Friday 14 October: The blood shortage comes as no surprise when donating is so difficult

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 we prefer ours),
Intelligent, polite, good-humoured debate is welcome, whether on or off topic. Differing opinions are encouraged, but rudeness or personal attacks on other posters will not be tolerated. Posts which – in the opinion of the moderators – make this a less than cordial environment, are likely to be removed, without prior warning.  Persistent offenders will be banned.

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

731 thoughts on “Friday 14 October: The blood shortage comes as no surprise when donating is so difficult”

    1. 365036+ up ticks,

      Morning B3,

      I know I’ve me lights on me tractor on, tis why i’m late checking in

  2. The blood shortage comes as no surprise when donating is so difficult

    We have not really heard anything about the risks involved from blood donated from fully vaxxed people.

    1. Yes, agree – IAM O neg but like the letter-writers, gave up years ago when they wouldn’t take my blood after a business trip some months earlier to Argentina where I stayed in a 5* hotel for a week. They were worried apparently that I might have Chagga’s disease or something. I would of course not volunteer to give blood if I thought in any way it might be tainted.

  4. Morning all. Have quickly scanned today’s Terriblegraph. Some interesting stuff in there but as I have to hot foot to work, I’ll just leave this from David Frost below the letters, in a piece on the anti-growthers.

    “… Where it is really going is set out in this week’s House of Lords’ Environment Committee report on behavioural change and net zero. It is a bleak read, fortunately leavened by a certain unintentional humour.

    To take just one example, the Committee heard from Kris De Meyer, head of the UCL Climate Action Unit, and one Per Grankvist – not, as you might think from his title, chief storyteller, a children’s TV presenter, but an advocate of storytelling as communication, on behalf of something called “Viable Cities”.

    Dr De Meyer spoke with admiration of a “story of a pensioner finding out how to navigate green grants from the Government … which showed the pensioner overcoming challenges and retrofitting her home with double glazing and a heat pump”.

    Such is the inspiring vision of the future set out before us. Free-born citizens spending their time finding out how to get money out of the Government in order to do things they wouldn’t choose to do themselves and living less well as a result.…”

    Mr Frost – Sir, you are on fire!

    1. Ok I must go but here is most of the rest of Mr Frost’s piece. It is good.

      “ The Committee speaks approvingly of the lessons of “the widespread behavioural change brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic”. That “behavioural change” was not, of course, accomplished by encouraging us to act differently or by providing better public information. It was achieved by making it illegal to meet others and by fining people tens of thousands of pounds if they did.

      The Truss Government has been trying to make us realise that there is another way, but it means that things have to change. If you restrict growth, people earn less, public services deteriorate, and everyone’s horizons shrink. When that happens, people get used to it, maybe even come to like it.

      So making this mindset change was always going to be painful, especially when we and the rest of the Western world have been living in a fantasy of free money and unearned gains for two decades now. Sadly, the Government hasn’t got the message across particularly well so far, and too many people don’t want to hear it anyway.

      Even some Tories. One ex-minister was quoted yesterday as saying: “Everything [the Government] are doing is everything that I don’t believe in.” One has to ask why this person ever joined the Conservative Party if they don’t believe in sound money, spending control, low taxes, and economic growth. There are too many like them, social democrats operating under Conservative cover.

      Sadly, it looks as if the Government may be beaten already. The rather hamfisted start was unfortunate, and has allowed enemies to move in for the kill. Credibility has been shot as every mini-budget U-turn makes another more likely. But the fight is not over yet. It is not impossible for Truss to recalibrate and keep the direction of travel while changing the pace. Let us hope so. If she fails, we will have lost the last chance to get onto a different path. We will then be living in the gloomy world of the anti-growthers, where we accommodate to steadily lower living standards.

      The Tory vision of the country is, or should be, one where people are busy – working, thinking, travelling, prospering, bettering their lives. It involves building things and going places. It involves houses and factories, roads and cars, ports and airports, as well as parks, countryside and gardens….”

      1. The Tory vision of the country is, or should be, one where people are busy – working, thinking, travelling, prospering, bettering their lives. It involves building things and going places. It involves houses and factories, roads and cars, ports and airports, as well as parks, countryside and gardens….”

        For these things to be Government must be largely absent!

      2. Sounds like a good vision, but will never work as long as criminals keep flooding in over the Channel.

    3. I don’t really understand what is going on here, the bankers were quite happy for £ blillions to be wasted on lockdowns and paying people not to work, £ billions on PPE, £ Billions on the crazy net zero carbon agenda trying to limit the damage of high energy bills, all borrowed and unfunded by an increas in taxation or cuts.

      Now we have a relatively small sum in comparison through cutting taxation in the mini budget and they try to bring down the government over it.

      The Left have been moaning about austerity for the last 12 years, now they are supporting more of it.

      It all looks like a false flag event to me, just to show who is in charge and there will be no deviation from the great reset agenda.

      I’m no fan of Truss but even the leaking of her meeting the King going oh dear appeared to be an unprecedented event, I don’t ever remember seeing anything like that when the Queen was on the throne.

      A;ll very sinister if you ask me.

  7. 366036+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Friday 14 October: The blood shortage comes as no surprise when donating is so difficult

    Carry on the same voting pattern with the same party first mindset & there will be torrents of mass uncontrolled blood entering the veins of the sewerage system via the drains.

    You can tell those at fault entering the polling station, they wear scarfs in high summer to conceal the reflection of the brass neck earned by following the party first, family tree
    mode of voting, then whinging all the way down the road to certain destruction.

  8. Home Office threatens to send heavily pregnant rape survivor to Rwanda. 14 October 2022.

    A heavily pregnant rape survivor from Eritrea has been threatened with forced removal to Rwanda by the Home Office.

    Human rights campaigners say it is the “most egregious” case they have come across so far in the government’s scheme to outsource the processing of UK asylum claims to the east African country.

    This woman has just spent the last six months in Calais so she wasn’t “raped” in Eritrea! Yet another False Flag from the Home Office to convince the dull peasants that all “refugees” should be allowed to stay!

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/oct/13/home-office-eritrean-woman-pregnant-rape-survivor-rwanda

    1. That’s why a number of Remainer Tories are so keen for the Tory government to collapse.

      Why they should be so keen to lose their seats in order to get a return to the EU I don’t understand, but there must be a reason.

      2. Farage was not sensible to allow remainer Conservative MPs to be unopposed by his Brexit Party candidates in the 2019 general election – the consequence of his not standing up to Johnson has led to a Conservative Party still stuffed with remainers, a bungled Brexit, complete capitulation to the EU on N Ireland and the probable return of UK to the EU under far worse terms than before.

  10. The country will become a dictatorship, if it is not already. Yet so many cannot or will not see it.

      1. 366036+ up ticks,

        B3,

        All the more reason to become a beacon of decency as we once were, and NOT return to power the same political shite we returned to power before, before,before.

        1. That would put us in the same bracket as countries like Hungary.
          The problem is we have so much debt that they own us and would bring us to our knees.

          Well they have done that with sport already

          1. 366036+ up ticks,

            B3,
            We been through the knee department and many of us found it to be demeaning .
            We NEED change, a strong opposition to combat the lab/lib/con coalition.

            Before the mass killing starts.

    2. 366036+ up ticks,

      Morning JN,

      I see it as, for many to deny lab/lib/con a vote is on par with chopping down the family tree.

  11. The country will become a dictatorship, if it is not already. Yet so many cannot or will not see it.

  12. Good morning, all. Cloudy. Chilly.

    I see the Tories are planning their final destruction

    1. ‘Morning Bill.

      Seeing your post reminded me of your usually reliable TV programme recommendations, so perhaps I may return the favour…

      For those who have not seen it, the 3-parter called Maxine (Channel 5) is a dramatisation of the appalling Soham murders in 2002. Unlike some of the media reviews I thought it was very well done, despite the dreadful event upon which it is based.

      The other series is The Rise and Fall of the Nazis – Downfall (iPlayer). Like the two previous series it is, in my view, a well made fact-based drama, with contributions from a number of knowledgeable historians.

      1. Thank you. I have read enough bad reviews to avoid the Soham story.

        The other is good. Can’t imagine how it will all end – 75 years on…with the Germans running Europe? No – too far-fetched….!

        1. The Soham reviews are, in my humble opinion, too critical. Those who played the leading characters were very well chosen in my view. Some of the reviews seem to contain an element of snowflakery, which is unfortunate. Of course the murder of two 10 year-old girls was horrific beyond words, but I think the series was sensitively made, and certainly not for the purposes of entertainment. For once Channel 5 has got it about right.

          1. ‘Morning, Hugh. I am in full agreement. I tend not to read reviews since many of them are hysterical and others make you wonder if the reviewer actually watched the programme in question. I watched Maxine with an open mind and I found the storyline accurate and the acting top-notch. The programme was presented with much care given to the feelings of those involved and it was never, at any time, prurient or invasive. Top marks to those acting in it and producing it.

    2. ‘Morning Bill.

      Seeing your post reminded me of your usually reliable TV programme recommendations, so perhaps I may return the favour…

      For those who have not seen it, the 3-parter called Maxine (Channel 5) is a dramatisation of the appalling Soham murders in 2002.

      The other series is The Rise and Fall of the Nazis – Downfall (iPlayer). Like the two previous series it is, in my view, a well made fact-based drama, with contributions from a number of knowledgeable historians.

  13. Morning, all! Been MIA due to immersion in decorating my brother’s dining room.

    Currently rejoicing in the transformation the first coat of a new colour effects; the second coat will be less fulfilling, and picking ouf all the mouldings perfectly is not a prospect that fills.me with joy, but it will be done, and done well.

    Fourteen hours straight yesterday, and when I was given dinner I came to a complete standstill and slept wonderfully. Is this the secret of the good life? 🤣

    Getting light enough now to start again. 🙂

    Have a glorious day!!

  14. ‘Morning, Peeps.

    Dull and overcast for now, and the weather is much the same.

    If this chap isn’t a Nottlr then he should be:

    SIR – We in South Yorkshire, and especially in the Doncaster area, have been used to earth tremors and coal-mining subsidence for the past 100 years, and no one ever gave that as a reason for mining to stop.

    Fracking (Letters, October 13) does not involve the removal of vast quantities of rock that coal mining requires, so subsidence should not occur. Minor earth tremors are a small price to pay for the benefit of the gas that fracking could produce.

    However, great care must be taken when water and chemicals are injected into the ground as part of the fracking process, in order to prevent underground water supplies being contaminated.

    Energy generation is more important than ever now that supplies from Russia are being stopped. Gas from fracking is essential, so let’s stop this bickering and get on with it.

    Malcolm Barnsdale
    Doncaster, South Yorkshire

    Well said, Mr Barnsdale. Unfortunately we have yet to convince the likes of the NT, the CPRE and all the other besotted greenies, but it’s a worthwhile start!

    1. “…great care must be taken when water and chemicals are injected into the ground as part of the fracking process, in order to prevent underground water supplies being contaminated.”

      BTL commenters make the point that only ‘safe’ chemicals may be used.

      1. ‘Morning WS. I haven’t seen the letters comments yet, but I hope they also make the point that fracturing in this country will take place well below water courses, unlike the USA where theirs is often not so deep.

    2. Those opposed to fracking live in cities, in nice big houses where energy comes from ‘the electricity company’. They’re no concept of how it’s generated nor really in paying for it.

  15. SIR – There has a has been a lot in the press recently about the location of solar panels on agricultural land and other purportedly unsuitable sites.

    As a retired chartered surveyor, I know that there are acres and acres of industrial roof space throughout the country, which could easily house solar panels without detriment to the community. Why is this opportunity not being pursued?

    Charles Merrifield
    Barnham, West Sussex

    You may well ask, Mr Merrifield. The reason usually given is that the National Grid finds the solar pv output from so many micro-generation schemes difficult to control. However, they seem to be able to manage the output from some vast ‘solar farms’, even allowing for the rapid changes in generation brought about by intermittent cloud cover…

    2. Some suggest making solar farms on agricultural land is so that when they are moribund- in the near future the land can then be classified as “brown field” and developed for housing etc.

    3. Solar makes sense locally, but with battery backup. However, there’s another issue that’s becoming evident, namely fire safety. If every home has a massive battery attached to it the risk of fire becomes significantly higher, especially with cramped terraces (which are all that’s built now) and no covered outside space.

  16. Elon Musk under federal investigation over $44bn Twitter deal – filing. 14 October 2022.

    Elon Musk is under a federal investigation related to his $44bn takeover of Twitter, the social media company has said in a court filing made public on Thursday.

    While the filing said he was under investigation, it did not say what the focus was, or which federal authorities were investigating.

    This has nothing to do with Twitter! Musk has been advocating negotiations with Russia over Ukraine. It’s a warning to keep his nose out of matters that don’t concern him!

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/oct/13/elon-musk-investigation-twitter-takeover-deal

      1. He can’t be loopy as he went to Sonny Barger’s funeral and gave an oration, he’s a Biker Dude.

        1. You have lost me there.

          I didn’t say he WAS loopy – but that he LOOKS loopy – it is common with TV people who cannot read an autocue properly.

      2. I don’t agree with you about his stumbling over his words and looking “a bit loopy”, Bill. At least that doesn’t seem the case to me. (Good morning btw.)

    1. Hey, Dean. Those Hombres over at DAF never had any beef with their elastic-band charabancs. As for me, Dude, The only combustion event that I ever get wary of on my overland moochings is the odd stray spark from the smokestack charring my derrière as I relax in the relative comfort of my free bogie-ride under the caboose. Modernity, Man, it’s for the posers.

      1. Hey Beatnik, electrickery is for candy-asses and the birds- when you fry them in the skillet, Man. Real hard-asses go by thumb or ride those rails, like you do, Hombre. Keep you tech as per the 1950s, Dude and put that U into poseurs, Buddy!

    2. All Li-ion batteries are very difficult to extinguish, as they generate huge heat and their own oxygen. Nightmare when they go on fire in an underground car-park. The only solution is to pull the burning car outside and let it burn…
      Norwegian fire service puts burning EVs into a skip filled with water and left to cool for several days.

  20. So the missing teenager Leah has been found dead.

    The aspect that puzzles me. Her remains were found in an empty house. It is the one house that the perlice did NOT search. Why did they not search it?

    1. Very close to where an old friend of mine lives. She’s absolutely horrified at what has happened. And now is feeling very uncomfortable about it all.

    2. I don’t know much about this case, but did the perlice know about it but fail to search it, or alternatively had no reason to suspect that she may have been there?

      1. A convicted paedophile had lived there. That knowledge would have been available to the police. They just didn’t look very hard.

      2. They searched every other house….. There was no reason – apparently – for this house to have been left off the list…

    1. The joke would work just as well if the King were the broken toy puppet with Shwab pulling the strings!

  22. Welcome to the FSU’s weekly newsletter, our round-up of the free speech news of the week. As with all our work, this newsletter depends on the support of our members and donors, so if you’re not already a paying member please sign up today or encourage a friend to join, and help us turn the tide against cancel culture.

    Financial censorship – a request for information from members

    It has come to our attention that the online platform Ko-Fi has removed a number of accounts belonging to some feminists and feminist organisations. Ko-Fi is a multi-purpose platform that allows users to sell their work and raise donations. The FSU is helping some of the cancelled users, including campaign group Conservatives for Women (we’ve tweeted about that case here and here), and is keen to help anyone else who has fallen foul of Ko-Fi in this way. If it has happened to you, or to someone you know, please get in touch.

    You can reach our case team at help@freespeechunion.org, or drop us a direct message via Twitter (@SpeechUnion), Facebook (@SpeechUnion), LinkedIn (Free Speech Union) or Instagram (@FreeSpeechUnion).

    The FSU’s packed schedule of events this autumn!

    You can see a calendar of all our events on our Events page. As that is a public page, you cannot book members-only events on the website, so do please look out for regular emails from FSU Events for full details, including links for tickets and registration.

    Members who have opted to hear about FSU Events should have received an email this week. If you have not received this, do check your inbox, including your junk folder, and get in touch if you can’t find it there, using events@freespeechunion.org.

    We have two excellent sessions at the Battle of Ideas Festival taking place in London this weekend (15th and 16th October). Toby will be speaking on a packed panel debating Online Safety vs Free Speech on Saturday afternoon, and the Free Speech Champions will discuss Winning Young Hearts and Minds on Sunday afternoon, with panellists including Professor Alice Sullivan and Rod Liddle. Members can access special discount tickets by entering the promo code FSU-BattleFest2022 at the top of the ticket page. Do come and say hello to us at our stall where we’ll also be selling some merch.

    The FSU intervenes after London college requests staff declare their pronouns

    An elite performing arts college that, as the Mail was quick to point out, “was once attended by Spice Girl Mel C”, has told staff to declare their preferred pronouns on email in solidarity with trans people. Bird College in south London also asked employees to display the transgender Pride flag and Black Lives Matter (BLM) logo in all written correspondence.

    In an email to staff last week, the college’s principal, Luis De Abreu, provided a signature template for them to use, writing: “Please can we all have the same version as attached.” The template included his pronouns, ‘he/him’; the slogan ‘I’m #MadeByDyslexia’; and the logos of the trans ‘Pride’ lobby and BLM.

    Was this an attempt by Bird College to compel its employees to endorse some contentious philosophical and political views?

    Declaring one’s pronouns is certainly a way of expressing support for the agenda of transrights activists, including their insistence that a person’s sex is not an immutable biological fact about them, but something that can be changed at will.

    That’s fine if that’s what you believe, of course. But for an employer to instruct employees who don’t believe this – gender critical feminists, say, or orthodox Christians – to declare their gender pronouns, with the implication that they will suffer a detriment if they fail to comply, is an act of unlawful discrimination under the Equality Act 2010, as well as a breach of their Article 9 and Article 10 rights under the Human Rights Act.

    It’s a similar story in the case of a self-proclaimed Marxist organisation like BLM – very few members of staff at Mel C’s alma mater are likely to share this far-left organisation’s desire to defund the police, smash capitalism and destroy the nuclear family.

    Perhaps a contrarian might try to argue that because Mr De Abreu’s statement has an interrogative structure (“Please can we…”) it’s a little unfair to interpret it as anything other than a polite request for colleagues to voluntarily follow their principal’s lead.

    But the email’s recipients weren’t just Mr De Abreu’s colleagues. They were people he’d hired, people he could fire, people whose careers were to some extent in his hands.

    Add to the mix the fact that tutors had previously been told during a staff meeting that they “must” use pronouns, while some also felt there was a ‘climate of fear’ in the college such that students were being harassed by peers if they objected to gender identity ideology, and it’s not difficult to see why Mr De Abreu’s email caused disquiet.

    According to one employee who spoke to the Mail, “Some staff members feel compelled and bullied and that they are being forced to misrepresent themselves and lie about their beliefs… Now this email telling us all to insert pronouns into our signatures and support the various organisations shown in the template he has sent out… It is not optional. It is definitely compelled.”

    Following a tip off from a member of staff, FSU General Secretary Toby Young wrote to the college, setting out the legal violations that may have taken place, and asking Mr De Abreu to make clear to staff that whether they choose to declare their gender pronouns or include the Pride or BLM flags in their signatures is entirely optional, and that they won’t suffer any detriment, including harm to their promotion prospects, if they refuse to do so. You can read that letter here.

    Following receipt of our letter the college appears to have had second thoughts. “We appreciate that this may have been interpreted as an instruction to include pronouns and certain logos,” Mr De Abreu conceded in a statement issued to the Mail, “but it is not, and has never been, the intention of Bird College to require any staff member to declare pronouns, or to appear to support any political group in their email signature.”

    Are free speech and decolonisation compatible in UK higher education?

    Under the Government’s Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill, universities will have a legal duty to promote free speech. That’s good (obviously), but research by the think tank Civitas suggests that institutions currently engaged in attempts to decolonise curricula may struggle to fulfil that duty (Epoch Times, Mail, Mail).

    The think tank set out to ascertain whether there’s a correlation between the frequency of occurrence of free speech controversies, and the intensity with which a university adopts decolonisation initiatives.

    To that end, researchers first identified 374 free speech controversies that occurred at UK universities during the period 2017-20. These included: 142 “anti-free speech petitions”, 123 “transphobic” controversies, 30 so-called “no-platformings” or “disinvitations” of external speakers, and multiple demands for the censure or firing of academics, and/or restrictions on their publication and teaching.

    Next, they scoured university websites, looking for any mention of either formal university policies or official statements/commitments on decolonisation or any mention of academics pushing for decolonisation. What they found was that “the decolonisation movement is more pronounced in British universities than previously thought”. Specifically. over half (56%) of UK universities have “an official commitment in some form”, while a third (34%) “employ academics that are advocating for decolonisation”. Seven out of 10 have at least one or the other.

    Correlation analysis of these variables then established that free speech controversies do in fact tend to occur moderately more often “where there are official policies/statements as well as academic advocates of decolonisation”.

    In a sense, that’s not particularly surprising – at an anecdotal level much evidence already exists to suggest that decolonisation initiatives often involve senior administrators, bodies like Advance HE and/or radical activists pressuring academics to conform and overriding their independence when it comes to setting reading lists for their courses and writing their lectures (e.g., Mail, Times Higher, Telegraph). What’s important about the quantitative research conducted by Civitas, however, is that it suggests these anecdotes aren’t anecdotes at all, but instances of a wider, statistically observable trend across UK higher education.

    Drawing on research conducted for the Higher Education Policy Institute, the report concludes with a summary of students’ views on free speech. It suggests there may be growing support for decolonisation among younger generations: 77% of students believe there should be mandatory training for all university staff on understanding other cultures (up 22% since 2016); 76% of students think universities should always or sometimes get rid of memorials of potentially controversial figures – up from 51% in 2016; and 62% of students say they support the creation of so-called “safe spaces” on campus, a policy increasingly associated with attempts to decolonise the university classroom – up 14% since 2016.

    The report’s author, Dr Richard Norrie, concludes that “the evidence shows a strong and growing censorious cohort of students who prefer cossetting over intellectual challenge, as though the harms of the latter were real and unbearable”.

    The FSU writes to the NEU regarding its draft definition of ‘transphobia’

    FSU General Secretary Toby Young has written to the National Education Union, Britain’s largest teaching union, after a whistleblower leaked a document to our organisation containing the NEU’s proposed definition of ‘transphobia’ (LBC, iNews, Telegraph, Unherd). The definition has been drafted after a resolution to develop a definition of transphobia was passed at the last annual NEU conference in the spring, and now looks likely to be adopted.

    The proposal suggests that anyone who expects trans people “to participate in discussion or debate about their rights and/or identities” is transphobic, and cites “propagating ideas, concepts and misinformation harmful to trans people and which erase and ignore trans history” as examples of transphobic behaviour (while neither outlining what is meant by “trans history” nor what “ideas, concepts and misinformation” would be considered harmful). It further defines transphobia as a “rejection of trans identity and a refusal to acknowledge that those identities are real or valid” or the “incorrect use of pronouns”.

    While protecting trans pupils, trans teachers and trans support staff from harassment is a worthy aim, it’s clear that this proposal goes way beyond legal compliance and would have the effect of rendering any challenge to gender critical ideology or the agenda of transrights activists as a form of extrajudicial hate crime.

    That’s problematic because, statistically, it’s inevitable that in a mass membership organisation like the NEU many members will reject the central tenet of gender identity ideology, namely, that sex is a social construct, and instead believe that sex is binary and immutable. Is the NEU effectively saying to all its fee-paying members that don’t want to go along with gender identity ideology that it regards them as ‘transphobic’ and no longer wants to represent them or defend their rights? As member relations campaigns go, it’s certainly daring.

    And what about the policy’s effect on staffrooms up and down the country – will it have a chilling effect on free speech? The Telegraph spoke to a whistleblower in the teaching union who certainly thinks so: “I am extremely worried. I’m from a Left-wing background and I hate this nonsense. We need free speech. Women need safe spaces. If this definition is accepted, anyone who says: ‘You can’t logically self-identify as the opposite sex’, you’ll be a transphobe.” The source added: “I think it will mean that teachers will be too scared to speak up in schools and they will go along with the NEU policy.”

    That’s certainly possible, although as Toby pointed out to the Telegraph, schools could just as easily end up getting swamped by discrimination claims from teaching staff who’ve been punished for refusing to use the preferred gender pronouns of a trans member of staff – the gender critical belief that sex is binary and immutable is, after all, a lawful and reasonable point-of-view, deserving of protection under the Equality Act 2010.

    The FSU certainly hopes the NEU will reconsider adopting its new definition of ‘transphobia’, not least because if it ever refuses to stand up for its members who won’t endorse gender identity ideology it, too, could be found guilty of discrimination under the Equality Act 2010.

    Graham Norton criticises John Cleese, dismisses idea of cancel culture

    Graham Norton has criticised Monty Python star John Cleese for speaking out against cancel culture (Evening Standard, Independent, Mail, Metro). In an appearance at the Cheltenham Literature Festival, BBC presenter Norton said: “John Cleese has been very public recently about complaining about what you can’t say. It must be very hard to be a man of a certain age who’s been able to say whatever he likes for years, and now suddenly there’s some accountability.” The host of The Graham Norton Show went on to argue that free speech should not be “consequence free”, stating that “cancelling” people is better described as “holding them to account”.

    According to the Telegraph, Norton had previously “hit out against elements of cancel culture”, and “defended inviting JK Rowling onto his Virgin radio show, despite the controversies surrounding the Harry Potter author because of her involvement in the transgender debate”. That’s a remarkably generous rendering of what Norton actually said (Spiked). Asked about cancel culture during an interview with the Times last month, he responded: “What’s interesting is cancel culture is heavy on culture, but not so much on the cancel. Harvey Weinstein is in jail – he’s cancelled. But everyone else is working away. They have a quiet six months but keep working.”

    Leaving aside the fact that Harvey Weinstein wasn’t cancelled for his opinions, but prosecuted for his actions – specifically, rape and sexual assault – the underlying premise of Norton’s argument seems to be that ordinary people have the same power, status and ‘bounce-back-ability’ as your average A-list Hollywood celebrity.

    In the FSU’s experience, however, it’s almost always those who aren’t famous who fall victim to the worst excesses of cancel culture. Take Simon Isherwood, for instance, the train conductor and FSU member who was sacked after asking whether indigenous populations in African countries enjoy ‘black privilege’ after attending diversity training on ‘white privilege’. He didn’t endure a “quiet six months” only for his agent to then pop round one day and tell him he’d just secured a six-figure advance for his autobiography, and, by the way, would he like to go on the next series of Strictly Come Dancing. Yes, the FSU helped Simon win at Employment Tribunal against his ex-employer and, yes, we’re still fighting hard to ensure he receives a good settlement. But by Simon’s own admission, cancellation has cost him his job, his career, his livelihood (Mail). That’s not being held to account – it’s being ‘unpersoned’ in the fullest, Orwellian sense of that term.

    So much for Norton “hitting out against elements of cancel culture”. As to his “defending inviting JK Rowling onto his Virgin radio show”, what he actually defended was his decision to turn the volume down on Rowling’s “problematic” views. Despite admitting that he’d never talked to her about “the transgender issue”, he said he imagined they would disagree, and that, as a result, he “wouldn’t have her on to air her views”. Why did he “have her on” at all? Because despite her “problematic” views, “she has the right to still wang on about her crime novel”.

    No doubt men said much the same thing about Suffragettes at the turn of the nineteenth century; that ‘authoresses’ like JK Rowling were perfectly entitled to regale their husband’s guests with excerpts from their latest, entirely frivolous novellas over the dinner table, but that they really mustn’t muddle their pretty little heads with all the complicated affairs of state that the gentlemen would be thrashing out together over a spot of port once the ladies had retired to the drawing room. Poor Mr Norton. The last of the great Edwardians. Perhaps he thought no-one would notice the antiquated trend to his thoughts. As he himself might put it, “it must be very hard to be a man of a certain age who’s been able to say whatever he likes for years, and now suddenly there’s some accountability”.

    Sharing the newsletter

    As with all our work, this newsletter depends on the support of our members and donors, so if you’re not already a paying member please sign up today or encourage a friend to join, and help us turn the tide against cancel culture. You can share our newsletters on social media with the buttons below to help us spread the word. If someone has shared this newsletter with you and you’d like to join the FSU, you can find our website here.

    And a warm welcome to all those people who joined in the past couple of weeks because they were so horrified by PayPal’s attempt to cancel us. You will be getting your welcome packs in the post within the next fortnight.

    Best wishes,

    1. Thanks Griz. I have a lot of time for Toby and the FSU. I also enjoy GB News even more when he and Mark Steyn get together.

      Incidentally, I think the name of the College has been misquoted – surely it is Bird-Brained College?

  23. The shattered Tories may yet face a fate even worse than political death
    The Conservative Party is now split at least three ways on the future of Liz Truss as Prime Minister

    Fraser Nelson : https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/10/13/shattered-tories-may-yet-face-fate-even-worse-political-death/

    This BTLer is already too late. A new party was needed as soon as Johnson started betraying us with his non-Brexit and his refusal to purge the party of remainers such as Grieve and Clarke who have been intent on destroying Brexit and the Conservative Party for many years..

    BTL

    If a new political party cannot now get itself together then Britain as a functioning democracy is completely finished.
    But that, I am afraid, is what the WEF, the MSM and many members of the Conservative Party want.    :

    1. The problem is Richard, politicians are far too comfortable in their own created environment, reliant on salary, expenses, out side (bungs) contacts, gold plated pensions and two or even three roofs over their heads.
      They know when they are well off and whatever happens, will see it through. Very lazy people in many ways. I wonder what people like Ken Clarke do all day ?

  24. Good morning from a Saxon Queen with longbow and axe packed away in handbag whilst I’ve the Chinese Bat Flu.

    Reading in the press, I see the Conservatives are engaging in fighting each other and too see who can be the shortest PM ever. They want to remove her by Christmas and place slimy Rishi in the role of PM . Rishi has thanked his supporters – so he must be aware of the undemocratic skulduggery that is occurring In the parliamentary Conservative Party .
    I think when they decided to get rid of Boris Johnson that was the time for a general election.

    Whilst Starmer just sits quietly eating popcorn.

        1. 366036+ up ticks,

          Lotm,

          That is truly good to hear, open political treachery via the lab/lib/con coalition has held sway over these Isles via the polling booth for the last 40 years, we are suffering the well deserved fallout, innocents inclusive.

    2. ‘Morning Ethel. It’s just one great mess, and it will get a whole lot worse if Labour get in at the next GE in 2024. The party is currently led by someone who can’t even define the word ‘woman’! We are truly done for.

    3. “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake”
      (c) Sun Tzu, Napoleon, or someone of that ilk.

  25. I only go on Facebook these days to catch up on Alma Deutscher’s career. It really is too much hard work to fight my way past their recommended choices and feed limited to my preferences even to see what I posted last week.

    One of them pointed to a video about her concert performance of her ‘Cinderella’ being performed in Wexford before it is put on again in California in November. I am keen to see how much it has been spoiled by influence from Lloyd Webber’s much inferior reinterpretation of this pantomime staple.

    When I finally got past Google’s Cookie Preference popup, its browser-compliance check and agreement to their terms & conditions, including the right to install analytical malware slowing up my bandwidth and giving backdoors to hackers, I finally got through to YouTube, which wouldn’t load up the video I called up. Instead their algorithm is recommending a choice of videos featuring Hip-hop, Premier League football, millionaire lifestyle, and Porsche car deals.

    The suicide of that schoolgirl was down to algorithms constantly feeding her disturbing content because it knows best. The response is more parental controls and a more rigorous age-check. I suggest the solution is to axe these damned analytical algorithms and return to the old-fashioned concept of delivering what one asks for.

    How do I get to turn off these algorithms and not have the companies deny me access because my system no longer complies with their specifications?

    1. I spend no longer than 5 minutes on Facebook and sometimes see what my friends are doing before I have to shut it.

      1. A few years ago I joined Facebook, only to regret it almost immediately. I closed my account 3 weeks later – and only after much difficulty in finding out bow to do so. I’m sure FB has its good points but in my (admittedly very limited) experience these are far outweighed by the bad. The same goes for Twatter and all other soshal meeja.

        Edit: ‘Morning N.

      2. A few years ago I joined Facebook, only to regret it almost immediately. I closed my account 3 weeks later – and only after much difficulty in finding out bow to do so. I’m sure FB has its good points but in my (admittedly very limited) experience these are far outweighed by the bad. The same goes for Twatter and all other soshal meeja.

        Edit: ‘Morning N.

  27. Water rationing

    SIR – The Environment Agency and National Infrastructure Commission both advocate compulsory water metering (report, October 12).

    Once again the consumer is being blamed. After decades of failing to plan strategically and invest in the adequate collection and redistribution of water across the country, a monopoly industry and its regulator have lined the pockets of investors, with nothing to show for the capital that we were told only privatisation could deliver.

    It is 31 years since the last major reservoir was built, and only 4 per cent of water is currently redistributed between companies. Apparently, some parts of England could run dry 
in 25 years.

    It is beyond perverse that people living in areas of plentiful rainfall should have water parcelled out to them in measured units at increasing cost, just so that those responsible for the failure to plan and deliver an adequate national supply can make a point about the scarcity they have created.

    Peter Nowell
    Norwich

    Dear Peter,

    1) In France this summer over 100 towns were getting water from a bowser truck for months and widscale rationing was across France, who’s water companies are majority government owned.

    2) Average leakage rates across UK water companies is substantially down, on average 20%, Scottish Water, 100% government owned and run, has average leakage rate of 38%, and NI Water, government owned has a leakage rate of 43%. Irish water, government owned has leakage rates of 38%.

    3) On water shortages, no less that 6 new reservoirs have been proposed by water companies, all of which have been opposed in lengthy, costly planning enquiries, the worst of which was Thames Water’s proposed reservoir in Abingdon. Therefore your shortage of water is not due to the water companies but the failure of government to force through infrastructure projects of national need.

    4) On sewerage discharges, these are growing due to several factors, these are the factors cited by the WELSH government in a recent paper.

    i) Climate change is leading to more flash heavy rainfall events.

    ii) Extensive “build out” housing means that far more of an area is changed from green absorbent land to concreted non absorbent land. This means that the sewerage systems are extended to new housing, and therefore result in more frequent overload due to higher run off and lower land absorption.

    iv) Additional housing means more people, more toilets, more demand on water and more sewerage connected to a mainly Victorian system which is increasingly overloaded.

    5) Scottish water last year had 10,000 sewerage discharge events where raw sewage was discharged into rivers and the sea. When asked under a FOI request how much was discharged they were forced to admit that only 3% of discharge points were actually monitored, so the 10,000 events may well be 35 times higher than actually declared.

    6) On cost, the average water bill across all England & Wales water companies is £1/Year more expensive than in Scotland at £386/year to £385/Year

    So Peter, I’m afraid there’s ZERO evidence that nationalised water companies do any better, and on most metrics the privatised companies do better than nationalised ones.

        1. It’s strange that whenever there is any problem, the lefties answer is always nationalisation.

          1. Yes, strange that isn’t it? Even though of course the country can’t afford to nationalise them, and even if it did it couldn’t afford the hundreds of billions of investment that’s required to solve the problems they blame on privatisation.

    2. During the last 30 years the population now resident here has increased by over 10 million…..migrants, migrants everywhere and not a drop to drink…..

      1. And that’s part of the problem, growing population means more water consumption, more sewage, more green land covered, and an increasing period of time the sewage system is overloaded.

        All these costs come to us for this endless migration

    3. During the last 30 years the population now resident here has increased by over 10 million…..migrants, migrants everywhere and not a drop to drink…..

  28. In the Telegraph
    ” Prince William reveals a knuckle injury stopped a promising boxing career ”

    He was in some hall Boxing the other day, one of those publicity things talking to a dusky lady.

    What nonsense wokiery .

      1. A vision of an alternative future. “Good Morning Your Majesty.” “Good Morning, Prime Minister, how are things today?”
        “Not so good Your Majesty..”
        “Take that, Prime Minister” – BOP!!!

    2. I know that humour is something that neither the King nor his sons are very good at and I think this is just a very weak attempt at a joke!

  30. Morning all 🙂
    Grey day, typically autumn, chill in the air, no breeze, no sun, very quite as well. Am I still alive ???

  32. The TorY MPs who voted for Untrussworthy now think that Petty Officer Slapper would be a better PM.

    They really are mad.

    2. Let’s be honest the pm is really only a mouth piece of the general cabinet committee and or course ‘Cur Humphry’.

          1. A fraction better – but not much. Thank you for asking. One of the troubles is that she is so thin she has very little resistance to germs, viruses etc. I try feeding her “super weight on” but it makes no difference. Over the sale of Laure she lost nearly three stone and has never put them back on.

          3. The MR takes stacks…. I am generally healthy. We have a very good diet and get most of the needful via food. We both Vit D during the winter.

        1. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8997b90f5f6296326fef6384ab182c6873e56719a3827aec255a11c6c17d72b6.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2721d932bedbf67da4d8fcba10c81e73483cc14e44f7fc348cba7be246a1383e.jpg Thanks, Paul.

          I had never seen a marsh warbler before moving here. I had seen many of the near-identical reed warbler A. scirpaceus and a couple of the much rarer (but still near-identical) Blyth’s reed warbler A. dumetorum in the UK. It was the distinctive song that gave me the identification and I have tried every spring over the past decade to capture the species photographically. This year, at last, I succeeded and am very happy with the fortuitous results.

          1. I miss my regular supply of venison from when i lived in Norfolk. I buy it from Scotland now. Wondeful venison steaks cheaper than fillet and lamb loin steaks.

      1. …and at 6kW when the Kona was charged at the Government peak rate of £0.34 per kWh it has cost me about £2.

    2. That’s very good Angie, you must have put an egg on the accelerator to achieve such figures.
      Is this mainly town driving? the figures will drop on a motorway trip and when the cold weather arrives but that is to be expected.

      1. Well vvof, in the Kona you can turn the energy in the car achieved through acceleration back into its traction battery through regenerative braking which is used insread of the brake pedal according to the level set – 0 to 3 . The journey that achieved the maximum miles per kWh was 16 to miles round trip to Morrisons largely on dual (70 mph) carriageway.

        You can actually achieve One-Pedal Driving on the Kona https://www.jdpower.com/cars/shopping-guides/what-is-one-pedal-driving-and-how-does-it-work by using level three regenerative braking which can be set whilst driving using paddles on the steering wheel.

        1. Be warned – if you don’t use the pedal brake much, winter salt will corrode your brake discs like nobody’s business, leading to MOT failure and a need for new disks and pads very frequently. Firstborn sees this all the time. Pedal brake warms the disc rotors and scrapes light surface rust off.

  36. Spectacled bear’s slim outlook by Daniel Mideros, Ecuador | Winner, animals in their environment

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/7a046beebc5a4b8617cb797fb8e7e756265a0162/0_0_3840_2560/master/3840.jpg?width=720&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=b3adea5ae6f2f95224b5c37aa6a888c6

    Mideros set up camera traps along a wildlife corridor used to reach high-altitude plateaus. He positioned the cameras to show the disappearing natural landscape with the bear framed at the heart of the image. These bears, found from western Venezuela to Bolivia, have suffered massive declines as the result of habitat fragmentation and loss. Around the world, as humans continue to build and farm, space for wildlife is increasingly squeezed out. Peñas Blancas, Quito, Ecuador

    1. Paypal account closed, I am just one of many I suspect. They will have to play their wokery games by themselves.

    2. There was an article yesterday in the DM. A woman asked the paper for help.
      Barclays had written to her saying they were closing some of her accounts.
      She had a savings account, an ISA and business account.
      They wouldn’t tell which accounts they were closing and they don’t, by law, have to tell her why. She eventually managed to get her money back after a six month struggle.
      The DM helped in getting it resolved.

      When my bank and building society wrote to me of these changes in terms and conditions where can can for any reason they choose close your account I emptied all of my accounts.

        1. I am looking at Kinesis at the moment, but they are so vague about a lot of stuff. Gold and silver backed crypto.

        3. Farage said on last night’s programme that if he had bought Bitcoin a year ago and sold now he would have lost half his money. But if you sell Bitcoin at a peak where do you hide your money until you rebuy it at the bottom of a tough?

          1. Don’t know Rastus. But the advice is always hold on to it. In the long run its worth will increase. But I don’t understand Bitcoin so I though I would pick up the book the young lady wrote, i.e. The young American woman Farge interviewed.

    2. And here is THE EXPLANATION:

      Our second repeat ward of the week is in Leicester. North Evington is an almost entirely built-up area a couple of miles to the east of Leicester city centre, along the main road towards Uppingham. This area was incorporated into Leicester in 1892 and shortly afterwards developed by Arthur Wakerley, an important architect of Victorian Leicester who served as mayor of the city in 1897 and was twice a Liberal parliamentary candidate.

      North Evington today is a majority-Asian area, overwhelmingly of Gujarati heritage, with all the major Indian religions well represented. At the time of the 2011 census the North Evington area proper was in Coleman ward, which was in the top 20 wards in England and Wales for those employed in manufacturing (26.5%, mostly textiles), in the top 30 for Asian ethnicity (66.3%) and Hinduism (21.8%), in the top 40 for population born outside the UK or EU (45.8%), in the top 70 for part-time employment (18.5%), in the top 80 for Islam (39.7%) and in the top 90 for Sikhism (8.8%) and those looking after home or family (9.0%). Charnwood ward, which in 2011 covered what is now the northern part of this ward, had a similar demographic. This religious mix isn’t always a harmonious one, and this by-election campaign has been marred by violence between the ward’s Hindu and Muslim communities. Dozens of arrests have been made.

      I take it, the Muslims lost this one.

      https://medium.com/@andrewteale_68354/previewing-the-five-council-by-elections-of-13th-october-2022-4b080f4b652e

  40. I have donated 45 pints of blood for years. Untill medical issues appeared .

    The Blood donation team used to visit our village and use the village hall .. local bods like me would volunteer to help with teas and cold drinks and the biscuit supply and to generally keep an eye on the bods who had donated blood .. The army were pretty good at providing blood as well.

    NHS Blood and Transplant set up altered their game more than 10 years ago .. and an appointment system was set up .. and the tea volunteer list was scrapped .. it became too automated . People couldn’t just turn up .. be tested then donate .. What used to work no longer did.

    Staff shortages became apparent , and I think the team spirit became a bit negative .

    https://www.nhsbt.nhs.uk/what-we-do/blood-services/blood-donation/

        1. They stopped wanting mine because I had been in the UK.
          They overreacted to the mad cow disease.

          I probably could donate now but I really cannot be bothered to face those obnoxious, woke questions – are you pregnant, have you had sex with another man in the past six months.

    3. MB and I have been discussing that.
      It seems to be a case of “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.
      Being too clever by half has turned round and smacked the service in the kisser.
      A hall/school/other venue being advertised as a drop in centre for blood donation worked perfectly well for decades.

    4. 45 pints a year for how many years? That’s nearly six gallons a go. The human body only contains 10 pints. Are you superhuman, Margaret? 🤣

    5. How much blood have you got in you? 45 pints for years??

      You sound like a bloodbank for vampires

    2. Just look at them! The women smartly dressed. No fat tattooed freaks. Even a guy in uniform with his medals on show. Its loss is enough to make you weep!

      1. How dull. No chance to be pushed onto the rails by a recipient of “Don’t Care In The Community’; no chance of losing a hand in a machete attack; being safe on an unlighted alleyway.
        How on earth did people put up with such mind-numbing boredom?

    5. We could not all have that, of course. Long days in factories and shops did not pay well enough. But we could all aspire to it.

    6. But how much better our lives are, especially after the “enrichment” of millions in the last 30 years

    2. The government have thought of that and are introducing a new law which makes it illegal for anyone over six stone to be in a fire or any situation where they may have to be rescued by a ‘fireperson’. Problem solved. They think of everything these politicians.

    3. The government have thought of that and are introducing a new law which makes it illegal for anyone over six stone to be in a fire or any situation where they may have to be rescued by a ‘fireperson’. They think of everything these politicians.

    4. As the article states – you’re not lifting the weight. You’re lifting the weight after you’re knackered. Anyone could lift 35kg. It’s lifting that after an 8 hour shift moving rubble and carrying people and kit that it counts.

        1. Get yourself a sack barrow they take up little storage space and can be used as a flat truck to transport o all sorts of items.
          https://www.bing.com/aclk?ld=e833CDOK_Bn-6hDXQKNoVuJDVUCUzwyoqOvn7u-mbCIGD-eDOnNqggwc0z6b2l66OclTevZIDkhEzgHT924-PfYZxWysDtK-N_Wl7Ql5SBTkFQuvLP2EbextMKp0ZaIUuV4HEilQ4uqIOxy1ODg-BeB8ynH-cs9ct5ekroHYUE7ThsyIcr&u=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&rlid=f323a3b4a5c112e7617dc0fde65f318b&ntb=1&ntb=1

      2. When I was a student I worked as a roustabout on a rig in the North Sea during the summer vac.

        One of the jobs we had to do was to load sacks of chemicals into the mud room where they were mixed before being pumped down the hollow drill pipes. These sacks weighed 50 kg a sack and we tried to outdo each other by lifting two at a time. The problem was that at the beginning the sacks on the palates were high and we stacked them on the floor but the pile of the floor got higher as the pile on the palates got lower!

        I now find 25 kg sacks are quite enough for me!

        1. Unloaded 50 tons of fertiliser fom a trailer, all by hand, as a 19-year-old farm labourer. 50kg sacks… it was a breeze. Now, I can barely lift a coffee mug with coffee in it… 🙁

        2. Who remember 1cwt bags of cement instead of the 25kg (½cwt equivalent) bags we have today?

  43. This guy would make a decent Leader:

    Readers of my generation will remember the children’s programmes Trumpton and Camberwick Green, a sweet vision of life in an English village depicted with puppets. There is almost no traffic, power comes from a windmill, nobody ever leaves the village, and the storylines involve disasters such as a water shortage or a campaign against an unwanted electrical substation.

    There, in a nutshell, is the view of the future held by too many of the people who rule us. Look around and you will see this world view everywhere.

    Labour thinks we can run a modern economy entirely on wind and solar power, to judge from Keir Starmer’s conference speech.

    Hilary McGrady, the director-general of the National Trust, is behaving like a throwback 1980s trade union leader, fighting the Government’s supposed “war on nature”, whether her 5.7 million members actually agree with her or not.

    Or there’s Canterbury City Council, introducing Soviet-style closed roads to restrict travel around the city. Obviously they want to make it difficult to use a car at all, a goal that the anti-growth councillors who run Oxford or Bath seem quite open about, and indeed have largely achieved.

    This whole tinpot picture of restricted aspirations inspires far too much of the British political class. They think it will produce a pleasant, unchallenging localism like Camberwick Green. It won’t. It will end up like East Germany.

    Where it is really going is set out in this week’s House of Lords’ Environment Committee report on behavioural change and net zero. It is a bleak read, fortunately leavened by a certain unintentional humour.

    To take just one example, the Committee heard from Kris De Meyer, head of the UCL Climate Action Unit, and one Per Grankvist – not, as you might think from his title, chief storyteller, a children’s TV presenter, but an advocate of storytelling as communication, on behalf of something called “Viable Cities”.

    Dr De Meyer spoke with admiration of a “story of a pensioner finding out how to navigate green grants from the Government … which showed the pensioner overcoming challenges and retrofitting her home with double glazing and a heat pump”.

    Such is the inspiring vision of the future set out before us. Free-born citizens spending their time finding out how to get money out of the Government in order to do things they wouldn’t choose to do themselves and living less well as a result.

    This is the essence of the anti-growth coalition. About as in tune with normal human nature as the Anti-Sex League in 1984, and about as likely to achieve its results without hectoring, lecturing, and compulsion.

    Because compulsion is where it will end up. The Committee speaks approvingly of the lessons of “the widespread behavioural change brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic”. That “behavioural change” was not ,of course, accomplished by encouraging us to act differently or by providing better public information. It was achieved by making it illegal to meet others and by fining people tens of thousands of pounds if they did.

    The Truss Government has been trying to make us realise that there is another way, but it means that things have to change. If you restrict growth, people earn less, public services deteriorate, and everyone’s horizons shrink. When that happens, people get used to it, maybe even come to like it.

    So making this mindset change was always going to be painful, especially when we and the rest of the Western world have been living in a fantasy of free money and unearned gains for two decades now. Sadly, the Government hasn’t got the message across particularly well so far, and too many people don’t want to hear it anyway.

    Even some Tories. One ex-minister was quoted yesterday as saying: “Everything [the Government] are doing is everything that I don’t believe in.” One has to ask why this person ever joined the Conservative Party if they don’t believe in sound money, spending control, low taxes, and economic growth. There are too many like them, social democrats operating under Conservative cover.

    Sadly, it looks as if the Government may be beaten already. The rather hamfisted start was unfortunate, and has allowed enemies to move in for the kill. Credibility has been shot as every mini-Budget U-turn makes another more likely. But the fight is not over yet. It is not impossible for Truss to recalibrate and keep the direction of travel while changing the pace. Let us hope so. If she fails, we will have lost the last chance to get onto a different path. We will then be living in the gloomy world of the anti-growthers, where we accommodate to steadily lower living standards.

    The Tory vision of the country is, or should be, one where people are busy – working, thinking, travelling, prospering, bettering their lives. It involves building things and going places. It involves houses and factories, roads and cars, ports and airports, as well as parks, countryside and gardens.

    Yes, that’s messy. We’d all secretly rather live in Camberwick Green. It looks a nice place. You could live a good life there.

    The only thing is – there is no such place as Camberwick Green.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/10/13/anti-growthers-will-turn-us-east-germany/

    1. Typically our politicians live in their own self preserving bubble. What difference to they think they are going to make by putting the heads of Britain’s population on the ‘globall warming’, climate change, chopping block.
      From what I can see and gather from news and other information. Nobody else on the planet seems to care a hoot.
      But as ever we are the martyrs.

    2. 366036+ up ticks,
      Morning LD.
      Turnham Green is a reality though as a real place name
      and also an odious policy of the peoples elected party in giving everything a GREEN hue ( or even a Huwie Green) small joke.
      no matter what the expense or damage is done these policies are being condoned by party members / voters
      who I do believe have great difficulty in finding their arses with toilet tissue.

      1. Richmond uponThames is similarly awash with woke Green virtue signallers, hell bent on destroying everything good.

    3. A large number of LibDems realised they would never get their hands on the levers of power unless they joined Labour or Conservatives. They presented themselves as Tory candidates and Tory selection committees welcomed them with open arms. We have a LibDem government. Proper Conservatives are hard to find.

  44. Erin’s had two jabs, both arms hurting and then hurts back lifting up 2 1/2 year old grand daughter.
    So I have to take her to do the weekly shop.
    Not all bad……At least I can slip a few more beers into the trolley. 😉

    1. I think that Caroline and I were very lucky to have been advised by our excellent doctor not to have the Covid jabs – without that advice we would probably have gone along mindlessly with the herd and been jabbed, re-jabbed and jabbed again.

      1. After my cariology problems following the first two jabs, I sought and took advice long ago, but my lovely wife is a tad herdie/wokey.
        But she’s feeling better after pain killers and decided to go shopping on her own, she knows how I hate it.

        1. Can’t be fully woke, otherwise she would realise that it can be wrong to drive a motor vehicle under the influence of painkillers.

          1. Oh no, I hadn’t thought of that. But we had a hug and kiss (oooh mind my arms) before she left. I might have to slip to the local shops for the beers now.

      2. Even chums who have been covid fanatics have refused this latest booster.
        MB and I have kept very schtum.

  45. Liz Truss to announce corporation tax rise in major mini-Budget U-turn – live updates

    DT Headline

    The last pretence that the Conservative Party is pro-business has now been exploded.

    The country is lost.

    Events of recent years have proved that the WEF has such a tight grip that popular votes can be ignored.

    The Brexit vote has been ignored and it will not be long before Britain is back in the EU.

    Now the Conservative Party are trying to overturn their own vote for a new leader.

    Who still believes that Trump was beaten by Biden in the last US presidential election?

    Who believes that anything will be done to stop illegal immigration?

    Who believes that we are ready for net zero?

    Who believes the government has any plans to stamp out wokery and restore free speech.

    (This is only the beginning of a very long list!)

    1. Have we got an undercover agent who can slip some cyanide into the Champagne that Klaus Schwab is gloatingly slurping?

    2. News is Quasi to be sacked, followed a week later by Truss. I think this is what you call a super nova.

      Then pleading calls for Boris to return, followed by Boris saying “Not on you Nelly, you made this mess, you lie in your own excrement”

    3. There’s a simple answer for Truss.

      1) remove the whip from all Tory MP’s including the cabinet

      2) Say the budget is unchanged, you can either vote for it or vote it down, but if you vote it down I’m calling a GE.

      Should concentrate minds

      1. Yep.
        No vote for Truss, then whip withdrawn and no reselection at next GE. Dissenting Cabinet members sent packing and a new more discreet Cabinet installed.

        1. If Richard Tice fails to recruit the few real Conservatives in parliament into his Reform Party then his party is finished and as dead as the Conservative Party is.

          People who read my rants here will remember that before Boris Johnson was ousted I suggested that the true Brexiteers in parliament should resign their seats and stand again in the by-elections as candidates for the Reform Party.

          Is it too late for that now?

          1. Maybe we all need Brazilians so that Schwab, Gates and Co can stop grabbing us by the short and curlies?

  46. Fallout: Living in the Shadow of the Bomb BBC Radio 4 Episode 1

    CND reborn: An anti-British propaganda series about the UK’s atomic bomb development. Complete with useless irritating background music – a new way of transferring licence payer’s money to the Rsoles hanging on the tails of the programme makers at Marxist HQ.

  47. Turning down the thermostat will help beat Putin and it is patriotic to say so. 14 october 2022.

    To the list of big positives, Brearley could have added that it would rank as a serious gesture of unity with Ukraine. The logic goes something like this: yes, Britain is far less reliant on Putin for imports than the rest of Europe but if we continue to use loads of gas, it will keep prices high, the proceeds of which will continue to find their way into the Kremlin’s coffers, helping to fund Russia’s war machine.

    In keeping with the times, ministers could channel the spirit of Second World War Britain to cajole people to be more conservative. After all, bombs may not be raining down on UK cities and towns again but Europe is once again effectively at war with a fascist leader.

    In 1940, the Ministry Of Information published a series of posters under the “Careless Talk Costs Lives” campaign, which urged the public to watch their tongues. The following year, it published another that was aimed specifically at British servicemen with the slogan “Keep mum – she’s not so dumb”. No one complained about the nanny state or “being told what to do” back then. It was just seen as sensible, as “doing the right thing”.

    TOP COMMENT BELOW THE LINE.

    J R Bentley.

    Ben your columns get funnier and funnier. The reason we are in this mess as a First World country which is now on the point of a massive energy shortage (read that again) is because of green catastrophism. Putin has made things marginally worse but the damage has been done in the last 20yrs following failed energy policy. Any info campaign should be focussed on how we can recover resilient supplies over the next 10yrs. If we don’t change course this will keep happening.

    PS – plot the cost of residential electricity over that 10yr graph above. Rising cost is directly proportional to increased green energy supply.

    The Spirit of Second World War Britain! Lol! The incumbents of Westminster have destroyed it far more effectively than the Fuhrer could ever have imagined.

    I think that I’ll turn my thermostat up!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/10/14/turning-thermostat-will-help-beat-putin-patriotic-say/

  48. Turning down the thermostat will help beat Putin and it is patriotic to say so. 14 october 2022.

    To the list of big positives, Brearley could have added that it would rank as a serious gesture of unity with Ukraine. The logic goes something like this: yes, Britain is far less reliant on Putin for imports than the rest of Europe but if we continue to use loads of gas, it will keep prices high, the proceeds of which will continue to find their way into the Kremlin’s coffers, helping to fund Russia’s war machine.

    In keeping with the times, ministers could channel the spirit of Second World War Britain to cajole people to be more conservative. After all, bombs may not be raining down on UK cities and towns again but Europe is once again effectively at war with a fascist leader.

    In 1940, the Ministry Of Information published a series of posters under the “Careless Talk Costs Lives” campaign, which urged the public to watch their tongues. The following year, it published another that was aimed specifically at British servicemen with the slogan “Keep mum – she’s not so dumb”. No one complained about the nanny state or “being told what to do” back then. It was just seen as sensible, as “doing the right thing”.

    TOP COMMENT BELOW THE LINE.

    J R Bentley.

    Ben your columns get funnier and funnier. The reason we are in this mess as a First World country which is now on the point of a massive energy shortage (read that again) is because of green catastrophism. Putin has made things marginally worse but the damage has been done in the last 20yrs following failed energy policy. Any info campaign should be focussed on how we can recover resilient supplies over the next 10yrs. If we don’t change course this will keep happening.

    PS – plot the cost of residential electricity over that 10yr graph above. Rising cost is directly proportional to increased green energy supply.

    The Spirit of Second World War Britain! Lol! The incumbents of Westminster have destroyed it far more effectively than the Fuhrer could ever have imagined.

    I think that I’ll turn my thermostat up!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/10/14/turning-thermostat-will-help-beat-putin-patriotic-say/

  49. “Untrussworthy set to sack the Ugandan.” (The Grimes right now)

    And to think we used to poke fun at the Italians changing their government every few days.

  51. 366036+ up ticks,

    Take no notice of this bloke he’s one of them there racist fruitcakes,

    What’s new?
    Popular Users

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    Gerard Batten
    @gjb2021
    ·
    2h
    On 14th Oct 1066, 956 years ago today, a furious battle raged at Hastings as the Anglo Saxons fought to repel Norman invaders. They lost, were dispossed in their own land, & made serfs for the next 300 years.

    Today our ‘leaders’ ferry invaders across the Channel, & serve the Globalist elite to turn us into serfs once again.

    https://gettr.com/post/p1u83ge3b49

    1. Yes, history seems to be repeating its self in a more subtle way, the fighting is on the streets, but our politicians seem oblivious of the facts growing in intensity before them.

      1. I thoroughly tired of this country. Our taxes are obscene and we’re told the state needs more money – it’s *Has* more money, it just wastes it.
        It is illegal to block the highways and the police defend and support the protestors.
        It is illegal to enter the country and yet tens of billions is spent brining in dangerous criminal migrants.
        Councils and police ignore children being raped. Judges impose restraining orders on those reporting about it.
        We’re told all the immigrants are necessary – and then they sit on welfare for life.
        We voted to leave the EU and the entire administration is fighting tooth and nail to do so much damage to our economy and society in a singular aim of forcing us back in.
        So called Conservatives are more interested in their careers than serving the country.
        Energy is practically unaffordable because the state made it too expensive – deliberately. It’s now having to give people their own money back so they can afford energy.
        Criminals serving life commit rape and murder because they’re ‘on licence’.
        Gangs of immigrant thugs roam the streets and the police aren’t allowed to smack them about because of ‘community relations’.
        In the meanwhile, councils waste billions fiddling with roundabouts, cycle lanes and traffic lights all to force down car use, yet if you take public transport you’re more likely to get mugged – usually by the ticket price

        Churches have to have grates over the window and mosques get to squeal that godawful dirge of muesli drivel over the air. Vandalism is everywhere, litter everywhere we have to pick up the dross from the welfarists.

        The NHS has waiting lists and has never been so well funded yet pours more into the offices of Trusts than hospitals. Education is a joke, preaching Left wing ideology. Ads bombard with nonsense over mixed race marriages and we’re told this is the future.

        It’s an abomination. Everything is back to front. Line the scum up, shoot them. Rinse, repeat.

        1. But there would be a shortage of bullets; lead is expensive and bad for the environment.
          Sharpen your knives.

        2. Why do you think the British have been disarmed?
          Only a select number of public servants and criminals have access to firearms.

  53. BBC confirm that the Chancellor has been sacked a few minutes after meeting with the PM. PM should go.

    1. Oh my Good God, are these people real?
      Stand by for a general election and a Starmer government.

  54. Good morrow, Gentlefolk, I had a much-deserved lie in today and I realised, that I’d forgotten the daily jokes. Her’s todays:

     
    Police Stop
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/150986bd984d9dd2c4d9435cbcb42ccc78ec430cd14ea33d4c7be0d14a4c38e8.jpg

    An elderly man is stopped by the police around 2 a.m. and is asked where he is going at this time of night.
    The man replies, “I am on my way to a lecture about alcohol abuse and the effects it has on the human body, as well as smoking and staying out late.”
    The officer then asks, “Really? Who is giving that lecture at this time of night?”
    The man replies, “That would be my wife.”

  56. Afternoon All
    I despair,I give up,the veil of illusion that our politicians actually govern our country is ripped asunder
    Minor tax cuts,total hysteria
    Untold billions spunked on Covid,HS2,Foreign aid etc etc normal business
    The cabal of rejoiners,common purpose and the WEF want us utterly destroyed rather than see us deviate from their agenda

    1. A guy in a car smacks into the back of a car at the traffic lights.
      Its driver, who happens to be a midget, jumps out and tells the guy behind that he is not happy.
      “OK, so which one are you?” asks the guy.

  58. Kwasi Kwarteng sacked as chancellor after mini-budget turmoil, Sky News understands

    Kwasi Kwarteng has been sacked as chancellor three weeks after his mini-budget unleashed chaos in the economy, Sky News understands.

    He was appointed to the role by Liz Truss only 38 days ago.

    Mr Kwarteng’s downfall was set in motion by the mini-budget on 23 September, in which he announced £45bn in unfunded tax cuts.

    The mini-budget pushed the pound to a record low against the dollar, sent the cost of government borrowing and mortgage rates up and led to an unprecedented intervention by the Bank of England.

    Ms Truss and Mr Kwarteng, who have been close friends for years, insisted that the turbulence in the UK economy was part of a global problem exacerbated by the war in Ukraine and post-pandemic recovery.

    But last week, after open revolt by Tory MPs and a record surge for Labour in the polls, the prime minister announced the first major reversal of mini-budget policies when she backtracked on scrapping the 45p top rate of income tax.

    The second U-turn came on Friday morning when the government said it would raise corporation tax from 19% to 25% next April, despite promising not to do so in the mini-budget.

      1. Yes, that sums it up, and my prediction?

        Sunak will see the Tory vote drop from 20% to 12% if that.

      2. I’m not sure I’d want to wish it on him. Just as Norman Tebbit was the the best PM we never had, so JR was the best chancellor never to be. To throw him into this mess would be a thankless task – and possibly embarrassing as he wrote so effusively in the DT of the mini-budget.

      3. Best he stays out of the way. Let the government implode on it’s own, try & stay out of the shitshower, and wait for the next Tory government. If that ever happens.

    3. Making everything 6% more expensive. When the wailers are crowing now having got what they want, when prices soar again and inflation spikes they’ll complain. I’m sick and tired of morons.

      1. Did you see Mark Steyn interview a Stop Oil protester last night? The guy actually said that there’s a cost of living crisis and people are going to be cold this winter because the government don’t listen to the green lobby and haven’t scrapped all fossil fuels. That’s the mentality we’re up against.

  59. LIVE Kwasi Kwarteng out as chancellor after mini-budget backlash. BBC champagne order broken again – third time in two months.

    1. Forget about Kwarteng, this signals the end of Truss and her cabinet of friends. It shows the overriding influence of WEF in dictating policy.

  60. The farce of the century has begun. Trudeaus invocation of the Emergency Measures Act brought on a mandatory review of the action, this inquiry started yesterday.

    Not saying that the inquiry is fixed but Trudeau selected the judge in charge of the inquiry and who better than a long time liberal donor who has spent time as an advisor to previous liberal governments.

  64. Tobias Ellwood MP
    @Tobias_Ellwood
    ·
    11 Oct
    GOV DECISION MAKING:

    I’d encourage the formation of a Government QUAD: (PM, Deputy PM, Chancellor and
    Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster) to red team and confirm big policy decisions made outside of Cabinet – before announcements are made.

    Well done Tobiased, you have a full bingo card of what’s wrong with the Tory Party.

    Still, you have a glittering career as a village idiot.

  66. The suicide squad move on – Fav for next Chancellor?

    Jeremy Hunt

    I dare you to look, its the end of the world as we know it.

    2. Baron Clarke of Nottingham, (formerly Ken Clarke M.P.), for chancellor.

      He was chancellor of the exchequer until 1997 when the Conservative Party was heavily beaten by Blair.

      Maybe Lord Clarke deserves another chance to see if he can annihilate the Conservative Party completely this time?

      1. I think she must now call a general election and, having done so, resign from the Conservative Party and join Richard Tice in The Reform Party taking with her John Redwood and the others whom our wise Nottler friend, damask_rose, suggested.

        1. Oh I think the Tories are going to have to look themselves in the mirror after this.

          You can’t abandon the base principles of a party and expect to survive

    1. I kept warning the headbangers at the Speccie, now they have fully reaped what they sowed

  70. It’s Hunt of all bloody people Hunt………

    During the Tory leadership contest Jeremy Hunt promised most aggressive tax cuts of all the candidates

    He said that he would cut corporation tax from 19p to 15p on day one

    Yet in one of his first acts as Chancellor he will have to raise corporation tax from 19p to 25p
    What an abject farce it all is…….

    1. Today’s page is about blood donation: now we have Truss’s political bloodletting. Tories in free fall and bets are off that they will make a soft landing.

    1. This is all much too depressing. Think I might just switch off the computer. Nothing personal…but – Jeremy bluddy Hunt!! Let’s go the whole hog and have Thereson May back as well, shall we?
      Can’t stand it any more!

        1. Hunt? A staunch hooverer up of every privilege going. A man whose dedication to mediocrity is second to none. A true champion of the well connected. An amiable lummox who grasped the silver spoon firmly in both hands at birth and has never looked back. A politician of whom the worst that can be said is that he hid behind a tree to avoid journalists.

      2. I agree , it’s app utterly depressing. Can’t bear to listen to the news either.

    3. That’s lost the Tories n million votes at the next election.

      We assume that Liz Truss considers that she won’t be around by then?

  72. Paul Staines, the founder of Guido Fawkes site, was on GB News a couple of nights ago.

    He made an interesting comment – he said that politicians who failed to keep their promises to their spouses were less likely to feel obliged to keep their word to the electorate.

    This made me think of Adulterer Johnson and his successor, Adultera Truss.

    Not only has she betrayed those who supported her but she has also betrayed Kwasi Kwarteng, her chancellor.

    1. Bur of course, it their nature. Why should their public life and values be any different from their private life and values?

  73. King Charles has approved of the DNA testing of the bones of Edward V and his brother – the boys in the tower . He wants the mystery solved . What then..

  75. Years ago, a Liebour primary school dinner lady was appointed Minister of Education. After a short time she resigned – saying that she was completely out of her depth. She ended up in the House of Lords, of course, were she is still out of her depth.

    But I have always had a regard for her honesty.

    Would that Untrussworthy have the same insight.

  77. So let me get this straight. The Conservative Party wastes two months of the country’s time in sacking Boris Johnson and replacing him with Liz Truss – a woman who campaigned on a platform of tax cuts and de-regulation. They then immediately do everything they can to stop her implementing this agenda, which is far as I understood it, is what the Conservative Party is supposed to be for. What the hell is going on?

    I am very disappointed that Truss has chosen to thrown Kwarteng under the bus, rather than resign herself as a matter of principle, or go to the country. I guess it will be back to the same ‘tax n spend’ agenda that we will also get under Labour.

    What is the point of the Conservatives? What is the point of voting for them?

  78. Hunt for Chancellor

    You need to join this government like you need a cheap ticket for the Titanic

  79. Jeremy effing Hunt! What the hell is the stupid woman thinking? He effectively wrecked the Convid response and he is a slimy little remainer! She and the Conservatives deserve everything coming to them! Unfortunately the rest of us don’t! I hate them all!

    1. My reaction is identical to yours Sue ..

      I hate them all, and Hunt has a gleam in his eye like Tony Blair ..

      Hunt will be borrowing from China I suspect ..

      These are difficult times ..I feel so shocked .. and fearful.

      1. I’m just blooming furious, and raging at the party which I have supported all my days! My grandparents and parents must be turning in their graves/urns! What a bunch of pathetic backstabbing b@stards and not one of the craven shonets gives a toss about this great country.

    2. slimy little remainer!

      And thus will be guaranteed to ensure we remain afixed to the IMF and EU dictat of ever increasing debt, economic ruin and poverty.

  80. The mind boggles! Even I seasoned cynic that I am look on with gobsmacked amazement! How can Truss continue? She’s just flushed her own policies down the toilet along with her Chancellor!

  81. The mind boggles! Even I seasoned cynic that I am look on with gobsmacked amazement! How can Truss continue? She’s just flushed her own policies down the toilet along with her Chancellor!

  83. Well, that’s three loads of apples put through the apple mill and the cider press resulting in 10 litres of juice this morning.

    Did a tub of M&S Chunky Chicken Mulligatawny for self & the DT and I’m now enjoying a ½ pint of the apple juice I did last week that has fermented rather nicely!

    I’m trying not to listen to, watch or read the news as I do not want to turn suicidal.

  85. 366036+ up ticks,
    Tell me, do you consider this
    lab/lib/con/current ukip coalition political hierarchy a safe pair of hands when regarding say, the welfare of children.

    They are fighting for their OWN in-house thiefdoms, body swerving their own country folks when taking up the current scam.

    The electorate majority have been politically construction these past 40 years material for a continuous WHINGE, leaving in it’s wake a trail of mentally broken kids, and a nation politically undermined and physically overrun by very dangerous invading forces.

    Where are the missing hotel kids or is the English taxpayer catering for the paedophiles playthings following the eyes shut mode…..
    for the good of the party.

  86. Remember an hour ago i said Truss was 5/4 to be gone by the end of the year?

    Its now 4/5……..

    2. For goodness sake. This whole farce is tiresome. How about we do something sensible and just tell them all to go home.

      They’re all useless after all. Go home, have a bath, read a book. Stay there. Stop wrecking my country.

    3. The sooner she goes the better.

      Kwasi Kwarteng and all Conservative MPs to the right of centre in the party should be having meetings with Richard Tice today to organise resigning from their parliamentary seats and joining the Reform Party to fight the inevitable coming general election.

      The Conservative Party is dead and if it is not buried quickly the corpse will start to rot and stink.

      1. IMO Tice should be putting out feelers to what must be a growing band of disaffected right of centre Tories. The latter cannot fail to see that their party has lurched to the left with no chance, certainly in the short to medium time frame, of returning to sensible policies.
        The diseased hand of the WEF is evident in the politics of this island and WEF adherents have to be expunged from positions of influence.

  87. I imagine that Jeremy Rhyming took the job as he sees it as his direct route to No 10.

    He’ll get Untrussworthy removed. Then modestly thrust himself forward as “The Man of Destiny”.

  89. Well the giggling poltroon has proved diversity isn’t an ideal fix in government .

    Can we compare them both to Fred the Shred .. and the RBS scandal?

  90. Before the Chancellor was sacked (13:28hrs) 10Y benchmark bond yield was 3.95%, just now its shot up to 4.177%

    In case you are wondering, yes that is a big move in WRONG direction

  91. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Hunt%27s_tenure_as_Health_Secretary

    Hunt pursued an ambitious agenda to address patient safety, regional variations in premature deaths, health tourism and A&E waiting times. He oversaw increased spending on the National Health Service but was criticised for controversial reforms, manipulating figures and increased privatisation. He implemented policies working towards a seven-day NHS and oversaw the imposition of a controversial new junior doctors’ contract in England, after the failure of negotiations during a dispute in which junior doctors undertook industrial action.

  93. Remember an hour ago I said Truss was 5/4 to go this year 90 mins ago?

    and 20 mins ago I said she was 4/5 odds on to go before the end of the year?

    Now she’s 8/11 odds on to be gone by the end of the year

    2. Far too long – she has no credibility left at all. She should be gone by the end of the week if not by the end of today.

  94. The priest in a small Irish village loved his chickens that he kept in the coop behind the church.
    One Sunday morning before mass, he went to feed the birds and discovered that the cock was missing.
    He knew about the cock fights in the village, so he decided to question his parishioners in church.
    During mass, he asked his congregation, “Has anybody got a cock?” All the men stood up.
    “No, no, that wasn’t what I meant. Has anybody seen a cock?”
    All the women stood up.
    “No, no, that wasn’t what I meant either.
    Has anybody seen a cock that doesn’t belong to them?”
    Half the women stood up !
    “No, no, no, that wasn’t what I meant.
    What I really really mean is, has anybody seen MY cock?”
    Sixteen altar boys, two priests and a goat stood up.

  95. The priest in a small Irish village loved his chickens that he kept in the coop behind the church.
    One Sunday morning before mass, he went to feed the birds and discovered that the cock was missing.
    He knew about the cock fights in the village, so he decided to question his parishioners in church.
    During mass, he asked his congregation, “Has anybody got a cock?” All the men stood up.
    “No, no, that wasn’t what I meant. Has anybody seen a cock?”
    All the women stood up.
    “No, no, that wasn’t what I meant either.
    Has anybody seen a cock that doesn’t belong to them?”
    Half the women stood up !
    “No, no, no, that wasn’t what I meant.
    What I really really mean is, has anybody seen MY cock?”
    Sixteen altar boys, two priests and a goat stood up.

  96. Remeber I said 20 mins ago

    Before the Chancellor was sacked (13:28hrs) 10Y benchmark bond yield was 3.95%, just now its shot up to 4.177%

    Its now shot up to 4.28%

  97. On the day of her wedding, a black girl’s mum calls her aside.

    “My daughter, tonight when you go to bed, your husband will want to do something you’ve never done before”.

    “What’s that”? She said.

    “He’s going to want to put his most precious item where you piss”.

    The daughter looks at her confused… “Why would he want to put his basketball in the sink”?

  98. A BTL under a DT article about Ms Truss which probably succinctly sums up what many people think:

    This morning at breakfast time I wanted her to survive; this afternoon I want her gone by suppertime.

  99. Well, there’s me about to recommence shovelling soil for those steps up the garden, when it began raining. So that’s knocked that idea on the head!

  100. Kwasi Kwarteng sacked as Chancellor less than 5 weeks into the job.

    I guess it really is Black History Month.

  101. To take my mind off things, I have just spent half an hour in the garden. 2 lb tomatoes; ½ lb raspberries; ½ lb Cobra beans (prolly the last picking). Gus came and joined me – in the way cats do, by just materialising from nowhere.

    Now back indoors. Has Hunt been sacked yet?

  102. Just to take your minds off the ghastliness of Liz Truss:

    On 20th December 2013 a Femen protester entered into a large church in Paris (La Madeleine, near the Place de la Concorde), stripped all the clothes off her upper body and proceeded to pretend that she was aborting Jesus in front of the altar (using a piece of veal liver for the “embryo”) before urinating on the altar steps. A French court gave her a suspended sentence of one month in prison, upheld after two different appeals, first in the appeal court and then by the cour de cassation, the highest appeal court in the country.

    The protester then took her case to the European Court of Human Rights which has just sentenced France to pay € 2000 in damages and € 7 800 in expenses to her.

    Jesus wept…

    The full article is below, in French.

    https://fr.aleteia.org/2022/10/14/la-cedh-estime-que-simuler-lavortement-de-jesus-dans-une-eglise-releve-de-la-liberte-dexpression/

      1. That made me laugh. You would indeed have thought that people would see the lack of “joined up thinking” there… but they don’t.

        The ECHRs upheld her appeal because, they said, her freedom of expression had not been respected.

        At a time when freedom of expression is genuinely under threat in the EU, you have to wonder about the political motivation behind this particular ruling. And I must admit that I do also wonder how that same institution would have reacted if someone had committed such an unspeakably offensive act in a mosque…

      1. I see cyclists ignoring red lights on Oxford Street W1 and of course if they come to grief it’s anyone’s fault but their own.

  107. I had a busy few hours late morning , giving the dogs a good run , then visiting a farm shop then dashing off to Dorchester to do some shopping .

    I had the car radio on and listened to BBC radio 4 .. and there was a really good programme about James Joyce .. in fact it was fascinating ..

    I am wondering whether Boris Johnson could be regarded as much a wordsmithery genius as James Joyce was ?

    Did any of you listen to the programme?

    https://twitter.com/True_Belle/status/1580933079325376513

    1. Teaching granny to suck eggs mode
      You want to be careful of getting involved with radio talk shows whilst driving !

    4. Acrylic paint? Do I need to ask. The muppet on the Steyn show last night thinks there are green replacements for everything. His brain has already been transplanted.

    6. Oh ffs. So they are doing it because they love the country and will be on “the right side of history” (sic)

  109. I saw this on F/B

    Since divorce was expensive during the Victorian era, some men simply opted to sell their wives instead. Much like a cattle auction, the husband would put a rope around his wife’s waist, wrist, or neck and take her to the market, where he would sell her off to the highest bidder.

    After she was purchased by another man, her previous marriage was considered null and void. And while this wasn’t technically legal in England, many authorities looked the other way.

    Unbelievably, the most recent case of an English wife sale was reported in 1913, when a woman giving evidence in a Leeds police court during a maintenance case claimed that her husband had sold her to one of his workmates for £1 (equivalent to about £100 now)

        1. Yes. I always get it wrong so i was intentionally vague.
          Read that for my 4th year mock English 0-level.

          1. Today’s yr 10 (4th form equivalent) are reading nothing nearly as sophisticated. (From memory when my kids did their “GCSEs” in the last few years). Imagine the trigger warnings you’d need if you made them read Hardy today!

    5. Wives were sold at Smithfield Market along with the rest of the livestock in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

      1. Yep – that’s when I picked up my first one for a tanner (only joking – she cost several times more)

  110. I found these on my rounds:

    So, Thick Lizzie made economic-fairytale statements in her leadership campaign.
    She was told by competent economists that that would crash the economy.
    She wouldn’t listen to sense.
    Way out of her depth, she only got the top job because the blue rinse brigade couldn’t stomach having the son of Indian immigrants running the country.
    She appointed an obedient poodle to do as she told him.
    And surprise, surprise, it crashed the economy.
    Still, it’s all Kwarteng’s fault, nothing to do with her of course.

    Pretty obvious who the one to go ought to be.

    And about time the UK got rid of this system of a replacement PM being decided by an unrepresentative few thousand party members.
    Full General Election whenever there’s a PM being replaced, please.

    A GE may even return a Conservative governement again, just not one with out-of-their-depth PM & Chancellor.
    Hasta La Vista, baby?…
    _____________________

    I reckon all Tory members who voted for Truss should be surcharged for the financial damage they have done to the country.
    _____________________

    People are striking because they want to preserve the real value of their wages.
    _____________________

    A united national coalition a la WW2 is the way to calm the financial markets in my opinion, it’s time the idiots of the far left and right were taken out of the equation for the good of the all. We should have had this for other ‘national questions’ like Brexit and the pandemic, too, but the government in question persisted in ignoring the representatives of a large proportion of the electorate by insisting on doing it themselves.

    These people are all Labour voters.

  111. I found these on my rounds:

    So, Thick Lizzie made economic-fairytale statements in her leadership campaign.
    She was told by competent economists that that would crash the economy.
    She wouldn’t listen to sense.
    Way out of her depth, she only got the top job because the blue rinse brigade couldn’t stomach having the son of Indian immigrants running the country.
    She appointed an obedient poodle to do as she told him.
    And surprise, surprise, it crashed the economy.
    Still, it’s all Kwarteng’s fault, nothing to do with her of course.

    Pretty obvious who the one to go ought to be.

    And about time the UK got rid of this system of a replacement PM being decided by an unrepresentative few thousand party members.
    Full General Election whenever there’s a PM being replaced, please.

    A GE may even return a Conservative governement again, just not one with out-of-their-depth PM & Chancellor.
    Hasta La Vista, baby?…
    _____________________

    I reckon all Tory members who voted for Truss should be surcharged for the financial damage they have done to the country.
    _____________________

    People are striking because they want to preserve the real value of their wages.
    _____________________

    A united national coalition a la WW2 is the way to calm the financial markets in my opinion, it’s time the idiots of the far left and right were taken out of the equation for the good of the all. We should have had this for other ‘national questions’ like Brexit and the pandemic, too, but the government in question persisted in ignoring the representatives of a large proportion of the electorate by insisting on doing it themselves.

    These people are all Labour voters.

  112. Looks like there has been a bout of BoE buying to drop the 10Y yield from 4.28% to 4.02%

    The markets scent blood the 10Y bond yield is now 4.802%

      1. If the bond yield goes up, that’s the cost of UK borrowing going up, which means it gets more expensive to borrow.

        1. In other words, the markets are losing confidence in UK finances, that may be a reaction to Truss, it may also be a reaction to the near certainty of Labour getting in.

          1. A contributory factor could be the government continuing to spend £500million per mile on the HS2 railway line.

          7. Sharp intake of breath. You mean you think he is not the greatest statesman since Churchill? I am shocked….

          8. Since the Conservatives have been in power this time round they have all shown themselves to be Janus faced fucking liars. New New Labour will be the new WEF order.

          12. I suggest railway carriages are placed on whatever is built and fill them up with our channel visitors. It would then be worthwhile to connect into the Eurotunnel and send them back.

          14. …and how many £million per day on the illegal gimmegrunts?

            Last I saw it was £5,000,000 per day. Not sustainable.

          16. Indeed, and the pound rallied initially, then fell as well.

            I expect to see money being pulled from the UK as the rich bail out knowing Labour “tax tax tax” is coming

          17. I don#t think it has anything to do with what the clowns are doing in Westminster. It’s the result of years of printing too much debt, and the chickens are now coming home to roost.

  113. I tried to understand how to activate and deactivate Lane Follow Assist and Lane Keep Assist on the Hyundai Kona EV after watching this video https://youtu.be/MAsnoR4LAXY but got very confused. I only managed to get to lane safety options on my EV by se!ecting icon sequence:

    Settings>Vehicle>Lane Safety

    from the Home screen,

      2. I’m gradually working my through it together with Hyundai and owner videos. It’s interesting to get feedback from Nottler EV drivers.

    2. Ye Gods Angie, you are being brave delving into the menu. My car continues to flash warnings and sound bells for numerous reasons known only to itself.
      I just drive it now oblivious to such fuss.

      1. The Kona flashes warnings and sounds bells by default but some assist functions can be disabled to make it drive more like a dumb manual.
        That’s why I asked the sales guy to disable as many assist functions as possible when I picked it up so that I might home in silence and one piece. I was glad to get home without incident.

        Now I really must try and find out what the Kona will do should I start driving in default mode by delving into the labrynth of home menu settings.

        1. I always had diesel cars until the f*ckwit government – which had been promoting diesel – upped the tax.

          1. Blame the Green Lobby, who switched from blaming climate change caused by greater CO2 from petrol to blaming environmental pollution caused by diesel particulates.

          2. I always had petrol cars but was persuaded by the Government to buy a diesel to cut nasty petrol emissions. The diesel trapped all its particles in a filter (DPF) which eventually blocked up completely and the car quickly lost its value.

    4. Just forget it, if you look out of the front windscreen you can see if you are keeping to the lane or not :o)…..(sarc)

  114. A change from Truss’s Travesties.

    King Charles is ‘absolutely devastated’ by ‘what has happened’ with Prince Harry and is ‘hopeful’ of a reconciliation, royal expert claims
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-11315337/Charles-absolutely-devastated-fall-Prince-Harry.html?login#readerCommentsCommand-message-field

    BTL

    To forgive somebody who is not sorry is a futile and pointless thing to do.

    There must be a forgivee who wants to say he is deeply sorry and who wants to be forgiven just as there must be the wronged person who wants to forgive. The fact of the matter is that Harry doesn’t want forgiveness and probably does not give a damn about the hurt and damage that he and his repulsive wife have done.

    It would be sheer folly for the King to forgive Harry.

    Hamlet’s stepfather fell on his knees to ask God for forgiveness for having murdered his brother in order to have the throne and his brother’s wife, Gertrude. But he realises that to have any chance of God’ forgiveness he must give up the very things he committed murder to acquire and this he is not prepared to do. What would Harry be prepared to give up in order to apologise sincerely to his father?

    “My words fly up, my thoughts remain below:
    Words without thoughts never to heaven go”

    2. I don’t think we need blow by blow accounts of Charles’s relationship with his sons. Do I inflict my family disagreements on my co-workers? No I do not!

      1. 25mm Opal polycarbonate sheeting on aluminium glazing bars. The entire floor decking and timber supports were leftover from previous projects. Two solid wooden doors are also being repurposed. I’m going to use composite shiplap cladding for the sides (maintenance free)…

  116. Sir Roger Gale MP@SirRogerGale
    ·

    1h
    Hard to understand why the Prime Minister has sacked her Chancellor – a good man – for promoting the policies upon which she was elected.

    Good, though, that in Jeremy Hunt there will be an experienced pair of hands on the financial tiller.

    Hard to understand your thinking there Roger, you think he shouldn’t have been sacked, and you think Hunt is a grown up. You really are dead in the water

    1. None of the arrises “think” – they are like puppies – following the one they believe is leader.

    3. The IMF said no. I’d imagine it went something like this:

      IMF: If you carry on this route we won’t fund you when you collapse.

      Kwarteng: Why would our economy collapse? It will grow under tax cuts.
      IMF: We’ll make sure it does. The UK cannot be permitted to show up the high tax big state communist dictatorship of the EU.

    1. Come on – be fair. She is going to deliver fiscal stability. She said so a thousand times (today).

      1. It’s SuperCaliFiscalisticStabilityocious
        Even though the sound of it
        Is something quite atrocious
        If you say it loud enough
        You’ll always sound precocious
        SuperCaliFiscalisticStabilityocious
        Um-dittle-ittl-um-dittle-I
        Um-dittle-ittl-um-dittle-I
        Um-dittle-ittl-um-dittle-I
        Um-dittle-ittl-um-dittle-I

  118. Village’s serial complainer costs residents £150 each

    A ‘vexatious’ local from Potto is accused of making 366 complaints but he says a group of 10 to 15 whistleblowers is responsible
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2022/10/13/TELEMMGLPICT000312583466_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bqbe775R1SNzm4sSSdJaF7PFKgqRD8QjI0RaZmbYcesHw.jpeg?imwidth=1280

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2022/10/13/TELEMMGLPICT000312583872_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqUGxCODkX240l0XouecxzOK_3kbZabrGt5fezt-PWo40.jpeg?imwidth=1280
    Gerry Woodhouse was named as a ‘vexatious’ complainer by a judge sitting on a tribunal convened by the Information Commissioner

    *
    *
    *************************
    Neal Passmoor
    2 HRS AGO
    Is he complaining about the lack of dentists?

    Priscilla Cullen
    2 HRS AGO
    I wonder if he is a cyclist.

    2. The Mayor of Clochemerle, played by Cyril Cusack in the brilliant televised version of the novel by Gabriel Chevalier always stood upwind of the village’s radical socialist, played by Kenneth Griffiths, because of his malodorous halitosis. The phrase used to describe this bad breath was:

      vexatious exhalations!

    3. That’s sad. Loved his series “Coltrane’s Planes and automobiles”.
      RIP, big man. And thanks, from me.

      1. Very sad. Great actor and he’ll be fondly remembered for ‘Tutti Frutti’ despite Emma Thompson! Cracker was just that!

  120. That’s me for today. I must away to deliver some fiscal stability – or hunt for some, anyway.

    Last night the MR and I watched The Ipcress File and she conceded that the the film (which she had never seen) knocked the tawdry modern effort into a cocked hat. I must have seen it at least 50 times!

    I hope she will be a bit less ill tomorrow. My medicine is working slowly.

    Have a good evening.

    A demain.

      2. I sat the wife down to Brief Encounter this afternoon – the romance, not the alien film.

        Most people feel sad at the warbling harpy in the train station but the Warqueen was bellowing obscenities at the poor waffling lass.

          1. Celia Johnson’s cut glass accent, although nice, is a bit too much these days. It does stand as a great film though. Carnforth Station, I believe, is where much of it was filmed.

    1. Too freaking right, Conners. What’s getting up your nose? You’re in good company, I sem to have become a clown without being funny.
      Managed to pay twice for the same rail ticket twice last week!
      Got the delivery date for contributions to flea market/boot sale out by a day. Consequently, left the pub & first beers with mates since forever early, to no good purpose.
      Was overcharged for food, didn’t notice. Paid.
      Today, missed the food rubbish bag & tipped a whole kilogramme lot of partly-fermented and very wet berries all over the floor…
      I think I’ll stay in bed.

  123. My candidate is on Chrystys tonight….Monster Raving Loony Party. He made more sense than any of the other oiks.

  126. “You learn if you want to – the lady’s not for learning”

    Not Margaret Thatcher.

    1. Miss Trust the adultress, who apparently thinks she is a Thatcher protégée, couldn’t be further from that lady if she tried. I was quite prepared to give the silly woman a chance, but for her to sack Kwarteng, who actually had a bit of sense, is unforgivable. Why couldn’t she stand up to the backstabbing sh*ts and sack the re moaning b*stards! She’s supposed to be in charge!

      1. It’s all clear if you have ever read the House of cards series of books by Michael Dobbs.
        PS.
        Books better than tv series (although good) but ignore the American series of the same name.

        1. That would be real life being stranger than fiction! Honestly, if I could write a political potboiler, this would be it! You just know what’s coming next!

        2. Wasn’t that a great book? “You might think that, I couldn’t possibly comment.”

          1. Another good series of books by Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn.
            “You might very well think that; I couldn’t possibly comment”.

      2. It is not for nothing that I nickname her Adultera – a very apt sobriquet as she has succeeded Adulterer Johnson.

  127. If I was Kwasi Kwarteng, I would be suing for unfair dismissal. He was the CFO, doing what his CEO told him to do. Then he gets fired when it goes pear-shaped, to save her blushes.

    See you in court Liz!

    1. “Both have been arrested for criminal damage & aggravated trespass.”
      I hope Tacey Emin is one of them.

  130. 366036+ up ticks,

    When the Beginning begins in earnest he must surely head up the deck of cards…… lest we forget.

    Gerard Batten
    @gjb2021
    ·
    1h
    The Tories who knew Hunt intended to worm his way back in will also know that he intends to go after Mogg. Now he’s in a position to do so.

    The internal politics are now more important to them than sorting out the mess we’re in.

    Remember, Hunt is a Remainer who wanted kids taken off their parents for refusal to take covid jabs. And he praised China’s lockdowns.

    Front benches now fully in the control of Remainers & Globalist puppets.

    https://gettr.com/post/p1u9okb36ba

  132. What have the Tories actually done in 12 years? Aside from reversing a stupid tax hike (NI) and the necessary changes to stamp duty, the 6% hike in corporation tax will wipe that, and the income tax reduction out at a stroke – and leave us all 4p in the pound worse off.

    They’ve done nothing about the energy mess which Labour instigated and they encouraged. State spending is still comically out of control and majority being wasted. The NHS is a joke, the BBC is still preaching a spiteful, Left wing agenda.

    If they’ve had 12 years and have done nothing with it, what’s the point of them?

      1. We need a new ‘Lord Protectorat’ as instigated in 1653.
        Edited as I got my dates wrong.

        1. Sorry Andrew, I don’t agree. I believe, or used to believe, that a Constitutional Monarchy was the best form of government. It has worked for many years, let’s see if it continues to work.
          Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans were bad news- here and in the new founded Bay Colony and New England.

          1. If you read Cromwell’s speaches as Lord Protector, he was very much against a parliament that did not put its people and country first.
            As for Puritan thinking: it was predominant all over UK and Europe, which made his reforms much more difficult.
            He was definitely against (contrary to popular opinion) the more radical and extremist views of Puritanism.

          2. I have read a few books on the topic but I am, and suspect always will be, a monarchist.. Cromwell had his points but others, John Winthrop, Governor of the Bay Colony for too long, was a narrow minded bigot who opposed and attacked anyone who did not agree with him.
            The state capitol of Rhode Island is Providence. Roger Williams was ejected by Winthrop because he did not follow all of said man’s edicts. He left the Bay and founded Providence, which to him. and many others, it was.
            Somewhat off topic but for all those who were saying Truss needed a chance- well, so does the King.

          3. My thoughts on American early Puritanism: Europe was well blessed when they left.
            Read C.H. Firth, Oliver Cromwell and the Rule of the Puritans, if your library can find a copy.
            As fot CIIIR, and Truss, I agree, they need time to establish their position within monarchy and government. Unfortunately, as with so much else, the MSM will not allow them that privilege.

          4. I think I did read that some time ago. And yes, the USA still suffers from the dregs of residual puritanism.

  133. What have the Tories actually done in 12 years? Aside from reversing a stupid tax hike (NI) and the necessary changes to stamp duty, the 6% hike in corporation tax will wipe that, and the income tax reduction out at a stroke – and leave us all 4p in the pound worse off.

    They’ve done nothing about the energy mess which Labour instigated and they encouraged. State spending is still comically out of control and majority being wasted. The NHS is a joke, the BBC is still preaching a spiteful, Left wing agenda.

    If they’ve had 12 years and have done nothing with it, what’s the point of them?

  134. I shall be looking forward to the data on the preferences of the backbenchers over the last six months of madness: whether they ousted Johnson, backed Truss, wish to oust Truss, wish to reinstall Johnson, were Remainers or Leavers, whether they know their arses from their elbows. Of course, the real chaos began on March 23rd 2020 when Johnson declared lockdown – and then broke the rules, sealing his own fate. The rest of it followed.

    I remember at the time of the referendum debate that many observations were made about the poor quality of the members (both sides) and ministers of the time and whether a vote to leave would expose their true inadequacy. We didn’t know the half of it…

      1. There is a tendency to want all commenters to sing from the same hymn sheet. I keep a lot of my opinions to myself because I don’t need any agro right now.

      2. It’s the news that’s so depressing! And like Oberst, I feel as though I am under a cloud at the moment and everything is going wrong. Just got to struggle on until things improve, I guess.

          2. It must be catching; Oscar has been grumpy with Kadi. He didn’t want to share his (actually Charlie’s originally) rug. They’ve settled down together now – on the rug of contention.

        2. I know pet! I am having a complete ‘news’ blackout! I’ve been really busy today and in an effort to start clearing out the clutter (before we die and the girls come with a skip!) I went up to the loft! I am now surrounded by 45 original one inch cloth Ordnance Survey maps circa1946 and a ZX Spectrum! Very exciting!

    3. From time to time it goes round in circles, Tom, and then it straightens itself out. It has been a bad day today and it seems there is no solution to our problems…. well, there is, actually, the time-honoured method but that would take guts that our young people seem no longer to possess.

  137. OT- I am now the “proud” owner of a walking stick. The lady who came to speak to us yesterday re what help we may be able to have, watched me hobbling around. Knee was very sore yesterday.
    I had gone to Sainsbury’s for some last minute groceries and this lady came round when I was out. Knee not too bad today.
    So, apart from MH, I now have an additional support method.
    A certain hospital in a nearby town is hectoring me because I have not booked an appointment. Get them! Where were these people for 3 years and now they feel they can bully us? I refuse to go miles away for an ECG which I had a few months ago and was told all was fine. They can get stuffed.
    We at Lake Lodge are calling the shots from now on- not the NHS.

      1. And I can become a Hell’s Granny. I shall whack people who annoy me with my stick. Whammo!

  138. Regarding Kwasi Kwarteng’ a letter to Liz Truss, am I alone in thinking his intention and wording chivalrous. They were best friends and the letter shows no rancour.

    Edited. Trump for Truss.

  139. Well, not a lot done this afternoon.
    Went out to restart on the steps and it began bloody raining.

    Cromford Apple Day tomorrow.

    1. Can’t you just have an afternoon in your armchair? I know I am not the only Nottler that you exhaust when we read of your exertions. I often have to go for a rest;-)

    1. Belle, if it’s any comfort at all to you, I really don’t believe he will. He may be portrayed as a madman but I don’t think he’s a nutter.

      1. He seems calm and measured to me, Sue, if a trifle pissed off from time to time. Unsurprisingly.

    2. Putin is portrayed as the very devil because from time to time our govt needs a bogeyman with which to scare the people and whip them into shape (control). We have much more to worry about in a ‘false flag’ event by our govt/the US, or even a false ‘false flag’ i.e. how would we know if, say, a nuclear explosion in some distant land (the Ukraine for example) had happened or not? They could tell us what they like and on past experience of the last three years the UK public would believe it because ‘it was on the telly’.

    3. Hopefully Truss will be more cautious now that her wings have been severely clipped. It was always a mistake for our country to be seen to be backing the most corrupt regime in the world. We simply cannot afford to lose billions when we have so many problems at home.

      For the equally corrupt Biden regime they are so deeply ingrained in Ukraine and beholden to corporate American interests, especially arms manufacturers and suppliers, their adherence to Obama foreign policy is at least understandable, if repulsive to the rest of us.

      We have no appetite for fighting wars in foreign lands; Blair put the final nail in that particular coffin and is yet to pay for his crimes.

      Regrettably we have a weak Prime Minister and a highly suspect chancellor in Hunt. Both are wreckers and Remainers. I doubt these two will get away with much more of their globalist agenda simply because we are wise to them and to the bastards pulling their strings.

      1. It’s some sort of programming, since covid many nhs leaflets, signage etc are printed in yellow on a blue background – it has got worse since the Ukraine flag started appearing everywhere, this colour scheme is popping up all over the place. I think we are being conditioned into being accepting of something, what that is has not yet become clear.

    3. Evening, Stephen! If you’re there, do reply to this and I’ll chuck over my email temporarily, in case I somehow manage to fit in a halt your way en route south again.

  144. Bed beckons. I want a quiet weekend. The light in the cursed bathroom has died.
    “Peeing in the dark, what were the chances…& etc”.
    That bloody bathroom is evil.
    Night Y’all.

  145. Par Four today; Birdy Three yesterday.
    Probs with format/ access.
    Wordle 482 4/6
    ⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜
    ⬜🟨🟩⬜⬜
    ⬜🟩🟩🟨⬜
    🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    1. Also par 4 today. Such a bad start, amazed when I got it! G’night!
      Wordle 482 4/6

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

  146. I think Kwasi Kwarteng should join Richard Tice in the Reform Party and take all those in the Conservative Parliamentary Party who are right of centre with him.

    Funnily enough Shakespeare gave Brabantio, the father of Desdemona, an interesting line to deliver to an important black man:

    “Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see,
    She has deceived her father, and may thee.”

    Of course the parallel is that Ms Truss deceived her husband and so it was only to be expected that she would also betray Kwasi Kwarteng.

    1. 366036+ up ticks,

      Evening R,

      There was an awful lot of deceiving going on back in 2019 involving these farage & co under the brexit party banner, they then had a name change to protect the guilty.

      You would be nearer the truth viewing the reform party as tory (ino) party Mk 2.

    1. What next? Frosty mornings, heavy dew, intricate spiders’ webs in the hedges…? I couldn’t bring myself to read the article: is the expert an over-opinionated ex-footballer?

  150. I see from the Mail that Charles wants to push Camilla as Queen and drop the “consort” before the Coronation. Sorry, but there will only ever be one The Queen to me, and it’s not about Diana, it’s about Charles’s lousy behaviour. He has no shame. A little bit too much like Henry VIII!

    1. I see Camilla as Queen.
      Kings have Queens.
      Queens don’t have Kings.
      Camilla has never tried to overshadow Charles but has been a strong support. I don’t like Charles’s politics.

      1. He specifically said that her title would be Queen Consort when he wanted the public’s support for his marriage, and instantly set about trying to reverse that as soon as he had got what he wanted. I don’t like this dishonest behaviour.

Comments are closed.