Saturday 22 August: The pandemic has shown that Britain is led by inexperienced managers

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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

Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/08/21/letters-pandemic-has-shown-britain-led-inexperienced-managers/

638 thoughts on “Saturday 22 August: The pandemic has shown that Britain is led by inexperienced managers”

  1. Didn’t we vote for a Conservative Government? 21 August 2020.

    Even on issues that should be a cinch for any natural conservative, this Government has been inert at best. You might have expected that a Conservative government would be able to stand up for British history? No such luck. When Left-wing anarchists began tearing down our statues, the Government remained largely silent, barricading itself inside as surely as it next had to barricade up the Cenotaph and the statue of Winston Churchill.

    You might think that a Conservative government would find it easy to defend our borders. But it seems to require Nigel Farage to make an issue of this for ministers to take notice and head down to the Channel just to stare at the water for an hour or two.

    And you might have thought that a Conservative government would have done what Conservatives have always been best at and raised up people of ability whatever their economic or social background? Yet, before ministers’ hasty u-turn the exams fiasco of this summer threatened to do exactly the opposite.

    Morning everyone. I guess it’s dawning on most people by now that the Tory Party is no longer Conservative and that most of its members, including its leader, are not either. Over the years they have been weeded out by selection procedures that mitigate against anything remotely of the Right. Parliament as a whole is actually a Neoliberal monoculture with only an anti-Semitic rump from the extreme left remaining in the Labour Party. This also applies to the administrative machinery, the Ministries and Quangos, Universities, MSM, whatever, all have succumbed to the Cultural Marxist wave. There is of course still some resistance caused by the last functioning’s of Democracy, Brexit being its most obvious example but I’m confident that this will be expunged later this year. Where does this leave us? Well when the present engineered “Crisis” is over we can expect a full on Marxist takeover. This of course is “Marxism for the Masses” it’s “Grab what you can” for the Globalists. Truly Dark Times lie ahead. You should be prepared for literally anything except normality.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/08/21/didnt-vote-conservative-government/

    1. Morning Minty

      BTL@DTletters

      Peter Beveridge – 22 Aug 2020 2:44AM

      You think Boris and Co are inexperienced//

      Come to NZ and see the darling of the Left Wing Media, Jacinda Kate Laurel Ardern.

      AKA Princess Fairy Dust, Taxcinda or just recently St Jacinda of the Pestilence and her side kick The Blessed Ashley of the Virus.

      1. From Wikipedia – BLiar follower
        Ardern moved to London where she became a senior policy adviser in an 80-person policy unit of then-British prime minister Tony Blair.[4] She did not meet Blair in London, but did question him about the invasion of Iraq at an event in New Zealand in 2011.[27] Ardern was also seconded to the Home Office to help with a review of policing in England and Wales.[22]

        2. I was dying to get out of hospital.
          I had been in for for a whole week and the consultant said that if I hadn’t gone in I would only have lasted two days.

    3. Morning Minty, I do hate “I told you so” type of people but I plead guilty to being one of them in this instance.
      When I saw the Conservative party readily re-adopt MPs who had worked tirelessly trying to overturn or ignore the democratic referendum result of 2016, I knew then it was not a conservative minded party.
      They never got my vote, nor will they.

    1. Morning Michael. I’d like to uptick you for posting the two cartoons but I find the contents too depressing. And what with Minty being on top form this morning – I’m off to slit my wrists (I wonder how much it will hurt?)….

          2. On balance I think I’d rather be sunk by The Royal Navy than by our ‘Government’……

          8. The fisheries protection fleet, I see. How many admirals needed to manage that lot? Might need a few more £350k per annum diversity consultants.

      2. You need to go and get a dose of Steve Turley to counteract Minty – his latest video is very upbeat about Trump winning.

  4. Good morning all. Clearly still working on hospital time!

    No news again today – what a relief. Looks a nice start to the day – and I have a treat – my son is calling in to check my will!!

    2. Morning, Willum.
      How did they find out about your chicken/pigeon shiite allergy? Did they run tests on all common (as in well known!) allergens, or did they base the tests on your location?

      1. Good morning, dear heart. I only found out after I was discharged! Apart from the basic bloods that they do on arrival – each morning a child would come along with a trolley and take three more samples. No one told me why; “Doctor has asked for them” was as far as we could get.

        It turns out that they were doing allergy tests via blood for cats/dogs/horses, dust mites, grasses (variés), tree pollen and moulds…. And chicken/pigeon serum.

        Clear for cats and dogs (phew – THAT would have been a disaster as we hope to have kitties soon). Grass – well, yes, hay fever – living in farmland….ditto trees – surrounded by several hundred. But those things have been there for the last 36 years and ave never caused any probs. But the chicken shyte IS new – thanks to Mr Rashid and his partner.

        2. Is that all the children that have been crossing the channel to support our illustrious NHS?

        3. Was it the same child each day or a different one? When I was in hospital 2 years ago I got the impression that at least 1/2 of the blood-taking was merely for training purposes.
          If ever I have to go through it again, I would refuse my consent until the Dr in question came in person to inform me of the whys & wherefores.

          1. As I was on – wait for it – six wards over the week – it was always someone new! It took three days to SEE a doctor….and that was only because a very bright and attentive nurse was willing to pick up a phone and summon him…. She did more for me in half an hour than most of the rest put together over the week.

          2. It doesn’t surprise me. On one occasion they wanted to move me just as supper was being brought round. I protested, because I knew that if I missed supper where I was, I would wait a couple of hours in the new ward, where supper hadn’t been booked, only to be presented with a curled up sandwich. Nevertheless they started piling things on to the bed from the bedside table & cupboard & 2 porters came to do the move. That was when I shouted at the top of my voice, “Something is being done to me without my informed consent!” Those were the magic words; they all backed off & left my in peace until supper was over.

          3. I was moved several times; once at 2 am; another time at 5 am. It was like being woken by the Gestapo – “You have five minutes to pack a small case…” Very disorienting.

            Still – the food was excellent.

          4. Been there, done that. It seems to be standard procedure. As soon as they realised I wasn’t about to die immediately and didn’t need surgery, I was shunted down the corridor to a medical ward in the wee small hours.

  5. Second lockdown warning as R rate rises. 22 August 2020.

    A second national lockdown could be imposed, senior Government advisers have warned, as the upper limit of the R rate pushed over one for the first time since restrictions were lifted.

    The Prime Minister effectively ruled out another nationwide shutdown, stating that the option was now akin to a “nuclear deterrent”, in an interview with The Telegraph last month.

    However, on Friday the Sage advisory group said Britain’s reproduction number was now between 0.9 and 1.1, with senior sources warning “more nationwide measures” may be needed.

    Yes you keep the “Crisis” running Sage. At this rate you will be able to bring Ferguson back soon!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/21/national-lockdown-could-necessary-uk-follows-trajectory-spain/

    1. 322904+ up ticks,
      Morning AS,
      Forward thinking sons of ferguson so to speak.
      With the eu “looking” shaky good scams MUST be
      nurtured

    2. When you have a PM that only follows and does not lead, it will never end. he should call it all off now.

    3. Good morning all.

      So the Covid alarm bells are ringing in towns who have enormous immigrant populations .

      If we didn’t have communities such as that, would the virus have fizzled out?

      1. ‘Morning, Belle.

        So the Covid alarm bells are ringing in towns who/which/that have enormous immigrant populations .

        Do we now have carte blanche as to which relative pronoun we use?

        2. Morning Peddy

          The moving finger writes; and, having writ, moves on: nor all thy piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.

    4. Apparently all care home spare bed capacity has been booked by the government from October onwards.
      So the lockdown will happen to save face.
      S0d the science.

      1. What? Are they expecting to have run out of hotelsby October for all the dinghy passengers?

        1. I think it’s for all the old biddies who might conveniently die of Covid. Keep them figures rollin’ ……

      1. 322904+ up ticks,
        Morning R,
        Probably on account that most on the shop floor
        can understand his patter even if regional.

        Of course a good many prefer political treachery
        couched in upper class English, it is seen to be “more believable and makes “putting the party first” a tad easier as we continue to observe.

        Con men ( current conservative politico’s) use upper class English to sell bridges to the unwary.

        So to my way of thinking it is not the rhetorical sound of the patter the commentator comes across with in this case but the content.

      1. 322904+ up ticks,
        Morning Msk,
        IMO one must have a high sense of reservation as in keeping in mind recent treacherous history.

    3. I don’t think frequent ball-disinfection would have been necessary given the pressure on them underneath that scrum.

  11. I guess the excellent exam results and the thousands of youngsters destined for university will reduce the the jobless figures for the government

    1. Why do you think the school leaving age was increased to 18?
      By 14, unless they are academic, most pupils have received from school all that will be remotely useful to them for the rest of their lives.

      1. I notice on my old school FB page that many of the people who were in the C stream and left at 15 have actually had good productive lives and done very well for themselves.

      2. ROSLA (Raising Of the School Leaving Age) – it’s been going on for decades. When I started teaching in the early seventies I taught in a ROSLA hut, a temporary classroom that had been put up to cope with the unwilling detainees.

    4. Blair’s aim of 50% to go to university was intended to massage the unemployment figures.

  12. I guess the excellent exam results and the thousands of youngsters destined for university will reduce the the jobless figures for the government

  13. Good morning all!
    I was very excited this morning to check my emails and discover that I have had a post removed from a BBC news story, on which I had commented! The story was about EU negotiations/Barnier and it was pretty obvious from the 6000+ comments that they were – how shall I put this?- being manipulated! So I fired off a fairly innocuous comment to that effect ” I see that aunty Beeb is moderating so impartially yet again! What a joke they are!” And Bingo! It was removed as being “off topic” They clearly don’t do irony either!
    So Yay! Go me! What a rebel!

    1. They don’t like being criticised. That has happened to me several times, but whenever I point out that other people’s posts are ‘off topic’, nary a word.

    3. Greetings, Sue.

      It’s a good job this is 2020 and not the early-to-mid 17th century; otherwise you would have found Matthew Hopkins on your trail. 😲

        1. But … but … very few (if any) of the women that Hopkins murdered were witches.

          I know that for a fac’, like, ‘cos I read it in Witch? magazine.

          1. Oh very good! And you never mentioned faggots! I did once, but I think I got away with it!

          2. Aren’t thy popular in Dood-lie, in Black Coontrey, served with grivy and mooshy piys?

      1. Hi Bill! How are you getting on? Missed you muchly!
        Having posted the saga on here, I am awaiting the kick on the front door! Oops must go….

    5. Sue ,

      I also had a comment removed, in fact I have been moderated out , perhaps banned , mine was also light hearted and slighly sarcastic .

      That happened a few months ago . I went over to the Mail and put a similar comment on , and It remained amongst a few hundred others.

      Just wondering whether the BBC outsource their moderating to students at dodgy universities , the ones who are touchy feely about statues and BAME, but not bods who DO NOT protest about FGM and Child grooming !

      1. Hi Belle! Exciting isn’t it? I rarely comment on the BBC, and then it’s usually sport or Scottish items, but the bias is so blindingly obvious that I couldn’t let it go! The fact that the article itself, and the reams of comment, were so skewed that a 5 year old could have seen it! Anyway, it caused a lot of hilarity in the house this morning, as my old man has only recently become aware of their dreadful reporting! Well, he would really, as I point it out all the time!

        1. I’ve never registered or commented there, but most of the ones they let through are so obviously leftward biased that I don’t stay long anyway. It’s almost as bad as Breitbart in the other direction.

          My OM is completely unaware of politics and bias whether of the left or right!

          1. Yes Ndovu, exactly what I find! I know it’s a bit like p****g into the wind when so heavily outnumbered, but I just couldn’t believe what I was seeing and I couldn’t resist stirring it a bit!

    1. Norway 2018. About 900 died from influenza.
      Norway 2020. 139 died from/of/with Covid19. Annualised, that’a about 278. 1/3 of flu. And we’re all shitting ourselves with fear.
      Bah!

    3. Anyone who has studied statistics should recognise that as a Poisson distribution.
      Looks fishy to me!

  16. Yesterday, the Grimes carried two bleeding heart letters about the”poor boy” who drowned while trying to cross the Channel. I risked posting a comment:

    “The young man could have avoided drowning by applying for asylum in Italy and/or France – both perfectly safe countries.

    It is manifestly unfair to blame the United Kingdom as “inhumane” when all the people trying to cross the Channel had safe countries in which to seek to live – assuming, of course, that they were asylum seekers and not economic migrants.”

    Usually, any reasonable comment is attacked by do-gooders/libtards/far-left foam-flecked etc etc. There were NO adverse replies – and 56 “thumbs”.

      1. Paki rape gangs (justice for Ellie signs)
        Priorty for gimmegrants over homeless veterans

  18. Good Moaning: a piece by Michael Deacon in the DT.
    I think we’ll stick to the Costa del Allan Towers this year.

    “No way were we going to fly abroad this year. Far too much fuss and bother. So instead we booked a nice family holiday right here in Britain. Simple and stress-free.

    Or so we thought. What we soon realised, however, was that Covid has made all holidays a nuisance. Even the ones you take in your own country.

    Not that there was anything wrong with the place we were staying. Like more or less everyone else in England, we’d decided to go to Cornwall. Lovely old-fashioned hotel. Beautiful grounds. Immaculate sea view. The sort of place Poirot goes to take a week’s break between cases, only to find the croquet lawn heaped with poisoned playboys.

    The place must have been wonderful, pre-Covid. But what with all the new rules and restrictions, it was now almost impossible to relax.

    Take breakfast. No more buffets these days. Far too big a risk of swapping germs over the hash browns. Instead we had to remain at our table, and fill in a lengthy form, ticking the box beside each breakfast item we wished to request.

    At great length, care of a vizor-clad waiter, our order would arrive – in portions that were pitifully small. A blob of baked beans. A splat of scrambled egg. A single slender sliver of bacon (maximum permitted number: two). Microscopic, next to the vast mounds we would shovel on our plates in the buffet days. But we couldn’t help ourselves to more. And we didn’t dare ask for a second form in case we looked greedy (or were charged double). So we just nibbled meekly on what we’d been given. Pre-Covid I would try to lose weight before going on holiday. Now I lose weight during it.

    Then there were the rooms. For the sake of the staff’s safety, these were never cleaned during our stay. No beds made, no towels replaced. Then, the morning we checked out, we were ordered to strip our beds and stuff all linen into polythene sacks – before legions of maids in hazmat suits and chemical backpacks were sent in to decontaminate our quarters. It was like Fawlty Towers crossed with Chernobyl.

    Every few feet you would bump into a liquid soap dispenser. Especially important to use when you were visiting the lavatory. First, wash your hands so you don’t spread germs to the door handle. Then wash your hands to get rid of any germs you’ve caught from the door handle. Then wash your hands for the usual reason. Then wash them again to get rid of any germs you’ve caught from opening the door on the way out. And indeed the germs you’ve caught from the button on the soap dispenser itself.

    I don’t mean to sound critical. I certainly don’t blame the proprietors. They were only trying to keep everyone safe.

    And anyway, it gave us a good excuse to moan. Which, at the end of the day, is what a British holiday is all about.”

    2. ‘Morning, Anne.

      I wouldn’t have stripped my bed. I would have told them that I don’t work in that hotel.

  19. Moh says that once you bring into focus a couple of people from mixed backgrounds , everything changes and their point of view becomes important .

    I find it really strange that people from a mixed white/black/ brown background , tend to disown the white bit , , and the other bit becomes the influencer, it is as if they are too embarassed to appreciate their white heritage.

    1. Could that be because most of them don’t look white? Characteristics like darker skin, fuzzy hair, wide nostrils, etc., seem to shine through.

      1. On the other hand, the ones I have seen speaking sense (mostly on videos posted on Nottl) all appear to have some % of white genes in them.

    3. There was a Twotter clip yesterday of a mixed race American mentioning that mixed race always declare themselves black as there is no privilege in being white. Great observation and how true.

  20. Very small room with a strong scent of urine.

    Bedding was disgusting and the
    food was slops.

    Very cramped with nothing to do all day, although the sex
    with the staff at night was a bonus.

    Would not recommend, far nicer
    places to go on holiday.

    Harry Mcguire’s tripadvisor review.

      1. Syros? Apparently (ok according to the Sun!) he’d been transferred there, from the very much more up market Mykonos where he had been embroiled in an altercation with the police! Well worth a read!

  21. The reek of corruption in British politics will fuel discontent with democracy. Peter Geoghegan22 August 2020.

    How much the former chancellor is being paid by the US bank is unclear. The salary is widely reported as “undisclosed”. But we can be sure it’s more than pocket money. Not bad if you already have a job as a public representative that comes with basic pay north of £80,000.

    Javid, of course, is not alone in cashing in from his time in Westminster while sitting on the green benches. Theresa May – still the MP for Maidenhead – has earned more than £1m on the international lecture circuit since resigning as prime minister a year ago. The former Tory leader – not exactly renowned as a great public speaker – was even paid £56,000 for an online talk delivered during lockdown.

    When I finished writing my new book, Democracy for Sale, earlier this year I wondered – at least for a moment – whether I was being too harsh on British politicians. Maybe I was overstating the power of money and influence in our politics. Maybe the system wasn’t as corrupt as I thought.

    I can only assume that Mr Geoghan was born yesterday. I often use the word corrupt to describe the British State but it is totally inadequate; there isn’t actually a word that describes the scale of what is happening. The Chinese used to have a pre-communist term “Squeeze”, which covered everything from giving one of your daughters to the Emperor in lieu of consideration (services rendered so to speak) and military officers stealing the food rations from ordinary soldiers and selling them on. It pervaded the entire population from the Very Top to the Absolute Bottom! The UK has not yet reached this stage but the country is still being systematically plundered by its Elite Class; both in bribes (stolen from the public treasury) and lucrative appointments for themselves and Fake Contracts (HSR) and the sale of profitable companies to the Globalists at knock down prices. It’s a sort of offshore Haiti under Papa Doc!

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/21/reek-corruption-british-politics-discontent-democracy

    1. Not forgetting the has-beens who are awarded a job for life for clocking into the Lord’s and retiring to a club for the night.

    3. It sounds as though he’s been reading Polly’s posts – I’m surprised he didn’t mention Georgy Porgy as the source of their unearned income.

  24. Morning all. A question for the cat people…

    My two PCs have been going ape sh*t over the past two or three days, haring around the house at top speed and miaowing loudly. Any ideas?

    1. Change of weather/change of season? Missy has been like that for the last couple of (unfortunately) nights. How old are your 2?

        1. Cats are often weather-sensitive & of course 2 of them egg each other on. I don’t think you have anything to worry about.

      1. Love it. Mine adopted same during the very hot days 🙂

        I’m going to give it a bash. I dont expect much tho’ as I haven’t got a team, it’ll just be me.

          2. It could be the strong wind. My cats used to go barmy when there was a gale. Messes their fur up.

          4. The horses don’t like windy weather, either. A gale up their tail is not to be recommended.

      2. The mackerel I had for dinner yesterday looked like that.

        Better label the creature before you make a mistake.

        1. You shouldn’t eat furry mackerel, it’s usually a sign that it’s gone off particularly if it’s grown legs. ;@)

  25. The Amazon Prime scammers are at it again
    “How can we help you”
    I suspect my reply “You can fluck yoiurself in the ‘arris with a spiny pineapple,bechahod*” was rather less cordial than he was hoping for…………….
    * In the interests of cultural sensitivity as they all seem to have Indian accents I went on line to garner some truly offensive Hindi insults,judging by the screaming responses I have this about right

  26. Morning all

    SIR – The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed some fundamental decision-making weaknesses in the machinery of government in Britain.

    As a former civil servant of nearly 30 years’ public service – in a technical specialism throughout – I see this as a consequence of the Modernising Government programme that started almost 20 years ago. Since then, the balance between trust and experience on one hand and process and scrutiny on the other has been damagingly shifted too far towards the latter.

    It is not uncommon for almost the entire upper-management tier of executive agencies and non-departmental public bodies to comprise very able people who have no practical experience of the area they oversee. They are, however, steeped in the language, beliefs and processes that underpin the current administrative system. Their mandate is to run an accountable business; this absorbs huge resources, inflates the number of senior management posts and distracts from doing the job. Something as difficult to deal with as a pandemic requires a much greater reliance on experience at the top.

    Neil Wellum

    Bridgwater, Somerset

    SIR – The Government lurches from one blunder to another. Where is the charismatic leadership we voted for?

    Advertisement

    Covid-19 infections are bound to continue, as preventing transmission in a country of over 60 million people is an impossible task. The important criteria is the number of hospital cases with severe symptoms, which are now very few, and daily deaths, which rarely reach double figures. It’s time to ditch the fear-inducing “control the virus” mantra, remove the economically damaging regulations and allow us all to get our lives back.

    The Government’s complete lack of direction – and (even worse) the failure to communicate a way back to normality – can only lead to a vote of no confidence in Boris Johnson.

    Alan Bilham

    Tetbury, Gloucestershire

    SIR – Fraser Nelson (Comment, August 21) writes that Tory backbenchers are running out of patience with the Prime Minister. To that he should add the vast majority of us who supported Boris Johnson in the Brexit campaign, his bid to lead the Conservative Party, and the general election.

    We are at the end of our tethers. This Government seems unable to govern. It will soon be too late to repair the confidence required for the Tories to be re-elected.

    Philip Hall

    Petersfield, Hampshire

    SIR – Pompey the Great fell seriously ill at Naples in 50 BC, after 30 years of success. Historians – and indeed his contemporaries – have asked whether he ever really recovered.

    Two years later he was defeated for the first and last time at Pharsalus, and shortly afterwards murdered by men he had thought allies. The precedent will not be lost on the Prime Minister.

    John Hamey

    Norwich

  27. SIR – Of course teachers know the capability of individual students. Yet the idea that we all know what grade this will result in is pure fantasy. A student under exam conditions is capable of achieving a range of grades.

    Just ask universities how accurate schools’ predictions are. Only 16 per cent of students attain their predicted grades. The majority (75 per cent) of grades are overpredicted.

    Tom Elconovich

    Leicester

    1. Grade predictions and teacher assessment for exam grades are two entirely different things.

      My predictions were pretty accurate but i I tended to ‘under-predict’ a little. However if I knew that my prediction would be used for actual grade assessment I would have been far more generous.

      (As I said before, as soon as teachers were expected to assess their pupils’ coursework for actual grades Caroline and I moved to France. As we have seen with the abominable, politically tainted Supreme Court, Conflict of Interest and Separation of Powers need to be taken far more seriously.)

        1. Good morning, Peddy

          You betcha!

          (I hope you appreciate the obvious cues I give you.)

        1. Not allowed. We had to show all our calculations in Maths exams in pencil on the RH side of the page, then draw a line through them. This was so that the teacher could write comments such as “it is time you dropped these childish methods”. Sarcastic bastard.

          1. Oh gosh, I remember that! I always knew the answers but had great difficulty making up the workings to go with them.

          2. I was the complete opposite; I knew exactly how to work out the answer, but the bl00dy numbers got in the way 🙁

  28. Morning again

    SIR – I have not seen my husband, who has severe dementia and is in care (Letters, August 21), for five months – except occasionally through a window or on my iPad screen. He changed in a few short weeks from being a happy, interactive soul to someone who is either asleep or completely shut down through lack of contact.

    What is the purpose of this policy – other than to save the Government more embarrassment? I wished to see my husband as a person, not as a body. I can see his body in a coffin.

    Maureen Geddes

    Bishop’s Stortford, Hertfordshire

  29. SIR – Looking at old-style passports (Letters, August 21), mine (issued in 1969) is blue – but all later versions, from 1977, are black.

    I always imagined that the latter group had been phased in after Britain joined the European Economic Community in 1973.

    Malcolm Watson

    Ryde, Isle of Wight

  30. Nine year old Abdulfatah Hamdallah died tragically whilst crossing the English Channel. His grief stricken eight year old friend, Ahmed Al-Somali, survived and is currently recovering from the shock in the Tony Blair suite at the Royale Hotel in Kensington. The French minister responsible for the safety of migrants was equally devastated and said the British should not be unduly concerned as she will be sending several hundred more tomorrow to make up for the tragic loss.

    https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2020/08/21/12/32216920-8651001-image-m-13_1598010303852.jpg

  31. Just popping in for a mo

    This is disgraceful, it’s not Boris’s fault – put the blame where it belongs, at the feet of the NWO.
    This is their plan, look it up.

    Shame on any lawyer who misleads the people like this, i didn’t see them sue the govt for the the 26,408 flue deaths in 2018. I cannot believe these shyster lawyers are trying to make money out of this

    https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1319649/boris-johnson-sued-legal-action-coronavirus-victims-covid19-uk-news

    1. ‘26,408 flue deaths in 2018’.

      I thought we’d stopped pushing children up chimneys some time ago?

    3. You cannot believe it? – I can. – and no doubt some who haven’t lost anyone, nor even been in the country, will try it on to get free money.

  32. 322904+ up ticks,
    Morning Each,
    I do beg to differ on “Britain being led by inexperienced managers when in
    the treachery department they cannot be surpassed, fact.

    A steady run of highly efficient political treachery artist as in major, may, clegg, cameron, ( johnson ?) has proved that.
    Also the voting mode of putting the party first on ALL major issues regardless of consequence has successfully brought the nation to it’s knee.

    Keep it up, the mosque is awaiting for those who wish to repent,,, 5 times a day.

  33. I am now going to ruin my morning by reading he print version of the DT.

    Call me an old grump – but I am getting sick to death of “revelations” by women that they were raped ten or fifteen years ago; and by bames talking about their “struggle for equality”.

  34. https://twitter.com/Telegraph/status/1297076942924132353

    A couple of examples the out of touch DT provided

    An instant way to transform a conservatory or dining room is to set the table. “Your table should be less about ‘laying’ and more about ‘layering’; an informal and ever-evolving display,” Bryony Sheridan, buyer at Liberty and an interiors specialist, says. “I always start with a tablecloth and in the summer, I love something bright and patterned that pops against the lush foliage.” (Try Muslin Indonesian Squared Tablecloth; £160. libertylondon.com

    Ooni ovens have been selling quicker online than any other outdoor cooking product (from £325; johnlewis.com). For a real statement, fashion designer Alice Temperley’s boyfriend, furniture maker Marcus Cresswell, designed The Disco Pizza Oven (POA; discovens.pizza), based on a disco ball, with a new oven launching at the end of the month. “It makes having pizza an event,” Cresswell says.

      1. Morning Anne

        If you click on that Liberty link, you will be saddened to see that we are not the market Liberty are pushing at.

        I feel shocked!

        1. I clicked on the link and was shocked, before I read your comment.. They are not aiming these products for the likes of me, obviously, thought I. So I’ll not be buying anything from them now or in the future as they seem not to want my custom. Defund ’em. It’s in our hands.

          Good morning, Belle.

          1. Yep Liberty aiming for the Black and coloured market, because black lives matter , they love the bling factor cos dey ave loads of money by the bucketful, and if you looked down the Liberty page you will see the scented diffusers the Megain wanted in church to kill of the churchy smell when she got married , and the Queen refused her request .. the diffusers cost £150 + https://www.libertylondon.com/uk/un-air-de-diptyque-fragrance-diffuser-1001448942.html

        2. Not even Tana lawn blouses?
          Or (whisper it because BT might see this and we mustn’t trigger one of his attacks) Liberty bodices.

          1. Tana lawn – a Liberty printed cotton was exclusive to a company called London Pride, makers of ladies blouses

  36. That some people are quite unthinking, clearly stupid or downright nasty is displayed by this very dangerous PC nonsense from Stonewall. The latter are demanding that ‘Trans Rights’ are paramount and that all aspects of fairness and, most importantly, the safety of biological (XX) women be sacrificed on the altar of the supposed rights of men identifying as women being allowed to compete in women’s rugby.
    Asking all clubs to support a tiny minority and thereby put the health and safety of biological women at risk should fall by dint of common sense prevailing but will probably be defeated when clubs have to review their players’ insurance premiums. Women’s non-contact sports are being undermined by biological (XY) men competing and there has been one serious injury in Mixed Martial Arts where a transwoman beat a biological woman so severely that the latter’s skull was smashed and her career ended. Minority ‘rights’ appear to have the upper hand in most areas of life at the moment but perhaps World Rugby is starting the fightback to ensure both fair competion and the protection of women from transwomen are upheld.

    https://twitter.com/VictoriaPeckham/status/1296905333613506562

    1. The women in these sports should just refuse to play on teams with trans-thingies. The trannies should just play amongst themseleves.

    2. World Rugby is not about sport. It is about Big Business. Within a couple of years the Six Nations competition will be fully controlled by them. They will do anything to make money.

    3. Good morning DFP (Dandy Front Pager)

      Why don’t the transgenders get properly organised and have their own exclusively transgender teams with only transgender players in them? They could then seek fixtures against regular men’s and women’s teams.

    4. The world is obsessed by risk; real or imagined.

      Here is a genuine high impact, high probability, high frequency eventand thus very high risk activity that is being ignored.

      At least there is some hope that insurers, people who understand risks, will set their premiums so high that the “sport” will be stopped in its tracks.

      If I was a woman playing rugby against a tranaman I would punch, scratch, knee and kick him in his non-existent bollocks at every opportunity, until the message got through.

      As to non contact sports I would allow them to compete at the highest level professionally. When real women watch their earning power collapse and boycott the events the advertisers will abandon them and eventually common sense might prevail.

  37. Well, well….

    “Alexander Djerassi, the son of Ghislaine Maxwell’s sister Isabel, went from working on Hillary Clinton’s 2008 Presidential campaign, to a “very powerful and prestigious position” within the state department, working under Clinton in charge of the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. He returned to Clinton’s 2016 campaign, according to the Beast.

    “Secretary Clinton gave Alex a job in one of the most sensitive areas of Obama’s executive apparatus,” an anonymous source told OK!. “The fact Alex Djerassi, fresh out of college, was put in charge of the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, covering the Middle East, was an interesting move.”

        1. The optician last week told me that my vision was 20/20, which is something. Whilst playing with his lens machine,he also showed me the threshold above which you legally are allowed to drive. It’s horrifically poor and I think explains many of the crashes!. If my eyesight was as bad as that and could not be corrected, I’d have given up long ago.

          1. I had macular degeneration in one eye which they managed to control by a series or injections and laser surgery.

            Even though if I close my good eye, I can see road signs but not read what is on them, I was told that vision through that my eye is still better than the minimum standard required for driving.

            There are some very blind drivers out there

          2. My eyesight was damaged by my stroke. It’s improved since, but not as good/poor as it was.
            I took a peripheral vision test that gave me OK to drive, but I don’t drive much, and not in the dark.

    1. 322904+ up ticks,
      O2O,
      But,but,but, Og that is that renowned far right racist as we have been led to believe , is there a million more of the same ilk ?

  40. I smiled:

    The online system for booking driving tests in England and Wales has
    been taken offline until Wednesday, the Driver and Vehicle Standards
    Agency (DVSA) said, after the website crashed on Friday

  41. Once again confirmation that my sub to the Spectator was The Right Thing To Do:

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/brits-aren-t-idiotic-but-our-institutions-are
    Rod Liddle

    “Two headlines from the same news-paper, less than three weeks apart. So, the Guardian
    on 31 July: ‘The Guardian view on delaying elections: it’s what
    autocrats do.’ This was in response to a suggestion from the US
    President that the elections might need to be delayed on account of
    Covid. And then on 17 August: ‘By delaying the New Zealand election,
    Jacinda Ardern appears magnanimous and conciliatory.’ This was in
    response to the New Zealand Prime Minister postponing the elections on
    account of Covid.

    The only rational response to this fairly typical piece of doublethink is that the Guardian
    likes Jacinda Ardern whereas it does not like Donald Trump. I am not
    sure why they like Ardern: she seems to me a simpering fraud and almost
    as irritating as the Canadian black-facer Justin Trudeau, but each to
    their own, I suppose. The woman recently reimposed lockdown on Auckland,
    despite the country’s much-heralded defeat of Covid, but she seems to
    have received no international criticism, or even very much criticism at
    home. She gets no flak for anything she does, much like that Swedish
    doom goblin who bestrode the planet hectoring everyone, before lockdown
    mercifully put a stop to her wanderings.

    Anyway,
    in much the same way, nobody seemed terribly pleased by the fact that
    Trump also managed to secure a normalisation of relations between Israel
    and the United Arab Emirates, perhaps the first genuine step forward in
    that scorched and benighted area of the world since Jordan and Israel
    signed a peace treaty in 1994 — or perhaps before, with the Egypt-Israel
    treaty of 1979, for which Nobel Peace Prizes were handed out. Nobody is
    mentioning that Trump might be awarded the prize, because the
    possibility simply doesn’t exist. Barack Obama got one for having done
    nothing whatsoever. Trump, meanwhile, could convince Hamas to recognise
    the state of Israel, hold properly democratic elections in Palestine and
    usher in a series of laws protecting gays, women and infidels from the
    wilder excesses of Islamist fervour, and he would still miss out because
    the liberal West considers him a racist and crypto-fascist and nothing
    he does will alter that perception. The next prize will probably go to
    the doom goblin or the NHS or something.

    Or
    perhaps to Alicia Garza, one of the founders of the insane organisation
    Black Lives Matter. Certainly BLM should receive the Antonio Gramsci
    Award for Most Rapid March Through The Institutions. I can just about
    call the organisation ‘insane’ today, but six weeks ago it would not
    have been possible in the mainstream media. It would have been struck
    out of any newspaper or magazine. Back then it was not possible, either,
    to suggest that the armed robber George Floyd was anything other than a
    hugely peaceable chap whose fight against injustice ranked alongside
    those of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King. Our institutions jumped
    aboard the holier-than-thou newly woke bandwagon and even minor
    criticisms of BLM could end with a sacking. (And it is not so long ago
    that people were sacked for saying ‘All lives matter’.)

    Around
    the same time, if I remember rightly, Yorkshire Tea tried to prevent
    someone from buying its product because she tweeted that she didn’t sign
    up to the BLM manifesto. Spineless, frit, desperately stupid, and above
    all anxious to show off their progressive credentials, corporations and
    public bodies took collective leave of their senses and punished anyone
    who dared to transgress. As Brendan O’Neill put it, this was a chilling
    time for democracy — the more so because none of those institutions or
    corporations actually agreed with BLM about almost anything.

    Best
    of all, when football resumed behind closed doors, the Premier League,
    the Football Association and the English Football League backed teams,
    commentators and pundits wearing BLM badges and players ‘taking the
    knee’ in support of this absurd, extremist organisation and its aims.
    Those aims include, of course, the abolition of capitalism — an economic
    system which previously the Premier League, in particular, had seemed
    to hold in a certain warm affection. As time progressed, the mono-mania
    subsided a little. I am delighted to say that Millwall and
    Middlesbrough, my two favourite teams, were the first to not take the
    knee before a game.

    We
    rightly worry when our institutions become captured like this. We may
    even begin to suspect that perhaps we have got it wrong, given the
    apparent unanimity with which everyone else is genuflecting to the
    patently risible. But lockdown was a strange time, even if I found it
    more pleasant than that old former life. For example, those football
    matches had no fans in attendance. It would have been interesting to
    have been at Millwall’s New Den with the 14,000 regulars to see how
    everyone responded to the taking the knee obsequies in that first game
    after lockdown. But we were barred. A clue comes from Major League
    Soccer in the USA where in the Dallas vs Nashville game, the first among
    paying spectators, the taking-the-knee business was roundly booed. So
    it will be by many, I reckon, when our football fans are allowed back
    from 1 October. Try it at the New Den and see what happens.

    And
    this is the one cheering factor of the whole hideous charade: the
    public simply does not buy into this stuff. It is at best uninterested
    and at worst hugely averse. Our institutions may have enormous power,
    but they do not have hegemony. They do not carry with them the people
    who pay for their existences. They float above, virtue-signalling,
    believing that we respect them for this self-serving obeisance. But we
    do not, in general. We think them gullible idiots, and we are right.”

    1. Torbjørn Jagland made the Nobel Peace prize a laughing-stock by giving it to Obarmy for being, well, obarmy. After that, I don’t give a shonet who or what they do with it – they can ram it up their fundaments, I don’t care.

    2. We think them gullible idiots, and we are right

      Mostly people are gullible idiots. Look at all the mask wearing etc.

      1. I wear my mask not because I am a gullible idiot but because I prefer to do my food shopping in person, rather than online. for all other shopping except shoes, online is fine. Yesterday I zipped round as quickly as possible – it’s completely joyless as nobody speaks to anyone else, whereas it used to be somewhere you stopped to chat.

        1. I’ve just received a letter from an old school friend who wrote almost the exact same thing about the current shopping experience. It seems to be pretty universal among those of our generation.

          1. It’s quite bizarre how the mask-wearing makes it so impersonal. Normally I’d chat to people I know, or the staff on the checkouts – now I just want to get my stuff and get out as quickly as possible.

          2. The last time I went into a supermarket, I said to the girl behind the checkout, “I’m smiling behind this”. She said it was very impersonal.

          3. I said to mine the other day – “I’d chat to you if I wasn’t wearing this thing” – she’d taken hers off. But most of the staff wear them now. It was a bit steamy on Friday and I couldn’t see too well as my specs steamed up with every breath, even though I’d tucked the top of the mask under them.

  43. Is the National Trust turning into a national joke? GUY ADAMS investigates how it’s sacking art experts, dumbing down stately homes, and is obsessed with PC issues

    Continuing its obsession with political correctness — which once led the great aesthete Sir Roy Strong to dub the Trust’s leadership ‘the Blair government in exile’, obsessed with ‘ticking the boxes of the disabled, the aged, LGBT and ethnic communities’ — it also suggests that Trust properties will be vetted for links to the slave trade.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8652387/Is-National-Trust-turning-national-joke-GUY-ADAMS-investigates.html

    1. It is not a problem, do as I did, refuse to renew our membership. When they have so few members perhaps they will change.

    2. I think the National Trust has been a joke for several years now. It has become besotted with political correctness etc. We cancelled our membership four years ago, with a letter explaining why. Got a pro-forma response saying we would be welcome back if we decided to rejoin.

    3. Here’s Charles Moore on the same subject.

      Why won’t the people who run the National Trust trust the nation?

      The charity’s plan to ‘repurpose’ our great historic estates is a betrayal of its founding principles

      CHARLES MOORE

      The National Trust: could an organisation want a better name? To be national and to be trusted is the ambition of every major British charity, institution, business and political party*. Since its foundation in 1895, the National Trust has, on the whole, lived up to its name. It is the most successful heritage organisation in the world. That is why it has more than 600,000 acres and nearly six million members.

      It is interesting to recall the trust’s full name. It is The National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty. This title links buildings with gardens, landscapes and coastline. Whenever people within the Trust have tried to break that link, there has been trouble. Whenever they have strengthened it, there has been success.

      Historically, there has always been a tension between what a great former supporter, Sir John Smith, called “the Lilies and the Boots”. The Lilies were the aesthete curators who cared about the collections and fabric of the more than 200 historic houses. The Boots were the land agents who wanted to make the estates work and preferred the great outdoors.

      This tension was usually more creative than destructive. The relationship between what is built by man and what is grown by harnessing nature is a glory of the British landscape. The National Trust has maintained this relationship, and sometimes improved it. That is what ensures its appeal to people of all classes and widely differing tastes. Members understand that it is all one thing – what Beatrix Potter, inventor of Peter Rabbit and Tom Kitten, called “a noble thing”. Because she believed this, she bequeathed the trust 4,000 acres of the Lake District. Its current headquarters is called Heelis – her married name – in her honour.

      But in recent years, something else has entered the fray. Now Covid-19 has brought it out into the open.

      This week, two documents have found their way into the public domain. The first, from the NT director, Hilary McGrady, introduced a “consultation” on the “Reset Programme”. In plainer English, she means job cuts. The trust is losing £200 million this year, caused, she says, by the coronavirus.

      There is the usual patter about biodiversity and carbon footprint, diversity and inclusion, “community”, Equality Impact Assessments, “unconscious bias” and “how the collections came to be” (which I take to be a coded reference to the profits of slavery). But in essence, the paper is lists and charts of lost jobs and new ways of working, mainly by centralisation. Food, for example, will come from “Whole Trust Delivery Teams”, not from the land and gardens the trust owns.

      Although the curators – the trust’s unique knowledge bank – will be cut by less than some areas, their expertise will diminish. Instead of being experts on one big thing, such as paintings, furniture, or textiles, they will be allocated to cover everything in a single century. This makes no sense when great houses have usually developed architecturally, and in their collections, over centuries. Blickling Hall, in Norfolk, for example, is Tudor, Jacobean and 18th century, with 19th-century alterations as well.

      Behind Ms McGrady’s 41 pages lies an implied admission that the trust has overreached, nearly doubling over ten years. It has been the Cecil Rhodes of heritage colonialism, grabbing too much, too fast. Now it has suffered a non-fatal but worrying cardiac arrest.

      The other document is called “Towards a 10-year Vision for Places and Experiences. Version 2.1”. It is written by Tony Berry, the Trust’s Director of Visitor Experience. The first thing to note about the Berry plan is its visuals. There are pictures of children building sandcastles, a family travelling in a driverless car playing with screens through a futuristic urban landscape, robots, wheelchairs, and a mock-up of the Houses of Parliament being flooded by global warming. Nowhere is there an identifiable picture of a trust property. There is no photograph of a trust house at all.

      That last point is presumably intended, since Mr Berry says that the “outdated mansion experience” has to go. He wants “revolution”, not “evolution”. Out goes the “asset-led approach (our primary role is to present the English country house as a distinctive part of our heritage).” In comes the “audience-led approach”: houses should no longer be presented as “country house former homes” but “repurposed as public space in service of local audiences”. “Everywhere… we will move away from our narrow focus on family and art history.”

      As for gardens, they will not just be beautiful places of tranquillity and “heritage”, but places of activity “where issues like climate change are acknowledged and tackled”. Perhaps some ingenious horticulturalist like the chap who produced the loganberry should develop a fruit called the berryberry in honour of Tony and his visitor experiences. It would be green at all times, and run through one’s system with frightening speed.

      If Mr Berry’s ideas were to be pursued, several things would happen. First the donor families, many of whom inhabit part of their former house, or a house on the estate, would rebel. If their gift was being “repurposed as public space”, why should they continue, as many do, to lend its contents to the trust, or, on death, to transfer them to it as “acceptance in lieu” of tax, instead of selling them on the open market?

      Second, the Berry vision might break the great National Trust Act of Parliament of 1937 specifically designed to rescue country houses for the nation. It would also call into question the unique privilege granted to the trust by its original Act of Parliament of 1907, which states that no property once given to the trust can be taken away from it except by the will of Parliament. Why should the trust be allowed to keep buildings whose historic interest it disregards?

      Finally, National Trust members are usually fascinated by the family stories in its properties, as part of the human dimension and historical context. They do not see most of the properties as neutral backcloths for entertainment, let alone for lectures about the environment. They like their romance and their narrative. Mr Berry loves using the word “narratives”. He says people are searching for “narratives to define their own identities”. Yet he never mentions the great common historical, social and geographical identity in all these places – the word “Britain”.

      It should, in fairness, be said that the gleam in Mr Berry’s eye is not the agreed policy of the National Trust. Ms McGrady has hurried to point this out. But his views are not untypical of those who talk of “visitor experience” and “interpretation”, yet seem actively to dislike the real experience of a place with a history – a history which, all too often, they seem proud not to know.

      This is a problem much more widespread than the National Trust – a problem in schools and universities and parts of the public services and the BBC. It is a culture – or rather a lack of culture – which needs to change.

      Here is the full sentence from Beatrix Potter from which I quoted earlier. “The Trust,” she said, “is a noble thing, and humanly speaking – immortal. There are some silly mortals connected with it; but they will pass.”

      *Footnote: The National Trust covers the whole of the UK except for Scotland. The Scottish National Trust is a separate (and much less secure) body.

      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/21/wont-people-run-thenational-trust-trust-nation/

    4. The Queen’s cousins, the Lascelles family, are descended from traders who made their fortune from plantations in Barbados. Fortunately the beautiful Harewood estate in Wharfedale is still owned by the Earl and Countess of Harewood, not the National Trust. I had to phone the Earl once, at work. He seemed a sensible sort of bloke.

      1. I used to drive past the Harewood Estate twice a week in the mid-70s, along the A61 between Leeds and Harrogate, on my way to the police training centre at Pannal Ash. A gorgeous part of the world.

      2. I would think most of those old families had links to slavery. What the lefties never ask is who sold the slaves to the white traders.

      3. Our MP is fortunate to have a similar lifestyle and back ground . He is also a reasonable chap . A book was reviewed a couple of days ago in the DT , written by someone with all sorts of issues , and article was not very flattering .

        Britain was built on muscle power and unfair advantages , but the majority of us benefited eventually .

        If that had not been the case , we would all still be living at peasant levels , similar to some of the poorer European countries where people clear off to for cheap holidays!

    5. Here’s Charles Moore on the same subject.

      Why won’t the people who run the National Trust trust the nation?

      The charity’s plan to ‘repurpose’ our great historic estates is a betrayal of its founding principles

      CHARLES MOORE

      The National Trust: could an organisation want a better name? To be national and to be trusted is the ambition of every major British charity, institution, business and political party*. Since its foundation in 1895, the National Trust has, on the whole, lived up to its name. It is the most successful heritage organisation in the world. That is why it has more than 600,000 acres and nearly six million members.

      It is interesting to recall the trust’s full name. It is The National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty. This title links buildings with gardens, landscapes and coastline. Whenever people within the Trust have tried to break that link, there has been trouble. Whenever they have strengthened it, there has been success.

      Historically, there has always been a tension between what a great former supporter, Sir John Smith, called “the Lilies and the Boots”. The Lilies were the aesthete curators who cared about the collections and fabric of the more than 200 historic houses. The Boots were the land agents who wanted to make the estates work and preferred the great outdoors.

      This tension was usually more creative than destructive. The relationship between what is built by man and what is grown by harnessing nature is a glory of the British landscape. The National Trust has maintained this relationship, and sometimes improved it. That is what ensures its appeal to people of all classes and widely differing tastes. Members understand that it is all one thing – what Beatrix Potter, inventor of Peter Rabbit and Tom Kitten, called “a noble thing”. Because she believed this, she bequeathed the trust 4,000 acres of the Lake District. Its current headquarters is called Heelis – her married name – in her honour.

      But in recent years, something else has entered the fray. Now Covid-19 has brought it out into the open.

      This week, two documents have found their way into the public domain. The first, from the NT director, Hilary McGrady, introduced a “consultation” on the “Reset Programme”. In plainer English, she means job cuts. The trust is losing £200 million this year, caused, she says, by the coronavirus.

      There is the usual patter about biodiversity and carbon footprint, diversity and inclusion, “community”, Equality Impact Assessments, “unconscious bias” and “how the collections came to be” (which I take to be a coded reference to the profits of slavery). But in essence, the paper is lists and charts of lost jobs and new ways of working, mainly by centralisation. Food, for example, will come from “Whole Trust Delivery Teams”, not from the land and gardens the trust owns.

      Although the curators – the trust’s unique knowledge bank – will be cut by less than some areas, their expertise will diminish. Instead of being experts on one big thing, such as paintings, furniture, or textiles, they will be allocated to cover everything in a single century. This makes no sense when great houses have usually developed architecturally, and in their collections, over centuries. Blickling Hall, in Norfolk, for example, is Tudor, Jacobean and 18th century, with 19th-century alterations as well.

      Behind Ms McGrady’s 41 pages lies an implied admission that the trust has overreached, nearly doubling over ten years. It has been the Cecil Rhodes of heritage colonialism, grabbing too much, too fast. Now it has suffered a non-fatal but worrying cardiac arrest.

      The other document is called “Towards a 10-year Vision for Places and Experiences. Version 2.1”. It is written by Tony Berry, the Trust’s Director of Visitor Experience. The first thing to note about the Berry plan is its visuals. There are pictures of children building sandcastles, a family travelling in a driverless car playing with screens through a futuristic urban landscape, robots, wheelchairs, and a mock-up of the Houses of Parliament being flooded by global warming. Nowhere is there an identifiable picture of a trust property. There is no photograph of a trust house at all.

      That last point is presumably intended, since Mr Berry says that the “outdated mansion experience” has to go. He wants “revolution”, not “evolution”. Out goes the “asset-led approach (our primary role is to present the English country house as a distinctive part of our heritage).” In comes the “audience-led approach”: houses should no longer be presented as “country house former homes” but “repurposed as public space in service of local audiences”. “Everywhere… we will move away from our narrow focus on family and art history.”

      As for gardens, they will not just be beautiful places of tranquillity and “heritage”, but places of activity “where issues like climate change are acknowledged and tackled”. Perhaps some ingenious horticulturalist like the chap who produced the loganberry should develop a fruit called the berryberry in honour of Tony and his visitor experiences. It would be green at all times, and run through one’s system with frightening speed.

      If Mr Berry’s ideas were to be pursued, several things would happen. First the donor families, many of whom inhabit part of their former house, or a house on the estate, would rebel. If their gift was being “repurposed as public space”, why should they continue, as many do, to lend its contents to the trust, or, on death, to transfer them to it as “acceptance in lieu” of tax, instead of selling them on the open market?

      Second, the Berry vision might break the great National Trust Act of Parliament of 1937 specifically designed to rescue country houses for the nation. It would also call into question the unique privilege granted to the trust by its original Act of Parliament of 1907, which states that no property once given to the trust can be taken away from it except by the will of Parliament. Why should the trust be allowed to keep buildings whose historic interest it disregards?

      Finally, National Trust members are usually fascinated by the family stories in its properties, as part of the human dimension and historical context. They do not see most of the properties as neutral backcloths for entertainment, let alone for lectures about the environment. They like their romance and their narrative. Mr Berry loves using the word “narratives”. He says people are searching for “narratives to define their own identities”. Yet he never mentions the great common historical, social and geographical identity in all these places – the word “Britain”.

      It should, in fairness, be said that the gleam in Mr Berry’s eye is not the agreed policy of the National Trust. Ms McGrady has hurried to point this out. But his views are not untypical of those who talk of “visitor experience” and “interpretation”, yet seem actively to dislike the real experience of a place with a history – a history which, all too often, they seem proud not to know.

      This is a problem much more widespread than the National Trust – a problem in schools and universities and parts of the public services and the BBC. It is a culture – or rather a lack of culture – which needs to change.

      Here is the full sentence from Beatrix Potter from which I quoted earlier. “The Trust,” she said, “is a noble thing, and humanly speaking – immortal. There are some silly mortals connected with it; but they will pass.”

      *Footnote: The National Trust covers the whole of the UK except for Scotland. The Scottish National Trust is a separate (and much less secure) body.

      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/21/wont-people-run-thenational-trust-trust-nation/

      1. That is a good article.

        I fear the countryside is being groomed towards diversity , encouraging hordes of inner city people to crowd our delicate countryside and litter it the way they have done to our towns and beaches and roadside verges.. and all the opportunists in the country will extend the drug county lines into small villages like ours , and coastal communities which are full of impressionable youths .

        Those people have no interest in history of our country , its geology nor the flora and fauna, nor could any of them even be bothered to learn the names of our trees and common weeds.

        Our local news this week is another another 50 sheep stolen from a local farm , and drug dens discovered, dog baiting and poaching in our rural countryside, and every day farm materials and equipment go missing .

        I feel terribly depressed .

        1. Farm thefts and sheep rustling, as well as sheep worrying by dogs, are problems in Gloucetsershire as well. But our local paper is now providing a propaganda space for “Stroud Against Racism”

    6. The Guardian was founded in 1821 by John Edward Taylor who traded in cotton produced by the slaves of the American south.

      Ban the Guardian for historic slave links!

    7. Nobody ticks the boxes of “The Aged” – in fact, it’s all their fault, with their “saved-for pensions and paid-for houses” priviledge – the bastards.

    8. The National Distrust has been losing the plot for some time. It’s now gone completely woke (and will soon go broke).

  44. I’ve just discovered a bottle of Malibu rum liqueur at the back of the cupboard…mixed with orange juice over ice it makes a delicious drink on a warm day.

    I’d forgotten just how many sherries I downed at lunchtime today…see you later at HH….or perhaps not….!

  46. 322904+ up ticks,
    “Lest we forget” could someone remind me of the losses incurred between
    27 May / 6 June in the Dunkirk area protecting / England / GB
    & democracy ?

    1. I don’t know that figure but I do recall 22,442 British Service personnel did not return from the Battle of Normandy in June 1944.

      2. 322904+ up ticks,
        S,
        To me there is a great deal of fuss being made media wise about what could very well be a 16
        going on 28 year old incoming potential terrorist
        out to take down democracy.

        I am for keeping in mind our losses fighting for democracy.

    2. I don’t know that figure but I do recall 22,442 British Service personnel did not return from the Battle of Normandy in June 1944.

    1. On that theme here’s an interesting article:

      The most basic thing one needs to know about a democratic regime, then, is this: You need to have at least two legitimate political parties for democracy to work. By a legitimate political party, I mean one that is recognized by its rivals as having a right to rule if it wins an election. For example, a liberal party may grant legitimacy to a conservative party (even though they don’t like them much), and in return this conservative party may grant legitimacy to a liberal party (even though they don’t like them much). Indeed, this is the way most modern democratic nations have been governed.

      But legitimacy is one of those traditional political concepts that Marxist criticism is now on the verge of destroying. From the Marxist point of view, our inherited concept of legitimacy is nothing more than an instrument the ruling classes use to perpetuate injustice and oppression. The word legitimacy takes on its true meaning only with reference to the oppressed classes or groups that the Marxist sees as the sole legitimate rulers of the nation. In other words, Marxist political theory confers legitimacy on only one political party—the party of the oppressed, whose aim is the revolutionary reconstitution of society. And this means that the Marxist political framework cannot co-exist with democratic government. Indeed, the entire purpose of democratic government, with its plurality of legitimate parties, is to avoid the violent reconstitution of society that Marxist political theory regards as the only reasonable aim of politics.

      Simply put, the Marxist framework and democratic political theory are opposed to one another in principle. A Marxist cannot grant legitimacy to liberal or conservative points of view without giving up the heart of Marxist theory, which is that these points of view are inextricably bound up with systematic injustice and must be overthrown, by violence if necessary. This is why the very idea that a dissenting opinion—one that is not “Progressive” or “Anti-Racist”—could be considered legitimate has disappeared from liberal institutions as Marxists have gained power. At first, liberals capitulated to their Marxist colleagues’ demand that conservative viewpoints be considered illegitimate (because conservatives are “authoritarian” or “fascist”). This was the dynamic that brought about the elimination of conservatives from most of the leading universities and media outlets in America.

      But by the summer of 2020, this arrangement had run its course. In the United States, Marxists were now strong enough to demand that liberals fall into line on virtually any issue they considered pressing. In what were recently liberal institutions, a liberal point of view has likewise ceased to be legitimate. This is the meaning of the expulsion of liberal journalists from the New York Times and other news organisations. It is the reason that Woodrow Wilson’s name was removed from buildings at Princeton University, and for similar acts at other universities and schools. These expulsions and renamings are the equivalent of raising a Marxist flag over each university, newspaper, and corporation in turn, as the legitimacy of the old liberalism is revoked.

      Until 2016, America sill had two legitimate political parties. But when Donald Trump was elected president, the talk of his being “authoritarian” or “fascist” was used to discredit the traditional liberal point of view, according to which a duly elected president, the candidate chosen by half the public through constitutional procedures, should be accorded legitimacy. Instead a “resistance” was declared, whose purpose was to delegitimize the president, those who worked with him, and those who voted for him.

      I know that many liberals believe that this rejection of Trump’s legitimacy was directed only at him, personally. They believe, as a liberal friend wrote to me recently, that when this particular president is removed from office, America will be able to return to normal.

      But nothing of the sort is going to happen. The Marxists who have seized control of the means of producing and disseminating ideas in America cannot, without betraying their cause, confer legitimacy on any conservative government. And they cannot grant legitimacy to any form of liberalism that is not supine before them. This means that whatever President Trump’s electoral fortunes, the “resistance” is not going to end. It is just beginning.

      With the Marxist conquest of liberal institutions, we have entered a new phase in American history (and, consequently, in the history of all democratic nations). We have entered the phase in which Marxists, having conquered the universities, the media, and major corporations, will seek to apply this model to the conquest of the political arena as a whole.

      The whole article is here:

      https://quillette.com/2020/08/16/the-challenge-of-marxism/

      Toby Young is an Assistant Editor of this blog.

      1. Having witnessed at first hand a discussion forum, based in America and aimed at those wishing to discuss their anxieties in safety, descending to ad hominem bullying and even libel under anonymous protection and with the blessing of the moderators of anyone without the correct “diverse” opinions, I can well understand how those in the presidential debate lacking the correct “diverse” opinions can feel hounded.

        I sometimes feel like someone having to leave school, giving up any hope of getting an education, because of the uncontrolled antics of bullies and the ineffectiveness of the teachers. Why couldn’t this person simply be offered a decent school?

        I would rather attacks on Trump were not quite so stupidly woke. There is plenty enough to criticise the man for his absence of scruples, especially when it came to betraying the Kurds, his highly dodgy friends in high places, and perhaps most damning of all to Joe the Plumber in Detroit, any failure to live up to his promise to get America back to work. Did he actually drain the swamp or merely attempt to attempt to use crap as foundation material?

        Far more tricky a question, and one that Democrats need to answer, is that is the alternative any better? If not, why not?

  48. Creekit – I know that Engerland wish to make defeat impossible – but being 500+ up, they do seem to be rubbing the slammers’ noses in it…. If they don’t declare very shortly, they won’t get a bash at them tonight….

    1. I had expected Buttler of all players to get a move on but inexplicably he slowed up. Not sure why.

      England need 20 overs against Pakistan this evening, each of our quickies given 5 overs apiece and told to go flat out.

      I still have serious doubts about Root’s captaincy. My choice would be either Stokes or Buttler. That way Root could get back to doing what he used to do best viz. batting at number four.

      1. Buttler appeared to fall into a batting coma. It just wasn’t natural with the state of the game.

      2. Buttler appeared to fall into a batting coma. It just wasn’t natural with the state of the game.

          2. Two down as of this instant.

            Do you fancy a job on TMS? You would get to commentate alongside Asa Guha and banter about hard knobs for breakfast.

        1. My other thought is that Ben Foakes could be number one wicketkeeper with Buttler as reserve but with Buttler as a high order batsman and captain.

          Spared the gloves Buttler could take on captaincy. He has a fine cricketing brain and the ability to adapt. Stokes is a natural vice captain at present and needs to be free to do what he does best.

          Rory Burns is not quite up to the job of opening batsman, just as Joe Denly was never an England number three, both despite having good records in County and as captains.

          Jack Leach of Somerset must be spitting blood at not having been given a game. He is a great spinner and can also hold an end carryIng a bat.

          I think the England team are very close to top notch but must address these weaknesses and be bold in their selections.

          1. Again, I agree, since you seem to be mirroring my thoughts too.

            Rory Burns is a bit of a conundrum. Since he had a decent summer last year I would advise him to get some specialist coaching. I don’t know if he is in contact with his former county colleague, Graham Thorpe, but if I were him I would seek Thorpe’s advice nonetheless. I would certainly persevere with him for the time being to see if he regains his form, especially as he is also potential captaincy material.

    2. I had expected Buttler of all players to get a move on but inexplicably he slowed up. Not sure why.

      England need 20 overs against Pakistan this evening, each of our quickies given 5 overs apiece and told to go flat out.

      I still have serious doubts about Root’s captaincy. My choice would be either Stokes or Buttler. That way Root could get back to doing what he used to do best viz. batting at number four.

    3. I understand some one is looking into making a decision on whether England is being or indeed have been racially motivated in scoring so many runs against the visitors.

    4. I understand some one is looking into making a decision on whether England is being or indeed have been racially motivated in scoring so many runs against the visitors.

    1. Was he the coach driver, that when he broke down and was scratching his head over the engine compartment, one of them said…………………………………………. “Do you need a screw driver”?

      1. Or two of the ladies were a bit behind coming out of the loo.
        The driver had the rest of the ladies lined up for a group photograph.
        One shout come on you two, the drivers trying to get us in to Focus………
        What all of us at once, said Doris.

          4. The dangling hair (never advisable when working under the bonnet of a car) would shield the dress.

  50. Tonight’s cocktail is a Brenda’s Delight. A Brenda’s Delight. Gin & Dubonnet c ice & lemon

        1. Since I’m denied the possibility to visit a decent pub and drink proper ale, the occasional bottle of Belgian beer is small recompense. I certainly wouldn’t drink it in Engerland.

          1. I like Belgian beer. There is a wonderful pub in Ghent – with about 150 beers that one feels obliged to try….before being carried back the hotel…

          5. It has long been my ambition to travel from Ghent to Aix (la Chappelle) [aka Aachen]. Following Browning’s route to bring the “good news”.

          7. No, Conners. I’m neither Dirck nor Joris. I intend to pour my “last measure” down the throat of my triumphant “roo”.

  51. Tonight’s meal is Barbecued rib-eye steak and chips. Barbecued rib-eye steak and chips.

          1. You have never had the pleasure of my ….wife’s home made ice-cream. With the Gaggia machine…..

    5. Had a fillet steak, courtesy Rishi, on Wednesday. The Jolly Farmer was a bloody Harvester until a year or more ago. Now, it’s a proper pub. No obvious Covid precautions. Pretty much the ‘old normal’…

    7. Actually with sautéed new potatoes, baked aubergine with garlic and chilli, and fried mushrooms. Rib-eye cooked on BBQ (at 300ºC) until medium rare and juicy.

  52. Wretched midges are out. Been bitten on the elbow, and man! that itches… now the little bleeders are flying round my head.
    Pity you can’t eat them… :-((
    Any incoherent typing later this evening is likely due to waving my arms at the flying dots, and striking the keyboard…

    1. I have mozzie screens over the windows to keep the buggers out. They are mostly successful but two nights ago, one breached my defences and bit me on the upper arm.

      It still itches like crazy! I hunted it down and got the bugger though.

      1. It was a big surprise to me when we moved here 20+ years ago, how virulent the wildlife is.
        4-motor mosquitoes; endless adders. Massive ant heaps with very bitey ants. How do these buggers survive the winters??
        Even the herbivores have it in for you. Get between an elk cow & her calf, and you’ll find out all about it!

          1. Yup.
            Come into gardens in the winter.
            One killed by a car on the road across the valley a few years ago.
            We also have deer in the gardens. Little Cat likes lying where they congregate, and collects all their ticks…

          2. We have moose here, allegedly. I’ve lived here for nearly nine years and I’m yet to see one. I think they are scared of Swedes.

          3. Each year, the hunt doesn’t take their allowed quota. Getting to be too many now.

      1. Likely there’s some under the bed in the pharmacy box. Problem is, I have to get up from the sofa…

          4. Mozzies. On holiday in Kas, Turkey a few years ago, we took the option of a final night at Dalyan, before being transported to Dalaman in the early hours for the flight home. We were sitting outside the hotel, when a waiter announced that ‘dinner was served’. We thought he was addressing us, but clearly he was talking to the mozzies. Suddenly, the air was thick with the little beasties, and we escaped to our rooms before we managed any food.

          5. They bit me through my clothes in Suth Sudan; the swarm around a light, you could have walked on. Ugh!

        2. I can smear some on the screen for you 😄
          As i sat with my son after golf enjoying our pints of Sharps Atlantic a huge Horse fly started to make a meal out of my right arm. I crushed it’s ambitions but it left a mark. Anthisan is excellent for bites.

          2. Aloe Vera. I have a plant which I break a small piece off and rub it on the bite – works like magic.

    3. That’s a typical Eyore remark; I would prefer:
      “There’s not enough Poohsticks”, sweetie … x

  54. Jesus H Christ.
    Nobody, but Nobody, ever utter the words ‘Noble Savage’ in front of me.
    Bloody Amazonian savages are putting primary school age boys through some sort of ant ‘ritual’ to toughen them up.
    Still, at least it not Africans ripping little girls to pieces.

    1. Wasn’t Noble Savage coined by Rousseau? A fantasist who never ventured beyond his home community.

      1. He spent some time in England – perhaps that’s where he formulated the idea of the Noble Savage (NOTTL- not yet having come into existence….!)

    2. That’s because they are anything but savages! Their arcane rituals might upset your sensibilities but they are far more intelligent than we are.

      For a start they do not breed out of all proportion to their environment. They only eat when hungry and respect their living space. Maybe if the so-called “advanced” civilisations of this planet (which includes us) studied them more and learnt from them, perhaps we would not now be reaching 8 billion souls polluting our living space and killing off all the ecosystems and natural biodiversity. Those Amazonian tribes don’t do that.

      Now tell me who are the “savages”.

      1. Don’t be silly, they breed like every other human without access to contraception.

        It’s just that most of their off-spring die very young.

        1. True, they get wood in the Amazon like any other human species and that is part of the problem.
          There are so many rubber trees in the Amazon that are being chopped up for timber that the rubber tappers have to be careful about protecting the valuable remaining source of condoms.

          They are always on the lookout for logging gangs that are a bit too handy with their choppers:

          https://www.npr.org/2015/11/04/452555878/deep-in-the-amazon-an-unseen-battle-over-the-most-valuable-trees

    3. Judgeing by our standards. Their way of life is totaly different. They prepare the children with the law of the jungle as that is where they live. The ant stings prepare them for what they will have to face. many of our children could do with some of that.!!

  55. Just looking at some gloomy statistics.
    2015, Norway. About 100 killed in the traffic, 590 killed themselves (17 in traffic). So, suicide is six times more likely to carry you off than a car smash.Gee…

    1. Depressed by the Scandi dramas. There’s another four episodes of ‘The Bridge’ on B4 tonight.

      2. The Bridge – all five seasons excellent, although I did miss Kim Bodnia in the later series

    3. Its the price of booze, stops you drinking yourself to death (but they don’t arf try).

        2. As do we.
          74%, clean spirit… diluted down, good with flavouring such as juniper, fruit, & tonic! Hic!

          1. There are kits of flavourings online and you can turn the spirit into anything you like. Ahem….so i’m told.

    2. Please don’t be so Beestly … a chap like Charles can’t sign on at the Job Centre and has to earn a Royal crust somehow,,,,,

      2. Gloucestershire Honey is excellent as your son could no doubt tell you – but £5 per jar is the normal price.

        1. Narfurk honey is OK, too, Missus.

          I am just finishing the 1 kg jar of Catalan honey I bought in Garriguella in February. A fabulous Co-op producing wine, olive oil and other local produce – plus a resto with a €9 menu del dia….

    1. Excellent. I re-watched Master and Commander (The Far Side of the World) for the 4th or 5th time the other day.

    1. I’ve watched the first 10 minutes and done some fast forwarding to see if it gets better.

      It doesn’t.

      If these two clowns are the best that the opposition can produce then the Dems are in with a chance.

      How many others, like me, say to Hell with them?

      1. I don’t thinK the clowns are the ‘Opposition’ however, they make some very salient points about the Dems choice of speakers for certain topics. For Example – Elizabeth Warren (1024th Native American) to speak on Native American Issues….

      2. They are commentators – nothing to do with the team.

        I’ve watched a lot of their stuff – Alexander can get a bit over-excited and locquatious, but he’s usually on the button.

        1. Either way, I’m afraid that I can no longer be bothered with that type of commentator/commentary.

          1. Fairy nuff – but they are not always falling about laughing and they are usually quite on the ball , though can be long-winded.

    4. I added a dozen stoned black olives to my baked vegetables last night. I love them.

    1. The backlog and the frontlog coming up swiftly to become one, as I used to say on my return from hols. Every year.

    2. Boros will never go over a fall like that, he has a Gates private jet non stop to a massive non job in Seattle.

    3. As far as I can tell the protesters dislike paedophiles and poofs and are dead against compulsory vaccines and the wearing of face masks. Being Irish they may have other irritances.

  64. Headline from the DT:

    “William Shakespeare was ‘undeniably’ bisexual, researchers claim”

    ‘To Bi or not to Bi that is the question:
    Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
    The stings in t’arris of outrageous fortune,
    Or to take arms against a sea of doxies
    And by proposing bed them. To bi—to sleep…..

    2. ‘Undeniably’? Have they produced incontrovertible evidence to prove their claim? No – it’s all by deduction, so not ‘undeniable’.

    1. Very good, Rik, my only pedantic SF moan is that the novel that was the basis for the Soylent Green film was titled ‘Make Room! Make Room!’.

      1. Harry Harrison is one of my fav authors,I alway wanted to be a “Stainless steel rat”

      2. Good call. But there is another anomaly, or rather anomalies – Brazil, Gattaca and The Matrix. Unlike the other titles those three are all films with no source novel.

  66. Well, my dear son and wonderful daughter-in-law came to see me – all the way from Long Newnton. It was lovely to see them. Dan sorted out the new spare wheel to perfection. I rewarded them with a large trombetti. We went out for walk to Croxton (about ½ mile away) to see their herd of goats – and back; plus several walks round the garden. I must have walked well over a mile to day – and feel better* than I have for MONTHS. Only 55 mins to a little celebratory drinky-poo.

    * I know I am tempting Providence – but what the hell?

    1. G’donya Bill, i was delighted to see you had made a come back and are now sorted.
      My best mate has been in a similar position to you and thought he was on a very slippery slope at one stage. But the doctors have now all cleared him of all but for a touch of gout.
      The good thing is he doesn’t drink very much alcohol at all, just the odd beer shandy. Being the resourceful type i have latched on to his symptoms as being similar to those i suffered around 4 years ago. MOH does complain a lot about the amount of wine i consume. But i have the back up where as i point out if my old mate doesn’t drink how can it be harmful as we have suffered similar health problems and i’m fine now.
      Cheers 🍷🍷 all the best.
      BTW i have just poured her a large V ‘n’ T lime and ice.

  67. Good night all.

    Portuguese squid stew for supper – fabulous. Then Brie followed by fresh dawdies.

    3. Keith Floyd had a restaurant in Bedminster in Bristol, formerly known for WD & HO Wills’ cigarette factory. Think Woodbines.

      There was a memorable TV account where his omelette was rejected by an elderly French lady who proclaimed that it was undercooked. She then proceeded to give Floyd a cooking lesson, by cooking the vegetables thoroughly. (Floyd was renowned for his crunchy uncooked vegetables.)

      The French woman gave Floyd a proper lesson in cooking and brilliant admonition.

      Edit: It was a Spanish Omelette.

      1. I remember it well. It was all about the technique which dear Floyd could not possibly master. It wasn’t just about flipping the wrist to flip flop the darned thing it was all about style. I’m not surprised he hated the old bag.

  70. That’s it; I’m off. My DiL has instructed me to walk down to the goats every day – so I’ll try t remember to take a camera tomorrow…

    Have a jolly evening.

    Must go and open a bottle – to reward the MR for all her care this last week (and 30 years)…

    A demain.

  71. Evening, all. As virtually none of the lot in charge has ever had a proper job in the real world, why is anyone surprised that they are useless managers, especially in view of the fact they’ve let the EU do all the decision making in the last forty-odd years?

    1. You are of course correct. We need people in parliament who have succeeded in business and other spheres of useful activity. A few actual scientists, engineers, architects (excluding the money grabbing Modernists, several of whom are already Lords) and to sack twelve dozen lawyers for starters.

      The government propensity for preferring the employment of management consultants, advertising freaks and a cabal of superficial analytical pollster geeks has proven to be a disaster for the taxpayer.

      The civil service is probably beyond repair as we have seen most recently with the operation of the Home Office and Foreign Office. Much the same indictment on performance grounds applies to the Department of Health, the utter failure of the NHS which the politicians prefer to proclaim a triumph, the utter failure of our ineffective Border Force to deal with the migrant invasion, the acquiescence of our supposed Police Force In the face of violent Black Lives Matter and Antifa protests.

      If Boris Johnson is unable or unwilling to lead this great nation of ours I suggest he exits stage left and leaves the task to someone who will finally grasp the nettle and perform.

        1. I am up in the night again. Woke up at 4 not being able to sleep without worrying again, as always. There is no comfort in the World Service any longer. How I miss John Peel and his world music at 3am that kept me through the night during my divorce. That is how they should be doing “diversity”!

          There was a programme last night on how the Beatles (the real ones, not the jihadis we must all now pander to) influenced the world during the 1960s, the decade of my childhood. I remember Beatlemania right from the start, and followed their music and break-up when I was a teenager, and knew pretty well every one of their songs.

          For me and for the programme, they were like opening the curtains and letting in the fresh air onto the stuffiness and the hornrimmed world of Mary Whitehouse and her pursed lips, her perms and “the done thing”. In contrast to that, the same decade brought in the property developers and the wretched corrupt planners who set about destroying beloved landmarks forever, replacing them with tawdry and ugly concrete. They too went for the railways. In the 1970s, they set about the countryside, and in the 1980s our cultural institutions. How I miss the pre-comprehensive development England as much as those who reflect on how beautiful German cities were before they were trashed by fate and the consequences of the Third Reich!

          Still, the Beatles made music that lifted us all and made us glad to be alive and gave us reason to move on with life.

          What have we today, equally revolutionary? May I suggest, during this time when the revolutionary has become mainstream and old certainties torn down in a spirit of wilful ugliness, as a revolutionary someone about as conservative as you can get, and that is my muse and mentor whom I have often mentioned, and the name I put on my ballot paper in December 2019, Alma Deutscher?

          She is about as far from the Beatles as is possible – very much posh rich middle class, whose parents are both academic doctors of philosophy, and one thing she ain’t is a John Lennon working class hero. Her music is not derived from jazz or rock-and-roll as the Beatles’ was, but has its roots in Mozart, Schubert, Tchaikovski and Beethoven. She is far more like Clara Schumann than Lady Gaga. She can hardly remember the Beatles, when they happened forty years before she was born, Even her long-dead grandmother, a Jewish concert pianist drifting into history, was born two years after George Harrison was and five after John Lennon.

          Her mission is to make the world a beautiful place in the teeth of much ugliness, and her weapon of choice is the violin, the piano, and a laptop with a MIDI keyboard and Sibelius, as if to remind us that beauty need not be divorced from the 21st century in which she was born and its technology.

          In a time of so much that is disturbing, her music is a comfort and a rope to cling to, that there are better things around the corner if only we have ears to hear them. Isn’t this what the politicians and the church leaders should be providing?

          1. Excellent comment, Jeremy, which deserves a wider audience.

            I seriously suggest you repost it on Sunday’s forum.

  72. Blundell’s and Oakham at the crease at the moment, Funny how such schools keep producing international cricketers and rugby players. I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that the teachers don’t knock off and go home just as soon as their last class is over.

          1. Almost – his quote was “Some people believe football is a matter of life and death. I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.”

          4. Bill Shankly made lots of famous utterances.

            After watching Celtic win the European Cup (the first British side to do so) he approached his good friend, the winning manager, Jock Stein, and said to him, “John, ye’re immortal!”

            Shankly himself did not reach that level of immortality, even though his successors, Paisley, Fagin and Dalglish did.

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