Friday 19 June: Fund the fight against modern slavery, instead of paying for past sins

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/2020/06/18/lettersfund-fight-against-modern-slavery-instead-paying-past/

743 thoughts on “Friday 19 June: Fund the fight against modern slavery, instead of paying for past sins”

    1. Such a shame, all those supposedly bright young people wasting their time,
      While being led by fascists into a dystopian future.

    2. Disgraceful. We need to get people back to work, college, school or decent law abiding people will suffer this abuse day in day out from those with nothing better to do.

    3. The mob: I disagree with him! He must go!

      The man: I disagree with you. You must go.

      The Mob: …. but we’re good! You’re bad!

      The Man: You’re the ones trying to silence me. That’s fascism.

      The Mob: …errrrrr

      Who am I kidding. They wouldn’t bother listening to a different argument, let alone think about it.

        1. Dear life, I hope you corrected my lower case i. I’ll have to lie down in horror!

          Bob! You didn’t! Gah!

  2. Good Morning Folks,

    Damp cloudy start, the rough might be a bit damp today,
    I’ll be keeping strictly to the fairways as usual.

  3. ‘Morning All

    Cool,there’s a new way to find films worth watching

    No trigger warning,don’t bother……………………

    https://twitter.com/godblesstoto/status/1273729938219323393

    Meanwhile as the crisp wanker squirms under “casual racism” charges and the book banners and burners go line by line through our entire literary canon seeking offence I can’t wait to see the fits of the vapours this will cause………………….

    “Bond had a natural affection for coloured people, but he reflected how
    lucky England was compared with America where you had to live with the
    coloured problem from the schooldays up. He smiled as he remembered
    something Felix Leiter had said to him on their last assignment together
    in America. Bond had referred to Mr. Big, the famous Harlem criminal,
    as ‘that damned nigger. Leiter had picked him up. ‘Careful now James,’
    he had said. ‘People are so sensitive about colour around here that you
    can’t even ask a barman for a jigger of rum. You have to ask for a
    jegro.’
    The memory of Leiter’s wisecrack cheered Bond up.”
    All the Bond films and books cancelled,ownership of the books or dvd’s will be a capital crime

    1. Outdated attitudes?

      Of a strong female lead defending the family, protecting the men and setting the agenda against an existential threat? Ripley is a strong, empowered woman who has a clear character arc. She’s not a super hero, she’s just a tough, independent woman.

      Gah, no, I can’t. Trying to argue the obvious against the Left is impossible. Let’s make her mega powerful from the start and give her no challenges, as challenges are bad and imply failings.

      For goodness sake. I’m going to watch it now. Then I’m going to watch Predator and revel in the machismo (especially when Arnie gets blacked up!)

      2. “Outdated attitudes?”

        It’s a long time since I watched this. I assume that the ‘attitudes’ are those expressed by the ‘space marines’, a group of musclebound men and women whose verbal interchanges are not, dare we say it, Wildean.

        1. No – the ‘colonial marines’ have characters. The show off proves a coward. The macho becomes a hero. It doens’t matter that one is a woman – she’s treated like the guys. She’s respected. She’s the hero, yes but she can only be so because of her motivation to protect everyone around her. She only does that to assuage her own nightmares. She’s afraid at the beginning and at the end has faced her daemons.

          Ripley earns their trust and respect, and they hers. There are characters, a story, a plot. Two mothers fighting one another for their families.

    1. Dear life he’s right. Skronk on a trouser press. The world truly is utterly insane.

  5. Just 110 humans would be needed to set up new Mars colony, expert reveals. 19 June 2020.

    At least 110 humans would be needed to set up a civilisation on Mars, a scientific study has found.

    The study, carried out by Professor Jean-Marc Salotti at the Bordeaux Institut National Polytechnique in France, has discovered that the minimum population would be needed to help make tools and commodities before supplies run out.

    The colony would have to live in an oxygen-filled dome and begin their own agriculture industry if they were to sustain life on the red plant.

    Morning everyone. That sounds pretty good to me right now. Put my name down!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8438489/Just-110-humans-needed-set-new-Mars-colony.html

    1. Wouldn’t inbreeding be a problem? It would end up like a village in rural Pakistan.
      Le Prof. sounds dangerously like an expert.
      Morning, Minty.

    2. “The colony would have to live in an oxygen-filled dome” Well that sounds like a dodgy start, I think an air-filled dome might be safer.

    3. Good morning, Minty.

      I am sure you would soon find 109 other like minded people!

    4. Well now. What sort of humans?

      Fifty five men and fifty five women in heterosexual partnerships? That would be a bit LGBTQXYDist, so we’d have to allow for some of them. As far as I’m aware, they haven’t yet manufactured trans men who can produce sperm or trans women who produce ova so they wouldn’t contribute much to producing the second generation Martian.

      What race and nationality? One from every country would be fair. That would mean a minimum of two hundred and four people. They would all have to be accepting of mating with any of the other races included regardless of generally being attracted to and attractive to ones own race.

      If we can get to Mars, presumably eventually we could get back again after a couple of hundred years when there are enough people and resources to build a rocket there. What nationality would these new Martians be? Which country would be responsible for homing those who want to stay on Earth instead of returning to Mars?

      Race riots? You ain’t seen nothing yet. I can see into the future and see a mob holding up MLM placards.

      1. “One from every country would be fair.” Mustn’t forget that new one, Chaz.

      2. After a couple of hundred years Martians would need to wear exoskeletons if they returned to Earth.

    5. Is that enough genetically for breeding – what are the minimum number for a healthy population. Has that been included in calculations.

  7. Good Moaning. And I have a bloody good reason to moan.
    There was I, hovering somewhere betwixt sleep and consciousness, when the bomb dropped.
    Actually it was MB, erupting into the bedroom, holding – at arm’s length – a small and v. malodorous dog.
    Spartie had found the only fox sh!t in the garden.
    There was I, stumbling around the bathroom, trying to run warm water and find the dog shampoo while dodging round agitated Other Half and scared and smelly doglet; all this while hoping not to slip on the wet floor where MB had man-handled the shower fitting.
    And all before I’d had even a sip of coffee. I deserve a medal.

  8. ” Earlier in the day, Facebook had removed campaign ads by Mr Trump and Vice President Mike Pence that featured an upside-down red triangle, a symbol once used by Nazis to identify political prisoners, communists and others in concentration camps.”

    Didnt know there was a right way up for triangles

    3. There’s an irony in the organisation that exists to sell people’s data having a qualm over profiling.

  10. At 6am this morning, the BBC dedicated just one news item to the financial consequences of Covid, and all the others to concocted stories whipping up race hatred among its listeners. Why do they feel they have to do this?

    In particular, the denouncement of the Foreign Secretary yesterday over “remarks” was particularly disgraceful, and I am very disappointed with Lisa Nandy for going along with it. I had hoped she was one of the few sensible ones in the Labour heirarchy, but it seems this once-sensible Northerner is being sucked into wokeness like the rest of them. I have no knowledge or interest in ‘Game of Thrones’, so what Raab said there went over my head. I do agree with him though that this whole going down on your knee to worship a murdered American gangster, just because he is black, is very sinister and not something I approve of, any more than he does. Does that mean we must both be forced to apologise for our views though?

    1. Morning Jeremy. Group psychosis has taken over. They actually feel like they are the one’s being persecuted thus they band together for mutual support.

      1. As we do here, thanks to Geoff’s generosity in setting it up. I wonder though if we are all a bunch of elderly curmudgeons talking among ourselves and preaching to the converted.

        1. I don’t feel like that!. I write what I think on here. The number of readers is irrelevant!

        2. Good morning, Jeremy.

          I don’t think we are ‘ a bunch of elderly curmudgeons talking among ourselves
          and preaching to the converted.’
          We have many posters who are experts in their fields of knowledge and I often learn
          something new; we have the ability to laugh at ourselves and to see the ridiculous;
          we may agree on a lot but not always;……etc.
          Yesterday evening I was chatting to the son of some friends, I asked him his opinion
          on kneeling for ‘blm’, his reply was both elegant and articulate, yet seemingly to many
          he would be considered ‘right-wing..’ To me he seems to be a very pleasant, compassionate
          young man who is looking forward to starting University in the Autumn.

        4. Jeremy, you are one of the youngsters.
          I remembers talking to a gentleman whose grandfather was born in the 18th century.

        5. There are dissenters and others will challenge opinions. That’s a positive thing. The difference here is how those ideas are challenged. There’s no attempt to silence as there is in the MSM.

          1. No indeed. I’ve been brushing up on my Attenborough Guide to Football Chanting for Primates. I find the macaques a bit squeaky, but the mountain gorilla is a good robust workhorse. My chimpanzee sounds too much like a kookaburra to be of much use outside Australia, but the howler monkey requires a few lessons with my voice coach. Remind me how gibbons chant.

            What do you recommend when unsilencing my disagreements with you?

    2. Morning Jeremy. Group psychosis has taken over. They actually feel like they are the one’s being persecuted thus they band together for mutual support.

    3. ‘Look East’ is now rabbiting on about BLM; to its delight, it found that school children (yay – private school – trebles all round) had pupils who said hurty things to each other.
      On the plus side, we had no lisping kiddiwinks holding up rainbows.
      (Well, not for the couple of minutes that MB could be @rsed to watch the programme.)

    4. Apologies, but it isn’t a ‘need’, it’s a want.

      The BBC is pushing a left wing line. Those are it’s children out there destroying society. The BBC utterly detests the society it exists in. It’s populated by young, rich, indulged Lefties, with far too many weirdos and they all think the same way. As a result they promote their own values over facts.

      As for kneeling before anyone – shove off. Her Majesty might be the only one, and then if she gives me a knighthood for services to whinging. To even the warqueen who is the centre of my world? Not a chance. We are equals, not subservient. That’s how it should be throughout society until someone proves they are inferior by dint of action. Without question the police were wrong. Justice on the actions of those officers has been served but we must remember that Floyd was a criminal. He was a victim of his actions.

      1. I came within a whisker of getting a job with the BBC as a TV sound engineer. Like a few of us here, I was young once; indulged, most definitely a weirdo (I’m still one of those – that sort of thing does not leave you in old age), Liberal-voting (so I do have Leftie sympathies) and compared to the woodlice in my shed, fabulously rich.

        So I ought to be one of them. But I’m not either going to kneel down in homage to American street-cred gangsters whatever the antics of the burger-fed bouncer with a badge that pass for policemen out in the colonies.

  13. Morning all

    SIR – Companies such as the brewer Greene King and insurer Lloyd’s of London are to pay reparations to black, Asian and minority ethnic communities for their involvement in the slave trade.

    Is this really the way forward? Slavery existed in many countries throughout the world for thousands of years. Payments by those who were not alive at the time of the slave trade to others who were also not alive and so did not suffer the horrors of slavery do not appear to achieve anything.

    But here’s a thought: modern slavery occurs today in many countries, including Britain. We can and must deal with it. Instead of reparations, donations should be made to aid the elimination of this evil practice.

    Roger Kemp

    London N8

    SIR – It would be better if Greene King apologised for its beer.

    Martin Smith

    Salisbury, Wiltshire

    SIR – So Cecil J Rhodes’s statue is to go (report, June 18). Does that apply to all the scholarships in his name, too?

    Diane A Myers

    Cambridge

    SIR – It seems that, before making their decision to remove the statue of Rhodes, members of Oriel’s governing body did not look at the magisterial Oriel College: A History, edited by their late colleague Dr Jeremy Catto.

    Had they done so, they might have had a greater understanding of (and perhaps respect for) the great “loyalty and generosity” shown by Rhodes to the college, at a time when it was in sad need of financial assistance.

    The low opinion that Rhodes clearly had of the governing body of his day would not, I suspect, be improved by its decision to erase his memorial while retaining the financial benefits in gratitude for which it was erected.

    James Vallance White

    London SW1

    SIR – While Oxford academics argue themselves silly about an insignificant statue, there is in Grahamstown, Republic of South Africa, a whole university named after Rhodes.

    Adrian Ericson

    Worthing, West Sussex

    SIR – Will someone tell me which countries have not profited from slavery in any of its forms?

    Elizabeth Prior

    London SW10

    SIR – One wonders if the many migrants who were ferried to shore after being picked up by the Ramsgate Lifeboat off the Kent coast on Tuesday would still have attempted to cross the Channel and enter this promised land had they known that it contains statues of Churchill and Rhodes.

    Charlie Bladon

    Cattistock, Dorset

    SIR – Is anyone going to object to a statue in London of Dame Vera Lynn?

    Anthony Haslam

    Farnham, Surrey

    1. Black men women and children were enslaved not by white men but by black men who brought them to the coast for sale. The fight against this dreadful trade was a. fight mainly against black men and Arabs.

      1. #HateFacts
        Report for re-education
        Edit
        As someone who visited many times in Gambia and visited the Slave Museum where the contracts between the Tribal Chiefs,Arab Middlemen and White Shippers are displayed I am reminded of one of the funniest tv scenes ever
        The risible “Roots” where white sailors are crashing through the jungle to capture black men

      2. Morning E. It’s worse than that. The Atlantic Slave Trade was a monopoly Black Business which made them incredibly rich. It was they who sought out the raw material, enslaved it, and which common sense tells you involved extreme violence and cruelty, and then shipped it to the coast ready for sale. The much maligned Whites were actually their distributors and delivery men to their customers.

      3. It was a handy way of monetising surplus population.
        Political opponents, conquered tribes and villages and, of course, criminals.

    3. I see from the headlines today that “The Church” [presumably CofE] has “apologised for historic links to slavery” – it’s a pity that their links to Christianity also appear to be only historic!

      1. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/18/exclusive-church-england-bank-england-apologise-historic-slavery/

        Exclusive: Church of England and Bank of England apologise for historic slavery links

        Church says links to slavery ‘a source of shame’ and Bank calls 18th and 19th century trade an ‘unacceptable part of English history’

        18 June 2020 • 9:30pm

        The Church of England and the Bank of England apologised on Thursday night for their historic links to slavery through vicars, bishops and Bank governors who benefited from the trade in the 19th century.

        The Church said its links to slavery were “a source of shame” as it emerged that scores of churches, clergymen and even a bishop could have been funded by compensation paid to plantation owners.

        Fresh analysis of a database held by University College London (UCL) found that nearly 100 clergymen, including a bishop, who benefited from slavery were from the Church of England. Six governors and four directors of the Bank of England are also named as claimants or beneficiaries in the database.

        They include Sir John Rae Reid, governor between 1839 and 1841 and director of the West India Co, who was paid £7.1 million in today’s money for his stake in 17 plantations, with 3,100 slaves, across the Caribbean.

        The Bank vowed on Thursday night to block any images of its notorious former leaders from being displayed there, describing the 18th and 19th century trade as “an unacceptable part of English history”.

        UCL has been logging the details of the 47,000 people in the UK who received some of the £20 million – £2.4 billion today – paid in compensation under the terms of the 1833 Abolition of Slavery Act.

        Also on Thursday, three of the world’s biggest banking and insurance companies pledged to make payments to projects benefiting black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) communities after their links to the slave trade were exposed.

        Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), Lloyds Banking Group and RSA Insurance said they would make payments or were considering doing so after being linked to the UCL database.

        The Greene King brewery

        The Greene King brewery Credit: Tony Buckingham

        That came after Greene King, one of the UK’s largest pub chains, and the insurance giant Lloyd’s of London said on Wednesday that they would make donations to BAME causes.

        Layla Moran, the Liberal Democrat leadership challenger, said on Thursday: “The Church of England and Bank of England, like many British institutions, must use the controversy over Black Lives Matter to confront past links to slavery and make amends.”

        Research shows that 151 clergymen in the database were involved in claims worth £66 million in today’s money, 96 of whom were from the Church of England. The claims to which the 96 clergymen were linked would be worth £46 million today.

        The construction of 32 churches is linked to claimants. They include Holy Trinity in Barnstaple which, according to British History Online, was “erected at an expense of nearly £10,000, defrayed almost wholly by the Rev. John James Scott”.

        The Rev. John James Scott was the main beneficiary from the compensation paid out over plantations in Jamaica which belonged to his father – more than £100,000 in today’s money.

        Among other clergymen to benefit the most from abolition compensation were brothers Rev. George Trevelyan and Rev. John Thomas Trevelyan, of Somerset. Jointly with other family members, they received more than £3 million in today’s money when forced to surrender six estates in Grenada – inherited from their father – on which more than 1,000 people were enslaved.

        The Rt. Rev. Henry Philpotts, the Bishop of Exeter from 1830 to 1869, was named as executor over three claims, worth more than £1.5 million today, on three plantations in Jamaica with 665 slaves. UCL researchers said there was no evidence that Bishop Philpotts personally owned slaves.

        The cash was paid to individual clergymen, not the church itself. The church campaigned for the abolition of slavery in the early 1800s and issued an apology for historic cases in 2006.

        A Church of England spokesman said: “We are unfamiliar with this data, but slavery and exploitation have no place in society.

        “While we recognise the leading role clergy and active members of the Church of England played in securing the abolition of slavery, it is a source of shame that others within the church actively perpetrated slavery and profited from it.”

        A Bank of England spokesman said: “As an institution, the Bank was never itself directly involved in the slave trade, but is aware of some inexcusable connections involving former governors and directors and apologises for them.

        “The Bank has commenced a thorough review of its collection of images of former governors and directors to ensure none with any such involvement in the slave trade remain on display anywhere in the Bank.”

        In the case of RBS (see above), there were 18 former companies associated with the bank that have links to claimants or beneficiaries in the database. A company report by RBS, published in 2009, listed the names of 80 male, 57 female and 27 child slaves part-owned by five partners of Hankey Bank, later merged into RBS.

        An RBS spokesman said it “will look at what more we can do as a bank, and this includes looking at making contributions to BAME groups”.

        Lloyds Banking Group was linked to slavery through eight former companies associated with it which had links to claimants or beneficiaries in the UCL database. A spokesman said it was “building a plan to invest in BAME colleagues, communities and customers” after the revelations.

        There were also five former companies associated with RSA Insurance with links to claimants or beneficiaries in the UCL database.

        A spokesman for RSA said it would be “making a donation to a charity which supports education programmes to address racism and improve awareness of black history in society”.

        Tobias Ellwood, the Tory chairman of the Commons defence select committee, told Chopper’s Politics Podcast, which you can listen to on the player below, that the revelations meant the UK was “finally having a conversation about our past, trying to better reflect it and understand it”.

  15. Morning again

    SIR – There is something very wrong with a country where footballers can play their game but children cannot go to school.

    Roger Redfarn

    Westbourne, West Sussex

    SIR – I agree with your call for firm government action on reopening schools. The militant teachers’ union sees this crisis as an opportunity to re-establish the influence it had in the Eighties.

    Now that we have a strong Conservative government, let’s not allow the unions, which are less interested in young people’s welfare than in their own advancement, to re‑emerge as a powerful force.

    Peter Dawsom

    General Secretary, Professional Association of Teachers, 1980-92

    Borrowash, Derbyshire

    SIR – Each day, up to 20 teenagers congregate on park benches outside our house. They are no trouble, but are there because they are bored and crave the company of their friends. There is no social distancing at all.

    What is the difference between this gathering and being at school, where the social contact would probably be less close? The Government is wrong to deny that such gatherings are happening and should fully open schools to give these children the education they deserve.

    Eric Rose

    Marlborough, Wiltshire

    SIR – My daughter recently discovered that my 14-year-old grandson was playing video games by minimising the screen in which his teacher was conducting a lesson on Zoom. I wonder how many other students are doing the same.

    Helen Webster

    Pyrford, Surrey

    1. “Now that we have a strong Conservative government…” – oh, yes? where’s that, then? I don’t see one, I see a collection of wankers onanising to themselves whilst the country descends into chaos.

  16. To all the non-white people of this world I apologise, unreservedly and wholeheartedly, on behalf of my father for his having been a coal miner.

    His daily routine “blacking-up” was nothing more than a cultural misappropriation and I’m sure he would grovel before you all if he were still here.

  17. The Grimes – bringing you good news every day…..(sarc)

    “Germany is facing its largest outbreak of the coronavirus since lifting lockdown after hundreds of staff at its biggest slaughterhouse tested positive.

    The plant near the city of Gütersloh owned by the meat-processing group Tünnies has been closed and 6,000 workers have been put in quarantine. Of the 1,050 tested on Tuesday, two thirds had contracted the virus. The case follows similar outbreaks at abattoirs in Germany and other countries in recent weeks and has fuelled fears that cold environments aid the spread of the virus.”

    1. You are Jill Backson and I claim…..! What are you giving away today?
      Manners! Good moaning all!

      1. Now now, young lady….

        I was struck by the fact that this is the second abattoir in week where there has been a sudden, heavy outbreak. (The other one was in Anglesey – that nest of vipers).

        I wondered whether bats were involved…..

          2. Don’t be stingy,Bill – give her an uptick!

            Auberon Waugh, the son of one of your favourite authors, detested bats and thought it a complete outrage that they were a protected species.

        1. Morning, you say! Have been up since 5 so I guess it’s the caffeine!
          Good morning Mr. Bean!
          Just off for lunch now!

  18. Morning all 😕
    I have a cuppa and check what is or might be going on in the UK and the world today. I click on news on the screen of my phone and nothing came up.
    Oh well, as you do, I fed the dog let her into the garden and it’s cloudy and drizzling outside.

  19. Nicked

    As the
    world of meaningless hashtags Marxist inspired riots and a dying / dead
    virus dominate our screens and newspapers a rather nasty piece of news
    was slid out hoping no one would notice yesterday.
    A Conservative manifesto pledge, remember them, is about to go pop.
    The
    triple lock on pensions is about to get removed, now many will say in
    the dark financial days ahead why should pensioners still get increases
    that no one ! else will get.

    Firstly our state pension is just
    about the worst in the western world when compared with average earnings
    as a guide, even Mexico gets a better deal, when you add in those
    having paid in to a private pension only to find themselves fleeced by
    ‘prudent’ Gordon Brown things do not look so rosy.
    But yesterday as a
    prelude to axing the triple lock we hear from politicians and
    government ‘spokesmen’ why we can no longer afford the triple lock.
    A
    government source says ” The unspoken story is if we don’t reform
    triple lock this is the baby that eats you out house and home. When
    everyone else is going to be poorer and inflation is going down as well
    pensioners will see huge increases in their income. It’s unaffordable
    and unfair”

    Make of that what you will, but huge increases,
    shurely shum mistake, an increase on very little can be projected as
    huge but it isn’t it is just a percentage.
    Steve Baker MP, remember he of the no surrender Brexit until he caved in, says we can’t afford it.
    But
    the same government can afford to match a millionaire footballers wish
    at the drop of a hat, can afford to spend trillions to shore up their
    belief that they did right over Corona virus, are still going ahead with
    HS2, have thrown further endless billions at the NHS without any
    guarantees it will be spent wisely, and continue to allow very large
    numbers of people to come to the country uninvited who almost
    immediately get all the financial goodies pensioners paid all their life
    for.
    So there we have it a group of people who have shown they
    should not be left near an open fire pontificate about pensions we not
    they can’t afford yet it comes from a position in which they have gold
    plated pensions as do most of the public sector all paid for by us.
    Not
    only have they tried to kill off as many old people with their handling
    of the Coronavirus but now want to squeeze them financially as if was a
    virtuous thing to do.

    I leave you with the weasel words of Steve
    Baker, ‘obviously we need to look after pensioners’ there hasn’t been a
    shred of evidence they want to look after pensioners and this virus from
    killing them to wanting them to stay inside forever, yes that was said
    at one stage shows the complete opposite, older people are in the view
    of an increasing minority becoming a ‘problem’.”
    We elected a “Consevative” government???
    Wot a sick joke

    1. Absolutely agree.
      The problem is if a labour government had enough “money left in kitty” to increase the pensions of elderly people.
      They would steal it back in property tax.
      And care homes would increase their already exhorbitant charges.

      1. I want to go to Dignitas rather than a care home. While I’m there, on the whole I think I will be treated better, and in the long run, I think it will be less of an expensive rip-off.

        1. A friend I grew up with went to live in Australia around 50 years ago. His aging parents followed him around 15 years later. His mother died having suffered from long term dementia. His father it seemed, committed suicide by overdosing on his own prescribed medication.
          Something very similar happened to one of our old neighbours. When his wife died while visiting her home town in Wales, poor old John was beside him self with grief. His life deteriorated and he became a virtual recluse. I latterly heard he had driven to Wales (he was in his 80s) and stayed at the same B&B in the same room and died of a heart attack. Possibly due to over dosing on his medication. I’m not sure but I don’t think autopsies are carried out on very elderly people, unless their are suspicious circumstance.

          1. Oh how sad, in both cases. I wonder what constitutes suspicious circumstances, as far as old people are concerned, nowadays. I thought that any death occurring outside a hospital, has to be followed by an autopsy.

  21. A group of psychiatrists toured an insane asylum that was renowned for their progressive rehabilitation methods.

    The doctors began by meeting with some of the patients. The first patient they visited was a young woman. She was practising ballet. One of the psychiatrists asked, “What are you doing?”

    She replied, “I’m studying ballet so when I get out of here, I can possibly join a dance troupe and be a productive member of society.”

    The doctor, quite impressed, said, “Wow, that’s wonderful.”

    The next patient was a man reading a book with a stack of books next to him. The same question was asked of him, “What are you doing?”

    “I’m studying biology, science and chemistry so I can enter medical school when I get out,” the patient replied.

    Room after room they witnessed the incredible success and attitudes of the patients. That is until they finally reached a room the asylum’s director was reluctant to open.

    Finally, the director was persuaded to open it. Inside was a naked man balancing a peanut on his very erect and stiff penis. The reaction of the psychiatrists was one of utter shock, as one of them stammered, “My God, what are you doing?”

    The patient looked up at the psychiatrist, with a wide grin, and said, “Hi, I’m David Lammy) I’m fucking nuts and I’m never getting out of here!”

    We wish!

    1. Unfortunately the asylum is called the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

    1. Three Democrats and a Whig.

      The reality is that the Democrat party should be disbanded because of its strong links to the support of slavery in the USA.

      1. The same as all political types enjoy, publicity, self justification and self satisfaction.

      2. Internal division and hatred, all across the USA.

        It’s the life-blood of the Democrats and their raison d’être.

  23. “1 million go to Trump Rally”

    Am I alone in thinking there’s going to be an incredible spike in the danger of the DEADLY Covid Virus this weekend in the USA, especially in their MSM studios and print rooms.

  24. There’s no interest in ‘modern’ slavery because its victims aren’t racists. The Left don’t want to solve something. They want to complain about what they have.

    That’s 99% of the problem. The whining and fighting isn’t about anything. It’s just anti social vandalism.

    1. Hence why constituencies that have always been Labour are so run down and poor. The Labour vote depends upon a non-stop supply of aggrieved and impoverished voters.
      Apart from Islington where the rulers and their apparatchiks live.

    1. 320317+ up ticks,
      Morning Rik,
      A major truthsayer, proven by the fact he is labelled as a
      far right racist.

      1. Plus ca change……………
        “It was always the women, and above all the young
        ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers
        of slogans, the amateur spies and nosers−out of unorthodoxy.”

  27. 320317+ up ticks,
    May one say nothing can go into the statue books, laws, common sense,
    decency, democracy etc,etc, because they were taken down & burnt.

      1. 320317+ up ticks,
        Morning Bob,
        To me london was given over as an act of submissive appeasement, not so much lost as given.
        What should worry indigenous peoples is Birmingham,Manchester, etc,etc, is following in the wake of london courtesy of the woke brigade.

  31. All the most explosive claims about Donald Trump in John Bolton’s memoir. 18 June 2020 • 7:21am

    John Bolton’s new memoir about his time serving as Donald Trump’s national security adviser may not have reached book shops yet, but it is already causing a storm in Washington.

    Once one of the US president’s closest aides, Mr Bolton left the White House last September following a string of foreign policy disagreements with Mr Trump.

    He appears to have now turned on his former boss in spectacular fashion in an upcoming book recounting his turbulent 17 months by his side.

    It is isn’t mentioned here (surprise surprise) but it is a requirement under American Law that those who have had access to State Secrets must submit any manuscripts to the department in which they have served. This is of course to prevent the leaking of said secrets. Bolton should by rights have already been arrested and charged with treason.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/18/explosive-claims-donald-trump-john-boltons-memoir/

  32. 320317+ up ticks,
    Another fallen domino
    breitbart,
    UK FOREIGN SEC SAYS ‘I’D ONLY KNEEL TO MY WIFE AND THE QUEEN’, IMMEDIATELY BACKS DOWN God did not enter the equation.
    I suppose he wanted to give honesty a try, but only rhetorically and found it NOT to his liking.

      1. 320317+ up ticks,
        Afternoon Ptv,
        Precisely, you have it in one.
        He was trying on the rhetorical integrity suit and found if was very uncomfortable.

  33. Dysfunctional ‘toxic culture’ led to Labour defeat, major report finds. 18 June 2020.

    However, it was also the product of two decades of demographic and political change that hit the party’s traditional base, and could endanger more Labour seats in 2024.

    “Labour’s electoral coalition had been fracturing for a long time and was broken in 2019. We were rejected by many of the communities we were founded to represent,” says the report, seen by the Guardian. “We lost all types of voters everywhere compared with 2017, except in London.”

    The Labour Party as a collective actively despise the White Working Class so it’s no surprise that they have gone elsewhere. The only real question is why did it take so long?

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/jun/18/dysfunctional-toxic-culture-led-to-labour-defeat-major-report-finds

      1. But won’t all those lovely BLM supporters vote it in?
        They’ll only need to do it once.

  34. SIR – There is another aspect to the prospect of the eldest female changing gender to inherit a title over younger male siblings (Letters, June 16).

    Many estates are entailed with the title. Were the transgender rule to apply, the eldest daughter could change sex to inherit both the title and the estate. There could then be a legal same-sex marriage and children.

    Dr Nicholas Courtney

    London SW6

    SIR – When a man receives an honour his wife becomes a Lady, but when a woman receives the equivalent honour her husband remains plain Mr.

    Surely it is time to change the rules so that only those who receive the title are allowed to use it.

    Ian Wallace

    Whitley Bay, Northumberland

    2. A king’s wife shouldn’t be called queen either, unless a queen’s husband is called king.

      3. If the king were gay and were to marry a same-sex partner, would there then be two queens on the throne?

  35. The bottom line

    SIR – What a difference three months make. Our local Tesco now has large packs of toilet rolls “reduced to clear”.

    William Pease

    Southam, Warwickshire

    3. 320317+ up ticks,
      E,
      With the continuing run on political sh!te one would have thought the price would have risen Willie P.

    4. White loo roll is racist. Lefties demand company produces brown loo roll. Brown loo roll doesn’t sell. Lefties demand government pays for brown loo roll matters.

      The Left find themselves knee deep in ****.

  37. Any lawyers here today?

    Is there a law that forbids you from marrying your parent?

    3. Who the hell would want to.
      Modern society doesn’t even bother if your parents are married to each other

    7. Not a lawyer but yes.

      However, I don’t know what the situation is with respect to adopted children/step-parents where there is no blood tie.

      Given the way society has moved I suspect that there are situations where a child can marry a legal rather than a blood parent.

      1. Didn’t that ghastly film director (spit) dump Mia Farrow (his wife) & marry his adopted daughter (Su Li?)?

        1. Yes, Soon-Yi Previn.

          She is Allen’s adopted daughter. She is the child of Mia Farrow and musician André Previn. What I don’t know is whether Allen adopted her legally when he married Mia Farrow.

          And America may be different. I was merely contemplating the UK.

  38. SIR – As an alumnus of Christ Church, I am following with interest the shocking story of the college’s relations with the dean, the Very Rev Professor Martyn Percy (Letters, June 16). It calls to mind the words of Henry Kissinger (or perhaps others), who when asked why academic politics are so vicious, replied: “Because the stakes are so low.”

    However, I recently received an email from Christ Church to the effect that the college was sponsoring a series of racial-awareness events and making great efforts to be a leader on equality, diversity and inclusion. What provoked this outbreak of wokeness? It seems it was an off-colour joke made by a candidate in the Junior Common Room elections.

    Now, I have no idea whether this joke was funny or offensive or both or neither. But when a 20-year-old makes a joke and that causes convulsions in a 500-year-old college, the governing body has gone mad. From now on, I side with the dean.

    Michael Crow

    St David’s, Bermuda

        1. Don’t know, but I voted for him as UKIP leader at least once. He’s very good.

  42. Hillary Tells UK News Rioters are ‘Tiny, Tiny Minority’ of BLM, Trump Has ‘Hijacked’ Christianity. 18 June 2020.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/45ecc8eff3ab5e2b1d7f1ee5bf251a95dbc17377218d06e13a6cc7bf942a9335.jpg

    “[W]hat [President Trump] was trying to do [at the church], as he often does, is to mischaracterise [Black Lives Matter supporters] and their behaviour and their goals and lump them in with a tiny, tiny minority of people who took advantage of a tragic moment to loot, and to steal, and to vandalise — a tiny, tiny percentage,” Mrs Clinton insisted.

    “[President Trump] wanted to cast that [criminality] over the millions of, you know, very thoughtful, non-violent, peaceful protesters.”

    You have to read this (Kay Burley is in there) it’s absolutely hilarious. All those people coming out of the stores with someone else’s property were just an infinitesimal minority!

    https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/06/18/hillary-tells-uk-news-rioters-are-tiny-tiny-minority-of-blm-trump-hijacked/

    3. Jeffery Epstein you say?

      Nothing to worry us there.

      Well, not for much longer…

  44. I see the RFU is going to ban us from singing Swing Low Sweet Chariot when we part with our hard earned dosh and head for Twickenham…

    Well, good luck with that, RFU.

        1. Allegedly she had quite a high number of notches on her headboard before marrying a prince.

          2. Nothing alleged about it, Grizz. She put it about like mad. Until she married. All three of her children followed in her footsteps.

          7. Good for all four of them. Was it John Betjeman or John Mortimer who remarked that on his deathbed no man ever lamented that he had enjoyed too much um, rumpy-pumpy?

    2. Yeh, that’s going to work, isn’t it. If anything it will be sung with more gusto.

  45. Australia is hit by a ‘sophisticated’ state-sponsored cyber attack: Scott Morrison confirms parliament, businesses, schools and hospitals are being targeted by an enemy government. 18 June 2020.

    Australia is under cyber attack from a foreign state targeting universities, hospitals, industry and governments.

    Prime Minister Scott Morrison today said a ‘sophisticated state-based actor’ was behind ongoing attacks which have been happening for ‘many months’ but have increased recently.

    He did not name any suspects but said there are ‘not a large number’ of countries which can carry out such massive cyber operations.

    One should always be careful of accepting any attribution from Western Intelligence Services about the source of cyber- attacks. This said the Aussies have upset the Chinese recently with their blunt speaking so it is almost certainly they who are responsible. China unlike Russia is a real menace, both to its neighbours and the world, and should be treated as such!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8438205/Huge-cyber-attack-aimed-Australian-government.html

    1. It was revealed on Radio Scotland this morning as China – who’d a thunk it?

    2. Since Russia are now proving to be more trustworthy than China, we should retaliate by banning beef chop suey with egg fried rice (and sweet and sour king prawns with noodles) from the British diet and replacing them with boiled turnips and beetroot soup.

      1. Since China fell out with the o
        Ozzies. They now buy their beef from South America. Hence the recent burning of the rain forests.

      1. Ka mate, ka mate! ka ora! ka ora!

        Ka mate! ka mate! ka ora! ka ora!

        Tēnei te tangata pūhuruhuru

        Nāna nei i tiki mai whakawhiti te rā

        Ā, upane! ka upane!

        Ā, upane, ka upane, whiti te ra!

      2. NZeders always refered to as ‘pig islanders’ by the dinky dye ozzies. You couldn’t be more insulting than that.

  46. Northumberland County Council apologise for Hadrian’s Wall – and order its destruction.

    Either because it was built with slave labour; or that planning permission was never applied for.

    1. It was the Roman legionaries who actually built the wall. Get the Italians back to knock it down (what’s left of it).

    2. Will they secure their position in England and simply move the stones up to the site of the Antonine wall?

    4. I liked the comment in the telegraph about aplogies:

      Greene King should apologize for their beer

      1. It was a letter. Someone made the same observation on here yesterday. Not sure who it was…..

  47. Sorry, chums, I’ve been very remiss today as I am struggling with set-up of our new A3 printer – we want that size of paper for family trees – I may be some time yet.

    Catch you all later – keep being interesting and interested, as usual.

    1. I did my family tree on an A4 printer and then sellotaped (other brands of sticky-back plastic adhesive tape are available) them together.

      I am as resourceful as I am tight! 😆

          2. Thanks. I’m not surprised they don’t want it viewed.

            If you don’t have the physical strength to lift a dropped motorcycle, you are not in proper control and shouldn’t be riding it.

  50. Headline tomorrow:

    “Greene King Apologises to Martian Emperor for Cultural Appropriation.”

  51. A few centuries ago there was a condition known as slavery, which politicians, nowadays, are begging forgiveness on behalf of their ancestors for.

    Will the politicians of future centuries beg forgiveness for the benefits “culture” of today, whereby perfectly capable but bone-idle young men are given hand-outs to live a life of comfortable lethargy instead of working and contributing to society?

    1. Good morning, Grizzly

      By your reckoning will there be any future generations or shall we have self-destructed?

      1. Good morning, Rastus.

        Who knows? We will be long gone and leaving an uncertain future for the upcoming generations.

        1. The twitter mob went into a frenzy about a chap saying that children should be raised inside a nuclear family between hetero sexual parents who have planned financially for that child.

          The mob hated this as it shames those who have done none of these things and don’t care about their actions or the effect this has on others. We know that single parent, low income families produce the worst (low educational attainment, poor health, criminal record, drug use) offspring. This is a statistical fact.

          What I found interesting is that the mob are promoting shamelessness, egotism and self indulgence at the expense of others. Not a one of them was capable of realising just how idiotic their comments were.

          When that generation age who will pay for them? They won’t have created anything, built anything or produce any value, so where will the money come from to fund their old age? I doubt they think that far ahead and assume it’s all magical – until the state simply cannot borrow after generations of wasters have bled the corpse of the economy to a husk.

    1. Morning Rik

      It seems to me that the Arabs and Turks plundered everywhere .. and more especially didn’t like blacks .

      The BLM movement shouldn’t be targetting us , but should take their spite and malice out on their ARAB overlords!

      Barbary Pirates and English Slaves
      by Ben Johnson
      For over 300 years, the coastlines of the south west of England were at the mercy of Barbary pirates (corsairs) from the coast of North Africa, based mainly in the ports of Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli. Their number included not only North Africans but also English and Dutch privateers. Their aim was to capture slaves for the Arab slave markets in North Africa.

      The Barbary pirates attacked and plundered not only those countries bordering the Mediterranean but as far north as the English Channel, Ireland, Scotland and Iceland, with the western coast of England almost being raided at will.

      https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofEngland/Barbary-Pirates-English-Slaves/

      1. On a recent programme about muslim Spain (Grenada) Simon Seabag Montifiore explained that one of the appaling islamic leaders had locked away for his pleasure thousands of ‘concubines’, a conveinient word for child abuse. Young males and females all with blue eyes and fair hair. All plucked from Northern Europe.
        Those he didn’t like he fed to his pet pride of lions.

          1. Yes.
            I’m having a bit of an NM with my mobile it’s developed a mind of its own. I’ve got an iPhone available, but need to get to a phone shop to have it set up.

      3. We’re easier to “SHAME” – not that we need to be ashamed of anything. We were a lot kinder and more productive than most countries. The Arabs and Islamists have no idea of shame – that is weakness as far as they are concerned.

        Dreadful morality, and will never be compatible with ours. Which is fine in the UAE, Saudi, and wherever Islam infests itself. It is not fine here in the UK.

        1. Hi HL

          We are kinder , so why are we being forced to atone for the sins of others .. events that took place in other centuries .

          Nice to see you commenting again.

    2. I think your on the right track.
      Most of the people in the UK probably didn’t notice a persons colour as something unusual or that needed ‘defending’ but I think it’s been brought to the attention of the vast majority in a rather larger than life sort of way. Even to the extent of it being extreme, slightly obscene and rather churlish.
      They really do need to remove the chips from their own shoulders.
      It’s their call.

      1. I suspect it’s brought to people’s notice just how over represented the tinted are on TV and in the media.

  55. In keeping with the current infatuation with blmism.

    The Canadian conservative party are electing a new leader,, a candidate debate was televised last night so that the mere mortals could view what is on offer. Oh goody, a debate on conservative fiscal and financial ideologies!

    Question one – do you accept that there is institutional discrimination in the police? There went that hope.

      1. It’s a long haul, over two hours but well worth it full of extraordinary information such as that there were black save owners and dealers in the Southern United States and that the trade in slaves by Arabs and Africans was enormous.

        1. Sadly, many of those convinced of The White Man’s Evil will not be prepared to examine the evidence.

  57. Good morning all,

    Cool start to the day , have had rain , slugs and snails have reappeared!

    Runner beans are in flower and are doing very well , racing ahead , their energy is incredible , they must be the most energetic of plants, almost growing 6 inches overnight , they are now about 8ft high.

    Jackdaws abandoned our chimney after creating such a mess, and moved into the chimney next door .. the house is vacant , we saw 3 fledged youngsters sitting on the roof the other day . So now we must book the sweep to clear the mess in ours and fit an anti nest thing ontop of the stack .

    1. Not bad at all. Her delivery is sometimes less satisfactory than one would expect from a telly person. But a lot of the things shown are fantastic.

      1. Thanks Bill! My trust in our ability to make a good job of a good subject has waned somewhat in recent years.

      2. They are. Huge cities of sand I never knew about, deserted it seems, unlike the pyramids which are cluttered with street sellers foisting rubbish on you or pleading for you to have your photo taken alongside a camel.

        1. Many years ago we booked a private tour with a Coptic Christian doing the guiding. She was brlliant at chasing off nuisance hawkers.

          At the end of the day HG requested a camel ride and the woman had us driven us to a real back street place. It looked a dump and we were at the point of calling it off, but as the guide had been so good with everything else we carried on, expecting a few expensive photographs.

          What happened was possibly one of the highlights of the trip. After a few minutes strolling, the camel turned a corner and we were immediately confronted with the most fantastic view of the pyramids and the Sphinx, later.

          No other tourists around, I got some great pictures and there was no attempt to hassle us into getting “professional” ones.

          At the end of a very long and wonderful day we offered her a very generous tip which she refused point blank, she said she had been well paid by us.

          We had thought it was incredibly cheap when we were quoted the price for day.

          Amazing.

  59. Just done my first walk round the garden. All well – and profiting from yesterday’s rain. Looks like some more to come in an hour or so.

    Th roses are the best I can ever remember.

    2. Zephirine Drouhin in my yard has comforted us as we watched the hysteria gather momentum to offer me two
      Mass Delusions to postscript my book, “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds “ by Charles Mackay.

    4. Yo Bill

      Th roses are the best I can ever remember

      Is that a good………. or a bad thing?

  60. SIR — It would be better if Greene King apologised for its beer.

    Martin Smith
    Salisbury, Wiltshire

    I’ll raise a glass to that, Martin. I have always found the products of that brewery to be overrated and not to my palate. Whenever I came across its wares, in a free house, I would inevitably choose the more flavoursome offerings from a host of rival breweries.

  62. We could do with a daily update of the treasonous, racist and crime-loving BLM-supporting businesses.

    So far, on the list which should no longer get my custom are:
    Yorkshire Tea
    Brooke Bond
    Lloyds of London (they have a monopoly over mandatory insurance, so this is a tricky one)
    Premier League Football
    BBC (another tricky one, since they have a monopoly over public sector broadcasting)
    Greene King
    Octopus Energy…

    I found this list here https://conservativeus.com/the-full-list-here-are-the-269-companies-who-are-supporting-blm-antifa-riots/ Ones I have heard of include:
    Abbey Road Studios
    The Academy (the oscars)
    Adidas
    Airbnb
    Amazon
    AMD
    American Airlines
    Apple Music
    Barclays Bank
    Bayer
    Ben & Jerry’s
    BMW
    BP
    Booking.com
    Burger King
    Burberry
    Cisco
    Coca-Cola
    DHL Express
    Disney
    Ebay
    Formula One
    Fox
    Goldman Sachs
    Google
    Gorilla Glue
    H&M
    Honda
    Hewlett Packard
    IBM
    IKEA
    Intel
    ITV
    Lego
    Levi’s
    Lenovo
    Lexus
    LinkedIn
    L’Oreal
    Logitech
    Mastercard
    Mattel
    McAfee
    McDonald’s
    Mercedes-Benz
    Microsoft
    Mozilla
    Netflix
    Nike
    Nintendo
    Old Spice
    Paramount
    Playstation
    Pokemon
    Porsche
    Pringles
    Proctor & Gamble
    RedHat
    Reebok
    Rice Krispies
    Sega
    Sesame Street
    Sony
    Soundcloud
    Spotify
    Starbucks
    Star Wars
    Subway
    Tesco
    Ticketmaster
    TicTok
    Timberland
    TMobile
    Tumblr
    Twitter
    Uber
    Versace
    ViacomCBS
    Virgin Records
    Vivaldi
    Warner Bros
    Wendy’s
    XBox
    Yamaha Music
    YouTube
    Zoom

    Makes quite a dent out of the private sector and of everyday life!

    …

          5. I was peeved when the St Ives branch closed a couple of years or so ago, so I now use the Huntingdon branch which is nearer. I wouldn’t have discovered my Turkish Barber next door to the bank if it hadn’t been for that change.

          6. You’d have found one somewhere else – they’re in every town now.

            I very rarely need to go into the bank so it’s not much of a hardship.

          7. Hmmm… probably not. I noticed it about a year ago on one of my visits to the bank, although I was not looking for a barber as I had long hair & a long beard. To go in & have the lot shorn off was a spur of the moment decision, which I don’t regret.
            I go in once a month to pay my Visa account & pick up a bag of £1 coins which I use as tips, the latter in normal times.

          8. I don’t often use my Visa card – though I did in January to pay for our flights. I pay it online.

    2. Rice Krispies isn’t a company. It is a branded cereal product manufactured by Kellogg’s (as are Pringles).

      Does this mean that other products made by Kellogg’s (e.g. Corn Flakes, Coco Pops, Special K et al) do not support this idiotic BLM nonsense? Is there a civil war looming within that company?

      1. There was an article about Coco Pops the other day. Its box bears an image of a monkey, which could be seen as “racist” by the BLM racists, who are not above calling the kettle black.

        What would Boris make of the honey monster?

    3. Time for you to drink your water, Jeremy – that’s about all you will be left to do shortly.

        1. I get my water from the public spring in the Hills. Occasionally it gets a public health warning “failed bacteriological test – boil before use”, but mostly it’s the same stuff they used to give to the Queen, before Coca-Cola decided that more money could be made from the pretty Victorian bottling works in Colwall by knocking it down and turning it over for executive housing.

          Top tip – if you are worried about racist stains in your kettle, then fill it up from the latrine, just as they do in Africa before well-meaning Europeans turned up. The stains should then be the correct shade.

        3. I get my water from the public spring in the Hills. Occasionally it gets a public health warning “failed bacteriological test – boil before use”, but mostly it’s the same stuff they used to give to the Queen, before Coca-Cola decided that more money could be made from the pretty Victorian bottling works in Colwall by knocking it down and turning it over for executive housing.

          Top tip – if you are worried about racist stains in your kettle, then fill it up from the latrine, just as they do in Africa before well-meaning Europeans turned up. The stains should then be the correct shade.

    4. I’m doubt if these businesses do support BLM.

      I suggest that they are led by spineless wimps who are afraid that their businesses will be trashed by the lawless mobs, if they don’t engage in a bit of pretense. They know that they will get no help from the emasculated police ‘service’.

    6. I am not surprised to see ITV on that list; today they were eulogising a stable lad who had come from Dafur. My thought was, if we’re so bl00dy racist, why has he come here?

  63. Daily Betrayal………

    I recall the time when a certain SpAd called Alistair Campbell ruled the roost in Westminster. I recall the time when the Expense Scandal broke – here’s
    a ‘history’ if you want to refresh your recollections. I recall the
    anguish expressed by Westminster journalists that they had missed that
    scoop, telling the Nation that they actually did know about this – but
    were afraid to report because they’d forfeit their precious access to
    Blair and Campbell.

    I now wonder if ‘our Westminster reporters’ are
    so coy questioning the role of Whitehall mandarins because they fear to
    lose access to their gossipy ‘sources’, providing them with briefings
    against Johnson and his government.

    As ‘Our MSM’ are deteriorating
    at the rate of knots a glance through the articles and reports this
    morning shows that they still haven’t ‘got it’. They still believe that
    it’s their holy duty to tell us peasants what and how to think. The
    finding of that poll earlier this month, that only 28% of us trust them,
    has apparently wafted by them as they write in their ‘work-at-home’
    garrets.

    https://independencedaily.co.uk/your-daily-betrayal-friday-19th-june-2020-day-88-of-lockdown-britain/

    1. Campbell had recently been on TV claiming he has mental health issues. Not feeling guilty is he ?

        1. ;-)) You think nobody has ever pointed out to him there are many things on the planet whose name begins with a C and you one of them Campbell.

    2. I am surprised that 28% believe the lies;
      that suggests that more than a quarter of
      us are fooled all the time!

      Shame on us!!

      Good morning, Rik…….again!! :-))
      [Sorry, I am losing it!!]

      Edited!

  64. Yes, I am logged in otherwise we would not be having the dialogue that allows you to tell me I am not logged in. Get it?

  65. Public Service Announcement
    “Anybody on here who is with Octopus Energy they have just announced full
    support for BLM they’re even going to fund them, I will be leaving them
    today like so many others are.”

    1. Sadly we’re with Bristol Energy – set up by the Black Mayor of Bristol who definitely supports the BLM nonsense- statue abuse and all – they set it up and made a huge loss after enticing customers in with a low price – and then immediately upped the price! We should have stayed with Scottish Power.

    2. 320317+ up ticks
      R,
      Should a nottlers combined boycott campaign be set up
      in reply to many an issue ?

      “They don’t like it up their tills / checkouts do they”

      1. There is a 14-day cooling-off period in which you can change your mind after switching to a new energy supplier.

    1. Ian Holm appeared in several plays by Terence Rattigan. I remember a very moving version of The Browning Version in which he played the rather sad Latin master in a public school whose wife was having an affair with one of his colleagues played by Michael Kitchen.

        1. Ridley Scott director, Ian Holm and John Hurt. With amazing sets by H R Giger. You missed a treat.

        1. I missed out Eng Lit (so no set English books) – having done O levels in 4 years instead of 5, we were excused EL and only did 9 O levels, not 10. It was a visit to the Theatre with the play as well. We got to go backstage (and on the stage, too).

    1. Peter Johnson
      19 Jun 2020 7:46AM
      “We highlighted the shocking, disproportionate impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on women of every age, stage, race and class.”

      Men have been dying of COVID-19 at twice the rate of women, yet apparently middle-class women are the real victims of this virus because they have lost their cleaners for a few weeks and can’t get their roots done at the hairdresser’s.

    2. I’m afraid I can’t look at the Telegraph now. It’s pure trash, like the Mail, and I’ve removed my bookmarks to it.

        1. We still buy (if from the local shop) or get free (from Waitrose) the Saturday paper copy.

    3. 10/10 for reading it.
      As soon as I saw the headline and the writer, I gave it a swerve.

  68. It is reported today that the Church of England and Bank of England have apologised for historic slavery links.

    What on earth does such an apology mean when everyone involved died more than a century ago?

    Apart from toppling statues, there are threats (in the Guardian, of course) to rewrite our history books.

    How about the Church, and all the other liberal hand-wringers, giving thanks and praising our history for being the very people who banned slavery throughout the British Empire, four years before Queen Victoria came to the throne? Of course, that hasn’t stopped the anarchists from defacing her statue in Leeds.

    And why do we not hear criticism of other European countries involved in slavery?

    And why do we not hear any mention slavery on the East coast of Africa such as that of Tippu Tip, a trader in slaves and ivory, who lived in Zanzibar and was born just at the time when we abolished slavery? By 1895 (60 years after our forebears had banned it) he owned 10,000 slaves. His real name was Hamad bin Muhammad bin Juma bin Rajab el Murjebi and his nickname means “the gatherer together of wealth”.

    I suggest that our ‘guilt’ has little to do with slavery and shame for our distant past but everything to do with a coordinated attempt by the real bigots and racists to undermine the heritage, culture and traditions of the country they hate. I refer to the BLM, the anarchists, the Labour Party, the Mayor of London, the BBC and assorted criminals.

    The silent majority are the ones who still love their country and who treat people, whoever they are, with respect. I wish that such respect was mutual. These people are not just silent but have been silenced by the MSM.

    A friend who is 81 told me the other day that he is glad that he is old because he doesn’t want to live to see the aftermath of this attempt to destroy everything that generations of loyal people from all walks of life have worked hard and fought for and given their lives for.

      1. Yes thank, you, very fit and so well that I haven’t seen a doctor for five years, a dentist for 20 years and an optician never! But a bit busy these days, trying to keep myself out of mischief!

    2. I don’t feel any blame. I am not responsible for it same as my chum Imran isn’t responsible for ISIS destroying ten thousand year old monuments in Syria or looting Tyrone for the Rwandan genocide – although he hasn’t seemed to change his mentality.

    3. The silent majority – and most of us here, are horrified at what is behind the riots and statue abuse – it is an attempt to erase our history and make us feel guilty, and by that means, to control what people are allowed to think. Children are already brainwashed into thinking that our past is shameful – but – once they are allowed back to school, this will be stepped up and history will be rewritten.

      These anarchists have been waiting for just this opportunity – the lockdown ,the social disruption, the lack of education, to engage their troops in this war upon normal people. It is having the opposite effect – as we who are not racist, have been wondering why these people who hate us, want to stay living in this country of ours.

      2. re britemp:
        you should feel guilty. your past is shameful! even more so by denying your country’s crimes. which were many, over a long time, more than the nazi holocaust if one really looks at it.
        the usa is catching up with that wonderfully.
        i don’t think statues should be torn down but have information added.

    5. The top DT letter today made some sense. Essentially if you want to make amends for slavery that happened several hundred years ago, help stamp out the slavery that is still going on today.

      Not that I would hope that modern day political leaders would have the guts to do this.

    7. what does it mean to jews whether germany admits to the holocaust or not? i think it’s important.

  69. BTL on last night’s Tucker Carlson

    Red Dragon Slayer – 4 hours ago

    If we have to answer for the crimes of our parents when is Chelsea Clinton going to prison?

  70. I’ve received an email from Tim Atkin who is a wine writer, telling me today is “Juneteenth”. Of course, I was wholly ignorant of this. (I excuse myself by saying that it was an event in Texas over 100 years ago, that was also mostly ignored in the USA.
    Mr Atkin has stretched this to include the involvement of Bordeaux vineyards in the slave trade,

    As an example of how far this nonsense has gone, I note his missive below, for your enjoyment or otherwise:
    “It’s been a week of toppled statues and Premiership footballers taking the knee at Villa Park. It’s been a week in which the world has faced up to what history really means.
    History is no longer a “done” thing, sealed in the past. It has become a visceral, living thing that we can interact with, a thing that can change our understanding of ourselves and of others. Twenty-two absurdly well-paid sportsmen publicly paying their respects may seem inconsequential, but as Marcus Rashford has shown, fame and wealth do not preclude someone from having a conscience or, indeed, using their influence for change.
    Today is Juneteenth, previously a celebration I knew little about, though I thought I had a reasonable understanding of some elements of black history. The abolitionist Thomas Clarkson, subject of the inspirational book, Bury the Chains, has long been a personal hero of mine (and a candidate for one of these newly vacant plinths, perhaps?). But I now recognise that knowing about historical black suppression has little value if I don’t actively educate myself about the current challenges faced by BAME communities and make conscious moves to be their ally in my professional and private lives.
    This is not least because the wine trade is enmeshed in some of the most painful episodes of history. Few people know, for instance, that Bordeaux’s Golden Age was partly built on profits from slavery, thanks to what Jane Anson in her excellent new study, Inside Bordeaux, calls the “triangular trade” between Europe, Africa and North America. It’s good to see how the region’s Musée d’Aquitane’s now depicts this.
    The world is newly willing to acknowledge why BAME people feel angry, excluded and discriminated against; and fear of putting a foot wrong is no longer an excuse for silence. We need greater systemic change, to be sure, but we can all have an impact on our communities too, not as dramatically as Clarkson did perhaps, but in smaller, more individual ways.
    A better future is in all of our hands.”

    https://news.yahoo.com/why-juneteenth-important-why-few-011504245.htmlw

    2. Fed up to the back teeth of hearing this claptrap now. History is the past, good, bad and ugly. I wasn’t there and I had nothing to do with slavery. I refuse to apologise for any of it.

      1. Time for a cool off?

        I have noticed you becoming as exasperated and sweary as some other Nottlers.

        At least unlike Annies husband yours hasn’t delivered fox shit rather than a breakfast tray. 🙁

        1. Exasperated yes – but I very rarely swear.

          Mine makes the tea – I do the food.

          Off to Morrisons shortly anyway.

          1. If you find yourself getting too hot under the collar, do as I did, take a break.
            I came back totally reinvigorate, even unblocked the bloody parrot and Ogga for entertainment.

          2. If you find yourself getting too hot under the collar, do as I did, take a break.
            I came back totally reinvigorate, even unblocked the bloody parrot and Ogga for entertainment.

    7. It’s only been recently that I have ever heard it mentioned here. We are deep into breast beating and mea culpas at present, but I doubt there will be any long term attitudinal change. Certainly not until the black community gets its own horrendous violent crime and murder rates down – 10% of the population commits 50% of those crimes, and in the vast majority of cases, the victims are other blacks. No protests over that – ever.

      1. Last night on BBC news we had Clive Myrie (black newsreader/reporter) finding black people who had been victimised. He said he hadn’t personally experienced discrimination. He pointed out that black people were far more likely to be stopped and searched, and to be in prison. What he did not say was that the black population is still a small proportion of the total population of this country but appears to commit a large proportion of the crime.

        2. He must have been disappointed not to find EDL lynch gangs on the streets.

  72. Heard last bit of Radio4Toady … Nick Robinson asking black rugby player if it’s OK for England fans to sing “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” …. Boy I wouldn’t mind seeing some people swing high …

    Just anuvva day on the BBC ..

    1. 320317+ up ticks,
      Rik,
      Touch of shaky penmanship there, very clear even on a smog bound day.
      ( Spear)

    2. Important to remember that the Guardian is a a supporter of the Nazi oppression and would almost certainly like us all locked away in camps for reeducation – to what they want us to think.

    3. What a spiteful piece of rubbish, even for the Graun. Wish I hadn’t clicked on the link now!

    5. Elgar was reported to have disliked Benson’s words which were tacked onto a rousing tune in his Pomp and Circumstance March No.1, but he needed the money. They have been sung every year at the Proms since. Elgar himself composed a desperately mournful lament ‘Sospiri’ around the start of WW1, followed up with ‘For the Fallen’ to express his true feelings about war, and he must have been truly thankful that he died before things blew up between the Germans and the Jews, both of whom he was deeply fond of.

      When I hear ‘We’ll Meet Again’ to give comfort to the wives and sweethearts of departing soldiers, sitting in isolation at home during WW2, I don’t think of the war; nor do I even feel any sense of nostalgia. Instead, I witness a lovely 15-year-old girl releasing a piano accompaniment to her song ‘The Star of Hope’ on the internet, for everyone to sing along to while locked down during the present coronavirus crisis, and she does so for precisely the same reason Vera Lynn sang her song. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOUE8EccQgU&list=PLWGPizxKI7i7Xx5X9z5yXaFjLv9p1gs5D&index=2&t=0s

  74. Dick Van Dyke Condemned Over ‘Blackface’ Appearance In Mary Poppins

    ‘More to the point, his name is basically Penis Van Lesbian, so how the hell can that be acceptable either?’

    According to a growing thread on Reddit, there are a number of other

    sections of the movie that are giving the public cause for concern.

    https://southendnewsnetwork.net/news/dick-van-dyke-condemned-over-blackface-appearance-in-mary-poppins2/
    Yes,it’s a parody,getting harder and harder to tell though………………

    1. Good one. Just imagine the fuss if yer blecks were made to climb up chimneys, rather than small white urchins.

    2. Blackface – playing a sweep?
      I must have been not concentrating on the news for a day or two, the lunacy is further advanced than I remember it being.

    1. Reminds me of an old cartoon. Couple on porch; couple inside front door.

      Porch couple: “Well, you have been to us; we have been to you. Let’s call it a day, shall we?”

  76. DT reporting that another £1billion is being provided to provide catch-up to childrens’ learning.
    I wonder if teachers and civil servants were given £10000 to equip themseves for working at home. I know my son had to use his own equipment to teach the willing students during the lockdown.

  77. Lots of wows here……… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMcwE4Ahdn0

    I’m in a state of having simultaneous conflicting reactions, beliefs, or feelings towards some object. Stated another way, ambivalence is the experience of having an attitude towards someone or something that contains both positively and negatively valenced components. The term also refers to situations where “mixed feelings” of a more general sort are experienced, or where a person experiences uncertainty or indecisiveness.

    3. I don’t have any mixed feelings when it comes to humans of all colours. I will accept the slogan (for that is what it is) “All Lives Matter” when it means just that.

      When it means that the lives of all LIVING THINGS can be given the same level of importance as the lives of human beings. It is precisely this prevalent mindset that is destroying the balance of nature on this planet, and do you know what: without other species of plant and animal (i.e. the very species being driven to extinction by the unstoppably onward march of mankind) then we are signing our own death warrant as a species.

      And how fucking stupid do you have to be to do that?

      1. 320317+ up ticks,
        G,
        Many have been doing just that on a regular basis on entering a polling booth,

      2. I’m In agreement.
        The reason for saying I’m ambivalent, is in thinking of a lot of women made pregnant by rape and other misfortune. It’s a well known fact that men of colour often leave their short term ‘partners’ when they discover a child is on the way.
        There are so many single parents/mothers out there with the responsibility of raising children they probably never wanted.
        I often wonder why the Chinese abandoned their 2 child rules.
        In this country it’s quite the opposite we seem to reward people for having a lot of children.

    1. Maybe they are preparing us for an alien invasion

      Preparing us? It’s already happened.

      it will be ‘racist’ or ‘xenophobic’ to resist them?

      Will be? It already is.

      1. 320360+ up ticks,
        Morning C,
        When it is fully realised that these governance parties are a major part of the enema force things
        will become a great deal clearer to many.
        WE could not have got into such a state as a nation
        with the lab/lib/con coalition party
        acting / governing on the side of the peoples.

    2. Maybe they are preparing us for an alien invasion

      Preparing us? It’s already happened.

      it will be ‘racist’ or ‘xenophobic’ to resist them?

      Will be? It already is.

    1. Lady, you do NOT want a civil war. Trust me. It isn’t like the movies – a few dramatic battles, the hero saves the heroine, and shoots the bad guy in the hat.
      Lots of people get to be dead. Even more go hungry. Plenty refugees are created – and aren’t there enough already?
      Lots of the country gets smashed up and burned.
      The economy is trashed.
      It would allow an invasion from a foreign power. Y’all want to have to speak Chinese?
      It takes decades to get things rebuilt and costs a fortune.
      The hatred lasts for generations, like forever, regardless of who “won”.
      The war takes forever to be over – if it ever is over. Shit, the Confederates and Unionists are still arguing!
      Just look at poor old Libya if you don’t believe me.

    2. Isn’t that a Republican mayor who has done it?
      I wonder what he’s been threatened with for his city.

    3. Isn’t that a Republican mayor who has done it?
      I wonder what he’s been threatened with for his city.

    4. Lady, you do NOT want a civil war. Trust me. It isn’t like the movies – a few dramatic battles, the hero saves the heroine, and shoots the bad guy in the hat.
      Lots of people get to be dead. Even more go hungry. Plenty refugees are created – and aren’t there enough already?
      Lots of the country gets smashed up and burned.
      The economy is trashed.
      It would allow an invasion from a foreign power. Y’all want to have to speak Chinese?
      It takes decades to get things rebuilt and costs a fortune.
      The hatred lasts for generations, like forever, regardless of who “won”.
      The war takes forever to be over – if it ever is over. Shit, the Confederates and Unionists are still arguing!
      Just look at poor old Libya if you don’t believe me.

        1. Us poor coolies don’t get to choose, but somebody, somewhere, typically does.
          They aren’t usually involved in the blood, guts and snot of it all, either, but maybe if they were, they’d be a tad more careful.
          Who chose to destabilise Libya? Not one of the poor buggers who suffer the fallout of that particular shitstorm!

      4. It would be different if the refugees crossed the border into Mexico not the other way round.

        Luckily Canada has a public health system that the Trumpetes demonise as being red communist, they would never flee north.

  80. 1984 now showing across the world…………………

    Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right. G, Orwell.

    Tickets – Please apply George Soros, Davos, Switzerland.

  81. Businesses in the Vatican City have been banned from accepting cash.

    It’s a PayPal edict.
    (I’ll get me coat)

  82. Am I going mad?

    About five minutes ago, I saw, here on NoTTL, a video of a car in the USA being driven the wrong way down dual-carriageway.

    For the life of me I cannot find it…. Did I imagine it?

      1. Ah – that explains it!

        My late father did that on the A38 in Devon in 1987. The police managed to stop him – and advised him to go to an optician immediately.

        He did – and the eye man spotted his brain tumour…….

        1. What a horrible experience.

          It’s surprising how often opticians spot problems that are not obvious.

          1. It was.

            The optician made an appointment for him to go to his GP (father wouldn’t have done it himself – he never wanted to bother people). Within a week he was in hospital in Exeter. We got him moved to Addenbrookes where they operated. – a pointless, cruel event, because they conned him into believing that he would be cured, able to pay golf etc etc.

            They simply wanted to use him as a guinea-pig for trainee cancer specialists. Had they asked him if he would agree to go along with that…though the outcome was “poor”, he would have agreed – because he had a simple (old-fashioned) faith in men in white coats.

            After the op, he lived with me for six months of increasing confusion. Even all these years later, I can remember him realising – and saying, “I am not going to get better, am I?” Fortunately, there was a lady in the village who was a nurse specialising in geriatric, dying patient – and she was superb and helped him come to terms with the inevitable.

          2. I’m sorry, Bill. A horrible experience for you and your Dad. How cynical to use him as a teaching aid.

          3. Indeed, Paul – but – and this I was never ale to forgive – the old man would have agreed had he been asked. Instead they cheated him.

          4. Don’t know what to say, Bill.
            I’ve always been suspicious of medics.

          6. That must have been terrible.

            That generation were almost too trusting, although I must admit that I accept what the medics tell me.

            My mother had a bad result from a hip operation and never walked properly after it. Being of that age she refused to sue.

  83. For your delectation, condemnation, and delight…our old school song. Not the official one, though. The Rector was known as “Massa”.
    By the by, there is a school of thought that suggests that negro spirituals were built upon a Scottish template, that of Scottish mouth music.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVLH5jE7oRI

  84. Just tried to reply to Jack’s “Ring ring story about going the wrong way on the motorway and found it was gone.

    I got into the wrong lane on a roundabout in Cheltenham a few years ago – and found I was going the wrong way! It was scary!!

  85. Here in Wellingborough, a dreary morning gave way to bright sunshine and from the distance came a familiar sound: through the clouds and into the sun, the first appearance this year of the Spitfire. The symbolism wasn’t lost on me…

    1. I worked in Wellingborough in the ’80s. Sheep St? I used to imbibe in The Star where they kept a reasonable pint of Charles Wells (not much choice in those days).

        1. I was about complain that there were way more than ten 9Fs (251 according to wiki). Nine still exist today. But then I clicked your link.

          The Franco-Crosti boiler being the key thing.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Crosti_boiler

          Regular 9F:

          https://i0.wp.com/www.curbsideclassic.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/09.jpg?resize=600%2C428&ssl=1

          Franco-Crosti 9F:

          https://photos.smugmug.com/BRStandardSteam/BR-Standard-9F-2-10-0-92/9202092029-FrancoCrosti-Built-/9202092029/i-3PMD5P7/0/XL/92026%20Crosti%20boiler%209F-XL.jpg

          Not an aesthetic improvement.

          Edit: Just noticed that the second photo offers almost a direct comparison. The front of a Britannia next to the 9F. A Britannia being almost identical to a normal 9F from the front.

          There is a shed plate visible on the Britannia, but I can’t make it out. And the 9F has a light patch where it’s shed plate is meant to be. Could it be Wellingborough? Were Britannias allocated there?

          1. Yo CC

            It was 65 years ago, fell lucky that I remember I:

            had an Uncle,

            Trainspotted

            Wellingboro’

          2. Sadly before my time, in fact I’m not sure I’ve even seen a 9F in steam and moving? Have seen Black Prince in Weybourne shed, on the North Norfolk.

            I’m more from the diesel/electric trainspotting era. However I find myself gravitating toward steam more and more. It would be great to be back in 1955 and to be able to take unlimited numbers of photos.

          3. Yo C

            If you have not been there, I strongly recommend the Rail museum in York

            You get in half price if you wear(!)

            Grey school shirt (with off centre skule tie)
            School blazer
            Long grey socks Left leg at half mast
            grey(ish) short trousers
            Your Ian Allan book in your pocket (red underlines for engines that you had ‘cabbed’ black for those that you had seen)

            That takes me back to the last Century

    1. Great.

      Using “Khan’s defence”, presumably any white person accused of far right racism can say: “you are asking this question because of my race, let’s change the subject?”

      1. Just wait until the mass gang rapes are dismissed for ‘not being on the same scale as slavery and the empire’.

        1. We’ve already had that.

          Slave masters raped the slaves.

          True, but I very much doubt on a gang rape basis, one after the other at a cross plantation level.

  88. In our new world, my wife managed to get to the dentist this week.
    Surgery doors locked, phone from the car park and they will let you in at the appointed time. Wear a mask at any time they do not have a pointed object rammed down your throat.
    The hygienist dressed from head to toe in a giant plastic condom, safe dentistry is apparently harder to achieve than safe sex.
    Repeatedly asked if she had a cough or temperature.
    That was just for a cleaning, which was restricted to just scraping off the plaquey bits, no polishing.

    Caution is wise but they seem to forget that in our county of 110,000 sq km, we have not seen a buggy person in over three weeks and only forty three cases since it all started.

    1. I need a hygienist appointment. My hairdresser tells me that her husband went to his dentist this week and was charged double for a clean etc because they’re trying to make up for lost income. Methinks that could be counterproductive. Looking forward to having my hair done too but sadly said hairdresser thinks I’m doing OK on my own – emailed her this pic taken yesterday – drat! https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e0d8f6fe0e51a53feb27eb0de73cb3ff7cad051646bf93e3e2bbeb6984dbb5ca.png

      1. Very brave of you Sue! I wouldn’t dare as I resemble a badly groomed Old English sheepdog!

        1. I’m sure you look fine! Much as I don’t approve of L’Oreal jumping on the BLM bandwagon, unfortunately (unlike the beer discussed below) their products are good. The “Magic Retouch” just sprays on the surface so it’s papering over the cracks but the effect is good, if temporary. It rubs off on fingers, bedding etc but also washes out easily.

          1. Thank you! It’s just a bit heavy! I’ve been able to colour as I always do, but since I had a general anaesthetic and radiotherapy I’m finding that the dye doesn’t “take” the same! Apparently it’s quite common!
            My daughter thinks the Retouch spray is brilliant!

    2. I am allowed to attend for a temporary filling, but no drilling is permitted…

  89. “Ring Ring”

    [answers] “Hi honey – I’m on the road. What’s up?”

    “I just heard a warning on the radio about the interstate. There’s somebody driving on the wrong side – going against all the traffic.”

    “Wow. How could anyone do that ?!?”

    “I don’t know, but I just want you to be careful. OK?”

    “Sure honey. I’ll keep a lookout. By the way, it’s worse than they said. It’s not just one – it’s hundreds !”

    https://youtu.be/JCZTA4K3vu4

  90. I put the wrong way post up again. I wanted to edit it earlier, but for unknown reasons Disqus would not let me, so I deleted it.

  91. Am I alone in being curious as to what has happened to one of our greatest silent supporters, Ice Annie?

    She has not been around on this forum for a while and I, for one, miss her silent but comforting presence and support.

    If you are still out there, Ice Annie, please give us a nod that all is well and you are OK. You are missed. 😘

        1. It may be that because I’ve taken to sorting by replies that I don’t see his votes, if any, in the mornings.

      4. I mentioned yesterday that he has up ticked me a couple of times recently, and I think one of the nottlers is in touch with him!

    2. Here’s a snippet from 7th August, when we had just moved to our new home – I don’t recall seeing posts from CL or IA since then:

      Geoff Graham says:
      August 7, 2019 at 7:29 pm Edit
      Hi HL,

      I’ve published the site address earlier than planned, since it (and variations of the same) escaped into the public domain.

      The note on the old site will remain in place until Disqus closes it down…

      sosraboc says:
      August 7, 2019 at 7:40 pm Edit
      Did your setting up of the new site automatically send out notifications to everyone who had ever visited the old Nottle?
      I’m seeing “upticks” from people who I cannot recall ever posting on nottle, eg cheshirelad and iceannie yet who have followed us here.
      If any regular visitor reads this but does not post, please join in, you would be welcomed..

      Ndovu says:
      August 7, 2019 at 7:40 pm Edit
      Cheshire Lad and Iceannie read but don’t post……. don’t know why!

      Come in and say ‘hallo’ – we don’t bite!

    2. Build a huge security wall around it with guard towers, just treat it as a prison island. Something like, ‘Escape from New York’.

  93. Furious about footballers ‘taking the knee’ again tonight. Noticed some players adding a raised fist. Isn’t that the black power gesture? If so, will anything happen?

    Think it has been mentioned previously that the Football Association wouldn’t allow poppies on players’ shirts last November as it was decreed ‘political’. Good that they are being so consistent.

  94. Has anyone asked the question,”how many patients did the NHS treat between 1st March and 31st May this year, excluding Covid 19 patients, and how many patients did the NHS treat during the same period last year”?

      1. Not Scarborough. 😊

        My paternal GF and all of his siblings made the journey from Scarborough to London in the very late 1800s.
        Quite a revelation in those days.
        I have a family tree based there, going back to 1760.

        1. Husband’s sister lives in Scarborough, and so does her (now remarried) ex. We still see him and his wife, but sister cut us out of her life 14 years ago.

          2. Yes – but it upset OH. Her children are fine, their four boys are our substitute grandchildren. She does have mental health issues, and for some reason blamed her brother (and her father) for everything that went wrong in her life.

      2. In a strange cellar filled with earth from another country, surely. That’s what always happens up there in the Whitby/Scarborough area.

    2. Poverty for me in the 1950s, while my widowed mother was working was trips to Weston to stay with my uncle and aunt.

      1. Holidays for me in the 50s meant a trip to Exeter to stay with an aunt and uncle.

        1. There are/were worse places, Con. We were happy to share our bombsites!

    3. Sheer luxury, Belle. We used to ‘ave to smash windows so’s we’d spend summer at the local borstal to get 2 meals a day.

      1. I went there on honeymoon! The car broke down on Hardknott Pass and we had to come home by train.

    6. BTL:
      “I wish I’d known that you could hand your kids off to social services for a week in the summer. I didn’t realise that that was possible.”

    7. That were luxury. I spent a week in Weston super Mare thanks to the generosity of the Bath Rotary Club. My school headmaster, William Victor Sylvester Smith, slipped me two half crowns on Bath Spa station as I boarded the train.

      I spent much of my time in Weston exploring the woods on the high ground and behind the large Victorian house in which I and several other disadvantaged boys were lodged.

      I blew one of the half crowns on the arcade machines and the other half crown on ice cream.

      In those days Weston super Mare was known colloquially as ‘Weston on the Mud’.

      The only other holiday I recall was a fortnight in a dilapidated caravan near Brean Down. This was by courtesy of the Methodist church in Bristol with which my mother had familial connections.

      My father was in hospital having suffered a burst duodenal ulcer and my mother was unable to cope with five kids on her own. So it was thought that packing us all off to a caravan for a holiday was a bright idea. It was anything but for my poor mother.

      This wretched foreigner, Naz Shah, claiming hardship needs taking down a peg or two. She knows nothing of our hardships and is in my view totally unfit to be an MP.

      1. A bit of a fuss has blown up over this. Yorkies have responded “You don’t what poverty is!” and “Lay off Scarborough!” while a Tory party activist has been suspended for suggesting that Shah return to the land of her fathers if she so dislikes the UK.

        Unsurprisingly, the first report is in the Yorkshire Post, the second in Gideon’s rag:
        https://www.examinerlive.co.uk/news/local-news/naz-shah-mp-scarborough-poverty-18454745
        https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/tory-activist-suspended-naz-shah-tweet-a4474406.html

        No mention of Israel or social cohesion in either.

      2. A bit of a fuss has blown up over this. Yorkies have responded “You don’t what poverty is!” and “Lay off Scarborough!” while a Tory party activist has been suspended for suggesting that Shah return to the land of her fathers if she so dislikes the UK.

        Unsurprisingly, the first report is in the Yorkshire Post, the second in Gideon’s rag:
        https://www.examinerlive.co.uk/news/local-news/naz-shah-mp-scarborough-poverty-18454745
        https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/tory-activist-suspended-naz-shah-tweet-a4474406.html

        No mention of Israel or social cohesion in either.

    8. Ungrateful brat. She was taken bird watching by the government at tax payers expense had whinges about it.

      Poverty isn’t a holiday you don’t like. It’s not being able to eat, you wretched harpy.

      2. My grandfather’s brother used to send him it every year for Christmas. For some reason, I remember a cartoon from, I think the 1952 edition where there are 2 dowagers discussing the possible arrival of ‘sponsored television’ in a large manorially furnished drawing room. How the world has changed.

        1. I remember a sad, and very far from gruntled, old zoo keeper showing a gloomy looking beast to a group of dismal people in the pouring rain. He says: “In this enclosure, ladies and gentlemen, we have the phacochoerus africanus – or common warthog – and like me – but unlike you – he’s only here because he has to be.”

        2. I’ve got every annual from 1946 to when Giles died. Number 3 cost me a mere £100 30 years ago from a specialist book dealer.

      3. We used to have most of the Giles Annuals in the loo. Talking of which I used to love the little details or story behind the story – for example in this cartoon Grandma is heading off for the outdoor privy, Aunt Vera has her perennial cold and is blowing her nose, the twins are bawling and Butch, the airedale, is having a scratch..

      4. In the early 70s it was suggested more than once that immigrants be paid to ‘go home’. I can’t remember the sum: £1,000 then would be about £15,000 now. A Giles cartoon featured a gang of dustbinmen in the pouring rain in a dreary urban street. One of them is a big black guy. The caption is just two words: “Try me.”

        (Someone will now produce the cartoon and I’ll realise how imperfect memory can be after half a century.)

    2. There is always a lot of detail in his cartoons. Grandma on her way to the little outhouse. An umbrella sticking out of the chimney and lots more.

    1. Thank you for reminding me of this one, Grizzly. I always enjoyed this song’s lyrics.

  99. DT Headline – (No comments allowed on the story)

    Exclusive: Church of England and Bank of England apologise for historic slavery links
    Church says links to slavery ‘a source of shame’ and Bank calls 18th and 19th century trade an ‘unacceptable part of English history’

    The odious Blair set the trend by apologising for the Irish Potato Famine but this is the end of Britain and the Church of England.

    I shall be applying for French nationality and leaving the Church of England.

    The greatest source of shame is what my former country has become.

    .

      1. Also in today’s DT is the news that Rugby fans may be banned from singing ‘Swing Low Sweet Chariot‘.

        Should they not also ban What A Wonderful World because not only was it sung by Louis Armstrong, a black man, but also because it has become a blatant lie.

    2. Britain atoned for slavery through the actions of men such as William Wilberforce.

      To go on apologising again and again is not a sign of anything other than pathetic grovelling.

      This renewed apology by the CofE makes a completely mockery of the concept of the confession of your sins bringing absolution and redemption.

      Indeed, Welby is guilty of serious blasphemy and should be defrocked immediately.

    3. 320317+ up ticks,
      Morning R,
      Sad to hear but best if you do not believe the fight for decency / democracy worth pursuing any longer.
      Some time back we ( the English) were victims of Barbary pirates, nothing has changed very much we are still under attack.
      Currently the attackers are internal / external the internal recognisable by their pinstripe garb the external
      by their tan & in the main youthful apparel travelling from a Dover direction.

    4. Magistrates in England and Shérrifs in Scotland disposed of minor criminals and nuisances by sending them to indentured servitude in the colonies. This originally meant places like Virginia and the West Indies. After the American Revolution they could not send such people to America. (They were sent to Australia instead.) The easy way to tell an indentured servant from a slave was the colour of their skin.

    5. Britain atoned for slavery through the actions of men such as William Wilberforce.

      To go on apologising again and again is not a sign of anything other than pathetic grovelling.

      This renewed apology by the CofE makes a complete mockery of the concept of the confession of your sins bringing absolution and redemption.

      Indeed, Justin (Call me Onan) Welby is guilty of serious blasphemy and should be defrocked immediately.

      1. Not just Wilberforce and the emancipation his efforts achieved, but in the lives and health of the sailors & Royal Marines who formed the West and East Africa Squadrons interdicting slavers and freeing their cargoes.

    6. Curious how Blair apologised for the potato famine yet Ireland has never apologised for the institutional paedophilia committed over centuries by its nuns and priests.

  100. Daily Mail story
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8437497/Meghan-Markle-believes-shes-destined-help-fight-systemic-racism-US.html

    Meghan Markle tells friends her instinct to leave the UK ‘all makes sense’ now because she was ‘destined’ to help fight systemic racism in US – and she hasn’t ruled out a career in politics

    Yes, we cannot deny that Prince Harry is as thick as horse manure but the poor sod didn’t deserve to be married to such a totally unpleasant and unsuitable woman!

    .

    2. That’ll be a turn up for the books.

      Husband of divorcee gives up royalty to become “first gentleman” of the USA.

    3. Honestly, I’m embarrassed for them now. Feel desperately sorry for the baby.

    4. She ‘left the UK’ because she has no integrity, sense of responsibility or integrity whatsoever. She wanted the title as a way to promote herself. When it became obvious she wouldn’t get that, she bunked off.

      The ‘I want a private life’ drivel was simply a lie. She’s an egotistical, arrogant brat who wants the platform without the responsibility. She’s a prostitute.

    5. Perhaps she should have stayed on,…………… she might have become a senior labour politician, as they do, she obviously knows all in hindsight.

  101. Bernie Sanders criticises Republican policing bill and says ‘we need to abolish qualified immunity’. 15 hours ago

    The senator added that “those found guilty, must be punished with the full force of law. That includes officers who stand by while brutal acts take place.”

    During his speech, Mr Sanders called for an unarmed “civillian core” of first responders to be added to police divisions, alongside numerous other policies to make sure officers are not forced to do tasks they are not trained for.

    He said that “now is the time to implement far-reaching reforms that will protect people and communities that have suffered police brutality, torture, and murder for far too long.”

    Bernie clearly regards the Police as the criminals. The obvious answer here, if you are a cop, is to just jack it in and try something else, after all who wants to get killed on behalf of a gang of idiots? This is much easier said than done; cops have families as well. What will probably happen is what the military call Internal Desertion, where all proceeds according to the book and appears normal but no one carries out the most hazardous duties.

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/bernie-sanders-police-reform-bill-qualified-immunity-senate-a9574411.html

    1. That’s what happened after the riots in Baltimore when a black career criminal died as a result of a rough ride in the back of a police van – broke his neck, as I recall. Anyway, after city officials immediately blamed the police and their tactics and announced prosecutions, the cops backed off, and the crime rate shot up.

      At least in that case, the police were black as well, so racism could not be used as the excuse for all those burnt out shops and new big screen TV’s for the rioters. And the juries threw out the charges against the police.

    1. Shirley this is the re-enactment of the Barbary Coast slavers from North Africa grabbing our coastal community children for Arab slaves. ‘White Gold’.

    3. Just posing and or acting out invented scenarios. No specific relevance to realty. Long term Chips on the shoulders leading to what looks like child abuse.
      Where it all started of course. Full circle.

  103. Nicked this, so can’t take credit

    Apple – We will make a free track and trace system.
    Google – We will help, then it will works across 99 percent of phones. Should be ready by May.
    UK govt – No, We’ll make our own version.
    Apple and Google – You’d need our help.
    Uk govt. – No we don’t, Dom’s mate says he can do it.
    Apple and Google – Off you go then.
    Dom’s mate – Can I have your propriety code.
    Apple and Google – Hahahaha. No.
    Dom’s mate – Why not?
    Apple and Google – Because your system breaches international privacy laws by ripping peoples contact data and storing it on your servers so you can use or sell it later.
    Public – It does? Fuck that!
    Hancock – Our world beating system is up and running, at a cost of only £120,000,000
    NHS – No it’s not.
    Hancock – We have hit a snag.
    Public – Whats that?
    Hancock – It doesn’t work on iPhones. Or Android. And nobody wants to download it.

    Whole world – Really…?

    This is the World Beating Track and Trace johnson was telling everyone about in Parliament a mere 2 weeks ago.

    Switzerland and France already had a working system, johnson was offered it for FREE – instead he’s wasted over £105 million plus on a system that is World Beating crap

    2. It’s going to be ‘annular’ almost exclusively in 3rd world countries. Will there be some panic when just the sun’s Corona is visible? Is it a sign? Wuhan will be not quite on the 100% coverage path..

  105. Historians will look back at us and ask: what on earth were they thinking?

    Far more productive than this Maoist assault on the past would be to turn the exercise on ourselves

    DOUGLAS MURRAY

    How wonderful it must feel to stand atop history as judge, jury and statue-executioner. You can see it in the faces of the crowds, whether they are shouting at statues in Oxford or stamping on them in Bristol. These people are getting high on the feeling of being superior to their forebears. How racist, colonialist, sexist and homophobic all those people were. What did Cecil Rhodes ever do for trans rights?

    Cultural conservatives have argued for decades that the decline in the teaching of history would lead to mass ignorance. Now we know what the stage after such ignorance is: mass presumptuousness.

    It is so easy to point to the past and find it guilty of failing to live up to our current standards. Especially when our standards change as swiftly as they now do. Just yesterday it transpired that a “trigger warning” has been added to Sky’s listing for the Disney movie Aladdin. “This film has outdated attitudes, language and cultural depictions which may cause offence today.” The movie – starring Will Smith – came out in 2019.

    But far more productive than this Maoist assault on the past would be to turn the exercise on ourselves. Every era in human history has done things we look back on and wonder: “What on earth were they thinking?” So unless we have become uniquely virtuous of late (which, of course, the woke think they have), perhaps we should perform this exercise on ourselves. What might we be doing that people after us will look at with horror? What statues that we put up might future mobs want to tear down?

    Even the biggest self-appointed “progressive” might be able to identify some offence of which they are guilty. Perhaps the fact that we continued to rear, kill and then eat animals will be looked back on as barbaric. Why did our age not know about the meat substitutes that will be plentiful in the 2050s? Or what about our demands for fast fashion which mean our society buys unbelievably cheap, swiftly-disposed of clothes? All thanks to the slave labour employed in China and other sweatshops in the Far East. “How did they not know where their clothes came from?” a later generation may ask. When they find out that we did, I suppose down will come our statues.

    Personally I think it at least equally likely that a future generation might look at the easy way in which our society views abortion in a very judging light. Certainly they could look at the push for euthanasia in such a way. But we will never know for certain. In fact we have no idea. Because that’s the thing about history. When you’re going through it you don’t know where or how it’s going to go. Let alone where it might end.

    A sobering thought. And one that our cultural revolutionaries might reflect on. If reflection were their thing.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/19/historians-will-look-back-us-ask-earth-thinking/

    1. Apparently the bbc have a statue of a child molester above their front entrance.

  106. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5f0d0782d36df7ceee8ddab9cab626ae230c10ce933cf774ee003c6adc3e4576.jpg A parochial comment from a letter in the [Glasgow] Herald.
    The Queen Elizabeth University Hospital built in Govan South Glasgow at a cost of more than £850 million will be, as the writer claims, a burden on Glasgow until the end of the century due to problematic smells, expensive ventilation and bad interior design.
    The site chosen is beside a sewage treatment plant and a waste disposal site. During construction [ as the writer claims]perfume had to be sprayed to reduce the obnoxious smell. The writer claims that as Nicola Sturgeon was Health minister in Scotland she would have had a hand in the decision making on where the hospital should be built. If she didn’t contribute to the decision she was negligent. [the writer claims] Nice to read that The first minister has her problems.
    Prickly Thistle used to give us these snippets.

    1. I am amazed that they allowed that through the “don’t say anything baaad about Herr (hair?) Sturgeon” filter! It’s probably similar to the one that let the smells in!

    4. “and bad interior design.”
      Interior design? Blimey what about the exterior?

    5. The QEU hospital has been plagued by outbreaks of infection and many have died, including new-born babies. Oh, and there is nowhere to park.
      The new Sick Kids in Edinburgh (on the same overcrowded inaccessible site as the Infirmary) was scheduled to be opened last July. But it was not opened as it has so many problems, including the air conditioning, that it is not fit for purpose. A very large legal case is looming.
      The old Infirmary occupied a large and very valuable site in the centre of Edinburgh, easily accessible from anywhere in the city. Presumably sold for many, many, millions. I can’t think of any reason why the new Infirmary should not have been built on the same site. Hmmm.

    3. Winston to scaffolder: “When’s the next state visit? It get’s very hot in the box in this overcoat.”

  108. From Euro Guido.

    There’s nothing like a classic ‘despite Brexit’ story to round off the week with; not only have Toyota
    affirmed their commitment to continue manufacturing cars in their
    Derbyshire factory – despite warnings to the contrary during the EU
    referendum – they’ve now also announced
    they’re to shortly begin building a new hybrid car for Suzuki from
    their Burnaston plant, before being sold right across Europe. This follows Nissan’s decision to concentrate production in Sunderland…

    2. There’s still the Honda factory in Swindon, due to close next year: a skilled workforce for someone to pick up.

      1. Indeed it was. 3 well-loaded tacos, could be stretched to 4 if sharing. I made them for the first time just over a week ago.

  110. Was sitting out the garden supping beers but is has suddenly got very chilly , has much been happening?

    2. Facebook have deleted a post by President Trump because it contains a red triangle. Personally I think Bass was a pretty good beer. This is dangerous stuff by Facebook. They may be declared a publisher rather then a platform and different regulations apply.
      As it is we should avoid Facebook and all of the sites who try to manipulate us, and those organisations that support those who try to manipulate us.

    3. One of our local councillors was forced to issue an apology because she retweeted one from Katie Hopkins.

    1. 10347

      I feel so sorry for the small zoos, rescue centres , horse charities, dogs cats and everything else .

      We are meant to be a loving nation.. it is now full of mega mansions , huge yachts that are bigger than warships, designer handbags , false economy, and a tier of people who don’t know the meaning of philanthropy .. and a very squandering government.

      Using that expression ” Every little helps” .. some hopes!

      Goodnight J

      1. In my view we have become a very self-centred nation. Also, because the government takes our money and wastes it (and many animal charities have forgotten why they were formed) we are more wary of giving away our hard-earned cash.

        1. People have been very generous to our little hedgehog rescue the last few months. We have been unable to do any of our normal fundraising activiities, but we will survive.

  113. As I am signing off for the day, let me leave you with quite a good joke – considering that we are all guilty of illegally posting stolen online images (court told).

    Last night’s excellent webinar (get me!!) from the British School at Rome was co-hosted by the Lutyens Society of America – whose patron is one of J P Getty’s grandsons.

    Winding up the lecture – which was really good – the Director showed a photo of him and the Getty chap and said, “For once, here is a genuine, legal Getty image.”

    Well, it made me larf.

    A demain – on yer knees.

    2. Seeing as they’ll all ‘Take an effing knee’ (including the ref et al), and all have the BLM logo boldly emblazoned on their backs, I think you’re correct.

    1. We do not have a Twitter account but will an explanation of why she has been banned ever be given?

      Is Twitter institutionally opposed to free speech?

    2. They never ban lefties do they.yet they say some of the most evil things.

    3. They never ban lefties do they.yet they say some of the most evil things.

  117. The problem as ever is that we are ruled by a group of dimwits and incompetents.

    We all watch on in annoyance at their every announcement or initiative. We simply cannot believe that the people in charge are so useless and ineffectual.

    Time for change.

    1. I agree, corim, but how are we to bring it about? People have had good candidates in elections, candidates who would have changed things for the better, yet failed to vote for them.

  119. 50 years on, and the miserable spectre of the Heath administration hangs over this government

    The Government desperately needs to avoid the same ignominious fate

    LEO MCKINSTRY

    A sense of deepening malaise now engulfs the Tory Government. On every front, trouble beckons. The economy is paralysed; the deficit spirals out of control. Incompetence and incoherence appear to characterise the official response to the Covid-19 pandemic, epitomised by the farce of over contact tracing and the confused messages on the lockdown.

    Even more chillingly, a wave of cultural vandalism sweeps across the land, leaving monuments defaced and our heritage in danger. As the authorities cower before the mob in this atmosphere of turmoil, essential liberties are under threat.

    The Conservatives should be mounting a fierce defence of our culture and history. After all, the clue is in the party’s name. Yet, despite a majority of 80 seats in the Commons, the Government appears weak, distracted. Instead of blasting the trumpet of defiance, Ministers continually sound the muted whistle of retreat. The party lacks confidence, the Cabinet experience.

    Boris Johnson himself has lost his ebullience as his popularity declines. At the peak of the Covid-19 crisis, he enjoyed approval ratings between plus 20 and plus 40 per cent. In contrast, one recent poll put the figure at minus seven per cent.

    What the Government desperately needs to avoid is the fate of another Conservative administration, which came to power exactly 50 years ago today. It was on 19 June 1970 that Edward Heath entered Downing Street after his triumph in the General Election over Harold Wilson. The victory had come as a surprise, for most opinion polls had pointed to a comfortable Labour win. But his success in confounding conventional wisdom initially emboldened Heath, who promised a vigorous new style of governance after all the squalor and ineptitude of the Wilson years.

    Just four months into his premiership, he declared that he would “embark on a change so radical, a revolution so quiet yet so total, that it will go far beyond the programme for a Parliament.”

    But that bold rhetoric could hardly have been more empty. Instead of taking command, Heath soon began to be buffeted by events. His Ministry limped from one catastrophe after another, its authority continuously draining away. Throughout this nightmare, the Prime Minister miserably failed to uphold Tory values. Instead, he behaved liked a progressive mandarin, seeing every problem through the prism of Whitehall bureaucracy instead of his party’s central philosophy.

    Without a firm political anchor, he was tossed on the turbulent seas of discord. Having come to power promising to crack down on public expenditure, he moved in exactly the opposite direction. Vast sums of taxpayers money were lavished on health, housing, welfare and education, with the result that inflation shot up to record levels. He said he would take on the militant trade unions, but he ended up presiding over a catalogue of retreats, like his 1973 surrender to the National Union of Mineworkers.

    During the election, he had presented himself as the champion of free enterprise who would oppose the extension of state control. He was soon executing more dramatic U-turns, as he introduced a prices and incomes policy, nationalised Rolls-Royce, and bailed out a number of “lame duck” companies like the Upper Clyde shipbuilders.

    The political storms were relentless. He had to introduce a three-day week because of energy shortages, cope with the Arab oil price hike and deal with soaring unemployment. During his premiership, Northern Ireland went through the most violent period of the Troubles, characterised by internment, Bloody Sunday and the collapse of Stormont. The attempt to reach a settlement through the power-sharing Sunningdale Agreement failed broke on the diehard opposition of unionists and loyalists, whom the Government failed to challenge.

    A brusque, cold personality with a streak of egotistical arrogance, Heath struggled to establish any connection with the public or rapport with his party. But his other key flaw is that he failed to act like a Conservative. It is telling that two of his most important measures represented an attack on British tradition, the very opposite of the impulse to conserve. One was his vast reorganisation of local government, which saw the destruction of numerous cherished municipalities and the creation of artificial new monoliths like the West Midlands County Council and Humberside.

    Far more important was his decision to bring Britain within the embrace of the European Community. This internationalist mission had long been the primary goal of this political career. Even in 1963, when Charles de Gaulle rejected Britain’s application for EC membership, he declared that “we will continue to work with our friends in Europe for a true unity.”

    Heath’s elevation to Downing Street enabled him to enact the fulfil his dream, though he only did so by misleading the British people about the realities of Brussels rule. In the 1970 election, the Tories shamelessly declared that “there is no question of Britain losing essential sovereignty.” Once the European Act had been pushed through Parliament, Heath was even more brazen in his dishonesty, announcing in a 1973 broadcast that “there are some in this country who fear that in going into Europe, we shall in some way sacrifice our independence and sovereignty. These fears, I need hardly add, are completely unjustified.” But they were fully justified, as the subsequent history of Britain’s subjugation at the hands of the EU demonstrated.

    Heath fell from power in March 1974, after, with typical maladroitness, he had called a general election on theme “Who Governs?” The answer from the majority of voters was, “not you.” After a second election defeat in November, an internal revolt by Tory MPs saw him replaced by Margaret Thatcher, who turned out to have far more steel than he did. While he embarked on the longest sulk in history, she transformed Britain. One of her most famous lines, delivered in 1981 with the country in the throes of another economic crisis, was a direct rebuke of Heath’s impulse for backing down. “You turn if you want to, the lady’s not for turning.”

    The fundamental lesson of Heath’s demise was that, in graphic contrast to Mrs Thatcher, he never really tried to govern as a Tory. Every administration is bound to involve major compromises – Mrs Thatcher herself had a gradualist approach to trade union reform – but Heath actively seemed to despise Conservatism. Boris Johnson is of course a very different figure: warm-hearted, humorous and jovial, with a natural gift for campaigning.

    But the current drift has to end. The Government could start to reassert its grip by standing firm in the Brexit talks, boosting businesses by easing the lockdown more quickly, and, above all, by challenging the wreckers of the social justice movement. Otherwise, the miserable spectre of Heath will loom ever more largely over Downing Street.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/19/50-years-miserable-spectre-heath-administration-hangs-government/

    I’m not sure that MT adopted ‘a gradualist approach to trade union reform’ but that she got one because of who she first gave the task to. His successor made a better job of it. We can imagine their approach to the TUC.
    Jim Prior – Knocks gently on door. “Hello chaps. I’m James. I wonder if you wouldn’t mind letting me in for a …”. Door slams in face.
    Norman Tebbit – Kicks door open. “Oi! I’m Norman and I haven’t had any dinner!”

    1. Trouble is, Leo, this government, like those preceding it, is not conservative with either a large or small C.

    2. Heath was many of the things ascribed to him, but his choice over Rolls was simple – nationalize, or let the bankruptcy take its course. Had that happened, GE and P&W would have picked over the carcass, the workforce would have been on the dole and some German outfit would have bought the rights to the name…

  120. Our ‘Rolls-Royce’ civil service has been found out

    The myth of Britain as a well-run country has been exposed by the ineptitude of the state apparatus

    JULIET SAMUEL

    All of us carry around beliefs about ourselves that tell us who we are. A banker may think she’s cleverer than other people. A socialist may think she’s a better person. A country may have an image of itself as better-run than others and jolly good at managing a crisis. “An Englishman’s self-assurance,” wrote Tolstoy in 1869, “is founded on his being a citizen of the best organised state in the world.”

    Well. This is a bit embarrassing, isn’t it? For all this self-assurance, the UK is now on track to record one of the Covid pandemic’s highest death rates and biggest economic crashes in the world. Yes, us, the sceptred isle, we who defeated the Nazis by building spitfires out of church railings, the sensible country that turns up its nose at revolutions and communists, the country of the “Rolls Royce civil service” and the “envy of the world” NHS. For years we told ourselves we were “well-prepared” for a pandemic and even “a world leader in preparing for serious disease outbreaks”, as England’s deputy chief medical officer Jenny Harries put it. Actually, it’s worse than embarrassing. It is tragic.

    Still, the failure to foresee this crisis is shared between the political classes – officials, politicians, think tanks and media (yes, us lot). The public has been generous in forgiving the Government’s failure to predict it and has submitted to the lockdown as a tool needed to buy time. But now that time, bought at such cost, has drained away and so has consent. Three months after we entered deep freeze, the Government can’t even guarantee children will be back in class by September – six months after schools were “temporarily” shut.

    The latest failure has a depressingly predictable air. The NHS’s development of a phone app to perform automatic contact-tracing, meant to improve the system’s thoroughness and efficiency, has run into the sand. Apple phones won’t behave the way the Government needs them to – a realisation reached by Germany and Italy weeks ago.

    According to Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, developers could produce a working app in two weeks if asked, using existing code released by Apple and Google. But Baroness Harding, former boss of second-rate telecoms firm TalkTalk turned political hack, who was put in charge of this debacle, didn’t want a standardised, off-the-shelf app. She wanted something exceptional and British, something, as she put it, “world-class”. Naturally, we wound up with nothing.

    We are used to being disappointed by our politicians. They certainly own their share of the fault. But Covid-19 isn’t a test of ideology or political instinct. It is a test both of our politicians’ grip and of our institutions’ basic ability to deliver.

    Repeatedly, those institutions have prioritised messaging, control and centralisation over getting the job done. There are elements of success that show how much ability is still there, trapped in the system, but each achievement is undermined by a crucial oversight.

    The Government ramped up NHS capacity, but neglected care homes. Then it ramped up testing, but neglected contact-tracing. It’s as if we only have the bandwidth for one big job at a time, when dozens need doing. Rather than casting the net widely at the outset, recruiting across industry and universities, deigning to copy other countries, filling in quickly for our lack of institutional experience, the system promotes its own and sticks to processology.

    This is not a new phenomenon. It is the reason why we find ourselves with technology from a deeply suspect Chinese telecoms company built into our infrastructure. It is the reason why thousands of people are still living in towers covered in flammable cladding, years after the Grenfell fire. It is the reason the Windrush generation were treated so terribly. Too much of the civil service has become accustomed to following political fads blindly and then, when disasters emerge, doggedly defending its record and succumbing to inertia.

    Departments that should be brimming with expertise and policy ideas have become hollowed out. The Home Office bats off questions to the police. The Department for Health hides behind Public Health England or redirects inquiries to the NHS. The Department for Communities sends questions about care homes to underfunded councils. Surely the “front line” knows best, we hear, as if departments aren’t there to develop policy. Occasionally, a really competent senior civil servant or minister takes charge and draws out the talent and drive still lurking in the system, but for the most part, it drifts, like a star ship whose crew has fallen into a coma.

    All of this could be compensated for by a really slick operation at the top. But Mark Sedwill is no Jeremy Heywood, who was known for his capacity to descend on a problem and dig into every aspect of it at once. And Boris Johnson must know of himself that he is a free-wheeling type who needs a control freak in the background managing things. Instead, he has Dominic Cummings who, far from being the despot he is painted as, has little interest in the mundane chief of staff role he is meant to fill, keeping the PM briefed and ensuring he has the right pieces of paper. One insider, asked recently whether the system would collapse without Mr Cummings, grimaced and said: “It already has.”

    The only scenario in which this country jumps out of the hole we are in is one where Covid-19, through some miracle of nature, just phases itself out. Unfortunately, the likelihood is that, like China, the US, Singapore and South Korea, we get clusters of resurgence that put our administrative competence to the test over and over again. Ministers at the top are rightly getting the flack for the Government’s chaotic response. Broadcasters love having us pundits on to talk about how much the politicians have messed up. But there is an allergy to talking about the rot further down, the mediocrity and insularity of so many senior officials and the waste of talent below them, which is hampering the basic bureaucratic functions of the state.

    Somehow, through it all, we keep believing we are an exceptional case, home of the “Rolls Royce civil service” and its brilliant functionaries. Covid-19 has revealed the truth: it’s a fantasy.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/06/19/rolls-royce-civil-service-has-found/

    Heywood held only one post, not three like Sedwill.

    Grenfell: with May the PM at the time, the suspicion remains that the cock-up was concocted.

    1. Do you know what I can’t be bothered to read all that, but judging from a quick scan it underlines what I’ve I been saying for many years. Everything our political classes come into contact with, they fuck up…..big time.

      1. 320317+ up ticks,
        Evening RE,
        And for many years they have had the unwavering support of the peoples time & time
        again.
        Party first every time.

      2. 320317+ up ticks,
        Evening RE,
        And for many years they have had the unwavering support of the peoples time & time
        again.
        Party first every time.

    3. She must have had a completely different view of the way the country was run from me. I have long thought that governments couldn’t organise a p1$$ up in a brewery.

    4. She must have had a completely different view of the way the country was run from me. I have long thought that governments couldn’t organise a p1$$ up in a brewery.

    5. I spent many years in a CS department. When I joined, the senior personnel had nearly all worked their way to the top from junior grades; they knew the business intimately and actually had dedication to the success of the department. They could be a bit Dickensian in their management approach but were principled, decent men and women who were proud of the department and protective of its quality. Then came the era of the Bright Young Things (BYT). They joined the ladder a few steps up, spent just enough time in various sections to make “improvements” but move on before the disastrous consequences of them became obvious, always knew better than those who had worked there for years, and had no principles other than what the latest management fad dictated. Once they reached the top, they favoured and promoted those in their own image and, thus, a once genuine world-beater was spoiled immeasurably. I am sure that a similar pattern prevailed across most of the CS.

      1. It was a similar story in education; the number of times I’ve seen BYTs appointed to senior management positions, introduce “improvements” to build their CV then get promoted before the consequences hit the fan is legion.

      2. Once upon a time, Enri, one had to be completely proficient in the job that your team was doing, otherwise you couldn’t manage it. Sad, isn’t it?
        When I were young, it was the ATs. When I were older, having been poached from Customs, they were referred to as Seagulls. Come in, shit over the existing staff/management (who knew what was what) and then fly off. I met quite a few of those!

        1. yes, it really is very sad how standards have fallen. I had not heard the term “Seagulls” before but it is very apt.

  121. Evening, all. We’ve already done our bit to end slavery. Let’s just make sure that anybody practising it here is deported.

    1. 3220317+ up ticks,
      Evening C,
      In the past the same type have murdered, raped & abused etc,etc and very very few have been deported
      Deport the current politico’s would be a start & anybody that wants to return them to power once more is a must.

  123. Next Thursday, can we all rattle and clank our chains and fetters, whilst bent at the knee, to our collaborating African and Arab slave traders?

      3. Mr N, a result! – thanks so much for the ‘complaints dvla’ information. 36 hours after my husband put in his complaint online, he had an email (yesterday morning) to say that his renewed driving licence would arrive within ten days or less. This after hearing nothing for 3 months.

    2. Good job they don’t allow spectators at football matches, me shouting “get off your knees you w⚓️‘s” May be frowned on.

        1. I rarely bothered with football, now I will never take any interest in it at all.

        2. I don’t watch football. If they start that stupidity in racing, they’ll lose my interest. (Fortunately, it’s unlikely because you never kneel when dealing with horses – you can’t get away quickly enough).

          3. My knowledge of dressage is zero, I thought there was a kneeling, but as you say, that’s probably circus stuff, mea culpa.

          4. Someone posted a picture of a liberty horse kneeling yesterday. That was a circus performance.

          7. We had a lovely barmaid who was seriously into dressage before the plague. Great girl who was starting to explain the intricacies to me. Hopefully she will return, post-apocalypse.

        1. That would be enough, then they could turn to shades of black. I can see it now, “ Dark Black Lives Matter”

  126. who IS paying for anything? who is even asking for money? mostly people want acknowledgment and don’t get it!

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