Thursday 18 June: Scrapping of Dfid must be accompanied by more efficient aid spending

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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

Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/06/17/lettersscrapping-dfid-must-accompanied-efficient-aid-spending/

828 thoughts on “Thursday 18 June: Scrapping of Dfid must be accompanied by more efficient aid spending”

    1. Nicked from Persephone25 who posted here
      “How convenient to introduce a political slogan – Black Lives Matter – on
      the back of Premier League football shirts – and have all the players
      ‘take the knee’ (ugh) when there are NO spectators present.
      If there
      were spectators, I suspect many would mock and protest this sinister
      virtue signalling, thereby undermining it completely and giving other
      ordinary Brits an example to follow in rejecting this SHIT”

      1. Yo Rik

        Is it not about time, that the ‘authorities’ ie Equal Opportunities Peeple, confronted the BLM movement, (which is so properly organised, that it has a hierarchy of management), for being…….

        Wait for it………

        Waycist

        PS, in the vein of BLM, the BBC announced that Idi Amin invented the Steam Engine

        1. Quite right too – political opponents, especially if they have a bit of fat on them, are much better for the environment than coal when powering up steam engines.

      2. 320282+ up ticks,
        Morning Rik,
        When near normality returns the ball is in the court of the peoples so to speak.
        Hit the turnstiles with a boycott is surely the way to go.
        Advantages all round in future the lowering of ticket price, and players wages to start with.

      3. Entirely correct. But the display of a Flanders poppy on a football shirt would be deemed to be ‘a political statement’ and verboten by the FA.

        Morning Rik

        1. I’m in broad agreement, but it was UEFA who banned the Scotland and England players from wearing a poppy armband as they said that no ‘political symbology’ should be worn on international team shirts. On the face of it this was not a bad decision, after all there are plenty of conflicts around the world where political symbology during an international match could stoke up strife. I do not see the poppy as a political symbol but I understand that it could be the thin end of the wedge and that a blanket ban stops any bickering over terminology.
          What the EPL have done is far more insidious, as Persephone 25 (and RikRedux) posted, they’ve kowtowed to a terrorist organisation behind the protection of closed doors. This will not sit well with the fans and, if it continues, it will be interesting to see if the fans (and viewers) vote with their feet rather than support this politically driven charade.
          Similarly in the USA, the NFL has permitted players and coaching staff to ‘take a knee’ at playing of the National Anthem. This is just another attack on President Trump by the Leftwaffe, in the form of the fascists of Antifa/blm. As it is only a season or so since the furore caused by the Colin Kaepernick ‘protests’. His behaviour then was frowned upon by the regular fans but by endorsing the Antifa/blm push to ‘take a knee’ ostensibly to support ‘anti-racism’ they are effectively being permitted to thumb their nose at POTUS. Again it will be interesting to see the effect on the already dwindling viewing figures and therefore advertising costs.
          Money talks louder than virtue-signaling.

    2. What they need to cheer up the screen is one of the charityathon subtitles putting a running total of how much the players are making in real time as we watch them in silence.

    1. Excellent! [© C Montgomery Burns]. I wonder if the police have charged the 73 year old though?

    2. Excellent! [© C Montgomery Burns]. I wonder if the police have charged the 73 year old though?

    3. The bloke on the left will very soon be getting a visit from plod who will arrest him, charge him with assault and he’ll no doubt be sentenced severely while the bloke the right will walk free.

  4. SIR – I work in a five-storey NHS building. We recently had a fire alarm. Evacuation took longer than on previous occasions because people were practising social distancing on the way down the fire escape.

    Has Covid-19 had some strange effect on our mental capacities?

    Professor Peter Furness
    Whissendine, Rutland

    Into the fiery furnace?

    1. Is there enough room down there if we are all spaced apart? What about the effect on global warming on all the extra energy required just to heat empty space?

  5. SIR – Fifty years ago, Cecil King, a former press magnate, made the following entry in his diary: “On Thursday evening we went to The Telegraph [election] party expecting a Labour majority of somewhere between 30 and 150. The first four results showed that a Tory victory was almost certain. And it was.”

    Thursday June 18 1970 brought one of the greatest surprises in modern electoral history. Throughout the preceding campaign the Tories had trailed badly in the opinion polls. The party reconciled itself to certain defeat. Only its leader, Ted Heath, remained undaunted, exuding a confidence that no one else shared.

    To universal amazement, he was proved right. A Labour majority of 74 was replaced by a Tory majority of 30, the only time since 1945 that one party has gained a working majority from another that had had one at a single election. Heath won 46.4 per cent of the popular vote, which no one since then has even matched.

    Is it not tragic that, on the 50th anniversary of this great victory, Heath’s reputation should remain tainted by seven unproven allegations of child sex abuse left over from a deeply flawed police investigation because this Government refuses to institute an independent inquiry?

    Lord Lexden (Con)
    London SW1

    C’mon. The revulsion to the Grocer was because of his string of lies and deception regarding the EEC and its future.

  6. SIR – I didn’t have an opinion on the merging of Dfid and the Foreign Office – but when I heard that Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron were against it, I knew instantly that it must be a good thing.

    Bernard Kerrison
    London SW4

    Nice one, Bernie. Live and learn…live and learn.

  7. Now Oxford University Grovels to Black Lives Matter. Delingpole. 17 June 2020.

    Lest anyone be puzzled as to how a once-great seat of learning has come to prostitute itself so shamingly before the altar of Woke, an answer of sorts is provided in the list of signatories.

    Most of the so-called Heads of Houses (ie heads of the various colleges) are not, as was formerly the case, distinguished academics/charismatic figures of outstanding achievement but dreary apparatchiks given the jobs either because they push the correct diversity/gender buttons or, because – in the case of pale, stale males like ex-Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger and Blairite nonentity Will Hutton – they have the right politically correct politics.

    Morning everyone. This is of course true of almost every public body and Quango in the UK. There’s not one that is not headed and run by Cultural Marxist apparatchiks.

    https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/06/17/now-oxford-university-grovels-to-black-lives-matter/

      1. Is that the one who claimed her boobs would rot if she drank a glass of wine?

        1. I hadn’t heard that one. If that’s her belief, she ought to avoid High Table at Trinity.

    1. One wonders if the Woke recipients of Rhodes Scholarships are going to reject their beneficiaries generosity? One suspects not!

    3. The inscription below the statue says “E Larga Munificentia Caecilii Rhodes”. This is Latin for “By means of the large munificence of Cecil Rhodes”. It is also a chronogram. If the values of the capital letters in Roman numerals are added the total is 1911, the year of construction of the Rhodes building which was paid for by him.
      I suppose that Oxford University will now demolish the entire building? Or are they such a bunch of hypocritical ingrates that they will keep the building, keep the scholarship funding, and disown their benefactor? I’m guessing that they are. Hardly the kind of moral example to their students that one ought to expect.

    1. Go to Technical Museums. Jet engines, mobile phones, steam engines, computers, aeroplanes…
      and at the Technisches Museum in Berlin, one of the City’s better pubs!

    2. Blanket, bowls and sticks – or, at least, suitcases, poor, broken shoes, cooking bowls and spectacles are all that’s left of very many Jewish lives that were ended in Auschwitz.

    1. Good morning Peddy (and all NoTTLers). The rain is much overdue here. Slowly, the lawn (which I fortunately mowed yesterday morning) is returning to a glorious shade of green.

      1. Now growing too damn fast here. I shall have to be out with the mower if the showers stop…

    1. As someone else pointed out, if Blair, Brown and the Babbling Poltroon think it’s an error, then it’s probably a good idea!

  13. 9 statues that are ripe for removal
    Benedict Spence 17 JUNE 2020

    Rodin’s Thinker, Paris
    Thinking is an activity human beings are no longer capable of doing, so why should an inanimate object be allowed to indulge in this most dangerous of pastimes? Thinking is a privilege — and we all know that privilege is to be fought and expunged wherever it is encountered. Moreover, it is too sedentary a statue — if it was depicted pondering whilst, say, in the act of pushing over another statue, that would be fine, but passivity is complicity in white supremacy.

    https://spectatorlife.imgix.net/content/uploads/2020/06/GettyImages-72896021.jpg?auto=compress,enhance,format&crop=faces,entropy,edges&fit=crop&w=730&h=448

    Cristiano Ronaldo, Madeira

    https://spectatorlife.imgix.net/content/uploads/2020/06/GettyImages-660242994.jpg?auto=compress,enhance,format&crop=faces,entropy,edges&fit=crop&w=730&h=479

    Cristiano Ronaldo is someone who has spent years sculpting his own flesh into anatomical perfection. For the metal manifestation of his features, therefore, to resemble a potato having an aneurism, is a crime against truth that will reflect as badly upon us as upon him. Since most other public works of art will have been cancelled by the time we reach the next decade, we cannot leave it to chance that this may be our sole artistic legacy.

    Michelangelo’s David, Florence

    https://spectatorlife.imgix.net/content/uploads/2020/06/GettyImages-50891638.jpg?auto=compress,enhance,format&crop=faces,entropy,edges&fit=crop&w=667&h=1024

    Quite aside from the fact that it’s a giant white man, carved from the whitest of white marble by another white man, this statue is often described as a “masterpiece”. The word “master” is a patriarchal term for an oppressor, whilst “piece” is what we shall have none of whilst these statues remain standing – if you’re dyslexic.

    Living Statues
    Though real statues are problematic, to imitate them for financial gain is still cultural appropriation, making light of the lived experiences of many an inanimate object through history. By and large, these imitators are as you might imagine — white men pretending to be statues of white men. This doubles the need to pull them down.

    Thierry Henry, London

    https://spectatorlife.imgix.net/content/uploads/2020/06/GettyImages-135446896.jpg?auto=compress,enhance,format&crop=faces,entropy,edges&fit=crop&w=681&h=1024

    Thierry Henry was a ruthless tyrant, who arrived in this country from across the channel in 1999, and spent 8 years brutally suppressing the people of Tottenham. For that, his followers erected a statue of him in north London, which is equally reviled by the Irish for the crimes he committed against them during a World Cup qualifier in 2009.

    Nelson’s Column, London
    L’existence d’un grand mémorial à l’un des plus grands criminels de guerre de l’histoire est un affront à la dignité du peuple Français. C’est une gifle au visage à la nation, à ses valeurs et à son caractère. Nous ne subirons plus l’insulte d’avoir à le supporter pendant que nous marchons dans les rues de votre capitale. Nelson doit tomber!

    Christ the Redeemer, Rio de Janeiro
    On a hill above Rio, Christ stands triumphant, arms aloft amid the heavens of Latin America; his vast, shimmering domains — fruits of conquest in his name — lying before him. Although Christ was the original social justice warrior — upsetting moneymen, telling people what to do, wearing sandals etc — he got too big, wrote a self help book, and is one of the five cast members on Queer Eye. Yeah, he pretends to be all progressive, but he’s not a true ally.

    Statue of Liberty, New York
    Once upon a time, this statue was the promise of the American dream – a gift from a fading colonial power to the land of opportunity. But nowadays, that’s a harder sell, as we all know America isn’t really free. Sure you can vote but what good is that when people who lack your intelligence choose the wrong politicians? Far better to move to China where those problematic events called elections are taken care of for you and where you’ll struggle to get served in a bar if you happen to be African American.

    America really is the pits in comparison. So perhaps now is the time to change this most famous of statues — rip down the giant white woman holding a torch to the east, and replace it with a towering, face-masked President Xi, offering you a mandarin phrasebook.

    Buddha
    If you Google the world’s biggest statues, almost all of them are of Buddha and most have unrealistic body standards. All, that is, except the Buddai — the rotund laughing buddhas. With an obesity epidemic almost as problematic as the current Covid one, and queues outside every McDonald’s Drive-thru, now is not the time to be putting muffin tops on a pedestal.

    https://life.spectator.co.uk/articles/9-statues-that-are-ripe-for-removal/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=CampaignMonitor_Editorial&utm_campaign=BLND%20%2020200617%20%20Huawei%20%20SM+CID_651be54a7cde13a502e8abf15eaa9e55

  14. Quite interesting that, out of a long list of commercial concerns that have historical links to slavery (in today’s Daily Telegraph), there is no mention, whatsoever, of The Guardian’s dark history in this matter.

    Might that be because there may possibly be countless slave skeletons rattling in the cupboards of many other major British newspapers?

    1. Morning Grizzly,

      Don’t these blacks and people of a coloured hue get it that we here in Britain were all slaves .. for hundreds of years , and how many times were we invaded .

      A short sharp induction and history lesson , the sort of history we were taught at school , would be very useful.

        1. TBF: the Anglo-Saxons had slaves.
          After the Norman invasion, those slaves became serfs; a distinction which I’m sure they really appreciated.

          4. They were legal differences. All to do with property rights and the amount of service given to the local lord in exchange for those rights.
            Even the word ‘forest’ is actually a legal term; it doesn’t mean an area filled with trees.

          7. Yep , still goes on and of course with other landowners as well… I also believe that The Duchy of Cornwall re Poundbury city have similar arrangements.

          9. If you think that’s feudal try to get your head round the crofting laws in Scotland

      2. Invasions are still happening today, Maggie.

        Take this morning’s report in the DT about the Chinese armed incursion into India- and Pakistan-administered Kashmir. “Unarmed Indian troops were ‘ambushed by the Chinese’.”

        Land grabs have always been an intrinsic part of human progress and always will be. It’s in our DNA and in our psyche.

  15. After 53 years of marriage, Solly Weintraub sadly passed away, leaving a grieving widow.

    Among all the other arrangements she had to make, she thought she ought to place an announcement in the Social and Personal section of the local Jewish newspaper.

    So she called them up and asked how much it would cost. “Five dollars a word,” said the clerk in the advertising office.

    “Oh, dear,” said Mrs. Weintraub, “that’s rather expensive and I don’t have a lot of money. Better just say, Solly Weintraub died.”

    “Actually,” said the clerk, “our minimum charge is thirty-five dollars, so you can have seven words for that price.”

    Mrs Weintraub thought for a minute, then said, “All right then, put ‘Solly Weintraub died. Buick Skylark for sale.’”

  17. Awkward……………
    “Greene King
    A Cayman Islands based Hong Kong owned brewery chain is apologising for British slavery in Africa.”

  18. In the unlikely event that Public Houses ever reopen, I vow never to use a Greene King one, or any of their products

    Lloyds will no longer be insuring my Super Yach, Cessna Jet, OLT Mansions or my Land Rovers

  19. All the bames and BLM fanatics could just pop over to Liberia to see just how well former slaves manage….

  20. Dame Vera………….
    The lady who went to the forgotten war in Burma
    Now about that fourth plinth…………………………

    2. One of the reasons why my Brother left California many years ago, apart from San Francisco, where he lived, being full of ‘Chinks and Faggots’ (his words) he maintained that Californians just hate each other.

  22. SIR – It is perhaps worth remembering that 99.3 per cent of British GDP is not spent on overseas aid.

    Andrew Jones
    Guildford, Surrey

    Where to begin?

    a) It’s not GDP that is relevant; it’s GNI (Gross National Income)
    b) Mr Jones’s virtuous tosh implies that 100% of GNI ‘belongs’ to the government and we serfs are jolly lucky to be allowed to keep any of it for ourselves.
    c) He glosses over the fact that £14+ billion is a lot of money, especially if one has to borrow it.
    d) I have just glanced at DFID’s accounts for year ending 2019. (193 pages) Huge amounts are not actually distributed to the deserving poor by DFID’s 3,700 employees but are shovelled off to other international agencies run by the EU or UN etc.
    e) So much more pleasant to have a series of genial lunches/dinners in Brussels/New York than to hack one’s way through the jungle or the back streets of Chennai (Calcutta)
    More later

    1. And why bother, they all hate us anyway, why would they take money from the descendants of slave traders?

    2. DfiD’s best ‘giveaways’?
      The Ethiopian ‘Spice Girls’
      An all-girl band from Ethiopia called Yegna received a total of £9.2 million between 2013 and 2016 via a UK-funded project called Girl Hub.

      In 2017 DfID, then run by Priti Patel, scrapped funding for the band, dubbed Ethiopia’s answer to the Spice Girls, after a review decided the money did not represent good value for money for the taxpayer.

      The Bangladeshi ‘Question Time’
      Around £5 million of UK aid money was spent by Bangladesh on a TV programme called Sanglap, meaning Dialogue, in 2012, in which politicians debated current affairs with a studio audience.

      Critics suggested at the time that the money should have gone towards helping the country’s millions of children suffering from malnutrition.

      Fixing potholes in India
      In 2018 DfID was criticised for sending £4 billion of aid money to India to support transport and infrastructure projects including fixing potholes, despite the fact that India was sufficiently wealthy to fund its own space programme.

      Low salt diets in China
      Last year the Government faced criticism for sending £55 million in aid to China – another country with its own space programme – which was spent on projects including a programme to reduce people’s salt intake. The money came from the Department of Health, which is among the other Whitehall departments that also sends money abroad.

      St Helena airport fiasco
      Nearly £300m was spent on an airport for the remote Atlantic island of St Helena that was unable to take commercial flights because of high crosswinds.

      DfID was accused by MPs of “staggering” errors in 2016 for failing to realise that the airport – designed to boost tourism on the island – was a white elephant.

      1. I’m actually really shocked by some of those. Over nine million pounds to a BAND?? I’ve been doing music wrong.

        1. Welcome to government waste.

          Foreign aid is a scam. It’s high taxes here that pay for backhanders and corruption overseas.

          Next time the stupid fools are demanding Amazon hikes prices to pay for higher taxes they need to be sent this list.

      2. Not to mention the frantic spending of millions on anything they could think of before the deadline to meet the mandated percentage spend expired.

        1. African potentate receives DfiD cash for health improvements / schools / water supply ………………

          Local Mercedes dealer delivers a fleet of new cars to a select group of ministers & friends + some backhanders for good measure.

    5. I post this yet again:-https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/767cfe09713700bee3c40d2943a660f81860eca4ba6ee3610f4e98fe4904c526.jpg

    6. No, but then considering we borrow money to give away in the first place it’d be more appropriate to say that 127.08% isn’t spent on overseas aid.

  23. I may never act again unless I express ‘correct’ opinions

    Laurence Fox

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/i-may-never-act-again-unless-i-express-correct-opinions

    First they came for the statues, then Basil Fawlty got ‘cancelled’ and three spoiled millionaires turned on their creator. So it was with J.K. Rowling’s woke progeny. Harry Potter, it would seem, is deathly shallow. Rupert Grint looked for a moment like holding firm, but he too quickly succumbed to the growing pressure to slip his golden dagger between Rowling’s shoulder blades. Surely these rich list regulars are perfectly placed to say what they actually think, protected from the ever-tightening vice of censorship? Apparently not. Fearing for their virtue or their future or both, the three children rounded on their mother. We must hope for better from Neville Longbottom.
    I, too, have come to the conclusion that I may never get an acting job again without expressing ‘correct’ opinions. While this probably isn’t the end of the world for you, it is a cause of some sadness and anxiety for me. Not least because I’ve always loved my job and also because I have two children who need dinner and clothes and a holiday once in a while. In my job there is a lot of waiting around and a lot of banter and more serious conversations that take place on set. Until very recently, my views on life were met mostly with good humour and, if not always agreed with, always respectfully tolerated.
    The genesis of this rather bleak view of my prospects came after my appearance on Question Time, where I voiced (slightly exasperatedly) a heresy that I’m fairly confident is held by a sizeable proportion of the population. The heresy was that, far from being hounded out by the baying racists of this statistically very tolerant and diverse country, Meghan Markle might, just might, have left for other reasons. Having spent years around actors, a fairly common trait is an enormous ego and the desire to be the centre of attention. I include myself very firmly in this bracket. So with little mental gymnastics involved, I wondered whether her departure might have had something to do with her being denied the limelight she craved.
    I’d said this before on Gogglebox and no one had batted an eyelid. But that was six months earlier, which — amid such blossoming clusters of the pathogenic spread of the woke religion — is an eternity. My opinion was further bolstered as I watched the brave and admired prince slowly compost and droop before our eyes into a bit of a sop; less Prince Hal, more Prince ‘Hang on, what do I say next, darling?’
    In this progressive monoculture, with its zealous quest for faraway utopias, I had committed a grave sin. I had used my white privilege to ‘berate and bully’ a person of colour, as the ethnic minority sub-committee of the actors’ union Equity put it.
    ‘Denounce him! Disgraceful!’ came the cries from the illiberal liberals, who see race in every injustice and cry ‘fascism’ at anyone who doesn’t view the world from their same narrow and unstable ledge of conformity. The media had a field day.
    Fortunately I’d had the sense, before my brain became so scrambled I couldn’t think, to hire myself a very good lawyer (something others without my dwindling financial privilege can ill afford) and Equity was reminded politely but firmly that the clue to its job was in the title of the organisation. It agreed to apologise and remunerated me for my troubles. Subsequently the whole of the Equity’s newly formed race equality committee resigned, and as far as I can tell, the whole union seems to be on wobbly ground.
    On 25 May the world watched as a policeman kneeled on a man’s neck for almost nine minutes, killing him. Our jaws dropped in horror and disgust. Something needed to be done. Justice needed to be done and seen to be done. On that, all were agreed. Black lives matter — three such powerful words. Words we all could unite behind. But was it that simple?
    A week later, I got a text from a very well-known young actor with a screenshot of a tweet of mine which read: ‘Every single human life is precious. The end.’ ‘Can you explain this to me?’ said the message. My phone rang; I picked it up and knew straight away that my friend and I were not alone on the call. I heard a quiet shushing, an awkward pause, the white noise on the line changed to speakerphone levels, the louder background and less intimate voice that give these things away.
    ‘Hey Loz… I want to really understand you… I mean… I defend you and as you know… I really love you… [You’re an actor, the only thing you love is the mirror, darling] but this… this is really hard…’
    ‘Which part of it?’ I said.
    ‘Can’t you see it’s just wrong?’ they said.
    ‘What?’ I said.
    ‘Loz…’ came the gently menacing reply. ‘How can I defend you, man? When you are saying shit like this?’
    ‘Shit like what?’ I said. ‘That every single human life is precious? Which part of that is problematic for you?’
    ‘It’s racist,’ came the reply.
    Cue deep sigh. Let me say at this point that I firmly believe that most people take the BLM mission statement at face value and support it in kind. I’m aware that I am not black and have no concept of the lived experience of anyone other than myself.
    Now where was I? Yes. I asked my ‘chum’ what they saw when they looked at the media coverage of this whole story. I asked whether they had heard of David Dorn (a retired policeman gunned down by a looter attempting to rob a pawn shop) once the rioting began, in the news. I asked whether they thought it was in any way significant that David Dorn (also a black life) had been murdered in cold blood, yet George Floyd’s senseless killing dominated every headline. I asked whether they thought it was significant that the man who gunned down David Dorn when caught would be charged with first-degree murder, and yet George Floyd’s killer would be tried for second-degree murder at best. I asked: was this fair? I asked whether the media might perhaps be complicit in fanning the flames of outrage? Whether George Floyd’s equally precious life was being used to serve other, more sinister objectives?
    There was a silence. We ended the call frostily and haven’t spoken since.
    My conclusion is that this tragic situation has become part of another narrative, a series of stories wound together to serve a broader societal aim. Righteous global outrage at a cruel and vile killing has morphed into a different agenda. Similar things have happened with other movements; #MeToo,Extinction Rebellion, Brexit, even the Covid-19 pandemic. The left rightly expose great chasms of inequality and hypocrisy in society — then proceed to throw themselves like lemmings into that void, unable to obey their own edicts. Desperately important causes have been politicised to the point of meaninglessness, opportunities for action hijacked swiftly by the cynical actors. No human being could fail to be appalled by what happened to George Floyd. We were united in our outrage. But what could have been a moment for unity has instead torn us apart.
    All injustice needs our collective and righteous anger. But the pursuit of that justice should bring us together, not divide us. Not social justice, not climate justice, not black justice. Just justice.
    We must start with what unites us, beginning with trying to see the best in people. Though some will exploit our good faith, we should offer it nevertheless. We must be aware of biased media, including our own state broadcaster the BBC. It has moved from the Jeremy Bowen-style ‘show not tell’ reportage of old, to one that describes protests that led to hospitalisations and mass arrests as ‘largely peaceful’. Some news suppliers have decided to relativise, and even encourage, angry mob tactics.
    So here I am, a white posh bloke, who loves his job, who has worked hard to be good at it, facing an uncertain future — all for the heinous sin of shaking my fist at the ugly, hypocritical and inconsistent god of progressivism. But unhappily for some (my agent and bank manager mainly) I will continue to say what I believe to be true. I’m not always right and very often wrong, but unless we can accommodate multiple understandings of a situation soon, it will all end with us abandoning words and reason, the tools given to us to heal and come together, in favour of the simpler but far more terrifying tools of engagement: fists, knives and guns. It’s already happening, and we should all be concerned by it. We cannot stand by in silence. Words are the answer.

    1. Articulate and fairly objective. At the same time he speaks as if the death of Floyd had, of itself, any significance. it does not. It has been raised to a false level of grossly exaggerated importance by the dark forces seeking our destruction.

      1. My thought exactly as I read what is otherwise a very good article. If it hadn’t been Floyd it would have been someone else but not one of the everyday killings of a black person by another black person. All the slaughter on London’s streets over the last few years and little or no reaction: an everyday consequence of living in Khan’s emerging ghetto. Floyd’s death and the pandemic, a partnership conceived in hell.

    3. I wouldn’t worry about it unduly Mr Fox; soon there will be no white actors except as comic relief.

    5. When a new political party comes into being to replace the defunct Conservative Party then Laurence Fox should be a prominent light in it.

      As I observed here yesterday most Nottlers – and not just Nottlers – have been disenfranchised as there is no political party to uphold its interests and the interests and values of a civilised society.

      The sooner the new party comes into being the better. Remember that two years before Macron became president his party La République En Marche did not even exist.

    6. The Left don’t want words. They don’t want discussion and reasoned debate. They want power. They want control over others.

      Until they get it they’re violent, aggressive and oppressive. It is their fundamental M.O. You can’t reason with a group of people who don’t want you to exist except as a slave to their ego.

  24. Definitely one of AEP’s better pieces

    400 years of British economic history have been reduced to crass Marxist caricature

    Europe achieved supremacy as it had reached technological and economic take-off in a way that no others had ever done before

    AMBROSE EVANS-PRITCHARD
    17 June 2020 • 7:11pm

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2018/09/29/TELEMMGLPICT000001740613_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqqmxPVSgZdN5rRVEbsmS7Zjacz28M62xV3nm01PjFDKU.jpeg?imwidth=960
    The slave trade was already deemed unconscionable by the Puritans in the English Revolution

    By emotional linkage, the crime of slavery and the larger story of colonialism have been fused into one immense atrocity. From there the indictment has jumped categories into a broader repudiation of four centuries of European and British achievement.

    Much of this is unhistorical and corrosive, and has gone unchallenged in Europe itself. It is taken for granted that the collision of world civilisations has been inherently destructive. Many Asians, paradoxically, are more forgiving.

    “You shared with the world your beautiful advantages. You shared the gift of reasoning and we learnt from you,” says Kishore Mahbubani, the prophet of Eastern ascendancy and the author of Has the West Lost It?

    “If the West had not succeeded, we would not have succeeded. We would still be in extreme poverty.”

    The British have long had a collective blind-spot about the industrial scale of the slave trade and the activities of the Royal African Company, as if the subsequent redemption of Wilberforce and Pitt closes the matter, or as if slavery was somehow an ‘American’ saga.

    The slave trade was already deemed unconscionable by the Puritans in the English Revolution. A ruling by Cromwell’s state council in 1650 prohibited shipments from the African coast. It was the absolutist Stuarts who brought this curse into our national life – and pursued it systematically – to gain a revenue free from dependence on Parliament.

    We should have created a national slavery museum years ago on the site of Elephant & Castle, which happens to be the coat of arms of the Royal African Company, and that is where the Bristol statue of Edward Colston ought to stand.

    What is not true is the broader narrative that the Great Enrichment of Europe and Britain in particular was a function of plunder, essentially the zero-sum transfer of wealth from exploited peoples by means of violence from the 16th Century onwards.

    This version of events has the causality backwards. Europe achieved supremacy because it had reached technological and economic take-off in a way that no other civilization had ever done before. The roots of this lie in what we can loosely call the Baconian Method, the interrogation of nature to “discover its secrets”, or plain science.

    Israeli historian Joel Mokyr argues in The Culture of Growth that there have been many ‘flourishings’ of technology over time but they were mostly incremental forms of know-how – better water mills, or horse collars – and never reached the threshold of ignition. Flirtations with free thought ran into autocratic suppression.

    These flourishings were of a different character to the Age of Reason in Europe, where a pluralistic market for ideas undermined the suffocating orthodoxies of the unitary Thomist system. This bubbling competition – and an irreverent willingness to challenge settled practice – was itself made possible only by the fractured mosaic of states, all vying to get ahead, and none with sufficient ascendancy to stamp out dissent. The ideological priesthood lost control.

    Britain had a peculiar variant. The Origins of English Individualism by anthropologist Alan MacFarlane digs deep into parish records of the 15th-17th Centuries to find a modern society that was largely free of immobile castes – not to be confused with fluid classes – and was quite different even then from most of Continental Europe.

    It was governed by political contract and constraint, with remarkable equality between men and women. It had broadly shared values from near top to near bottom. The rule of law generally prevailed.

    England had already freed itself from the developmental curse of ‘amoral familism’, the Cosa Nostra mindset that society is hostile and treacherous, and therefore that moral obligation ends with your own kin. It was a country where people mostly assumed that others were decent and they acted on that basis.

    It was this bedrock national character – turbocharged by the parallel advances of Europe’s intelligentsia – that in my view explains why Britain exploded on the world scene in the late Elizabethan age, went on to Bacon and Newton, and from there to the spinning jenny, the steam engine, and Faraday’s electricity.

    “The British Industrial Revolution of the late eighteenth century unleashed a phenomenon never before even remotely experienced by any society,” says Prof Mokyr. It was not a foreordained advance. It was the result of a rare cultural alchemy.

    Behind the great leap forward was the Common Law, the sanctity of contract, the respect of patents, and that unsung hero, the joint stock company, which distributed risk and allowed for creative failure. The trade doctrines of Adam Smith opened minds to the concept of expandable wealth and liberated us from the extractive and inert psychology of mercantilism.

    Fractional reserve banking made possible an unprecedented expansion of credit. Deep bond markets vastly increased the ability of the state to sustain long endeavours. The Bank of England regulated the liquidity of commerce with modern sophistication even in the 1690s. These were the springs of British prosperity.

    The history of imperialism is taught today as a catalogue of outrages but such a narrow focus is not illuminating. There were too many variants to reach any sweeping conclusion. I learned my version at the feet of the Indian historian Anil Seal at Cambridge, and the story he taught was that the British empire in India took over the existing Mughal administration lock, stock, and barrel, one set of foreigners displacing another.

    It rested on alliances with ruling princes. It evolved through many iterations – each starkly different – and the core objective was trade and captive markets, not the same as extraction, nota bene. It is for Indians to judge the moral quality of the Raj in all its aspects with the distance of time. I doubt that hard-Left agitators bent on tearing down every vestige of colonialism in London have much grasp of the subject.

    All great protests have a specific objective: Catholic emancipation; the vote for suffragettes; or the US civil rights movement, targeting the legal architecture of racial segregation that still existed in the 1950s and early 1960s. The Black Lives Matter movement – and especially its sympathy protests in Europe – is rich in emotion but frustratingly unfocussed by comparison.

    America has been striving for half a century to overcome the legacy of racial injustice and the sort of reflexes that led to the police killing of George Floyd. That is what Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society was all about. Failure is not entirely for lack of trying. That is what makes this case so doubly sad.

    But at the risk of sounding old-fashioned: all lives matter. British society should be wary of entering too deeply into this sort of race politics.

    A colour-blind social and political system – all equal in the eyes of the law and the state institutions – took a long time coming and is a shining feature of modern liberal democracies. I reject the fashionable argument that defence of this ideal is implicitly racist, supposedly because it justifies a status quo of exploitation, to borrow from Marxist diction.

    We have moved through the gears from the goal of equal opportunity, to the goal of equal outcomes, and from there to the jurisprudence of hate crimes, with different prison tariffs depending on racial motive, arriving at a point where everything is filtered through the prism of race and sectoral interests.

    Whether they know it or not, proponents of our ‘re-racialised’ society are drawing on the toolkit of empires through the ages. Imperial systems manage their ethnic and religious cauldrons with a panoply of special codes, protections, laws, and classifications.

    Such a method of governance is inimical to liberal values. We risk coming full circle.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/06/17/four-hundred-years-british-economic-history-have-reduced-crass/

    1. ‘Morning, Citroen, if I took nothing else from A E-P’s article, it would be, ” The rule of law generally prevailed.” and that is what is missing in today’s chaotic society.

      I beg Boris to leave the WuFlu problems to his Health Minister and get together with Rees-Mogg (Leader of the House) to introduce a timetable to:

      1. Repeal the Human rights Act 1998
      2. Reject any recognition of the ECJ
      3. Remove the ‘Supreme Court’
      4. Re-establish the Law Lords as the highest Court of Appeal (excepting in very rare cases, an appeal to the Monarch).

      By these actions, the appellant (often repellent) lawyers are immediately neutralised and the Judiciary put back on the right (correct) footing.

      We once again will have the ability to remove convicted immigrants from our shores, without let or hindrance.

      QED

    2. May I suggest that we halt ALL overseas aid ..

      We need to throw warning shots out to those people who come from countries who recieve our aid , and who have taken advantage of our charity , and who now feel stroppy enough to create disorder and mayhem in Britain which has provided them with education, health benefits and housing and …. the security of free speech.

    3. Or, in brief, BLM acts without understanding of our past, in order to destroy the present, and revert to a system that manacled the advance of mankind?

      1. Morning, HP.

        IMHO the people driving BLM will not admit to understanding our past, although I’m certain they fully understand, it just doesn’t suit their agenda to do so. They are frauds. It’s likely that the majority of their flock of followers are completely ignorant of history. The self named Progressives really are regressive in thought and deed, and it is a planned assault on our lives and culture.

    4. And no mention anywhere of the Protestant Ethic which means you have to work hard (he who will not work shall not eat, as it says in the New Testament) and the Marian tradition of veneration of women via the BVM.

  25. Morning all

    SIR – Full marks to the Prime Minister for executing his long-standing plans to abolish the Department for International Development (Dfid) and transfer its obligations to the Foreign Office (report, June 17).

    However, it is a little disappointing that he appears to have no plan to repeal the statutory obligation to commit 0.7 per cent of GDP to foreign aid, irrespective of need. As long as this is in place, it seems inevitable that ministers and civil servants will continue to squander our money (most of it borrowed, for the foreseeable future) on projects only vaguely related to genuine aid requirements.

    I hope Boris Johnson will lay down clear guidelines on how Britain’s contribution should be allocated, together with a transparent monitoring and reporting system to ensure compliance.

    John Waine

    Nuneaton, Warwickshire

    SIR – The abolition of Dfid is long overdue. While it has been distributing largesse to countries that may or may not need it, there have been myriad small charities working quietly in the background, probably to greater effect.

    These include the Associated Country Women of the World (ACWW), one of whose founders, Madge Watt, also founded the Women’s Institute (WI). The WI has continued to support ACWW, which concentrates on relatively inexpensive projects, all supervised locally, to support rural women living in poverty worldwide.

    ACWW encourages them to improve their standard of living through co-operation – for example, by showing low-caste Dalit women in India how to create home gardens, both to nourish their families and increase their income by selling their surplus. Let us hope that grass-roots projects such as these will benefit from the money we give to help others in future.

    June Green

    Bagshot, Surrey

  26. Morning again

    SIR – Apart from in a few exceptional cases, it is compulsory for children to attend school.

    A common date for all of them to resume doing so should be set. Any teaching staff choosing to be absent on that date should be regarded as having resigned from their posts. This is good enough for most other employees.

    Peter Clark

    Canterbury, Kent

    SIR – As a headmistress, I welcomed back some students from Year 10 this week. We have a robust risk assessment in place and have, for instance, created outdoor handwashing stations as part of our plan.

    I should like to open my school to all pupils, but I am not allowed to do so. My students are fortunate to have access to excellent guided home learning – but it is not the same for all. On the seafront and common there are huge groups of teenagers who are not observing social distancing. While they are enjoying the good weather and a chance to relax, they should really be in lessons – and the sooner they return, the better.

    Jane Prescott

    Headmistress, Portsmouth High School

    1. 320282+ up ticks,
      Morning E,
      How about for the foreseeable future disasters only, lets face it we are living in a daily disaster on the home front.

  27. SIR – Various Oxford dons (Letters, June 17) accuse Professor Louise Richardson of “inappropriate ventriloquising” in quoting Nelson Mandela as part of her response to the “Rhodes Must Fall” debate. It seems they are also applying “inappropriate ventriloquising”, because I see no evidence that Mr Mandela said that statues must fall.

    John Harmes

    Alton, Hampshire

    SIR – Has anyone thought of erecting more statues, rather than taking down the one of Cecil Rhodes?

    When Rhodes sought to add what was is now Botswana to his enterprises, three Tswana kings, led by Khama III, travelled to London to lobby for support; they succeeded in their mission and so foiled Rhodes’s exploitation of their land and people.

    Is there space close to the Rhodes statue for statues in honour of these kings, to illustrate what he did and tried to do and what the effects were?

    Tim Oaks

    Buxton, Derbyshire

    1. Well if one takes Mandela’s approach, one might put a tyre around the neck of Rhodes statue and set it alight.

    2. How about a statue of the Archbishop of Canterbury entitled ‘The Onanist’ showing him living up to this sobriquet?

  28. 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.

    ANSWER – 1 in 64

    1/8 x 1/8 = 1/64

  29. SIR – As Tory grandees watch the slow disintegration of this Government, they might wish to consider the example of Eddie Jones, head coach of the England rugby team, who admitted that he had picked the wrong team for the World Cup Final.

    The Cabinet is in retreat and has no apparent strategy. It flip-flops daily; it has no clear message and is regularly economical with the truth. Its ministers make unexpected line breaks, rather than leading the pack, while the bench looks sparse.

    Could it be that the wrong fly-half is in Number 10?

    Doug Littlejohns

    Brentor, Devon

    1. They don’t have to pay for it. They’ll just slap it on our insurance premiums, which are mandatory.

    2. How about the Arab nations paying compensation then? When will the Romans and Barbary pirates be paying me???

  31. SIR – Who is running this country – the education unions, Black Lives Matter or Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London?

    Boris Johnson’s very young Cabinet is showing inconsistency in its decision-making. While Mr Johnson is just the person to lead, he urgently needs help from senior Tories and advisers who have business and life experience, and can bring economic insight and a commitment to getting our great country back on track.

    Children need to go to school, adults need to go to work, the police need to do their job, and the British people need to be able to live their lives again.

    Jinnie Edwards

    Brereton, Cheshire

      3. JE would be safe; apparently he was gay, which might save him from the Twatterati.

        1. He was also badly burnt flying a Lancaster bomber.

          He got his crew safely home, and was awarded some decoration for his bravery.

        1. The sprouts went on at Easter!

          Maybe you are getting mixed up with the cabbage?

          Edited.

          2. Yo Gg

            have 123456789000000000000000 down vote for mentioning the S word, before December

          4. I once tried putting the sprouts on at Easter, but I found they were slightly overcooked.

          7. Yo Ae

            or the truth

            I once tried putting the sprouts on at Easter, but I found they were slightly overcooked. very undercooked

      2. Aaarrgghhhhh …… the sprouts!!!! Why did nobody warn me?
        Time passes so quickly when you’re not having fun.

    1. Well said, young lady. Please don’t ever stop giving out this important message.

        1. I couldn’t understand a word she said. To me it was just an hysterical babble.

  35. It’s only just…………………….
    “Following the money is always tricky, BUT… it shouldn’t be hard for
    modern-day Guardian journalists to grasp the logical conclusion of their
    own ideological pathologies. They must resign and pay back every penny
    earned from a company with such a RACIST past. Failing to do so would be
    ignoring they have been profiting from slavery for the duration of
    their employment.”
    https://img1.grunge.com/img/gallery/what-happens-when-a-snake-tries-to-eat-itself/intro-1569786946.jpg

    1. Point of detail: why were euros converted into dollars rather sterling? Is the Telegraph pandering to the American audience?

      1. That’s a really important question, Joseph. Now I feel duty-bound to spending the rest of the day to finding out.

  37. Good morning, all. Some useful rain throughout the night – steady – not too heavy; beginning to peter out. I expect the butts will have refilled.

      1. As they collect & hold water, rather anal-retentive even.

        ‘Morning, Rastus.

      2. As they collect & hold water, rather anal-retentive even.

        ‘Morning, Rastus.

  38. Hi everyone. Been downtown wearing my mask. A white woman (she is a manager running several private care homes) at the bus stop gave this to me in an action typical of British generosity. The smaller bakeries are now open and some of the larger department stores. HMV opens at ten o’clock and Marks and Sparks is as it has been for the last fortnight.

    I use these forays not simply for idle acquisition but also to enquire into the opinions of others. One of the problems with NoTTL is that one can easily be lulled into believing that the views expressed on it are typical of the country at large so I check to see if this is true. This unfortunately requires some untypical British nosiness and plain lying which on occasion elicits frank responses. Bigot, Racist and Nutter having at various times been among them. I do my best in the cause of truth to ignore these since my interest is in their views not my own. Today I approached a man in the food queue at M&S. He agreed that times are strange and we should all be back at work but seemed to know nothing of the coming economic disaster or the Marxist Revolution that is in progress. I watched his face and those of others closely as he replied; this being the UK people are inclined to dissimulate in their speech for fear of offending but are less guarded in their expressions. There was nothing there to indicate any alarm about the present situation; though he did suddenly remember that he had to be elsewhere and departed forthwith moving me up one place in the queue. This ignorance in the face of disaster is not at all unusual, people continue to eat sleep and defecate as per normal. What did I learn from this and the two other conversations I had? Well the generality of the population are tired and wary but will go down with the ship singing along with the orchestra!

    2. I can only report from the village in which I live.

      Everyone stops for a chat, observing the 6′ 6″ rule, no one yet has changed
      their mind about Brexit. Most seem to believe the PM is still not fully recovered
      and seem prepared to go along with what he says, excusing the u-turns by
      wondering if Industry is at last waking up and offering advice. Some are very
      concerned about Hospital appointments being cancelled. Generally though
      people remain optimistic.

    3. I’ve concluded that most people have very little interest in politics or current affairs. They accept what they hear on television and radio and do not question or research further. It’s why Ogga’s constant repition about about voting habits is so pointless – most people have no idea and care less, just so long as they can get on with their lives.

    4. My good friend, an ex-schoolteacher, believes the schools should remain firmly closed, as it’s not safe, and lockdown should be tighter – as it’s not safe.
      Poor lass. I hope she’ll get better.

      2. The MR rang her pal who lives permanently in France in a medium sized village.

        A very successful lawyer, high-profile career – now very respected translator. Frightened stiff of going out of her house, “In case someone comes too close….”

        Pathetic is not the word.

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

    Exclusive: Top British firms to pay compensation over founders’ slavery links
    Greene King and Lloyd’s of London among the companies to apologise and pledge payments to BAME groups

    When Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize Tom Lehrer said he was giving up satire as he could no longer compete with reality.

    This is a Lehrer/Kissinger moment for us cynics – can we compete?

    1. Compo should only be paid if the descendants agree to retrun to the condition before the slave(s) were removed – so, they need to return to live in a shuthole mud hut in Africa with no medical services, cars, TV and so on!

      1. Yo Ol

        In many cases, they have brought pre-slave conditions and way of life with them

        2. Do they bother with jumping over the broomstick to show they are married? Or is that a commitment too far?

      2. Or – deduct the benefits of living in a Western civilization – health care, education, way of life, freedom from marauding gangs of slave-takers…

      3. All the money used to pay for one way tickets to the African countries where modern slavery and genocide are still rife.

      4. I am sure that the media are hiding the truth from us.
        There are millions of African-Americans and Caribbean residents who are hightailing it back to the ancestral lands.
        It’s just that nobody will tell us – like the heated situation in Dijon.
        Morning, Herr Oberst.

    2. What about the UK companies which are indirectly benefiting from child labour in foreign lands producing cheap goods such as clothes, footware and mining for rare elements for battery production? Is child labour not equivalent to slave labour?

      2. I hope that any money paid by such firms is taken from the salaries of the companies’ directors and employees so that the general public is not left with the bill through raised charges.

  40. Happy Waterloo Day – by the way. Spinning in his grave, I expect the Duke wonders why he bothered.

    Oh, and Toy Boy is coming to London today – to give Sad Dick, the Caliph the Legion of Honour.

    (I often wonder whether de Gaulle deliberately chose this day on which to make his famous “Appel” to the people of France so that the REAL anniversary could be forgotten across the Channel….)

    1. ‘Morning, Bill, such a pity that Toy Boy will not arrive at Waterloo Station as used to be the case.

      When will he introduce Agincourt and Crecy as stations on the Paris Metro?

      A burning question for Boris to put to him on the 205th Anniversary of yet another French defeat.

  41. I don’t really understand this structural racism malarky virtually all of us white folks can go back generationally to pre-Norman times, all of that time our ancestors have never owned their own hovel, house or bit of land, never had more than a few groats to rub together and some of us still don’t, but black people have been here merely 60 years or so, they now own their houses, some have wealth beyond our wildest dreams, yet they historically are the ones that have been hard done by, I just don’t get it.

    1. Nor does anyone sane. It marks the end of our country until people start reacting sensibly, and there seems to be no sign of that at present. It’s not just the silly season. The lunatics are in control.

    2. 320282+ up ticks,
      Morning B3
      And all the time the peoples keep supporting / voting for mass uncontrolled immigration parties indigenous peoples NEVER WILL GET IT.

    3. “some have wealth beyond our wildest dreams,” – agreed – especially multi millionaire bag of air kickers who now think it ok to demand the rest of us have to pay, for THEIR ideas,, while they live in absolute luxury.

    4. Spot on Bob .

      Considering these people wouldn’t dare creating a fuss in the country of their great grandparents .. they have always relied on the kindness and charity of the British , and they use our language with impunity and have used Western civilization for their own advantage. As I say .. they are all parasites..

      Similar to the cuckoo really !

      2. 320282+ up ticks,
        Morning TB,
        The herd by their continuing voting pattern are
        financing their own demise, but what is worse is they are condemning their innocent kids lives also.
        Next move will be by these submissive, pcism & appeasement rear exits will be morning school assembly that will start from a kneeling position.

    5. Firstborn’s lower field, the one that borders the river, is more land that all the land ever owned by any of my relatives, as far back as you can go, in one small field.
      That struck me the first time we walked in it, and has never left me. It’s very humbling.

    1. We’ll Meet Again.

      The lyrics were especially poignant at the time…. But I know we’ll meet again some sunny day.

        1. First thing an illegal immigrant did when they arrived at Dover was to eat one.

          That’s why there are none left.

      2. She had a good innings. I have been a fan of her all my life and shall never forget her.

      3. Yes Phizzee.

        Who will we have left to write the obituary of this most splendid of countries.. ?

        William Shakespeare
        “This royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle, This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, This other Eden, demi-paradise, This fortress built by Nature for herself Against infection and the hand of war, This happy breed of men, this little world, This precious stone set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall Or as a moat defensive to a house, Against the envy of less happier lands,–This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.”

        Dame Vera Lynn embodied all those sentiments
        RIP

    3. A Sad day for many reasons.
      I use to cycle past her then Hendon home on the way to school and back.

  43. If statues are going to be pulled down, cus they do not fit in with peoples views now, can we not do something about the ‘unwaned presence of the Vikings’, that still exists in UK today via Place Names viz

    Place names ending in -by, such as Selby or Whitby. These -by
    endings are generally places where the Vikings settled first. In Yorkshire
    there are 210 -by place names. The -by has passed into English as ‘by-law’
    meaning the local law of the town or village.

    Place names ending in -thorpe, such as Scunthorpe. The -thorpe names are
    connected with secondary settlement, where the settlements were on the margins
    or on poor lands. There are 155 place names ending in -thorpe in Yorkshire.

    Place names as a mixture of Anglo-Saxon and Viking words. These are known
    as ‘Grimston hybrids’, because -ton is an Anglo-Saxon word meaning
    town or village, and Grim is a Viking name. The idea is that a Viking took
    over an Anglo-Saxon place and called it after himself. (Women’s names are
    very rare in place names). There are 50 ‘Grimston hybrid’ names in Yorkshire.

    Changes in pronunciation. The Anglo-Saxon place name Shipton was difficult for the
    Vikings to say, so it became Skipton.

    Lets get back to good old British names like Woolfardisworthy, which just roll of the tongue

    1. Passing through Foxton two days ago, just down the road from us, I noticed that the ‘ton’ in the Foxton village sign had been painted over with white paint.

    2. ‘Afternoon, OLT, so long as the MSM (Mostly Shit Media) are taught the correct pronunciation of places like Wymondham, Happisburgh and Haverhill. we might include Milngavie and Strathavon a wee bit further North passing Alnwick and Hawick on the way.

        1. In North Shrops we have Broughall (pronounced Brothel) and Boreatton (pronounced Bratton).

  44. Yet another piece of English / GB fabric leaves us all the poorer.
    RIP Vera Lynn.

    1. 320282+ up ticks,
      Rik,
      The sheepdogs @rse went over the horizon some time ago, and the wolves are in close proximity to the brace of dispatch boxes.

    1. Alma Deutscher wrote her symphonic overture ‘Siren Sounds’ last year when she moved from Dorking to Vienna, and was inspired by the sound of traffic, especially the sirens of emergency vehicles, to set it to music. She wanted to take the ugliness of modern life and transform it into something she finds beautiful, such as a Viennese waltz.

      When I played it to my elderly mother, she found it rather unsettling – why does she want to celebrate the wailing of air raid sirens from the blitz? I suggested that someone born in 2005 might not remember the war as well as my mother does.

      Why then should I remember what atrocities took place during the Boer War, let alone 18th century slavery?

      1. One can learn from history, but unless one personally was a part of the endless miserable things done to others, one need not apologise. I did nothing to be ashamed of, so I do not apologise. On behalf of anybody.

    1. Privately owned houses and estates are always much more fun anyway. They tend to not have the British quirkyness ironed out in pursuit of centrally controlled bulk buying and attitudes.

  48. 320282+ up ticks,
    May one ask will johnson pay the frog toy boy more than he is going to ask for in compensation regarding Waterloo ?

  49. New article in the Speccie by Laurence Fox – ’tis worth a read. (Hope no one posted earlier):

    “Laurence Fox
    The pitfalls of wrongthink
    From magazine issue: 20 June 2020”

    “First they came for the statues, then Basil Fawlty got ‘cancelled’ and three spoiled millionaires turned on their creator. So it was with J.K. Rowling’s woke progeny. Harry Potter, it would seem, is deathly shallow. Rupert Grint looked for a moment like holding firm, but he too quickly succumbed to the growing pressure to slip his golden dagger between Rowling’s shoulder blades. Surely these rich list regulars are perfectly placed to say what they actually think, protected from the ever-tightening vice of censorship? Apparently not. Fearing for their virtue or their future or both, the three children rounded on their mother. We must hope for better from Neville Longbottom.

    I, too, have come to the conclusion that I may never get an acting job again without expressing ‘correct’ opinions. While this probably isn’t the end of the world for you, it is a cause of some sadness and anxiety for me. Not least because I’ve always loved my job and also because I have two children who need dinner and clothes and a holiday once in a while. In my job there is a lot of waiting around and a lot of banter and more serious conversations that take place on set. Until very recently, my views on life were met mostly with good humour and, if not always agreed with, always respectfully tolerated.

    The genesis of this rather bleak view of my prospects came after my appearance on Question Time, where I voiced (slightly exasperatedly) a heresy that I’m fairly confident is held by a sizeable proportion of the population. The heresy was that, far from being hounded out by the baying racists of this statistically very tolerant and diverse country, Meghan Markle might, just might, have left for other reasons. Having spent years around actors, a fairly common trait is an enormous ego and the desire to be the centre of attention. I include myself very firmly in this bracket. So with little mental gymnastics involved, I wondered whether her departure might have had something to do with her being denied the limelight she craved.

    I’d said this before on Gogglebox and no one had batted an eyelid. But that was six months earlier, which — amid such blossoming clusters of the pathogenic spread of the woke religion — is an eternity. My opinion was further bolstered as I watched the brave and admired prince slowly compost and droop before our eyes into a bit of a sop; less Prince Hal, more Prince ‘Hang on, what do I say next, darling?’

    In this progressive monoculture, with its zealous quest for faraway utopias, I had committed a grave sin. I had used my white privilege to ‘berate and bully’ a person of colour, as the ethnic minority sub-committee of the actors’ union Equity put it.

    ‘Denounce him! Disgraceful!’ came the cries from the illiberal liberals, who see race in every injustice and cry ‘fascism’ at anyone who doesn’t view the world from their same narrow and unstable ledge of conformity. The media had a field day.

    Fortunately I’d had the sense, before my brain became so scrambled I couldn’t think, to hire myself a very good lawyer (something others without my dwindling financial privilege can ill afford) and Equity was reminded politely but firmly that the clue to its job was in the title of the organisation. It agreed to apologise and remunerated me for my troubles. Subsequently the whole of the Equity’s newly formed race equality committee resigned, and as far as I can tell, the whole union seems to be on wobbly ground.

    Time passed. I set about removing the tar and feathers and the left-wing commentariat patted itself on the back and moved on. Deliberately or not, though, they missed the real story. Which was more likely: that Britain is an overwhelmingly tolerant and welcoming country, one that people risk their lives attempting to reach, or that Britain is a place where racism and bigotry hide in plain sight? One of these stories sells papers and the other is true.

    Anyway, all this is by the by. I use this story to point out that even in the smallest, most apparently meaningless situations, identity politics can cause ripples that turn into bigger and more powerful waves when whipped up by the winds of the outrage media. Our silence at their corruption is read by them as consent.

    On 25 May the world watched as a policeman kneeled on a man’s neck for almost nine minutes, killing him. Our jaws dropped in horror and disgust. Something needed to be done. Justice needed to be done and seen to be done. On that, all were agreed. Black lives matter — three such powerful words. Words we all could unite behind. But was it that simple?

    A week later, I got a text from a very well-known young actor with a screenshot of a tweet of mine which read: ‘Every single human life is precious. The end.’ ‘Can you explain this to me?’ said the message. My phone rang; I picked it up and knew straight away that my friend and I were not alone on the call. I heard a quiet shushing, an awkward pause, the white noise on the line changed to speakerphone levels, the louder background and less intimate voice that give these things away.

    ‘Hey Loz… I want to really understand you… I mean… I defend you and as you know… I really love you… [You’re an actor, the only thing you love is the mirror, darling] but this… this is really hard…’

    ‘Which part of it?’ I said.

    ‘Can’t you see it’s just wrong?’ they said.

    ‘What?’ I said.

    ‘Loz…’ came the gently menacing reply. ‘How can I defend you, man? When you are saying shit like this?’

    ‘Shit like what?’ I said. ‘That every single human life is precious? Which part of that is problematic for you?’

    ‘It’s racist,’ came the reply.

    Cue deep sigh. Let me say at this point that I firmly believe that most people take the BLM mission statement at face value and support it in kind. I’m aware that I am not black and have no concept of the lived experience of anyone other than myself.

    Now where was I? Yes. I asked my ‘chum’ what they saw when they looked at the media coverage of this whole story. I asked whether they had heard of David Dorn (a retired policeman gunned down by a looter attempting to rob a pawn shop) once the rioting began, in the news. I asked whether they thought it was in any way significant that David Dorn (also a black life) had been murdered in cold blood, yet George Floyd’s senseless killing dominated every headline. I asked whether they thought it was significant that the man who gunned down David Dorn when caught would be charged with first-degree murder, and yet George Floyd’s killer would be tried for second-degree murder at best. I asked: was this fair? I asked whether the media might perhaps be complicit in fanning the flames of outrage? Whether George Floyd’s equally precious life was being used to serve other, more sinister objectives?

    There was a silence. We ended the call frostily and haven’t spoken since.

    My conclusion is that this tragic situation has become part of another narrative, a series of stories wound together to serve a broader societal aim. Righteous global outrage at a cruel and vile killing has morphed into a different agenda. Similar things have happened with other movements; #MeToo, Extinction Rebellion, Brexit, even the Covid-19 pandemic. The left rightly expose great chasms of inequality and hypocrisy in society — then proceed to throw themselves like lemmings into that void, unable to obey their own edicts. Desperately important causes have been politicised to the point of meaninglessness, opportunities for action hijacked swiftly by the cynical actors. No human being could fail to be appalled by what happened to George Floyd. We were united in our outrage. But what could have been a moment for unity has instead torn us apart.

    All injustice needs our collective and righteous anger. But the pursuit of that justice should bring us together, not divide us. Not social justice, not climate justice, not black justice. Just justice.

    We must start with what unites us, beginning with trying to see the best in people. Though some will exploit our good faith, we should offer it nevertheless. We must be aware of biased media, including our own state broadcaster the BBC. It has moved from the Jeremy Bowen-style ‘show not tell’ reportage of old, to one that describes protests that led to hospitalisations and mass arrests as ‘largely peaceful’. Some news suppliers have decided to relativise, and even encourage, angry mob tactics.

    So here I am, a white posh bloke, who loves his job, who has worked hard to be good at it, facing an uncertain future — all for the heinous sin of shaking my fist at the ugly, hypocritical and inconsistent god of progressivism. But unhappily for some (my agent and bank manager mainly) I will continue to say what I believe to be true. I’m not always right and very often wrong, but unless we can accommodate multiple understandings of a situation soon, it will all end with us abandoning words and reason, the tools given to us to heal and come together, in favour of the simpler but far more terrifying tools of engagement: fists, knives and guns. It’s already happening, and we should all be concerned by it. We cannot stand by in silence. Words are the answer.”

    1. Posted earlier by The Boss, but it doesn’t hurt to have it again for the afternoon crowd!

    2. He’s mostly right. I can’t see anything wrong with what he’s said, including that every life is precious. How on earth can it be construed to be racist, except to be seen as refuting the BLM narrative.

      Regarding the death of Floyd, this was an interesting article:
      https://medium.com/@gavrilodavid/why-derek-chauvin-may-get-off-his-murder-charge-2e2ad8d0911
      Why Derek Chauvin May Get Off His Murder Charge
      A deeper look at the policies behind the death of George Floyd

  50. Many Nottlers will, I suspect, recall seeing pictures of the England football team in Germany in the 1930s giving the Nazi salute and will see parallels with current ‘taking the knee’. These are naive people imagining they are doing the right thing while, effectively, showing support for something truly appalling.

      2. The stupid haircuts were bad enough. Kneeling idiots, has now finished my life long interest in the game.

          1. I fear they are not limited to wendyball, sos. Just look at rugby players…{:¬((

          3. Now that any Tom, Dick or Samoan can play for any country in the Six Nations – I have found it less and less interesting.

          4. It’s an extension of the asylum/reunification mantra.

            It’s a strange thing, If I was a top sportsman, Australia would allow me to play immediately, because my grandfather was born there, yet if I wanted to emigrate I would have to jump through all sorts of hoops and it would take a long time to pass.

          5. I know, Sos, I tried twice before giving up due to the high cost of health-care there for non-indigenous Australians.

          6. I would love to emigrate there in due course.
            The life style and the people are great fun.

            Another reason I would like to live there is for my children’s benefit, when I die. They don’t have inheritance tax.

          7. Whereas the French have a set way of dividing up your assets, which may not have been what you wished.

      3. I figured that quite a while back, Bill and can only agree with you.

        As for the multiple sheep fans who think they’re watching sport, when in fact they are are just giving financial support to big business.

        It’s not only BAMES who are as ‘fick as shyte’.

  51. In the unlikely event that Public Houses ever reopen, I vow never to use a Greene King one, or any of their products

    Lloyds will no longer be insuring my Super Yach, Cessna Jet, OLT Mansions or my Land Rovers

    1. Unlike you, some of those products are missing from my portfolio. But Lloyds is a bit of a problem to avoid though since most insurance comes down to some Lloyds syndicate or other. I do imagine that many of the members, if such people still exist and aren’t actually anonymous far eastern potentates and drug barons, will be against their management committee’s approach.

      1. IPA & Abbot used to be good in the Dog & Partridge, Bury St Edmunds (next door to GK’s brewery), but noticeably inferior 10 miles away in Thetford. I guess it doesn’t travel well…

        2. Yes Geoff, Abbot ale was good – especially the draught but the best beer they made was St Edmunds Ale for the 1976 jubilee. When I lived in BSE I used to go to a pub called The Woolpack in Fornham St Martin and the Nutshell. Also lived in Thetford and my local there was The Bridge Inn. Both GK pubs with decent beer. managed to get to most pubs in East Anglia as I played darts for the Bridge. Happy days

        3. Do GK still brew, or is it contracted out? last time I was in UK (last year); Abbot Ale was a thin flavourless imitation of a once great beer.

          1. It does. The brewery has been expanded recently to cope with the level of production.

    3. I am very disappointed, I have search for Greene King pubs near me and there isn’t any!
      How the hell do I boycott something I have no normal access to.
      Interesting the map shows an abundance in the Bristol area, would that explain the statute incident?

      1. Don’t buy any beers branded Morland or Hardy Hanson. These are just two of the names that GK has acquired over the years.

      2. A few days ago, I had an email from their Chef and Brewer section telling me how they were going to keep me safe.
        Looking at the list, I decided my blood pressure would be even safer if I stayed away.
        I don’t go out for a meal to be treated like a plague bacillus.

  52. I was watching the phone video of the incident yesterday when the PM’s jag got rear-ended during a demonstration outside Downing St. It’s hard to make out sometimes, since the camera is not held that professionally, but I think I can get the gist. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcvJbPZ-Is4&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR3PQQeFgPoGLGWH36Kv7fha3blhkXnc2QzxLxn1Ory54W557pVzeD-6_S4 The moment of impact is at 0:58.

    The demonstration were a group of Kurds protesting about the NATO-supported bombing of Iraqi Kurds by Turkey, safe in the knowledge that the media here is distracted by other things. There’s a constant chanting of “Erdogan – Terrorist!” by the Kurds. They are kept in place by a line of yellow-vested police officers, and while noisy, it is good-natured and orderly on both sides.

    Then someone in a grey hoodie wanders out into the street in front of the convoy leaving Downing Street, who is being manhandled by a police officer in the path of the motorcycle outrider, who brakes sharply causing the PM’s car to do likewise and be rear-ended by the car behind. The hoodie is then dragged to the side to be arrested. The Kurds are remonstrating with the police and carry on chanting. The police then lay into the Kurds.

    I suggest that the hoodie was an agent provocateur allowed by the police in a stage-managed, but harmless assault on the Prime Minister’s convoy, with the intention of justifying a more aggressive approach on the demonstrators.

    Given Trump’s open support for Erdogan, and his prickliness to having his associates criticised in public, I suggest that the real intention was to silence the genuine grievance the Kurds have over their betrayal by the West, after they had put their lives on the line clearing out Islamic State.

    Of course we are not going to get a proper report from the media, who are far more concerned with pulling down statues and getting millionaire footballers down on their knee to pay homage to a foreign criminal.

    1. You’re probably correct.
      It wouldn’t have been the first time a member of ‘rent a crowd’ became involved in a planned incident.
      But why and how did Kurdish people get into the UK ?
      Rhetorically speaking.

      1. No comments. I stopped reading that paper forty years ago. The Harry Potter books are anti-Catholic and anti-Christian. Yet praised in that paper.

      2. This is somewhat similar to Lefty lists of the most significant females/female politicians compiled in the Blair years – lists of 12 or 20 and Margaret Thatcher’s name was missing (excluded).

  54. Morning all 😕
    Just a quick question.
    Why would I or any other person who has spent 3 months being very strict with social distancing etc. Drive to a local shopping centre to be assessed and checked for having had Coronavirus ?
    Especially when we have seen thousands of our thickish snowflake generation and other members of the population obviously ignoring all the rules.
    And of course there is a huge risk of being infected by the testers.

      1. It might take longer to surface Sue.
        And no one in our extended family has had it.
        The only people who I know had the virus both picked it up at the Cheltenham festival. Both travelling to and from individually, neither had knowledge of each others attendance. Both survived.
        I’m still reluctant to take any chances.

      2. If no spike transpires from all the mass gatherings, both on beaches and parks at the end of May, and the mass demos in the last two weekends, then we will know the whole lockdown has been an unnecessary farce, causing economic misery for years. It should be lifted forthwith – get the schools open again and people back to work while there are still jobs.

  55. With regard to companies that are, apparently, tainted by connections with the slave trade, here is another list that is of companies that were implicated in trading with Germany during a certain period of time and contributing to the Holocaust. There is one British company and many well known names- mostly German. Oddly, nobody in the past has boycotted their products and I don’t think they have publicly shown any remorse.

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

    1. All a bit iffy. These companies may have produced products for the German Government, from buttons to jet engines. As for “documented to have profited from participation in the Holocaust”. There are two things to be clarified here. What does the term “profited from participation” mean and how did they participate? Define “Holocaust”.

      1. If you talk Jet Engines, Stafford Cripps and the Labour Govenrment, gave Russia/USSR the Centrifugal-flow
        Rolls Royce Nene Jet engine, which as the RD-45 turbojet powered the powered the MiG 15

        A total of twenty-five Nenes were sold to the Soviet Union as a gesture of goodwill – with reservation to not use for military purposes – with the agreement of Stafford Cripps.

        1. Good day, OLT (@ Noon today) the mention of Stafford Cripps reminds me of an apocryphal story told to me by Toby O’Brien who ran the Conservative Party’s PR for a while:

          It must have been in 1942 when Sir Stafford Cripps, whom Churchill detested, was Lord Privy Seal in the coalition government. It transpires that one morning, while Winston was at his daily toilet and ablutions, a footman knocked on his toilet door to tell him that Sir Stafford Cripps was here to see him. The well-known voice boomed from the other side of the door, “Please inform the Lord Privy Seal that I am sealed in my privy – and can only deal with one shit at a time.”

        2. In the Korean War the MiG very capable jets in the air. Well done Mr Cripps.

      2. I believe camp inmates had to work at IG Farben, to pay for their upkeep. Many died.

        1. Yes. The headline is not supported by information. Many French prisoners had to work in factories and farms.

  56. Will compensation be paid by the beneficiaries to all those who were passed over because of “positive discrimination?”
    Thought not.

  57. We may be missing the point about Black Lies Matter.

    The slow march through our institutions is not always about control. The people that promote the sulphurous woke dogma know full well it antagonises ordinary people, they enjoy your anger and frustration, they revel in your sense of helplessness, this is what they really want.

    Get used to this, almost every single thing in your life that was wholesome and true they will corrupt and pervert, they take pleasure in destroying innocence and delight in our misery.

    So don’t play their game, switch it off, stop giving them your money. Starve them of the cash they need and deny them any emotional consideration.

    It will pass and they will fail if you do this. Concentrate on gardening and close friends and family and start reading those books you kept meaning to read, its going to be a long seige.

        1. I’ve mentioned that on here once or twice but I don’t think that our Polly agrees. Many of those people/families have been around for many generations and their wealth and reach far surpasses that of Georgie-cum-lately. That’s not to say he isn’t an evil old coffin dodger.

  58. Child slave’s grave vandalised in apparent revenge attack for Colston statue. Andy Gregory
    1 hour ago

    Marvin Rees, the mayor of Bristol, described the memorial as an “iconic piece of Bristol’s history” which had been “smashed in two”.

    He added: “We just don’t want to go down the route. We don’t want to go down this tit-for-tat invisible attacks on each other.

    “The opportunity is to really showcase to the country and to the world that we are a city that has the ability to live with difference; our own differences in who we are, our difference in understanding and experience of the world.

    It’s always different when it’s one of your own!

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/bristol-slave-grave-vandalised-edward-colston-statue-scipio-marvin-rees-a9572836.html

    1. He’s right about the tit-for-tat.

      Unfortunately, when a can of worms is released it’s hard to know where they will end up once they’re underground and out of sight.

        2. A ha…i just pointed that out after you posted.

          The left seem incapable of seeing their own faults. They will never see anything but through a glass, darkly.

    2. We just don’t want to go down the route.

      Shouldn’t have started it then, or allowed it to happen without repercussions on the vandals who pulled down the statue.
      Every action is likely to have an equal and opposite reaction, or be careful what you start, because you might not like where it ends up.

    3. “The opportunity is to really showcase to the country and to the
      world that we are a city that has the ability to live with difference;
      our own differences in who we are, our difference in understanding and
      experience of the world”.

      Except for those we disapprove of.

      Doesn’t this idiot realise the lies in what he says.

  59. Talk of plans to restrict the rise of UK pensions.
    Terrible news, but obviously understandable when our government is so busy handing out billions to people who have never paid a single penny into the system. But more than readily receive it.
    I can’t remember any of the recipient’s making a difference to the lives of elderly people in the UK. Or even the lives and standards of the UK taxpayers who wholly support them.

    1. I can’t remember any of the recipient’s making a difference to the lives of elderly people in the UK.

      I can recall numerous physical attacks and murders of old people.

      1. Tell me about it Ellie. And money in the bank earns nowt.
        Price increases across the board are imminent.

        1. In the case of food, they have already started. I have noticed several items that have gone up (and petrol is on the rise again after an all-time current low).

          1. Over the years since I have taken notice of politics, probably around 45 years.
            I’d say on average the political classes usually make it up as they go a long and normally don’t have a clue what they are talking about. Most pre election promises go by the board. As I have said many times they always know all the answers in hindsight and usually it’s everyone else’s fault except their own.
            One of my acquaintances close to where I live. Told me of his daughter in law who worked for a senior politician. She wrote most of his speeches. He wouldn’t say who he was.

          2. Oh they have no clothes, Eddy, just like the emperor. It’s all just an illusion. We’re just the poor sods who pay for their delusions.

    1. Tut tut, that can’t be right, LD. We are all led to believe that he walks on water, rather like Floyd.

    2. Another martyr? They do pick-’em don’t they? Obviously the police would take no chances with this one. They are trigger-happy because they know if they aren’t the bastard would shoot first.

        1. There have been suggestions they have arrested people to order for organ donation.

    2. Sweeney Todd isn’t allowed to open his barber’s shop until 4th. July.
      When he does, he’ll have to dress like surgeon …. oh, bugger … that gives the game away.

    1. Lammy really is a grade one twat. Just because a few people get uppity about a serial criminal’s death at the hands of heavy handed police officers in the USA, the World is supposed to stop and pay obeisance to his memory, or rather, do as instructed by the Marxist group who are making insurgent capital out of the event. It’s clear that BLM have been plotting and waiting for such an excuse: how else does one explain the sudden eruption of their demands and protests across a number of countries?

      On the issue of Raab, is this the first play in his move to replace the ineffectual and bumbling Johnson? Playing the sensible and slightly tough line as he sees where public opinion sits with this pressure to kowtow to thugs and insurgents. Be interesting to see who next in the Cabinet takes this line, Gove is my choice.

      1. Politicians shouldn’t answer trivial questions like the one JH-B surprisingly asked Dominic Raab. The BBC News is making a meal of the situation. His answer wasn’t racist. Ed Davey was dragged on to the BBC news programme to discuss the matter. He wasn’t asked if he would “bend the knee” but gave a half hearted support for the BLM.

    3. Morning Belle! Does anyone seriously give a monkeys what this thick-headed, squealing, permanently offended, racist piece of canine excrement, thinks? And I use the word “thinks” very loosely!

      2. Sue, did you overcook the eggs and burn the soldiers this morning? You’ll be getting this blog a bad name if you’re not careful.😎

        1. Nah! Had a bad day yesterday! Crummy sleep! Ergo grumpy morning! Beautiful weather though!

          1. Beautiful here in the sense that we had some generous rainfall for the garden overnight and this morning. Angry clouds at the moment but rain holding off. Hope the remainder of the day is good for you.

          2. Thank you Korky! Had news that a very old and dear friend of ours has been advised that his cancer treatment is no longer effective and has stopped. He is now at home with wonderful palliative care etc. but in these odd times he can’t have visitors and he was so down when I spoke to him. I have known his lovely wife even longer than him (45 years+) and they just seem to have given up. He is only 68 and I am so sad.
            Thank you for your good wishes!

          3. If i were in your situation i would go and see him anyway. Check your temperature. Wear mask and gloves. I would ask them first though.

          4. Thanks Phizzee! I have it in my mind to go (especially as Herr Sturgeon is graciously allowing it – but it’s not political…honest guv!) but I think they will need a bit more time to let it all sink in.

          10. It has finally stopped raining here. Warming up too, as the wind has gone round to SW.

        1. I’m afraid my dear friends tell me I have no “grey areas” just black and white! A bit “non grata” in theses times!
          Sorry if I offended!

          3. Thank you! With a guy like that you never run out of words! Cloth-eared as well!

          11. Ooh! He up voted me a couple of times quite recently! Try your magic again!

          13. No offence to me.
            Lammy is a professional race baiter and deserves what he gets.

          15. Your opinion is your opinion. Nottlers won’t be offended. Unless you fart loudly for punctuation !

            I also tend to see things in black and white. It makes decision making easy. I have mild Aspergers. The downside is facial recognition. If i meet someone new and the following day they have changed their clothing, i don’t recognise them. It has got me in trouble in the past.

          16. You and me both, Phizzee! I once famously failed to recognise my mother-in-law when I met her in a totally different context. That did NOT go down well with MOH or MiL!

      4. Morning Sue

        Lammy has got the attention of the media .. especially the BBC. I think he is an absolute fraud .. His limitations are too numerous to mention.

  65. I blame the wife of Harry … the pair of them are living in the USA… she almost gave her stamp of approval for all black disobedience .. her uppity attitude was a signal to the Royal family to take the knee!

    1. Good morning Truthful Beauty

      Be careful – I believe the word ‘uppity’ is no longer used in politically correct circles.

      1. Failed to sign it as well.
        Given all the money expended on their schooling, you’d think they could muster an ‘X’ between them.

  67. This racism nonsense reminds me of what happened to a friend of mine, Jeremy Taylor, who appeared in the satirical revue Wait A Minim with my cousins in the 1960’s. He then returned to England and appeared regularly on television and played in folk clubs and theatres with the likes of Spike Milligan, Donald Swann and Sydney Carter.

    Because some of his songs poked fun at the apartheid system he was banned from performing in South Africa while at the same time an international ban was imposed upon him for having performed in South Africa! Racial matters always promote irrational judgements and behaviour.

    Here Jeremy pokes fun at racial discrimination:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DTFwNOEzIY

  68. As the sublimely unwoke James Delingpole tells us………..

    ”Britain Unleashes a Green New Deal to Kill What’s Left of the Economy”………

    https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/06/03/britain-unleashes-green-new-deal-to-kill-whats-left-of-the-economy/

    This is part of the race to ‘Build Back Better’ which is the latest code phrase for UN green global tyranny.

    Globalists are supremely proficient at inventing attractive sounding reverse meaning ”code phrases” which really are invasive, subversive and sometimes subliminal propaganda terms designed to enter the lexicon and ultimately to bring about global government. Such phrases appeal directly to the uninformed who are immediately drawn in to believing the proposition sounds highly desirable and is deserving of their support. Whereas the reality is exactly the opposite and contrary to their interests.

    ”Build Back Better” will mean a huge increase in wind and solar farms across the UK and more vastly expensive and technically troublesome nuclear power stations similar to Hinkley Point which may never work at all. Also the replacement of every gas cooker and every gas boiler in the UK with an electric equivalent and ultimately the dismantling of the UK’s gas supply network.

    So while British people may welcome the return of British fish to British shops, cooking it looks likely to be an extremely expensive operation which might even be impossible. Thanks entirely to Prime Minister Johnson and his insane ”Build Back Better” UN globalist obsession which really should be renamed ”Destroy Everything Which Works”.

    Of course, destroying everything which works would undermine any nation state and set the stage for global government.

    That fits in exactly with the aims of ”Billionaire Influence” which underlies virtually every aspect of UK government policy and legislation since at least 1997 and possibly before and is completely incompatible with the rational defense of the nation.

  69. A reading from one of Thomas Sowell’s books. A very long, but extremely interesting listen.
    Whatever the undoubted shame of Britain’s involvement in the slave trade, our efforts in ending the trade has already wiped the slate.

    https://youtu.be/VWrfjUzYvPo

  70. We have had some gentle rain.. yipee.

    Went to Weymouth shopping , on the way , we looked out across Weymouth bay , and the big liners are still anchored there. They were enveloped in a thick sea mist, the weather was clamping in . They looked amazing in the grey low cloudy murk.

    There was a huge queue of people waiting in a long line around the car park at Sainsbury super store , so we opted for Morrisons not too far away , and there was more organisation , no queue and a much more pleasant shopping experience.. Diesel fuel was very cheap as well .

    I was so lucky because as soon as I entered the store after sterlising my hands and all that palavar, the rain came down ! Moh stayed in the car .. People said the rain was heavy . When I finished shopping, there were huge puddles outside and just a heavy warm drizzle .

    Our local vet is still doing consultations in the car park, how on earth do they cope with bad weather. It also seems as if Dentists are also back to work ..

    There are so many inconsistencies re other businesses , but people who are having work done on their homes , like loft conversions are quite stuffed because there is a shortage of building materials .. Travis Perkins have gone down the pan, and builders are having a great deal of difficulty acquiring plaster for walls and ceilings etc .

    Still difficult getting an appointment with a doctor, strange old world .

  71. 320282+ up ticks,
    Would it be beneficial for an independent body along the lines of
    Simon Wiesenthal to list data / actions taken by this odious species of peoples for future reference.

    Their current actions cannot surely be ignored when sanity once again outweighs insanity.

    Resulting in deportations, incarcerations, and a CONTROLLED FRENZY
    of STAMPING out this type of SH!TE.

      2. Arresting anyone who joins in and jailing them. That’s about the current level of clown world policing, isn’t it?

    2. Not convinced that rugby fans will take kindly to being told what they can and can’t sing.

      1. Good , and I hope Rugby fans object to anyone taking the Knee, and I also hope that our Rugby people are the sense and sensibility of the Nation , and they forcefully object to all the nonsense of pandering to BLM Folk.

        1. Too many blecks playing as “Englishmen” these days, Maggie. They’ll kowtow. Just you watch.

      2. I’m left cold by crowds’ singing, but I would join in with gusto for that.

      1. It’s a dreadful dirge; I’ve never understood why it is England’s “song”

          1. They need special words for the national Anthem tune:

            Up yours, you Scottish runts
            Piss orf you Oirish grunts
            England’s our name.
            Send us victorious, Welsh cowed beforious
            Eyeties aren’t glorious
            England’s the name.

          2. Excellent! Can I steal it to send to my rugby playing Scottish son-in-law? He’ll really like it!!

    5. Yes, absolutely. Let’s bury the song and any memory of it and its writer.
      Or is that not the point??

    6. To be honest all of the songs belted out at the Home Nations comprise nationalistic bile. The Scotland anthem is the worst followed closely by the Irish. The Welsh is, well, just Welsh and understandably so.

      The Sweet Chariot song is just in very poor taste as is so much of the commercialisation of our national sports.

      1. The Welsh anthem is only understandable if you speak Welsh 🙂 Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau.

        1. Wot?
          Whales…., whales….,
          bluddy great fishes with bluddy great tails…

          they swims in the sea….
          but they don’t bother me…
          bluddy great fishes are whales.

  73. 320282+ up ticks,
    Can’t wait for near sanity to return, full sanity never will,you will be reading what really was behind Dunblane before that makes a return.
    No, can’t wait to get to the match and see mass knee bending exercises & back of shirt messages saying BLM.

    The players are earning their £200000 a week corn with such displays so I don’t mind having to mortgage the house for a price of a ticket.

    If ever an issue begged to be boycotted it is football via the turnstile.
    First fan through the turnstile should automatically receive a left / right to the kisser, subsequently any following gets the same.
    A slap some sense into them trial campaign.

    If it proves successful an automatic slapper will then be mounted at all polling booths and rigged as required.

  74. Teatime!

    First of the season, freshly made seedless raspberry jam made from home grown fruit and a lemon Madeira drizzle cake fresh from the oven.
    Looking at the fruit bushes the next batch, either tomorrow or Saturday, will be a mixture of raspberries and loganberries, they make a good combination with the loganberries having a more tart flavour than the raspberries. Gooseberries to follow in a few weeks – this year the pesky blackbirds will not get the fruit as I’ve caged the bush – and then blueberries and blackberries through to late summer.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/52ce97a141c0aa2b824e91a199599a037677adcadbfd453b7dad607315a07704.jpg

    1. We picked our first strawbs today; despite straw and nets and vigilance, bloody slugs ans snails have been at them…grrr.

      1. Our strawbs are over now, but raspberries still coming thick and fast and gooseberries just starting.

        1. We have autumn raspberries which seem to go on and on without being got at by birds and other pests.

      2. Try some diatomaceous earth for the slugs and snails. They don’t like it up ’em.

      3. Are you sure it’s not mice? We had a serious mouse problem on the potager, until we got a cat.

          6. In which case, share and share alike.

            You should only need to “shell” the boundaries, after you’ve dealt with those inside the bed.
            You might consider a layer of sharp sand under the straw.

      4. For reason or reasons unknown I cannot grow strawberries successfully on my soil. The plants start out looking good but by early May they start to die off and I lose about half of the plants. I’ve moved them around the garden and tried a number of varieties but always get the same result.

      1. Much like your stir-fry, and I love stir fry, but I’ve never made one that looked as good as yours yesterday.

        1. It’s not a product I like particularly because of the sugar content, but adding a spoonful of Thai sweet chilli sauce to a stir-fry gives it a lift and a sheen.

    5. Shame on you. You have put all those minimum wage piece workers out of a job. They spend 18 hours a day stamping out those little shapes from cardboard to put in to raspberry jam.

      Can you post your raspberry jam recipe please…. 🙂

      1. Sexist. What about Girlsenberries?

        And Transenberries. Must move with the times….

      2. No, I haven’t. IIRC the first time I heard of Boysenberries was when Spencer Tracey mentioned them in a film I can’t recall the title of. Are they an import from the States?

        1. Try and find some berries to taste and if you like them, they are very easy to grow and the fruits are very large.

      3. I thought they were a character from Only Fools & Horses
        :-((
        I’ll get me coat

  75. Bank of England adding £100 billion more of Quantitive Easing to aid the economy. There seems no end to this largesse.

    2. Yo clyde

      Large S
      small s

      there is the same amount of ‘hite’ with them both

    3. Meanwhile finding an interest bearing account to store a little cash gets more and more difficult. It’s completely irresponsible behaviour.

      1. If there is one thing the BoE/the Govt. fear more than inflation it is deflation.
        They want people to spend not to save.
        If people don’t start spending when this Covid idiocy ends, then the economy is never going to recover and unemployment will continue to rise.

        But there will be no money to pay benefits to everyone at the level they now are. This might make the 30’s look like a period of great prosperity.

        1. Done my bit, went to M&S yesterday and return 2 sets of joggers. Why do they keep changing the cut/feel/size of things. Anyway, got a £32 refund and bought a polo shirt reduced from £19.50 to £9. Glad to help in anyway I can. 🤣🤣

          1. That’s the way it goes.

            I wonder how many people will be doing just that, if they see that the goods have been reduced and possibly even buy back cheaper the same things.

        2. I’d be very happy with deflation, the only people who don’t like it are those heavily in debt, because the debt can’t be inflated away. And what institution is most heavily in debt I wonder…

          1. It might appear beneficial short term, but I’m convinced a prolonged bout of it would be very bad news indeed.

          2. It’s bad news for business, as people delay spending, in the expectation prices will fall further.

          4. Let’s try it and see. It’s better than the present autodebt game and printing unlimited imaginary money.

          5. If everyone thinks goods will be cheaper tomorrow they won’t buy today. Stock builds up, prices are cut, people still don’t buy, because they think it will be cheaper tomorrow. Lack of cash flow then kills the small business. The manufacturers can’t sell and they go bust too. Unemployment all round.

            Tax take drops so benefits have to be cut. Thus less money available to spend. It’s a vicious circle.

            I think the money printing is the lesser of the two evils, but only just. Some posters here believe one can print almost ad infinitum, I’m not one of them.

          7. ‘Afternoon, Sos, I would certainly back a drastic cut in benefits, if only to discourage illegal and useless immigrants.

            Once they’ve all cleared off home again and we have strong immigration laws, we might look at restoring some of the benefits.

      2. The Muslims apparently don’t like the idea of interest being paid on savings. I wonder how they save their money.

        1. Like many slammer deceptions – they don’t charge “interest” – just take a great lump of capital in due course.

        3. Don’t kid yourself. They expect a return on any investment, they just don’t call it “interest”

          1. Their not supposed to gamble either, but I know for a fact that many of them buy lottery tickets. It’s probably one of the reasons the winners are less publicised.

          2. Many Muslims in the UK only obey their rules when it suits them.
            They’re not unusual in that, so do Christians, but they are certainly more hypocritical about such things

          3. One gets a payment for the priviledge of looking after the money and investing it – a ind of profit sharing.

          5. That’s how my chum who has been involved in Islamic banking described it to me.
            I often wonder, as a woman – and an English woman – how she deals with the Muzzies.

  76. There is much joy in Canada.

    Trudeau has spent several years trying to bribe and cajole his way into a security council seat. It will be a close vote they said, it may require numerous recounts so do not expect a quick result when they vote on the temporary memberships.

    Despite millions spent in bribes to UN delegates including tickets to Celine Dion concerts, the application came in a poor third yesterday, leaving pretendy PM unseated.

    We await his weasel words to justify the loss and wonder what he will now get up to in an effort to boost his woke standing.

    1. Norway secured 130 votes, while Ireland got 128 and Canada managed just 108.

      India ran unopposed to win in the Asia-Pacific region, while Mexico also ran unopposed.

      The terms for new members start on 1 January 2021.

      a-haaa…

      1. He can go anywhere in the world to spread his opinions and influences, but like so many of our western political classes choose to rub the noses of their own electorate in the self built sinking mire.

          1. I wouldn’t say he’s a nobody. All that hugging and kissing with Macron might pay off one day.

          2. Pedant alert but being the proud possessor of a wide, RAF, handle-bar version, I would like to point out, Philip, that ‘mustache’ is American, mine is very English and is a moustache.

    1. History will be rewritten. Anything celebrating Great Britain will be trashed, children will only be taught Black History, and statues will be removed, streets renamed and all will be whitewashed – err blackwashed.

    1. My then toddler-aged elder son threw a strop in the middle of Woolworth.
      I moved away to another counter and left him to it; it was obvious where he was!
      Old biddies gathered round him, clucking, tutting and casting murderous glances at the unnatural mother.
      Sprog stopped to draw breath, looked round the concerned faces and realised that THE face wasn’t amongst them.
      Screaming stopped, he got up and toddled over to me.

      1. There was a very middle class mother taking three small children out for bicycle ride down the pavement in front of our house last week. One of them did a full on tantrum, which was prolonged for what felt like hours because her mother stopped and reasoned with her.

        1. My son had a temper tantrum as a toddler – I just picked him up, carried him out of the shop under my arm like a parcel and proceeded homewards. I don’t recall that he ever tried a repeat performance.

    2. Oh for a steamroller – you re-tarmac the road and as they’re black put the cats eyes in at the same time

      1. No need for such drastic treatment. Many of our smaller roads just get a quick spray with tar then a layer of stones.

        Far less expensive

    4. Get the local farmer to bring his side-emitting muck-spreader down the grass verge – they’ll all be washed away when they recognise the shite they are.

  80. I’ve made a start: today in ALDI, I had a choice of Abbott Ale (Greene King) or Bishop’s Finger (Shepherd Neame). The Abbot Ale remained on the shelf.
    This evening, I will be contacting Greene King, as their website begs us to do. I am currently composing something pithy but polite.
    Here is the link:
    https://www.greeneking.co.uk/contact-us/

    2. Apart from any other apologies they might be making, ask them when they are going to apologise for their beer-flavoured water know as Greene-King IPA?

      1. When I lived in Victoria Street in Cambridge 1983-1993 we bought bottles of Greene King IPA and Abbott Ale from an old fashioned corner shop on Clarendon Street viz. Percy Wing. We returned the bottles and received a few pence on the returns.

        In those days both the IPA and Abbott Ale were very good ales. Having previously lived in London and been accustomed to Fullers’ London Pride and Young’s Special it was a welcome surprise to find such excellent beers in Cambridge.

        Those were truly distant days.

        Now living in North Essex the best beers locally are Nethergate and Adnams’ Southwold breweries.

        Edited.

        1. ADNAMS, please!

          I had a splendid weekend in Southwold in the mid-90s with a visit to to the brewery. Even in mid-June there were plenty of visitors. In high summer it can be unpleasantly crowded.

          1. Sadly, that too has changed for the worse.

            If asked in the 1970’s what was my favourite beer ,Adnams best bitter would have been the response.
            No longer.

        2. Hi corim, yes I can remember GK beers which were pleasantly drinkable. At some point the bean-counters got involved and turned good products into cheap-tasting rubbish. Both Nethergate and Adnams produce reliable, quality products. Current favourites of mine are Adnams Ghost Ship and their ‘Ease up’ IPA. Nice part of the world!

          Youngs Special is now very nondescript from what you will remember, and it won’t be long before Pride goes the same way now that Fullers is Japanese owned.

          Nothing stays the same!

        3. Abbot used to be my favourite (in the mid-late 80s), but the last time I had a pint, it was the same in name only.

    3. Good for you Anne! Right behind you and since I’m having a stroppy day, I may not be as perlite as you!

    4. If bottles of Dancing Duck’s products make their way down to you, I’d recommend their “Dark Drake” Oatmeal Porter.
      A meal in a glass.

  81. Two Sisters …. well, hey ho …

    Anglesey outbreak: Do we need local lockdowns?

    “Localised action” may be needed to tackle Covid-19 hotspots, said the health minster Vaughan Gething.

    He was being quizzed following the outbreak at an Anglesey chicken processing plant, where 51 workers have contracted coronavirus.

    The 2 Sisters site at Llangenfi has been closed in a bid to control the virus spread.

    1. I used to know Vinnie in the ’80s when he lived in the Watford area, we shared the same local. He could be volatile at times but was a loyal, rough diamond.

    2. There’s piece’s of his head and brain all over his home TV room and the screen. 😠😨😲

  84. I know I keep on about things – but the British School at Rome has just ended a very interesting talk about the construction of the building now used by the BSR. It was designed by Lutyens (and the webinar (get me!!) was introduced by his grandson – who is a cousin of Matt Ridley and Jane Ridley – and boy, there ain’t half a family resemblance!

    The talk will be available from tomorrow on BSR YouTube (along with earlier ones in the series.)

    Those of you who are history lovers will enjoy some of the talks. (And, if you watch on YouTube – subtitles (of a sort) are available – because sometimes in the live talks the sound is a bit wonky.)

    1. The British Embassy in Rome was designed by Basil Spence, a much derided and underestimated architect.

      One of the Prizes at University College London Bartlett School of Architecture, where I studied, was a Scholarship to the British School in Rome. The girl on my course gifted this Award gave up after a year in Rome. She had no real interest in architectural history as far as I recall. It was a waste of a scholarship. I would have lapped it up. I was a better student and better architect. Such is
      life.

  85. I wonder how many BLM will ” take a knee ” for Dame Vera tonight, or ever !

      1. The hideously white imperialist woman who vocally backed Churchill’s unspeakable declaration of war on defenceless Germany.

    1. Presidential candidate a worry for the Democrats.
      At least a third want another candidate instead of Biden.

    2. ..with a British corporal’s chevron by way of reference to le petit caporal. Snigger.

  88. When 2020 rolled around did anyone think they’d be staring at a bunch of racists desperately hurling the ‘racist!’ term at you to make you into racists so the real racists can call you a racist?

    Stop the world. I want the Left to get off.

    1. I’m going to pinch your last line, if you don’t mind, to repeat as often as possible!

    2. No – and we didn’t think we’d all be under house arrest for months, either.

      1. Aye. nearly 3 months. Even shopping, which used to be a way to get out and speak to people has become a bonkers trial.

      2. That is why I loathe New Year’s Eve.
        All that forced jollity, knowing full well that the year will be ‘mixed’ – if we’re lucky.

        1. Quite agree. Forced jollity is awful, I’d far sooner invite a few close friends for dinner, the only nod to NYE being a bottle of champagne at midnight.

      3. Nor stopped by the police by just leaving one’s own village ..for an hour!

        Nor finding the shelves in local small shops cleared of goods like bread, loo paper , eggs , sugar , fruit and vegetables and….. meat.. then having t queue in a long line with 6 ft between you and the next person .. then wake up at night wondering whether your gummed up throat was a sign of the virus.

        All appointments cancelled , no access to the doctors , and a shortage of paracetamol!

          1. I was able to get my hair done last week and feel so much better! The salon had removed half its seating to enable safe distancing and we were all wearing face masks. Kind of odd but a much needed pick-me-up after so long waiting, so go and get yours done as soon as restrictions lessen up in your area, you will feel so much better.

          2. This has had a bad effect on everyone , I feel like a recluse as well. I do take the dogs out , but give them a run where no one else goes , spaniels need to run and sniff , and my 12 year old spaniel isn’t very good with strange dogs since his terrible accident 3 years ago, the younger one is 7 years old , loves to gallop around with a ball in his mouth.

            During the first month of lockdown , I sorted and cleaned drawers and things, then housework became very boring , so concentrated on the garden , planted runnner beans in a flower bed , split all my perennials , and replanted , grew some radishes , overdid the lettuce thing, they ran riot , and with Moh and myself here , we just became frantic, told the children what to do in case we snuffed it . My concern is still the dogs and the old parrot… Fear and fright do strange things . Dystopian times. Neighbours of ours just vanished into themselves , all of a similar age group.

            When I needed to shop , social distancing became similar to a Tarantella dance .. then the social distancing arrows and masking tape appeared on the shop floor .. People were so cautious , just almost skipping out of the way, no one dare speak .. we were all warned about the spray from our lips if we talk .. So smiling a rictus grin .. and /or keeping the head bowed .. and suddenly everyone is saying sorry .. everyone apologises .. personal space becomes very strained..

            It is all so exhausting .

            Then parish meetings … all council meetings are now Zoom orientated. I haven’t a clue about Zoom .. So now I have to catch up quite quickly .. I hate the idea .

            So I do agree with you J, I cannot be bothered with anything either.

            The good news for you is you have some young Swifts to monitor and enjoy .. now that is really lovely . I hope they do well .

          3. You’ve done a lot more than I have. I do the shopping once a week, cook dinners, I think the weather’s got to me today. I feel very unfit. The lockdown may have loosened a bit but still nowhere to go, no meetings, fundraising events, normal life.

            The swift parents are keeping the chicks well covered so we haven’t really had a glimpse today.

          4. That is all I do, shop for cooking meals , son is working , living at home so cook for Moh , he and me , and food prices have gone up .

            No meetings for me or other things . Just shopping trips and see the sea .. Lots of tourists around from other parts of the country .. Boris really stuffed up there allowing people to travel hundreds of miles for a day out !

            We are really worried about things kicking off again . I have stuff in my freezer in case we have another lock down .. I even tried to find dried milk today , just in case!

          5. Belle, you’re sounding like you’re overcome with negativity. That’s a downer for anyone! Think positive, as many positive aspects of your life as you can. Don’t dwell on downsides, think positive!

          6. You are not alone. I am in a very similar situation (managed to take part in a council meeting by Zoom for the first time today after a trial run with church a couple of weeks ago). My dog is my lifeline because MOH has dementia and it’s a full-time job caring. I am less concerned about going out than I am about the mental effects of being shut in, to be honest.

          7. You certainly have your hands full Conway.

            How did you cope with Zoom , how many were using it for your meeting.

            I might ask for a trial run , just to to get familiar with it .

          8. There were only six of us with the parish clerk in control as host. There were forty odd a couple of Sundays ago for the church service. That was slightly more chaotic!

          11. Is that what they call it OB..

            Goodness me , yes , yes yes , and no wonder I am tired because I stay up late to watch Foyles War .. which I loved when it was on years ago and enjoy it even more now .. such a clever series .

          12. Tuesday’s thunderstorm has buggered up our telly – some channels work and some don’t. I wanted to watch the Tutankhamun programme tonight on BBC4 but that’s one that we haven’t been able to pick up – he’s set it to record but it probably won’t. We’ll see. Time to deal with the dinner!

          16. Not sure if he’s tried that – anyway he called someone to come and look at it (or at the aerial).

          17. One of my favourites, Belle. A neat twist in a detective story.
            And I always fancied Honeysuckle Weeks… ;-))

          21. One of my favourites, too, along with Endeavour. Both present England as I remember it.

          22. I’ve definitely got that. OH has got back on the tennis court, he’s been more active than me.

          24. It’s much better, though he can’t serve or do topspin, but it’s ok so long as he sticks to chop or sidespin shots and doesn’t raise him arm too high. He played a singles match this week, the first for over 20 years – in a ladder competition and beat a much younger chap, which was good for his marale. He’s lost a lot of muscle though, and he always was small and wiry, not a big man.

          25. I feel so much more alive this week after going out to the pub – twice! Sunshine, beers, outdoors, crowds and lovely girls… Sunburn, as well, but hey!
            And I’ve been going to the office this last few weeks – by bus & train.

          27. And forcing myself to deal with renovations and farm work – not quite finished washing Firstborn’s house outside – bugger me- there’s a lot of washing to take care of, with heavy duty scrubbing as well, scaffolding to shift… then there’s beer to drink in the sunshine…

          29. Lovely to have social interaction with two lovely, bright, intelligent women. Gave me a proper boost, so it did.

          31. A chum called to ask if I had a battery charger. He wanted to go shopping and obs car wouldn’t start.

            I pootled round and as we fiddled about it dawned on me he was still in his dressing gown – at half 2 in the afternoon. He told me ‘I’d forgotten how bright it was out here.’

            He hadn’t left his flat for about a month.

          33. We just heard from a friend in Ottawa. She is one of the nervous ones, she hasn’t been outside her apartment since mid March and has finally reached out for a bit of help with her depression.

            What is worse a couple of weeks suffering before dying from this bug or three months of mental hell?

          34. I don’t think I’m depressed but I’ve certainly got CBA syndrome. Anyway, I’d better go and rescue the dinner.

          35. I think the CBA syndrome is a result of the initial stress, the anxiety of lockdown, leading to that initial burst of adrenaline through our veins (which may last for days) and then subsides and twangs back not just to normal but minus normal, resulting in CBA and simply can’t be bothered. I had mega-lethargy after the first two weeks of feeling stressed out by it all. This week I have felt for the first time adrenaline levels may be heading upwards towards normal, I have managed to clean the windows, the bathroom, some ironing…. However, I am not sleeping well, which doesn’t help, I awake feeling tired and non-rested, and the day can be a struggle at times in parts. However, as Sue M says, this too shall pass, nothing is for ever. You are not alone, N.

          36. I’m sleeping surprisingly well – not so long ago I was a night-bird, often up till the small hours. These days I go to bed when OH does – we read for while then we’re off…….. apart from jaunts to the loo we sleep till he gets up to make the tea.

    3. Fond memories of Anthony Newley in the London show with Anna Quale, early 60’s I think.

  89. Lionel Shriver talks to Allison Pearson: ‘The British people have never more profoundly disappointed me’. 18 June 2020.

    “Fiction writers these days are all from a very narrow political persuasion, their books neatly line up and there’s no edge. If nothing else, it’s boring,” she said. “I have lost friendships because of my political positions. But someone a little right of centre never renounces the left wing friend. It’s always the other way around. That means something. It means where the intolerance is. I can make do with having Remainer friends, I forgive them too.”

    I agree about the British People who have become spineless poodles afraid of their own shadows but there’s a nice little piece of perception in the quote.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/authors/lionel-shriver-talks-allison-pearson-british-people-have-never/

  90. So, according to Sky News just now, every Londoner is now a holder of the Legion d’Honneur.

    I wonder why…?

    2. There is precedent. The people of Malta were awarded the V.C.

      How their suffering compares to the low lifes of London is beyond me

  91. I wonder if the writer will be called in for an ‘assessment’?

    History will judge those who emerged from lockdown to fight the ghost of Cecil Rhodes

    There is no shame in loving the country you belong to. We immigrants love it, too

    MARIE DAOUDA

    I come from a country with no statues.

    It is not that Morocco never had statues. Not that long ago it had statues of French officials – of which only one remains, hidden in a consulate garden. It had, a bit earlier, statues of Christian saints and Roman dignitaries, of which there is no trace. Before that, it must have had statues of Phoenician deities. All have been destroyed, and with them visible proof of the complex history of North Africa.

    There is nothing new about submitting statues to the trial that their subjects escaped. In the Roman Empire, when a Caesar fell out of public grace and was murdered, his successor’s first thought was about statues. Faces were erased, then redrawn in the new emperor’s image. Tearing down statues is not new, either. People re-evaluate the past, but when it comes to re-evaluating individuals, things get trickier. How much did a person’s representation owe to its own time? Frankly, almost everything.

    Cecil Rhodes was not particularly loved in his own day; his wealth was admired, but not his half-avowed homosexuality. He might have been too forward-thinking, for what business of his was it to create a scholarship that could be awarded regardless of race or creed? The language of his will is clear and obvious: “no student shall be qualified or disqualified for election to a Scholarship on account of his race or religious opinions.”

    If Rhodes was the racist we assume he was, then surely he knew what “race” meant? Five years after Rhodes’s death, in 1907, in the wake of the election of the first black Rhodes Scholar, Alain LeRoy Locke, the Rhodes Trustees argued that when Rhodes used the term “race” he might have meant “Dutch, English, Jew, and the rest.” Perhaps Rhodes was simply more progressive than his trustees, and than most people of his time.

    Rhodes endowed my college at Oxford, Oriel, with the means to further its work and fulfill its vocation as “The Provost and Scholars of the House of the Blessed Mary the Virgin in Oxford, commonly called Oriel College, of the Foundation of Edward the Second of famous memory, sometime King of England”. Rhodes is included in the daily college prayer said after dinner in hall, and in the yearly benefactors’ service. Does that mean that we, as a community, condone the horrors he engaged in? No; of course not.

    History is an unyielding judge. A time will come when people will shrug their shoulders at the weariness of this overwrought generation of Britons who, having locked themselves up for more than two months, emerged to fight statues and ghosts. To remove any statue now would say: “up to June 2020, we were racist. But now, lo, we are washing our hands in the blood of our statues, we are not racist anymore.”

    It is alright for hands to be dirty. No hands are clean in history. The first colonisers of North Africa wiped out all its Christian and Jewish heritage, and thrived on the slave-trade. They had black slaves as well as white slaves. Any neutral view of history tells us that oppression is a matter of military power, and not of race.

    When I first arrived in France I found the presence of religious statues beautiful. They spoke about the past of a country I wanted to settle in, a land I wanted to become organically part of. France took me in as I took it in, with its complicated past and the painful pages of its history. Then I came to Oxford.

    I took Oxford in as it took me in; I sincerely hope that I was admitted because I write quirky ideas about French authors who were hated in their days, then rehabilitated, and then hated again. I am at home here, walking down the High Street with Rhodes on one side and the Blessed Virgin Mary on the other. I hope Oxford did not take me in because of how my “ethnic background” makes the diversity quotas look better.

    I never felt more at home than when the city was deserted because of coronavirus; anyway, I had nowhere else to go. To some, Oxford might be a Harry Potter setting to be enjoyed while they enhance their CVs; to me, it stands as the last place on earth where people would dedicate their lives to the pursuit of truth.

    I will not say that as an African I am oppressed by Oriel’s statue of Rhodes and by the buildings Oxford owes to imperial largesse, nor that I feel incomplete, as a Catholic, by the absence of statues in some of the other niches. I do not wish to change a single stone of Oxford, because I love it. I love it as much, and maybe more, than I love any city I have lived in before.

    There is no shame in loving the country you belong to. We immigrants love it, too. It is possible to criticise a country and the people who built it, while still loving it. Without a French presence in Morocco, I doubt I would have had any chance to enjoy an international academic career, let alone as a woman. My mother insisted that I should be educated in the French system; my grandmother’s pride was that I ended up teaching French to French teenagers.

    Could I decolonise myself? No; nor do I wish to. I am proud of what the complicated past of colonialism made me. I feel no guilt about it, and the last thing I need now is the apologies of a French person feeling sorry for me.

    White guilt is unhelpful and condescending. Whenever someone tries to deploy it, I tell them that my ancestors were involved in the slave trade, too.

    Marie Daouda is a stipendiary lecturer in French at Oriel College, Oxford

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/18/no-do-not-feel-oppressed-cecil-rhodes/

      1. And a myth. I do not feel guilty for the actions of other people living now, let alone a century ago.

    4. A very lovely piece of writing! I hope it doesn’t damage her career as it reads as though written from the heart.

  92. If black people think that they would be better represented by a black politician, just tell them to look at white people and their representatives.

  93. We have had some gentle rain.. yipee.

    Went to Weymouth shopping , on the way , we looked out across Weymouth bay , and the big liners are still anchored there. They were enveloped in a thick sea mist, the weather was clamping in . They looked amazing in the grey low cloudy murk.

    There was a huge queue of people waiting in a long line around the car park at Sainsbury super store , so we opted for Morrisons not too far away , and there was more organisation , no queue and a much more pleasant shopping experience.. Diesel fuel was very cheap as well .

    I was so lucky because as soon as I entered the store after sterlising my hands and all that palavar, the rain came down ! Moh stayed in the car .. People said the rain was heavy . When I finished shopping, there were huge puddles outside and just a heavy warm drizzle .

    Our local vet is still doing consultations in the car park, how on earth do they cope with bad weather. It also seems as if Dentists are also back to work ..

    There are so many inconsistencies re other businesses , but people who are having work done on their homes , like loft conversions are quite stuffed because there is a shortage of building materials .. Travis Perkins have gone down the pan, and builders are having a great deal of difficulty acquiring plaster for walls and ceilings etc .

    Still difficult getting an appointment with a doctor, strange old world .

    1. One of my crowns came out last Friday evening. I rang my dentist on Monday morning (they re-opened on 8th June) and, because I am a Denplan patient, I was given an appointment that same day at 4:45 pm. Went in, was provided with a mask and hand sanitiser, dentist had the PPE gear on (face mask, visor etc). Was out less than 25 minutes later with crown replaced. Good job it didn’t happen a few weeks ago.

      1. I had a similar experience. But just a check up and hygienist. My dentist will even put a crown back in free of charge.

        I also have Denplan. £32 a month. Lab fees on top. I have four check ups a year and four hygienist appointments so it works out really well. (cheap).

        1. I am also on Denplan, been with them since they started , but their fees are similar to dog insurance , the older you get the more they hike the fees up.

    2. Weymouth holds many memories for me. On the beach for most of the day. Meet at the clock on the prom for a picnic that Granny made.

      Early morning with Aunts and Uncles at Chickerell for mackerel fishing. My Aunts hauling the nets as My Uncles steered the boats. Us kids gutting and packing the fishes into boxes.

          1. Do you know?………..I didn’t like to ask.

            I was worried I might show myself up to
            be un-woke..……or summat!

            xxx

            Edited!

          3. Anything you say, Dear One.

            You should see my 18″ red/white/blue
            hanging baskets. I am going for the best
            ‘Front Garden prize’ in our VJ Street Party

          4. Good luck. I have a Red, White and Blue border, but it can’t be seen from the street.

          5. i’m beginning to think i am losing my sense of humour.

            You’re not alone in that.

      2. How lovely for you Phizzee,

        The beach is still lovely .. Not many people around on the beach, at the moment because everything is closed , but there have been people swimming .

        The unusual thing at the moment is because the fish and chip places are closed , no stench of greasy chips and vinegar in the air,.. WE CAN now actually smell the sea , and all the salty air.

        1. I liked watching the tractor comb the beach in the early hours. Do they till do that?

          I know what you mean about the smell but fish & chips is one of life wonders at the sea side.

          The worst offenders are the ones that don’t change their oil regularly. They stink.

          3. Nah, that’s much longer. Back to front, inside-out, inside- out/back to front, that’s a year if you’re careful!

    3. J’s having trouble with his hearing – I told him to ring the surgery and speak to a nurse – he said they’re not answering the phone.

      1. My GP’s outfit answers the phone – then makes you wait ten minutes while they give you menus, health advice etc etc Then a person will speak brusquely and do her best to dissuade you from bothering anyone medical.

          1. My surgery has closed its on-line booking system but I was able to speak to the receptionist and got my 6 monthly Diabetic blood test and consultation with a diabetes nurse next week within 5 minutes of phoning the surgery this morning.

          2. If one tries that “option” the earliest apptmt is usually at least four weeks hence.

            If I really NEED a GP, I drive to the surgery, queue up, wait, and wait, and speak firmly to the cow woman behind the desk.

  94. This is the email address of the Greene King CEO:
    nickmackenzie@greeneking.co.uk

    This is wot I rote.

    “Good evening, Mr. MacKenzie,

    As our family lives in East Anglia, we have, for many years patronised Greene King public houses and also bought your beer at supermarkets.

    However, after your craven submission towards the BLM movement – an avowed Marxist organisation aimed at destroying liberal western culture – we will no longer be using your public houses or buying your products.

    Your company may wish to pay Danegeld to a voracious monster that will never be satisfied however much you bend the knee and scatter largesse in its direction, but that money will no longer be coming from our pockets.

    Yours sincerely,

    Anne Allan

    1. Nice one Anne. I expect you’re waiting for a grovelling response ;@)

      What surprises me is that you were happy to drink their nasty beer in the first place!

      1. I’m not a beer drinker. I just keep some in stock for visitors.
        It tends to be whatever is going in ALDI or Lidl.

    3. Greene King was bought up by last year by Hong Kong venture capitalist Li Kashing who owns CK Hutchinson. Also bought up by this corporate was Three Mobile and Superdrug. The Chef & Brewer chain is also part of it.

      Half a dozen microbreweries have been set up near me in Malvern over recent years, but these are threatened by pubs being forced to pour their stock down the drain after the sudden lockdown statement in March. Maybe this is all part of the plan to drive small competition out of business, so that the global corporates can corner the market and take the knee to gangsters whenever they like.

      1. Jeremy, I think your analysis is somewhat fanciful. Microbreweries are springing up and thriving all over the country, producing some superb products, it ain’t their fault that pubs are shut. Beer being poured away is unfortunate but inevitable, regardless of the beer coming from a micro or a conglomerate.

        1. Our local brewery has been doing takeaways since the lockdown started. I think they’ll survive.

    6. Dear Mz Allen

      We set out in the 1990s to change our company from a respected regional brewer with some well liked beers into a national mega-corp hated by anyone interested in quality. We bought breweries and closed them, flogging off the land to speculators. We also acquired some lovely country pubs which we also closed and then sold off at ridiculous prices because they were so much more valuable as residential properties.

      We reduced our costs and prices, put our competitors out of business by sheer force of numbers, and then whacked our prices up again to make even more profit so that we could repeat the cycle. It’s easy when you have a near-monopoly. Most of the public don’t give a stuff what they shove down their throats and we don’t give a stuff if you’re bothered.

      Tossing a few notes the way of BLM is good publicity. We know! We’re such ethical people!

      Yours contemptuously

      The Greene King board

      2. William, that’s brilliant! And absolutely right. You’ve made my evening with that. The only point that I would add is that they closed down the only pub in many villages in E Anglia without any scruples or guilty conscience. A truly loathsome company.

  98. Latest Breaking News – Taking the knee is discriminatory against disabled people, especially people with new knees, or only one leg, it is to be banned forthwith

    2. Prompts the question as to why de Gaulle had Greek letters round his Kepi.

      Answer ‘Cos French letters would just look silly! Boom boom.

    1. Which I predicted 5 weeks ago. I can’t believe the collective incompetence we’re putting up with.

      1. We may refer to Johnson as Mr Bumble in the near future – although I wish he had a bit more of Dickens’s beadle character about him irt BLM and Antifa and illegal migrants.

      2. Which many of us predicted several weeks ago. Another example of the ‘Not invented here’ syndrome that is so prevalent in UK public sector IT departments.

        All so predictable. All so depressing.

        1. We know better than Google and Apple they said and a million realists said they did not believe them.

          Our Canadian incompetents have gone straight to the commercially developed product, now they have the issue of persuading people to install it.

  104. A thought provoking post from GP:-

    Judas was Paid • 8 hours ago
    It strikes me that we now have a new class system in Britain. Gone are the Ronnie Barker/Ronnie Corbett/John Cleese days of upper, middle and lower classes. Now we have just two distinct groups, the givers and the takers.

    The givers are the hardworking, tax paying (always ready to be fleeced) citizens who, like you and I, fend for themselves and their families because it is the age old way and the right thing to do. These people have a moral foundation built upon the precept that nobody has a right to a free ride and that it is a man’s duty (particularly) to provide for his wife and his children. There are variations to this of course but the fundamental instinct remains as the driving force.

    The takers are all those who depend upon the labours of the above. In some instances, because we are at heart a compassionate people, there are those who without the assistance they receive would find life intolerably hard. Nobody would really question their receipt of a modest portion of what is gleaned from the harvest. There are those who are employed in protecting the community; the forces, the police and the fire service. To these we could add the ambulance service and the NHS. Other infrastructural bodies also require a stake. Then we have the claimants, those who could but won’t respond to the moral imperative to pay their own tab. In with these as a close neighbour I would add students. In times past they would already be out in the world making a living but through the largesse of the society in which they live they are relieved of such expectations for a time and are free to endeavour to learn enough to make themselves useful in days ahead.

    It is my belief that the latter have no place in shaping society other than in a respectful and modest form. I do not begrudge them a vote. They are welcome to join with the vast throng of others, including the givers, in seeking to create the society of which they dream and to do it through the ballot box.

    The givers must not be taken for mugs. It would be a folly to assume that they will remain happy to labour and supinely acquiesce to the destruction of the landscape they have worked and paid for. Compassion and fairness are not infinitely elastic features of human nature. There are limits and should the present stupidity cease to abate I predict there will be huge trouble ahead for whichever of the current governing/parliamentary parties is within hitting distance.

  106. Caloo, callay. I must share this excellent news with you. From the Wail – couldn’t happen to a nicer bloke….!!

    “Gary Lineker is accused of ‘casual racism’ after jokingly tweeting he ‘had a tenner on Black Lives Matter scoring first goal’ when the Premier League returned last night.”

    1. A very mild and fairly amusing joke which would be treated as such by most tolerant people.

        1. That is the problem Bill. They are very thin skinned. After decades in the UK you would think they would have some understanding and tolerance for UK humour.

          1. I think British citizenship for immigrants should be dependent on showing they understand and enjoy British humour after a certain length of time in the country. Would 5 yrs be adequate to assimililate the humour?

    2. So it is true….racism is endemic….with overpaid hypocrite luvvies.

      As they say…every revolution eats its own children.

      Can’t wait to see him apologise and say he mis-spoke. Wanker.

          1. The lady is without a smut on her character. She made the mistake of paraphrasing me. And you know how smutty i am. 🙂

          3. ‘Ere……..don’t you muscle in ‘ere!

            Me an ‘im’s a long term item…..We have been
            to Mary Rose together!!

          5. Does your husband know that you talk to strange men? And none is much stranger than a loose NoTTLer in Fareham…

        2. He doesn’t need to apologize. He’s a raving leftie.

          They are always forgiven.

  107. There is a long delay to the last race at Ascot (I’m watching the recording) after a day dedicated to thanking people for doing the job they are being paid for. The plus is that we shan’t be subjected to the caterwauling of some “choir” on Zoom wailing “Say a Little Prayer”. There is a God after all!

        2. Equestrianism is becoming woke, unfortunately. There are moves afoot to make it more “diverse” and “equal”. So that’s the end of competition, then! The whole point of competition is that people are better than others and you strive to improve.

          1. Is there a:

            “Who can slaughter and eat the horse fastest” section? Halal of course, as in horses for courses?

          2. I have to say that we regularly visited the East of England Show. I normally parked myself by the bandstand to listen to gifted children playing Holst.

            I enjoyed the Farrier competition where competing blacksmiths shod a horse. Then there was the log cutting competition where the New Zealand axe cutters versus the chainsaw clinched it.

            Eventually the only thing you could hear was that “Jacinda is riding Peter Pan”. The bloody horse jumping fraternity had stolen the show. We stopped going.

          3. And I bet Peter was enjoying the ride, at least until the spoilsport announcer revealed all.

          5. I always had a glass of cider in my hand. One year I guessed the weight of the exhibited pork pie correctly and received a month’s supply of pork pies and cold meats from the company. (I forget their name).

  108. Some talking head on QT has just said ‘In 2020 no child in Britain should be going hungry.’ Clearly an attack on this Tory, uncaring government…

    But she’s right. In 2020, if you can’t afford to bring up your children properly then you shouldn’t damn well have had them in the first place.

    1. If the kids are going hungry, what are the parents (or single mother) doing with the child benefit?

      2. Doberman, alcohol, cigarettes, lottery, scratch cards, latest iPhone. Please add as many more as you like.

  110. Good night, Gentlefolk, too late to start scrolling through 228 comments at ‘New’ and 73 ‘below’,

  111. 1984 – Now showing live around the world.

    ”The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.

    Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.

    Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.”

    George Orwell

    Tickets – George Soros, Davos, Switzerland.

  113. Right, chaps. I am off. Very useful rain today. It was persistent but never heavy. A little more supposed to arrive tomorrow morning.

    I hope to join you tomorrow, on bended knee… Bloody cramp…!!

    TTFN

  114. SAGE must be held accountable for its failings

    WAQAR RASHID

    It doesn’t take a scientist to work out something has gone clearly wrong in this country’s response to the coronavirus crisis. Indeed, the various members of SAGE (the government’s scientific advisory group for emergencies) appear to have cottoned on to this judging by some of their recent statements.

    These are unprecedented times and honest mistakes are simply that – but regrettably there have been some catastrophic failings and hindsight cannot explain all; no wonder there are some very worried people.

    Because of the finger pointing we are stuck in a state where there are rules for ordinary people not to have more than six people in a garden and keep children absent from school and yet thousands of people over recent weekend demonstrations are seemingly able to flout any kind of social distancing with impunity. Because of the blame avoidance, we are struggling as a nation to get at the truth of what has gone wrong.

    From the moment the names of those involved in SAGE were made public, it was clear there was a serious problem. Very distinguished and brilliant people but drawn from a base so narrow that the unintended consequences would be missed. A collection of professors from epidemiology, statistics, infectious disease with some social behaviour experts to ensure compliance. They could wax lyrical about R-numbers and the optimal length to social distance: But ensuring enough protective equipment for health workers? Keeping the most vulnerable in care homes free of Covid-19? Ensuring frequent and regular testing of frontline staff in hospitals and the community to avoid spread in these settings?

    It wouldn’t surprise you to know that deaths in care homes and hospital acquired cases are massively over-represented in the grim details of this crisis. Unfortunately, all these crucial prerequisites do not appear to have been on their radar. The release of SAGE minutes confirm this and have meant that the hiding places for those involved are disappearing fast.

    There are so many more examples of unclear and then panicked thinking. Not least why they did not expect an initial rush of cases that were witnessed amongst those most susceptible (usually a genetically more susceptible predisposition). This created ultimately an unfounded panic that the NHS could not cope and I suspect coupled with the feverish atmosphere at the time (remember the panic buying of toilet rolls?) ushered in the disastrous lockdown which we still find ourselves in.

    What is clear looking at SAGE’s minutes is that right up until lockdown, the body was aware there were big gaps in knowledge both of the cost of a wider lockdown and what could be achieved by voluntary social measures and protecting just the vulnerable alone.

    It’s hard to know what happened exactly from here but in the face of rising panic within government and the message coming back from ‘the science’s’ great and the good that more information was needed, pandemonium must have ensued.

    The final failing was the apparent absence of any serious scientific and medical knowledge with the Department of Health itself other than those co-opted on SAGE. It meant they could not scrutinise what was coming from them and therefore could not act objectively in a calm manner. The rest as they say is history but unfortunately, we still have hardly moved on.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/18/sage-must-held-accountable-failings/

      1. According to Toby Young, no scientist on Sage recommended lockdown – (despite what Neil Ferguson is saying now).

  115. Boy, 14, appears in court on terror charge, accused of making bombs in his bedroom. 18 June 2020 • 5:54pm

    A 14-year-old boy is accused of making bombs with shrapnel and bleach in his bedroom.

    Prosecutors allege that the teenager from Eastleigh in Hampshire, who cannot be identified, researched and prepared a series of devices by combining explosive substances such as bleach with tinfoil and screws, with the aim of making bombs containing shrapnel.

    He recorded various videos expressing his wish to become a martyr and explaining how to make explosive devices, Westminster Magistrate’s Court heard.

    Thank God he’s not far Right!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/18/boy-14-appears-court-terror-charge-accused-making-bombs-bedroom/

    2. I’m cynical enough to believe that this is a white anglo saxon protestant, and the MSM will suddenly produce this case as institutionalised racism, because so many people jumped to the conclusion that he was a Methodist.

      1. The report reads:
        The boy was arrested by Hampshire police last Friday and was charged on Wednesday with preparation of terrorist acts contrary to section 5 of the Terrorism Act 2006 in connection with Islamist terrorism, Counter Terrorism Policing South East (CTPSE) said.

        1. It might well do, but don’t assume that the police are not using one act to catch an individual.
          He could have been accessing Islamist websites and that was the “in”

          Rather like Al Capone was caught using tax legislation.

    4. Chief Magistrate Emma Arbuthnot remanded him in youth detention ahead of a preliminary hearing at the Old Bailey on Monday.

      Considering it was she who sentenced that Essex chap to two weeks in jail for having a pee next to the memorial plaque, this would warrant a death sentence, no??

      2. Led astray, loves is Nan. Always a cheery hello for the neighbours…….Yawns……

    1. And we should thank Gordon Brown for ensuring we didn’t join the Euro, ditto Soros, for making sure we were ejected from the ERM, thereby making it possible to win the referendum.
      If we were in the Euro, I don’t think we would have voted to leave…

      1. 320317+ up ticks,
        Morning lms2,
        Granted, also keeping in mind it was the real UKIP that got us the referendum & victory ( farage being the mouthpiece of the only credible 100% patriotic party in play) only to hear in complete dismay,
        ” job done, leave it to the tories”
        Nothing has gone right since, treachery has that sort of affect on issues.

  118. A former Taliban fighter has won the right to live in Scotland after a judge ruled that he would not receive proper treatment in his home country for the post-traumatic stress he suffered during the conflict.

    The member of the Islamist group, whose identity has been protected by the courts, was granted asylum after a judge at an immigration tribunal in Glasgow found that returning him to Afghanistan would infringe his human rights. It was also claimed the former fighter, 41, would be at risk because the present regime is hostile to the Taliban.

    Colonel Richard Kemp, a former British commander in Afghanistan, told The Scottish Mail on Sunday: “This Taliban terrorist should be immediately deported to Afghanistan, where he can be dealt with

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ex-taliban-fighter-can-stay-for-treatment-06p636xw3

    1. Another story that is so stupid that it has me asking if it is fake.but no, stupidity rules.
      I guess that any ISIS butcher now has a precedent for escaping the middle east and moving to Glasgow.

        1. Didn’t some court just rule in her favour, rejecting the governments revocation of her citizenship?

    2. Did the Scottish judge fail to find that the former Taliban fighter, 41, is hostile to the rest of us ?

      F**k his human rights …

    4. “The German concentration camp guard who escaped to South America, was too traumatised to be returned to Europe because he wouldn’t receive treatment there and Europe is now hostile to Nazis…”

      Could anyone envisage that scenario occurring???

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