829 thoughts on “Friday 30 August: Remainers’ outrage is beyond parody after their attempt to take power and defy the referendum”

  1. Former Philip Hammond aide is FROGMARCHED out of Downing Street by police after being accused of LEAKING Brexit secrets by Boris Johnson’s top adviser Dominic Cummings. Mail. 30 August 2019.

    A senior Treasury aide was frogmarched out of Downing Street last night after being accused of leaking Brexit secrets to allies of Philip Hammond.

    Sonia Khan, who was the former chancellor’s special adviser, was allegedly confronted by Boris Johnson’s chief aide Dominic Cummings.

    Morning everyone. I haven’t spotted this story anywhere else yet so it might be a piece of fiction. Still if true it might explain the Darroch and Williamson leaks as well! No prosecutions forthcoming one suspects!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7409193/Leak-fury-No10-Dominic-Cummings-quizzes-former-aide-Operation-Yellowhammer-document.html

      1. When I was down there early July, I was struck by the number of people of Indian/Pakistani appearance at Durdle Door.

      2. Good morning Beautiful Verity

        I know this coastline rather better from the sea. The tidal races at St Albans Head and Portland Bill can prove rather too exciting if one’s timing is wrong. Lulworth is, of course, a very pretty anchorage but it is not very comfortable because of the swell.

      3. Morning, M.

        Durdle Door wouldn’t be quite so popular if they shut it (or kept it ajar!). :º)

    3. The BBC news is now almost Impossible to watch. I do not want to buy a new TV set but if I watch any more of the BBC’s biased lies I shall throw something at the screen.

      I think BJ made an error of judgement in some of his ministerial choices. Can ether Rudd or Morgan be trusted?

  2. Corbyn inciting people to block the streets in response to the roguation of Parliament. Not the sort of behaviour expected from an aspiring PM.

    2. Corbyn is a nasty little Marxist .. he has mingled with the worst anarchists in recent history
      Until a few years ago he sat on the Labour back benches drawing a salary .. He has embraced South American politics , the man is a little control freak who is anti everything that he was privileged to have been part of in society .

      His type will have stunk of skunk and dirty habits in his student days .. he would have been careless with regard to his association with the scummy sections of anti society . That man has a major personality defect

      People like that do not give a tinkers curse about real poverty .. yet they try to ignite and inflame resentment , and take great joy in inciting riot and disruption against the state .

      Those sort of people are dangerous , and will hijack any grievance for their own benefit .

      I feel really fearful now, because things could get out of hand very quickly .

      ( We witnessed the fervour of imported followers when Corbyn visited Tolpuddle a few weeks ago , it was not a nice sight)

      1. They knew all that when they made him Leader of the Opposition. Donald Trump is a crass capricious loudmouth, and was open about it all during the election process, yet they still made him President.

        Democracy is perverse.

        The lesson may be that, after being deceived by the smooth charms of Blair and Cameron and Clegg, disillusioned voters prefer to smell what they are getting.

        1. What on earth are you talking about ..

          Corbyn was put in as a a far left stooge , they assumed he wouldn’t last five minutes , now the perfunctory sniffing Marxist has a cult following by the young as the leftie tatty anti establishment grandfather they never knew !

          1. How wonderful it is in your dotage to be a sex symbol for the young!

            The politics of envy, I think they call it.

          2. I think the young are beginning to desert Labour, according to recent polling. They’ve probably jumped on board the Green/Limp Dim bandwagon.

    3. …but it would be the kind of seditious behaviour we might expect from a leader of the Oppostion who consorts with terrorists.

      Talking of street-blocking and other illegal acts, Toady is in full outrage mode again this morning – when I switched on just after 7am we had a former official from the Speaker’s office condemning the action of the government, a hostile (naturally) SNP MP, and at around 7.20 a Referendum thug, alongside some Labour shadow minister or other, both of them rabble-rousing “hundreds of thousands of people” to turn out and occupy roads and buildings. In other words, inciting as many people as possible to break the law. And all of this in the space of just 15 minutes! Mrs Chuckabutty will apparently be taking the wheel of the outrage bus at 7.50 for another onslaught, courtesy of our state broadcaster. If this is what passes for balance then BoJo’s first task after we are out is to bring the Biased Broadcasting Corporation to heel. Better still, strangle it by ending the licence fee.

      ‘Morning, Clyde.

  3. Morning, all.
    All rained out this last couple of days, so lovely and sunny today – cool, autumnal, soft air. Good to be alive!
    Hope all Y’all have a grandtastic day!
    🙂

  5. Last night we watched “Franco’s Architecture” a film made and presented by Jonathan Meades. I can only assume that the beeboid person who commissioned it is a secret subversive – like Our Susan. No blacks; no rainbows; no political correctness. Just good old fashioned talk.

    Do try to see it on catch up. It was brilliant (whether you like Meades or not).

  6. Dicey situation?

    V. Dicey, however, believed that in certain extreme circumstances the monarch could dissolve Parliament single-handedly, on the condition that “an occasion has arisen on which there is fair reason to suppose that the opinion of the House is not the opinion of the electors..

          2. You’re wrong, Sos, the Parrot knows everything. In fact her standard reply when anyone asks her a question is “That’s for me to know and you to find out”. As far as I can tell, all of the planet’s problems are caused (in her view) by either Auric Goldfinger, Rosa Klebb or Oddjob. :-))

      2. Ach, wee Elsie, an’ awa’.

        I think ye’ll find that ‘Johnston’ is a braw Caledonian version of the more Sassenach ‘Johnson’.

        1. There is world of difference between “Johnson” and “Johnston”, just as there is between Richard Branson and Branston pickle.

          2. I do remember Pan-Yan, Grizzly. But now that I shop (mainly) at Aldi I buy their equivalent brand called “Bramwell’s” with a label very similar to that of “Branston’s”. And now I really must shoot upstairs to bed or your post will result in my spending the next half hour preparing and munching on cheese and crackers covered with Bramwell’s pickle.

  8. Sir – It is clear that the opposition to leaving with no deal is a cover for those wishing to reverse the referendum result and remain in the EU.

    The EU knows this and is relying on them to stop Britain leaving. The Government is now fighting for the people’s Brexit against the EU, the Commons Speaker and the Remainers. What have we come to?

    His Honour Lord Parmoor
    High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire

    What have we come to? This is simply more of the ever-increasing evidence of the progressive stupidity of the human species. If you were a little more observant, your Honour, you wouldn’t fail to notice that the low intelligence levels of your fellow man are plummeting by the second.

    If there were intelligent beings on a nearby planet currently watching the shenanigans of mankind, they would concur that ant colonies had more sense and organisation. Even amœbæ display more intelligence than Homo sapiens sapiens does.

    1. ‘Morning, Grizz.

      “Sir – It is clear that the opposition to leaving with no deal is a cover for those wishing to reverse the referendum result and remain in the EU.” This was precisely the point made by IDS in his R4 PM interview two days ago – and a rare moment when the BBC permitted the counter argument to be heard – despite Quinn’s attempts to shout him down.

      1. ‘Morning, Hugh.

        IDS comes over as being far more intelligent and perspicacious than he ever did during his short tenure as party leader.

        1. A substantial amount of that was due to the Blairite propaganda campaign painting all Tories as sleaze-merchants being taken up by the Press.

        3. Morning G

          IDS was a ghastly leader. He visited our constituency when we were desperate to get a Tory MP into the seat in the bad old Brown /Blair days .
          We escorted him to various safe villages , and lingered as he took photo calls .. He was bland , aloof and had nothing to say for himself , and behaved as if he had a swagger stick under his armpit ! .
          Michael Howard was far more user friendly and amenable as a leader , but had an irritating voice.

          IDS has probably grown up politically .. mellowed , no , keeping his powder dry , yes!!

    2. So what you’re saying (© Cathy Newman?) is that Homo sapiens sapiens, i.e. wise wise man has become a contradiction in terms?

        1. By using the taxonomic term, Homo sapiens sapiens do you follow the latest school of thought that Neanderthals were a sub-species of Homo sapiens i.e. Homo sapiens neanderthalensis? Neanderthals apparently weren’t the rather slow and dim people as often portrayed but were master stone tool makers and had a more developed culture than originally thought. Up to 4% of Homo sapiens sapiens genetic make-up turns out be derived from Neanderthals except in pure bred sub-Saharan Africans. That fact opens up a world of new thoughts and ideas of where, exactly, modern man developed.

          1. I think that latest theory probably has a lot going for it. Having sad that, all research into something that has been putatively extinct for around 200,000 years is going to be mainly speculative.

    3. If you take into account probable globalist financial influences, everything makes perfect sense.

  9. Morning all

    SIR – The wonder is not so much that, with the proroguing of Parliament, Boris Johnson has again confounded those whose prejudice blinds them to his courage and abilities; it is that anyone still takes seriously the outrage of Remainers.

    For them to accuse the Prime Minister of conducting an undemocratic coup so shortly after plotting their own so-called government of national unity – excluding anyone in favour of upholding the largest mandate in British history – is beyond parody.

    After the obfuscation and procrastination of the Theresa May years, thank goodness we now have a leader.

    Tim Coles
    Carlton, Bedfordshire

    1. SIR – At a time when we need cool heads and considered judgment, it is sad to hear political leaders inciting people to take to the streets in protest at the prorogation of Parliament.

      For three years, MPs have warned of the dangers of Leave extremists taking to the streets against Parliament’s actions to thwart the referendum result; but very little has occurred other than limited, civilised protest. Now, some prominent MPs regard civil unrest as a legitimate response, sowing seeds that could yet reap a whirlwind.

      For many, Parliament lost its legitimacy when, after giving overwhelming support to an in-out referendum in 2016, it did everything in its power to nullify the result.

      Parliament is now undermining the last chance of a negotiated deal before turning its firepower against a no-deal Brexit. If it succeeds, our democracy will have died – but not in the way protesters are claiming.

      Rod Barrett
      Bromley, Kent

      SIR – The legality and morality of prorogation can and will be debated and contested, but to insist that it has been done for reasons other than Brexit is unwise and an insult to the intelligence of the electorate.

      Dr David Shoesmith
      York

  10. SIR – Me-mocracy: noun, acceptance of democracy only when the outcome of that process suits an individual or group interest; equally, the dismissal or denial of democracy (to others) when that process does not suit an individual or group interest.

    Paul Flynn
    Standish, Lancashire

    1. SIR – I would be concerned if, amid the sound and fury, any of those protesting were Leavers.

      But to a person, and shouter of “Oh, Jeremy Corbyn”, they all appear to be Remainers, including our “impartial” Speaker. Ride it out, Boris.

      Edward Thomas
      Eastbourne, East Sussex

  11. We had the vote and it was leave, just leave and nothing more. That has to be carried out. Remainers are either self interested or sheep.

    1. Morning JN,
      It was not the sheep that brought us to this pretty pass currently it is people ie the
      electorate, via the voting booth time & again.
      The sheep are completely innocent.

      1. The sheep are destined for cheap doner kebab in Leicestershire.

        They are guilty of failing to run fast enough from those fellows in a white van carrying sharp knives.

  12. Wreck of paddle steamer throws light on British support for Confederacy slave states during US Civil War. 30 AUGUST 2019 • 6:00AM.

    Britain has long been proud of its historically progressive attitude to slavery, frequently pointing to the fact that this country abolished the trade across its territories as early as 1833.

    But beneath the waters of Liverpool Bay lies something that should dent our complacency about this country’s role in the ending of human bondage.

    The wreck of the paddle steamer Leila, which sank on its maiden voyage in 1865, sheds new light on the actions of some British businessmen in supporting the southern slave states of the Confederacy during the US Civil War.

    There is no incident too vague or tenuous that is not dragged up to smother us all in White Guilt. The actions of these Blockade Runners were those of private enterprise and in no way reflected the attitude of the general population of the UK or its government who never officially recognised the Confederacy, even though the war had adverse effects on UK Trade.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/08/30/wreck-paddle-steamer-throws-light-british-support-confederacy/

    1. We all supported the Confederacy. They chose to secede from the Union and the Union used sheer force to bring them back into line.
      Glasgow built ships for the Confederacy as blockade runners. Jefferson Davis visited Glasgow after the defeat, and stayed with the brother of a Confederate officer, born in Edinburgh. who had died bravely in battle. The Scots would take the side of the South for we know about being knocked about by a bigger neighbour. (Of course, we also made money from cotton and tobacco.)
      The reality is that slavery was doomed. The British Preventive Squadron was patrolling the ocean, seizing slave ships from Nigeria to Rio. Liberia had been purchased by Americans as a home for freed slaves in 1847. Agricultural mechanisation had begun. The use of horse drawn reapers released men to fight in the Civil War.
      Regardless of the morality of slavery, progress in efficient farming was certain to bring it to an end within decades.

    1. Morning, Delboy36. The bin-men have just this minute emptied my two overloaded sacks of garden waste, so I am now able to continue weeding the garden, which is one of my major tasks for the day; I plan to install an arbour in my garden once all of the weeds have been removed. Hopefully the location will be cleared by the end of tomorrow, meaning that the arbour construction and installation can start straight away in September.

      1. Yo Elsie

        What sort of boats will you have in it, where is it and what are the mooring fees?

        1. You must have read my mind, OLT. As the nights are getting longer I thought today that It might be a good idea to festoon the completed arbour with a string of sun-activated little lights, i.e. my ‘arbour lights!

      2. I am rubbish at weeding. I hate bending down. So my arbour is replete with weeds and grown over. Over the years, I have cut hazel bushes bending over the stems to make a series of hoops over which I then trailed over weed wild rose, honeysuckle, loganberry, clematis, hop, hazel from the hedge, wisteria, and pretty well anything else that grows out of control in that end of the lawn. I now have a cloister, rather than an arbour, but have put a bench there on which I can sit in the shade and contemplate the weeding.

  15. Ken Clarke: I would support Jeremy Corbyn as PM to block ‘no deal’ Brexit. 30 AUGUST 2019 • 7:27AM.

    Kenneth Clarke, the former Tory Chancellor, has said he would support Jeremy Corbyn as Prime Minister if it was “the only way” to stop a no-deal Brexit.
    Speaking on Sky News, he said: “So long as we were absolutely certain we could keep Jeremy under control and he would not have any chance of implementing any bits of his manifesto, I hate to tell you that I probably would [back him as Prime Minister].

    If ever there was anything that demonstrates Clarkes unfitness to be a Member of Parliament this is it! Once Corbyn was installed in 10 Downing Street with his acolytes around him who would be able to remove him? The reins of power, control of the armed forces and intelligence services would be in his hands. He could have any opposition arrested under Emergency Powers if necessary.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/08/30/ken-clarke-would-support-jeremy-corbyn-pm-block-no-deal-brexit/

    1. “Who would be able to remove him [Corbyn]?” The answer, Minty, is John McDonnell – and in just a short number of weeks, probably.

      1. So in effect he is saying he would not support Corbyn. It is just spin. The conditions he attached would be impossible to meet

  17. People Vote

    I demand a Peoples vote in the following Constituencies as they have a very small majority and people know a lot more about these MP’s now and people may have changed their mind

    (Strange how the MP’s stay quiet on that. You can bet if challenged on it they would waffle on about it being very different and they have o need to face an election)

    North East Fife – 2 votes Stephen Gethins
    Perth and North Perthshire – 21 votes Pete Wishart
    Newcastle-under-Lyme – 30 votes Paul Farrelly
    Southampton Itchen – 31 votes Royston Smith
    Richmond – 45 votes Zac Goldsmith
    Crewe & Nantwich – 48 votes Edward Timpson
    Glasgow South West – 60 votes Chris Stephens
    Glasgow East – 75 votes David Linden
    Arfon – 92 votes Hywel Williams

    1. Are those accurate, Bill? Timpson was ousted by the Labourite Laura Smith in 2017. Her margin of victory was 48 votes.

  18. From yesterday’s business section – some good AEP stuff

    Brexit is vibrant democracy in the raw: it is Europe that risks sliding under authoritarian control
    AMBROSE EVANS-PRITCHARD – 29 AUGUST 2019 • 5:29PM

    Each of us as a private citizen must make our own judgement on Boris Johnson’s thunderbolt.

    We must filter out the noise and “candyfloss” indignation to decide what is legitimate in the unique circumstances of Brexit, where the supremacy of Parliament is trumped by the higher legitimacy of a constitutional referendum.

    Do not forget that Parliament’s rejection of the Withdrawal Agreement is the first time since 1864 that it has refused to accept a treaty. It is on thin constitutional ice itself.

    In my view prorogation – for so long, in this climate – is sharp practice and a political step too far. But it is not a constitutional outrage, let alone a coup d’etat.

    As my colleague Asa Bennett has written, Boris has given the anti-Brexiteers a taste of their own medicine. They have been rustling up every arcane precedent to bend the rules. Boris has hit back in the same spirit. They have lost six working days of Parliamentary time. That is all.

    The headlines across the European media have been predictably Gothic, echoing one side of the internal UK debate without a Fingerspitzengefühl for what is just pantomime and what is not.

    “Thus end democracies,” led Die Zeit. It accused Boris of resorting to the method of “despots”. Deutsche Welle called him a “dictator”.

    I would certainly agree that democracy is at risk – and can die – but not particularly in Britain. For whatever you think of Brexit, you cannot with a straight face call it anti-democratic, unless of course it is ultimately thwarted by those aiming to lock us back inside the cage.

    Can the same be said so confidently of Europe? The EU is composed of democracies (some more deeply-rooted than others). It has democratic elements such as the European Parliament. But it is not a democracy.

    It is a supranational regime guided by a Commission with quasi-executive powers that operates as an ideological priesthood. Belgian and French historians compare it to the European imperial systems of the early 20th century with their hybrid structures and showpiece native assemblies.

    The insidious effect of this centralised power is to bleed the lifeblood of the national institutions. It saps their legitimacy. It infantilises the member states by usurping their functions. This changes them over time.

    As I wrote at the time of the referendum, Lord Sumption (a former Supreme Court judge) gave an elegant description of how democracies die, though as ardent Remainer he fails to see how well this fits the EU itself.

    “They are slowly drained of what makes them democratic, by a gradual process of internal decay and mounting indifference, until one suddenly notices that they have become something different, like the republican constitutions of Athens or Rome, or the Italian city-states of the Renaissance,” ….. Or the once vibrant liberal democracies of Europe in the early 21st century?

    This EU regime is not elected in any meaningful sense. Voters cannot remove it when it persists in error, as it did eight years ago by driving Europe into economic depression and caused levels of youth unemployment long thought impossible in a modern civilized society. Nobody has ever been held to account for these failures.

    Yes the EU is a soft empire, but it ceases to be soft when challenged, as became clear during the eurozone crisis when it toppled the non-compliant premier of Greece (George Papandreou had the temerity to call for a vote on the EU austerity package) and replaced him with a technocrat (a former vice-president of the European Central Bank).

    It happened again in Italy in 2011 when it toppled premier Silivio Berlusconi and replaced him with another technocrat (ex-EU commissioner) who then delivered drastic and self-defeating austerity as demanded by the German finance ministry.

    That episode is revealing. We know from one kiss-and-tell book (Bini-Smaghi) that the decision was made after Berlusconi began to talk of leaving the euro. One former ECB governor told me how these punishment beatings occur: “They threaten governments that misbehave with financial destruction. They cut off refinancing and threaten to kill the banking system. They create a roll-over crisis in the bond market. This what happened to Italy in 2011.”

    A variant of this was done to Greece in 2015 when the ECB raised the pressure against the rebel Syriza government by dialing down liquidity to private banks – illegally, since they had done nothing wrong – until the money finally ran out in the cash machines and Alexis Tsipras capitulated.

    There has never been a proper airing of how the ECB was able to write secret letters to the Italian and Spanish leaders ordering detailed changes to labour and social law, and fiscal policy, and even the Spanish constitution, while holding a gun to their head on bond purchases. We do not know who was responsible for anything because power was exercised through a shadowy interplay of elites in Berlin, Frankfurt, Brussels, and Paris – and still is.

    These methods smack of monetary dictatorship. There was never a whisper of protest from Die Zeit or Deutsche Welle at the time.

    The missionary press corps in Brussels is invariably complicit. When one of their colleagues – a German reporter from Focus investigating EU abuses – was arrested on trumped up charges and held incommunicado as the police went all his notes and computers, and burned all his investigative sources, none rose to his defence.

    When the Commission’s chief accountant revealed abuses in the EU’s internal finances the Brussels press corps closed ranks in silence. It is a curious tribal reflex. Call it what you want but it is not what we in Britain would take for a free press that speaks truth to power.

    Ultimately, the logic of monetary union is incompatible with democratic self-government. It can be made to work over time only by moving to fiscal union, giving Brussels control over taxation, spending, and the core economic policies of nation states.

    Prof Otmar Issing – the disillusioned founding father of the euro – says fiscal union must eviscerate the budget powers of the Bundestag and fellow parliaments. It goes to the essence of what it means to be a democracy, he says, and forgets the lessons of the English Civil War and the American Revolution.

    For me the line was crossed when the EU smuggled through the Lisbon Treaty, enabled by a Merkel-Sarkozy executive stitch-up, after the text had already been rejected by French and Dutch voters in its earlier guise. It is one thing to advance the European Project by stealth and the Monnet method, it is another to override the outcome of a plebiscite.

    And Lisbon matters. It extended the jurisdiction of the European Court to all areas on Union law for the first time (not just Community law), and arguably over everything by making the Charter of Fundamental Rights justiciable.

    Ireland alone held a referendum on Lisbon. When the Irish people voted no, they were made to vote again, just as they were made to vote again when they rejected the Nice Treaty.

    This is the EU method. All votes that go its way are conquered ground, Acquis forever. All votes that go against are to be massaged, reworked, and ultimately recast until they go the right way … until Brexit, the referendum that the EU must reckon with.

    The last three years have been messy for British democracy but have also been intoxicatingly vibrant. The fights have been conducted through Parliament, the courts, the press, and on the streets through passionate but peaceful civic protest. There has been nothing like the Gilets Jaunes here. And let us hope that Boris’s rash move does not precipitate it. In short, British democracy is in rude good health.

    Die Zeit should peel away the layers of obfuscation and euro-Kitsch and look more closely at Europe’s upper level of government: its reflexes and enforcement methods, its accretion of unaccountable power, its co-opted press, and the authoritarian logic of monetary union. That is where democracy is dying. It is half dead already.

    1. Taking out the normal recess periods of the commons the Shutdown by Boris is 4 days That is well within the normal shutdown prior to a Queens Speech

        1. Here is another’s definition that sums TLDR up:

          “TLDR is an acronym for Too Long, Didn’t Read. It’s mainly seen on the web, either at the end or beginning of a long post or in the comments section. It’s quite a common texting abbreviation. If TLDR is mentioned in the post, the point is to provide a summary of the lengthy text so that someone can skip to the TLDR section and get a quick overview of what the story talks about without having to read the whole thing.”

          I am new to this group and found it upon the very good recommendation of another, but I have been online for 30 years now as I was in the right place at the right time when boards such as this sprang up in the UK.

          TLDR is not an insult in itself, and can often be used after someone reads the first few paragraphs and then scrolls down to realise just how long the posting is. I myself have form for typing some long comments when trying to explain something complex. It can be especially used by those not using a computer to read comments, such as a smart phone or a tablet. Long comments can seem to be an unending wall of text on those devices.

          This group has excellent comments in it, but after reading 5 or 6 long ones your eyes can glaze over at seeing another one.

          This comment itself might be too long. So I’ll end the definition there. 🙂

          (I have had a sinking feeling at times when I click on a video clip from a trusted friend and find that the file is 1 hour 30 mins to watch. It is okay if you have that time to spare, but if not then it is TLDW.)

    3. Reading just what the EU apparatchiks managed to do to members of the “club” via financial threats is very worrying: imagine what that shower of crooks could do the UK if we became a colony/vassal of this corrupt union of bullies and parasites. Remainers should take a ‘wake-up’ pill and look at what the EU actually does, not what they, the Remainers, would like it to do.

    4. Die Zeit & most other papers are supporters of the EU, and left-wing to boot (sorry, BOOT). Thus, they piss on Boris and the UK for daring to not follow their instructions.

  19. Man + Beer = Deep, Profound Thoughts!
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0e60c6823eebcb6d8659f0faa2ad3285553a37773e5aaba9b3edb124fb9c51c2.jpg

    I mowed the lawn today, and afterwards sat down and had a cold beer. The day was quite beautiful and the drink facilitated some deep thinking on various topics.

    Finally, I thought about an age-old question: Is giving birth more painful than getting kicked in the nuts?

    Women always maintain that giving birth is more painful than a guy getting kicked in the nuts.

    Well, after another beer and some more thinking, I came up with the answer. Getting kicked in the nuts is way more painful than having a baby; and here’s why.

    A year or so after giving birth, a woman will often say, “It might be nice to have another child.”

    On the other hand, you never hear a guy say, “You know, I think I’d like another kick in the nuts.”

    Case closed, time for another beer. And more thinking

      1. The weird thing is, Stormy, that it depends on both males and females.

        And with another beer and a bit more thought, I might modify your statement, “Lucky for the human race that it doesn’t depend on males homosexuals for its survival.”

    2. Hmmm, not sure about the “…defer the leave date so as to leave in an orderly fashion”. That’s very open-ended.

  21. F1 : It says I must be logged in to post an image. As you can see I’m signed in – How do I log into this new site? Thanks

        1. Than I am at a loss. When you reply, (or comment) do you not have the usual images below the box?

          1. It seems a common problem I get that to. If you click on the image box it says you are not logged in, Could be browser related I am using Edge

          2. Thanks Bill – I always thought you were close to the Edge ( I’m currently on Safari!)

          3. Usual images are below the box but whether I drag and drop or use the landscape selection box it refuses to let me load an image unless I’m logged in!

    2. ‘Morning Stephen.. Are you back at home base? Sorry I didn’t show to assist you up the Caen Hill flight but I have lost your mobile number (at least, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. In reality my ‘phone went kaput and I can’t retrieve your number for another couple of weeks)

      1. No worries zxcv3… I got a free ride up the flight – I didn’t have to open or close a single lock or paddle!

  22. ‘Morning, Peeps.

    “I’m marching to demand a peoples (sic) vote” says the placard in the rather disagreeable photo heading today’s Nottl.

    Where was the holder on the 23rd June 2016, I wonder? Perhaps he’s got a touch of amnesia…

    1. They love using the word People don’t they? People’s vote, People’s Parliament. All very USSR. What was the 2016 vote then, a gerbil’s vote?

      1. Quite so, JK (and good morning).

        Bliar started all this nonsense with ‘the People’s Princess’ (spit) in 1997.

        1. Good morning Sir!

          It’s all very Orwellian, all these shenanigans are aimed to overturn the biggest ‘People’s Vote’ in the history of this country. Just like the double-think in parliament, the MPs suddenly so concerned about upholding ‘parliamentary sovereignty.’ Where were they when the Maastricht, Nice and Lisbon treaties were signing away our sovereignty to Brussels?

          A pox on the lot of them!

      2. Our favourite dominant male gerbil got out and disappeared about the time the nights drew in and we lit roaring fires in the living room all winter.

        We found him alive and well buried deep in the ashes when clearing out the fireplace the following Spring.

        1. Good grief! We used to cook baked potatoes in the ashes – it’s a wonder your gerbil made it.

      3. It’s newspeak, means the opposite. Example: The People’s Democratic Republic”
        Not run for, or by “the people”
        Certainly not democratic
        and a dictatorship.

  25. I am Marching to demand that the Politician’s accept and implement the democratic peoples vote that took place in 2016

    1. Actually, like the “marcher”, I’m sitting down, but I demand we get what we voted for 🙂

  27. Lib Dems hold off SNP to win Shetland by-election

    Lib Dem candidate Beatrice Wishart has fought off a strong challenge from the SNP to hold Shetland in a Holyrood by-election.
    She succeeds Tavish Scott, who had been MSP for the constituency since 1999 in what was Scotland’s safest seat.
    Ms Wishart polled 5,659 votes, ahead of SNP candidate Tom Wills on 3,827, a majority of 1,837.
    The Lib Dems saw their majority more than halved from 4,895 in 2016 as the SNP benefitted from a 14.4% swing.
    With 11,835 votes cast, the turnout was 66.5%, up from 62% in the 2016 Scottish Parliament election.

    2. The Northern Isles have been Liberal since Adam was a boy. Many of the representatives in the past, for example Jo Grimond, were people with principles and honour. Mr Carmichael has been the polar opposite. So it is hardly surprising that the Lib/Dems have lost support.

  28. More Premium stuff…

    Do these media luvvies really believe it’s time to man the barricades?
    JULIET SAMUEL – 29 AUGUST 2019 • 7:31PM

    Remember this. When the coup came, it was the media luvvies, actors and literati who led us to the barricades. “You will not destroy the freedoms my grandfather fought two world wars to defend,” the hero and known kerb-crawler Hugh Grant wrote on Twitter.

    “Weep for Britain,” wrote Stephen Fry. “A sick, cynical brutal and horribly dangerous coup d’état.” (“Ya-boo sucks to you, Frenchie,” he no doubt added, offline). Philip Pullman, the author, suggested dryly that he’d like to hang the Prime Minister from “the nearest lamppost”, but when challenged, amended his preference to deploying “the axe and the block”. Perhaps we should try The Not-So-Subtle Knife?

    These heroes clearly know a coup when they see one. After all, what is the world coming to when free-born parliamentarians must forego more than four days of debating time in which they would no doubt have decided, finally and clearly, after three years of prevarication, what exactly they want to do about Brexit?

    How positively totalitarian it is for the Government to suggest that MPs not be given yet more time to undo the consequences of their own legislative decisions.

    And how utterly sinister – dangerous, terrifying! – that this ancient Mother of Parliaments should be given only one whole week to collapse the Government lawfully in a vote of no confidence, should it wish to do so.

    In a single stroke, Boris Johnson’s foul and despotic regime has revealed that it simply doesn’t believe in MPs’ right to spend yet more time fannying about.

    It is unconscionable 
that Parliament should be given only the briefest of chances to fritter away the days on vainglorious infighting while failing to undo the result of that annoying referendum.

    What kind of a democracy is this?

    It was, of course, left to a friend across the Pond, the former governor of Vermont Howard Dean, to tell it like it is: “The UK tonight is closer to fascism than the US.” To which there is surely only one response – if this is fascism, can the trains please run on time?

    Now, of course, we are very likely hurtling towards the moment reached by any violent coup: a free and fair election.

    This would be the moment when the Government circumvents the lofty cogitations of our political classes and seeks a mandate for its programme from the dreadful mass ranks of voters.

    The real trouble, you see, is that no one has an accepted mandate for anything – neither the “no deal” lot nor the “stop Brexit” crew (though the former are certainly closer to having one than the latter).

    The best way to deal with such a situation is clearly to hand all decision-making power to a Parliament that has a proven track record 
of failing to resolve anything.

    That way, instead of seeing the Government impose its interpretation of Brexit on the country, we could finally let the Speaker speak for the nation and revoke Article 50. Since everyone from Dominic Cummings to Dominic Grieve agrees that the stupid clause should never have been triggered, this can’t fail to unite the country.

    After that, we can replace the Queen with the monarch we all really want: King John Bercow.

    2. Everything is being eaten in the countryside .

      Even little birds are being trapped by netting and eaten as delicacies . Poaching gangs are everywhere, there are so many thieves skulking around , farm equipment, seed, hay , fertiliser , you name it .. The countryside is like a war zone.. One doesn’t even feel safe going out for a Nightjar watch or barn owl / moth/ bat expedition .. There are some suspicious nasty characters out there now. I am not being hysterical, it is true .

      2. Going OT for a moment – our might last night was spoiled by the arrival of a bat in our bedroom at about midnight. I managed to shoo it out back through the window only to have it return about 30 minutes later. This time I trapped it in the bathroom and managed to pick it up and put it out of the window. The little sod had the temerity to bite me!

        I’m now awaiting a sudden change in my dentition…

        1. You MUST have a jab … please.. I went to a bat do a few months ago, and was told jabs are important incase you get an infection ..some even carry rabies … yes true!

        2. True_Belle is quite correct – it is worth getting that bite checked out. One of my earlier romantic interests in life was quite into bats and walking at night to spot them. There is probably nothing at all to worry about, but even if you have been nibbled by one who has something, it will be easily cleared up if they catch it early enough.

          I’d wear cricket or mail gloves before picking up one of the little darlings.

  30. Im getting mighty fed up with this call for a people’s vote.
    Who do they think voted in 2016? Dolphins?

    1. ‘Morning Sos,in that event Farage &Co will eat Boris’s lunch at the next election,probably by splitting the vote and letting some combo of loonies in
      The only thing I trust about Boris is his ego,that we must pray is sufficient

      1. Unless there was a pact, which I think very unlikely, Leave would eat itself.

        I also fear that if analyses I have read are correct, that once Brussels gets the WA and the PD, a new government is bound by them, something that has never been done before, as far as I’m aware.

        1. The WA was agreed as a new treaty without a release clause. May was incredibly stupid as well as duplicitous to agree to that as lawyers have exposed what that means for the Country – vassalage or colony status as the apparatchiks called it. The WA & PD have been pored over and their evil contents widely publicised and too many people now know what the impact of their implementation would mean for them. How is Johnson going to spin the evils away? If he agrees only to give our fishing grounds up he will have lost many, many voters: how many will he alienate if he tries to give the whole Country away? If he is gambling on his popularity and charisma to dupe the voters then he is every bit as dangerous as the secretive May ever was.

  32. No-deal Brexit: Flu vaccine delays ‘likely’

    BBC Fake news in full flow

    The BBC can probably just about legally get away with it. The trick they use is to try to link the delay due to the NHS to Brexit. They do this by assuming that as production of the vaccine is being delayed due to NHS indecision it may be delivered after Brexit and may therefore be possibly delayed but you could equally say there may possibly be a strike next year which may delay it. You can make up endless links that the BBC have done

    Yes there may be delays but that’s because the NHS cannot make there minds up delays in deciding what strains of flu to use in the vaccine. They are also only talking about one company that accounts for about 20% of the supply so why the others appear to be unaffected who knows. I guess we cannot except consistency with BBC fake new

    1. Any MSM report containing the expression “may” or “might” can be dismissed as a lie.

    2. Any bad economic news is because of Brexit. Any good news (if they even report it) is despite Brexit. Pure propaganda. Should be made suscription only.

    2. The difference between dogs and cats is that dogs have consciences and know when they have done wrong and will be in trouble.

  34. Good morning all.
    Bright & breezy.

    Bit of a lie-in after a late night last night.

  35. How Boris Johnson boxed his Brexit opponents in
    Alexander Pelling-Bruce – Coffee House – 30 August 2019 – 8:19 AM

    As a Leave voter, it is satisfying to watch Boris’s Johnson’s bold Brexit plan unfold. The predictable backlash to it – what Jacob Rees-Mogg called the ‘candyfloss of outrage’ – is also an entertaining spectacle, with some of those most determined to stop Brexit resorting to ever lurid analogies to describe the Prime Minister. But why are the Government’s opponents now wailing so loudly? The answer is simple: because they know this week’s prorogation move has boxed them in.

    First, let’s be clear: whatever some of Boris Johnson’s supporters might say, the plan to suspend Parliament is a deliberate attempt to decrease the parliamentary time MPs have to act to pass anti no-deal legislation. But the Government also showed that while it is willing to bend the rules it won’t break them. 14 October was chosen as the end of the prorogation period (rather than the expected 9 October end of conference recess), because it is the latest date to comply with the terms of the Northern Ireland Executive (Formation etc) Act. This Act requires a report to be published on or before 9 October and then motions to be moved within both Houses within five days. Despite the extended prorogation period, the Government will be able to comply with this.

    This makes it clear that the Government is working within the legal stipulations set by Dominic Grieve’s political chicanery, and is responding in kind. So there is nothing unconstitutional or improper here. And if the Commons does not like the move, then it is free to pass a motion of no confidence in the Government. As long as a majority of MPs have confidence in the Government, but disapprove of its Brexit policy, they cannot complain about any legal and constitutional means the Government employs to achieve its objectives.

    Anti no-dealers are boxed in because it looks like they will be forced to use a vote of no confidence as part of their strategy (which, in any case, had always been their best bet). This fact stymies rebel Tories who are unwilling to lose the whip and end their careers in the party, and may keep the numbers in the Government’s favour. Legislative methods alone should now fail because of the time constraints and the tactics that the Government will no doubt use (Lords filibustering, for example) to delay if necessary.

    Of course, if MPs are sufficiently united and determined enough, they can at the beginning of next week precipitate an early election. A Johnson-led Conservative party would go into this boosted by the perception of decisive leadership against those trying to thwart the referendum result. This is vital for the Tories if they wish to neutralise the threat from Nigel Farage and the Brexit party.

    Yet a snap poll being called in the next few days is a less likely scenario. Instead, it seems more probable that we make it to the scheduled Queen’s Speech and EU Council summit on 17-18 October. Here Boris Johnson will hope to achieve a new deal, which seems to be the primary purpose of this move this week. As I wrote on Coffee House earlier this month, prorogation is the surest way to restart the negotiations, as there is no incentive for the EU to negotiate while there is a chance of MPs thwarting no-deal by legislation.

    The question to ask then is what sort of deal is Boris Johnson aiming for? Does Downing Street simply want the backstop removed from the Withdrawal Agreement, or would it seek further changes as well?

    Analysis of Dominic Cummings’s blog posts before he entered Downing Street gives us some clues. While he does not mention the Withdrawal Agreement explicitly or its details, there is a litany of remarks about the negotiations being poor.

    Crucially on 27 March, he criticises those who supported the backstop for “effectively ending the ‘negotiations’”. This implies that his desire is more than removal of the backstop; otherwise surely there would be nothing further to negotiate. There is also another revealing passage at the end of the same post. In a section addressed to Vote Leave activists, Cummings writes:

    Also, don’t worry about the so-called ‘permanent’ commitments this historically abysmal Cabinet are trying to make on our behalf. They are not ‘permanent’ and a serious government — one not cowed by officials and their bullshit ‘legal advice’ with which they have herded ministers like sheep — will dispense with these commitments and any domestic law enforcing them.

    Cummings, of course, is now part of such a serious government. And what this passage means is that it is wrong to view any negotiations – and any resulting deal, before 31 October – as the end of the story.

    At the minimum, the backstop must be removed, or we will leave with no deal. But if the EU offers nothing more, I think it is perfectly plausible that the Withdrawal Agreement without the backstop will be put to the Commons after the EU Council summit. Recalcitrant ERG MPs could then be brought to heel with the guarantee of a tough negotiating stance after we leave. This could include ripping up the very deal that had been agreed.

    What is clear so far is that Cummings, Nikki da Costa (No.10’s director of legislative affairs) and Rees-Mogg have played a brilliant opening salvo in the parliamentary battle. As I suggested might happen, those desperate to block Brexit were successfully lulled into thinking they had more time to act. And if Boris Johnson’s opponents in Parliament really want to thwart his Brexit plan, they will have to avoid falling into the same trap again.

    1. All Boris has done is use the parliamentary tools available to him. The Remoaners with the aid of the Speaker have been doing that for years and breaking normal conventions

    2. Even without the backstop, the WA is unacceptable. Martin Howe’s analysis showed that. The Political Declaration is toxic.

    1. The anti democratic, treasonous activities we have witnessed over last 3 years have made it abundantly clear that parliamentary sovereignty was only ever an illusion of democracy that relied entirely on the electorate entrusting their sovereignty to elected representatives. That trust has now been revealed as fully broken, we no longer have even an illusion of democracy.

      1. It was lost in 73 since then the electorate have been in many respects rubber stamping the
        reigning government actions via the polling booth, in turn the reigning government/s has been rubber stamping the
        eu requirements / orders.

        1. Victim blaming the electorate for being lied to is akin to victim blaming girls for falling victim to the ‘grooming gangs’, and definitely does not do anything to pave the way forward.

          1. You continue to post that ,not I.
            Who else has condoned mass uncontrolled immigration on a regular basis via the polling booth over the years time & again, again, & again ?

          2. Probably 50%+ of the current electorate that you incessantly victim blame were not even born long enough ago to vote again, again, & again.

          3. You mean they vote in ignorance when currently voting ?
            By your reckoning they are brain washed on a
            regular basis plus now being ignorant of past facts.

          4. They are victims of being brainwashed & lied to, which backs up my illusion of democracy statement, all you do is victim blame them, which offers no solution / counter to the brainwashing & lies at all.

          5. Once even twice maybe but no way time after time after time, 12 times in point of fact since we joined the crime syndicate.
            Do you not get the feeling they are putting party first and damn the consequences ?
            Who is running the brainwashing campaign ?
            is it vaz ( AKA jim the washing machine salesman) ?

          6. In common with ‘grooming gang’ victims, victims of brainwashing are not in any way responsible for their victim hood, and neither is a foetus in any way responsible for its mother’s pregnancy.

          8. And yet again, there’s that unable to logically reason, so just resort to insult, which is common to the lefties.

        2. Ah …. those heady days when we believed a British government wouldn’t lie to the electorate over such a serious matter.

  37. OT – a moment of pleasure and satisfaction.

    In Carcassonne there is a history/archaeology society – of which we became members 25 years ago. For several years, I was on the conseil d’administration We gave up about 10 years ago, because we were never here for the meetings.

    One of my co-potagistes is an amateur historian. I mentioned the society to him. He had never heard of it – despite living within 15 miles of it for 65 years!
    I sent him details. He has joined – and is amazed at the intellectual level. Every year there is a Bulletin containing transcripts of the 20 or so lectures. Henri was fascinated and wants all the back numbers that I have!

    It is nice to be able to give something back.

      1. Working as a labourer in the vineyard. Basic education. Discovered that he was bright in his late 50s.

        1. When she was at school, SWMBO was repeatedly told that she was useless at languages.
          After moving to Norway (and a bit of time to get up to speed), she can now hold technical discussions in English, Norwegian, Swedish and Danish, hold restaurant-level discussions andread German, French, and some Finnish.
          Not bad for a failure at languages!

          3. I’ve lived in Sweden for coming up eight years and I am fully fluent in Northern English, pidgin Swedish and double Dutch.

  38. Cadbury’s is mocked for launching ‘Unity bar’ with four different types of chocolate to ‘celebrate diversity’ as social media sarcastically thanks the company for ‘solving racism’
    Cadbury’s released the bar in India on its independence day, August 15
    ‘To celebrate India and her people, because sweet things happen when we unite’
    It features four shades – dark, blended, milk and white – ‘united in one bar’
    It has been mocked on social media and compared with other failed campaigns

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7410219/Cadburys-mocked-Unity-bar-four-different-types-chocolate-celebrate-diversity.html

    3. Do you remember the mutterings from school dinner ladies when we wanted to mix up jam and salad cream to put on our granite pie?

    1. See above my comment about beef. Same applies to biomass.

      If it were limited to coppiced wood, which can be harvested over and over and over again and grown locally, sparing the transportation costs, then there might be some point in it.

      Ben Law, who built his own Grand Designs home from timber grown on Prickly Nut Wood in Sussex, once said that he could coppice a tree, build a house from it, and in thirty years could coppice the same tree and build another house.

  42. For those who enjoy BS, how’s this? I want to know the validity of a tourist visa to the USA, so we can be reasonably sure to book and return whilst the visa is still valid. This is the response from their helpdesk:
    “Thank you for contacting U.S. Visa Service Desk.

    We understand that you have queries regarding the validity of non-immigrant visas.
    Due to our security regulations, we need to ask you to write us your full name, date of birth (in month, day, year order) and passport number, and send us a copy of the information page from your passport in jpg or pdf format in order to assist you.

    FFS!

    1. Probably trying to comply with EU data protection legislation which creates crazy situations like this

        1. B-1 visa then. I think a beefed-up visa entry system is a good idea. We need much tighter screening here.
          I had 25 years of experience obtaining work visas from all over, and sending your passport information page seems small fry, to be honest. I know you’ve worked all over as well.

          1. Yes. No escape, the Saudis knew I’d been to Iran on the other passpost, so the Merkins will too.

    3. I have a US visa stamped in my first ever passport, 1977-1987, which states that I can make multiple visits and is valid “indefinitely”.

      Would that be “indefinitely” for life, or just for the life of that passport?

  43. Given Corbyn and Co etc have been to the EU several times would they care to enlighten us with what proposed deal they have got? because they have not put it to the commons or is it the EU sent them away with a flea between their ears ?

  45. BREAKING NEWS

    Judge refuses to order temporary halt to Boris Johnson’s plan to suspend UK Parliament, ahead of full hearing

      1. Well The Scottish court rejected it . Whilst not binding on the English courts it will probably be taken into account

      2. Before Ed Miliband’s old school on Havestock Hill was knocked down, there were two entrances, one marked “Girls” and the other marked “Boys”.

        When confronted by the choice above, would it be only the gender-confused that would not enter either door, and therefore be spared slaughter?

  47. Watching Greta on her arrival in NY it is difficult not to feel sympathy for a child being so badly abused and used by those who should be protecting her

    But twas ever thus,using children to promote evil messages has a long history

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/64471370bb909adbd841216334a172722af38569df0d77c59802df6d78801322.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/cf684e736ac1dd1f8e68e3554554c25dfa86a146e12286a4c568718cd243c8f4.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/43af83b847756f1d3b2614a01ce74d20035eaa8b98606343f82d8e06ea2d62da.jpg
    Why?/ Because it works so well

      1. Lisle stockings.
        I can remember old ladies wearing them. Presumably they were too old c.1945 to be worth a pair of nylons.

    2. That pigtailed girl on the first picture looks frighteningly like Greta.

      Totalitarian regimes throughout history have indoctrinated children (give me the child and I’ll give you the man and all that). Children are by definition impressionable, idealistic and have no historical context – i.e. they can’t remember or imagine a world that is different to the one they know today.

      Using an autistic child to frighten other children into believing that there is about to be a “mass extinction event” is simply evil. There is no other word for it.

      1. The domestic cat is known to mimic perfectly the cry of a human infant when demanding something; the domestic dog does the same trick with the eyes. The target for this emotional manipulation is much less the children, but rather the adults instinctively hardwired to respond with a nurture-and-protect reflex.

        I actually think Greta is right about the threat to the planet, but I arrived at that conclusion decades before she was born, and without the influence of psychological tricks. While I applaud her clarity of mind, her narrow-mindedness may actually be counterproductive in coming up with a solution.

        I can only do what I can, and boycotting Brazilian corned beef and composting, rather than burning garden waste, are two small but positive things I can do.

        1. I’m all for cutting waste and pollution, cleaner air and less plastic in the oceans. But man-made climate change is a scam, with a ‘green on the outside, red on the inside’ anti-capitalist agenda hiding under all the fluffy save-the-planet stuff.

          1. And I’d always thought it was a true blue wheeze for making money during a recession.

        2. Good afternoon, Jeremy.

          If you let me know much Brazilian corned beef you usually buy, I’ll order the necessary extra to make up for it.

          1. The Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, is a Christian conservative isn’t he? That may have more to do with the faux outrage than any fires.

          2. …..and Evo Morales, Presidente del Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia, is a fully paid up lefty so that makes his fires acceptable and a cause for sympathy.

          5. I thought you might. A lot of redneck Americans must be prepared to bankrupt their own farmers in order to strike a blow against the trees and the injuns.

          6. You may very well think that, but I feel I should point out that I’m neither a redneck, nor an American.

            I am, in fact, a Scottish ‘teuchter’.

          7. So is Donald Trump (he’s very proud of his Scottish roots).

            Do they not have beef in Scotland? There was a pretty little black bull in the farm next door to where I grew up that was forever getting out looking for female company. His breed was ‘Aberdeen Angus’ which I presume is part of Kansas.

          8. Do teuchters come in anything other than Scottish?

            Apparently, my Ayrshire born Great Great Grandmother was adamant that the bagpipe & tartan highland culture has nothing to do with her because she was “…Scots, nae a teuchter!”

          9. … and that illustrates the clear difference between the Gàidheal and the Gall.
            :¬)

        3. Contraception, giving poor communities in Africa and elsewhere the means to improve their lives, reduce human wildlife conflict and stop exploiting endangered wild animals for their body parts, would do more to avoid mass extinctions than any number of virtue signals by Greta and her followers.

    3. Morning Rik,
      The use / abuse of children consequences of mass uncontrolled immigration party policies will also have a lifelong scarring effect on the
      victims, the Jay report will bear witness.
      May one enquire what types support / vote for parties with such policies ?

    4. I found the photos of her looking relaxed and happy while crossing the Atlantic rather disturbing.
      What on earth is going on her homelife that makes bucketing around in cramped conditions on the ocean with strangers bring a smile to her face? I thought autistics were extremely upset by changes of routine and the presence of strangers.

      1. It is just the usual Rent a Mob crowd that turn up for any protest. Not many have turned up though and I suspect that next week when Schools & Colleges etc are back the numbers will drop further

    2. Why aren’t the police clearing the road? Oh I see, they were on a tea-break.

      Pity Boris’ water cannon are not about

    3. “I’m a German citizen … I can’t understand how a democracy can be hijacked by their own prime minister.”

      Of course you can’t understand. You haven’t got a fucking brain, you dim cow!

      Of course, democracy is still alive and kicking in Bruxelles and Strasbourg, innit?

      1. Wasn’t there a German Chancellor who, within living memory, did a pretty good job of hijacking democracy in his country?

  49. Hmm – the placard reads “Put it to the People – Demand a people’s vote – I’m marching [although actually she’s sitting down!] to demand a people’s vote” How many times do these halfwits (or possibly even just quarter wits?) need to be reminded – we had a [expletive deleted] people’s vote; 17.4 million people voted to Leave, and your side [further expletive deleted] LOST! I wonder how many of them are actually in employment?

    2. The MP’s voted against us remaining in the single market and customs union. They voted against taking No Deal off of the table and voted against the only DEAL on the table so logically they Voted for us to Leave without a Deal

      The vote on Leaving the EU was never conditional on a deal. That is just spin being made by those that want to remain

      As for it being a narrow win it was not 4% is a good majority and most UK constituencies voted for Leave

      I have not heard MP’s calling for a peoples vote for those MP’s that have a 4% or less majority nor are they calling for a peoples vote for those MP’s that have now joined another party. Hypocrites comes to mind

    4. And if we had another referendum, would the result be different?

      I think not, because all the well informed are not showing any enthusiasm for a second referendum.

      1. I would suggest we are still not sell informed. The media and Remoaners are still pumping out outright lies and spin such as falling over a cliff. The NHS being sold off and Medicine and food shortages etc

        The reality is that ONLY 12% of our trade is with the EU. We do more trade with Non EU countries than EU countries

        Now 12% of trade is significant but even if we lost all of it, it would not be a disaster , The reality is though most of that trade would remain but we would also see significant growth in our non EU trade

      2. Judging by what some former remainers have said to me (they would now vote to leave), possibly the majority for leave would be greater. Remainers are not immune to popping their clogs, either.

  50. Oh dear,the warmists are having a Glacial Meltdown of their own in the courts,first the fraud Micheal Moore loses in Canada and now this

    “In May 2018, after an academic career of more than 30 years, Peter

    had his employment terminated as a professor of physics at James Cook

    University in Townsville, Australia. Peter had spoken against the

    accepted orthodoxy that climate change was ‘killing’ the Great Barrier

    Reef.

    There’s some absolute rubbish

    being spoken about the reef and people’s livelihoods are being put in

    jeopardy. If nobody will stand up, then this is just going to go on and

    on and on. It has to be stopped.

    Peter’s court case has enormous implications for the international

    debate about climate change, and for the ongoing crisis surrounding

    freedom of speech.”

    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/04/15/victory-climate-skeptic-scientist-peter-ridd-wins-big/
    The judges verdict against the warmists is totally damning

    3. “…because I live almost a thousand miles from the court, I was not able to be there.”

      I’m surprised he wasn’t sacked for that.

    4. It is not a judgement on whether the Great Barrier Reef is being seriously damaged by global warming (which is not the remit of a court of law, but rather should be debated between sceptical scientists) but whether a university is lawful in sacking an academic for expressing an opinion. Even though I personally support the theory than humanity is interfering seriously with the world’s climate patterns, I also support the verdict in this case.

      I would respectfully ask the prof if he doesn’t think global warming is killing off the Great Barrier Reef, then what is?

    1. Shirley there are so many of them, going by MSM coverage, that they could have their very own schools.

      2. You can imagine the rebel in that school who stands up one day and declares “No! I will not conform to your stifling world view! This is madness! I don’t care what Mummy1 and Mummy2 say – I was born a boy and a boy I remain!”

      1. ‘Afternoon, George, I wonder how the ‘inclusive’ guide manages, having to use human, humanity, humankind, human race and manufactured?

        1. ‘Afternoon, Tom.

          The gonadically-challenged pussies who write this bilge evidently have no inkling of what etymology means. In their minuscule brains the only words acceptable are:

          personned
          personhood
          personliness
          person-and-dog
          person-at-arms
          person-eater
          Person Friday
          personhole (and personhole cover)
          person-hours
          personhandle
          Portuguese person-of-war
          personslaughter
          persontrap
          personswear
          person alive
          person-in-the-moon
          person of straw
          person-of-the-match
          Edouard Personet
          personakin
          persoñana
          personatee
          persongle
          persondate
          persondible
          and persongel-wurzel among others.

          My favourite would be: person-personagement.

          One necessary and most welcome change would be womenstruation (and womenses) since they have nothing to do with men.

          The persons responsible need capturing for their own safety.

          1. You can no longer say to me – ” I’ll be with you in a couple of secs…”
            You now say – ” I’ll be with you in a couple of genders ..”

          2. Joking apart, there is absolutely NOTHING that ” I can no longer say”.

            Utterly NOTHING.

      2. We should never mention hens without including c*cks and we must never mention dogs without including b*tches.

        (Without the * in place of the vowel this post would have been automatically removed by the auto-censor)

          1. How did you get away with it? I have had posts with such words automatically deleted. Do you have undue influence in high Disqus circles and if so how did you get it?

    3. I despair, our society is truly broken and I fear we may have travelled too far down the path to perdition to ever recover.
      :¬(

  54. York Roast Co., Salisbury closed after a ‘decrease since Novichok attacks’.

    In a statement, Wayne Chadwick, managing director of The York Roast Co., said: “Since the 2018 Novichok attacks in Salisbury, we have experienced a significant decrease in visitors to The York Roast Co. on Butcher Row and the store has not performed to the required volumes since.

    This guy must have had a near nervous breakdown deciding between Novichok or Brexit!

    https://www.salisburyjournal.co.uk/news/17870651.york-roast-co-salisbury-closed-39-decrease-since-novichok-attacks-39/

  55. Interesting how the BBC keep claiming it is a very large protest when it was no more than a hundred or so of the normal rent a mob that turn up for anything. Look at the pictures and they are all taken quite close up and cropped to cut out the empty space around them

        1. Yo, Elsie.

          What’s “btw”? Below the waterline? :•)

          [My smileys are still the best, no argument, on this forum (or any other) :•) ]

          1. Your smileys are certainly very good, but every time I see one (whether yours or those posted by others) I tend to get a crick in my neck from inclining my head to my left to see them properly! 🙂

          5. ‘Morning, Paul.

            If you incline your head to the right instead of the left, it looks like a boar’s arse.

          6. I obviously don’t spend as much time in close proximity to pigs’ arses as you evidently do, Paul. :•Þ

      2. Its a part of the Brexit Party Fisheries Protection Fleet which will be launched by Nigel in Colchester on Monday

    1. And to think that members of this vacuous generation will one day be in positions of power.

      It makes me glad that I’m entering my dotage!

    4. Make the most of the cheese and grapes.
      There’ll be nothing but mousetrap after Halloween.

    2. ‘Afternoon, Eddy, I get the irony but pray tell an old fart, who be Matthew, Ross, George and Adam?

      I doubt they are NoTTLers.

  59. Apropos all the nanny-state labelling of consumers goods that is foisted upon us these days; you know, labels on bags of peanuts warning us, “This product may contain nuts”; and “use-by” or “best-by” dates on packets, bottles and cans of various foodstuffs; I have found one product unfettered by such stupidity.

    This morning I bought a bottle of Johnson’s Baby Oil and nowhere on the label does it state how many babies were killed so that their fat could be rendered down to manufacture the oil. Weird, that.

    [In case any of the more curious among you were wondering why a senior citizen who has never experienced fatherhood was buying Baby Oil: it is a superior product for keeping the hog’s hair bristles of my art brushes in good condition.]

    2. I have used it for giving massages in the past. Also the baby moisturiser one, although I am not sure of the effect of having skin that soft from head to toe has on someone, as I was the one doing the massaging.

      Ahh, the wild days of youth. 🙂

    3. Good afternoon Grizzly

      If your body is still functioning on all cylinders then fatherhood could yet be a joy in store for you.

      I did not became a father until I was 47 and one of my best friends became a father once again at the age of 65 three years after he had been widowed. He and his lady friend are delighted and proud – their daughter has brought them great joy.”

      1. Good afternoon, Rastus,

        I’ll take your word on that, especially since there are younger great-grandfathers around than me.

        I never had a desire to procreate and still don’t. I’m more than happy enough just producing works of art and craft.

  61. I’m back. Bowls green has been mowed, guttering on clubhouse repaired, new padlock fitted to water controller cabinet etc. etc. Now having a spot of lunch before I take the Springer in the forest for an hour. I’m beginning to realise why I am so fit and healthy for my age. 😇

    1. Well done Delboy. Have you had a good season?
      It’s our Finals Day tomorrow. I’m not in any this year but vw is in the Veterans final at 10am. I’m supposed to be the Umpire tomorrow but my right knee is bu**ered and I can’t get down to measure. Such is life.

      1. Hi gg. The season has been good. I am now the Green Manager and the Facilities Manager. I am vice-captain of the first team and I sit on selection. The main thing is that the body is working well and so I am playing well. Long may it continue.

        1. My word you are busy chap. I’m Club Captain this year and chairman the selection committee. It’s taking up more of my time than I thought it would. Most of our matches are friendlies, Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday and that’s all we select for.
          Long may your health and body allow you to continue.

  63. Good morning, my Friends

    I have been busy with office work which must be done – we shall be publishing our 2020 Easter course dates on Monday so I aplogise if this has already been posted here. Nigel Farage is not after personal power – he is after a proper Brexit:- I am less sure about Boris Johnson:- he seems more interested in Boris Johnson than he is ina proper Brexit.

    Nigel Farage: I would not demand to be made a minister even if I helped the Tories win an election majority

    Nigel Farage is considering not standing general election candidates against Tory Brexit-supporting MPs who will vote down Boris Johnson’s Withdrawal deal.

    Mr Farage also said that if he helped the Tories win a majority at a snap election – possibly as soon as this Autumn – he would not demand to be made a minister.

    He told The Telegraph’s Chopper’s Brexit Podcast: “The way to fight an election is not on day one to think about where you won’t stand but make sure you have got candidates to stand everywhere.

    “That is what we are doing – and then we will make the tactical decisions what the right thing to do is.

    “If Boris Johnson decides that the right thing to do is to go for a clean break Brexit, then we would stand down.”

    Mr Farage, who unveiled a slate of candidates to fight nearly every seat in the country this week at a general election, added: “What’s remarkable is we have 635 people out of thousands that have applied that have made it through, been through the vetting, been through the screen testing and they’re ready to fight the election.

    “And yet – when I say to them, “You must be prepared, if it’s in the national interest, to stand down” they applaud, and that is remarkable.”

    The Brexit Party leader also said that he had no interest in being a minister in a Tory Government.

    Nigel Farage with Christopher Hope on Chopper’s Brexit Podcast
    Nigel Farage with Christopher Hope on Chopper’s Brexit Podcast CREDIT: JULIAN SIMMONDS/ JULIAN SIMMONDS
    He said: “I’m not interested. I know you find this difficult because you think I’m like the rest of them – I’m not. I’m only in politics because I want to change the future direction of this country. Once it’s done I’ll be very happy.”

    On his electoral strategy, he added: “If Boris goes with this awful, miserable European treaty even without the backstop, we will fight against him in every seat in the country and he will not win the election.

    “Brexit is the defining issue of our times. Boris will not win a majority – he won’t be able to – if we fight against him. If he goes down the withdrawal route we’ll do that, but that is not what I want to do.

    “I want Brexit to happen, I want Boris to go for a clean-break Brexit and we will then give whatever support we can give him.

    “We will put country before party and support Boris Johnson, and Boris Johnson with our support would be unstoppable. Not only would he win a big majority, he’d be a hero.”

    Also on the podcast, Remainer Tory MP Sam Gyimah who quit over Brexit said Cabinet ministers who opposed suspending Parliament during the Tory leadership campaign need to “look into their own consciences”.

    Speaking on the podcast, Mr Gyimah said: “I have respect for Dominic Raab – at least he said what he said during the leadership contest but I am extremely surprised by those who only a few weeks ago were putting themselves forward for the highest and most powerful position in this country, arguing that prorogation would be wrong for us and are now silent on the issue.

    “This is the kind of action that gives politicians a bad name… People have to look into their own consciences – that this is an extreme step, they were against it only five or six weeks ago, why are they for it now, why are they silent now?”

    Chukka Umunna, the Lib Dems’ foreign affairs spokesman, called on Matt Hancock to resign following his anti-prorogation stance during the Tory leadership race.

    In a letter to his colleagues dated June 6, the Health Secretary had said: “To suspend Parliament explicitly to pursue a course of action against its wishes is not a serious policy of a Prime Minister in the 21st century.

    “What kind of message would this send around the world about our values when so many have given so much for the rights of democratic freedom?”

    Other guests on the podcast this week are Naomi Smith, chief executive of Best for Britain and Owen Bennett, Whitehall Editor of The Daily Telegraph.

    1. Morning R,
      30000 plus peoples put their trust in “nige” the multi stabber, consequences of which resulted in 30000 ruined UKIP jackets.

      1. I can understand your loyalty to UKIP but UKIP was not achieving anything while the Brexit Party is doing so.

        What do you make of Richard Braine? Apparently he is yet another Old Etonian party leader like Cameron and Johnson.

        .

        1. R,
          In all honesty you cannot make comparisons as such.
          My personal opinion there are faragist followers still at work within the UKIP NEC.
          IMHO one should be loyal to the Country first ,
          then party.
          In all reality peoples have seen the true measure of “nige” but on account of Brexit
          refuse to recognise it even though it is via his own rhetoric.
          I applaud the brexit group, but the “nige” and after 30000 treacherous bites, no thanks.

        2. Nigel abandoned UKIP then stabbed it in the back and bad-mouthed its members. As far as I’m concerned, he’s lost my trust. He will achieve splitting the vote.

    2. “This is the kind of action that gives politicians a bad name… People have to look into their own consciences – that this is an extreme step, they were against it only five or six weeks ago, why are they for it now, why are they silent now?” – because MPs have no conscience.

  64. Court case on Tuesday to decide if HM assented to the prorogation of Parliament after hearing illegal advice of her PM:

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2019/aug/30/politics-brexit-mps-lawyers-and-campaigners-battle-prorogation-live-news

    There is a view that HM may still be able to exert her authority over Parliament without recourse to her PM where Parliament has been unable to legislate for an undertaking by the Government to honour the result of a referendum put to the electorate.

    1. I don’t remember all these legal hearings when we went into the common market and when our PM’s signed up to all the treaties.

          2. ‘Afternoon Anne. Been a bit busy lately, I’ll try to make sure that cynical me shows up a bit more frequently!

    2. Popcorn time at the Graun. They don’t know what’s happening but keep throwing bones into the street for the howling mob to gnaw on.

      Severin Carrell has more on Gordon Brown’s claim that the European Union will offer to withdraw 31 October for leaving the bloc, to “pull the rug” from under hardline Brexiteers.

      Speaking in Edinburgh on Friday morning, Brown said he had been speaking to EU leaders and understood that President Emmanuel Macron of France no longer insisted the UK should be held to that date. Brown claimed Macron had originally insisted on it chiefly to “sound tough” during the European election campaign.

      Speaking at the launch of a new think tank Our Scottish Future, Brown said he accepted EU leaders could not unilaterally withdraw the deadline but were poised to say they would extend it if asked, adding to pressure on Boris Johnson to avoid a no-deal Brexit.

      “I have actually been talking to some European leaders this week. I believe that next week the European Union will withdraw the October 31st deadline and remove the excuse that Boris Johnson has, and the claim that he’s making, that it’s the European Union being inflexible in their timing, and make it possible for MPs to vote [against] no-deal Brexit.”

      His remarks were met with incredulity in Brussels, since there has been no discussion of that strategy at all; it was not on the radar. One official there described them as “bizarre”. The EU requires unanimity of all 27 member states on such a change – a process which involves heads of government involvement, and the UK’s agreement to it.

      During a question and answer session, Brown went further: “My information is that Macron no longer holds to that deadline. It was really introduced for his campaign in the European elections to make him sound tough.

      “And none of the other European commissioners, including the new president of the European Commission [Ursula von der Leyen], I believe will hold to that October 31st deadline.

      “So really the government has two arguments that they want to get across – that it’s a sovereign people against a non-sovereign parliament, and it’s Britain against Europe. Pull the rug from under that argument by saying it’s not Europe that’s being inflexible, it’s up to Britain now, the October 31st deadline can be removed.”

        1. Brown lost the plot years ago. I thought he had been confined to Carstairs Hospital, suffering from a gender identity crisis, insisting that his name was Prudence and he had saved the world.

          They must have let him out.

      2. Dragging Brown and Blair out of a historical cess pit does not do much to support the Remainers.

      3. If that’s the best they can do, wheeling out Brown, probably the second worst PM in history, they are really scraping the bottom of the barrel.

          1. It was a difficult choice with so many to choose from. On balance I thought him the worst with a whole host of joint seconds including Blair, May and Major. I have always disliked Brown intensely since he raided Pensions and turned this country’s pensions from the envy of the world into, amongst, the worst. Followed by his advertising to the world he would be selling our gold then waiting for the bottom to fall out of the market before doing the dastardly deal.

        1. A bit off, a former PM conspiring with a foreign power against the current PM?

    3. Well, those promoting this court case are resisting the authority of the Crown?

  65. Good Afternoon one and all . I sit here outraged, disgusted and generally discombobulated , “ah” you say , “the old Brexit shenanigans finally crashed the feeble Beastly wetware”, no that’s not it. I was delighted to find that one of my all time Ealing comedies “Kind Hearts and Coronets” has been remastered and released for sale, no problem there , they’ve not re-edited or mucked about with it in any form, what flipped my bean was we’re now living in such a risk averse, tigger sensitive don’t offend anyone anytime about anything no matter how inconsequential that film was preceded for 30 seconds by this full screen warning :-

    “Please note that the language used in Kind Hearts and Coronets reflects historical attitudes which audiences may find offensive. For reasons of historical preservation we have opted to present the film as it was originally screened.”

    BAH

    1. I watched it the other day while plugging through a mound of ironing.
      Even the ‘n’ word has survived remastering.
      “I shot an arrow in the air,
      She fell to earth in Berkeley Square.”
      Why can’t I remember that amount of ‘Paradise Lost’?

    2. I’ve just been reading Joseph Conrad’s book, ” The Coloured Person of the Narcissus “.

    3. The “Talking Pictures” channel on tv has that or similar before every old film or series that they screen. I’m often hard pressed to guess what I’m supposed to take offence at, which probably means that my “unconscious bias” is beyond the pale.

  66. Good afternoon, Campers.
    I’m not too sure that my laptop (which has been given severe talking to for being very silly) is quite up to a rousing march after its hospital stay (more like a gentle stroll with a chihuahua who has to sniff everything) …. but here it is, making its entrance:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8p1BedwyFKY

    1. Welcome back Annie! Must have been the new, unrestricted word version of Nottl that crashed it!

      1. Nobody could find out what was wrong.
        Laptop was just in a strop. I’ve stopped its pocket money for a month and give it a Good Talking To.
        On the plus side, I discovered that my wonderfully mad Apple Mac nerd is working again. After a serious car accident he had to take some time out.

    2. Ooops! You’re back earlier than expected……I had better cover my tracks……………………WELCOME.

      2. Welcome back, Our Anne. Hopefully this little offering might give you (and a few others) the sense of purpose that the current Parliamentary machinations are meant to distil.

    1. This image “2 hours later at Windsor” was posted via the Disqus site which still seems to be operational?

  71. Why has the Speaker not been sacked ?

    The speaker is supposed to be an impartial chair of the commons but it is blatantly clear he is not

    1. The main reason it is burning is the were allowed to set fires to clear it. So nothing at all tro do with so called climate change

      1. Is it alright then to burn the forest, providing one cuts the trees down first?

        Your second sentence is a non sequitur.

    2. With any good fortune, the constant judgemental whining of this soulless little robot will drive the moderates of the world to lite up BBQ’s and grill burgers across the globe. Brainwashing propaganda such as hers starts to grate in real peoples lives after a while.

      It will not be long now before she is left to struggle with the fact that her parents used her as a convenient misinformation tool instead of loving her as their daughter.

      1. I am detecting a simplistic “four legs good, two legs bad” judgement here.

        Beef, raised on huge deforested slash-and-burn ranches, with the slurry poured into rivers, the animals injected with antibiotics and growth hormones, and fed on soya harvested from more deforested slash-and-burn monocultures, sprayed a dozen times a year with toxic chemical – is a vile and serious threat to the wellbeing of life on this planet, and I am right behind Greta’s campaign here.

        However, the same beef comprising the grown-on redundant male calves on dairy farms, kept outside on pasture land in mixed farms, where the muck is mixed with straw and flung around the fields to improve the condition of the soil, where stockproof hedges provide a habitat for all sort of beneficial creatures and a few pests (almost certainly predated on and not really a major problem), and can be maintained in excellent productive condition for centuries… I have no reservations about enjoying a BBQ here with a clear conscience.

        1. But it is NOT “Greta’s campaign”, Jeremy. I doubt she could find the Amazon on a map. She simply spouts words fed to her by those that pull her strings instead of allowing her to develop as a damaged child into a damaged adult.

          1. Indeed, she may regret going on strike during geography lessons when hopping on her boat again for the next leg of her journey to Chile.

        2. jeremy – I applaud you sir for completely missing the point that my first paragraph was not meant to be a statement of future unfolding events. It was meant to be a reflection that people do not like to be lectured on subjects that they are already well-versed upon. A trend that I have noticed is embraced by yourself at times.

          My second paragraph, however, is sadly likely to come to pass. But those fanatics on the left have a track record of using children to make their false points.

          1. I will not be silenced in a political forum such as this one.

            As for globetrotting Greta, she’s having a lovely time that many teenagers would envy. I don’t think she’s suffering too much right now.

          2. LOL you think I am trying to “silence you.” My word… That is some complex you have there. 🙂

            I thought that the comments that you have made lecturing others were silly, that is all. I just ignored them as I would from anyone else who typed in that way. But if it makes you feel better:

            “Your opinions are not foolishly simplistic and displaying lack of understanding. Everyone IS out to get you and silence your truth.”

            There. But I would not hold on to that belief for too long. It is not good for you, hampers learning, and makes creating new friendships considerably more difficult. 🙂

            Time for lunch.

          3. She’s autistic for goodness sake – completely focused on her belief that she is right.

          4. I’m appalled at her parents using her fragility in this way.
            As I’ve said before, she looks noticeably happier and more relaxed on a small craft in the middle of the Atlantic and amongst strangers.
            I can’t help wondering why.

        3. Beef farmers in Brazil and the USA are earning their living whether we agree with their methods or not. We don’t have to buy their products – we can continue to buy British beef, raised in a more natural way.

          They probably fart just as much as the Brazilian ones, too.

          1. It was the National Treasure Environmentalist Jeremy Clarkson that came up with the solution to farting cows. By strapping them to roofs of cars with a tube from the rear end to the supercharger, the power output of the engine is improved by one cowpower.

            They’re also approved in India.

    3. Anyone would be led to believe that these fires started by spontaneous combustion rather than by people lighting them.

  73. Why does Disqus think I’m not logged in? I clearly am but every time I try to upload a picture it says ‘You have to be logged in to upload an image’. Tried logging off and on numerous times, no difference.

      1. Have you tried actually closing NoTTL, shutting down your device – and starting again?

          1. Try left clicking on the “blob” next to your user name. Then left click on one of the today’s blue discussions and you should find you are on the page but in the “old style”.
            Enter your comment and upload your picture normally.

            Alternatively right click the blue and open in a new tab, which should keep this page open as well.

            Good luck

          2. ‘Evening, Sos, I wonder if this will work after September 1st when the old system is prorogued into eternity?

          3. If it works.

            I have a suspicion that “old disqus” might close the channels but the facility/concept will still work.

            We shall see.

    2. It could be something to do with your cookies. My laptop is old and slow but I’m not having that trouble.

      1. Could be, but short of blocking them (which I don’t want to do) thenI’m a bit stuck.

        1. Is your browser accepting third party cookies? Disqus is regarded as a third party since our move and I had to set Opera to accept them and I’ve not had any problems until today when I was logged out nearly every time I refreshed the page. Seems to have settled down now.

        2. Someone who knows more about these things than I do said something about accepting 3rd party cookies.

    3. Several people have said the same thing over the past few days. The general answer that I have picked up is that this is caused by either the browser you are using, the settings on that browser, or the platform you are typing on (laptop, tower, mobile phone or tablet.)

      Most people seem to be fine, which suggests that it is the software that you are using that needs to be tweaked / adjusted, rather than a systems failure on Disqus’s end. Not much help I know, but at least you know that you are not the only one.

      1. Thanks for the reply. Using Safari on a MacBook Air. I’m not going to mess with the settings so it looks like I’m stuck.

        Oh well…

          1. Now, if you were using a 2011 Desktop with Windows 10 and Chrome – no problems…

          4. “Now, if you were using a 2011 Desktop with Windows 10 and Chrome – no problems…”

            Isn’t that the equivalent of using an abacus, a slate and scratcher, or a Sinclair ZX whatever?

          5. Seems that there are a lot of problems with Mac and Safari but that’s probably ‘cos you paid a lotta wonga for systems that don’t actively support the ‘Office’ capabilities of Windows 7.

          1. I had to change to Firefox in order to get rid of the great white spaces when using Chrome.

        3. I’m finding that Safari on my iPhone refuses to up-load my photos and saved pictures (as it used to do quite happily) though copy and paste from other sites still works. Chrome on my work laptop is fine.

          1. Hi Sue. I decided to try a different browser. Apple is a bit sniffy about what you can download so I picked one from the AppStore – Maxthon. And it worked!

    4. Try just hitting the X in the corner of the red admonishment.

      I’ve had that, but not about pictures – and it works.

  74. DT BTL Comment:
    Mick Collins 29 Aug 2019 7:53PM

    we should all note that 1162 days after the referendum and with the deadline of October 31st looming up on the horizon our MPs saw fit to go on 6 weeks holiday.

    …and they complain about losing 4 days of debate…

  75. I would really like to slap the face of the man in that photograph with a wet fish.

      1. Oh, goody, George, my take-off of de nïgger man fron Jam aker is OK, ‘cos I is a sambo too!

    4. Well, that is as riveting as staring at wallpaper. What I’d like to know is:

      What will this year’s Swampy do when her 15 minutes of fame are up?

      How will she survive when the ephemeral pinko snowflakes and their MSM sponsors move on to the “next big thing”?

      Stooge doesn’t even start to describe her.

      1. Not a change of grimface, nor any change in the language, so that thick Americans might understand what her placard says.

    5. A deeply disturbed child being abused by those who claim to love her. Shocking. (And I am serious).

  78. Darn it!

    Something went wrong while trying to load this feed. Try again in a little while.

    Please visit Discuss Disqus to learn more.

    2. Beware Gina, he likes women whose name end in “ina”. Indeed, there are some interesting words ending in “ina”. Nudge-nudge, wink-wink.

      2. Mother in law lives in Bath, it is indeed beautiful.
        The view driving into Bath is spectacular.
        The Georgian architecture and bohemian idiosyncrasies
        are still very English unlike many other English cities.

        1. I was at St Christopher’s prep school in Bath from 1954 – 1959. Every Sunday we walked in crocodiles to Bath Abbey for matins. When we got back to school (in North Road where King Edward’s School now is) we were supervised in classrooms while we wrote our weekly letter home to our parents. We were not allowed to seal these letters as they had to be read by the school’s staff to ensure that rebellious spirits such as mine did not tell the truth about what a total dump the school was.

  81. The Saxon Queen has packed her longbow and clothes for Devon
    early start tomorrow stopping of overnight in Somerset ,
    remember waterproofs as this green and pleasant land always
    waters when on holiday.

    1. It has been mainly blue skies all day here in Cornwall, and there are only small bits of high cloud even now as I look out of the window. There is a band of heavy rain tomorrow morning moving from Cornwall across to Devon, but the forecast is 95% clear skies after that passes through at lunchtime / midday. A pleasant 17 degrees tomorrow instead of the 23 degrees that we had at the start of the week.

      That rain should freshen the air once it has gone over. 🙂

      1. We’ll be doing lots of walking so shan’t want it too
        warm anyway:) travelling down to Somerset tomorrow,
        staying overnight in Yeovil and continuing down
        to Devon on Sunday . Looking forward to being
        back down in the West Country and I’ll manage
        to squeeze a late summer cream tea or two in as well 🙂

  82. That’s me for today. Have to go three yards for drinks with neighbours. They are down from Lyon. Yves was born in the house across the road. His dad was a barber who cut people’s hair in what is now the living room. Life was simpler then.

    A demain. I hope…

        2. Strange; my French friends both know and care – they are now for le Brexit and le Frexit.

      1. No worries – our chums – who are abstemious (to say the least) managed to eke out THE bottle….

  85. HAPPY HOUR – One smart pooch.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ba7c1fabc4673732a8b83dcbc668f51c386b7ef2a2ec7673d7519852bc1992f1.png

    I was playing softball with Maud this afternoon when the ball landed on a cushion on the sofa.
    Maud tried jumping up to retrieve the ball but gave up after several attempts.
    I wondered how long would it take her to figure it out……..not long.

    She grabbed the edge of the cushion, pulled it towards her and the ball fell at her feet.
    Genius or wot!

  86. The present composition of the House of Commons has taken three years to show that it is incapable of enacting the people’s democratic vote expressed in the 2016 EU referendum. We need a House of Commons which is capable of doing so.

    Surely Boris Johnson’s must call the remainers’ bluff on their charge that he is being undemocratic. He should be prepared to form an electoral pact with the Brexit Party, proclaim clearly, openly and honestly that they will ensure a WTO Brexit if they are elected and that they will accept the result of an immediate general election however it goes.

    This would flush out those who are truly for and those who are truly against democracy.

    2. I don’t think that is true at all……..

      To me, everything looks absolutely logical……

  88. The case that has been taking to the Scottish courts over suspending parliament seems to be no more than PR because as far as I know the Scottish courts have no jurisdiction over matters in England so the only way it could potentially affect England is if they took it to the Supreme Court ie an English court. AS far as I know if it has been through the Scottish courts it can be taken to the Supreme court without going through the lowers English courts first

      1. Not sure how the courts can rule on it in any case given we have no written constitution and suspending parliament before the queens speech is normal practice and always happens and a 4 day suspension is well within the norm.

  89. If bloody only…………………….

    Great ConWoman article

    “SHHHH . . . don’t tell them, but in

    fighting the prorogation of Parliament British liberalism is about the

    make the greatest, most unforced error since its rise to hegemony began

    more than fifty years ago. By deciding to die in a ditch to defend

    ‘Parliamentary sovereignty’ – by which they mean EU sovereignty – over

    our affairs, they will end both, and with it their grip on British

    politics”

    .https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/is-this-the-liberals-armageddon/

  90. August 30 2019, 5:00pm, The Times
    We’ve entered the glory days of British political nonsense

    Quentin Letts

    Members of wicked juntas do not usually read Jeeves books. Nor do political mobs, mid-protest, generally lay out picnic rugs and sit down to a punnet of grapes, hummus and a promising little glass of something chilled and white. But in recent days we saw both those things, which perhaps goes to show what glory days these are for British political nonsense.

    The PG Wodehouse fan was Jacob Rees-Mogg, leader of the House of Commons. On Wednesday he flew to Aberdeen to see the Queen at Balmoral and secure the prorogation of parliament, which was soon being compared to a South American coup. Did Generalissimo Mogg spend the flight poring over official documents? Did he immerse himself in Machiavelli or the war philosophies of 6th century BC China’s Sun Tzu? Actually, he gobbled down a rather good Wodehouse spoof called Jeeves and the King of Clubs.

    I have been sketching Westminster on and off since Margaret Thatcher’s last weeks as premier and have never known such excess, such vividness, such a glut of preposterously British vaudeville.

    Mrs T and her crew were immortalised by Spitting Image. Tony’s Cronies were sent up by Rory Bremner — Peter Mandelson, such a gift — and, yes, there was something priceless about chillaxed Dave Cameron and his petulant coalition partner Clegg. But none of those eras matched today’s cast of drawling, trouser-flapping, expostulating oddities. Harrumphing hypocrites, plutocratic class-warriors, blithely bogus pieties: we’ve never had such a corking harvest.

    Every day brings some fresh vignette which, if included in an episode of The Thick of It, would have viewers shaking their heads and saying: “This time you have gone too far.” Only yesterday we had that Pooterish blowhard John Major — oh yes — saying he was going to go to law to stop Boris Johnson’s prorogation. Major himself once prorogued parliament for naked political advantage. He also used to complain about former prime ministers acting as “back-seat drivers”. What a prize cant.

    For our present prime minister we have a crumple-shirted, buccaneering bonker who has exasperated his opponents by being the very opposite of the galumphing bungler they supposed. The Opposition is led by a mildewed Marxist who gives every impression he wishes he was hoeing his council allotment. Our supposedly vicious right-wing populist movement turns out to honkily cheerful, more like the provisional wing of the Rotary Club, and anyway, surely no one called Nigel can really be a dangerous Fascist.

    On the rabble Left, those supposedly terrifying tribunes of the proletariat, Momentum, are the ones who sat down to a chichi picnic at Wednesday night’s demo outside parliament. Little pinkies out, comrades. Anyone fancy a top-up of Meursault? And from abroad came helpful (not at all) contributions from D Trump and G Verhofstadt, the latter sporting the greasiest centre-parting since Jaws in the Bond films.

    What pickings, what succulent offerings: Michael Gove, more exquisitely polite than a sultan’s butler; Diane Abbott, a glass-completely-empty dunce; Emily Thornberry, Marxism’s Lady Wobbles; Dominic Cummings, a dress-down Robespierre. We have the hyperventilating Soubry, twitchy as an old broody, pushing her beak so close to TV cameras that you expect her to blow on the lens and give it a polish with her feathertips.

    The supposedly unbiased Commons Speakership is occupied by Bercow, the most unbalanced, baleful, batey-bolshy hobgoblin in London SW1, whose misfortune it was to miss the “coup” this week because he was on a sunbed in Turkey. Let’s hope the waiters moved the kebab sticks out of his reach or someone might have been stabbed.

    Ann Widdecombe’s pinking tones ding our ears from the right. From the left, Sir Keir Starmer stutters and stares at interviewers, gaze unblinking, weird as a blackbird. Then there is the Archbishop of Canterbury, the weak-chinned Etonian ex-oilman, his damp-rag forays into the Brexit minefield making Anglican parishioners cuss like Los Angeles rappers. It’s not exactly ideal at matins when prayers for the episcopacy generate snorts, from predominantly Leave-voting congregations, of “Pray for that blithering fool? You must be *%$#ing joking!”

    All this and more: moist Barry Gardiner, the clench-jawed Raab, a sobbing Grieve and Little Miss Swinson demanding an audience with the Monarch. It’s just as well Prince Philip has been mothballed.

    So, despite all this talk of our politics becoming “toxic”, despite that shrieking Psycho shower-scene music that seems to accompany every BBC News bulletin and despite Philip Pullman making lynch-mob allusions about Boris, and Hugh Grant exploding in F-words all over Twitter, let us marvel. Let us laugh at these maniacs. A spot of Wodehouse really might be the only answer.

  91. Another one has emerged. Unusually at least by the name he appears to be English

    I am still amazed at the almost total lack of checking of these claims. I can understand in the first few weeks but not after that. Are the council seriously saying they had not a clue who was living there, AS far as I know you ned permission from the council to take in lodgers

    https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/grenfell-fraudster-faked-living-in-tower-flat-to-pocket-75k-in-support-a4225501.html

    2. The fire was in June 2017 and he has been given Housing and Support worth £75,225(!) In two years… That is £37,613 a year for doing nothing. I have obviously been in the wrong line of work.

      Oh, I forgot. I have a sense of morality and believe you should earn your own money in this life.

      1. That is 37 grand a year tax free. Maybe 50 a year gross.
        Like you, I think I was brought up badly.

  92. The Home Office is reviewing the process foreign nationals undergo if they want to become UK citizens.

    There is likely to be intense public debate over any changes which could include overhauling the “Life in the UK” test where applicants demonstrate their knowledge of UK laws and history.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-49485612

    Usual BBC article written by lefty Mark Easton!

    1. Stupid questions. I got 6 out of 12 from the test. Old stones and old bones say little about English culture.
      Mind you, do they want to encourange immigrants to live at Stonehenge and read 19th century poetry ?

      1. I think they should be told lots of quitessentially English jokes including puns interspersed with quotations from Shaekspeare and the King James bible and see which ones they laugh at and whether they groan at the puns. Wrong response and they get sent back whence they’ve come.

          1. An Englishman, Scotsman and Irishman went into a pub. Question: what about the Welshman?
            Answer: The Welshman was already inside the pub.

            That should sort the chaff from the wheat.

        1. It’s all I can do to remember yesterday, let alone 200 years ago.
          Why do you think bookmarks were invented ?

    2. T-B Process no 1 – If the person has come into the UK illegally that person should be deported without appeal and no further possibility of being given UK citizenship.

    3. I scored relatively low and I’m quite content.

      Do I really want to be coerced into thinking that to be “British” I need to know anything at all about other recent arrival’s cultures?

    4. I got 11/12.

      Didn’t get the one about the ‘Hindoostane Coffee House’. I googled it and found that it opened in 1810 and closed in 1811 due to lack of business.

      WTF remembers a failed Indian restaurant that closed over two hundred years ago? The question was probably designed for wogs, who pay closer attention to wog things than do the indigenous British.

  94. I see the Remoaners are still trying to claim No Deal was never on the table. It was and always was. Yes it was said it should be quite easy too get
    t a deal with the EU and it would have been had we not had a Remoaner PM masquerading as a Leaver. She turned down a Canada +++ deal which would certainly have been the basis for an acceptable deal with the EU

  95. Another one the Remoaners are coming up with is the PM was elected by 1% of the population well that’s how PM’s are elected How many voted for Corbyn

  96. Lets get this right Parliament is not being closed down. It is in recess until the 3rd and then in recess from the 1oth to the 9th for the Conference season . Boris is suspending parliament until the 13th with the Queens speech being on the 14th so it is utter rote to claim he is closing it down for weeks. It is normal to suspend parliament for few days prior to the Queens Speech

    If the REMOANER were so concerned they could have tried to stop the Conference season close down but they did not

  97. Very cross MB has returned from London.
    While the Unwashed Middle Class Rebels blocked the roads, the police stood by watching and, in several cases, laughing.
    Would anyone care to remind me why we pay tax?

  98. It llooks as though it has been wall-to-wall Brexit shenanigans while I’ve been prowling round a corner of Kent looking at bricks. I won’t bore you with pictures of bricks, but some might appreciate this stained glass by Chagall in a little gem of a church I was drawn to by it’s brick tower (before you ask what was I doing getting sidetracked in churches). https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/aac2f1a42a73004832793b3b76bb9ea5a1757f07eed720c46b8e8eed8ed9969c.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d53cb6a588c010b60e371a1d8dd261f06a319feea1ae502f47eff580665952bb.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a37243ae1316a25609f8144ccd67703229ac11e9e9652f04d78dc49d71f90454.jpg

    1. “The Chagall windows at Tudeley were commissioned by Sir Henry and Lady d’Avigdor-Goldsmid in memory of Sarah d’Avigdor-Goldsmid, their daughter who died in 1963 at the tragically early age of 21, in a sailing accident off Rye. Sarah d’Avigdor-Goldsmid and her mother had visited the 1961 Louvre exhibition of Chagall’s work. The centrepiece of the exhibition were the windows designed for the synagogue of the Hadassah Medical Centre in Jerusalem, depicting the Twelve Tribes of Israel. It was the memory of her daughter’s love of these windows that led Sir Henry and Lady d’Avigdor-Goldsmid to commission Chagall to design windows for All Saints Tudeley.”

      What a sad reason for the windows to be commissioned, but they are beautiful and they help to keep her memory alive. 🙂

      1. I converted Somerhill, the home of Sir Henry and Lady d’Avigdor-Goldsmid to whom you refer, for Yardley Court School between 1989 and 1991. The house is a five bay Jacobean mansion built for the Earl Clanricard and completed circa 1611. It had an equally large Victorian wing with stables added. Parts of the inner courtyards were earlier than the Jacobean build. Turner painted it viewed across the lake.

        It was in very poor condition. The Jacobean build was in danger of collapse by years of water penetration and the worst infestation I have seen of Deathwatch Beetle. Massive oak timbers embedded in walls were mere frass. The Victorian wing had the worst infestation of Dry rot I have ever had to contend with. Fortunately I enjoyed the services of John Durtnell and his excellent building team led on site by Geoff Edwards.

        I found the stained glass by Marc Chagall on one of my jaunts. It is stunning but Chagall was of course a Russian so it is not to everyone’s taste.

    2. Never seen what they see in Shag All. Even though I have been dragged round various museums in which his “work” is displayed.

    3. Reminds me of the stained glass window commemorating Braque in the church at Varengeville.

      1. No I don’t mind your straightening the image (like having to look at picture skewwhiff on the wall)- I didn’t know someone else would be able to tweak it.

        I’ve been visiting churches since starting to drag my mother (as driver) around them in Norfolk as a child. Fortunately my mother liked anything historical so raised no objections. It’s a lot more frustrating these days with so many locked churches sadly.

    3. For nearly thirty years one has had to endure a succession of quisling bastard prime ministers coming to ask me to sign away more of their powers to my Hun cousins, surrendering my realms powers while quietly enriching themselves on the EU gravy train. Well now they can spend the rest of their miserable lives rotting in the Tower.

    4. “I’m going to have a little drinky…and then I’m going to execute the whole bally lot of you!”

      1. I saw that picture before. Wasn’t it when she was signing ( in response to a petition signed by 17 million of her subjects ) the death warrant for Theresa May ?

  100. Just told my American chums about Meggie Sparkles
    and her writing messages on bananas, they thought it bizarre.

    1. “Sir, Meghan Markle’s writing is like a dog’s walking on his hind legs. It is not done well, but you are surprised to find it done at all.”
      — Dr. Jimmy Johnson (no relation)

  101. Evening, all. If the views of people in the street to whom I talk are anything to go by, anger is rising at the shenanigans of those losers who can’t accept the verdict.

    1. Not where the votes count, unfortunately, Conwy – where majorities of slammers vote three or four times, for example.

          1. Is it your art work?
            I admire techy geek skills, mine are limited to posting the odd pic.

          2. Ah! I thought you meant waft my finger under someone’s nose!

            Yes, a quick copy into Paint and put the text onto it.
            5 minute job.

          3. I normally just post pics I have found online, but I did make one from scratch using Paint 3D. It was a bl00dy nightmare trying to wade through the hundreds of fonts available to finally find one that “looked right.” Then I forgot which one it was and had to start again the next time. So I didn’t do any more.

            I really must write down the names of the fonts that look good. 🙂

          4. MM, a tip with fonts: if you’re going to post on the Internet then use a sans-serif (no curly whirly bits on the characters) font. They are easier to read and hence more comfortable for the reader.

          5. Korky – Thank you for that comment. I was flailing around trying to find anything that looked readable when I saw “Microsoft Sans-Serif” and went for that one. It was a lot better than the others and saved a lot of time. 🙂

          6. If you look carefully, the old pre-3D Paint should still be somewhere on the system.
            Much easier to use.

          7. They do seem to be making things a little easier on the techy side of things. e.g. giving instructions about various options that can be used with saved photos etc.

            A word of warning on posting photos taken using digital equipment. My grandson who recently turned 14 years old, told me that people with the skills to do it, can pick up ‘meta data’ from those sort of photos.

            Since the last windows up-date I am unable to post videos! Since they were about the only things I could post with ease, I’m none too happy about that. But, I will figure it out ……….eventually.

            Edited to remove an unnecessary (stray) comma.

          8. ‘meta data’ – what’s that when it’s at home? I could ask hubbie but he would probably give so much info that I’d be none the wiser?

          9. Elouise – Yes every shot that you take with a camera phone has a huge amount of data stored in it as standard, so I would not use a photo taken at your home. Pictures downloaded from the internet don’t have that personal data of course. Some may be copyrighted, in which case they will have a big Copyright symbol on them somewhere. I would not use those either. 🙂

          10. Yes, I’d wondered occasionally about the copyright issue. I will look out for the Copyright symbol. Thanks for that.

          14. During a NAAFI break in Hameln one of the NAAFI lasses, being given a hard time by one of the lads, came back with the comment, “Whoever put teeth in your mouth spoilt a perfectly good fanny!”

            Cue loud cheers from the rest of the lads and a red face for the culprit!

          16. Plum-Tart, Depending on what software you are using, it should give you an option on the screen called “Font Size” – obviously the bigger you choose the bigger the letters will be. 🙂

            Have fun – I am off for the night now. No need for me to get up tomorrow… To drink alcohol or not to drink alcohol… It is a bit late to start. Possibly just a glass or two. There goes the morning. 🙂

          18. Plum-Tart – I do not know which operating system or software you are using, but if it is Windows 10 then just put your mouse over a picture that you want to alter and RIGHT click it. A menu will pop-up and just choose “Edit with Paint 3D” (which came free with mine) and it opens the picture up. Then you can add text to it once you figure out how. 🙂

            (You can zoom in or out using the mousewheel. It defaults to a “marker” which lets you squiggle over the picture. You can change the shape of the marker on the upper right of the screen. If you do not like what you have just done, then click the “Undo” button on the top right. To get text, move the mouse to the middle top of the screen and click on “Text” then on the picture. You will need to resize the little window that pops up to chose where the text goes. You will also need to choose how big the text is, and the font or what it looks like. And save at the end by going to the far top left and clicking on “Menu” and then choosing “Save As” and pick “Image” then choose the file name and what type (.jpg is the normal file type for pictures.))

            That is probably far too bad a guide, and you might be using Windows 95 or an Apple Mac for all I know, so I will stop there. It is not difficult to make them though, once you have done a couple. 🙂

            (If it all goes horribly wrong and you get lost – just click on the cross at the very top right of the screen and pick “Don’t Save” – that will get you out of it with no damage done.)

          19. Windows7 at present.

            Thanks for the info MM….I’ll experiment but I have very little patience !

          20. That sounds like fun! Must give it a go tomorrow – if I fail (which I probably will), maybe my resident techie will help.

  104. Closely argued and winning stuff. Unfortunately the ‘EU Powers That Be’ are only really interested in ‘The Project’ and the ‘Vassalage of the UK’ and the ‘Remain Powers That Be’ are only really interested in cancelling Brexit. Trade is not the real focus of either of those groups opposing Boris.

    Only Whitehall stands in the way of our Gatt 24 ‘get out of jail free’ Brexit card

    By Iain Duncan Smith, conservative MP, David Campbell Bannerman, former MEP, Martin Howe, chairman of Lawyers for Britain, Jon Moynihan, chair of Vote Leave’s finance committees, and Rebecca Ryan, head of #standup4brexit
    30 AUGUST 2019 • 12:36PM

    It was supposed to be a “gotcha” moment. During the Conservative leadership election, Andrew Neil sought to ambush Boris Johnson, challenging him on his claim that a World Trade Organisation (WTO) deal called GATT Article XXIV (GATT24 to the layman) could be used to smooth a ‘No Withdrawal Agreement/No Deal’ Brexit. But it wasn’t Boris who was wrong; it was, most uncharacteristically, Mr Neil.

    The exchange is worth going through in some detail: first Boris stated that we could leave the EU while still leaving a current zero tariff and no quotas agreement in place. He had in previous statements explained that this could be accomplished by an agreement between the UK and the EU to use Clause 5b of Article XXIV of the GATT.

    Mr Neil had clearly prepared a well researched trap on this. That 5b was all very well, he harrumphed – but what about 5c? Triumphantly, Neil proclaimed that 5c overruled 5b. He derided Boris for not having fully understood GATT XXIV.

    The scene is used to claim Boris was caught out, and is used by Remainers to deride Boris for getting it wrong. But in an examination of the exchange, Boris twice claims: “I would confide entirely in 5b which is enough for our purposes”, replies Boris. He was not concerned with 5c, or even 5a!

    Neil tried to claim 5c can overturn 5b — but expert lawyers explain that this 5c applies only in the case of an ‘interim arrangement leading to the formation of a free trade area’. The phrase ‘interim agreement’ means more than the colloquial phrase – it has a very specific meaning under GATT Article XXIV. It refers to a case where two parties move gradually towards a free trade area with a plan and schedule of reducing tariffs over time. The EU used this very provision when it was first established as the EEC.

    But the UK and EU already have zero-tariff trade between them, which we merely seek to maintain, whilst replacing EU membership with a ‘SuperCanada’ style Free Trade Agreement and mini deals on non-trade areas. So 5c does not pertain. Boris was absolutely correct – 5b is sufficient and 5c is irrelevant.

    In fact, arrangements can be extremely simple: a basic 3-page Free Trade Agreement would suffice. A one page illustrative version has already been drafted by Dr Lorand Bartels, an expert in trade law at Cambridge University

    Yes this needs the EU’s and the WTO’s agreement, for sure. Call this a ‘basic deal’. But it’s massively in the EU’s interest to agree, saving £13bn a year of tariffs on EU goods (UK only £5bn), and it’s precisely the kind of tariff free approach that the WTO exists to accomplish.

    The reality is that the option of using the GATT Article XXIV is more viable than ever. If rebel MPs want a deal here is a deal. Granted only basic, but a deal that is enough to avoid delays at borders, as you will not have to apply tariffs and quotas on most goods. Little obvious will change when we leave on October 31st this way.

    Boris Johnson has had a fearsomely successful first few weeks as Prime Minister and has transformed the situation. Finally, the UK has the leadership it needs – a Prime Minister confident on the world stage, who is able to stand up to the EU and make it clear what needs to be done. Already, they are responding with flexibility and positive noises. Clarity of leadership at the international level – particularly when dealing with an organisation like the European Union – is everything.

    As Boris made clear, May’s Withdrawal Agreement is dead. The problems stretch far beyond just the backstop. The WA – three times rejected by the House of Commons – was the culmination of three years of dithering and delay from a government and civil service who didn’t truly believe in Brexit, and weren’t psychologically prepared to seize this golden opportunity. Now, the country has leadership which is excited by the prospects of leaving the EU.

    Binning the Withdrawal Agreement, and invoking GATT24, is the way ahead to a clean, peaceful and immediate Brexit. We can get straight on with negotiating that US trade deal and with deals around the world, and the many other freedoms Brexit brings.

    Wiser heads in the EU understand that the heat needs to be taken out of this debate and we need to return to first principles. ‘Mini-deals’ – sector by sector emergency legislation to smooth the transition in the event of ‘No Deal’ – have already been quietly scoped out and agreed. And the EU does not want No Deal. It has made that abundantly clear —just as we have made it abundantly clear that the Withdrawal Agreement ‘negotiated’ by Mrs. May’s administration is unacceptable.

    It’s easy, in the 24-hour milieu of social media scare stories and partisan reporting, to get caught up in the moment. It is said that Whitehall is advising Downing Street that GATT24 will not work, whilst others dislike the political linkage with the ERG. It will work, as a whole international trade legal team advising successful Boris campaign adviser Iain Duncan Smith know, and the concept didn’t originate with the ERG.

    But they need to be challenged heavily on such advice by legal experts such as Martin Howe, Barney Reynolds and Dr Lorand Bartels, who have stated unequivocally that these Whitehall advisers have got it wrong and that GATT Article XXIV 5b is a not only viable, but is a deliverable solution in this tight timetable. A three page Free Trade agreement can be scoped, negotiated and agreed by the vital EU Council on 17th October, and be applied from 31st October. Deal!

    Provocative statements from either side do not help. But it is time now to inject plain common sense into the Brexit debate and push a negotiating stance that works for all sides. Macron and Merkel have made it quite clear they are ready to compromise. With our new Prime Minister at the helm, the EU has finally started to listen, instead of trying to dictate. GATT Article XXIV is the ‘get out of jail free’ card for both the UK and the EU. It can satisfy MPs because it is a deal, even if a basic deal. Why wouldn’t both sides want to use it?

        1. I do not know. We buy Steinhauser from ALDI, brewed by Radesberger. Perfectly fine at about 70p per bottle. Also used for tempura batter.

    2. Because a significant number of Remainer politicians don’t actually want any deal. Not “no Deal”, not “GATT deal” – they simply don’t want us to leave.

      1. I think the best way forward is to move to getting a Canada ++ type trade deal. The problem is Westminster has wasted so much time that we have pretty much run out of time and Brussels will not be keen on offering it whilst Corbyn and co are busy trying to undermine Brexit

        One trick Boris could have is to move forward our Leaving date. This seems to be technically an option although no doubt they might try to challenge it in the court although as far as I know it does not need new legislation

        1. I seem to recall that that was prohibited in the agreement to extend the Leaving Date to 31 October, at the same time making it the only leaving date… I might well have got this wrong.

    3. Interesting article, but it makes it appear that the WA was only about trade. It wasn’t.

      1. The WA has nothing to do with trade at all. The EU say they will not talk trade until we sign the WA and they will not commit to a legally binding requirement to talk trade even then basically they want us to sign a blank cheque

        1. Evening, Johnny. She is going to collect her aircraft or aeroplanes. Planes are used to smooth wood. 😇

          1. And ‘planes is the accepted abbreviation if one is being picky. But what Johnny wrote was quite clear.

            Planes are also 2 dimensional mathematical constructs, but whose counting?

    5. It should be HNOMS Helge Ingstad, not HMOMS…….unfortunately she has already sunk

      https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0e/KNM_Helge_Ingstad.jpg/300px-KNM_Helge_Ingstad.jpg

      HNoMS Helge Ingstad is a Fridtjof Nansen-class frigate of the Royal Norwegian Navy. The vessel was ordered on 23 June 2000 and construced by Navantia in Spain. The ship was launched on 23 November 2007 and commissioned on 29 November 2009. Named for Helge Ingstad, a Norwegian explorer, the Fridjtof Nansen class are capable of anti-air, anti-submarine and surface warfare. the frigate has been used as an escort for ships carrying chemical weapons to be destroyed. On 8 November 2018, HNoMS Helge Ingstad collided with the tanker Sola TS in Norwegian waters just outside Sture Terminal.[2] Helge Ingstad was severely damaged in the collision and beached. On 13 November 2018, the ship sank where she had run aground and is in all probability a constructive total loss.[3]

  106. Help please. vw has tried to log in under her log in but it automatically logs in in my name. Then she logs out and tried to log in under her own name but it still defaults to me.
    Can anybody advise please.

    1. No idea! I just had to log in again but I’m on my phone at the moment instead of the laptop.

    2. Alas I cannot be of assistance either. When I log in I just choose an email address from the list and then type in the password I use with that address. 🙁

      Different accounts have different email addresses on my laptop.

    3. The cookie on your computer contains your info. Delete it and it will get recreated next login by which of you logs in first.

    4. This may sound too simple and I’ve hesitated to mention it, because it’s probable that the lady in question has already tried to do this?
      i.e. just override or to be precise over-write the name that comes up automatically.

  107. OT. Virtually the whole of Woking is without water as the is a problem at the Chertsey production unit.
    Do you think this is Brexit or Trump or those pesky Frogs and Krauts who own our utilities?

  108. I never thought John Major would turn out to be a complete and utter sh!te.
    He was weak and a hypocrite to boot and headed the most politically disastrous Tory government
    until Theresa May.
    Not forgetting the disastrous Maasticht Treaty shambles…

    1. I want to know who allowed him to be knighted … Reward for shagging and shite and nearly bankrupting us and betraying Maggie Thatcher

      1. “…betraying Maggie Thatcher.”

        Compounded by the fact that he was Maggie’s chosen successor (to prevent Heseltine and Hurd taking the job).

      1. Eurosceptic ministers – widely thought to be Michael Portillo, Michael Howard and Peter Lilley – “bastards” in a conversation that was overheard when he did not take off his microphone following a TV interview.

    3. Was Currying favour in the news at the time of Maastricht or was he being blackmailed?

    4. He “wunts” putting out of his misery……… don’t forget the disastrous ERM policy and Black Wednesday…. 15% mortgage interest anyone?

      1. I had a mortgage when it shot up to 15% – anybody who complains about lack of affordability should try dealing with that.

        1. Didn’t it briefly go higher before we were forced out of the ERM?
          I remember that we’d just bought this place and that the mortgage was making things VERY tight.

          1. They tried desperately to keep us in the ERM. No price was too high. In the end, they couldn’t buck the markets.

          2. It was that which caused my cynicism of politicians to grow.
            Both Labour & LibDems had given their support to us joining the ERM yet, when it all went tits up, both were quick to denounce the move.

    5. Anyone who thought that Ms Currie’s vegetable garden was a good repository for the pygmy carrot of this horrible, diminutive little ex-member from Huntington must be completely warped. He must be treated with the complete contempt he deserves. He’s a nasty little sh*t.

  109. Anyone listening to Jeptha from the Proms? It’s just coming to the end and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Some wonderful singing.

    2. I just enjoyed Gil Shaham playing Prokofiev 2nd Violin Concerto and a Bach encore on the Comptesse de Polignac (Stradivarius, Cremona 1699).

      I thought I was watching The Proms.

    3. It sounded wonderful in the Hall. Slightly shorter than billed. There was one chorus cut.

      The soprano was a fabulous looking black girl in a bright red strapless dress with a tight bodice and huge skirt. Jeanine De Bique.

  110. Is anyone backing up and archiving the old Nottle Channel before it is wiped?

    There are something like a million comments. It is a real nightmare trying to do it using a browser – all this “Load more comments” and “Read more” all of which must be clicked, and this horrible scrolling and screen hogging of the updated interface that won’t allow to scan more than a couple of comments at a time. Saving the page also saves all the ads and graphics and videos. Trying to save it as a text file of simple html does not save the comments, only the Disqus guff around it.

    There must be a better way of doing this.

    1. Found this:

      Vuppe Mod • 5 years ago • edited

      You can access all of your comments online from your profile. Instead of Recent Activity, go to Comments. It should infinite scroll to your very first post.

      It works, allowing you to see all your own Disqus comments. No mention of how to grab them though. CtrlC/CtrlV I guess.

      1. Because of the infinite scroll, my browser crashed a couple of years back, and I was plagued by “See more”. This drip feed of information is making me very ill. I’m getting chest pains right now.

  111. This is probably too advanced for Remoaners to understand….

    Boris Johnson’s Parliament shutdown isn’t unconstitutional
    Anna Bailey – Coffee House – 30 August 2019 – 3:27 PM

    Has Boris Johnson done a Charles I and shut down Parliament indefinitely? The headlines this week might lead you to think so. ‘Uproar as Boris Johnson shuts down parliament to protect Brexit plan’, reported’ the FT. John Bercow called it ‘a constitutional outrage’. ‘It’s tantamount to a coup against Parliament,’ raged former attorney general Dominic Grieve. Nicola Sturgeon called it ‘a dictatorship’.

    Yet the reality hardly lives up to the rhetoric. These are the facts: Parliament will return from summer recess on 3 September as planned. Parliament will not sit from mid-September to early October during the three-week party conference season – also as planned and as happens every year.

    What has changed is that following the unusually long parliamentary session under Theresa May, Boris Johnson has decided to start his premiership with a new parliamentary session. This means the prorogation of Parliament and a Queen’s Speech to lay out his new legislative agenda, which will take place after the planned party conference recess. The Government’s line is that only three days of planned parliamentary time will be lost as a result of this plan, between 8 October and 10 October.

    So does this loss of time for MPs to debate Brexit make the PM’s prorogation strategy unconstitutional?

    It is clear that the prorogation of Parliament is in itself legal. As professors David Howarth and Catherine Barnard have made clear, “The only clear limits on the length of a prorogation are, first, a statute of 1694 requiring Parliament to be held at least once every three years, and second, the practical consideration that much of government spending and several important taxes are authorised one year at a time.”

    Nor does the prorogation breach any written, non-statutory constitutional guidance. But does the prorogation breach constitutional norms? These are not easy to pin down, given that they are unwritten. They are also typically unspoken. Discussions of them typically only emerge at moments of crisis, which is when their interpretation is most prone to being contested.

    Yet in this case, the constitutional norms are actually relatively clear cut. It is quite normal and uncontroversial for a Parliament to be divided up into several sessions, typically one a year. May’s epic session of nearly two-and-a-half years is very much the exception; a new session represents a return to constitutional normality. And a recess of a few days prior to the beginning of a new session is also the norm.

    But there is one respect in which the prorogation is, in professor Bogdanor’s words, “abnormal” and which involves some sleight of hand on the Government’s part. The three-week break for conference season was to be a recess. Recesses are controlled by Parliament itself: it could shorten or cancel the planned recess if it wished. There has been no indication that there was any intention on the part of Parliament to cancel the planned conference season recess, but nevertheless it could have chosen to do so at any point. But by suspending Parliament “no earlier than Monday 9 September and no later than Thursday 12 September” until 14 October, the Government has removed that option from Parliament. Parliament will be prorogued for up to 34 days, which is indeed abnormal.

    But does ‘abnormal’ equal ‘unconstitutional’? There is no clear-cut answer to this. Time spans are – somewhat obviously – a matter of degree rather than binary. Thirty-four days is not a long enough period to be considered a clear-cut breach of constitutional norms, but nor is it comfortably within them. The Government is taking advantage of the timing of conference season to justify dancing on the edge of acceptability.

    The length and timing of the proroguing of Parliament has led to accusations this is a thinly-disguised attempt to try and prevent Parliament blocking a no-deal Brexit. The PM has said this isn’t the case. Only Johnson himself knows the truth. But the suspicion that he is doing it for this reason is understandable.

    But when it comes to judging whether something is, or isn’t unconstitutional, motive doesn’t matter. The fact that an action is one of political expediency does not make it unconstitutional. After all, acts of political expediency take place all the time. A constitution that prevents all acts of political calculation cannot exist.

    So it is clear that the prorogation is pretty much entirely constitutional. Only the length of the prorogation stretches the boundaries of constitutional norms, but without clearly overstepping them. And while Boris Johnson’s critics have reacted furiously to the plan, suggesting the PM has become dictatorial is well wide of the mark.

    After all, Parliament still has ample opportunity to remove the Government by constitutional means. The Opposition can table a motion of no-confidence at any time that Parliament is sitting; it has a chance to do just this on Tuesday. It also retains the statutory right to form an alternative government from the existing Parliament. Prorogation does not change that. That’s a funny kind of dictatorship.

    Dr Anna Bailey is an author at Briefings for Brexit

        1. Sorry, I didn’t mean to suggest insobriety! In answer to your question, dunno. The whole thing hasn’t worked properly for me since the changeover.

          Breakfast in Poole? Boat lands at 7am. The best I can find is the cafe in M&S at Castlepoint. Any ideas?

    2. N
      O

      N
      O
      N
      E

      Sorry, feeling frivolous after seeing Remoaner bricking themselves.

    3. I’ve been getting shunted around or to the bottom of the page when I click on more comments or a new reply. However I judge that minor inconvenience compared to others problems of constantly being asked to sign in, which I only get , touch wood, when I haven’t accessed NOTTL for a week or two from any computer.

    5. I have found that even using Windows, the page will start hopping about depending on how many screens of information you have open (i.e. all of the comments for the past 5 hours on your screen) and for how long it is since you “refreshed” your webpage. Although if you “refresh” you do lose the “5 comments above” “4 comments below” notifications until they build up again.

      Refreshing does stop the screen jumping though for me.

  116. Yellow Hammer leak source found it was a number 10 advisor who was escorted out by the police, #named as Sonia Khan

  117. Jeremy Corbyn has endorsed a plot by his hard-left supporters to “shut down the streets” by whipping up the biggest act of civil disobedience in decades to protest at Boris Johnson’s Brexit plans.

    If that is the case, then why hasn’t Corb Jong-yn been arrested on a charge of inciting a public order offence?

    1. And to those smart-arses who will read a typo and make a smug remark: too late chummies, I’ve refreshed!

    2. When you think what the state has done to TR for upsetting a few slammers, its rather surprising that inciting riots and civil disobedience draw not a murmur. The beeb are also content with Jo Brand suggesting throwing acid at NF because, surely, no one would actually follow her advice. But they did accept it was not a very good joke.

        1. Sithee thissen! (or thy self.) If that means that I have just sworn at you in Swedish, Grizzly, well it was you who started it!. Night night!

  119. Wot I wrote in my log:

    At Bradford on Avon the local amateur dramatic society was performing an adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles in the mini cathedral-like Tithe Barn that is situated adjacent to the Kennet and Avon canal. It’s not a novel I’d read so decided to go and see the performance. At the box office it was good to know there were only a dozen seats left for the night’s performance. What was a little disconcerting was the non-availability of any printed tickets. I was offered a slip of note paper with the seat number L13 hand written on it. I asked if I could borrow her ballpoint so I could draw my version of a £10 note, the price of admission……

    Once inside the cavernous barn I found myself sitting next to a work colleague of the leading lady. I said to her that I hadn’t read the story but I hope it wasn’t going to be a musical. She was somewhat taken aback and said: “It’s not a musical and it has” (without a spoiler alert) “a very tragic ending….”

    It had a bit of a tragic beginning as well when the Producer came on stage before the performance began to announce that: “The leading lady has lost her voice and unfortunately, she doesn’t have an understudy. Still we will do our best with the microphone technology we are using…..”

    Once the performance began, the need for microphones inside the massive barn became very clear. What wasn’t so clear to me, suffering from a degree of hearing loss, were half the words being spoken by the actors with a heavy Dorsetshire burr. The play began with lots of dancing and singing. During one of these musical interludes I turned to look at my neighbour and she conceded I was right about it being a musical.

    Act One ended on a happy note with a marriage proposal for Tess. It also ended on a happy note for me as ever since I accompanied my family to see the musical “Cats” I’ve subsequently avoided them like the plague! I slipped away back to the boat and found it so hot inside that I had no option but to open all the hatches doors and windows otherwise I wouldn’t be able to sleep that night. The boat did eventually cool down but not before the play had finished. However, I can vouch for the fact that it did have a tragic ending because at about the time the performance was due to end someone across the valley decided to let off a series of fireworks that wouldn’t have disgraced an official display. I winced as every cannonade went off knowing it would be echoing around the interior of the barn. So, to this day I don’t know what misfortune befell our Tess, but it couldn’t possibly have been as bad as losing her voice, and having to compete with a barrage of fireworks off stage, in front of 200 people.

    1. Thank you for reminding me of yet another of those brilliant books which I read, without real understanding, when I was young.
      Writers wrote real books in those days, not sex dramas with an index of rape scenes for the masses on the front page.

      1. Agreed. Have just finished reading 1000 pages of a translation of Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov – with the occasional nine pages of type without a paragraph break!

        1. What a coincidence! I’ve been listening to Il Trivetore in the car. I listened to it over and over again and decided to replace it with Carmen. I removed the CD to return into the CD case and discovered that there is another disc, marked CD2. So now I am playing CD2.
          Apparently the story is about a family of artisan trivet makers. The family is ruled with a rod of iron by the father who is also the boss of the workshop/factory. He is called Il Trivatore, the title of the opera. The story concerns the relationship between him and his sons who are looking for a degree of personal freedom as well as harbouring a desire to modify the traditional design of the trivets they produce. There is an anvil chorus and the hammer blows chime with the trivet pattern produced. A divergent note would indicate a deviation from the standard pattern. There is quite a lot of argy-bargy with frequent interruptions from a female singer, probably the intelligent but downtrodden young housekeeper. It is clearly based on “The Brothers Karamazov” but the version by Tolstoy, not the other one. The whole thing is in Italian and the words are a bit strangled at times, being sung. I don’t speak Italian but I think I’m getting the gist of it.
          I don’t think it will end well.

          2. Come back steam radio. All is forgiven.
            These bloody awful modern productions are a pain.
            The music and singing are terrific.

          4. Not content with pride marches and the ‘carnival they’re wasting police time singing blöödy opera.😎

          11. No just under the Direction of a former private voice coach to Dame Kiri Te Kanawa…

          12. I am jealous. I have no singing voice. One audition was swiftly concluded with the summary that “I had a strong voice…”

  120. Good night all.

    I’ve been watching the Last Night of the Proms from 2012. Not one single EU flag in sight. Glorious!

    1. I watched that a while back Mr Viking,
      just thought of it. Well I’m off, a long drive to Yeovil then on to
      Totnes tomorrow. No one like the EU there I presume .

        1. Ah yes i expect to see a few yoghurt knitting tree hugging
          Lib Dems when we resume the journey further towards
          Devon tomorrow. At the moment staying overnight in
          a thatched roofed pub that is mentioned in the doomsday
          book, very beautiful. A villiage named lower Odcombe
          Nr Yeovil. We have so many beautiful little villiages
          like this in England, hope they remain so.

      2. ‘Morning, Ethel,

        I really like Totnes – it’s like an old hippy retreat, but smaller and nicer than Glastonbury. My ex was from Devon and we spent many happy hours there. Lots of nice little pubs around there.

        Brixham is also nice – a real fishing town.

        1. We are to be in a village just below Totnes and look
          forward to checking it out, sounds quirky 🙂

  122. How about this?
    All MPs taking up Cabinet positions, including the Prime Minister, to be required to sign a document that would prevent them commenting, directly or indirectly about the persons or actions, or writings, or policies, of subsequent Cabinet Ministers.
    This would prevent the likes of Clarke, Major, Bliar, Brown, Heseltine, et al in the future, from criticising and interfering in things no longer in their remit.

    Edited to make sense.

    1. How?

      The people who sign for the future, possibly, but the turdwagon? How do you stop it? They won’t sign retrospectively.

    2. Is it really necessary? I’m sure most folk recognise these people as ‘has-beens’, failed ones in a lot of cases. Not only that, a lot of the time what they have to say will eventually work against them. That’s why Blair has kept quiet recently.

  123. I have a question: why does Sir John Major believe that his opinions on anything, cricket even, are worth anything. The man was one of the worst Prime Ministers in our history despite the intense competition. He presided over Black Wednesday if my memory serves, which incompetence allowed Soros a run on the Bank of England losing us billions. I recall mortgage interest rates rocketing to 17% under his tenure.

    The ghastly man shagged the equally ghastly Edwina Currie, thereby betraying his wife and bringing a particularly bad stench to government.

    On his visit to Russia to meet Yeltsin he sipped the cup of vodka and remained seated. Any fool knows you throw it back in one swallow and remain standing in honour of your host whilst doing so.

    The most accurate portrayal of Major remains his Spitting Image persona. That at least had a sort of life to it.

    2. And he who prorogued parliament in 1997 is now acting as it it never happened and saying Boris should not be able to do that.

      Hypocrite. And if he had put EU entry to a referendum, rather than ramming it through a very reluctant parliament, all this current mess would have been avoided.

      1. Precisely. By the way Major went from a geek in penury to become a very wealthy individual after leaving office. I suspect that he is yet another failed politico clown taking the Soros shilling.

  124. One of the American chums told me that Cadburys were making
    a diversity chocolate bar to represent multiculturalism,
    I thought he was pulling my leg until he sent me a link from
    Fox News. The chocolate is milk at one end and dark chocolate
    at the other end, I thought the snowflake world has gone mad
    and the chocolate should contain nuts to represent that.

    Anyway, I am off to bed now, a long drive tomorrow to the West Country .
    Good night .

  125. Delivering Brexit is the only way to end the performative rage of the Remainers

    DOUGLAS MURRAY

    The elite fury about ‘prorogation’ is slightly perplexing

    Prorogation is the new backstop. There’s an ugly little sentence. And one that no one in history had cause to write until this week. But “prorogation” is indeed the latest thing that a portion of the country has decided to become instant experts on in order to expend all their available fury over. Those of us who lived through the “backstop” years can recognise the signs.

    As it happens, I spent a portion of my life focusing on Northern Ireland. A decade ago I wrote a book on the province and, while the subject has always fascinated me, the signs that not everyone shared my enthusiasm were always there. The way people used to look at their watches was one. As was the way in which they claimed their glasses needed refilling, and never returned.

    There were also the steps backwards – imperceptible at first, but often ending in a crazed dash for the door. Over the course of years these, among other subtle and not-so-subtle indicators, persuaded me that chat about Northern Ireland was one way to empty a room in record time. So the instant expertise on border arrangements that emerged in recent times always struck me as suspect. People who had never been near the Irish border began to say: “Ah, but what about the backstop.”

    The question well served that portion of the nation which was busily adopting that special manner of our time: omniscient fury. This week, the backstop crammers found a new word to crowd around.

    In its way, the mainstreaming of “prorogation” has been a magnificent thing to behold. No sooner had the Government made clear that the House of Commons would not be sitting for three days in September than the Eumenides showed that they had found their newest plaything.

    On Twitter, the writer Philip Pullman immediately pronounced that when he hears the name “Boris Johnson” he now thinks of the words “rope” and “nearest lamp post”. An interesting aspect of this contribution is that only months ago the same Philip Pullman was on social media declaring that the police should have looked into Nigel Farage’s pre-EU elections promise to put “the fear of God into our MPs”. Pullman was one of those Remainers who decided to pretend that the Brexit Party leader was essentially inciting the murder of MPs with these words.

    If Boris Johnson or any of his supporters wanted to play the game of “Let’s compete to be as sensitive as possible when it advances our cause” then they might point out that Johnson’s great-grandfather (the Turkish politician Ali Kemal) was actually lynched by a mob almost a century ago, making Pullman’s comments in even more questionable taste. Thankfully, few people on the Prime Minister’s side want to play that game. This bid to win political points through a combination of ultra-sensitivity and implicit violence continues – for the time being at least – to be the preserve of a specific fragment of the British public.

    Hugh Grant, for instance, also decided that prorogation was the hill on which he was willing to die. New hill though it may have been to him. “You will not f— with my children’s future,” the actor menaced the prime minister. “You will not destroy the freedoms my grandfather fought two world wars to defend.” Grant’s sense of decorum declined from there. “F— off you over-promoted rubber bath toy. Britain is revolted by you and you [sic] little gang of masturbatory prefects.”

    It is the sort of thing that any archaeologists sifting through the detritus of our virtual civilisation will have a hard time interpreting. It is hard enough to understand right now. What does the star of Paddington 2 have against bath toys? And why does he liken the Prime Minister to one? And what’s all this about the onanistic habits of the British Cabinet? Does he know something we don’t?

    Our parliamentarians were not much more restrained. Labour MP Kate Osamor aimed her spleen at the Palace. “The Queen should look to what happened her cousin Tino ex King of Greece when you enable a right wing coup! Monarchy abolished!” she tweeted. If the Queen genuinely holds the kind of power Ms Osamor attributes to her then the MP really ought to be nicer. After all, her son recently only narrowly avoided spending time at Her Majesty’s pleasure. You’d have thought a little restraint might be in order.

    But it was not a week for restraint. Osamor’s colleague, Clive Lewis, decided that the opposition to prorogation was necessary, even if it led to his highly unlikely arrest. “If Boris shuts down Parliament to carry out his no-deal Brexit, I and other MPs will defend democracy,” he promised. “The police will have to remove us from the chamber. We will call on people to take to the streets. We will call an extraordinary session of Parliament.” This widely retweeted call to arms was rounded off with the hashtag PeoplesParliament.

    Inadvertently, Mr Lewis highlights a problem that our excitable new constitutional experts keep failing to address. We have had two Parliaments since the referendum of June 2016. Both have been filled with MPs. Yet over a period of three and a quarter years neither of these Parliaments, put together, have found a way to carry out the will of the British people.

    Both main parties (plus others, on occasion) have said that they are committed to seeing through the will of the people. Yet Parliament remains packed with people who disagree with the people, all overseen by a Speaker willing to plot against a sitting government.

    It is not clear to everyone that three more days was all that Osamor, Lewis and Co needed to finally make their peace with the electorate’s decision. And so the Johnson Government is doing something that it has every right to do, and which is a perfectly reasonable thing to do in order to make the October 31 Brexit deadline.

    The Government knows the games that will play out. There is not a procedure in the land that Dominic Grieve, John Bercow, Anna Soubry and others (and that’s just from what used to be the Conservative side) will not throw in the Government’s way. Even the former prime minister, Sir John Major, has re emerged, attempting to stop by legal means a parliamentary procedure he himself once used. Something that opens Major up – not for the first time – to charges of something like hypocrisy. And so it goes on, with our public square filled with people competing with each other to be as angry as possible over something few of them had heard of until yesterday.

    Will it ever end, this fury? Only by one means. It will begin to end from November 1, when the people who spent recent years adopting the furiously omniscient pose realise that their expense of effort was in vain and that they should spend their time doing other things. Such as either representing the people or amusing them.

    Of course, the MPs and celebrities will have to arrange among themselves who is best suited to which task. To speculate would only risk descending to their level.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/08/30/delivering-brexit-way-end-performative-rage-remainers/

  126. The left-wing media is cheering Eddie Mair on LBC after he claimed to have invited on to his show the ministers who spoke out against prorogation earlier this year; they apparently refused. The obvious cries of ‘——- hypocrites’ are ringing out but what is the truth of the defence that they were talking of a prorogation beyond Oct 31st? It has to be said it’s a bit awkward for them if their objections were absolute.

    As for Eddie Mair, he should be sent to join Jolyon Maugham for a bit of tarring and feathering.

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