Thursday 25 June: Warm beer, church and village cricket are tantalisingly out of reach

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/06/24/letterswarm-beer-church-village-cricket-tantalisingly-reach/

888 thoughts on “Thursday 25 June: Warm beer, church and village cricket are tantalisingly out of reach”

      1. ‘Morning, Elsie.

        Thunderstorms predicted for tomorrow, so the air will feel heavy alongside the heat.

        1. It already feels very heavy – muggy and humid at about 27 degrees C. A good storm to clear the air would be welcomed as long as we don’t get struck by lightning.

    2. Cellar temperature = cool, so as not to kill the flavour whilst still being refreshing.

    1. My 13 year old grand-daughter is climbing up the wall at not being able to go to her school. She has been doing many hours a day online teaching, which keeps her education going (sort of) but misses the companionship and the classroom.

      1. It looks as if we shall be able to run our courses this summer after all but with rather reduced numbers. We may even avoid bankruptcy!

        We had offered to run on-line courses, as we did at Easter, if we could not have our students physically with us but as one mother said, her poor daughter was sick and tired of on line teaching as she had been having this from her school since lockdown.

        Most of our students come from independent schools and most of these schools have made a very good effort to provide full-time on-line teaching but, from what I have gathered, there are some schools in the maintained sector which have done Sweet Fanny Adams.

    1. So Jake’s Mother who is a Director gets to stay on but his girlfriend gets the Sack? Is this some sort of Family Feud payoff?

      2. 320618+ up ticks,
        Morning AS,
        Surely seemingly Jake’s mum is showing disapproval by stamping down on Megan, not in many eyes a good reflex reaction.

    3. 320618+ up ticks,
      O2O,
      This boycott is a powerful tool in the peoples toolkit
      but will they comply not only on this but many issues for the benefit of others, that is the question.
      Surely past time those in opposition to common sense & decency felt some pain.
      We have had four years of sh!te ongoing capped off if more proof is needed by these politico’s now virtually
      giving people smuggling a Royal seal at Dover.
      STAY SAFE,STAY INDOORS,
      If you wake at midnight, and hear a horse’s feet,
      Don’t go drawing back the blind, or looking in the street;
      Them that ask no questions isn’t told a lie.
      Watch the wall, my darling, while the illegals go by!

    4. How gloriously Soviet.
      My German friend and her siblings weren’t allowed to go to university because her grandparents had been landowners (farmers).

    7. And the sooner most professional football clubs go bankrupt the better.

  7. Good morning, all.

    Before anything else, any NoTTLer in the Shropshire area might be interested in this Open Garden. It was created by the daughter of one of the MR’s oldest friends – who died early this month. The daughter, Vicky, herself a widow with two children – is specially opening as part of the celebration of her mother’s life.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4c44e8e7134b24604622fbe4ab435d5acdee30d70b71b884bf2684d8107119a8.jpg

    This should enable you to find the place online and book.

    2. Jenrick nearly had to resign because of his COVID- 19 movements early in the outbreak. He is on very thin ice.

  9. Tweet by Cambridge University. ( at last)

    The University defends the right of its academics to express their own lawful opinions which others might find controversial and deplores in the strongest terms abuse and personal attacks. These attacks are totally unacceptable and must cease.

    1. Any idea:

      a) If they mean it

      and

      b) If so, what has caused this change of mind?

      1. It’s Guy Burgess tweeting a secret message to his controllers in the Lubyanka building. He’s awaiting the coded response, “Vlad is a sweetie.”

        2. Sorry I don’t understand. Which academic and what did she say? It’s hard to imagine a Cambridge academic coming out with anything but lefty drivel.

          1. Priyamvada Gopal @PriyamvadaGopal
            I’ll say it again. White Lives Don’t Matter.
            As white lives.

          2. Ah, I get it now. When it’s a lefty spewing hatred against white people, any opposition is bullying.

            One of the biggest disappointments of my life was when I realised that our two greatest universities are beacons of mediocrity, snobbery and petty, smallminded spite rather than truth, integrity and intelligence. And that was already thirty years ago.

          3. Oh hang on.

            A racist spewed hatred and bile and because the speaker isn’t white, they’re given free reign.

            Now imagine – as Rachael Riley said – that this was a ‘skin head Nazi’ – wouldn’t accept it then, would you? This is provocation, abuse and insult. If that’s a teacher, they should be sacked, immediately.

            Free speech exists. She can say it, but she cannot avoid the consequences. Other people must be allowed to challenge her racism.That’s the problem though. The hypocrisy.

          7. Abolish whiteness? Surely that’s hate speech?

            What on earth does ‘don’t matter’ ‘As white lives’? mean?

  10. Morning all.

    SIR – The new rules for visiting the pub have obviously been written by some civil servant who only frequents expensive West End wine bars.

    We, the innocent people, have been held prisoner in our own homes. Now we are to be tagged so we can continue our confinement in the community.

    John Owen

    Gloucester

    SIR – Giving contact details to pub bar staff is a burglars’ charter. What politician decreed that I must advertise my absence from home?

    Dr Terry Langford

    Southampton

    SIR – How ironic that the reopening of pubs rather than churches provoked a cry of “Hallelujah!” in the House of Commons.

    Derek Wellman

    Lincoln

    SIR – Our country church can seat 80, but the Sunday congregation is about 10: four households, the rector and organist. The congregation is always well spread out. When services resume, singing is not to be permitted. May we perhaps be allowed to hum?

    Martin Smith

    Brimpsfield, Gloucestershire

    SIR – Village cricket is not allowed but outdoor gyms are. The risk posed by a bunch of organised loafers who spurn the high-five and huddle must be tiny.

    As Boris Johnson is a vice-president of our club, we are doubly disappointed.

    Nicky Bird

    Chairman, V&A Cricket Club

    London W3

    Show more

    SIR – Lifts in multi-storey car parks and stores are still out of use. This leaves the disabled and many elderly people unable to go about their daily lives.

    David Wirrich

    Torquay, Devon

    SIR – In a supermarket yesterday I forgot the carrots but was stopped from reversing a few feet, and told to follow the one-way system. I then passed 10 people instead of one, so defeating the aim of the regulation.

    Peter H York

    Daventry, Northamptonshire

    SIR – I can now meet up with my daughter’s family, while maintaining social distancing. But try telling a two-year-old granddaughter that she mustn’t hug my knees or sit on my lap. When she runs up I must back away. What message is that sending?

    There will be no family get-togethers for us until young children are exempt from these guidelines.

    Debbie Kenyon

    Newark, Nottinghamshire

    SIR – From my lockdown reading, may I recommend the strangely prescient Naked Sun by Isaac Asimov, set on a planet where people only ever meet remotely by “viewing” and have a terror of being near one another.

    Is this where we are heading?

    Janice R S Sinclare

    London N12

      3. No wonder Muslims are so pissed off with life – they see everybody else enjoying themselves and can’t join in. One of life’s joys is going to the pub, having a decent pint of beer and chatting with your friends, putting the world to rights.

      4. And singing and dancing and painting pictures and sculpting and well…just about everything really. No wonder so many of them have gone mad.

        Good morning, Sue.

    2. I despair of people like Debbie Kenyon. Why doesn’t she just take the risk and hug her grandchild. What does she think is going to happen?

    3. Peter H York you should have left you shopping where if was and walked out of the shop.

      Debbie Kenyon cuddle your granddaughter. Ignore the restrictions. It is your life, your choice not Big Brother’s.

      Are these letters put in the papers just to rile us even more?

    4. Janice could try reading “The Machine Stops”, a book in a similar vein.

    5. David W. seems to have overlooked the fact that parking spaces for the disabled are usually on the ground floor of a multi-storey carpark.

      1. In Shrewsbury, to get to the shopping centre from the multi-storey car park ground floor you have to walk up several flights of stairs.

  11. Stranded mariners

    SIR – Today is the Day of the Seafarer. About 1.65 million crew members – 28,000 of them British citizens – in 96,000 ships are carrying 95 per cent of the world’s trade, supplying us with the food, fuel, and goods we rely upon, including vital medical equipment.

    This complex global supply chain is now jeopardised by fear created by the pandemic and by travel restrictions.

    Usually, about 200,000 seafarers rotate worldwide every month, but more than 400,000 are stranded at sea and ashore, leaving our supply chains at risk of collapse. Increasing numbers are stuck in ports and not being paid.

    This time-bomb threatens to damage global trade and economic recovery. As a maritime nation, the United Kingdom is well placed to lead an international response to this crisis. I would urge the Government to take the opportunity to do so.

    Lord Sterling of Plaistow

    London SW1

    1. The BBC had a snippet about this seafarer exchange. The changeover involves thousands of flights to the ships and thousands of flights to return the seafarers home each month. This surely must be added to the carbon footprint of cruise ships and container ships. Modern society cannot live normal lives without creating massive carbon footprints and the Government should realise this and change their climate policies to a more realistic one.

      1. The Government should abandon the net zero nonsense because carbon dioxide does not heat the planet. “Carbon footprint” is simply irrelevant and meaningless.

        1. Carbon dioxide is plant food. More CO2, better growth. I doubt many of the greeniacs have ever understood photosynthesis.

      2. Container ships are far more important to nations which don’t bother to grow enough food to feed themselves.

        Already certain nations, fearing a looming food shortage, are banning food exports.

        I’m sure that this coming Autumn food shortages will take the PTB by complete surprise.

        1. Someone has woken up to the fact that there will be a shortage of apples and pears (not the rhyming variety) this year. I recognised that a while ago – my pear trees which are usually laden have relatively little fruit on them. The reason is not ascribed, however, to the weather conditions when the fruit was being set, but to a lack of fruit pickers (no doubt due to trying to put in place sensible immigration policies)!

  12. SIR – I share readers’ frustration with the DVLA (Letters, June 22).

    Many other departments in county and district council offices are apparently closed, along with public-sector services. These include planning departments and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, to which I have been unable to report a farm welfare issue. Our local recycling centre is open by appointment only.

    Is it just the private sector that is expected to return to work?

    Susan Chambers

    Kingerby, Lincolnshire

    1. The Animal and Plant Health Agency has offices throughout England. They should be on 24/7 standby for emergencies.

    1. 320618+ up ticks,
      O2O,
      A few of this gentleman’s ilk in governance would most definitely NOT go amiss.
      The truth in from the heart feelings shared by many.

  14. VICTORY FOR STU PETERS, MANX RADIO PRESENTER

    Stu Peters, the Manx Radio presenter who was suspended for challenging the concept of “white privilege” in a heated discussion during a late-night phone-in, has been exonerated. The Isle of Man’s Communications Commission – its equivalent of Ofcom – has completed its investigation and concluded that Stu did not breach the Programme Code.

    In a “decision notice” published this evening, the regulator said: “Whilst issues surrounding race can be an emotive matter, the debate in question was conducted in a fair and measured way, and for the most part, in a calm and open manner.”

    This is a significant victory for the Free Speech Union, which went in to bat for Stu, a member of the new organisation. On June 7 it wrote to the Communications Commission, demanding it exonerate the presenter, and hinting that it would challenge the decision in the courts if it didn’t. The Isle of Man is bound by Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which means the Commission has a legal duty to uphold the right to freedom of expression.

    Toby Young, General Secretary of the Free Speech Union, says:

    “The suspension of Stu Peters by Manx Radio and the investigation of him by the broadcasting regulator just because he challenged the concept of ‘white privilege’ is a clear breach of his right to free speech. The attempt to publicly shame people who don’t subscribe to the latest woke orthodoxies and rob them of their livelihoods is reminiscent of the struggle sessions during China’s Cultural Revolution. We would do well to remember that our grandparents fought and died to protect the right to challenge ideological dogma without being punished by the authorities. I don’t believe that this cruel humiliation of Stu Peters is supported by Manx Radio listeners or the people of the Isle of Man. He deserves an apology and immediate reinstatement.”

    Manx Radio, which referred the matter to the regulator when it suspended the presenter, may have been hoping for a different outcome – as of tonight, it has not reinstated Stu, with Managing Director Chris Sully instead saying station bosses “need time to work through the entire report to see what we can learn”.

    If it doesn’t give him his old job back, it will be hearing from the Free Speech Union which has set up a litigation fund so it can stand up for free speech in the courts. You can contribute to that fund above and sign a petition demanding Stu’s reinstatement by Manx Radio here.

    1. A small but very welcome victory in this age of political correctness and craven stupidity. Well done Toby Young and the Free Speech Union.

      ‘Morning, Citroen.

    2. If they don’t reinstate him he can sue. If they do reinstate him he’ll be forever at odds with his employer with them looking to get rid of a ‘troublemaker’. As for ‘see what we can learn’ that’s code for ‘look for a loophole to get rid of him anyway under a different reason.

      It has been shown over and over again that we do not have free speech in this country. The state has ensured that. Comically ‘we’ is also the majority white British population. It seems the violent thugs and religious terrorists can say and do what they like.

          1. Global apartheid? Relocate all whites in Africa to Europe and all blacks and/or Muslims in Europe to Africa?

            This would be a sad indictment on human philosophical efficacy Population exchanges between Greece and Turkey have caused a certain amount of misery.

            But the question of how to assimilate great swathes of people with entirely different mores and beliefs into our society is not a problem that our politicians want to address.

    3. There has been no spike in infection after the BLM protests. Why should sensible people not enjoy the summer sun?

      This government reminds me of Hitler in his bunker in the last days of WW2, issuing increasingly deranged orders about regiments which no longer existed. His generals quietly ignored his orders and did what they thought was best. So should we.

  18. Britain has fallen down the rabbit hole of second wave hysteria

    In the alternative reality of After Corona, a drop in deaths has failed to prevent an outbreak of deeply strange alarmism

    SHERELLE JACOBS – DAILY TELEGRAPH COLUMNIST
    25 June 2020 • 7:00am

    After three months stuck in a lockdown nightmare, this week, Britain finally passed through the Covid Looking Glass – to a strange new reality where everything plays out as the exact opposite of what it actually is.

    In After Coronavirus (AC) Land, the broadcasters are speculating about whether the Prime Minister has gone too far in his bid to lift lockdown on July 4. The pledge to reopen pubs and hairdressers, they fret, has coincided with an alarming jump in the UK’s death toll, to 280.

    Meanwhile, through the gloom of world recession, the first warnings of a second wave of the virus flash like the evil, disembodied grin of the Cheshire Cat, from America to Germany. Such is the level of alarm that leading medical figures have signed an open letter calling for an urgent review into whether the UK is prepared for the “real risk” of a second outbreak.

    Of course, the truth is almost the reverse of this rendition of reality. Rather than going too far, the Prime Minister did not go anywhere near far enough in lifting lockdown. UK debt has grown larger than the size of the economy. Yet restaurants must roll out protective screens on top of the one-metre measure, and gyms, spas and swimming pools have been barred from reopening.

    And it turns out the surge in the daily death rate is a mirage magnified by myopic broadcasters. The ONS’s “280” figure included 109 “historic deaths” reaching back as far as April. The death toll is clearly in decline: just 46 Covid-linked hospital deaths were reported on Tuesday, compared with 778 on Tuesday, April 21. The number of patients who died in the week to June 12 was the lowest in three months. Covid hospital admissions have gone from 3,099 on April 1 to 184 last week.

    But perhaps the most troubling of AC Land’s non-realities is The Need To Prepare For A Second Wave. Particularly as there is no material evidence of a widespread second wave anywhere on the planet. If anything, a pattern is emerging of small, localised outbreaks, with relatively high detected cases but low hospital admissions and deaths.

    In Germany, as the R number “rocketed” to 2.88 and 1,500 workers tested positive at a meat processing plant, the country’s daily death toll was just 19 on Wednesday. As the world speculated about signs of a second wave in Lisbon, with authorities enforcing a curfew following a spike in new cases, the death toll dropped to just six more on Tuesday. And as American “flare-ups” fanned the flames of anti-Trump outrage, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published modelling projecting that hospital rates would flatline in the so-called “hotspot” of Florida, while the national death rate continued to drop from its peak in mid-April.

    A pattern is emerging of rising cases and falling deaths in countries where economies are reopening, testing is being ramped up, and the vulnerable are – finally – being more effectively shielded. These countries show no sign of lurching into a second wave; only a glimpse of life unfolding as it should have done from the beginning.

    The distinction may perplex those stuck down the lockdown rabbit hole. But rather than panicking about a fresh peak, Britain should be preparing to live with Covid as a circulatory endemic infection – potentially with no vaccine.

    Perhaps we need to let herd immunity take its course, while protecting “institutional super spreaders” like care homes, hospitals and meat plants with bomb-proof testing strategies. Especially as young people are now the most likely group to be infected with the disease, according to PHE data sampling. Perhaps drugs already in existence can help us treat the virus. And perhaps in the long term we may have to encourage people to catch it early, like chicken pox, as expert Sir David Spiegelhalter has said.

    The hitch is that this option of preparing to live with the virus is completely blocked off at present. Downing Street is strangely invested in a vaccine, even though we still await the cure for HIV almost 40 years later. Our whole strategy hinges on it; as Chris Whitty has said repeatedly, social distancing measures must remain in place until one is found.

    It gets curiouser and curiouser. Dirt-cheap drugs may be part of a solution. But, as they aren’t exactly money-spinners, are attitudes in Britain and abroad towards them compromised by profit motives? While the UK’s recent approval of £5-a-course steroid dexamethasone to treat seriously ill patients is to be welcomed, the international demolition job on 10p-a-day hydroxychloroquine, which may help prevent Covid or treat early-stage cases, should have our guard up. Particularly as the Lancet has been forced to retract the paper that savaged the drug, and the WHO suddenly distanced itself from the treatment for unsatisfactory reasons.

    “The hurrier I go, the behinder I get,” said the White Rabbit. The moral being to think before you act. Hysterical Britain urgently needs to reflect on whether the narrative it has embraced – of elusive vaccines and the race to stop a second wave – is really the right one.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/06/25/britain-has-fallen-rabbit-hole-second-wave-hysteria/

    1. a certain A Allan wants DT columnists to form the government (except Lord Hague of course).

    2. More people are killed on the roads – are we to implement distancing measures there, or will tail gaters be exempt?

  19. SIR — Police are quoted as saying that, since the pandemic started, spotting drug couriers has been “like shooting fish in a barrel” (report, June 18). I am always intrigued by this expression.

    Is it really that easy, or do you need to practise first? What sort of fish do you use? What sort of barrel? What do you shoot them with?

    I note that the report comes from Wiltshire, a landlocked county to which I have recently moved, so – though not yet au fait with its customs – I was surprised that activities with barrels of fish should be widespread here. Are there clubs you can join?

    Colin Beardwell
    Devizes, Wiltshire

    “Shooting fish in a barrel” really is a silly saying since most people attempting to do so would consistently fail to hit one. They would need to factor in the coefficient of linear refraction (an optical illusion caused by the different light transmission densities of air and water) before taking aim. If not they will routinely fail to hit a fish.

    Herons are rarely fooled by this scientific anomaly because they have sight lines along their bill, which they line up at a point in the water a short distance away from where their fish prey actually is. When they lunge forward at the virtual position of the fish, the point of the bill strikes where the fish really is.

    1. Good morning Grizzly

      I learnt it as the ‘bent stick phenomenon’ when I did Physics at “0” level.

      1. Good morning, Rastus.

        Isn’t it fascinating how we sometimes retain the minutiae of the lessons we were taught well over half a century ago?

      2. 320618+ up ticks,
        Morning R,
        Like it, bent stick that is, could that be applied to bathing politico’s ?

    2. I read once that Churchill had a cased pike trophy on the wall and was asked how he caught it. It seems he shot it with his shotgun while it was basking just below the surface.

    3. My father’s first job was in the Wiltshire Police, based in Devizes. I suspect he would notice a change since 1933.
      He told me this tale about the perception of Wiltshire’s IQ levels.

      “There are variations on the legend of Moonrakers and the location of the legend is claimed by many locales within Wiltshire and a couple outside.

      The form told by Wiltshire’s detractors is that a traveller came upon some drunken Wiltshire men one moonlit night. They were trying to rake a round glowing object from a pool. The rakers claimed it was a large cheese they were trying to retrieve; the traveller declared it was obviously a reflection of the moon. No imagination, travellers.

      Wiltshire’s own variant on this is that smugglers detected an approaching Exciseman (revenue agent) on a bright moonlit night. In order to waylay suspicion the smugglers dumped the contraband (usually barrels or kegs of French brandy) into a nearby pond. When the Exciseman had gone they began to fish out the barrels with hay rakes. However, the Exciseman came back and asked them what they were doing. They told him it was surely obvious, they were raking out the cheese they could see in the water. The Exciseman laughed at them for being so stupid and rode off. The “moonrakers” left off raking the moon, laughed at the Exciseman’s naivety and continued to recover their kegs.

      Variations on the second version include the smugglers coming from Bristol, Bishops Canning and elsewhere but Devizes seems a popular place for the enactment. The period tends to be “a while ago”, which is sometimes acknowledged as being the 17th or 18th century.”

  20. Buenos dias.
    You want to witness racism at work?
    The DT has published an article by some female sportswriter who explains that for people with dark skin in the UK, it is an everyday occurrence, all through their lives, etc. But, and it’s a big but, the white bosses at the DT don’t use sub-editors; and no-one had the heart or guts to tell the young lady that you ‘effect change’ not ‘affect change’.
    PS I hope that I am correct!

  21. Morning, all! So happy to be able to indulge my inner lizard – hope those of you who don’t like the heat can find shade!

    I think the letter raising the possibility of humming in church is good. I’m not a churchgoer, but those of you who are might like to advocate this. I have read all the studies there are on singing, and can’t see that humming would present any more danger than normal speech.

    *slithers out into the sunshine*

  22. There are very few people I would trust to have the conscience to be trusted with thinking out the future of the nation. Like the German officer in Dad’s Army, I have my Little List, which I am happy to add to. These are people I would go to the ends of the world to serve whenever they are in a position to influence events. Others will have a completely different list; I know how much admiration there is in the Establishment for black American gangstas, especially if they are gay or Muslim, but they are not on my list.

    Coming immediately to mind are:

    Lawrence Fox – the actor who looks like a Central Casting Ideal Aryan stormtrooper and would be perfect in any WW2 drama playing the baddies, but what struck me when I first encountered him playing Sgt Hathaway was how his intelligence and his conscience places him far above his peers, both in the fictional TV drama, and with the police in real life. Hearing the actor bravely take on a partial BBC Agenda Propaganda Corps studio audience and convince me he was right under fire suggests bravery and sound political judgement. On a personal level, we have both had to endure acrimonious and traumatising divorces against a legal system that favours the professional female divorcee.

    Alma Deutscher – I expect regulars are sick of me expounding the virtues of this remarkable teenager, but it would need someone with a heart of flint not to be in love with her. Since early childhood, she had been on a mission to create beauty, and in so doing to make the world a better place. She has said this many times, and has backed it up with some of the most wonderful tuneful melodies and sensitive playing of this century. As a person, she seems without a blemish. She combines a high imagination with a capacity for hard work and application of her skills. She is also quite at home bringing her vision at the very highest level, and has worked on a diplomatic level through her contacts in Vienna with the likes of Putin and Xi. I have argued that she already merits a damehood, breaking the previous record for the youngest damehood by over a decade, but i fear that while Alma Deutscher deserves this honour and would hold it with great dignity, I am not so sure the honour deserves Alma Deutscher.

    The Prince of Wales – this is a controversial one, and the rightwingers who are pushing the woke agenda on the left are confounded by this man, who was born into a lifetime of duty under the shadow of his mother (who has herself been a fine monarch for many years) and beset with a melancholy about the state of the world that he feels is his destiny to sort out. Unlike Alma Deutscher, there are quite a few flaws in his character, his judgement and his luck that he has had to deal with. Most notably that first marriage to a woman with whom he had little in common, but somewhat foisted on him by his powerful and persuasive grandmother. Whatever we feel about Camilla, she was right for him all along, being someone who could happily spuddle along the lanes in wellies (which Diana, Queen of Knightsbridge, never could), but my goodness he has had to pay for his mistake. At least one of the princes found happiness with a lovely and supportive wife, but who knows what will become of the other. Back to Charles, what impressed me most about him was how he stepped in to save the internationally important National Top Fruit Collection at Brogdale in Kent, after Thatcher’s Government put it on the market for lucrative executive housing development, and the charity set up to save it was forced to pay top whack to save the trees from the bulldozer. It was Charles who put up the money and provided the clout to see off Thatcher’s gang of speculators.

    …

    1. Tragic, isn’t it? There is a pub in Hawkhurst called the Black Pig. Every so often someone demands a name change, but so far they are not minded to do so. Good for them! I shall continue to support them when they reopen.

      Oh yes, and the village of Blackboys (aarrrghhh!) in E Sussex. Presumably all 6,000 residents are sweating on the top line in case the mob arrives to ‘persuade’ them otherwise.

      The world has gone completely start-staring mad.

      1. There’s a pub near us that used to be called “The Nigger And The Blackamoor”. After a number of complaints it was changed to “The Nigger And The Coalminer”.

      2. It’s beyond a joke, Hugh.

        Pubs with the word “black” in their name used to be commonplace. I know of The Blackamoor’s Head at Troway, in N E Derbyshire, and The Green Man and Black’s Head at Ashbourne (Bob of Bonsall will know the latter).

        Are all such names bearing a common shade to be expunged?

    2. If the name is so insulting, why don’t they simply change it to “The White Boy” then everyone will presumably be happy..,.won’t they?

    3. We have a so-named pub near us, where every once in a while some snowflake objects to the name – until it is pointed out to them that it was the nickname of King Charles II.

  24. Fakenham Market was almost back to the “old” normal – apart from some stupid (ignored) signs from the council telling to keep 2 metres apart. In fact, the “queue here” system actually speeded things up.

    Hot, though. Good to be back in the modest 25ºC heat o the garden.

    For those who are interested, the Yeti is a jolly good car. Still much to learn about the “systems” (the handbook is in a curious sort of English – Google translate from Czech, I reckon) – but, fortunately, my elder son is making his way from Long Newnton early next month – and he’ll sort it out in ten minutes!

    1. Morning Bill!

      Queueing in an orderly fashion is actually much more English than having a scrum, isn’t it? Mind, I queued at Wickes on Sunday only to be told that as I had an appointment, it wasn’t necessary. Hopefully within the next eight weeks or so, I’ll have a new kitchen. One that functions. Not looking forward to the installation but the process has to be endured and I have a tiny kitchen so it hopefully won’t take long.

      3. I’ll be interested to hear how you get on. Do Wickes supply the fitters or do you choose your own?

        1. They supply the installers – though I was promised that the latter would have contacted me by now to arrange their survey. Will chase if that hasn’t happened within another week. I have to buy the tiles and in this case the ceramic hob, because Wickes don’t do the type I want but they should organise ordering and delivery of the rest.

      4. Q: Why are women’s feet shorter than men’s?
        A: So they can stand closer to the sink.

        I’m off before I sustain any damage.

        1. But,……… that is exactly why plinths are set back and or units are made to be supplied with out them

    1. 320618+ up ticks,
      Morning RIk,
      I believe they have been given the right to say whatever
      by their old boys, perfect role models in today’s political climate, that be kim philby, mcclean, burgess,& hunt.

      1. If ever I think that I should have worked harder at school and got better “A” level grades and gone to Cambridge – as my father did – instead of going to UEA a statement from Cambridge University reveals that it has gone completely to pieces

        Mind you UEA was the place to be in the 60’s – there were far more pretty girls there than at Cambridge!.

  27. Morning again

    Recruitment by quota

    SIR – It seems strange that a desire to create a colour-blind society should result in the BBC’s call for applicants to be recruited based on their race, socio-economic background or disability (report, June 23).

    In my years as an employer, I always recruited those candidates most suited to the job, regardless of (for example) race – rather than those of a specific race, regardless of their suitability.

    Julian Tope

    Portishead, Somerset

    SIR – Most managing directors, MPs and others at the top of the tree are over the age of 40, with 20 years’ experience behind them. When they were born, less than 1 per cent of the country’s population was black. Even when they started their careers, the figure was only 3 per cent.

    Diversity today reflects conditions as they existed 40 years ago. We can change the future, but not the past.

    John Wallace

    Basingstoke, Hampshire

    SIR – It might be tricky to extend elsewhere the BBC’s “diversity quota”, whereby a fifth of a production team must be “from a diverse background”. Could such a quota apply to the Olympic Games selection process?

    It’s hard to imagine track athletics adjusting talented – almost wholly black – teams in order to comply.

    Veronica Timperley

    London W1

    1. The BBC imagines that it’s correcting an unfair imbalance. It’s actually discriminating against those who’ve never had privilege in favour of those who’ve never earned it.

      1. I think, ahem, that the BBC is discriminating in favor of views which are highly financed.

        1. I was about to post the same thing: Sue has expressed herself very succinctly and clearly.

          One thing we tried to teach 16 year old public school boys who aspired to be prefects was that respect has to be earned and that they had to have consideration and respect towards those to whom they are responsible.

    2. The Premier League might have a problem with quotas. I would guess that black footballers are over-represented in the diversity stakes. Puts the kneeling for Black Lives Matter into perspective.

  28. 320618+ up ticks,
    Brixton in mind,
    May one ask in a serious manner will the police force be able to bend the knee in the future? not being funny but would in not be found to be difficult if one were in traction.?

      1. 320618+ up ticks,
        Afternoon Anne,
        May I add to your very apt post and along the same farming lines in suggesting that the
        electorate in regards to the ballot booth have the lab/lib/con coalition party lie fallow at least until Dunblane is revealed.
        Ps
        Oaaaarrrrhh.

    2. They were metaphorically speaking, on both knees last night.
      Miss guided by mizz dickie and their ‘action manual’.

    3. They were metaphorically speaking, on both knees last night.
      Miss guided by mizz dickie and their ‘action manual’.

      1. 320618+ up ticks,
        RE,
        Thanks to the corkscrew lab/lib/con coalition politico’s & their supporters that is going to be compulsory,5 times a day if very drastic action is not taken shortly.
        It is written in the HoC canteen menu, the future you will have to swallow.

  30. Anyone notice the BBC Newsnight piece on age inequality and the COVID-19 pandemic?

    Great balance by running a piece from their go-to fink tank the Resolution Foundation and Torsten Bell who they must have on speed dial. Naturally for balance they had David Willets who by coincidence is the President of the Foundation’s Advisory Council.

    Maybe I didn’t get the memo but it seems to me Newsnight has become the broadcast medium for the Resolution Foundation.

    Oh – by the way, check out the names of their major donors. Although you can probably guess.

    2. How hideous. Why do people disfigure their bodies.

      Can you imagine what she’ll look like when she’s 80, sagging and tripping over bits of her body that should be nowhere near the floor.

    3. Good god – what a sight! And she’s no more changed race than a trannie’s changed sex.

    5. Michael Jackson did quite well when he changed his skin colour.
      And especially in the UK everyone is handed the same, if not with their capabilities opportunity to be successful in their lives.
      But some people never realise their own potential.
      And of course it’s every one else’s fault except their own

    7. She can’t change her race, only her appearance.
      And apparently, not for the better.

  32. Russia cannot afford another 15 years at war with the west. Philip Stephens. 3 HOURS AGO

    Vladimir Putin is proposing to give himself the option of another 15 years in office. He could spend this time continuing to shake his fist at the west. Alternatively, he could brush away the cobwebs of the cold war and begin to recognise the challenge to Russian power from its friend and ally China.

    So far Mr Putin’s foreign policy has been tactical rather than strategic. Its goal has been to keep up appearances. Russia’s president heads a nation in decline, but one unwilling to cede its place at the top table of global affairs. There is nothing unusual about this. British prime ministers clung on to the idea they were one of the “Big Three” even as the empire dissolved around them. At some point, though, the pretence becomes unsustainable.

    Mr Putin has built his standing at home on the promise of restoring Russian prestige abroad. Above all, he has craved recognition for Russia as a match for the US. Nothing wounded him so much as former US president Barack Obama’s throwaway jibe that Russia had fallen to the role of a “regional power”. The Kremlin’s answer has been to sacrifice strategic interests to appearances. The unspoken price has been the acceptance of the role of junior partner in Beijing.

    Morning everyone. I know that these people write what they are asked; in this case it was probably, “500 words on Putin and Russia. £10 a word.” This said one would expect some sort of research, some appreciation of Geopolitics and not least a little self-awareness.

    Putin knows all too much about Russia’s economic and demographic weaknesses and is far too astute to believe that Russia and America are equals. He tried repeatedly at the beginning of his Presidency to come to a rapprochement with the West but this was always sabotaged by a United States that has no wish to see a Russia/Euro alliance that would form a rival Hegemon. This is why he has turned to China! As to being in decline, has the author read a paper recently? The West, particularly the Anglosphere, is dissolving around us; ironically within a very few years Russia and its Eastern European allies may well be the only White polities in existence.

    https://www.ft.com/content/4a35af89-16a9-412f-acbf-63d94d0c6bc4

    1. The West well and truly shot itself in the foot when it rejoiced over a defeated Soviet Union.
      It showed none of Gorbachev’s imagination or magnanimity.
      Despite it’s enormous eastern hinterland, Russia’s is a western culture. It has a spotty history (to put it mildly) but I would say that we can understand its mindset far better than that of middle eastern or Chinese cultures.
      Western leaders had a golden opportunity to bring Russia back in from the cold, and they comprehensively blew it.

    2. I discovered today I am entitled to wear the Cold War medal (as long as I put it on the right side of my blazer)!

  33. I did not manage to read all of Paul Hayward’s unbelievable article in the Telegraph – the other day- his comment on the Burnley WLM streamer. However, I would like to think he had 50 minutes to listen to a voice of reason to put this issue into perspective from the position of somebody qualified to have an opinion. I commend this interview to all. Obviously, he has felt obliged to make a film to highlight his side of the argument and question the motives of those that feel they are qualified to tell him he’s an “Uncle Tom”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbhFubiFiqg

    1. Outstanding!!

      “It’s not cops killing young black men,it’s young black men killing young black men”
      See London for further details!!

      1. I’m feeling rather Darwinian this morning.
        Are the young thugs doing society a favour?
        Have they mown down their own kind before they’ve done much – hope fully no – breeding?

        1. Larry Elder points to a societal crisis that has developed over 50 years. It affects all groups in the USA but it is especially pernicious to one group and he even quotes Barack Obama saying how bad it is. However, somebody like himself, a Black Conservative will be shouted down for saying exactly the same thing. We know it is totally unreal now, where there is no informed debate anymore, teenage schoolgirls telling us the world is about to end and a compliant/complicit MSM promoting arrant nonsense.

        1. Great minds almost think alike….

          Is this keeping the peace, or taking the peace??

  35. OK people! I think I have just heard THE most moronic piece of radio EVER! I know I shouldn’t listen to the Whine but he was on when I was making lunch! He is talking to some random lunatic, who having found a live caterpillar in some broccoli, he decided to keep it and let it pupate! He checked that it was not harmful to Britain (the broccoli was Spanish) and the built it a house! and bought some more broccoli! It also had caterpillars and they are all now living happily with this sad person! BBC loses it, big time!

    1. Erm…….. I collected two jars of frog spawn earlier in the year and put them in a big tub in the garden. Bloomin’ froglets everywhere now.

          1. That was very perlite of you! I might have used rather more colourful language! Frog off perhaps!

        1. We had had some heavy rain and the park was full of puddles. I knew they would dry up and a lot of tadpoles wouldn’t make it so i gave them a hand.

    4. Reminds me of one of Hilaire Belloc’s cautionary tales:

      Be kind and tender to the Frog,
      And do not call him names,
      As ‘Slimy skin,’ or ‘Polly-wog,’
      Or likewise ‘Ugly James,’
      Or ‘Gape-a-grin,’ or ‘Toad-gone-wrong,’
      Or ‘Billy Bandy-knees’:
      The Frog is justly sensitive
      To epithets like these.
      No animal will more repay
      A treatment kind and fair;
      At least so lonely people say
      Who keep a frog (and, by the way,
      They are extremely rare).

    5. And prior to that the Whiner was promoting more chinese virus panic. Don’t sing, only visit compliant hairdressers etc.

          1. Oh yes! He is quite ghastly and ghoulish. He seems desperate to get people to cry on the air. And so patronising with his “caring” voice!

    7. I no longer eat calabrese, but I do buy Romanesco when it’s available ( to make penne with romaneso sauce). I immerse the entire head minus leaves in salty water for a while to dislodge any caterpillars or similar before cooking.

  36. Nothing very new for NoTTLers…

    Tom Goodenough
    Revealed: What ‘Black Lives Matter’ really stands for
    24 June 2020, 6:07pm

    Anyone worth listening to agrees that black lives matter. But what does the organisation ‘Black Lives Matter’ stand for? Worryingly, for the 34,000 Brits who have topped up BLM UK’s coffers with over £1million in recent weeks, finding out is no easy task.

    Despite being inundated with donations, BLM UK does not appear to have its own website and is not a registered charity. What’s more, the group is resisting calls for it to become one. So why won’t it? ‘A charity structure would not allow us the freedom and flexibility to do our political work in the ways we wish to do them,’ according to BLM UK. What then is that political work? Here are 11 things that BLM UK advocates that might make some supporters think twice about backing the organisation:

    1. BLM wants to ‘dismantle capitalism’

    This objective might come as a shock to many of those who have donated to the BLM cause. It might come as a particular surprise to Premier League footballers like Man City’s Kevin De Bruyne, whose shirt at Monday’s game against Burnley was emblazoned with the organisation’s slogan. De Bruyne is City’s top earner and is paid £350,000 a week. It is unlikely he would fare as well without capitalism.

    2. BLM says climate change is ‘racist’

    BLM’s attempt to blockade Heathrow and London City airports in 2016 was greeted with widespread bemusement. Why was ‘Black Lives Matter’ trying to stop people going on holiday? The answer: ‘Climate crisis is a racist crisis,’ the group said on its Twitter feed. ‘Black people are the first to die, not the first to fly, in this racist climate crisis,’ it added.

    3. BLM wants to abolish prisons

    ‘Prisons and detention centres should be abolished,’ BLM UK has said. It seems likely that Britain’s 80,000 prisoners would approve, but do the thousands who have donated to BLM also back this policy? And what should happen to those convicted of violent crimes like murder if there are no prisons?

    4. BLM wants to get rid of borders

    Britain’s borders are ‘enforced by extreme violence,’ according to BLM UK, which proposes that open borders might be the answer.

    5. BLM says unemployment is ‘violence’

    Not having a job is miserable, but is it really ‘violence’? Yes, according to BLM UK.

    6. BLM condemns stop and search

    Tragically, a quarter of those killed with a knife in Britain last year were black. This is the highest proportion since records began more than twenty years ago. Stop and search is far from perfect but it is a key strategy for police to ensure that more black teenagers don’t have their lives cut short. Yet BLM describes an uptick in what it calls ‘racist’ stop and search as ‘violence’.

    7. BLM wants to get rid of the police

    The group says it seeks to ‘develop’ and ‘deliver…strategies for the abolition of police’

    8. BLM says the government appointment of a Pakistani heritage woman is ‘racist’

    Munira Mirza is something of a great British success story. Mirza, a working-class northerner of Pakistani heritage, was the only pupil in her sixth form to win a place at Oxford. Mirza now heads up the No.10 policy unit. So how did BLM react when she was tasked by the PM with setting up a commission on racial inequality? ‘This appointment is racist,’ BLM UK said.

    9. BLM condemned the suffragettes

    Suffragettes ultimately secured the vote for women in Britain. A progressive step? BLM UK doesn’t appear to be convinced: ‘Despite what you might’ve learned at school, many suffragettes were also working to advance White power,’ the organisation has tweeted.

    10. BLM said Churchill is ‘staunchly racist’

    Without Churchill it seems all but certain that Britain would have lost the war to Nazi Germany. And yet while Churchill was clearly no saint, is it fair to describe him – as BLM does on its Facebook page – as ‘staunchly racist’?

    11. BLM describes big charities as ‘colonisers’

    ‘Big charities are nothing more than colonisers repackaged for the 21st century,’ according to BLM on its official UK Facebook page.

    As a result of some of these policies, aims and statements coming to light, there is growing disquiet among supporters who have stumped up cash only to discover what BLM UK really stands for. BLM UK is also continuing to resist calls to be more transparent about its leadership because of concerns about a possible threat from far-right activists. Instead, in responding to questions about who runs it, BLM UK says: ‘We assure you all organisers involved with BLM UK are Black (not politically black, Black and of the African and Caribbean diaspora) and the funds raised will be diligently used to transform the nature of Black life in the UK.’

    Will that be enough to reassure those people who agree that black lives matter but don’t buy into the Black Lives Matter political project?

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

    BTL:

    Old Fox • 14 hours ago
    Thank you for this; and thank you to the Spectator for letting us make comments. These front organisations frequently use mean spirited cant to disguise their real aims. “Hope not Hate” for example, whose real name is “Pie eyed Utopianism, not due precaution”. Similarly “Black Lives Matter” has nothing to do with humanitarian benevolence and everything to do with Marxist malice. We should agree with the words, contextualise them within the view that all lives matter and look with contempt upon the conspiracy of prigs and thugs who have hijacked them, reserving at least a percentage of our disdain for the MSM which largely refuses to enquire within.

    A real liberal Old Fox • 13 hours ago • edited
    Very good article in the Spectator US on parallels between the situation in the US and 1916/17 Russia. An entire class of otherwise sensible, educated, monied families deciding that they had to identify (presumably despite plenty of evidence about underlying motives) with a political movement that intended to destroy them. And did. I believe that less than 1% of adult Russians were Bolshevik. But they brought down a regime and subjected one of the most important nations on Earth to 3 generations of misery, poverty and servitude. One of the local lads is running a marathon for BLM tomorrow. We’re all going to leave our mansions and drive our Jaguars, BMWs and Audis to cheer him on.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/revealed-what-black-lives-matter-really-stands-for

    1. An entire class of otherwise sensible, educated, monied families deciding that they had to identify (presumably despite plenty of evidence about underlying motives) with a political movement that intended to destroy them.

      Yes that is where we are!

    2. We are where we are as a country culturally and socially because that has been the goal since the war.

      We have to realise that our MSM is just as sewn up as any totalitarian state of the past, Soviet Union, 1930’s Germany, Communist China, they are not ever going to change tact and switch to our side ( freedom and democracy, independent judiciary and press ) even as our throats are slit open, in many ways we are going back to the dark ages where kings ruled by absolute fear of loss off life and limb for not kneeling.

      The people that we have to be most wary of are those in the media that appear to be on our side, they are only there to create an illusion of hope and fairness, look into their past and they were all far left students doing what the indoctrinated students are doing now.

      Not sure how we will prevent it, we have all been strung along all our lives, slowly giving in to more and more loss of free will and freedom.

      Has anyone got the gumption to take action?

      1. 320618+ up ticks,
        Morning B3,
        Seemingly supporting the lab/lib/con coalition party is the excepted way to go even though the last two decades especially have proved to be worse than disastrous.
        Truth of the matter be God helps those who help themselves this does not only mean alien welfare seekers but also indigenous ballot booth users.

      2. A look at other doomed states leads one to the conclusion that they die more of Apathy than anything else!

      3. Such a person would have to be prepared for immediate denouncement and quick martyrdom.

    3. The eleven bullet-pointed items in the above article are simply more tangible proof of the ongoing failure of education in the modern age.

      You simply cannot educate the uneducable.

      Common Purpose is preventing proper education taking place.

      1. Education? A mixed race woman I know, 50s and born here, didn’t know what BAME stood for – I had to explain it to her. A few minutes later I was on about the flood coming from Calais and they were from all over the world. She replied – there’s no Africans coming. I replied that Somalis, Eritreans, Libyans, Sudanese, Algerians etc were all coming – her gobsmacking reply – but NO Africans. I then realised she didn’t even know that those countries are in Africa and Africa is a continent, not a country. I still don’t think she understood !!!!!

        As for No6 above – A quarter of knife victims were black – so THREE quarters were what colour?

    4. Even given that these Lefty racists are morons they could not exist without capitalism. It is what gives them the ability to rant and whine. It’s what lets those black donors complain and gives them the spare time to waste rather than picking crops or carrying water.

      As for abolish the police – how about we do that, but only in Black and ethnic areas? How long before they all kill one another? As for abolish prisons I agree. Impose flogging for criminals.

      Unemployment is violence against black people? Nonsense, desperate ranting from stupid children.

    5. Hope not Hate can more aptly be named by simply reversing the two nouns in its name.

  37. Rod Liddle
    The police have become too politicised to function

    Defund the police? Yes, why not
    From magazine issue: 27 June 2020

    https://images.contentstack.io/v3/assets/bltf04078f3cf7a9c30/blt374ad3ff3a30acd8/5ef44b7a1ce00b649d2b5213/thin-blue-line.png?format=jpg&width=1920&height=1080&fit=bounds

    Of the many admirable demands made by supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement, such as dismantling capitalism and making white people pay for centuries of vile oppression, none commended themselves to me more than the demand that we should defund the police. This is a hugely attractive proposition, I thought, as I watched the chief constable of Kent, Alan Pughsley, ‘take the knee’ in solidarity with people who want him abolished.

    I felt much the same upon hearing the words of Superintendent Andrew ‘Andy’ Bennett of Avon and Somerset Police, who watched as BLM protestors threw a statue of Edward Colston into the river. ‘Andy’ instructed his men to do nothing at all — because, as he explained, guarding the statue may have led to problems, and the last thing the police want is problems. Later, when asked what would happen to the people identified on camera for this act of public vandalism, he said: ‘We might ask some people to voluntarily attend a police station. But we haven’t got that far.’ No, indeed — don’t put yourself out, Andy, whatever you do. Defund now, then.

    The police do not do what we want them to do, and have not done so for a very long time. By ‘we’, I mean the vast mass of people who pay their wages through our taxes. We would quite like the police to catch people who break into our homes and steal things, for example. Currently, in England and Wales, 97 per cent of burglaries go unsolved, the success rate having halved since 2013. In other words, if you are burgled, it is next to useless ringing the filth — although if you’re really lucky I suppose they might offer you counselling. Better to assuage your anger than solve the crime.

    In response to the appalling stats, the Metropolitan Police commented that burglary presented ‘particular challenges’ in finding culprits. Does it? Well blow me down. Once again, don’t put yourselves out on our account, lads. Robbed of your wallet and mobile at knifepoint? No point ringing the police — again. Only 4 per cent of robberies in England and Wales in 2017 were solved. Had your car nicked? There is just a 2 per cent chance that the police will bring a prosecution.

    However, shout politely, ‘If you don’t mind terribly, I think white lives matter too!’ and your chances of being apprehended and prosecuted are four times what they would be if you nicked someone’s car and more than twice as much as if you’d broken into someone’s house. The Lancashire old bill were hot on the trail of a bloke who flew pretty much exactly that slogan over a football match this week. A little late in the day they have come to the conclusion that he had not broken any law. I could have told you that.

    The police — or, at least, police chiefs — are never happier than when grandstanding on crimes which they think will bring them political cachet and thus the respect of the rest of our liberal elite. And there is no force more determinedly, hopelessly progressive than the Metropolitan Police. Last year we had the pleasure of seeing officers dancing with Extinction Rebellion protestors. How cheering this must have been to the thousands of Londoners whose working day had been sabotaged by the demonstrations. It was a bridge too far even for the government and the Met’s chief constable Cressida Dick was, uh, gently asked what the hell was going on.

    Neil Basu is the head of special ops at the Met. Amid controversy about comments by Boris Johnson such as comparing women who wore the burka with ‘letterboxes’, Basu said: ‘Every public figure who’s got a microphone and has got an opportunity to speak should take the opportunity to be bringing society together. The most important thing everybody should be aiming for is a socially cohesive, inclusive society.’ Perhaps, Neil. But your particular job is stopping crime, not social engineering. Basu then implied that if the current Prime Minister applied for a job with the Met, he wouldn’t get in.

    Basu also signs up to the asinine belief that the over-representation of black men in our prisons is the consequence not of greater wrongdoing on their part, but of ‘racial bias built into the very fabric of our institutions and society’. Why, then, are people of Indian and Chinese descent not also over-represented? Progressives cling to many expedient notions in order to keep afloat their berserk ideologies, but few have been as damaging either to a socially cohesive society, or indeed to the murder rate among young black men, than this transparent canard.

    The obsession with hate crimes, meanwhile, has become ludicrous. A couple of years ago I was reported to North Wales Police for making the insensitive and perhaps unforgivable joke that the Welsh language seemed to be short of a vowel or two. When I heard about this I was firstly perplexed and then a little angry. Who would bother the police about such an obviously trivial matter, I wondered? I thought about contacting the North Wales police and crime commissioner, Arfon Jones, to find out what response they might give to someone so egregiously wasting police time, until it became clear that the complainant was the North Wales police and crime commissioner, Arfon Jones.

    There’s no doubt in my mind that the creation of the fatuous job of police commissioner has increased the politicisation of the police. Humberside Police piled round to a bloke called Harry Miller’s workplace to lecture him about re-tweeting a humorous limerick about transgenderism. To Miller’s enormous credit, he fought his corner and got a High Court adjudication which decided that the police had unlawfully impinged on his right to freedom of expression. But what an arrant waste of valuable time.

    If you want the perfect example of political grandstanding by the police in their pursuit of wholly ectoplasmic — or indeed nonexistent — crimes, look no further than Operation Midland, the brainchild of the Met. The allegations of a fantasist, Carl Beech, against Edward Heath and other senior politicians played right into the Met’s hands: right-wing Tory establishment bastards sexually abusing our children! Sixteen months of investigation, the lives of many ruined and the dead defamed, all costing around £4.5 million and with not a single prosecution in result. The inquiry into this debacle identified 43 ‘key failings’ in the Met’s management of Operation Midland, which it said had been ‘hysterical and disproportionate’. You’re not kidding. The senior officers involved in this catastrophe have all since been promoted.

    It is scarcely a surprise that the police top brass have been co-opted into the woke sensibilities which afflict almost the entirety of our establishment. That it has happened after ten years of Conservative rule is, of course, a calamity in itself. But the police need to understand that the public is no more with them on their fashionable obsessions than it is behind the extreme-left causes espoused by Black Lives Matter. It is often said that the police cannot do their job without the consent of the general public. What they need to understand is that the ‘general public’ includes the rest of us. Indeed, it is largely the rest of us.

    I suppose we should feel a certain sympathy for the ordinary copper on the beat, if they still have something as recherché as a beat. It is undoubtedly the case that the reduction in police numbers has seriously hampered their ability to catch criminals. It is also beyond doubt that political correctness, imposed upon them from above, has meant that they are in danger — from their own side — when they try to fight crime.

    The most obvious example is the (mercifully temporary) cessation of stop and search, during which time street murders dramatically increased in our capital. It was a Conservative prime minister, Theresa May — a former home secretary — who wished to acquire solid anti-racist kudos from banning stop and search. Well, congrats, ma’am: more black lives were lost as a result. If a Conservative government cannot grasp that the police are losing the support of the majority of the people through their relentlessly progressive agenda, then who can?

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/The-police-have-become-too-politicised-to-function

    1. “Currently, in England and Wales, 97 per cent of burglaries go unsolved.”

      Well, what do you expect if burglary has been downgraded from crime to “minor nuisance” and is no longer investigated by the agency that has replaced the proper police?

      1. We – the public consider it a crime and we didn’t ask it to be downgraded – or expect it to be.

        Society is back to front: the victim is punished and the offender mocks. Killers know they’ll get away with murder. The soldier is hounded for doing his duty. The terrorist lauded and protected.

        Duty and responsibility are mocked, integrity devalued against egotism. The vacuous praised, the shirker rewarded.

        1. “We — the public …”

          “The public are the police and the police are the public.” Sir Robert Peel.

          1. Not any more, Grizz.

            For the typical constable, maybe. For anyone in their management chain no. They’re all political pole climbers.

      2. Our PCC actually said that “hate crime” was the priority, not nicking burglars! It brought howls of disbelief from those of us who heard him and had come to insist that actually what we wanted sorted was the vandalism and theft.

    4. Another corker from Rod! Hopefully he can evade the Gulag for a lot longer.

    3. Perhaps when the pubs open, the whole world won’t feel the need to visit Durdle Door.

  39. Today’s failed missive to the DT letters’ page. I wonder if it was considered to be too scaremongering for general consumption?

    SIR — From the emergence of Homo sapiens, around 200,000BC, until the industrial revolution, around 1800AD, the world’s human population
    slowly grew to one billion. In 1951, when I was born, it stood at 2·5 billion yet has more than tripled within my lifetime to 7·8 billion (i.e. in a mere 70 years).

    Human intelligence, ingenuity, culture, literature, art, manners, grace, discipline and resourcefulness also peaked in the 19th century when a balance
    of nature was still obvious. Since then, the judgment of the human species has rapidly deteriorated in an inverse proportion to the explosion in its numbers.

    The rapid decline in human intellect, discipline, good manners and concern for the environment accelerates. The increasingly moronic behaviour of mankind (reported daily in all news media) and the ever more execrable standard of politicians chosen to lead the species tells me the end is in sight. My hope is that when the earth rids itself of this pestilence, a vital biological diversity will once again reign on the only planet known to support life.

    A Grizzly B.

    1. Maybe there’s a quantum of intelligence, that gets spread among however many people are alive? And, in any case, how did they count all the people back in 200,000 BC? Could anyone even count back then?, or was it “One, two, lots”?

      1. 200,000BC was the putative time in history when Homo sapiens first branched off from its simian ancestors and emerged as a full species. I think we can safely assume that the first of those were quite few in number.

        I’m guessing that their counting was in similar fashion to the grunting that is replacing language today. :•)

    2. Could it be , Grizz, that there is a finite number of intelligent human beings, like most NoTTLers, despite the exponential growth in population.

      1. The exponential growth in population has mostly happened in countries with lower average IQ.

        My grandparents on my mother’s and father’s sides had seven and eleven grandchildren respectively.
        My parents had four (and I was criticised for having four children – it was “too many” apparently!).
        I hardly know anyone with more than four grandchildren nowadays.

        Also on the subject of IQ and population growth, I attended one of the most academic all girls’ schools in England, founded in late Victorian times. I’d love to know the statistics of what % of old girls from this school get married compared with all women, since its founding.
        I’ll bet if we knew the truth, the rate of marriage would be consistently lower.

        1. I have 13 grand children and 5 great-grand children – I’ve obviously taken someone elses share

          1. Ah, that’s nice. The world is surely a better place for having more little Fallick_Alecs in it 🙂

        2. I’m the youngest of five and the only survivor. We all married and each had two children. Our two have two children and one child. The three boys went to grammar school and the girls to secondary modern schools. We all made our way in the world off our own backs. We all left school at 15 and we’re born as far into inner London as you can get. London EC1. How mum and dad coped with 7 people in a 3 bedroom flat with no bathroom is quite unbelievable.

  40. Referred to elsewhere today. If you haven’t already seen it, take a deep breath before reading.

    Football must lead the second wave of support for Black Lives Matter now the counter-strikes have begun

    PAUL HAYWARD

    You just know the authors of the ‘White Lives Matter Burnley’ banner over Manchester City’s ground wanted to add another word. ‘More.’ White lives matter ‘more.’ But they were playing a PR game and to reveal the full toxicity of their thinking would have been bad strategy.

    What a waste of money, though. We already knew ‘white lives matter.’ How? Because in America white people are generally not being murdered by police on the streets and in their cars; white people are not being excluded from the top professions because of the colour of their skin; white people are not discriminated against or judged in the way black citizens routinely are.

    So, the sky-writers spent all that money to state the obvious. But that was not the deeper purpose. It was to cast white people as the losers, innocent bystanders, in a pendulum swing towards black rights, which include the right not to be executed by law enforcement officers and the right to fair and equal treatment at work, in university admissions and in life.

    Also, the right not to be abused and dehumanised in football grounds. And this is where the buzz of a Cessna light aircraft and the trailing of a banner mark the start of the next phase for our national game. Much as the tearing down of statues of slave traders was bound to bring the far-right out in a generalised defence of anything that is claimed (by them) to represent British heritage, so Premier League footballers taking a knee and running out with ‘Black Lives Matter’ on the back of their shirts was guaranteed to start a counteraction.

    It took only a week for the defenders of the old ways to come up with the idea of flying a banner aimed at people who have really not thought-through what ‘Black Lives Matter’ means – or perhaps don’t care. Its call for equal treatment will be reframed by bigots as a demand for better treatment, or more power, than white people. This lie needs to be stopped in its tracks and football, which responded well to the reckoning that followed the killing of George Floyd, now faces a stiffer test.

    Messaging, gestures and statements of support require limited effort (which is not to doubt their sincerity). We can all do it. We can retweet, black-out our Instagram pages and join marches. But the next stage is the counter-strike by those who want to prevent change, by people who feel threatened and resentful about losing ingrained privilege.

    Then out comes the banner and up goes the plane, especially when the far-right is using all the tools of PR wars, like everyone else. A younger person warned me recently – correctly – about seeing political struggles as a series of ‘wins’ and ‘losses’ played out on social media: for example, thinking a man urinating on the memorial for a police officer killed by a terrorist is a ‘defeat’ for the far-right because it shows their true face and is met with disgust. These assumptions are not always reliable and can be a distraction from the real struggle.

    After the Man City-Burnley game football can see that defending the position it took is a daily obligation. Ben Mee, the Burnley captain who spoke so well after the game, admitted that his team were distracted by the overhead intrusion. Frankly, you can lose 5-0 at Man City without aerial distractions, but the upset caused to Mee, his club and most of all to black people watching the game (including Micah Richards, the Sky pundit, who was clearly distressed), were the first indications that football will have to hold its ground and its nerve.

    The early signs were promising. Mee said: “We’re ashamed, we’re embarrassed. It’s a minority of our supporters – I know I speak for a massive part of our support who distance ourselves from anything like that. It definitely had a massive impact on us to see that in the sky. We are embarrassed that our name was in it, that they tried to attach it to our club. It doesn’t belong anywhere near our club.”

    https://twitter.com/SkySportsPL/status/1275177543029719043

    By then Burnley had released a statement: “This, in no way, represents what Burnley Football Club stands for and we will work fully with the authorities to identify those responsible and issue lifetime bans. We are fully behind the Premier League’s Black Lives Matter initiative and our players and football staff willingly took the knee at kick-off at Manchester City. We apologise unreservedly to the Premier League, to Manchester City and to all those helping to promote Black Lives Matter.”

    I’m assuming that anyone reading this column already understands that ‘white lives matter,’ while technically correct, sets out to negate ‘black lives matter,’ by denying the fact of racial injustice and inequality. The aim at Man City was to turn back the tide of understanding, which, for the first time in a generation in the UK, has advanced beyond T-shirts and slogans, beyond protest to pressure for action and change.

    From Ben Mee and Burnley came a recognition that when football gets back up from one knee it has to confront those who want to wreck the stance it has taken: those who attack Raheem Sterling and all black people from the skies and on the ground.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2020/06/23/football-must-lead-second-wave-support-black-lives-matter-now/

    1. Business doesn’t have a colour, it employs whomever is the best for the job and can make them most money, if not enough black people can get those jobs when other minority groups can they they should start looking at themselves, the way they live, how much effort they put in to learning and living within the law.

    3. “… white people are not discriminated against or judged in the way black citizens routinely are.” – thereby judging white people in the same way as blacks – ie, collectively, and negatively.

    4. Unfortunately I am not a football supporter which prevents my refusing ever to set foot in one of their stadiums ever again!

    5. Business doesn’t have a colour, it employs whomever is the best for the job and can make them most money, if not enough black people can get those jobs when other minority groups can they they should start looking at themselves, the way they live, how much effort they put in to learning and living within the law.

      1. I am not sure it is possible to employ the best people for the job in these days of quotas and diversity officers.

    7. Unless I’m disremembering, the BTL comments were pure gold.
      (I’m rashly assuming they are still there.)

      1. Good morning Anne! I’m afraid the comments were “disappeared” very rapidly! Cowardly ba****ds!

    8. Who is this fool anyway, and what on earth is a national newspaper doing publishing this fantasy-based drivel?

    9. That piece is full of lies and bigotry. I am sure I read recently that police in the U.S. killed more white men than black men.

    10. I notice the author hasn’t the confidence of his argument to open up the article to comments.
      I suspect, truth be told, he knows what sort of comments would be written, very few in agreement.

      1. Ours too…who knew that water is magnetic? Ours has spent all 10.75 yrs proving it on every possible occasion.

        1. Crikey! Ours was 10 in May! Our daughter has one of his sisters! Yes all water is magnetic even bird bowls!

    3. I remember my two sons squirming with delight when I recited this to them when they were little boys:

      Daddy Fell into the Pond
      by Alfred Noyes

      Everyone grumbled. The sky was grey.
      We had nothing to do and nothing to say.
      We were nearing the end of a dismal day,
      And then there seemed to be nothing beyond,
      Then
      Daddy fell into the pond!

      And everyone’s face grew merry and bright,
      And Timothy danced for sheer delight.
      “Give me the camera, quick, oh quick!
      He’s crawling out of the duckweed!” Click!

      Then the gardener suddenly slapped his knee,
      And doubled up, shaking silently,
      And the ducks all quacked as if they were daft,
      And it sounded as if the old drake laughed.
      Oh, there wasn’t a thing that didn’t respond
      When
      Daddy Fell into the pond!

      1. Thank you Mr T.
        Alfred Noyes’ young son once presented a bouquet to HRH Princess Beatrice in the early 1930s. Consequently the poet’s grandchildren are able to say that their grandfather met one of Queen Victoria’s daughters. Makes history lessons more fun.

        1. Alfred Noyes was a friend of Edward Prior, the headmaster of St Christopher’s Preparatory School, Bath and he visited the place in 1957 – the year before he died – when I was a boy of eleven.

          The fine Georgian house had a magnificent staircase on which we were invited to come and sit and this ancient little, wizened man with a wheezy voice recited his well-known poem The Highwayman. I still have a vivid picture of him in my memory – it was a magical evening.

          (St Christopher’s is no more: the fine Georgian house and impressive grounds are now part of St Edward’s School which bought the place when Edward Prior died in 1959)

          https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c9d332e1381953076db9f6f39cf79471ea9f7d7cfbdd5b31f1f270ccb5007d04.jpg

  44. For a bitter taste of Polish populism, just watch the evening news. Timothy Garton Ash. 25 June 2020.

    Second, we need to defend media pluralism. Media scholars distinguish between internal and external pluralism. Internal pluralism means you get a wide range of political views inside one channel, radio station, newspaper or online platform. (Think BBC.) External pluralism means different political tendencies are represented by separate channels, stations etc. Internal pluralism is better because a truly liberal democracy requires informed citizens who are exposed to a wide range of facts, arguments and opinions even if they only watch one channel. But in Poland that was never fully realised after 1989 – public television was always inclined to sway under pressure from governing parties, although incomparably less crudely than today – and the chances of achieving it are now remote.

    Extract from The Twilight Zone

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/25/polish-populism-evening-news-public-broadcaster-presidential-election

    1. Plurality of opinions? Here I can watch the 4 main News Channels and get a view/interpretation of the UK or World events which is DIRECTLY OPPOSITE to that held, and sometimes held strongly, by 75% of the population above the age of 30. That is the views/interpretation part, before we even address the lies on MSM News or the news which is simply ignored, or in the BBC’s case buried 5 pages deep on the Website.

  45. Re fish in a barrel.

    http://www.aboutenglishidioms.com/2012/02/shooting-fish-in-a-barrel/

    There would appear to be lots of origins for this but little consensus.

    This Idiom Was Tested On MythBusters.
    As it turns out, fish are sensitive to changes in water pressure. So when they fired a gun into the barrel, the bullet created a pressure shock wave when it entered the water and that alone was enough to kill any fish.

    One I liked:

    Origin: Prior to the modern days of refrigeration, fish were packed and stored in large barrels. The barrels were packed to the rim full of fish. As such, any shot the entered the barrel would be guaranteed to hit at least one of them. This being the case, nothing would be easier than shooting fish in a barrel.

      2. I had Manx oak smoked kippers, properly grilled, last night. The house has an odour, but it will soon go.

  46. Buenos dias.
    You want to witness racism at work?
    The DT has published an article by some female sportswriter who explains that for people with dark skin in the UK, it is an everyday occurrence, all through their lives, etc. But, and it’s a big but, the white bosses at the DT don’t use sub-editors; and no-one had the heart or guts to tell the young lady that you ‘effect change’ not ‘affect change’.
    PS I hope that I am correct!

    1. Effect change – to carry out change, set it in motion
      Affect change – to change the change (!), edit the change.

    2. A few days ago, out of sheer curiosity – given the ructions it was causing – I read a sports writer’s witterings.
      It merely confirmed that my lifetime rejection of all things sporting and the carp written about it, was one of my soundest decisions.

    3. Bon dia.

      The DT used to be a flagship for top quality journalism. It clearly no longer is.

    4. She was discriminated against at school and her English teacher deliberately did not teach her properly because of her race,

    5. Yesterday the local BBC channel had a news item on racist comments.

      One of the whiners complained that rude remarks had been made about his freckles.

      Freckles?

      Is that all to complain about?

      3. In the summer when my freckles go supenova my mother started calling me flyshitface.

      1. That is what JK Rowling needs, a spell checker, one that works on her critics.
        (I don’t always see my replies which often head to the spam file)

  47. Morning, all! So happy to be able to indulge my inner lizard – hope those of you who don’t like the heat can find shade!

    I think the letter raising the possibility of humming in church is good. I’m not a churchgoer, but those of you who are might like to advocate this. I have read all the studies there are on singing, and can’t see that humming would present any more danger than normal speech.

    *slithers out into the sunshine*

    1. There was an old bag in the drinks section of w/rose yes’day & she kept humming. Got on my nerves a bit.

  48. 320618+ up ticks,
    breitbart,
    TORIES NOW PARTY OF WORKING CLASS, BREXIT HELPED WIN OVER TRADITIONAL LABOUR VOTERS: REPORT.

    With these type friends there is definitely no need of enemies.

    The best of the worst is maybe right depends how you like your failures.

  50. Would it be considered racist if I wore a T shirt with the words emblazoned in large bold letters:

    NO IMMIGRATION
    WITHOUT
    ASSIMILATION &
    INTEGRATION

  52. Thursday singalong

    Knees down mother brown
    knees down mother brown
    under racism you must go
    ee-aye, ee-aye, ee-aye-oh

    If I catch you standing
    I’ll cut your head right off
    knees down, knees down
    You won’t get the police round
    knees down mother brown

  53. Tweet from Kent Police and it is true.

    ‘We’re marking Gypsy Roma Traveller History month by raising the ‘GRT’ flag’, helping to show our continued support for diverse communities. Kent’s history has a rich Gypsy & Roma heritage & we’ll continue to work with all communities to ensure this is a welcoming county for all’

    1. They given up with policing, then? More of a party organisers, wedding a speciality?

      1. It’s what the C word was invented for, they all appear to be trying to be the biggest C’s of the all.

  55. Good News/Bad News

    Good News: the sun is shining and we can get out for a good sun tan.
    Bad News: UV is so strong that we’ll get skin cancer.

    Good News: UV is strong enough to suppress the COVID-19 virus.
    Bad News: COVID-19 could come back again this winter.

    Good News: massive antibody testing programme being rolled out to thousands of front line staff.
    Bad News: scientists say that won’t prove anything and is a waste of money and resources.

    Good News: we’ll be better off with a virus this winter if we just go around in our cars to get out of the house.
    Bad News: vehicle and fuel taxes expected to rise to meet COVID-19 bill.

    Good News: we can save money this winter by staying at home if the virus returns.
    Bad News: tax on gas for central heating expected to rise to meet COVID-19 bill.

    Good news: deaths arising from hypothermia will relieve payments from private and state pension funds.
    Bad News: some of us elderly and vulnerable will have to die.

    Good News: if an infectious virus is still around then our estate will not have to pay the military for disposal of our bodies.
    Bad News: our families won’t be able to visit their loved one’s burial site at Porton Down.

    Good News: ideal time for a celebratory wake with a barbecue down on the beach.
    Bad News: it’s winter and the sun isn’t shining.

    Good news: the sun isn’t shining because the emissions output by the funeral cortege are absorbing all the harmful UV light.
    Bad News: the COVID-19 virus is having a field day with a second wave.

    Good News: most of us will survive the second wave because we have managed to deal with the first.
    Bad News: the next virus won’t be called COVID-19.

    Good News: we’ll all be proficient in using Microsoft group internet meetings.
    Bad News: we’ll all have had anti-viral injections and watching the rotating loading icons in front of our eyes.

  57. ‘Morning ,all.

    It’s been suggested in a debate on ABC – Australia’s national broadcaster – that chess is inherently a “racist” game because white always moves first.

    https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/06/24/taxpayer-funded-radio-debate-chess-is-racist-because-white-moves-first/

    But here’s the thing. The pieces on my chessboard aren’t black and white, instead they’re wee figures representing the army of Scotland, under King Robert I, and King Edward II’s English hordes at the Battle of Bannockburn (although I have to admit that apart from “Black Douglas” there’s no diversity or enrichment among the ranks).

    Still, it shouldn’t be a problem, since Scots v. English is generally accepted as the “right sort of racism.”
    ;¬)

    1. You probably meant to say the Scottish Hordes versus Edward II’s English army…

        1. Well, that’s no way to describe those fine, well-disciplined and gallant warriors in the Scots Army that sallied out to defend hearth and home against the invading Saxon horde,who were intent on carrying fire and the sword into Scotland in a campaign of pillage and rapine.

          1. I used to know a Scottish lad when I was at university.. Scottish name and accent, but he was a campanologist who used to spend his long vac going on bell ringing tours of English towns and villages. I didn’t think the Scots went in for change ringing so it was surprise, I think he had been corrupted by going to an English school. I remember a Presbyterian church near one of my schools whose contribution was to blast out distorted bell sounds from a loudspeaker arrangement in the tower every Sunday. I think it was the sound replayed from that BBC interval record.

          3. I used to know a Scottish lad when I was at university.. Scottish name and accent, but he was a campanologist who used to spend his long vac going on bell ringing tours of English towns and villages. I didn’t think the Scots went in for change ringing so it was surprise, I think he had been corrupted by going to an English school. I remember a Presbyterian church near one of my schools whose contribution was to blast out distorted bell sounds from a loudspeaker arrangement in the tower every Sunday. I think it was the sound replayed from that BBC interval record.

    2. Good morning Duncan.
      You are, of course right, but not England v Scotland. That’s the wrong sort of racism. :-))

    3. Feasgar math!

      I have a similar Culloden set that is similarly non-racist. The two sets are represented by the tartan of the Bonnie Italian Price and the redcoats of the Duke of Cumberland.

      The only problem is that the Highlanders wear a white cockade on their bunnets and the English army wear a black cockade on their tricorns. Since the black cockades invariably win, nobody ever complains about racism. 🤣

      This entire post is fictional: I have no such chess set but I like the idea!

    4. “…Scots v. English is generally accepted as the “right sort of racism.”

      A case was won under the 1976 Race Relations Act (BBC v. Souster, 2001) on “…the basis that the English, Scots and Welsh constitute separate groups defined by reference to national origins but not on the basis that they are of different ethnic origins.”

      The complainant was an English television presenter who claimed that BBC Scotland’s rejection of his employment application was racially discriminatory.

    5. I have a Mongolian chess set. The pieces aren’t black and white, either; they are brightly coloured and include camels.

    1. Effing disgraceful and they actually demand the sympathy of the rest of the UK population ?
      Obviously not available for bbc non reporting agency.
      BTW…..WTF is a taybooll ?

    2. Perhaps Mr Grimes could pass his message to Priti Awful – the woman posing as Home Secretary.

    3. Perhaps it’s all a cunning plan to ensure the whole population gets to see exactly how life would be if BLM took over and the police and the prisons were disbanded?

      Edit for the benefit of those who interpret all posts literally.

      1. I bet the woke hipsters and gentrifying leftards living in their million pound terraced houses in the heart of Brixton are delighted with the turn of events
        (snigger)
        More white flight incoming but just like democrats that flee high taxes,crime and violence to Republican states they will take their idiot views with them unchanged and so the cycle runs and runs…………………..

        1. Yeehah.
          Watch house prices in towns about 1 hour from Londonistan go sky high.
          Downsizing …. (cough).

    4. I think that’s what they’re waiting for. Then these racists will cause so much chaos all out war will spring up and they’ll get to say ‘Told you so!’ with the full endorsement of the media.

  59. DT Story

    Twenty-two police officers injured as Brixton party ends in violence
    Footage appeared to show a police vehicle damaged during the unrest, described as “utterly vile” by Priti Patel

    Tut tut you naughty thought criminal Nottlers!

    We must accept that smashing up cars, violence and throwing things at the police are all part of the traditional culture of Brixton. This may not be ‘our culture’ but it is an alternative culture to ours – not a worse one – and the onus is upon us to adapt to this culture and accept it.

    1. Morning all.
      Just a third on the list article with a cursory mention on bbc news this morning. No footage of the violent demonstrators, unlike video footage from other sources.
      Interesting how London ‘Old Bill’ can arrive kitted out and tooled up when there is a ‘far right’ but peaceful demo and beat the crap out of them.
      They must have been aware through social media this was going to happen last night so they sent out ‘the crying squad’.

    3. I must not judge other cultures.
      I must not judge other cultures.
      I must not judge …….

      1. Culture kul’chər, n cultivation; the result of civilisation; the state of being cultivated; refinement in manners, thought, taste, etc; loosely, the arts; a type of civilisation; the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively.

        [Other lexicological descriptions are available.]

  60. Mad Max rides again.

    Maxine Peake’s bizarre George Floyd claim

    STEERPIKE

    Is Israel to blame for the tragic killing of George Floyd by police in Minnesota this year? It’s not a question that has crossed many people’s minds as protests have swept across America in reaction to the unarmed man’s death.

    For certain sections of the left though, a connection with Israel can always be found. It certainly seems that way for the actress and full-on Corbynista Maxine Peake. Peake gave an interview with the Independent today, in which she claimed that:

    ‘Systemic racism is a global issue… The tactics used by the police in America, kneeling on George Floyd’s neck, that was learnt from seminars with Israeli secret services.’

    The Indy itself appeared to endorse this, noting afterwards that:

    ‘Though a spokesperson for the Israeli police has denied this, a 2016 Amnesty International report said that hundreds of law enforcement officials had travelled to Israel for training.’

    Peake’s somewhat bizarre claim originates in a Morning Star piece from 1 June this year, headlined ‘Minnesota cops “trained by Israeli forces in restraint techniques” ‘. Peake is a big fan of the communist publication, and has been a guest editor of the paper in the past.

    Unsurprisingly, there does not appear to be much evidence to back the headline up. The Morning Star piece seems to be solely based on a short article on Minnesota Public Radio, which noted that 100 officers attended a conference hosted by the Israeli consulate eight years ago.

    The conference was not about policing or restraint techniques though, but was instead focused on counter-terrorism. According to reports at the time, the conference only lasted for half a day and mainly looked at techniques to prevent terrorist acts, such as suicide bombings.

    Speakers on the day included ‘a police commander who is speaking from the point of view of the police chief,’ and ‘a bomb tech specialist… speaking about the techniques and the improvised explosive devices that were used by the terrorists.’ No mention was made at the time of Minnesota police learning restraint techniques. In other words, Peake’s view that ‘Israeli secret services’ were involved in George Floyd’s death appears to be a conspiracy theory.

    Meanwhile, the Amnesty ‘report’ cited by the Independent appears to be a blogpost which concerns American police officers travelling to Israel for training. No mention was made in the report of the Minnesota police force.

    None of this appeared to trouble Shadow Education Minister Rebecca Long-Bailey though, who glowing re-tweeted the interview and remarked that ‘Maxine Peake is a diamond.’

    Mr S wonders if Long-Bailey read the article at all. If she had, she might have spotted Peake saying that Labour leader Keir Starmer is ‘a more acceptable face of the Labour Party for a lot of people who are not really left wing’. Awkward…

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/maxine-peake-s-bizarre-george-floyd-claim

    25 June 2020, 1:06pm

    Here’s the Independent piece if any wants to read about the ex-communist (no, I don’t believe her either):
    https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/maxine-peake-interview-labour-corbyn-keir-starmer-black-lives-matter-a9583206.html

    1. Found it! If she took in the mother as well, it’s best not to handle the babies when they are so small as the mother will sometimes eat them if stressed. Best to just let the mother get on with it and not interfere.

  62. It seems that there were riots in Brixton yesterday, perpetrated by the very people whose lives apparently matter more than any others.

    Fifteen police officers were injured. I wonder how many of them were down on their knee(s) the other day (along with the leader of the Labour Party), worshiping the very people who hate them.

    I would hope that the many decent black people would be thoroughly ashamed of their ‘brothers’. But they are probably afraid to speak out for fear of being labelled as racist!

    1. There are always riots in Brixton when the temperature rises above a certain level…

        1. As a youngster I use to love their version of Sunny side of the Street, a 78 rpm played on our first family gramophone.
          It was second hand wind up jobbie, but such a large mahogany structure with a huge lid. I had to sand on a chair to play a record.

      2. Mix in alcohol and drugs and violence is guaranteed.

        The police are truly pathetic.

    2. Unless decent black people – like Candace Owens – show their opposition to BLM and until decent Muslims show their disgust at Muslim rape gangs then things will never get better.

    3. Spot on, Sg.

      This was put up 20 mins ago – not sure why it took so long:

      https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-53176472

      Strangely, in this case one is left to guess the type of resident involved. However, given that the Black Broadcasting Corporation usually makes it known when whitey is on the rampage, I think we are pretty safe in coming to the conclusion that he played no part in the riot this time, and neither was he the cause of it.

  66. Copied from a letter to the Telegraph -Danny Hughes 25 Jun 2020 10:45AM

    In
    this column in the last couple a days some people have mentioned that
    writing letters is a small step to resisting uncritical support for
    BLM. Could I suggest that people write to FIFA, the EPL, the FA, and
    individual clubs advising them that the BLM slogan that has now become
    standard on matchday shirts is in breach of Law 4 of FIFA’s Laws of the
    game, and should therefore incur sanction?

    For those unfamiliar with Law 4, it includes the following:

    “Equipment must not have any political, religious or
    personal slogans, statements or images.” (…) “Players must not reveal
    undergarments that show political, religious, personal slogans, statements or
    images, or advertising other than the manufacturer’s logo.” (…)”The team of a player whose basic compulsory equipment
    has political, religious or personal slogans, statements or images will be
    sanctioned by the competition organiser or by FIFA … A player/team of a
    player who reveals undergarments that show political, religious, personal
    slogans, statements or images, or advertising other than the manufacturer’s
    logo will be sanctioned by the competition organiser or by FIFA”.

    The
    possible defence against the charge that the clubs are in breach of
    Rule 4 is that BLM is not a political organisation. However, on this
    point the most vocal organised group spearheading the British side of
    the movement, does not seem shy about admitting its political aims.

    Two extracts from BLM UK’s Gofundme page are as follows:

    “We’re
    guided by a commitment to dismantle imperialism, capitalism,
    white-supremacy, patriarchy and the state structures that
    disproportionately harm black people in Britain and around the world.”

    “We
    note the comments regarding not being a charity. A charity structure
    would not allow us the freedom and flexibility to do our political work
    in the ways we wish to do them.”

    Tom Goodenough has an article in the Spectator that mentions other aspects of BLM UK’s political agenda

        1. Sorry, Bill. I didn’t see yours when I wrote mine – yours were hidden below the “Show More” line.

    2. I wouldn’t bother. Extinction Rebellion, BLM, and islam are in clear break of the UK’s anti-terror laws. These groups have not been proscribed.

  67. 320618+ up ticks,
    May one ask in the name of health & safety of the innocent general public, aside from politico’s.
    The peoples are told on one hand there is a likelihood of a reemergence of the plague, whilst those politico’s doing the telling are also bringing into the country potential patients by the hundreds, via Dover.
    Would any of the current lab/lib/con supporters / members / voters please tell me are they confident they are supporting a 100% pro United Kingdom party ?

  68. Coronavirus latest news: ‘Major incident’ declared after thousands flock to Bournemouth beaches in heatwave. 24 June 2020.

    Council declares major incident as beaches packed, car parks full and mountains of waste emerge.

    A multi-agency emergency response has been activated by BCP (Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole) Council to co-ordinate resources across the area to tackle the issues.

    Council Leader Vikki Slade said: “We are absolutely appalled at the scenes witnessed on our beaches, particularly at Bournemouth and Sandbanks, in the last 24-48 hours.”

    I’m glad I wasn’t there for the waste emerging! Sounds pretty grim!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/coronavirus-news-lockdown-rules-uk-deaths-vaccine-social-distancing/

    1. Roads have been closed here as well .. all buttons are being pushed .. severe situation .. THOUSANDS have descended here and many are behaving like maniacs.. mostly Asian men driving the most beautiful superb cars , driving down from Leicester and Derby , Luton etc, .. How do we know, well because of their discarded shopping receipts, and the rubbish they left behind!

    1. I saw that earlier and came up with the revelation that this particular display of total and utter ignorance, must essentially be absolute and utter bliss.

      1. 320618+up ticks,
        R,
        This lookalike conservative group in governance
        cannot be faulted in rhetoric but action benefiting the United Kingdom is greatly lacking, excellent
        rubber stampers doing the bidding of others though.

  71. Incident in Bournmouth,
    Crowds of people with nothing to do with BLM causing no problems

          2. Plus butt plugs and dildos to stop them filling up with water and simultaneously be prepared for gay pride?

          3. The council should just drag it all above high water and leave it there for the weekend, if there’s no rain forecast.

            It might ram home to the selfish fools just how disgusting they are.

          5. Love them, except we were caught up in a very violent storm last year traveling by early morning ferry from Paxos to Crete for our flight home. The clouds and the sea met at sea level. Even in the harbour the sea was rough. We all had a job to walk the plank.

          6. The one last week dumped two month’s worth of rain on us in an hour and filled our satellite dish with water.

          12. Indeed, but I doubt it’s much fun when the day trippers are there either.

            Weigh the car on the way in (ho ho) and on the way out.

            Any decrease in wieght gets that amount of liquid animal shit sprayed into the car.

          16. Not much fun for the residents, who will be appalled at the mess, to find heaps of stinking garbage all around the beach.

      2. The whole country has not only been invaded – it has also been proletarianised.

        1. Why are these people so disgusting? What sort of parents did they have? We would never leave filth like that behind.

          1. With the takeout fast food places reopening, we are back to being able to see how far we are from their nearest emporium. Extra large paper cups, fifteen minute drive, large cups, ten minutes and you are almost there when you see the small cups.

        2. If, by proletarians, you are referring to working people (as per the definition) then you are wide of the mark. Most working people are clean, fastidious and hard-working with a pride in their lives, homes and environment, and they possess a strong community spirit.

          You might have meant the underclass, who are the polar opposite of the working class, and who tend to be falsely tarred with the same brush. That level of humanity is anything but concerned about anything but itself. Please try not to confuse the two.

  72. A puzzled pensioner writes:

    When yer plod went dahn Brixton last night, why were they not tooled up in full riot gear?

    They would have been for a peaceful march by former military personnel.

    3. The police have introduced a new test based on the limbo dance.

      Your IQ directly linked to how low you can go in centimetres. The bar is originally set at 90 centimetre and anybody who cannot get under this is suspended from the police immediately. In order to be eligible for promotion a person has to be able to get under the bar set at 50.

  73. Al-Beeb Noos – nothing like a bit of white washing

    ’22 officers injured but none seriously’
    ‘Some vehicles appear to have been targeted’
    “Footage from the scene hasn’t been verified’
    Funny Old World
    Brixton is even nearer than France but yet again the Al-Beeb managed not to have a single reporter or film crew on the scene
    “unverified footage” my arse,it’s all over social media,it’s all over the blogs another epic fail for the Al-Beeb
    Edit
    Scrolling down I see the Al-Beeb have finally covered the story,obviously realising they’re not going to get away with ignoring it

    1. And was Dick Head of the Yard, “Appalled at the violence against her officers”?

    1. Greene King was one of the companies apologising for slavery links and paying Danegeld to BAMEs.

  75. Yesterday there was some poor unfortunate chap pulled unconscious from our marine lake, the emergency services were very quickly on the scene.
    The access is easy and we’re a couple of minutes away from the M5 and yet :-

    An Air ambulance
    A first responder
    5 Ambulances
    The Coast Guard
    The Police
    and The Fire Service

    all turned up in a blaze of blue lights and shrieking sirens

    WTF’s going on?

    2. A man drowned in a local canoe lake. The water is only 2 feet deep. When questioned the police response was they were not allowed to enter the water because it required a specialist unit.

      He was a local homeless man with a drink problem.

      Health & safety rules killed this poor unfortunate.

    3. Earlier on, I posted the Spectator’s ‘Steerpike’ column about Maxine Peake and the Independent article (before the sacking).

      Sometimes events move so beautifully quickly.

      1. My thought too. A shame because Rebecca Long-Bailey, Corbyn’s cheerleader, along with Abbott, Shah, Butler, Lammy and the other racists would have ensured that Labour never regain power.

    5. No doubt she’ll instigate an inquiry using a hoomun riatghts lawyer………oh hang on,….. that was her bosses job

        1. Just look out for a further promotion leading to much commotion. From RLB to a simple DL ?

  77. More from Bournemouth we are hearing that a group of tearaway’s have left the beach and are now wearing kiss me quick hats and looking at saucy postcards, some were even asking for change for the what the butler saw machine.

      2. Ooh Belle! I think Marbella is a bit up-market for your average yob! It has posh boats and villas and stuff!

        2. It’s no fun on the Med, no tides, no pebble beaches, no piers with bingo and penny arcades, buckets and spades, all those people wearing fancy stylish attire and well honed bronze bodies, it’s all so un-British.

        4. It’s no fun on the Med, no tides, no pebble beaches, no piers with bingo and penny arcades, buckets and spades, all those people wearing fancy stylish attire and well honed bronze bodies, it’s all so un-British.

        5. I’ve never been to mainland Spain. The place has never held any appeal for me.

  78. As the Greeniacs are girding their loins again,this is timely

    “One crisp winter morning in Sweden, a cute little girl named Greta woke up
    to a perfect world, one where there were no petroleum products ruining
    the earth. She tossed aside her cotton sheet and wool blanket and
    stepped out onto a dirt floor covered with willow bark that had been
    pulverized with rocks. “What’s this?” she asked.

    “Pulverized willow bark,” replied her fairy godmother.

    “What happened to the carpet?” she asked.
    “The carpet was nylon, which is made from butadiene and hydrogen cyanide, both made from petroleum,” came the response.
    Greta smiled, acknowledging that adjustments are necessary to save the
    planet, and moved to the sink to brush her teeth where instead of a
    toothbrush, she found a willow, mangled on one end to expose wood fibre
    bristles.

    “Your old toothbrush?” noted her godmother, “Also nylon.”
    “Where’s the water?” asked Greta.
    “Down the road in the canal,” replied her godmother, ‘Just make sure you avoid water with cholera in it”
    “Why’s there no running water?” Greta asked, becoming a little peevish.

    “Well,” said her godmother, who happened to teach engineering at MIT,
    “Where do we begin?” There followed a long monologue about how sink
    valves need elastomer seats and how copper pipes contain copper, which
    has to be mined and how it’s impossible to make all-electric
    earth-moving equipment with no gear lubrication or tires and how ore has
    to be smelted to a make metal, and that’s tough to do with only
    electricity as a source of heat, and even if you use only electricity,
    the wires need insulation, which is petroleum-based, and though most of
    Sweden’s energy is produced in an environmentally friendly way because
    of hydro and nuclear, if you do a mass and energy balance around the
    whole system, you still need lots of petroleum products like lubricants
    and nylon and rubber for tires and asphalt for filling potholes and wax
    and iPhone plastic and elastic to hold your underwear up while operating
    a copper smelting furnace and . . .

    “What’s for breakfast?” interjected Greta, whose head was hurting.

    “Fresh, range-fed chicken eggs,” replied her godmother. “Raw.”
    “How so, raw?” inquired Greta.
    “Well, . . .” And once again, Greta was told about the need for
    petroleum products like transformer oil and scores of petroleum products
    essential for producing metals for frying pans and in the end was
    educated about how you can’t have a petroleum-free world and then cook
    eggs. Unless you rip your front fence up and start a fire and carefully
    cook your egg in an orange peel like you do in Boy Scouts. Not that you
    can find oranges in Sweden anymore.

    “But I want poached eggs like my Aunt Tilda makes,” lamented Greta.
    “Tilda died this morning,” the godmother explained. “Bacterial pneumonia.”
    “What?!” interjected Greta. “No one dies of bacterial pneumonia! We have penicillin.”
    “Not anymore,” explained godmother “The production of penicillin
    requires chemical extraction using isobutyl acetate, which, if you know
    your organic chemistry, is petroleum-based. Lots of people are dying,
    which is problematic because there’s not any easy way of disposing of
    the bodies since backhoes need hydraulic oil and crematoriums can’t
    really burn many bodies using as fuel Swedish fences and furniture,
    which are rapidly disappearing – being used on the black market for
    roasting eggs and staying warm.”

    This represents only a fraction of Greta’s day, a day without
    microphones to exclaim into and a day without much food, and a day
    without carbon-fibre boats to sail in, but a day that will save the
    planet.
    Tune in tomorrow when Greta needs a root canal and learns how Novocain is synthesized.”

    1. Don’t be too hard on the girl. I’ve been on the same journey myself, having joined the Ecology Party after the 1979 election and was for a while Constituency Chairman and Secretary before joining the SDP in 1981.

      Like Greta, in my youth, I had apocalyptic visions of where humanity was leading the world. This was the time the ever-so-righteous Jimmy Carter was talking about a “limited nuclear war” in Europe that would no doubt be over by Christmas, and we all instructed to hide from any incoming under the kitchen table with a fireproof identity label attached to our person, so the stats could be kept in order. It was also the time when profligate and ostentatious consumerism became fashionable. I knew very well the world would be stuffed if a billion Chinese decided they could live like Americans. And we were grubbing out the orchards and hedgerows and spraying life to extinction in our New! Improved! prairies, under direction from the business-friendly EU. Yes, I was a militant in 1980, same as Greta.

      Yet, it dawned on me that whatever passion I had burning in my heart, it would be all for nothing unless I could bring the majority of people round. Saving the world by living like monks may work for Boris confronting a global pandemic in 2020, but it was not something thought of in 1980. Hence my decision to join the SDP soon after it was founded, with the intention of making concern for the environment mainstream which the SDP, along with their Liberal allies, was prepared to do.

      1. We don’t have to live like monks. We do really need to find middle way. Not impossible, but the immutable insanity of the greenies pretty much rules it out.

        1. Like all political movements, the Greens are divided between the purists (such as Greta) and the pragmatists. Both are needed.

          The purists make sure the vision is not compromised to oblivion, or to a state where what is actually happening is completely the opposite of what the members thought it stood for. There are plenty of examples of that in other parties, and indeed I might suggest that all of them have lost their vision.

          The pragmatists dwell though on the art of the possible. Better to get something done than nothing at all. The lunatic fringes may be quite sound in their theory, but apart from being a bit of entertainment for the rest of us, are unlike to get much put into practice. Pragmatists can see the whole picture, and must work with people as they find them, not how they think they should be.

          Working together though, wonders can be achieved.

          My feeling was that it is not always necessary to give up reasonable comforts in order to respect the environment. I might even suggest that the quality of life can actually improve, and can do drastically as economies of scale kick in and entrepreneurs adapt to a new market, improving on anything the Greenies can dream up, both environmentally and financially. Simply planting and caring for a line of trees makes life so much more pleasant, especially in this heat. All it requires is to change habits, which is hard to do without a kick up the backside, which is perhaps what Greta can provide. Better her, since she at least has a heart, than some damned bureaucrat without imagination or soul ticking boxes, achieving the worst of all worlds, and getting a lot of bonus doing so.

    2. The Greens don’t care about the consequences – mainly because they don’t understand them.

      Besides, as is usual with the Left it isn’t about the cause, it’s about controlling people.

      2. You could be right. I thought they were on duty, but then realised they weren’t wearing stilettos with matching nail varnish.

  81. Not sure this august body has a clue of what the impacts would be of a wholesale switch to heatpumps, especially as the air to water variety only produce warm, not hot, water. The US use, which is extensive, are all of the air to air variety as houses are built with ductwork, and the units also provide summer cooling. Once it gets properly cold however, auxiliary heat (usually electric resistance heating) is needed as the units rapidly lose efficiency – and electricity consumption soars. As to trying to retrofit them into a tower block, someone should sell tickets for that.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8457481/Gas-boilers-no-longer-fitted-new-homes-2025-climate-advisers-warn.html

  82. Latest breaking News from Bournemouth, man arrested for exposing himself on beach, he blamed his Gran for giving him a knitted pair of trunks for Christmas.

    Police are saying that the sea water is still very cold and the suspect was not transitioning as first thought

    1. The dyslexic agnostic insomniac. Stays awake all night wondering if there IS a dog.

    2. 320618+ up ticks
      Afternoon BA,
      Talking of mattresses I can see the whole indigenous
      peoples of GB taking to the mattresses mafia style eventually, when it is deemed enough is enough.

    2. Well, if you have table leg in a plastic bag the police will shoot you dead (if you are white).

    3. Ah back to the old times in 2001(?) . Brixton riots, the sequel.

      Time to force everyone to go out to work, get them off the streets.

    4. As long as no one complains of an optical in CV19 infections and complains about “racism”

    5. Why put unarmed police in there to get hurt? Just let them kill each other and burn their own homes.

      1. 320618+ up ticks,
        Afternoon N,
        Why not try where appropriate deportation as in
        the whole family unit , innocents on the felons side must suffer the same as innocents outside of the family circle.

          1. 320618+ up ticks,
            Make your bloody mind up N,if will are all tagged
            far right racist human rights would not apply.
            Far right racist would surely quote inhuman rights
            as is their right.
            The end with this issue would justify the means,

      2. Armed and armoured police are only deployed against ‘far right’ thugs.
        Not peaceful ethnics holding a joyful celebration.

    6. According to the DT it was a ‘party’ that got out of hand and a sword was brandished.

      Looks more like a riot to me. Reintroduce the Riot Act and get the police to do their job.

      Clear out the social workers at the top of the Police Farces and reintroduce proper policemen who have come through the ranks. We should start with Dame Dick or should that be Lame Pr*ck.

  85. Anyone seen this from the Salisbury Review?

    Who is this highly uninformed ball kicker and why should we listen to him about school meals?

    ACCORDING to the Independent, 500,000 children in Britain go to school on an empty stomach.

    A quick Google search for ‘People going to bed hungry in the UK’ returns 56million results. You can find article after article with such headlines as ‘Shocking figures showing hidden hunger’ and ‘1 in 4 UK parents skipping meals due to lack of money’.

    According to the Guardian, more than 8million people have difficulty putting food on the table.

    This is surprising given that we also have a well-documented obesity crisis.

    A farm shop near me sells 20kg sacks of potatoes for £7. That works out at 28p per kg, which provides 750 calories, as well as enough protein, nutrients, vitamins and trace minerals to live on healthily.

    As is well known, the Irish, prior to the potato famine, survived on potatoes. There have been more recent studies done where people have lived on nothing but boiled potatoes for many months and ended up far leaner, fitter and healthier than when they started.

    The Sherpas in the Himalayas still live on a diet of practically nothing but boiled potatoes with a bit of salt and chili on the side. Vast pots of the things are boiled. A basket full of cooked potatoes is placed in the middle of the floor and everyone starts peeling them and dipping them in the chili. It is interesting, if you are climbing or doing heavy manual labour, what a vast volume of potatoes needs to be eaten to maintain body weight. You get bored with both the eating and the peeling long before you could possibly get obese.

    A glance at a comparison site shows you can buy a kilo of ‘value’ or ‘basics’ rice for about 45p at every single supermarket in the land, from Lidl to Waitrose. That equates to an amazing 4,000 calories per 45p, albeit with a lot less nutritional value than the potatoes.

    The market price for basic rice is very similar wherever in the world you go. It costs around 45p a kilo in the markets of Kathmandu as well as the aisles of Tesco. A Nepalese person on an average income of £850 per year (and that is an average, so there are many on £425 per year) manages to live and not starve to death paying the same price as someone in a ‘deprived’ area of Britain.

    So why are we told that people are ‘starving’ in the UK, where the average income is £24,000? Are we really saying that low-income people in Britain are poorer than Nepalese peasants?

    Eggs, chicken, carrots – are these really so expensive? Again, comparison with a poor country such as Nepal is instructive. In Nepalese villages, there are no factory-farmed chickens. Each chicken has to be reared and killed individually. Eggs are expensive and not mass produced.

    Here are the comparative prices of some foods in Britain and Nepal:

    1kg of carrots: UK 45p, Nepal 45p

    Small chicken 1.2kg: UK £2.50, Nepal £5

    One basic egg: UK 11p, Nepal 20p

    The figures speak for themselves. Food in the UK is not only relatively very cheap but absolutely very cheap. The results can be replicated all over the world. Jamaica has some extremely expensive food prices, so ham is out of reach of almost everyone. Here, cheap gammon can be had at the almost giveaway price of £2 per kilo. A 670g packet of bacon with scruffy little bits can be bought for £1.50. Nice and cheap to go with the eggs for those 500,000 starving school kids.

    And something else is happening: whilst the supposed 500,000 children are going to school hungry because their parents seem unable to afford an 11p egg and a couple of slices of toast, we have an obesity epidemic. Sixty-two per cent of adults are now classified as overweight compared with 53 per cent in 1998, while 28 per cent of children aged 2 -15 are overweight.

    Can no one who writes these articles in the Independent and elsewhere see the contradiction?

    The problem is not lack of food or the cost of it in this country: indeed food has probably never been so relatively cheap or in such vast quantities.

    But a visit to a food bank of the type that millions are supposed to rely on shows you the problem. It is full of cans of sweet custard and packets of PopTarts and the like. They do not stock raw potatoes because they might ‘go off’.

    The Trussell Trust, one of the UK’s largest food bank charities, makes up parcels of ‘three days’ nutritionally balanced, non-perishable food’. That cuts out all those cheap eggs and potatoes, even though these items actually last weeks. Does tinned fruit in sugar syrup really count as nutritional?

    Here is a picture of another food bank taken at random. It shows a big box of Toffee Crisp at the front!

    The problem is much more basic. People have chaotic lives. They spend money on the wrong things. They do not cook and it would seem that many cannot cook. If the numbers are anything to go by, they cannot even be bothered to buy and cook some potatoes or an egg for their hungry children.

    Food banks should stop, think and go back to the drawing board. Kind as they may be, they are not doing society or their beneficiaries any favours. They are creating a dependent, obese population. Teaching their recipients how to shop for raw ingredients and to cook ‘meat and two veg’ would be more helpful.

    And perhaps they should stock ‘horse’ carrots. These are just ordinary carrots with a bit of mud on them and a touch misshapen. They need scrubbing and take a bit of effort. They cost £1.90 for 12.5kg – that is just 7p for an old pound in weight.

    Oxfam used to run an advert: ‘Give a man a fish and he will feed himself for just a day. Give a man the means to catch a fish and he will be able to feed his whole family for a lifetime.’

    It should be updated: ‘Give a woman a food bank parcel and she will feed her children for a day (as well as making them sick and obese). Give a woman a sack of potatoes, a box of eggs and a cooking lesson and she will feed her children nutritiously for a whole week and won’t need to come back next week

    https://www.salisburyreview.com/blog/who-is-this-highly-uninformed-ball-kicker-and-why-should-we-listen-to-him-about-school-meals/

    1. Being a cynical old person, I might well think that the Trussell Trust, set up to relieve poverty, actually creates a client state to keep people dependant. They had an income of over £11 million in the financial year ending march 2019.

    2. A bit like food aid to Africa. The extra energy provided is used up producing another sprog.

    4. Food would be even cheaper if it were not for the CAP and taxation on transporting goods. Most of the cost is tax. We produce so much the unit cost of the item is almost irrelevant.

    5. Ooh, sexist! Not just women should cook, you know 🙂 Back in my day at school there were lessons entitled “domestic science” where pupils were taught to cook. Nowadays it is “food technology” and I suspect it’s about how to open cans.

    6. He’s right. Food banks ceate dependancy just as aid to Africa does. It creates an underclass of people who haven’t a clue how to cook, or how to feed their kids on healthy food.

      Anyone who lived through the rationing years of the 1950s would know how to cook simple meals with fresh ingredients.

        1. I learnt very little in a year’s cookery lessons at school, but although I’m no great shakes as a cook, I can manage fresh stuff rather than the crap that makes people obese.

          These people need education rather than handouts.

          1. I went to an all-girls school (sec.mod. in the day) first year we learnt how to sew and make our aprons and caps, the second, we had 1/2 day cookery lessons followed by full day in third year. Our final year saw us having housewifery for a full day once a week where we had to make our way by bus to a local facility which was housing for local teacher training college students. We were assigned different tasks each week, gosh…looking back now, it was slave labour!!

          2. We did sewing for the first two years and I made my needlework bag and cookery apron – though my mother had to finish them off for me. She was a much better needlewoman that I ever was. the third year was cookery, and we started off with tea and toast. I didn’t make anything useful. Weeks and weeks of cheese pastry. Then fairy cakes. No proper meals or vegetable or meat cooking. After that it was the two year O level syllabus.

          3. My mother was a seamstress. She was a prolific knitter and would knit my jumpers and my socks. The less said about knitted swimming trunks the better.

            The knitting of socks involved three needles none of which had heads on them viz. pointed at both ends. How the whole thing did not slip off remains a total mystery to me. Her knitting was phenomenal, clickety click, clickety click…..

            My mother resented giving fresh ingredients to my two idiot sisters for their ‘experimental’ domestic science lessons. Occasionally they would return with a few remnants of the cheese straws which they had themselves consumed on the walk home from school. On one famous occasion we were presented with a loaf of bread with a density greater than a similarly shaped lead ingot.

            I dare not mention the rock cakes which would have de-toothed a Tiger attempting to eat them.

          4. My mother was a seamstress. She was a prolific knitter and would knit my jumpers and my socks. The less said about knitted swimming trunks the better.

            The knitting of socks involved three needles none of which had heads on them viz. pointed at both ends. How the whole thing did not slip off remains a total mystery to me. Her knitting was phenomenal, clickety click, clickety click…..

            My mother resented giving fresh ingredients to my two idiot sisters for their ‘experimental’ domestic science lessons. Occasionally they would return with a few remnants of the cheese straws which they had themselves consumed on the walk home from school. On one famous occasion we were presented with a loaf of bread with a density greater than a similarly shaped lead ingot.

            I dare not mention the rock cakes which would have de-toothed a Tiger attempting to eat them.

          5. I had some knitted swimming trunks too – they didn’t bother with tops for little gilrs in those days! My mother had given up knitting socks by then, but I did have a go myself years later at knitting a Balaclava for my husband. It was quite tricky.

        2. Caroline gave both our boys cooking lessons and a copy of the Delia Smith Cookery Book before they went off to university at the age of 17.

          Henry and Jess share the cooking but Christo does all the cooking as his fiancee, Katy, does not know how to cook.

          Having not got married until the age of 41 I became a competent but not spectacular cook. However Caroline does not like my cooking and so she does virtually all the cooking and I am very happy with that as she is an excellent cook.

    8. The “poor” should be issued with The Pauper’s Cookbook. by. Jocasta Innes.

      It’s an excellent little book with masses of good, simple, nutricious recipes.

    9. It’s because they weren’t taught how to cook or budget for that matter. Plus fecklessness and not giving a shit as it’s always someone elses problem.

      Too many takeaways will take a huge chunk out of their benefits.

      1. So will the bills for their phones and Sky and all the other essesntials that they don’t need. Child benefit is meant to be for their children.

        1. I remember some bint complaining that she couldn’t pay her gas bill and wanted an emergency loan from ‘the social’ which of course she would never pay back.

          She spent the rest of the bus journey blithering on to her chum about her new nails and ‘tats’.

          2. I was the youngest of six. Though both my parents worked all hours they couldn’t provide for us all. Shoes from the jumble sale and the like.

    1. Arrested doesn’t mean an awful lot any more, they have hoomun riaghts.
      Our judiciary is now mentally tainted.

      1. 320618+ up ticks,
        RE,
        Playing by the rules has got us into a sh!te bog so as I just posted to N, being a far right racist you are
        obliged & expected to quote and act via inhuman rights during times of hostility.
        Where applicable deport felon / whole family I bet you could safely take your bag of balls into a bookies and come out a winner regarding that
        being the answer.
        would not have to be tried many times I bet.
        Ps
        Even rear exits love their mums.

    2. Just play up to Trump. The PM should just say Good idea Donald, we will also hand out ten year jail terms to anyone defacing statues and monuments.

      It won’t have any effect on the mobs because the police will ignore the new rule but it might help in trade deal negotiations.

      P.S. Free Trade? Despite the new NAFTA, Trump has just announced duties on some Canadian imports so don’t expect a US UK free trade deal to do anything for you.

      1. What Canadian imports?
        And the entire point of Batten’s tweet is that the police and politicians should be enforcing the existing laws over damage and destruction of public property. They’re not, on either side of the pond, unless you think that they shouldn’t be?
        And what does that tweet have to do with Trump?

  87. That’s me gone for this hot, sticky day.

    Have fun this evening.

    A demain.

    1. Just as well that mentally/physically ill immigrants prefer to attack G men and not L women. Unless of course you are a gay man without body armour, reinforced vehicles and armed personal protection guards.

      1. They do seem to be be seeking contempt rather than respect.

        Every director of a football club and every politician in Britain should be compelled to read the Black Lives Matter website carefully and have to answer detailed questions on its content and explain just why and how they agree with its stated aims.

    2. Presumably the mask is to hide identity when yer perlice decide to film the subsequent riot intead of stopping it.

  92. Here’s a snippet which is encouraging:

    Way back in 2007, five men with dual nationality (Franco-Moroccan and Franco-Turkish) were convicted to several years in prison after they were found guilty of associating with terrorists involved in a terrorist attack (Casablanca, 2003, causing the death of 45 people). They were released (early) in 2009 and 2010 but were stripped of their French nationality in 2015 after the law changed and made this possible.

    The five men appealed to the European Court of Human Rights, which has today validated the French authorities’ decision.

    The beginning of a wind of change?

    https://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/la-cedh-valide-la-decheance-de-nationalite-francaise-de-5-hommes-condamnes-dans-un-dossier-terroriste-20200625

    1. France has also summarily deported extemist Imams without appeal
      Here……………………??
      Not so much…….

      1. France has also deported thousands of other undesirables – by dinghy across the English Channel.

    2. It would be nice if that wind of change reached storm force 10 and started to spread.

    3. I think France and Italy have for some time had a more robust attitude to deportation of foreign criminals, being less likely to allow the ECHR to get in the way. The convention has more get-out clauses than some of its critics are aware. The real problem is usually its implementation in domestic law and the attitudes of judges towards it.

    1. I don’t remember the whole country coming together last weekend to praise the police – am I getting dementia?

      2. They really should stop making these inclusive statements. It makes them look detached from reality. The majority of law abiding taxpayers think the police are an utter joke. A bad one at that.

        Dials 999……help..police..i’ve been burgled.

        We can give you a crime number and offer you counseling.

        Aren’t you going to investigate?

        Click…brrrrrrr.

        1. The last contact we had with the police was early in 2013, when my husband saw someone nick our neighbour’s ladder in broad daylight. A police woman came round to investigate. She didn’t stay long as she was worried about being caught in a snowstorm as there were a few flakes falling.

          We found the ladder a day or two later, dumped on the common.

      3. All I remember from last weekend is having dinner with our next door neighbour and coming home to hear that three innocent white guys were stabbed to death in a park in Reading.

        1. And toned people accuse whitey of micro-agression and racism when they are viewed with suspicion.

      1. The police should just deliver a skip load of knives and a skip load of guns then just arrest the survivors. It’s the only way.

        1. Minty: I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.

          Phizzee: Fuckin’ A!

    3. “I’ll be picking up with the Met Commissioner immediately.”

      Has English been replaced as the default language in the UK?

      1. What Priti Flamingo should have said was….

        I will be meeting the person responsible for this outrage and ordering her resignation immediately.

    4. ” The whole country came together to praise our heroic police officers”

      We did? Must have missed that….

      1. Well they managed to make those three Dead Gay Guys vanish from the MSM!

        1. Three Inconvenient Dead Gay Guys.
          Yet they will be rubbing the rainbow flag in our faces at every opportunity, just so long as it doesn’t involve pointing the finger at islam for homophobia.

          1. Don’t forget the Feminists. FGM? Never heard of it! Child Rape! What’s that?,

    1. It is not a major incident. It is the British people saying this is the end of lockdown.

  95. Gawd, talk about sophistry.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8460059/Cambridge-University-backs-academic-tweeted-White-Lives-Dont-Matter.html

    Dr Priyamvada Gopal, 51, who teaches in the Faculty of English at Churchill College, took to the social media platform on Tuesday evening to write: ‘I’ll say it again. White Lives Don’t Matter. As white lives.’

    ‘They were very clearly speaking to a structure and ideology, not about people.’My Tweet said whiteness is not special, not a criterion for making lives matter. I stand by that.’

    Can we all now say: “Black Lives Don’t Matter. As black lives.”?

    1. ‘They were very clearly speaking to a structure and ideology, not about people.’My Tweet said whiteness is not special, not a criterion for making lives matter. I stand by that.’

      Yeah, right.

      1. As a corollary then, blackness is not special, not a criterion for making lives matter. No? Fancy that.

      1. In my day it was good for “hard courses”, engineering, veterinary medicine and Natural Sciences and the like.

        1. My neighbour in Cambridge was a Churchill ‘Mathematics’ Don and a right pain in the arse. He let his property to Cambridge student bell ringers. He was interested in bell ringing and sundials. His name was Frank King.

          After my commute to London I would arrive home to find a dozen bicycles stacked against the wall of my property both obstructing the footpath and damaging the glass in my front window.

          The students would discard their cigarette butts by throwing them into my garden and onto my polypropylene rooflight over my extended dining room.

          I lost any regard for the supposed excellence of a Cambridge University education following those experiences. A bunch of stupid self obsessed hooligans.

          Some idiot fat girl deliberately smashed the wing mirror of my Saab, parked outside my property, following a May Ball. She very considerately lifted the shattered wing mirror and placed it on the roof of my car. I saw this from my front bedroom window early in the
          morning.

          My wife’s nana, who lived on Brunswick Walk, had a beer glass thrown through her window after another May Ball.

          Cambridge was never all it is cracked up to be.

          1. I had a great time there and lived in the city in various locations and Girton for ten years as well as in college and college properties

            Like all university towns it had its share of idiots.

          2. The Churchill people I recall were very grey engineering types, undergrads and lecturers. Just like me. {:^))

          5. Six years later most of them were laying down their lives for King and Country. Presumably, in the meantime, they grew up.

          7. Now there are degree courses in “statue topping” and “permanently offendedness”

          8. The Churchill College buildings are as you say ugly. They were the result of a competition won by Sheppard Robson, a nondescript firm then based in Russell Square but later in the former Piano Works in Kentish Town. I believe they are still going.

            I mention this because it seems to me that the very worst buildings erected in Cambridge in the past fifty or so years were the result of RIBA competitions and mostly awarded to fashionable London architects. It started with Hugh Casson followed by James Stirling, Powell & Moya, Sir Leslie Martin’s protege Sandy Wilson, Howell Killick Partridge and Amis and a few other London based miscreants besides.

            Cambridge went from a distinguished architectural gem to a place polluted by crap architecture in my lifetime. Pety Curie was gone in the blink of an eyelid. The Backs ruined by white concrete monstrosities bearing no relation to the wonderful historic buildings to which they are attached.

          9. Not been to Cambridge since the late 1980s, Corim, but I recall exactly what you describe. Together withe academics with top degrees in arrogance. I’m afraid I didn’t then, and don’t now, rate the gown or the town.

    1. “Gypsies, Roma and Travellers have lived, worked and nicked stuff throughout Britain for over 500 years”

      Fixed.

      1. Yup. The original Roma’s frequented fairs and set up camps on common lands. The Acts of Enclosure where property owners were enabled by law to erect fences around their property was the death knell for their way of living.

        The great English poet John Clare lamented the loss of access to his favourite locations brought about by those Acts of Parliament. He was eventually driven mad but his poetry survives.

        I occasionally come across old Roma camps on my travels. There is a field in Fen Ditton near Cambridge and a site near Stow in the Wold that I would pass. These sites are characterised by the hoop shaped caravans and the tethered horses as you might see at Appleby Horse Fair.

        The problem Travellers are mostly Irish and comprise thieves and vagabonds. They have no respect for our customs, our property or our landscape. They leave filth wherever they go.

      2. Yup. The original Roma’s frequented fairs and set up camps on common lands. The Acts of Enclosure where property owners were enabled by law to erect fences around their property was the death knell for their way of living.

        The great English poet John Clare lamented the loss of access to his favourite locations brought about by those Acts of Parliament. He was eventually driven mad but his poetry survives.

        I occasionally come across old Roma camps on my travels. There is a field in Fen Ditton near Cambridge and a site near Stow in the Wold that I would pass. These sites are characterised by the hoop shaped caravans and the tethered horses as you might see at Appleby Horse Fair.

        The problem Travellers are mostly Irish and comprise thieves and vagabonds. They have no respect for our customs, our property or our landscape. They leave filth wherever they go.

      3. Yup. The original Roma’s frequented fairs and set up camps on common lands. The Acts of Enclosure where property owners were enabled by law to erect fences around their property was the death knell for their way of living.

        The great English poet John Clare lamented the loss of access to his favourite locations brought about by those Acts of Parliament. He was eventually driven mad but his poetry survives.

        I occasionally come across old Roma camps on my travels. There is a field in Fen Ditton near Cambridge and a site near Stow in the Wold that I would pass. These sites are characterised by the hoop shaped caravans and the tethered horses as you might see at Appleby Horse Fair.

        The problem Travellers are mostly Irish and comprise thieves and vagabonds. They have no respect for our customs, our property or our landscape. They leave filth wherever they go.

        1. We used to have a gypsy/Roma family with their traditional painted caravan and horses pass by our way fairly regularly. There was a place at a crossroads where they could camp for a couple of weeks usually with space to graze the horses. The woman told me they followed a traditional route from somewhere on the south coast up to the Midlands (can’t remeber the details now). They never left any mess, just a neat circle of ash from their campfire. If I were them I wouldn’t want to be lumped together with pikeys and tavellers.

    2. He is right about Roma who have travelled throughout the UK without causing much bother. There is a long tradition as recorded by George Borrow in his books ‘The Romany Rye’ and ‘Lavengro’. Someone on here made the connection between the Roma language and that of the Eastern European and Indian sects. This is amplified in Borrow’s references.

      He is wrong about Irish and French travellers who pitch up wherever a field access is available, pilfer and steal from the locality and move on to inflict their filthy habits on other unsuspecting folk, leaving tons of detritus and wrecked landscapes in their wake.

      The more I read about Sadiq Khan’s opinions the more convinced I am that the the little man is a stupid, rabid anti-British plant of Saudi Arabia and the useful tool of the globalists.

      1. Uncle Tom, too. See his appearance on Iranian TV. (Can’t find the clip – but some expert NoTTLer will know where it is)

  98. Germans, good at cars, not so good at card companies:

    Scandal-hit payments firm Wirecard has filed for insolvency, causing its shares to dive almost 80%.

    It comes after the German firm last week disclosed a €1.9bn (£1.7bn) hole in its accounts.

    Former boss Markus Braun has since been arrested and accused of inflating Wirecard’s finances to make them appear healthier to investors and customers.

    The firm’s creditors stand to lose billions of euros from the scandal.

    The controversy erupted last week when auditors EY refused to sign off on firm’s company’s accounts, having been unable to locate the missing €1.9bn.

    The Munich based firm, which employs almost 6,000 staff in 26 countries, initially claimed the money was held in accounts at two banks in the Philippines.

    But on Monday Wirecard said the money simply may not exist.

    Investigation widens
    In a statement on Thursday, the firm said its new management had decided to apply for insolvency at a Munich court “due to impending insolvency and over-indebtedness”.

    The firm is also evaluating whether to file for insolvency proceedings for its subsidiaries.

    Wirecard, which was launched as a start-up in 1999, joined Germany’s prestigious Dax 30 share index two years ago at a valuation of €24bn.

    But the company’s shares have crashed almost 100% in the last week, giving it a stock market valuation of less than €400m.

    The Munich prosecutor’s office, which is investigating Mr Braun, said it had now widened its investigation to look at others.

    Former chief operating officer Jan Marsalek is under suspicion and believed to be in the Philippines, according to the Reuters news agency.

    Meanwhile, Mr Braun has been freed on bail of €5m and remains a suspect.

    It filed for insolvency this morning.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-53176003

    1. Well I guess the Establishment has spoken.
      WLM = get the sack
      WL don’t matter = get promoted.
      And Boris presides over this and pretends not to notice it happening!

      1. 320618+ up ticks,
        Evening BB2,
        Been that way especially since Thatcher received the order or the knife, the electorate locked into the party first battle and all the while the anti UK enemas were building on a daily basis.
        Many of the peoples thinking one after the other politico’s were the Savior only once again to find out other wise.
        Once, it went the peoples way, the referendum, it was never allowed to again.

  101. While we must all have some sympathy for the ordinary folk of tourist destinations inundated by armies of slobs, it grates a bit to hear the local authorities complaining. They’ve all gone along with the lockdown nonsense, unquestioningly accepting the measures and implementing them with relish. Can anyone think of any public body or prominent individual that has criticised the strictures? I can’t.

    It doesn’t help to rail at the public, released from their quarantine prisons. The guilty are encamped at SW1.

      2. Bob 3 – they didn’t moan but many were sad at the loss of close relatives.

    2. Mind you, having seen the results of the ignorant townie invaders of the countryside (deaths of livestock due to inappropriate feeding, litter and being chased by family pet dogs who would “never dream of doing any harm”), I am not enamoured of releasing them into the wild.

  102. I suppose after the war there were still those people that enjoyed shouting “put that light out” that lost their platform for bossing other people about and felt very dis-empowered.

    1. My grandfather was an air raid warden. No-one happier than him when he did not have to do that any more. Living near the docks in Southampton, no-one should have had to go round telling people to obey the black out rules, but like today, there were always those who thought they could ignore obviously sensible precautions.

  104. Someone posted here about renewing their driving licence online, at age 70. There is one thing to watch out for. The DVLA automatically moves one or two categories, Cat. D from memory. I think that’s the one about driving minibuses. If you need to keep that licence category you will have to make arrangements.

    1. That’s why it took me six months to get my new licence. Had I renewed online I would have lost my C1D1 entitlement. I used to have a Category A rating (I could drive just about anything, including a steam roller, which I have done in the past) and I wanted to keep that, especially as my campervan is borderline for the car licence limit. I had to take a medical (£75, thank you very much) to prove I’m not going to drop dead at the wheel between the time I was 69 and 364 days and the day I turned 70.

      1. Here you can usually drive an RV of any size on a car license. A few states do require special licenses on very large RV’s, but they are not difficult to get. The manufacturers have done a good job of lobbying, apparently.

        — Jack.

      1. Grunwick, punk rock, the Scottish terror raid on the Wembley goal posts…

    2. I don’t see too much diversity in the one on the left – could that be the difference?

    3. 320618+ up ticks,
      LD,
      “What brought the change” why, lab/lib/con of course
      via the ballot booth.

  106. Boris trying to instill pride in our country by painting the grey government plane in patriotic colours – quite rightly, in my opinion.

    However, I don’t expect that many people know who this lady is. Note her rolled down stocking. Is she having a cup of tea with a neighbour? About to pop into the garden to prune the roses?

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e6f8cdf8d2931b09d78f17b2f1f4d822753e1b2c7a1ddca0a16ed701ea32db34.jpg

    No. She is Her Majesty’s Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary from the Court of St. James to the Republic of Tunisia in a formal meeting today with the smartly dressed Tunisian Minister of the Interior, to discuss cooperation on many important issues such as security and terrorism.

    I may be an old fuddy duddy, out of touch with modern Britain, but I would have thought that the Queen’s representative would want to make a bit of an effort and show some pride in representing her and, by extension, all of us! (Tunisia is a country with which I am very familiar).

    1. “She is Her Majesty’s Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary from the Court of St. James to the Republic of Tunisia in a formal meeting …”

      Her dress – and demeanor – are straight from the House of Frump …

          8. I know of what I speak, pet!

            And don’t talk to me about “chest”. The antibiotics
            haven’t started to work yet…{:¬((((

          9. Well, you WILL be pleased to clear your chest! Take care of yourself and if you can’t then let the MR. She seems to be very good at it! Years of practic,

      2. Oh dear! I have done her an injustice but I still think she should smarten up and actually look as if she is interested in the conversation!

        1. The camera never lies – but it can catch people unawares. She’s probably listening intently.

    5. She probably rolled it down to avoid laddering it when she “took the knee”

        1. The photo may be deceptive, but one leg looks far more “natural” than the other. The sandal leg looks bare, the other looks as if it has nylon..

  107. 320618+ up ticks,
    Has anyone the answer how can we achieve the distancing required by this governance mob when the entry back door is held open by the governance mob employees at Dover, & why do we need more unchecked potential patients, murderers, paedophiles, rapist etc,etc ?
    Someone who supports & votes for them must know.

  108. This doesn’t look good for Boeing.
    https://youtu.be/gvDf0WHyWMs
    The oil & gas industry started with SIL rating for instrument & control loops some 25 yesrs ago. This means that the allowable probability of loss of (safety) function was inversely proportional to the consequence of that loss of function. So, any failure that might kill people had to be demonstrated in design and tested frequently in operation, to have a vanishingly small probability.
    Doesn’t look like they took care of anything other than money. That’s the Douglas takeover effect for you.

  109. Evening, all. A propos the current plague, I came across this in my current reading about the Great Plague of London, 1665: “Records of death were unreliable …. Special hospitals were built or set up …” Evelyn, in his diary, recorded about streets “thin with people” how few people he saw. Boghurst’s Laimographia, a contemporary publication noted, “… in the summer about half that were sick died, but towards winter three parts in four lived”, which implied there must have been some acquired immunity. Plus ça change, eh?

      1. Plealey? Not near here. It’s by Pontesford and Minsterly – well south (but not as far south as Ludlow, which is still in the county ).

      2. Plealey? Not near here. It’s by Pontesford and Minsterly – well south (but not as far south as Ludlow, which is still in the county ).

    4. Daniel Defoe in his Record of the Plague Year reports on the Houses that were shut up, some wealthy people escaped to their country homes, and the majority of the people who died were the poor.

      1. Much the same as recorded by Boccaccio in The Decameron. The rich folk of Florence similarly decamped to the hills to avoid the contagion.

  110. In response to crowded South Coast beaches, I see Mike Hancock contemplated closing beaches on TalkRadio today. Well we did close the beaches and put in lots of barbed wire during WW” (I still recall seeing them as a child on some of N’Land beaches). But, really this is shocking government – a government which doesn’t seeem to have noticed more serious violations of social distancing in recent weeks, accompanied b far more violence. Here are the top 3 BTL comments:

    Patrick Freel 25 Jun 2020 8:15AM
    Funny how BLM gatherings aren’t a risk but sunning yourself on a beach is. No wonder people ignore the advice of their supposed betters.

    Flag167UnlikeReply
    Byron Constantine 25 Jun 2020 8:43AM
    Only the Standard, Sun and Daily Express covering the Brixton riots last night.

    All over social media. Cops run out of another “no go” area. Much like parts of Stockholm and Germany.

    Welcome to Europe in the 21st century.

    Flag132UnlikeReply
    Neil Whelan 25 Jun 2020 7:04AM
    Epic clap for the NHS. ‘Save the NHS’? It’s there to save us! Any chance of a GP appointment for my cancerous growth diagnosis yet or are they still on holiday/off with stress?

    Lots of BAME on that beach maybe the fascist BLM can herd them off to save their lives. Obviously they’ll only do that for black people as they are a racist organisation. On that note, have Labour actually done anything about being the anti-Semitic party?

    Normal average death rates are down for the last 2 months. So overall we’ve had a small blip in death rates which has cost us a fortune. Media hasn’t reported that because they are a bunch of ***** using this opportunity to push the liberal/globalist backed division/diversity message onto us as paid for by that wonderful Mr Soros.

    Any news on kicking out Huawei and making China pay for the havoc it’s caused while growing their own economy?

    Has Bojo got enough mojo back to finish off Brexit properly?

    Tune in next week….

    Flag99UnlikeReply
    M S M 25 Jun 2020 2:05AM
    The concept of keeping public and private lavatories closed ie pubs and shopping centres, is one of the most stupid and bizarre ideas anyone could come up with.

    A plea to ‘open up the economy’ and what on earth are you supposed to do when you need a pee ?

    That phrase, the lunatics have taken over the asylum, couldn’t be more apt.

    Who are these idiots?

    Every living thing needs to pass waste water.

    This is utter madness.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/coronavirus-news-lockdown-rules-uk-deaths-vaccine-social-distancing/#comments

    1. 320618+ up ticks,
      Evening LD,
      I take it that the beach at Dover will receive special treatment as in being paved with handrails and signposted te straight on for welfare office.

      1. Do the newcomers bother making it all of the way to the beach? Jyst jump in a boat and call the UK taxi service.

  111. Latest Breaking News Kier Starmer says that he intends to go after and take on the hard left, Boris has replied that remains unfazed by it.

      1. The Concorde “flappy flag” tail, on an otherwise pure white aircraft, was lovely. Superb graphics. This one the same.

    2. 320618+ up ticks,
      Evening S,
      Fabulous maybe but what is the truth behind the colourful facade in regards to the Country ?
      You cannot decorate over sh!te it shows through in a very short time.

    4. Looks like the kind of paint scheme that British Airways should have had, instead of all that dross they had after they dumped their so called “heritage livery” – which I always liked. I also liked the old BOAC livery – takes me back to my early transatlantic trips.

      2. The first BA livery I didn’t like, The BOAC was elegant, especially on a VC10.
        Nostalgic sigh…

    7. The contract has gone to Marshall Aerospace in Cambridge. Very welcome work for a good British company, always on hand to help successive governments out. They manufactured the nose section for Concord where other larger companies backed out.

      It is absolutely necessary for our country to project a positive image around the world.

      I trust Boris will next sanction the commission of a new Royal Yacht.

        1. Thank you peddy. Apart from having to attend the surgery for a monthly blood test (what a nightmare, albeit of relatively short duration) I have spent the day in the garden, relaxing, quaffing champagne and wine and admiring the roses.

          1. Tht’s my kind of birthday! Hope you had a grand one, Cori – and many more!

          3. My Father managed 72, and was the longest surviving of my male relatives. Hope I get that far, and win some grandchildren on the way. Who knows?

          4. Good evening Mr O. Poppiesdad’s mother told him that the males in the family seldom lived beyond the age of 50, and his own father died at 42 (lung cancer). Four days ago he celebrated his 79th birthday. Every generation is different.

      2. They have been around a very long time, both in road and air transportation.

  114. DT reporting that Pakistani National Airlines have grounded a third of its pilot s over dubious licences. The Air Accident investigators blamed the pilot for the Airbus A320 which crashed at Karachii n May killing 99 people. Unusually quick decision by the investigators

    1. FFS, a third of them, just imagine what they do with forged documents over here.

        1. I need to renew my passport in August and can’t find out anywhere on-line if the burgundy passport is totally replaced by a black one. I also noticed that Tower Hamlets has a Passport office of sorts – why?

          1. It’s rather a lottery. Last I read, they are finishing the Burgundy ones fist, blue should start coming out sometime in the summer. That might well have slipped by now.
            I have a shiny new Burgundy one…

          2. Just buy a cover for it if you don’t get a blue one. I have a nasty burgundy one, but a proper dark blue/black cover that makes no mention of the EU.

  115. Supper tonight…

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/recipes/0/turkish-spiced-griddled-chicken-thighs-coriander-relish-recipe/?WT.mc_id=e_DM1259607&WT.tsrc=email&etype=Edi_FAM_New_ES&utmsource=email&utm_medium=Edi_FAM_New_ES20200624&utm_campaign=DM1259607

    That was fantastic, can’t wait to try the relish with other things. washed down with a NZ SB, but cold beer or cider might have been better. 2 fillets wee enough without side dishes.

    Then nibbled on a Reblochon.

    Finally Dawdies & cream.

    1. Bought the season’s first Norwegian strawberries this afternoon. The other greedy buggers in the family ate the lot before I even got a sniff! Bastards! You can go off people, you know!

      1. That will teach you for snaffling all the cheese and wine. What goes around comes around… 🙂

  116. Our problem isn’t Brighton. It’s Hove

    The rising tide of violence on the streets is a greater threat to the public than a few crowded beaches

    JILL KIRBY

    As temperatures peaked this week, no-one can have been surprised by the scenes of packed beaches, social distancing apparently abandoned as the great British public soaked up the sun. From Brighton to Bournemouth, those cheerful beachgoers decided that sunbathing and swimming will do more for their physical and mental health than staying at home, and they are probably right. The risk of catching Covid in the open air is now miniscule; most children still can’t go to school, and around half the workforce is either furloughed or unemployed, so going to the beach makes perfect sense.

    But the darker side to this summer’s enforced idleness was equally predictable.

    On Wednesday evening, just a few miles [sic] from Brighton, hundreds of teenagers gathered in a park in Hove, openly taunting the police, who intervened as fights broke out. Later that evening, street parties in Brixton erupted into more serious violence, with police cars jumped on and 22 officers injured.

    Elsewhere police have reported a spike in knife crime, with seven serious stabbings taking place in the West Midlands within the last week. The lull in crime that took place during lockdown, which apparently left the police with nothing more serious to do than tell sunbathers to go home, is well and truly over.

    Are the police ready to face the challenge of a summer of unrest? Early signs are not very encouraging. One of the most disturbing images to flash up on our screens during the first Black Lives Matter protests was of police officers running away from the crowd as it turned violent. The desire to show that the British police do not resemble their US counterparts appeared to lead to a situation where showing solidarity with protestors took precedence over keeping order.

    Working with, rather than against, the public, has underpinned British policing since the days it was founded by Robert Peel. But the principles laid down at the formation of Peel’s force in the 1820s included the requirement to “seek and preserve public favour, not by pandering to public opinion, but by constantly demonstrating absolutely impartial service to the law”.

    Such “absolutely impartial service” has been watered down in recent years by the demands of equality and diversity. That should not, however, provide an excuse for the police to stand back while protestors occupy the streets and pull down statues. Scenes from the Black Lives Matter demonstrations left the law-abiding public uneasy about who is really in charge of the streets and parks of our towns and cities.

    That is a question which cannot be left hanging in the air just now. The ingredients for a summer of unrest are all disturbingly present. Most teenagers have been out of school for months and some of them, perhaps not unreasonably, have lost the habit of studying altogether. Their future does not look great. Universities and colleges are closed and the prospects of casual summer jobs, as well as longer term employment, are low.

    Added to this, clubs, gyms and most facilities for organised sport are closed, and socialising indoors is precluded by health guidance. In a desperate effort to reawaken the hospitality trade, the Government is to license pubs and bars to serve drinks on the street.

    It is not hard to see where the combination of enforced idleness and outdoors-only entertainment ends up. For a lucky few, opera on the lawns of Glyndebourne. For the rest, street parties that can easily run out of control.

    Over the last three months, we have been told to stay at home to “Keep safe”. Public compliance has rested largely on the fear of catching Covid-19, a fear stoked by the Government and promoted by parts of the media. Despite the current low incidence of infection, the Government still insists that caution must be our watchword. But it will be a tragic irony if the fear of violence in our towns and cities leaves people cowering at home.

    Police chiefs need to stand with the Home Secretary to show that keeping order on the streets is their priority, and that outbreaks of violence present a bigger threat to our safety than the dreaded virus.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/25/problem-isnt-brighton-hove/

  118. Okay, sit tight and take the brace position!

    One in three pilots in Pakistan has a FAKE flying license, aviation minister reveals amid probe into crash last month that killed 97 people
    263 of Pakistan’s 860 pilots hold fake licences, an investigation has uncovered
    They cheated on their pilot’s exam by paying people to take the test for them
    Shocking find was made amid a probe into a crash in Karachi which killed 97
    Pakistan International Airlines, which operated the crashed plane, has suspended 150 of its pilots with ‘fake’ licences

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8459365/One-three-pilots-Pakistan-FAKE-flying-license-revealed.html

    1. Some one might like to check the licences of a lot of UK cab drivers.
      Or just generally check a lot of peoples driving licences

      1. The types who do so won’t be unduly bothered if they’re caught, they’ll just carry on regardless.

        1. But what if their licence is revoked, wouldn’t that stop them?

          Just asking for a civil servant who cannot think things through.

          1. I’ve just asked another civil servant, who wonders what paperwork is required so he can revoke the non-existent licence.

    2. We should make sure that PIA is the only airline able to fly to and from Pakistan.

        1. Good morning Anne, that was my implication. Also those who have British passports by are really still Pakistani.

    4. Expecting someone to be qualified to do their job, well it’s just sooo waycist.

      2. I worked in a branch of engineering supporting Gas and Oil after my Army days and one thing I quickly learned was that any “Diploma” or “Qualification” from the sub-continent or Africa/Middle East was treated with the utmost scepticism.

        1. Choose almost any profession you like.

          Apart from my first post after university I can’t.recall being asked to show my employers my certificates.
          From then onwards it seemed to be down to accepting my CV and getting previous work references.

        2. There is a whole very profitable business being run in the UK falsifying students qualifications.
          Run by gentlemen of overseas origin.

        1. When I was working in Delhi, one of the local guys I was working with asked me if I wanted an Indian driving licence. I asked about tests, residency, etc. The reply was, “We have a guy we all use to get these things done as we don’t want to waste our time in long queues for anything official.” Just requires the usual wad of rupees to change hands.

          p.s. The company was very definite that I should not end up in an Indian hospital. Instructions were if sick, to get out of the country for treatment – anywhere with “Western” quality of medicine and hospitals. And not worry about the costs of getting there.

        2. When I was working in Delhi, one of the local guys I was working with asked me if I wanted an Indian driving licence. I asked about tests, residency, etc. The reply was, “We have a guy we all use to get these things done as we don’t want to waste our time in long queues for anything official.” Just requires the usual wad of rupees to change hands.

          p.s. The company was very definite that I should not end up in an Indian hospital. Instructions were if sick, to get out of the country for treatment – anywhere with “Western” quality of medicine and hospitals. And not worry about the costs of getting there.

    6. Preliminary investigation into the Karachi crash suggests that the two “very experienced” pilots forgot to bother about lowering the undercarriage….

      2. Its far worse than that! without going into the full horror, they did lower the U/C but retracted it close to the runway. It must have been hard to concentrate on the landing whilst the aeroplane computers were shouting so many warnings about speed, height and terrain. There was a similar incident in India a few years ago, they remembered the wheels but were going so fast it ran off the end. Not quite so spectacular but the passengers did not walk away either.

        1. I picked up from one video reporting on the crash that, to prevent damage to the aircraft, there were systems in place to prevent the undercarriage from being lowered if the aircraft was going above a given speed.
          The flight profile of the first landing attempt shewed the plane was far too high and, to loose that height it had to approach at a very steep angle, keeping it above that speed until it touched down.

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