Wednesday 17 June: The Rhodes Must Fall campaign follows the ideals of Nelson Mandela

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/06/16/lettersthe-rhodes-must-fall-campaign-follows-ideals-nelson-mandela/

689 thoughts on “Wednesday 17 June: The Rhodes Must Fall campaign follows the ideals of Nelson Mandela”

  1. Good Morning Folks,

    Cloudy start here.

    The Parakeets are back, been watching the face off between the BLM parakeets and the statue defending crows, magpies and pigeons most mornings and evenings.

  3. Dismay as No 10 adviser is chosen to set up UK race inequality commission

    Munira Mirza has doubted existence of institutional racism and criticised ‘culture of grievance’
    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/9f9c2a6699500e3b01e3fa2000ae3a005c24bb73/0_126_3000_1800/master/3000.jpg?width=620&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=1ea85962d6c47c16385dba59578c0dbe
    Munira Mirza, the head of the No 10 policy unit, is leading much of the work to form the commission.

    Oh no!! The dispensers of UK taxpayers’ involuntary largesse are dismayed that they can’t fix the result before the commission is convened.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/15/dismay-over-adviser-chosen-set-up-uk-race-inequality-commission-munira-mirza

    2. Why does the head of any ‘committee’ looking into any aspect of race relations have to be a BAME?

      2. Given that the Guardian is exposing it’s own inherent racism by objecting to her, I think she’s an excellent choice.

      1. ‘Morning, Bob.

        How long is it since you…

        No, actually you’re right.

    4. I distrust any government commission. Inevitably it will find what the government wants.

      I also utterly distrust the mob, because they will see what they want to, especially when it isn’t there.

      If we want to actually resolve racism then we have got to stop talking about it. When we make an issue out of it we create a victim rather than a person. It continually seems that some people are obsessed with ‘doing something’ not to help others, but to make themselves feel better.

      1. If we want to resolve racism we need to ditch multiculturalism, insist on one rule for all, no quotas, no translations and stop importing so many people who don’t fit in.

  4. What fun!!

    LIBDEM LEADERSHIP TEAMS FLING INSULTS
    Last night the Mirror exposed comments from LibDem leadership contender Wera Hobhouse, accusing her opponent Ed Davey of having a “heart which beats with the Tories”, as well as attacking former leader Jo Swinson for a “daft” election campaign. Hobhouse is brave to attack Davey for being a secret Tory, given her and her husband are both former Tory councillors, who defected to the LibDems in 2013 without by-elections…

    Things have been getting nasty behind the scenes as well. Hobhouse will be unaware of usually anonymous LibDem activists emailing Guido’s inbox over the last fortnight with repeated accusations of hypocrisy over her support of the Colston statue felling, alleging her husband’s family wealth comes from Isaac Hobhouse, a Bristolian slave trader who operated at the same time as Colston. Guido couldn’t plot a decisive family tree, so chose to leave the family squabbles alone…

  5. They are back on about the UK being one of the richest countries in the world and about foreign aid this morning, as they keep telling us what a racist country we are I’m surprised we give anything.
    In any case they will all still hate us however much we give.

    1. Of course, because as with everything else, weakening nation states is the motive in preparation for global government.

        1. I might believe that when I learn how many are getting their P45s.

          I suspect that the current DfID incumbents will carry on as before with the only change being new headers on their letters.

  6. SIR – At 5 pm each day, a government minister reads out statistics about Covid-19 deaths, tests and infections, and then graphs are displayed showing the same numbers in comparison to those of the previous week.

    The minister may then talk about some specific initiative relating to their brief. This is usually no better than marketing puff and is ignored in the questions that follow, and in post-briefing news programmes.

    Then come the questions. Those from the public are usually relevant to Covid-19, but then the journalists start. It is clear that their questions (especially those from the BBC, ITV and Sky journalists) are not designed to illuminate or clarify government policy on the pandemic, nor to acknowledge progress, but instead represent opportunities to grandstand and try to get a “Gotcha” moment.

    News outlets later follow up by focusing on the question that their own journalist asked – questions usually unrelated to Covid-19.

    What is the point of continuing these briefings? We can find the statistics online from news outlets, the initiatives announced are usually irrelevant or ignored, and the questioning has become a 2020 version of bear-baiting.

    Steve Narancic
    Wantage, Oxfordshire

    1. The interests of the media are to justify the biases of their consumers. The problem is, they’ve forgotten that their consumers are not their own personal echo chamber of rich, well educated, Left wing, isolated, secure West London yuppies with expense accounts.

  7. Britain needs a truth and reconciliation commission, not another racism inquiry. 17 June 2020.

    The findings of these reviews are plain. What’s needed isn’t more investigation of these issues, but action to confront them. If Johnson were really keen to offer a new way to address the persistence of racial inequality in the UK, he would follow the example of Belgium’s parliamentary chair, who last week called for a truth and reconciliation commission (TRC) to address his country’s legacy of empire. Many of the problems being called out by the BLM protesters, from the public monuments celebrating slave traders to the institutional racism of the police, have their roots in empire.

    Morning everyone. It is hardly worth arguing against these idiotic proposals since they can only have been dreamed up by someone whose connection with reality is tenuous at best. There is no one alive who can remember the Slave Trade let alone have participated in it. One should look at them more as establishing a narrative intended to assert the moral degeneracy of white civilisation so that its people can be robbed not only of their birth right and possessions but eventually their lives.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/16/britain-truth-reconciliation-commission-racism-imperial

    1. . There is no one alive who can remember the Slave Trade let alone have participated in it.

      We are led to believe that the Slave Trade is still alive & kicking in certain parts of the World. Therefore it is as logical as night follows day, that there are people alive who have knowledge of it.

      1. Except of course those women trafficked into prostitution – all border free thanks to the EU.

        However, that fact would get in the way of the Guardian’s love for open borders and continental socialism so it can’t talk about that.

    2. Ah yes. Sentence without cause. Don’t bother to determine the facts, just go straight to firing squad.

      The Left never change. I do wonder if they even understand how vile they are.

    3. Ah yes. Sentence without cause. Don’t bother to determine the facts, just go straight to firing squad.

      The Left never change. I do wonder if they even understand how vile they are.

  8. SIR – Michael Hellier (Letters, June 15) writes that Guy’s and St Thomas’s NHS Foundation Trust bowed to “public pressure” in removing statues. There is, however, little evidence of widespread public support for this removal. Surely, the Trust in fact gave in to a strident, highly vocal minority.

    Sue Pickard
    Epsom Downs, Surrey

    Many of those supporting retention of the statues have been scared into expressing their views only privately. Mob Rules, OK?

  9. Apparently the EU has nearly agreed fishing policy with Boros.

    This is based on Britain taking back control of quotas so it’s all British fish.. and then letting EU boats have access and pretty well the same amount of fish as they had before.

  10. As top flight footballers are getting so politcal about how our taxes are spent, I was thinking that Boris should impose a 95% top rate of tax for footballers earning over £ 20,000 a week.
    Who could argue with that? they would be doing their bit, giving something back.

    1. Would be interesting to hear about the lengths footballers, and various other very well-paid people go to to avoid paying their ‘fair share’.

      1. They don’t. Footballers are taxed at source. Clubs are very careful about that because of the backlash they’d get from their supporters.

        Sponsorship deals, advertising, personal promotions – those are all their own private affairs.

      2. I don’t know if it still the case, but at one point clubs were offering to pay the taxes of the top flight players. This was done secretly so that the headline wage was actually a gross understatement of what they were really being paid.

        I believe it was stopped under financial fair play rules, to prevent a few very large clubs totally dominating all football competitions.

    2. I agree. Unfortunately though, that would prob spell the end of the Premier League.

      I can live without soccer but there are many who can’t

      1. Football used to be the game for the proletariat and it was far better when it was.

        They recently showed a production ‘An Inspector Calls‘ on TV but I preferred Priestley’s novels such as Angel Pavement and The Good Companions – here is a description of football from the latter:

        To say that these men paid their shillings to watch twenty-two hirelings kick a ball is merely to say that a violin is wood and catgut, that Hamlet is so much paper and ink. For a shilling the Bruddersford United AFC offered you Conflict and Art; it turned you into a critic happy in your judgement of fine points, ready in a second to estimate the worth of a well-judged pass, a run down the touchline, a lightening shot, a clearance by your back or goalkeeper; it turned you into a partisan, holding your breath when the ball came sailing into your own goalmouth, ecstatic when your forwards raced away towards the opposite goal, elated, down cast, bitter, triumphant by turns at the fortunes of your side, watching a ball shaped Iliads and Odysseys for you; and, what is more, it turned you into a member of a new community, all brothers together for an hour and a half, for not only had you escaped from the clanking machinery of this lesser life, from work, wages, rent, doles, sick pay, insurance cards, nagging wives, ailing children, bad bosses, idle workmen, but you had escaped with most of your mates and your neighbours, with half the town, and there you were, cheering together, thumping one another on the shoulders, swopping judgements like lords of the earth, having pushed your way through aturnstile into another and altogether more splendid kind of life, hurtling with Conflict and yet passionate and beautiful in its Art. Moreover it offered you more than a shilling’s worth of material for talk during the rest of the week. A man who had missed the last home match of ‘t’United’ had to enter social life on tiptoe in Bruddersford.

        J. B. Priestley, The Good Companions, 1929

        1. As Terry Pratchett said. “The thing about football-the important thing about football-is that it is not just about football”.

        2. I don’t care what footballers/F1 drivers [insert other well paid profession] is paid AS LONG AS I’m not forced to pay for it.

          If I decide to get myself a ticket to an F1 race then so be it. My cost, my choice. I think football is played by woofters so ignore it. Other people love it and pay the daft subs fees. That’s the market at work.

          What I do object to (and who’d guess) is the exhorbitant salaries of public officials who achieve nothing, risk nothing, sell nothing, make nothing and just cost money while appallingly managing our own. There shouldn’t be a single salary in the public sector above 75,000. If there’s evidence of an individual radically bringing money in, or truly earning it – such as a surgeon performing 10 operations a week or something, or a school head consistently improving standards, grades and outcomes for students, give them a bonus. If there’s an official who saves the tax payer money, give them 5% of the saving. otherwise the state is simply a furnace that burns money without risk. We must be allowed to stop shovelling our cash into it.

        3. Football: a game for gentlemen played by thugs.
          Rugby: a game for thugs played by gentlemen.

      2. I would celebrate the end of the Premier League. Football was dealt a mortal blow back in 1992 when they decide to allocate 95% of the sport’s finances to a handful of megarich global brands.

  11. The latest Covid can and can’t list, for anyone struggling to keep up. 17 June 2020.

    So, ladies and gentlemen, everyone perfectly clear on what we’re allowed to do today? I thought so. Here, for the benefit of the terminally confused, is an updated list of Corona Cans and Can’ts. You…

    CAN have your hair cut – but only by the dog groomer. Although not in Wales or Scotland.

    CAN’T join a gathering of more than six – unless you are hellbent on overthrowing capitalism in which case you can meet thousands of people in Hyde Park and chuck things at the police.

    CAN go to work if the R rate is between 0.6 and 0.9 – unless you are too busy shopping. But not in Wales where you can only travel five miles and the shops are shut.

    CAN’T see your grandchildren if you are married and they live in another household.

    CAN see your grandchildren if you are a single-person household. It’s surprisingly easy to throw out your husband/wife of 40 years. They may, at first, put up a bit of a struggle, but tell them you’re only following government guidelines and they should settle down.

    CAN’T go to school if you’re a bored, depressed teenager – but you can attend a rave in the countryside and inhale nitrous oxide, leaving behind hundreds of used capsules which Allison’s puppy, Bingo, will lick enthusiastically and then attempt sexual intercourse. With himself.

    CAN join a long queue for Primark but you may have to wait longer for cancer treatment. First things first!

    CAN’T travel on public transport without wearing a mask, even if your glasses steam up and you miss your stop. Masks should not be worn in Wales. The minute you cross the River Severn, you can rip off your face-covering and cough as much as you like. But only in Welsh.

    CAN board a packed flight from Luton to Larnaca, but if you want to go to church you must pray alone.

    CAN’T sing hymns for this is very dangerous. Unless you are at a rally with several thousand other people when you can sing what the hell you like as long as it’s really rude.

    CAN travel to a beach or beauty spot but DO NOT attempt to go to the loo.

    CAN’T take your GCSEs or A levels or go to a theatre but you can visit a zoo. Although not in Scotland.

    CAN open your non-essential shop so long as you put in place ugly and alienating Covid-secure measures which make your business totally unviable. As you tell members of staff that you have to let them go, be sure to maintain two metres social distancing. No comforting hand on the shoulder! Gentle weeping by the newly-unemployed person is permitted, but anyone who threatens to become hysterical should wear a mask.

    CAN’T attend the university you have a place at. There are plans to get universities up and running by the autumn of 2021, but ONLY if lecturers have got to the front of the queue in Bicester Village and paid for their Mulberry tote bag. And it’s 100pc safe. In the university, that is, not the shops. Although not in Wales or Scotland where it will never be safe again.

    CAN have a summer wedding. Maybe. The Government has been “examining how to enable people to gather in slightly larger groups to better facilitate small weddings” since the 11th of May. And they will be letting us know very soon if you can have a summer wedding, possibly as early as November.

    CAN’T kiss the bride. The best man will pass the ring to the groom on a pole measuring no less than 6.56168 feet.

    CAN have Botox, but you are still forbidden to attend a graduation ceremony or your uncle’s funeral.

    CAN’T go on holiday abroad to a country which has returned to normal after overcoming Covid without entering a strict quarantine for 14 days on your return in case you import the virus from the country that doesn’t have it. A vast army of highly-trained Home Office quarantine enforcers – Hayley and Saj in Scunthorpe – will phone one in five returning British holidaymakers and ask, “Are you observing the quarantine rules?” You will reply, “Yes, indeed, I am!” even if you have left your household to enjoy afternoon carnal relations with a member of the SAGE committee who is “keeping the science under review”.

    CAN work if you can but do NOT send your children to school. Lock the little darlings in a cupboard under the stairs with a bumper pack of Wotsits and a flashlight. Tell them not to worry, they can expect a Number 10 Review of their situation very soon.
    Well, I hope that’s perfectly clear. How nice that we can all continue to navigate the Coronacrisis with no whiff of suspicion that the powers-that-be don’t know their Rs from their elbow.

    I’ve never paid any attention to the Government pronouncements which appear to me to be mostly oriented on keeping the crisis going!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/latest-covid-can-cant-list-anyone-struggling-keep/

    1. “Lock the little darlings in a cupboard under the stairs…” We did that in normal times, when we had to go out. The children complained. Eventually we got an au pair. We locked the au pair in the cupboard with the children. It worked very well.

  12. The disproportionate punishment for this poor chap desperate for a wee symbolises the cruel divisions the media and the liberal left have carved into our society.

    SIR – I am outraged for Andrew Banks (report, June 15) rather than by him. Two weeks in prison for urinating in the street is disproportionate for a demonstrator who committed no violence or criminal damage, who turned himself in and offered a sincere apology when sober the following day.

    Full disclosure: I once urinated behind a bush in a churchyard. There was no disrespect intended, but I was desperate. I don’t think Banks intended disrespect either, but simply failed to think it through.

    This man is the victim of a snobbish and sometimes visceral hatred of overweight, white working-class men, many of whom have poorly articulated feelings of loyalty to this country.

    Is there a word for this prejudice – “chavism” perhaps?

    Frances Killian

    Altrincham, Cheshire

    1. Yeah, the “poor chap” was “desperate”.

      So “poor”, in fact, he could only afford sixteen pints of some questionable beer to pour down his neck to make him “desperate”.

      1. Assuming he paid for the beer. Maybe his mates paid. We don’t know the full story.

          1. Well, that is a fair point. (The first one into the bar after the game usually ordered up 15 pints…)

      2. But Grizzly there was no intent to desecrate anything and two weeks prison was absurdly harsh.

        1. I agree with all you say, Epi.

          My point was about his “need” to consume a whole large bucketful of fizzy stuff. I have no issue with your good points about the media and the liberal Left.

    2. It’s not the two weeks in prison that bothers. It’s the hypocrisy of the other bloke who assaulted a police officer and vandalised properly who got a £75 fine.

      That’s the problem.

    4. BTL Comment:-

      Robert Spowart
      17 Jun 2020 7:57AM
      I agree with Frances Killian. Andrew Banks was a prat but next morning he realised he was a prat and handed himself in.

      A £50 fine and stern talking to should have been sufficient.

    5. When I was in my late teens and early twenties we all went to The Gun Inn in Keyhaven for a pint or two on Christmas Eve before going to the midnight communion service in All Saints Church, Milford-on-Sea. Many of us had to slip out during the service because pressure on our bladders was interfering with our devotions.

  13. Elite French Police Deployed as Armed Chechens and North Africans Go to War in Dijon

    BTL:
    Oliver Coniston • 13 hours ago

    Chechens and North Africans fighting for possession of France. The French don’t get a say in the matter and can either submit to their gang overlords or get out.

    This is the vision the EU has clearly stated will be the fate for all of Europe.

    Send in the tanks.

    https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/06/16/elite-french-police-deployed-as-armed-chechens-and-north-africans-go-to-war-in-dijon/

          1. I did say i would only be buying Non-E.U produce in future when i can, but there have to be exceptions. Brits now make a good range of cheeses. Some good wines. But sadly nothing like this mustard range.

            Thanks for the link.

          2. They are expensive but very good, and they sell them in sampler sized pots.

            The Beaune factory is worth a visit, well presented tour and very informative.

          3. I don’t think i will be visiting Dijon for a while. I haven’t got a flak jacket. I’ll buy online or see what Waitrose has.

          4. We never go to Dijon now, but visit Beaune, just down the valley as it were, regularly.
            Lots and lots of very good restaurants, I suspect you might enjoy it.

          6. Lots of those too.

            It’s a delightful place, we discovered it almost by accident when we were touring through France, staying in places on spec and we were looking for somewhere to stay that night. I’ve lost count of the number of times we’ve been back since, for “let’s spoil ourselves weekends”.

            We’re both very fond of the local wines, sadly too expensive for regular consumption.

    2. Yo Citroen

      I must read morester slowerester

      i read your post as “Send in the Yanks”.

      Who are still basking in the Glory of their victorious campaign in Grenada in October 1983

      I wonder, that if similar events occurred now, would the US be allowed by BLM to interfere in the politics of what is
      basically a Black Country and how long will it be before the Middle East is BLM inclusive

    3. 320246+ up ticks,
      Morning C,
      I wonder if the GB indigenous 48% are packing today &
      leaving for France to help out ?

  14. Tommy Robinson – a correction. 14 JUN 2020.

    Our article OAP BEATS UP TOMMY ROBINSON IN JAIL, 21 July 2019, reported that Tommy Robinson was ‘decked by a 70-year-old lag in the prison showers’. The information within this article was provided by a reliable source; however, on this occasion, the information proved to be unreliable. We did ask the MoJ to comment on the story, but they declined. The Governor of HMP Belmarsh has since provided an email confirming that Tommy Robinson was ‘not involved in any incidents of any type, and most definitely not involved in a fight /assault on or by another prisoner as described in our newspaper article at the time.’ We are happy to clarify the correct position and offer our apologies to Tommy Robinson (real name Stephen Yaxley Lennon) and his family.

    I don’t think very many people believed it anyway and I’ve learned to believe nothing that the MSM tells me about anything at all!

    https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/tommy-robinson–a-correction-22189002

    1. Yo Minty

      Perhaps Tommy Robinson was ‘‘decked by a 70-year-old lag in the prison showers’. was just wishful thinking,
      like so much crap coming from the MSM is

  15. Good morning, all. A nice sunny start to the day. I wonder what ghastliness awaits us.

  19. If it’s so dreadful and racist in Britain or the US or wherever, why are these people still here? Why do ever larger numbers of them want to migrate? Why don’t they go home?

    2. 320246+ up ticks,
      Morning C,
      Many would never have left if you sent the welfare & kids allowance check.
      They certainly ain’t coming for the climate.

    3. And why does no journalist in the broadcast or printed media ever ask BAME people who hate Britain these two simple questions:

      If Britain is so horribly racist why is it the most sought after destination in Europe? And why do you want to stay?

      And of course the other question that has never been asked:

      Before Mugabe and Mandela South Africa and Rhodesia were magnets for African migration. Why was that?

  20. Vegetarians and vegans are more introverted than meat eaters, scientists have found, and suggest it could be because their diets cause “segregation”.

    A study revealed that being vegetarian or vegan is related to personality and the scientists, who studied the diets of more than 9,000 people and reported their findings in the journal Nutrients, hypothesised that the results could be due to those who don’t eat animal products being more “socially segregated” than those who do. [Report, DT 17/06/20]

    No, it’s not called “segregation”. It is called malnutrition.

    2. I was chatting to my old mate Bruce on the phone Monday he lives on the edge of the Dandenong ranges in Victoria.
      They have been in Oz for over 40 years. He told me him and his good lady watch Escape to the Country on British TV.
      And yearn to return.
      You must be barmy Brucie I told him, this country as you knew it is finished. He confirmed that when he told me where his sister who lives in Devon was recently invaded by hordes cramming on to the local beaches. And likewise where his brother lives in Norfolk.
      I pointed out that there’s usually a hidden reason why English properties are up for sale.
      The pair own a beach fronted property on Phillip island.
      IMHO Its absolute paradise.
      He’s not a golfer but there is a GC within walking distance.
      You stay where you are i told him we’ll be over again next year.

      1. I was chatting to my neighbour the other day; he is a Swede and has aways lived in Sweden but is an anglophile who has visited the UK a few times. He also watches (and loves) Escape To the Country on Swedish television, which shows a rural idyll of how it used to be.

        I told him not to get his hopes up since that programme displays a twisted version of reality these days.

        1. Due to the recent influx of younger noisier neighbours with seemingly dozens of children and yappy dogs, who have moved in to our once peaceful cul de sac. We have been looking for a possibly move.
          One we found in our area and price range (many are far too expensive) was a 4 bed detached in another out of the way village, but close by. I checked out the planning applications for the area and found plans have been submitted to build two 4 bed detached within a short ( a lob) stones throw from the end of the garden. With access from main road after trees and shrubs are removed. Of course removing all the dense foliage that would absorb the traffic noises. Building homes any where is rife in England at the moment.

      2. The Dandenongs are lovely, although I understand there’s a bit of a fire risk sometimes. I think you’ve given him good advice.

        1. They did have a close call around 4 years ago. Packed up ready for evacuation, but the wind changed direction.
          They have experienced two ice storms with huge ‘hail stones’ the size of tennis balls. Two of their families cars were written off. And roof damage to many people’s houses.
          Bruce had a ‘pet’ magpie, he would sit down in the evening with a beer and a male Maggie use to fly in and stand on his knee eating peanuts.
          And twice a day early morning and dusk, sulphur crested cockatoos rest in the treetops surrounding the local gardens. Very noisy.
          They live close to a lovely town called Olinda.

  22. ‘Morning All
    Funny Old World
    Every single race-baiting grifter on the radio and tv is either “African”,”Indian”,”West Indian”,”Somalian”,”Ugandan” etc while they whine just how evil and racist we are and how they and their compatriots are denied the riches they deserve…………..
    Yet when it’s politely (or not) pointed out that they are free to enjoy the successes they are worth in the homelands they or their parents came from all of a sudden they are “British”
    Personally I put this trait down to Benifitophobia,fear of losing freebies

    1. Quite a decent video too. Give the dilemma faced by American Police in a proper context.

      1. In the late 80’s I was trying to find my hotel in Ft Lauderdale late at night after flying into Miami. Hopelessly lost and confused I spotted a police car parked up so decided to ask for directions.
        As I walked towards his car I noticed he became defensive and almost primed for trouble. I made sure my hands were open and in plain view of him. The atmosphere changed again and as soon as he heard my accent he relaxed and offered to guide me to my hotel.
        I thought then as I do now, what a hell of a job to be that cautious.

        1. There are many videos on YouTube of how to behave if stopped by traffic police in the US. Sit still, hands in plain view, don’t do anything unless cleared by the officer first. And especially don’t reach for anything…

          1. Don’t think YouTube was around at that time, you had to use common sense.

          1. A few years ago In the final of the TV programme Bake Off, he was seen to quite deliberately snapped off the handle from a master piece in chocolate engineering. A male contestant had constructed a chocolate well that actually fully worked.
            This left the judges in no doubt,….. the winners was Nadia Hussein. Her Peacock cake resembled a road kill dodo, with shop bought blue icing with a couple of tubes of coloured smarties planted on it. She latterly made and presented a jubilee celebration cake to the Queen. It looked like pile of garbage and was probably binned. She now has her own TV programme !!!!
            In situations like these it’s been customary to say
            “you couldn’t make it up” ! But the BBC did. All of it.

          2. I saw the snapping incident, and the Nadia cakes. They were a shambles, to be polite.
            White male privilege again, eh?

          4. I saw the snapping incident, and the Nadia cakes. They were a shambles, to be polite.
            White male privilege again, eh?

          1. You mean he’s extremely skilled at putting the bait onto fishing lines?

  27. Weird headline in The Grimes today – redolent of the “Peaceful demonstration 27 police injured”…..

    20 Indian troops die in border brawl with China

    So just a bit of a punch up that got out of hand?

    5. Apparently, when there is a clash between the Chinese & Indian armies, weapons are strictly banned as that would be taken by both sides as an open declaration of war.

        1. Karate is lethal. A guy I joined up with was a Karate expert – he killed himself with his first salute

    1. It’s the little things that matter and the unauthorized channel crossings demonstrate that the Boris Johnson government is a globalist government.

      Same with fishing where Boros has apparently agreed to let the EU have much the same amount of fish as before under new quotas which will be decided by the UK.

      So the reality is no change on fishing, it’s just the words which are different.

        1. Fenton,…….. my wife and my self with our Black lab were in Cornwall on holiday about 6 months after that happened. We bumped into a couple who had Fenton’s ‘sister’ with them.

  34. Good Morning. It is another dreich day. We have had rain and mist every day for a week.
    Today is the 80th anniversary of the sinking of the Lancastria. Maybe as many as 6,500 British troops died. It was the largest single-ship loss of life in British maritime history.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Lancastria

  35. Supporting children at risk of hunger over the holidays should not be a one-off intervention

    The Government should build on this initial announcement and commit to funding free school food provision schemes for all children at risk of hunger, during every school holiday.

    What did school mean to you as a child? Learning new things and getting an education? Seeing friends? Kicking a football about in the playground?

    As Marcus Rashford has reminded us all this week, for over one million children in England, school is not only a chance to learn and play – it’s also a chance to eat a hot and healthy meal.

    One million children is a staggering number.

    It includes 280,000 children who are supported by the Department for Education’s National School Breakfast Programme, implemented by Family Action and Magic Breakfast.
    https://www.politicshome.com/thehouse/article/supporting-children-at-risk-of-hunger-over-the-holidays-should-not-be-a-oneoff-intervention

    The question I would love to ask, (I get it there is appalling poverty , elderly people as well suffer) One million children staying hungry is unbelievabl in this day and age .

    I assumed allowances and benefits covered things like that

    1. £35 a week child benefit for two children is plenty to feed them. Might be a bit more difficult with teenage boys but then they should have a Saturday job.

      1. Child benefit is far too much – when I first got married family allowance was nothing for the first child and 3s-9d for second (I think). Why the hell should the taxpayer pay for someone elses children at that rate? If you can’t afford to feed and clothe your kids don’t have them. Now we’re going to give free meals to kids during the school holidays and the chavs are complaining they should have money instead of vouchers because you can’t buy fags, beer and drugs with food vouchers. The benefit system stinks, no wonder asylum sneekers want to come here

        1. Why is there child benefit at all? As someone who is defiantly child-free [a condition which seems to upset a few on this forum], I object, strenuously, to having my taxes used to pay for the upbringing of other people’s brats. Especially those people who are nowhere close to being fit to be parents!

          [There; that should bring them out, wailing and screaming into their biscuit-dunked instant coffee!]

          1. Instant coffee…. ugh. Worked years ago with a pretty lass who would only drink Mellow Birds…

          3. Appalling substance – looks like own label instant gravy powder, and didn’t even have enough flavour to taste like an old ashtray, as does all other instant coffee.

          4. Even in childhood I was constantly puzzled as to why instant coffee tasted nothing like coffee.

            I would go to a 1950s coffee bar and buy a delicious cup of coffee (invariably made by an espresso machine) then go home and attempt to re-create it using instant coffee. I couldn’t understand, at the time, why I invariably failed so miserably.

            Someone once gave me a jar of “instant” tea and, in common with its coffee counterpart, it was beyond vile.

          5. I love a good espresso – thick, dark and strong as hell. First thing, to get me going, a tiny cup with sugar (!). Real wake-up juice, it is!

    2. Colston put his hand in his own pocket to help the poor,virtue signalling Rashford just put his hand in ours……………..
      It’s a tough life out there those fags,booze,tats,sky,drugs and the latest phones don’t pay for themselves you know,child bennies help but every little helps…………….

      1. Meals on wheels in the old days ( or the seventies/ eighties / nineties when I helped out ) were freshly cooked meals that we used to deliver to the elderlies and anyone who was incapacitated by illness etc.

        They were nourishing meals , usually cooked either on school premises all the year round . There were also school holiday lunch clubs for children.. latchkey children , and they were looked after and occupied by youth helpers, teachers etc .. AND there was a children’s holiday scheme whereby good hearted families who lived either in the countryside or semi rurally , took in disadvantaged children for a couple of weeks , and the children who participated probably had a superb secure time , something they would remember forever. The children were given clothes by the WRVS, if they didn’t arrive with sufficient clothing. Some children arrived with just one spare pair of clothes if that.

        In those Seventies days, the majority of the impoverished youngsters were white , and very needy , from the remnants of some of the most appalling housing and social conditions .

        In that same era , the WRVS helped war veterans .. ELDERLY war veterans , WW1/ WW2.. some of them were tramps … gentlemen tramps .. when all the mental hospital closed , alot of folk were turned out into the community . The Salvation Army took up the slack , but many elderly men were left helpless and homeless and slept rough .. and they used to come to the WRVS for spare clothes and fresh socks .

        I could chatter forever about this, but so many had foot problems , fleas and lice . What a shame public washrooms closed!

        They were huge holes in the cradle to the grave support , and I attended a few funerals where the poor old so and so’s had NO one for a simple service .. The Salvation Army were very good at organising things like that.

        WRVS had many roles to fill.. including feeding and providing drinks for firefighters , when huge fires took days to put out .

        Things have changed dramatically these days . I am not too sure real old fashioned povery exists any more . People appear to absolutely feckless with their money and aspirations .

  36. D/T letters
    M E Greaves
    17 Jun 2020 10:11AM
    I read yesterday that some twit is offended by cartoon characters shown on packets of Rice Crispies and Coco Pops.

    A new generation of woke idiot is born. Not the ‘snowflake’, the ‘cornflake’!

    1. That’s the criminal ex-MP; the one who voted while wearing an ankle tag.
      Fiona Ombooga or something.

    2. Remember that terrible racist Hilaire Belloc’s Cautionary verses:

      Here is a disgraceful example:

      Lord Uncle Tom was different from
      What other nobles are.
      For they are yellow or pink, I think,
      But he was black as tar.

      He had his Father’s debonair
      And rather easy pride:
      But his complexion and his hair
      Were from the mother’s side.

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

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

    1. I don’t think it was all just another staged media stunt, they were most probably going to do it anyway, while letting a young black man become a hero and get lots of media coverage, it all fits in with recent events, our news these days is all scripted by the modern equivalents of people like Mandelson and Campbell.

      1. I don’t think it was all just another staged media stunt

        Not all. Just mostly.

        The majority of the children affected will be our beloved replacements*. Certainly per capita and probably in absolute terms as well. So it all represents another convenient net transfer of resources from us to them. Remember these people are going to boost our economy and pay our pensions. All we have to do in return is feed them, educate them, facilitate their arrival here, house them, pay them, not enforce the law against them etc. It’s all going to pay off . . . somehow.

        The fact that they chose a gormless footballing youth from the replacement demographic as the puppet figurehead for this campaign shows how bold they’re getting.

        Essentially the message is: “pay up whitey, feed our kids”

        *Not forgetting the recent period poverty campaign. ‘We’ were reminded how ‘we’ needed to do something. But all it really meant was another transfer of resources to non-whites.

    2. As it was rather late when I posted this, perhaps I should repeat myself today.

      If there are any of my fellow Nottlers who think that Boris is the man to stop this country tipping over the precipice into a self destructive meltdown, I fear you are going to be disappointed.
      The man lacks the moral fortitude and integrity to do what’s needed. It pains me to say it, but it pains me even more to admit I see no obvious candidate to replace him.
      Once upon a time I would have looked at ERG members, but that is another fairytale isn’t it?

      The Rashford farce is just the latest example.

  40. Thousands Sign Petition to Shut Down Guardian over Links to Slavery, Anti-Lincoln Propaganda

    The British left’s flagship newspaper is facing the call to eat its own tail, after more than 12,000 people have signed a petition calling for the liberal, pro-Black Lives Matter Guardian to be shut down over its historical links to slavery and for siding with the Confederate states during the American Civil War.

    The Change.org petition to the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) already has more than 12,000 signatures with the number growing hourly, spurred on by accusations against the newspaper of hypocrisy for backing the far-left BLM while having a history connected to slavery.

    The call comes after far-left activists have demanded the removal of statues of prominent figures in British history who may have profited from slavery, supported colonialism, or even have been wrongly accused of extremism.

    The Guardian had published pieces in the past admitting not only did it print anti-Lincoln propaganda, but said Manchester’s working-class mill workers who refused to touch plantation cotton — in solidarity with black American slaves — should be effectively subjected to slavery themselves and forced back to work.

    The then-named Manchester Guardian was founded in 1821 by John Edward Taylor, who profited from cotton plantation slavery, according to political website Guido Fawkes. After he died in 1844, the newspaper continued its relationship with the slave trade, making money from the slave-backing cotton mill owners of Manchester who paid for advertising.

    Guardian editor-in-chief Katharine Viner admitted in 2017:

    It [The Manchester Guardian] even sided with the slave-owning south in the American civil war: the paper demanded that the Manchester cotton workers who starved in the streets because they refused to touch cotton picked by American slaves should be forced back into work. (Abraham Lincoln wrote to the “working men of Manchester” in 1863 to thank them for their “sublime Christian heroism, which has not been surpassed in any age or in any country”.)

    During Black History Month in 2008, The Guardian published a letter revealing that the newspaper had printed confederate propaganda against Abraham Lincoln in October 1862, writing that “it was an evil day both for America and the world when he was chosen President of the United States”.

    https://twitter.com/ClarkeMicah/status/1271395015386968066
    *
    *
    *
    https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/06/17/thousands-sign-petition-shut-down-guardian-links-slavery-anti-lincoln-propaganda/

    PETITION
    https://www.change.org/p/independent-press-standards-organisation-shut-down-the-guardian-newspaper

    12,370 at 11:20 am

      1. Get in the queue ………
        Deep joy, My butts are topping up, it’s chucking it down here 🙂

    2. So, “the paper demanded that the Manchester cotton workers who starved in the streets because they refused to touch cotton picked by American slaves should be forced back into work” – white privilege, eh? All whites to feel guilty about slaving, eh?
      Rowlocks to BLM!

      1. The best solution for reparations would be to shackle Polly Toynbee, Owen Jones and the rest of the miserable editorial staff of that sorry rag to a chain gang and force them to pick cotton for a paltry living whilst living in shanty towns in the Deep South cotton belt.

  41. Good Moaning.
    A Spekkie article: a two coffee job, as it’s quite a long and convoluted read.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/are-the-police-still-impartial-

    “Are the police still impartial?

    The only silver lining of Churchill’s encasement is that he didn’t have to suffer the indignity of seeing thugs perform Nazi salutes in front of him. It’s a toss up whether this was more grotesque than the hoodies of the week before who threw bikes and bottles at police. Rightly, there was the proper police presence over the weekend to prevent widespread crime and disorder. But why did police surrender to one mob and not the other?

    The job of police is to uphold the law. But is that always still the case? When officers failed to prevent the toppling of Edward Colston’s statue in Bristol they ignored Robert Peel’s fifth principle of policing:

    ‘To seek and preserve public favour, not by pandering to public opinion; but by constantly demonstrating absolutely impartial service to law, in complete independence of policy, and without regard to the justice or injustice of the substance of individual laws.’

    But it isn’t only those on the beat who appear to have forgotten this rule. Mike Barton, former chief of Durham Constabulary, told me that because of cultural diversity, ‘impartial’ must now be interpreted with reference ‘to all communities’, rather than as ‘slaves to law’. Among senior officers, he is unlikely to be alone in holding such views. This presents a problem. And the upshot is that impartiality becomes its opposite: partiality. In other words, to treat people equally, we must treat them differently. This idea has seeped into police consciousness.

    Politicisation is the brother of partiality. In its initial defence of genuflecting police at the protests earlier this month, Scotland Yard said that its officers ‘care deeply about justice and equality’. In Bristol, Superintendent Andy Bennett of Avon and Somerset Police said before the Black Lives Matter event that ‘it’s important to stand up for fairness, equality and inclusion and we fully recognise the reasons why people will want to gather at College Green’.

    Superficially, these sentiments sound wonderful. But what does equality mean? And should the police be the ones enforcing it? Bennett might say it is important for his officers to stand up for fairness, but what type of fairness? If this were to mean paying the same level of tax and equality were to mean dishing out rewards regardless of input, and inclusion were to mean Cressida Dick is Commissioner of the Met regardless of her talents, then it’s easy to see how these might invite significant disagreement.

    Sometimes police support for causes is subtler. In a letter to headteachers following school climate protests Superintendent Andy Bennett described the issue as ‘important’ and ‘naturally attract[ing] the interest of young people who want to show they care about their planet and to influence those in power to do more’. He also described the organisers of the Bristol-based youth led protests as having ‘done a good job in mobilising young people to attend’.

    Sir Peter Fahy, the former chief of Greater Manchester Police, sees confusion around the role of the police in protests. He says that they ought to facilitate protest but not allow it to disrupt the community. The question to ask, however, is how the police manage to justify giving protesters such licence. A significant part of the answer is the 1998 Human Rights Act.

    The issue with the Human Rights Act, which incorporated the European Convention into law, is that it affords the police (and the judiciary) great latitude in deciding how and when to intervene in a protest. It does this by introducing a test of proportionality that was previously an alien concept in English law. The Act itself does not expressly state such a test, but the UK courts have followed European case law, where the proportionality principle is fundamental in interpreting and applying the Act.

    If a police commander agrees with the aims of a particular demonstration, the law permits him to simply set the bar for intervention very high. This is arguably what happened at an Extinction Rebellion protest at Cambridge in February. Superintendent James Sutherland admitted protesters were breaking the law by obstructing the highway, but characterised the protest as peaceful and hid behind the Human Rights Act.

    But this characterisation was wrong, since the protesters were openly committing criminal damage, literally overseen by the constabulary. The Convention articles themselves and their exceptions are so easy to play off against each other in the ritual dance so beloved of lawyers and judges that a competent police commander will not find it difficult to justify his or her operational decisions to intervene or not.

    Funnily enough when Barton and I discussed the Cambridge disruption, he commented that ‘lots of people will say family life will be adversely affected’ by climate change. I’m not even sure a lawyer would try using abstract future denial of Article 8 – the right to respect for private and family life, home and correspondence – to rationalise police action now.

    The Human Rights Act allows police to follow their ideological inclinations under the pretence of impartiality, if they so wish. The Police Reform Act 2002 – another Blairite gift – altered the police oath in England and Wales from serving ‘without fear or affection, malice or ill will’, to ‘with fairness, integrity, diligence and impartiality, upholding fundamental human rights and according equal respect to all people’. The old words describe virtues; the new ones mostly refer to ideology. The effect should not be underestimated: words matter. As Barton told me, he often referred to the oath at family events for his officers, impressing upon them the importance of human rights. Indeed, he claims that one cannot be against human rights, but only against their application. This neatly illustrates the point, and would be news to Jeremy Bentham, Roger Scruton, and a proportion of the legal profession, including the current Attorney General.

    The practical consequences of this are quite disturbing, particularly if we are entering a period of more frequent protests. For if officers are going to express support for a cause beforehand, then we are entitled to question the motives for operational decisions on the day. After the submersion of Colston’s statue, Supt. Bennett explained that ‘Our policing style from the outset was low key’. Should we read ‘low key’ alongside ‘It’s important to stand up for fairness, equality and inclusion’?

    The remarks of the Chief Constable of Avon & Somerset the following day show the rot produced by the intersection of partiality and politicisation. ‘Can you imagine scenes of police in Bristol fighting with protesters who were damaging the statue of a man who is reputed to have gathered much of his fortune through the slave trade?’

    But what about the part of the oath to protect property? It’s ludicrous for police to think that by doing their job they would be the provocateurs. Yet this is the inevitable consequence of police moving away from the Peel principles. Police need rescuing from philosophical entanglement before public trust is further eroded.”

    1. BTL:

      sfin • 17 hours ago • edited

      Public trust in the police isn’t being ‘further eroded’ – it has gone, finished, extinct. The police are currently the enemy of the public they are paid to serve.

      What the article does get right is the complete lack of suitability of senior police officers for the commands they currently hold, and the need for a rapid rewind to Peel’s principles of policing.

      This should not only reverse the politicisation of the Blair years, but should, at least, encompass the repealing of the Tory’s 1984 Police and Criminal Evidence Act – an act that hamstrung the police in paperwork and turned them, at the time, into the paramilitary wing of social services.

      plainsdrifter • 17 hours ago • edited

      The police have become hopelessly politicised and lost the plot over 50 years ago when there were the vanishing remnants of service culture in their ranks. Now, they are laughably PC and incompetent. They even genuflect to BLM. Stupid b-stards.

      And look at the brass. After the supremely foolish operation Midland, Hogan Howe goes to the Lords and Cressida D-ck is promoted. That’s corruption.

      The most pertinent point is in the first paragraph, “Rightly, there was the proper police presence over the weekend to prevent widespread crime and disorder. But why did police surrender to one mob and not the other?” Answer; because the Left gets an easy ride – even from the sodding Tories.

    2. BTL Comments:-

      Blindsideflanker • 9 minutes ago
      “he didn’t have to suffer the indignity of seeing thugs perform n4zi salutes in front of him.”

      I don’t believe that is true.

      Bob of Bonsall Blindsideflanker • 6 minutes ago
      Agreed. I think the anti-“Right Wing” hyperbole in the MEEJAH and, I’m afraid, coming from the government is alienating more and more ordinary people who look in in amazement at the way their opinions are being ignored and slandered.

      1. “he didn’t have to suffer the indignity of seeing thugs perform n4zi salutes in front of him.”

        It’s a statue. It doesn’t see anything.

        Knob !

    3. Thanks for posting, Anne. I was going to say that the police are just a laughing stock now, but in fact the position is far too serious for that. They seem determined to destroy what little respect remained. I believe that their decision not to uphold the law for certain law-breakers and not others will have the most terrible consequences. They have become the friends and protectors of some classes of criminal, and that is a sickening situation.

  42. The Salisbury Poisonings, episode 3 review: a warm tribute to ordinary people who rose to an extraordinary challenge. 17 June 2020 • 2:15am

    Dawn (MyAnna Buring) was staying with boyfriend Charlie Rowley (Johnny Harris) and getting ready to see her daughter Gracie when he surprised her with a bottle of perfume he’d found on one of their skip-scavenging expeditions. As viewers willed her not to do it, even though we knew full well she would, Dawn sprayed herself with it.

    There was a pause when she pointed out with puzzlement that it seemed to be odourless. Within minutes, she collapsed and was rushed to intensive care. Charlie soon followed suit and joined her in hospital. Everyone initially assumed it was a drug overdose. Then Dawn’s family were told she had been contaminated with nerve agent Novichok. The guilty relief of her estranged father Stan (Ron Cook) – “So Dawn didn’t take anything herself? It wasn’t her fault?” – was heartbreaking.

    Well that’s the end of this fantasy which was marginally more realistic than the Official Version. I was somewhat surprised to note that the perfume bottle required its cellophane wrappings to be removed as this destroys the premise that it was used to attack the Skripals!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/2020/06/16/salisbury-poisonings-episode-3-review-warm-tribute-toordinary/

      1. You an sometimes break in by hammering at the esc key as the article opens. The question is, why would you want to? Pretty well all the DT write is drivel, anyway.
        Morning, Peddy.

        1. Go’morgen, Paul.

          You are so right. I have the online Dt sent to my mailbox. I skim past all the drivel, e.g. about choosing the prettiest face mask, etc., knowing that in each case I’ll be able to read a dozen lines at most, & head straight for the recipe near the bottom of the page. I am usually permitted to read the entire article which I sometimes C&P into my recipe folder. That done, I delete the paper.

    2. ‘Morning, Minty. I’m pretty sure it was said at the time that Putin’s thugs had with them more than one ‘container’ of Novichok, presumably as a spare supply. That would seem to me to be sensible planning, though where any others may be now nobody knows. On a landfill tip somewhere perhaps? Not a happy prospect in the event of a leak into a water course though.

      1. …it was said at the time that Putin’s thugs had with them more than one ‘container’ of Novichok…

        Morning Hugh. Really? Would this be the same people who “knew” that it was dispensed from a perfume bottle that has never been found?

  43. SIR – Our university’s vice-chancellor, Professor Louise Richardson, makes two unwarranted claims (“Nelson Mandela would have opposed Rhodes Must Fall campaign”, report, June 12).

    First, she draws on Mandela’s words, seven years after his death, to defend colonial-era statues. This would be inappropriate ventriloquising in any context. It is especially so now, when universities need to listen to, not presume to speak for, black students and people of colour.

    Secondly, she claims that the campaign amounts to “hiding our history”. The opposite is true. What is being demanded is a full and frank accounting for Britain’s history, in place of the selective commemoration of “great men” whose wealth was made through white supremacy.

    Your report refers to a speech made by President Mandela in 2003. Earlier that year, he spoke of Cecil Rhodes and others who “enriched themselves at the expense and exclusion of others”.

    He also spoke of the South African constitution’s promise to “recognise the injustices of our past” and to build a country that “belongs to all who live in it”. Rhodes Must Fall and Black Lives Matter demand nothing else for Britain. We support those demands.

    We, the undersigned. Goodbye Oxford

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/PortalPictures/June2020/BLM_Lead.jpg?imwidth=640

      1. …and on a massively damaging scale, too. But that is irrelevant to this lot.

        ‘Morning, SB.

        1. Which reminds me, Peddy, I must disappear now and mow the lawn before the rain starts. See you all later, NoTTLers!

  45. Morning all

    SIR – I am confused. As a retired headmaster, I consider that my main job was to ensure that the children under my watch were provided with the best education possible. The new normal, however, seems to involve ensuring that children have no education at all.

    I genuinely do not understand. The science suggests that children are not at risk, yet teaching unions, for some unknown reason, refuse to let teachers teach and insist on remote learning, which is not actually happening. Why should teachers continue to be paid by the state for a service they are not providing? This may be a new world, but unions politicising the future of our next generation cannot be right.

    Paul Ashley

    Helmsley, North Yorkshire

    SIR – Stephen Carpenter (Letters, June 15) asks if children need to be educated in a school building. He suggests that they can receive instruction online.

    Indeed they can, but what they cannot do online is experience the academic, sporting, cultural and social interaction with others that is so valuable in the learning process, and without which they would be much the poorer.

    Hamish Hunter

    Marlow, Buckinghamshire

    SIR – Why are our children not in school? When out walking, I see large groups of teenagers congregating and certainly not social distancing.

    Jean Hayes

    Harrogate, North Yorkshire

    SIR – How can it be acceptable for children to be allowed to go shopping with a parent in somewhat crowded areas, and yet be unable to return to school due to social-distancing issues and the risk posed to everyone’s safety?

    Laura Madden

    Leicester

      1. Best education means no global government so of course there’s no best education.

      2. I had my first Zoom experience on Saturday with a conference link-up over three continents. Sitting here in Sweden I spoke to one brother and his family in Dubai and, simultaneously, another brother and his wife in Cornwall; a nephew and family in Cornwall; another nephew and family in Manchester; and three families in Sydney.

        It was, in the main, a very good and clear experience; vision was good but there were occasional sound quality drop-outs. It was, however, in general a much better quality than Skype.

        1. And, of course, recorded and stored away in yer China.

          Good morning, Grizz.

          1. Good morning, Billy.

            Them chinkies will have a job deciphering al the accents on display. [English, Derbyshire, Cornish, Mancunian, Sri Lankan, and Australian].

    2. Looks like Hamish thinks that Zoom is not all that it’s cracked up to be. That’s my impression too.

  46. In their 70’s, Homer and Ethel still pounded their mattress every night. Then came the day Homer’s doctor diagnosed a heart condition that demanded abstinence.

    “One more time, Homer, and you’re a dead man,” the doctor warned, adding, “I’d suggest you and Ethel take separate rooms to avoid temptation.”

    Homer unhappily moved to the guestroom downstairs and Ethel stayed in their love-nest upstairs, equally pissed with the new arrangement.

    On the second night, Homer could no longer ignore his raging erection. Slipping out of his room, he made his way up the dark stairs.

    Half way up he bumped into Ethel.
    “Homer, where are you going?” Ethel asked.

    “I’m coming up to commit suicide,” Homer said, stroking himself. “Where were you going?”

    Ethel grabbed his crotch. “I was coming down to kill you.”

  47. SIR – Brian Gedalla (Letters, June 15) argues that banning hand luggage on flights will lead to an increase in thefts of suitcases. This is a fair point.

    But there is a serious problem with hand luggage: when it requires wheels on it to transport it to the aircraft due its weight and size, assistance is often needed to stow it in the overhead lockers. In the event of an emergency evacuation, passengers are told not to take their luggage with them, but some will try. If bags are dropped in the aisle, they could block the escape route and endanger life.

    Geoff Adderley

    Bridport, Dorset

    SIR – Brian Gedalla writes about the difficulties of insuring valuables in hold luggage, and he notes that theft of bags from the carousel is hard to prevent without checks on people leaving the baggage reclaim area.

    I travelled through Singapore for many years and this approach was commonplace. All travellers were issued with barcode stickers that matched those on their bags. Checking these stickers before allowing people to leave was simple and quick.

    Paul Shields

    London NW1

    SIR – For those of us travelling on business, it is imperative that we do not check in our laptops. For those travelling with young children, a bag of toys, books and other distractions is essential, and for others a selection of books and magazines is desirable for even a short-haul flight.

    For those of us taking life-preserving prescription medicines, it is always recommended we keep them in hand baggage in case hold luggage is mislaid. Worldwide, more than 20 million bags are mishandled each year.

    Keith Appleyard

    West Wickham, Kent

  48. This closing of the Dept for Paying Rich Dictators.

    I’ll be you all an old sixpence that the dosh will continue to be handed ou – the chap signing the cheques will just have new letterhead.

    1. You do like safe bets, BT.

      It’s all political smoke and mirrors and let’s tell the people we’ve actually listened to them and acted on their concerns.

      At times I think that people can’t be quite so gullible as to believe politicians when there is so little achieved by the frauds. It’s then I recall all those people ‘taking the knee’ for a dead foreign criminal, the miles long queues to get to McDonald’s and Burger King when they re-opened, and the fights to get into Nike stores. Then I realise there must be something fundamentally wrong with a large section of the population.

    2. Current DfID staff will continue in the same offices doing the same job.
      All that will change is the letter headings.

    3. Our scumbag political classes have always had ways worked out on how to directly deceive the electorate.

      1. 320246+ up ticks,
        Afternoon RE,
        They are encouraged to do so via the polling booth ….. and the electorate.

    5. Afternoon Bill and all Nottlers.

      I read the other day that the £14bn “budget” will be given over to “combating Russian meddling, and security issues”. Worthy causes I’m sure you’ll agree! .

      1. Nah.
        More likely another hardship payment to MPs for having to work at home.

        2. ! They deserve it, the poor dears. Fancy being at home until last week on full pay, with an extra £10,000 to be burdened with, I feel so sorry for them.

  49. Broadcasters like the BBC are alienating their audience with ‘woke’ pandering. NIGEL FARAGE17 June 2020 • 10:00am

    Just at the moment the media is needed most to scrutinise the increasingly mad world in which we live, it seems that public trust in UK news coverage has fallen to among the lowest levels globally.

    According to the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism Digital News Report 2020, confidence in the British news media was beneath that of almost any of the other developed countries polled. It even ranked below Hong Kong, whose media is increasingly in the grip of the authoritarian Chinese state.

    Only 28 per cent of those polled said they had faith in most of the UK’s news most of the time, down from 40 per cent a year ago. The report also noted that the BBC had not emerged well from Brexit, weathering criticism from those who are politically on the left and the right. Indeed, trust in the BBC with the most partisan groups has fallen by 20 per cent since 2018, according to the research.

    I’m shocked! Deeply shocked. I didn’t think there was anyone !

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/06/17/broadcasters-like-bbc-alienating-audience-woke-pandering/

  50. Here’s something to cheer us all up…

    The game is surely up for blundering fraud office

    Collapse of investigation into banknote printer De La Rue is just the latest in a string of high-profile clangers made by the watchdog

    BEN MARLOW – CHIEF CITY COMMENTATOR
    16 June 2020 • 9:28pm

    One of the few things that Theresa May got right was figuring out that the Serious Fraud Office was useless. OK, not completely useless, if you factor in a handful of high-profile deferred prosecution agreements, but even those are not without controversy.

    Among her many failings was not doing anything about it, so here is the UK’s fraud-buster again with another bungled investigation, the latest in a comically long line of cock-ups.

    This time it is the pursuit of banknote printer De La Rue that has ended prematurely. What were the allegations? Nobody’s really sure, since the details have never been revealed. All we know is that it centred on suspected corruption at the company’s operations in South Sudan.

    The collapse of the investigation is great news for De La Rue as its recovery takes shape. Its share price had slumped to all-time lows after a series of profit warnings, the departure of long-suffering chief Martin Sutherland, and then a fraud inquiry lasting a year.

    But after a sharp rally, the stock is now trading above pre-Covid-19 levels.

    As for the SFO, it has suffered so many reputational blows that you wonder how long it will be before someone decides its time is up.

    Yet again a case has collapsed because there was little chance of a conviction. Or as the agency says: “The SFO has concluded that this case did not meet the relevant test for prosecution.”

    Situation normal then. After all, who can forget the humiliating attempt to convict Barclays executives over the bank’s rescue deal with Qatar, not once but twice? Having had its case against former boss John Varley thrown out, the SFO went after the other three again. After a seven-year pursuit and a five-month trial, costing an estimated £10m, the jury acquitted the trio following just five hours of deliberation.

    Or how about the equally high-profile pursuit of three former Tesco bosses over the supermarket’s £250m black hole unearthed in 2014? It was thrown out after an eight-week hearing by judge Sir John Royce who declared the prosecution’s case “so weak that it should not be left for a jury’s consideration”.

    Then there was the six-year inquiry into British-Canadian businessman Victor Dahdaleh, abandoned after two witnesses from the US refused to attend the trial and face cross-examination and a key witness changed his evidence.

    Not to mention a botched inquiry into the Tchenguiz brothers that triggered a £300m damages claim that was eventually settled out of court. And a bribery investigation into BAE’s al-Yamamah deal with Saudi Arabia, jettisoned by then prime minister Tony Blair in 2006 because it risked causing “serious damage” to British security, though not before the agency lost 32,000 pages of data and 81 audio tapes relating to the probe. The list goes on.

    The arrival of tough-talking new boss Lisa Osofsky from the mean streets of Chicago was supposed to bring an end to the SFO’s calamitous ways but so far it’s hard to discern much difference, if any.

    There was much talk of merging it into the National Crime Agency and turning it into a souped-up, crime-fighting UK equivalent of the FBI. In your dreams. Instead, we’re stuck with the Keystone Cops.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/06/16/game-surely-blundering-fraud-office/

    1. It’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that corruption is now so ingrained into the system that no Law Enforcement department is functional.

      1. As we learnt from the Inquiry into the Banking gigascam of 2008 (which had its roots in Lawson’s 1986 “Big Bang” and Mandelson’s ongoing perpetuation of it). Many years of gravy-ladelling into the troughs of top corporate lawyers deduced that it was not “within the remit” of the Serious Fraud Office to investigate serious fraud, and they all got off scot-free with their bonuses, pensions and share options.

        One of them now runs the Bank of England.

  51. The morons of the BLM etc will recognise the box on the right but will any of them recognise the figure on the left: he was one of the greatest mass murderers of the 20th Century, and a supporter of Hitler’s regime for almost two years, to boot. They are less likely to recognise the guy in the middle wearing a sharp suit and bow tie, history not being one of their strong points.

    https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1272931514829996035

      1. Yo/No Peddy

        The piccy of Trueman is below

        Fred Trueman statue to be located at Skipton Canal Basin

        Unless of course his (bowling) actions have upset the BLMers in the West Indies

        In which case they might just as well throw the statue straight into ;the cut’

        https://www.cravenherald.co.uk/news/5000306.fred-trueman-statue-to-be-located-at-skipton-canal-basin/

        https://www.cravenherald.co.uk/resources/images/1012887.jpg?display=1&htype=100000&type=responsive-gallery

    1. Morning Bill,

      I don’t suppose any millionaire footballers have offered to put their money where their mouth is?

  54. 329246+ up ticks,
    May one ask could we be witnessing a FEF in action in an ongoing serial form and with the governance party clearly in collusion regarding Dover ?
    FEF = Foreign Expeditionary Force, able to move unhindered on london say and consolidate and establish, for the world to see, the FUTURE.
    If allowed to continue then the FUTURE from down at, on your knees level five times a day is very bleak indeed.

    1. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-53067426
      Taken from the above – -“Minister for immigration compliance Chris Philp said: “French authorities stopped more than 1,000 migrants from crossing the Channel across the months of April and May and have stopped more today.
      “We continue to work with them to tackle these illegal crossings and bring the ruthless criminals who facilitate them to justice.”

      And with some getting here by rowing boat ( that is the UK’s idea of controlling your borders !!!) You can hear them singing

      Row row row your boat
      North to Dover’s shore
      They all hope that we’re the last
      But there’s millions more.

      Apologies for that.

      1. 320246+ up ticks,
        Morning W,
        The only reason for the stoppage would be the illegals are not coming across with the required wonga, palms have to be greased especially political palms both sides of the channel.
        Also diesel must be found for the establishments
        naval transport.

  55. Vegetarians and vegans are more introverted than meat eaters, scientists have found, and suggest it could be because their diets cause “segregation”.

    A study revealed that being vegetarian or vegan is related to personality and the scientists, who studied the diets of more than 9,000 people and reported their findings in the journal Nutrients, hypothesised that the results could be due to those who don’t eat animal products being more “socially segregated” than those who do. [Report, DT 17/06/20]

    No, it’s not called “segregation”. It is called malnutrition.

    1. “More introverted.”

      Does that mean they spend much of their time looking up their own backsides wondering what’s gone wrong?

  56. Why do Anti poverty campaigners never demand tax reductions as a way of helping the less well off??
    Puzzle ain’t it??

    1. Because it also benefits the rest of us, and a “us & them” attitude is essential.

      1. And apart from that how much tax do the really low earners pay?

        It could still make sense to really cut the lowest tax rate and up the tax threshold, even if higher band taxes went up to compensate.

  57. Very good explanation of the “Black Card” by Candice Owens

    https://youtu.be/qKpEl9jJ4dA

    I have seen a few of her videos lately, she is a strong, intelligent and brave lady. The sort of positive role model that others kids should be following rather than the divisive idiots on the Left, BLM and Antifa.

    3. If all people of colour were like Candace Owens then there would be no interracial problems. She is a breath of fresh air.

      1. She’s merely representative of the facts – that society is formed of a wide and diverse population. Some intelligent and erudite, others barely above the level of brutes.

  58. Morning all 😊
    Recently discovered cheap and readily available drug that prevents a full blown virus attack. Suddenly rockets in price and become difficult to obtain !
    Or am I just an old
    experienced septic ? 😉

    2. It’s only a steroid which suppresses an over active immune system as steroids do. It doesn’t directly treat the virus.

      Of course most doctors knew that already but were prevented from saving lives by the NHS.

      It’s exactly the same with a range of existing drugs where the side effects are already known. They’re used to treat other conditions…. but the NHS won’t allow them to be used on C-19.

      Except in Boros’ case. He got something special though we’ve never been told what.

  60. I had the misfortune to hear the beeboid radio 3 news at 1 pm. I assume that the Prime Minister had a better PMQs today, because the lead item (most of the bulletin) was about the harridan Murrell and her plan to end the 2 metre rule for good in September.

    1. If the Government introduced the two centimetre rule would anyone notice the difference?
      (give them two centimetres and they’d take a kilometre).

    1. 320246+ up ticks,
      Afternoon Rik,
      I will give 911 a bell on a phone I haven’t got to a switchboard you disbanded yesterday.

  63. SIR – I am surprised no one appears to have drawn attention to the fact that the only historical precedent for the wholesale removal of statues of different figures from public view was that carried out by the Nazis and the Vichy government after the German occupation of France.

    Statues of Jews, Masons, radicals, philosophers, democrats and past opponents of the Germans – any that were repugnant to them – all went. Those in metal were melted down, others were broken up.

    For this see Pierre Jahan’s clandestine photos of the destruction of those made out of metal in Paris in La Mort et les Statues (1946).

    Alastair Laing

    London N5

    1. If the left bothered with historical precedent they would realise that they are the evil authoritarians. That they are the fascists, the bad guys.

      It is a unique property of their self righteousness that the Lefty mind cannot see the malice and spite behind their actions.

    1. 320246+ up ticks,
      O2O
      If it was in the manifesto would the peoples still have adhered to the same voting patter do you believe ?

      Without a shadow of doubt, yes, we could never, as a nation, achieved such a depth of odious standing without the continuing input of lab/lib/con, it would have been impossible.

    2. …what looks very much like government collusion by border neglect.

      It’s not neglect Oggy which would look rather more disconnected. It’s a highly organised system for bringing immigrants into the country and probably also serves as a decoy from the airports and ferries.

      1. Well the ferries aren’t running at the moment, so clearly having to improvise.

    3. Globalists like Boros and Macron are like the card dealer in Poldark who keeps all the best cards up his sleeve to make sure everyone else always lose, while with clever talk always appearing to be straight.

      2. That’s crystal clear. You can add Brussels to that list with their 25% muslim demographic.

    2. 320246+ up ticks,
      O2O,
      He did take her back to playschool after the ceremony though so I believe.

    4. There are few things as pissing off as the selective indignation of the MSM

      How can the MSM, the Police and the politicians expect any respect when they turn a blind eye to Muslim rape and persecute Tommy Robinson for trying to draw their attention to the filthiness of it; and they call Nigel Farage a racist when he draws attention to the shameful failure of the police and the government to enforce the law and put a stop to illegal immigration.

      1. 320246+ up ticks,
        Afternoon R,
        The “nige” works to a very different agenda than Tommy that is for sure.
        The establishment employees rate the indigenous peoples as far down the pecking order as rotherham proved, and one day the indigenous peoples are going to wake up , maybe after receiving the kiss of allah and a dose of sore knees
        for a while, to what they have been voting for all these years then to late, the sh!te will connect with the fan.

    1. Will they ever make a statue for Boris Johnson? If so will he be portrayed in a horizontal pose?

      2. If ever they erect a statue of David Cameron or Treason May I want to come back as a pigeon

  67. Just got home from my rounds & car unloaded before the downpour started. No q at the bank, no q at w/rose.

    Why is it that no matter how new your windscreen-wipers, something gets caught & causes smearing at exactly eye level?

    1. No rain here, blue sky , very warm , huge CuNims to the north of us hanging there like giant meringues in the sky.. I can see them .. no threat of rain for us , probably North Dorset and Poole and Bournemouth will have some wet weather.

      I expect I will have to water the garden , again, this evening .

        1. Blooming hot here! Have just planted an acer, a hazel (apparently with truffles!) and a buddleia globosa from pots into the beds! I am glowing!!

      2. I think the big black clouds came milling around Salisbury Plain – very heavy downpour with thunder and lightening late in the afternoon.

    3. No crowd control. That demonstration broke the law. Had they all been arrested earlier it would never have happened. Why no action against these foreign muslim agitators? Oh, I see what I said there.

    1. Just imagine how it would be all over the news if Trump brought the army in to quell riots in the USA

    3. To be fair to Macron the flood of Muslims began before he was president; indeed it had begun before he was born and even before his wife was born.

    4. To be fair to Macron the flood of Muslims began before he was president; indeed it had begun before he was born and even before his wife was born.

  73. Brendan O’Neill
    We need to talk about Munira Mirza and Priti Patel
    16 June 2020, 4:48pm

    We need to talk about Priti Patel. Specifically we need to talk about what happened to her last week. In an emotional statement in the House of Commons, Patel talked about some of the racist abuse she has experienced, from being called a ‘P**i’ in the school playground to being depicted as a cow with a ring through its nose in the Guardian. (Patel is a Hindu, and the cow is a sacred symbol in Hinduism.)

    She did so in response to the claim made by Labour MP Florence Eshalomi that the government doesn’t understand the problem of racial inequality. After recounting her run-ins with prejudicial hatred, Patel said: ‘I will not take lectures [on racism] from the other side of the House.’

    How did the supposedly anti-racist left respond to Patel’s comments? Did they offer her solidarity as a victim of racism? Did they cheer her for bravely discussing some of the racist bile that has been thrown her way?

    No. They mocked her. They insulted her. They accused her of ‘gaslighting’ black people and essentially told her to shut up about her personal experiences. It was, to my mind, one of the most disturbing, and revealing, things we have seen from the contemporary left in recent times.

    Let’s consider the seriousness of this: an MP talked openly about the racism and sexism she has suffered and she was told to pipe down, to stop being manipulative, to know her place, essentially. The Labour MP Nadia Whittome was first out of the gate. She accused Patel of using ‘her identity as an Asian person to silence Flo Eshalomi as a black person’.

    A group of Labour MPs, led by Naz Shah, followed up with a letter chastising Patel. They expressed their ‘dismay’ at Patel’s comments, accusing her of ‘using’ her ‘heritage and experiences of racism’ to silence the discussion about racism against black people.

    They went so far as to suggest that her words could harm minority groups: ‘[W]e ask you to reflect on your words and to consider the impact [they] had towards black communities.’ So when someone like Patel talks about her experience of racism, she causes distress to certain ethnic groups. There’s only one thing for it: shut up, woman.

    That letter was shameful. There is no other word for it. Just imagine if Diane Abbott made a statement in the Commons about the disgusting racist abuse she receives (and she receives a lot) and a bunch of Tory MPs wrote to her accusing her of ‘using’ her identity and warning her not to be so self-centred in future. There would, rightly, be fury and anger for days. And yet this is done to Patel and no one bats an eyelid. Some of those on the left severely reprimand an Asian-heritage woman for talking about her experience of racism and we’re expected to think this is normal behaviour.

    How can this happen? How can the experiences of a prominent ethnic-minority woman be so publicly and cavalierly pushed aside? I think there are two reasons.

    The first is because Patel is from an Indian background. And, tragically, it looks like some on the left want to do with Indians what they have already done with Jews: redefine them as ‘privileged’ and therefore less deserving of support than other ethnic-minority groups, such as black people and Pakistani Muslims. This is a poisonously divisive agenda, almost a kind of woke communalism, which pits communities against each other — blacks vs Indians, Muslims vs Jews — at a time when we should be trying to unite the country around shared values.

    The second reason Patel is so ruthlessly targeted by the left is because she is their worst nightmare: an ethnic-minority woman who refuses to conform to their view on racial issues and who rejects the fatalistic idea that Britain is a systemically racist country in which you have to be white to succeed.

    Nothing winds up the woke set more than an ethnic-minority person who refuses to sing from their hymn sheet. It’s the same with Munira Mirza, director of the policy unit at No10. People are going mad today about the fact that Mirza is playing a key role in setting up the commission on race and ethnic disparities that Boris Johnson announced on Sunday.

    The fury over Mirza’s role stems from the fact that she has dared to question the contemporary left’s view of racism. She doesn’t believe Britain is an institutionally racist country. She is critical of the ‘culture of grievance’ that encourages ethnic-minority groups to conceive of themselves as permanent victims being held back by unassailable structures of hatred and prejudice.

    In the eyes of some, Mirza’s questioning of the ideology of victimhood makes her a race traitor. Like Patel, she stands accused of failing to think and behave in the way ethnic minorities should think and behave. That’s the dark irony of the rage against dissenting ethnic-minority figures. It is itself motored by a racist belief that all BAME people should share the same worldview, and that if they deviate from this worldview then they must be cast out; they will no longer be ‘real’ BAME people. This is utterly dehumanising, as racism always is. (For the record, I know Mirza and she has written for my magazine, spiked.)

    There are others, too, who fail the PC test of being a good BAME person. There’s the brilliant Kemi Badenoch, who frequently commits the speechcrime of saying Britain is a very good place to be a black or brown person. There’s Trevor Phillips, of course, cast out of mainstream left circles for questioning whether every problem facing ethnic-minority communities really is caused by racism. All have received flak for breaking away from the racial conformism outrageously demanded by sections of the left.

    We are witnessing the rise of a kind of woke racism: a belief among certain political activists that they have ownership over ethnic-minority groups. We should cheer Patel, Mirza, Phillips and others for challenging this deeply patronising idea and for speaking freely and honestly about life in Britain. I have no doubt that a majority of Brits would find these people’s stories and beliefs far more inspiring than the dead-end racialism of the increasingly negative left.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/we-need-to-talk-about-munira-mirza-and-priti-patel

    1. “…we should be trying to unite the country around shared values.” No we should not. Most emphatically not!
      It is up to those who live here to abide by and fall into line with our traditional values. All of them. No exceptions. This is not “Pick & Mix”. This is the UK not a bazaar in Cairo.

    2. 320246+up ticks,
      C,
      I see the internal rhetoric inside the close shop as window dressing & fodder for the herds consumption.
      Same with the current tory lookalike party they are
      seemingly pressurised by non existing opponents.
      So it boils down to how can she handle the Dover issue
      when under personal attack going back to schooldays ?
      How about we have an indigenous person whos pedigree goes back to William the conker player with NO personal side issues replace priti on the ILLEGAL
      Dover entry front, thereby letting priti give 100% attention to her in-house major rhetorical crisis.

    3. “a belief among certain political activists that they have ownership over ethnic-minority groups”. Hmm, like slave owners?

    4. “a belief among certain political activists that they have ownership over ethnic-minority groups”. Hmm, like slave owners?

    5. Ah Bless,the same grifting Leftards (of all colours) that call Candace a “Coon” for not accepting the victimhood narrative.
      As for Naz shut your mouth raped children Shah a long period of silence would be welcome

    6. The second reason Patel is so ruthlessly targeted by the left is because she is their worst nightmare: an ethnic-minority woman who refuses to conform to their view on racial issues and who rejects the fatalistic idea that Britain is a systemically racist country in which you have to be white to succeed.

      There will be another reason why the left don’t like her, people of Hindu and Sikh religions don’t particularly like muslims.

      1. Hence the Partition of India in 1948 into East and West Pakistan. East Pakistan is now Bangladesh.

        I note that there is still a large Muslim Minority in India, doing their best to undermine Indian (Hindu and Sikh) society.

        1. But look at the success india has made of its independence from Islamic influence. Pakistan is seriously third world.
          China doesn’t put up with their nonsense. Only stupid western governments give the medieval mindset credence.

  75. RSC ‘may be forced into drastic hibernation without urgent help’. Wed 17 June 2020.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/90932b3cb994035909fc4231fb8e74a85442916ce4a4c05835f9fee15241a36e.jpg

    It may be one of Britain’s biggest and best-funded arts organisations but without urgent support the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) faces being forced into “drastic hibernation” because of the pandemic, its leaders have said.

    I’m something of an oddity for an antisocialist in that I think some artistic endeavours do need to be supported by the taxpayer. This said I have watched the beginnings of two RSC productions on TV this last fortnight and I can only wish that it never wakes up!

    https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2020/jun/17/rsc-may-be-forced-into-drastic-hibernation-without-urgent-help

    2. Every time I hear the arts rattling their begging bowls (conveniently and publicly refusing “bad ” funding, I think of Maslows hierarchy of needs.

        1. I was 19 when I learned the theory! Quite a bit older now but it must have settled in my tiny mind!

      2. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a motivational theory in psychology comprising a five-tier model of human needs, often depicted as hierarchical levels within a pyramid. … From the bottom of the hierarchy upwards, the needs are: physiological, safety, love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualization.

        It’s not really my field and certainly not my garden or even back yard.

          1. I must have misunderstood it – I thought that if we kept people in fear of their lives and wondering where the next meal was coming from they wouldn’t have the time or energy to cause trouble!???

  76. Black trainee vicar is denied position by Church of England bosses because the ‘monochrome white working class’ parishioners might make him ‘uncomfortable’
    Augustine Tanner-Ihm hits out at the ‘institutional racism’ in Church of England
    The claim about him not being a ‘match’ for a curacy role was made in an email
    The Masters student will now explore work outside the church after experience

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8431767/Black-trainee-vicar-denied-position-Church-England-area-population-monochrome-white.html

    1. I suppose White Missionaries were ‘uncomfortable’ when faced with Black congregations?

  77. I think Boris should follow this

    Many leadership academics and practitioners argue that when you face tough decisions, the answer may be to avoid the options placed before you and find a ‘third way’, even if this means bending (or in some cases breaking) the rules (see Decisive and Leadership BS).

    Bending and breaking the rules is not without consequence. You will face, policy, bureaucratic and human obstacles, and even if you are careful, you may trigger a regulatory, legal and even public backlash. Without getting into a debate about ethics, sometimes the ends justify the means, other times they don’t. You need to be wise enough to know the difference and understanding enough to allow those that follow you to do the same.

  78. ”Can we in future have an honest and clear explanation so that more Members of Parliament might understand what is going on”.

    This request goes to the heart of many difficult issues which affect the UK. From energy policy to the C-19 medical response, from unauthorized channel crossings and riots to ”billionaire influence”, and so much more besides.

    Let’s take a look at the new fishing policy which is being proposed. According to ”Breitbart” this is to be based on quotas which will be agreed annually between London and Brussels………..

    https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/06/16/eu-set-cave-fishing-boris-says-deal-can-be-done-july/

    Reading between the lines, and especially as the EU agrees, it’s obvious that while the fish will technically be British and so fulfil the ”taking back control” mantra, the EU will be allowed to catch the same amount as before. Otherwise obviously the EU wouldn’t be so compliant. So it looks that as usual in political terms, there is more than one way to skin a haddock in international agreements. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

    As David Starkey remarked ”liberalism values international cooperation and globalism over rational defence of the nation” and I think everything Prime Minister Johnson does is guided by these principles.

    Obviously one must ask where those ”globalism” principles come from, and in that respect I’m sure there is no reasonable doubt. Globalism comes from ”billionaire influence” which has clearly been at the heart of British government policy since the Tony Blair victory in 1997, and quite probably before, and continues to this day irrespective of which party is in power.

    Globalists are deeply subversive, through catchy reverse meaning slogans (Build Back Better) and subliminal propaganda (including more reverse messaging), they make everyone believe that their proposals are in the best interests of the public and the world at large, even to the extent of handing control to them and away from national governments. It’s all designed to undermine nation states in favor of global government. The Davos 2018 ”Shared Future” presentation is typical.

    The UK’s C-19 medical response is a perfect example of globalism policy, as is Net Zero which looks deliberately intended to bring Britain and others to their knees… and, along with so many other undesirable policies, it’s all due to invasive and subversive globalist ”billionaire influence” which is incompatible with ”rational defense of the nation”.

  79. Number of far-right terrorist prisoners in Britain hits record high. Wed 17 Jun 2020 15.09 BST

    The number of far-right prisoners convicted for terror offences in Great Britain climbed by a third last year to their highest recorded level, and accounts for more than one in six of all terrorists held in prison, according to official figures.

    The Home Office data shows that 44 “extreme rightwing” prisoners were in custody for terror offences across Great Britain, up from 33 a year ago. Three years ago, the figure was nine and no higher than five before that.

    Those who have been jailed in recent years include Thomas Mair, who murdered Jo Cox four years ago this week, and a neo-Nazi who plotted to kill another Labour MP, Rosie Cooper, with a machete a year later.

    44! Good grief it’s almost the Waffen SS! Let me see. I reckon about a dozen of those are from National Action who once put stickers on a War Memorial and whose leader christened his son Adolf Hitler. One is Thomas Mair who had trouble working out what day it was and the Machete guy was a set up. The rest must be a rough lot. I don’t think.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/17/number-of-far-right-terrorist-prisoners-in-britain-hits-record-high

      1. Islamist extremists still form the largest category of terror prisoners, but at 183 last year the overall number has remained roughly flat since 2018 – meaning the proportion of far-right terror prisoners has increased to a record 18%.

        1. But they are all mentally deranged, of course, and know not what they do….(sarc).

    3. Only a very small minority would bother to read this news paper.
      Is the not a Guardian against the continuous flow of this inherent addiction towards spreading malignant Leftwaffe BS.

  82. Boris Johnson in car crash outside Parliament. 17 june 2020.

    The police vehicles were part of a security movement. A pedestrian is reported to have stepped onto the road, causing the vehicles to suddenly stop, which has led to two of the vehicles in the convoy being involved in a damage-only collision.

    A man, no further details at this time, was arrested at the scene for offences under Section 5 of the Public Order Act and for obstructing the highway.

    Mug! He should have toppled a statue!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/17/boris-johnson-car-crash-outside-parliament/

    1. Bames complain that protester was hideously white “Why no protesters of color (sic)? Demonstrate in Hyde Park this Sunday.”

    3. No one in the convoy being charged with driving without due care and attention? Thought not.

    4. I noticed that the Jaguar in which Boris was travelling was fitted with number plates which featured the EU flag!

    2. That’s not far from the truth. I went round our church with the Dyson (as opposed to a Crozier) yesterday, in preparation for limited opening next week, and the spiders had been rather busy…

        1. More a case of each doorway having an invisible curtain to walk through. Usually at face level. The punters won’t have time to drop off. TPTB have decreed that we can only open for two hours on Tuesday mornings, and another two on Thursday afternoons. Only one person allowed in the building at a time. And the place will be festooned with warning notices, black/yellow tape, and hand sanitizer dispensers. Most conducive to private prayer, I don’t think…

          1. At my church we have to sign a register to say when we attended for track and trace! I shan’t be bothering. I can pray in my garden or in the studio when I need peace and quiet.

      2. I hope you took them all home with you !

        ♫All things bright and beautiful all creatures great and small♫

        You can save them all to decorate the fairy cakes when the vicar comes to Tea…..

          2. Stuck ya finger in the socket did ya?

            I bet the MR never lets you out of her sight !

  85. De Gaulle statues vandalised before Macron’s memorial visit to London. 17 June 2020.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/03652f9ac34c9710db4a122455661d2b78e29971237d444e49617709d67eb24c.jpg

    Two statues of Charles de Gaulle have been vandalised, causing outrage ahead of President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to London on Thursday, the 80th anniversary of the exiled Free French leader’s appeal to resist the Nazis.

    Hmmmm! Perhaps there is something to be said for Black Lives Don’t Matter after all!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/17/de-gaulle-statues-vandalised-macrons-memorial-visit-london/

        1. “Bernard Schmeltz, the top state official in the region, said in a statement that the violence “appeared to be part of a settling of scores between members of the Chechen community in France and residents” of Dijon.”
          Ah! “Residents of Dijon”.
          In the French press the reports are more specific. The “residents” originate from the Mahgreb. So these” residents of Dijon” hail from Algeria, Morocco, and Libya and are muslims.

          1. I thought that Chechnya was also predominantly Muslim.

            They’re probably different flavours of Islam.

          2. Yep. Although this thing started when the “residents” beat up a Chechen youth last week.
            The word went around the Chechens of France and they turned up mob-handed at the weekend.

        2. That’s what they usually do – hide it elsewhere then say they’ve covered it.

    3. Why? He had no connection with slavery – unless being white made him guilty by association.

  86. How far back do we go in this witch hunt, how wide do we extend this pernicious net?
    When I worked in London I worked with people who were quite well off. Their ancestors had claimed some land and made some money by arriving in England with William, Duke of Normandy. A few weeks ago I did some business with a man whose family fortunes were severely dented by being on the Jacobite side in the ’45. Fortunes were revived by slaves and sugar.
    Where does it stop? I shook hands with a man who’d shaken hands with Baden-Powell. That hardly makes me a slave-owner.

    1. Can any European unequivocally state that their family never benefitted from the slave trade? Even a cup of tea sweetened with sugar made from canes collected by slaves would qualify as this indirect benefit.

      Africans and arabs from the deepest jungle might be innocent but that is about it for innocence

        1. They still are. They have more slaves today than Nasty White Men ever did.

        2. The Moors were cruelty personified behaving with a sadism remote from the ill treatment of blacks in America. They relished cruelty as an almost religious duty.

  87. Latest Breaking News Just out – Inventor Thomas Rammhofer to be airbrushed from engineering record books for his part in creating slave cylinders, say BLM supporters.

    1. It is time that any additions or deletions from the history books are only made using the social values of the future, say the year 2100.

      That is the only way that clutches and brakes will work after the slave cylinders are removed.

    2. The next demand will be to rename male and female connectors e.g. electrical and plumbing, because they upset transgender people.

    3. The next demand will be to rename male and female connectors e.g. electrical and plumbing, because they upset transgender people.

    4. Exhausting stuff as well………and many British women in the past had been ‘slaving over hot stoves’ for years, bringing up their own children whilst the father of the children were out working to support the whole family………………now it’s the UK tax payers who have become slaves to all the benefit seekers who have jammed themselves into the UK (well England mainly) to live their lives in relative luxury.

        1. I do hope you’re not bringing tribalism into the situation Citroen, oh no……… that’s already been going on for a long time hasn’t it ;-))

  88. Time is like a river. You cannot touch the same water twice, because the
    flow that has passed will never pass again. Enjoy every moment of life. As a
    bagpiper, I play many gigs. Recently I was asked by a funeral director to
    play at a graveside service for a homeless man. He had no family or friends,
    so the service was to be at a pauper’s cemetery As I was not familiar with the area, I got lost and, being a
    typical man, I didn’t stop for directions.
    I finally arrived an hour late and saw the funeral guy had evidently gone
    and the hearse was nowhere in sight. There were only the diggers and crew
    left and they were eating lunch. I felt badly and apologized to the men for
    being late.
    I went to the side of the grave and looked down and the vault lid was
    already in place. I didn’t know what else to do, so I started to play.
    The workers put down their lunches and began to gather around. I played out
    my heart and soul for this man with no family and friends. I played like
    I’ve never played before for this homeless man. And as I played “Amazing
    Grace”, the workers began to weep. They wept, I wept, we all wept together.
    When I finished, I packed up my bagpipes and started for my car. Though my
    head was hung low, my heart was full.
    As I opened the door to my car, I heard one of the workers say, “I never
    seen anything like that before, and I’ve been putting in septic tanks for
    twenty years.”

    1. The definition of a gentleman is a man who has his own bagpipes but doesn’t play them!

      1. The definition of really sweet music is when you chuck a set of bagpipes into a skip and they hit a rap singer.

    1. Cost you well over a grand to paint a car properly. Plane paint is very expensive, and there’s a lot of prep time – and a lot of plane!

    3. Farrow and Ball must do Red, White and Blue!
      My brother who is a painter and decorator considers it rubbish but the nobs still insist on it.
      That may be your answer.

        1. My late son, a painter and decorator by trade – had some very rude words for the paint.

          If the client insisted, he’d buy “proper” paint of the appropriate hue – and decant it into a F&B tin he had kept for the purpose!

  90. Off topic.
    I have taken the last trombetti and butternut squash out of the cellar and they’ve kept well; by a happy coincidence the seeds I planted from last year’s crop have germinated and appeared this evening.

    I was starting to think they would never come through, it’s been so unseasonally cold. They should catch up quickly as they are only about 10 days later than last year.

    2. I have a Trombetti at the end of my bean patch. 8 inches high at the moment. The other 23 seedlings once they had gone past the cotyledon stage were bequeathed to the neighbours. Trombetti heaven in my neck of the woods….Thanks to Uncle Bill Trombetti LTD.

    3. Interesting. I sowed new seed (last year’s being such a disappointment). That was in the last week of March. I had to do a second sowing because nothing appeared. Sod’s Law meant that I ended up with about 15 plants! I have five in the garden here – out doors, fending for themselves. Four are now producing very good looking trombettini – which will develop.

      The lady who took over the potager in Laure also sowed new seed in early April – and now has 8 inch fruit on her plants… As it was a new vegetable for her, she e-mailed last week asking for recipes! (She was told by the co-potagistes that trombetti growing was compulsory in “Bill’s section”…!!

      1. It will be interesting to see what appears.

        Because of the courgettes and more likely butternuts, I wonder if they might have cross pollinated and mght produce something interesting.

        I had a super-abundance of completely differently shaped butternuts last year and I considered whether that might have happened.

        1. Last year, we had some very odd fruit. Some was bright green with stripes. After a lot of cogitation, I figured that some of my plants ad cross with the courgettes grown across the fence by co-potagiste Robert. Perfectly OK to eat – and had the same keeping qualities. Just odd to look at.

          So you may have the same thing happening with your squashes.

          I look on myself as a mini Joseph Banks…!!

  91. Chucking it down in Derbyshire.
    Lots of distant and not so distant rumblings, but, as yet, not a lot close up. Most of it is the other side of the Derwent.

  92. Uncle Ben’s rice announces it is ‘evolving’ its brand hours after Quaker announced it will scrap Aunt Jemima name in a bid to end ‘racial bias’
    Uncle Ben’s rice announced it’s ‘evolving its visual brand identity’
    The Aunt Jemima pancake and syrup brand is being renamed by Quaker Foods after more than a century because it is based on racial stereotypes
    Aunt Jemima has racist origins as it comes from a vaudeville era song and its character was based off the mammie, a black woman working for white families
    Quaker announced it was dropping the brand and working on a name change

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8432739/Uncle-Bens-rice-announces-evolving-brand-Aunt-Jemima-scrapped.html?ito=push-notification&ci=19180&si=7271111

      1. Notice from picture of tonight’s football match that all (?) players are ‘taking the knee’. Are they doing this voluntarily, or has it been ordered from above?

        3. Even the match officials. I wonder what would happen if anyone refused? I don’t think it would happen – none of them has the guts or brains to realise they are supporting a Marxist organisation dedicated to overthrowing democracy.

    2. I remember when cooking Uncle Ben’s rice it was okay to call out, “is it nearly ready” ?

    3. And the term “Aunt Jemima” is also used as a feminine equivalent to Uncle Tom.

    4. I suppose that this means that all white families and restaurants will have to fire their black female cooks? Otherwise it would be racist stereotyping by whitey.

    6. Oh -for heaven’s sake………!! I don’t buy them anyway but erasing all history is crazy and where will it all end. I don’t know about you but I’m proud of my history!

  93. The former slave who became the toast of Georgian society – and a slave trader

    As Boris Johnson has pointed out, the complexity of Ayuba Suleiman Diallo’s life is a cautionary tale for today’s culture warriors

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/books/2020/06/16/TELEMMGLPICT000003981039_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqqVzuuqpFlyLIwiB6NTmJwfSVWeZ_vEN7c6bHu2jJnT8.jpeg?imwidth=960

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/authors/american-slave-became-toast-georgian-society-slave-trader/

  94. That’s me for the day. A lot achieved. Finally persuaded the French insurers to cancel the car insurance. Any NoTTLers who deal with yer French will know that – in the main – yer French NEVER react even remotely quickly to e-mails. Took a fierce phone call from the MR to sort them out…..

    Started to remove a now unwanted box hedge*. Roots are very deep – so taking it in stages. Interesting lecture online from the British School in Rom about the British contributions to the 1911 International Exhibition in, er, Rome. Though the delightful lecturer had a very poor delivery. Even the sharp eared MR found it tricky to hear her.

    Looks like rain overnight. Hope so. Have a jolly evening practicing your knee action…..

    A demain.

    *Still about seven yards left – available free. Buyer collects (and digs it up).

    1. Our box plants all died from the blight. You obviously don’t have it Narfolk.

  95. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5f4bf57a53480d14e9bd31a580bca3a7e0d5d0e037ea8a03c7cee8ca289e8184.jpg

    Puzzle No. 763 – Wednesday 17 June 2020

    The CILIP Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Medals are announced 7.15 tonight on Radio Four’s Front Row for the UK’s oldest and best-loved children’s book prize. There are 8 books shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal and 8 shortlisted for the Kate Greenaway Medal.
    What is the probability of you randomly picking both winners correctly?

    Today’s #PuzzleForToday has been set by Bobby Seagull in his capacity as UK Library Champion following previous incumbents Mary Beard and Stephen Fry.

        1. I was wondering how many points you get for running down a mozzie – must be more than a hedgehog.

  97. Just got a bit wet. Went out to clear the grids on the rainwater gullies to reduce the amount of water flooding down Clatterway and across the main road.

    1. Last time I wet out to clear the road gulley opposite my house – there was 8 inches of water in the road – dome flucker in a range rover drove through at high speed – drenching me.

          1. If it had been a banker, the dash cam would have been all over the internet:

            A lawyer getting soaked rather than soaking….

      3. A driver was fined a lot and had points put on his licence for doing that here. Driving without due care (or the Weegie version).

        1. Over here it constitutes driving without due care as well. First, however, you have to find a plod to follow it up and act on it.

  98. 320246+ up ticks,
    Can any of the lab/lib/con mass uncontrolled immigration coalition party
    member / voters tell me WHY ?
    breitbart,
    ‘Invasion’: Dozens More Illegal Boat Migrants Brought Ashore at Dover

      1. 320246+ up ticks,
        Evening TB,
        Took it off of the breitbart menu, just go to breitbart / London.

    1. Mind Games was a champion 2-yr-old sprinter; seriously fast! He stood at stud and died, aged 20, in 2012.

  100. BBC Radio 4 this morning reported that the Government does not know how many illegal immigrants are in the UK. I am not surprised. They also reported that the Government are working hard at protecting our borders and deporting illegal immigrants. I am surprised.
    I wonder how many illegal immigrants have had COVID-19 and how many have died. There must have been some but I suppose they turn a blind eye to these statistics

    1. I would wonder how many people have died as a result of covid infected illegal immigrants being allowed to wander about freely.

      1. Actually, apart from the prawns and rice it was mostly grown in my own garden. It wasn’t meat and two veg if that’s what you mean.

    4. A 404.

      Carrot not corriander?

      EDIT I’ve checked, and coriander is one “r”. One “r” just doesn’t look “right”

      1. No coriander, not with basil. I save the coriander for Indian and Thai curries.

        A 404? Isn’t that the Marlow bypass?

        1. The picture refused to load for me.

          Now that it has, it’s obviously carrot.

          We like fresh corriander and happily mix it with basil.

          As an aside, have you had problems with mildew on your green basil this year? We’ve lost two lots to it and yet the purple seems to be free of it.

          Very strange.

          2. I like it fresh.

            Herbs and spices are very individual as far as taste is concerned, let alone their effect. There are a few which give me a very bad allergic reaction

          3. Me too, Belle. It tastes ‘soapy’ in an unpleasant way. It is something to do with our genes. Poppiesdad also hates it.

          4. Is that so PM, why ?

            Corriander is the only herb I really recoil from .. There are other herbs I am not too keen on , but corriander is the top of the list.

          7. Without wishing to put my 3 fellow anglers to shame I out-fished them on my own (we seem to take turns in doing this). Location of where you fish on the boat appears to be all. We caught maybe 35 very decent pollack, 1 ling and a few jumbo mackerel. We used large launce as live bait mainly.
            I’m not a big fan of pollack and so took nothing home. The skipper ended up with 3 and a half boxes of large pollack and we didn’t pay full price for the charter. Lovely day that leaves us knackered and aching. Masochism must play some part in this sport.

          9. The mackerel were caught first thing and so would have been 10 hours old at the end of the trip, so not as fresh a you could wish for, Belle. You’re right though, mackerel are yummy. I think they’ye fetching a good price at present due to scarcity.

          10. Morning M

            Years go when we were in Nigeria , the local markets were full of huge mackerel on ice .. tons of the stuff , obviousley sucked out of the ocean by huge factory ships . The smell was something else.

          11. I’ve walked through a few, Belle, but even my interest in fish wasn’t as overpowering as the smell.

          13. Water temperature rising, the mackerel are coming in too. Summer’s here. Good old sunfish.

          14. Coriander sounds lovely, the sound of the word almost musical….. but ugh! overpowers any dish for me and himself. I recall reading an article a few years ago that explained that actually the taste of it and the way it tasted was genetic. Our younger son has not inherited this gene, surprisingly. He loves the stuff. P’dad and I find that we have to be careful with tarragon as well although we can tolerate it if it is just a hint in the background. Turmeric and cumin are also off our lists!

          15. Good heavens PM, that is so interesting. I dislike tarragon as well as well as a few others like fenugreek or however you pronounce it , star anise too.

          16. Fenugreek is very useful in a fish curry – it takes away any fishy smell that might linger in the kitchen.

          18. I couldn’t cook half the things I do without them! Turmeric and cumin are wonderful spices in many ways.

          19. One of my fave dishes to make is green Thai curry. The ‘green’ is from lotsa fresh coriander blitzed to a paste and mixed with coconut milk.
            Delish

          21. No problem. The biggest problem with the coriander is the speed of growth, blink and its gone to seed. Freezes well though. Truffles are coming through as well…..

          22. My first time growing coriander and I was surprised at how quickly it flowered, I’m not that keen on it though. it came in a gift along with other herbs which I frequently use.

          23. A liberal sprinkling of freshly chopped coriander brings a curry to life! Also a necessity in guacamole.

          24. Sorry, not a great curry fan, but agree on the guacamole, a must with Mexican food!

          26. Agreed re coriander.
            We leave it in a herb patch and when it goes to seed allow it to regrow.

            It’s very reluctant though.

          27. Do you collect the seed. I prefer the ground seed as a spice to the leaf as a herb.

      2. A404, is that for six people with extra noodles, free prawn crackers and a bottle of Coke?

  103. All BBC Public Service (as opposed to Studios, formerly BBC Worldwide) staff have been invited to apply for voluntary redundancy. I accepted being tuped into Studios because I figured the PS side would wither but I expected it to take longer than this.

    2. If you are considering it, look at the pensions side VERY carefully.

      From your earlier comments on this blog, you appear to have many years service.

      You might be pleasantly surprised if there’s enough to make any redundancy award turn into spending money such that there’s no point in taking a lump sum form the pension and diluting your income.

      1. When I reach state pension age next year, I’ll have notched up 30 years service. I wouldn’t take a lump sum option. I’d rather have the full annual payment promised. I’m not eligible for this round of redundancies as I work for BBC Studios, the commercial side. If it was offered I’d take it though.

        2. I took an early out at 59, when the “mother company” was trying to reduce costs. They basically did a “Godfather” – made me an offer I could not possibly refuse. Zero regrets.

          1. Me too but I was only 52. Best move I’ve ever made on, full indexed linked pension.

          2. Retirement in Norway went up a couple-three years ago, to 70 for men & women.
            Gotta keep working more to support all the unqualified immigrating illiterates who get a free pass to everything.

          3. I shall be 74 in a couple of weeks and, were it not for CV19 I would still be helping Caroline run our courses. We have lost most of this year’s income and still do not know if we can go ahead with our summer courses which should be starting on July 5th. This means I shall have to go on working until I am 80 if I am not overwhelmed by senility.

    1. and what is happening to the men STILL collecting slaves in Africa

      OOps day is blick, can do no wrong

        1. ”while giving the continent an economic boost, officials in Ghana say.”

          Oh okkaaay….. that’ll be the ones with AMEX.

          No AMEX… forget it.

        1. Look what happened to Rhodesia. Once a fair honest self sufficient Africa country, now another African shi*th*le run by the second murderous lunatic in succession.

          2. Once a wonderful country.
            I recommend you read a book by Peter Goodwin When a Crocodile Eats the Sun.

            And then that arch dickhead Wilson poked his nose in Bob.
            I was in Salisbury when Wilson was lecturing aboard HMS Tiger.
            The locals hated him.
            There’s was a marked difference in education as soon as you crossed the Limpopo at Biet bridge.

      2. Oriel could give the Rhodes Scholarship funds to Zimbabwe and South Africa and let them administer the scholarships to fund their own people in their own Universities.

        My guess is that the money will then be stolen by the corrupt African governments and we will no longer have to ‘carry’ the imagined guilt.

    3. This is quite sickening. Why don’t they hold a vote on it.
      Everyone who doesn’t like our statues can leave our country.

      1. 320246+up ticks,
        Evening RE,
        The submissive pcism & appeasement brigade would see that as democracy and be firmly against it.

      1. And all Rhodes scholars will be demanded to repay the money they received from the Rhodes Foundation?

  106. The Queen won the 16:10 at Ascot, or at least one of her horses, ‘Tactical’ did (at 7/2; it was 5/1 this morning)

  107. Oh well another day passes, not much happend, Boris had a bump in his jugular whoops Jaguar. What a bleedin’ mess this country is in.
    Perhaps he might have banged his head and has at last come to his senses, and will give a lot more consideration for the opinions of people who voted against his opposition. Or perhaps not…. i’m fed up to the eye balls with it all…night all 😴
    It’s going to be very wet tmz.

    4. Her partner explained:

      “When I shout STOP! I need to you pull it out quickly and to its full extent!”

    5. A version I heard was the recipient said to the younger ‘stoker’.
      “You’re not very good with your organ are you sonny”!
      Well he replied “I’m not use to playing in cathedrals”.

  115. People moan about the BBC but tonight I’m watching ITN and it’s just as bad.

    They are reporting the difference in predicted and actual exam outcomes for non-white pupils vs white, the variance is greater for non-whites. This is claimed to be the outcome of conscious and unconscious bias and is retailed as FACT. The only cause, no other factors are mentioned. Any rational analysis is completely out of the picture.

    At this extreme level of voodoo bias it’s no longer possible to prove anything anymore. Any disparate outcome must result from the machinations of evil whitey alone.

    My suspicion is that schools flatter many non-white aspiring architects, clock boys and rocket surgeons by means of lenient treatment of their course work and exaggerated predictions of their exam success . But when it comes to exams they are marked blind and the overly progressive train hits the somewhat more meritocratic buffers. Whereas white kids will be assessed more realistically.

    So, ironically the more race blind part of the equation is now up for the BLM Year Zero treatment while the obviously biased component – the teachers who actually know the race of the pupils – are assumed to be innocent.

    Klownworld.

    1. They are definitely catching up.
      Portillo on trains is far easier to watch.
      Did you see the featured kneeling footballers ?
      That was enough for me.

      1. Yes, sportsball is back. Praise be!

        I never had much interest in football but that’s dropped to less than zero now. It’s a key component in the bread & circuses.

        1. He’s right.

          I don’t think they get the choice, but if it turns out that they do, I’m ceasing to support the team I’ve followed for nearly 60 years.

        3. I’m a great football fan but I will NOT watch players ‘taking the knee’ or wearing a BLM logo. That’s not what the game s about, they can stick their matches where the Sun doesn’t shine.

      2. Look at Eysenck’s work – which he was howled down for by the left wing mob. Asians (i.e. Orientals) on top, then Indo europeans, then African races. My hi tech work experience certainly would not contradict his thinking.

  116. Evening, all. It has hoyed it down here; there’s a flood outside my studio again and the road where the old ford is culverted is under water as well. No need to water the pots!

    2. Any Boris initiative that makes Cameron, Brown and Blair simultaneously apoplectic, must be inspirational …

  118. The aircraft that Boris wants repainted to reflect our national status should be at my suggestion … The nose of the aircraft should be Busby coloured then red and gold for the guardsmens uniform jacket then black to reflect guardsmans trousers .. and then our Union flag on the tail..

    If we are going to big ourselves up , that is what is required .

    (Or the nose of a Corgi?)

  119. DTStory

    Cecil Rhodes statue to be taken down at Oxford’s Oriel College

    I know that most Nottlers have already registered their disgust here but the DT is too frightened to allow comments under the article.

    I hope that all Oriel alumni will withdraw their subsidies, gifts and change their wills so as to remove their support for the College completely.

    In effect rational, decent British people have been completely disenfranchised. If it is not an sensible option to vote for Lib/Dems, Lab or the Conservatives then for whom are Nottlers going to vote?

    1. I hope they withdraw the Rhofes scholarships and have all the recent ones repaid.

  120. Just an observation to sleep on. (Polly might concur with the premise if not the outcome.)

    As I watch the new lock downs in Peking (sic) and the Chinese trying to shift the blame, I get very angry.

    Covid 19 was almost certainly created in a lab in China by people investigating viruses and seeking vaccinations that would make them an absolute fortune. The Gates foundation is very likely doing the same.

    When the time comes, I hope that there will be the equivalent of Nuremberg trials and that the leading lights in charge, if found guilty, will be hanged.

      1. Unfortunately not.

        But those bastards had better pray that someone like me doesn’t take charge in due course.

    1. Seattle will bounce back as soon as Donald sends in the Feds…

      Meanwhile peeps will start to understand what happens by electing Democrats.

    2. Did you see Chris Tarrant on channel 5 this evening Bob ?
      He was in Morroco, they have a superb rail system.

      1. And how big and modern is Morocco?
        Rail transport in London, including the underground, is cursed by it’s history and geography.

    3. Interesting Bob,explains why Soros has spent so much on District Attorney elections,a cheap way to destroy society
      Here of course with no elections he has to rely on Common Purpose

  123. Tonight, watching the list of companies coming forward to bend the knee in front of the illiterate mob, I finally decided that our country is no longer worth saving or respecting. It should sink back into the North Sea and like Atlantis, be lost for ever:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/17/companies-britain-linked-slave-trade-say-today/

    ”
    Greene King and Lloyd’s of London apologise over slavery links and pledge payments to BAME groups
    Move marks first time controversy over UK’s past involvement with slavery has impacted the corporate sector”

    1. The founder of the Guardian made his pile trading American cotton planted and picked by slaves. Maybe that self righteous rag should shut itself down in protest.
      -Jack.

    2. Greene King is a rotten company responsible for the flogging off and closure of tens of thousands of pubs. It has bought up numerous independent breweries over decades and destroyed distinctive ales all over the UK.

      Lloyd’s of London is an insurance business specialising historically in insuring shipping. It’s symbol is the Lutine Bell. It is financed by the wealthiest investors who seek to make profits by association with its various investor groups. Few rich folk advertise their membership except Lady Mary Archer, the wife of perjurer Jeffrey Archer, is a prominent board member.

      These companies are precisely the sort I would expect to seek advantage by sympathising with disorderly criminals.

Comments are closed.