Friday 11 June: Oxford’s boycotting dons care more for virtue-signalling than teaching

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2021/06/10/letters-oxfords-boycotting-dons-care-virtue-signalling-teaching/

791 thoughts on “Friday 11 June: Oxford’s boycotting dons care more for virtue-signalling than teaching”

  8. Gordon Brown says he will not give up fight to reverse Brexit. 11 June 2021.

    Gordon Brown has said he will not give up pushing for the UK to rejoin the EU, while stressing that this is a personal view and he accepts it is unlikely in the short term.

    While the former prime minister was a strong supporter of remain before the 2016 referendum, his comments at a Guardian Live event on Wednesday night are the first time he has explicitly called for the UK to return to the EU.

    “I want to rejoin the European Union,” Brown said. “I’ll not give up. I didn’t support joining the euro because I didn’t think it would work for Britain, it wasn’t because I objected to a single currency.

    Morning everyone. So much for Democracy! No one should be under any illusion that Brown is on his own! All of the Labour Party and quite a few Tories in Westminster are fellow travellers! The hostility to the present Government over the Northern Ireland Protocol from both the US and EU has the end of an Independent UK in mind! A campaign is being waged to overturn the Referendum Result.

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jun/10/gordon-brown-not-give-up-fight-reverse-brexit

    1. What was the purpose of Tony Blair’s meeting with George Soros in New York in April 1996? Presumably it was an exchange, election funding for 1997 in return for the policies, laws and financial favors Soros wanted. Exactly as subsequently happened between Soros and Obama.

      Gordon Brown subsequently became one of George Soros’ best friends and sold Soros’ consortium 750 government buildings dirt cheap in 2000.

      I think it’s very likely the explanation for the low price gold sale in 1999 was…
      a shorting deal with Soros.

      What happened to the $7.5 Billion Gordon Brown and Tony Blair awarded in 2003 to QinetiQ on the day they sold 31% through a tax haven to John Major’s new employer, a private equity fund in DC, where Soros, astonishingly, was the star client?

      As Major and Soros were in the same fund as senior executive and star client, what does that say about 1992?

    2. 334180+ up ticks,
      Morning AS,
      “end of an Independent UK in mind!”
      Precisely why the REAL UKIP under Batten leadership was taken down via treachery.

  9. Good morning all. It is now 4.40 am and I have just finished watching Daniel Craig’s first outing as James Bond (Casino Royale – 2006) and read the extensive notes on the IMDb site. This took me from 10.30 pm until now (around 6 hours). A big mistake, as I shall now have to go to bed and catch up on my sleep – probably 8 hours until close to 1 pm. So goodnight all, and see you all on Friday afternoon.

    UPDATE: In fact I awoke at 9.30am and have been catching up with emails, etc. Now (11.20 am) I plan to have a short lie-in before setting out for a drive around Colchester and surrounding villages. I simply don’t fancy doing much today. Toodle-oo and see you all later (or maybe tomorrow).

  10. [Another abstract woke scribbler] Can the Monarchy Survive? Latest comments copy / pasted below https://unherd.com/2021/06/the-royals-must-fight-the-culture-wars/?tl_inbound=1&tl_groups%5B0%5D=18743&tl_period_type=3&mc_cid=2772533097&mc_eid=f8bf59e7dc

    Prashant Kotak
    “…one of those pleasant London inner suburbs…”, “…Haringey…” Doesn’t compute, Professor. Just does not compute

    Philip Stott

    The last time I was driving through there (admittedly 15 years ago) I locked the doors reflexively, I think it might have been gentrified now (perhaps by Mr. West)

    Sue Ward

    It’s rather unfair to describe the Windsors as a family who “weren’t even British originally” when we are all expected to pretend the migrant who washed up at Dover yesterday is as British as those who were here when the Domesday Book was written

    Cheryl Jones

    I appreciate the role of the monarchy in our culture and its stabilising influence. Unfortunately the fact that they also, thanks to relentless media desire to fulfil column inches, often reveal themselves to be all too humanly fallible, counts against them. The monarchy used to be distant, mysterious and enigmatic. They were symbols not personalities. Only the Queen truly embodies that spirit now. Falling out of the right vagina feels wrong as way of achieving lifelong
    privilege. But then again the royals, unlike other ridiculously privileged people (many of whom also did not particularly earn it) do have on their side the fact they are seen to devote their life to public service, that they sacrifice their personal freedoms in many ways to fulfil a role they never chose. That has a nobility about it that is admirable. The public’s reaction to Harry’s abandonment of his duty, in order to live a rather tawdry shallow life for profit in California, is telling. He has broken the contract that bestowed his wealth, privilege and titles upon him, so continuing to use them and profit from them is the worst kind of treachery. The Queen wouid NEVER do such a thing. Perhaps self sacrifice and duty and stoicism will truly die with her as the cult of narcissism thst has engulfed our culture in recent years sweeps away the past

    Katharine Eyre

    Question to the Yank protesting at the presence of items tenuously linked to colonialism: WHY DID YOU GO TO THE UK TO STUDY?

    Sue Ward

    Indeed. It’s incredible that someone so fragile as to be threatened by a portrait of our 95 year old female head of state has found the courage to come here at all. Having said that, this week a NYT reporter professed to be intimidated by the sight of the Stars and Stripes so I probably shouldn’t be so surprised

    Simon Denis

    In sum, the country we’re becoming is detaching itself from all that the monarchy represents. Well, in a word: no. That element of the country which votes for Corbyn, “takes the knee”, excuses “BLM” and defaces statues – that segment of the country has detached itself from the monarchy. The rest of us are still
    supportive. The “cultural revolution” which you depict as sweeping Britain is, in fact, sweeping over its surface, like a gale over corn; and the task of Conservatism is to put up a few wind breaks: defund the Beeb, shrink the universities, reassert freedom of conscience with a few well placed laws and – at last – get migration under control. The only question is – will they do it? The danger is that they will not, because the Corbynista, knee taking, BLM excusing vandals happen to thrive in our upper middle class, which runs the civil service. So it’s not a question of “revolutions” and “zeitgeist”, but of fashion and power. Realise that and your resistance is strengthened. Fail to realise it and the left’s culture warriors have already defeated you.

    mike otter

    That the 98% of us who are normal don’t engage in wokism is why its a problem. Most of the 98% as you say don’t feel its effects just yet, like the frog sitting in cold water when its first put on the stove. However the 2% that are abnormal – woke etc, are violent and racist and have positions of power in education, the media and local/national civil service. If they are to be defeated by the rule of law it will require legal action from cautions for threats up to jail sentences for racially aggravated violence and vandalism. So far this has not happened and it looks increasingly like the police and judiciary are more part of the problem than the solution. So if they cannot defeated by civil means it bodes ill for us all – compare the reaction of authorities today with say 1968 and you can see what may happen if the rabble of mad zealots continues to rampage unchecked.

  11. The Woke Don’t Want to Save the World https://unherd.com/2021/06/the-woke-dont-want-to-save-the-world/?tl_inbound=1&tl_groups%5B0%5D=18743&tl_period_type=3&mc_cid=2772533097&mc_eid=f8bf59e7dc usual copy / paste comments:

    Michael James

    Also, China is scary and could retaliate, e.g. by withdrawing funds from Western universities. So better not provoke it

    Stephen Rose

    Another article on the performative nature of Western Woke. I liked the observation about corporate pride banners and their non application in Saudi Arabia.
    Liberal manners, demand a sagacious nodding through of this stuff, it is largely self identification. Lost your job at Stonewall, move to J P Morgan without any step check.

    Something in defence of those hated,19th century Empires, they used their reach and power to help eradicate slavery across the globe, not just wring their hands. Before Covid, I had business with China, now I face a dilemma when or if they come calling, I wonder if I have the moral courage at a time of economic need

    Simon Denis

    You say that “wokeness” locates evil in “highly abstract concepts like whiteness”. Whiteness is not a highly abstract concept. It is the colour of many a person’s skin. Attack it and you attack them. Would you excuse the BNP on the grounds that “blackness” is just a “highly abstract concept”? I doubt it. Isn’t this, then, just the double standard which you correctly identify in America’s differential approaches to Saudi and the Holy See? And the double standard rests on toxic ignorance and distortion, designed to make “white” societies the scapegoat; to load them with blame for all ill. This is not some harmless fad but a deeply sinister wave of hysteria. It connives in Saudi and other non-western crimes against minorities, women and those whom they designate sinners or deviants, by ignoring them. Conversely, it libels ordinary western conservatism, not to mention the Christian religion as full of “hate”, when they merely disapprove. It covers for self-destructive rates of migration into western territory which disable assimilation and encourage division. The woke may well be selfish, frivolous, inconsistent, warped. They are indeed engaged in spiteful tantrum with no beneficial intentions or results. But they remain powerful and everyone today is sensible of that power and cowers under it. The wretched story of that unfortunate young cricketer shows how stupid and abusive that power has become. Lenin, a strutting, pontificating, hectoring fanatic, was laughed at right up until the time when people realised he was in charge; and it is the same with the “woke”. They and their poisonous distortions have got be stopped as soon as may be.

    1. Simon Denis is spot on. I suspect the Woke probably regard him as Denis the Menace!

      Morning AWK et al

          1. can only speak for myself, but on other sites, I actively hunt down woke trolls. Here is where I come for P&Q and to ensure I’m tapped in re UK from individuals regardless of their veiws

  12. Getting the Virtue signalling in early re Cyber Polygon and hitting the supply chains and target food: Low-income countries hit hardest by spike in global food priceshttps://www.devex.com/news/low-income-countries-hit-hardest-by-spike-in-global-food-prices-100119?mkt_tok=Njg1LUtCTC03NjUAAAF9lJHq79fg3ueLv9fn2eyYopC8Dh6MYQQcKC5ZsvlS_dztTfaK49bc6Q-4ytGIZDoAcjfWnHjNKrdZxPzLrAP_xCdlZyno3TEcPjdHyV0wIBrSZw&utm_content=text&utm_medium=article&utm_source=nl_newswire

    usual emotive waffle by the same usual suspects

  13. The Tories Created their own worst enemy https://unherd.com/2021/06/the-tories-created-their-own-worst-enemy/?tl_inbound=1&tl_groups%5B0%5D=18743&tl_period_type=3&mc_cid=4ea50d40ca&mc_eid=f8bf59e7dc

    Antonio Ioverio

    “But it’s far from clear that simply being removed from direct government control makes public bodies less hostile to the Tories.”

    I refer to Robert Conquest’s second law of politics:

    Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.

    Ian Barton

    Maybe the Tories created the left-wing public sector “monster”, but surely its the American left that added the “woke”

    Norman Powers

    Were the Cameron/Clegg and May governments especially conservative though? Cameron was the archetype of a drifting centrist. I doubt he ever had strong political views on the civil service one way or another. Cumming’s blogs about those times also paint such a picture.

    Between the Blair-ish Cameron and coalition years, then the Brexit vote and years of internecine warfare, then COVID, you could argue that the Conservatives haven’t until now really had anyone at the top who might care to tackle these issues (and arguably still don’t).

    It’s also worth noting that “wokeism” and “diversity=hard leftism” is a relatively recent phenomenon that only really got rolling starting in 2010. BTW the quote from the civil service guy is shocking. He needs to be publicly disciplined but, of course, no such thing is likely to happen

  17. Donald Trump says he trusts Vladimir Putin more than US intelligence and asks Joe Biden to send his ‘warmest regards’. 11 June 2021.

    “As President, I had a great and very productive meeting in Helsinki, Finland, with President Putin of Russia,” Mr Trump said. “Despite the belated Fake News portrayal of the meeting, the United States won much, including the respect of President Putin and Russia.

    “Because of the phony Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, made-up and paid for by the Democrats and Crooked Hillary Clinton, the United States was put at a disadvantage—a disadvantage that was nevertheless overcome by me.

    Good luck to Biden in dealing with President Putin—don’t fall asleep during the meeting, and please give him my warmest regards!”

    Lol!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/11/donald-trump-says-trusts-vladimir-putin-us-intelligence-asks/

    1. I suppose it gives our fine boys and girls in blue a day or two out by the seaside when they would otherwise be harassing non-compliant folk for failing to adhere to Covidiotic rules in some backwater shopping centre….

    6. It could be that the police got a tip-off that the Extinction Rebellion mob were planning to walk down the railway line. The mob did promise significant demonstrations this Summer.

    7. It could be that the police got a tip-off that the Extinction Rebellion mob were planning to walk down the railway line. The mob did promise significant demonstrations this Summer.

  20. Steerpike
    Sage scientist claims social distancing should remain ‘forever’
    10 June 2021, 11:25am

    https://images.contentstack.io/v3/assets/bltf04078f3cf7a9c30/blt3044ed3196689fad/60c1e25efbd63412d41346c0/Screenshot_2021-06-10_at_10.58.39.png?format=jpg&width=1920&height=1080&fit=crop

    First we were told it would be just 12 weeks to ‘turn the tide’; then it was that the pandemic would be over by September (2020). But now, amid yet more calls to push back the 21 June reopening date, it appears one scientist is happy for the current restrictions of social distancing to continue ‘forever.’

    Professor Susan Michie is a member of the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies and has previously caught Steerpike’s eye as a key pillar of the Communist party of Great Britain who once boasted the nickname ‘Stalin’s granny.’ The former wife of key Corbyn adviser Andrew Murray, Michie has been omnipresent on the nation’s television screens through out the pandemic, continually popping up on Newsnight to preach the virtues of lockdowns and Covid restrictions.

    Last night it was the viewers of Channel 5 who were treated to her musings as Michie poured cold water on the notion that vaccines could be the silver bullet to defeat Covid:

    “
    Vaccines are a really important part of the pandemic control but it is only one part. Test, trace and isolate system, border controls are really essential and the third thing is people’s behaviour. That is the behaviour of social distancing, of when you’re indoors, making sure there’s good ventilation or if there’s not, wearing face masks and hand and surface hygiene. We’ll need to keep these going in the long term and that will be good not only for Covid but also to reduce other diseases.

    Asked to clarify just she meant by ‘long term’ Michie paused, laughed and replied: ‘I think forever to some extent because this isn’t going to be the last pandemic.’

    https://twitter.com/i/status/1402682447586811913

    Michie subsequently doubled down on her comments in the discussion, likening masks, outdoor meetings and social distancing to previous changes in behaviour activity such as wearing seatbelts and picking up dog poo in the street, adding: ‘It’s not going to be a huge big deal, the kind of behaviours that we’re talking about.’

    Mr S wonders how the public will react to being conscripted into a permanent revolution by Michie and her good comrades.

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

    BTL:

    Blindsideflanker • 19 hours ago
    Communist promotes a totalitarian agenda, well I never, who would have thought it.

    Marius • 18 hours ago
    She is an utterly malignant nutjob, but I am forced to conclude that the pretend Tories are entirely happy with her deranged input. No-one would appoint a card carrying member of a British Nzi party to a key state role, but commies are good to go, despite the 100m+ death toll.

    2. Maybe the venerable Professor has a valid point.

      More ‘social distancing’ means less shagging. Less shagging means less overpopulation. I think she’s onto a good thing.

  21. Fury as Russia brands jailed Vladimir Putin critic Alexei Navalny ‘a US spy’. 11 June 2021.

    Russia provoked fury yesterday by claiming jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny was a US agent.

    A Moscow court declared his political party ‘extremist’ and banned groups founded by the activist, pictured, in the latest move to silence opponents of Russian president Vladimir Putin.

    Well I’ve looked around for this “Fury” but I can’t find it. The “US Agent” is a bit off as well! I’m pretty certain that Navalny is an Mi6 concoction!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9674869/Russia-brands-jailed-Vladimir-Putin-critic-Alexei-Navalny-spy.html

    1. mng Araminta, DM probably mean Tyson Fury, although what he’s got to do with a Soros / US State funded funded blogger course for Young Leaders
      [scholarship from Yale’s World Fellows program, with graduates directly linked to the Maidan Revolution in Ukraine] not sure. I’ll have to find a woke and ask

    2. mng Araminta, DM probably mean Tyson Fury, although what he’s got to do with a Soros / US State funded funded blogger course for Young Leaders
      [scholarship from Yale’s World Fellows program, with graduates directly linked to the Maidan Revolution in Ukraine] not sure. I’ll have to find a woke and ask

  24. Steerpike
    Watch: Rees-Mogg mocks Oxford ‘pimply adolescents’
    10 June 2021, 2:48pm

    In recent months Jacob Rees-Mogg has kept a low profile in Westminster. The leader of the House is kept mainly these days to the confines of managing parliamentary business with the mile-long ‘Mogg conga’ queuing system last June being one of the few occasions he has returned to the limelight.

    So Mr S was delighted to see the Old Etonian demonstrate he has lost none of his wit or wisdom when he came to the Commons today to field questions from backbenchers. A question by Ipswich Tom Hunt MP decrying the ‘wokeification’ of British universities offered Rees-Mogg the chance to offer his thoughts on Churchill college Cambridge potentially rebranding, 150 Oxford academics refusing to teach until Oriel’s statue of Cecil Rhodes is removed and Magdalen college removing a portrait of the Queen.

    Rees-Mogg told the House:

    “As for Magdalen college, it’s not exactly 1687, 1688, it’s a few pimply adolescents getting excited and taking down a picture of Her Majesty. It makes Magdalene look pretty wet but it’s not the end of the world. I wouldn’t get too excited about that though it does amuse me to speculate what would happen if one of her Her Majesty’s subjects suggested taking down the stars and stripes in an American university, it might not be enormously well-received and as I think the pimply adolescent in question was an American citizen, he might like to think about that. He might think that taking down the US flag in an American university was a bridge too far, even for the most patriotic Briton.

    https://youtu.be/iRz2HAqCFYo

    “As regards the academics refusing to teach, I mean I am half tempted to say you should be lucky not to be taught by such a useless bunch but if they are that feeble, what are you missing? I mean what are they doing there? Why don’t they have any pride in their country, our marvellous history and its success? And Rhodes is not a black and white figure. Perhaps they’re not learned enough to have bothered to look up the history of Rhodes in any detail which has been written about quite extensively now and as I say: he is a figure of importance and of interest and of enormous generosity to Oxford. Do they want to give the money back to the descendants of Cecil Rhodes? Or are they intending to keep it to themselves? So we must not allow this wokeness to happen. The idea of changing Churchill college, well perhaps we should introduce a bill to rename Cambridge Churchill and call it Churchill university and that would be one in the eye for the lefties

    Renaming Cambridge university? Only an Oxford graduate could ever propose such an idea.

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

    Blindsideflanker • 16 hours ago • edited

    I wouldn’t get too excited about that

    Then he will be saying we shouldn’t get excited about something, then something else, and so on until all our culture has been cleansed away. At what point will Rees-Mogg draw a line in the sand and say no further?

    In the US there are Chinese emigres who remember what it was like living under Mao’s cultural revolution and they are speaking up at the similarity they are now seeing in the US. The lazy Tories will stir themselves when it is too late.

  25. Headline in the DT:

    The Pentagon may bomb the Taliban if it tries to retake Kabul in the wake of US forces withdrawing, it emerged on Thursday night….

    I wonder if it will be called Operation Kabulldozer?

  26. Boris Johnson praises Joe Biden as ‘breath of fresh air’ after talks – as it happened. 11 June 2021.

    Boris Johnson and Joe Biden have had their first in-person meeting at Carbis Bay in Cornwall, where the G7 summit will start tomorrow. Johnson described the president as a “breath of fresh air”. And Biden reaffirmed his commitment to the UK-US “special relationship”. The two men also signed a new “Atlantic Charter”. Here is the joint statement explaining it. It says:

    The president and the prime minister set out a global vision in a new Atlantic Charter to deepen cooperation in democracy and human rights, defence and security, science and innovation, and economic prosperity, with renewed joint efforts to tackle the challenges posed by climate change, biodiversity loss, and emerging health threats.

    Excuse me I can’t find my sick bag!

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2021/jun/10/uk-covid-live-news-latest-updates-matt-hancock-pandemic-coronavirus-brexit-g7

    2. What I cannot understand is why they are donating Pfizer rather than Oxford Astra-Zeneca to the third world. It is simply not practical to keep vast amounts of vaccine safe in the field stored in liquid nitrogen, when there is a sporting chance of keeping it in a fridge long enough to dispense it to the natives. You also get a lot more done with OAZ than with Pfizer, with even enough left over (about 90% of the budget, but they might need more) to pay bribes and bonuses.

      1. Morning Jeremy. This is more a Publicity Gimmick than a realistic aid package!

    3. Morning, Araminta.

      It’s all theatre, third rate end of the rusting pier theatre with an audience consisting of those bored souls who have metaphorically come in out of the rain. Johnson’s posing as the democratic libertarian who will lead the UK to prosperity via a green nirvana is more of that third rate acting. He is nothing but a fraud.

      1. Morning Korky. As are they all. One wonders what happened to those Public Reformers and Social Justice activists of the Victorian age. Where are their modern counterparts!

        1. I’ve not read much social history but I think that the people you mention held strong beliefs in improving the World, not just for themselves but for their people.
          The modern politician, especially those who came along a few decades after WWII, have turned out to be destroyers as opposed to builders. Using claims of improvement they destroyed (amongst many other institutions) the bedrock of any nation, its education system.
          Now the destroyers have morphed into greedy, in it for their own enrichment charlatans, and if it means destroying society as we know it, so be it. The medieval robber barons would be green with envy at the actions of the current political cabal.

  27. Boris Johnson praises Joe Biden as ‘breath of fresh air’ after talks – as it happened. 11 June 2021.

    Boris Johnson and Joe Biden have had their first in-person meeting at Carbis Bay in Cornwall, where the G7 summit will start tomorrow. Johnson described the president as a “breath of fresh air”. And Biden reaffirmed his commitment to the UK-US “special relationship”. The two men also signed a new “Atlantic Charter”. Here is the joint statement explaining it. It says:

    The president and the prime minister set out a global vision in a new Atlantic Charter to deepen cooperation in democracy and human rights, defence and security, science and innovation, and economic prosperity, with renewed joint efforts to tackle the challenges posed by climate change, biodiversity loss, and emerging health threats.

    Excuse me I can’t find my sick bag!

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2021/jun/10/uk-covid-live-news-latest-updates-matt-hancock-pandemic-coronavirus-brexit-g7

  28. Why is it that the back-up batteries in mains smoke alarms always fail in the wee hours? Just watched the youTube video to ensure I don’t electrocute myself and found this BTL comment:

    “Yes, smoke alarms are a good invention, put this particular model isn’t as easy to change batteries on as the video makes it look. After listening to the bip, bip for two hours in the middle of the night you might start considering burning your house down just to shut it up.”….

    1. Indeed!
      02:00 or so… PEEP!
      Awoken with thundering heart… is house on fire…? Silence, so, relax, and strat to go to…PEEP!
      Argh!

    2. Because battery output decreases with falling temperature, thus the low voltage sensors will first trigger when the ceiling temperature is coldest, which is normally in the middle of the night.

      1. mng Grizz, am sure everyone on here fully agrees but for the purposes of democracy and detente with our latest overseas visitors spoiling the landscape in Cornwall, the above is the toned down variant

      2. Too quick Grizz, a bit of forplay first with some of our Tudor ancestors more ingenious ways of inflicting severe pain without death, strappado, rack, near death by pressing, par-boiled in the blood of the innocents he killed and broiled at the stake to name a few, then hanged , drawn and quartered with the evicerated giblets liberally dosed with some of Porton Down’s most potent diseases thence furtively introduced into the wet markets of Wuhan. If you wanted to be a bit more exotic you could add nearly death by 999 cuts. I don’t like Blair

        1. “I don’t like Blair.” Oh, I wouldn’t go as far as that. I utterly loathe the cretin.

          1. I guess you realised I was being ironic – next to Herr Schicklgruber I think Blair is possibly one of recorded history’s foulest excrescences .

  31. There are many Rhodes Scholars in the world. President Clinton was one.

    Janet Whitehead Sheering, Essex

    For any system to succeed, it must show what failure will produce

  32. There are many Rhodes Scholars in the world. President Clinton was one.

    Janet Whitehead Sheering, Essex

    For any system to succeed, it must show what failure will produce

  33. Good morning, all. There was a gorgeous sunrise – now it is cloudy and grey and very breezy.

    Toy Boy sticking his sausage in, I note.

  34. The Government has responded to the petition you signed – “Allow non-professional singing in groups of more than six indoors”.

    Government responded:

    The Government eased restrictions from Step 3 to allow up to 6 people to sing indoors. It is right that we take a cautious response and follow the views of public health experts.

    Bang on cue: BBC Radio 3 News 7:00 am today: “The Association of Directors of Public Health have urged the delay of lifting restrictions on the 21st June as cases rise’

    1. In other words, standard Government response to the public “Get stuffed! – we’ve got your money and can afford a bigger militia than you, so we don’t need you”.

  36. 334180+up ticks,
    Morning Each,
    Could this be seen as the threat of threats ?

    The Associated Press
    @AP
    ·
    8h
    British Prime Minister Boris Johnson says G-7 nations will pledge to give 1 billion coronavirus vaccine doses to poorer countries. Half of that will come from the U.S. http://apne.ws/brJrLzL

      1. 334180+ up ticks,
        Morning S,
        Who can say with near CERTAINTY what the endgame will be concerning this issue, the rhetorical foundation regarding it has been so deviously murky.

      1. 334180+ up ticks,
        Morning AWK,
        I am thinking of the long term effect, down the road where all the cans are from the past.

        1. always easy to use echo chamber to pledge when there’s no money. It won;t be the cans that are kicked it’ll be ther perceived clwons who feel entitled and a coerced, compliant youth. The prescient issue is today’s generation (your children and mine) have zero comprehension of the past and nor do they want to because if they did bother to take the time to understand the past, the present would be contextual.

          Instead they reject out of hand anything that precedes their notion of ‘the perfect world’ when in fact they don’t realize they are marching steadily but surely over the cliff. It’s easy to throw buzz words around in support of your own argument … it is a lot harder
          to fully understand the multifaceted aspects of any given issue from multiple perspective. Hence why ‘cancel culture’ and the like is the
          default option currently as it’s the quick and dirty solution to every problem of the vacuous and that includes those elected, not delivering nor any intent to

        2. always easy to use echo chamber to pledge when there’s no money. It won;t be the cans that are kicked it’ll be ther perceived clwons who feel entitled and a coerced, compliant youth. The prescient issue is today’s generation (your children and mine) have zero comprehension of the past and nor do they want to because if they did bother to take the time to understand the past, the present would be contextual.

          Instead they reject out of hand anything that precedes their notion of ‘the perfect world’ when in fact they don’t realize they are marching steadily but surely over the cliff. It’s easy to throw buzz words around in support of your own argument … it is a lot harder
          to fully understand the multifaceted aspects of any given issue from multiple perspective. Hence why ‘cancel culture’ and the like is the
          default option currently as it’s the quick and dirty solution to every problem of the vacuous and that includes those elected, not delivering nor any intent to

  38. When (and why) did the cretinous expression, taking the knee, replace proper the English words such as “kneeling”, “genuflecting”, or “grovelling”?

    3. Morning Grizz. You forgot kowtowing; something the Brits absolutely refused to do with our earliest contacts with the Chinese Court!

      1. That was then Minty…..

        From ZH:

        “The UK government has authorized the sale of £2.6-billion worth of military and civilian equipment with potential military use to China in the past three years, government figures show. Last year saw a tripling in exports to China of “dual use” items defined as “civilian goods with a military purpose.”” Some £1.6-billion worth were authorized in 2020, compared to £526-million in 2019.

        The increase coincided with the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic in early 2020. The exports have been approved while China is identified by the British government as “an increasing risk to U.K. interests” and “the biggest state-based threat to the U.K.’s economic security.”

        ….interesting times……

    4. Morning Grizz. You forgot kowtowing; something the Brits absolutely refused to do with our earliest contacts with the Chinese Court!

    5. Its true meaning was as a mark of disrespect given by Colin Kaepernick towards the national anthem. I’m sure that we all know that on here, but idiotic footballers believe that it is a sign of virtue and cannot see its corrosive effect.

      2. Funny wince the meringue wearing fellow started his crusade he’s… not worked.

    6. ‘Tis from the popular (until season 8) televised serial ‘The Game of Chairs’, where ‘pon t’was much waffle of folk ‘taking the knee’ to show subservience to another or a cause.

      Of course, like all things, it is transitory and doesn’t really indicate respect. When you are respected you confront it, eye to eye as an equal.

    7. The use of “Taking the Knee” seemed to come about after the George Floyd incident . .

      Americanism . . sounded somehow “reverent – in honour etc”?
      What they, the BLACK LIVES MATTER movement have done, is hi-jack the gesture for their own use . . seems “noble” somehow ?

  39. The Euros haven’t even started and I’m already sick of it, I wont be watching.
    Has anyone yet considered that this kneeling gesture falls foul of the laws protecting the disabled and the elderly from discrimination.
    Many people cannot physically kneel, forcing them to watch the fit and able bodied performing this manoeuvre is like slap in the face for them,they need to stamp it out (no offence to those that cannot stamp).

    1. Scotland will not take the knee before matches at Euro 2021, instead opting to ‘stand up to racism’
      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2021/06/09/england-boos-will-end-fans-understand-taking-knee-not-political/

      England on Thursday night were left isolated in taking the knee alone in their three European Championship group matches after Scotland announced they would not join them in doing so.

      Amid the publication of a new poll that laid bare the deep divisions among supporters over the gesture, the Scottish Football Association said its players would not resume performing it, having stopped in March.

      Croatia, England’s opening opponents, also confirmed their squad would not take the knee on a collective basis during Euro 2020.

      With Czech Republic having previously announced they had adopted “a neutral political stance” over the pre-match routine, England were facing being the only team in Group D to continue to perform it.

      And still England will continue this gesture, seemingly completely oblivious to the fact that it is seen by many fans as endorsement of the political aims of the Black Lives Matter movement, which is marxist, racist and anarchist.

      3. I have yet to see any racism either professionally or personally. I’ve seen black thugs, white thugs. I think that racism is an invention created by a gestalt to push a narrative. I do believe there are revolting individuals and I don’t think that has anything to do with colour.

    2. Apparently a ‘minority’ of fans booed the players kneeling. Got to keep up that Left wing pro racism approach, eh BBC?

      Odd how a minority is actually the ‘majority’.

    1. Morning Bob

      The air always felt heavy and polluted in the Southampton area where Moh’s late parents lived . They weren’t too far from Burseldon. Get yourself down to the shoreline at Netley , there is a nice pub there , and some good grub. You will see how busy Southampton water is with ships going about their business.

  43. Good morning all

    Dull day , cloudy, feels damp. Moh was away early to golf , wearing his shorts … He who complains about the cold , who likes closed windows and doors.

    Yesterday evening was chilly, but I had a lovely dog walk in the fog on the heath at dusk, on my own with the spaniels .. the chirring from the nightjars was amazing , I even witnessed several low fly pasts, , they are little birds with a huge wingspan .

    3. Good morning, Maggie.

      I wouldn’t exactly call Nightjars “little birds”, they are quite substantial. I was once a member of a licensed BTO ringing group that conducted a survey on Nightjars in Sherwood Forest. We would catch them at dusk, weigh and measure them, photograph their wing markings, attach a numbered ring to their leg, then release them again. Sherwood Forest has the second largest population of the birds in England after the New Forest. They have the tiniest bill imaginable coupled with the widest gape. A very charismatic and beautiful bird is the ‘goatsucker’.

  44. JAN MOIR: It’s not just a name… Harry has stolen the Queen’s crown jewels

    During a life devoted to public service and being on almost permanent display, Lilibet was the one thing the Queen had that was entirely her own.

    It was hers, and hers alone

    Spoken aloud, it was the affectionate nickname first bestowed upon her by her grandfather, King George V, adopted by her beloved father and mother, and an echo of the past that she must still hear, whispered down the hallways and by the firesides of Balmoral and Sandringham.

    It was also a private endearment uttered throughout more than 70 years of marriage by her husband who, may I remind certain parties, is recently deceased.

    Elizabeth may Regina, but Lilibet was something more sublime.

    No, it does not appear on patents or seals or official documents, but it was her signature on the most personal of correspondences. It was the cipher that spoke of the bonds of family and also of the flesh and blood woman behind the throne, under the crown, beyond the castle moat.

    Its use was restricted. It was a tender diminutive spoken only by those who knew and loved her.

    Lilibet was as much a part of the Queen’s personal identity as her Sunday hats and buckled shoes, her tweeds in the country and her cornflakes in Tupperware.

    And now it is no longer hers, its emotional exclusivity shattered; targeted and then blown apart like a clay pigeon. If we all instinctively understand its importance to HM, if even Noel Gallagher gets it — someone who is hardly a poster boy for the delicacies of family unity himself — why can’t Meghan and Harry understand the enormity of what they have done?

    Thanks to their perhaps well-meaning but thoughtless cradle- snatch of the Queen’s childhood nickname, Lilibet has been devalued faster than a cryptocurrency.

    Once only used in intimate royal circles, now it is in the mouths of American TV hosts and radio shock jocks. It is on BBC bulletins and in newspaper headlines. It is the subject of furious legal letters and at the heart of an unedifying briefing war involving gloat and counter-gloat.

    Lilibet is now spoken of as a truculence, an affront, a protocol ram-raid, a misstep.

    The jury is still out on whether using the name for the new baby Sussex is a deliberate act of marketing strategy and self-interest or an innocent tribute from a loving grandson that has gone awry. No matter whose side you are on it is clear that whatever it was, it no longer is — its private significance lost forever to the braying world.

    When it comes to Lilibet, all bets are off.

    You have to wonder what the Queen must think of the loss of this term of endearment, on the eve of her official birthday and in the week that Prince Philip would have celebrated his 100th.

    She turned 95 in April, four days after burying her husband at Windsor Castle. Newly widowed and grieving, she could be forgiven for hoping for an extended period of peace and tranquillity in these late years of her life. God knows she has earned it.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-9674707/JAN-MOIR-not-just-Harry-stolen-Queens-crown-jewel.html#newcomment

    1. “The jury is still out on whether using the name for the new baby Sussex
      is a deliberate act of marketing strategy and self-interest or an
      innocent tribute from a loving grandson that has gone awry. No matter
      whose side you are on it is clear that whatever it was, it no longer is —
      its private significance lost forever to the braying world”.

      A typical example of Gaslighting. Seems innocent but is weaponised to discombobulate.

    2. Personally, there is Her Majesty who will always remain so. I cannot imagine a better example of Britain that that stoic, hard working, calm, dignified and polite person who no doubt has a wicked sense of humour than Queen Elizabeth II.

      In contrast, the Megan and Harry show is a pathetic sitcom of some bloke I used to respect and a narcissistic slapper with the morality of a cobra.

    1. They don’t care.

      There’s no interest in solving the underlying problem namely that the barracks should be empty, or available to military personnel. Not illegal foreigners.

    2. There are so many things that are not right here in the UK .

      Moh and I went to Poole on Tuesday evening , our first real outing for nearly two years , there is a car park near Poole Quay , on our way down the steps was a very skinny hollow eyed English woman sitting on a bundle of blankets , begging , as articulate as any of us , she looked terrible ..

      She showed me her arms , not scarred , no evidence of needle use , she had a cough , I mean it, she looked a mess, She told me she lost her job at the beginning of Covid , worked in a hotel , then lost her rented flat , I don’t understand certain things .. I have been carrying around a £10 note for ages , because we don’t use cash now, do we . Everywhere requires a card.. so I parted with my £10 note , the thing is , I did it , but it was only a small gesture ..

      How and why are people ending up a mess , and who does the cradle of the welfare state apply to..

      1. mng TB. the welfare state’s been hollowed out and no safety net, all in pursuit of profit and idealogy. Am sure there aren’t many who would have acted in the noble way you did, certainly not among younger generations. As for illegal economic gimmegrants, what passes for the welfare state will be merely used as a tool / empty promise to attract those inbound with zero consideration for English people and their values

      2. It is a very fine line that we tread between relative comfort and disaster. There but for the grace of God go all of us.

          5. Sorry! I had a communication from the Jehovah’s Witnesses a couple of days ago….

        1. The end of furlough will be like a coastline with the waters receding, exposing the bare bones usually hidden beneath the waves, just before the poverty tsunami finally hits.

          Then workers will find that their jobs, and the companies that provided them, no longer exist. With the subsequent default on mortgages, bank loans, credit cards, rent…

      4. Unfortunately the welfare state has been hijacked by socialist and marxist social do-gooders. Instead of providing a safety net for those unfortunate to be at the bottom of the social scale it has become the basis for entitlement of a section of society who have been brainwashed to believe they are entitled to live off the tax contributions of those who contribute. It, together with all the other woke activities, has all the elements of historical societal collapse, it is simply a matter of time.

      6. It certainly doesn’t apply to the indigenous, Belle. Still less to those of us who have worked and fallen on hard times.

    3. 60,000 people needed to be accommodated in the middle of a pandemic? That’s how many are getting in illegally? We’re being swamped and all the government can do is talk tough to hide its complete failure.

  46. ‘Black Lives Matter’ registers as political party and could stand in local elections next year
    Laurence Fox has also lodged papers to register his Reclaim party
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/10/26/black-lives-matter-registers-political-party-could-stand-local/

    If the political party called Black Lives Matter is allowed to have those who demonstrate in its name at sporting events then why are the BNP, the English Defence League and other white supremacist political parties not afforded the same consideration?

    Surely you need to be neither left wing nor right wing to think that the same rules should apply to everybody?

  47. ‘Black Lives Matter’ registers as political party and could stand in local elections next year
    Laurence Fox has also lodged papers to register his Reclaim party
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/10/26/black-lives-matter-registers-political-party-could-stand-local/

    If the political party called Black Lives Matter is allowed to have those who demonstrate in its name at sporting events then why are the BNP, the English Defence League and other white supremist political parties afforded the same consideration?

    You need to be neither left wing nor right wing to think that the same rules should apply to everybody.

    3. What a revolting man! And why is an 80 year old wearing the T shirt of a 16 year old?

  49. Incompetence? Lies? Lies deployed under a veil of incompetence?
    We need more senior people to stand up and tell the truth about the shenanigans that this corrupt and lying government is getting up to. The time to keep quiet and remain in the shadows is ending. Speak up or be found to be complicit.

    https://twitter.com/HSJEditor/status/1402951627385016323

  50. Lee Cohen
    Biden proves that Trump was a true British ally

    Whatever you think of the former president, his commitment to the UK was clear
    10 June 2021, 6:11pm

    Now that Joe Biden has landed, many Brits may now be realising what a stalwart friend you had in Trump. Within minutes of arriving on UK shores, Biden was denouncing Britannia, Boris, Brexit — you name it. Far from hailing the UK, America’s most cherished ally, BIden was showing Britain a bullying disdain that should be reserved only for China or Iran.

    It is difficult to conceive of two stranger bedfellows than the golden-tongued Old Etonian and the awkward, plain-spoken ‘blue collar’ Joe Biden. But rhetoric, style and acuity aside, the two heads of government face divergent motivations when it comes to policy — these are likely to challenge the British-American partnership.

    Last week, Biden’s top UK diplomat Yael Lempert issued an official (and offensive) reprimand to Lord Frost, Johnson’s Brexit minister, suggesting that the UK is inflaming tension with the EU and Ireland over the Northern Irish Protocol. Nevermind that Biden is inserting the US into affairs in which it has no business and that he is so willing to flagrantly line up against our staunchest ally. Nevermind that Biden is dangling trade goodies in exchange for British acquiescence to the EU.

    Biden has committed to reversing Donald Trump’s foreign policies, mostly on grounds of authorship rather than merit. Many Americans deeply regret this return to Obama-style postures, which bows to unelected transnationals and ultimately alienates friends and emboldens enemies.

    In defiance of his strongman image, Trump mostly kept America out of global conflicts. When his team did engage, they achieved more than any prior US presidency when it came to cooling the conflicts in the Middle East. Donald Trump was one of the greatest champions of Britain ever to grace the Oval Office, whether or not that raises British eyebrows. In word and deed, Trump celebrated the USA’s most important global alliance and viewed Britain through the same lens that gave rise to his ‘American Greatness’ mantra.

    Britain’s demand to recover its sovereignty resonated with Trump’s world view and he supported it from the first moments of his presidency. Trump’s rhetoric might have been grating to many British ears but his relations with the country were largely harmonious on substance. He never made over-reaching demands on our staunchest ally and he didn’t meddle beyond expressing personal opinion (quod vide Brexit or recognising how much luck Harry would need in his marriage).

    The single international policy prize that mattered to Britain and eluded him was a US-UK Free Trade Agreement. Chagrin within the halls of Brussels was no reason to hold back from this — he saw the EU for what it is — but this mutually beneficial pact was never going to be allowed. Democrat ideology, driving as it does in the Pelosi direction of Congress, is ambiguous to the national interest. Opposing anything authored by Trump is the guiding star.

    As Biden makes this first transatlantic crossing as President, the contrast is stark. His team insists that Biden will ‘re-establish America’s global leadership’ and ‘earn back our position of trusted leadership’. This is a false premise. Given Trump’s alignment with the UK, Biden’s anti-Trumpism has to be expressed in other ways. Most likely this means favouring transnationals such as the UN, EU and WHO rather than our most trusted ally. It probably also means looking to back those bleating loudest about Britain’s escape from the EU.

    Biden’s primordial identity is ‘I’m Irish’. True to form, the out-of-touch President has internalised all of the anti-British prejudices and grievances that Irish immigrants brought to America. It is hardly surprising that Biden has threatened Boris Johnson over the Northern Ireland Protocol, a matter of no US national interest, rather than pursuing what should matter in the bilateral context — most obviously a US-UK trade deal.

    Anti-Trumpism means opposing Brexit. The merits of the thing cannot be rationally assessed on its own terms. Johnson and Biden are united in some areas such as the climate change agenda, and, in principle, to holding China, Russia and Iran to account. But their relationship is fraught with obstacles. As Johnson has put his nation on a path of its own, Biden’s view accords with that of his former boss: notwithstanding the many ties of culture, language, values, intelligence sharing and defence, the bilateral relationship with the UK is to be always subordinate to a certain world order.

    British friends who suffered from a form of Trump-induced derangement may soon realise that the affliction blinded them to a true friend.

    WRITTEN BY
    Lee Cohen
    Lee Cohen, a senior fellow of the Bow Group and the Danube Institute, was adviser on Great Britain to the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee and founded the Congressional United Kingdom Caucus.

    1. The Speccie has been a big disappointment with it’s TDS and the way it covered the election steal

      2. The Speccie has been a big disappointment with it’s TDS and the way it covered the election steal

        It so appalled me that I did not renew my subscription. I might add that, given that Andrew Neill is a particularly severe #TDS sufferer, it makes me less enthusiastic about the arrival of GB News.

    2. “….It is difficult to conceive of two stranger bedfellows than the golden-tongued Old Etonian and the awkward, plain-spoken ‘blue collar’ Joe Biden. “

      I agree with the general thrust of this article – but I must take exception to the description of Boris Johnson as ‘golden-tongued’ – I cannot recall any British prime minister, except possibly for Gordon Brown, who was as bumblingly incoherent and confused as Johnson.

        1. You listen to him? I stopped a long time ago when I realised he lies when his mouth open.

    3. “. Nevermind that Biden is inserting the US into affairs in which it has no business ”

      Well that’s a first !! /sarc

  51. Where Do Red-Headed Babies Come From?

    I can honestly say I never thought of this answer…

    After their baby was born, the panicked father went to see the Obstetrician. ‘Doctor,’ the man said, ‘I don’t mind telling you, but I’m a little upset because my daughter has red hair. She can’t possibly be mine!!’

    ‘Nonsense,’ the doctor said…’Even though you and your wife both have black hair, one of your ancestors may have contributed red hair to the gene pool.’

    ‘It isn’t possible,’ the man insisted. ‘This can’t be, our families on both sides had jet-black hair for generations.’

    “Well,” said the doctor, “let me ask you this. How often do you have sex?”

    The man seemed a bit ashamed… ‘I’ve been working very hard for the past year. We only made love once or twice every few months.’

    ‘Well, there you have it!’ The doctor said confidently….

    “It’s Rust!”

  53. Just had a drive into the village and its….lupin day!
    Thousands of them line the roads all over Finland at this time of year.
    We have quite a few growing at the side of our house.
    You don’t plant them here..they just self-seed.

          2. Just a skill I have…😱 But I have recently grown 4 roses (healthy) from cuttings! Dead pleased with myself!

    2. I’ve never managed to grow them successfully. If they don’t die straightaway they get covered in nasty blight.

      1. I’ve not had much luck, either, yet my grandmother’s garden was full of them (those and Michaelmas daisies)

  54. Stepping Into The Spotlight? Putin’s Hidden Daughters Take The Stage At Prestigious St. Petersburg Forum. 11 June 2021.

    MOSCOW — At the high-profile St. Petersburg International Economic Forum earlier this month, the head of Moscow State University’s Center for the National Intellectual Reserve, Katerina Tikhonova, gave a six-minute speech by video link about using “breakthrough technologies” to boost investment.

    On the sidelines of the same event, genetics researcher Maria Vorontsova gave a 13-minute interview on rare diseases that was broadcast on national television.

    Both events would have slipped by unremarked in the crowded program of the three-day forum, except for the fact that the two women are reported to be the daughters of authoritarian Russian President Vladimir Putin.

    Vlad has balls! Quelle surprise!

    https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-putin-daughters-public-roles-spotlight/31300858.html

    1. There is no secret about them.They are both married with families and both are professional scientists.
      They would be both in their 30s.

    2. Gosh – I imagine that they got their prestigious appointments entirely on merit….

          7. Deffo when they showed the ‘assumed body’ being removed from the cells it didn’t look anything like him. Did you notice how many times is was shown on the MSM ?

      2. Da Tovarisch, to quote Vladimir Putin : ” I am the most liberal & tolerant of democratically elected world leaders & I will shoot or poison anyone who says otherwise! “

  55. Welcome to the Free Speech Union’s weekly newsletter. This newsletter is a brief round-up of the free speech news of the week.

    Lisa, Maya, Marion, Ann: fighting back against the silencing of women

    After an investigation lasting two months, FSU member Lisa Keogh has been cleared by Abertay University. She will not be punished for saying that women have vaginas – but it should never have come to this. It shouldn’t have taken two months to dismiss the nonsensical complaints and Lisa should not have been subjected to this ordeal in the final weeks of her law degree. But this is an important victory and we’re delighted with the result. Lisa said: “No woman should face discrimination in the way I have because she believes in sex-based rights. I want to say a special thank you to the Free Speech Union for helping me through this stressful time, in particular Fraser Hudghton, the Case Management Director, who has been on hand at all hours to answer my calls and navigate me through this.” The news was widely reported in the Daily Mail, Times, Metro, Herald, Daily Record, Courier, and Christian Today. Our full response can be found in our press release.

    The victory of Maya Forstater in the Employment Appeal Tribunal yesterday is a victory for free speech, albeit quite a small one. The ruling found that, contrary to the judgement of the Employment Tribunal, gender critical beliefs are deserving of respect in a democratic society and, as such, are entitled to protection under Articles 9 and 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. However, the judge made it clear that the expression of gender critical views in the workplace would, in some circumstances, still constitute “harassment”, as defined in s.26 of the Equality Act 2010. And even though Maya won her appeal, her case will now have to be heard again in the Employment Tribunal and a win is by no means guaranteed. The Employment Tribunal may conclude that her firm was right not to renew her contract because her expression of gender critical views did constitute harassment of trans and gender non-conforming people, and preventing that was more important than protecting her right to express her belief that transwomen aren’t women. What the judgement means is that henceforth employers will have to balance their obligation to protect trans and gender non-confirming people from harassment against their obligation not to discriminate against employees on the basis of their gender critical beliefs. And an employer may well decide that the former obligation trumps the latter – and if challenged about this decision in the ET, the ET may well side with the employer. So there is still a good deal of work to be done to protect free speech in the workplace – something we’re going to be campaigning for shortly. (You can read our response to the verdict here.) Nevertheless, the judgement does mean that employers won’t be able to persecute gender critical feminists with impunity – and for that we should thank Maya and her army of supporters. The full judgement can be found here. Her solicitor, Peter Daly, says the ruling means “the era of ‘No Debate’ around sex and gender, if it ever existed, is over”.

    Meanwhile, in Scotland a feminist campaigner – Marion Millar – has been arrested and charged for supposedly “transphobic” tweets. Worryingly, a fundraiser to support her was removed by GoFundMe on the grounds that it was “prohibited”. But she later raised the funds simply by posting her PayPal details on Twitter. We will be monitoring this case closely and have reached out to Marion to offer our support.

    And Marion isn’t the only Scotswoman under fire for her gender critical beliefs. The former rector of Edinburgh University, Ann Henderson, was “subjected to a sustained campaign of abuse and attempts to silence her after she called for a reasoned debate on gender recognition reforms”, the Times reports.

    Stonewall has faced a new barrage of criticism this week over its attempts to silence dissent. Organisations continue to quit its diversity scheme, including Channel 4, the Ministry of Justice, UCL and the University of Winchester, while other government departments are keeping the scheme “under review”. Police forces have been threatened with legal action over their affiliation with Stonewall by Harry Miller’s Fair Cop pressure group on the grounds that the link breaches rules on political impartiality. FOI requests have revealed the extent to which Stonewall’s dogma on trans issues has permeated into public institutions – without any democratic oversight. In the Times Libby Purves says Stonewall “is now becoming the bully itself”. Likewise, the Telegraph’s Tim Stanley says the campaign organisation has gone too far and Celia Warden writes about the culture of fear that our institutions, including the NHS, are creating.

    Snitching portals

    We’ve written to all the Russell Group universities advising them that the reporting portals they’ve set up to enable students and staff to make complaints about “micro-aggressions”, among other things, may render them vulnerable to legal challenge, as reported in the Telegraph. The Mail says that more than 60 UK universities have paid to install the “Report + Support” tool on their websites and the company which developed the reporting system secured £1.35 million in funding from UUK, the group to which all university Vice-Chancellors belong. Meanwhile, Cambridge Vice-Chancellor Stephen Toope has beaten another retreat, withdrawing his University’s ‘Change the Culture’ campaign which was what led to the creation of the Cambridge snitching portal in the first place. Camilla Turner has the full story in the Telegraph. Our Director Douglas Murray says the victory at Cambridge is a template for victory elsewhere.

    Not all Vice-Chancellors are woke. We welcome the excellent comments from the Provost of UCL, Dr Michael Spence, who said the idea that having to listen to opposing views make students “unsafe” is nonsense and it’s not the job of universities to make students “comfortable”, but rather to challenge them. As Adam Tomkins puts it in the Herald, “None of us has the right not to be offended by what each other says. Just because someone else’s speech upsets you – just because you find it offensive – does not mean they have no right to say it.”

    A study has found, unsurprisingly, that there are significant generational divides when it comes to free speech, with older generations much more enthusiastic about it. To address this, we’re campaigning for the Department for Education to amend its guidance on the teaching of British values in schools so it encompasses the need to teach children about the importance of free speech. That would have been useful to point to in our recent defence of a trainee teacher at Manchester Metropolitan University who was placed under investigation – and threatened with referral to a Fitness to Practice panel – after he said he would be willing to show Mohammed cartoons in class if they had educational value. Gary Oliver has written about that case in the Conservative Woman. “Aided by Toby Young’s Free Speech Union, the student teacher is in the clear – at least for the moment. However, one wonders what sort of reference from MMU will follow him around and whether, when seeking a teaching post, he will find that the educational establishment has already marked his card,” he wrote.

    Wisden goes woke

    The hounding of cricketer Ollie Robinson for nine year-old tweets has shown once again the need to pushback against the Witch-Finder Generals. That teenagers make off-colour jokes should surprise nobody, but in modern Britain it’s enough to destroy careers. Toby wrote about this for the Mail earlier this week. We’re pleased to see Oliver Dowden, the Culture Secretary, and the Prime Minister defending Robinson and telling the England and Wales Cricket Board to “think again” over the decision to suspend him and place him under investigation – even though Robinson has already apologised. Matthew Syed in the Times writes that cancel culture “is like a virus that people catch, finding hitherto undiscovered wells of pleasure in the bringing down of people for past sins, stretching back into youthful adolescence. The idea of rehabilitation, still less forgiveness, is ruled out of court.”

    Further players have been dragged into the storm since the offence archaeologists sifted through Robinson’s old tweets and even Wisden, the cricketing almanac, has joined in, prompting harsh criticism from fans. The sleuths at Wisden “discovered” one post made by a player when he was just 15. FSU director Douglas Murray says in the Sun that this whole affair demonstrates the “stupid, unforgiving and vengeful way in which we now treat people”. You can read Rod Liddle’s caustic take on the “controversy” here.

    Meanwhile, the Greens have dropped their Batley and Spen by-election candidate – the rugby league international player Ross Peltier – for posts he made as a teenager. As long as this is considered an acceptable tactic for bringing people down we recommend all our members install Tweet Delete, an app that deletes everything you’ve ever said on Twitter that’s more than a week old. It’s a lot cheaper than hiring a “social media scrubber”.

    Andrew Doyle – creator of Titania McGrath and a member of our Advisory Council – made the case against cancel culture for Reason. Former President Obama has again criticised cancel culture and its dangers, but the ACLU, once a great defender of the First Amendment, is split over whose speech it will actually defend. Like so many once great pro-free speech organisations, it’s been captured by the woke left.

    Taking the knee

    If football players continue to take the knee it’s inevitable that some fans are going to boo – not because they’re racist, but because they object to the intrusion of politics into our national game. If politics is to be kept out of football, then that rule should be applied to all political organisations, equally – the FA shouldn’t make an exception of BLM because it’s fashionable. But if the FA is going to insist on defending players’ right to take the knee, then fans should be permitted to react as they see fit, whether by applauding or booing. It cannot be free speech for the players but not the fans. That’s our view on the ongoing controversy, expressed in a letter to the FA, and reported in the Mail. Scott Benton MP says it’s time for players to stop taking the knee, and that the gesture is not an uncontroversial gesture of support for the moral cause of anti-racism but a statement of support for the Black Lives Matter organisation and its views. Writing in ConservativeHome, Paul Goodman says “the nation’s best-attended sport faces the possibility, to put it no more strongly, of crowds balkanising before football matches on political lines, if not quite ethnic ones”. This is the critical point: when our national team competes in the Euros it’s an opportunity for people to put their differences aside and come together, which is why politics should be kept out of football. The England players should follow the example of Scotland’s players who have decided to stand together and link arms to express their support for the cause of anti-racism. If the England players do that at the first match against Croatia on Sunday instead of taking the knee, not a single fan will boo.

    Librarian suspended for criticising China’s human rights record

    We are supporting Maureen O’Bern, the librarian suspended and placed under investigation by Wigan Council for criticising the Council’s decision to enter into a contract with a Chinese state company, given China’s persecution of Muslims. We have written to the Council on her behalf and will offer her whatever support she needs to ensure she is reinstated.

    Covid censorship

    Free speech isn’t the only thing harmed by censorship. Writing in the Sunday Times, Jamie Metzl argues that stifling scientific and political debate will make another pandemic more likely. In the Telegraph, the indefatigable Douglas Murray criticises the media for failing to report on anti-lockdown protests, and social media companies who arrogantly decided they “knew” where the virus originated: something which is now the subject of intense debate. Brian Monteith challenges Ofcom’s stifling of debate about Covid-19 – all the more troubling as the Online Safety Bill is set to give the broadcast regulator huge new powers. As long-standing members will know, we tried and failed to challenge Ofcom’s censorious coronavirus guidance in the High Court, but at last people are beginning to wake up to the role Ofcom has played in inhibiting debate about the government’s handling of the pandemic. We would encourage all our members to write to their MPs about it. Instructions on how to do that can be found here.

    Arts and advertising

    The Advertising Standards Authority is imposing a woke worldview on the public, writes Len Shackleton in Spiked. No-one will touch Morrissey, writes James Hall in the Telegraph, while comedian Nick Dixon, who is on our Advisory Council and was on the roster for one of our FSU comedy nights, has said he was overlooked for a gig because he’s a white male.

    GB News

    “The original meaning of woke was somebody who was aware of social justice issues and who can complain about that?” said Andrew Neil, ahead of the launch of GB News. But the insidious spread of cancel culture now “stands against everything we have stood for since the enlightenment onwards and that is why it is serious”. Neil will have a Woke Watch segment on his new TV show and he told the Evening Standard that “there are so many delicious issues around cancel culture that it is hard to decide what to pick”. Sadly true. We’re looking forward to the debut of GB News this weekend.

    Debbie Hicks: handcuffed, arrested and charged after filming inside a hospital and posting the film on Facebook

    Debbie Hicks, the anti-lockdown campaigner who was arrested after she filmed what appeared to be an empty hospital ward in December last year – and posted the film on Facebook – has been charged with a Public Order Offence. She is now raising funds for her defence. Whether you agree with Debbie’s views or not, this is an important free speech case – her legal team will be running an Article 10 defence – and she deserves our support.

    Sharing the Newsletter

    We’ve received several requests to make it possible to share these newsletters on social media, so we’ve added the option to post them on a few different platforms, including Twitter and Facebook. Just click on the buttons below.

    If someone has shared this newsletter with you and you’d like to join the FSU, you can find our website here.

    Remember, all of our work depends on our members, we receive no public money: sign-up today or encourage a friend to join and help us turn the tide against the censors.

    Best wishes,

    1. Maureen O’Bern should be far more worried about China’s social credit system that oppresses ALL its citizens, rather than its ongoing war against a movement that regards her as a second class citizen.

      The Maya Forstater case is a classic illustration of why identity politics is doomed to fail, and is a terrible, unfair system that should disappear from British law forthwith.
      Any group whose rights are advanced purely because they belong to that group must at some point trample on the rights of another group.

      women’s rights advanced at the cost of men’s.
      muslim rights advance at the cost of womens’, non-muslims’ and ex-muslims’
      gay rights advance at the cost of straight people’s (think re-definition of marriage to exclude sexual fidelity)
      trans rights advance at the cost of womens’
      etc etc.

      Laws should be framed around truth and justice, not the advancement of different groups.

      1. Thousands of Chinese visit Lapland every Winter.They don’t look very oppressed to me.

    2. The the FSI even exists – no, *has* to exist is the real terror. However, it’s important to note that these are not crimes. They’re the state thugs being embarrassed and crushing dissent.

      They are simply authoritarianism – thuggery, bullying and oppression. That folks, is frightening. In a democracy, if such a case were brought against the free citizen then the officials responsible are sacked. Simple as.

  58. Morning all, just back from Mrs VVOF 3rd radiotherapy treatment. I can confirm traffic levels are pretty well back to normal, although the congestion on the outskirts of Bath has been made worse I think by vehicles avoiding the Clean Air Zone. It was introduced in March and now drivers of non compliant vans and HGVs have learnt the routes to avoid the fee.
    If any councils have a need for potholes or barely existent road surfaces, they need to get in touch with BANES, they seem to have an abundance as my poor suspension will confirm.
    Pub lunch today with fellow retired work colleagues which I am looking forward to as it has been a long time since the last get together. 🍺🍝

    1. I hope Mrs VVOF is coping well with the radiotherapy – they gave me some cream to use on the sore patches which helped.

      1. Thanks for your kind wishes.
        So far so good. She has been using E45 which we had already had. That appears to be helping.

        2. E45 cream is good, and quite soothing. I was given some aqueous cream in a large tube which was good, and previously I also had some hydro cortisone steroid cream.

  59. The BLACK LIVES MATTER movement has registered as a political entity . . . So the England team will be making political gestures by kneeling down in support . . . .

    3. Shome Mishtake Shurely?*. BLM is a terrorist organisation if the UK government definition is to be taken literally.

      * That’s my Sean Connery impression done for the day.

  60. Gareth Southgate – a chinless man with a bunch of teen-age, over paid, over hyped hooligans . . .

    England Team . .?? – my #rse!

  61. RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Mr President must tell the EU to stop playing silly sausages… Why would Joe Biden want to fall out with America’s principal NATO ally over a ludicrous semi-domestic squabble?

    PUBLISHED: 22:00, 10 June 2021 | UPDATED: 22:00, 10 June 2021

    Brexiteers can put the Biden blimp back in its box. On the eve of the G7, the President has rescinded an official rebuke to Britain over the so-called ‘sausage war’ with the European Union.

    That’s if he ever knew anything about it in the first place. America’s national security adviser denied that any alleged ‘démarche’ — diplo-speak for a quiet word in your shell-like — had been issued at the direction of the President.

    Jack Sullivan said Biden had no intention of getting ‘adversarial’ when discussing Northern Ireland with Boris Johnson.

    The story was probably put out by an over-enthusiastic aide at the White House and seized upon by the Boys In The Bubble to create an acrimonious eve-of-summit bust-up.

    It didn’t make sense. Why would Biden, who has made a great song-and-dance about re-engaging with the rest of the world after the isolationism of the Trump years, want to fall out with America’s principal NATO ally over a ludicrous semi-domestic squabble about sausages?

    The only people getting adversarial here are the bureaucrats of Brussels, who will weaponise any trifle to punish us for Brexit.

    Actually, I wish I hadn’t written that. It will only put ideas into their heads. Given that they’re trying to stop us sending British bangers to Bangor, how long before we’re plunged into a full-scale sherry trifle war?

    This storm in a frying pan ought to be hilarious, reminiscent of that classic episode of Yes, Minister in which Sir Humphrey informed Jim Hacker that on the order of Brussels the Great British Banger was to be renamed the ‘Emulsified Hi-Fat Offal Tube’. That’s if it wasn’t so serious.
    *
    *
    *
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-9674343/RICHARD-LITTLEJOHN-Mr-President-tell-EU-stop-playing-silly-sausages.html

    1. I’m fed up with all this. “All this” being the endlessly repeated demonstrations of cowardice and stupidity by our government. Enough of compromise! Enough of negotiating!
      Let’s leave NATO*. Ask the US to remove all of its bases and servicemen from the UK within the year. Leave the European Court of Justice, stuffed with judges steeped in the Napoleanic Code, leave Human Rights organisations -all of them – we never needed them the past. Leave the UN, a complete and dangerous waste of money that has not prevented bloodshed and massacres on a massive scale, and whose every “intervention” has been failure.
      And, oh yes? Trade War with the EU – bring it on! Lots of other countries prepared to supply us.
      *Well that might leave us open to invasion by Russia? Does anyone imagine that Russia would want this country free in a lucky bag?

  62. Keep clapping – On Weds, Birmingham Crown Court, Healthcare ‘assistant’ Ayesha Basharat pleaded guilty to using the bank card of a deceased 83 year old lady at Heartlands Hospital in Birmingham on January 24th. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5d72e9a7b2dcc0b304066320bb0d95523f436022c534ecbda1471367dfb77cbe.jpg

    Just 17 minutes after the lady was pronounced deceased, her contactless card was used to purchase sweets and fizzy pop from a vending machine. She used the card on another three occasions, before she was arrested on Ward One of the hospital four days later.

    Was given a suspended sentence, expect her back in the NHS soon.

        1. Or disable the aerial (no puns, because I really loathe these things):
          “The aerial can be broken with a hole punch or soldering iron but I’ve found that making a small cut across the aerial is sufficient. It’s not necessary to cut all the way through the card – all that’s needed is to cut through to the layer containing the aerial. Start with a shallow cut and make it deeper if required. From the images above, a cut to the top of the card is likely to disable most cards.”
          from https://robinminto.com/blog/post/2014/03/21/Disabling-contactless-payment-cards-or-preventing-card-clash-with-Oyster

    2. I’m disappointed more than anything. She’s employed, does a job in a position of trust and respect.

      Hell, if she wanted something she could have just asked someone.

  63. I keep reading that this kneeling carry-on, described in the press as “Taking the Knee” is supposed to be in recognition of the fight against racism..?
    Don’t know if any of the kneelers and their supporters ever watch television . ?
    More or less every advert features Black persons, in fact their presence, in percentage terms, outnumbers the Non-Black persons

          2. Already seen this only without the drunkenness.

            Trans people must be instructed that they will use the toilet of their sex – which is the same as their gender.

        4. That’s most of the faux Tory MPs done for. They’re all a bunch of merchant bankers. The outliers with a whiff of science about them would prefer the description, a Jodrell.

          4. There’s always some one who will weigh anchors 😉
            And it’s usually Roger the Cabin Boy.

        5. Ah, muslim science, used to justify everything in their texts. Did you know that it’s scientifically proven that pigs are unclean because they have urine running through their veins instead of blood? (as told to me by a devout muslim).

        8. I reckon lots of them would believe this nonsense too. Still, the alternative is a ready supply of vulnerable white girls, no worries there – if caught, community service or maybe a few years of jail time then released to continue with their vile ‘culture’. No risk to their afterlife.

    4. Does wonders for my bank balance. They don’t want my money – so I don’t spend it.

  65. Flagrant breach of Covid rules. Police intervened, arrest followed, then prosecution. Oh, no wait, they are members of the Scottish government. So that’s all right. “Sorry to have disturbed you.”

    https://t.co/MOgAecpT0U?amp=1

      1. Yes. We all are. The police taking a sensible, lenient and kindly view instead of knocking them about, handcuffing them and bundling them, willy-nilly, into the back of a van, as if they had broken the law. Hmm, let me rephrase that….

    2. Same thing happening in Cornwall. No social distancing or masks except for the cameras.

      1. Oh yes. However, it is the least of the goings-on in this wee country.

  67. Good morning, NoTTLers! A little bit of gallows humour that the British are (thankfully) renown for:

    IT WAS the End of Year Student Awards evening 2021 at Fulkin Hill Secondary School. A lump formed in the headmaster’s throat as he walked up to the rostrum to present the final award of the evening for a very special student. He had publicised the event to the mainstream media and was pleased as punch when the BBC emailed him to inform him that they were sending a reporter down to cover the event. This would be his proudest moment. He adjusted the microphone and began to address the audience.

    ‘We are honoured to have Mr and Mrs Righteous here with us this evening to receive the posthumous “Bravery at School” award on behalf of their son Freddie. Please come and join me, Mr and Mrs Righteous.

    ‘It is often the case in times of national crisis that the fine young people of this country turn out to be the heroes of the day, and the Covid pandemic has been a wonderful example of this. We offer our heartfelt thanks to the millions of vaccinated children all around the country for courageously stepping forward and doing their bit. In particular, we want to thank Freddie, who sadly cannot be with us tonight. Of course it is not only Freddie whom we should thank but also our excellent teachers at Fulkin Hill who persuaded him to take the vaccination via the “Just a Little Prick” learning resources. These resources are an invaluable aid in educating children and parents who may be vaccine-hesitant. They dispel many widespread myths about the Covid vaccine, like the absurd claim that the vaccines might be dangerous in some way. Here at Fulkin Hill we have no time for that sort of negativity. Thank goodness parents like Mr and Mrs Righteous had a more informed and positive attitude when they proactively helped Freddie through the “Just a Little Prick” learning resources and then went on to volunteer at many of our “Just a Little Prick” parents’ evenings. Indeed Mr and Mrs Righteous were first in the queue to get all three of their boys vaccinated. They informed me earlier this evening that their other two children also suffered adverse reactions to the vaccine but thankfully they have not been anywhere near as severe as Freddie’s. Indeed we hope to see Bertie and Sammy Righteous back in school as soon as their prosthetic limbs have arrived. We will be holding a “Just a Little Prick” Fun Day to celebrate their return, to which all parents . . . erm, I mean all vaccinated parents will be invited.

    For the rest: https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/farewell-to-freddie/

      1. We once had a dog called Engineer………..every time we kicked his back side he made a bolt for the door

  72. “The President of the United States brings a breathe of fresh air” says Boris Johnson in the Daily Telegraph report.

    Isn’t the president known as Halitosis Joe?

    Boris Johnson must have been standing up wind of him when he made this inaccurate observation.

    1. A breath of fresh air? – When I once saw the US Air Force One – and four other 747s ( 2 either side of AFO) head over to a Gulf war visit, I didn’t think the 20 jet engines were bringing fresh air. How many have turned up at Mildenhall? – and the exhaust fumes from all the cop cars with 6000 police aren’t doing much good. Wonder how the crime figures over the rest of the nation are going?

    1. Afternoon all, are you still with us PT ?
      Even a gentle cooling breeze on a hot day and rising Bubbles in a cold glass of champagne would offend some one.
      It all seems to be just another variant.
      What’s the latest local news on once Carbis, now Covid or Carbon bay today ?

      3. I did that with the children. They jumped off the stairs. I did not catch them. Life lesson:”Trust No One”.

        They went home and told their parents.

    3. I take offence at that as you didn’t bother to consider my denomenation.

      Frankly, if people are offended then they just need a beating.

  74. Guardian:

    ‘Johnson should back England team for taking the knee, says [Gordon] Brown’.

    Just goes to show that whatever you may think of Boris, we’ve had far, far worse.

    1. As I remarked yesterday BLM is the BNP or the EDL for ethnic minorities.

      Does Gordon Brown think that football fans should genuflect for the English Defence League or any other white supremacist parties?

      1. Admittedly it’s not really my circle, but the BLM mob seem to have popular support across a spectrum of ethnic demographics. Why, I don’t know. The EDL and BNP seem to be widely looked down upon.

        Fundamentally the blm are just racists peddling division and discontent while excusing the looting, violence and abuse of society disguised as empowerment – when it is simply theft and property destruction, as the rentamob always carry out.

    2. Dear Mr Brown,

      You ruined the economy, crashed the banks, stole my pension, destroyed our gold reserves, removed the banking regulator when it got uncomfortable, then had the audacity to blame the banks for your failures.

      Sod off, shove off, never speak again.

      Sincerely, your former employer.

    3. The Guardian in well known for its pathetic spelling:

      ‘Johnson should sack England team for taking the knee, says northern town’.

    4. Daft Vader is such a vacuous dick he’d jump on any old band (It’s all he has) wagon especially one with the bullion on board.

        1. And his minister for post it notes “There is no money left in the kitty”.

    5. Sorry –

      DT, 12.51 ‘Lobby latest: Boris Johnson tells football fans not to boo

      Downing Street has now told England fans not to boo the football team for taking the knee in protest against racial injustice.

      Despite No 10 previously declining to condemn those who booed players, a spokesman said: “The Prime Minister respects the right of all people to peacefully protest and make their feelings known about injustices.

      “I think the Prime Minister has spoken before about his desire to get everybody to get behind the national team and the PM would like to see everyone getting behind the team to cheer them on, not booing them.’

  75. Needless to say this chap didn’t survive long on twitter…………..

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/91763de60ffd07acc4ec880ff18753e413e88eeeaa948d6a18ca934c8e8dec8f.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c47af0933a04d2f0fa624de8cd516272b089d85db85a1f2f1139a4405df3d635.png

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/379dc42e6398f47864533852c5d71c190a5202d5ca84b1243824718e50b6ef88.jpg

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9049ac44d21a592d6d40a07855e604109782a90943679b4c82406297d1adcf82.jpg

    1. Like the radio show presenter of the phone-in ” We are an open forum – any subject – text or phone us ” – -I sent a text which I knew the bbc wouldn’t like – no comment, no reading out – they put some music on. So much for “Open Forum”.

  77. Good afternoon all
    What a week. Shadow in right eye appeared on Monday. After checking on line thought I had detached retina. Checked with 111 on line told to go to A&E immediately. Spent six and a half hours there told Ophthalmology would arrange appointment for later in week.
    Tuesday. Unhappy with A&E booked half hour appointment with Specsavers for afternoon. Hospital called with appointment for Friday 3pm. Specsavers, after 1 hour 30 mins say I have detached retina. Referred to hospital saying I must be seen Tuesday. No response phoned 5pm all doctors gone home.

    Called emergency eye doctor who saw me urgently at 7pm, different hospital, confirmed detached retina. Immediately phoned St Thomas’s, London and arranged appointment for me Wednesday 10.30 am.

    Wednesday 10.30 various tests and operated on at 2 pm to fix retina. Discharged at 5pm with appointment for next day.
    Thursday 10.30 had dressing removed saw specialist nurse, given eye drops and back home by midday.

    This morning first hospital phoned to find out what had happened.

    Never ever go to A&E at St Peter’s Chertsey.

    2. Brilliant Alf. Well done you for taking matters into your own hands, it seems the only way to get anything done these day. I suspect if you had left it and waited for an appointment you might well have lost your eyesight.
      How long after your last jab did that happen ? Only asking because a couple of people including my self have suffered badly blood shot eye not long after their second jabs, one friend had a TIA.

      Now after my second bout of Afib, I’m still waiting for an appointment with the cardiologist after my visit to A&E on the 10th of April.
      Because I was unwell on the morning of the 28th of May i was unable to get to an appointment with an orthopaedic surgeon regarding my painful knee. I rang the department and apologised. Yesterday 13 days later, I received a copy of the snotty letter from the ‘Mr’ telling me and my GP that because I didn’t arrive for the appointment he’s not making another appointment so i am to be discharged. I had waited well over 6 months for that appointment.

      1. I haven’t had any of the experimental injections. I was recommended by 2 surgeons earlier in the year to take 5000 iu of vitamin D3 to boost the immune system and shall continue to do so. They also recommended doubling the dose in early winter.
        Have only suffered from the ineptness of the local A&E.

    3. Around 1960, a work colleague suffered a detached retina – the first time I had ever heard of such a thing.
      He swiftly had an NHS operation at Moorfields. The retina was stitched back into place and he then spent a further three weeks in the hospital, lying on his back perfectly still until the surgical work had healed.
      For several weeks afterwards, he had to avoid sudden head movements and heavy lifting.

      1. For this they went in through the white of the eye. A lot of pushing and shoving and had to lie on my front for an hour after surgery. Very swish operation they run at St Thomas’s. Like a Rolls Royce where St Peter’s is like a clapped out mini.

    5. Hope all goes well for recovery, Alf. It just about sums up the state of the shambolic NHS. Clap for it? Crap on it is nearer the mark.

    6. Blimey, John – what a week indeed! So relieved when I got to the end. Do take care – let Maggie do the heavy lifting. 🙂

  78. Ahead of travelling to Cornwall for the G7, the French President said the UK’s request for the Northern Ireland protocol to be revised was “not serious”, adding it “says nothing can be respected”.

    “I believe in the weight of a treaty, I believe in taking a serious approach. Nothing is negotiable. Everything is applicable,” he added.
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/06/11/g7-summit-cornwall-joe-biden-uk-news-boris-johnson/

    BTL Comment

    Why did Boris Johnson agree to a border in the Irish Sea when he promised there would not be one?

    It was an act of extreme folly, capitulation or even madness and look at the mess this act of insanity will go on causing for as long as the Northern Ireland Protocol remains in place.

  79. Joe Biden doesn’t understand Northern Ireland

    The President flaunts his Irish descent, but is blind to the truth about the EU’s imperialistic Protocol

    RUTH DUDLEY EDWARDS

    Joe Biden is a classic of the type: a man of tenuous Irish descent who loudly declaims his Irishness yet clearly has little experience or understanding of the country, its history or inhabitants. Among his worst habits is reverentially and irritatingly quoting the same few lines of Yeats and Seamus Heaney at every opportunity. The US President has been at it again this week. Somewhat undiplomatically, on his arrival in the UK, he recited part of WB Yeats’s poem Easter, 1916 – about the Easter Rising – in a speech at RAF Mildenhall.

    The Irish Catholic nationalist tradition and its vibrant oral culture is certainly seductive. But it is hard to tell whether Biden’s Irish shtick is just a politically useful part of his “folksy Joe” routine or whether he really has swallowed whole a fashionable version of Irishness that effortlessly incorporates leprechauns and freedom fighters, poets and comedians.

    Either way, he is rapidly becoming the most influential proponent of a self-mythology that sees the Irish people as both the most oppressed in the world yet also the most entertaining.

    By the time Biden was old enough to flaunt his Irishness (based on the nationality of two of his eight great-great-grandfathers), the massive contribution to the United States of immigrant Ulster Scots warriors, administrators and politicians had been forgotten and the narrative of Ireland as a victim of British oppression reigned almost unchallenged. This was helped by the success of Irish writing, pubs and music in promoting Brand Ireland, a remarkable unofficial PR exercise that resulted in many Irish-Americans, Biden included, exclusively taking their Irish politics from Dublin.

    In the process of painting the British in Northern Ireland as jackbooted oppressors – an image that greatly and tragically helped the IRA’s prolific stateside fundraising efforts – the Dublin narrative also served to relegate Ulster’s unionist majority to an afterthought at best.

    Like many Americans, Biden seems to have little clue about the role the Unionist community once played in turning Northern Ireland into the most prosperous part of the island of Ireland or of the hurt and damage they suffered as a consequence of armed republicanism.

    This one-sided view has had dire consequences for his approach to Brexit and specifically the Northern Ireland Protocol. Like many Irish Catholics he loves the idea of the EU and cannot see its imperialistic and autocratic instincts. Like many in America, he is all too willing to accept the Dublin version of the facts as the whole, unbiased story.

    Having little knowledge of or sympathy for unionists, Biden seems to be incapable of understanding why they feel threatened by what they see as the weaponisation of the Irish border to punish Britain. Nor does he seem either willing or able to appreciate just what an outrage the Northern Ireland Protocol’s attempt to dismember the UK really is.

    He would be wise to reflect on the contrasting examples set by the nationalist John Hume and the unionist David Trimble. Jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement that brought to an end three decades of violence initiated and driven by the IRA, Hume – true to the romantic Catholic tradition – gave a verbose speech full of vaulting, utopian rhetoric that quoted (who else?) WB Yeats.

    Meanwhile, Lord Trimble’s intelligent analysis of the fundamental cultural differences that divided Northern Irish nationalists and unionists drew inspiration from figures who spanned political divides and included a warning that could have been tailor-made for the US President: “I believe that a sense of the unique, specific and concrete circumstances of any situation is the first indispensable step to solving the problems posed by that situation.”

    Despite his soothing words in Cornwall yesterday, Biden’s views on Northern Ireland may now be more extreme even than the Dublin government’s, which has a thoughtful and well-informed Taoiseach who cares about the stability of the Province.

    Does Joe Biden even know that his support for the Protocol might unwittingly help Yeats’s “rough beast” to be born again?

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/10/joe-biden-doesnt-understand-northern-ireland/

    2. Thing is, Biden like O’Banana – who he served as Vice President – is a dedicated and uncompromising enemy of Britain. His self-styled “Irishness” is just an excuse to justify his hatred of this country.

      The sooner our deluded Prime Minister recognises the fact and stops fawning over this snake, the better.

  80. 334180+ up ticks,
    I take it that the current lab/lib/con member / voter have full confidence
    and this statement would not seem amiss.

    Very dangerous lunatics, and as for johnson & biden,

    Personally I would like to know what they are mainlining on ? interspersed with regular skunk intake.

    Boris Compares Himself and Biden to Churchill and Roosevelt

  81. G7 announces one billion jabs for poor countries.

    But UK must surely now be one of the poorest countries considering how much the UK has spent on developing, testing and manufacturing vaccines, funding the shortfall in lost earnings due to lockdown and meeting the costs of contacting and jabbing virtually the whole UK adult population.

    At least it looks as though we shall be self sufficient in sausages!

    1. Man in poor country he say me no wannit massa, me seen wot white man juju does – or summat like that.

      1. But then life is like a box of chocolates – you never know what’s coming next like Black Magic.

    2. Meh..money’s no object.
      The American system seems to be in vogue.
      If in doubt…print.

      1. Was it Tony Blair who once said the future’s Brown?
        What followed is history.

        1. Cameron said there was NO limit to the amount of Indians? who could come. And who said we are taking 20000 Syrians? And 5m+ Hong Kongers. Not bad for an already overcrowded island.

  82. Meanwhile, in America, this from Robert Spencer…

    NANCY PELOSI, HIGH PRIESTESS OF THE LEFT’S CULT, GIVES THANKS TO FLOYD HER SAVIOR

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/73e1b50e7482ab0b269db4e5292d1bfb8ecca2fab9d5d0c5bc04045f8d07b33b.png

    House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Smirnoff) has been getting a lot of heat, as Matt Margolis detailed, for thanking George Floyd for being good enough to die “for justice.” But amid all the scorn and ridicule Pelosi is justly receiving, a key point is being overlooked: While her words may have sounded mawkish, maudlin, and incomparably tone-deaf to outsiders, to true believers in the left’s new secular religion, everything she said was entirely appropriate. In her capacity as high priestess of this religion, Pelosi was performing a hieratic role and giving thanks to the new savior.

    The priestess began by giving thanks to the deity for his salvific sacrifice: “Thank you, George Floyd, for sacrificing your life for justice.” Then she recounted a bit of sacred history for the edification of the believers: “For being there to call out to your mom — how heartbreaking was that — to call out for your mom, ‘I can’t breathe.’” She concluded by explaining to the faithful how much they owed to the savior: “Because of you and because of thousands, millions of people around the world who came out for justice, your name will always be synonymous with justice.”

    Pelosi is ostensibly a Catholic, and this statement closely follows the pattern of the Catholic Mass, which contains texts giving thanks to the Lord, recounting the institution of the Holy Eucharist, and explaining how Jesus gave his life for the salvation of the world.

    Pelosi’s comments, comparing the career-criminal George Floyd’s death to the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, are not just mere heresy – they are blasphemy of the most wicked kind and clearly demonstrate that she is a servant of the Antichrist.

    She should be dragged before the Spanish Inquisition – she wouldn’t be expecting that …

      1. Could well be, unless she has self-declared as a “nigra”. In these strange times anything is possible.

          1. Thanks, Walter.

            About a fortnight ago, I woke up one morning and decided to eschew all news and current affairs for a while. I found the experience strangely refreshing but the bottom line is, one cannot ignore reality forever. So here I am again. At least here – unlike most sites – we can temper the news with humour.
            ;¬)

          2. I like reading your comments ( even if sometimes it takes me a while to look up all the words I don’t know ).

          4. Good to see you, Duncan. Avoiding all MSM is not just good for the soul, it’s good for the BP. Here at least we have a sceptical take on the propaganda and fear mongering.

      2. They all seem to be wearing the same scarf, presumably it has some meaning.
        It says “I’m a brainwashed blasphemous fool” perhaps?

      1. Thanks, Herr Oberst.

        Aye, all well here and I trust all’s well with you and yours too.

          1. Sorry to hear that, Ol. It’s difficult enough at the best of times, but to be so far away and subject to covidiocy makes it even worse.

    4. Just think that last September we had to cancel our gamily of 6 adults holiday at Trevone opposite Padstow because we had a an 8 month old baby with us. Now there are at least 6 thousand police and other security people in this one spot and who knows how many others attached to this pointless nonsense. And the carbon foot print of all this will be phenomenal. But where’s silly little Greta, she be in good company. Maybe she’s in Boris’ pocket. He’s got his hand on something in there.

    1. An incredibly incompetent woman who promised one thing and has clearly done her best to do the absolute opposite – -but still get paid for doing it so badly. ( unless of course her actual job IS to bring in as many as possible ). Either way I think her and her team who allow these to stay should be held criminally responsible for those who then have gone on to murder/rape/drug dealing / driving illegally etc etc. She should be charged as aiding and agetting every single one of the crimes these have committed.

    3. It’s interesting that that little merde Marcon is insisting on the NI Irish sea border but refusing to enforce the one between France and the UK.
      The French could stop the flow immediately if they so chose, but of course they are delighted to get shot of the migrants.

      1. They make you sick don’t they, anything to get themselves into the spotlight of self importance.
        Not only delighted to get rid of their own illegals, they are wetting their pants because it’s annoying he hell out of the English.

        1. Only because the English are too pathetic to actually do anything to stop it.

        2. I console myself that there is a good chance that Macron might be what lets Le Pen in, and that that is what History remembers him for.

  85. “Edward de Bono, who has died aged 88, was famous for introducing the world to the concept of “lateral thinking” and made a fortune by jetting round the world to explain what it meant….

    And there’s me having invented Bi-lateral thinking and I haven’t made a bleedin’ penny……

  86. Time to kill the TV licence. Spiked 11 June 2021.

    The television license is not the ‘least worst’ method of financing public broadcasting in Britain – it is the worst possible method.
    It’s not just the expense. The licence fee guarantees that we have a state broadcaster, not a public broadcaster. The only meaningful economic signals the BBC receives come from the government, which controls its budget and appoints its governors. The BBC is incapable of fostering a meaningful relationship with the public – we must pay for it, whether we like it or not.

    This is a wonderful diatribe against the BBC; it even has observations about this fount of Cultural Marxist Propaganda that I’ve never noticed. Nevertheless its author; Jonathan Miller, is mistaken. If we cancel the licence fee; the BBC like the Corporate Succubus that it is, will simply fasten onto the Body Politic and get its finance from Direct Taxation. It needs to be shut down; its employees who have been made fat on the earnings extorted from poorer people should be sacked, and if possible its buildings demolished.

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/06/11/time-to-kill-the-tv-licence/

  87. “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.”

    Albert Einstein.

  88. My continuing saga with the NHS (Neglected Health Service)

    After giving up on the non existent phone consultation offered via my GP I popped into the chemists to ask the pharmacist’s advice. He recommended a course of tablets to be taken three times a day.
    After reading the list of do’ and dont’s I was confused about their effectiveness.
    Was I doing the right thing?
    ….further reading told me if unsure regarding this medication consult your GP ……..
    Thanks!

    1. I have just finished my telephone consultation with my GP,………….he’s very surprised that I still haven’t heard from any one since my first visit to A&E on the 10th of April, but he is a decent chap on the face of it all and going to chase things up.
      Mean while back on the ranch…………..🙄🤠

    2. Have you tried a course of Leeches, apparently a cure for many ailments and plenty around Cornwall at the moment.

    3. Have you tried a course of Leeches, apparently a cure for many ailments and plenty around Cornwall at the moment.

  89. A quick thumbs up to Esure for being one of the few firms not bowing to the bullying of the DT’s ‘consumer champion’. In this case, the stolen car’s owner demanded more money than he bought it for privately 10 months ago as he could only find more expensive ones of no older or no lesser spec in the same colour at dealers when the policy clearly states that the market value paid out is a book price for that car, not the cost of finding a minimum-standard replacement. Of course, this is different when you are claiming off someone else’s insurance should you be an innocent victim of their actions.

    3. No, but it wouldn’t be the first time. He was reported to have died in 2013 and 2020.

      2. “reported to have died etc…”

        “He’s NOT the Messiah! He’s just a Very Naughty boy…”

      3. “reported to have died etc…”

        “He’s NOT the Messiah! He’s just a Very Naughty boy…”

    4. No, but it wouldn’t be the first time. He was reported to have died in 2013 and 2020.

    7. I thought he was one of those trans human billionaires who are planning to live to 150?

    8. I thought he was one of those trans human billionaires who are planning to live to 150?

      1. Rags-riches/rags in two generations (slightly amended). Easy come, easy go…. and fingers crossed.

  92. Britain abandons all reason by backing Biden’s sordid tax plan
    Politicians’ attempts to maximise corporation tax revenues in fact risk damaging their economies

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/06/11/britain-abandons-reason-backing-bidens-sordid-tax-plan/

    Which country is in the deepest economic hole?

    Which country has the highest corporate tax?

    The two go together – and it is not surprising that France is the graveyard for businesses. As George W. Bush said: The French don’t have a word for entrepreneur. It was his best joke – but most of the public were too stupid to see the irony.

    Boris Johnson is set to raise corporate tax rate from 19% to 25% in 2023 to try and kill of any vestiges of British business recovery and to stuff British competitivity.

    Was Margaret Thatcher the only Conservative politician in recent years to understand that lowering taxes raises more revenue for the state than raising them?

    1. There are 364 Conservative MPs in the HoC, Johnson is just one. Where is the outrage from the other 363?
      CINO!

  93. Biden and Putin not currently expected to hold joint news conference following meeting next week. 11 June 2021.

    President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin are not currently expected to hold a joint press conference following their high-stakes summit in Geneva, Switzerland, next week, two US officials familiar with the matter said.

    The final plans are still being formulated, and could change. But officials putting together the day’s events said that as of Friday no joint press conference was expected.

    I don’t expect one. Quite frankly I’m expecting a bust-up! Biden’s taken every opportunity to threaten Putin over the last two weeks and is I suspect planning to be as unpleasant as possible at the meeting. Vlad of course, as is his nature, has kept schtum but I’m pretty sure he’s coming armed for Bear. This may be the Last US/Russia Summit ever held!

    https://edition.cnn.com/2021/06/11/politics/vladimir-putin-joe-biden-press-conference/index.html

    1. Biden could not cope with a press conference which he had no complete control over.

      1. especially when sitting next to someone who is compos mentis and has no interest in protecting Biden.

    2. The russians are banking on a press conference.
      It gives Vladimir a big advantage because he doesn’t reply in English ,but he does understand it.
      As the interpreter translates Joe’s remark,Vlad has a few minutes to formulate an answer.
      He’s used this tactic before.

    1. …And the folk who change one’s life for the worse are called Bar Stewards…..

  95. Earlier today Poppie’s mum posted ‘There but for the grace of god go all of us…..’

    Me and my god.
    I prefer to keep god out of my life however every so often I feel compelled to ask him thought provoking questions. Like ‘WTF are we all doing …and if you’re so great why is the world shite?
    When everything is fine and dandy it’s god’s doing but when it goes
    tits up it’s our own fault. Cop out or wot?
    Some years ago when the world was sane David Kossof had the God Spot on BBC Radio called ‘Conversations with God’ . I loved his take on god, often sprinkled with Jewish humour.
    Enjoying my early cuppa in bed this morning I wondered what god had in store for me next, hoping he had he given up on me!

    I’ve certainly given up on him…..

    1. 334180+ up ticks,
      Afternoon P,
      Sad to hear, I do not believe that is his mindset .

      Better times accoming.

        1. When I was waiting for Oscar to arrive, I felt very deserted. I’d been praying for a dog to find me without success. Ad te domine speravi, non confundar in aeternum. When I managed to get him after his first choice people turned him down, I felt he was indeed Dieudonné.

          2. Alas, not respite Friday; I had to take MOH to the surgery for something that it turns out is not what I booked and which could have been done at home.

          4. Alas, no. MOH flatly refused to go to the Day Centre last week with the result that the place has now been filled by someone on the waiting list. I shall be taking Oscar out for a drive to a beauty spot and having a long walk, than lunch in a dog-friendly pub next Friday.

          5. OMG, you really are cursed, aren’t you! Wish there was something more than sympathise that I could do.

          6. That’s life. At least I’ve got Oscar now. Next Friday I shall drive to a local beauty spot, take him for a walk and have lunch at a dog-friendly rural pub, leaving MOH at home. I need time to myself and some respite, so I shall do my best not to feel guilty. Considering he hasn’t been here a week yet, Oscar does seem to have chilled out. He let one of my neighbours (I did warn him) touch him on the head without reacting this morning. Needless to say, he got a biscuit reward (Oscar, not the neighbour ).

          8. I’m sure there is, Plum. Keep the faith. Oscar’s making progress, albeit slow. We are going for longer walks (now twice a day because I need the exercise and I just plain enjoy it). Tonight we walked the footpath through the field for the first time and for the first time in months I ran up the hill on the way back (Charlie couldn’t manage it in his later days). I cannot say I would not have blown a candle out at the end any more, at this stage, but I’ll get there!

          9. I’m sure there is, Plum. Keep the faith. Oscar’s making progress, albeit slow. We are going for longer walks (now twice a day because I need the exercise and I just plain enjoy it). Tonight we walked the footpath through the field for the first time and for the first time in months I ran up the hill on the way back (Charlie couldn’t manage it in his later days). I cannot say I would not have blown a candle out at the end any more, at this stage, but I’ll get there!

    2. … for he maketh
      his sun to rise on the evil and on the good,
      and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust      .

      Matthew 5:45

      1. The rain it raineth on the just and on the unjust fella.
        But it mostly raineth on the just because
        the unjust has got the just’s umbrella!

        Stephen 5:23

        1. Our enlightened headmaster (who served in the Navy during WW2) gave us that poem to copy in primary school.

    3. … for he maketh
      his sun to rise on the evil and on the good,
      and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust      .

      Matthew 5:45

    4. I pondered and fretted for decades on the meaning of life and the concomitant pantheon of multiple and one true gods and in the end my bewilderment was resolved when I read somewhere somebody else’s simple philosophy of ” Shit happens, deal with it the best you can” and that seems to make as much sense as anything. I’m still in awe of ecclesiastical architecture and fully back a benign belief system that works for the common good and can comfort folks in times of distress. One of the sources I found most enlightening was “Misquoting Jesus” by Bart D. Ehrman.

      1. Born and brought up in the C of E. Steeped in the Book of Common Prayer and Hymns Ancient and Modern and the Authorised Version.

        I completely lost all faith when my younger son died. Everything that I had been brought up (conditioned) to believe went out of the window.

        But I still find peace and time for contemplation in church buildings and in hearing the familiar words and hymns (though that is increasingly difficult, now- with all the leftie wokery in the C of E).

          1. Me too Plum. Born, baptised, confirmed, married, and both girls baptised into the church. Move to Scotland and was told I had to “join” the community! My God is my God and I really don’t need permission to worship Him!

          2. Mum came from a well known SW Cork family , her family arrived in England a couple of years before war broke out . She completed her education and joined the Wrens .. some time during the war , she met my father who was also in the RN .. he was a Protestant, she was brought up as a Roman Catholic .

            She was excommunicated when she told her father she wanted to marry , she had uncles who were Jesuit priests at a well known school in London.. they put pressure on her parents .. and that was it .. They would have nothing to do with her..NO she wasn’t pregnant .. she just fell in love with Daddy.

            We were brought up as Protestants, and I attended C/E schools . Never met my maternal grandparents , my mother was fairly broken really , although strong .. How could her parents and relatives and her sister be so horrible with regard to their faith .

            Way down deep in the very depths of SW Cork they are still like that.

            My sister and I visited the area about 30 years ago , where Mum’s family used to live , and cousins still existed , and we were regarded with great suspicion , as those 2 Protestant girls from England , and our hire car was followed by the police , and we were stopped and questioned .. The B+B owner tipped the police off!!!!

          3. It doesn’t do to look back Belle, yet I find myself doing it more and more as I get older. Is it because there is so little to look forward to?
            I recollect my childhood which was idyllic until I was ten and my parents separated……my marshmallow world fell apart!

          5. I don’t bother looking back at my childhood – I was very unhappy and relieved to get away to university at 18! Things since then have been very mixed, but at least it was my own choice.

          6. Me too Plum. Born, baptised, confirmed, married, and both girls baptised into the church. Move to Scotland and was told I had to “join” the community! My God is my God and I really don’t need permission to worship Him!

        2. Bill, this is my fiftieth year as a church organist, after six years in the choir. More accurately, I now pretend to be the director of music, and the parish pays me for pretending. We can’t sing, or ‘people will surely die’. I now despise the Church of England. It had a bad pandemic, nationally, but also locally in my parish.

          I’ve reached the conclusion that the Church as currently constituted is actually a barrier to faith. I’m no happy-clappy evangelical type, and I tend to view Scripture in the context of when it was written – i.e. I don’t take it literally. 2 millennia later, we have a greater understanding of how things work. Though perhaps less so in the last 15 months.

          So, do I have faith in the Church? Not in the slightest – it’s populated by humans, with all our failings and frailties. To put it mildly.

          Datz’s “shit happens” was almost written into sub-contracts when I was working in construction. But what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, apparently. I’m crap at prayer, but when things have been really bad, they’ve inevitably worked out for the best, and I have a strong sense of having been ‘looked after’. Divine intervention? I don’t claim the gift of discernment, but a few – rather more religious – folk have said ‘the Lord looks after his own’, and I think they may have a point.

          The church buildings, the hymns and all the traditions retain their attraction. But they also bear witness to something which all the Welbys of the world cannot erase.

        3. We had some very dear friends who belonged to a particularly evangelical offshoot and back in the late 80s when our eldest daughter was desperately ill they offered to come into the ITU and pray over her, I declined the offer and fortunately she recovered without their help. I mention this as a couple of years later the wife of this couple was diagnosed with terminal cancer and in her last few weeks their eldest son ( about 12 as I recall) died in his sleep, she attended his funeral in a hospital bed with drip etc and died a few days later. The husband and their remaining daughter’s faith was not shaken as it was so strong they felt there was a purpose for what happened. I cannot operate on that level of delusion it was just awful .

      2. Born and brought up in the C of E. Steeped in the Book of Common Prayer and Hymns Ancient and Modern and the Authorised Version.

        I completely lost all faith when my younger son died. Everything that I had been brought up (conditioned) to believe went out of the window.

        But I still find peace and time for contemplation in church buildings and in hearing the familiar words and hymns (though that is increasingly difficult, now- with all the leftie wokery in the C of E).

    6. Maybe so*, but God has not given up on you.

      Rod Steiger as Napoleon in “Waterloo”.

        1. Actually, I have long considered us as being God’s electric train set.

    3. The sheer hubris and pomposity of Fataturk – comparing himself and Demented Joe to Churchill and FDR – defies belief.

      1. Greetings, O Monarch of the Glen. You are back, I ken. We were getting worried…

      2. Greetings, O Monarch of the Glen. You are back, I ken. We were getting worried…

        1. I think Canute was not trying to prove his godheadity ( I made that word up) but proving a point about his fallibility as a mortal. BoJo on t’other hand has no such limitation.

        2. I think Canute was not trying to prove his godheadity ( I made that word up) but proving a point about his fallibility as a mortal. BoJo on t’other hand has no such limitation.

      2. 334180+ up ticks,
        Afternoon Cs,
        Him & his tory party (ino) followers on an arranged full moon day could try howling in unison from hilltops countrywide,
        that could have as much affect as anything else.

    5. 334180 + up ticks,
      O2O,
      Then how is it Og the lab/lib/con mass uncontrolled immigration ( ongoing) mass paedophile suppliers via
      the uncontrolled immigration coalition still has a fee paying membership that are still condoning via the polling booth what is taking place TODAY within the Isles.

      I put it down to being criminally insane, a badly flawed mindset, thinking with a serious limp.

    6. Before reading this I commented above that Johnson had lost it. Now I read that he is equating himself and the senile Biden with two men to whom the modern World owes its survival. Those two men plotted, planned and encouraged their people to fight and defeat tyranny. Johnson and Biden are both committed via their globalist masters to impose tyranny on their people. Johnson is not only a deceitful lying buffoon but now it appears he is suffering from delusions of grandeur. What next, the voices in his head must be obeyed? I thought we were only in the shit, now it looks as though we’re submerged in it.

      1. 334180+ up ticks,
        Evening KtK,
        As distasteful as it is credit must be given
        to johnson & party, political manipulation and herd husbandry cannot be faulted.
        As for being in the sh!te that has been the case since the major era,up to the lower lip.

        we will probably find that on the 21st June
        the tea break will be over and it’s back on our heads.

  97. “Boris Johnson urges world to be ‘more gender neutral, feminine and green’ as it builds back from Covid in bizarre opening remarks at G7 summit”

    Carrion is now writing his “speeches”….

    1. Erm, how can you be “more gender neutral” and “feminine” at the same time, I wonder? the man is a complete twit [polite version].

        1. To be fair, twits is not the word I wanted to use!! Anyway, weasels [and cobras] are much cuter than twits!!

        1. God, but they were slow. Cornered (with a full tank) like a pill on a counter-top.

          1. Always assuming the bar-(no)grip tyres actually gripped anything, of course.

          2. Worst with half full tanks.
            When cornering the water surged towards the out side of the bend, making it both lob-sided and top heavy and liable to flip over.

        1. I hope those two are taking the p, as it doesn’t bode too well for their future if that photos is serious.

      5. Don’t hold back, I’m convinced that Nottlers will support any and all pejorative descriptions of the plank that is Boris Johnson.

    3. Become more “feminine” ? – – so we can get well and truly ****ed by the invasion of the RoP?

    4. The Frankfurt School had a thing about primitive matriarchal societies being more “natural”? Jordan Peterson makes an interesting point that in the Bible the masculine principle is order out of chaos.

      1. Afternoon Sue. There are good reasons for thinking the very earliest hunting societies were Matriarchal in nature! This probably changed with the advent of the Division of Labour and the rise of Agriculture!

        1. Women just aren’t that good at taking risk! We’re much better at making the best of everything.
          We have far too much to lose, as we only have a short time in which to secure our future.

      2. Afternoon Sue. There are good reasons for thinking the very earliest hunting societies were Matriarchal in nature! This probably changed with the advent of the Division of Labour and the rise of Agriculture!

      3. Oh dear. I was brought up in a matriarchal society. Most fishing communities were matriarchal. The women looked after the children and the money. The men worked at away at sea.

    5. The Frankfurt School had a thing about primitive matriarchal societies being more “natural”? Jordan Peterson makes an interesting point that in the Bible the masculine principle is order out of chaos.

    7. He’s lost it, that’s if he ever had it in the first place. The fraud has become an embarrassment. Your BPAPM is spot on.

          3. It’s a well known fact that Boris’s mistresses always have more influence than the wife.

    8. WTF?
      The west needs to be less gender neutral, feminine and green!

      Anyway, being gender neutral is surely in direct opposition to being feminine?

      1. When I were a lad, a twat was a fundamental female orifice.

        Johnson certainly is.

    9. “Boris Johnson urges world to be ‘more gender neutral, feminine and green’ …”

      Incoherent, incomprehensible and ignorant …

  98. Now GB News takes on radio too: New network reveals plans for national service days before launch of television channel challenging BBC and Sky News. 11 June 2021.

    GB News has today announced plans to launch a national radio service as early as next month – just days before its channel starts on Sunday.

    The new network, chaired by political interviewer Andrew Neil, said it was in the final stages of completing a ‘long-term deal to secure spectrum on the Digital One national multiplex’.

    I don’t listen to the radio but this is encouraging news in that it shows they are determined to make an impact. The TV Channel begins on Sunday and I am hoping for something anti-woke. We shall have to see. The arms of the Globalists are long!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9677021/Now-GB-News-takes-radio-New-network-reveals-plans-national-service.html

    1. I fear it will soon sound much as all the others…. Far too many people were beeboids.

    2. I fear it will soon sound much as all the others…. Far too many people were beeboids.

    3. If it’s anything like Sky News Australia, or Tucker Carlson on Fox, it will have my complete support.

      But let’s face it, what are the chances??

  101. Boris says he DOES support footballers taking the knee and urges England fans NOT to boo – as Scotland reveal they WILL take the knee for Wembley clash in show of solidarity, 11 June 2021.

    Asked to give a categorical answer on whether Mr Johnson supported the England team’s stance this afternoon, the premier’s official spokesman said: ‘Yes. The Prime Minister respects the rights of all people to peacefully protest and make their feeling known about injustices.’

    The spokesman added: ‘I think the Prime Minister has spoken before about his desire for everybody to get behind the national team and as I said, the PM would like to see everyone getting behind the team to cheer them on, not boo.’

    They can’t even get this straight! The blending of two different narratives into a single piece of sophistry where the booing is equated with failing to support the team instead of objecting to the bending of knees is typical!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9675701/Gordon-Brown-calls-Boris-Johnson-England-players-taking-knee-Euro-2020.html

      1. Nothing more than she deserves…Oooh wait a minute! She deserves loads more…

  102. That’s me gone. Another odd day. Very cloudy – muggy felt as tough it might rain – but never did. Good day for gardening – warm but not hot.

    I’ll kneel and wish you a jolly evening.

    A demain – when I will be gender neutral, feminine and green.

    2. This kneeling business is terrible , try kneeling , weeding the garden , difficult to get up unless you are crouching , froglike fashion .

      1. Good afternoon T-B – I have a device which I can kneel on and has handles at the sides which enables me to push myself up. Argos, Amazon and garden centres have them and they are not expensive.
        I am thinking of getting another to help myself to get up and down inside the house.

  104. ‘When is she going to sort this?’ Boris ‘lashed out at Priti Patel’ over migrant Channel crossings as ministers blame officials for failing to enforce policies
    Boris Johnson reportedly blasted Priti Patel over migrant Channel crossing surge
    The premier said to have demanded to know ‘when is she going to sort this out?’
    Almost 5,000 migrants have made the perilous crossing to the UK this year

    Who in the Home office is plotting and scheming to allow as many illegal men and women and their giant adult sized children into Britain?

    1. Our PM is entirely to blame. He is in charge. Such a public exhibition of illegal action being taken by our Border Force cannot be complete disobedience of orders. Government and senior civil servants are behind all this and the PM cannot blame others.

      1. I would be surprised if that tub of lard Johnson had enough energy to lash out at anyone.

        I would expect he is too tired from slogging along the beach, all the photo calls and making promises which he cannot keep.

        Hope Dilyn behaves and Carrie doesn’t insist on the conjugals or it may be the end of him…on second thoughts.

    2. Which of Bozza’s chums whispered that little snippet to make it seem as if the PM gives a stuff?
      Or was it Mrs. Bozza because the wallpaper is now secure and she’d like to enjoy it for a few months?

    3. Which of Bozza’s chums whispered that little snippet to make it seem as if the PM gives a stuff?
      Or was it Mrs. Bozza because the wallpaper is now secure and she’d like to enjoy it for a few months?

  105. Poor old Cornwall , I pray the good people down there are immune to this damned virus .

    If I were Cornish and succumbed to the virus in a week or so, I would sue the government .

  106. BBC reporting that 42 have died from the Delta variant in the UK. No mention of the nationality or if they had just returned from India or were Indians resident in the UK. People who already had the 2 vaccinations have been confirmed with the Delta disease. Let’s hope the G7 variant is not so troublesome.

  107. Red Kate

    She is one of over 150 Oxford academics to announce their refusal toteach the college’s undergraduate students in protest at its decision to
    keep a controversial statue of Cecil Rhodes on its main facade.

    The students/college/government MUST bring a Class Action against the ‘academics, for refusing to teach them.

    At the very least, their pay or whatever posh word they use must be stopped.

    They should be wary walking the streets at night. or are the students on teecher’s side

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/10/oriel-controversy-meet-red-kate-leader-peoples-republic-worcester/?li_source=LI&li_medium=liftigniter-rhr

  108. Cornwall G7 – update
    A woman waited over two hours for a doctor to get to her mum…

    Lucky woman….!

    1. My tally in the end was a 15 hours wait for an ambulance for Mum. A broken femur leaking blood was the finding, I have asked the ambulance trust if this their normal standard of service.

      1. They will say it is due to covid/staff off/increased demand.

        What you won’t get is an honest answer.

        1. Any increased demand will be due to vaccine injury. It seems to be mayhem out there.

      2. I’ve had an issue with the right hand for over a week. 4th and 5th fingers numb, and not fully flexing. Think it’s carpal tunnel syndrome. Went to the GP surgery website. Must phone, it said; but they don’t answer calls, and refer you to the website. So I went back to the website. Eventually found a link for seeking help. It promises they’ll be back in touch within three days. In fairness, they don’t claim they are consecutive days…

        I’m almost relieved that ‘Freedom Day’ is postponed. There are lots of weddings and memorial services lined up for late June and beyond, and at present, it seems that I’ll struggle to play. As was posted earlier, shit happens… 🙄

        2. Sorry to hear that, Geoff. Hope it’s sorted soon. I took MOH for a “medication review” today at the surgery. It turns out it was merely a BP check! Review (and dementia review) will take place by telephone! Why on earth couldn’t they have arranged it with the District Nurse to do a home visit? I did mention I was struggling. They offered me all sorts of telephone “help”, but nothing practical. “You can always ring if you want to talk to someone,” they assured me. I told them bluntly that I couldn’t get through on the phone; after I’d been waiting half an hour for them to answer I felt like throwing it out of the window. Still, I did finally get the results of my ankle X ray; soft tissue damage only. “No action”.

      3. Broken femurs can be life threatening. That is shameful lack of service. Put in a complaint.

  109. Steerpike
    ‘Hitler was right’ journalist leaves BBC
    11 June 2021, 6:15pm

    https://images.contentstack.io/v3/assets/bltf04078f3cf7a9c30/bltc8d066938d4dda17/60c39073d475801b9d550adb/Screenshot_2021-06-11_at_17.33.43.png?format=jpg&width=1920&height=1080&fit=crop

    Tala Halawa, the BBC journalist who was found to have tweeted ‘Hitler was right’, is out at the Corporation. Almost three weeks ago, Steerpike highlighted how media watchdog organisation Honest Reporting and others had uncovered a string of tweets posted on Halawa’s Twitter account from 2014. These included pronouncing that ‘Israel is more Nazi than Hitler’ and ‘Hitler was right’.

    Halawa had also declared ‘ur media is controlled by ur zionist government’ and tweeted a graphic of a child being burned on a menorah, the Jewish ritual candelabrum. On Facebook, she shared the same meme that got Naz Shah suspended as a Labour MP in 2016, a graphic proposing the ‘transportation’ of Israel to the United States to end ‘foreign interference’ in the Middle East.

    She further proclaimed that ‘Zionists can’t get enough of our blood’ and ‘they’re [sic] are crying the holocaust every single moment but they’re practicing it every single moment as well’.

    After the tweets came to light, the BBC launched an investigation into Halawa, who joined the Corporation in 2017 and was employed as a ‘Palestine specialist’ at BBC Monitoring, where she contributed to reporting on the fallout from the recent fighting between Israel and Hamas. Mr S was contacted by several concerned BBC journalists furious at being linked by association to their disgraced colleague.

    At first the Corporation seemed keen to stress the tweets pre-dated Halawa’s hiring — though why that would reflect better on it isn’t clear — but Steerpike understands as of Friday that she no longer works for the BBC.

    Let’s hope their recruitment background checks are more rigorous in the future…

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

    Sir Paul Condom • 18 minutes ago
    She has a very left wing face.

    2. Oddly enough I don’t want her sacked, because she has the right to express her views however abhorrent.

      I want her exposed, to allow people to make their own judgements.

      Firing her just allows the PTB the licence to cancel anyone and everyone for far lesser “offences” on the back of her case.

      Publish and be damned.

      1. She should not be in the UK, she is clearly a Muslim Brotherhood plant & the ultimate aim of the Muslim Brotherhood is to establish the Caliphate of the West, inciting against & killing Jews is just one of the symptoms of the malignant cancer known as Islam.

          3. She is not a cancer. She is merely posessed of perverse, insane views.

            If she were presented openly and the public shown what she thinks then they would lose trust in her opinion and by association the BBC.

            Once the truth is exposed that’s it, the demands flourish for honesty. People start to think. To question. To debate. They truly wake up rather than stay asleep, mindless and comfortable.

      2. Yes, yes and double yes.

        She has the right to express her opinions, but equally she must be presented as a Left wing, communist anti semitic ding bat.

        The BBC lie by omission.

  110. Steerpike
    ‘Hitler was right’ journalist leaves BBC
    11 June 2021, 6:15pm

    https://images.contentstack.io/v3/assets/bltf04078f3cf7a9c30/bltc8d066938d4dda17/60c39073d475801b9d550adb/Screenshot_2021-06-11_at_17.33.43.png?format=jpg&width=1920&height=1080&fit=crop

    Tala Halawa, the BBC journalist who was found to have tweeted ‘Hitler was right’, is out at the Corporation. Almost three weeks ago, Steerpike highlighted how media watchdog organisation Honest Reporting and others had uncovered a string of tweets posted on Halawa’s Twitter account from 2014. These included pronouncing that ‘Israel is more Nazi than Hitler’ and ‘Hitler was right’.

    Halawa had also declared ‘ur media is controlled by ur zionist government’ and tweeted a graphic of a child being burned on a menorah, the Jewish ritual candelabrum. On Facebook, she shared the same meme that got Naz Shah suspended as a Labour MP in 2016, a graphic proposing the ‘transportation’ of Israel to the United States to end ‘foreign interference’ in the Middle East.

    She further proclaimed that ‘Zionists can’t get enough of our blood’ and ‘they’re [sic] are crying the holocaust every single moment but they’re practicing it every single moment as well’.

    After the tweets came to light, the BBC launched an investigation into Halawa, who joined the Corporation in 2017 and was employed as a ‘Palestine specialist’ at BBC Monitoring, where she contributed to reporting on the fallout from the recent fighting between Israel and Hamas. Mr S was contacted by several concerned BBC journalists furious at being linked by association to their disgraced colleague.

    At first the Corporation seemed keen to stress the tweets pre-dated Halawa’s hiring — though why that would reflect better on it isn’t clear — but Steerpike understands as of Friday that she no longer works for the BBC.

    Let’s hope their recruitment background checks are more rigorous in the future…

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

    Sir Paul Condom • 18 minutes ago
    She has a very left wing face.

  112. 334180+ up ticks,
    How about a maskburka, just forward thinking which would in reality
    fall into line in regards to the herds voting pattern.

    ‘Not a Huge Deal’ to Wear Masks Forever, Says ‘Communist Party’ Scientist Advising UK Govt

    1. The same thought had already occurred to me. During the original spike in March/April 2020, I knew a couple of people who had it, and they both described the cough, the fever, the lassitude, and the weight on the lungs.
      At Christmas, a whole family I know had something, which was tested positive as “covid-19”. They described standard fluey cold symptoms.

      1. Couldn’t have been fluey cold symptoms, bb2. Influenza, colds and pneumonia didn’t happen last winter, that’s official.🙄

        The fact that 1500 PCR swabs were sequenced in October and not one showed a sign of the SARs-02 virus but showed either Influenza A or B is neither here nor there. It’s likely that CV-19 has disappeared and its specific symptoms along with it: to maintain the charade the new “variant” has to have a new set of symptoms, and here we are. Rogues, the lot of them.

    2. I’ve had a headache and a sore throat.

      Although I rather think that was down to my imbibing too much brandy.

  114. French Open – pity about the curfew!

    Nadal v. Docko 2nd set.

    Spectators must leave due to curfew….

  116. Government caught out fiddling the vaccine effectiveness figures?

    https://www.hartgroup.org/changing-goal-posts-vaccinated/

    Since 1 May, they’ve stopped counting deaths with a positive Covid test as Covid deaths – but only if the person is vaccinated…..

    Wow, that vaccine sure did reduce the numbers of people dying! Yes siree, it was all worth it and I can’t wait for my next magic booster jab!

      1. Fear not, I am being sarcastic.
        I mean, that really would be the clinching argument, wouldn’t it – a treatment so successful that they have to massage the figures to make it look as though it’s saving lives!

        I still have a strong feeling that I’m sitting in the cinema, munching popcorn while The Great Pandemic, directed by Billionaires, produced by HMG and starring Boris and SAGE unfolds on the screen in front of me…and waiting at the door, are the stormtroopers ready with the shackles….

        3. Boris Johnson and Hancock have been lying to us under the pretext that the SAGE advisors have a scientific method behind their strictures.

          They do not but are a bunch of charlatans and behavioural scientists with financial interests in major pharmaceutical companies and whose research funding was given by the Chinese Communist Party and their apparatchiks.

          As with the exposure of Fauci in the States this current mob will have to be brought to book for the immense societal damage and economic cost they have visited upon the UK.

          The game is up Boris old bean. You are a figure of fun and ridicule and rightly so. I hope you and your type wind up behind bars.

  117. From ZH:

    UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is set to delay the country’s “freedom day” from lockdowns by just under one month – from June 21 to July 19 – after the ‘Delta variant’ COVID-19 strain from India exploded 240% in one week, as was first reported by The Sun, and later confirmed by the Financial Times via comments by England’s Chief Medical Officer, Chris Whitley, who requested the delay.

    Under plans drawn up to be announced on Monday, a two-week review will be included meaning Covid restrictions could be dropped on July 5 if hospitalisations stay down.

    But multiple sources told the Sun the chances of lifting restrictions as planned on June 21 were close to zero – in a massive blow to Wembley hosting of the Euros.

    4. So never mind the infections, what about numbers that might matter for example deaths and hospitalizations? It looks like you will be locked down for ever if those minorities carry on as usual.

      For the first time this year, we were allowed to sit on the balcony at the golf club and enjoy a drink today! Aren’t our masters wonderful?

      1. 334180+ up ticks,
        Evening R,
        And it will continue so ALL the time you
        recognise them as ” our masters”

    5. If there are zero infections at the Cornish cream of the clot-fest then there is no reason to carry on the carry on lockdown film.

      1. May I nick your comment for Twitter? It is superb and deserves a wider audience. I will wait for your nay/yay.

          1. I will, then. Thanks for the ok in loco… in loco… in loco parentis will have to do….

        2. Please do.
          There’s never any need to ask, because I take the view that if it’s on here I’ve published and am already damned.

    1. Perhaps if Muslim maniacs stopped killing random strangers, they might be accepted.

      What kind of religion kills people who are trying to make minefields safe?

      What a silly question, Islam.

    2. How about, Muslims stop their toxic portrayals of Muslims? Bombings, knifings while shouting Allah Akhbar and attempts to set up a caliphate where non muslims are slaughtered are not the best PR for your movement, are they.

    4. Are they just ramping up the ante, or do they seriously think they are being badly portrayed? Or ar they really really dim?

      1. Apparently Harrison Ford had an awful cold that day and just wanted to end the scene quickly.

    7. Out goes “Ali’s Snack Bar”, as they murder

      incomes

      Cedric has such a luvverly Bijou Bistro, daahhling

      1. E&S

        I think the Met are modelling themselves on a force to be
        105% LGBT
        108% BAME
        178% Liebour
        307% supporting Ms Abbatopotamus for setting the Entrance Exam

    2. Ooohh exceeded! How exciting! A team. Yes, in a team. Working together. Teamwork. Met the boss, all great. Lovely.

      Team! Pride. Team! Serving! Public service! Privilege! Clucking bell!

      Flyer? Of course – foreign, probably gay.

    4. 334180+ up ticks,
      Evening TB,
      Hospitals require printout for the seriously constipated wards, with a stand well back warning.

    5. 334180+ up ticks,
      Evening TB,
      Hospitals require printout for the seriously constipated wards, with a stand well back warning.

    1. Wot wot? I’ve not paid attention to the news. What’s happening? Aside from the usual chaos and carnage of disorganised, chaotic socialist nations?

        1. Since they relinquished being Romans, the I Ties have been perpetual losers

  121. Of course animals are sentient – but the Animal Welfare Bill will become a battering ram for militant activists

    The ground is being laid for exactly the expansion of bureaucratic, non-parliamentary power that Brexit was supposed to counter

    CHARLES MOORE

    Do animals have feelings? “Feelings” is a tricky word in this context because it has such strong human connotations. It encompasses love, grief, joy, regret, wonder, humour, envy, pity, selfishness, pride and much more. It is a mistake to equate human emotions with animal ones.

    All the same, the short answer to my question is “Yes”. Despite differences of degree – can one equate a lobster with a labrador or a dungbeetle with a donkey? – the essential point is that animals are sentient beings. Mammals, in particular, can demonstrably feel pain and pleasure. And while one must guard against sentimentality, those of us who know dogs well speak of them showing love for us. More arguably, the same can be said about horses. (I decline to enter into correspondence about cats.)

    Since animals can feel pleasure and pain, human beings must act accordingly – taking care not to inflict needless pain. They must mind about animal welfare, not only because high standards will produce better eggs, meat, milk, leather, wool and so on, but also because of a deeper duty to living creatures.

    So it might seem uncontroversial that the Government will introduce its Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill in Parliament next week. The Bill will “make provision for an Animal Sentience Committee” which will monitor “the effect of government policy on the welfare of animals as sentient beings”.

    One should always ask, however, whether any piece of new legislation is needed. If there is no need, there should be no legislation. The tendency, much-loved by pressure groups, of trying to make new laws to express strong feelings, should be resisted. It leads to bad law, and politics conducted through the courts.

    This is never truer than in the world of animal-rights pressure groups. Daniel Greenberg, the distinguished Parliamentary Counsel whose professional job included the drafting of the 2004 Hunting Act, said last year how “troubled” he had felt about it: “For the first time in my immediate professional experience, the mechanism of the law was being deployed not to further some public policy objective … but to inflict on the whole country the personal moral perspective of the 600 or so citizens who happened to find themselves in the House of Commons at the time.”

    The Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill is not in this category. It does not ban anything, and it is government legislation, not a Private Members’ Bill. But I fear it is driven by a similar personal moral perspective. This will emerge afterwards, when it is too late.

    Rather as woke leaders within museums, Oxbridge colleges and the National Trust now claim that no one, before them, has ever confronted the history of slavery, so the animal-rights campaigners suggest that animal sentience has never before been recognised in our law.

    This is quite untrue. Two hundred years ago, Parliament passed the Cruel Treatment of Cattle Act. In 1835, the Cruelty to Animals Act followed (64 years before comparable child protection legislation). The very definition of cruelty to animals involves accepting they are sentient. You cannot be cruel to a lump of rock, only to a living being. As the Countryside Alliance briefing on the subject trenchantly begins, “Animal sentience is often incorrectly referred to as being a ‘principle’ when it is a question of fact.” (I should add at this point that I am on the board of the Countryside Alliance, but this article is only my personal view.)

    So why is animal sentience being asserted in a new Bill? The history here is that when we were still in the EU, we were bound by Article 13 of the Lisbon Treaty, which refers to animals as sentient beings, and says that, in stated areas of policy, the member states therefore should “pay full regard to the welfare requirements of animals”. The Government declined to incorporate this in the Brexit Bill, promising its own legislation on the subject instead.

    One Brexit benefit is that we no longer have to suffer the sort of continental legislation that declares a grand general principle and then invites judges to make what our tradition sees as political decisions in the light of it. The British approach is more pragmatic and democratic. Yet in this case, we appear to be creating a European-style law all by our ourselves, and gold-plating it.

    The problem with the committee which the new Bill allows the secretary of state to create is that it depends entirely on the attitude of its members. Whereas the Lisbon Treaty version insisted that animal welfare requirements should be balanced against customs “relating to religious rites, cultural traditions and regional heritage”, there is no such balance in this law. Whereas the EU restricted its scope to areas obviously involving animals, such as agriculture and fisheries, there is no such restraint here.

    Nor is any distinction made between human duties to wild animals and those to domestic ones. Yet it is surely obvious that anyone with a pet or a farm animal under his/her control has a more serious welfare duty to that creature than he does to a fox that kills his hens or a deer that scoffs his roses. Even within the category of wild animals, our law has for centuries recognised the difference between “game” and “vermin”. Could sentience zealots override all such distinctions?

    The new Bill certainly allows the committee to do so. It does not insist that the duties towards animal sentience should be held in check by any idea of the public interest. So if the committee is stuffed by representatives of well-organised animal-rights/green lobbies its power for mischief will spread right across government.

    What happens, for example, if the committee finds that current laws about predator control fail to show “all due regard” to animal sentience? What if it decides to take on Muslim or Jewish rules of slaughter? What if it enters the issue of animals in medical research, or hurls itself into arguments about fishing and angling? Can it assert itself even on foreign policy?

    The ground is being laid for just the expansion of bureaucratic, non-parliamentary power that Brexit is supposed to counter. The consequence will surely be an ever-greater resort to the courts, with pressure groups using committee reports as their weapons of “lawfare”. The committee could become a Trojan horse for extremism – and the Trojan horse, let us remember, was not a sentient animal, but a collection of sentient human beings using animal disguise to effect capture.

    The Government must be aware of this but is letting itself be blackmailed for fear of being branded “anti-animal”. For the same reason, it will be frightened to go against anything the new committee recommends. As in so many areas of woke/green issues of “rights”, it will find it has created another bit of the “Blob”.

    The legislation’s supporters will believe that, to coin a phrase, no animals were harmed in the making of this Bill. I am not so sure. The future of animals, particularly on a crowded island like ours, relates to our capacity to establish useful relations with them. If animal “rights” prevent us keeping sheep, cows or pigs to our economic benefit, very few sheep, cows or pigs will remain. If the day comes when bureaucrats decide that putting a bit in a horse’s mouth and a saddle on its back is the foul subjugation of a sentient being, why breed horses? The Government should not start out down a path it need not travel.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/11/course-animals-sentient-animal-welfare-bill-will-become-battering/

    1. Here’s more on the subject.

      Exclusive: Animals to have their feelings protected by law in Queen’s Speech

      In an exclusive interview, Environment Secretary George Eustice explains why his new Animal Sentience Bill is necessary

      By Christopher Hope, CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, and Charles Hymas, HOME AFFAIRS EDITOR • 8 May 2021 • 9:30pm

      Animals with a backbone will have a legal right to feel happiness and suffering in a Government drive to raise welfare standards in Tuesday’s Queen’s Speech. An Animal Sentience Bill will enshrine in law that animals are aware of their feelings and emotions, and can experience joy and pleasure, as well as pain and suffering. “Sentience” will apply to “vertebrate animals – anything with a spinal cord”, Environment secretary George Eustice told The Telegraph in an exclusive interview below.

      An existing committee of experts and civil servants in Defra will be tasked with ensuring Government’s policies take into account animal sentience. Ministers were criticised in 2018 when the duty was not carried across into UK law from the European Union after Brexit. The Government wants to make the UK a world leader in animal welfare and laws that protect animals form the centrepiece of this week’s Queen’s Speech.

      As well as an Animal Sentience Bill, an Animals Abroad Bill will ban the import of trophies from animal hunting. A third measure – a Kept Animals Bill – will stop live animal exports and ban families from keeping primates as pets.

      The Government will also publish an animal welfare strategy which will raise the prospect of banning fur imports, microchipping all domestic cats and calling time on the cruel killing of pigs by gassing them with carbon dioxide.

      Animal welfare is not at odds with caring about our rural communities

      The Conservative government has certainly come a long way since the party first won power in 2010 on a pledge to offer a free vote on legalising fox hunting, writes Christopher Hope.

      This week’s Queen’s Speech will see the Tory government publish draft laws that enshrine in law the right of animals to feel pain, as well as bans on live animal exports, importing hunting trophies and keeping primates as pets.

      A separate animal welfare strategy document will set the direction of travel, raising the prospect of banning fur imports, microchipping all cats and calling time on the cruel killing of pigs by gassing them with carbon dioxide.

      It is some journey from “hoodie hugging” when David Cameron was leader in the 2000s to “bunny hugging” under Boris Johnson in the 2020s. And it has been witnessed at first hand by George Eustice, a party press officer in the 2000s and now the Environment secretary.

      When we met in his office at the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs late on Friday, I asked him if he thinks this lurch towards saving animals rather than hunting them with packs of dogs will sit well with the party’s traditional voters.

      He says: “I don’t really see that there’s an inconsistency between caring about animal welfare, wanting to promote that and believing in rural communities, and the values of the countryside. I grew up on a family farm from a sixth-generation farming family. I’m somebody who really understands the social capital that exists in our farming communities and rural communities. And by having higher standards of animal welfare, there’s nothing at all that is at odds with caring also about rural communities in the countryside.”

      For Mr Eustice, who grew up on his family farm with Guinea pigs, rabbits and a rescued Border Collie called Mono, the difference between then and now is that Boris Johnson wants to prioritise animal welfare.

      “There were always other priorities. Boris Johnson is the first Prime Minister, probably ever, to mention animal welfare on the steps of Downing Street. We’ve now got an occupant in Number 10 who really just wants to get some of these things done.”

      Critics claim that Mr Johnson’s love for animals comes from his fiancee Carrie Symonds, a passionate environmentalist. Mr Eustice says he has not talked to Miss Symonds “directly” about the new animal welfare laws.

      He says: “She [Miss Symonds] has long held views on this so there’s no doubt about that – she’s campaigned on animal welfare issues. And it’s not as though she’s unique and alone in this. She is a Conservative she’s passionate about animal welfare, as am I, as is the Prime Minister.”

      The most eye-catching of this week’s slew of animal welfare laws is an Animal Sentience Bill which will enshrine in law that animals are aware of their feelings and emotions, and have the same capacity to feel joy and pleasure, as well as pain and suffering.

      An existing committee of experts and civil servants in Defra will be tasked with ensuring Government’s policies will take into account animal sentience. Ministers had been criticised in 2018 when the duty was not carried across into UK law after Brexit.

      Mr Eustice says: “It would not make fishing illegal – people needn’t worry about that. It is much more than when we design policies, we have to have regard for animal sentience.”

      Mr Eustice admits some of the measures – such as the ban on bringing back hunting trophies to the UK and possible restrictions on fur imports – will not affect large numbers.

      The ban on keeping primates as pets, for example, is mainly targeted at the small number of people who have marmosets in homes (numbers grew after the Labour government removed restrictions in 2008 on the grounds that they are not dangerous).

      But it is all about “sending a signal”. He says: “It sends an important signal around the world and this is something that we want to try and stop.” Many of these changes – such the ban on live animal exports – are made possible by the UK’s exit from the European Union.

      “As a self-governing country you gain some agility and also the self-confidence to make these judgments for yourself. And it does show that outside the EU, we can address areas of policy that some might consider, small niche areas of policy, but where you can make laws better or stronger.”

      Mr Eustice admits that tackling the fall-out from the coronavirus pandemic is the Government’s number one priority.

      But he says: “That doesn’t mean you have to stop work on every other front. How you treat animals, and the legislation you have to govern that, is a mark of a civilised society, and we should be constantly looking to improve and refine our legislation in this area.”

      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/05/08/exclusive-animals-have-feelings-protected-law-queens-speech/

      2. Rather than stopping the import of hunting trophies, why not allow them, but then immediately publish that no punishments will be made of the hunting and murder of this person: and then name the hunter publicly.

        He’ll be dead in no time – hopefully run to ground, injured, bleeding and alone, frightened. Just like the animal he has pointlessly killed.

        Heck, put up a bounty of the import fees as a cash payment for their head.

      3. 334180+ up ticks,
        Evening WS,
        Don’t let an educated animal read the parliamentary canteen menu then.

    2. Here’s more on the subject.

      Exclusive: Animals to have their feelings protected by law in Queen’s Speech

      In an exclusive interview, Environment Secretary George Eustice explains why his new Animal Sentience Bill is necessary

      By Christopher Hope, CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, and Charles Hymas, HOME AFFAIRS EDITOR • 8 May 2021 • 9:30pm

      Animals with a backbone will have a legal right to feel happiness and suffering in a Government drive to raise welfare standards in Tuesday’s Queen’s Speech. An Animal Sentience Bill will enshrine in law that animals are aware of their feelings and emotions, and can experience joy and pleasure, as well as pain and suffering. “Sentience” will apply to “vertebrate animals – anything with a spinal cord”, Environment secretary George Eustice told The Telegraph in an exclusive interview below.

      An existing committee of experts and civil servants in Defra will be tasked with ensuring Government’s policies take into account animal sentience. Ministers were criticised in 2018 when the duty was not carried across into UK law from the European Union after Brexit. The Government wants to make the UK a world leader in animal welfare and laws that protect animals form the centrepiece of this week’s Queen’s Speech.

      As well as an Animal Sentience Bill, an Animals Abroad Bill will ban the import of trophies from animal hunting. A third measure – a Kept Animals Bill – will stop live animal exports and ban families from keeping primates as pets.

      The Government will also publish an animal welfare strategy which will raise the prospect of banning fur imports, microchipping all domestic cats and calling time on the cruel killing of pigs by gassing them with carbon dioxide.

      Animal welfare is not at odds with caring about our rural communities

      The Conservative government has certainly come a long way since the party first won power in 2010 on a pledge to offer a free vote on legalising fox hunting, writes Christopher Hope.

      This week’s Queen’s Speech will see the Tory government publish draft laws that enshrine in law the right of animals to feel pain, as well as bans on live animal exports, importing hunting trophies and keeping primates as pets.

      A separate animal welfare strategy document will set the direction of travel, raising the prospect of banning fur imports, microchipping all cats and calling time on the cruel killing of pigs by gassing them with carbon dioxide.

      It is some journey from “hoodie hugging” when David Cameron was leader in the 2000s to “bunny hugging” under Boris Johnson in the 2020s. And it has been witnessed at first hand by George Eustice, a party press officer in the 2000s and now the Environment secretary.

      When we met in his office at the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs late on Friday, I asked him if he thinks this lurch towards saving animals rather than hunting them with packs of dogs will sit well with the party’s traditional voters.

      He says: “I don’t really see that there’s an inconsistency between caring about animal welfare, wanting to promote that and believing in rural communities, and the values of the countryside. I grew up on a family farm from a sixth-generation farming family. I’m somebody who really understands the social capital that exists in our farming communities and rural communities. And by having higher standards of animal welfare, there’s nothing at all that is at odds with caring also about rural communities in the countryside.”

      For Mr Eustice, who grew up on his family farm with Guinea pigs, rabbits and a rescued Border Collie called Mono, the difference between then and now is that Boris Johnson wants to prioritise animal welfare.

      “There were always other priorities. Boris Johnson is the first Prime Minister, probably ever, to mention animal welfare on the steps of Downing Street. We’ve now got an occupant in Number 10 who really just wants to get some of these things done.”

      Critics claim that Mr Johnson’s love for animals comes from his fiancee Carrie Symonds, a passionate environmentalist. Mr Eustice says he has not talked to Miss Symonds “directly” about the new animal welfare laws.

      He says: “She [Miss Symonds] has long held views on this so there’s no doubt about that – she’s campaigned on animal welfare issues. And it’s not as though she’s unique and alone in this. She is a Conservative she’s passionate about animal welfare, as am I, as is the Prime Minister.”

      The most eye-catching of this week’s slew of animal welfare laws is an Animal Sentience Bill which will enshrine in law that animals are aware of their feelings and emotions, and have the same capacity to feel joy and pleasure, as well as pain and suffering.

      An existing committee of experts and civil servants in Defra will be tasked with ensuring Government’s policies will take into account animal sentience. Ministers had been criticised in 2018 when the duty was not carried across into UK law after Brexit.

      Mr Eustice says: “It would not make fishing illegal – people needn’t worry about that. It is much more than when we design policies, we have to have regard for animal sentience.”

      Mr Eustice admits some of the measures – such as the ban on bringing back hunting trophies to the UK and possible restrictions on fur imports – will not affect large numbers.

      The ban on keeping primates as pets, for example, is mainly targeted at the small number of people who have marmosets in homes (numbers grew after the Labour government removed restrictions in 2008 on the grounds that they are not dangerous).

      But it is all about “sending a signal”. He says: “It sends an important signal around the world and this is something that we want to try and stop.” Many of these changes – such the ban on live animal exports – are made possible by the UK’s exit from the European Union.

      “As a self-governing country you gain some agility and also the self-confidence to make these judgments for yourself. And it does show that outside the EU, we can address areas of policy that some might consider, small niche areas of policy, but where you can make laws better or stronger.”

      Mr Eustice admits that tackling the fall-out from the coronavirus pandemic is the Government’s number one priority.

      But he says: “That doesn’t mean you have to stop work on every other front. How you treat animals, and the legislation you have to govern that, is a mark of a civilised society, and we should be constantly looking to improve and refine our legislation in this area.”

      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/05/08/exclusive-animals-have-feelings-protected-law-queens-speech/

    3. The sad thing is those who care already comply with and exceed such law, those who don’t, won’t bother and won’t ever be caught.

    4. It will never take on muslim rules of slaughter. It will, however, take on farming.

  122. Of course animals are sentient – but the Animal Welfare Bill will become a battering ram for militant activists

    The ground is being laid for exactly the expansion of bureaucratic, non-parliamentary power that Brexit was supposed to counter

    CHARLES MOORE

    Do animals have feelings? “Feelings” is a tricky word in this context because it has such strong human connotations. It encompasses love, grief, joy, regret, wonder, humour, envy, pity, selfishness, pride and much more. It is a mistake to equate human emotions with animal ones.

    All the same, the short answer to my question is “Yes”. Despite differences of degree – can one equate a lobster with a labrador or a dungbeetle with a donkey? – the essential point is that animals are sentient beings. Mammals, in particular, can demonstrably feel pain and pleasure. And while one must guard against sentimentality, those of us who know dogs well speak of them showing love for us. More arguably, the same can be said about horses. (I decline to enter into correspondence about cats.)

    Since animals can feel pleasure and pain, human beings must act accordingly – taking care not to inflict needless pain. They must mind about animal welfare, not only because high standards will produce better eggs, meat, milk, leather, wool and so on, but also because of a deeper duty to living creatures.

    So it might seem uncontroversial that the Government will introduce its Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill in Parliament next week. The Bill will “make provision for an Animal Sentience Committee” which will monitor “the effect of government policy on the welfare of animals as sentient beings”.

    One should always ask, however, whether any piece of new legislation is needed. If there is no need, there should be no legislation. The tendency, much-loved by pressure groups, of trying to make new laws to express strong feelings, should be resisted. It leads to bad law, and politics conducted through the courts.

    This is never truer than in the world of animal-rights pressure groups. Daniel Greenberg, the distinguished Parliamentary Counsel whose professional job included the drafting of the 2004 Hunting Act, said last year how “troubled” he had felt about it: “For the first time in my immediate professional experience, the mechanism of the law was being deployed not to further some public policy objective … but to inflict on the whole country the personal moral perspective of the 600 or so citizens who happened to find themselves in the House of Commons at the time.”

    The Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill is not in this category. It does not ban anything, and it is government legislation, not a Private Members’ Bill. But I fear it is driven by a similar personal moral perspective. This will emerge afterwards, when it is too late.

    Rather as woke leaders within museums, Oxbridge colleges and the National Trust now claim that no one, before them, has ever confronted the history of slavery, so the animal-rights campaigners suggest that animal sentience has never before been recognised in our law.

    This is quite untrue. Two hundred years ago, Parliament passed the Cruel Treatment of Cattle Act. In 1835, the Cruelty to Animals Act followed (64 years before comparable child protection legislation). The very definition of cruelty to animals involves accepting they are sentient. You cannot be cruel to a lump of rock, only to a living being. As the Countryside Alliance briefing on the subject trenchantly begins, “Animal sentience is often incorrectly referred to as being a ‘principle’ when it is a question of fact.” (I should add at this point that I am on the board of the Countryside Alliance, but this article is only my personal view.)

    So why is animal sentience being asserted in a new Bill? The history here is that when we were still in the EU, we were bound by Article 13 of the Lisbon Treaty, which refers to animals as sentient beings, and says that, in stated areas of policy, the member states therefore should “pay full regard to the welfare requirements of animals”. The Government declined to incorporate this in the Brexit Bill, promising its own legislation on the subject instead.

    One Brexit benefit is that we no longer have to suffer the sort of continental legislation that declares a grand general principle and then invites judges to make what our tradition sees as political decisions in the light of it. The British approach is more pragmatic and democratic. Yet in this case, we appear to be creating a European-style law all by our ourselves, and gold-plating it.

    The problem with the committee which the new Bill allows the secretary of state to create is that it depends entirely on the attitude of its members. Whereas the Lisbon Treaty version insisted that animal welfare requirements should be balanced against customs “relating to religious rites, cultural traditions and regional heritage”, there is no such balance in this law. Whereas the EU restricted its scope to areas obviously involving animals, such as agriculture and fisheries, there is no such restraint here.

    Nor is any distinction made between human duties to wild animals and those to domestic ones. Yet it is surely obvious that anyone with a pet or a farm animal under his/her control has a more serious welfare duty to that creature than he does to a fox that kills his hens or a deer that scoffs his roses. Even within the category of wild animals, our law has for centuries recognised the difference between “game” and “vermin”. Could sentience zealots override all such distinctions?

    The new Bill certainly allows the committee to do so. It does not insist that the duties towards animal sentience should be held in check by any idea of the public interest. So if the committee is stuffed by representatives of well-organised animal-rights/green lobbies its power for mischief will spread right across government.

    What happens, for example, if the committee finds that current laws about predator control fail to show “all due regard” to animal sentience? What if it decides to take on Muslim or Jewish rules of slaughter? What if it enters the issue of animals in medical research, or hurls itself into arguments about fishing and angling? Can it assert itself even on foreign policy?

    The ground is being laid for just the expansion of bureaucratic, non-parliamentary power that Brexit is supposed to counter. The consequence will surely be an ever-greater resort to the courts, with pressure groups using committee reports as their weapons of “lawfare”. The committee could become a Trojan horse for extremism – and the Trojan horse, let us remember, was not a sentient animal, but a collection of sentient human beings using animal disguise to effect capture.

    The Government must be aware of this but is letting itself be blackmailed for fear of being branded “anti-animal”. For the same reason, it will be frightened to go against anything the new committee recommends. As in so many areas of woke/green issues of “rights”, it will find it has created another bit of the “Blob”.

    The legislation’s supporters will believe that, to coin a phrase, no animals were harmed in the making of this Bill. I am not so sure. The future of animals, particularly on a crowded island like ours, relates to our capacity to establish useful relations with them. If animal “rights” prevent us keeping sheep, cows or pigs to our economic benefit, very few sheep, cows or pigs will remain. If the day comes when bureaucrats decide that putting a bit in a horse’s mouth and a saddle on its back is the foul subjugation of a sentient being, why breed horses? The Government should not start out down a path it need not travel.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/11/course-animals-sentient-animal-welfare-bill-will-become-battering/

      1. Yes but that is the US.

        If I followed their advice, I would be getting a visit from the Mounties.

        1. Just tell ’em you are following Medical advice….that prevents you from wearing a mask….

    2. Her choice; she has had her jabs, Maggie.

      I am astonished that when riding her horses, she never wears a helmet; she invariably makes do with a headscarf!

  124. Evening, all. I didn’t have to find crosswalks, fire hydrants, bridges or anything, tonight – I just clicked on log in and it put a green tick in it!

        1. A recording of one of my friends (former opera singer) singing it was played at her funeral. For me it ticks a lot of boxes; Italian words and a sentiment of farewell.

        1. Thank you, Hat. We never know when the thread will be cut, so we need to live each day to the full.

    2. Well if you inject half the population with dodgy gene therapies then as real scientists have predicted the vaccinated will be infected with the toxic Covid spike proteins and will likely infect others.

      Many vaccinated folk will suffer irreversible damage to their natural immunity, will have serious adverse reactions and many will die.

      The constant scare mongering of lockdown reversals is pure propaganda. It is designed to destroy small businesses and install state control over every aspect of our collective lives.

      Johnson is a front for greater powers and a disgrace. His claims to being Churchillian are laughable. The man is a fat Turkish Fraud and always has been to those with a modicum of discernment.

      1. Conspiracy theorists, you and I know them as the people who are always wrong about the government’s intentions re CV-19. Well, one or two are speculating that not all of the jabbed received the “vaccine” but were injected with a saline solution. This was done to ensure that not too many will die in the immediate aftermath of the jabberthon should things go wrong with the potion. Mass problems with the jabbed would raise too many questions. Of course the non-jabbed would not suffer the same effect, hence why 100% jabbing is being demanded. Cannot have a control group exposing the failure of the jab.

        1. Ktk mng – default baseline jab Glucose and Saline [G/S]. So far in Kenya, they’ve ratched up a total of 37 G/S jabs in a population of 47 million since June 2020.

    3. Excellent. Truly excellent. The great British public will bring this to an end in the traditional manner.

  128. A BTL comment on a DM article about how Marina Wheeler feels about seeing Princess Nutnuts cavorting with her former husband in Cornwall:

    I should imagine that Marina Wheeler, the former wife of Boris Johnson, is delighted to be rid of the bumptious bonking buffoon. She probably feels some pity for the younger woman having to pretend to be enjoying his clumsy and inexpert lovemaking – but at least she is rid of the offensively lecherous oaf.

  129. A BTL comment on a DM article about how Marina Wheeler feels about seeing Princess Nutnuts cavorting with her former husband in Cornwall:

    I should imagine that Marina Wheeler, the former wife of Boris Johnson, is delighted to be rid of the bumptious bonking buffoon. She probably feels some pity for the younger woman having to pretend to be enjoying his clumsy and inexpert lovemaking – but at least she is rid of the offensively lecherous oaf.

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