’s views, we can see their behaviour for ourselves. I applaud the chap who carried the white guy away from trouble, but as he said himself, the crowd would have killed the victim. That was the element of the story that seemed to have been glossed over in the press reports.

    2. I am racist
      You are racist
      He/she/it is racist
      We are racist
      You are racist
      They are racist

      I was racist and I still am
      You were racist You still are
      He/she/it was racist He/she/it still is
      We were racist. We still are
      You were racist You still are
      They were racist. They still are

      That’s whitey sorted.

  26. Fascinating story, do give it a glance

    Why global crises are the mother of invention

    In 1815 a volcanic eruption wreaked havoc around the world. But it led to the birth of the bicycle

    The eruption in April 1815 of Mount Tambora, a volcano in what is now Indonesia, was one of the largest in recorded history. A vast plume of dust and ash spread around the world, blocking out the sun and reducing global temperatures. In China the cold weather killed trees, crops and water buffalo. In North America a “dry fog” reddened the sun and there was summer snowfall in New York. Riots and looting broke out in Europe as harvests failed. Food prices soared and tens of thousands of people died from famine and disease. Horses starved or were slaughtered, as the high price of oats forced people to choose whether to feed their animals or themselves. https://www.1843magazine.com/design/rewind/why-global-crises-are-the-mother-of-invention

    1. Surely that’s just globalist propaganda to divert from the fact the EU was beaten at Waterloo ?

        1. Actually I did and I thought it very interesting.

          But as an alleged conspiracy theorist, obviously I was just examining an alternative possibility.

          Though on reflexion I think your interesting story is 100% true.

    1. 320146+ up ticks,
      O2O,
      My dad was a geordie down the pits at 14 wonder if he knew her ?
      All looked the same at shift end.

      1. 320146+ up ticks,
        Morning TB,
        I do want to see it being made as a threatening gesture on leaving these shores en masse as in
        “we’ll get you Limeys” on day.

  30. Clots have hit the news this morning on BBC Red Button:

    https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/news-from-the-bhf/news-archive/2020/june/london-researchers-to-test-promising-coronavirus-treatment

    I wonder how this work addresses the ADAMTS13 deficiencies that are expressed in certain members of our community?

    The answer may lie somewhere in the way clotting works in our bodies and it is clear that this is not yet completely understood:

    https://youtu.be/856Y9a0Nenk

    1. I heard this briefly mentioned on a news bulletin. No reference to ethnicity…

    2. When I read that clots had hit the news, my first thought was that the news ALWAYS seems full of clots 🙂

      Then I worked out what you meant.

  31. The “You couldn’t make it up files” gets an outing
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ccaa9ad7952ea0e30c040d7da14cb9bc28611eef1badc42914fa5ef044ee35c4.png
    Our Rudyard would disagree……………………
    Loo! loo! Lulu! lulu! Loo! loo! Loot! loot! loot!
    Ow the loot!
    Bloomin’ loot!
    That’s the thing to make the boys git up an’ shoot!
    It’s the same with dogs an’ men,
    If you’d make ’em come again
    Clap ’em forward with a Loo! loo! Lulu! Loot!
    (ff) Whoopee! Tear ‘im, puppy! Loo! loo! Lulu! Loot! loot! loot!

    https://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipling/loot.html

    1. Perhaps he might like to explain why he thinks looting has a racist connotations, what does he know or has seen that might give him that idea ?

      1. Burglary is the more correct (and, in this case, more appropriate) term, Sue.

        “A person enters any building or part of a building, as a trespasser and, whilst therein, steals or attempts to steal anything within that building.” S9, Theft Act, 1968.

        It carries a penalty of 14 years on first conviction.

        [Of course, burglary has been downgraded from crime to simply ‘nuisance’ by those who run the police these days!]

        1. Wasn’t there a distinction in earlier legislation between Burglary and House Breaking (or something on those lines) where Burglary was carried out in the hours of darkness?

      2. Sadly a lot of words and phrases have racist connotations: mugging, murder, theft, inciting racial hatred, violence, abandoning children, excusing slavery by African chiefs, etc. etc.

        Funnily enough the most coherent and sensible arguments against the BLM movement comes from black people. Candace Owens has done more to win my respect than any other person who has expressed views on this subject.

    4. Nope. The editor is right. Which group in the USA does most looting. Yes! Correct! It’s the blacks. Have look at the Watts riots, or last week in the USA. It’s saying it out loud that is racist. (Don’t mention county lines, unless you are in Nashville.)
      We are at the point where not only is that past being rewritten or simply redacted, but are at the point that we see live on TV is not what we think it is.

      1. It’s been a while since what we see on TV, live or not, isn’t what we think we’re seeing (or hearing, for that matter).

    2. Churchill will have to wait until she has had meetings with Stalin, Roosevelt, JFK, John Lennon ….

  33. Morning all.…..;-))
    Part of Marcus Rashfords’ story……….you seem like a decent young man, but………
    My story to get here is all-too-familiar for families in England: my mum worked full-time, earning minimum wage to make sure we always had a good evening meal on the table. But it was not enough. The system was not built for families like mine to succeed, regardless of how hard my mum worked. As a family, we relied on breakfast clubs, free school meals, and the kind actions of neighbours and coaches. Food banks and soup kitchens were not alien to us; I recall very clearly our visits to Northern Moor to collect our Christmas dinners every year. It’s only now that I really understand the enormous sacrifice my mum made in sending me away to live in digs aged 11, a decision no mother would ever make lightly.

    https://metro.co.uk/2020/06/15/marcus-rashford-writes-passionate-letter-mps-pleading-free-school-meals-12852579/?ito=cbshare

    My (Ready Eddy) story was very similar, our ( I have two sisters) mother worked hard, there was no minimal wage in the 50s, she did the jobs she could find and to be paid for. And carried the shopping home in bags and washed the bedding and clothes by hand, we had no fridge no freezer, milk delivered in bottles, the vast majority of people i grew up amongst had to pay rent. There were no state benefits. And when the father we knew came home from the war, who actually lived with us, worked full time as well. We had hard times and had to eat what was put in front of us, no favours from neighbours. Parents were too proud in the days after WW2. And there was no free national health. We still had some food rationing until the early/mid 1950s. We grew vegetables in the small back garden. We had no school free dinners only free milk.

    There are lots of photos on line taken with his father who does not want to be involved in all this. BUT……..
    “My mum was a single parent, she had five kids all living in the same house. The programme that I started at 11 years old, you’re supposed to start it at 12 years old,” he said…………..

    Enough said eh Marcus………..life can be tough and Wizz-Bang now you’re a multi millionaire.

    1. “…and then he gave away all of his money so that lots of poor people could live happily ever after.”

      1. Whereas Stanley Matthews had to catch a bus to all his home matches since he couldn’t afford to buy a car on his paltry wages.

    1. Perhaps Mr Wettone should have joined Birminghams Serious Crime Squad. they’d stichup their own Mother for the price of a bag of chips.

      1. I very much enjoyed reading and commenting on Inspector Gadget. I liked winding up the Barrister. He would have a hissy fit over the mention of biscuits. (not provided in Magistrates Courts).

        It is perfectly clear why the Police wanted these blogs shut down. They made them look stupid. Which they are.

        Do you remember Night Owl?

  35. If you don’t feel comfortable wearing a mask on public transport, simply don’t wear it and if challenged say that under Part 1 Section 4 (a) of The Health Protection (CV, Wearing of Face Coverings on Public Transport) you are exempt as they cause you severe anxiety.

    (Simon Dolon)

    1. Well I guess that you will not be visiting any time soon, airlines are operating a strict no mask, no fly rule.

      Shouldn’t this have been the rule on Londons underground back in March when it might have mattered?

  37. David Lammy excels himself in his response to this already much discussed piece by Johnson (at bottom).

    Rather than tear some people down we should build others up

    Prime Minister says we need to tackle the substance of the problems, not the symbols

    BORIS JOHNSON

    It was utterly absurd that a load of far-Right thugs and bovver boys this weekend converged on London with a mission to protect the statue of Winston Churchill. It was right that a good number should have been arrested. They were violent. They were aggressive towards the police. They were patently racist. There is nothing that can excuse their behaviour.

    And yet it was also, frankly, absurd and deplorable that the statue of Winston Churchill should have been in any plausible danger of attack. It was outrageous that anyone could even have claimed that the statue needed protection. It was and is miserable to see his statue entombed in its protective sheath.

    It is true that the monument has been covered up several times before, in anticipation of trouble, after consultation with the Mayor’s office and English Heritage, because the police believe that is the safest and simplest thing to do. But many people will look at that image and feel a sense of bewilderment. Why attack Churchill? What has the world come to when one of this country’s greatest ever leaders – perhaps our greatest – has to be shielded from the wrath of the mob?

    We all understand the depth of feeling that has been exposed by the killing in Minnesota of George Floyd.

    No one who cares about this country can ignore the many thousands of people who have joined the Black Lives Matter movement to protest peacefully, as most of them have, in the last few days.

    It is no use just saying that we have made huge progress in tackling racism. There is much more that we need to do; and we will.

    It is time for a cross-governmental commission to look at all aspects of inequality – in employment, in health outcomes, in academic and all other walks of life.

    We need to tackle the substance of the problem, not the symbols. We need to address the present, not attempt to rewrite the past – and that means we cannot and must not get sucked into never-ending debate about which well-known historical figure is sufficiently pure or politically correct to remain in public view.

    Where will it end? Are we supposed to haul down Cromwell who killed so many thousands of people in Ireland? What about Nelson and all the other innumerable reminders of this country’s imperial past?

    Take the case of Ayuba Suleiman Diallo, whose portrait hangs in Room 15 of the National Portrait Gallery. He was a native of Gambia who was known and admired in 18th-century London as a translator of Arab texts. He was also, originally, a slaver himself. Does that mean he should be purged from the gallery?

    My point is that our history is immensely complex, and modern Britain is a product of a vast conglomerate of ideas and beliefs – not all of which look good in the light of today. Yes, Churchill expressed all sorts of views over his immense career – and bear in mind that he entered parliament under Queen Victoria and left it under Queen Elizabeth – which are totally unacceptable to modern ears. As it happens, he generally changed with the times. He changed his view on India, and her capacity for independence; and whatever he may have said about Islam in the 1890s, he also built the Regent’s Park Mosque in the 1940s.

    And above all – as so many have rightly pointed out – it is the height of lunacy to accuse him of racism, when he stood alone against a racist tyranny that without his resistance would have overwhelmed this country and the rest of Europe.

    He was a hero, and I expect I am not alone in saying that I will resist with every breath in my body any attempt to remove that statue from Parliament Square, and the sooner his protective shielding comes off the better. It is not just that is wrong to destroy public property by violence.

    I am also extremely dubious about the growing campaign to edit or photoshop the entire cultural landscape. If we start purging the record and removing the images of all but those whose attitudes conform to our own, we are engaged in a great lie, a distortion of our history – like some public figure furtively trying to make themselves look better by editing their own Wikipedia entry.

    Would it not be better and more honest to ask our children to understand the context, to explain the mixture of good and bad in the career of Churchill and everyone else? Rather than tear some people down, we should build others up, and celebrate the people who we in this generation believe are worthy of memorial.

    We have brilliant sculptors and artists. Why should they not be commissioned to make fitting additions to the landscape and cityscape? Take the great courtyard in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, where stone statues of British explorers and imperialists look down from the niches. Many of the niches are for some reason unfilled.

    Rather than tear down the past, why not add some of the men and women – most often BAME – who helped to make our modern Commonwealth and our modern world? Isn’t that a more cheerful approach? This new vogue for politically correct iconoclasm is not just dispiriting, and unfair, and often ahistorical.

    Worst of all, it is a total distraction from the matter in hand. It does nothing for BAME people to go around mutilating statues, or campaigning against this or that cultural relic. There are far greater and more important battles. In the last 10 years we have seen a big expansion in BAME students at our universities; more young black kids excelling in the most challenging subjects at school.

    The struggle now is to turn that into the universal narrative and the universal expectation – a story of success and not discrimination. That means taking seriously the serious points that are raised by the marchers. It means addressing racism and discrimination, and stamping it out. But it does not mean wasting time in delectable academic disputation about the life and opinions of every historical personality currently immortalised in bronze or stone.

    Let’s fight racism, but leave our heritage broadly in peace. If we really want to change it, there are democratic means available in this country – thanks, by the way, to Winston Churchill.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/06/14/rather-tear-people-should-build-others/

    It’s Johnson who wants a culture war. Just let that idea sink in…

    Lammy accuses Tories of seeking ‘culture war’ over fate of Churchill’s statue

    In his Today interview (see 9.19am and 10.02am) David Lammy, the shadow justice secretary, also accused Boris Johnson of making his Telegraph article mostly about Winston Churchill statue because the Tories want a “culture war” as a distraction from their policy failings on race. Lammy said:

    [Johnson] insists on talking about statues. The Labour party isn’t talking about statues. The Lib Dems [aren’t] calling for Winston Churchill’s statue to be removed. Neither are the Greens. The only person that wants to focus on Winston Churchill’s statue is the Conservative party and frankly it’s bizarre. They want a culture war because they want to distract from the central issue; implement the reviews.

    Do something. Change it. You’re in power. You’ve been in power for a decade.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/jun/15/uk-coronavirus-live-non-essential-shops-reopen-latest-updates-news

    1. What a despicable dog this PM is. Who does he think fought at the Somme, at Arnhem, at Suez, in Malaya, in the Falklands?
      A heap of whataboutery. A future of appeasement. A bleak subservient future for whites.

      1. Founder of the Manchester (latterly to become The Guardian) Guardian with links to slavery, cotton merchant John Edward Taylor.
        I worked that out on the back of a fag packet.

  38. Here’s the DT’s response to criticism of Johnson’s article:

    The Left’s attacks on the PM over race are a grotesque calumny

    TELEGRAPH VIEW

    The political subtext to the Black Lives Matter campaign is that Boris Johnson and the Tories are racist. This grotesque calumny has been aimed at the Prime Minister for years, and particularly since he wrote in this newspaper about the burka. He was not arguing for its prohibition but for freedom of expression as a central tenet of British liberalism.

    The Prime Minister’s article in this newspaper today is very much in this tradition. He denounces thuggery and disorder on the streets, upholds the right to peaceful protest, but recognises that the issues around race and inequality still need to be addressed. What more can a Prime Minister say or do? Two of the great offices of state are occupied by people from ethnic minority backgrounds. This Government is the most diverse in history. Yet Mr Johnson is given no credit for this because the aim of some protesters is less to gain better treatment for ethnic minorities than to find another stick with which to beat the Tories.

    The Prime Minister has no reason to apologise for his record in this regard, having spent eight years as mayor of the world’s most multicultural city. Moreover, Mr Johnson’s bafflement as to why Churchill should be the target of protests, given his pivotal role in the defeat of the most racist ideology in history, will be widely shared.

    Indeed, perhaps the greatest irony in the few weeks of protest in London and other cities was the spectacle of far-Right demonstrators giving the Nazi salute as they claimed the right to defend Churchill from his detractors. The “football lads” turned up in Whitehall on Saturday spoiling for a fight which, in the absence of other demonstrators, they proceeded to have with the police. As Mr Johnson says, nothing can excuse this behaviour.

    But, as he implies, there is a political motivation behind those targeting the Churchill statue. The Left see it as a totemic emblem of Conservatism, even though the wartime leader was a Liberal during his early years in politics and was never trusted by the Tories before the war and not even for a while after it began.

    The campaigners pressing for the eradication of our past are a minority not supported by most of the country. They seek a Maoist disavowal of British history or, as Mr Johnson puts it, they want to “photoshop the entire cultural landscape”.

    They certainly need to be resisted – but by way of debate and argument, not thuggish violence.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/06/15/lefts-attacks-pm-race-grotesque-calumny/

    1. Resisted – so where is the State in resisting them? If it is left to the “ordinary” folk to resist them, then control will be further lost, there will be bloodshed, and it will not be pretty.

      1. It is coming. It is being forced on us. The forces of the Government will be applied against us.
        Look at the events of the last fortnight.
        1. Whip up outrage against a trivial event several thousands of miles away in a different country with different laws.
        2 Organise suitable blacks and sjws (gullible and biddable) to protest.
        3. Advise the Government and police to take little or no action.
        4. Make no preparations regarding barriers, stewarding or controlling.
        5. Ensure that the mobs are given their way by removing any sensible police presence.
        6. Make no arrests for rioting, disorderly behaviour or criminal damage.
        7. Have politicians speak about events in a neutral or approving way.
        8. Have police commanders speak only in an approving manner.
        9. Demand that no opposition demonstrations take place.
        9a Have BLM keep away for the sake of good order (sweet!)
        10. Install strict controls of opposition and corral them within metal barriers.
        11. Have large numbers of riot police in full armour press the opposition hard.
        12. Have agents provocateur start trouble.
        13. Make lots of arrests.
        14. Condemn the violence of the football lads/military veterans.

        Every aspect of this was organised from start to finish.
        We now have BLM good and football lads/veterans bad. Don’t you think?
        As well as a sock puppet for a PM who thinks we need to do more against “racism”, and probably will.

        1. “As well as a sock puppet for a PM who thinks we need to do more against “racism”, and probably will.”

          Sooty, Lamb Chop and Fingerbobs have more character, acumen, brainpower and leadership ability than any politician I know.

          2. Good afternoon, Maggie.

            I couldn’t include that thing for two reasons:

            1. It is not a sock/glove puppet (those that I mentioned are).

            2. It was totally unfunny and beyond annoying.

    2. “Mr Johnson says, nothing can excuse this behaviour.” Johnson is a sop, an appeaser who does not even recognise the possibility of war. Unlike the much maligned Chamberlain who could see it coming, plain as day, and bought us enough time to hold out.
      The Prime Minister created the events of last Saturday when the football lads made their presence known. He was responsible. I’d say it was his fault except that he probably intended what happened. Certainly those from whom he takes direction intended it. As for the Home Secretary…
      By allowing the BLM mob to take to the streets in defiance of old and new legislation, in allowing them to deface and destroy memorials, to attack and injure around 60 members of the police, while the commanders of the police simpered their sympathy for BLM, Johnson made it plain that there was no law to be enforced on blacks.

    3. 320146+ up ticks,
      Morning WS,
      The two great offices of state are filled by designed treachery or gross stupidity, mayday clearly showed that.
      Many other positions of power nationwide are being put in place in preparation for future events as in taking up the two knee kneeling position, five times a day.
      All the time the vote in to keep out brigade are active the real enemas are building on a daily basis.
      Is the invasion on the Dover front financed by the taxpayer, if so is it going to be a burden, ongoing.
      Do the tax payers not mind?

  40. Hah!!!!!!
    Foiled dastardly Disgust plot/inefficiency. I zapped my history, so it played silly B’s when I tried to log on here. I popped over to the Spekkie and did it that way!

    3. Too imprecise a question because family is not defined.

      There are many possible answers. Six is probably the one he’s looking for.

      But equally, each daughter might have a husband and they could have children.
      The son could have a wife and children.
      The daughters could all be adopted and each of them have a brother.
      Mr and Mrs Smith could have parents or even grandparents still alive.
      Mr and Mrs Smith could be divorcees and each have three daughters etc etc.

    5. How many trans siblings who are not willing to declare as either sex?

      No doubt pedants of this parish will use the precise wording to determine if the sisters can share a brother, or is it one each?

      1. It can’t be one brother each, otherwise each daughter would have 3 brothers.

  45. The Salisbury Poisonings review – Novichok drama with lessons for now. Sun 14 Jun 2020.

    Back in Salisbury, we follow the forlorn figure of Dawn Sturgess. She struggles to control her addiction to alcohol, while her endlessly patient, cruelly disappointed mother looks after her daughter, Grace. It is Dawn and her partner who will become the victims of the vial of novichok discarded after the assassination attempt, seven miles away in Amesbury. Bailey, meanwhile, is poisoned during his search of the Skripals’ home, despite a full bodysuit and every other protection. Maybe he should have been told to stay alert.

    Morning everyone. I recorded and watched this first episode early this morning. It is a first class production. Acting, direction, script; it is a reminder of how good the BBC used to be in those halcyon days when it made TV programmes and not Cultural Marxist propaganda. This said it no more tells us what happened in Salisbury than The Private Life of Henry VIII informs us about the English Reformation. It is otiose to criticise it for this lack, because, like Korda’s movie, it is a work of fiction designed to entertain not educate. One could, for example, point out that in the opening scene in the park that the doctor who provided the initial treatment is missing (ironically just as she was in the reports at the time) and the recovery of the Skripals is later attributed to the ambulance crew administering Naloxene (an antidote to Fentanyl) the first time this has ever been mentioned. Is this true? We have no idea. If you point these things out they can all be dismissed as Artistic or Dramatic Licence. So save your breath.

    We are however on safer ground with the quote above which perpetuates, in fact enhances, the myth about the death of Dawn Sturgess. The perfume bottle that killed her could not have been used against the Skripals not only because we do not know if such was used but also because it was still sealed.

    https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/jun/14/the-salisbury-poisonings-review-novichok-drama-with-lessons-for-now

    1. I watched with astonishment as DC Baileys house is exactly the same colour and design as my own! One detail was that in reality they didn’t visit the house for some days because the hamster was dead and the cat on its last legs through dehydration. In the film, they seemed to visit almost immediately, and they did show the cat and the hamster cage!

    2. I wonder if the BLM activists are going to organise a trip to Harry Corbett’s grave to desecrate it?

  47. We have graciously been allowed to dine at restaurants by our conservative(?) government, so we ate at the golf club last night. Oh dear there are restrictions that make it less than enjoyable:

    Tables are spaced six feet apart with no moving of the tables allowed.
    Staff all wearing masks and gloves
    Plastic plates and cutlery, a commercial dishwasher supposedly cannot kill the blessed bug.
    Drinks came in plastic glasses as well, so it was a pint of Pinot with my salad!

    I can hear a lot here saying ignore the rules, well there goes the food and drink license!

    Looking forward to my wife’s visit to the dentist on Wednesday, she is supposed to wear a mask at all times.

    1. Sounds fun.
      We’ll not be bothering with eating out until we are allowed to enjoy ourselves.

  49. Wearing a face mask to keep out a virus is as effective as carrying rice in a bag made of chicken wire.

    1. I don’t think they’re designed to keep a virus out, but to stop one sneezing/coughing/spraying/spluttering (think Roy Hattersley) ones germs and possible infections over others and anything else in the line of fire.

  50. 320146+ up ticks,
    Just had a blood test being a “real UKIP” member of long standing stood me in good stead, true grit, the needle was 6′ 6 6/8″s long and the nurse had the stance of Lancelot.

  51. I see Boris has claimed that ‘Blacks suffer discrimination in education’. The last time I checked, all children are obliged to attend school and receive the same standard of education. What they do with it is up to them.

    1. And the cohort that appears to do worst of all is the poor white working class boys.

      1. That must mean that the system discriminates in favour of black children.

        Edit added b to lack

        1. No! This is not an area where logic can be applied! (Logic, being Greek, is white and racist.)

        2. I think it’s more likely that the boys are left to their own devices, with little encouragement at school as well as at home.

  54. Scientists say most likely number of contactable alien civilisations is 36. Mon 15 Jun 2020 .

    Under the strictest set of assumptions – where, as on Earth, life forms between 4.5bn and 5.5bn years after star formation – there are likely between four and 211 civilisations in the Milky Way today capable of communicating with others, with 36 the most likely figure. But Conselice noted that this figure is conservative, not least as it is based on how long our own civilisation has been sending out signals into space – a period of just 100 years so far.

    The problem here is, as Drake himself phrased it, “If they exist where are they?” Having superior technology they would already be aware of our existence. So we can assume that they have been and not being impressed have left. All this is of course lamentably anthropocentric, since it assumes that a technological “civilisation” is the optimum state. The dinosaurs lasted 66 million years without inventing the wheel. We on the other hand are on the cusp of extinction after a mere 6!

    https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/jun/15/scientists-say-most-likely-number-of-contactable-alien-civilisations-is-36

    1. 320146+ up ticks,
      Afternoon AS,
      So, many have been blaming the likes of the real UKIP
      and the likes of Tommy Robinson and all the time it was the wheel.
      Once again very near on a war footing so I think a quick rendering of 🎵wheel meet again don’t know where…….. is appropriate.

  55. 320146+ up ticks,
    May one ask, what is the news on the invasion front at Dover, has a bridgehead been consolidated, is Dover still English or an occupied
    territory, do priti / johnson know ?
    Was it a joint effort by the lab/lib/con political lowlife to neuter the British Bulldog ?

  56. DT Story

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/14/bishop-calls-statue-henry-morton-stanley-removed/

    Bishop calls for statue of Henry Morton Stanley to be removed
    The bishop of St Asaph, Gregory Cameron, has written to the city council asking for the removal of the monument to Stanley

    What has the Anglican Church come to?

    It should be disestablished and its property confiscated and given to the Roman Catholic Church.

    Reading Gregory Cameron’s background on Wiki he was a chaplain to Rowan Williams when Williams was AofC and is a very influencial figure within the Church with degrees in Law and active in legal matters concerning the church.

    Does anyone on this site still want to remain in the Anglican Church? I don’t.

    1. Good morning Richard

      The Bishop should not meddle in politics , he must reach out and show more empathy to the many Christians whose faith has incurred the wrath of subhuman blacks who torture and murder thousands .. The Church remains silent !

      1. The church needs to return to fundamentals, and cast off all this archbishop hierarchy and gold gown crap.
        “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”, said Jesus. It doesn’t say “with an Archbishop and his retenue of anal retentives”. Do, ditch the church and gather together 2 or 3, (with social distancing, of course).
        Worship without all the flim-flammery.

        1. ‘Morning, Paul, personally I prefer to keep my own counsel and beliefs without the benefit of ANY organised religion.

          Religion and what their God tells ’em, is probably the oldest organised control system in the world and I won’t have any truck with it. I will NOT be controlled by another’s wishes.

          1. “Religion and what their God tells ’em, is probably the oldest organised control system in the world”
            My feelings exactly, Tom. I don’t need, or want, people setting themselves up to tell me how to behave or what to think, and that whatever I do I am wrong. I try to behave according to Christian principles, but to insist that swinging a chalice or whatever is the only way to worship, then fooey to that.

      1. Welby and Cameron had a mission and a common purpose: to destroy the Church of England.

        The project is coming along very nicely.

    3. I guess we all just have to have our own personal dialogue with God .

      We don’t need the Anglican church as it is now , do we , the stuff we all grew up with sufficed sufficiently . I attended church schools when I was a child overseas , and have also been a school governor .

      God won’t mind if we question the values that the present Cof E represents .

    4. Well, they’d better get rid of Livingstone as well. Bloody Scotch missionary interfering with native customs like polygamy, rainmaking, and slavery…

      1. As you imply, Livingstone was one of the sources of intelligence used by the RN during it’s anti-slavery campaigns on both sides of Africa.
        Stanley was quite probably also involved in the same work.

        1. Neither of them were happy about slavery. Livingstone had to accept help from slavers on occasion. As did Stanley who was a rougher sort.

    5. Transfer him to an African diocese, ideally somewhere with a strong Muslim presence on its borders.

    6. 320146+ up ticks,
      Morning R,
      I totally agree but I would say that wooen eye, being of that RC type persuasion .

    7. It should be disestablished and its property confiscated and given to the Roman Catholic Church.
      ……..or turned into a mosque

      1. We want it all back. All the land and property confiscated from the monasteries.

    8. Easy to see why Jules Gomes and Gavin Ashenden became Catholic. Rome will survive a bad pope because it’s about the magisterium not the man. Mind, I stated on Marcus Walker’s Twitter feed when he was discussing the real XR agenda that these things present me with a dilemma with regards to remaining an Anglican and he reminded me that there are many like him still in the Church of England who don’t subscribe to the Cultural Marxist agenda. For how much longer though?

  58. Grrrrr.

    Students past and present call on Dorchester schools to ‘decolonise curriculum’

    “Reflecting on our education within DASP, we feel we were provided with a predominantly white, Eurocentric perspective that often left many of us ignorant to systemic racism and the injustices that black, indigenous and people of colour have faced and continue to face. By de-colonising the curriculum, we mean teaching children from primary school age an honest portrayal of British colonialism and its central role in the slave trade, and how those structures still pervade society globally today.

    https://www.dorsetecho.co.uk/news/18516418.students-past-present-call-dorchester-schools-decolonise-curriculum/?fbclid=IwAR1hWhw_z9ZTFNdOSqkhtwckiQkP-WP5aOAprg5Vrm0M5iPHFSOaqbsOf1Q

    3. “an honest portrayal of British colonialism and its central role in halting the slave trade” – I’m all for it if they learn about how much money and effort the UK put into stopping the trade!

    4. It might sound a bit tautological but colons are arseholes and you can’t do without them!.

    1. If they exterminate white people from London, then there will only be black or brown people left to kill each other.

      1. Which of course they are doing already .

        The police have taken the kneee, and no doubt they will stop their stop and search, and black and brown will quarrel with each other.

    2. When you put it like that, it’s all so obvious.
      Why didn’t we think of that sooner?

    1. The Democrats gave you a choice of senile buffoons so that if either one won office he would die very soon afterwards and Witch Clinton would take over.

      1. That depends on who he choses as his running mate.

        Unless she is his choice and becomes V-P or gets one of the very senior positions in government there are going to have to be a lot of Arkansacides before she gets that far up the pecking order.

    1. Appeasement only means they will come back with more demands. And “silence is violence” is straight our of the Marxist handbook.

      1. Hi Ndovu! This guy seems to be the ultimate upper clarse twit! As you say, appeasement will lead to even more “ethnic cleansing” I always assumed these mandarins to be fairly intelligent people – I was misled!

  64. 320146+ up ticks,
    May one ask,
    Would it be a safer option to have governance ( tax payers) financed
    landing barges operating on the Dover front during the
    current invasion ?
    Thereby using political submissive pcism & appeasement to it’s full extent.

    1. https://order-order.com/2020/06/15/bbc-impartiality-advisers-ultra-partisan-anti-boris-anti-brexit-tweets/

      Former Director of BBC News and now a lecturer at Professor of Journalism at Cardiff University, Richard Sambrook, has been drafted in by the Beeb to advise on impartiality, specifically on platforms like Twitter. So the BBC have turned to the famously not left wing world of academia…

      Guido’s not sure Sambrook is the most impartial of impartiality advisers, having

      Declared “I’m strongly remain” two years after the referendum

      Tweeted that “Donald Trump and Boris Johnson” are “post-truth politicians”

      Shared a Carole Cadwalladr story, adding the words “more Boris lies – now a man of zero integrity”

      Claimed that “Britain is being led to an epic act of national self-harm over Brexit”

      Criticised a letter from Oliver Dowden to Lord Hall over BBC Bias, arguing “Government tries to extend lockdown to independent journalism and critical views”

      Claimed Brexit is not the “will of the British people” because turnout was just 72%

      Called the Government “Shortsighted” and “stupid” for voting down a Lib Dem wrecking amendment on the Erasmus Programme

      Called it a “disgrace” that eurosceptic MEPs received EU funding

      Tweeted out an Independent article entitled “Brexit is going to be far worse than anyone could have guessed”

      Highly critical of Boris Johnson during the EU referendum

      Tweeted about pro-Brexit “Twitter bots” influencing the EU referendum

      Tweeted “Brexit is utterly, utterly stupid”, and “Brexit is like a Premier League side wanting to be relegated”

      The truth is there is far too much anti-Boris anti-Brexit bias to include in one article. Guido found Sambrook’s Twitter account to be more that of a partisan political commentator than an aspiring impartiality tsar. What a bonkers hire for advice on social media conduct…

      1. Perfect. Ideal. He’ll give the BBC what they want. The Government will be satisfied. all-round good – everybody happy.

      2. Hired simply to perpetuate the myth of an impartial beeb. What did you/we expect. They are a total disgrace.

      3. He’s there to advise them how best to become even more biased.

        They’ve chosen the right guy.

      5. Bernard Matthews is tp review whether their should be Turkey on the menu for Christmas Dinner

      1. Really?!
        L
        Just looks a healthy weight to me.

        Real women are not all seven stone.

    3. 320146+ up ticks,
      Afternoon AS,
      May one ask what is the cut of the slush fund priti & johnson are pulling in, there has to be one and with substantial pay offs, being the issue is so blatantly
      carried out.

    4. Today’s Ponder

      A What happens to all the boats

      B Ditto All the people who came in the boats

      C The Border Farce crews and management who allow this fiasco to continue

      D The Minister who allows it to happen

      E The PM who does nothing about it

      F Any outcries from Local MPs

      G Are the Islington Luvvies taken the dregs in

      H Are new phone SIMS being issued to the new arrivals as they disembark

      I Wil the photocopier keep up with supplying documentation

      J How do the incomers move on from Dover

      K To where do they move on

      Just wondering

      1. It’s all arranged in advance OLT. The Home Office is simply a Travel Agency for Immigrants!

        1. Nothing would surprise me. It is very well organised as there hasn’t been a report of immigrants drowning in the Channel: the MSM would be all over it if there had been a tragedy.

          1. The MSM are not all over the tragedy of their arrival, or the tragedy to natives bearing the cost of supporting tens of thousands of illegal immigrants.

      2. What is disturbing is the number of people trolling Farage on this tweet and a few who are glad that the illegals made it safe and sound and welcome their arrival. Some people are either very stupid or have been brainwashed – I can see a possible conflict there as for many of these people a brain was an optional extra and they declined the offer – and see no harm in importing thousands of young fighting age moslem men.

        1. Brainwashed.
          Don’t forget: rioters = “mainly peaceful”
          Opponents of rioters and mass immigration = extreme far right extremists

      3. 320146+ up ticks,
        Afternoon OLT,
        A They return the boats or lose the deposit.
        B The influx helps build the accommodation for
        those following.
        C Slush fund recipients,
        D under a rock.
        E Part & parcel of.
        F Cries of “we want a bigger cut”
        G………
        H All inclusive in the welcome welfare package.
        I see welfare package.
        J limo ( taxpayers hire)
        K Eventually next door to all indigenous.

      4. Have the lifeboatmen of the RNLI been charged with being accessories to the illegal entry to the country of, er, illegal immigrants? If not, why not?

  68. What on earth is wrong with Disqus today? It wouldn’t let me log in, then the page refused to load – on the fourth try I got in again!

      1. Yup. It is rather hit and miss.
        (Crosses fingers, holds breath and presses ‘send’)

      2. I had a problem logging in to the internet on my old computer WDS 7… but not with WDS 10…….

      3. It does that to me sometimes, too.
        But I don’t have the login problems because I never log out. Even if I shut down my laptop completely (because it gets very slow) I don’t have to log in again because I let Firefox restore the pages that were open.

    5. I had problems accessing Disqus this afternoon. I had cause to delete cookies and history as my onscreen keyboard on my iPad froze. it is a pain deleting these but it solved the problem but Disqus had a hissy fit thereafter for half an hour, then suddenly it relented.

  70. Why Putin’s Rating Is at a Record Low. 5 hours ago.

    Russian public opinion is bucking the trend. While the approval ratings of most Western leaders have risen amid the new coronavirus pandemic, President Vladimir Putin’s ratings are consistently falling, taking some governmental institutions down with them. Data collated by the independent Levada Center pollster reveal that the president’s approval ratings slumped to a historical low of 59% in April, and stayed there in May. This may be a new plateau.

    They are “down” to 59% are they? Lol! If you added all the party leaders scores together in the UK they wouldn’t make 60%.

    When did I ever think that I would be jealous of Russia?

    https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/06/15/why-putins-rating-is-at-a-record-low-a70572

    1. While the approval ratings of most Western leaders have risen amid

      Which world leaders are those then?

  71. Andrew Banks jailed for urinating near PC Keith Palmer memorial after 16 pints. 15 JUN 2020

    A man has been jailed for 14 days for urinating next to the PC Keith Palmer memorial in Westminster after drinking 16 pints.

    Andrew Banks, 28, appeared at Westminster Magistrates’ Court where he admitted to outraging public decency after being pictured urinating next to the monument during Saturday’s far-right protests in central London.

    So it was faked then!

    https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/breaking-man-admits-urinating-next-22193760

    1. Normally he would have received a £50 fine. Doesn’t bode well for those prosecuted for deliberately defacing a monument. /sarc

      1. The law has for a long time been applied more severely to the right than to the left.

        Why?

        1. BBC local news interviewed a person who proudly admitted to pulling on the ropes that toppled the Colston statute. They plastered his name across the screen to help the Avon & Somerset knee benders. No news of an arrest much less a conviction.
          White privileged my @r$e!

        2. The Judiciary like all our Institutions are infested with Common Purpose drones.

          It is why there have been so few convictions of Pakistani rapists. The ones that are, are also given short sentences.

          2. “The Judiciary like all our Institutions are infested with Common Purpose drones.”

            In that case we need to urgently develop large quantities of a fly spray that specifically targets Common Purpose drones as well as their queens and workers!

          3. In that case we need to urgently develop large quantities of a fly spray that specifically targets Common Purpose drones as well as their queens and workers !

      2. I’m surprised it wasn’t a suspended sentence, though two weeks should be enough time to give the BAME fellow prisoners plenty of time to make their feelings known.

        1. I’m surprised it wasn’t a conditional discharge – don’t commit another offence within 12/24 months or you’ll be brought back to court and sentenced for both the new and old offences.

          1. I’m not an expert on sentencing alternatives in such cases, yours is probably a better option.
            What seems very strange in this case is how quickly it’s all gone through, compared with other offences recently.

          2. The courts are probably only dealing with very serious cases at the moment like murder, rape, hate crime and alleged far right peeing in public. :-((

      3. Don’t worry Mr AA.

        The Police have already stated that they decline to prosecute Ms. Al Waly who defaced the Cenotaph. .

  73. And Democrats insisted Trump’s nominees to the Supreme Court must be biased.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53055632

    The US Supreme Court has ruled that employers who fire workers for being gay or transgender are breaking the
    country’s civil rights laws.

    In a 6-3 decision it said federal law, which prohibits discrimination based on sex, should be understood
    to include sexual orientation.

  74. Oh no!! How sad…never mind.

    Matthew Lynn
    Germany is picking up the tab for Brexit
    15 June 2020, 5:10pm

    https://images.contentstack.io/v3/assets/bltf04078f3cf7a9c30/blt1f5c08d1638b07f2/5ee78e281c3f04391d81915d/GettyImages-1202300646.jpg?format=jpg&width=1920&height=1080&fit=crop

    The car workers would pay a heavy price. The City would be muscled out of crucial markets. The Treasury would be sinking in red ink as tax receipts went into freefall, and farmers would lose their subsidies. During the long, painful debate about the UK’s departure from the EU there were lots of different groups which, we heard repeatedly, would pay a price for that. But now that we are out, we are finally getting a definitive answer. There will be a price to be paid. But it will be German tax-payers who will be picking up the tab, not anyone in Britain. And that could hardly come at a worse time.

    EU leaders are due to meet on Friday to discuss the Budget for the next seven years. Boris Johnson doesn’t have a lot to be thankful for right now, but at least he doesn’t have to go through the ritual humiliation of trying to hammer out a compromise in Brussels in the middle of the night and facing furious headlines whatever deal he brings home. Instead, he can leave that dubious pleasure to Angela Merkel.

    According to a report in Die Welt today, the Commission is planning a 13 billion euro (£11.7bn), or 42 per cent, increase in the German contribution to the EU. It currently pays in 31 billion euros (£27bn) to the EU Budget, but over the next seven year the annual amount will go up to 44 billion euros (£39bn). That will make it by far the biggest contributor to the EU on both a net and gross basis. That may be about to get worse. The EU is about to borrow 750bn euros (£672bn) for its Coronavirus Recovery Fund. It remains to be seen exactly how that will be dished out – there will be another fierce struggle about that – but because Germany has been relatively lightly hit by Covid-19 it should receive less money than Italy, Spain and France, but as the biggest economy it will still pay in more than anyone else.

    In effect, Germany in paying the price for Britain’s departure. Ironically, the 13bn euros increase in its subs almost matches the UK’s gross contribution (14.6 billion euros (£13bn) in 2018), although the net figure was significantly less.

    Maybe the average German won’t mind about that, although you wouldn’t want to bet your last Bratwurst on it. But it could not have come at a worse time. Germany’s once mighty economic engine was already looking to like it was about to run out of steam. Its car industry, by far the largest sector of the economy, is stuck with a range of big diesel SUVs at a moment when they are about as popular as a sneeze at the supermarket check-out (the electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla is now worth more than BMW and Mercedes combined), and its export-orientated, manufacturing based economic model looks uniquely vulnerable in a world where trade has ground to a halt.

    The government is spending billions to prop up its economy, but it may need to re-invent itself as well, and that is not going to be easy. Germany, for historical reasons, has always been remarkably relaxed about funding the EU, in a way the British never were. Its tolerance is now about to be pushed to the limit – and quite possibly beyond it.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/germany-is-picking-up-the-tab-for-brexit

    2. What they need to do is declare war on China.

      Well, not really, but Russia never works out too well for Europeans.
      The UK is no longer worth the effort.
      The French would capitulate and expect to be paid.
      The rest of Europe is more trouble than it’s worth …

    3. We aren’t out yet. The time to celebrate is New Year’s Eve – I’ll have the champers on ice.

    5. Maintaining empires is an expensive hobby.
      This time, it’s the Mediterranean countries giving the Germans their place in the sun.

    1. Bert ” Have I still got what it takes?”

      Ada “Yes and no”

      Bert “What do you mean ?”

      Ada “The hose is there, but it’s floppy and leaks.”

    2. Ada – ” What is worse peeing on the Winston Churchill monument or peeing near PC Keith Palmer’s memorial”?

      Bert – ” Both as bad as each other, Ada, but according to Dick it depends if you favour the Left or the Right”.

    1. The RSC are ‘shocked and appalled’ over the use of one word – ‘garish’. They must be very thin-skinned.

      1. They were also “shocked and appalled” by BP funding student discounted tickets for their oh-so-woke productions, and told BP to shove it!

    2. Macbeth was on last night in modern dress. Somewhat barmy when you consider that it was a historical play when Shakespeare wrote it.
      It looked odd. Not what we are used to unless of course you’re used to weird approaches to drama.

      1. In Shakespeare’s day plays were performed in modern – ie 16th century – dress (and the women’s parts were played by boys). They also had to contend with toffs sitting on the apron.

  78. Police to Veterans at Cenotaph :” Winston Churchill’s statue’s coming down anyway. His granddaughter’s requested it. The Cenotaph’s coming down also. They’re moving it.”
    Then “This is a sterile area. If you stay here you’ll be arrested, and you’ll spend the weekend in the cells.”

    Not in any way not trying to rile up the Veterans and cause trouble, eh?

    https://britannianews.co.uk/2020/06/15/must-watch-ex-servicemen-gives-a-hard-hitting-truthful-account-on-his-time-in-london-it-was-orchestrated-by-the-media-and-police-to-make-us-veterans-look-bad/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

    1. Grizzly

      Please get some of your old mates together and go and sort out this repulsive group of people who have the effrontery to call themselves police men and women.

  80. As a black police officer, I know the Met is still institutionally racist. Mon 15 Jun 2020.

    I’ve seen and heard how an environment of micro-aggressions and white privilege affects fellow BAME officers in the force, forcing them to carefully navigate a minefield while feeling hemmed in on either side. The Metropolitan Black Police Association has been championing the fair treatment of BAME officers, yet the playing field is still not remotely level. To this day, a BAME officer is twice as likely as a white officer to be subject to a misconduct allegation. And as we saw in the treatment of Carol Howard, Robyn Williams and Khafi Kareem, if a black officer commits a misdemeanour there is a greater likelihood of the press getting hold of it and plastering it across the tabloids.

    The inclination to blame outside agencies for the difficulties in our lives and work is a universal human trait. It helps to avoid the unwelcome conclusion that we ourselves are indequately equipped either emotionally or psychologically to deal with the world. In primitive societies it is the Gods, or if a little more advanced, the Devil. If you are here in the modern world, it is the Other, White, Black, whatever, that is hindering us in the search for our own supremacy, for make no mistake, that is what it is. Not a fair shake or equality but to possess what is thought to be the superior means and possessions of others. To take it by force if possible and by fraud if not. This search for ascendancy is intrinsic to all human beings, since that dominance increases your chances of survival in a hostile world. This is why BLM should be resisted, not because you are racist but because you are either at the top or the bottom of the heap and the real bottom is the grave.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/15/black-police-officer-met-institutionally-racist-bame-officers

    1. Some thing puzzles me Minty ..

      Are Indians classified as black , or is it only black American/ African . Do we hear Indian voices ranting forth.. no we don’t do we .

    2. As the Man said:

      The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars
      But in ourselves ………………………………….

    3. Ali Dizaei MET Police Commander was much misunderstood. It’s their culture you see. Being a liar, cheat and a fraud is part and parcel.

      And WTF is microaggression? He looked at me funny? FFS.

    4. When do we hear the “Metropolitan White Policeman’s Association” comments on this farrago??
      Oh wait……………………………

    6. “The fault, dear black, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings…”

    7. Some thing puzzles me Minty ..

      Are Indians classified as black , or is it only black American/ African . Do we hear Indian voices ranting forth.. no we don’t do we .

      1. Most of them are too busy working – running shops or being doctors, most Indian people are busy and hardworking.

        2. Yes, agree, Indians are the ones with property , businesses, IT skills, scientific knowledge , strict family rules , pride and as you say admirably hardworking.

          Blacks have victimhood nicely sewn up , don’t they.

          1. Were the Muslim hordes on the march at the weekend? Or were they saving themselves for later? It does seem that BLM members are of a more black or mixed race hue.

          2. They are holding back from all this Ndovu the better to take over when the present protagonists are exhausted!

          3. They are probably aware that their esteemed leader was a slave owner too. No wonder they don’t allow statues and drawings of him.

        3. The strange thing is that in general black people do not seem to have a lower middle class; there are plenty of well-educated upper middle class people such as doctors and lawyers but very few self-employed business people as many Asians are. So, if you’r black you’re either upper-middle class or working class.

          Why is that?>

          1. IMHO lack of access to decent education and working capital.

            A typical indian family live 3 generations to one house. The kids marry and move their wives into the family home. They often own other houses but rent them out to pay the mortgage off.

            A typical black person lives in an inner city council estate, has had a poor education and doesn’t have 15 incomes coming into one well-filled household.

          2. So are you saying that the majority of blacks don’t possess much up top despite the educational and welfare opportunities they had available?

          3. No. Im saying they don’t have the opportunities.

            Most inner-city schools are rubbish, and most sink estates are crime-ridden cess pits.

            Doesn’t really matter what your IQ is if you don’t have access to a reasonable school or capital to start a business.

            We talk a lot about ‘equal opportunities’ but really they don’t exist. We call something like access to education equal opportunity, yet the inner city black has access to the local comprehensive which often can’t even be chosen. Whereas someone with a silver spoon born in their mouth will have access to some of the best private schools and is far more likely to go to an at least Russell-group university. Yes we all have equal opportunity to ‘education’ but the quality of the education we are able to get varies wildly. The indian family with so much money coming in to just one household can move into a catchment area for a good school and often has family help when setting up a business and access to capital to get it off the ground.
            My previous indian boss has 6 incomes coming in and they own 4 houses with 3 of them rented out. His best friend who lives around the corner is not indian but bengali and that family has 10 incomes coming in, owns a restaurant that has done well for 25 years. One of the children has a good job as an accountant, the others set their own businesses up. The bengali family were all privately educated.
            How does ‘welfare opportunities’ promote either capital accumulation or educational attainment? Assisted places might be available still, I don’t know, but those were aimed at middle-class families not sink estate blacks. Their only option is to land a scholarship which doesn’t happen often.

          4. Well, if its sink estates you want, there are plenty of them, filled with white people. Edinburgh – Wester Hailes, Niddrie, Pilton.

      1. Look more like cheap oven chips.
        Evening, Geoff. Hope you’re keeping well.

        1. Yo, Paul. Fine, thanks. Apart from a bit of a blister on the right stump, but that’s under control. I’m not posting much at the moment, since I’m totally peed off with the news. And busy tarting up the cottage before it goes on the market. I don’t stand to benefit directly from the sale, but – for example – I’ve sheets of plasterboard here which would cost a lot more to throw away than they cost to buy. And I’ve bugger all else to do…

          1. News schmooze. It’s still all Corona – like the beer, all piss and wind, and keeps repeating.
            We’re mostly back to normal in Norway, except for the distancing. Was out to dinner with a lovely Irish lass last week, this week a statuesque Polish lass taking me out to dinner.
            Tough life, eh? And it’s to be 26C tomorrow… I’ll have one for all Y’all.

          3. Excellent. Had a couple of friends round yesterday. One, the ex, is into ‘bubbles’ now. Having stayed with one friend for two nights, then having met up with at least six more friends and relations, plus a hairdresser, I suggested that her ‘bubbles’ were more accurately described as ‘foam’…

      2. The mediaeval joists in my house are wider than deep. This is because the carpenter placed more importance on the width of the tenon joint where mortised into the primary beam. This enabled two bored pegs to fasten the joint.

        Modern joists are no longer reliant on a purely carpentry connection so the timber can be shaped/utilised for its structural properties. Even so the joists could be much less deep at the ends as the maximum bending stress is at its centre. For this reason in the early development of iron framed structures such as the Mills of Joseph and William Strutt in Belper etc., the iron beams are both wider and deeper at mid section than at the column supports.

        You will know this but it might be of interest to others.

        2. We have a small cottage in the garden which has huge oak beams.
          Why?
          They are so out of scale with everything else here, that they stick out like a sore thumb. They are possibly twice the size of the main beams in the chateau. The cottage beams are clearly younger oak whereas the house beams look as if they’ve been used several times before, elsewhere, The cottage beams are also “splitting” as they age; the cracks follow the grain. The beams here have no splits but groan and creak as the weather/temperature/humidity changes.

          I love it, it’s as if the house is alive. What I hope is that it doesn’t mean it’s about to collapse around our ears!

          1. Our house creaks and moves. It is perfectly normal for old peg jointed structures to move. If they did not move they would possibly fall down. With shallow footings, if any, old structures are prone to soil conditions such as clay heave if in proximity to large trees.

            Some of our modern ledged and boarded timber doors will bind at certain times as a result of fractional movements in the oak frame of the house. Joints open and close and creaking noises are particularly audible in the quiet of night.

            Green oak was used simply because it was easier to cut and fashion with iron tools than seasoned oak. Green oak inevitably splits and cracks as it dries out. This characteristic is less prevalent in heart wood.

            I suspect your outbuildings were built by estate workers who will not necessarily have the same expertise as the builder of the main house. They felled a tree on the estate and used it as best they could.

          2. Reassuring, thank you.

            Yours is certainly a lot older than mine.

            Bits of mine will be very old, looking at the stones, but I suspect they’ve been stolen to build it.

        3. The first use of steel frames for large buildings that led to the development of the New York Skyscrapers.

          Interestingly, I’ve a vintage catalogue from a company called RA Skelton for “Broad Flanged Beams, Grey Process” that, by a rearrangement of the rollers are an improvement on the standard RSJ.

          Surprisingly, I’ve just found it on an internet archive page!

          https://archive.org/details/SteelConstructionAndBroadFlangeBeamsGreyProcess/mode/2up

          1. Yup Bob. The development of steel framed buildings all started in Derbyshire. Initially the mill owners wished to achieve a higher degree of fire resistance and used heavy pine or fir beams sitting above cast iron columns. The timber beams were clad with metal. This proved unsuccessful so they developed cast and wrought iron beams shaped to sit above cast iron columns. The early columns were cruciform and later annular.

            Edit: the floors were a series of shallow hollow clay pot arches with sand pugging above and pine boards atop. These spanned between the primary and secondary beams.

            I find this aspect of architectural history fascinating.

          2. When I obtained the Skelton catalogue I was surprised that to get his rolling process accepted Grey had to go to Belgium and the USA.
            Being aware of the difference between a Grey Beam and an RSJ, I realised that OLE structures on the Railway used Grey Beams.

        4. The deeper midsections is beautifully demonstrated in early iron bridges, where they rivetted extra plates on as you got closer to the mid-point.
          BTW, I love rivetted constructions… I’ll get me fur-lined anorak!

          1. In my work I often find pre-1933 steel structures fabricated with British Standard Beams. These are usually I-Sections but with wider steel plates riveted to the flanges of the smaller sections. The riveting was performed in the steelworks.

            I have a catalogue for these British Standard Beams and connection details as produced in Middlesbrough by Dorman Long & Co. Ltd.

            Dorman Long supplied the steel for the Tyne Bridge and Sydney Harbour Bridge along with many other important steel structures.

  82. Completely and utterly off topic.
    Great pleasures in life:

    Hares.

    I’ve been cutting around some of the semi-wild parts of the estate and I startled a leveret. The little creature was hunkered down and I had not noticed it. Luckily, at this time of the year, I always cut fairly slowly, specifically for that eventuality.

    It suddenly shot away to the nearest heather bush. It went in head first and obviously thought it was completely invisible, just resting there, static. Silly thing didn’t realize that it was completely visible apart from its nostrils. It was only a little larger than a clenched fist.

    If one talks to them very softly, the ears come up and the eyes open to see what’s going on. One can get very close to them, I could have touched this one, but it was so young I feared that if I had done so it would have had a heart attack.

    The adults had been very visible this evening, but not near the leveret’s ground. As the sun has gone down they’ve moved to the back of the house where the little one is.

    It’s fascinating to watch. I suspect there are other leverets in and around the edge of our woods, judging by the movements of the bigger ones.

    3. When we lived on the edge of a Colchester village, the hares lived in one field. We never saw them anywhere else around; just the one field beside the house.
      The size of them is astounding; there’s no way you can mistake them for a rabbit.

      1. If you are driving and see them out of thr corner of your eyeein a field you can mistake them for small deer. (Well, I have…)

        1. Agreed.
          I had an adult hare in a scrape close to the house which I saw head on from the path.
          At first sight I thought a small deer had got through the fencing. The head shape with the ears half erect can look the same.

          It’s interesting watching them from the rear, the ears and the tail combine to make them look like the head of a much larger animal.

      2. I love watching them. As you say there’s no mistaking them.

        Yesterday I had one lolloping along the path a couple of feet from where I was sitting, huge eyes watching me, but because I didn’t move, it was completely unconcerned. I suspect I could easily have grabbed its ears. The legs are like coiled springs, out of proportion to the body.

        I cut paths through the meadows and they use them to move around the grounds.

        I try to approach them calmly, I whistle Lilli Bolero (really!) and they recognise the tune and I talk to them very calmly, they don’t flee unless I move too fast.

        The leveret today I could have picked up.

        1. Hares are native to Britain.
          Boadicea used to release one before battle to divine the result.
          Presumably the one released before the Battle of Watling Street turned the wrong way.

      4. I painr rabbits on my bald head and from a distance they look like hares.

      5. When I was living in Colchester the second time, I went out with the Easton Harriers. On the way back to the horse box, I saw a single hound who had got detached from the pack hunting a hare; puss ran about, but the hound didn’t cut the corner and take her. He just followed the scent.

      6. At a distance more likely to mistake them for a small deer like a munkjack (?sp).

    4. ” I suspect there are other leverets in and around the edge of our woods”
      They have form for doing that.

      1. But it ain’t a good strategy here. They’re much better placed nearer the house

        Lots of stone and pine martens, stoats and weasels.

        Not to mention many, many owls and daylight raptors.

        When we arrived there was a real rabbit problem. “Wilding” the garden soon solved that!

        If only I could encourage a mole predator.

    5. What a lovely description; thank you!

      I saw my first hare up close last year, and it was a magical experience.

  84. Sadly, the body of the F15 pilot has been recovered from the North Sea. Shit happens, I suppose. I worked on three projects at RAF Lakenheath in a previous life. The USAF have a hospital there which serves all of Europe. We upgraded it. Plus a new Histopathology Laboratory – nuff said. And as place where they did stuff with missiles. Prolly…

    1. I’m sorry to hear that. When they said they didn’t know the status of the pilot, I thought it wouldn’t be good news. Unless he ejected and was found pretty quickly, the prognosis wasn’t brilliant.

    2. How was his body found? USAF Search and Rescue, UK Coastguards – sadly the RAF no longer have much in ghe way of an S&R capability?

        1. I clicked the link and immediately realised I’d seen it before.

          The engineering and architectural skills of their builders is humbling.

          1. Fascinating. The Sixties, remarkable for its lack of diversity (except for Euston wiring).

  87. A propos of nothing in particular, I went shopping today – the day non-essentials were open. It was almost like being back to normal; no queues, not even at Iceland where they are normally queueing round the block! Admittedly, I didn’t try Sainsbury’s. Managed to get to the opticians, even a charity shop was open. At some time I shall be able to get the print of Elizabeth the Spitfire framed because the gallery was open. The High Street had been pedestrianised, but there were hardly any pedestrians. Will probably have to go to either the local hospital or Shrewsbury audiology tomorrow to get MOH’s hearing aid fixed. Why do people have to fiddle with gadgets?

    6. Im sure one or two of the usual suspects will be along to tell us how wonderful and enriching this is for the French people.

    1. We’ve not had any try to rebuild their nests in the eaves of our house this year. There’s a nest under the roof overhang next door, and I’m guessing other houses here.
      The angle of our pitched roof is too wide, and the previous year’s nests have been washed out and destroyed by various storms, and it seems the house martins just haven’t bother to rebuild them.

    1. Our favorite restaurant opens again on 4th july. Is this the begining of the end……….

      4. “‘Tis the anniversary of the publication of the declaration of independence from Great Britain in 1776. Patriotic displays and family events are organized throughout the United States.”

        Is your favorite [sic] restaurant an American franchise, Johnny ?

      5. No. It will be the ‘new normal’. Tables socially distanced, further away than you could possibly have imagined and face masks and gloves. Oh, and prices will have risen to account for the loss of earnings from fewer covers due to the ‘socially distanced’.

        1. If you don’t feel comfortable wearing a mask on public transport, simply don’t wear it and if challenged say that under Part 1 Section 4 (a) of The Health Protection (CV, Wearing of Face Coverings on Public Transport) you are exempt as they cause you severe anxiety.

        2. In parts of Ontario we were allowed to dine out a couple of days ago.

          As mentioned this morning, patio only, tables six feet apart, plastic plates, cutlery and wine glasses made for the downbeat “new normal” experience.

          Mandatory hand sanitizing on entry and the staff sanitised everything after we finished. Prices have risen as you predict.

          The best thing was the fancy hand sanitiser, it has a nice pina colada smell.

        3. I met with the MD of one of our shop fitter clients earlier today. My wife ensured the safe distance requirement and he peed in the garden after coffee.

          He has paid staff 3 months redundancy on full pay and claimed a bit on the government compensation scheme. His company was owed about half a million and was therefore owing half a million. He had to sell about half of his collection of classic and historic cars to pay bills and help meet the salaries of retained staff and pay the rental on his offices.

          When I see a bunch of useless wankers with no jobs, all living on benefits and contributing sod all to the community making an exhibition of their innate ignorance on our streets I weep.

          What the hell has happened to our once great country?

    3. I was only able to see the illustration for that. Any chance you could let me have the method?

      1. Aber selbstverständlich…

        This is simple but luxurious (it’s rich so you don’t need a huge serving). Add cooked broccoli, shreds of Parma ham, lardons (tossing them in at the last minute), or just have it as it is.
        Prep time: 1 minute | Cooking time: 15 minutes
        SERVES
        Four
        INGREDIENTS
        300ml double cream
        Juice of 1½ lemons and zest of 2
        325g dried egg fettuccine
        50g Parmesan, grated, plus more to serve
        METHOD
        Put the cream, lemon juice and zest into a sauté pan and bring to the boil. Reduce by a third, though be careful – it reduces very quickly.

        Cook the pasta in plenty of boiling salted water until al dente.
        Add the cheese and some seasoning to the cream.
        Drain the pasta and add it to the pan. Heat through gently for about 40 seconds and serve with extra Parmesan.

        I used soured cream, which needed using up, plenty of freshly ground black pepper & tagliatelle.

          1. I find many of the daily recipes in the DT useful, but you sometimes have to tweak the ingredients. Some of the cooks are down-to-earth, while others are away with the fairies.

        2. I would have thought boiling up the lemon juice and cream together would curdle if you weren’t careful?

          1. Ah. das ist die Kunst. 😉

            Seriously, I would have thought so too, but it doesn’t seem to happen. Soured cream & crème fraiche have already been treated with acidifiers.

          2. I’ll try it with creme fraiche as I don’t usually buy double cream. Though i did use creme fraiche last week in a recipe without lemons and it curdled quite nicely.

          3. To quote Nigella: it’s nothing to be afraid of.

            I think the answer is to keep stirring over a fairly gentle heat. It doesn’t take long; it’s not a risotto.

    2. It makes me smile the way the first cat licks its lips before trying to take a chunk out of the hand.

  94. I thought I knew that name

    “For anyone who thinks the name Emma Arbuthnot – the idiot sentencing the
    bloke for peeing in public on Saturday – is familiar, it is.

    She is the same hysterical Common Purpose bitch who sent a parliamentary
    candidate to prison for daring to oppose the foul Anna Soubry.

    Keep an eye on Mrs Arbuthnot. She’s a wrong ‘un.”
    Edit
    “She was also the judge involved in rejecting the appeal of Assange after the Swedes cancelled the original warrant.

    Establishment “go to”!
    Plus of course forced to disqualify herself over complaints of “connections” in the Uber case

      1. after scouring youtube and wasting a good few minutes, I can say that he is apparently called Patrick McGuinness. And he does something on BitChute whatever that may be. And he ain’t a copper, definitely etc.

    4. As long as she convicts the thug who threw a bicycle at a police officer for assault and jail for 10 years the two weeks this bloke got is negligible.

    1. I have just scanned through the Daily Fail. It has left me with the distinct impression that every act of violence has been carried out by a “far right thug”.
      Not one by anyone other than “far right”

      Our MSM never fails to disgust me.

    1. I don’t watch it at all any more. I remember the Pravda days: seems like the beeb has modelled itself on that.

      1. Yo! Tryers.

        You are so fast at this you beat the Boss at his own game!!

        By the way…….where is he?

  103. I received this missive from my MP via his CCO controlled website.

    June 2020

    Dear Constituent,

    Thank you for writing to me about the Black Lives Matter movement, and the current state of affairs around the world. I share your alarm about what happened in the USA, and was shocked and horrified by the tragic death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Our Government and all right minded people in public life have condemned this killing unequivocally, as do I.
    Racism has no place in our society, and is an evil that we should collectively work towards eliminating. I strongly oppose the unlawful use of violence in any form, and I am heartened that thousands of people have chosen to express their strong emotions in a peaceful manner, respecting social distancing rules.

    In this vein, I condemn the conduct of some protestors in their use of violence against the police, including in London over the weekend. I greatly value the Metropolitan Police Service, Surrey Police and other police forces across the country in the vital work they do in keeping us safe, and violence against the police and police horses is completely unacceptable.

    Regarding exports to the United States, the Government takes its export control responsibilities very seriously. The UK operates one of the world’s most robust and transparent export control regimes, with each export licence application considered on a case-by-case basis against the Consolidated EU and National Arms Export Licensing Criteria. The Consolidated Criteria provide a thorough risk assessment framework, requiring the Government to think very carefully about the possible impact of providing equipment and its capabilities. My understanding is that the Government will not grant an export licence if doing so would be inconsistent with the criteria.

    I was gravely concerned to read the figures that suggest that those from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) backgrounds are at greater risk of Covid-19. I have shared these concerns with ministerial colleagues, who too recognise that these are troubling figures and commissioned Public Health England (PHE) to research this. PHE’s report can be accessed via:
    https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/890258/disparities_review.pdf

    As I say, I share your sentiments about the death of George Floyd and we must strive to eradicate the remnants of racism in our society. We have come a huge way over recent decades but there is certainly more to do. I assure you that I do everything I can to support firm but fair policing and justice here in Woking, Surrey and the wider UK, and I think we can be proud of our Surrey Police and their current leadership and officers.

    I also believe that, with the continuing threat of coronavirus, we must continue to abide by social distancing measures and follow the rules designed to save lives. Thousands of my constituents have suffered both personal and professional hardship due to coronavirus and its impact, and in light of these sacrifices we cannot allow progress in defeating the virus to stall.

    I will continue to oppose racism and to support the right to protest peacefully and lawfully, and I strongly value the work of our police, who have worked hard over recent decades to reclaim their reputation one of the finest and fairest police forces in the world.

    Thank you again for writing to me about these really important issues.

    This is my response

    I have read with disgust the Conservative Central Office link they put on your website.

    They have missed the whole point and are scared to stand up for the majority of the British Public. George Floyd was an addict high on drugs who was being arrested. I agree that the method used to restrain him was wrong and that police officer has been sacked, quite rightly so, and is now in prison awaiting trial for murder again quite rightly so.

    CCO must have been watching a different news to me a week ago last Saturday, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/06/thousands-set-attend-black-lives-matter-protests-across-uk-despite/.

    27 police officers were injured on 6 June and a ‘protester’ pushed a bike into a police horse the the rider had been thrown from. The Cenotaph was desecrated and the statue of Sir Winston Churchill was defaced. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-52954899. And the police stood by and did nothing!
    And of all those arrested the only one to be dealt with in court was a drunk who urinated in public beside the memorial to a police office, no on it. He appeared in court very quickly and was sentenced to 2 weeks in prison. On the basis of that sentence the prison population would double each week between Friday night and Monday morning.

    BLM is a racist Marxist organisation that is dedicated to the overthrow of democracy and capitalism and the destruction of the family unit and this is the organisation that all politicians and their parties are fawning over. Britain is NOT a racist country. If it was there wouldn’t be hundreds of thousands try to get here if all they were going to do is be abused.

    Why is the political class so keen to see the destruction of our society, the removal of statues etc.

    When are you all going to stand up for our culture and call out these disruptive and dangerous demonstrators. It is likely that if you do nothing to stop them the politicians will probably be the first targets. Opposition will not be allowed.

    Wake up it’s time for leadership not cowardice. You don’t all have to be sheep and follow, we need someone to stand up and be counted in favour of our indigenous population and those who want to integrate. We have always been a country that welcomed people who were going to work. In the current phase we are going through we need to halt immigration and let the 600,000 plus who came in last year to integrate and get legitimate employment. If they are illegal they should be deported immediately and if they want to appeal it should be from the safe country they passed through to get here.

    Another rant but your website head office message is likely to ensure you will not be elected again.

    1. Afternoon Alf. I notice the phrasing of the letter is suitably ambivalent so that no one reading it would be unable to take umbrage at it. It is this assumption that we are all too stupid to notice that offends me the most!

  104. The logical conclusion of this quest for those opposed to a political orthodoxy where everyone are victims is insurrection. Most fair minded folk will no longer tolerate this false narrative. The politicians need to clue up fast, otherwise they will be disposed of as has happened in our past.

  105. what they need is plaques with real information, just as lloyds should have, and great houses build on slavery money.

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