Friday 12 June: Schools could have more pupils back if the Government let them decide

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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

Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2020/06/11/lettersschools-could-have-pupils-back-government-let-decide/

677 thoughts on “Friday 12 June: Schools could have more pupils back if the Government let them decide”

  3. ‘Morning All

    It’s the Cenotaph I said to myself,incredulous at what I was seeing

    https://twitter.com/LeaveEUOfficial/status/1271199409087418368

    Then the adrenaline fueled shot of rage left me shaking,from the Akbarriers on our bridges to this the bastards are determined not one stone of our culture shall stand on another

    Littlejohn says it well

    “Everywhere, madness is in the air. For the

    past couple of weeks, there’s been an End Of Days atmosphere abroad. As

    the columnist John Junor, late of this parish, used to ask: Who’s in

    charge of the clattering train?

    We appear not to have a Government worth the name. Boris has lost the plot

    completely since his near-death experience from Covid-19.

    You’d never think that six short months ago we elected a Conservative

    Government with an 80-seat majority. It feels as if we’re living in a

    Left-wing dictatorship.

    In the face of

    the greatest national emergency since World War II, the nation is

    consumed by a preposterous squabble about statues of long-dead white men

    with links to the slave trade, however tenuous.

    Mobs roam the country committing criminal damage while police stand back and let them get on with it.

    Opportunist Labour politicians, like London’s two bob chancer of a mayor Genghis Khan, seize the moment.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8412783/Britannia-teetering-brink-anarchy-national-emergency-says-Richard-Littlejohn.html

    2. This has been coming all my life. The left’s influence has steadily grown. After they got education in the 80s, the rest is more or less predictable.

  4. On my DM profile, I can’t see any of my comments – the page is just blank. Is this just me, or are other people having the same experience? I wondered if I was being banned or punished for not accepting their cookies.

    1. ‘Morning, bb2.

      Nope, my profile is normal with all recent comments on display.

    2. #metoo. If you tap on the ‘your profile’ again whilst looking at the blank page (i.e. not shutting down and trying afresh) sometimes they eventually materialise. Just keep on trying. Then go out of that page if you don’t succeed, ‘rinse and repeat’. It is irritating and tedious, but I have never not managed to see them in due course. I have wondered that about the dm, am I being punished for being over the target.

      1. That was my experience for several days, before the comments disappeared altogether. They have mysteriously reappeared this morning.
        I have been banned by the DM in the past; they don’t tell you anything and your comments appear on your profile as usual but they don’t appear on the articles you commented on.

        1. I have experienced that, too and sometimes they wait until the conversation has moved on before publishing your comment so that it looks as though no-one is interested.

  6. SIR – Two metres until September? That is my job gone. Is there a statue of Neil Ferguson that I can arrange to have thrown into a river to draw attention to a real problem?

    G P Brown
    Norwich

    Why bother with a statue? Seek out the real thing and hurl him in the Wensum.

  9. SIR – The calls to remove the statue of Thomas Guy from the front of his eponymous hospital (at which I served for 28 years) are preposterous.

    Yes, he profited from the South Sea Bubble, selling his shares before it burst, but he also made a lot of money selling bibles. He was not, as far as I know, directly involved in the slave trade. Guy’s was built opposite St Thomas’s for patients the latter refused to admit. He made many other philanthropic bequests.

    Would the politically correct mob like to erect a statue of someone with no connection to the institution? This is what has happened at St Thomas’s, where an effigy of Mary Seacole dominates the front garden, while Florence Nightingale – who assisted in the design of the Victorian building, and whose school of nursing was founded there – is hidden inside.

    David Nunn FRCS
    Malling, Kent

    1. I understand that, far from nursing, Mary Seacole ran a brothel for the officers fighting in the Crimea.

  10. SIR – Hang on a minute! Just a few weeks ago, Boris Johnson was trying to open schools but the teachers’ unions and head teachers were strongly against it.

    Now that he has listened to them, and said we’ll wait, Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, is suddenly in favour of opening schools.

    P J Mills
    Dursley, Gloucestershire

    1. So (© Cathy Newman) the pupils, teachers & parents are just pawns.

      ‘Morning, zx.

      1. 320049+ up ticks,
        Evening Db,
        I read that at first as LAME & thought yet another limp dick.

      1. I have a vague recollection that ‘fuzzy wuzzies’ got a mention in Dad’s Army. Can anyone confirm, please?

        1. ” got a mention” – it is one of the frequent phrases in the series. I hope there is no statue for the leader of the WW2 Dambuster heroes.

    2. I haven’t been paying attention, is Zulu still available on any streaming service?

    3. Yo Ol

      Micron of France has Fawlty Tower’d a bit

      Was in not at ceremony last year at to commemerate D Day, that he followed the line of

      “don’t mention (the part the Brits played) in the war”.

    4. Fortunately I still have the set of Fawlty Towers DVDs given to me some years ago. Presumably possession of which now makes me a very bad person…oops, there goes the front door yet again…

      ‘Morning, Oberst. Think I’m about to be visited by the pc storm troopers.

    5. I best not mention the fact I have a copy of Blazing Saddles. I may even watch it tonight to remind myself that once upon a time, the whole world was not so f*****d up as it is now. I know, it does sound like a fairytale.

      1. Rising Damp with Leonard? Rossiter is a good example of how white and black people can exchange banter without falling out.

    6. Fortunately I still have the set of Fawlty Towers DVDs given to me some years ago. Presumably possession of which now makes me a very bad person…oops, there goes the front door yet again…

      ‘Morning, Oberst. Think I’m about to be visited by the pc storm troopers.

      1. At this rate, Amazon are going to do well out of me.
        How much of my ‘investment’ in box sets will go to to BLM?

  13. Good morning, all. A wet morning – with mist, as well.

    I am just going to board myself up – to avoid offending anyone.

    4. Not enough, I’m afraid. You must now delete every ‘questionable’ blog post – in other words the whole lot.

      Nice knowing you, Bill…

    5. Wet morning Bill.
      We’ve had nothing but wets spread all over every form of media for the bast 6 months.

    6. Not enough, I’m afraid. You must now delete every ‘questionable’ blog post – in other words the whole lot.

      Nice knowing you, Bill…

    1. The single dissenting voice against the rampaging mob, the Dover invasion force etc silenced. I think he has retained his Twitter and YouTube feeds but for how long?

  15. SIR – The arbitrary delay to the reopening of rural pubs is farcical. Pubs should be able to reopen their beer gardens if they wish.

    It is ludicrous that people can buy supermarket beer and drink it with friends in parks, but can’t order a beer in a pub garden.

    Ruth Corderoy

    East Hagbourne, Oxfordshire

    2. 320049+ up ticks,
      Morning E,
      Pubs are centres of like minded peoples gathering in many respects, these could be seen as plotting & planning.

    3. Another day, another enormous flaw in the regulations. Whole fleets of coaches and horses are racing towards it.

      ‘Morning, Epi.

      1. It’s got to the point at which every new measure announced by the inept PTB is either too little too late, ill- considered, or just plain stupid.

        1. They are just ripe for mockery.
          Conjure up an effing stupid regulation and – lo and behold – it will be paraded at 5.0 pm next day or that very day if you’re lucky.

        2. H-K – I have yet to work out what PTB represents. Please enlighten me and excuse my ignorance.

          1. Sorry clydesider, I’m the first to complain about unexplained acronyms and jargon. The fragrant damask_rose has beaten me to it – ‘powers that be’.

          2. Thanks Harry It’s like Cryptic crosswords. It’s usually obvious when you find out the answer. I am struggling with Cryptic crosswords now. Yesterday I took an intelligence test which was on the internet and it was a series of boxes in 3×3 lines with lines or numbers in them except one box on the bottom line with only a question mark in it. You then looked at a selection of boxes with the lines or numbers in them and you had to select which of those boxes was the missing box with the question in it. There was a time limit. I managed to put the correct choice in the boxes but ran out of time long before I was at the end of the questions. Certainly not my idea of an IQ test.
            I never found out how badly I did as I was invited to pay for the result and accompanying certificate. It passed 20 minutes of my time exercising the remaining brain cells in my head.

  17. Morning everyone. I’m having some disqus problems at the moment. No notifications and my posts are not making it though to my profile. Anyone else?

        1. Seems to be getting worse, looks like a repeat of the previous Disgust cock-up, with the addition of having to log back in after a refresh. I know nothing of how these blogs work – or don’t – but I do wonder whether the time is coming for a different ‘provider’…no offence Geoff, just a degree of frustration with their inability to fix it when it goes wrong!

  18. Just a thought.

    Any white person found on a BLM march should be given a sound thrashing by several black policemen.

    It’s for their own good; to help them really understand at a visceral level what it’s like to be on the receiving end of racism.

      2. I googled Black and White Minstrels to see if I could find on youtube any songs by these singers (who once were the BBC’s top attraction on a Saturday evening) to post for my fellow Nottlers’ delight

        To my great surprise this message appeared on my screen:

        This site cannot be reached.

        I can understand that the BBC is keen to hide all traces of its racist past and I can understand the BBC wishing to hush it up. But if Britain can be attacked for its past even though people like Wilberforce did more than any black person to end slavery then surely the BBC should be attacked in the same way as statues?

          1. Good morning Spikey

            Of course in those days the word was not considered to be offensive.

            Have you got any recordings of negro spirituals that you play which you could post for us?

          2. Morning Richard, I’m afraid not – not really my scene but if you can suggest a few I’ll see what I can do for you

          4. ‘Morning, Anne, even I, fumbling with stocking tops in the 60s, can remember that those ‘Nigger Brown’ stockings, quickly became ‘American Tan’. I should have a B.S. degree. No, I mean Bachelor of Stockings, though I’m au fait with the other BS.

          6. Recordings of this song sold more copies in South Africa than Elvis Presley!

            Popcorn chewing gum,
            Peanuts and bubble gum,
            Ice cream candyfloss and eskimo pie
            Ah, Deddy, how we miss
            Niggerballs and liquorice,
            Pepsi Cola, ginger beer and Canada Dry.

    1. Eh? I’ve been taken to a report about a cat fight between two bankers’ bints.

    2. All those who disagree with “Black Lives Matter”(the Anarchist Group rather than the belief that black lives are no less important than other lives) should immediately stop subscription to the TV channels showing the matches, stop watching the games on television and boycott the grounds of the teams involved so that all income for football dries up until this nonsense stops.

      The reluctance of so many footballers to take a pay cut during lockdown – as many oother people have had to do – has shown that their principal interest is in money rather than their supporters and the no-longer beautiful game. Everybody must starve them of money – but I fear the general public has become too incurably supine to react..

      1. Yo mr t

        If the the shirt sponsors for the clubs agree with this stupidity, it is up to the common man to boycott all those sponsoring companies

        If they had All Lives Matter they would be doing a service to the cohesion and unity of the folk of UK.

        If the BLM supporters are averse to the change, it says an awful lot abour them.

    3. Yo OLT.

      What’s the point of that if the games take place behind closed doors?

      1. I suspect they will be televised. Racing is taking place behind closed doors, but it’s on TV on certain days.

    4. 320049+ up ticks,
      Morning OLT

      It is in the peoples court as in, use the turnstile or not.

      By the by are we suffering disquestitas again in some form.

    5. I thought that political slogans and symbols were not supposed to appear on footballers’ shirts? Remember the row about poppies on England players’ shirts?

      1. It only works one way.
        The majority of the millions of young men mown down in WWI were white.
        A mere detail compared with a drugged up crook getting his quietus.

        1. Sadly true. They simply hate without reason or cause.

          I do wonder when this tsunami of bigotry, violence and thuggery will end and if it will end with oppression and suffering or with englightenment – the realisation that these people need someone to stand on their necks.

    6. As they make a lot of money from idiots fans buying kit, if nobody buys it, they could find they got woke, but went broke.

  20. Seems the Disqus problem with notifications is back – nothing about today’s upvotes but it keeps telling me about one from yesterday!

      1. Probably the only example of a large cretaceous-period lizard that survived, alone, for 65 million years in order to confront mankind. No wonder it amassed such an impressive vocabulary.

        Shame there aren’t a few around today to clear up the masses of dim Lefties.

  22. Call me pathetic, but – if the bame attacks on London (and elsewhere) are called off for whatever reason – I am thankful.

    1. It’s just the most visible aspect of the movement that’s been stopped.
      They’re still silencing people, sacking them for speaking their mind, or the truth.

  24. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OodlihNmcqI
    Tucker Carlson Tonight
    Watch this video from 21 minutes in, about the spread of CV19 in a NYC hospital, where CV19 and non-CV19 were nursed on the same floors, and even in the same rooms. A nurse took undercover footage of what went on there. Note in particular the date of Governor Cuomo’s edicts regarding treatment of CV19 patients.

  25. For the French speakers amongst us:

    https://www.lemonde.fr/afrique/article/2019/08/25/fatou-diome-la-rengaine-sur-la-colonisation-et-l-esclavage-est-devenue-un-fonds-de-commerce_5502730_3212.html?fbclid=IwAR2N4llYi07cuQY4PHx1R-AWenMAJYpiEIsGOCmP8opuJAgsVZIrpBFq3l4

    This is an interview with a lady novelist of Senegalese origins. A voice in the wilderness. I’m afraid I can’t translate the whole thing, it’s far too long, but here are just a couple of nuggets:

    As a child she used to go fishing with her grandfather: “When the wind was too strong and I started to cry, he would say: ‘Do you think that your tears are going to get us back to the village more quickly? Just row!’ What I learnt from that was that moaning never saves you from anything.”

    Asked about migration of young Africans to Europe: “I would tell them to stay at home and to study, because in Europe young people of their age also struggle. …. If I have been able to become a novelist, it’s because I tired my eyes and my bottom in libraries.”

    In summary: take responsibility for who you are, don’t moan, don’t consider yourself a victim… good stuff. I suspect she would agree with Candace Owens and with the Ghanaian president.

    1. Education! Edu….funnily enough education is the key. In my own poor wee country that was recognised centuries ago.

    2. There are very many civilised, well-educated and intelligent black people just as there are very many barbaric, ill-educated and stupid white people..

      One of the great sadnesses of the BLM movement is that it is going to prove very bad for race relations and white people will forget just how many decent, black people there are.

      1. Post script.

        Much is said and written about the evils of colonialism – but much less about the evils of the end of colonialism.

        One of the worst things about its end is that it has drained former colonies of their brightest and best young people who seek a better life in Europe rather than staying at home to build up their own countries. Caroline mentions the Ghanaian president above – here is the speech to which she refers:

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsOrs-06fzE

        1. Good man……..but sadly one of very few.

          Although France has already a quite a lot of black people living in the country, they are not shy about shoving them on to us.

        2. Brilliant.
          That is a video I’ve been spreading about for the past few weeks.

      2. My chum, Wedji recently pinged up to mock these protestors and say much the same thing.

        As he doesn’t agree with the black racists and fears the reprisals of white racists he’s stuck in the middle between two abhorrent camps.

        This stereotyping – by the racist black community is horrific. It is polarising people into for and against for no other reason than to create division.

    3. The idea of personal responsibility, effort and merit are long gone, crushed under the wheel of ‘liberal’ greed, handouts and reward for idleness.

    1. They won’t bother with the A12. It’s permanently blocked on one side or the other.
      Morning, Grizz.

    2. Two things spring to mind, can we get them back to repair the pot holes, no body else can be bothered.
      And I imagine the slaves were all, if not predominately white, was this racist ?

    3. It isn’t just the A roads, either. The road running past my house, which is a B road, is an old Roman road.

      1. I once took some advice, when driving from Chesterfield to Plymouth, to use, as far as I could, the Fosse Way, following its track on OS Maps (instead of the usual M1/M42/M5). The first time it was quite an adventure, little traffic and lots of charming villages.

        The second time, I found lots of HGVs using it a rat-run so the experience was spoiled.

      2. I once took some advice, when driving from Chesterfield to Plymouth, to use, as far as I could, the Fosse Way, following its track on OS Maps (instead of the usual M1/M42/M5). The first time it was quite an adventure, little traffic and lots of charming villages.

        The second time, I found lots of HGVs using it a rat-run so the experience was spoiled.

    1. Afternoon, Ped.

      I got the ‘corvid’ allusion even if this thick lot didn’t! 🤣

      1. Which of this ‘thick lot’ are you referring to, Grizzly.

        You are becoming more and more grumpy,
        what, on earth, is the matter?

        Good afternoon!

          1. Good afternoon, Dear One.

            Grizz used to be such fun…..
            perhaps some people, in old
            age, naturally progress……..
            to miserablenessteress, or
            summat!!..:-)
            I think I have a touch of the Tryers!!…:-))

  29. Good morning all.

    Just had an overnight update. The much-heralded new Edge doesn’t seem to have materialised.

  30. Funny Old World

    The new “fast track” for arresting and jailing protestors is coming in just as there may be some non Far Left targets about……………………..

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f734ba0168835dbe8af06dd04d004c5c0391ac6ebba9eadf0b922d9b3980a59e.jpg
    Just like there are “legal loopholes” for the Bristolnacht farrago but the “bleaching” of some black poet’s statue in the same city will be pursued with the full force of the law

    1. The bloke on the right may have deserved the medals. The bloke on the left has a yellow streak that comes over from his back.

  31. Funny Old World

    The new “fast track” for arresting and jailing protestors is coming in just as there may be some non Far Left targets about……………………..

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f734ba0168835dbe8af06dd04d004c5c0391ac6ebba9eadf0b922d9b3980a59e.jpg
    Just like there are “legal loopholes” for the Bristolnacht farrago but the “bleaching” of some black poet’s statue in the same city will be pursued with the full force of the law

  32. I have various wooden carved African heads , some nice paintings and other bits of African art , all collected over the years, and loads of books about Africa .

    Oh yes and Sudanese year books dating back to the late forties early fifties showing how good their ecomomy was . White Nile and Blue Nile by Alan Moorehead , many Thomas Baines books . Nigerian commemorative maps , when they achieved independence , arabic phrase books etc etc.. my late beloved father collected much stuff, and distributed alot amongst the family , oh yes and an African cooking pot called a Scottle .

    The whole lot is going to be taken to the tip , I have had enough .

      2. Actually, it’s for making porridge. Scottish missionaries, you know. (I have noted that the names Mungo Park and David Livingstone have been prominently absent from the fairy stories of the BLM criminal hooligan foot soldiers of the Cultural Marxist takeover.)

        Quotes from Park
        Park was convinced that:
        “whatever difference there is between the negro and European, in the conformation of the nose, and the colour of the skin, there is none in the genuine sympathies and characteristic feelings of our common nature.”
        — Park 1799, p. 82

        Park encountered a group of slaves when traveling through Mandinka country Mali:
        “They were all very inquisitive, but they viewed me at first with looks of horror, and repeatedly asked if my countrymen were cannibals. They were very desirous to know what became of the slaves after they had crossed the salt water. I told them that they were employed in cultivating the land; but they would not believe me; and one of them putting his hand upon the ground, said with great simplicity, “have you really got such ground as this, to set your feet upon?” A deeply-rooted idea that the whites purchase Negroes for the purpose of devouring them, or of selling them to others that they may be devoured hereafter, naturally makes the slaves contemplate a journey towards the Coast with great terror, insomuch that the Slatees are forced to keep them constantly in irons, and watch them very closely, to prevent their escape.”
        — Park 1799, p. 3
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mungo_Park_(explorer)

    2. Don’t just bin them.
      Send them off the auction, the market might be quite bouyant and you could be pleasantly surprised.

    3. Sos is right. There are collectors of Africana and a bit of research will find the right auction house for it. And a tidy sum for your favourite charity, perhaps….

    5. Charity shop (when they reopen) might be more appropriate than the tip, then some others might enjoy them. It’s not your late father’s fault that the descendants of the people he respected have disrespected this country and its history.

    6. I have various Swahili textbooks from the ’70s when I was visiting Kenya & I’m holding on to them.

    7. Don’t bin it, sell it. People buy African stuff (although I have no idea why) for good money.

  33. ‘Nuff Said……………….

    It was not part of their blood,

    It came to them very late

    With long arrears to make good,

    When the English began to hate.

    They were not easily moved,

    They were icy-willing to wait

    Till every count should be proved,

    Ere the English began to hate.

    Their voices were even and low,

    Their eyes were level and straight.

    There was neither sign nor show,

    When the English began to hate.

    It was not preached to the crowd,

    It was not taught by the State.

    No man spoke it aloud,

    When the English began to hate.

    It was not suddenly bred,

    It will not swiftly abate,

    Through the chill years ahead,

    When Time shall count from the date

    That the English began to hate.

    Kipling of course,this is the original text,”English” is often swapped to “Saxon”

    https://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipling/beginning.html

  34. Some great work by the Book Burning Corporation, seems that if we remove all TV content with white people in it black people in America will stop shooting each-other.

    1. Have they turned their attentions to ‘The League of Gentlemen’ yet? I seem to recall that Papa someone was a blacked up whitey, and there was mockery surrounding a taxi driver who was ‘transiting’?

  35. You can see why people want their own countries to live in when you start to see this evil lot. What is Boris doing about it NOTHING.

    There is no way these people should be acting like this. it just proves they are not fot to live in Britain.

  36. Nelson provides half an answer to his own question without realising it when he refers to poor white boys and single black mothers. Welfarism and family. The white and black underclass have much in common. I suspect there are more white than black.

    We’re asking the wrong questions about racial inequality in the UK

    Gesture politics is far easier than examining what really explains the huge disparities between different groups

    FRASER NELSON

    When America was in flames last week, there was uproar in Westminster over a fairly innocent remark made in Parliament by Kemi Badenoch. Britain, she said, is one of the best places in the world to be black. Her fast-growing army of critics took this as a blithe dismissal of racism – and this points to a battle to come. There are two very different ways of seeing the equalities agenda, now clashing against each other. This is worth looking at more closely, because it’s a new form of politics that will likely be with us for some time.

    Boris Johnson’s first Cabinet had more black and minority ethnic (BAME) politicians around the table than all other cabinets in history put together. But what unites his ministers is a hatred of the idea of being labelled “BAME”.

    Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, was listening to her car radio when she first heard herself described in this way by David Cameron. She was so furious that she almost veered into a ditch. Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor, is baffled by the idea that his Indian heritage is in any way a disadvantage. Ms Badenoch, newly appointed Equalities minister, regards identity politics as reductive and divisive.

    The Tory view, in general, would be that Martin Luther King had it right when he defined equality as judging people by the “content of their character”, not the colour of their skin. Labour, now, is more drawn to the Black Lives Matter agenda, where skin colour matters a great deal – especially for those MPs who see the world in terms of oppressors and the oppressed.

    Earlier this week, a group of Labour MPs “took the knee”, a gesture associated with the Black Lives Matter campaign, in a photo OP outside the Commons. It’s pretty unlikely that any Tories would be pictured doing the same.

    It’s an incendiary topic, with plenty to discuss. If you’re white in this country, you certainly are far more likely to earn more and live longer. But dig deeper, and things become more complicated.

    Britons with a Bangladeshi background typically earn 20 per cent less than whites. But those with Indian heritage are likely to earn 12 per cent more. For black Britons, it’s 9 per cent less; for Chinese, 30 per cent more. It’s hard to put these differences down to systemic discrimination based on skin colour.

    This is why Tories tend to reject a “white vs BAME” narrative as being an American import that fundamentally misunderstands Britain. Ms Patel has told her Home Office civil servants that she finds the BAME acronym “patronising and insulting”, as well as being blunt and not useful for judging policy issues. Even “black” lumps together those with African and Caribbean backgrounds, which can be simplistic in a country where the former group are (for example) twice as likely to get into university than the latter.

    Admissions to university – a useful proxy for future life chances – also offer a fascinating insight. The average 18-year-old English applicant has a 35 per cent chance of going – but it’s 50 per cent for those categorised as Asian and an almighty 68 per cent for Chinese.

    Black students, as a whole, do better than the national average. The ethnic group least likely to go, with a 30 per cent entry rate, are whites. You tend not to hear that figure, because so much of England’s public debate about higher education tends to be driven by an obsession about who gets into Oxbridge.

    Deploring racism is important, but not difficult. It is far harder to look into the huge disparities between the ethnic groups and ask what explains them. More dangerous still is to ask whether culture or family structure might play a role.

    The hot potato that no politician wants to handle is the shocking underachievement of poor white boys: they do worse academically than any other group. Ladders of opportunity work for those eager to climb. But what about those who have come to believe that it’s not worth trying? The problem of the “hard-to-reach” poor white boys is one of the toughest questions of equality – and race – in Britain today.

    It’s often the least fashionable causes that most need the political attention. One that the right amount of political pressure might help to fix.

    The MPs who “took the knee” outside the Commons ought to have gone straight back inside and campaigned for all schools to reopen, because nothing would be of greater help to young black Brits today. Black mothers are more likely to be single parents, with too many forced to choose between their job or running a homeschool. It’s the classroom where pupils from poorer backgrounds can find space to study, friends and teachers to inspire them.

    The classroom is a great leveller, but when schools are closed, the greatest weapon of social mobility lies unused. Inequalities will be left to fester.

    Social distancing will also mean far fewer internships this summer – at least, for those without family connections. By some accounts, two thirds of apprenticeships this year will be suspended: what will happen to those who may now miss their first foothold into the world of work? A study last week estimated that school closures have undone about 10 years of progress on education inequality. How to make it up?

    All pretty difficult questions. Playing the game of identity politics is easier, with a more visceral appeal. A letter to Ms Patel was signed by 32 Labour MPs yesterday saying that as BAME politicians they would not allow her to “gaslight other minority communities”. They are furious, it seems, that the Home Secretary had said she needed no lessons on racism. She replied last night, saying that she will not conform to their view on how ethnic minority politicians should behave. A decent response – but she would be in a stronger position if she had more to say, in general, about how the Tory approach is better.

    Britain had become far better, in recent years, at levelling up. But the Covid disruption will have been a huge setback, deepening inequality in all kinds of ways. The social damage being inflicted by lockdown will take years to repair. The challenge for the Tories, now, is to show that they are the party to do it.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/11/asking-wrong-questions-racial-inequality-uk/

    1. “Equalities agenda”. This is baloney. We are all equal in the eyes of God. The rest is tripe. First, define your terms. What does “equal” mean?
      As soon as that is attempted the whole thing falls.

  38. Morning all. Here’s the first lot……

    SIR – If the Government really wants more pupils to get back to school before the end of the summer term then it has the power to act.

    All it need do is allow schools to make the decisions that fit locally, for their school and area. At Ryde School we have had about 70 per cent of pupils in Reception, Year 1 and Year 6 in school since last week, and look forward to welcoming groups of Year 10 and the Lower Sixth next week.

    However, I am unable to have pupils back from other year groups because the Government refuses to allow us to make our own decisions.

    I am not asking for a relaxation of the expectations around maximum numbers in school or class, nor of the social-distancing requirements, but simply to be trusted to make the right decisions for my school.

    While some pupils and teachers will want or need to continue their remote education, I know the majority of parents, pupils and staff at my school are keen to be back as soon as possible.

    Advertisement

    Ofsted’s chief inspector urged us to be more optimistic yesterday, but optimism can’t overcome the confusing messages and controlling hand of an incompetent government department.

    The scandalous failure of the Government to prioritise the education of our young people sits high among the many injustices highlighted in recent weeks. The Secretary of State can and should do something about it – and now.

    Mark Waldron

    Head Master, Ryde School

    Isle of Wight

    SIR – I have never joined a protest march, but if there was one lobbying the Government to send children back to school, then I would be there.

    William Tice FRCS

    Upham, Hampshire

    SIR – Hang on a minute! Just a few weeks ago, Boris Johnson was trying to open schools but the teachers’ unions and head teachers were strongly against it.

    Now that he has listened to them, and said we’ll wait, Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, is suddenly in favour of opening schools.

    P J Mills

    Dursley, Gloucestershire

    SIR – Why the worry about children returning to school? Look at the children gathering to play in streets and parks and on beaches. I have seen little social distancing among them.

    Sue Jezzard

    Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire

    SIR – Spain has announced that, for children up to the equivalent of Year 5 in Britain, there will be no social distancing in nurseries and schools.

    Dr Jennifer Longhurst

    Surbiton, Surrey

    SIR – How long before we see the Government paying large compensation claims to young people denied their right to an education under the Human Rights Act?

    Carolyn Berven

    Pinner, Middlesex

    1. Carolyn Bergen, for ‘Government’ kindly substitute ‘poor sodding taxpayer’.

      On a much more serious note, two of our grandchildren of school age are showing clear signs of behavioural problems, having been prevented from having any contact with their friends since late March. Home schooling is all very well but the loss of all social interaction with other children is upsetting them. Extend this to September and we can only imagine what harm is being done – and it may not be temporary. Does this bloody government have a majority of 80 or not? If it does then enough of this whimping out to backsliding leftie unions. Govern or pay a terrible price at the next GE (if not before).

      1. Similar with my grandchildren. Older one in first year of school, beginning to overcome shyness and interact with classmates, and younger one had just settled after 2 months at daycare. Both parents working from home, living in an apartment so no ready access to fresh air, father just returned to his workplace part time, children left at home with a mother who appears to barely cope. Tantrums and behaviour issues increasing.

  40. SIR – The edict ordering the use of face masks in all clinical and social-care premises is a recognition that these locations are the current sources of contagion.

    We may have “saved the NHS”, but it has been transformed: A&E is virtually empty, staff are stressed by Covid but no longer run ragged, and many care homes are half full. Masked staff will emphasise that the NHS has become an object of fear. Few over-sixties look forward to their overdue appointments; most are cancelling or using Zoom. Elderly people are refusing hospital care and taking their chances at home.

    It will be a brave government that unmasks the NHS in the absence of an effective vaccine. The irony is, having made the NHS dysfunctional, we may have saved it from its long-predicted collapse from chronic overload.

    Dr Richard Hurren

    Ferndown, Dorset

    SIR – Our ears are perfect for securing spectacles, hearing aids and the loops of face masks. Has anyone mastered the challenge of wearing all three without them displacing each other?

    Jean Renshaw

    Tadworth, Surrey

  41. SIR – The peremptory removal of the statue of Robert Milligan at the request of Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, and with the connivance of Tower Hamlets Council and the Canal & River Trust, may have broken planning legislation.

    Not only does the statue site appear to be within the curtilage of the buildings known as “Warehouses and General Offices at Western End of North Quay, West India Dock Road, London E14”, which are listed Grade I, it is also within the West India Dock Conservation Area. Was consent obtained for its removal?

    I have written to Historic England asking it to investigate. In the meantime, the statue should be returned and the local planning authority, Tower Hamlets, should start the statutory process of granting itself the necessary consents.

    I trust that Historic England will also issue a rebuke to the council. However, its spineless reaction to the similarly illegal removal of the statue of Edward Colston (listed Grade II) in Bristol suggests that it is yet another public body willing to let riots and demonstrations override its duty – which, in its case, is to “secure the preservation of ancient monuments and historic buildings”.

    Hugo Summerson

    London SW20

  42. Morning again

    SIR – We should remember with gratitude the fact that, following the passing in 1807 of an Act of Parliament banning the slave trade, the Royal Navy carried out anti-slavery patrols off the west and east coasts of Africa, as well as off the Arabian Peninsula (where, incidentally, slavery had been practised for centuries).

    Peter Mulleneux

    Wadhurst, East Sussex

    SIR – I await the reaction in the United States when the Black Lives Matter movement seeks to change the name of the capital city.

    Nick Reilly

    Esher, Surrey

  43. Douglas Murray
    In defence of liberalism: resisting a new era of intolerance

    Our public figures must rediscover the true spirit of liberty
    From magazine issue: 13 June 2020

    It has become fashionable in recent years to talk of the death of liberalism. But as crowds high on the octane of generational self-righteousness rampage through major cities, the evidence mounts. The growing intolerance of freedom of thought, the inability to talk across divides, the way that most of the British establishment, police included, feels the need to pledge fealty to the cause — as though all terrified of ending up on the wrong side — points to a crisis of more than confidence. It is evidence of an underlying morbidity.

    Each day the cultural revolution is picking up a pace, with the iconoclasts who attacked the Cenotaph and the statue of Winston Churchill looking for new focuses for their rage. The University of Liverpool has announced that its Gladstone halls of residence will be renamed after protestors pointed out that the former prime minister’s father had owned slaves. So there goes the ‘sins of the father’ ethic too. Nervous broadcasters have started removing programmes ahead of any stampede, with the BBC withdrawing Little Britain and HBO taking out Gone with the Wind from their streaming services in case the woke eye of Sauron flashes on them.

    What we are seeing is nothing more or less than the death of the liberal ideal.

    Of course ‘liberalism’ was always a broadly defined term; a definition made only vaguer by Americans making it synonymous with ‘left-wing’. But in the truest political sense it encapsulates most of the foundations of our political order, including (though not limited to) equality, the rule of law and freedom — including the freedom of speech that allows good ideas to win out. In the past few years, left-wing critics have been keen to identify what they see as the erasure of liberal democracy by popularly elected leaders on the political right. But in our own country, the much more serious assault on political liberalism comes not from the conservative right, but from the radical left.

    Over the past couple of weeks, well-meaning people have poured almost a million pounds into the coffers of Black Lives Matter UK in the belief that they are helping a movement that will help black people. In fact they have funded a deeply radical movement. On its own fundraising page, BLM UK describes its aims as: ‘to dismantle imperialism, capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy and the state structures.’ So as well as dismantling a nonexistent menace (‘imperialism’) it intends to bring down the economy and completely alter relations between the sexes (negatively characterised as ‘patriarchy’). This is not liberalism, but far-left radicalism of a kind that has become very familiar of late.

    Some people watching events of recent days will have been surprised by how far and fast such sentiments have run. By the sight of a mob in Bristol tearing down a statue and then jumping on it. By a Labour MP saying: ‘I celebrate these acts of resistance. We need a movement that will tear down systemic racism.’ By the ranks of British police who could find no way to respond to this behaviour other than (in a newly invented act of faith) to ‘take the knee’ before it. And then there is the media, which has chosen to provide cover for such violence and purge from their ranks not just people who dissent from it but, in the case of the New York Times a few days ago, anyone who helps publish someone who dissents.

    As one of the last liberals left at that newspaper, Bari Weiss, explained it last week, the over-forties in the news business (like so many others) imagined that the people coming up under them shared their liberal worldview. Then they discovered that these young people believed in ‘safetyism’ over liberalism, and ‘the right of people to feel emotionally and psychologically safe’ over ‘what were considered core liberal values, like free speech’. Actually the divide is even bigger than that, and now encompasses nearly everything. Where the liberal mind is inquiring, the woke mind is dogmatic. Where the liberal mind is capable of humility, the woke mind is capable of none. Where the liberal mind is able to forgive, the woke mind believes that to have erred just once is cause enough to be ‘cancelled’. And while the liberal mind inherited the idea of loving your neighbour, the woke mind positively itches to cast the first stone.

    Readers of The Spectator have known this was coming. When this magazine first wrote about the Stepford Students, it was asked why we take this so seriously — surely the students would grow up? And they did: but they didn’t change. The virtue-signalling of large corporations — the growing legions of diversity officers and ‘implicit bias training’ — was also written off as the silliness of the corporate world. When we described the mandatory requirement in government to prove a ‘commitment to diversity’ in order to be eligible for any public appointment, it was greeted with the same dismissal. As the American journalist Andrew Sullivan (himself now seemingly muzzled, if not cancelled) put it two years ago: ‘We all live on campus now.’

    Step by step, the UK came to have a public and private sector dedicated to the implementation of views which are barely distinguishable from those of the protestors who took to the streets in the past week or two. It’s an ethic which demands that our society play a set of impossible, unwinnable games of identity and ‘privilege’ that not only subvert but end any idea of tolerance.

    All of this emanates from those who come out of university educated to loathe our society, believing it to be characterised by the oppression of certain groups by other groups: a shameful history and a shameful present. Today these people head into professions where their language of aggressive superiority (‘Educate yourself’) is used to intimidate their elders, force every-one to agree with their point of view and otherwise make themselves unsackable.

    As with all movements that catch, they aren’t on to nothing. Inequalities and inequities do exist, here as in all societies. Reasonable people disagree about how to address this. But the new illiberal radicals do not share that worry. For them, every inequity that exists (financial, familial, social, neurological) is the result of the same thing: discrimination. A thing we must ‘tackle’, ‘eradicate’ and otherwise cleanse from existence. There’s an awful lot of work to do.

    Even the woke analysis of history that now sees them scouring the land for more statues to assault is radically different from that of the liberal mind. Liberals understand that people in history acted with the knowledge they had at the time, and that the task of those looking back is to look on it with understanding, not least in the hope of being understood in turn. The woke mind abhors this. It knows that it is right, and that everybody before this year zero was a bigot. After the weekend’s vandalism against London monuments, the capital’s Mayor, Sadiq Khan, announced that his ‘Commission for Diversity in the Public Realm’ would sit in judgment on all racist statues in the capital. Within hours, the Museum of London had already brought in the cranes to remove an errant statue on West India Quay.

    In such ways has the free exchange of ideas about our past and present been replaced by a series of demands and assertions that demand everyone else’s compliance. ‘Silence is violence’ is one favoured line, meaning that if you do not agree with the radicals, you are perpetrating an act of violence. Naturally this assertion comes from the same people who have spent a lot of time asserting that words (such as ‘mis-gendering’ someone) are violence. While the violence of the past few days is not violence.

    It is on the lip of this trap that our representatives and public figures have teetered over the past week or two, unable to work out how they can avoid a step they intuit to be deadly. What they need to do is pause and fundamentally change the terms, basing their appeal not just on reason but on a truly liberal spirit. It should be one which emphasises that the claims being made are unjust. It is unjust to portray the whole of American society, in all of its complexity, as typified by a policeman who is awaiting trial for murder. And it is even more unjust to think that his actions reveal some deep truth about the British police, or the British state, let alone everybody who is white. Equally, it is not just unjust but vindictive to pretend that any contradiction of your world view is merely a display of ‘white privilege’, ‘white fragility’ or ‘white tears’.

    Unwittingly or otherwise, those who use these terms subvert one of the last great additions to liberal thought: that aspiration expressed by Dr Martin Luther King half a century ago. For when Dr King talked about the need to judge a person by the content of their character and not by the colour of their skin, he gave us something that was not just a great moral insight but — in an increasingly diverse society — the only solution. A year before his death, Dr King gave a speech titled ‘Where do we go from here?’ in which he said: ‘Let us be dissatisfied until that day when nobody will shout, “White Power!”, when nobody will shout, “Black Power!”, but everybody will talk about God’s power and human power.’

    The people who have come after Dr King have spent years busily inverting that dream. In the name of black agency they try to deny white people agency. In the name of assailing white supremacy they end up by asserting black supremacy. And in order to make up for the sufferings of people who are no longer alive they demand vast wealth transfers today based on racial grouping. It is hard to imagine a more divisive programme, all carried out in the name of anti-racism. What they are actually doing is busily re-racialising our societies. Which is how you come to the situation where a cabinet minister is quizzed on Sky News about the precise ethno-racial composition of the British cabinet and certain ‘anti-racists’ can be found on social media noting with disapproval the number of people of Asian descent in the cabinet.

    Any movement that says ‘Things are so bad that this whole thing needs to be pulled down’ should be encouraged to realise, before they have to experience it, the cost of what they are abandoning. And to remember the central truth about how much easier it is to pull down than it is to build. They must be responded to by people of every skin colour and background with a polite but firm ‘No’. Not just because the things that they are attempting to pull down include the only things that are capable of holding us all up. But because if everything that got us here was so bad, then what we are living in wouldn’t be so unusually good.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/in-defence-of-liberalism-resisting-a-new-era-of-intolerance?utm_medium=email&utm_source=CampaignMonitor_Editorial&utm_campaign=WEEK%20%2020200613%20%20AL+CID_4030adc23003249398f3c91eba58442a

      2. Except that he’s left out Soros who wants global government and a “shared future”.

        To move to that future, it’s necessary to wreck the present.

        No wonder Soros has poured money into BLM.

    2. That makes you understand why Blair wanted a massive increase in University attendance. It wasn’t to improve the life chances of the graduates, it was to create a large, compliant group susceptible to brain washing.

      And it appears to have worked.

      1. It’s no one thing.

        Before arriving at university they will also have had 14 years constant brainwashing at school and at least the same via TV, film, comics, books, music.

        Knocking out any single one of these elements won’t fix things. They’ve all got to be tackled, more or less, at the same time.

        Not to mention the political system and finance.

    4. I have felt compelled to subscribe to the full edition of the Spectator. I know it’s in the same group as the remains of the Telegraph, but it makes me feel better to know that there is still at least one publication that is prepared to declare itself as centre right, even though they do waver from that on occasion.

      1. The Spekkie is worth the money.
        It has writers you could kiss and some you could scrag. But it doesn’t do to keep reading writers who merely reinforce your beliefs.

        1. I used to read the Coffee House pages, and they still are not as secure as they should be, but paying them is my feeble contribution to the fightback. And far better value than a TV licence or what the DT has become.

        2. I must admit to a prejudice against writers, politicians and journalists who are prejudiced..

        3. I used to read the Coffee House pages, and they still are not as secure as they should be, but paying them is my feeble contribution to the fightback. And far better value than a TV licence or what the DT has become.

      2. Though only a quarterly, the Salisbury Review is good.

        ‘WHITE PRIVILEGE’ – A MYTH CREATED BY RIOTING RACISTS

        Black people living in the United States – just as here at home – are seen for what they should always have been seen; equals; with equal opportunities, equal access to health care, to education, to employment, to the pursuit of leading a comfortable, content life in a modern civilized society. Our individual problems do not reflect the colour of our skin, but the fact that we’re human.

        The homeless black man one passes in the street has no less privilege than the homeless white man perched, begging cup-in-hand outside Morrisons.

        Yet, at a time of such abundant colour-blind opportunity, in many a misguided mind a distorted alternative interpretation of the modern world exists. It is a world in shackles. A world wallowing in false victimhood sustained by politically-motivated mythical oppression-peddlers.

        The air-conditioned workplaces and glistening shopping malls are replaced by 19th century Texan cotton fields. A crooked, violent cop is replaced for a hillbilly redneck white supremacist behind a well-polished sheriff’s badge.

        Feelings become facts. Cuffs became chains.

        And as this warped outlook takes hold – accelerated by the words and rants of blue tick liberals, hate-filled anti-hate activists, and antisocial socialists – ironically, an entire generation have become enslaved. Held back by synthetic bitterness and anger. Hunched over beneath the burden of resolved ancestral grudges and the weight of an oppression already lifted by their forbears. Real men. Men like William Wilberforce. Martin Luther King Jr. Or brave women like Rosa Parks.

        Neither Rose nor King would ever condone the violence currently gripping Washington and Minnesota, or the unjustifiable screams of “scum” from the stretched mouths of Antifa fanatics towards Police officers in Manchester. They would be outraged. Outraged at the exploitation of the black right’s movement by self-entitled millennials, looters and political agitators. Outraged at the politicising of George Floyd’s tragic murder as the result of police brutality (for we must remember that no evidence has to date been provided to support the idea that his death was racially-motivated). And outraged at the many mock-limped adolescents screaming wretchedly of hardship and struggle before heading home, kicking off their £200 Nike trainers, smoking cannabis in their warm beds, and pondering over who to blame for them being so hard done by.

        Meanwhile, amid a mass shrugging of shoulders and the refusal to punish racism in all its forms – including anti-white sentiments – those who stir racial tensions for their own political or personal aims, have become further emboldened. Invincible. Protected by the shield of political correctness and a get-out-of-jail-free-card rubber-stamped ‘BAME’.

        “The white British population has decreased by 600,000, while the minority population has increased by 1.2 million… so, yes lads; we’re winning!” popular left-wing commentator Ash Sarkar celebrated with a smug smirk in one of her recent viral videos, before giving the thumbs up.

        “It’s time for white people to understand their whiteness” came a widely supported headline from Time magazine just this week.

        “White people are the problem” a former Democrat Congress Candidate tweeted – reminding some of Diane Abbott’s infamous “white people divide and rule” remark.

        The murder of a single black man has been the provocation for a united swarm of angry drones as smoke to a hive. In the midst of their buzzing, the news of Dave Underwood – the black Federal Officer gunned down just days ago during the violent protests in America, has conveniently been drowned out. Perhaps if his sad end had nestled into their narrative his life may also matter to the narrow-minded collective.

        Since 2017, 223 black people and 457 white people have been shot and killed by police officer in the United States. The majority of those killed had been armed at the time of their death.

        While it is a fact that racism does exist, and that police brutality is a problem in urgent need of solving, one cannot help but think that if this really does boil down to anger over the discrimination or brutality shown to what are essentially a small number of black criminals who do not represent the majority, then shouldn’t the slogan ‘Black Lives Matter’ in fact be changed to ‘Black Criminals Matter’?

        Buildings now burn. Defenseless female shop owners continue to be savagely beaten in the streets, and Antifa terrorists stoke the racial flames from London to D.C., it’s becoming clearer by the day that while King’s Selma march helped society step forward, self-described progressives ever persist, unchallenged, to drag us right back.

        https://www.salisburyreview.com/blog/white-privilege-a-myth-created-by-rioting-racists

        1. Yup. The Left hate the idea of progress and change. It removes their support base.

    5. ‘Morning, Citroen, “On its own fundraising page, BLM UK describes its aims as: ‘to dismantle imperialism, capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy and the state structures.’”

      If that’s not pure racism, them I know not what is.

      When will we hear of their prosecution?

      1. They’d be stuffed without capitalism – it got them here. Without imperialism they’d still be grubbing in the dirt.

        If they want to undo patriarchy then all those black men should go home to their families – you know, the ones they abandoned.

        Regarding state structures, let’s start with the Left wing police, welfare and housing benefit.

        You see, racist black lives is racist – you’re entire existence is down to the structures you seem to want to destroy. That you don’t understand that is comical.

    7. The Left hijacked liberal because ‘big state high tax oppressors of truth, reason and rationality’ was too difficult for them to say.

      It’s much the same with antifa. They’re fascists. The problem is they can’t admit so to themselves so they grab at the opposite as nothing more than a PR stunt. They know it’s a lie, they just don’t care as long as they get their way.

      1. Antifa are not fascists. They’re communists. They were communists in the 1920s and 1930s, they’re communists now. They haven’t changed at all. Except their current program will be more like Mao’s Cultural Revolution and Cambodia’s Year Zero rather than the 1918 Russian version.

  45. As the Soviets found, rewriting history to suit an agenda is doomed to fail. `2 June 2020 • 11:30am

    Let’s start from surveying the current situation. Decades ago a choice was made: Britain was to become a multicultural society. This decision was taken at a political level without people being consulted. Immigration was encouraged for economic, moral and then political reasons. Today’s British society has a significant non-white minority population. Considering demographics and political discourse, this trend is likely to continue.

    This is of course the nub of the matter. We do not have a multicultural state by choice, but by diktat from a minority eager to show their Socialist credentials. Worse than that, the error has been compounded by every politician who has sat in Parliament since. They have lied about it continuously for twenty years and continue to do so even now. It was, and still is, an act of evil unequalled in history since it involved the complete and total betrayal of the many who had placed their trust in the few. The eventual price will be the extinction of the indigenous inhabitants and the disappearance of the UK as a unitary state. It is a tragedy beyond calculation.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/06/12/soviets-found-rewriting-history-suit-agenda-doomed-fail/

    1. As I suggested a few days ago, it is Attlee’s statues that should be destroyed.

      1. He’s regularly voted the best PM of the 20th century, something I pretty much agree with overall. He certainly lacked charisma, but he was a true reformist and a sagacious leader. Of course he did overnationalise some industries but still overall he laid the ground work for the next 20 years of prosperity.

        1. He wasted what little money the country had on nationalisation, set up a welfare state that undermined the very fabric of society and passed the British Nationality Act which has led directly to today’s problems.

          He was a terrible prime minister.

          1. His administration also managed to put bread on ration – something that six years of war failed to do!

          2. As usual we’ll have to disagree.

            I am very much for the welfare state. You are probably enjoying having a state pension, I’ve needed unemployment benefit and tax credits in the past. Workers don’t often get sick pay as part of a contract these days, so being ill means no food, or can’t make bill payments. All major nations have some form of welfare state.

            I agree somewhat on nationalisation. I’ve always said he did go a little too far but on the other hand it did give the golden generation and the boomer generation a solid twenty years of living standard rises, until Heath, Nixon and the Yom Kippur war caused a decade of stagnation, and worse, an eventual switch from Georgism-lite to neoliberalism.

            What was wrong with the BNA? Are you against Commonwealth countries being autonomous? Besides it was updated in the eighties by your beloved Thatcherite government.

            He was overall the best PM of the 20th century. In fact he was the best post-victorian PM to date. Even Thatcher was an admirer.

          3. Beveridge warned against the dangers of the welfare state inducing sloth, which it has amongst many i.e. the underclass. I have never said that we shouldn’t have one.

            The cost of nationalisation delayed economic recovery. The Tories boosted it after turning Labour out.

            Please don’t talk to me in that insulting manner about Thatcher. You will find nothing in my record on here that supports your snide remark. Thatcher was an admirer of him for seeing through his programme but not for its content.

            The BNA led to the mass immigration that has brought us to where we are today, a society on the point of meltdown.

    2. With the economy plunging uncontrollably into the abyss and unemployment certain to follow, what justification will Johnson et al. use to continue with the madness of mass uncontrolled immigration? The argument that the UK will require uneducated, semi-literate and unskilled people by the hundreds of thousands per annum to improve the economy won’t wash.

      1. 320049+ up ticks,
        KtK,
        Precisely, that is why I cannot get my head around these mass uncontrolled immigration parties still finding after decades of deceit / treachery, support.
        .

    2. “Urban” is another word with apparently racist connotations. These people need to get a life!

  47. FCOL. This whole palava around JK Rowling’s tweet about people who menstruate is getting beyond a joke.

    Trans women are trans women. They are not women. They may think they are women, and they may have help to look like women but they are NOT WOMEN.
    Trans men are trans men. They are not men. They may think they are men, and they may have help to look like men but they are NOT MEN.

    After so much progress in equality of opportunity, it seems the very word ‘woman’ is in danger of being expunged. We are to be called ‘people who menstruate’.
    I have just read an article that suggests men should now be called ‘people who ejaculate’. Funny though, you dont hear so much about trans men demanding the right to use men’s loos and go to men’s prisons do you? Defeats the whole argument of trans women if you ask me.

    It’s about time we went back to defining sex based on chromosomes and not how someone feels.

    1. A good looking young eunuch was appointed to look after the harem when the sheik went away for a holiday.

      But when the sheik returned a full year later he found that all his wives and houris were pregnant. It transpired that the eunuch was just not cut out for the job!

    4. Well, no, they’re not trans women at all.

      They’re men in a dress on drugs. A woman wanting to be a man is a woman wanting to be a man.

      Apologies, but it’s a simple as that. At the cellular level your sex is defined as male or female.

      Now, those facts stated – people can do what they want. A man can dress as a woman. In a free country that’s his choice. He can take drugs to prevent his body and brain producing the hormones it is designed to. He can callhimself Shirley if he wants. What he can’t do is force me to agree with him.

      What he can’t be allowed to do is force me, through force to say he is a woman because it is a lie.

  48. Where is Yulia Skripal now? Salisbury Novichok victim’s new life. 22:38, Thu, Jun 11, 2020

    Unconfirmed reports also suggested the pair may already have left Britain to start new lives in another country.

    British chemical weapons expert Hamish de Bretton-Gordon told the publication: “I’m sure Yulia especially will want to return to some sort of normality and a remote Commonwealth country may be an option.

    “The Government continues to have a duty of care and the Russians seem unconcerned with any collateral damage they caused around this assassination attempt.

    I had intended to leave this alone for now but needs must; this is just one of several articles in the tabloids designed to smooth the way to this weekend’s TV serial, The Salisbury Poisonings. Their purpose is simply to answer any awkward questions about the fate of the Skripals before they are asked. In the case of the articles this involves disabling the comment sections so no one can comment. All are blank!

    https://www.express.co.uk/showbiz/tv-radio/1294723/Yulia-Skripal-Where-is-Yulia-Skripal-now-Salisbury-Novichok-victim-Salisbury-Poisonings

  49. I have said this before but I shall continue to repeat it until everyone wakes up. The blame for the rise in the current riots by ‘offended’ gangs of entitled Lefties hangs firmly on the door of the Right.

    It is all your fault: the conservative Right!

    For decades, the Right have remained sitting with their thumbs up their arses whilst the Left have mobilised behind their backs. The Right have tut-tutted, whinged away on social media, flapped their stiff upper lips and muttered into their semillon blanc whlst the Left got busy under their very noses.

    The entire establishment was usurped and turned liberal whilst the Right were looking the other way. The judiciary, education, the health service, the police, the newspapers, radio, television, industry, the banks, local and regional government were all infiltrated; slowly, quietly, surreptitiously, insidiously and invidiously whilst we on the Right sipped our G&Ts and listened to The Archers.

    Emboldened by their success, which was aided and abetted by the widespread and determined brainwashing provided by agencies such as Common Purpose, the Left then mustered their massed ranks of foot-soldiers to unleash havoc on the country, destroying centures of culture and the British way of life.

    And this is only the beginning.

    And still the Right mutter away in letters to newspapers before going back to pruning their Ena Harkness, Graham Thomas and Peace.

    1. 320049+ up ticks,
      G,
      I was asked yesterday is the skin on my repeat drum getting thin.
      It has been evident for years that the lab/lib/con are a
      pro mass uncontrolled immigration coalition supported as such via the ballot booth.
      The blinkered party first voting pattern continued unabated, whilst the mosque construction program continued, unabated.
      The vote & hope brigade have heaped sh!te on this nation year on year, GE on GE, & have a great deal to answer for.

    2. Good morning Grizzly

      Do you remember the doggerel verse:

      Here lies the body of Henry Grey
      Who dies upholding his Right of way
      He was Right all Right, Right all along
      But he’s just as dead as if he’d been wrong.

      But as you so Rightly point out, the Right has been too timid to stand up for itself and will end up just as dead as the unfortunate Mr Grey.

    3. Indeed so, Grizz – we fondly imagined that the virus would burn itself out, now it’s a pandemic.

    4. Because the conservative right are law-abiding individuals, not a hive-minded collective.
      The right weren’t in positions of power when Blair decided to expand the university indoctrination system to 50% of the youth. That’s where this springs from, and the far left activists have worked their way into power. It was also under Blair that so many quangos were set up, dominated by the Left to the tune of around 75%.
      We voted for a “Conservative” government that had promised to undo some of the damage Blair had done, but instead they carried on his legacy.
      4 million people voted for UKIP, and got just one MP, versus the 50+ of the SNP on 1.5 million votes.
      The entire media and Establishment, the UN, EU, etc are stacked against us. Anyone who puts their head above the parapet gets shot down. They’ve effectively silenced Tommy Robinson, sidelined Farage now, and Gerard Batten, etc.

    1. Offering to pay travel expenses for the Football Lads Alliance would achieve more than another petition, no matter how good its intentions are.
      It appears pointless to put your trust in a political party that was previously known as the party of law and order, so I can understand the likelihood of other forms of action being considered.

      1. 320049+ up ticks,
        Afternoon VVOF,
        Agreed but If I may, I can understand the necessity of other forms of action being taken.

  51. Churchill statue boarded up after it was targeted by demonstrators. 12 JUNE 2020 • 7:45AM

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b5c6b4ada2a14633d203ed164bda0a55bd05038cbebb4710329decc203d8c8bc.jpg

    The statue of former prime minister Sir Winston Churchill has been boarded up ahead of another weekend of anti-racist protests.

    Black Lives Matter demonstrators will take to the streets of the capital on Saturday and Sunday, but far-Right groups are expected to challenge them.

    The Democratic Football Lads Alliance called on supporters to travel to London to protect monuments – including the Churchill statue at Parliament Square – after a number were vandalised in recent protests.

    I’m sure Hitler and Tojo would have approved.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/12/black-lives-matter-protests-churchill-statue-boarded-targeted/

    1. To board up our statues is plain cowardice.
      If there has to be a fight, so be it.
      The country will then see how things stand. They will see that the Government, the councils, the police are one with the rioters.
      Those who were elected by the people are against the people.
      Those who should defend and support the people are against the people.

      1. Good morning Maggiebelle

        DFS is doing a roaring trade and has received several bulk orders from the government.

    3. That picture represents the abject failure of Johnson, the Home Secretary and the police. And it is utterly shameful.

  52. When documents are released for viewing they may have sections REDACTED – in other words BLACKED out in case they are not to everyones agreement.
    When the printed word is deemed to be unsuitable or not to everyones liking, , it is BLACKED out
    When in mourning, people dress in BLACK.]
    BLACK is the colour of DEATH
    Where is the BLACK Lives Matter movement taking us ?

    1. Ummmmm…

      Oh.. civilizational collapse, shared future, global government… billionaires and Davos rule… that sort of thing…

    1. Do they know what ‘autonomous’ means? Perhaps when all electricity, water and gas are cut off they might.

    1. They couldn’t go to Africa. Slavery still exists there, and they might end up on the nasty end of it.
      Much better to scream about imaginary racism in a country that never had slavery and did its utmost to end it worldwide, and complain about people who are a long time dead.


      Ethiopia officially abolished slavery in 1932, Sokoto Caliphate abolished slavery in 1900, and the rest of the Sahel in 1911. Colonial nations were mostly successful in this aim, though slavery is still very active in Africa even though it has gradually moved to a wage economy.

    1. The Snivelling little git has been caught out by his own previous responses.

    3. “Far right hate groups” = ordinary people fed up with the far left Marxist agenda.

  58. Once dem black folk find out Colonel Sanders was a rascist they’ll all die of starvation….just saying.

      1. Nothing dry about my last KFC. I hadn’t had one in 20 years and just fancied one. Under the outer coating it was the most disgusting slimy goo. I threw it straight in the bin. I should have thrown it at their window. Never again.

        They had obviously sourced the nastiest cheapest chicken possible.

          1. You can still buy decent chicken. At a price.

            I remember a prog that did a blind tasting of roast chicken. An ordinary supermarket one and a fully free range one.

            The majority went for the supermarket one and when asked why they said the free range one was dry and tough.

            Not only had they been conditioned into thinking that factory farmed chicken was better, I also thought the free range one hadn’t been handled/roasted properly.

            As you and Rik sez…fuckwits everywhere.

          4. Up to six months ago I bought my chook from a free-range farm that sold nowt else. Unfortunately they closed down because all the muppets were buying the tasteless cheap shit from the supermarket.

            I’ve found one supermarket, in another town, that sells a few free-range birds that are much tastier than the usual barn fare but not as nice as those from the place that shut down.

          5. You can still buy decent chicken. At a price.

            I remember a prog that did a blind tasting of roast chicken. An ordinary supermarket one and a fully free range one.

            The majority went for the supermarket one and when asked why they said the free range one was dry and tough.

            Not only had they been conditioned into thinking that factory farmed chicken was better, I also thought the free range one hadn’t been handled/roasted properly.

            As you and Rik sez…fuckwits everywhere.

  59. Morning all 😕
    I’m confused, BLM Hyde Park protest called off because of the possibilty of counter (probably invented by the media) protest by ‘hate groups’ ?
    What has been more hatefilled than every one of the protests we have already seen ?
    Or have they just realised there are no shops to loot or not many statues in the park. The only one I can think of is one that celebrates a fairy storey. ☺
    Some people never grow up.

    2. It’s because they’re cowards, and don’t want to be on the receiving end of a good pasting. They’re crybullies who are only brave when outnumbering their opposition.

      Maybe they’ve been called off by the government:

      https://mobile.twitter.com/KonstantinKisin/status/1270711803597615111

      You’re going to hate me for writing this. You’re going to resist what I say because you don’t want it to be true. You’re going to pretend that I want this to be true when, in fact, there is nothing I hate more than the fact that is has come to this.
      Here is what happens next:
      If protestors continue to deface monuments like Winston Churchill’s statue and burn British flags on the Cenotaph, you will see groups forming to defend them. These groups will be composed primarily of young, angry white men and led by people with links to groups like the EDL and Tommy Robinson. This is already happening.

      The groups will gather in city centres to “defend our country”. They will have names with words like “patriotic”, “British”, “defence” in them.

      Inevitably, they will clash with the current protestors and the police. Under pressure from the media and political class, the police will overreact. They will treat these groups differently to the BLM protestors. They will use force. They will detain people for breaking lockdown rules. They will issue stiff sentences.

      The media will do the opposite of what they did with the BLM protestors – instead of talking about how “27 police officers were injured in “largely peaceful” protests”, they will run major front page headlines like “27 police officers injured by far right violence”.

      At this point, the majority of the public will lose the ability to be nuanced. The double standards will be too obvious to ignore. Fuelled by a constant stream of images of white people kneeling, washing POC feet and publicly apologising, as they already are, they will conclude that their very identity is under attack.

      At this point, all their sensible aversion to supporting thuggish far right groups will evaporate. They will believe they are in a war for their survival and extreme measures are justified.
      At the next election, fuelled by mass unemployment resulting from the economic depression, far right parties will make significant inroads. When I say “far right”, I am not talking about what the far left call “far right” such as anyone who talks about controlling immigration. I’m talking about genuine far right parties that talk about *reversing* immigration and deportations.

      These parties will not win seats or get anywhere near Government but they will put a UKIP-like pressure on the Conservatives. Boris Johnson will likely be ousted as too soft and liberal and replaced by a law and order hardliner.

      From here, I’m afraid, the journey is all too obvious.

      My only real issue with this line of reasoning is “replaced by a law and order hardliner.” Does anyone know of one in the Tory party??

      He also says: “I have it on good authority that people in Government all the way to the top have read my Twitter thread from a couple of days back.

      I hope they listen…”

      1. 320049+ up ticks,
        Morning Ims2,
        I am in agreement with KK all the way, repeating myself in a good cause gives me no problem.
        As in prior post’s Tommy Atkins responded to the call concerning protecting the nation and so will peoples of Tommy Robinson calibre even after being castigated / smeared by a multitude.
        Ain’t no submissive politico’s going to win this war it will call upon men with BIG cast iron bollocks.

      2. This is a treacherous insulting diatribe. Where are the “thuggish far right groups”? Bring them all together and there wouldn’t be enough of them to fill a bus.
        There is no real reason for the rioting that we have seen, it is just rioting.
        How would this buffoon describes the Crusaders?

      3. ‘Morning, Ims2, “I hope they listen.” They certainly didn’t listen to my perfectly reasonable letter, to which I have yet to receive a reply.

        It will take a minor civil war to make them sit up and take notice – and that minor civil war is coming. The only problem is that it may escalate out of control.

      4. Thoughtful comment piece by Robert Taylor in the DT, along the similar lines

        https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/11/poole-oxford-seeing-first-stirrings-silent-majority/

        Three cheers for the residents of Poole for protecting Baden-Powell’s statue by the harbour. And three more for my alma mater, Oriel College, Oxford, for so far refusing to give into protesters demanding Cecil Rhodes be toppled.

        At times, these last few days, law and order has seemed like an optional extra. Policemen bend the knee in front of a baying mob, get beaten up in the street, and run to escape pursuing crowds. Meanwhile, statues are toppled into rivers, war memorials are vandalised and our greatest ever war leader has “Racist” scrawled all over him.

        But is Britain’s sensible, silent majority now awakening from its slumber? Could it be that Poole and Oxford are the first signs of a great conservative fightback?

        It doesn’t come naturally to the silent majority of small-c conservatives to take on such a task. Above all else, conservatism is built on law and order, and respect for democracy. Yet, cowed by the mob and terrified of being labelled racist, politicians, public officials, and even some police officers now seem paralysed by indecision.

        So, we get the absurdity of the Bristol police standing by, so as not to “inflame tensions”, while crimes are committed in front of their very eyes. And we get William Gladstone’s name removed from a university building because of the sins of his father, for goodness sake.

        No doubt the extreme end of those protesting this week are thrilled by this. Just look what we can achieve when we intimidate people, they must think. Is there no end to what we can do when we bypass the ballot box and shout loudly enough?

        No wonder, then, that what started with a disgusting killing thousands of miles away in Minneapolis has led with lightning speed, via Colston, Gladstone and Milligan, to Little Britain and Ant and Dec. That’s the deranged logic of judging history by 21st century wonky wokeness. If Ant and Dec are fair game, then so is just about everyone living and breathing before about 2012.

        You might not know it from watching the BBC, but only 13 per cent of people, according to YouGov, approve of Colston’s statue being destroyed by crowd violence. Most are aghast at these self-appointed statue-topplers. By all means let’s have a sensible, democratic debate about statues, portraits, books and much more. If some need to be removed, then we can decide to do so calmly and democratically. But random mob demolition? He who shouts loudest gets his way? Think again.

        And let’s just ask ourselves what would happen if this all continues. Why, anyone with a grievance and a few loudmouthed mates would be free to take exactly the same route. If one group of protesters can destroy something they find offensive, the next group – perhaps with a genuinely racist agenda – will do exactly the same. That’s anarchy for you.

        And yet, our Conservative government is silent, seemingly choosing the path of least resistance. Fair enough, it wants to beat Starmer to the centre ground. But it can’t afford to sit out this culture war. Its hard-fought 80-seat majority was built by attracting voters who agree with the people of Poole, are horrified by the vandalism of Churchill and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Oriel College’s desire for reasoned debate not knee-jerk capitulation.

        But if the government continues to dither, the silent majority must act for them. No doubt powerful forces will still put pressure on Poole and Oxford.

        Those battles aren’t yet won. But what matters is not the individual skirmishes in what is now an all-out culture war, but the willingness of ordinary, decent people to stand up for common sense, democracy and debate.

        1. ‘Morning, KenL, ” Its hard-fought 80-seat majority”. I have recently started wondering if the silence from government over things that matter, is because Boris is aware that many of that majority wouldn’t support reining in the BBC, stopping immigration, repealing the Human Rights Act, leaving the EU, etc.

          He cannot risk defeat with such a large majority but it would expose the fifth column.

          1. ‘Morning NTI. I fear you are right, a very large number of them have already shown themselves to be completely spineless. My own Tory MP didn’t bother to respond when I emailed him about his lack of support for Cummings when Cummings was being hounded by the media a couple of weeks ago.

          2. It could be, of course, that the view expressed in your letter was outweighed by many more complaining about Cummings. If you expect your MP to dance only to your tune and not listen to other tunes, you are no better that the BLM protesters. You might well have found support for your view in this forum but all the polls showed a large majority of the population did not approve of what Cummings did and most of the MPs who, in your words did not support him, stated that they has received overwhelming opposition to Cummings.

          3. They are the remainers who have still not given up and are working to undermine brexit.

          4. Hi Enri. I take your point, although here in rural west country I doubt I am a lone voice in the wilderness. He is not known for sticking his head above the parapet very often so I had thought I might have got some sort of standard email response explaining his position.

          5. Unless he was the target of an orchestrated campaign to swamp him with emails (and I would not put that past some highly partisan elements of society), he should, at least in normal times, have had the courtesy to acknowledge your email. However, I don’t know what his particular circumstances were and it might be that he was overwhelmed with the demands of an exceptional time.

            On the matter of MPs being reluctant to stick their heads above the parapet, I would agree with you. Here’s a little story that might illustrate why they seem to have so little courage. Many years ago, I was in the RAF and my boss had served before the war (that shows how old I am) and one day we were discussing the relative qualities of the pre and post-war officer cadres. He opined that the pre-war officers were by far the best as most of them were from a background where money and privilege were always there. They served because it was “service” and, if there was something they disliked, they were not inhibited from saying so and would resign if necessary. This meant that things were done for the right reasons and ensured that their superiors were wary of causing widespread anger. Today’s MPs are too often without the financial background to risk careers and income by offending their superiors in the Party.

            Another tale… Singapore is one of the best run, prosperous and law-abiding nations on the Earth. The man who was the driver behind this for decades was Lee Kuan Yew. He said that MPs would be paid huge salaries so that, firstly, it attracted men and women of the highest calibre and, secondly, that they would not want to risk this by engaging in corruption or by failing to carry out their duties.

            Perhaps there are some lessons we could benefit from!

          6. You could say the same about the Lords before their reform into what we have today. The old Lords served because they thought it their duty – nowadays they are just political placemen.

          7. The hereditary Lords served because they saw it as their duty to perpetuate the status quo which was one that greatly advantaged them and not the bulk of the electorate. Much as it pains me to say so but one of the very few who gave up their title and seat in the Lords and stood for election as an MP was Tony Benn, and even he made sure that he was not giving up his property and wealth. For the most part, the hereditary Lords gained their Lordships by means that we would today imprison them for.

          10. A Singapore MP is paid just over a third more. Personally, I would support a move to halve the number of British MPs and pay the remainder a lot more.

        2. Good comment, on the ball.
          But what will happen as usually does, any single group from the ‘silent majority’ (easy to arrest and restrain) that brings this smouldering problem further into the limelight will be rigorously and unfairly classed as ‘far right’.
          They are bound to be long term residents of the UK with a longer UK heritage.
          And dare I say it white.
          Our dastardly media will have a field day.
          Constantly on the back foot the minority but ‘financially backed’ well practiced leftwaffe, will try to antagonise any situation as they attempt to rework it.
          They know that the police and the judicary are seemingly on their side. And will act accordingly.
          So the government has to do what they are paid for.
          Get their fingers out and bring an end to all of this disgusting nonsense.
          It’s their Civic Duty.

        3. If only 13% of YouGov respondents approve of toppling Colston’s statue, that is an indication in itself. YouGov targets the woke, left-leaning for its questionnaires.

      5. Putin must be laughing his socks off. He came to power after the shambolic events in Russia during the 1990s.
        Don’t think that something similar couldn’t happen here.
        I am rapidly reaching the stage where I would happily watch a few heads drop into a basket. Now, where’s my knitting wool?

        1. Indeed. Hitler and Nazis came to power because they promised to end the chaos in Germany (much of it caused by them), and resist the Communists. That ended badly for everybody.

          1. I was accused of supporting Hitler last night. I questioned the proposed removal of statues and the incessant attacks on historical figures, that resulted in the accusation that I wanted statues glorifying Hitler.

            I really thought that I was joking when I suggested that our little town would need to be renamed because Picton was a racist several hundred years ago, but no they are talking about it and wanting to move our statue of Sir John A Macdonald from its plinth on Main Street.

      6. You have to wonder if all the racism, violence, theft, looting, rioting and destroying was solely to provoke a response.

        After all, the police haven’t solved the problem and stood up for society. Someone has to, and it’s going to be the people you’d rather didn’t – who don’t truly represent the majority.

        If the white racists attack the black racists then very obviously the police will attack the white ones – ignoring that they wouldn’t be there is the blacks hadn’t caused the blasted problem by rioting, looting, destroying, vandalising and thuggery in the first place.

  60. Newsflash latest !

    Boros is Humpty Dumpty !

    “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

    Britain will fully Leave the EU on January 1 2021…….

    …..but everything will Remain the same…………

    https://twitter.com/Nigel_Farage/status/1271338179489136641

  62. I hope you enjoy this , because it is just a Fraday afternoon distraction away from all the nonsense we are hearing about at the moment , pinched from F/B

    Someone asked the other day, ‘What was your favourite ‘fast food’ when you were growing up?’
    ‘We didn’t have fast food when I was growing up,’ I informed him.
    ‘All the food was slow.’
    ‘C’mon, seriously.. Where did you eat?’
    ‘It was a place called ‘home,” I explained. !
    ‘Mum cooked every day and when Dad got home from work, we sat down together at the dining room table, and if I didn’t like what she put on my plate, I was allowed to sit there until I did like it.’

    By this time, the lad was laughing so hard I was afraid he was going to suffer serious internal damage, so I didn’t tell him the part about how I had to have permission to leave the table.

    But here are some other things I would have told him about my childhood if I’d figured his system could have handled it:

    Some parents NEVER owned their own house, wore jeans, set foot on a golf course, travelled out of the country or had a credit card.

    My parents never drove me to school… I had a bicycle that weighed probably 50 pounds, and only had one speed (slow).

    We didn’t have a television in our house until I was 10.
    It was, of course, black and white, and the station went off the air at 10 PM, after playing the national anthem and epilogue; it came back on the air at about 6 am. And there was usually a locally produced news and farm show on, featuring local people…

    Pizzas were not delivered to our home… But milk was.

    All newspapers were delivered by boys and all boys delivered newspapers –My brother delivered a newspaper, seven days a week.
    He had to get up at 6 every morning.

    Film stars kissed with their mouths shut. At least, they did in the films. There were no movie ratings because all movies were responsibly produced for everyone to enjoy viewing, without profanity or violence or almost anything offensive.

    If you grew up in a generation before there was fast food, you may want to share some of these memories with your children or grandchildren. Just don’t blame me if they bust a gut laughing.

    Growing up isn’t what it used to be, is it?

    MEMORIES from a friend:
    My Dad is cleaning out my grandmother’s house (she died in December) and he brought me an old lemonade bottle.
    In the bottle top was a stopper with a bunch of holes in it. I knew immediately what it was, but my daughter had no idea.
    She thought they had tried to make it a salt shaker or something. I knew it as the bottle that sat on the end of the ironing board to ‘sprinkle’ clothes with because we didn’t have steam irons. Man, I am old.

    How many do you remember?
    Headlight dip-switches on the floor of the car.
    Ignition switches on the dashboard.
    Trouser leg clips for bicycles without chain guards.
    Soldering irons you heated on a gas burner.
    Using hand signals for cars without turn indicators.

    Older Than Dirt Quiz:
    Count all the ones that you remember, not the ones you were told about. Ratings at the bottom

    1. Sweet cigarettes
    2. Coffee shops with juke boxes
    3. Home milk delivery in glass bottles
    4. Party lines on the telephone
    5. Newsreels before the movie
    6. TV test patterns that came on at night after the last show and were there until TV shows started again in the morning.
    (There were only 2 channels [if you were fortunate])
    7. Peashooters
    8. 33 rpm records
    9. 45 RPM records
    10. Hi-fi’s
    11. Metal ice trays with levers
    12. Blue flashbulb
    13. Cork popguns
    14. Wash tub wringers
    15. 78 RPM records

    If you remembered 0-3 = You’re still young
    If you remembered 3-6 = You are getting older
    If you remembered 7-10 = Don’t tell your age
    If you remembered 11-15 = You’re positively ancient!

    I must be ‘positively ancient’ but those memories are some of the best parts of my life.

    Don’t forget to pass this along!
    Especially to all you’re really OLD friends….I just did!

    1. Hi Belle. I don’t know if you have seen my response to you about your African paraphernalia but please don’t be hasty. If you want rid of it then do as someone else suggested and sell or auction it. African studies is big at the moment and you could earn some cash.

      1. Hi Phizzee

        Thanks for the tip.

        Disqus is playing up and I cannot view any replies ..

        I think Africans are in total denial about their heritage and past , so their tribal history will be beyond them and their abilty to judge THEIR leaders . There were always aggressors and victims , that is the history of Africa ..

    2. Car starting handles that could break your wrist if you held it wrongly.
      Horse drawn milk and bakery carts
      Steam rollers
      Workers Playtime
      The morning radio announcenment at 8am of the successful execution [hanging] of a murderer. Made us think.
      Dick Barton Special Agent
      Dixon of Dock Green
      The morning radio doctor who was obsessed with bowel movements and drove my dad crazy
      Noisy slow revolving and blunt dentist drills which still haunt me today.
      Darned socks and jumpers. Patched trousers
      The feared Lochgelly strap.
      etc
      I am a fossil.

      1. Horse drawn coal cart.

        I know what you mean about those dentist drills. Bloody sadists. No wonder peddy is so tetchy. No one to torture. 🙂

      2. You are not alone. I am sitting here in patched trousers and darned (well, rowed up) jumper.

      3. Wireless accumulator (recarged for about 6d if I recall) ho and Paul Temple also Uncle Mac.
        Outside loo with a wooden bench seat, it was deepest darkest Wales in the early/middle 1950’s.

      4. Wireless accumulator (recarged for about 6d if I recall) ho and Paul Temple also Uncle Mac.
        Outside loo with a wooden bench seat, it was deepest darkest Wales in the early/middle 1950’s.

      5. Coal delivered by horse and cart. Everybody rushing out with a bucket to collect the manure for their roses.

      6. Horse drawn coal cart.

        I know what you mean about those dentist drills. Bloody sadists. No wonder peddy is so tetchy. No one to torture. 🙂

      1. …which you had to remove from the freezer compartment with a cloth in case your fingers stuck to the frozen metal.

    4. During the last few days I’ve been sorting through things and packing things up to do a house swap with my sons partner. In doing so I came across letters to my mother from my father when he was courting her- the one I looked at was so formal and began ‘Dear Miss Price’. At some point I must find tim look through them further. I also found a diary of my mother’s for 1948 – probably the only time she kept a diary and entries are sparse, but one mentioned seeing a young King Faisal of Iraq come on board their ship at Port Said on their journey to England. I wish she had written more.

    5. I’m old enough to remember all of that! My mother would never have a telly in the house – she died not having one.

      I still have milk delivered ( mum also had bread, milk, meat, groceries and fish delivered – as a widow, she worked full time so it saved her shopping)
      I still cook most days from fresh ingredients.

    6. Ration Books!

      I still have my mum’s ration book and her ‘posh’ hat. She always wore her ‘posh’ hat when going shopping.

      1. I didn’t know I had a maternal grandfather until I saw my mother wearing a hat.
        My father explained that she was going to her father’s funeral.

        1. My experience with hats involved my father. I once had the temerity to ask him why the drove the car with his hat on, it didn’t make sense to me. I never got an audible answer, only a look and I never asked again.

    7. A wash tub wringer? For years my mother had a gas powered zinc plated boiler that was provided with the council house. She had a mangle in the outside shed for squeezing the water out: that, or plenty of shoulder and upper arm power.

      1. Same here. Asking for permission to leave the table and thank you for what was placed in front of you were the only words that we were allowed to utter at the dinner table.

    9. If we did not eat our dinner, our plate was kept and put in front of us for breakfast the next morning.

    10. Thanks for posting Belle. 9 – I’m just getting old.

      We didn’t have a telly until 1953……… to watch the Coronation.

      1. Same here. We had to have the curtains drawn to see the 9″ screen – and we invited the neighbours to watch!

      2. We didn’t have one at all – the first one was in 1970, some time after I was married – a throw-out from friends.

    11. Onion Johnnies.
      Ice cream tricycles (“Stop me and Buy one”)
      VD warning posters in all lavatories.
      Buses with no passenger doors.
      Seats in the grocer’s shop for old customers.
      An overhead wire mechanism to transfer the customer receipt from the counter to the cashier.

      1. Butter being cut from a large block, patted into shape and wrapped in greaseproof paper.

    12. I scored 15/15 as did most Nottlers I expect.

      Ignition switches on the dashboard. The ignition switch by itself was not enough – you had to press a separate button to start the motor and each car always had a cranking handle for when the starter motor didn’t work or the battery was not up to the job.

      Indeed cranking handles were still considered essential on boats until about forty years ago. I remember sailing from Guernsey to Alderney during spring tides – where currents in the Alderney Race run at 10 knots – and we were being sucked towards the rocks. There was no wind to get us moving under sail so we had to get the heavy Volvo diesel engine started. My crew – a formidable No 8 rugby player – failed to turn the engine over firmly enough. Terror gave me strength and I grabbed the crank handle and by a miracle the engine broke into life and we managed to get past the western end of Alderney, navigate the rock-filled Swinge and get safely into Braye Harbour.

  64. John Marenbon
    The tragedy of our children’s lost education
    12 June 2020, 2:40pm

    When we try to take stock of government choices that have made the Covid-19 epidemic so much more harmful than it need have been, it is hard to know what item will top the list.

    The failure, shared by leaders worldwide, to keep infected people from entering the country and spreading the disease when the epidemic was still confined to the Far East? The carnage in care homes? The wanton undermining of the economy through an unnecessarily protracted lockdown supported by unaffordable state aid?

    Education, however, will probably figure, if at all, a long way down the list, because the effects of the failures in school and examination policy are almost invisible – no excess deaths, no direct redundancies or bankruptcies. Yet these unseen effects may well represent the greatest loss of all.

    The collateral damage alone is serious enough: millions of parents unable to carry on with their work, abused and vulnerable children left without support, children without the social life, routine and need to accommodate others which trains them to be proper members of society. But it is the central damage which is gravest. From 5 to 18 all but the smallest percentage of pupils at the best independent schools will have lost between three months and half a year of their schooling. To be deprived of education is incommensurably worse a loss than all these others.

    Of all that our state offers its citizens, education is most precious. Healthcare and economic support may enable humans to survive; education lets them live worthwhile human lives. Children and young people will indeed resume their classes eventually – though, we are told, perhaps not even in the autumn. But the loss is more than a mere percentage (about 5 per cent) of teaching foregone. Continuity, too, is important and so is the habit of study. The education offered to most pupils in England is far from ideal, but for everyone at school this year it will be significantly worse.

    Examinations are an important part of education policy, and here the choices made, apparently with the government’s blessing, have been even poorer than those made by the schools themselves. It was precipitately decided to abandon GCSEs and A-levels and rely on teacher assessments instead. The result, in the best case, is that two cohorts will, through no fault of their own, have examination grades that employers and universities should not take very seriously. There may even be four such cohorts (GCSE and A-level candidates for 2020 and 2021), since it is easy to anticipate the calls for teacher assessments to be continued next year, because candidates’ preparation will have been so disturbed.

    The worst case, however – and unfortunately, perhaps the most likely one – is that traditional, written, externally set, marked and moderated public examinations will disappear for ever. They already seem anachronistic because they judge candidates’ performances neutrally, irrespective of their sex, sexuality, ethnicity and economic circumstances, and allow, at least to some extent, those who are more intelligent and work harder to excel. Many would be happy if Covid-19 and its disruptions provide an excuse to do away with them.

    The government might reply to such criticisms that it has closed schools and allowed examinations to be cancelled only because of the demands of public health. To do otherwise would be to risk tens of thousands more deaths. This would be a very weak, reply, however, for both practical and scientific reasons, and on grounds of principle. Scientists, who differ about almost everything else to do with Covid-19, are agreed that, a few identifiable special cases aside, people between 5 and 18 years-old run a negligible risk of having the illness in a serious, let alone life-threatening, form. There is also no clear evidence about whether, and to what extent, having schools open would increase transmission of the disease more generally, and some reason to think that younger children do not contribute much to spreading it.

    It is debatable whether all the precautions now being taken in primary schools are necessary, but practical steps could be taken to open schools to all pupils, even following these rigorous and extreme social distancing rules: it is just a matter of logistics and imagination – making use of vacant spaces, moving lessons outside, staggering timetables, teaching more in smaller groups.

    It would be right to reopen schools, and it would have been right to plan and hold public examinations. We have, unfortunately, a government governed, not by statistics and scientific advice, but by the particular interpretations put on them by officials who are often more concerned about protecting their positions and increasing their power. Our rulers lack a compass, by which they could choose to act in the right way rather than setting certain narrow goals and then calculating the means to reach them. Denying education to millions should simply never have been countenanced.

    John Marenbon is a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. This article appears in Politeia’s Back to School! Preparation, Not Cancellation

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-tragedy-of-our-children-s-lost-education

    1. “Our rulers lack a compass, by which they could choose to act in the right way rather than setting certain narrow goals and then calculating the means to reach them.”
      Perfect summing up.
      No doubt the Red Guards will be beating down his doors.

    2. How do these people get these positions? Are Fellows of colleges not supposed to be able to think, to have some minimal reasoning ability, a brain sufficiently unclouded by claret to be able to grasp reality?
      Any child able to tie their own shoelaces needs to be taught English, Arithmetic and good manners. Once that has been accomplished there is no need to attend school until around the age of fifteen. Any academic knowledge and training can easily be absorbed in three busy years.

      So missing a few months should not be an issue.

      1. Sadly, many children attend infant school not yet potty trained, let alone able to tie their own shoelaces (that’s what Velcro is for, innit?).

      2. On state education, I belong to the Rod Liddle school of thinking.
        It’s the ramifications of these panic measures that is so serious.

  65. The Chip shop i go to still wrap up meals in newspaper.
    Yesterday i got a Plaice in The Sun.

    1. Top tip….If you can’t get the lid off a jar and you don’t have a device to do it. Run warm to hot water around the seal and hey presto !

        1. Did the Vikings have jars of mayonnaise i think would be a more pertinent question.

          Do keep up. 🙂

      2. The Zyliss Strongboy 2 is a great device. We have tried lots of kitchen gadgets many of which did not work, and some like mandolins were dangerous.
        The Zyliss opens jars. No messing around. As kitchen gadgets go it may not be the champion but it’s a contender.

          1. So what you are saying is that a strap wrench/Bay Boa is not a gadget?

            (Actually I looked it up. It is functionally the same as the Zyliss.)

          2. It’s why i use hot water. I only have a galley kitchen and don’t want to stuff it full of bits and bobs.

  67. Top comment BTL@DTletters

    David Arrowsmith
    12 Jun 2020 4:20AM

    What vicious little berks those Harry Potter sprogs grew into.

    1. They were paid too much.

      Radcliffe was cute as Harry Potter but he is bloody awful as an adult. And his head is too small.

      Emma Watson obviously didn’t need to act the part of Hermione. She is Hermione.

      Ghastly people.

  68. Is it just me? When I click on the black spot (or red) all the comments etc are at least three hours old.

      1. Done that several times, No change. Red dot still shows “5” – and the last is now 4 hours ago.

      2. Now you’re talking! A large G&T for the Sultana and I’ll have a Buck’s Fizz, please.

        1. No – it’s the notifications problem again. I don’t suppose they will fix it over the weekend.

        2. Replies to onesself don’t show up on the “replies” viewer. Dunno why.

  69. Well heavens to betsy dawn has broken and in Ontario we are now allowed to get a haircut. Me thinks that another trim with the sheep shears is in order, the next month will see lineups out the door and beyond.

    Dentists are also reopening, my wife has an appointment next week and she has been told to turn up wearing a mask which should make for an interesting cleaning.

    Now if only my quick scan through the papers had not shown upictures of Churchill in a box, it might be a day worthy of celebrating with a drink or three on one of the newly reopened patios.

    1. Can you charter a plane? I tried trimming the mane on the back of my head, but even with 2 mirrors, it’s come out very crooked. And if your charter could include a few trips to the dentist, that would be welcome too…

      1. Unfortunately now that it is all over, there’s quarantine at both ends. Four weeks locked up is too much for a haircut.

    2. Morning Richard – I think it is disgraceful and humiliating that Winston Churchill has been boxed in and the Cenotaph has been boarded up. Antifa and BLM will claim this as another victory. Our politicians and police must do better than this to protect the fabric of this country.

      1. It is certainly not a Churchillian attitude, “We will fight them in the streets…”

    3. Has Trudeau, the blackface mannequin, stepped down yet?

      He really should go, given his history of inappropriate gestures.

      Start up a Trudeau must go BLM petition.
      It would serve hm right if he were hounded out of politics. I wouldn’t mind betting someone could find one of his ancestors was a slave owner.

    4. It’s an awful feeling that anything is fair game to these morons. There’s no guarantee, following the Essex Chief Constable’s statement yesterday, that this magnificent memorial in Colchester is safe. A smaller memorial to two Royalists, Lucas and Lisle, shot after the siege of Colchester, is vulnerable as it is sited in a secluded spot behind the Castle Keep.

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/076fe44cf8b3a0a73bb49c91ce4b5c474f3cf0b24cd90414343359d04c5ade9a.png

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8150ea70b18f9a50f7cfe13b7d1ce12d5769a4efed0ec2f6cfef21aab2f8c7e4.png

  71. When documents are released for viewing they may have sections REDACTED –
    in other words BLACKED out in case they are not to everyones agreement.

    When the printed word is deemed to be unsuitable or not to everyones liking, , it is BLACKED out

    When in mourning, people dress in BLACK.]

    BLACK is the colour of DEATH

    Where is the BLACK Lives Matter movement taking us ?

    1. Ah well you see, all those expressions are simply symbols of whitey’s oppression.

  72. I’d like to congratulate Geoff. How has he managed to tap into the DT letters with a knackered laptop?
    Is he sitting on his roof holding up a bent coat hanger?

    1. Bent coat hanger? Don’t be silly, thus is the age of digital!

      He’s holding up a dustbin lid!

    3. Probably some fellow Nottler loaned him one or the off/on trick worked. Anyway I thank Geoff for his efforts. He keeps us together when it is most needed.

    1. It is difficult to judge who is the greatest disappointment – Johnson, the police or the Home Secretary. Upon reflection I would say they are all as bad as each other. If they are not careful they could be facing a whirlwind of anger – and we all know where that will end up.

    2. It is difficult to judge who is the greatest disappointment – Johnson, the police or the Home Secretary. Upon reflection I would say they are all as bad as each other. If they are not careful they could be facing a whirlwind of anger – and we all know where that will end up.

  74. ‘Morning again.

    Still reading the (free) Saturday edition of the Grimes (yes, I know, I’m a slow reader) and came across someone called Meggie Foster, mentioned in Giles Coren’s column. This lady specializes in “lip-sync eviscerations” of people like the Abbopotomus, Boris, Trump, Superbrat and other worthwhile targets. May not be everyone’s cup of tea but you can’t ignore her skill at taking the rise out of pompous politicians and so on. Here’s just one example that may brighten your day:

    https://twitter.com/i/status/1258336578713387010

  76. Spreading sweetness and light! This 92 year old lady responds to 5 musicians who came to play in her nursing home. You will need to click on the arrow on the bottom right hand corner to play this; it doesn’t seem to want to open on Disqus.

    https://twitter.com/SergePueyo/status/1270754495123857412?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1271013230530514949&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ffr.aleteia.org%2F2020%2F06%2F11%2Fla-danse-de-raymonde-92-ans-meilleure-recompense-de-ces-musiciens%2F

  78. Found on FaceAche:

    I won’t kneel with the masses,
    I won’t be told my fate,
    By people who hijack tragedy,
    To perpetuate their hate.

    Don’t you shout ‘Black Lives Matter’,

    Whilst running through the streets,

    When your people are burning Foot Locker,

    Stealing Nikes for their feet.

    
Don’t dance on The Cenotaph,
    
Like it’s Carnival or Mardi Gras,

    That sacred granite edifice,

    Marks people who died in war.

    
How dare you besiege Number 10,

    This isn’t even our fight,
    
If you want to go and protest,

    Get a 4,000 mile flight.

    
Social distancing flouted,
    
Police punched in the face,
    
Missiles hurled at Downing Street,
    
This isn’t about race.

    
It’s rent-a-mob and anarchists,
    
Versus police led by lambs,

    They just stand there and take it,
    
Lefty Cressida tied their hands.

    
Meanwhile America’s burning,
    
It’s a tragedy we all agree,

    That George Floyd lost his life,

    For all the world to see.

    
Justice must take its course,

    The cop has lost his job,
    
Now he faces twelve good and true,

    Not a braying mob.

    So Monday I won’t be kneeling,
    
I won’t even bow my head,

    Because someone I don’t even know,

    Has wound up dead.

    
An armed robber and a felon,
    
In and out of jail,

    As a model citizen,

    He was a total fail.

    
I’ll weep for whom I choose to,
    
I’ll say where and when,

    Not because a lifelong offender,

    Bought it in the end.

    
I don’t condone the officers,
    They rightly face the wrath,

    But ask me to kneel for a criminal?

    Don’t make me laugh.

    You can keep your lefty rhetoric,

    Your dismantling of our state,
    It’s BLM not Middle England,

    That’s peddling the hate.

    1. Had email from Havering Council to say that as a result of events in America, race relations in the borough are to be reviewed. This makes no sense to me and so sent the following email to council leader:

      ‘Dear Councillor White,

      I was interested in your remarks about events in USA that require a review of race relations in the borough. I am not clear why the actions of a policeman (described by some as a psychopath) murdering a career criminal 4,000 miles away should warrant such a review. Have there been incidents which would cause concern?

      Please let me know the thinking behind this.’

      2. Dear V.O.M,

        It’s because we don’t want people to know what a lot of headless chickens we is and didn’t want to miss the virtue signalling bandwagon.

        Don’t forget to vote for us next time…………

  79. Just sent this to my MP.

    Dear Mr Quince,

    As MP for an Essex constituency I presume that you are aware of the Chief Constable’s statement re protecting our heritage. The Chief Constable’s strategy for dealing with mob rule on our streets and the desecrating of public monuments appears to be very similar to the stance taken by Somerset and Avon last weekend. Standing idly by and doing nothing while a crime is being committed is not acceptable.

    From the Daily Mail quoting the Chief Constable:

    “He said: ‘What we will do is have appropriate plans and of course the officers will be there looking to make sure that people don’t get hurt in the first instance, trying to protect property if that’s the right thing to do, but people come first, making sure officers and those taking part are safe.'”

    “…the officers will be there looking to make sure that people don’t get hurt in the first instance…”

    I would prefer that the police service I help pay for would be acting to keep people safe and protect property rather than merely looking, wouldn’t you?

    The CC is emphasising the need for safety: so, in that regard, will the CC be employing a senior officer or outside contractor trained in writing risk assessments on demolition procedures to be present and the assessment agreed with, “…those taking part…”, to use the CC’s words, before any vandalism is permitted?

    By hinting that his officers may step back from policing criminal acts – “…trying to protect property if that’s the right thing to do…”- the CC is opening a can of worms and setting a dangerous precedent for the future of policing in Essex. Have you asked, or are you preparing to ask, the CC to reconsider his statement and therefore continue to police Essex as the public expects? With the Home Secretary’s constituency in Essex I would like to think that she would have some concerns over the CC’s proposals. Have you any plans to discuss this turn of events with Ms Patel?

    Finally, the lack of a forceful condemnation and a declaration of firm action from the Government on this issue is concerning, especially a Conservative Government. Delivering the streets and monuments of this Country into the hands of a few thousand anarchists and vandals is not a good look for the,”party of law and order”. The lustre, in the regard of law and order, is disappearing rapidly from the Conservative Party.

    Regards,

    1. 320049+ up ticks,
      Afternoon KtK,
      Been better sending some sound advice such as “quit
      while you are ahead”
      Or “while you have a head” the following
      continuation / consequence of bending the knee.
      As already posted hydra heads ( your Mp answers to) are safe in so far as lop one off two grow.

    4. Step back from policng criminal acts – that’s what the police are for. If they don’t want to police, they shouldn’t be in the force.

      Perhaps there should a police force which upholds the law and a criminals fluffer group that encourages or stands by while violent thugs loot and destroy our society?

    1. Sturmabteilung? Street fighters, bullies, Jew baiters, racists and murderers, a possible fit.

    2. The police should target white BLM protesters for prosecution and hopefully they will be given exemplary sentences for criminal damage.

      1. It will be the “Far right extremist Nazi’s) protecting Winston Churchill’s statue that will be arrested. I hope they do a bit of Cop bashing as well, fucking pansies.

      1. I made a jar full last week from a 300-year old recipe on a Yank YouTube channel. I make the sausage meat from a mix of lean and fatty pork that I mince before adding seasoning and rusk. I substitute a 400g can of tomatoes (passed through a sieve) for the water and then add a big squeeze of tomato puree.

          1. I once worked with a lovely lady who was extraordinarily “sturdy” yet she was a veggie!

            I didn’t know at the time (so I couldn’t tell her) but if she’d ditched the bread, spuds and cake and troughed a bit of dead animal matter she would have been a cracker.

  84. I’ve been wondering with all this current nonsense of pulling down statues. And accusing long lost people of attachments to slavery, if the HoC party whips will be removed. They have always sounded rather like slave drivers to me.

  85. Just read an article about Khant’s iconoclasm aka throwing a bone to the baying mob.
    Amongst the potential targets for virtue signalling, this suggestion jumped out:
    “Will Karl Marx’s tomb be destroyed because of his deeply held anti-Semitism?”
    Short answer … No. Labour and BLM have absolutely no problem with anti-semitism.
    The Jews have an unfortunate trait of being intelligent and getting on with life. And they are white.

  86. POACHED: Silverback mountain gorilla Rafiki killed – big blow for conservation tourism

    Rafiki, one of Uganda’s most loved mountain gorilla silverbacks, has been killed by poachers in Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable National Park. This is an enormous blow to conservation tourism and the last remaining mountain gorillas

    https://africageographic.com/stories/poached-silverback-mountain-gorilla-rafiki-poached-big-blow-for-conservation-tourism/?fbclid=IwAR22B8hDqlR_DK7LZ7d32JIszp-w7CiYlN9WUcbI1pnkYkcDhvyMpzPu970

    You can take an African out of Africa, but you will NEVER take Africa out of an African .

    3. Why poach gorillas? They might be better fried.

      What possible value does a dead gorilla have? Surely not Chinese medicine.

          1. 320049+ up ticks,
            Evening TB,
            What the similarity being unsuccessful on both issues ?
            Sad news but proves never take paws to a gun fight.

  87. I’ve come to the conclusion that at the centre of the dreadful triad of BLM, ER and Antifa there beats a diseased common heart of nihilistic malevolence , this 21st century iteration of Cerberus ( or even Hydra ) has such a grip on the impressionable young that even when you point out that the stated common purpose of these people ( ref intended ) is to destroy western civilisation and replace it with what in all honestly would be an analogue of Zimbabwe, the only response is one of the mortally blasphemed against and shrieks of “racist gammon boomer” . If one of the aims of this pestilential assortment of psychopaths is to incite civil war the loathsome Morlocks are close to achieving their aim.

    hmmm that’s better of me chest.

    Betimes we went to Hestercombe Gardens today, open for the first time since lock down.They usually have 8 gardeners and 30 volunteers on site but have been ticking over with just two gardeners on site, the slightly unkempt nature of the gardens was actually quite attractive as it softened the formal lines.

    Warning :- may contain Hollyhocks

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2001587a04387b40967420ff1ecd77ce0ff3a3aaba7d733f9a800bc7b649b96c.jpg

  90. Well, well, well…wotta surprise!

    Steerpike
    Emily Sheffield replaces George Osborne at Evening Standard
    12 June 2020, 4:16pm

    https://images.contentstack.io/v3/assets/bltf04078f3cf7a9c30/blt9994b5d7bee6ce90/5ee39b7c78d727433aea844d/Screenshot_2020-06-12_at_16.12.21.png?format=jpg&width=1920&height=1080&fit=crop

    Today, it was announced that Emily Sheffield, founder of ‘This Much I Know News’ and former deputy editor of Vogue, has taken over as editor of the Evening Standard. She replaces former Chancellor George Osborne, who will now become editor-in-chief of the publication. Osborne spent three years at the helm of the paper.

    Sheffield takes over at an incredibly difficult time for the Standard – the paper normally relies on London’s massive commuter footfall to justify its advertising revenue. It has been reported that the paper’s distribution has almost halved since the lockdown began.

    Still, one thing remains unchanged: the Cameron-clique still clearly dominates the top rungs of the publication. As David Cameron’s Chancellor and ally departs as editor, he is replaced by none other than Samantha Cameron’s sister.

    Readers may remember that it was the same Emily Sheffield who shared an infamous photo of David Cameron, her brother-in-law, barefoot and asleep on a bed at a wedding in 2013. At the time, Sheffield apparently had only meant for the photo to be shared with eight other people on Instagram:

    @PoliticalPics
    OMG, Emily Sheffield is to be the editor of the once great Evening Standard, talk about keep it in the Tory family !! still she clearly likes photos after she took pic of david cameron in bed while he was PM, lets be honest the paper couldn’t get any worse !! or could it.
    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EaUZKGOWoAESedk?format=jpg&name=small
    View image on Twitter
    3:35 PM – Jun 12, 2020

    Sheffield’s rise to the top of the Standard may work out well though for Keir Starmer. Soon after the Brexit vote in 2016, the incoming editor of the Standard asked ‘how quickly can I join the Labour party?’ and revealed that she ‘only voted Tory for David’.

    It seems like the Cameron-era is still far from over…

    1. DT article – https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/06/12/eu-finally-accepts-will-no-extension-brexit-transition-period/

      Michael Gove told Maros Sefcovic, a commission vice-president, that Britain would not ask for a delay to the period beyond the end of the year in a meeting of the joint committee on the implementation of the Withdrawal Agreement.

      The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster “couldn’t be clearer” in his formal notice to the commission, Mr Sefcovic told reporters inBrussels, “he explained this was the promise that was given to theBritish citizens in the electoral campaign”.

      “[He] was very clear, unequivocal on the fact that the UK is not going to seek the extension and because this was the last joint committee before the deadline expires we take this decision as adefinitive one,” said Mr Sefcovic. “Therefore, we are pleading foracceleration of work on all fronts.”

      “We have informed the EU [on Friday] that we will not extend the Transition Period. The moment for extension has now passed,” Mr Gove said.

      … “We must now progress on substance,” tweeted Michel Barnier as it was confirmed the end of June deadline for extension would expire without a request.

      1. I will believe that when the 30th June deadline has passed. I am all too well aware that Boris was going to be dead in a ditch before there was any extension. Deeds, not words.

        1. Grant Shapps has just said that we are leaving [on BBC TV news]. The relaxation on goods coming into the UK is temporary and once we are out on 1 January 2021 we can sort this out asap once we don’t have the EU round our necks. I am still of the opinion that Boris will stick to the end of year deadline. We have left the EU, we are approaching the end of Transition. The conservatives don’t want to commit political suicide.

          1. Your small ‘c’ conservatives, is that a Freudian slip? ie Our government ain’t conservative.

          5. Yep, paint him black and call him Bernie, in honour of the deceased BLM politician

          6. As housing minister he approved many corporate greed schemes in the Hatfield St Albans area.
            Buildings crammed and stuffed on to many ‘brown field sites’.
            There’s another of his babies in the offing an ancient area called Sleepshyde. Green belt apparently ‘owned’ by rich self important tossers running short of funds.
            And then with the usual political expediency he shoved on to where his is today. Don’t all the political AHs do this ?

          7. Your small ‘c’ conservatives, is that a Freudian slip? ie Our government ain’t conservative.

        1. You have not “left” when you are still paying a fortune in tribute, still subject to the ECJ and still having to obey all the diktats.

  94. Is it me or has anyone else noticed that Gary Lineker and Emily Maitlis are white?

    This is an outrage, the Book Burning Corporation must act immediately and replace them with people that do reflect the diverse society they have been so actively demanding.

    2. How do you know that Emily Maitlis doesn’t have a black partner (cf. all TV adverts). ‘Course, Lineker can’t have a black female partner, ‘cos that would be demonstrating white supremacy.

      1. Oh that’s fine. Mateless will be allowed to buy a bargain three piece suite.

      2. The difference between the two of them is that Line Acre was never ever sent off. No red card.

        1. He was going to be sent off but at the time he was a national treasure and when he “talked” to the referee about being the only person to have evicted St Gary, the straight red was changed to a yellow.

          Allegedly!

          3. It’s a word Dickens brought to light in his excellent Little Book of Sketches by Boz.
            It was a parish election for a new Beagle. The candidate who won provided a larger bag and better cakes to the voters. His name was Mr Bung.

          2. Yep.

            And good luck to you.

            At the top end it’s totally wasted on me.

            I’ve been lucky enough to sample some of the very best, and really enjoyed them, but given the choice between one bottle of ****** super wine premier grande cru, and a few cases of Pécharmant from Le Terre Vieille, give me the Pécharmant every time.

            It’s like Sauternes, I’ve had some of the very best vintages from Chateau d’ Yquem, but again, five cases of Loupiac for one bottle of Sauternes, it’s no contest for me.

          4. If you enjoy full bodied red wines, look out for it.

            You’ll be hooked without the expence of a string of ponies.

  96. Collected car. All home and dry. Glass of fizz to look forward to ten years of happy motoring.

    Catch you tomorrow – after the demo…

    1. Bowling along on the open road then, not a car in sight…. Enjoy your new car!

        1. Larff of the week PT 😆😂😃😄
          Dark blue might have been a better choice for old (uncle) Bill ☺

  97. Tonight’s DT. Surprisingly, no comments allowed:-

    ‘This is more important than your hurt feelings’: What happened when I toured Britain’s ‘problematic’ statue

    Many of the campaigns around statues of controversial figures – including Cecil Rhodes, Robert Milligan and Edward Colston – have been going on for years

    As the din of this week’s public debate surrounding quite what to do with our “problematic” public monuments has grown to a tumult, Alice Procter mainly felt a sense of excitement. For her, this conversation has been a long time coming.

    “I guess for a lot of people this whole thing has only started this week, but many of the campaigns around statues of controversial figures – about Cecil Rhodes, or Robert Milligan, or especially Edward Colston – have been going on for years. It’s just great that something is finally happening.”

    Procter, a 25-year-old historian and writer, is an expert in the matter. For the past three years, she has led the hugely popular ‘Uncomfortable Art Tours’ ­around six major museums and galleries in London. Three to five times a week, Procter takes dozen-strong groups of art enthusiasts and tourists on a refreshing journey around the permanent exhibitions at the likes of the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Tate.

    The idea is to shine a light on the conveniently forgotten (or deliberately obfuscated) role of empire and colonialism both in the art displayed, and in the very way it is displayed. She’s also written a book, The Whole Picture, on the same subject, and now plans a sequel about public monuments

    We meet at the Victoria Memorial, the imposing, gilded marble commemoration of Queen Victoria that doubles as a roundabout outside Buckingham Palace. Procter doesn’t yet do tours outside. “This is part of the reason,” she says, looking up at the drizzle.

    She isn’t affiliated with any campaigns to remove monuments – such as Topple the Racists, an online hit list of statues of individuals with links to the slave trade – but is delighted that we’ve come round to rethinking who and what is celebrated on our streets.

    “It’s fascinating we’ve now shifted from the idea that statues are always going to stay put, because that’s just not historically accurate at all,” she says. “Plenty of people opposed the statues people have been saying ‘represent the views of the time’. These issues have always been there.”

    Born to Australian parents, Procter lived in Hong Kong until she was eight, which gave her an interest in the untold context of the British Empire, before she and her family moved to the UK permanently.

    We look up at Victoria, who sits stern and haughty on her throne. Procter says it’s illustrative of a wider issue around the limitations of public art as a teaching resource. “This is all about her as an imperial figure, with allegories for profit and prosperity.

    “Sculptures will always be simplistic – there isn’t room for footnotes – but it’s important to remember where that profit came from. Britain’s power was built on its navy, and within that is the Transatlantic slave trade. We need to remember that centuries of colonialism laid the groundwork for a figure like Queen Victoria,” she explains. “I would just love more context for public art.”

    We wander up The Mall, and are soon met by Captain James Cook. Procter reads aloud the swashbuckling description of an explorer “travers[ing] the ocean gates” and shakes her head. “He sounds like a hero, but there’s a lot missing from that conversation. No commemoration of the indigenous people who travelled with him, for one thing.”

    Over the road, in Trafalgar Square, Admiral Nelson’s atop his column. It’s on the topple list. “Well, Nelson was really, really racist. He was very pro-slavery, and wrote a letter stating that he’d essentially fight until his dying breath to stop William Wilberforce and his brethren, so we’ve got him in his own words.”

    Once you begin noticing how frequent the statues are, and simplistically valiant these monuments have been made to look, it’s difficult to argue with Procter’s belief that we should look at them anew. Even as a historian, she isn’t fully convinced by the idea the worst of them should be moved to museums, as the Colston statue will be, either.

    “There’s a feeling that museums should be a relic box of everything – ‘Oh, just shove it in a museum.’ But most museums don’t have the funds or physical space for these statues. And why do we feel the need? I don’t think there’s any danger of waking up and forgetting slavery was a bad thing if we don’t have a sculpture of somebody like Edward Colston around. We could channel those funds into something contemporary that better remembers the people who went through it.”

    A wander down Whitehall presents even more villains. There’s Robert Clive, the man who established British rule in India, whose statue the historian William Dalrymple called for the removal of this week, outside the foreign office. There’s 1st Viscount Slim, Field Marshall Douglas Earl Haig… and at the end, in Parliament Square, Winston Churchill.

    The statue of Edward Colston plops into the Avon in Bristol last weekend

    The statue of Edward Colston plops into the Avon in Bristol last weekend. It has since been retrieved CREDIT: PA

    Despite cleaning attempts, the words “WAS A RACIST”, daubed by protesters last weekend, are still visible on its stone base. “This is the thing, he was a racist, it’s not really up for debate. His contemporaries thought so too,” Procter says.

    She understands that many may struggle to re-evaluate historical icons, but has blunt words for those having difficulty.

    “Any kind of cultural moment like this is going to have pain for some people. You might have to let go of something you liked, but you have to come to terms with the fact that this is more important than your hurt feelings.”

    The Whole Picture by Alice Procter. Buy the ebook now for £10.99 at books.telegraph.co.uk or call 0844 871 ‘

      1. Shame on me, I was thinking it would be good on the fire, but I will resist the thought.

    2. “Procter, a 25-year-old historian and writer, is an expert ….” She may well be an ‘expert’ (used so much it has lost all meaning these days) but at 25 she has not had a lot of life experience with which to structure her expertise…. just opinions, I expect.

      1. The arrogance of these arseholes never ceases to astound me. I’ll give the benefit of the doubt and assume the writer of the article has described her thus, but even so the arrogance is there.

        Fine, if it’s something that is so new that hardly anyone even knows it exists, you can conceivably be an expert at 25, but to be described as an expert when there will be people who have studied your subject for longer than you’ve been alive is nonsense.

      2. It is rather frightening that people so young can call themselves ‘historians’. There is no modesty and no recognition that all they purport to know has come from books written by others.

        It takes a lifetime of experience at the sharp end to really gain knowledge. Even then we learn more day by day because we are receptive. It applies particularly in my own profession. No twenty five year old ‘architect’ is going to tell me anything about my Art.

    4. “We wander up The Mall, and are soon met by Captain James Cook. Procter reads aloud the swashbuckling description of an explorer “travers[ing] the ocean gates” and shakes her head. “He sounds like a hero, but there’s a lot missing from that conversation. No commemoration of the indigenous people who travelled with him, for one thing.””
      The girl needs a slap back into reality.

    5. Historians do research. They look at original documents. They visit archives. They look at what was on the ground and pace it out. This takes time. Lots of it. Most “historians” are not historians. They rewrite other people’s books.

    6. This reads like a Peter Simple column – she must be related to Deirdre Dutt-Pauker.

  99. I have just had a brief glimpse into the future

    In the year 2059, the United Nations will decree that on May 26, 2060, all countries in the World will

    have a National Holiday, in Remembrance and support of The Reverend George Floyd.

    The Rev Floyd was highly regarded preacher in in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area of Minnesota.

    On 26 May 2020, Rev Floyd was callously killed, when he intervened to stop a group of white policemen, from
    raping a 14 year black (virgin) girl, one of his parishioners. The girl managed to escape, but Floyd was killed
    by six of the policemen kicking him to death

    His death caused a worldwide uproar. Even though Floyd was a Methodist, he was canonised by the Pope.
    Queen Elizabeth issued a Royal Decree, that after her death, Princess Meghan was to succeed her.

    The Conservative Party in UK was disbanded and the party to come into power was the Black Lives Matter,

    White old age pensioners were moved out of their houses and into tenement ghettoes, to make room
    for the vibrant young black Entrepreneurs . The dealing of drugs on the street became a thing of the past.

  100. Just had an interesting email from Which?motoring. Photocard driving licences which are due to be renewed between now & 01/09/20 will be automatically extended for 7 months “because of the difficulties in getting photos done during lockdown”. However, this does not apply to over-70s licences which must be renewed on time in the normal way, i.e. for the very group who are supposed to be self-isolating! Another example of governmental Madness.

    https://www.which.co.uk/news/2020/06/dvla-gives-seven-month-extension-on-photocard-driving-licences/

    1. Well, you shouldn’t be driving at your age. It’s for young people only. How would they keep the accident statistics up otherwise?

    2. If you have an over-70 licence renewable at 3 years, you can renew online. The existing photo of record is applied. You don’t need to take a new one. There is no fee.

    3. New passport applications can now be made by taking a selfie for the photo. How about the DVLA borrowing the technology from the Home Office’s contractor?

      1. Once you have an acceptable (no smiling etc) digital image, I think you can use it across government, Paul.

  102. Whooee!!

    I have just h d a wonderful run in with one of
    the Doctor’s receptionists.

    We have four regular receptionists, three girlies
    who live in the village and one who doesn’t!!

    Guess which one I got on the telephone?

    The conversation went something like this………

    Receptionist…..”Can I help you?”

    Me….Good afternoon, I need to speak to a Doctor or nurse.”

    R……What about?

    Me….I don’t choose to tell you.

    R ….Well you have to tell me so I can decide if it is an emergency.

    Me…..No! I do not have to tell you, suffice to say it is Not an emergency.

    R. Well you still have to tell me, I need to Know what it is about.

    Me……No you do not need to know; suffice to say, I am not going to
    ……….waste the Doctor’s time!
    It is about time You realised I am the Customer here, you work for me,
    not the other way round and had great pleasure in slamming the phone
    down on her!

    I await the door being knocked down!!! :-))

    1. Receptionist: “Can I help you?”

      Me: “How the hell am I supposed to know your capabilities?”

    2. It’s strange, that quite often at a doctor’s surgery the receptionist can be very stroppy.
      Above their station is the phrase.

    3. Besides what is happening now. I got totally fed up with my local GP service. I am quite prepared to have a proper consultation with a private Doctor at a cost of £100. You get 30 minutes if you want it and you can discuss more than one thing.

      Went to see my Dentist and hygienist today. They were wearing space suits.

      How are you me deario?

    1. He might just as well prostrate himself and allow any passing black criminals to piss all over him.

      1. Have left a comment to the article asking for his position to be reviewed as a matter of urgency.

    3. I think we can assume that the police are as much use to the law-abiding as a chocolate fireguard.

  107. Make no mistake – BLM is a radical neo-Marxist political movement

    ALEXANDRA PHILLIPS

    The rapid spread of protests across the West under the Black Lives Matter banner has left a political breathlessness from Baltimore to Berlin. Those in positions of authority are scrambling to show they are addressing endemic racism, and in the commercial sphere, not ending up on the wrong side of the debate and risking Twitter storms and boycotts. In a world where nothing is exempt from moral judgment, being on trend means signing up to radical political movements.

    That is what Black Lives Matter is. Don’t take my word for it. Take theirs. The form of words that appears on most online posts connected to the group riffs on ‘the black radical tradition’ which counts among its past contributors the Black Panther Movement and Malcom X. BLM happily self-identifies as a neo-Marxist movement with various far left objectives, including defunding the police (an evolution of the Panther position of public open-carry to control the police), to dismantling capitalism and the patriarchal system, disrupting the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure, seeking reparations from slavery to redistribute wealth and via various offshoot appeals, to raise money to bail black prisoners awaiting trial. The notion of seizing control of the apportionment of capital, dismantling the frameworks of society and neutralising and undermining law enforcement are not just Marxist, but anarchic.

    Desperate to appease a vociferous clamour, celebrities and companies are queuing up to endorse. Airbnb has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars, an ironic move for a company that enables profiting from real estate through casual lets, driving up rental prices and gentrifying neighbourhoods, impacting on affordable leases in inner cities.

    Nike, which has come under fire for using sweatshops to manufacture unaffordable, ‘aspirational’ footwear to pitch to the poorest in society, is now striving for racial equality. Amazon has banned the police from using their facial recognition software in tackling crime, yet are happy to push for greater intrusion in the private sphere.

    UK tea manufacturers, whose business was built on the back of slavery and operate under neo-colonial plantation models where tea is grown and picked through agrarian toil in the developing world to be shipped for production, packaging and profits in the West have jumped on the hashtag #Solidaritea. Post-truth absurdity is where we have reached. Yet as companies commercially conflate the tagline Black Lives Matter, with the movement Black Lives Matter, momentum builds for an organisation with little scrutiny or accountability, that is able to mobilise millions and encourage, wilfully or not, outpourings of vandalism, looting and violence across the West.

    With enormous sums of money flooding in – BLM had already received over $100 million from the Open Society Foundations, Ford Foundation and Borealis Philanthropy among others – and many written aims straight from the Communist copybook, there is surely reason for concern. Black Lives Matter is a somewhat amorphous and decentralised movement, allowing international chapters to set up under their banner. Not having a structure, a figurehead or centralised financial control means there is absolutely no accountability. Nobody to call for an end to violence, while providing a moral shield behind which perpetrators of crime can feel emboldened.

    But decentralisation does not mean disorganisation. Even with a captive audience under lockdown filled with frustration, sparking a range of parallel protests across the West still demands highly skilled choreography. The sort of operation that requires thousands of avatars to flood social media platforms with calls to action, that can target and penetrate entire demographics simultaneously across a range of countries. That is simply not possible by a group of well-meaning activists, however romantic about a cause you may wish to be. It can be achieved using extremely high level, sensitive intelligence equipment of the kind deep state operatives have access to.

    Throughout history civil rights movements have been either aided and abetted or exploited by Communist foreign actors, from the American civil rights movement to apartheid in South Africa. By sowing discord in countries, socialist activists have hoped to nurture fertile grounds for socio-political fecundity. It is well within the realms of possibility that state-backed cyber warfare emanating from Russia and China would want to exploit and exacerbate mounting discontent while the West is still reeling from the pandemic.

    A once small American movement that witnessed bursts of activity after individual cases of perceived police brutality has become the most prominent protest movement in Europe, and polarises societies wherever it goes. Unlike predecessors that often fell on the swords of their figureheads, this movement remains impervious to the accountability of a leader, because there are many. What we do know of the few founding members is that many are connected to radical Left organisations.

    An FBI report released in 2017 found that attacks on police in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Dallas, Texas were influenced by the Black Lives Matter movement, with 28 per cent of those who used deadly force against police officers motivated by a hatred of police. An unclassified FBI study following the Dallas cop-killing spree of 2016 that left 5 officers shot dead reported departments and individual officers increasingly taking the decision to stop proactive policing amid concerns that anti-police defiance fuelled in part by movements like Black Lives Matter had become the “new norm.”

    The sight of missiles being thrown at unarmed British police, with entire ranks forced to retreat from a baying mob should leave anybody who values national and community security with chills. Footage of an attack against a police officer and his colleague in Hackney attempting to apprehend an assault suspect showed members of the public filming the incident while one joined the fracas with a baseball bat. As statues are torn down and lists of demands are drawn up, sleepwalking towards lawlessness must terrify many members of the public.

    The difficulty in raising criticism or calling for scrutiny of the movement, despite pulling in unimaginable revenue and endorsement from the biggest corporates, biggest names and most prominent political appeasers, is that it leaves the accuser open to being censored and attacked as a racist. As the movement establishes organised chapters across the West, is emboldened to make explicit commitments to extreme forms of socialism and anarchy, and generates a head of steam against the very structures and protections that have guarded Western society for decades, if all opposition is silenced and checks and balances swept aside, reversing a nascent tidal wave of mob rule will take significant and disturbing levels of force.

    I support those who genuinely want to make the world a less prejudiced and more equal place, but there are many reasons to be concerned that Black Lives Matter is not enabling this, and instead is fostering division, chaos and destruction designed to bring the West to its knees – something that will harm the very people the movement purports to protect.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/12/make-no-mistake-blm-radical-neo-marxist-political-movement/

  108. Are we at peak bonkers yet?
    James Delingpole

    Not My Spectator Column: A Mad World, My Masters

    I feel sorry for all the aspirant writers who’ve been using the lockdown to bash out the edgy, topical, high concept thrillers that they know are going to make their fortune. Because it’s not going to happen, is it? No matter how ingenious, convoluted and shocking their intricate plots, they’re not even going to come even close to capturing the gibbering lunacy of the world in 2020 as it hurtles inexorably towards peak bonkers.

    Some recent examples:

    Tanya Gold (the restaurant critic of the Spectator, formerly a right wing publication), wokesplaining in the Telegraph (also formerly a right wing publication) about how Gone With The Wind (formerly an acknowledged classic of cinema) is so racist we shouldn’t be allowed to watch it any more.

    Diana Thomas (formerly laddish features journo David Thomas; now the Telegraph Magazine’s transgender columnist) denouncing JK Rowling (formerly uber-woke children’s author) for her outrageous suggestion that you’re not a real woman unless you have periods.

    Andrew Neil (chairman of the formerly right wing Spectator; reputedly the only conservative journalist given house room at the BBC), tweeting out about the ‘Don’t Mention the War’ episode of Fawlty Towers (formerly almost universally recognised, including by one A. Neil, presumably, as the second or third funniest episode in British sitcom history):

    It amazes me this was thought acceptable even in the late 1970s. Especially by the liberal and supposedly progressive Mr Cleese and cast.
    Just in case you thought it couldn’t get any madder, here is the cherry on the icing of the cake which someone clearly left out in the rain: the latest tweet from Yasmin Alibhai-Brown (formerly the most annoying person on the planet).

    #standwithjkrowling back off you hyenas. Misogyny dressed up as righteousness stinks. No Body Shop products henceforth for me either.
    I think it’s the last tweet I find most disturbing. When Yasmin Alibhai-Brown says something sensible, you know that the ravens have left the Tower, the music of the spheres has turned discordant, and that the End Times are fast approaching.

    My friend Sir Dan of C was similarly confused, as he explained on Twitter:

    This is like getting an erection whilst browsing through the Ikea catalogue. I just don’t know what the answer is I’m afraid.
    ….
    Look at Boris Johnson’s pitiful defence of the right of a statue of Winston Churchill in Parliament Square not to go unvandalised.

    “…we all understand the legitimate feelings of outrage at what happened in Minnesota and the legitimate desire to protest against discrimination.”

    Legitimate? What can possibly be legitimate about mindless vandalism provoked by the killing of a failed porn star, high on drugs by a rogue copper 4,000 miles on the other side of the Atlantic?

    Whatever progress this country has made in fighting racism – and it has been huge – we all recognise that there is much more work to do.

    Say WHAT, Boris? There are many criticisms you could make of Britain but an excess of racism certainly ain’t one of them. On the contrary, you could reasonably argue that a much bigger problem is the opposite of racism: an ingrained culture of state-endorsed grievance and race-baiting victimhood which is keeping certain ethnic minorities mired in poverty and bitterness, and contributing to a mistrust and resentment from the broader culture which is killing social cohesion.

    One of the first rules of standing up to the SJW mob is never to concede an inch of territory because they’ll only see it as an admission of guilt and a sign that you’re prepared to offer still more.

    Or as Kipling put it in better times:

    We never pay any-one Dane-geld,
    No matter how trifling the cost;
    For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
    And the nation that plays it is lost!

    1. “Andrew Neil (chairman of the formerly right wing Spectator; reputedly the only conservative journalist given house room at the BBC), tweeting out about the ‘Don’t Mention the War’ episode of Fawlty Towers (formerly almost universally recognised, including by one A. Neil, presumably, as the second or third funniest episode in British sitcom history):”
      I’ve searched for this but can’t find anything, anyone else seen it?

  110. It is becoming more and more apparent with each passing day that our government isn’t going to lift a finger to uphold law and order and do what they are supposed to do to protect our country from harm from extremism until the good people of this country decide to try to do it for themselves, then behold, action to protect statues

    1. 320049+ up ticks,
      Evening B3,
      Personally I refrain from calling that odious political group government.
      A government is a group of responsibly minded politicians, & not a gaggle of pinstripe clad treacherous Bengal Lancers.

    2. Why do you think it’s nigh impossible to get a gun? Unless you’re a criminal.

  113. Well, well, well…wotta surprise!

    Steerpike
    Emily Sheffield replaces George Osborne at Evening Standard
    12 June 2020, 4:16pm

    https://images.contentstack.io/v3/assets/bltf04078f3cf7a9c30/blt9994b5d7bee6ce90/5ee39b7c78d727433aea844d/Screenshot_2020-06-12_at_16.12.21.png?format=jpg&width=1920&height=1080&fit=crop

    Today, it was announced that Emily Sheffield, founder of ‘This Much I Know News’ and former deputy editor of Vogue, has taken over as editor of the Evening Standard. She replaces former Chancellor George Osborne, who will now become editor-in-chief of the publication. Osborne spent three years at the helm of the paper.

    Sheffield takes over at an incredibly difficult time for the Standard – the paper normally relies on London’s massive commuter footfall to justify its advertising revenue. It has been reported that the paper’s distribution has almost halved since the lockdown began.

    Still, one thing remains unchanged: the Cameron-clique still clearly dominates the top rungs of the publication. As David Cameron’s Chancellor and ally departs as editor, he is replaced by none other than Samantha Cameron’s sister.

    Readers may remember that it was the same Emily Sheffield who shared an infamous photo of David Cameron, her brother-in-law, barefoot and asleep on a bed at a wedding in 2013. At the time, Sheffield apparently had only meant for the photo to be shared with eight other people on Instagram:

    @PoliticalPics
    OMG, Emily Sheffield is to be the editor of the once great Evening Standard, talk about keep it in the Tory family !! still she clearly likes photos after she took pic of david cameron in bed while he was PM, lets be honest the paper couldn’t get any worse !! or could it.
    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EaUZKGOWoAESedk?format=jpg&name=small
    View image on Twitter
    3:35 PM – Jun 12, 2020

    Sheffield’s rise to the top of the Standard may work out well though for Keir Starmer. Soon after the Brexit vote in 2016, the incoming editor of the Standard asked ‘how quickly can I join the Labour party?’ and revealed that she ‘only voted Tory for David’.

    It seems like the Cameron-era is still far from over…

  114. BBC Radio 4

    Just caught a bit of a programme discussing accuracy of COVID antibody tests.
    With testing at the forefront of global health service investments it’s obviously good sense for big pharma to produce a reliable test.

    There are now hundreds of tests available but there is no statistical data to back up the claims for accuracy.
    The Roche test has claimed 100% accuracy but that is only based on a 29 sample delayed sufficiently to ensure a good result after patients had been lab tested as COVID-19 positive.

    Potentially a big money spinner for a company with the chosen product.

      1. It turns out that the accuracy is dependent on the length of time between onset of the COVID-19 infection and the time of the antibody test.

          1. Nope 5’11”. The headrest is interesting being weighted with lead at the back and with straps adjustable to become a lumbar support.

    7. Your house looks like it’s made of sticks, Corim. be careful the big bad wolf doesn’t come, huff and puff and blow it down!

      Couldn’t you have designed a more modern pad made with … say … breezeblock?

      [Only joking, mate. It looks lovely.]

      1. The cottage is mediaeval circa 1430 with extensions in the C15 as the room in the photo and another bay of C17. The mediaeval section was a petite hall house with solar but with floor and chimney added in mid C15.

        The Oak floor boards to the inserted floors are about 1/2” in thickness and 15” wide. They were cut by a circular saw circa 1520 in Silesia and imported. The clamps are English Oak and the joists English Elm.

          2. Great pics, John. You are fortunate (not lucky) to live in such a building.

        2. The floor tiles in the background look fairly old – are they part of the original floors?

    8. I’m sure you will have edited the picture by now, but that looks like an architect designed study.

      };-O

        3. The photo is of our Sitting Room. My study is almost inaccessible because of the volume of books at present.

          My favourite study chair is a Bergere Bow Windsor chair in Yew with a deep Elm seat which I bought from Stewart Linford in High Wycombe about forty years ago. It too is a beautifully crafted piece, a testament to the skill of the Windsor chair maker.

          The damn iPhone has reorientated the image but you get the gist. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/86e61c904a64c14a5741740cab6881c03a2515a6cb2b9973d7116aa534ca0d55.jpg

          1. That’s a proper chair, contoured for your bum. I’m sitting on something similar, but probably less expensive.

          2. Yup. The ergonomics of the Windsor chairs is very good. I could not stand those plastic office chairs so bought a couple of slightly larger Bergere Bows in English Oak with adjustable Elm seats and Tiger Oak bases with castors.

            They cost a fortune but might just become the antiques of tomorrow. I shall be long gone.

        4. The photo is of our Sitting Room. My study is almost inaccessible because of the volume of books at present.

          My favourite study chair is a Bergere Bow Windsor chair in Yew with a deep Elm seat which I bought from Stewart Linford in High Wycombe about forty years ago. It too is a beautifully crafted piece, a testament to the skill of the Windsor chair maker.

          The damn iPhone has reorientated the image but you get the gist. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/86e61c904a64c14a5741740cab6881c03a2515a6cb2b9973d7116aa534ca0d55.jpg

  119. Goodnight everyone .
    We have been watching Foyles War , very enjoyable .. pity it is on so late .

    It rained really heavily this afternoon.. no need to water the garden . I went for a long evening walk with the dogs instead whilst Moh went to the golf driving range .. normality at last..

    Sleep well , don’t dream about statues!

    1. Great programme. We record anything we want to watch these days and fast-forward through the ads. But (courtesy of another Nottler) we have a box set of Foyle DVDs.

  120. In a series of Tweets” “Mr Johnson said monuments like Churchill’s were put up by previous generations as he urged people to “stay away” from demonstrations amid the coronavirus pandemic.”
    So, what you are saying Prime Minister is that the civilised people yield the ground to the ignorant savages?
    Perhaps we should hide behind our settees, you damned worm!

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53023351

  122. Like him or loathe him, Nigel Farage has proved that defending the concept of democracy is now a profoundly risky act

    Broadcasters need a diversity of opinion, but Farage’s exit may well scare other voices into silence

    GAWAIN TOWLER

    I bet the cancel crew couldn’t believe their luck. At very short notice, Nigel Farage was taken off air with instant effect by LBC – supposedly due to concerns within the Global News network, which includes Capital Radio and Classic FM amongst others in its roster.

    Cue great celebrations across social media as armchair justice warriors celebrated the scalping of one of their great antagonists.

    Farage himself is not overly concerned about the turn of events and the impact on him. He has a battle hardened-carapace, and has never taken himself overly seriously. He does worry about the impact of one of the country’s leading political voices being snuffed out by his employer. This, he fears, will have a very deadening effect across the UK. Others who might well have a different viewpoint, but do not have his resources both personal and financial resilience, may be scared into silence.

    As you’d expect in a modern media company, Global’s board is all white men bar one of its 10 members. LBC presenters did, however, show a diversity of opinion, which is more important. The station is keen to get the best talent, particularly for its high-profile spots, with Nick Ferrari running the breakfast show, and – up until yesterday – Nigel Farage as the voice of the early evening.

    So keen was Global to keep Farage sweet that, with his contract up for renewal in mid-July, it had been in long negotiations on how to keep him. Only a week ago those negotiations were ongoing. I can hardly believe that they were offering him a pay cut to his hefty salary.

    But in the blink of an eye – so fast that his longstanding producer and LBC staffer for over 9 years, Christian Mitchell, was not informed – Farage’s career with the station was over.

    https://twitter.com/MitchellCMM/status/1271076201587752960
    Ostensibly this is because some of the staff at Global had an issue with him. To be fair, they have had an issue for a long time. Stablemate James O’Brien, voice of the metropolitan Remainer classes, couldn’t help but gloat and others have anonymously briefed against him to various news sources.

    https://twitter.com/mrjamesob/status/1271087738209685505
    Nigel’s ostensible crime was to liken the actions of Black Lives Matter campaigners to the Taliban in their desire to erase the past. He also pointed out that the organization itself wishes to defund the police and put an end to the capitalist system, not through democratic methods, but by mass pressure. He has also been the only serious commentator to have highlighted the boats coming across the Channel illegally during the lockdown. This was deemed too much.

    Voices have been chuntering for years to pressurise Global to remove him. They do this by organizing Twitter mobs to target advertisers, threatening income streams. We have similarly seen people like Martin Shipton, the veteran Left-wing political commentator at the Western Mail, removed from his role as the chairman of the Welsh book awards. His crime was to query whether the Black Lives Matter demonstration in Cardiff was relevant to what has been happening in the USA or, indeed, should happen at all given the draconian pandemic lockdown rules set by the Welsh Government. For that a tax-funded charity fired him. And this is happening all over the place.

    Corporations who should know better are supporting a movement that has as its driving purpose the destruction of the very system that creates them. And everyone is joining in. So we have the spectacle of parliamentarians “taking the knee” on the Westminster estate. We see large numbers of police do the same in the face of baying mobs. And then we see officers from the same police force being beaten in the street.

    Schools are sending out information to their pupils, advising that if they go on demonstrations, they should wear “non-identifiable clothes”. The only reason why somebody would do that is to avoid being arrested afterwards, having been involved in criminal activity.

    But it is now a risky act to stand up and speak out against all this, to defend the concept of democracy and the British way, and to call out the actions of bigots and fanatics, as we are now in a world where someone like Nigel can be fired for expressing his view.

    On the walls of the BBC at Portland Place are the words of George Orwell carved into the fine, license-payer funded stone: “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”

    Those words are as true now as they were when he wrote them. It seems clear that right now that they should be covered up, maybe by a polite, socially-distant, law-abiding mob, as broadcasters are not living up to them.

    Gawain Towler is former head of communications for the Brexit Party

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/06/12/like-loathe-nigel-farage-has-proved-defending-concept-democracy

    1. GEORGE ORWELL REMEMBERED WITH STATUE
      A bronze statue of the novelist and writer George Orwell was unveiled today outside the BBC’s London HQ in Portland Place. Orwell worked for the BBC during World War Two presenting a magazine programme for the Eastern Service. The statue is by Martin Jennings, the sculptor responsible for the John Betjeman in St Pancras Station and that of Philip Larkin in Hull. Next to the statue on the wall of the building is carved the inscription “If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” The project was delayed by some years owing to BBC management’s concerns over Orwell being “too left-wing.”
      http://www.londonhistorians.org/index.php?id=1975

  123. The Withdrawal Agreement Joint Committee met for the second time on 12 June by video conference.

    The meeting was co-chaired by the UK Chancellor of the Duchy of
    Lancaster, The Rt Hon Michael Gove MP, and EU Commission Vice President,
    Maroš Šefčovič, and attended by delegations which included Member State
    representatives and the First Minister and deputy First Minister of the
    Northern Ireland Executive.

    The Committee undertook a stocktake of Specialised Committee meetings
    which have taken place since the first Withdrawal Agreement Joint
    Committee meeting, and was updated on implementation of the Withdrawal
    Agreement more generally, on which both sides have made good progress.
    The UK reiterated our commitment to protecting the Belfast (Good Friday)
    Agreement in all respects, and to upholding our obligations under the
    Northern Ireland Protocol. The UK emphasised our commitment to EU
    citizens in the UK and ensuring that they and UK nationals in the EU
    have their rights under the Withdrawal Agreement protected.

    The Committee took one Decision – to amend ten minor errors and
    omissions in the Withdrawal Agreement, related to citizens’ rights and
    financial provisions, required for legal certainty.

    The UK took the opportunity provided by this second meeting to
    emphasise the UK’s decision not to extend the transition period. There
    will be no further opportunities to extend the transition period. The UK
    will regain its economic and political independence on 1 January 2021
    at the end of the transition period and uphold a key demand of the
    British people.

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    1. I saw him being given the brown tongue treatment on ITN earlier. They neglected to explain why he was misidentified.

      The actual flag burner should be prosecuted, jailed then deported.

      This pos merely needs to be deported.

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