Friday 11 July: Is Starmer’s deal with Macron really going to deter Channel migrants?

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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

Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here.

545 thoughts on “Friday 11 July: Is Starmer’s deal with Macron really going to deter Channel migrants?”

  3. Good morning, chums. And thanks, Geoff, for today's new NoTTLe site. Today's Wordle I did in 4 (a Par).

    Wordle 1,483 4/6

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

    1. One wonders what knighthoods are awarded for these days: services to crime?

  8. I blame the rise in global temperatures on the endless gaslighting we get, day in, day out on what is quite obvious to everyone by now that the trafficking gangs are our Western governments and their globalist agendas

  9. 409257+ up ticks,

    Morning Each

    Leading us into a revolting future, maybe for the 48%and politico's, otherwise to my mind
    beneficial to the 52% plus being a grand bit of global warming.

    Dt,

    Bonfire topped with migrants effigy set alight in Northern Ireland
    Police investigate possible hate crime after ‘vile and racist’ display erected as part of loyalist celebrations in County Tyrone

      2. Except nobody associates it now with the Catholic/Protestant schism – it’s just a tradition, something to mark the start of winter, (except the people deliberately trying to “stir up” “hate”).

  12. Rogerborg ⬛🟧
    8h
    Why are we buying jets and nukes when the enemy is already inside the gates?
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c838b96cb61503865a300d2286bb2c5f8618c4adacc795a5477e3bb615dae133.png
    Jonathan Mackie
    10h
    Is it just me, but after watching the videos of the Manchester airport police, surely we should be employing people as police generally but even more so at critical infrastructure locations who can handle themselves and not get beaten up by a couple of nomarks?

    1. The whole Blair-2-Starmer progressive liberal clown show on display for the world to laugh at.

      starts in Starbucks where a tourist gets head butted by a protected demographic.
      then two dwarfs and Mr Magoo attempt an arrest.
      pure Keystone Cops.
      and now a trial that the Lefties wish would just disappear.. like the Starmer arson attacks.

    2. Norwegian police just got permission to be armed at all times.
      News report just now that police, pursuing a suspect in Oslo, fired several shots at him, wounding him in the leg.
      That's exactly why they were armed only on special permission. Where did the misses go? Why is it suddenly wild west in the city? Lucky only the criminal was hit – and if they'd killed him, what kind of an over-response would that be?

    1. The women and children are only taken so that they can be sacrificed if necessary.

      Dead women and children are very much favoured for publicity and putting pressure on the British to rescue everyone.

  14. Pea Jay
    10h
    Just e mailed The Crown Estate. Regent St still awash with Pride flags from Oxford Circus to Piccadilly Circus despite Pride Month having finished 10 days ago. Told them these decorations need taking down asap. Reply awaited. If still there next week, I will be writing to Chuck at Buck Palace.

    Chris Smith
    Pea Jay
    7h
    It’s wonder the Royal Standard over Buckingham Palace has not been replaced with a pride flag.

  16. Morning, all Y'all.
    Lovely, sunny morning. Day off work, going to smallholding later.
    Play nicely!

  17. Captain Sensible
    12h
    # “Sweet dreams are made of cheese,
    Who am I to diss a Brie?”

  18. A wealth tax is a moral abomination. It’s time for Britain to celebrate riches

    Inequality is the engine of growth. Attempting to eliminate it will inevitably make everyone poorer

    10 July 2025 8:20pm BST
    Sherelle Jacobs
    The wealth tax many in Labour are mulling after the benefits climbdown is not just practically unfeasible. It is a moral abomination. It belies their enduring commitment to the socialist principles some of us hoped had long ago been put to bed. It represents property theft, violating the individual’s right to justly acquired wealth.

    The fundamental problem is that since Margaret Thatcher’s downfall, and the triumph of the Tory Wets over the party’s Right, Conservatives have conceded the moral high-ground to the Left. Where the Right has pushed back against socialist policies, it has done so on practical grounds.

    High taxes disincentivise work, pay rises and promotions. They risk tipping us onto the wrong side of the Laffer Curve. They only made rational arguments, not emotional ones, drawing on economics, not morality.

    Kemi Badenoch is now trying to correct this with her talk of “takers” and “makers”. Yet many of her arguments in a speech yesterday laying out her vision for welfare reform were practical: the benefits bill is a “ticking time bomb” that could “collapse the economy”.

    The implication is always Left-wing ideas are nice in theory, yet unworkable in practice. But if the Right is to ever win, it must stop implicitly apologising for, or shying away from, the benefits of capitalism.

    This wealth tax provides the perfect opportunity. Concerns over “workability” are important, but the Tories should emphasise the immorality of a Labour Government coming after our assets – assets which are already taxed on their gains, interest and dividends.

    The notion that private property cannot be justifiably raided by the state ought to be sacrosanct. It is unfortunate that our Prime Minister once, as a recent graduate, reportedly said: “Isn’t all property theft?”.

    To the Left, the individual, their labour and their possessions belong to society.

    Then there is the idea that taxing wealth represents a necessary rebalancing of our economy. Those who are “rich” – a word which now only seems to have negative connotations in modern Britain – have achieved success through the exploitation of the deserving poor.

    And the wealthy behave like hoarders, living off asset returns whilst those in work are forced to pay.

    The Left are gaslighting us on an industrial scale. Many of Britain’s wealthiest are successful entrepreneurs who made smart decisions, took risks and worked hard. Their assets have typically been acquired through taxed income.

    Almost 90 per cent of mortgage applicants are working people, including the self-employed. Returns from appreciating assets often merely offset excessive taxation and regulation.

    Just as not all the wealthy are parasites, not all the poor are deserving. Our welfare system is no longer a cushion for the most vulnerable, those any civilised society would want to shield from hardship.

    We can trace the problem back to the Coalition government, which implemented a series of changes to welfare that made claiming disability benefits significantly more attractive. Unsurprisingly, it prompted an explosion in claimants.

    It is to sustain our ballooning welfare bill that a wealth tax is advanced. This isn’t about helping the state perform its most basic functions, but keeping an ever-rising number in a state of permanent dependency.

    A wealth tax denigrates the kind of values society should be encouraging – prudence, ambition, delayed gratification. It justifies the worst of human impulses, such as envy.

    As Dr Anne Hendershott, author of The Politics of Envy, tells me: “Envy compels us to focus on what others have and what we don’t have. Trump knows that we envy the rich, but he also tries to tell us that we too could be rich.”

    In Britain, we don’t see success as something to aspire to, but rather to be torn down. In practice, a wealth tax would be a non-starter. Evaluating assets is fiendishly difficult, especially when public officials of middling talent are responsible.

    One leading tax expert recounted a revenue official who argued a violin’s asset value must be less than a cello’s because it is smaller.

    Even economists sympathetic to the Government admitted to me that “unless a crack team has been secretly working on it”, a wealth tax will take years to set up.

    We have no central register of wealth, so it would involve creating an evaluation body, with running and administrative costs significantly denting revenue. Every year the authorities would have to value homes, furniture, art, jewellery, antiques, cars, boats, pension rights, businesses, farms and other land, and intellectual property.

    All of this helps explain why most countries which have experimented with these asset taxes have subsequently abandoned them.

    When the French socialist president François Mitterand introduced a wealth tax in 1982, it was estimated that the losses in tax flight from the country were twice the revenue it brought in.

    When François Hollande sought to introduce a supertax, 12,000 millionaires departed in 2016 alone. Advocates are confident that, for the mega rich, a 2 per cent tax wealth tax would be a “drop in the ocean”. They are wrong.

    The UK is slowly squandering its competitive advantage with its changes to the inheritance tax and non-dom regimes.

    A wealth tax could be the final straw, driving away investment, and making capital more expensive for small businesses.

    And yet, while the practical arguments against a wealth tax might seem decisive, the Conservatives need to stop ducking responsibility to point out that such ideas are morally repugnant.

    Britain needs politicians who are unafraid to declare that the rich benefit us all and wealth inequality is an inevitable outcome of a well functioning economy.

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

    Nigel Mills
    10 hrs ago
    I had to laugh when Kinnock said the tax should be on those with more than 6 or 7 million pounds of assets. We have to assume he is only worth 5 million pounds.

    Victor Rybacki
    9 hrs ago
    I have to wonder why those who hate the rich never seem to complain about footballers – for some reason these are allowed be rich, but they complain about everyone else who has been successful typically via the unglamorous route of business

    1. Never mind a lower level when wealth tax starts. Once the principle is established, you watch that lower level sink rapidly to about 2/6.

      Since the money is taxed every time it moves, what's the principle that says it should be taxed when it just grows, for example, by your house appreciating over time? Ours is rising, mostly because we are using taxed income for home improvements, paying VAT and fees to the craftsmen (which they declare and have taxed), so if we are to be taxed on the increase in value I'll declare the place a business and claim back the fees paid to craftsmen and paint suppliers as legitimate expenses.

        1. We had one, then it was removed. There's talk of bringing it back – as if there isn't enough tax already.
          The tax was (IIRC) 0.15% of your gross wealth over a certain threshold, so raised bugger-all and was easily seen as what it was – envy of those who had a bit of capital behind them. Very few actually have significant wealth as a result of chance or birth, most have it as a result of hard work and careful saving. So, why punish that?

    2. “You too can be rich “? Why would anyone bother to work hard and amass assets only for the state to steal them to give to someone who can’t be bothered?

  19. Some good news from the real world
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8b9cf0ed9d0aaedccd6a962a5dd0b95e337cd3d648bd60d6a040e05f8628e4a7.png https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/018dd0dee07a4575f39cdcb85aac76e5f950312f388d51189643789664401172.png https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/31e410c6d4ea301391cfa8ecebe78273ebe570e19c1e07968696e2c2fe8b72ef.png https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ab62e3b142af164121f92e552e816e95690d4cce8e3cea002b31250b124b2797.png https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/31e410c6d4ea301391cfa8ecebe78273ebe570e19c1e07968696e2c2fe8b72ef.png

    3. The most disturbing thing about these results is that the Labour vote has not collapsed completely.

  20. Some good news from the real world
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8b9cf0ed9d0aaedccd6a962a5dd0b95e337cd3d648bd60d6a040e05f8628e4a7.png https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/018dd0dee07a4575f39cdcb85aac76e5f950312f388d51189643789664401172.png https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/31e410c6d4ea301391cfa8ecebe78273ebe570e19c1e07968696e2c2fe8b72ef.png https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ab62e3b142af164121f92e552e816e95690d4cce8e3cea002b31250b124b2797.png https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/31e410c6d4ea301391cfa8ecebe78273ebe570e19c1e07968696e2c2fe8b72ef.png

      1. Sadly, it is the result weak and treacherous governments – of all stripes.
        On the plus side, at last it has proved possible to unite the Prods and Papes.

        2. My word just how have so many useless people ended up in the same 'office blocks'. Wastemonster and Whitehall.
          And now Scotland Yard.

    2. No they are not there to “help those who are or feel vulnerable”. No wonder they are failing if they think this is their mission.

    1. Good morning Bill,

      Yep , the same old , and again .

      But you are here , and so are we , and despite hot unbearable summer nights , and all the talk about the weather , politics and whys and wherefores , we are here, even just to mutter good morning .

      My mad fool of a husband is off to his golf match , he will be back home by 1400hr , I hope .

      2. What is par for his local golf course and what does he hope to go round in?

    2. Good morning, not quite the same old, today we have bright sunshine. Sun cream at the ready!!!

  25. Isabel Oakeshott
    Britain is trapped in a dizzying decline and London is its epicentre

    My recent visit to the capital highlighted the grave consequences of uncontrolled immigration and reminded me why I have moved abroad

    10 July 2025 8:00am BST
    Isabel Oakeshott

    The hollyhocks are at peak beautiful in the village I call home.

    Rearing out of clumps of vibrant lavender that has self-seeded all the way up the street, their little bells come in shades of pale yellow, white and faded pink. As autumn approaches, the plump, green stalks will keel over, flopping onto the pavement like the swords of fallen fairies. For now, they line the road like sentries protecting a piece of England that is so beautiful that being there is like drinking an aphrodisiac. On a midsummer evening, when the air is heavy with the smell of cowslip and the only sound is the beating wings of fat wood pigeons as they sail between slate rooftops, it is dizzyingly perfect.

    Returning to the UK this week from a long period abroad, I fell in love with my country all over again, the transition from gleaming, steaming Dubai eased by this glorious weather and a run of luck with trains and planes. For once everything worked, from the seamless eGates at Heathrow, to the thrilling and most unusual availability of decent public transport into London.

    Back in the Cotswolds, it was so damn lovely that living overseas suddenly felt like a mistake. If the UK is like this, what on earth am I doing, living in the Middle East? Instead of staring across the Arabian Gulf, looking out for stray missiles, I could be smelling peonies in the garden or walking the dog through barley fields. Very briefly, I wondered if, in joining the growing exodus of people from the beleaguered UK, I had taken leave of my senses.
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2025/07/09/TELEMMGLPICT000431777769_17520747627480_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqA7N2CxnJWnYI3tCbVBgu9T0aesusvN1TE7a0ddd_esI.jpeg?imwidth=680
    Idyllic villages like Broadway, in the Cotswolds, do not represent the real England any longer Credit: iStockphoto
    But hang on! The idyll I briefly re-entered is but a bubble. Real as it is, my village is one of a diminishing number of places in the UK that are – as yet – unaffected by the terrifying change sweeping the rest of the country. And herein lies a problem: for well-heeled people like myself who live in places like this, are almost entirely insulated from what is going on elsewhere. In the kind of towns and villages in the shires where sweet old ladies mark Armistice Day by knitting poppies and slip crocheted love hearts through letterboxes on February 14, the wealthy can, and do, exist in almost complete ignorance of the way our country is sliding into angry and dangerous division.

    Sure, it was ever thus: rich and poor have always led divergent lives, knowing little to nothing of how the other half lives. What is genuinely new, however, is the devastating impact of mass, uncontrolled immigration; ballooning dependency on the welfare state; and the associated sky-high taxation of workers and wealth creators.

    Of the many issues blighting Britain, the loss of control of our borders has the gravest social, economic and cultural implications. The tidal wave of incomers who enter the country illegally, speak no English, and are dumped on already downtrodden areas, is exacerbating the grinding poverty that has always existed in those places.

    In the last 12 months alone, the number that have crossed the Channel – around 45,000 – would be too many to fit into Chelsea FC’s Stamford Bridge stadium. Unless someone, somehow, stops the boats, by this time next year, the total number would fill Wembley Stadium. The more that come, the more resentment grows among those who have always lived here and are now forced to compete on equal – or even disadvantaged – terms.

    In parts of the UK where it is not normal to spend a tenner on a piece of purple sprouting broccoli, there are all manner of other desperate problems. Central London is a showcase. To the casual eye, the capital certainly looks splendid in the sunshine, but the rampant crime and aggressive promotion of foreign cultures and causes is impossible to ignore.

    Mid-afternoon on Embankment, I watched as a Rastafarian swaggered down the middle of the road, high as a kite on God knows what. He was waving two gigantic Palestinian flags – far more prolific, it seems, in town centres these days than the Union Jack. Pathetically, Sir Keir Starmer now says he didn’t mean it when he talked of an “island of strangers”, but such spectacles suggest he is right. Near Lambeth Palace, a tented shanty has sprung up on the steps of an underpass. As the rubbish piles up, the authorities do nothing.

    Then there’s the pickpockets, shoplifters, spliff smokers and Tube dodgers who have always been around, but have never before operated with such open contempt for authority or their fellow citizens. In the last fortnight alone, two friends have had phones snatched by masked muggers.

    On the Strand, dozens of rough sleepers hang around gurning at tourists and breakfasting on cans of cheap cider. Around Charing Cross, there are so many ruffians that fashion retailer Jigsaw – a most unlikely sounding target for thieves – now locks its doors. This isn’t Tiffany’s, or even Greggs the baker: it’s a mid-market women’s clothing retailer. Who on earth is stealing linen skirts?

    Opposite the headquarters of Coutts, a soup kitchen draws all manner of toothless desperadoes. On the doorstep of the prestigious bank, an old retainer, suited and booted, is part security guard, part symbolic buffer between the destitute and the company’s well-heeled clientele. He watches silently as a shirtless man calling himself “Little J” reels around the pavement, swearing he is the King of Iran. Half an hour later, Little J’s story changes: he is one of Elon Musk’s many secret children, and had £900,000 in the bank, until someone took it.

    Some 40 per cent of rough sleepers in London are foreign nationals who have discovered the streets of Great Britain are not, in fact, paved with gold. Nonetheless, several told me that they can make £40 an hour just by sitting on the pavement with a dog and a sad sign. Evidently not all are genuinely homeless: many privately admit to claiming benefits.

    Spend too much time in places like my village, and it is quite possible to imagine that none of this is happening – or worse, not to care. Amid the heady scent of climbing roses and the chime of ancient church bells, I too almost fell into this trap. After the aphrodisiac, however, comes cold hard reality. For the time being, at least, I was not wrong to step away from this dizzying decline.

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

    Tom Ogilvie-Graham
    21 hrs ago
    pinned
    I’m certainly not rich, after 30 years service in the Army, but have also moved abroad as I don’t want to spend my remaining years in the cesspit that much of the UK has now become. I feel I have more in common with local people in many other countries than within Britain. It is not a question of colour or religion but culture; the shoplifting, mugging, welfare dependency, entitlement, drug taking, lack of shame, absence of manners etc etc are just too entrenched.

    Scott Free
    21 hrs ago
    pinned
    I worked in central London for the thick end of 10 years in the late 80s and 90s. It was a fantastic experience in every way. My hectic social life was formed in a way that only a London of that time could do. Commuting was as pleasant as commuting could ever be, the sights and sounds of a vibrant city available every day on my lunch time walks and my often late night journeys home on the tube, safe and reliable. Yes, there were beggars and rough sleepers around but not in any great numbers. When I moved around the city, with a couple of exceptions, most areas looked like the country I was born into. My mantra at the time was that anyone offered the chance I had should take and enjoy the experiences I was very lucky to have had.

    Now. I wouldn't go near the place and many of our once great towns and cities are the same, overtaken by incomers whose wish is to reform the places they left behind in my country. Indeed, encouraged to do so by governments and activists. Without some major upheaval. the UK is finished!

    Carpe Jugulum
    23 hrs ago
    We have gone far, far beyond bemoaning the continual failure of our legacy political parties and are now well into visceral hatred of the posturing and utterly witless scum of LabCon.

    The UK is broken. We now have a society riven by divisions and populated by work averse para sites convinced of their ‘right’ to money taken from the wages of workers.

    A society that tolerates attacks on our history by third-rate ‘academics’ quoting dogma…

      1. It's very sad to read the article above. Decades ago, as students with no money, we managed to get a ground-floor flat on the Milwall Estate, right across the wall from Milwall Dock on the Isle of Dogs. With no money, and neighbours who numbered Kray family, it was actually a really enjoyable time that I look back on with great nostalgia – and realise that those times are well gone now, and cannot be recreated.
        Having lived in Norway since 1998, we have no desire to move back to the UK, especially now everything seems broken. JUst to be able to buy Branston Pickle and Heinz salad cream in the shops is not incentive enough! The whole lifestyle and, frankly, uselessness of the place, puts us off.

        1. I used to go to London quite often when my friends in Islington were alive. Also for demos against trophy hunting etc. Last time was 2019.

          1. I wonder on your travels, did you meet a guy who came over from Mana pools northern Rhodesia in the late 90s.
            He came to speak to our government and was on a crusade to save elephants from being killed for their ivory. He turned up in our village, stayed with some people who he'd met while they were visiting the area.
            A nice guy, i gave him a job for a few weeks, he was broke.
            Gary his second name escapes me, it might come back.
            I tried to track him down, but he told me that the mugabe government hated him and he might have gone into hiding.
            Or even been murdered.

          3. He was funny as well.
            And he left his unwanted work boots under the seat at a bust stop in the village. Unfortunately I didn’t meet or know the people he stayed with.
            But I’ve found someone named Gary working at Mana on FB sent him a message. If he’s not the same person he might have or still know him.

        2. We always buy jars of Branston Pickle when we come to England.

          We find our Dutch family and friends who have never tasted it before love it and many of our French friends do too.

      2. In Spring last year, MH and the 'Canadian son' took the children (aged 8 & 6) to London. I declined to go. The children had a wonderful day, including the train journey of an hour each way. There were no 'incidents,' but I worried about what might happen if the girls went to the toilets, as their daddy and granddad obviously couldn't accompany them. Maybe I should lend my son a dress for that job!
        When they visit next month, they want to go again. Again, I will worry about toilet visits, mugging, phone snatching, attempted child-snatching (especially as both are blond and pretty). But I will not be going.

    2. Golly gosh, in the late sixties , London was it .. groups of us(student nurses) felt safe and happy exploring everything , travelling there was cheap , the tube felt safe , we listened to music visited shows , theatre, latest films , fashions shops , we were on a minimal salary , had boyfriends who were a bit more flush with money , visited restaurants , and what a thrill then , tea at the Ritz and also my first ever grown up curry experience in 1966 .. unforgettable .. https://www.veeraswamy.com/

      1. Ah, Veeraswamy! My father took me there the first time Iived in London. What a treat! 🙂

  29. Morning all! Shattered and aching after yesterday evening's excursion. It was great but five hours on foot on rough terrain was exhausting. Slept quite well apart from aching all over.

      1. It was an evening trip to the Forest of Dean with naturalist guide to see what could see, hopefully night jars. We did see them – flying – as it got dark and a huge orange moon rose up. Others could hear them churring but all I could hear was my tinnitus. But we saw lots of good birds as well. On the walk back to the cars, two toads on the path.
        It was a good evening but five hours on foot was exhausting!

        1. Well, poor you J,

          Would you really believe me if I tell you that last night I took moh out on one of my own little safaris.. dusk .. drove in the car to one of our heaths .. stopped the car , got out listened , chirring , lots of , got out the white hankie , waved it around , Moh flashed his phone light , nightjar circled around us , huge wing span for such a small bird , catching moths!
          The gorse/ pine and heather and the warm road attracts moths , thanks to our car lights .. the birds are there in hunting mode .

          We didn't see any owls sadly .

          1. I’m OK- had shower which eased off the aching. Off to the tip shortly and the shopping. Tomorrow we have Stroud Show so I will have to sort out the stock this afternoon for our stall.

        2. I follow Trevor Pendleton (The Ramblings of an Entomologist on YouTube) if you or anyone interested in insect life (I love his channel)! Hope you recover soon…tinnitus not cool, had a bout of that, no idea why it suddenly stopped.

          2. Sorry to read that, Ndovu – hope it doesn’t trouble you too much? Him indoors has poor hearing, modern aids seem much improved, he wears it 24/7 unless cleaning it.

  30. The intense and consuming stupidity of George Monbiot
    10 July 2025, 4:10pm
    Rod Liddle

    Chauve souris de la lune

    There is an intense and consuming stupidity within almost everything George Monbiot writes, the lumpen prose devoid of both doubt and humour. Doubt and humour are blood brothers, of course – and enemies of the kind of bovine certitude which Monbiot peddles, a cacophony of privately educated green tinged nepo leftism to which the majority of the country is rightly averse.

    I mention the chauve souris de la lune because he wrote a piece in the only publication which can stomach his idiocies, the Guardian, suggesting that my article about Glastonbury last week was – I think I’ve got this right – the beginning of a process to actually nuke Glasto and all the people at the festival. And that I was hiding behind humour. The real point of the piece, which Monbiot, being thick, missed was to contrast the two opposing views of ‘Glasto’ – the BBC’s view, which is that it is the country ‘coming together’ and the widespread views of recusants who believe it to be a convocation of hugely irritating people whose views are not shared by the majority. For Monbiot, though, it was simply an opportunity to peddle a lie that I thought nuking Glasto might not be a bad idea, all things considered. But then, of course, if you are unable to respond like a normal being to humour, you are unlikely to understand very much at all.

    Incidentally, I am still waiting for that absurd woman from Brighton to be charged with wasting police time.

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

    John Anaxagoras
    16 hours ago
    Wouldn’t it be great if she was charged with wasting police time? All it would take would be one sensible policeman. In Brighton, that might be like the search for an honourable man in Sodom and Gomorrah, or the fabled virgin in Newcastle, but we live in hope.

    Professor Pistova John Anaxagoras 15 hours ago
    The fabled virgin reminded me of this so I looked it up. Not that relevant but I've started so I'll finish:

    Aberdeen Churchyard

    Here lie the bones of Elisabeth Charlotte,
    Born a virgin, died a harlot.
    She was aye a virgin at seventeen,
    A remarkable thing in Aberdeen.

    Nick in Sussex
    15 hours ago
    I don’t remember George calling out Jo Brand for suggesting that someone should throw battery acid over Nigel Farage. Perhaps I didn’t buy the Guardian that day.

    1. "I am still waiting for that absurd woman from Brighton to be charged with wasting police time."

      Que?

      1. When I was at school I got into the habit of learning poetry by heart which is something I have continued to do which proved useful when teaching English Literature as apt quotations readily sprang to mind.

        Unfortunately my memory also became clogged with 'inappropriate' limericks. Here is one I learnt by heart at school because my brother-in-law sent me this book which contained the disgraceful verse underneath which I have hidden behind a spoiler.

        (This book was published in Paris by the Olympia Press before either The Chattertley ban or the Beatle's first LP. Certainly one would not have wanted one's servants to read it but smutty schoolboys fell upon it avidly.)
        https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a08df1f3e9684ef367103f50f342adb5649e5162f3538db67153a4bde80d8073.jpg
        There was a young sailor from Brighton
        You said to his girl: "You're a tight 'un"
        She said : "In your depravity
        You chose the wrong cavity
        There's plenty of room in the right'un"

        1. Not clogged, Rastus; just expanded in a slightly different direction. 😉🤣

          Still jealous of your early introduction to memorising poetry . What a wonderful resource to have.

      2. Some councillor from Brighton took umbrage at Liddle's humorous comment that a small nuclear device dropped on Glastonbury and Brighton would help the country. I think she tried to get plod/lawyers involved. Over a joke.

      3. Brighton council leader reports Rod Liddle to the police
        7 July 2025, 9:06am

        Brighton pier (Credit: iStock)

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        It seems that some people really can’t take a joke… In the magazine this week, Rod Liddle wistfully contemplated the idea of nuking Glastonbury, pointing out that a small-yield nuclear weapon dropped on the festival ‘would immediately remove from our country almost everybody who is hugely annoying.’ Rod added, for good measure:

        Given our current lack of a working missile programme, the good city of Brighton is safe – for now

        I am not saying that we should do this, of course – it would be a horrible, psychopathic thing to do. I am merely hypothesising, in a slightly wistful kinda way. One on Glasto, one on Brighton, and the UK would soon begin its recovery, with only a few chunks of gently glowing cobalt 60 left to remind us of what we are missing.

        Mr S is willing to bet that most people reading this did not actually think that Rod or The Spectator were endorsing the use of weapons of mass destruction. Even so, it appears some of our local politicians are taking Rod’s bomb ‘threat’ quite seriously.

        This weekend, the Labour leader of Brighton and Hove county council, Bella Sankey (who clearly has far too much time on her hands) tweeted that she was reporting both Rod and The Spectator’s editor, Michael Gove, to Sussex Police for ‘incitement to terrorism’:

        Brighton was bombed in Second World War and also in my lifetime in a terrorist attack in 1984.

        As the Leader of Brighton and Hove City Council I am writing to @sussex_police to ask them to investigate this incitement to terrorism published by Rod Liddle & @michaelgove. https://t.co/VVMtJywCkn
        https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a0e2e4e55c780253076fbad45947dee1f62c6644f2afd0290a22818770dd57cc.png
        — Bella Sankey (@BellaSankey) July 5, 2025
        Mr S can understand why Sankey is taking the risk of a nuclear attack so seriously. After all, here at The Spectator we have in fact been enriching vast amounts of uranium in the basement of 22 Old Queen Street, as well as putting on the occasional wine lunch. But given our current lack of a working missile programme, the good city of Brighton is safe – for now.

        Still, it doesn’t exactly inspire confidence that the leader of such a large council seems to struggle so much with the concept of satire, never mind basic reading comprehension.

        Unfortunately, it seems there isn’t yet a non-proliferation treaty for nuclear-grade stupidity…

    3. Moonbat is an idiot, and writes a lot of twaddle. He and Owen Jones were the main reasons I gave up on the Graun years ago. Both get everything wrong, yet are convinced of their own rectitude.

      Sad, The Manchester Guardian used to be a proper newspape.

      1. 409257+ up ticks,

        Morning B3,

        Same as I find the illegal importation daily of paedophile rapist / abusers,
        could be some collateral damage, if so, stop the boats.

        1. There is no interest in doing what must be done to stop the invasion. Too many people are too wedded to the legal and regulatory chains it provides them.

          1. 409257+up ticks,

            Morning W,
            If that be the case then to many people can be accused of child abuse on the grounds of the legacy they are intending to leave.

    2. 409257+ up ticks,

      O2O,

      Fighting the governments fire from hell with cleansing
      people power fire, let it become the towering inferno
      beacon of the return of patriotic sanity

  32. Good Morning!

    Today in FSB Iain Hunter sets out the Globalist End Game, now in plain sight, in his important piece The Curtain Has Been Pulled Back posing that we are being subjects to a rising crescendo of fake bad news designed to scare us all into accepting serfdom and poverty. The Mother of All Project Fears. Please do read it, and watch the films exposing the lies for what they are. Remember, 2030 is less than five years away now.

    Energy Watch: Over the last 24 hours: Britain's electric power was sourced from Gas, 32.5%; Solar, 12.7%: Wind 8.9%; Imports, 20%; Biomass, 9.7%; Nuclear 13.2% and Miscellaneous, 2.8%.

    freespeechbacklash.com

  33. Off topic slightly

    Jane Birkin’s original Hermès bag sells for record €8.6 million
    Bidders said to include Kim Kardashian helped the scuffed accessory that once belonged to the Anglo-French actress smash the previous record for a handbag.

    More money than sense, or worth it to secure the Mona Lisa of It-bags? The Anglo-French actress and style icon Jane Birkin’s eponymous leather Hermès tote is the world’s most wanted arm candy that has launched a thousand dupes. Now it is the world’s most expensive too, after the star’s original Birkin sold for €8.6 million (£7.4 million) at auction in Paris.

    Sotheby’s livestreamed the ten-minute auction, which was held in the French capital during its biannual couture week of catwalk shows to coincide with an influx of fashion-loving big spenders into the city. The nine bidders were rumoured to include Kim Kardashian and the Canadian rapper Drake, but the bag finally sold to a private collector in Japan via telephone.

    • Fake, rent or steal: the murky world of £60,000 Hermès handbags

    Experts estimated bids might reach £1.5 million, but three telephone bidders pushed the numbers even higher. While the so-called hammer price of the bag was €7 million, the buyer’s premium takes its final price tag to €8.6 million.

    Hanushka Toni, a collector and chief executive of the luxury resale platform Sellier, said: “I’ve never been to an auction that was so electric.” Her top price was €2 million. “A lady entered the race at the end who hadn’t previously been bidding. When the hammer came down, the room erupted into applause.”

    The 35cm by 40cm top-handled bag sat on a plinth inside a glass case in front of the audience. Its leather was faded and scuffed, with residue from the original owner’s Unicef and Medecins du Monde stickers. Its original gilded brass hardware had been replaced with gold plating, and its zips and studs differ from modern versions. It also had a shoulder strap. Inside, a nail clipper hangs from a chain — Birkin was known for keeping her nails short.

    “It was kind of falling apart,” Toni said. “It had holes at the corners and the handles were quite worn. Parts of it looked very soft and scratched. Jane Birkin was famous for absolutely ruining her bags.”

    • Jane Birkin carried a £10k bag with an air of ‘Oh, this old thing’

    Birkin, who died in 2023 aged 76, sketched a design for the bag on an aeroplane sick bag while on the same flight as Hermès’s then chief executive, Jean-Louis Dumas. The wicker basket she was travelling with had spilled it contents. “The day Hermès make one with pockets, I will have that,” she told him.

    The actress was gifted five of the bags named after her and sold another in 1994 to raise funds for Aids charities.

    Thursday’s sale beat the previous record of $450,000 for a handbag — also a Birkin — in 2022. The highest auction price for a fashion accessory in Europe had been a hat belonging to Napoleon Bonaparte, which sold for €1.9 million in 2023. The current record for any fashion item remains $32.5 million in 2024 for a pair of ruby slippers from the Wizard of Oz.

    https://www.thetimes.com/life-style/fashion/article/jane-birkin-hermes-bag-auction-paris-dskqglqzl

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlpDf6XX_j0

    1. The wealth tax should be applied to people who can spend this ridiculous amount of money on a second hand handbag

      1. Well, I rather disagree as it's a form of art. I disagree on wealth taxes entirely but hey ho.

        This is capitalism in principle. An item of perceived value is sold for a high amount. The auction house benefits, all the staff get a nice pay packet, the other bidders lose nothing and the highest bidder gets something they like at no cost to anyone else.

        1. That's true but then I think someone could do some good with that money instead of spending it like that as they obviously wouldn't miss it

    5. The Warqueen has some bags in the cupboard. None seem of a usable size. Apparently one is needed per outfit, per season.

      I didn't really mind until she added them on as special items to the insurance then when I got an earful for replacing a failed disk in our storage box looked at her pointedly.

  34. As reported by the BBC this morning: "President Macron said the British people were sold a lie with Brexit when they were told it would be easier to control borders. Leaving the EU had left the UK with no way of sending the migrants back legally. Brexit had made the situation worse, not better."

    This line – about Brexit being based on lies – has been repeated many times. The liars were not the campaigners, who acted in good faith, but those charged with implementing it. The UK establishment and the EU pulled the strings of the hapless, hopeless May and made Brexit a failure. "Look what you've done to yourselves", sneers the EU. Well, immigration will be an EU problem soon. There's only so much the people of Europe will take, whether or not they're supporters of the EU.

    1. Here, people see how the EU behaves, and as a result the "No to EU" movement gathers strength daily.

      1. The remoaners don't care and see it as 'our fault for leaving' and the general public are ignorant, with either the deceit from the main stream press or outright lies from the political class.

    2. Let's face it all people in politics are the same……lying thieving bustards.

      1. I'm not sure Eddy…I think they believe their policies in so far as they want to be elected, and may even want to implement those policies. However, once in government – the Civil Service are our real and permanent government, sometimes they fulfil the electorate's choices and sometimes not. If that's true there's not much point in voting.

    3. Well said, William. And immigration numbers rising in Europe, especially in German and France. I've read Meloni is returning Italy's to Libya – if true, that's a leader right there.

    4. It's far more a case of 'look what we did to you by bad faith negotiations, spite and double dealing.'

      1. But if the UK government really wanted to leave, they would have gamed that attitude and been ready to counter it, using all possible means – including threats of war if necessary. But, they didn't want that outcome, so they rolled over for their tummy to be tickled.
        Witness the eff-up that's the result, working rapidly towards total breakdown of society. And that may well result in civil war.

      2. But if the UK government really wanted to leave, they would have gamed that attitude and been ready to counter it, using all possible means – including threats of war if necessary. But, they didn't want that outcome, so they rolled over for their tummy to be tickled.
        Witness the eff-up that's the result, working rapidly towards total breakdown of society. And that may well result in civil war.

  35. As reported by the BBC this morning: "President Macron said the British people were sold a lie with Brexit when they were told it would be easier to control borders. Leaving the EU had left the UK with no way of sending the migrants back legally. Brexit had made the situation worse, not better."

    This line – about Brexit being based on lies – has been repeated many times. The liars were not the campaigners, who acted in good faith, but those charged with implementing it. The UK establishment and the EU pulled the strings of the hapless, hopeless May and made Brexit a failure. "Look what you've done to yourselves", sneers the EU. Well, immigration will be an EU problem soon. There's only so much the people of Europe will take, whether or not they're supporters of the EU.

    1. A classic example is southern Africa.
      Once a tidy almost self sufficient food wise well organised country, Rhodesia completely effed up by Wilson and Mugabe. South Africa is now also being effed up by the government.
      Rubbish strewn streets where it was once safe and pleasant to live.
      They never stop moaning.

      1. "Rubbish strewn streets where it was once safe and pleasant to live."

        Not so much a case of "Coming to a town near you!" but already here.

    2. That fellow is NOT a diversity. Africa is kept poor by reliance on rich countries charity. Until we stop meddling they'll never develop the education, material logistics, engineering and technology to fend for themselves.

      When there's a famine, we feed them. When there's a disease, we heal them. We never let them suffer and grow from the struggle. It's cold, it's likely perceived as cruel, but it is the only way they'll ever advance.

      1. Indeed.
        The greater part of my Father's career was working in NIgeria on the UK Governments dollar/naira, teaching at university in the South, then the North. Anyone who learned anything then went to US/UK/Europe/Middle East, to earn money. None stayed in Africa.

  37. Call me a conspiracy theorist if you like, but his emergency alarm signal that is to be triggered as a test on all our mobile phones, I'm now wondering if it will cause our mobiles to explode like those pagers Hamas were using.
    Im putting mine in the shed down the end of the garden just in case.
    Or maybe it will trigger something that has been injected into our bodies instead, well those that had them .

    1. I've had alerts twice in the past, to look out for alarms…never happened. Not had an alert as yet, so will probably get the alarm:-D

    2. You can turn off emergency alerts. After all, what the state considers an emergency really isn't.

  38. Morning All 🙂😊
    Oh dear more sunshine than you could poke a stick at. And 32 degrees forecast for later.
    Hopefully our political classes will pull their silly dangly fingers out and some new reservoirs will be made and hopefully filled soon. With more than two million new arrivals in the past 15 years one would have thought even they might have thought of that……..but same old same old.

    1. While we're chained to the EU environmental laws we are forbidden from building new reservoirs. The environment agency loves this but folk just don't understand: our water policy comes from the hated EU. It's designed for Spain, not the UK.

      This is why it – the entire EU fiasco – doesn't work.

      1. Apparently there is a new one being built in the south of England.
        But we are not in the EU and the Brussels mafia have no jurisdiction over us.

  39. 'morning, Eddy…I'm very surprised no water shortages/hosepipe bans yet, especially as our population numbers rising so fast. And no new reservoirs (far as I know). Perhaps water board repaired all those leaks….

    1. Morning KJ.
      There is a hose pipe ban in a part of Yorkshire already, with a thousand pounds fine for using one.
      The rest of the country will soon catch up. It happened in 1976 we had stand pipes in the streets in some areas.

      1. Thanks Eddy…didn’t know that, I’m further North – not as heavily populated as Yorkshire. Yes, ’76 I lived there too, and also stand pipe end of street. I was in hospital for weeks (heavily pregnant, high bp) we weren’t allowed to have baths. NHS maternity services not always good at that time, even with a much lower population, in my experience. I was left alone for 24 hours strapped to a machine which churned out a lot of paper supposedly standing in for lack of staff.

          1. There were many of us, Eddy..in two separate wards at each end of the hospital. Two ward sisters on duty, each working a shift. Almost a wartime spirit developed, most of us in for high blood pressure/bed rest. Today, would be prescribed pills and told to go home. The narrative around Lucy Letby of dysfunctional wards is one I recognise. A young woman I know was admitted to Morecambe for a cesarean section, came round only to be told had a hysterectomy done instead – no more children for her, and possibly medication to delay early onset menopause. I suspect there are other similar stories, and not just in maternity cases, eg dementia ones – my dad was failing and admitted after an accident, when I visited him he told me the chap in the bed opposite would regularly have his leg trapped in the bed frame by the nurses, I didn’t believe it until I witnessed it. Sorry to be so negative, the NHS is good in many respects, but there are the exceptions.

    2. Part of Starmer's master plan is to stock-pile large quantities of bottled French water such as Evian, Perrier, Vittel and Volvic.

      Not only will this be a yet another sycophantic gesture to please Macron but also, when millions of British people are literally on the verge of dying of thirst, he can control just who gets life-saving water and who does not.

      1. Are you sure Macron’s onboard with that, Rastus…he has the elderly French to look after, especially the ones in Paris……

      1. Sorry, Delboy – thought I’d already replied to you..? Coming to a place near all of us, and soon, I think – we’re only 11 days into July.

  40. Macron blames Brexit for migration crisis as Channel deal unravels
    British people have been sold a lie, claims French president, as hundreds of migrants arrive on day Starmer seals ‘one in, one out’ deal
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/07/10/macron-blames-brexit-for-migration-as-channel-deal-unravels/

    To some extent Macron is right: in saying the British people were sold a lie they were – the biggest lie of all was from Boris Johnson who said:

    Let's Get Brexit done!

    He lied because he had no intention of getting Brexit done and from the very beginning he sold us out with the UK fishing industry betrayal and the betrayal of Northern Ireland's sovereignty.

    BTL

    More and more people in Britain detest EU loving Starmer who is determined to destroy Brexit and the UK with it; more and more people in France detest EU loving and Brexit hating Macron.

    It is not the French people that the British should hate – it is the French state; it is not the British people that that the French should hate – it is the British politicians.

    1. In a sense, Brexit is responsible as by the state refusing to leave the ECHR we are chained to the HRA. We are also, under EU treaty paralysed from simply getting rid of the vermin.

      It was all a very careful, very clever assault on our rights as a nation, all part of the EU's punishment of the UK for the temerity of leaving. The political class – over 70% of MPs wanted o remain chained and they, knowing there was nothing the public could do, fought to ensure that happened.

      1. If that's the case, Wibbling, then the only way to get a proper exit is to get rid of the politicians, by violent means if necessary.

        3. I agree, however they're also irrelevant. The machinery that supports them is the problem.

          A starting point is to cut off their funding. Stop letting them spend our money without our permission. no, that's not an election, it is the acceptance of the budget which must be rejected until every penny is accounted for. No longer can a department just get more cash. That must be reduced by 10-15% year on year.

          Then comes policy, whereby we revoke and demand the repeal of policy that is damaging to society.

          We could call this newfangled idea 'democracy'.

    1. Three men and a lady?

      Rightly chaps. Tell me – how difficult do you find it to stand like that, with your feet together and toes forward? I can't. It squashes the doobries.

    5. That's so amazing. This AI business means we literally won't be able to believe anything we see online or in the news.

    6. Am I the only one who think Mme. Macron's stance has rather hunched shoulders, possibly indicating osteoporosis?

      2. It's unnatural whatever it is. But so is Macron whatever he is. Same goes for 2Tier.

  43. They pay tax advisers instead, Alec – moving their money around the globe, a type of trafficking? It's all quite legal, or so I understand. City of London been a safe haven for a good while. Good morning, btw x….are you painting today? 🙂

    1. Morning Kate, no I will be putting my new washing machine through its paces as the sun is shining and producing the free electricity x

      1. Ah you have solar panels, Alec, as we do. The water is boiling hot, ‘a man’ supposedly coming to ‘look at it’ today. We got ours on the FIT scheme – electrician said it was a no-brainer, everyone should have them, government idiots etc..possibly a decade or so ago(?) xx

        1. We never got the FIT lark, despite generating massive amounts – some 700W going to the grid.

          I'd like batteries but they're £4000 all told.

          1. We wouldn’t have if it wasn’t for the electrician working here at the time. His latest is blue hydrogen, I’m less convinced by that than he is tho’. Did I tell you about the Tesla guys who came to look at the battery installation…….x

        2. I've had mine for over 11 years Kate and the FiT scheme does me well. Over the year it pays for all my electricity and I've had my money back – the new scheme won't do that. Before any excess goes to the grid it is routed through my immersion heater so they are effectively paying to heat my water too thus saving my oil. I was going to get batteries but I'd never recoup the cost x

          1. I thought it was a good scheme too Alec. Guessing Him Indoors had his reasons, as yet non-mansplained to me…… power still being routed from solar panels to heat water rather than to battery, they’re not sure how that’s being done, yet. Electrician here recently, must have done something. He was quite frit of the bats in the roof space :-DD The Tesla guys came to check the battery installation…the car, the guys..from a different sphere….x

  44. The moon last night was amazing! As I was wandering the house with a terrible cramp in my left shin!

    2. I get that too, more salt in diet helps me….and yoga to strengthen muscle (when I can be bovvered to do it)…

  45. From: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/07/11/uk-gdp-economy-trump-tariffs-us-trade-deal-ftse-100-markets/

    Britain’s economy shrank in May despite Sir Keir Starmer and Donald Trump announcing a trade pact between Britain and the US, official figures showed.

    The UK’s gross domestic product (GDP) declined unexpectedly by 0.1pc during the month, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

    It followed a 0.3pc down turn in April after the US president launched his so-called “liberation day” tariffs.

    What would be unexpected is if the economy grew. Every time taxes have been hiked – every year for the last 30 – the economy has declined. Our growth is stagnant because of those policies. The state is wedded to a failed conceit that the more it spends, the more money goes into the economy. This is a nonsense. All big government does is sick a needle in one arm, pour half the patients blood on the floor, wipe the other end in some poo and stick it in the other arm. The result is not good.

    The scary thing is it seems intentional.

  46. 40925 + up ticks,

    May one ask, was he clutching a batch of membership forms ?

    Dt,

    The French handed the migrants over – then asked for their life jackets back
    Farage takes to the waters to witness Starmer’s ‘blatant betrayal’ of voters’ immigration demands

      1. 409257+ up ticks,

        Morning TB,

        By rhetoric & treacherous actions Mare Striker
        would be apt, the tool and treacherous kit kicking the rollocks out of the OLD GREY MARE England.

  47. Nightlife always good, Maggie, especially summer time. I desperately want a moth trap….have been promised one…

  48. Here's a good one from Toronto re electric transport. They bought ferries that run on batteries, forgot to buy charging points… using diesel generators instead!
    https://youtu.be/n6qjOaDq-Es?si=ywJ96oLYj4NEDJwo
    Can they actually supply the current necessary to the ferries? Likely, at best, the transmission grid will need built out to carry the necessary current.

  49. We have all read the letters, I prefer the answers!

    Marcus Vaigncourt-Strallen
    17 min ago
    Starmer and Macron stood at lecterns yesterday and told outright lies. They have not got a clue how to address the problem of illegal migration (yes Edwin, I mean "illegal" as in young men simply trying to get to the UK so they can join the ever-growing black economy – which the BBC now calls the "grey" economy). They will be employed illegally and neither they nor their employers will pay a single penny in tax of any sort.

    The very clever and very rich criminals who mastermind the journeys from sub-Saharan Africa right through to the UK and their very rich cousins who co-ordinate the armies of illegal workers in the black economy are just laughing their socks off at the pompous posturing of these 2 pathetic excuses for leaders.

    Oh! I feel better for that rant!

    Reply by Michael Geddes.

    MG

    Michael Geddes
    5 min ago
    Totally, positively, absolutely, unquestionably correct! Are our "leaders" still using the "smash the gangs" slogan? At one time, our governments may have been described, partially in jest, as dim-witted, incompetent, inefficient and lacking any concerted plans or vision. Now that assertion has been proven correct.

    1 new reply
    show new reply
    Comment by James Frost.

    JF

    James Frost
    26 min ago
    1 in, 1 out? That won't reduce the flow by much, if at all. How can it? People will just try again.

    1
    1 older reply
    show older replies
    Reply by E Hatfield.

    EH

    E Hatfield
    6 min ago
    1 in, 1,000 out. Every day.

    Reply by babs baxter.

    bb

    babs baxter
    5 min ago
    and 'dangerous' crossings taken from free will and choice

    1
    1 new reply
    show new reply
    Comment by Lionel Pettrick.

    LP

    Lionel Pettrick
    32 min ago
    New headline – "Economy shrinks unexpectedly despite UK-US trade deal"

    Unexpectedly? Really?

    1. I’m fed up with hearing about the “dangerous” crossing. How come so many manage to get here if it’s so bloody dangerous. Oh yes, either the RNLI or coast guard boat picks them up and brings them here.

  50. BBC

    "Reeves disappointed after economy unexpectedly shrinks."

    She must be the only one. Its only the begining.

    1. Increase taxes, stifle initiative and aspiration, clobber the private sector and – surprise, surprise: the economy shrinks.

  51. “It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies,” wrote CS Lewis.

    “The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

    It is hard to think of a more fitting description of our government. With the parliamentary omnipotence of a huge majority, the moral busybodies wasted no time in attacking the one British institution which can quite legitimately claim to be the envy of the world: our independent schools.

    Just a year ago, middle-class parents of a bright child could save and skimp to provide their offspring with a world-class education. But now the merit of the child or the sacrifices of the parents are becoming significantly less relevant in the selection criteria.

    It is again to CS Lewis that I turn for the perfect epithet for this Government: “Of all tyrannies,” he warned, “a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/tax/private-education-britain-best-exports-destroyed/?recomm_id=078ed4ac-523d-4c96-813d-76438b35a4e0

    1. Now both lads are well past school age and the mortgage paid off, I calculated that we have enough to pay for a public school in the UK. If we had a grandchild of the right age… but we don't. Personally, I'd rather have the children at home, not only as temporary visitors. I was at boarding school for 10 years, then university, never really grew up or knew my Parents, and I'd hate that to happen with any grandchildren.

      1. We home-schooled our children as we sailed around the Mediterranean in Mianda but then sent them to boarding schools in the UK for their Sixth Form studies.

        Each one was able to go up to university at the age of 17 and each has been in full employment since the day they graduated. Both have bought their own homes and have either a wife or a fiancée.

        Hydra in the winter when it is not crowded is a lovely place.

        https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/bdcbf303845bc604582c77cb4c36e54bb6d3b6a12c19b9d4d707f15a33405bee.jpg

        https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/17dabfc51290c515d2d6039fe4e4a4687dc2efefd6c6282cd98fbd610f630a2d.jpg

      2. My one grand child has been dispatched to private school in London but as a day pupil. The fees make your eyes water. I went to a state boarding grammar school in Cowbridge. I think it was about £70 a term back then, to fund one's keep.

      1. His tail is very expressive. Makes many movements with it. Often wonder what he is trying to say!

        2. Shows the emotion.
          Ours come running towards the car when we get home at the end of the day, tails straight up. "Wonderful to see you again! We're hungry!" is what it means.

        5. Ziggy has a beautiful ringed tail. Straight up! “I’m pleased to see you – now give me some food! ” Fluffed up – Yikes!

    3. It's a hard life, being a cat. I have all three bears with me. All are very hot. They're under cool blankets at the mo.

      1. The beagle is acting as a draught excluder at the moment. Kadi has just wandered back in from the garden. I am sipping a cold lager after lunch (fish and chips as it’s Friday).

  53. Right chaps, I’m off now for a walk along the foreshore at Bo’ness with an old friend, then this evening I’m going to do my first ‘wild’ dook in a reservoir! Very exciting, but I think I’ll just call it a swim! Dont worry, I won’t be alone – the group are known as the Falkirk F*nnies’! I managed to buy a short wetsuit from Lidl for £14.99 and got neoprene gloves online! So wish me luck as you wave me goodbye….I’ll report back!

    4. I hope you are aware of the dangers of wild swimming. Reservoirs can be particularly dangerous.

        1. The danger that kills most teenagers is columns of very cold water. When you swim into one you sink.

      2. Most of them have notices saying "no swimming" but why not live a little on the wild side!

      1. Oh yes! Don’t believe the climate doom merchants! Actually, I know you don’t!🤣

  55. Tiler has arrived. Lots of mixing noises. He'll be back tomorrow to finish off. The level of skill and hard work these Polish guys have is impressive – almost a caricature, really, but I'm very grateful, it's a lovely job he's doing… that, and the choice of tiles by SWMBO. They looked very grey at first, but now on the floor in our rust-maroon kitchen have taken the colour from the units and taht's warmed the grey just a tad, a lovely effect!
    It's so pleasurable being surrounded by such skill and talent. Makes one feel quite insignificant, but I seem to be able to earn money to pay for it…

    2. An expert tiler is a joy to watch. We had a Spanish chap do the floors in Laure. A real work of art.

    3. Yes, the skills they have are impressive. I'm reminded though when I lamented not being able to do it that they couldn't configure an MC-LAGG switch config, so that's what you do in exchange for the skill they provide.

      Well, the Warqueen reminded me. I'm quite hard on my complete lack of practicality.

    1. What Starmer isn't saying is that it'll be several hundred thousand in one out. Who wants to leave anyway.

      Then he'll say 'well it was always one hundred thousand. That was clear in my statement when I said 1.'

      1. He is always SO "clear" about what he didn't say, but suddenly thinks he should have said.

    3. "I am zee one in at present, and when I leave I am zee one out so that is our agreement done; now geeve me more monnai!"

      1. Not mine. Peter Orr lives in Shalbourne, the village down the hill, and does a lot of wildlife photography hereabouts. He came up to sit in the 'garden' last evening. I'll try to find some of his other stuff to post on here.

        1. You do know some very interesting people.

          One of the reasons i try to arrange lunches with Nottlers.

          Next one is at the VSC in September if you are interested.

      1. As Peter pointed out, the angle and evening sun makes it look more like a swallow but it is, in fact, a swift.

  58. From: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/07/11/reeves-to-delay-cash-isa-reform-after-backlash/

    A Treasury spokesman said: “Our ambition is to ensure people’s hard-earned savings are delivering the best returns and driving more investment into the UK economy.”

    Cut taxes then. It's as simple as that. If you want more money going into the economy then let people keep what they earn. Stop increasing the debt by cutting state waste. Leave interest rates alone so they find an equilibrium instead of using them as a balancing act against tax driven inflation.

    Yet it tells you something about the state. It thinks it is the economy rather than a parasite of it. It thinks it has the answers and solutions when really, it's just a chaos engine. The solutions are simple. The problem the state has is that in those solutions there's just no need for it.

  59. We should have school vouchers. That way you can send your children anywhere you, the parent want. Imagine the complete change of attitude to the state would have if parents were the customers rather than the unions.

    1. Indeed.
      Can you see today's government making such a radical and customer-friendly change?

    2. We used to have the assisted places scheme whereby bright children got to go to private schools. Blair (a product of Fettes, the Eton of the north) put paid to that.

      1. It was always interesting to me that the older generation Labour grandees, many/most of whom were public school and Oxbridge educated, enthusiastically got rid of grammar schools. And then assisted place and direct grant.

        Anthony Crosland who led the anti Grammar School charge, went to Highgate and Trinity as an example.

        And Harold of course, was local grammar and Jesus college.

      2. It was always interesting to me that the older generation Labour grandees, many/most of whom were public school and Oxbridge educated, enthusiastically got rid of grammar schools. And then assisted place and direct grant.

        Anthony Crosland who led the anti Grammar School charge, went to Highgate and Trinity as an example.

        And Harold of course, was local grammar and Jesus college.

    3. My children went to a state boarding school. Fees by the tome they left (2 years ago) were c £15.5k for the year

  60. It's odd that the Left can't understand this but of course, they thought that more tax would raise more revenue for the state to distribute to create 'growth' – in specific, state chosen sectors.

    Which no one wanted because if they did, then the state wouldn't have to take money to pay for them.

    1. Parents can save the fees (pay off the mortgage quicker?) whilst sendig their children to the local state schools – for which they have already paid in taxes and rates, so the parents are no worse off but the schools are more crowded and with no better funding.
      Good plan.

    1. Another comparison – 4 and a half Southampton's. 10 Bournemouth/Christchurch/Pooles. 8 Brighton's.

      Given that none of them contribute to society and are not ever going to be tax payers that's a million useless eaters every year.

      1. Which is why I no longer sign these petitions, Still Bleau. (Good evening, btw.)

  64. Rachel's Shrinkage

    Editor of Readers Tractors
    5h
    Shall we run a sweepstake on how many times Liz Truss gets blamed for this by labour ministers today?

    Korky
    Editor of Readers Tractors
    5h
    It’s also time to say “breakfast clubs” as often as possible.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/65c5ca5efdc8d0d2a22a72a0afada8cb4c32474cf690b08d7dbf3143ef976da9.png

    Jess the Grooming Gang Champion
    Cecil Parker
    3h
    It didn't cross my desk.

    Bo Williams
    5h
    Construction fell? Shouldn’t construction be booming? I thought we were busy building 1.5 million new homes?

    Bruce Everiss
    5h
    Ρe𝚛 ϲaрi𝚝a, аllоwiոɡ 𝚏о𝚛 inflа𝚝іоn, ԝe are іո 𝚛eᴄessіоո.
    Αnԁ і𝚝 is Labоur's роlicіеѕ 𝚝hat pu𝚝 υs 𝚝հе𝚛e.
    Αnԁ 𝚝հey dоn'𝚝 υnderѕ𝚝aոԁ hоԝ 𝚝о ge𝚝 us оᴜ𝚝 о𝚏 і𝚝.
    Аll beсauѕe 𝚝hey a𝚛е ԁrіvеո by tհе ոaѕtү lеftү dоɡmа оf bіtter enᴠү.
    Thіеᴠes iѕ 𝚝ruly еvіl аոd ԁеserᴠеs 𝚝о bе c𝚛үiոց.

    Rogerborg ⬛🟧
    5h
    Sure, manufacturing, construction and retail are collapsing, but lawyers are billing more, so that's very productive.

    1. What are the other two…….. I'm too hot watch…….. I don't use any of those on the front.

          3. Local crisp (potato chip) makers offer a Salt 'n Vinegar flavour – very popular. Not exactly on a par with eating chips out of a bag outside a Liverpool chippy in the rain, but getting there.

      2. You don't have to watch! On many videos, just hover on the cursor/progress bar to see pop-up titles.

        The others are salad cream, mint sauce and horseradish sauce (not 5 but 6).

        1. Why change a successful recipe? Maybe make a NL and a GB version (small change in ingredients) rather than impose someone else's tastes and destroy the product?

          1. They never listen to the customer. ” they know best” I now never buy it.

      2. The original HP sauce was the best – so thick it was hard to get out of the bottle, and with the classic label – in French as well as English. Today's is but a pale shadow of what it should be. All went down the pan when salt contents were cut. Same thing happened with Bovril – it got runny, which it never used to be.

    3. Where do they get these people/ Apart from the mint sauce – not an enthusiast, so have no idea, all the others are available here in the US. Not necessarily everywhere, but in decent supermarkets for sure.

      I currently have Colman's – both powder and in the jar varieties, HP Sauce, Heinz Salad Cream, Heinz Malt Vinegar and Horseradish sauce at home.

      p.s. is Daddy's Sauce still around?

      1. Lots of things are available, but if they don't recognise/know what they are many people tend not to try such things on the off chance they are better than their own favourites.

        1. Malt vinegar is widely on offer in cafes and restaurants these days. The other stuff I get at the local supermarket.

          1. Yes, but you’re looking for things you know.

            How many condiments that you don’t know do you try “on the off chance” and how often?

  68. Bruce Everiss
    4h
    Prоblеmѕ:

    Nᴜtty Ζеrо. Milіbrаіո.
    Fіѕϲal iոϲоոtineոcе.
    Ѕtᴜոning iոсоmрe𝚝еոϲe.
    𝚁іԁіculоυѕly оvеrѕіzed ѕ𝚝ate.
    Lе𝚏tү dоցma о𝚏 рuոіѕhiոց ѕuϲϲeѕѕ.
    Th𝚛оwіnց enо𝚛mоᴜs аmоᴜոtѕ о𝚏 mоոеү a𝚝 migraո𝚝ѕ.
    Ou𝚝 о𝚏 cоnt𝚛оl bеnе𝚏its ѕyѕ𝚝em.
    Рυblіᴄ seϲtо𝚛 trаdе υոіоns.
    Hυցe grоԝth iո 𝚝հe ᴜntаxed blac𝗄 еϲоոоmү.

    1. Just about everything that could be wrong, is and it is all down to the socialist state.

  69. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/07/11/uk-gdp-economy-trump-tariffs-us-trade-deal-ftse-100-markets/

    The UK’s gross domestic product (GDP) declined unexpectedly by 0.1pc during the month, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

    It followed a 0.3pc downturn in April after the US president launched his so-called “liberation day” tariffs.

    Liz McKeown of the ONS said the economy contracted after “notable falls in production and construction, only partially offset by growth in services”.

    Chancellor Rachel Reeves said the figures were “disappointing”, adding she remained “determined to kickstart economic growth”.

    I know deceit is second nature to them, but surely at some point Reeves is going to have to acknowledge that her tax and waste budget has been the cause of our economic ruin. She seems to have no actual relationship with the truth except to deny reality. What is wrong with these insane nutters and why can we not rid ourselves of their destructive stupidity?

  71. It's a scorcher out there! Back from the tip and the shopping. Washing hung out. Lots to do this afternoon, ready for the local show tomorrow.

  74. Shirley my ears deceive me – did I just hear [Mrs B is next door glued to Wimbledon coverage] that Taylor Swift is playing Alcaraz??

  75. Not keen on salad cream or mint sauce, loathe malt vinegar but love Horseradish!!

  76. From the Telegraph
    The 1976 heatwave advice to listen to today (and what to ignore)
    Do we really need neck fans and gel pillows? Some of us remember surviving the hot weather with a string vest, a pint and a packet of crisps

    Nick Harding 11 July 2025 8:00am BST
    Nick Harding
    Writer Nick Harding combats the summer sun the 1970s way: with lager, crisps and a string vest Credit: Andrew Crowley
    Here come the hot weather preppers again, lugging gallons of water with them, faces caked with factor 50 death masks, ready for the apocalypse, otherwise known as plus-30C. With another heatwave forecast for the weekend the orders are flying in for emergency equipment. Cooling plastic neck rings that you dip in cold water and wear like a noose. Ice-pack slippers. Cool gel pillows. Neck fans. Ice vests.

    Let me take you back to the heatwave of 1976

    If, like me, you’re a child of the 1960s and 1970s, you will naturally baulk at this frenzy for frigidity. We lived through the great heatwave of 1976 after all, and we wear it like a badge of honour. I was seven and I managed to survive it just with a carton of Kia-Ora, an ice pop and a smattering of Hawaiian Tropic factor 2 tanning oil.

    Telegraph journalist Philip Johnston remembers it well: “As radiators boiled over and engines seized up (remember that?), the AA was receiving emergency calls every two minutes. In Southampton, which broke the June record with a 96F temperature, a casualty doctor said: “One of the best things you can have in this weather is a pint and a packet of crisps to replace salt. Also, a string vest is ideal.”

    The only government advice issued related to water rationing, not surviving the heat. We were told to share bath water and only flush number twos. Direct public health messaging (stay indoors, drink fluids etc) only became standard after the 2003 heatwave.

    Boomers and Gen X didn’t grow up carrying water bottles to school. There was a single water fountain in the playground. Likewise, holidays abroad weren’t complete without third-degree burns. No one bothered with umbrellas so when you did burn you covered the affected area with a towel and got on with it.

    Fast forward to 2025

    Heatwave warnings are everywhere. Take drinks on public transport. Stay indoors. Test the pavement temperature before you walk your dog. Schools are banning children from playing outside during heatwaves. Even Glastonbury provided dispensers of SPF. You can’t walk down the street without seeing five different types of hand fans. Have we all gone heatwave mad?

    Heatwave mad? Nick Harding deploys a range of methods to stay cool
    Heatwave mad? Nick Harding deploys a range of methods to stay cool Credit: Andrew Crowley
    Through the prism of 1976, a Gen Xer like me may be tempted to see it all as overkill. And with all this madness going on it’s easy to forget what you really have to worry about. I speak to Dr Josh Foster, lecturer in environmental physiology at King’s College London. Rather frighteningly, after our conversation, I’m now not sure we are taking the warning signs seriously enough.

    The 1976 heatwave was estimated to have led to 700 extra deaths in the UK. In the record breaking summer of 2022 there were an estimated 2,985 excess deaths associated with heat. Last year, TV doctor Michael Mosley is believed to have died of heat exhaustion after losing consciousness while walking in 40C temperatures.

    Foster explains that an article in the journal Nature last year identified the United Kingdom as one of the most extreme-heat-vulnerable developed nations on Earth. “Part of the reason for that is because the frequency, intensity and duration of heatwaves in the UK is far exceeding what we projected five years ago,” he says.

    Quite rightly, today’s advice reflects that and begs us to take heatwaves altogether more seriously. We’re advised to keep out of the sun between 11am and 3pm, the hottest time of the day, close curtains, wear hats, check on the elderly. Foster believes that the penchant for middle-aged people like me to dismiss well-meaning advisories on heat danger is indicative of a generational and cultural indifference.

    “Typically, when there’s a heatwave you see a TV reporter either standing on a beach or by a lido talking about the pollen count. In reality, these are mass mortality events. In 2022 we had a two-week heatwave where the temperatures reached 40C, and there are over 5,000 [heat-related] excess deaths in older individuals. People don’t really understand the health implications of heat stress because it’s quite new for us and has only started to accelerate in the last five to 10 years.”

    The inconvenient truth about hot weather

    The truth is that for vulnerable populations heatwaves are deadly. Particularly at risk are the elderly living on their own, people with limited independence, people with pre-existing health problems such as heart disease and impaired kidney function, and people with cognitive problems that hamper the ability to seek cooler environments such as Alzheimer’s and dementia.

    “One of the most important aspects which increases someone’s vulnerability is lack of social contact,” explains Foster. “We need to be very aware of people who fall into those high-risk groups and ensure that they’re either removed from hot spaces, or that we are checking in on them regularly and ensuring that they have access to hydration and different cooling solutions.”

    So, while we might well roll our eyes at the constant heat warnings, we really should be taking the heatwave more seriously than we did in 1976. As Foster warns: “The climate projections are honestly quite terrifying. The air temperatures that we’re experiencing have gone up exponentially in the last five years and I’ve heard some climate scientists in different meetings suggesting that in five years we realistically could get over 50C in London. And that’s a more conservative estimate.”

    Still, that doesn’t mean you should rush to buy your granny a neck fan or a pair of cool gel slippers. (Some of us are simply taking it too far.) Below, Foster looks at the old-fashioned heatwave advice to help us decipher which pieces we should listen to and which we can ignore.

    Anyone know where I can bulk-buy Kia-Ora?

    The 1976 heatwave advice to listen to (and what to ignore)

    Drink hot beverages: false

    A 2012 study from the University of Ottawa’s School of Human Kinetics found that drinking a hot drink increases your body temperature slightly, which triggers more sweating. If that sweat can evaporate, you cool down more than you would from drinking a cold beverage. It only works in dry conditions where sweat can easily evaporate. In hot, humid weather, the sweat sits on your skin and doesn’t help. “It does induce a small heat-loss response,” says Foster. “But that’s only to counteract the fact that you’re putting hot fluids into the body. There’s no real evidence that this would have any meaningful cooling effect.”

    Wear a string vest: true

    The UK Ministry of Supply conducted a study in 1955 testing various string vests on soldiers stationed in Egypt’s Suez Canal zone where temperatures reached 37C. Soldiers reported that the string design stayed cooler, reduced the “dragging or sticking” sensation caused by sweat, and improved comfort. Foster agrees. “We recommend loose-fitting, breathable clothing. And the reason for that is that it will help the sweat to evaporate. Certainly, a string vest would be ideal for this.”

    Nick Harding
    Nick’s string vest will actually help in a heatwave (but he can ditch the beer), says Dr Josh Foster Credit: Andrew Crowley
    Eat crisps: true (but healthier salty snacks are preferable)

    According to reports, during the 1976 heatwave one piece of advice from a casualty doctor was to eat crisps. Foster explains: “We lose important electrolytes through sweating, such as sodium, potassium, chloride. Replacing them is important but I think you could do that through healthier means than eating a bag of crisps.” We shouldn’t exceed 6g of salt a day, according to government guidelines. Try sprinkling a few flakes of sea salt on freshly chopped tomatoes.

    Drink beer: false

    This was also included in the advice from the aforementioned doctor. A 2022 Spanish study suggested some truth in this, concluding that beer and water had an equivalent rehydration effect post-exercise in heat. Researchers cautioned beer is only hydrating in small doses (one to two drinks). Foster advises against it. “Alcohol may make you less thermally sensitive,” he says.

    Eat ice cream: false (but iced slushy drinks are fine)

    A nice thing to do in the hot weather but from a physiological perspective, ineffective. Foster explains: “It is not going to affect your temperature regulation per se. However, one of the things that does have a powerful cooling effect is iced slushy drinks.” When you drink a slushy your body has to melt the ice before it can absorb it. Melting ice takes energy, meaning it takes heat from your body to turn that ice into liquid water, therefore this process removes more heat from your body than drinking cold water alone.

    Wear damp socks to bed: false

    According to social media, wearing cold, damp socks in bed can help keep you cool on hot nights. Foster advises against this, explaining: “The hands and feet have important roles in thermoregulation. They have a high surface-area-to-mass ratio and can offload quite a lot of heat to the environment. It’s probably better to keep them bare.”

    Wear woollen undies: false

    According to one Edwardian home magazine, lightweight wool under suits was the coolest option, as wool absorbed bodily moisture and allowed evaporation. Foster is sceptical. “Breathable clothing is optimal,” he says and advises that cotton is not ideal as it has a high evaporative resistance. “It absorbs a lot of water, so you end up carrying more weight around and the water doesn’t evaporate from the skin as readily.”

    Proven cool hacks for hot weather

    Lie flat with feet in the air

    The cardiovascular strain that accompanies heat stress will be reduced by lying flat with legs raised.

    Fans

    Fans are effective up to a certain temperature, above which they start to become hazardous. Foster explains: “For the most part, fans will be effective at cooling the body, but their effectiveness depends on how much cooler the air is compared to skin temperature, which is typically around 35C in a warm environment. If the air temperature starts to approach 35C, then the fan will have no additional cooling impact. If the air temperature starts to get into the high 30s and especially above 40C, there’s ample empirical evidence that fans can become very harmful, working in a similar way to how a convection oven works, pushing that heat back onto the body.”

    Fans are only effective up to a certain temperature, above which they start to become hazardous
    Fans are only effective up to a certain temperature, above which they start to become hazardous Credit: Andrew Crowley
    Spraying water on skin

    A mist of water sprayed on the body will evaporate and create the same cooling effect as sweating, but without relying on the body’s own production of sweat. Lukewarm water will evaporate faster and is more comfortable.

    Limb immersion

    A study published by the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada, conducted on firefighters who were experiencing significant heat stress, found that immersing feet or forearms in cold water was an effective way of extracting heat from the body.

    Official advice from the UK Health Security Agency

    Keep out of the sun at the hottest time of the day, between 11am and 3pm.
    If you are going to do a physical activity (for example exercise or walking the dog), plan to do these during times of the day when it is cooler such as the morning or evening.
    Keep your home cool by closing windows and curtains in rooms that face the sun.
    If you do go outside, cover up with suitable clothing such as an appropriate hat and sunglasses, seek shade and apply sunscreen.
    Drink plenty of fluids and limit your alcohol intake.
    Check on family, friends and neighbours who may be at higher risk of becoming unwell, and if you are at higher risk, ask them to do the same for you.
    Know the symptoms of heat exhaustion and heatstroke and what to do if you or someone else has them.
    Recommended

    1. Bathwater… back then, I set up a hosepipe that was used to siphon the bathwater into a rain butt in the garden, so Mother could keep her favourite plants alive. No shower back then.
      Then joined Father in the loft, to lag it with fibreglass… that was fun!

    2. 1976 vs 2022 heat wave deaths… as %age of population, please.
      Dear God, do people really need told this crap, just because it's a few degrees over 20C? Talk about spreading gloom & despondency, panic and the like.
      It's hotter than usual, get over it. Have a cold tinny/lemonade/whatever, and stay out of direct sunlight.

    3. How many people were seriously obese in 1976? People were more resilient for one thing and didn’t need to be directed in every step of their lives. You would think that going for a walk these days was like crossing the Sahara.

  77. From Coffee House, the Spectator
    The Irish problem has existed for centuries, though the nature of that problem is not always easy to define. It used to be political, though relations between English and Irish people on a personal level have usually been harmonious. There are still political problems, because identity – the question of to whom we owe our loyalty – shapes lives and creates communities. But now there is a different problem, and it’s one-sided.

    Many English people are suddenly keen to present an ersatz Irishness to the world, as a form of civic virtue, to the point of claiming citizenship. Some claim to feel ‘European’, in a vague way. Others feel that being green offers the swiftest route to an ill-defined ‘romanticism’. Ah yes, it’s that old favourite, the Celtic twilight!

    Oasis, for instance, those Manchester rockers who have forged a career out of rancid stupidity, are performing on their reunion tour before a tricolour that proclaims ‘Ireland Forever’. It’s true that Noel and Liam Gallagher were born to Irish parents, though as their father was a drunkard who took out his frustration on his children, theirs is not a story to commend. At recent London gigs by Fontaines D.C. and Kneecap, sizeable numbers of English fans showed up waving Irish tricolours – joining in chants of ‘Free Palestine’ – are another example of the anthropological oddity. Ed Sheeran, a third-division pop star, has also claimed he is ‘culturally Irish’, though it invites the question: what kind of culture does he have in mind? Clearly it is not the tradition which produced Synge, Yeats, Wilde, Joyce and Shaw. Nor, going back a bit further, is it the Anglo-Irish culture that gave us Sheridan, Farquhar and Goldsmith.

    Those writers felt no need to wrap themselves in the flag. Joyce, the great traveller, reckoned most Irish people were happy to be so, but few wanted to live in Ireland. Living in Paris when the Irish Free State was proclaimed, he was offered a green passport – but thought his British one was good enough. Wilde, badgered by a priest who thought he had gone over to the other side, replied it was an honour to live among the race that had given the world Shakespeare, Milton and Keats. Shaw, who lived most of his long life in England, thought that if you put an Irishman on a spit, you would easily find another Irishman to turn it.

    There have always been England-haters among the Irish tribes that settled elsewhere. In America the Irish element in South Boston has never moved on from an ancestral Anglophobia. Not only the British, either. ‘Southee’ is notorious for its hostility towards black people. In this country the embers of historical enmity in Liverpool are occasionally prodded into flame. Turn left out of Lime Street station, and you don’t have to walk far to find pubs that belittle everything English. It’s that fog again, which envelops the descendants of Irish folk who left that myth-encrusted isle decades ago.

    There have always been England-haters among the Irish tribes that settled elsewhere

    ‘Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone’, wrote Yeats, whose mind was anything but foggy. ‘It’s with O’Leary in the grave.’ What a stinging rebuke that remains. Ireland has never been greener than green, as Jewish people may confirm. Its people may be jolly and humorous, or they may be petty and vindictive. They may be open-minded, or they may be bigots. In other words, they’re much like people anywhere else in the world.

    As for the ‘Irish culture’ those balladeers go on about, that really means fiddles in the snug bar, bicycles on the roof, and mugs of porter chased down by tots of whisky. It’s not much of a feast. My great friend Stephen Fay could have told the cod-Irish a thing or two. His father Gerard was a star reporter on the Manchester Guardian, and his grandfather Frank helped Yeats establish the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. He told the great writer: ‘I admire you as an artist, and despise you as a human being.’

    Every ‘Bloomsday’, 16 June, Stephen would gather at the Garrick Club with a group of pals to honour Ulysses and Leopold Bloom – and yes, there would be Burgundy and Gorgonzola sandwiches! When asked how Irish he really was, Stephen would smile and say: ‘I’m as green as I need to be.’ He was an authentic Irishman, and had the wit to prove it. Meanwhile, if the Irish really are as accommodating as we are told, maybe they can take those ghastly Mancunians off our hands. I’d even risk a glass of stout to toast their departure.

    WRITTEN BY
    Michael Henderson

  78. SC from PACA
    4h
    Just to mention that just a couple of months ago here in The Land of Wine and Cheese, Le Petit President was even less popular than The Kneeler in the UK.

    And for the many of the same reasons – economy, immigration, puts the EU's ideologies before those of France, etc, etc.

    However…In the past couple of months his popularity has had a small rebound Thanks to his double successes over the lamentable Starmer. With the UK give away on Fishing Rights in exchange for rien serieux et important and this week's ' one-in-one-out agreement ' which now ensures that the hundred thousand or so already in the UK and the many hundreds of thousands waiting to join them will never be returned to France, suddenly our loathed Petit President is being praised for his negotiating skills.

    That just about sums up how particularly useless The Kneeler really is.

  79. From the Telegraph

    The 19 things that weren’t nearly as good as you remember them
    Feeling nostalgic for Britpop, Crackerjack and Woolworths? This list reminds you that not everything ages quite so gracefully

    Rob Crossan 11 July 2025 7:00am BST
    British nostalgia lead design
    The past is a foreign country – and, according to most people of a certain age, they do things differently and almost certainly better there.

    With those rose-tinted spectacles on, everything from our youth seems glorious: the music, the cars, the fashion, the tech (or lack of). But was it? Or are we just extremely good at blocking out the bad bits of life from several decades ago?

    Sometimes our nostalgia radar gives off some wildly inaccurate readings. Here are 19 things which are capable of inducing sickly sentimentality but were, we believe, entirely rubbish, even at the time.

    Pre-digital TV

    Strike It Lucky, a British game show hosted by Michael Barrymore, aired on ITV from 1986 to 1999
    Strike It Lucky, a British game show hosted by Michael Barrymore, aired on ITV from 1986 to 1999 Credit: Fremantle Media/Shutterstock
    Kenneth Clarke’s Civilisation series remains, over half a century on from its initial broadcast, the BBC’s high water mark of arts and cultural programming. But before any rants about the demise of the “Golden age of television” gather steam, it’s worth remembering that, directly before the first episode, BBC Two broadcast The Jimmy Logan Show, a godawful cabaret-type shambles with a Caledonian theme, featuring the eponymous presenter singing the likes of I Love A Lassie and Song Of The Clyde.

    For every Civilisation there were two dozen Jimmy Logans on the BBC and ITV in the analogue era. We’ve filtered Little and Large, Strike It Lucky and The Grumbleweeds from our memories – and quite right too. There is more good television on demand available at the click of a remote today than you would have found in a decade of watching Granada or Tyne Tees in the pre-digital era. Having only three or four channels was rubbish. And the introduction of a fifth in 1997 really only made things worse.

    Woolworths

    Woolworths: the Saturday haunt for cheap pick'n'mix, plastic shoes and seven-inch singles
    Woolworths: the Saturday haunt for cheap pick’n’mix, plastic shoes and seven-inch singles Credit: Heritage Images/Hulton Archive
    We bought our first seven-inch singles, our worst-ever shoes and our own body weight in cola cubes and gobstoppers from Woolies. But that was only because there was nowhere else to go on a Saturday morning, unless you fancied hanging out at the butcher’s. There was always something slightly Soviet about Woolworths: low-quality goods on rickety shelves, staffed by people with all the motivational zeal of an elderly sloth. The truth is, if Woolworths re-emerged tomorrow, you’d never, ever go.

    The BBC test card

    The BBC test card: a haunting still of a girl and her clown, once the only thing on daytime TV between news bulletins
    The BBC test card: a haunting still of a girl and her clown, once the only thing on daytime TV between news bulletins Credit: PhotoEdit / Alamy Stock Photo
    Daytime television may be a Pot Noodle for the eyes – seemingly designed to keep the old, infirm and unemployed in a state of energy-sapped apathy. But it’s positively stimulating compared to the past reality of staring at a still image of a small girl playing noughts and crosses with a pernicious-looking clown, set to a soundtrack of Ersatz Bossa Nova performed by an orchestra too tepid to land a cruise ship gig. If Orwell had lived into the 1970s, you can bet that something like the test card would have flickered on Winston Smith’s telescreen between the Two Minutes Hate and bulletins from the Malabar Front.

    C&A

    C&A: frumpy fashions, static-filled rails of polyester and a look so dated even Dot Cotton might have thought twice
    C&A: frumpy fashions, static-filled rails of polyester and a look so dated even Dot Cotton might have thought twice Credit: http://imageBROKER.com / Alamy Stock Photo
    The real surprise is that C&A didn’t shut down in this country much sooner, given the risk of electrical fires sparked by the sheer weight of polyester, acrylic and nylon packed into every store. Picture an episode of Are You Being Served?, put the entire staff of Grace Brothers on a course of Xanax, add chrome to every surface, and you have a typical C&A: racks of clothes so frumpy that even Dot Cotton, were she around today, might decide she’d do better on Vinted. The fact that branches of C&A still exist – and thrive – in towns and cities across provincial Germany tells you everything you need to know.

    Landlines

    Landlines: draughty hallways, tangled cords and the constant terror of someone else picking up mid-flirt
    Landlines: draughty hallways, tangled cords and the constant terror of someone else picking up mid-flirt Credit: Popperfoto via Getty Images
    We should never feel nostalgic for an era when etiquette (in middle-class homes, at least) meant starting a conversation not with “Hello”, but by trilling “Banbury, 35712” in a voice uncannily like Thatcher’s before she hired a voice coach. Expensive, unreliable and thoroughly uncomfortable if the phone was stuck in the downstairs hallway, the real curse of the landline fell on teenagers. They had to stretch the cord into the downstairs loo and try to chat up the object of their affections, all while dreading the moment someone upstairs might pick up another receiver and bellow, “Get off the line!” Dating under those conditions was hell – the kids don’t know how lucky they are.

    Compact discs

    Compact discs: fragile, overpriced and oversold — but somehow still fondly remembered as music's last physical stand
    Compact discs: fragile, overpriced and oversold — but somehow still fondly remembered as music’s last physical stand Credit: dszc/E+
    “They’ll withstand anything”, went the credo at the time of their launch. It turned out there were a few caveats to “anything” – like a bit of dust or dropping them on a soft carpet. CDs are unfairly placed on a nostalgic pedestal as the last hurrah of music as a physical product. But in reality, their heyday coincided with the final greedy push by record company bosses, who slept soundly while charging upwards of £13 for a single disc in 1996. Executives from that era are, if there’s any justice, now working in Carphone Warehouse, while we listeners wallow in 27-hour Spotify playlists that cost less than a tenner a month. Consumer revenge, it turns out, can have a most seductive melody.

    The A-Team

    The A-Team: (l–r front) Dirk Benedict, George Peppard, Mr T; (back) Dwight Schultz — heroes of recycled plots and cartoon capers
    The A-Team: (l–r front) Dirk Benedict, George Peppard, Mr T; (back) Dwight Schultz — heroes of recycled plots and cartoon capers Credit: NBCUniversal
    To paraphrase Mr T, pity the fool who feels nostalgic for this odious gruel, dished up on ITV on Saturday teatimes. Genuinely, every episode was exactly the same. If you were lucky enough to avoid every series but are still curious, here’s what happened: a helpless person turns to a vigilante gang, who cobble together a homemade weapon and then toss the bad guy around the floor in a Benny Hill–meets–Scarface crescendo of cartoon violence. That’s it. You can go back to watching This City Is Ours now. You missed nothing.

    Britpop

    Kula Shaker: English psychedelic rockers led by Crispian Mills, who rose to fame during the Nineties
    Kula Shaker: English psychedelic rockers led by Crispian Mills, who rose to fame during the Nineties Credit: Martyn Goodacre/Getty Images
    Just as punk gave us two good bands (the Sex Pistols and the Clash, obviously) alongside a barrage of horrible noise, so the Britpop era – now three decades behind us – produced about half a dozen decent songs (Common People, Girls and Boys, Live Forever, and you can pick the other three yourself) and an astonishing amount of limp, student disco dreck that wouldn’t have scraped onto a Searchers B-side in the Sixties. If you remember Sleeper, Kula Shaker, Cast and, heaven help us, Menswear, then you’re unlikely ever to feel too misty-eyed about this cynical musical moment. For everyone else, dig around on Spotify and remind yourself just how weak and thin the vast majority of it really was.

    The weekly music press

    Melody Maker: one of the world's earliest weekly music magazines, chronicling the British music scene for decades
    Melody Maker: one of the world’s earliest weekly music magazines, chronicling the British music scene for decades Credit: Retro AdArchives / Alamy Stock Photo
    Across the country, groups of elderly men can be found in pubs lamenting the demise of Q, Record Mirror, Melody Maker and the NME over pints of real ale, their tote bags stuffed with Steely Dan live albums. They’re wrong. The music press may have given us Nick Kent and Julie Burchill, but it also inflicted Tony Parsons and a blitzkrieg of some of the most pretentious drivel ever put into print. At its worst (roughly the mid-Seventies), albums were always “sonic cathedrals”, a band’s second album was invariably described as “a sophomore effort with a more widescreen sound”, and drummers in live reviews were inevitably “no slouch behind the kit”. Insufferable bilge – whose demise remains one of the internet’s greatest victories over conceit, tedium and unwashed hair.

    Telegrams

    Telegrams: slow, costly and cryptic
    Telegrams: slow, costly and cryptic Credit: Peter Stone / Alamy Stock Photo
    Imagine waiting for an email telling you you didn’t get the job you were gunning for. Now stretch that wait to four hours or more, delivered by a 14-year-old on a bicycle, then endure the extra indignity of trying to decipher a message written in a style that makes cuneiform look straightforward by comparison. Punishingly expensive and often incomprehensible, telegrams were only useful at weddings when the best man could announce, to everyone’s relief, that “Uncle Hector and Aunt Phyllis sadly can’t make it, but send their congratulations,” from their converted pigsty in the Fens.

    Football pools

    Football pools: long odds, small prizes and a duller, more parochial past wrapped up in false nostalgia
    Football pools: long odds, small prizes and a duller, more parochial past wrapped up in false nostalgia Credit: RAC Images / Alamy Stock Photo
    “Spend, spend, spend!” shouted Viv Nicholson when she won £152,300 on the pools in 1961. Playwright Jack Rosenthal wrote a brilliant dramatisation of her story. But it also helped cement the myth that “doing the pools” was somehow more ethical and pure than today’s National Lottery. It wasn’t. The football pools were absolutely rubbish. The odds of winning were usually worse than the Lottery’s, and the payouts were comparatively small. If you want proof that life was duller and more parochial not so long ago, look no further than a pools coupon.

    Blue Peter

    Blue Peter: Caron Keating, Peter Purvis and John Noakes — familiar faces from the show's golden years
    Blue Peter: Caron Keating, Peter Purvis and John Noakes — familiar faces from the show’s golden years Credit: Adam Butler/PA Archive
    Those who claim Blue Peter represents “proper and appropriate television for children” are only saying so in a desperate attempt to manage the ongoing psychological trauma of their own school days – when they probably spent most break times with their heads forcibly submerged in the lavatory pan. Nobody liked Blue Peter, and admitting you watched it was about as helpful to your playground popularity as having BO and eating fish paste sandwiches for lunch. If you have children yourself, part of ensuring their future health and happiness is to mete out strong punishment if they’re ever caught whistling the theme tune.

    The ‘old’ Radio Two lineage of DJs

    Jimmy Young: part of Radio Two's old guard, famous for his 'recipe of the day' and broadcasting whimsy that tested listeners' patience
    Jimmy Young: part of Radio Two’s old guard, famous for his ‘recipe of the day’ and broadcasting whimsy that tested listeners’ patience Credit: Johnny Green/PA Archive
    The truth about Radio Two is that it never really changes; you just get older and start appreciating it more. There’s nothing wrong with the new crop of DJs like Vernon Kay and Scott Mills – in fact, they’re a vast improvement on the old guard. Never get nostalgic about Derek Jameson, whose voice sounded like he had halitosis capable of clearing a football stadium. Wogan proved that innocent listeners can suffer psychological injury from passive whimsy, and as for Jimmy Young and his “recipe of the day,” it’s hard to feel sentimental about an era when reading out cooking instructions for ham and banana hollandaise was considered a proper use of licence fee payers’ money.

    Town centre cinemas

    Town centre cinemas: seedy one-screens with horsehair seats, flat orangeade and a pipe-smoking neighbour you couldn't escape
    Town centre cinemas: seedy one-screens with horsehair seats, flat orangeade and a pipe-smoking neighbour you couldn’t escape Credit: eye35 / Alamy Stock Photo
    Yes, you could walk to them, and they were cheaper than a trip to the multiplex at the edge of the retail park. But the ABCs, Cannons and Odeons of yore were pretty filthy, seedy places all told. Try as you might, you’d struggle to consider the reclining seats in today’s air-conditioned picture houses as anything less than a luxury compared to the ordeal of visiting a one-screen town-centre flea pit. The seats seemed made of horsehair and cardboard, the only drinks on offer were flat orangeade and coffee that tasted as if it had been scooped from a pig trough. Then you’d have to tolerate the bloke sitting next to you, invariably smoking a pipe and fiddling furtively with the inside of his raincoat – a distressing sight at any time, but especially during screenings of Last Tango in Paris.

    Crackerjack

    Picture shows – (l-r) Sally Anne Triplett, Stu Francis, Janette Tough as 'wee Jimmy' Krankie, Ian Tough as Ian Krankie (the Krankies) and Leigh Miles on Crackerjack, 1981
    Crackerjack: from ‘Crush a Grape’ Francis to ‘Stewpot’ Stewart, a kids’ show that scarred a generation’s Fridays Credit: BBC
    “It’s Friday, it’s five to five, it’s… time to consider emigrating to any part of Papua New Guinea without television reception.” If you only caught this BBC kids’ variety show in its final, early Eighties death throes – hosted by the maniacally creepy Stu “Crush a Grape” Francis – consider yourself lucky. The true horror was dealt to kids of the 1970s, whose Fridays were ruined by the likes of Ed “Stewpot” Stewart, Don “Yes, I had a bath this morning” Maclean, and Peter Glaze, whose rendition of David Bowie’s Golden Years (which you can find on YouTube) is a gargantuan musical mismatch.

    Teasmades

    Teasmades: unreliable, bulky, and brewing awful tea — best to rely on a thoughtful partner or teach the kids to use the kettle
    Teasmades: unreliable, bulky, and brewing awful tea — best to rely on a thoughtful partner or teach the kids to use the kettle Credit: Alamy
    They never went off on time, brewed vile-tasting tea, were heavier than a bookcase, and everyone who owned one gave up after about three weeks – because you could never remember to put milk in the mug the night before. We’d all love to be woken up with a brew in the morning, but by now we should have realised the best way to do this is to have a partner who anticipates your needs – or just train the kids to use the kitchen kettle.

    Parkinson

    Michael Parkinson and Meg Ryan on 'Parkinson', 2003
    Parkinson: a master of turning cultural icons into a ‘snooze-fest’, with less bite than an ‘ice cream van jingle’ Credit: BBC/Television Stills
    The recent AI-generated Virtually Parkinson series confirmed what those unclouded by nostalgia always knew: being dead might actually have improved his interviewing style. Watching original episodes of Parkinson is a harrowing ordeal, as he repeatedly manages to reduce conversations with some of the most fascinating cultural figures of the late 20th century into a pseudo-avuncular snooze-fest, peppered with questions that carried as much intellectual heft as an ice cream van jingle. As an interlocutor, Parkinson made Lorraine Kelly seem like Christopher Hitchens – only with a Yorkshire accent and infinitely worse suits.

    Cigarette machines in pubs

    Cigarette machines in pubs: fewer sticks, full-price packs and a con that made no one's life easier
    Cigarette machines in pubs: fewer sticks, full-price packs and a con that made no one’s life easier Credit: Linda Kennedy / Alamy Stock Photo
    You didn’t actually get 20 cigarettes in a pub vending machine pack. You got 16 or 17, wrapped in cellophane that proudly displayed the reduced number – just to make absolutely sure you knew tobacco companies were laughing at your addiction while charging you for a partially empty pack of Rothmans. These machines weren’t convenient. They were an outrageous con.

    Dinner parties

    Dinner parties: 1980s' status battles served with bland food and endless tales of Sinclair C5 exploits
    Dinner parties: 1980s’ status battles served with bland food and endless tales of Sinclair C5 exploits Credit: Tom Kelley Archive
    “I used to like it when people invited us over to dinner,” is a common refrain among the misguided and deluded, usually muttered as they wait for the Just Eat man to deliver California rolls from three streets away. This yearning for the era when we’d don high heels to stand in our own kitchens, creating nouvelle cuisine that looked like wallpaper stains on square plates (and tasted even worse), is a monstrous failure of memory. Dinner parties were the nemesis of the 1980s: a three-course brag-a-thon among Alpine-altitude social climbers whose only redeeming feature was the possibility they might choke on their poached pears with red wine before regaling you with yet another anecdote about their Sinclair C5.

    What do you think? Are there other things from the past that sounded great but were really rubbish? Share your guilty nostalgia fails or favourite overrated memories below

        1. Thinking back, TV never played a big part in my life; it was always books and seldom films. I think I only saw one film as a child and that was The Dambusters.

          1. And mine. I remember dad fetching home a small b&w tv, I quite liked Muffin the Mule and Andy Pandy. That’s a girl for you 😀 He would definitely have watched Dambusters, anything to do with WW2. He’d been stationed in Java, after a spell in France.

          2. I had a Muffin puppet. I suppose I must have watched the series. Andy Pandy, yes along with Watch with Mother, Rag, Tag and Bobtail.

          3. I had a small pink plastic muffin the mule. He came with a ring, the’stone’ shaped like a small turnip. That was magnetised ..if you showed him one side he opened his mouth but if you showed him the other side his mouth stayed shut. Do you remember the flowerpot men, Conway? (Hope you enjoyed your concert btw?) K x

          4. Flobberjob! My Muffin was metal and had strings, a proper puppet. Probably worth a fortune now!

          5. The things we didn’t know then but know now :-DD The last one I remember was Shari Lewis and Lamb Chop but I somehow never took to that…

      1. It was a long piece, and nice of rob to send it on. The repetitons are often where there were photos with captions, and sometimes people who post whole articles aren't used to this.. Could you possibly ignore the repetitions?

  80. Afternoon all. Had to hang around most of the morning waiting for a phone call. Now it’s too hot to take the dogs until there is more shade. The sun should have moved round enough by three.

    The aim of the “deal” was never to deter migrants; it was so Harmer could claim to be doing something.

    1. We often have the hottest part of the day about 3 or 4 as the sun is then full on the hillside.

  81. That's me for the next few hours. Driving up to Firstborn's place. Nice 'n warm just now. S'layders!

  82. 409257+ up ticks.

    May one ask,is there anyone who still believes it is meant too ?

    Dt,

    Friday 11 July: Is Starmer’s deal with Macron really going to deter Channel migrants?

    1. Until there is a gunboat in the channel and the weapons are used, the vermin will keep coming. That means leaving the ECHR. The Left won't let us. Starmer doesn't want to. Until we have the invasion will continue.

    3. They should get Brigitte on the case. She can push them all about when they try to leave.

  83. Good day Nottlers all!

    Currently on a B/W painting kick, which is interesting as usually my paintings are flooded with colour.

    It started off with a sunflower. My usual method is to do the underpainting in white over a dark background, then add layers of colour.

    This time, I wanted to get the underpainting done before going out to dance and somehow only left myself 20 minutes or so, meaning it was all very slapdash.

    The next day, though, I looked at the uneven paint, grey showing through in the brushstrokes, and rather liked the effect. So I added some darker accents back in.

    Thought you might like to see its trajectory! https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f36b4094c86df1d54d7df89ee119df8ea561f11abab6512b543214445122b87c.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/59d8f0d9c10215322529661c22fe3e4791f4042d81a19a0dbd57ce58b366fd3b.jpg

          1. Very much so. You can mix them with water if watercolour is your thing, use them like oils but with faster drying time, or do what I generally do, which is use them to block out a painting before moving on to oils.

          3. You can use oil over acrylic, but not the other way round (oil is too flexible).

      1. Me too especially photography, when I did wedding photography I offered B&W pictures as either an alternative or an extra and was surprised how many couples took it up

        2. Which rather shows that they CAN stop them, they just don't want to.

          And in their shoes would YOU want to keep them, I wouldn't!

    2. 60 criminal invaders on every boat and 10 damned boats. Get a gunboat into the channel and shoot the swine.

  86. Everything you need to know about ticks – and how to stop them ruining your holiday

    Warmer weather in the UK and Europe brings outdoor adventures, but also a risk of tick-borne illnesses such as Lyme disease and encephalitis
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/advice/everything-to-know-about-ticks-lyme-disease-encephalitis/?recomm_id=b51bcf72-af34-4cf5-a13c-e3541e727d3d

    What could be more delightful than communing with nature in a glorious landscape, far from the crowds, luxuriating in the warmth and peace of summer? It is the perfect holiday scene. But unfortunately, there may be ticks about ready to spoil the fun, sensing your presence, easily latching onto clothing in an existential quest for their next meal.

    Ticks are not insects. Like spiders, they have four pairs of legs and no wings or antennae, but they are obligate parasites. Worldwide, hundreds of species of the bloodsucking creatures can be found wherever there are animals to feed upon. And unfortunately, a small number of these also transmit infections to humans, of which Lyme disease and tick-borne encephalitis are the best-known.

    But through proper precautions and prompt medical treatment if the need arises, a tick bite doesn’t have to ruin your holiday – besides the obvious ick factor – if you stay aware of the risks.
    Lyme disease
    High risk areas

    Ticks carrying Lyme disease can be found in the US, Canada, across Europe and in the UK – particularly grasslands and woodlands in England and the Scottish Highlands. It is now estimated that 4 to 6 per cent of ticks in the UK carry the bacteria that causes Lyme. In regional hotspots like Devon, where Lyme incidence is highest, this rate can reach up to 7 to 10 per cent.
    What is Lyme disease?

    Lyme disease is caused by bacteria that are present in the salivary glands of certain tick species. The infection is named after the town of Lyme in Connecticut, where it was first described in 1975. Since then, it has spread geographically to include most parts of the USA, where the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) estimate there may be as many as 476,000 cases every year. However, it can be widely found throughout the northern hemisphere (causing an estimated 3,000 cases annually in the UK). Small mammals and birds form a reservoir of infection that makes Lyme disease almost impossible to stamp out.

    1. When I was younger people use to call my grandfather Spider man.
      I always thought that it was because he'd been a hero in his earlier years.
      But then my grandmother spoiled all my illusions when she told me that he couldn't get out of the bath.

    1. Judging by many of the results, it seems Rigging elections has been happening for years.

        1. Yes apparently due to 'an administration Error' many London Jewish areas didn't get their documentation in time to vote. How strange…..

          1. Don’t worry, they will all be sent a special gold (yellow) stat to wear as a consolation

  88. Wordle No. 1,483 2/6

    ⬜🟩⬜🟩⬜
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    Wordle 11 Jul 2025

    Marque for an Eagle?

    1. Blimey, well done!
      I made a bit of a pig's ear of this one – bogey…….

      Wordle 1,483 5/6

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      1. Me too – I'm not doing them a lot recently. Other Things, dear boy, things…

        Wordle 1,483 5/6

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    2. Golf done. Wordle done so now it is time for lunch

      Wordle 1,483 4/6

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      Add in the nice Mr Trumps latest tariff and it is probably going to be counted as a bogey.

      3. Me too!
        Wordle 1,483 3/6

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    4. Birdie this morning. Been out all day.

      Wordle 1,483 3/6

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    5. Well done. Thought I'd done well.
      Wordle 1,483 3/6

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  89. If you Nottlers are looking for some TV entertainment we've been watching a programme series on Netflix Called 1923. Cast includes actors such as Harrison Ford, Helen Mirren, Timothy Dalton and many others to keep an eye out for.

    2. At least 90% of the population would agree with Gen X of the North.
      The other 10% are either muzzrat cockroaches or deluded, leftie fools.

    4. I doubt that Khan would have said any such thing, especially as the case is sub judice.

          3. Well, it IS Friday…

            I expect the disgusting Attorney-General had it removed so as not to "embarrass" his slammer mate Khan.

    1. Steam trains really take me back. Travelled West of England to Liverpool at the start/end of term, plus at half terms. There was a direct Liverpool-Plymouth train, via Shrewsbury and the Severn tunnel, afternoon service south, night service north. One of the old "boat trains".

      Also to/from grandparents' place on the South Coast for hols. Solo of course…

      1. My mother and I used to take the train to Exeter to stay with relations. Stourbridge Town to Stourbridge Junction, to Crewe then down to Exeter.I remember the waits at Crewe Junction; the black smuts, the smell of steam …

    3. I imagine we don’t have craftsmen capable of building a viaduct like that any more.
      A beautiful piece of architecture and only took 5 years to build by 2,300 workmen. Today it would take longer than that to get planning permission and have at least 2,300 health and safety managers another quantity of DIE managers who will make sure there are the right number of queers, lesbians, transvestites et etc.
      35 years to build and close a month later because it’s unsafe.

      1. I understand your point. I believe we still retain some of the best engineers and craftsmen and should be more than capable of surpassing the output and quality of the Ribblehead Viaduct.

        The reason we are held back from building beautiful structures and buildings is for the many reasons you give viz. local bureaucracy and national political inertia. There is also the predominance of bean counters at every stage and a reluctance to pay the going rate for quality.

  92. Camilla Tominey
    This shameless Labour Government could be gone far sooner than anyone imagines
    After only a year in office, the PM has been painted into a corner by by his disastrous policies and disgruntled back-benchers.

    Camilla Tominey
    Associate Editor
    Camilla Tominey
    Related Topics
    Jeremy Corbyn, Labour Party, Lord Hermer, Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron, Migrants
    11 July 2025 4:32pm BST

    A state visit is meant to demonstrate the best of British – and as far as the pomp and pageantry around Emmanuel Macron’s sejour was concerned, that was true.

    But let’s be honest, if Prime Minister Keir Starmer, his deputy Angela Rayner and Chancellor Rachel Reeves – with a side order of Foreign Secretary David Lammy – are supposed to represent the crème de la crème of UK statecraft, then we really are en difficulté.

    So lacking in stature are the current Labour crop that even when the pint-sized president started slagging off Brexit, none of them stepped in to defend the “once in a lifetime” democratic decision taken by this country almost a decade ago.

    “The British people have been sold a lie,” opined Monsieur Napoleon Complex, arguing that we were told leaving the EU would “make it possible to fight more effectively against illegal immigration”.

    Sure, we were told Brexit would allow us to “take back control of our borders” and we haven’t – but the biggest lies of all were told at this week’s Anglo-Francofest, with the pretence that the “17 in, one out” migrant fudge is a “good deal” for the UK.

    The British people have been sold a £500 million pup by the French – who have taken a vast amount of taxpayers’ pounds to do precisely the opposite of stopping the boats. On Thursday, a French navy warship escorted a dinghy crammed with nearly 80 migrants to the Channel’s midpoint for a handover with the UK Border Force – but not before demanding their life jackets back from the asylum seekers to reuse them on the next trip.

    These two wildly unpopular Euro-Lefties can’t even save their own sinking approval ratings, so forget “smashing the gangs”. “Stop the showboating” might be a better slogan for this arrogant pair of smug elitists.

    Advertisement

    After a disastrous first year in office, Starmer is now ranked the least popular prime minister of the past four decades, plumbing even greater depths than Gordon Brown. He is such a poor politician that he cannot even keep the party together, despite a stonking majority, with angsty backbenchers forcing him into U-turn after U-turn.

    Meanwhile, we’ve got Rayner of “Tory scum” fame single-handedly trying to bankrupt Britain with a workers’ rights bill that seven in 10 business leaders say will stifle growth. She’s reportedly at war with our lachrymose Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, who, despite her Oxford education, is so out of her depth she’s being regularly outfoxed by her chippy Cabinet colleague who left school at 16.

    Reeves has any number of ominous forecasts at her fingertips to tell the ginger whinger to do one – or risk further destabilising our fragile fiscal situation – and yet she is seemingly too busy blubbing over her red box.

    Take the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics, which show the UK economy once again shrank “unexpectedly” in May, contracting for the second month in a row. Confounding analysts who expected to see slight growth, the economy shrivelled by 0.1 per cent, driven by a drop in manufacturing and “very weak” retail sales.

    The only sector to grow overall last month was services – including legal firms recovering from the impact of changes to stamp duty thresholds the previous month. Presumably, they have also been cashing in from defending convicted criminals from deportation, giving away the Chagos Islands and trying to prosecute Northern Ireland veterans under Labour’s watch. Perhaps we can litigate ourselves into prosperity! The unelected Attorney General, Lord Hermer, who was this week revealed by The Telegraph to have handed himself an “effective veto” over government policy, would certainly be in clover.

    When you consider the triumvirate of travesty that is currently in charge of this once great nation, it is little wonder people are seriously starting to question whether Labour can go the distance.

    The Prime Minister is reported to be “pinning his hopes on a summer refresh”, which apparently doesn’t mean a Lord Alli-funded spending spree on linen clothes.

    Instead, he is planning to use the long parliamentary recess, which begins on July 22, to inject more purpose into the Government and could reshuffle ministers as soon as next week. (Expect Reeves to stay put as Starmer’s resident flak shield. Oddly, Lisa Nandy, the Culture Secretary, is set for the chop despite being the only person in his team, bar Rayner, capable of communicating with anyone north of the Emirates Stadium.)

    On Friday, the Cabinet was summoned for an “away day” with the Prime Minister at Chequers, his Buckinghamshire country retreat. On Tour with No Cheer Keir? Let’s hope they had Aperol on tap.

    Few believe a refresh can stem the bleeding, with rumours now circulating that Starmer could call an election as early as next year.

    The idea behind this kamikaze plan would be to completely eviscerate the Tories – who have yet to recover from 14 years of failure – so that Labour are level pegging with Reform. Starmer could then look to form a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, and, God forbid, the Greens, in a bid to present the electorate with a “sensible” alternative to “far Right” Farage.

    The fact that Jeremy Corbyn has re-entered the fray, with 18 per cent said to be considering voting for him according to the latest YouGov polling, won’t put Starmer off. If Sexy Jezza manages to take out Wes Streeting in the process, then so be it: one less leadership rival for the prime minister to worry about – plus, the Health Secretary is about to be embroiled in an almighty row with junior doctors demanding a 29 pay rise on top of the 22 per cent they have already been given.

    I know it sounds completely nuts, but that’s how desperate the people running the country have seemingly become.

    Another theory is that Starmer could be undone by his own increasingly disgruntled MPs. Such was the loveless nature of Labour’s landslide that many backbenchers were voted in on such slim majorities that they have nothing to lose in ousting the Prime Minister if it means getting re-elected. They have already won the rebellion on winter fuel and welfare.

    Next they will be agitating to scrap the two-child benefit cap and if that necessitates threatening to vote down the autumn Budget, then so be it. Admittedly, no Budget has been lost in a vote of the Commons in recent political history but, like Macron, who was this week reported to be considering a snap election, Starmer is a man in office but not in power. The arch Remainer might want to seriously consider seeking asylum in France. I hear Paris is lovely at this time of year.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/07/11/shameless-labour-could-be-gone-far-sooner-starmer-uk/

    Comments are Brill!

    1. That piece is such a scarily real description of the state of our country and the malicious, spiteful, unpatriotic, tone-deaf scum who are in charge.
      One little detail, of which I have either forgotten or never knew in the first place, is that Thieves Reeves went to Oxford.
      How on earth did such a clearly incompetent, lying person ever get a place there? Was she there on a 'sympathy' place?

      1. Oxford, and Cambridge for that matter, has been seriously over-rated for decades.

        Oxford has produced people such as Boris Johnson and Michael Gove to say nothing of Dido Harding and there are hundreds of other useless politicos whose performances at the Oxford Union remain risible.

        We saw Oriel College tie itself in knots at the behest of some ghastly and profoundly ignorant black Rhodes Scholar, the utter hypocrisy of the ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ movement evidently lost on the complainant.

        The Said Business School is about the only recent building development and that has wrecked part of old Oxford.

        The most recent misadventure associated with Oxford Colleges is of course the magical Astra Zeneca Covid vaccine developed by its supposedly top scientists. We are still waiting for the total death and serious injury figures arising from its administering to hundreds of thousands, millions even, of trusting but unsuspecting victims.

    1. An old video but for David Aaronovitch to play on his Jewishness like that was disgraceful. I wonder what he's feeling now. I suspect he will admit under his breath that much of London isn't London anymore and certainly not the London that his parents were born into and in which he grew up.

      London's no longer safe for you, Mr. A.

      1. I've rec'd that a few times, Ndovu…usually associate it with naughty words. I never do that, and I don't think you do either…..:-)))

  96. https://x.com/Basil_TGMD/status/1943656114282696722 Department of Education? 24 staff working abroad

    Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Morocco, Spain, South Africa, and Turkey.

    Department of Energy? Ten.

    Thailand, Botswana, Barbados, India, Slovenia, United States of America, France, Belgium and Ireland.

    Department of Science? Seven.

    Ghana, United States of America, Italy, Belgium, Sweden and Germany.

    Department for Transport? Four.

    Netherlands, India, Malawi and the United States of America.

    Ministry of Justice? Eleven.

    British Virgin Islands, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Netherlands, Poland, Republic of Ireland, United States of America.

    Why are so many civil servants working from other countries?

    Why are they not here?

    2. I think it started during lockdowns/wfh, and never went back to what passes for normal.

  97. That's me for this warmish day. Bit like 1976, I'd say.

    Have a jolly evening.

    A demain.

    1. If these 4-day weeks involved putting in the same hours over the 4 days, i.e. 4 longer working days, that would be different, though still not good.
      How can the council justify paying staff the same salary for 20% fewer working hours?
      Allowing them to WFH for 3 of those 4 days is madness. One of the days being WFH (depending on the job), might be more acceptable.

    2. I remember Three Card Tricksters operating at the top of Haymarket. Many tourists wagered five or even ten pounds and lost. The gang were from the East End if their accents were anything to go by. One of their number would place a note in wager and be seen to win but it was a scam. There was a lookout who would shout “Old Bill” at the sight of a copper.

      The Three Card or (as here) Three Pea tricksters have been around for centuries. They were once confined to Fairs on Common Lands and the scam run by Gypsies. The Enclosure Acts deprived the travellers of commons on which to operate. The fact that these foreign scum are able to revive the practice in broad daylight on Westminster Bridge shows how far our proud country has fallen.

  103. Andrew McQuillan
    The hypocrisy of those attacking Moygashel’s migrant bonfire
    11 July 2025,

    The marching season – when a section of Northern Ireland’s unionist community take to the streets to commemorate the triumph of William of Orange against James II – has always been a useful barometer of the Ulster loyalist mood.

    From the 1960s, when Ulster Unionist MPs were barracked for their leadership’s dalliances with ecumenism, all the way to the 1980s and 90s when the right to march in certain areas came to the fore, Orange gatherings have given a sense of what the rank and file feel about Northern Ireland.

    The 2025 bonfires – which traditionally start the Orange festivities – have kept up with the broader UK zeitgeist. Deep in County Tyrone, the bonfire in the town of Moygashel included an effigy of several figures in a boat above a banner which proclaimed, ‘Stop the Boats’. The flag of the Republic of Ireland soon joined it.

    Outside of England, Northern Ireland has seen the biggest disturbances about demographic change in the past year. After Southport, Belfast saw protests and rioting, while in June there was violence in Ballymena, after two boys who required a Romanian interpreter in court were charged in connection with an alleged serious sexual assault.

    South Belfast snobs and Irish nationalists view the effigy and all that goes with it as yet another ghastly example of poorly educated working-class Protestant thuggery and bad taste. The same people who in recent months were solemnly intoning about Kneecap’s right to artistic expression, were swift to condemn the pallet stackers of Moygashel. Police Service Northern Ireland are now investigating the ‘hate incident’.

    This is classic Northern Irish whataboutery writ large. Is the bonfire in bad taste? Certainly yes. But should the people who erected it have to endure a police investigation and insufferable opprobrium from those who have bent backwards to justify Kneecap telling their audience to ‘kill your MP’? Certainly not.

    Much of Orange pageantry can undoubtedly be crass. In South Belfast, a bonfire was lit on an asbestos riven site close to the energy infrastructure which powers two hospitals. The PSNI ignored a Belfast City Council vote to take it down after paramilitaries threatened disorder if it was removed. What cause this serves the Union is anyone’s guess.

    Beyond the outrage about the banner, however, the most interesting thing about it is that it demonstrates the increasing prevalence of the backlash against illegal migration in the Northern Irish social and political firmament.

    South of the border, the liberal world view of painless assimilation has been rocked to its core by increased immigration. Now the thorny issue of migration, ethnicity and demographics has been layered on top of Northern Ireland’s existing divisions.

    ********************************
    Stanley
    4 hours ago
    Ironic that Sinn Fein think burning a plastic dummy is inhumane, but think it's OK to Shoot, Bomb, kill and main real people.

    Graham Green Stanley
    4 hours ago
    Yep, blowing up and innocent pregnant woman in mainland Britain is a necessary act in the fight to take over the part of Ireland in which the majority want to remain British. But burning a plastic dummy, whoa, that’s overstepping the mark.

    Andrew C
    3 hours ago
    One of my friends has had to seek urgent compassionate leave from work: her mother suddenly passed, leaving her frail and infirm father alone and she's trying to get him into a care home. He has no money to speak of and the house won't fetch much. He worked his entire life and never once fell foul of the law. My friend's looking at 5-6k a month minimum for his care and has a family of her own.
    Then I switch on the news, see the boats arrive, see the chancers disembark and travel in air-conditioned buses to a nice hotel and three squares a day. It makes you <!*%> sick!

    1. "The same people who in recent months were solemnly intoning about Kneecap’s right to artistic expression, were swift to condemn the pallet stackers of Moygashel."

      In a ****ing nutshell…

      1. Big red barn.
        The small shack to the right planned to me our holiday cottage. Eventually.

  106. Good evening Nottlertown and I hope you are all well. I asked this question over at FSB the other night and I would like to canvass opinion here too if you are so inclined and could spare a moment.

    In cultural issues…

    Does anyone listen to audio books? If so do you have any none woke/ none tiresomely Liberal-Left fiction recommendations for me? I'm currently wading through Death's End
    by Cixin Liu (book 3 from The Three Body Problem story). Great ideas but the character writing is dire.

    1. Audio books are too slow. I prefer to read when in bed, and it's difficult to concentrate on audio without falling asleep. Then, who knows what you missed?

      1. You can put a switch timer, not so much is missed if one nods off. Quick scan back.

    2. Yes – the MR and I do. Have lots and lots of recommendations. Name your particular John Ray…

      1. Mystery is good. I have waded through the complete Sherlock Holmes stories before now. It was glorious. That sense of old decent Britain would be good, whatever the genre.

        1. Try "This sceptered Isle"
          kept me going for many many miles
          Edit
          The Rebus novels by Ian Rankin are good too

        2. Trollope’s “Barchester” stories read – superbly – by Timothy West
          Tolstoy – ” War and Peace” and “Anna Kerenina” – the American translation
          If you have 127 hours to spare – Pepys’s Diary – a brilliant reading
          John Le Carré’s later books read by himself
          We have just completed “Sword” by Max Hastings – about 6 June 1944. A book about the great deception to which Germany was subjected prior to D-Day. And another (shockingly read) about The St Nazaire raid.
          Our Audible “library” contains over 100 books…..

          Always listen to the sample – the reading is very important and several books which we had wanted to hear were abandoned because of shoddy narration.

          If you want any more info – just ask.

    3. Yes I do. The best one I have had recently was Joan Hickson reading an Agatha Christie book. It was great because it went on for hours and hours!

    4. I have listened to audio books (but I've never got to the end of one because they send me to sleep). I've got some Dick Francis and Len Deighton's Bomber.

  108. Phew! Just spent a couple of hot, sticky hours sorting stock and loading the car for tomorrow. Exhausted now. Dinner will have to wait.

        1. Give it time, they will be, and there's a good chance that the women involved will find that the authorities make their lives an absolute misery.

          1. Aye, the 'legal' challenge will end but I'll bet they'll be redundant fairly soon, houses posessed and bank accounts frozen.

            The Left are vindictive and spiteful.

    2. Oh! The bloke in the back of the dinghy is the career criminal drug addict floyd.

    3. Well Brigitte has three kids from her previous marriage, so definitely not a man.

  112. I reported yesterday on the commemoration of the closure 10 years ago of the East Midlands last coal mine. Tell kids today how important mining was and they won't believe yer! Here, for no other reason than it illustrates how we were, is a photo of the great spoil heap at Backworth colliery, Northumberland, in the 1960s.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/fc9d1b78a751d0b2926aea94814f878343dab2791f8e2beb12fca4b1469731c6.jpg
    Bad pun alert:

    Mountains out of coalhills…

    1. All Greeniacs should sit on the dock of the bay at Newcastle Australia, watching the ships come in, to load up with coal for China.
      The Australian mines make ours look like kiddies' sand castles.

    2. I read an 'imgur' thread the other day with a bunch of stupid children blithering on about how 'green' was the cheapest energy going and how cars should be abolished and everyone should walk.

      Of course, they're brats who live in cities. They rent, so they want free stuff. They don't cook, so they don't shop. It's truly tiresome at how ignorant these children are.

      A chap proposing nuclear was marked under 'bad comments'. The immaturity and sheer stupidity of the next generation is worrying. The lies are monumental and must be stopped. Adults – not the brattish whelps infesting our government – must simply say no, and publish the facts.

  116. Listening to the LotusEaters' podcast and a couple of comments are worth mentioning.

    The segment re the "deal" on the boats brought up the non-role/non-intervention of the Monarch, who should now be known as "Charles the Absent".

    Second was the term "shadow economy" aka organised crime that is now, wait for it, worth close on 11% of the UK's GDP.

    Surely, we are heading over the edge of the abyss in a ship crewed by morons and ne'er-do-wells.

    1. When GDP figures are published do they include estimates for the blek economy?
      If they do they shouldn't.
      It doesn't contribute to the UK except at the VAT level from how the earnings are spent.

    2. I saw the first line and thought of the TV series – Wanda Ventham and Ian Hendry as a couple of spooks living on Crete.

    3. We'll never stop the boats coming if we don't smash the black economy

      The 'One in, one out' deal promises to clamp down on illegal work, but how feasible is this in a convenience-driven market?

      David Shipley • 11th July 2025, 7:14pm BST

      In the reporting on this week's migration agreement between France and the UK, most of the focus has been on the "one in, one out" deal between the countries. Britain will send back 50 illegal arrivals a week, in exchange for 50 other migrants who have applied via a French scheme. The idea is that being sent straight back to France will deter migrants from making the journey, and that Sir Kier Starmer will be able to announce that he has "stopped the boats".

      In reality, of course, this will make no real difference to the situation. In the past week, almost 1,100 migrants crossed the Channel. Given the opportunity to be housed, clothed and fed for free, and potentially granted asylum and ultimately the right to housing, health care, education and benefits, a less than one in 20 chance of being sent back to France will not stop the illegal crossings.

      Sir Keir and Mr Macron know this. The French president spoke about the British Government's "mobilisation to deal with the pull factors for irregular migrants, including the fight against illegal work". How real is this commitment? The Home Office insists that in the last year, "immigration enforcement has increased illegal working activity by 51 per cent" and it is promising "new biometric kits" for these teams so that it can conduct on-the-spot right to work checks.

      What actually happens when illegal workers are caught? Under the 1971 Immigration Act they can be sentenced to a maximum of six months imprisonment. However, Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) guidance says that they would almost never prosecute, instead seeking to remove an illegal worker from the UK. The CPS does not publish any data on how many people it prosecutes for working illegally.

      For asylum seekers even the threat of deportation does not exist. This week, an immigration officer told a journalist that working illegally does not hurt an asylum seeker's claim. This is correct. Under the law, only someone classed as a "serious criminal", and jailed for at least 12 months is at risk of their claim being rejected as a result.

      The gig economy is often linked to illegal working. Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, visited a migrant hotel, in June, and found "clear evidence of illegal working for Deliveroo, Just Eat and Uber Eats".

      These businesses insist they are doing everything possible, and going beyond their legal obligations in checking documents. But if this is true, how can it be that social media is awash with opportunities to loan or buy delivery accounts?

      Meanwhile, the Government has introduced new penalties for companies employing illegal staff, including fines of up to £60,000 per worker, business closures and even the threat of imprisonment for directors. Unfortunately, all these efforts are only likely to scratch the surface of the problem.

      There may have been over 7,000 arrests of illegal workers in the last 12 months, but with a 2020 study estimating that 800,000 to 1.2 million people were living in the UK, none of whom are entitled to benefits, it is reasonable to believe that illegal workers number in at least the high hundreds of thousands. Even if the Home Office managed to double, or triple the number of annual arrests it would not begin to stop illegal working.

      Ultimately, immigration enforcement is like "stopping the boats". It does nothing about pull factors. Arrest some workers, fine some cash-in-hand businesses, maybe even jail the occasional director, if we can find the room. The shadow economy rolls on.

      These illegal workers, on delivery bikes, at car washes, or elsewhere in the gig economy, are working to feed our hunger. We love the convenience of restaurant food on demand, cheap fruit or a cheap car wash. All these conveniences are reliant on a vast population of illegal workers and while that demand exists they will keep coming. Large-scale gig economy businesses are perfect for the government.

      The corporate business receives legitimate revenues and pays taxes, meanwhile the illegal workers operate at arm's length, keeping costs down. To solve this, rather than fiddling around the edges with enforcement and checks, we need to stop using those businesses and industries which are clearly intimately connected with illegal work, and should demand that the government closes businesses, which require illegal staff to operate.

      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/07/11/well-never-stop-the-boats-if-we-dont-smash-black-economy

      1. No matter how much waffle there is around this, we all know that if the will was there the illegal migrants would be swiftly stopped and deported. We are then faced with the worrying reasons as to why the will is not there, as to why we are being consistently lied to on this point alone, and why these fit, belligerent young men, mainly muslim, are being imported en masse

        1. The establishment is more scared of the possibility of a backlash from the illegals than it is of the indignation of the settled people of these islands.

          Well, that and the fact that it doesn't have enough manpower to deal with X,000,000 illegals….

          2. My niece has a boyfriend in the army and she says there is unrest up north that is being kept from us. I don’t necessarily trust her but it may be true.

          3. It could well be true, with so many northern towns and cities being over-run by the 'unwanted.'
            Many of these areas are deprived and they see 'them' being given everything for free, including priority for the NHS and dentistry services.

    4. Just listening now 👍2TK – a malignant narcissist; his emotionally unstable upbringing leading him to rules-based everything. His bloody mother has a lot to answer for.

  118. Ladybirds swarm across Britain in biggest plague since 1976

    Insects disrupted play at Lord’s this week after rising temperatures

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4007fde47ad51c2b2ca6caa7b05566ce12111d8a268b7eb054bd660c9cc0bcd0.png
    The biggest ladybird swarm since the summer of 1976 has been caused by a string of heatwaves.

    Experts said that the bugs are being seen in "very high numbers" this year because of the warm weather. Ladybirds descended on a quiet beach in Point Clear, a small village in Essex, while the South East saw "millions" of the beetles, which like coastal areas to forage in, according to researchers.

    It comes after a swarm of the insects disrupted play during the cricket at Lord's on Thursday. The insects distracted players and led to a brief pause in England's contest against India on the first day of the third Rothesay Test.

    Prof Helen Roy, an ecologist and ladybird expert from the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, said: "Many species of aphid-feeding ladybird, such as the seven-spot ladybird, are being seen in very high numbers this year. This is a consequence of the high aphid numbers and warm weather.

    "People are reporting many sightings to the UK Ladybird Survey through iRecord, which is fantastic. If people want to help insects and other wildlife in this weather, they can leave shallow dishes with a little water for them. Also, we encourage people to leave the aphids in their garden on roses and other plants so there is plenty of food for ladybirds."

    Tim Coulson, professor of zoology and head of biology at the University of Oxford, encouraged people to "learn to love" ladybirds.

    He said: "Warm weather means more aphids because they can complete each generation faster – insects, including ladybirds and aphids, tend to speed up their lives in warm weather. Ladybirds eat aphids, and an abundance of aphids means ladybirds have a lot to eat.

    "People should learn to love the ladybirds. They are effective predators of aphids, which can be a major pest of many plant species. Much in the way that wolves keep deer numbers in check in some parts of the world, ladybirds keep aphid numbers down. A swarm of ladybirds in a cricket game, even against India, should remind people of the role that predators play in keeping the ecology of Earth in a healthy state."

    Dr Peter Brown, an associate professor in ecology and conservation at Anglia Ruskin University, said the last "boom year" for ladybirds was during the summer of 1976, although there have been years in between when there has been a rise, but the locations have been more isolated.

    He said: "In 1976, there were a lot of seven-spot ladybirds on the beaches as they searched for food and people thought they were invading – they were not, as they are native to the UK."

    That year, the warmest UK summer on record, the red beetles descended on cities and towns across the country, leading to reports of insect bites. According to the British Entomological and Natural History Society, there were over 23 billion ladybirds swarming on the southern and eastern coasts of England.

    The warm weather created the ideal environment for aphids, the food that ladybirds feed off, to grow, leading to a surge in their population. Dr Brown, who is an organiser of the UK Ladybird Survey, added that the increase in numbers should be seen as a positive.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/07/11/ladybirds-swarm-across-britain-in-biggest-plague-since-1976

    1. Gawd, they make such a fuss of these events.

      I see far, far more ladybirds over-wintering in the house.
      Every spot variety from nil upwards. I often release a similar number to that in the picture as Spring begins.

      I like them because they devour things I don't want in the garden

    2. That picture shows our beloved indigenous ladybirds, an absolute boon when they appear. They are increasingly under threat from an invasive species (known as the Spanish Ladybird) Which has a huge range of colour and pattern and a much wider, rounder body. I t is unclear (to me) whether the invaders actually attack the natives or simply dominate their food sources.

  120. Oh well off to bed again….it seems to be a regular occurrence at this stage of my life.
    I was a regular after midnighter in my younger days. I must be getting old 🤔😏🙃.
    At least my pulse rate has slowed down, now almost back to normal. I just hope I've still got a pulse tomorrow 😊😄😉
    Good night all Nottlers sleep well. 😴

  121. Well, the forecast said 30°C but the warmest we got, at about 16:00, was 27.2°C.
    Not a lot done today, too bloody hot.
    Now off for a cold bath then bed.
    Goodnight all.

    1. Hi Bob. Temperature peaked here near Guildford at 32 deg. I abandoned mu usual perch in the West-facing Kitchen, mid-afternoon, and found a pleasant breeze in the East-facing Lounge. All is well, even if I had to use the TV in that room for the first time in months…

    1. They could start charging "asylum seekers" the same as the rest of us, for a start.

    2. Government are he'll bent on wrecking our country its culture and social structure.
      Now the economy.

  124. Highest Temp today was 25.8 at 15.03. Less than forecast of course. Pleasant cooling breeze.

    1. Much hotter here, Johnny – stifling, and apparently going to be worse tomorrow, when we have to endure yet another party. I have been waiting for it to cool down sufficiently to do the nags without passing out, done that, but now am too tired – or terminably idle – to do the watering. Or am I? Getting dark.

      1. I managed to persuade OH to do the watering, while I made a fish pie. We've just finished eating.

    2. I wish. It was a nice muggy 30C over here today and no sign of a change for days.

    4. I think it was warmer than that here. 29 or 30 I should think. And no breeze.
      We've just finished a rather late dinner. Too hot earlier on.

      1. Met Office ” A cooling trend from tomorrow” must have stuck in their throats.

      2. Just checked the temperatures, we got up to 27.3°C yesterday.
        Currently a tad under 17°.

  128. Not long back from a very nice concert in a local church. Good mix; I particularly like the Tallis and Lotti. I wasn't so keen that they ended on a modern song about "refugees". As I remarked, "I'm all refugeed out"; my heart isn't warm and welcoming any more. I regret that I didn't take the dogs (some people did), but I thought they would have been too hot in the car.

  129. Well, chums, it's now bedtime for me. So Good night to you all; sleep well and I hope to see you all early tomorrow morning.

  131. I have been a bit busy today, with work, and mum and dad coming to visit. Dad went off to bed a while ago but mum, who finds it difficult to sleep, and I have been chatting over a bottle of wine. It is so hot still and difficult to sleep notwithstanding an inability to in the first place!. Mum is 81 and dad is 86. I am very lucky.

  132. I have been a bit busy today, with work, and mum and dad coming to visit. Dad went off to bed a while ago but mum, who finds it difficult to sleep, and I have been chatting over a bottle of wine. It is so hot still and difficult to sleep notwithstanding an inability to in the first place!. Mum is 81 and dad is 86. I am very lucky.

  135. Sue Gray’s Invented ‘Envoy for the Nations and Regions’ Role Abolished By Starmer

    Co-conspirators will remember the furore surrounding Sue Gray’s exit as Starmer’s chief of staff last year – only for No10 to conjure up a bespoke role for her as “Envoy for the Nations and Regions”. She did precisely nothing in the post, and before long, was quietly shuffled off to the Lords…

    Guido can now confirm the role was potemkin. In response to a written parliamentary question, the government said they have “no plans to appoint an Envoy for the Nations and Regions” in order to replace her. No longer a Gray area…

    July 11 2025 @ 17:00

    Bo Williams
    10h
    One of the greatest scandals in British political history is how a Labour Party apparatchik, posing as disinterested civil servant, was allowed to write a report that fatally undermined the only Conservative Prime Minister with a realistic chance of beating Labour in a General Election.

    GenghisMcCann
    Bo Williams
    9h
    She managed a pub called the Cove between Newry and Mayobridge in Irelandland back in the day before she became master of the universe.

    Ernest Nowell
    Bo Williams
    10h
    It is alleged she was a Spook, who knows people.

    Beebsplaining
    11h
    🤔 got to admit seeing the "gold standard " of the snivelling service not last 100 days as it was all unravelling around her was hilarious 🤣

    Karma was a beach,🤔 sit in the house of Lords, you are only as good as your last performance 🤔
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6cb92c25dfe24247c11992d92d624ff5b7448959e8a4ee82a66bec4c7b5a72e0.png

    1. I still strongly suspect that Boris was the victim of a setup organised by Labour supporting civil servants.

Comments are closed.