Friday 28 August: By flinching at responsibility we are being infantilised in this pandemic

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/08/27/lettersby-flinching-responsibility-infantilised-pandemic/

676 thoughts on “Friday 28 August: By flinching at responsibility we are being infantilised in this pandemic”

    1. Thank God it’s also Pension Day!!
      My bank account was beginning to look a bit sick!

      1. I get paid on the 25th.
        A load of money whooshes into my bank account and ricochets into the ever-open maws of credit cards, mortgages and so on. Result – by the 26th, there’s bugger-all left again.
        :-((

        1. My state and railway pensions are on 4 week cycles with my Army pension being monthly and my outgoings are spread across the month so my current account stays moderately healthy.

          1. Morning, Bill.
            Need the strong beer to dull the pain in my Yorkshire soul of all that money getting away… :-((

          3. “ower stirs” – my paternal grandmother used to say “Well, I’ll go to France” – but she never did.

  3. ‘Morning, Peeps.

    Shirley Knott?

    SIR – Closely following the Government’s daily government coronavirus briefings, I rapidly came to the conclusion that the majority of ministers were both mediocre and dim. Following recent explanations of governmental failures, I have reversed my opinion: I now believe they are dim and mediocre.

    Paul Saunders
    Thame, Oxfordshire

  4. SIR – Those who are dismayed at the current policies of the National Trust may wish to consider the benefits of membership of the Historic Houses Association.

    This organisation comprises an eclectic collection of properties across the country that are, in the main, lived in and run by their owners, who cultivate an ethos and atmosphere similar to that which once prevailed in National Trust properties.

    Bryan McGee
    Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire

    We were members of the HHA but found that their open days were somewhat haphazard and restricted. When away in another part of the country for only a limited time this was rather frustrating.

    1. SIR – If people are unable to visit National Trust houses (Letters, August 25), some can at least walk in the gardens and visit the shops.

      Lanhydrock, a National Trust property in Cornwall, has a plant nursery that supplies the garden shops of other major National Trust properties in the south of England, the Midlands and Wales. This nursery is about to close, resulting in the loss of jobs for some who have been the foundation of the nursery for more than 40 years.

      This nursery has been doing good business since the lockdown was eased and seems to be the only part of the National Trust to be making any money. The closure appears absurd.

      Jill Thomas

      St Neot, Cornwall

  6. And an earlier than usual Good Morning from derbyshire.
    Looks dull outside at the moment and I’m going to have to check up on Stepson. Not only has his phone has been switched off all week, but he has an appointment at the hospital this morning I’m going to have to get him to.

      1. It gets to be a bit of a grind though.
        I should have transferred part of his benefits across to him this morning, but I’m making him wait until I see him, otherwise he’ll draw the money out and go off somewhere before I get there.

        1. You are very good, Bob. Grind is exactly the right word; just that constant feeling of one step forward and then two steps back.
          A fifty year old medical fad combined with beancounter greed, has caused immeasurable suffering – and not just to the patients.

        2. It is tough. Are there no local charities that can take some of the load? My Mother has carers from a charity visit 3 times a day to make sure she takes her medication, is clean, fed, and the house tidied. Don’t know what we could have done without that.

          1. Human Rights. You are not allowed to make patients take their medicine, eat, have a bath etc…..
            Thank God MB and I got out when we did.

          2. i’m having a last mug of tea before heading to Derby to, hopefully, take Step-son to a hospital appointment.
            And no, i do not think he was ready to be discharged last week.

          5. One of my friends, who used to work as a carer, said she gave up because of all the rules and regulations.

  7. Morning all

    SIR – There is no better example of the way in which this pandemic has undermined professional responsibility and infantilised our society than Labour’s criticism that giving head teachers the final say on face coverings (outside coronavirus “hot spots”) is “passing the buck”.

    Informed decisions with reference to the local situation, shape and size of school and to recent experience will mean the right choice will and should vary from place to place.

    The Government’s previous position forbidding masks in all schools was no more sensible than Labour’s now in insisting on them.

    As a head it is right that I am accountable for the decisions I make, but to be accountable I have to be responsible too. If that means passing the buck then pass it on.

    Mark Waldron

    Ryde, Isle of Wight

    SIR – There is a national spirit of trying to get the country operating again after the lockdown. Companies have striven to make the workplace Covid-safe. Shops, cafes, restaurants and gyms have used initiative to make their premises safe for customers. Unions have co-operated, with the interests of their members to the fore, in getting them back to work again.

    ADVERTISING

    Ads by Teads

    Sadly this does not seem to apply to education. Teachers’ unions and a few hesitant schools should take some positive action towards the recovery of our country.

    Peter Amey

    Hoveton, Norfolk

    SIR – Anyone with an ounce of common sense will see that making children wear masks in parts of their school is a sop to those parents still frightened of any sort of risk, however small. It is an encouragement to them to get their children back to where they should be.

    Bill Todd

    Whitton, Middlesex

    SIR – J P Morgan, the investment bank, has announced plans for staff to continue to work partly at home. Surely it is imperative that employers encourage staff to return to work in the office.

    However well staff may have worked at home, productivity must be better in a fully equipped office. Any company that does not have the spin-off of people meeting daily will also surely suffer from a lack of entrepreneurial new ideas.

    Without encouragement and training from seniors, young people too can easily get lost in companies that they have newly joined.

    Adrian Platt

    West Horsley, Surrey

    SIR – James Stone (Letters, August 26) suggests that “working from home will end when autumn heating bills arrive”. I also forecast that cycling, electric scooters and walking to the office will drastically decline after the summer.

    However, I wait to see what happens to “temporary” and proposed cycle lanes and traffic control.

    Leslie Hayward

    Thames Ditton, Surrey

  8. SIR – The idea that friendships could be damaged or ended by lockdown (report, August 27) is nonsense.

    Serving in the Royal Navy in the Seventies and Eighties, I was frequently away at sea for months on end. There were no mobile phones, social media or Zoom. Contact with friends and family was by letter, but, when I was home on leave, relationships continued as normal.

    Thanks to social media, I have been able to reconnect with old shipmates, some not seen for 35 years. When we meet, the years fall away and we pick up where we left off.

    If friendships are eroded by lockdown, one has to ask if they are true friends or merely acquaintances.

    Dr Alf Crossman

    Rudgwick, West Sussex

    1. Friends are not the same as acquaintances.
      I read somewhere that you typically don’t have more than seven friends, but (as the address book and Arseache will testify) people often have very many acquaintances – who come & go.
      Even after an absence of years, friends resume where they left off, as if there was only a day or two gap.

      1. I was discussing this with someone the other day and said that I could count the number of real friends on one hand or may be just into the second hand and that anyone else only qualified as an aquaintance. She was in the same boat but had been made to feel that was abnormal. I suspect anyone claiming to have lots of friends is very insecure in themselves.

        1. Depends how you define “friend”, I suppose.
          Somebody who follows you on arsebook isn’t a friend IMHO.

          1. I don’t do arsebook, but I wouldn’t even count someone on that I hadn’t met even as an aquaintance.

  9. SIR – The extreme Left has always latched on to any fringe protest movement, causing schisms, in-fighting and extremism. Divide and rule is the oldest trick in the book.

    That they have found truly useful idiots this time can be easily seen on the Black Lives Matter UK website.

    Guy Bargery

    Edinburgh

    1. You know, try as I may, I cannot get my head around why the oxymoronic expression, “useful idiots”, has gained so much popularity. Surely these people are “useless idiots” since their value to society has no worth whatsoever.

        1. Good God – I’m being told that the link is ‘Unsafe’ and, despite telling the server to continue, nothing happens. 1984 looms large!

          1. Sorry the link didn’t work for you. It’s part of an interview with Yuri Bezmenov – might be available on youtube as well if you search for it. I’ve not had any unsafe messages.

        1. That’s a moot point, Nursey. I would suggest they are useful to no one. Not even themselves.

          3. Wiki:

            The phrase “useful idiot” has often been attributed to Vladimir Lenin,[3] but he is not documented as ever having used the phrase.[4] In a 1987 article for The New York Times, American journalist William Safire investigated the origin of the term, noting that a senior reference librarian at the Library of Congress had been unable to find the phrase in Lenin’s works and concluding that in the absence of new evidence, the term could not be attributed to Lenin.[4][5] Similarly, the Oxford English Dictionary in defining “useful idiot” says: “The phrase does not seem to reflect any expression used within the Soviet Union”.[1]

            The term appeared in a June 1948 New York Times article on contemporary Italian politics (“Communist shift is seen in Europe”), citing the centrist social democratic Italian paper L’Umanità.[6][1] L’Umanità wrote that left-wing social democrats, who had entered into a popular front with the Italian Communist Party during the 1948 elections, would be given the option to either merge with the Communists or leave the alliance.[6] The term was later used in a 1955 article in the American Federation of Labor News-Reporter to refer to Italians who supported Communist causes.[7] Time first used the phrase in January 1958, writing that some Italian Christian Democrats considered social activist Danilo Dolci a “useful idiot” for Communist causes. It has since recurred in that periodical’s articles.[8][9][10][11][12][13]

  11. No healthy child has died from coronavirus in the UK. 28 August 2020.

    No healthy child has died from coronavirus in the UK, the biggest study into the condition suggests, as researchers say they are confident in sending their own children back to school.

    Research by universities including Edinburgh and Liverpool, discovered that children made up less than one per cent of all people admitted to hospital with Covid-19, and just six youngsters had died overall.

    Morning everyone. I strongly suspect that very few healthy adults have died of coronavirus either.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/28/no-healthy-child-has-died-coronavirus-uk/

    1. Can you find the death toll from influenza for 2018 in the UK, to compare with Covid-19?
      2018 influenza deaths in Norway were recorded as 902. To date, half-year, Covid-19 deaths are 264.
      Admittedly, the isolation has helped prevent infections so far, but nobody ever locked down a country for influenza – and tha kills more than COVID, by a factor of three!

        1. and the deaths from COVID seem to be about 41,564 – but how trustworthy is that number, bearing in mind the kerfuffle over what actually included in those statistics?

        2. and the deaths from COVID seem to be about 41,564 – but how trustworthy is that number, bearing in mind the kerfuffle over what actually included in those statistics?

  12. No healthy child has died from coronavirus in the UK. 28 August 2020.

    No healthy child has died from coronavirus in the UK, the biggest study into the condition suggests, as researchers say they are confident in sending their own children back to school.

    Research by universities including Edinburgh and Liverpool, discovered that children made up less than one per cent of all people admitted to hospital with Covid-19, and just six youngsters had died overall.

    Morning everyone. I strongly suspect that very few healthy adults have died of coronavirus either.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/28/no-healthy-child-has-died-coronavirus-uk/

  14. Unusually serious for Jan Moir. And I agree with her.

    “Girls Aloud star Sarah Harding has advanced breast cancer. She is 38.

    One wishes her all the best in the difficult months ahead. However, each time a celebrity gets cancer, I hope in vain that society will desist from talking about ‘winning’ and ‘losing’ the cancer ‘battle’.

    This kind of combat terminology is often hurtful to those who have not recovered well through no fault of their own.

    Or those with poor prognoses who have no chance of winning anything, least of all a deadly encounter with this disease.

    The implicit suggestion in the battle conceit is that cancer victims could do something about their situation, if only they would buck up. Take some vitamins. Make the effort. Stop feeling sorry for yourself.

    These thoughts are a comfort for everyone, except the patients. Surviving cancer is not a matter of will. And while cancer is many things, it is not a battle. Quite the opposite, in fact.

    Patients are quite passive and totally impotent in the process, turning up to be pumped full of chemicals or radiation. A positive outlook helps, but ‘fighting cancer’ metaphors don’t help anyone.

    At worst, they can suggest that those who continue to struggle have somehow failed, when the truth is there was nothing they could do. Anyway, good luck to Sarah (above) — and anyone else who has a difficult diagnosis.”

  15. Trans people are real — but so is biology

    Turning sex into gender and gender to social construct has pitted the movement against science

    Douglas Murray – Thursday August 27 2020, 5.00pm, The Times

    Earlier this week Sasha White was fired from her job working at a literary agency in New York. Her offence was writing comments on Twitter that the Tobias Literary Agency deemed anti-trans. As it happens Ms White would appear to be rather pro-trans. “Gender non-conformity is wonderful,” she says in her Twitter bio, “denying biological sex not so.” It is that second clause that got her into trouble.

    It has been extraordinary watching the trans debate play out over recent years. But too rarely does anyone stop to acknowledge the underlying causes. I have tried to perform some of this delicate surgery in my own recent book. Happily more and more people are doing the same. Notably the neuroscientist Dr Debra Soh. Her new book, The End of Gender, lays out with exceptional care not just why we have got into the present impasse, but how we might get out of it.

    As Soh says, the effort to turn sex into gender and gender into some endlessly mellifluous thing is an attempt to contend with a real question. Nearly every culture has some space for between-the-sexes people: the fa’afafine in Samoa, the Kathoey in Thailand. In our own culture we have struggled with this because it has got tied up with another issue. There is now a wide societal embarrassment over the way in which gay people were treated in the past. One thing that followed from that has been a perfectly natural desire not to repeat the mistake. When gay people said that our preferences were not a choice, it took a long time to be believed. Today when trans people say they are born trans they are speaking to a highly receptive and sympathetic audience.

    Turning sex into gender and gender into a “social construct” was one way to try to address our near-complete knowledge-deficit about what trans actually is. The problem is that it treads across some serious magisteria. Not least science.

    My own realisation of this came when I started noticing that it was my scientist friends who were becoming most vocally nervous — in private — about where this was heading. Institutions at which they worked were demanding that they said things, and pretended to believe things, they knew not to be true.

    For instance gametes exist and there are only two types: sperm cells and eggs. There are no intermediary gametes. Likewise, although rare chromosomal disorders such as Klinefelter syndrome occur, no self-respecting biologist can therefore agree that chromosomes are some figment of the heterosexual imagination. Soh herself left academia for the same reason many other scientists have been considering it: because this is the first time in their professional lives that they have been asked, indeed told, to ignore the scientific method. The first time in centuries that a dogma — religion if you will — has assumed precedence over their realm.

    But the revolt is on many fronts. The manner in which trans claims disrupt the rights of women is now understood thanks to some high-profile conflagrations. That is because the demands of trans activists are clearly so different from other rights movements, including women’s rights. The successful branches of women’s liberation never insisted on ignoring biological reality entirely. They asked for equality, and demanded that certain realities were accepted but not ignored. And yet today when women say “We’re happy for you to be trans but that doesn’t make you precisely the same thing as a woman” they find not just abuse but (as happened to Ms White this week) career destruction.

    The same goes for gay people, who did not win their argument by saying “We’re here, we’re queer and as a result the penis is a social construct”. As the trans debate goes on there is increasing gay alarm at the claims made by trans activists about what they term “trans children”. As the LGB Alliance and others are now trying to highlight, there exist not just old-fashioned gender stereotypes but something deeply anti-gay about present trans claims. For example, why should a slightly effeminate boy be thought to be a boy trapped in a girl’s body? Or a boyish girl be “diagnosed” as trans? At least four-fifths of children diagnosed as having “gender dysphoria” will grow up to be healthily gay. Is it any wonder that an increasing number of gay men and lesbians are becoming concerned about the claims made by advocates of gender dysphoria?

    Despite all this, in the face of the revolt the trans activists keep digging in. And the absurdities mount. The Lib Dem leadership candidate Layla Moran recently tried to get around the impasse by claiming that she sees someone’s true gender “in their soul”. Yet most people — albeit privately — recognise that to be anti-scientific nonsense.

    Still, as the sackings continue, the activists seem to imagine that if they just clear all opponents from their path, they can win by insistence. Nothing could be further from the truth. Biological reality can be ignored, but not for long. Our society is struggling for a way to understand the question of trans. It is a noble aim. But if you are going to address a complex question it is unwise to discard the best analytical tools any society has developed. As Soh demonstrates, we can be humane and self-respecting, liberal-minded and respectful of the scientific method. A generation is emerging that is dedicated to that task. We must hope that they win.

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

    BTL:

    A refreshing “take” on the subject. Thank you.
    this debate is about the insanity of trans women with male genitalia being sent to women’s prisons, where they assault biological women, it’s about trans women with male genitalia competing in women’s sport, it’s about trans women with male genitalia accessing female ‘safe spaces’ like bathrooms and changing rooms, and most horrifically women’s refuge centres. It’s about having to accept trans women with male genitalia if a woman requests a female to perform an intimate medical examination. It’s about the total and absolute violation of the rights of biological women.

    A misogynist, homophobic movement which harms children calling itself progressive is not so. Serious questions need to be asked as to why gender identity ideology has taken such a grip on our public service, medical and academic institutions. It is purely dogma-driven as you say so well Mr Murray.

    1. Think of the C21 fate of ‘George’ of the Famous Five.
      Apart from the fact that helicopter parents wouldn’t allow them that level of personal freedom.

    2. However, be that as it may, no civilisation can flourish if it allows homosexuality to do so. The contortions of perversion become more and more contrived when homosexuals have children by the misuse of what medical science has made possible. Homosexuality is a curse on society, as should be obvious, as a homosexual society will die out naturally.

  16. The ghastly bandleader, leftie, England hater Rattle is all over The Grimes, today – and, natch, being eulogised by the like minded.

      1. I can think of quite a few who are in the queue in front of him for an urgent slap in the chops.

  17. Morning all! Torrential rain now in its eighth hour here, and I am packing for a weekend’s camping in the Lake District with friends, LOL. Should I fail to darken these doors again, please assume I have managed to drown halfway up some mountain; and it was nice to have known you.

    1. It always rains in the Lake District – so it should be a home from home. When inside, DON’T touch the tent…….

      2. Does anybody remember the ending of Arthur Ransome’s S&A book, Peter Duck?

        We saw plenty of waterspouts as we sailed from Sicily to Malta on Mianda in 2005 which were quite unsettling.

        On another occasion we were actually knocked flat by a tornado in the middle of the night while we were anchored in a bay in SW Turkey. It tore a solar panel from its s/s mounting on the transom and vanished into thin air.

        We haven’t been able to get out to Mianda this year because of travel and quarantine restrictions which is sad as we don’t know how many more years I shall be capable of sailing a 40′ sailing boat: https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ee0c09df40e4222194069415f1b0da057c310c63741de016f6d5dd1cb6142957.jpg

          2. Funnily enough there is a boat in Marmaris marina called Me’and’er which can cause confusion when being called on the VHF radio.

          5. Suspected so, but there could have been an alternative.
            A guy I worked with years back had a narrowboat called “Wanderer”, but when the department bought him a ship’s bell to go with it, inscribed with the name “Wonderer”, he had to edit the narrowboat’s name a little!

          6. Add a ‘d’ to the end and you have the Pakistani batsman of whom Sir Viv Richards once opined, “If I needed a batsman at the other end who I could entrust with my life, it would be Javed Miandad.”

        2. Give sailing lessons, maybe. Have all the pully-haully stuff done by the deckie-learners. Navigation lessons in the classroom are good but practical experience can be hard to come by. I was steering a vintage fishing boat and the “experienced” person told me steer for a prominent island in the distance. I did so, until such time as I realised that the “island” was in fact a hill on the mainland. I have been astonished by the ineptitude of those, including boat owners, who considered themselves experienced sailors. While I was crewing a yacht in the Forth the helmsman-owner managed to collide with a buoy. A buoy roughly the same size as a single decker bus.
          For those who don’t have access to a family boat, membership of a yacht club helps, but nothing beats having to do it under the critical eye of an old salt. (in French)

    3. Morning, ATD.

      Have a lovely weekend and don’t forget to take a copy of Wainwright’s Walks. 😊

      1. Does there exist a Wainwright’s Slithers in the Mud, Cursing? Might be more useful. 🤣

        1. Remember to bring your rubbish home with you and don’t leave it in already full litter bins .

          In this area we are awash with visitor rubbish , they even discard their tents and other things.

          People seem to have more money these days to squander .

          1. I was raised to leave NOTHING in my wake. No littering here. I have even thoughtfully insured against the temptation to abandon kit by being poor as a church mouse 😇

          4. Wine in cartons is a good thing, though, as when they are empty they can be flattened, and weigh almost nothing. Much better than bottles or cans.
            They also come in 3 litre volumes, too :-D)
            Hic!

          5. Same up here Maggie (good morning BTW) – human waste is everywhere, there’s some dirty bastards about

          6. …. “they even discard their tents”.
            Probably Benders (no, not the Charles Lynton type); they are an absolute butter ugger to squish down again and are cheaper than one night at a B&B.

      1. Insect repellent was quite literally the first thing I thought of. Then wine. Then waterproofs. I might have my priorities wrong.

        1. Citriole (in some insect repellents) is supposed to be effective in killing off the C19 virus (according to army research).

    7. Err… Enjoy!
      Remember – wool keeps it’s thermal properties, even when wet!
      So, if it gets too bad, shelter in a sheep!

    9. Let’s hope it will be like the seaside at Blackpool when the Ramsbottom family visited:

      They didn’t think much of the ocean
      The waves they were fiddlin’ and small
      There was no wrecks and nobody drownded
      Fact nothing to laugh at at all.

      And don’t forget to take a tarpaulin as the song about the West Country Way advises.

      The moral of this song is clear to be seen
      No matter how cunning or crafty you’ve been
      If you go courting young girls of 16
      Best heave a tarpaulin on your threshing machine

  18. Clap for the NHS.

    My brother-in-law lives in East Sheen (London). Five mins from Twickenham. He is a volunteer for Covid tests. He has one every couple of weeks – or when he has “symptoms”. This morning he woke with a sore throat. They said me must be tested soonest – but as all the test centres were fully booked, instead of Twickenham, he should go to – wait for it – Manchester…….

    He drove to Twickenham which was inundated with one other person being tested…..

    Now – a woke person would have gone to Manchester…….

  19. This comment, from another newspaper, sums up very nicely just what the Black Lives Matter movement is all about – l

    “They are a tissue destroying virus growing in a society that has turned off its own immune system.”

    1. They have got all they have asked for so far, why not go the whole hog. QWERTYs might have something real to bitch about.

      1. 323080+ up ticks,
        Morning PM,
        We have been there before,
        I see the return of powder egg & saccharine times in the near future on account of lessons NEVER learnt.

        Ps,
        To any concerned If post needs clarifying please ask.

  23. 323080+ up ticks,
    I cannot fathom out where johnson & co ( party supporters inclusive) are in the wrong, if they were working for the benefit of the British peoples there would be cause to whinge, but brussels must be highly delighted especially with the Dover out pouring / in letting campaign working successfully.

  24. Thank you BBC for inspiring the silent majority to stand up to this cultural revolution
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/08/27/thank-bbc-inspiring-silent-majority-stand-cultural-revolution/
    The corporation’s cack-handed Proms plan has unwittingly paved the way for a more rational conversation about British history and values

    NIGEL FARAGE

    For those of us who believe in the rule of law, in our great tradition of free speech, and in the very existence of our nation, the events following the terrible death in Minneapolis of George Floyd in May have left us without voice. We have either been silenced or, in some cases, “cancelled”, the term now used to describe a person who has been thrust out of a social or professional circle for expressing an opinion. It is the modern version of sending someone to Coventry.

    This week’s row over the Last Night of the Proms, in which the BBC has – absurdly – insisted that the words of Rule, Britannia! and Land of Hope and Glory cannot be sung on 12 September is just the latest chapter in this summer of discontent.

    Perhaps by making this ghastly mistake, however, the BBC has unwittingly opened up the possibility of everybody having a more rational conversation about British history, culture and values. Indeed, I wonder whether this crazy decision marks the moment at which the majority say: “Enough is enough.”

    Why, after all, should a small minority of the population who hold an extremist view dominate our national debate? Since when did a properly functioning society prosper by implementing topsy-turvy policies? And why should the rest of us be dictated to just because some people don’t like something?

    Millions of us watched in horror a few months ago as Churchill’s statue was defaced in Parliament Square and the Cenotaph was desecrated. We were also subjected to those dreadful pictures of a mob tearing down a public statue of Edward Colston in Bristol and depositing it into a dock. Yet some of those who have stood up to criticise these reckless, anti-democratic factions have lost their jobs and in some cases been labelled ‘racist’.

    My own comments on some of these outrages may well be a reason that I am no longer an LBC presenter, though I choose not to denigrate a former employer.

    When I appeared on ITV’s Good Morning Britain in June to explain that the Black Lives Matter movement is not about racial equality but instead has a Marxist agenda to overthrow the established order and to defund the police, I was called a liar. The programme’s increasingly ‘woke’ presenter, Piers Morgan, seemed very happy with this situation. I find it surprising that a man of his intelligence cannot or will not acknowledge these facts.

    I know that the forces of conservatism have been in retreat for years, without anybody giving a voice to their opinion. Yet in the country at large – that place known as Middle England – people are increasingly perplexed. Why will nobody stand up and say that Britain abolished slavery more than 200 years ago, and that the Royal Navy spent 50 years driving out this appalling trade? Why will no one say that far from being a racist country, Britain is an fair-minded nation that has managed its relationship with its former colonies in a manner that is unrivalled in history and has led to the Commonwealth of Nations? These questions have troubled many people since the spring.

    It does feel as though a lot has changed in recent days. Perhaps a tipping point has been reached.

    Thanks to the increasingly unloved BBC choosing to take its lead from a politically correct Proms conductor from Finland, Dalia Stasevska, it has essentially told the licence payers who fund it to be ashamed of who we are, to hate our culture, and to rewrite our history.

    Yet to this public opinion has overwhelmingly said: “No.” Thousands have signed petitions calling for the Last Night of the Proms to be reinstated. A proper debate has been stirred. And, at last, the Prime Minister seems to have sided with the people, speaking some common sense words about the episode and lambasting the BBC for its handling of the affair. He was quite right to do so. Why should we apologise for who we are?

    I was very surprised when ITV’s This Morning programme invited me on yesterday to have a debate with an activist from the Black Lives Matter movement – somebody who, incidentally, is also a prominent Remainer (isn’t it funny how Remainers always seem to support every negative view of British history?)

    For once, I found myself in this mainstream media setting being treated not as the villain, but as the voice of the majority. The presenter, Eamonn Holmes, who compered the debate, even pointed out that 90 per cent of his viewers thought that Rule, Britannia! and Land of Hope and Glory should not be axed.

    For his efforts, Mr Holmes is now also being condemned as “racist” in some quarters. This doesn’t really matter, though, because it is obvious that most people are with him on this issue. The worm has turned. When even our left-of-centre broadcasters are waking up to the opinions of their own viewers, it does feel as though some lost ground is being made up.

    Let’s be honest about it. Britain is the most tolerant country in the world. We believe in democracy, law, and decency. No longer should any of us be silent in the face of this attempted Marxist-sponsored cultural revolution. The stand has now been taken, albeit thanks to the BBC’s cack-handedness.

    To quote an old favourite comedy programme, ‘Allo ‘Allo! : “Listen very carefully, I will say this only once…thank you BBC.”

    1. 323080+ up ticks,
      This farage chap is that the same one who had no problem whatsoever of denigrating 30000 plus party members of UKIP that worked to give him a platform that one ?
      Trust as far as you can throw a fat abbot.
      The “nige the knife” is well remembered,

      1. Good afternoon, ogga

        I think you will never forgive Nigel Farage for being the one person who made Brexit possible. You would rather Britain was trapped permanently in the undemocratic tyranny that the EU is than to give Nigel Farage any credit.

        Nigel Farage, like most politicians, has made mistakes and his worst one was not allowing his Brexit Party candidates to stand in Conservative held seats where the incumbent was a remainer – this was a catastrophic error of judgement.

        But let us hope that Farage has learnt from this and that his Reform Party will get off the ground and rewrite the political geography of Britain.

      2. Good afternoon, ogga

        I think you will never forgive Nigel Farage for being the one person who made Brexit possible. You would rather Britain was trapped permanently in the undemocratic tyranny that the EU is than to give Nigel Farage any credit.

        Nigel Farage, like most politicians, has made mistakes and his worst one was not allowing his Brexit Party candidates to stand in Conservative held seats where the incumbent was a remainer – this was a catastrophic error of judgement.

        But let us hope that Farage has learnt from this and that his Reform Party will get off the ground and rewrite the political geography of Britain.

        1. 323080+ up ticks,
          R,
          You cannot see the irony in your post
          once again you are dependent on HOPE
          hope major, hope cameron hope clegg,
          hope may, hope johnson, & now hope for a self confessed mass knifer.
          Little wonder we as a Country are in deep sh!te.
          Quicker we run out of hope candidates
          and connect with a positive one the better.

        2. 323080+ up ticks
          Afternoon R,
          Stop clutching at bloody straws an being bloody silly you are coming across like
          one more disgruntled tory’s blaming any
          outside of the party.
          `The farage condemned himself if you cannot see that you have no business teaching.
          Error of judgement do please refrain from being bloody stupid it was
          pre meditated orchestrated act of treachery as was the mass stabbing.
          There were thousands made the referendum possible all the while being castigated by pro eu lab/lib/con party’s / members.
          Since major you have put your trust in treacherous losers and I do believe you
          are not about to mend your ways.

          2. 323080+ up ticks,
            R,
            Turning the other cheek went out of fashion some time back, the toxic governance trio politico’s taught us that long ago.
            Some people never learn especially those that
            convince themselves they are really supporting / voting for a genuine Conservative party and they have been doing this since Mrs Thatcher fell foul of a tory knife.
            Peoples cannot go on denying facts & be upset at
            retaliation, denying facts is how we got into this odious state as a Nation to start with, as with supporting & voting for a ersatz party, party’s, time & time again, that surely is tiger by the tail politics
            without a doubt.

  25. Apropos nothing at all it was on this day in 1961 that I started work aged 15. On Monday 31st August it will be 9 years since I retired having worked for 50 years and 3 days. Not many will achieve that in the years to come.

        1. But you are older, Uncle Del…!

          I stopped in 2009 – after 50 years and a few months. Enjoyed every minute of my working life.

          Now I enjoy not working – having time to read and think and potter about. Of course, the MR keeps me on my toes…

        2. Although younger than you Del I retired 27 years ago (yes early retirement) although I still work (?) as a recovery truck driver – I will probably completely retire from that next March when I’m 80

          1. But you make lovely music and provide a measure of joy for people in retirement homes. You are an example to us all.

    2. It is the same day and year I joined the British Army. It was poorly paid and a hard life. If I had known what it was going to be like…
      .
      .
      .
      .
      I’d do the same again.

      1. If only we had people like you at the top now it might be a different story. I applied for 3 jobs and was offered all three and I took the one that offered he highest wage, £6 per week, and was only 200 yards from home. The other two were in the city and offered 5 guineas and 4 guineas respectively.

    3. It’s a blessing that we retired when we did, the insecurity in todays job market is not something that I envy.

      Although they deny it the company that I worked for has a very aggressive policy of dumping anyone over fifty. Even high performers crossing the age barrier are met with bad reviews and layoffs.

      1. If you run your own business you don’t really retire for as long as there is still demand for your services and you enjoy what you do. Caroline is, in my unbiased opinion, probably the best teacher of “A” level French there is – at least that is what many of our students tell us.

        I make the lunch, drive the minibus, do the office work and the shopping and try to make the students laugh – my role is to be an anarchist and a bad influence and to make a few mistakes with my spoken French so that Caroline can criticise me rather than the students.

        While our courses remain fully booked and for as long as we and our students and their parents are happy we shall carry on. I am 74; Caroline is 58.

        1. Definitely not a unique case but one person that I golf with is in his eighties. He is still involved in the day to day operation of his insurance brokerage and will frequently go from course to office.

          My job required a lot of travel. I cannot imagine doing that nowadays, it was bad enough with airport security but in todays covid world the travel would be unbearable.

          1. Airports are hell.

            Until this year we made two trips to Turkey and back each year to go sailing and we hope to carry on next year plague permitting.

    4. My 10th anniversary of retirement comes up in September. Younger than you, but it was a medically induced retirement. It’s been a lovely 10 years. Just a pity about the way the world’s going to the devil.

      1. I retired at the end of March 2011 and have never regretted it. I certainly wouldn’t want to be working in the JobCentre now – they’ve been rushed off their feet with claims for Universal Credit. Still working for the hedgehog rescue, though this year has been a bit different, with no events.

      2. I retired (early on medical grounds) in 1999 – just before the moon left earth’s orbit 🙂

  26. When Donald Trump spoke, a sense of delusion hovered over the White House. 28 August 2020.

    Mr Trump delivered his speech on the White House lawn, before a live audience of hundreds of supporters sitting side by side, unmasked, in a clear sign that the president will continue to deny the advice of America’s leading public health experts and also the plight of America today.

    This week gave the President an additional opportunity to push this agenda as the US witnessed yet another episode of police brutality. On Sunday, Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old black man, was shot seven times in the back as he walked to his car in Kenosha, Wisconsin where his three children sat waiting. As the Republicans delivered their convention speeches, protests continued to escalate and some turned violent.

    Another Guardian Article in the Telegraph! They do really own them all!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/28/donald-trump-spoke-sense-delusion-hovered-white-house/

        1. You didn’t see any of the pictures broadcast by the Republicans during Trumps speech where very few in the audience wore masks even though the US health care authorities are recommending masks? So how is that statement incorrect?

          At least they only shouted Four More Years, if they had sung the words who knows what a catastrophy would have followed.

          2. Ah the second second paragraph about the great divide.

            He only sees the rioting and talks about that, the left only see the shooting and riot about that.

    2. The response was probably planned by Trump. Hs is continuing to claim MSM bad, they are just reacting as expected.

      Stop the violence, stop the disrespect for the past, stop socialism are messages that will not just appeal to his base, there are many disgruntled middle of the road Americans who will hear these words and maybe reconsider.

      While the press are focused on inaccuracies and omissions, they are letting Trump set the agenda.

  27. When Donald Trump spoke, a sense of delusion hovered over the White House. 28 August 2020.

    Mr Trump delivered his speech on the White House lawn, before a live audience of hundreds of supporters sitting side by side, unmasked, in a clear sign that the president will continue to deny the advice of America’s leading public health experts and also the plight of America today.

    This week gave the President an additional opportunity to push this agenda as the US witnessed yet another episode of police brutality. On Sunday, Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old black man, was shot seven times in the back as he walked to his car in Kenosha, Wisconsin where his three children sat waiting. As the Republicans delivered their convention speeches, protests continued to escalate and some turned violent.

    Another Guardian Article in the Telegraph! They do really own them all!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/28/donald-trump-spoke-sense-delusion-hovered-white-house/

  28. Spot on, David Vincent! Got it in one.

    SIR – The words of Rule, Britannia do not need to be “fixed”, as Andrew Lloyd Webber suggests.

    We need the BBC and other like-minded minority groups to stop seeking reasons to be offended, then inflicting their ridiculous views on the rest of us.

    David Vincent
    Hawkhurst, Kent

    1. 323080+ up ticks,
      Morning HJ,
      Methinks David we are in dire need of a governance party
      with a set of “just within the law bollocks” that will rhetorically & physically ( action taken) kick the sh!te out of those considered out of order.

      This will NEVER be achieved via the lab/lib/con sh!te creating coalition and the regular party first brigade.

    3. What needs fixing is wet, woke, wan….s guilt ridden worriers like Andy Pandy Webber and his equally wet pals at the BBC. Is there no-one in government with an ounce of back bone who will tackle this suppurating sore in the side of Britain?

      1. If she was lucky enough to avoid the Equitable Life disaster. Yer beeboids were deeply into that outfit.

        2. What a bloody awful farce it all was,holding a small independent brokerage I made a decision to accept lower commissions to put my clients into what were regarded as the “Gold Standard” companies like Norwich Union,Scottish Amicable,Scottish Life and yes Equitable Life.
          When the endowment shortfalls scandal broke it damn near broke me,how could I look these people in the eye

  33. Good morning, all. It rained overnight – a bit. The promised thunderstorm never arrived. It is now dry and looks likely to remain that way.

    No news again. What a relief. Porridge calls.

  34. I posted a comment, the other day, on the YouTube video about Covid-19 injections. My comment was:

    “I am so thankful that I will be 70 next birthday and not 7 or 17.”

    A very perspicacious reply was posted today by an astute chap, presumably from the USA. He said:

    “I had the same thought. When I was about 20, the old-timers then, were telling me that the good old days were over and they felt glad to be leaving soon. How right they turned out to be. These were just regular working people but they could see it all coming. What the bad guys did was poison the minds of the students at all levels. Only liberals were allowed to teach. Only liberals were acceptable in Hollywood. Straight white men were disenfranchised. Then their graduates started to totally dominate the judiciary and the media. So, here we are.”

    Those amongst us whose eyes are wide open will resist having governmental wool pulled over them.

      1. 323080+ up ticks,
        Morning Anne,
        Methinks people power has brought us to such an odious pretty pass so by the same token people power can be used to rectify matters.
        With an added ingredient, that being “will”

    3. Boris might need a bigger skip:

      As at the end of March 2018 there were 430,075 civil servants in the Home Civil Service. There are two other administratively separate civil services in the United Kingdom. One is the Northern Ireland Civil Service, the other is the foreign service .

      Her Majesty’s Diplomatic Service employs around 14,000 people. I can’t find the figures for the N. Ireland Executive but the Annual budget was £12.2 billion in 2020-21.

      The civil service does not include government ministers (who are politically appointed), members of the British Armed Forces, officers of local government authorities, the police, or quangos of the Houses of Parliament and employees of the National Health Service.
      (NHS = 1.2 million staff in England,162,000 in Scotland, 89,000 in Wales, 64,000 in Northern Ireland).

      The unCivil Service needs a thorough clear out!

      1. Note that the cartoon is, as usual, derogatory. Implying that Boris is scapegoating the unCivil Service for has own mistakes.

  36. Morning, Campers.
    I received this email last night from banker (NOT a smelling mistook) chum: it was headed ‘you may wish to pass this on’. And I do.

    “I spent today in the City and there is no reason not to return to the office.There are cafes open and some shops, yes, some have closed but those which remained open are doing a great trade.

    The station is well organised and the trains are spotless and have been well cleaned.

    I can see no excuse for not supporting the City and going back to a proper work environment.By meeting face to face I have three deals to put together which total some £500m and I could not have done this via Zoom as it is not the same.

    Working from home is one thing if you are following a set process and you can’t do anything else.Innovation is quite another.

    This situation is ripe for a massive scam because seeing is believing and operating remotely does not work when you are isolated from seeing connections in the office.

    Rant over.

    There are offices now going for FREE as landlords just want people in the premises.”

    1. .By meeting face to face I have three deals to put together which total some £500m and I could not have done this via Zoom as it is not the same.
      Working from home is one thing if you are following a set process and you can’t do anything else.Innovation is quite another.
      Exactly my opinion. You cannot form a relationship involving trust without face-to-face contact. Video conferencing, at best, allows you to maintain an already-formed relationship.
      Creativity doesn’t work through Skype. There’s no energy, and you can’t scrawl on the whiteboard & rub things out, either.

      1. On a purely personal level, you can’t catch someone’s eye and – with a look – suggest, “WTF is HE on about?”

        1. “WTF is HE on about?”
          This chum started on the trading floors when women were rare and the testosterone was like a smog.
          One glance from her and strong men crumble.

    2. There has been reports that the Government is considering making face nappies compulsory for the office environment.
      That will really encourage people to return NOT.
      They just need to look at the high street to see what happens when such thinking is implemented.

  37. 323080+ up ticks,
    Morning Each,
    Many are allowing themselves to be infantisied more like, finding it to be a more comforting position to be in.
    Many take the easy buck passing route as in leave it to the politico’s, who in turn have lost the art of governance due to the fact of taking the easy buck passing route themselves as four decades plus of pro eu rubber stamping has shown us quite clearly.
    There is no way on Gods green earth these ex contented politico rubber stampers have / will change overnight and to continue to feed them a carte
    blanche menu plus ( party first) without other options is surely the apex of stupidity.

  38. Good morning all

    An early seasonal nip in the air this morning , patches of blue in the sky, there are some beautiful enormous thunderclouds rising high in the sky .

    I have a visit to the dentist later, where I have been instructed that patients will not sit in the waiting room but in the garden instead , so I will take my brolly!!!

    1. Morning T-B, I am halfway through a course of treatment, I think all dentists are following a set procedure. I have to ring when outside to let them know I am here, wait to be let in, sanitise hands and take nothing into the surgery with me, everything to be left in a box in the hall.
      It has worked OK on previous appointments but the sun has been shining then, next appointment Thursday, let’s hope it is dry.

      1. I am also half way through a course of treatment and phoned the surgery last week. They had sent me a letter implying that I owed them money from March treatment! Given that they hold you hostage at the desk until you pay, I found that quite odd and checked my account. Paid 16th, cleared 18th. So I told the dragon, and then asked about the treatment. “We’ll phone you!” was the gushing reply! So much for the professional attitude!

        1. Hi Sue, I must be lucky because I always have a nice repartee with the receptionist. It must be my sparkling personality. 😂😂

          1. I knew that! 😘 Actually she’s always been OK but she possibly didn’t like me questioning the admin!

      2. My dentist is working 7 days a week to clear the backlog of cancelled appointments. He cares about his patients. Unlike my GP who is a lazy bitch.

        1. So far (fingers crossed) I have only needed the GP for a repeat prescription. If requested, I check my own blood pressure and write the results on the repeat request note.
          Suits me fine. My only bug bear is the bloody gauleiter in Boots, but I now go to the little hatch to collect rather than going into the shop.

      1. Mrning Plum

        I have been covered by Denplan from the word go , when they first started, but sadly , like dog insurance, they adjust the goal posts as one gets older .

        1. We used to be with Simply Health; they were reasonable and accommodating for the first few years, and then became more and more prescriptive. And we hadn’t used them more or claimed for more complicated treatment.
          We now just put money aside and pop in once a year; we are perfectly capable of recognising if something has gone wrong in the intervening twelve months.

        2. Agree Belle, I stopped Denplan some years ago.It was cheaper to Paygo..
          I had a happy accident when painting the ceiling and tripped coming down the ladder chipping my front tooth. After the dentist filled it with a discoloured filling… I chose veneers and had two front teeth fixed….vast improvement! That was 40 odd years ago…they still look good today!
          Thank god I tripped on that ladder…..

          1. I may just do that, Moh is moaning, but I say to him , he has golf fees and I have Denplan .

            I am not high maintainance , unlike him and all his bits and pieces for golf!

    3. You are lucky, our lot are still bunkered down, no routine treatments. Its a dereliction of duty

    1. Banksie! More like Wa.ksie – the man’s a tosser. His street art may be clever but he is wetter than a mouldy blancmange and woker than the Swedish Muppet. He needs whitewashing from existence.

  40. Gordon Ramsay shows off his incredible new swimming pool as renovations continue at his £4.4 million Cornish home. 28 August 2020.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f49c92be0b0babaa0969dea7ca5f92a8800dc315b988f638f119b897285d535d.jpg

    Gordon has been in the midst of huge renovations on his Cornish home, after demolishing five bedroom property that had been there to build two new homes.

    He bought the house for £4.4 million in 2015 and infuriated locals by demolishing the original 1920s house that had been there.

    Actually it looks an absolute dump!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-8673443/Gordon-Ramsay-shows-incredible-new-swimming-pool-4m-Cornish-home.html

    1. I can’t wait to read Corim’s verdict on that flat-roofed monstrosity. Anyone spending money on a flat-roofed house deserves all the problems it brings.

      2. Back in the late 80’s I went to see the Frank Lloyd Wright house “Falling Water” at Bear Run in Pennsylvania. (I have family in Pittsburgh.) It’s comprised of flat roofed cantilevered sections slotted into the rocks above the water fall. Very attractive on the outside but all the inner walls had water stains where it had seeped through, not being able to drain off. The house had just been acquired by the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy and they were working to correct the great architect’s mistakes.

      4. Words fail me except to say that whilst enjoying the beautiful views from his picture windows he might wish to contemplate that the view we have of his monstrosity is anything but beautiful.

        I will say one thing for that other detestable cook, Jamie Oliver, who had the money and taste to purchase the beautiful Spain’s Hall near Finchingfield. Mind you I fully expect him to wreck it with ‘improvements’.

      1. That’s a funny thing to say, Dear. Wouldn’t you rather see a building which had grace & style?

      1. I heard that they could do wonders with shipping containers – but it still looks like a pile of shipping containers.

      1. We should make homes from containers for our illegal ‘refugees’. They can be done up quite nicely.

  41. J K Rowling you say…………

    Saw this on Twitter:

    “JK Rowling talking about the 20th
    anniversary of Harry Potter. I don’t think anyone has milked a small
    wizard this much since Debbie Magee.”

  42. BBC caught lying again.

    “Finnish conductor issues a statement
    saying she did NOT axe rule Britannia and calling it ‘an important part
    of the event’ – piling pressure on BBC Proms director who took
    ‘creative’ decision”.

      1. Amol Rajan interviewed Lord Hall. And suggested to him that the BBC was the broadcasting wing of BLM.

          1. There isn’t enough of it. It’s not thick enough. And now you have poured it over everything it will all taste the same. Ask your brother. He’ll tell ya.

          2. Now look here. That gravy was proper thick and there was plenty of it. Photography doesn’t always show the reality.

            As for my 17-years younger bro; who d’you think taught him to cook in the first place when he was a snot-nosed kid?

        1. I was too busy looking at the pic to notice.

          White cabbage is an abomination and should only ever be used for coleslaw or sauerkraut.

          3. I love swedes (kålrot, rutabaga, yellow turnips…) but, funnily enough, Swedes don’t like them.

    4. Oh oh Grizzly! Looks amazing! My old man is out with his pal for his weekly curry and I am mostly having scrambled eggs!

    5. If you was a proper t’Northerner you would eat the Yorkshire and gravy first. Plus, Southerners with any refinement would refer to it as batter pudding !

      1. ‘Batter pudding’ is an affectation eaten by poofs. I’m a cultured northerner who likes his clafoutis.

    6. Those roasties aren’t crisp enough for me and the YP (with onion gravy) is a separate course

      1. They might not look crisp on the photo, Spikey, but I can assure you they were very crisp. ‘Snowflake’ is a local variety that is pale and doesn’t darken much when roasted.

        I was brought up with YP as a starter course but I don’t go in for that any longer; especially as I like my beef with it.

  46. Morning all.

    Main headline today: By flinching at responsibility we are being infantilised in this pandemic
    ………..we certainly are and a chance to brush up on your Italian

    This has gone to everyone in Govt, The Press, the PM et al. Just to let them know that we know what they are up to.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLwT-k0pVHI

    WILL THE MEDIA IGNORE THIS ??????????????

    COVID-19 IT SEEMS, IS THE NAME OF THE AGENDA, not the virus.

    Coronavirus is a cold virus. Google it.

    Italian doctor | covid19 means program of mass extermination | please make it viral

    DO NOT TAKE ANY TESTS – YOU WILL BE INFECTED.

    WE NEED TO REMEMBER V FOR VENDETTA.

    OUR GOVERNMENT NEEDS TO ANSWER IN COURT.

    BORIS YOU KNEW ABOUT THIS AND MUST BE COMPLICIT.

    DID ALL YOU MP’S THINK YOU WOULD ESCAPE THIS????????

    DID ALL YOU MPS THINK WE WOULD NOT FIND THIS OUT?????

    DID ALL YOU MPS THINK YOU WOULD BE NOT PUNISHED?????

    ——————————-

    2. I have just sent this to family and friends who will probably think I am barking mad and tear me apart…… especially as the Italian doctor says everyone who is tested will turn out to be positive….. However, there is definitely something shifty and strange going on and they are not coming clean about things, especially with all the u-turns and confusion. It is like it is a rehearsal, a theatre for us as spectators and a ‘let’s see how this goes’ sort of attitude pervades whereas if it were a real, actual threat there would be no messing about.

      Having said the above, I am in an alice-in-wonderland world this morning where everything seems brighter, louder and larger following an overnight migraine which kept me awake most of the night.

    3. As I’ve mooted so many times, the human species is completely out of control and has become a pestilence to all other life forms as well as itself.
      Something positive urgently needed to be done to combat humanity’s excesses. It seems that someone has taken this to heart and has started the process.

      C’est la mort!

        1. 323080+ up ticks,
          Afternoon PT,
          Decency demands NON halal prior to La piccola morte.
          PS
          Am partial to them there little lamb chops with a curly tail.

        1. The fall’s been happening for decades, agreed, but this last 10 years has seen an acceleration in it, to my mind at least.

          5. Confusion all over the place. Listen at 18 minutes when the presenter says “it was still a new piece 100 years ago and made its first appearance in 1905″…BUT…this is not the LNotP 2010 but a special concert dedicated to Henry Wood recreating the 1910 Last Night.

            I looked up Paul Daniel’s Last Night appearances and found he’d done only one – 2005 – and assumed the video was wrongly labelled (not uncommon on You Tube).

          7. Er, I was confirming your link!

            It was a Sunday and with the BBC Concert Orchestra, not the Symphony which usually does LN.

            Come to think of it, I thought the audience was a bit tame but this was at the time the BBC was slowly strangling LN.

        1. Hmm. I’ve an old broken vacuum cleaner that would look a treat there. How do I apply?

          1. Apply through your local Labour councillor and socialist party membership secretary – with promises of fat brown envelopes if successful.

  49. In the news from Scotland.
    A woman raped in a park in Paisley. Police looking for a “black man”. (A person of non-white appearance, and not an ice cream chocolate nougat wafer.)
    These attacks have become very frequent in the West. Nothing do with the influx of foreigners, I suppose…
    Hunterston B nuclear reactor is to be closed down shortly. Energy generation capacity (that works 24/7) has been steadily reduced in Scotland over the last 20 years including the loss of Cockenzie and Longannet coal-fired power stations. How did the French Government (EDF) get to control our electricity?
    The Scottish Government is passing laws today to allow police to enter homes and break up gatherings of more than 15 people.

    1. I believe that EDF did not have to conform to open trade regulations for some time as their competitors did. This enabled the company to steal a march on the competition and maintain its monopoly in France while being able to outbid its competitors in foreign markets.

      It is amazing how few young people are aware that EDF stands for Électricité de France.

      This is a good example of why the EU has worked very well for France but not at all well for the UK

      1. Also, as you say, a good example of how some EU countries have disregarded the rules. The thing that irks me most is that new boats such as ferries to the Scottish islands have to be put out to tender under EU rules. This has resulted in orders going to foreign shipyards, in Germany, Poland and Finland, all of whose yards are illegally subsidised by their governments.

      2. Oof! I noticed that immediately and corrected it – but not quickly enough to escape your eagle eye!

    1. A few years ago I shared a ward in Addenbrookes with a lovely chap who had been a Button Boy. He explained that at the top of the mast a sturdy lightning rod bent around and above the foot diameter button and this enabled him to pull himself up. Once standing he would pull his jumper down over the lightning rod which afforded a sense of security.

      My friend reckoned that the Button Boy was the best job in the Navy. You received a double ration of porridge on the day of the celebration.

      When I worked at Osborn House in the early nineties it was intended that a mast would be erected and the whaler reinstated as a reference to its role in training naval recruits. I believe Prince Philip trained there along with other royal princes.

      1. No way would you get me up there – big respect to all the young lads who did – I’ve seen it

        1. True. It was the place that immediately sprang to mind. One of the more hair raising displays at the Colchester Tattoo (RIP).

  51. That Harry chap the footballer who is whining on the media , but is he just a wealthy boozy footballer misbehaving in Greece and pleading for his job..

    You will be surprised to hear me say that I admire the principles of the footballer Marcus Rashford though, he has used his fame and reputation to help poor families and their chiildren .. Yes he is allso overpaid , and I doubt whether he is using his own money , but he is a dooer , that is what counts.

    1. Morning T-B – Harry’s success in getting a retrial could backfire. He is adamant that he won’t apologise for his behaviour.

      1. An apology would be an admission of guilt so even if he is as guilty as sin his lawyers would never allow him to say sorry.

        1. I don’t think so. He had been advised that an apology would have been advisable. The Greeks are a very proud race.

          1. There must be a forgiver but also a forgivee if the process is to have any meaning..

            It is pointless forgiving somebody who is not remotely sorry for what he has done – it is mere hypocrisy.

            In my way of classifying things there are three types of saying ‘sorry’:

            i) Saying sorry for a misfortune for which one has no resposibility at all – such as the odious Blair’s vacuous apology for the Potato famine or knee bending to BLM. Of course one uses the expression as a sort of condolence and expression of sympathy such as: “I am sorry to hear your piles are playing up today”;

            ii) Saying sorry for something one did not intend to do – such as dropping and breaking a piece of crockery or accidentally treading on somebody’s toe. In these cases one can show one’s sincerity by offering to make good the damage if one can;

            iii) Saying sorry for a deliberate and nasty error when has has fully seen the monstrosity of what one has done. This also demands some penitence and reparation or it is not sincere. We are still waiting for several apologies from Mr Blair.

            Elton John may have sung that sorry seems to be the hardest word – but it can also be hypocritically easy to say sorry and not mean it.

          2. Yes, Mr. Tastey, I’m with you on all of the above, but he has been very badly advised. He has quite obviously lied about certain aspects of the incident and has dug an enormous hole for himself. Saying sorry for being a drunken a***hole might just have been the way forward.

      3. We live in hope! And knowing Greek attitudes to arrogant lawbreakers, it could be spectacular!

        1. If he is guilty he fully deserves to be imprisoned.

          He seems to embody many of the characteristics I abominate but I cannot honestly say whether he is innocent or guilty – how can I possibly know?

  52. Is it just my location or are other people seeing almost just one species of butterfly in the garden? I’ve never seen so many large white butterflies in one place at the same time. Lot of brassicas being grown perhaps.

    2. I’ve had several varieties; tortoiseshell, cabbage whites (I don’t grow brassicas), peacocks and an orange tip or two earlier in the year. I may have had others I just didn’t happen to catch feeding on the buddleias. I usually get Red Admirals and Painted Ladies as well.

    3. I see red admirals, peacocks, small torts, some blues, the occasional white & 3 mornings ago I saw a hummingbird hawk moth – all on the Buddleias.

      1. There are other butterflies around, but at present I can look from any window and will see 2 to 3 large whites at any one time.

        1. Or orange-tips. I saw one red admiral. No little birds, just nasty magpies and other cawing things :o(

  53. A foreign tourist was killed last night by a polar bear at a camping site close to the airport at Svalbard. Bear was shot at to drive it away, and was later found dead.

  54. Just in from picking two pounds of damsons.

    The weather today is curious. There is quite a strong north-easterly wind. It is turning about 30 miles off shore – so by the time it gets here it is a south-westerly.

    As I walked west down the lane to what turned out to be Billy No-Mates (who ignored me) it was odd to have the wind behind me; and yet to have the wind still behind me returning to the east!

    The radar shows a lot of rain – but somehow it misses us; we just have drizzle – of a damp sort.

  55. Good afternoon all
    If you like ginger, not he one attached to cringer, you’ll probably like these cookies. Stumbled across them by accident and they’re very moorish.

    GINGER COOKIES

    PREP TIME: 10 Minutes COOK TIME: 10 MinutesTOTAL TIME: 20 Minutes
    Easy Ginger Cookies using dried ginger and crystallised ginger .

    INGREDIENTS:

    • 120g Butter
    • 85g Light Brown Sugar
    • 2 TBSP Golden Syrup (42 grams)
    • 120g Oats
    • 120g Self Raising Flour
    • 1/2 TSP Bicarbonate of Soda
    2 TSP Ground Ginger
    • 50g Crystallised Ginger, chopped

    Method:
    1 Line 2 baking trays with baking parchment and preheat the oven to 190°c (170°fan).
    2 In a large pan, melt the butter, sugar and syrup over a medium heat.
    3 Take off the heat and add the oats, flour, bicarbonate of soda, ground ginger and chopped crystallised ginger. Mix thoroughly until combined.
    4 Place heaped teaspoons of the mixture onto the baking sheets and bake in the oven for 10 minutes. Cool on a wire rack.

    20 minutes to make and cook. About 30 minutes to scoff the lot.

      2. He reportedly had painful cramps and often diarrhoea and other gastrointestinal symptoms…he should have stuck to translating latin into English..

          2. I was once of the same view.

            My middle lad uses it in various recipes and I was pleasantly surprised by how good it was; particularly when he revealed the secret ingredient!

            I would never have guessed, having had it elsewhere when it was not great.

          3. Sorry sos! It has the same effect on me as couscous! Have tried several times to do things with them both but no luck! And I’m an adventurous cook! Now bulgar is a different matter!

          5. I was once of the same view.

            My middle lad uses it in various recipes and I was pleasantly surprised by how good it was; particularly when he revealed the secret ingredient!

            I would never have guessed, having had it elsewhere when it was not great.

        2. I’ve had that problem too. What I do now is cut them out thicker (8–10mm) and cook them for 5–10 minutes fewer than the recipe states.

        3. 250g of butter
          125g caster sugar
          125g cornflour
          250g plain flour.

          I add in a pack of white, milk and dark chocolate, if I’m mad some fudge pieces.

          It usually makes a sort of breadcrumby mixture.

          Bash that into a pyrex tray and flatten down ’til level. Now, my tray is about 30cm by 20cm, and the end wodge is about 2-3cm deep.

          Poke with fork.

          Put into at 170’c – I use about that for my fan oven – well, I put mine in at 120 as my oven is posessed.

          After 22 minutes it should be just browning at the edges. I take it out then. Any earlier and it’s too gooey, any later and can be used as a brick.

          Try it – I don’t know if I’m doing it right, but it works for me and junior’s chums never complain. The war master wants me to make caramel shortbread, so thats next, although I fear that’ll be a genuine brick than neat caramels.

    9. Are they called cookies because they are American or because the writer cannot spell biscuits?

      1. It from a British website. They are not hard like biscuits and have a slightly chewy texture. I wouldn’t call them biscuits but they are delicious.

    10. How nice of you to think to share with us Notlers.

      And sod those who take the wee — ‘though Nottle wouldn’t be the same without the humour here!

  56. Got to go and cook our paricular brand of ‘Corned Beef Hash’ for dinner – Grizzly, please note that this is served after 19:00 hours as we lunch at one!

    Recipe available upon request.

      1. A question for everyone. What name is given to the shape of the Corned Beef tins? No I do NOT know.

      2. As I’ve given to Spikey – Fallick Alec:
        Corned Beef Hash

        Ingredients
        25 g butter
        1 onion, chopped
        3 cloves garlic
        1 tbsp fresh thyme, leaves only
        1 tsp Marmite
        350 ml beef stock
        150 ml red wine
        375 g corned beef – mashed
        2 tbsp flat leaf parsley, chopped
        Freshly ground pepper
        Chilli Flakes (a pinch)

        Method
        1. Boil the potatoes in a large pan of simmering, salted water.

        2. When they are just cooked, season the diced potatoes and mash them thoroughly with milk and the butter.

        3. Now, heat the butter in a frying pan. Add the onions, garlic and thyme and fry for 3 minutes.

        4. Add the marmite, stock and red wine and cook briskly until reduced by half (15-20 mins), with 5 minutes left, sprinkle the chilli flakes into liquid.

        5. Add the corned beef and parsley and season with freshly ground pepper.

        6. Cook for 5-10 minutes, breaking it up with a fork.

        7. Place the corned beef mixture into an ovenproof dish and top with the mashed potatoes. Meanwhile preheat the oven to 200°C/gas 6.

        8. Mix together the grated cheddar and breadcrumbs.

        9. Sprinkle the mixture over the mashed potatoes and bake for 20 minutes until golden brown.

        Serve hot from the oven with a dressed green salad.

        1. 1. Boil the potatoes in a large pan of simmering, salted water.

          What potatoes? They are not in the list of ingredients.

          2. No mention of ‘Toppings’ in your post.

            Btw, you could have done steps 3 – 6 while the potatoes were boiling.

      1. Here you go, Spikey. Others just want to brutalise it:
        Corned Beef Hash

        Ingredients
        25 g butter
        1 onion, chopped
        3 cloves garlic
        1 tbsp fresh thyme, leaves only
        1 tsp Marmite
        350 ml beef stock
        150 ml red wine
        375 g corned beef – mashed
        2 tbsp flat leaf parsley, chopped
        Freshly ground pepper
        Chilli Flakes (a pinch)

        Method
        1. Boil the potatoes in a large pan of simmering, salted water.

        2. When they are just cooked, season the diced potatoes and mash them thoroughly with milk and the butter.

        3. Now, heat the butter in a frying pan. Add the onions, garlic and thyme and fry for 3 minutes.

        4. Add the marmite, stock and red wine and cook briskly until reduced by half (15-20 mins), with 5 minutes left, sprinkle the chilli flakes into liquid.

        5. Add the corned beef and parsley and season with freshly ground pepper.

        6. Cook for 5-10 minutes, breaking it up with a fork.

        7. Place the corned beef mixture into an ovenproof dish and top with the mashed potatoes. Meanwhile preheat the oven to 200°C/gas 6.

        8. Mix together the grated cheddar and breadcrumbs.

        9. Sprinkle the mixture over the mashed potatoes and bake for 20 minutes until golden brown.

        Serve hot from the oven with a dressed green salad.

          3. Not recently. I don’t feel she felt comfortable with all the positive stories about President Trump.

          5. Yes, I’m in touch with her. She’s giving NoTTL a rest but I hope she’ll return in due course. But she’s fine.

    4. Recipe? For corned beef hash? No such thing.
      You just fry an onion,
      chuck in a load of mashed tattie
      add the diced contents of a tin of corned beef (see what I did there?)
      dribble in a goodly amount of Lea & Perrins to taste.

      Cook on a fairly high gas, turning the mixture frequently to prevent it burning.
      serve with baked beans or/and tinned tomatoes.

      Who the chuff needs a recipe for that???

      1. I add a strong curry powder, some pickle (Branson or home made) as well as the Lea and Perrins.

          2. I wouldn’t offer it to a guest but sometimes i just want comfort food i had as a child.

          4. I remember baked beans on toast in my childhood 65 years ago. I loved them; there were only Heinz, who introduced curried baked beans which I didn’t like at all, although I liked curry.

      2. Even I can manage corned beef hash without a cook book (once I’d looked up how to do it the first time)!

    5. I wish I could succeed and be a social winner,
      And I wish my friends arrived at one when I asked them out to dinner.
      I know I’ve got the brass but I haven’t got the class
      And the whole situation is getting up my donkey!

    6. As it’s a dish which takes 15-20/60 max. to prepare why do you start at 4 pm if you’re dishing up at 7 pm?

  57. The postman brought what used to be my weekly treat – The Spectator.

    No more.

    Just as the Daily Telegraph is morphing into the Grauniad, so the Speccie is turning into a pink version of the New Statesman. Far-left contributors bragging about themselves and their new book (thanks, arse-grabber Marr); other leftoids. Woke editorials. Attacks on Johnson.

    I just despair. I have been a reader since 1954 – and for many years it was a serious, Conservative weekly. No more.

    I gave up the Staggers (which I used to read to compare and contrast) because of its relentless attacks on Brexit – as well as its support for Corbynliner (after saying he was a disaster)….

    The Speccie may have to go the same way….

      1. Thank you. I am afraid that I find him smug, irritating, self-obsessed (as well as relentlessly sex-obsessed), far-right and a tosser.

        Quite why he believes that women 60 years younger continue to throw themselves at his feet is beyond me.

        1. Agree re him, but the magazine doesn’t have much by him in it.

          Lots of people who might have writen for the Spectator years ago.

          1. Yes, yes; but this Greek hypocrite wanqueur slags off Philip Greene and other old men who obsess about young women….

      1. Everyone appears to be at it. I received an advert this morning for retirement homes in a nearby village (which is about as white and indigenous as one can get). What was on the cover? Some blek woman in effnik dress claiming that she really loved the development! Straight into the fire! They have no chance of getting my custom with that advertising.

          1. Good evening, Grizzly. Did you find copies of The Foxglove Saga and The Path of Dalliance?

          3. Good evening, Grizzly. Did you find copies of The Foxglove Saga and The Path of Dalliance?

    4. It provides loo reading material for the week, I start at low life and end at high life on the following Friday.

      1. Sounds like your smallest room could do with a clean if there’s that much crawling about.

      3. These people are literally outbreeding us. Our benefits system is horribly unfair. State waste and salaries are disgustingly high. Incompetence is rife. Apathy is the watchword. Arrogance the underpinnings.

        I remember waiting 10 minutes to get through to a parking department at the council to report a broken meter. I said, look these are our number plates. What happens if we get a ticket? ‘You’ll get a fine’, the woman said.

        ‘Why? it’s your fault we can’t get a ticket’
        ‘You still have to display one.’ Woman said.

        I remember at that point the war queen took the phone from me and calmly said ‘We can’t. Your machine is broken.’

        As, it seemed was the woman at the other end. She couldn’t accept her failure as the fundamental problem. Logic escaped her. With such geniuses – no doubt called back from a permanent coffee break – in charge, what hope is there?

        1. I got a ticket a couple of years ago when the machines were out of order. Nobody was displaying a ticket but presumably they had all paid by phone and I didn’t.

    4. I’d like a bigger house. You have a choice not to have children. You can live in a bedsit for all I care. Breeding should not be rewarded with a ‘pay increase’ in housing. The scum neighbours thought that acceptable. It isn’t.

      What they should get is an income tax rebate for each child they have. Child benefit should not exist. Housing benefit should not exist: it breaks the housing market and prices first time buyers out of the market.

  59. JK Rowling returns human rights award to group that denounces her trans views. 28 August 2020.

    JK Rowling is returning the Ripple of Hope award given to her last year by the Robert F Kennedy Human Rights (RFKHR) organisation after its president, Kennedy’s daughter, criticised her views on transgender issues.

    “Because of the very serious conflict of views between myself and RFKHR, I feel I have no option but to return the Ripple of Hope award bestowed upon me last year,” Rowling wrote. “I am deeply saddened that RFKHR has felt compelled to adopt this stance, but no award or honour, no matter my admiration for the person for whom it was named, means so much to me that I would forfeit the right to follow the dictates of my own conscience.”

    One cannot help but feel a smidgen of schadenfreude at Rowling’s discomfiture at the hands of the Trans Lobby that has nothing to do with my being the only person on the planet who has not read one of her books but everything to with her stupidity at lining up with these nutters in the first place. Worst of all she is still a feminist!

    https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/aug/28/jk-rowling-robert-f-kennedy-human-rights-award-trans-views

    2. There are feminists – who believe in equality of opportunity. Those folks are fine as they expect to work to earn their role.

      Then there’s the ‘new’ lot, who are an utter disgrace and keep wittering on about how only 3 seats at board level have women in them, and demanding that they be given half of them – without having earned the experience or ability to sit there.

      These folks never demand that half of all bin men slots be filled with women, or sewage workers – no, they only want the cushy jobs.

      1. The problem of course is that genuine equality of opportunity cannot and will not deliver equality of outcome.

        1. Good! it shouldn’t. Not everyone has the same talents, not everyone the same capabilities or willingness to work.

        1. Bought one for the kids many years ago. Maybe they’re good stories but I couldn’t get past the way it was written, as you say.

          1. She is very clever the way she picks her characters and settings. They are entrancing, but a bit of plagiarism did her no harm!

      2. I haven’t read any of them. We did watch the series “A casual vacancy” on the telly a couple of years ago because it was filmed round here, but it was crap.

        1. I read the first book to see what all the fuss was about, but there seemed to be so much plagiarism, I didn’t bother with any of the others.

    4. You are not the only person who hasn’t read one of her books. I share that distinction, too 🙂

  60. Just heard today on the BBC that an innocent unarmed youth in America has been brutally shot seven times in the back by US cops.

    “US erupts as man shot 7 times in back by cops – A US town has erupted in protests after police shot an unarmed black American man seven times in the back in suburban Wisconsin”. BBC News

    Has anyone else heard about this? Why is it not being broadcast far and wide? …or have I missed something. (sarc)

      1. It’s a “C’mon, c’mon, you plebs – riot! Why aren’t you rioting! Get out on the streets! How many more times do we have to tell you?! – it worked last time….” there is a hint of desperation there. They haven’t realised yet that BLM is just sooo last June.

    2. Unless it’s a different ‘unarmed black man’ – a genuinely unarmed one. The last one was armed with a knife and was – apparently – going for a gun.

      Only in the BBC’s mind was he unarmed. Helps push the narrative ‘Trump bad, police bad, black good.’

      1. It wasn’t mentioned by Trump last night, only the riots and demonstrations that followed.

        Rather like te Democrats highlighting the shooting and ignoring the riots.

  63. Second item on the BBC lunchtime ‘news’ – the 57th anniversary of Luther King’s assassination. I must admit that the significance of such a momentous event had obviously passed me by…

    Third item – blik babies at a disadvantage with CV-9.

    Cheerleaders for BLM? You’d better believe it!

    1. It continues…lots of vouchers issued after blik footballer changed the government’s mind about school lunches…blue plaque put up to honour an Indian woman who had a distinguished war record before she was killed in a German concentration camp. A little late in the day, perhaps??

      1. New blue plaque – The award came after work by a group that was set up in 2016 to address the lack of diversity in the scheme. When the working group began, only 33 of the more than 900 plaques were dedicated to black and Asian figures. Even now, only about 14% celebrate women.

        Anna Eavis, the curatorial director of English Heritage, said it was vital that a more diverse selection of blue plaques were awarded. (Guardian news – The BBC’s very own propaganda sheet.)

        1. Silly me, I naively expected that the most deserving people would be selected for the scheme…

          2. You daft herbert. Whatever gave you that idea?

            This isn’t an age of merit and responsibility. It’s one of take and expect. The Left aren’t interested in earning things!

      2. The BBC Young Reporter Competition on SE News…a blik schoolgirl has won with an article about diversity – but then, you had probably guessed that was what I was about to type…

  65. BBC R2 pulling out all the stops on Martin Luther King & BLM. Ken Bruce announced he was playing only bleck music today. J. Vine continuing the theme…
    Car radio went off in a trice.

    2. Did the BBC forget that Luther King wanted to tear away the labels while the black looters are mindless want it to be how they are judged?

      King was opposing racism, the looters are enforcing it.

  66. Afternoon All

    I see we paid for a last minute legal challenge that prevented Priti Patel

    from getting rid of 23 ‘failed asylum-seekers’ again. Blair’s human

    rights scam legal aid money-go-round in action.

    If only we had a tory government with an 80 seat majority that could change all this……………

    Amazing how easy it is to enforce mass house arrest and muzzling rules
    on the entire population, but nothing can be done about invading
    gimmigrants……………..

    1. What sort of barmy legal system do we have where money is given to lawyers to sue soldiers fighting under government mandate and to endorse and protect criminal illegal immigrants who are not citizens at all?

      Our entire legal system is demented. It can’t even be called justice system, as it isn’t remotely interest in what is just and right.

    2. If we go the Covid-19 route with them, (ie immediate action taken without recourse to laws etc) we could declare them all infected. Quarantine ’em on Goodwin Sands for 15 days and then check their refugee validity status.

    3. You worry too much. Of the 234,000 immigrants who arrived last year (only about 135,000 were illegal), 27 have been permanently expelled and another 120 are awaiting repatriation to France – providing the French authorities will accept them. Be patient, the government is doing its best,

      1. Given that those 135,000 should never, ever have got here and have done nothing but soak up tax payers cash for a year the number is unacceptable high.

    2. The Democrats might well find that a lot of similar people feel the same and vote Trump.

  70. That’s me gone. Bottles to open.

    Have a jolly evening imagining the plod dancing with the coons in Notting Hill, and worshipping the Extinction Terrorists as they do their damnedest to wreck many city centres this lovely weekend.

    A demain

    1. Who needs Greggs’ sausage rolls when you can easily make your own? On Wednesday I knocked out a quick batch from a roll of shop-bought, ready-made puff pastry and a packet of a decent German Bratwurst that I bought from LiDL.

      They were quick, simple, and surprisingly substantial and delicious. They freeze well too.

      1. I prefer plain pastry with sausage rolls. Puff pastry + sausage meat is too rich for me.
        Morning, Grizz.

        1. Morning, Nursey. Each to their own. I find shortcrust pastry too ‘claggy’ (heavy in the mouth) on a sausage roll.

          Unlike a lot of people, I also prefer mine cold to hot (hot ones are too greasy for me).

  73. With Donald Trump and this election, it feels ominously like 2016 all over again. 28 August 2020.

    Donald Trump is not a competent president but he is a terrifyingly effective one, as the 2020 RNC proved once again. The central lesson of 2016 for Democrats should have been: do not underestimate Trump, and do not take his general ignorance as a lack of political skill. Worryingly, this lesson does not seem to have been fully absorbed, and there are eerie similarities between the present election and the one four years ago. I’m getting deja vu, and I don’t like it.

    The good news for Democrats is that Joe Biden is ahead in the polls. The bad news is that Hillary Clinton was also ahead in the polls. Biden’s lead may be sliding in critical states, and some estimates show him underperforming Clinton in the critical state of Wisconsin. Biden’s overall margin over Trump is greater than Clinton’s was at her peak. But FiveThirtyEight reports, troublingly, that “there are also nine states where Biden’s margin over Trump is smaller than Clinton’s was at this point in the campaign,” including “many Rust Belt battleground states”.

    Yes it does. I for one don’t believe Trump is as far behind as the polls say! In fact he may not be behind at all!

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/28/donald-trump-2020-election-feels-like-2016

    1. The polls seem to give the results the woke would like to see, and when it comes to vote time, the people give a result that the woke definitely didn’t want.

    1. To the former – I rewatched Command just this morning. Amazing film, perfect 80’s.

      The bottom – not at all. It’s called justice.

      1. I think the point being made is that Covid-19 is about as dangerous as a teeny weeny little spider.

  75. NOT watching the Proms .

    The introduction of the first piece of music and dialogue from a young coloured composer was intolerable.

    I exercised my white privilege.

    1. Been decades since we watched the Proms. TBH, don’t miss it, especially since it became political.

  76. Have you had a nice day? Here’s something to spoil it.

    As migration numbers balloon, the Tories still offer empty rhetoric and endless retreat

    The idea this level of immigration is a key engine of British prosperity is a delusion bred by wishful-thinking social justice warriors

    LEO MCKINSTRY

    The Government has rightly been criticised for its inaction over illegal migrant crossings of the English Channel. Already more than 5,000 people have arrived on the South Coast this year, easily a record, yet the Home Office does little except indulge in hollow language, provide a quasi escort service for the illicit dinghies, and bleat about the inadequacy of the law.

    To be fair, that last complaint is partly justified by the antics of what have been described as “activist lawyers”, who use the justice system, especially the flawed Human Rights Act, to impose their own progressive agenda. As this paper reports today, a deluge of last-minute legal claims forced the Government on Thursday to abandon a deportation flight of 23 illegal migrants who had reached Britain across the Channel.

    Using the law and the cowardice of the liberal establishment, these courtroom campaigners might like to pose as the champions of justice, but in practice they only promote border anarchy, people smuggling, the inversion of morality and the collapse of public faith in the judiciary.

    Their ascendancy has little to do with compassion for the vulnerable, given that most illegal migrants are young men. On the contrary, it represents the triumph of guilt-tripping, bullying and criminality over genuine fairness.

    But the very fact that they have been allowed to get away with their destructive behaviour is a severe indictment of the Tories’ ineffectuality. After all, we have had a Conservative Government for more than a decade, yet nothing radical has been done to tackle the judicial shenanigans.

    One simple reform might have been to stipulate that only British citizens are eligible for legal aid, but instead there has been only empty rhetoric and endless retreat.

    Indeed, the latest Channel fiasco is symptomatic of the Government’s wider failure on immigration. The Tories are meant to the be party of strong borders and the maintenance of Britain’s identity. Promises of tough post-Brexit controls at the centre of Boris Johnson’s election victory last December. But instead they have followed Labour’s open-door policy.

    After ten years in office, our frontiers are now even more porous than when Tony Blair, the high priest of globalism, was in charge.

    That depressing reality was spelt out in the starkest terms by the latest quarterly migration report, released yesterday by the Office of National Statistics. Covering the year to March 2020, before the advent of the coronavirus pandemic, this document once more exposed the scale of the demographic revolution that has gripped our country.

    During those 12 months, no fewer than 715,000 people arrived in Britain, and over 100,000 more than in the previous year. The colossal influx is even 38,000 higher than the 677,000 set out in the last ONS quarterly report just three months. Nor can there be much doubt that this extraordinary figure of 715,000 new arrivals is broadly correct, since over the last year 756,000 National Insurance numbers have been dished out to non-British citizens.

    It has been suggested that this is the storm before the calm, in that migrant numbers are soaring before the end of the Brexit transition period when a new points-based system comes into place. But that is an unconvincing argument, since the majority of new arrivals, 437,000, were from outside the EU.

    Given that free movement does not apply in any of these cases, the Government could have exerted downward pressure on these numbers if there had been the political will. Ministers already had control over most of the influx, but they have continually failed to exert their authority.

    The open-door enthusiasts claim that none of this matters. They cynically try to downplay the impact of the annual flood by referring, not to gross immigration, but to the net figure which is reached by subtracting emigrants from arrivals.

    In the latest ONS quarterly, this calculation results in a net figure of 313,000 which is still enormous, the equivalent of Coventry’s population. But the resort to sophisticated numeracy is disingenuous. It is gross immigration which is driving the transformation of our society and culture, turning urban Britain into a land that is unrecognisable to that which existed only 40 years ago.

    Another ruse is to argue that students – who total 257,000 in the ONS report – should not be counted because they are here only temporarily. But this is more deceit.

    Firstly, students still use public services, like housing, transport and the NHS. More importantly, study here is often a gateway to permanent residence. This was precisely the problem recognised by Theresa May who as Home Secretary in 2012 banned those with student visas from working more than four months a year after the completion of their studies. But Boris Johnson’s Government ditched that restriction last year, allowing all international graduates to stay and look for work in Britain for another two years. That must certainly be factor in the rise in student migrants.

    Yet by far the greatest dishonesty lies in the fashionable pretence that nearly all migrants are coming here to work. This is the most cherished piece of pro-immigration propaganda, which holds that newcomers are invariably more diligent and enterprising than lazy British people.

    It is an attitude encapsulated in the words of left-wing commentator Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, who once wrote that “taxpaying immigrants” keep “indolent British scroungers on their couches watching TV and drinking beer”. But such denigration is unsupported by the facts. As the latest ONS figures reveal, less than a third of the new arrivals are actually looking for work, only 228,000 out of the influx of 715,000. Even fewer, just 177,000, had a definite job to fill.

    The idea of mass immigration as a key engine of British prosperity is a delusion bred of wishful-thinking and virtue-signalling. Ironically, it is the left-wing political class – so keen on open borders – whose own work demolishes that myth. From BBC programmes to academic studies, from pressure group lobbying to Labour hand-wringing, progressives are always desperate to tell us that migrant communities suffer more unemployment, deprivation, welfare dependency, exploitation and poor housing than the British population. That is used as both an explanation for urban crime and a justification for anti-discrimination programmes.

    The truth is that mass immigration on its current spectacular scale comes at a heavy price. Our civic infrastructure is under intolerable strain, the supply of housing in crisis and the benefits system overloaded. In June, the National Audit Office declared that abuses and errors in welfare cost £4.5 billion this year, a rise of 20 per cent on the previous year. Only last week, a Manchester mother of eight, Saaba Mahmood, was convicted of illegally pocketing £100,000 in benefits for relatives in Pakistan, though typically of softly-softly Britain she was spared jail and sent on a taxpayer-funded course to learn more about the impact of her crimes.

    On a deeper level, the demographic upheaval is feeding toxic identity politics and the institutional obsession with diversity, where British people are encouraged to wallow in collective guilt.

    The social justice warriors prattle about fighting bigotry, but their actions are grievously undermining tolerance, unity and freedom.

    We now inhabit a country where the traditional bonds of solidarity are fraying, torn by McCarthyite witch-hunts and ideological indoctrination in the name of anti-racism.

    None of this should be happening under the Tories. But given its dismal record on immigration, the Government might be inadvertently helped by the advent of Covid, which – at least on a temporary basis – has led to a drastic reduction in numbers since April, partly because of international travel restrictions, partly because of the British lockdown.

    The full figures will not be available until the next quarterly report in November, but the signs are of a major decline. According to Home Office data released on Thursday, the number of visas for skilled workers fell by 95 per cent in the second quarter of 2020, while the overall total of visas was down 99 per cent, a similar drop to that for study visas.

    In its own grim way, Covid appears to have brought mass immigration to a juddering halt. But our politicians would be engaged in an absurd deceit if they tried to claim any credit for this change. They are the ones who fuelled chaos.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/08/28/migration-numbers-balloon-tories-still-offer-empty-rhetoric/

    2. Britain is asleep , the great deception continues.

      We had an inkling that we were being duped , but not the extent we are now.

      The anti white bullying and trashing of our hospitality , and the things we hold dear to our hearts are being ignored .

      The media is egging on BLM and BAME , and if any one listened to Radio4 news at 1pm this afternoon, you would have been sickened by the ghastly anti white poem spoken by Benjamin Obadiah Iqbal Zephaniah. I have tried to locate it on line , it is brand new and appalling anti you and I and everything we value.

      I was on the way to my dentist when Moh and I nearly pranged the car , we were in shock to think the BBC Radio 4 news should have given that twerp such prominance .

  78. Care homes were asked by NHS managers and GPs to place blanket ‘Do not
    resuscitate’ (DNR) orders on all their residents at the height of the
    coronavirus pandemic to keep hospital beds free, a new report has
    found….

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/23/care-homes-asked-place-blanket-do-not-resuscitate-orders-residents/
    At Nurenberg “we were only obeying orders” was insufficient to prevent hangings,when do the mass murder trials commence???

    1. We-e-ell, they were old, you see, and don’t count, they didn’t pay much, hardly anything in the way of taxes, pretty much worthless, you see….. they don’t have a union and when they accepted admittance to residential accommodation they nigh on lost pretty much all of their ooman rights…. unlike those crossing the English Channel.

      I always have said that when Christianity was pushed out of the door that barbarism would come flying quickly in. The only thing I didn’t see was how quickly it would happen.

      1. Mandatory “vaccinations” has already been talked about. Could make plenty of houses empty for the replacements currently in hotels awaiting the reunion with their families.

        1. Those that weren’t ‘got’ by infection in the residential and nursing homes, and by having nhs treatments denied and cancelled, will be cancelled themselves by covid vaccinations. Many of the remainder will find themselves unable to have children a decade or two later. Which set me thinking today – there seems to be positively an epidemic of polycystic ovarian syndrome among white young women today. Just saying.

        2. It is more about vaccination passports. It is part of the Globalist plan. The plan is not dissimilar to Hitler’s adoption of the yellow star to be worn by folk with even a trace of Jewish ancestry.

      2. Excuse me. I pay tax on my state pension and pay tax on my private pension. I pay tax on any earnings I receive as an albeit semi-retired Architect.

        I resent paying tax on investments and earnings which were already subject to high rates of tax. I am paying twice over. I see no benefit but simply witness the wasteful distribution of my taxes to pay for illegal immigrants and generally useless politicians and civil servants.

        1. #metoo! All of those I am in agreement with you – we too pay tax on our govt pension, private pension and investments – everything. I know only too well. I was speaking from the government’s point of view, how it sees the truly old of this country, our own people, its perspective on our elderly…! – a certain historical government in Germany saw them as ‘useless eaters’. I cannot find words to express how much this ugly phrase offends me, how much I disagree with the concept it encapsulates.

          My apologies for the misunderstanding.

      3. Love Island comprises groups of drug addled ‘body builder’ type youths cavorting with young women with bum enhancements and boob jobs. Better to avoid this crap. Most of the participants have serious mental issues.

    2. There is about to be a backlash against our supposed political masters. They never reckoned on the intelligence of 52% of the population over Brexit nor the ease of accessibility of information on the net recording and codifying of their misdeeds.

      The only question is “whose instructions are they following?” The answer is of course the globalist alliance of bankers, assorted Bilderbergers, Bill Gates and George Soros and the lobbyists who both fund such as Pew and a whole bunch of climate alarmists.

      When several hundred private jets descend on Davos and the flying elite claim that we should save the planet by returning to hunter gathering and going cold in winter, nobody but a fool would believe a single word that they say.

      Yup, we have a house of fools but the general population knows precisely what is being planned.

      1. Actually looking at my own family most people are sheeple,too interested in Love Island to use the computing power of their phones to awaken themselves…………..
        Ignorance is bliss,enlightenment is too much like hard work…………
        Their and their childrens fate will be appalling but there is no escape…………..
        Edit
        these are people with brains,just too lazy to use them,I despair

          1. But perhaps not before they are vaccinated…… I also worry about my sons, both well educated with educated lefty wives ( that may well be an oxymoron) although none, fortunately, into Love Island.

          4. They will have to catch me first…… I meant by my comment that our sons may not come to their senses until it is too late and after they have experienced the mendacity and venality of govt. Issues with govt are something they don’t want to talk about; they have lefty wives, all are in their late thirties. I am regarded as a tin foil hatter.

          5. I never knew about Love Island until I took a table for two in a restaurant in Long Melford, since closed. There was a group of hideous fat tattooed women assembled around one of the larger tables, shrieking mostly and making our own dining experience intolerable.

            After some time of watching this assortment of fat slags mouthing off, most going outside for a fag or more, and returning to annoy me, my wife told me that they were rattling on about some nefarious TV programme called Love Island.

            I confess total innocence about the shit these ghastly people follow on TV.

          6. I have seen it mentioned only as a lurid headline when flicking through the free tabloids on the web – I have never seen an episode and neither do I wish to. I can feel myself cringing at the thought.

    1. There is the infantilisation of the masses but there is also a weird loss of perspective and common sense among those educated people in senior positions and those in authority leading them to overreact in a fascist way to every minor perceived threat without challenge.

          1. “An empty plate is what you have left after being served a portion of my famous rhubarb crumble”. (Attributed to Elsie Bloodaxe of this parish.)

  80. Irish cricket – Big six = Hole in One !

    Cricketer left in need of windscreen repairs after smashing own car with huge six
    Ireland’s Kevin O’Brien scores direct hit in T20 game
    Self-inflicted damage comes from one of eight sixes …

  81. Smithsonian Channel
    Normandy the 85 Days
    Jeez,St Lo,some liberation………..
    Edit
    Reality is terrifying,I think about 14/15 is the right age for compulsory viewing in our schools,after all in later episodes some of the front line troops will be not much older……………

        1. Good morning, Bob.
          I think the person who made the post
          deserves the credit!!
          I may have missed it but I hope you
          had a successful time yesterday, with
          your Step-Son.

  84. I spent the morning in the centre of Cambridge meeting a potential client who is taking a small unit on St Andrew’s Street as part of the Grand Arcade development. The footfall prior to Covid on that stretch is tens of millions per year.

    I remarked that on entering Cambridge on Hills Road and passing the old Cattle Market site, now a ghastly assortment of ugly developments, hotels and flats for commuters, the usual swarming Chinese students were absent.

    My client reckoned the Chinese students would return. My other observation was just how few people were on otherwise normally bustling streets, most wearing silly useless masks. We are in very worrying times, believe me.

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