Friday 1 September: The West needs a credible nuclear deterrent to keep Russia at bay

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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442 thoughts on “Friday 1 September: The West needs a credible nuclear deterrent to keep Russia at bay”

  1. Pinch & Punch, 1st of the Month – No back answer.
    Good morrow, Gentlefolks, today’s story

    Many A True Word
    On Christmas morning, a cop on horseback was sitting at a traffic light, and next to him was a kid on his shiny new bike.

    The cop said to the kid, “Nice bike you got there. Did Santa bring that to you?”

    The kid said, “Yeah.”

    The cop said, “Well next year, tell Santa to put a taillight on that bike.”

    The cop then proceeded to issue the kid a $20.00 bicycle safety violation ticket. The kid took the ticket. Before he rode off he said, “By the way, that’s a nice horse you got there. Did Santa bring that to you?”

    Humouring the kid, the cop said, “Yeah, he sure did.”

    The kid said, “Well next year tell Santa to put the dick underneath the horse, instead of on top.”

  2. Happy September!

    Well, I’m here folks! Second sleepover over, and the boys Mum and Dad will be back today! I’m knackered

    3. ‘Morning, Sue. The occupants of Janus Towers, now just the two of us, are part-recovered following a 3-day invasion. Strange, isn’t it – we look forward to seeing them all and then we also look forward to getting the place straight again, and a bit of peace, after their departure. Fortunately the weather was fine for the annual bbq, although some of us still have stiff and aching joints after a badminton ‘competition’. I use the word loosely because the rules are made up on the spot but rarely observed afterwards. (Tears and tantrums are not pretty in those of us who are at least three-score and ten!)

  4. The West needs a credible nuclear deterrent to keep Russia at bay

    Russia is the least of our worries, nuclear weapons cannot defend us against globalist great resets
    But they can give us the equivalent of nuclear Winter without setting one off

  5. Good morning all.
    A damp start after overnight rain. Heavy overcast at the moment with mist coming off the trees opposite. Not raining at the moment, but 10°C outside.

    It seems that Shopping Lists have joined Triumph Heralds in the petty letters stakes:-

    Forgetful shopper
    SIR – When I shop for food I insist that my wife leaves me a list (Letters, August 31) to forestall any disputes arising from my forgetfulness. She invariably omits the quantities, so I still have an earful when I return with the wrong amounts.

    John H Stephen
    Bisley, Gloucestershire

    SIR– Numbered shopping lists are a mixed blessing.

    I recall a hapless husband who came back from the shops with one pint of milk, two cabbages, three potatoes, four loaves of bread and five packs of custard creams.

    Mik Shaw
    Goring-by-Sea, West Sussex

    Roger Fowles
    4 MIN AGO
    Mrs F told me to put Tomato Ketchup on the shopping list
    Now I can’t read the rest of it.

    2. I didn’t find any Triumph Heralds in today’s letters. as a one time owner of one and it’s successor, the Vitesse. Did I miss something?

  6. A letter that Grizz will agree with I suspect:-

    Basics of policing
    SIR – In 1962 my wife and I joined the police (Letters, August 30) and attended the Ryton-on-Dunsmore training centre. The instructors were mature serving sergeants and officers. We were trained to know and uphold the law, treat the public without fear or favour, and keep the peace.

    There were restrictions, such as not being allowed to wear badges other than those of our force or rank. Our appearance was strictly controlled and we were smart and tidy when appearing in the street. If an officer stepped out of line, particularly in their first two years, they were dismissed. This happened to a good friend and copper when he was found asleep on night duty.

    It is about time the service got back to the basics of the job: protection of life and property, as in the definition taught back in 1962.

    Neville H Walker
    Atherstone, Warwickshire

    4. Good luck with that. I think it’s too far gone. Better to start again from scratch.

  7. How come school building are in danger of collapse that were built under Labour in the 70s and 80s when the schools built over a hundred years ago are still going strong?
    Does this prove that modernisation is not a good thing?

    2. There have been complaints in my local rag about the deficits of “new build” houses. Well, what do people expect? They are thrown up in no time.

  9. Good morning, chums. I was about to say “A pinch and a Punch” and “White Rabbits” but, as usual, Sir Jasper has beaten me to it. Enjoy your day and your month.

    1. Our first mortgage payment went out. While all planned for, all calm it is still ‘strike a light.’ Even the warqueen’s fatigued and she’s recovered companies from hundreds of millions of debt.

        1. Indeed.
          Diverted it to high-rate (huh!) savings account until we work out what’s best to do.

  10. Rishi Sunak has played his last, best card. Now he must pray for a miracle. 1 September 2023.

    As the election approaches, one of Sunak’s biggest challenges will be to explain what Conservatism is: why it has worked, why it’s better than the alternative. The results, sadly, don’t really speak for themselves. Sunak thought furlough would – for all its huge cost – minimise economic scarring because the Tories had learnt how to move people from welfare to into work. Instead, Britain is now the only major country to have failed to rebuild our workforce back to pre-pandemic levels.

    Coutinho’s promotion means there’s someone else around the Cabinet table who thinks the next big heave at welfare reform will be vital. It would be political suicide to talk about a relaunch, especially for a man not even a year into the job. But what we’re seeing now is Sunak choosing his last few pre-election battles, gathering and promoting his closest allies and getting ready for his final push.

    Is this a joke?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/08/31/rishi-sunak-has-played-his-last-best-card/

    1. No, Sunak should stand up at 9am, admit he is an unelected stooge, apologise for stabbing his first boss, then the elected PM in the back, immediately announce every tax cut truss presented – and more, He must then send gunships out to defend our borders, start packing foreign criminals into shipping containers for instant removal, repeal the ECHR, Migration pact, Windosr agreement, HRA, climate change tax scam, net zero scam, abandon the digital currency, sack 70% of the civil service and by ten past 9 announce his resignation and donate 99% of his family’s wealth to help for heroes.

      Then hang his cabinet and every wet, Left wing libdemalike in this abusive, poisonous faux socialist party.

      1. Ha, another case of ‘Dream on’ Wibbles. It’ll never happen, like a limpet, he clings to power. Piano wire is the only alternative for him and his ilk.

    3. Sunak removed NOW. Conservative Party suffers severe loss at general election but can rebuild under a conservative leader.

      Sunak remains leader. Conservative Party wiped out at election. RIP – The Party’s dead and buried.

      I think that very few Conservatives are aware that if they don’t dump Sunak NOW that’s it. Finito

    4. I have noticed a lot of what I would call government propaganda on social media of late. No comments allowed, of course. Lots of promises that anyone with any experience of government since 1997 will know have little acquaintance with the truth. Must be an election coming up.

  11. From Going Postal yesterday, a speech by Churchill made in 1933 will resonate with many:-

    Winston Churchill- What England Means To Me

    This speech was made on April 24, 1933, six years before the second World War, seven years before the battle of Britain, when Winston Churchill was fifty-nine years old.

    There are a few things I will venture to mention about England. They are spoken in no invidious sense. Here it would hardly occur to any one that the banks would close their doors against their depositors. Here no one questions the fairness of the courts of law and justice. Here no one thinks of persecuting a man on account of his religion or his race. Here everybody except the criminal looks on the policeman as the friend and servant of the public. Here we provide for poverty and misfortune with more compassion, in spite of all our burdens, than any other country. Here we can assert the rights of the citizen against the state, or criticise the government of the day without failing in our duty to the Crown or in our loyalty to the King. This ancient, mighty London in which we are gathered is still the financial centre of the world. From the Admiralty building, half a mile away, orders can be sent to a Fleet which, though much smaller than it used to be, or it ought to be, is still unsurpassed on the seas.

    Historians have noticed, all down the centuries, one peculiarity in the English people which has cost them dear. We have always thrown away after a victory the greater part of the advantages we gained in the struggle. The worst difficulties from which we suffer do not come from without. They come from within. They do not come from the cottages of the wage-earners. They come from a peculiar type of brainy people always found in our country, who, if they add something to its culture, take much from its strength.

    Our difficulties come from the mood of unwarrantable self-abasement, into which we have been cast by a powerful section of our intellectuals. They come from the acceptance of defeatist doctrines by a large proportion of our politicians. But what do they offer but a vague internationalism, a squalid materialism, and the promise of Utopias?

    Nothing can save England if she will not save herself. If we lose faith in ourselves, in our capacity to guide and govern, if we lose our will to live, then indeed our story is told. England would sink to the level of a fifth-rate power, and nothing would remain of all her glories except a population much larger than this island can support.

    We ought, as a nation and as an Empire, to weather any storm at least as well as any other existing system of human government. It may well be that the most glorious chapters in our history are yet to be written. Indeed, the very problems and dangers that encompass us and our country ought to make English men and women of this generation glad to be here at such a time. We ought to rejoice at the responsibilities with which destiny has honoured us, and be proud that we are guardians of our country in an age when her life is at stake.

    https://going-postal.com/2023/08/winston-churchill-what-england-means-to-me/

    1. “Nothing can save England if she will not save herself.”

      So true – time to rise up and save England – indeed the whole UK.


    2. Here we provide for poverty and misfortune with more compassion, in spite of all our burdens, than any other country

      Yes, overly generously. Because the state likes people being reliant on welfare. It refuses to stop people who have contributed nothing from taking everything.

      There is nothing that can be done. The only people who can resolve the carnage they have created is the state machine itself – and to do that it has to be destroyed. The parasite has to die for the animal it is eating to live for the parasite, in far reduced terms to continue to exist.

      I’d advocate a new currency. Move everyone over to blockchain. have shops accept it. Once folk realise this currency is invisible to the state taxes simply stop being paid. If you want something, you pay for it. However a host of other stuff happens to – carehomes, currently being thieves will actually have to charge what they cost, not what big fat state will pay out. Same for schools as with no taxes schools will have to charge for tuition and enter a market.

      Cutting the state’s ability to levy and collect tax solves almost every problem we have.

      2. State paying for care homes, eh? If Mother was compos mentis, she’d like to know about that, because it’s her bank account that pays for her, at least. No help from any other bugger.

      3. I’d caution against moving to digital currency. It’s not as anonymous as some suppose, and it relies on the Internet, which can be disrupted. The lack of ability to spend crypto-currencies without the overall infrastructure of the Internet is a real drawback for me. Hard currency/gold is far safer than electronic.

    4. This speech was made to the Royal Society of St George in London. Omitted from the above is this introduction:

      “On this one night in the whole year we are allowed to use a forgotten, almost forbidden word. We are allowed to mention the name of our own country, to speak of ourselves as ‘Englishmen’, and we may even raise the slogan ‘St George for Merrie England’.

      “We must be careful, however. You see these microphones? They have been placed on our tables by the British Broadcasting Corporation.”

    5. “the mood of unwarrantable self-abasement, into which we have been cast by a powerful section of our intellectuals.”
      Oh, dear. I’m not an intellectual, despite 4 degrees and the ability to read. I’m heartbroken. Crushed, even.

    6. “the mood of unwarrantable self-abasement, into which we have been cast by a powerful section of our intellectuals.”
      Oh, dear. I’m not an intellectual, despite 4 degrees and the ability to read. I’m heartbroken. Crushed, even.

    7. That very resilience and self-assurance has been systematically drummed out of us – presumably with a view to our losing our will to live.

  12. Attetmpted to register for council tax yesterday. The system is obtuse so eventually just emailed them. “We aim to respond within 21 days”

    Fine matey. That’s 3 weeks I won’t have to pay your offensive taxes. I wonder if I replied to my customers with ‘I aim to respond within 3 weeks?’ I wouldn’t have much business. Dammit, these people are staff. Their responses should be next business day at minimum.

      2. Lots of private companies quietly rowing back on wfh. HSBC Uk in the paper today saying staff must turn up at least 3 days a week…

    2. Don’t underestimate them – they are perfectly capable of sending you a bailiffs’ letter after 21 days because you haven’t paid!

  13. ‘Morning All

    Aye Right…………..

    http://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a3110e5cdd586acb318d752c8a0e1ccbf120b2bcb5eca92589ca645f816c45f9.jpg

    The Rest

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/42ae2fb8f97422250a4a98d044bc7243ab041b7671fc8186b857f8b099eb2d79.png

    https://henrymakow.com/z-borg-censorship.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c3700763af802bae2fa8217fd3f6b10c2beefc8b6a283025e6a39e823448d68a.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/dec96a6688960ed052d3f82f64605f05fe3bbdb9f37ee5375361624bd1db6b9f.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7fc636f3330aff7d45f0914171f7176efa5b5ee7eb6c0cc0a25eb5be9f98de4b.jpg

    2. The first one is surely a disguised way of saying what we all think about Shapps, in the only possible way that could get past the censors?

      I would dearly love to believe that the last one was a joke…I would find it hard to restrain myself from physical violence if I discovered that anyone had given these books to any child of my family.
      Not very inclusive though, are they – I don’t see any drag queens in hijabs…

    3. What os the Gadsden flag?? This is the second reference i’ve seen to it in a cartoon. I’m feeling a tad ignorant so don’t laugh at me!

  14. Sweden hit by four explosions in an hour. 1 September 2023.

    An hour later another two explosions were reported minutes apart in Norsborg, a suburb south of Stockholm, and in Nykoping, around 100 kilometres south of the capital.

    In both cases, police said no one was hurt. All four blasts were at residential buildings.

    Sweden has struggled to rein in a surge of shootings and bombings in recent years as gangs settle scores fuelled by the drugs trade, but Gothenburg police said it was too early to speculate on a motive for the two blasts in the city.

    No one hurt! Well that’s OK then! No word on the ethnicity of these people either.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/08/31/sweden-hit-four-explosions-hour-gang-related-violence/?li_source=LI&li_medium=liftigniter-rhr

      1. I wondered about the ‘Nors’ bit of the name.
        Probably north of somewhere, but possibly not Stockholm.

          2. Vikings couldn’t write. I have no idea of any village that might have been the Capital of Sweden.

            I do know that I am descended from Egil (530) King in Sweden, Uppsala and am the 50th Generation.

          3. “is there a village that was once the capital of Sweden?”
            Yes, Norway !
            As the joke goes…

    4. Ethnicity is only mentioned when the culprits are white. If ethnicity is not mentioned it is virtually certain that the protagonists are not white.

      (Am I committing Critical Race Theory here?)

    1. My loving spouse did a job yesterday for a client who works in MSM and reported that this person said that every time a journalist wants to blow the whistle or print a negative story about e.g.Lineker, Edwards they get a threatening phone call and so the whole thing is dropped.

      We have vile evil people in positions of tremendous unelected power and i hope the whole MSM collapses. Al Beeb does so much to protect these people as do the #bekind Grauniad types. They ise bullying and intimidation to perpetuate their evil regimes. We don’t know the half of it.

  16. Schools in England to shut over risk of collapse. 31 August 2023.

    More than 100 schools have been told to shut down buildings and classrooms that are at risk of collapse because of crumbling concrete.

    Schools and colleges were warned to close parts of their estates by officials at the Department for Education (DfE) on Thursday, days before the start of the new school term.

    Around 24 schools will have to fully close their buildings and find alternative teaching spaces, it is understood.

    The schools are suspected of having “crumbly” reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) that could collapse.

    When I was very young American B movies used to talk about something called graft. This, I discovered much later, involved things like using inferior materials on government contracts and charging for the real thing and then pocketing the difference. It was actually a huge criminal operation there at both State and Federal level. The New York construction industry, which is run by the Cosa Nostra, is still plagued by it. Now there is no mention of this in the article but unless they have forgotten how to make concrete in the last twenty years something similar must be happening.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/08/31/schools-england-shut-concrete-buildings-prone-collapse/

    1. This problem has been known about for nearly as long as the purported life of the Aero concrete.
      I doubt it’s just schools. Think of the office blocks, hospitals, tower blocks of council flats and car parks that have been thrown up since 1960.
      T Dan Smith’s memorials are all around us.

  17. Good morning all.
    Our daughter’s 33rd wedding anniversary today. Between daughter, son and us we have clocked up 111 years of marriage.

      1. No. She has 2 daughters aged 19 and 21, both still at university. The eldest is doing a post grad year in sports business management. The younger starting 2nd year in Psychology.
        Son has a son, now 20, who’s doing a Masters in Pharmacy and about to start 3rd of 4 years. He has a smashing girlfriend and who knows what may happen.

        Edit Post instead of pot.

    3. My parents clocked up 53 years, Caroline’s parents clocked up 58 years and because I was a late entry to the matrimonial stakes Caroline and I have only clocked up 35 year of monogamous marriage!

      There are several Golden Nottlers who have clocked up 50 + years of marital servitude – but are there any Diamond (60 +) Nottlers?

  18. Good morning all.

    Just a heads up that we (that is Rastus and I) need to change our internet box today. Depending on my level of (in)competence, we may or may not have to call upon a technician to help us set it up. We may be some time…

  19. https://ci4.googleusercontent.com/proxy/Tgt3WC1oF1FrVBoxvq0F1fY6WoUCATxpT70UjD-LtkNmaOD3emJ9ixx3eWneVG03o0olw8Le4K0T5xnoNAsxuW4Zk9kw0FHR48n2RqTmLKkPlsJuIhPywQLzNEuHkX3Y2SGZxyVpzfoWYEt2tVysoCHIy-AMssZnRwCAIWtimLnHGpxzAmmldNH10R_U8o43v0fD5_x1GsA7J-taDRD30LdAtkl8UOkaDjDj4AmjxtGRLsgLo3Z0VIM4g4JYg-hZp5q-SVCK-dNGeApqAmUZooKpXmz6tnZzqBFxj81m1BzT38y3h8B7H5t9uPE=s0-d-e1-ft#https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_36,c_scale,f_png,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack.com%2Ficon%2FNoteForwardIcon%3Fv%3D4%26height%3D36%26fill%3Dnone%26stroke%3D%2523808080%26strokeWidth%3D2
    Interesting post from Igor today.

        1. Thank you!
          I read a suggestion from Dr McCullough that the spike protein hangs around because it can’t be broken down by the body.
          It’s not clear to me whether it’s hanging round for this reason, or whether it is still being produced.
          If the former, then three months of the nattokinase/bromelain/curcumin protocol should clear it. But if it’s still being produced, then you’d need to take them forever?

          At the moment Dr McCullough is recommending 3 months.

          1. Whatever the mechanism, it does seem to weaken the body’s immune response and thus the person’s health.

          2. Yes – the latest excess mortality figures are worrying. I’ve ordered the McCullough protocol for a couple of people.

  21. 375891+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Friday 1 September: The West needs a credible nuclear deterrent to keep Russia at bay

    Truth of the matter is,
    Our TINY segment of the west needs URGENTLY to look inwards starting with the political governing self interest,scamming, treacherous,deceiving, lying ,cheating, reptiles.

    These politico’s represent the combined arseholes of humanity
    they will arm the herd to back them when they go war seeking
    then park many, in times of semi peace under the nations viaducts.

    Bearing in mind these political arseholes combined have their own protection force “in 5* residence” on standby, and being added to daily.

    As for the herd at home, bearing arms for self protection that is a definite NO NO.

    With the lock down they, the political arseholes, shout pull, as with clay pigeons and somebody dies, that is along with the controlling manipulation, it has ALL been witnessed in action.

    May one ask, WHAT are these creatures still doing in positions of power, who are the death wish electorate supporting them ?
    if you are so inclined then sod off to Switzerland and pull the trigger.

    2. Russia is not the enemy, our real enemy is just across the channel that is where the invasion is coming from. the moment that the Brexit referendum result was announced all we recieved were threats and insults from the Brussels commissars especially their French poodles

      2. It seems that the others stirring up all the trouble are emerging as the enemy of the human race. But the ‘THEY’ are far to obsessed with themselves to notice.

          1. Ah! The Head Offices of UK Ltd. a wholly owned subsidiary of the WEF with one Rishi Sunak as the Managing Director.

  23. ‘Morning, Peeps. A wet, if mild, morning is predicted on this part of yer sarf coast. Fortunately Summer returns from Sunday onwards – that’s probably because it still is, despite the Met Orifice and the BBC trying to advance the start of Autumn yet again (the real date in the 23rd of September, but apparently they seem to think that many are incapable of understanding this).

    An excellent article by Simon Heffer, with apologies for including the ‘P’ name. (Here’s a clue – he’s the finest smug hypocrite in the pay of the BBC.)

    How the Left turned the RSPB from pro-conservation to anti-Conservative

    Like the National Trust and the RSPCA before them, the charity has stuck its beak into politics to try and bring down the Tory government

    By
    Simon Heffer
    31 August 2023 • 7:00pm

    The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, soon to celebrate the 120th anniversary of its Royal Charter, has charming origins. It was the union of two women’s groups opposed to the exploitation of birds for fashion purposes. Victorian and Edwardian ladies had the plumage of exotic birds sprouting from their hats: in the 1880s, three-quarters of a million skins of such birds were imported into Britain annually. Its campaign was a huge success.

    Ladylike is the last term to describe the current activities of the RSPB. Its response on Wednesday to news that the Government was, thanks to Brexit, abandoning EU rules on water pollution to allow the building of 100,000 more badly-needed houses was not only lacking in refinement; it also lacked the political impartiality demanded of an organisation’s charitable status.

    On Twitter, the charity abused the Prime Minister, the Levelling-up Minister, Michael Gove and Thérèse Coffey, the Environment Secretary. “You said you wouldn’t weaken environmental protections,” it snarled. “And yet that’s just what you are doing. You lie, and you lie, and you lie again.” The tweet was retweeted by a political affairs officer at the RSPB who is a Labour activist.

    The outcry was as rapid as it was predictable. The RSPB seems to have abandoned a distinction between promoting conservation and engaging in political agitation. Perhaps influenced by the National Trust’s determination to rewrite history, or the RSPCA’s flirtation with class-based agitation over hunting with hounds, the charity now feels it should stick its beak into politics, and help bring down a Tory government.

    It responded to attacks by confirming it stood by its comments. However, three hours later, it backed down, releasing a mildly shamefaced statement admitting the tweet was “below the standard we set ourselves”.

    This retreat could be connected with a RSPB trustee, the environmentalist and director of the UK Centre for Greening Finance and Investment Ben Caldecott, attacking the tweet as “simply not an appropriate contribution to our public discourse”. He said he would raise the matter urgently with the chief executive, Beccy Speight. Ms Speight has a background familiar in the radical world of running a modern charity. She is ex-local government, ex-National Trust and ex-Woodland Trust. She did at least have the courage to defend herself and her organisation (though not especially well) on yesterday’s Today programme, apologising for the “framing” of the tweet.

    If that formula sounds like weasel words, that is because they almost certainly are. The RSPB has been under attack for what Tim Bonner, Ms Speight’s opposite number at the Countryside Alliance, identified some time ago as “the Packham tendency” in the charity. He referred to the ubiquitous television wildlife presenter Chris Packham, to whom the BBC continues to allocate immense airtime, despite his nakedly political stance on environmental and wildlife issues. Mr Packham is a vice-president of the RSPB; he is also closely associated with a militant belief in regulating game shooting to a point where it becomes unviable.

    But even the RSPB has had difficulties with Mr Packham. One can imagine his anguish when, in 2021, the charity was condemned for describing how to bait an electric fence with honey to give badgers a shock and keep them away from their bird reserves. Ian Botham complained that he thought this constituted an offence under the 1992 Protection of Badgers Act. The charity backtracked rapidly.

    The Countryside Alliance (which counts Labour peers as two of its three vice-presidents), other pro-field sports bodies and many country people sincerely interested in the welfare of birds believe the RSPB has ceased to concern itself mainly with conservation, but has instead embraced a leftist agenda far beyond what many of its members, and the Charity Commission, would expect. It is also pretty ungenerous to the Government, from which contracts and grants have paid the RSPB £78,281,650 since 2018: the grants alone are now almost £15 million a year.

    The nature of the response to the “liars” tweet indicated its impact. Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s spin doctor, Caroline Lucas, the Green MP and the shadow environment secretary Jim McMahon all supported it. Mr McMahon capitalised on it to say: “Most will rightly conclude it’s the dying days of a Government void of positive ideas to make the country better, occupied only with ransacking anything of value.” The tweet was immediately polarising, with Mark Jenkinson, a Conservative MP, demanding a Charity Commission investigation.⁰

    An almost umbilical connection appears to have been created between charities, campaigning and being anti-Conservative – not least because so much of what the charities seem motivated to campaign against requires the overturning of government policy.

    Ms Speight herself has form, accusing the Government last year of mounting an “attack on nature”. The charity particularly loathes grouse shooting, supposedly because of the detrimental effect it has on raptors such as hen harriers, and it wants the sport licensed in England as it now is in Scotland. Licences are also very selectively issued, allowing the gathering of black-headed gulls’ eggs, but the RSPB now wish that to be banned. An egg can cost a diner in a smart restaurant £8, affordable perhaps by the type of person who pays £3,000-£3,500 a gun for a day’s grouse shooting. An element of class antipathy appears to have insinuated itself into the RSPB’s world view.

    Mr Bonner has lashed into this aspect of the charity’s policies. “In RSPB world,” he has written, “pheasants are always ‘non-native’, whereas the brown hare never is, despite the fact that they were both introduced by the Romans. Grouse moor management is always ‘intensifying’ despite the fact that grouse bags have been falling for decades. Raptor persecution (which we can all agree is an appalling crime) is forever increasing, despite actual incidents being at historic lows and raptor populations booming.”

    He believes that “part of the reason for this is undoubtedly the mistaken belief that a narrow band of anti-shooting activists… reflect the views of the population as a whole, or even the attitudes of RSPB members.” He claims the charity is “increasingly conflicted” over essential wildlife management “as it pits practical conservation against the Packham tendency, which labels predator control “casual killing” and brings Judicial Reviews to challenge the Government on the issuing of General Licences for the control of exactly the corvid species that like nothing better than to snack on a lapwing chick.” The RSPB also wants lead shot banned for shooting live quarry, even though it is more effective at killing them cleanly than some alternatives.

    The RSPB has justified its anti-shooting campaign on the basis of “growing public concern, including from our membership”. Mr Bonner has labelled this contention “distinctly shaky ground” because “there is no evidence of any growing public concern about game shooting in the public domain. In fact, the evidence – based on economic studies and demand for game shooting – is that far from being concerned about game shooting, more members of the public want to do it.” He claims Countryside Alliance polling “has consistently suggested that issues like hunting and shooting remain subjects of utter irrelevance to the vast majority of the British public.”

    One suspects, on that basis, that many who donate to the charity, or leave it handsome bequests in their wills, would be aggrieved by its association with politicised left-wing causes, or its apparent belief that it is entitled to attack an elected Government in nakedly political terms. It is a long way from the “twitching”, nesting boxes and bird feeders loved by its benign supporters. They may well think differently – and so may the Charity Commission.

    * * *

    The BTL posters seem to be if one mind on this subject. Here’s just one response:

    Emma Dixon
    13 HRS AGO
    All big charities are highly politicised; I wouldn’t support any of them. Your money is much better spent being donated to small, local charities that spend funds appropriately and can make a difference, not on big ones who indulge grandstanding or political peacocking by their highly paid ‘executives’.

    Hear, hear!

    1. Like all left wing animal charities their love of birds does not go so far as to bring to public attention the mass slaughter caused by wind turbines and the cruelties of ritual slaughter .

    2. I suppose no one thought to mention that the houses would not be “badly needed” if the population weren’t being vastly increased by illegal imports. There is a lot of evidence that grouse moor management is essential both to prevent fire risk (muirburn) and to ensure biodiversity. Just like LACS, whose deer “sanctuary” has actually caused suffering by overcrowding, these animal rights do-gooders are often far removed from practical issues of animal management.

  25. Apparently, Not All Black Lives Matter

    White supremacists are responsible for .001% of all murders each year. According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting statistics for 2021, black people are responsible for 60% of all murders in the U.S., and the majority of their victims are other blacks. Those are the many, many black lives that absolutely do not matter to the media.

    https://www.takimag.com/article/apparently-not-all-black-lives-matter/

    1. You’re forgetting they’re a result of ‘racism’ because white people didn’t give them enough money to live how they wanted to.

      1. Of course.
        And if you gave them all $5Mn each, by the end of a year there would still be millions of poor blacks and a few very rich ones and a middle class that would be richer than it is now.
        AND lots and lots of dead blacks killed for their money.

      1. I must admit that I found the .001% one hard to believe, I think the decimal point is in the wrong place and should have read 0.01.

  26. Good morning all,

    Here in Pembrokeshire the wind is back in the Sou’-West, it’s going to be a nice day, 14C going up to 18C.

    So, 1 in 4 ULEZ cameras has been ‘decommissioned’.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/08/31/ulez-cameras-vandalism-expanded-quarter-sadiq-khan/

    The heart-warming bits are in the comments. Almost entirely in support of the ‘freedom-fighters’ and full of encouragement to ‘keep up the good work’. Some people are venturing to suggest the action should be extended to all cameras monitoring the roads. I tend to agree, including ANPR cameras belonging to the parking parasite companies which increasingly seem to be monitoring car parks even at pubs and hotels. Smash them all, I say.

      1. 375891+ up ticks,

        S16,

        Every long trek starts with the first step.

        🎵
        1 camera at a time sweet …..

    2. Good morning Fiscal and everyone. When does criminal damage start to evolve into ‘terrorism’? I can chuckle at the bag-for-ulez technique, but not angle grinders.

    3. Me too, FM. I never had myself down as a supporter of vandalism, but in the case of Ulez enough is enough and I’m prepared to make an exception and quietly rejoice. This country has so much wrong with it, I find it encouraging to think that Khan and his mob are being forced to listen. It’s rather like the safety valve on a pressure cooker finally letting go…

    4. Me too, FM. I never had myself down as a supporter of vandalism, but in the case of Ulez enough is enough and I’m prepared to make an exception and quietly rejoice. This country has so much wrong with it, I find it encouraging to think that Khan and his mob are being forced to listen. It’s rather like the safety valve on a pressure cooker finally letting go…

  27. Morning all 🙂😊
    No change in the weather on the 1st.
    A Pinch and a punch……..🤌👊
    We had a lovely evening and meal out last night sat close to and chatted to a couple of around the same age.
    It’s probably a better idea to back off and leave Russia alone. Our useless politicians always get everything wrong. We don’t want them starting a war. Unless it’s all been planned and the reason why they allowed more gimigrants in than we can cope with.

    1. If it has all been planned (and I suspect it has) it won’t be the gimmigrants they are sending off to fight the bad fight. It will be poor old Tommy once again.

        1. Yes…. when we uprise… if there are enough of us…and many of our men are gone or weakened through the ills of the injection and possibly sent off to Ukraine along with the other European men. The accommodation the gimmigrants occupy can only ever be temporary. They have probably been promised our homes if they are patient. After all, they don’t inject these men as I understand it.

  28. The RSPB has got itself into a spot of bother after it posted a series of Twitter messages shouting ‘LIARS!’ about the government’s decision to drop EU rules on ‘nutrient neutrality’ for home builders in order to speed up house building. The RSPB is accusing the government on going back on a promise not to weaken environmental protections. HMG’s response is that the risk to waterways from house building is small compared to sewage discharge and agricultural run-off, to which problems it has committed £280 million. In all the articles I’ve read on the subject, the RSPB hasn’t responded to this.

    This is, of course, the charity that seeks to protect raptors from evil gamekeepers and to prove its point conducted an experiment on its own reserve at Langholm in the Scottish borders. By effectively withdrawing gamekeeping control, predators cleaned out most of the rare ground-nesting birds, including the hen harriers the RSPB was trying to protect.

    Two years ago, it advised staff to use honey on electric fences around reserves to bait badgers and give them an electric shock to scare them off. Ex-England cricketer Ian Botham threatened to kick their bloody heads in reported them to the police for encouraging the offence of ‘cruelly ill-treating a badger’ under the Protection of Badgers Act 1992.

    The RSPB has for some time been under attack for what Tim Bonner of the Countryside Alliance describes as “the Packham tendency”. Chris Packham is vice-president of the RSPB and a hardline opponent of grouse shooting. He recently appeared on The One Show on BBC TV sniffing the bottoms of goshawk chicks. Viewers reported the programme to Hampshire Police in respect of an alleged offence under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. I had no idea the Act covered that kind of offence.

    Beccy Speight, the RSPB’s chief executive, was forced to apologise on Thursday (for the tweets, not Chris Packham’s cloacal inhalations), insisting she did not approve the post and it had not gone through ‘normal protocols’. She added that the charity was ‘not entering politics’. It is not recorded if she spat feathers while saying this.

    Here’s a photo of Ms Speight, clearly someone for whom a pair of pan-fried grouse would be a mere tit-bit. Only an entire flock of free-range poultry (organic, natch) for this one!

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/028b918fb8333bdff6725930b14ab436e9d0bc30b75dc847ae85b2b377bfb6c9.jpg

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/08/31/rspb-liars-tweet-anti-conservative-national-trust-rspca/
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/08/31/rspb-accuses-government-lies-environment-pledges/
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/08/31/rspb-trustees-condemn-liar-tweet-sunak-environment-laws/
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/12/19/rspb-face-police-barbaric-guidance-give-badgers-electric-shocks/
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/08/26/chris-packham-bbc-one-show-goshawk-chick-investigated/

    1. So it seems it’s not only our politicians that eff up everything they come into contact with.

    4. It may be true that the RSPB is not “entering” politics; it’s been there for a long time! The offence may well be interfering with the young of raptors rather than specifically channelling one’s inner Biden.

  30. Last night I watched BBC TV’s recording of Mahler 9 at The Proms. The band was the LSO, the conductor Simon Rattle in his last UK performance with them. Katie Derham gushed and grimaced as if in training for Countryfile and had a chat with the well-known musicologist Sheila Hancock. The interval feature included a number of talking heads giving us their (brief) opinions on Rattle. Seven of them were musicians, three were not. Given that this is the closed circle of the BBC, I’ll let you guess who the three were. They are regular ‘go-tos’, two of them in particular on panel shows.

    As they might say in the way of today, it was so-o-o-o-o BBC.

    1. I woz there. What did you make of the performance? I loved the BBC Singers and the unaccompanied Poulenc but the Mahler 9 was just OK and didn’t warrant the rapturous reception it received. A prommer friend reminded me that the National Youth Orchestra gave a much more memorable performance a few years ago and I do agree with him.

      1. Flat. It’s not the first time I’ve heard a lifeless Mahler symphony under Rattle. I presume the Prommers were applauding because it was his UK LSO farewell but then they are a bit over-enthusiastic at times.

        Anyway, as no one has had a go at my little test, the three BBC ‘heads’ were Fry, Toksvig and Callow. Predictable, what!

        1. The Wigmore got Callow to interview Dame Janet Baker in the hall one Sunday afternoon a few years ago. That worked because of course he was asking the questions and Dame Janet does know her music.

  31. Beware September: five cautionary tales from economic history. 1 September 2023.

    1. September 1720 and the collapse of the South Sea Bubble.

    Even three centuries on, the rise and fall of the South Sea Company is the yardstick against which all subsequent speculative manias are judged. That’s because this crisis had everything: a dodgy business prospectus; a company that was unable to generate the returns it was promising; the first example of what became known as a Ponzi scheme under which the company was buying its own stock to keep share prices high; groupthink; and investors left to rue their foolishness. The list of casualties when the share price collapsed from a high of £1,000 included Sir Isaac Newton, who lost upwards of £40m in today’s money. The main beneficiary was Sir Robert Walpole, who as chancellor handled the crisis deftly and went on to become prime minister.

    Lesson to be learned: what goes up comes down.

    2. September 1931 and the departure of sterling from the gold standard.

    In the early years of the Great Depression, Britain and most other major countries were subject to the strictures of the gold standard, under which governments agreed to exchange their paper currency for a fixed amount of the precious metal. The gold standard ensured that countries facing balance of payments deficits could not devalue their way out of trouble but instead had to deflate their economies to regain competitiveness. Britain had suspended membership of the gold standard at the start of the first world war but rejoined in 1925. The result was slow growth, high unemployment and pressure for cuts in welfare spending to balance the budget. A minority Labour government collapsed under the strain and a new national government – still with Labour’s Ramsay MacDonald at its head – bowed to the inevitable and came off the gold standard in September 1931. Other countries followed suit.

    Lesson to be learned: bad economics equals bad politics.

    3. September 1992 and Black Wednesday.

    Over the course of the 20th century, it was Labour governments that took the political flak for devaluation. The exception to that was the day speculators led by George Soros forced Britain out of the European exchange rate mechanism (ERM) and inflicted a blow to John Major’s Conservative administration from which it never recovered. Britain had joined the ERM in October 1990, less than two years previously, and was committed to keeping the pound within a set range against the German mark. The ERM effectively operated as a looser form of the gold standard and had many of the same defects. Pressure on the pound intensified as the UK struggled with recession at a time when reunification led to higher German interest rates. Soros and his fellow speculators saw the pound as a one-way bet and on Black Wednesday (16 September 1992) they were proven right. After announcing that interest rates would be raised to 15% to defend sterling, resistance crumbled and the pound was allowed to float. Economic recovery followed swiftly but Major’s reputation was permanently tarnished.

    Lesson to be learned: be careful of importing your economic policy from overseas.

    4. September 2008: Lehman Brothers and the near death of the global banking system.

    The global financial crisis had actually begun more than a year earlier but culminated with the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, a middle-ranking US investment bank, on September 2008. Lehmans came to symbolise everything that had gone wrong across the banking sector: institutions had taken big bets on the US housing market, creating new opaque and complex financial instruments that magnified gains in the good times but left them exposed when the market turned down. Investors were unsure which banks were nursing the losses so assumed that all of them were in the same boat. Banks lacked the capital to cover their potential losses and when the US government allowed Lehmans to go to the wall panic set in. Even the most powerful banks were seen as vulnerable and ultimately governments were forced to step in with injections of public money. In the UK, the Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds were partly nationalised, while central banks slashed interest rates to mitigate the economic fallout. Fifteen years later, the banks look healthier but the global economy has never fully recovered.

    Lesson to be learned: A bubble is a bubble so never believe people who say: “It’s different this time.”

    5 September 2022 and the short-lived premiership of Liz Truss.

    As a historian, Kwasi Kwarteng ought to have been aware of the perils of September but Liz Truss’s chancellor was eager to make his mark quickly after being appointed in the month. Kwarteng sacked the Treasury’s top mandarin, Tom Scholar, decided not to run his proposals past the government’s spending watchdog and then seemed surprised when the biggest package of tax cuts in 50 years was greeted with the loudest of raspberries from the financial markets. The plan to kickstart Britain’s sluggish economy was an instant flop. Within a week the pound had fallen to its lowest ever level against the US dollar and the Bank of England was forced to launch an emergency bailout of the UK pensions industry. Mortgage rates soared, and Kwarteng was summoned home from a meeting of the International Monetary Fund to be sacked by Truss, who was forced out shortly afterwards. Orthodoxy returned under Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt, who became the fourth chancellor of 2022.

    Lesson to be learned: Mess with the financial markets at your peril.

    The real lesson of course is that all human systems are prone to collapse. As we shall shortly see here in the UK.

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/sep/01/september-five-cautionary-tales-economic-history-south-sea-bubble-trussonomics

    1. Of that last one, surely the message is, conservative policies that work will no longer be allowed to be applied. Ruination is the order of the day.

    1. The more EVs on the roads the more total gridlocks there will be on cold wet winter nights! These could take several days to clear. Imagine 500 cars – three abreast -on the M25 and impossible to move any of them without cranes!

      1. That’s precisely the drawback of EVs.

        Once they’ve stopped you can’t move them.
        Once they’ve caught fire you can’t put them out.

        The particular problem with Teslas is that everything that requires mechanical movement requies a battery of some sort.
        What people who are not used to recovering Tesla EVs don’t know is that there is a secret compartment in the front of the car that hides two wires which when activated by a small battery will flip the bonnet- then you should be able to jump start it by activating the 12 volt system (as long as the main traction battery isn’t flat).

  33. We went to the movie the other night. So I sat in an aisle seat as I usually do because it feels a little roomier.
    Just as the feature movie was about to start, a blonde from the center of the row got up and started working her way out of her seat.
    “Excuse me, sorry, oops, excuse me, pardon me, gotta hurry, oops, excuse me.”
    By the time she got to me, I was trying to look around her and I was a little pissed off, to say the least, so I said, “Couldn’t you have done this a little earlier..?”
    “No..!!” she said in a loud whisper, “The TURN OFF YOUR MOBILE PHONE PLEASE message just flashed up on the movie screen and mine is out in the car.”

  34. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6168c64266554422b3b7c6c919bc22a35180a55ab380d4ad6863caddf08fe300.png
    https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/with-100000-families-homeless-taking-in-1-2million-migrants-isnt-exactly-going-to-help/

    This is a sad reflection on the complete incompetence – or is it deliberate malignity – of our politicians who do not give a toss about British families who are homeless or in inadequate accommodation. And now they are purloining students’ accommodation – it was pretty chaotic sorting out our boys’ university accommodation a decade ago but now things are even worse – especially when accommodation is being requisitioned to house illegal aliens.

    I expect that many Nottlers will agree wholeheartedly with Bonce’s BTL comment in The Conservative Woman.

    The government of the UK is committing treason against their own native people. It’s now impossible for the native British to get social housing in a city. This type of housing has all been prioritised for non-white migrants.

    What on earth would be the purpose of such a policy unless it was for malicious intent?

    You don’t bring in millions of low IQ third worlders and stuff them in all your available social housing. Paying them billions in welfare for the good of the economy or the culture.

    The native British meekly complain like they did with the convid rules. But ultimately they accept the situation and keep on voting LIBLABCON. There isn’t another Western nation doing this kind of job on its natives. Perhaps that’s because they know their populations would kick off big time.

  35. James Cleverly warned China over ‘malign cyber activity’ and human rights. 1 September 2023.

    James Cleverly warned China off continuing “malign cyber activity” in face-to-face talks in Beijing, the Foreign Office has said.

    Other concerns raised included the “mass incarceration” of Uighur people, the importance of peace in the Taiwan Strait and concerns about oppression in Hong Kong, according to the Foreign Office’s official readout of the meetings.

    I’m sure that the Chinese were left quivering in terror at this admonition. I wonder if they knew who he was?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/08/30/james-cleverly-tough-conversations-china-human-rights/

    1. With the mass incarceration i expect instances of rape, murder, bombing, stabbings and paedophilia are lower per head than here.

  36. Question for the blokes – how on earth do you manage with little panel pins?? I am currently at the stage of refurbishing my paternal grandparents’ bridge table for my aunt where I am attaching the freshly felted (this had not been done in my lifetime!) board to the table rim, and these 15mm pins are tricky even with much smaller fingers!

    2. What you can do is line some up on sellotape and start them and remove the tape as you get them started.
      Retired carpenter and joiner / contracts manager. 🔨🪚

    5. Get a woman to do it, they have smaller fingers.

      Seriously though, use thin cardboard or tape to hold the little bleeders in place while you clonk them.- just like the others have suggested.

    7. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/017bc2cd0651cb8f73ba7f85d464c71dff198c4cbde063e318fb9152a3865edc.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2a0a5fb34f02a34a12a1d9a430af0674fb2ca8d43005be5c29f4f48334ee456a.jpg
      Hi, Katy.
      As in any endeavour, the correct tool for the job is a must. The tool designed specifically for hammering in panel pins (aka ‘brad nails’) is the cross-pein hammer, or ‘pin-hammer’. The photos are of mine. The narrow head on the back of the cross-pein enables you to tap the panel pin in initially without hitting your fingers. Once it is part way in you invert the head and use the round head to finish off the job. I call my little hammer my “toffee hammer” since it is very small. Hope this helps.

      1. That is actually fascinating. One of those would have been damned useful. As it was, I managed with my aunt’s minimal tool kit, and rather a lot of swearing… 🤣

    3. The Left don’t care. It is a particular psychotic arrogance that ensures they refuse to see the reality of life beyond their own hypocrisy.

  38. Proud Boys Florida leader jailed for 17 years over Capitol riots. 1 September 2023.

    Joe Biggs and Zachary Rehl convicted for seditious conspiracy as judge says attack ‘broke tradition of peaceful transfer of power’

    Two senior members of the Proud Boys militia have been handed hefty prison sentences for their role in the 2021 assault on the US Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump.

    Joe Biggs, the Florida leader of the self-styled paramilitary group, was sentenced to 17 years in prison for seditious conspiracy and other charges, one year shy of the longest sentence given to a participant in the riots on Jan 6, 2021.

    Zachary Rehl, leader of the Philadelphia Proud Boys arm, was sentenced to 15 years in prison on the same charges.

    Prosecutors called them key figures in the attack by thousands seeking to forcibly overturn Joe Biden’s November 2020 election victory, after Mr Trump repeatedly claimed without any basis that there was massive fraud in the vote.

    This is just a rerun of the Peasants Revolt and the Tolpuddle Martyrs et al. The story of oppressive governments frightened of those people that they are supposed to represent.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/09/01/proud-boys-joseph-biggs-zachary-rehl-sentenced-capitol-riot/

    1. The ‘riot’ was stupid and pointless. However, the idea that the demonstrators were a danger to the peace of the USA and that they were but a few steps from seizing power is absurd.

      Ahead of sentencing on Thursday, prosecutor Jason McCullough said what Biggs and his fellow rioters had done in shutting down the Congress that day was “no different than [sic] the act of a spectacular bombing of a building”.

      Cobblers.

    3. In a similar vindictive act, the leaders of last year’ canadian Freedom Convoy go on trial next week. They are accused of various Mischief charges. Tamara Lich has already spent almost two months in prison and has been subject to some severe restrictions on who she can meet.

      Obviously speaking against the ruling cabal can seriously impact you.

  39. Walter took his wife Ethel to the state fair every year, and every time he would say to her, “Ethel, you know that I’d love to go for a ride in that helicopter.” But Ethel would always reply, “I know that Walter, but that helicopter ride is 50 dollars c and 50 dollars is 50 dollars.”
    Finally, they went to the fair, and Walter said to Ethel, “Ethel, you know I’m 87 years old now. If I don’t ride that helicopter this year, I may never get another chance.” Once again Ethel replied, “Walter, you know that helicopter is 50 dollars and 50 dollars is 50 dollars.”
    This time the helicopter pilot overheard the couple’s conversation and said, “Listen folks, I’ll make a deal with you. I’ll take both of you for a ride; if you can both stay quiet for the entire ride and not say a word I won’t charge you! But if you say just one word, it’s 50 dollars.”
    Walter and Ethel agreed and up they went in the helicopter. The pilot performed all kinds of fancy moves and tricks, but not a word was said by either Walter or Ethel.
    The pilot did his death-defying tricks over and over again, but still there wasn’t so much as one word said.
    When they finally landed, the pilot turned to Walter and said, “Wow! I’ve got to hand it to you. I did everything I could to get you to scream or shout out, but you didn’t. I’m really impressed!”
    Walter replied, “Well to be honest I almost said something when Ethel fell out but, you know, 50 dollars is 50 dollars!”

    2. 🙂🤗
      That Sounds like one of the old Tommy Cooper jokes.
      A driver is pulled over on a motorway by the police. Yes officer he says ?
      The policeman says “I’m sorry to inform you sir, but your wife fell out of the rear nearside passenger door 5 miles back”.
      “But she’s not suffered any injuries”.
      The driver replied, “Oh thank god for that officer, I thought I’d gone deaf”.

  40. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/549ce5f50e1cd92e8713220e6c01101be19682978015efcf1fbd01b2cd25f1e2.png
    https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/the-climate-scaremongers-playing-fast-and-loose-with-the-facts/

    BTL
    Della Cate

    Last Sunday, the smiling weatherman piped up with “What four letter word do you think of when you think of our summer this year?”. I immediately shouted rain, but I was wrong. The correct answer was “warm”. He then went on to say that July was 2.5 degrees warmer than normal.

    I was so incensed that I left the room. On what planet could you describe the summer of 2023 as warm? We had 2 to 3 nice weeks in June, which were pleasantly warm but not excessively so, after which we’ve had cold, miserable, grey and wet days, interspersed by an odd sunny one. It’s been distinctly autumnal since the start of August. And so cold in July that the heating has gone on a couple of times.

    Do these people think that if they keep repeating a lie, it will become true? Do they think that we can’t look out of the window and see the grey cloud and rain? That if they keep on repeating “warmer than average” we will eventually concede the point, even though we’ve had to wear jumpers and coats in summer?

    I’d describe our summer as “miserable”, but that’s not a four letter word. I know what four letter word I could use about the BBC and its weathermen and women, but I won’t use if here!

    Rastus C. Tastey – reply to Della Cate

    Remember what the Bellman said in Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark?

    “What I tell you three times is true.”

    If only the climate alarmists were as moderate as the Bellman and gave us their prognoses of doom only three times and not thousands of times.

    But it has become counterproductive in that the more times we are told about the manmade climate crisis the more we know it must be a lie.

    2. “Their final, most essential command was not to believe the evidence of their own eyes and ears.”

      1. Our experience told us that those got Covid having not had any of the jabs – as Caroline and I did – had it considerably less badly than those who got Covid having had all the jabs and boosters. Our experience – along with any evidence which does not fit the agenda – is fake news, irrelevant and should not be expressed.

    3. It’s certainly been sunnier than usual up in the Highlands – my solar panels have generated 1364 Kw in the last 3 months and I’ve only used 121 units from the grid, a record on both counts for me.

  41. The era of the tank is far from over. Hamish de Crettin-Gordon. 1 September 2023

    But like all military capability, it is about how you use it rather than what it is. To us, one historian and one tank commander, what is intriguing – and welcome – is how poorly the Russians are using their tanks.

    Is this the same Crettin-Gordon who wrote:

    British-made tanks are about to sweep Putin’s conscripts aside.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/09/01/the-era-of-the-tank-is-far-from-over/

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/06/09/british-made-tanks-about-to-sweep-putins-conscripts-aside/

    1. I don’t suppose for one moment he’s listened to Col. MacGregor, retired tank commander who has been in action and whose views on the use of tanks in this conflict are the complete opposite.

    2. I don’t suppose for one moment he’s listened to Col. MacGregor, retired tank commander who has been in action and whose views on the use of tanks in this conflict are the complete opposite.

    3. The Russkies are very ably demonstrating that it doesn’t matter what type of tanks we give the Ukes. They all burn the same.

        1. There’s some weird ‘climate change’ going on around here. For the past few days I’ve been wearing a woolly pully!

          1. I had the heating on again this morning (it’s off now and I’m wearing a thick cardigan). Global boiling? Bring it on!

          2. I was out getting my hair cut this morning and I parked near an old friends house I popped in to see him and fix his front door bell.
            I noticed his radiators were warm.

    2. That takes me right back to the girls’ changing rooms at the school sports grounds/playing fields after hockey.

      1. Been warm and sunny all day here, got some more gutter cleaning done and made some chicken wire obstacles to prevent birds nesting under my roof tiles. Shifted the scaffolding to where tomorrows cleaning will be done (weather permitting)

  43. They only built our schools and hospitals to last for thirty years, I wonder if that was for a reason.
    Maybe they thought we wouldn’t be needing them in the future.

    1. Under the Islamic state of Britistan, girls will not be educated, so we will only need Madrassas for boys. They will all sit on rugs outdoors, so buildings will not be needed.

    2. Just as they are not repairing our roads with any great speed or enthusiasm, presumably for the same reason.

  44. From Today’s Guido Fawkes:

    Inspector General in ordinary–

    The Conservatives to win the next General Election? Not a problem. Here’s the press release that will do it…

    “The UK is no longer accepting asylum application from individuals who cross the channel as illegal immigrants. Asylum request will henceforth only be acceptable when made to British embassies abroad in person. The loss of life in the English Channel due to illegal migration is tragic and unacceptable and HM Government is determined to stop it in its entirety”

  45. Afternoon, all. Don’t faint; I had some documents to sign and needed to put the computer on to send emails to confirm they were in the post hence my early appearance. It may not last.

    We need a credible deterrent, nuclear or otherwise, to keep our government at bay. It’s done more damage to this country than Russia ever has or is likely to!

    1. The ability to refuse to pay tax would be it.

      As mentioned prior, if you contact them to try to organise it, and they decide they won’t respond for 21 days then htat’s their problem. Not mine.

  46. “The intercontinental ballistic missile Sarmat, one of Russia’s most capable nuclear weapons, has been approved for active duty, Yury Borisov, the head of the space agency Roscosmos, has announced.

    The development was revealed by Borisov on Friday during a Roscosmos event. The weapon is believed to be the longest-range and heaviest in the Russian nuclear arsenal. Its final test stage was reported last year.

    The liquid-fueled silo-based delivery vehicle is the intended replacement for the aging R-36M2 Voevoda missiles. Its range is estimated at at least 11,000km, while the payload weighs around 10 tons.

    Russian President Vladimir Putin has touted the Sarmat as highly capable in defeating anti-ballistic missile systems, particularly because it can be routed via various directions. Shorter-range ICBMs can only reach the US from Russia by flying over the Arctic, and the US has ground-based interceptors situated for such a flight path.

    Putin has repeatedly stressed that Russia was forced to develop the new system after the US reneged on its commitment not to build ABM systems.

    Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu reported last December that deployment of the Sarmat had started and that the missile would be ready for service in 2023”.
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/54afb6c97ed58d1a5851bfc595288a8dac8be4e9ff1ca7314786f2ab1e5c4cea.png

    1. I would suggest that he UK Border Farce needs, urgently, to enquire about enlisting the services of those Algerian coastguards.

    1. I wonder how many schools could be demolished and rebuilt for the costs of taking in and keeping10,000 gimmegrants per annum?

      1. It’s just about to feature on 5 News.
        I haven’t seen any news yet today.
        Bread baked and Tuned in.
        I’ve been in construction for 53 years and never heard of RAAC.
        What ever next ?

        1. It comes to light that as usual our media have over exaggerated the problem and are scaring the pants off of the public.
          There extensive investigations taking place on many buildings.

  49. Rose veal Pithtivier individual Wellingtons with truffles, mushrooms and rocket…Butter and beef fat saute potatoes and maple syrup carrots. Followed by Deconstructed apple crumble. Served with Sauvignon blanc and two bottles of Brunello di Montalcino and a 2012 Barollo because the guests wanted more wine…the buggers !!!
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/856a50854e948c5807c197ae371b9548bd3603cf8b2798e3a4b05ca5febd0eb9.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/71918f6ab205a506864c3a13d54f754f542bd02d04bd5ddda239165f7f8904a2.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6a50fe2dda79f022c26f8be890787b67f778ed44018984d6a98f6f18e9d7fb75.jpg

      1. Look you. I had a Navy Commander and a Chief Petty Officer to entertain. There was more in the Galley !

          3. They do all the big Army and Navy events which they invite me to. Mess dinner on HMS Victory once. Then on the Lightship.

            Summer Barbies and Halloween nonsense in the Dockyard. Garden parties too. I just turn up now.

          4. You most certainly should be being particularly hospitable. You’re lucky with your friends.
            The more you practise the luckier you get?

          5. In this case next door neighbours which is even better.
            You do need to make an effort though….
            Monday is the Not the Telegraph letters lunch.

            Harry Kobeans called us the Lollygaggers from a line in my Sunday morning invitation.
            I intend to rename us………The Interesting Times Gang.
            A little like the gatherings you attend this has become something similar. I said i would pay for the Malbec and another Nottler said they would pay for the lion share of the food !
            Happy days are here again.

          7. Don’t think so. We may on occasion be double breasted….But the ITG is becoming more relevant.

          13. I will. Though most of the attendees don’t look any where as good looking as me…so it will be mostly me. :@)

          14. Have a lovely time.
            After a very wearing year, we are gradually resuming a social life.
            Very disappointed in the Mercury Theatre programme until January. Apart from the pantomime, it is mostly worthy stuff; I don’t fork out good money for a right-on snooze-a-thon.
            The one nighters offer more actual entertainment.

          15. When I lodged on East Hill one of the other people who shared the billet worked at the Mercury. He used to “paper the house” for first nights. Free tickets to the theatre – what’s not to like?

      1. They certainly do but your comment tells me nothing.

        For these same guests i have done the full on Wellington in the past but someone has to pay for it. £80 for the fillet for four last time i did it.

        At least i didn’t serve a prawn cocktail first !

          1. Me too as i am sure Johnny does. His post to me didn’t tell me how wonderful i think i am so i was confused.

          2. Perhaps he didn’t understand how a ‘crumble’ can be ‘deconstructed’. All looks good otherwise, carry on.

          3. In the depths of Winter i make the crumble in the traditional way.
            All the elements are made separate so they remain in distinct layers and flavours unlike the traditional crumble which tends to meld and merge.

  50. No sign of Lacoste? Hope he’s OK. He had back and wrist problems, I think?

    A par four on Wordle today.

    Wordle 804 4/6

    🟨⬜⬜🟨⬜
    🟨⬜🟨🟨⬜
    🟨⬜🟩🟩🟩
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    1. He might be finding his wrist is too painful for using his computer. Is anyone in touch with him away from here?

    3. Just back from fishing. Double bogey.

      Wordle 804 6/6

      🟨⬜⬜🟨🟩
      🟩⬜🟩⬜🟩
      🟩⬜🟩⬜🟩
      🟩⬜🟩⬜🟩
      🟩🟩🟩⬜🟩
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

  51. European aviation authorities have flagged a London-based firm for supplying “unapproved parts” for jet engines on older Airbus SE A320s and Boeing Co. 737s.
    “Numerous Authorised Release Certificates for parts supplied via AOG Technics have been forged,” the European Union Aviation Safety Agency wrote in a statement to Bloomberg.
    London-based AOG Technics sold CFM56 jet engine parts to third-party repair shops servicing older A320s and 737s. EASA said the parts had certificates the manufacturer could not authenticate or confirm “they were not the originator of the part.”

    “Manufacturers and regulators sounded the alarm weeks ago, triggering a global scramble to trace parts supplied by AOG Technics and identify affected aircraft,” Bloomberg said.
    EASA said the parts with “falsified Authorized Release Certificate” were for CFM56 engines installed on older narrow-body planes. The regulator has told airlines to quarantine parts that potentially could have fake documentation.

    According to Companies House The Director is one:

    Jose Alejandro ZAMORA YRALA

    1. Had dealings with that shite for Libyan company’s oilfield gas turbines. Very lucrative, it is, and at least the oilfield turbines aren’t holding hundreds of passengers aloft.

  52. From the Beeb…

    Unofficial data gathered by a group of people calling themselves Julie’s Ulez map, who are opposed to the expansion, shows that out of the 1,762 cameras in outer London, about 750 have been damaged or stolen.
    Data from the map suggests that across Greater London, almost one in four cameras are damaged or missing.

    You do the Maths!

  53. Went to the tip this morning and then did the shopping. Saw the first mask in Morrisons for quite some time. Obviously the new scariant is frightening people.

      1. We have a woman cashier in our local Grand Frais, who always wears a mask.

        1 if you’re that frightened, given that there is a screen too, why are you working in a public environment?
        2 if you’ve got “something” why are you working in a public environment?

    2. A young boy in the Hertfordshire village our eldest and his family live, tested positive this week.
      Unfortunately that’s all I know.
      Last night my wife and I were out for a meal and had a good meaningful conversation with couple on the adjacent table. They were both of the same mind re covid. And stated they would not be having any more jabs.
      My friend who lives near Melbourne, Oz. Told me yesterday he always wears a mask when he goes out in public.

      1. I’ve not to my knowledge had covid because there was no testing in January 2020. I’m pretty sure I had it then, as did OH, and we both had a dry cough for several weeks afterwards. Last August I had a sore throat – it was painful but didn’t develop into anything. I had to have a very cursory PCR test – £70 please! before my trip to Kenya in February 22. Other than that I’ve never bothered with testing and really can’t see why people bother testing for a variety of the common cold.
        I won’t be having any boosters or flu jabs. Everybody must have had the virus by now, though of course the more jabs people have for it, the more likely they are to catch it and be ill.

          1. I’ve got my stock of vitamins in and will start taking them again soon. I’ve stopped talking about it to my friends as they all seem to be fanatical addicts of the jabs. Most of them have had covid several times of course!

          2. Vit D3 here. Not had a cold, flu, covid, whatever since I startred with it.
            Doesn’t stop tax returns, however.

          3. I’ve taken it from October to March since 2020 and had nothing during that time. This time I’ve got some K2 as apparently they should be taken together as it helps the calcium to go to your bones instead of the vascular system. Not sure how it works but I’m following what Dr John said. Vitamin C as well, though the tablets I got last year were devils to swallow.

          4. Yes, you do need to get K2 with D3. Many brands combine the two in one capsule/tablet. I have great difficulty in swallowing large tablets, whatever the shape. I get orange flavoured chewable/suckable vit C.

          5. I’ve had some nice orange flavoured ones from Morrisons, which i’ve bought again this time. but I still have quite a few left of the other, large ones.

          7. Clearly the so called vaccine is not effective. We have members of our family who firmly believe in it have had every jab available and had covid.
            There’s no point in taking the risk.
            It seems to have taken more lives than saved them.

        2. MB was bloody ill in Jan/Feb 2020.
          He often develops a chest infection after a cold, but that time he was ill for longer and was having to pause for breath on the stairs.

          2. Yes – I remember there was definitely ‘something’ going round at that time and i remember he was ill then. We were not so ill – nothing more than a normal cold, but the cough did linger.

      3. The rectorette has gone down with “covid” – at least it spared me a meeting with her to discuss what I should be doing when I “led” the act of worship (surely if I’m leading it, I’m in charge of it, not parroting her ideas?). Let’s hope she’s gone down with another variant by the time the PCC meeting comes around.

    4. The government has said it should be teated as seasonal flu. ( as that is what it is.) so many people appear to have a death wish.

    5. My son has been in bed for the last week – tired, sweating, fatigue and eventually vomiting. Hard to know if it’s just a virus or *a new variant of covid*. Anyway he is on the mend and back to being his surly 18 year-old self.

      1. Sounds a bit nasty! But the list of covid symptoms covers pretty much everything. If you don’t test, it’s ‘just a cold’.

  54. These last few days I’ve been reading Laura Dobson and Patrick Fagan’s “Free Your Mind” and I must say that it is terrifying. Very good and well worth a read.

    Don’t be put off by the horrible title (the subtitle is better: “The new world of manipulation and how to resist it”). I must add that I think that we Nottlers are doing a pretty good job resisting!

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/61ae60df82fc229a670c69e025dfa2493fc31e2cab0cde71a20c694da8c887b2.jpg

    2. I have resisted the rectorette’s attempt to get me to do an “act of worship” at the PCC meeting because a) she wouldn’t define act of worship b) a prayer was insufficient (and I refused to do anything longer as we don’t get through all the PCC business as it is, even though we start half an hour earlier c) she wanted me to use a “format” (supplied by her – choice of 3) and wouldn’t explain why I needed to stick to that and d) I am tired of her blaming everything on me when it’s her lack of engagement with other people’s views and inability to answer questions (she literally runs away when asked face to face in public meetings) hence I am unable to work with her (her accusation and implication it was my fault). I’m considering what to do at the meeting – arrive late, sit at the back of the church until the meeting actually starts or just sit there and refuse to make any responses. Answers on a postcard! I daresay some lie will be given as to why I’m not doing it if I don’t turn up on time and show my presence.

      2. Oh, man, Conners.
        Forced to worship – I’m sure there’s something in the Bible about that. Might be worth looking at this link – but above all else, be true to yourself. Then, you can look yourself in the eye in the mirror, and not flinch. My most important principle – afterwards, can I look myslf in the eye, directly, and say “I did the right thing?”
        https://catholicsbible.com/bible-forcing-religion-on-others/

        1. This is why most of the congregation have voted with their feet. She will have things her way and no other. I copied the bishops into my final rebuttal where I pointed out I was willing to do a prayer and if that isn’t an act of worship, what is it? I’d pointed out in an earlier exchange where she said there should be a link between worship and the PCC that we always ended with the Grace. Apparently that isn’t enough. Trouble is, she’s only been a Christian for a decade. Most of us have been Christians all our lives (infant baptism, Sunday School, teenage confirmation, Christian Union at university and regular worship, often being acolytes, servers and/or choir members).

          1. I was baptised a C of E Christian, but age brings crankiness, questioning, and a philosophy more like that of the Friends – bizarrely, my Father was raised a Friend, and rebelled over the restrictions. He hated the barstewards.
            I approve of faith, but not of organised religion – it’s too close to politics and control than anything to do with God – look at the money, riches, hierarchies, instructions, and not actually doing anything to a) further the religion, or b) help people.

          2. I’m not an unbeliever – I’ve had too many instances of Divine Intervention in my life to doubt it! Certainly the current CofE is not doing anything to further the religion – it doesn’t even stand up for it! Perhaps Mathew 6:1 about not making a show of religion comes closest to the situation. Thing is, nobody in the PCC is an unbeliever – we were, until the rector arrived, regular churchgoers and worshippers.

          3. There’s a deal of inner peace to be taken when singing hymns and praying, especially with beautiful music in beautiful surroundings, so I see the point of churchgoing. I find, when I enter a Church, I light a candle (if there is a stand), in memory of all those I loved and are no more – mostly older than me, many younger. It gives me peace in my soul (always assuming I have one of those).

          4. Indeed. I get great solace from singing hymns and from listening to a magnificent choir, which makes is all the more soul-destroying that the rectorette alienated the choir and constructively dismissed the Director of Music. We follow them round the churches now (“groupies” as I said to the vicar at Nantwich after evensong). If I go to a strange church I will often light a candle. A light to lighten the darkness. When I did my hospital visit last Monday, the chap in the bed opposite (he didn’t have any visitors at the time) said that he enjoyed singing hymns when I talked about my trip to listen to sung evensong. Faith without works is dead 🙂

          5. I’m sorry you are having a hard time, Conners, made worse by the deliberate actions of another.
            I’d love to have a solution, but…

          6. There is no solution at the moment. I now worship elsewhere (High Church, so I’ve gone back to my roots), but it isn’t the same, for all that everyone is nice and friendly and they all like to include me in everything that’s going. For one thing, it’s twice as far away and for another, the choir, hard though they try, are not as good.

          8. Trouble is, the hierarchy are on her side; whether it’s because they are reluctant to admit to a mistake or because they want to destroy and close the church I don’t know.

          9. Because they want to be in charge. Religion is another form of politics, which is why I stay away – despite the beautiful music and buildings.
            Remember the “Where two or three are gathered together in My Name” passage? Doesn’t talk about hierarchies, buildings and pension plans, committees, and the like. (Matthew 18:20). Just the simplicity of worship.

          10. But, “tu es Petrus et supra hanc petram aedificabo ecclesiam meam” – the keys of heaven to bind and loosen.

      3. Why can’t she do the “act of worship” herself? When our priest is present at meetings, he always leads a prayer himself; he wouldn’t dream of asking anyone else to do it in his presence. And when’s he’s not present, we do whatever seems right at the time. Nobody’s ever complained.

        1. That’s because he’s sensible (and he’s probably been a Christian most of his life). She wants the members of the PCC to be “leaders” (but only if we follow what she sets down, clearly). People have frequently observed that she’s lazy – I make no comment. She tried the tack of my being “unconfident in leading prayer”. Frankly, lady, if you’ve faced a recalcitrant 9C last thing on a Friday afternoon, leading a prayer meeting is a doddle! I was in the Christian Union when I was an undergraduate and leading prayer meetings was regular and nothing to worry about. Not that she knows that about me, because although I’ve told her my background, she won’t have taken it in. My real gripe is the time it will take. It’s a PCC meeting with an agenda to get through (we don’t manage it now without a revivalist meeting at the start), not a prayer meeting. Any hint of questioning and she falls back on “she’s the chair and in charge of the PCC meetings” and the rector’s word is final (she doesn’t actually come out and say that last part, but it’s pretty clear that’s the way it’s going to be).

          1. Our parish priest comes from Burkina Faso and converted to Christianity in his twenties (he’s in his forties now). Neither his nationality nor his conversion are preventing him from being an A1 priest; we are very fortunate to have him.

            Your rectorette’s attitude reminds me of our bishop’s… I deal with the parish accounts and now refuse to go to diocesan finance meetings because everything has been decided before the meeting anyway, so all their meetings are a total waste of time. I have more worthwhile things to do, like playing at funerals. Better, more patient people than I am go to these meetings and try to redress the balance – and thank goodness some people are prepared to do it!

          2. That’s ten years more than our rectorette. I wouldn’t care if she came from Timbuktu if she did a good job. She doesn’t do pastoral visits, she’s totally disorganised, she’s fouled up the weddings and funerals bookings and we can no longer pay our parish share because takings (and attendance) have gone through the floor. The bishops seem to ignore everything we tell them so it seems we are stuck with her. I am now on the parish register of the church I now attend regularly as I can’t foresee being able to go “home” on a regular basis any time soon.

        1. That much is clear. Even asking questions was taken as an indication that I was unwilling to come on board. She takes it as a challenge to her authority and gets on her high horse. Instant, uncomplaining obedience is her requirement. She was “disappointed” that I wouldn’t work with her. She has NO idea how to deal with people. I don’t know how much longer I shall remain on the PCC. As I only worship when she’s on holiday (which is surprisingly often, considering she complains she never gets any time off), I may well lose my qualification to be on the Parish Roll by virtue of regular attendance at church (I live outside the boundary of the parish).

          2. I know. She’s been working on it since before Easter. Soon she’ll end up with no PCC as she’s ended up with virtually no congregation.

      5. Honestly, why pick fights with the PCC?! What’s wrong with a prayer? Hope you manage to work it out.

        1. She picks fights with everyone; she’s got rid of the magnificent choir and superb Director of Music plus two very able Church Wardens and all the sidesmen who had been there a long time. It’s left her with one crony Church Warden and the Verger. Most of the congregation have gone elsewhere (if they get 16 on a Sunday morning, they are doing well). I expect it to be packed tomorrow as she’s away; the diaspora will return (and then go again as soon as she’s back).

    4. Thank you for the recommendation! I want to learn more about this too.
      Catherine Austin Fitts has some videos about entrainment on her website, The Solari Report, which I think is subconscious influencing.

  55. Oh well waiting for our number three to arrive for dinner. I’m very hungry and it’s pub a clock I’m orff to pour glass of red.

  56. Dramas for a Friday. SWMBO on her way to Firstborn’s place got a puncture on the motorway. The equivalent of the AA initially refused to turn out, although we’ve been members 25 years plus. Some altercation later, all fixed. Some 2 1/2 hours later, having swapped cars back home, she’s off again.

  57. I bet there are some squeaky bums at Essex University.
    And any other brutalist institution of higher and further education.

    1. I like Rick Wakeman’s superb rendering of that standard (which he played on the organ at St Giles, Cripplegate) on the track Anne Boleyn on his 1972 album, The Six Wives of Henry VIII.

      1. Just hunted it on YouTube. It’s good! But, for me, lacks the simplicity and reflective nature of the brass version.
        Thanks for pointing it out, Grizz. Now, I’ve learned something.

        1. I bought that album, Paul, in the HMV Shop on Oxford Street, not long after it had been released. It has always remained a favourite.

  61. When I am in charge all fast food ‘restaurants’ will have doors only 18 inches wide wide, working on the theory that anyone who can’t fit through doesn’t need a McDonald’s..

    1. If people want to eat that stuff, let them. As much as they like, but be clear that the adverse effects are down to them to solve, too – at their own cost, so if they choose to eat huge amounts of fast food and get fantastically fat, there’s nobody to blame but themselves, and nobody will come to their aid without they pay.
      Individual responsibility – their choice.

      2. It’s not just fat, it’s all the chronic diseases that one gets from eating all that junk.

    1. Go on then, @ScottyGoesAgain. Be the one who murders Grant Shapps. Rather than exhorting someone else to do it, have the gumption to take matters into your own hand.

      1. I think ‘line them up against the wall’ is a phrase that is being used as a figure of speech to emphasise his disgust at yet more of our, and generations into the future, hard earned cash being given to the Zelensky Launder-O-Mat.

        1. It also implies revolution rather than assassination. Such phrases were common when we were growing up. Our primary school teacher, who had served in the war, used to make anyone who couldn’t do tables flash cards stand against the wall to be shot!
          You got a second chance, and a third chance, and nobody ever got shot.
          Can you imagine the furore if a teacher did that nowadays! Traumatised kids all over social media!

      1. 375911+ up ticks.

        Morning DW,

        I personally do believe “they”the politico’s / pharmaceuticals
        have abused the word virus
        to meet their own ends ie
        profit and manipulation.

  68. Just lost the Internet for a while. It’s righted itself now, but it may become intermittent, so I’m signing off. Goodnight, everybody.

  69. I fear for the future of Britain, a country in danger of just giving up

    Schools are crumbling, the NHS is failing, and taxes are excessive, but too many people no longer expect anything better

    DAVID FROST • 1st September 2023 • 7:00pm

    As everyone in West London knows, Hammersmith Bridge has been shut for four years – and counting. No end is in sight to the wrangle between central government and the usual, reliably useless Labour London borough.

    As so often, the Victorians did it better. The original bridge, from the 1820s, was damaged by a boat in 1882. Within two years, a temporary replacement was up; and three years after that we got the current elegant structure. The same thing obviously needs to be done today, too – but the decision to list the bridge in 2008 has closed it off.

    I dwell on this not to share metropolitan woes. I dwell on it because it seems deeply symbolic. As the Roman Empire in the West ended, so people stopped looking after its infrastructure. Aqueducts were repurposed and bridges failed. That’s why I see their modern parallels as the canary in the coalmine for a civilisation that is finding it harder to do the basics.

    It doesn’t take much searching to find other examples. We have known of the faults in the concrete in some schools at least since a roof collapsed in 2018. But after five years of dither, it seems easier to tell children to revert to the world of lockdown and be taught online, or put up with going to school in a Portacabin, as people were forced to move into Nissen huts in the aftermath of bombing in the Second World War, than to fix the problem.

    Again, as I write, we have another day of ASLEF rail strikes. By now we all just shrug our shoulders. If it’s a problem, drive, or travel a day later, or just work from home.

    Of course, the Government has a new weapon, in the Act requiring a minimum operation in key public services during strikes, but I am not seeing any signs that it wants to use it.

    In the NHS, too, we’ve all given up expecting any routine treatment. What does it matter if doctors’ strikes mean you move from six millionth in the queue to seventh millionth?

    I am not saying that such problems are easily or simply solved. They aren’t. But still we have a Government that spends nearly half of all the money in the country every year and employs nearly six million people, so it’s reasonable to expect action rather than inaction.

    Without that, more and more of us are going to see our taxes as the average medieval peasant did. When your lord wanted money, you tried to find it, and then got on with your life: you didn’t expect to get anything back for the cash.

    So again now: pay the tribute to the government – then buy private health care; go by car rather than train, dodging the potholes; pay for top-up tuition for your children; and accept that you just have less money.

    There are many reasons for these phenomena, but I want to single out two: one economic, and one cultural.

    The economic one is the now-obvious fact that the country’s tax base can no longer support our aspirations for the public realm. Without economic growth, with output per worker hardly growing since 2008, public services can’t grow at 2-3 per cent a year without eventually placing huge strain on the system.

    That strain is now becoming visible in the shabby state of our hospitals, schools and roads, and in the deferral of infrastructure programmes other than the sainted HS2.

    Of course, all the clever people in both parties say that, nevertheless, taxes must eventually rise still further. The ageing population and declining public health mean that we can never hope to increase economic growth from our own efforts. Better to keep the immigration floodgates open and push taxes up to keep the show on the road.

    As I have argued many times, there is no future in this. Ever-increasing taxes just crush the economy. The only question is when the break point comes.

    I don’t expect anything better from Labour, but those Conservative politicians who are fine with it – people who at least purport to believe that individuals spend their own money better than the government and that incentives matter – really should be ashamed of themselves.

    Still, this problem can be remedied with clearer thought and a genuine determination to cut spending. The second problem, the cultural one, goes deeper.

    It’s what seems to me a very evident decline in the belief in excellence and the growth of the feeling that anything will do and anything is good enough.

    We’ve all experienced it and lockdown reinforced it. Whether it’s the “lazy girl jobs” meme on social media, idle public servants, schools that don’t teach facts and knowledge, woeful customer service from big companies, we are getting used to the mediocre.

    This reality often seems at variance from the official presentation. The Government points to the improvement in literacy over the past decade. Yet we all deal with people every day who can’t write coherent English and struggle to understand a proposition of any complexity.

    Similarly, crime is falling according to the statistics – yet most of us feel the streets are less safe and more threatening. We are told that renewable energy is cheaper and better, yet the Government is preparing to pay people not to use electricity in case the grid can’t supply it.

    The official presentation is becoming like Soviet tractor production statistics, simply out of line with, indeed irrelevant to, the experience of daily life, an experience where no one expects the authorities to try to improve things.

    You then get another infallible sign of a country at risk of decline: a ruling class that focuses on protecting its privileges rather than the welfare of the people.

    I’m afraid that this is all too visible in Britain today. The NatWest board that tried to protect Alison Rose. George Osborne’s British Museum board that didn’t seem to take seriously the evidence of thefts or want to hold anyone responsible. The NHS managers in Chester who didn’t face up to the deaths on their maternity wards. It’s no wonder that so many people think the system is rigged. No wonder that so many young people think it would be better to try socialism than continue with the current set-up.

    The frustration that so many of us feel with the mainstream political class comes down to a sense that they just don’t get any of this. Boris Johnson, for all his weaknesses, tapped into a spirit of change, a belief that the country could be run in a different way, a voice for the people and places who felt ignored. Few politicians are really offering this now.

    Of course, we expect nothing better from Labour, the voice of stasis, of public sector interest groups and even more state diktat. But I’m sad to say that leading members of the current Government also give the impression of thinking that there’s nothing really wrong with the way the country has been run in the past decade or two – or, alternatively, that there is nothing that the Government can do to change things, and all that can be achieved is to keep the show on the road and hang on to their jobs for now.

    They aren’t even trying to control immigration, to the obvious frustration of Suella Braverman. They face both ways on net zero and (in the Online Safety Bill) on free speech. They boast of how much is being spent on state provision.

    This week’s ministerial changes underline the political strategy of tilting back to the Blue Wall, to those who are still keeping their heads above water, and hoping that fear of the alternatives will get the Conservative Party over the line. It’s a “just about managing” attitude to government for a just about managing country.

    I really fear for the future of Britain if we don’t get off this path. When I resigned from the Cabinet, it was because I couldn’t as a matter of principle support another lockdown. We dodged that bullet. But we are now facing another great risk, that we simply fail to rise from our torpor and settle into comfortable decline, with a political class that tells itself nothing else is possible.

    I will keep arguing for something better because I don’t believe that the people of this great country are really so fearful of change. We always rise to the challenge when we are faced with it honestly and squarely and we know what must be done. What we need is for our leaders to do the same. To rise to the occasion, to take tough choices – and to lead.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/09/01/i-fear-for-the-future-of-britain-a-country-danger-giving-up

    1. He is right, but it’s just another article that describes the symptoms accurately, yet avoids delving into the obvious causes.

      Stop mass unskilled migration, that is costing the country, not increasing its tax base.
      Close Common Purpose.
      Get rid of DIE, which is killing Britain.
      Get rid of all privileges for having the right sex, skin colour or sexual orientation etc and make everyone equal before the law.

      There are many other things that should be done, but we will never have a functioning country as long as everyone isn’t equal before the law, and as long as we are pouring public money into supporting unproductive people whose first act in this country was to break the law.

        1. Thank you! I fear the purpose of the civil service is to frustrate anyone wishing to do anything sensible though, otherwise some MPs would already have tried something.

          1. Fire all of them, too. Make any snivel serpent an individual contractor, paid by results.

    1. If only I were sleeping well, Elsie ….. and after reading the article following on from William Stanier, I doubt that I will ever sleep again! The world has gone stark, staring, bonkers mad.

      1. Don’t forget that there are some things that it is impossible to change, poppiesmum. As the famous saying goes: “God give me the serenity to accept the things that I cannot change, the courage to change those I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” I do hope that this will help you to sleep better.

  71. Top of the in-tray for Claire Coutinho on Monday…

    Property owners who don’t comply with new energy rules may face prison

    Ministers want to grant powers to create new criminal offences and increase penalties as part of efforts to hit net zero targets

    By Nick Gutteridge, Political Correspondent, and Amy Gibbons • 1st September 2023 • 8:00pm

    Property owners who fail to comply with new energy efficiency rules could face prison under government plans that have sparked a backlash from Tory MPs. Ministers want to grant themselves powers to create new criminal offences and increase civil penalties as part of efforts to hit net zero targets. Under the proposals, people who fall foul of regulations to reduce their energy consumption could face up to a year in prison and fines of up to £15,000.

    Tory backbenchers are set to rebel against the plans, which they fear would lead to the criminalisation of homeowners, landlords and businesses.

    The proposals are contained in the Government’s controversial Energy Bill, which is set to come before the Commons for the first time when MPs return from their summer break on Tuesday. It provides for “the creation of criminal offences” where there is “non-compliance with a requirement imposed by or under energy performance regulations”. People could also be prosecuted for “provision of false information” about energy efficiency or the “obstruction of… an enforcement authority”.

    The Bill will replace and strengthen the rules on energy performance certificates (EPCs), which were previously based on now repealed EU law.

    A Government spokesman said: “We have no plans to create new criminal offences, and any suggestion otherwise is untrue. Energy certificate legislation originated in EU laws, and our amendments ensure landlords, businesses and tenants are provided with the information they need to make their own decisions on energy efficiency in their buildings.”

    Officials suggested the Government required such powers to amend criminal offences that already exist under the current regime. Ministers are giving themselves broad umbrella powers to redraw and enforce the system before consulting on precisely which changes to make.

    Tory MPs have expressed alarm that ministers would be able to create new offences with limited parliamentary scrutiny under the update. Craig Mackinlay, the head of the Net Zero Scrutiny Group, has tabled an amendment to strip the “open-ended and limitless” powers out of the legislation. He told The Telegraph: “The Bill is festooned with new criminal offences. This is just unholy, frankly, that you could be creating criminal offences. The ones we’ve found most offensive are where a business owner could face a year in prison for not having the right energy performance certificate or type of building certification.”

    Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, a former energy secretary, said the proposed use of statutory instruments to create new offences was unacceptable, adding: “Criminal offences are an exceptional use of the state’s power and therefore require the fullest constitutional scrutiny. The whole Bill is about piling costs onto consumers. It’s as if Uxbridge and the vote against Ulez had never taken place.”

    Whilst such statutory instruments do have to be approved by the Commons, they are typically nodded through and not a single one has failed to pass in the last 35 years.

    Sir John Redwood, the Tory MP for Wokingham, said the powers were “over the top” and a “clumsy intervention” to try and force through net zero, adding: “It’s entirely the wrong way around. If you want to speed up progress on energy efficiency, then you should do it via grants and assistance. People are in the best position to judge their own houses, and you need to give them a helping hand rather than threaten them with action.”

    The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero has been approached for comment.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/09/01/property-owners-failing-comply-new-energy-rules-face-prison/

      1. Earlier stories re homes that do not reach the D rating in the EPC would not be able to be sold were disturbing enough, and now this?
        You’re correct, poppiesmum, this is a ‘land and money’ confiscation scheme straight out of the WEF playbook.

    2. Redwood supping with the devil as usual. Can’t bring himself to say that the whole thing is a scam.

      We’re just heading into a mini ice age, so there are good reasons to improve insulation in houses – but why it has to be wrapped up in such a tissue of obvious lies about carbon dioxide is incomprehensible, unless their mantra is keep the peasants stupid!

  72. Top of the in-tray for Claire Coutinho on Monday…

    Property owners who don’t comply with new energy rules may face prison

    Ministers want to grant powers to create new criminal offences and increase penalties as part of efforts to hit net zero targets

    By Nick Gutteridge, Political Correspondent, and Amy Gibbons • 1st September 2023 • 8:00pm

    Property owners who fail to comply with new energy efficiency rules could face prison under government plans that have sparked a backlash from Tory MPs. Ministers want to grant themselves powers to create new criminal offences and increase civil penalties as part of efforts to hit net zero targets. Under the proposals, people who fall foul of regulations to reduce their energy consumption could face up to a year in prison and fines of up to £15,000.

    Tory backbenchers are set to rebel against the plans, which they fear would lead to the criminalisation of homeowners, landlords and businesses.

    The proposals are contained in the Government’s controversial Energy Bill, which is set to come before the Commons for the first time when MPs return from their summer break on Tuesday. It provides for “the creation of criminal offences” where there is “non-compliance with a requirement imposed by or under energy performance regulations”. People could also be prosecuted for “provision of false information” about energy efficiency or the “obstruction of… an enforcement authority”.

    The Bill will replace and strengthen the rules on energy performance certificates (EPCs), which were previously based on now repealed EU law.

    A Government spokesman said: “We have no plans to create new criminal offences, and any suggestion otherwise is untrue. Energy certificate legislation originated in EU laws, and our amendments ensure landlords, businesses and tenants are provided with the information they need to make their own decisions on energy efficiency in their buildings.”

    Officials suggested the Government required such powers to amend criminal offences that already exist under the current regime. Ministers are giving themselves broad umbrella powers to redraw and enforce the system before consulting on precisely which changes to make.

    Tory MPs have expressed alarm that ministers would be able to create new offences with limited parliamentary scrutiny under the update. Craig Mackinlay, the head of the Net Zero Scrutiny Group, has tabled an amendment to strip the “open-ended and limitless” powers out of the legislation. He told The Telegraph: “The Bill is festooned with new criminal offences. This is just unholy, frankly, that you could be creating criminal offences. The ones we’ve found most offensive are where a business owner could face a year in prison for not having the right energy performance certificate or type of building certification.”

    Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, a former energy secretary, said the proposed use of statutory instruments to create new offences was unacceptable, adding: “Criminal offences are an exceptional use of the state’s power and therefore require the fullest constitutional scrutiny. The whole Bill is about piling costs onto consumers. It’s as if Uxbridge and the vote against Ulez had never taken place.”

    Whilst such statutory instruments do have to be approved by the Commons, they are typically nodded through and not a single one has failed to pass in the last 35 years.

    Sir John Redwood, the Tory MP for Wokingham, said the powers were “over the top” and a “clumsy intervention” to try and force through net zero, adding: “It’s entirely the wrong way around. If you want to speed up progress on energy efficiency, then you should do it via grants and assistance. People are in the best position to judge their own houses, and you need to give them a helping hand rather than threaten them with action.”

    The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero has been approached for comment.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/09/01/property-owners-failing-comply-new-energy-rules-face-prison/

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