Friday 20 September: It’s not inevitable that assisted dying would endanger the vulnerable

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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

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

610 thoughts on “Friday 20 September: It’s not inevitable that assisted dying would endanger the vulnerable”

  1. Good morrow, Gentlefolk. Today’s (recycled) story – more a list – and the end of the Joke-book.

    Age-isms:

    My doctor asked if anyone in my family suffered from mental illness. I said, "No, we all seem to enjoy it.

    My bucket list: keep breathing.

    Camping: where you spend a small fortune to live like a homeless person.

    Just once, I want a username and password prompt to say, "Close enough."

    Being an adult is the dumbest thing I have ever done.

    I'm a multitasker. I can listen, ignore and forget all at the same time!

    Retirement to do list: Wake up. Nailed it!

    Went to an antique auction and people were bidding on me.

    People who wonder if the glass is half empty or half full, miss the point. The glass is refillable.

    I don't have grey hair; I have wisdom highlights.

    Sometimes it takes me all day to get nothing done.

    I don't trip, I do random gravity checks.

    My heart says chocolate and wine, but my jeans say, please, please, please eat a salad!

    Never laugh at your spouse's choices. You are one of them.

    One minute you're young and fun. The next, you're turning down the car stereo to see better.

    I'd grow my own food if only I could find bacon seeds.

    Losing weight doesn't seem to be working for me, so from now I'm going to concentrate on getting taller.

    My body is a temple; ancient and crumbling.

    Common sense is not a gift. It's a punishment because you have to deal with everyone else who doesn't have it.

    I came. I saw. I forgot what I was doing. Retraced my steps. Got lost on the way back. Now I have no idea what's going on. But I remembered to send this to you.

    1. Last night I placed a small object next to the computer to remind me to do something today – Come on! Help me, what was it?

  8. Head of Civil Service expected to resign amid tensions with Sue Gray

    Simon Case, long tipped to quit next year, is understood to be stepping down next month

    Ben Riley-Smith, Political Editor
    19 September 2024 5:40pm

    Britain’s most senior civil servant is expected to formally resign next month amid tensions with Sue Gray, The Telegraph understands.

    Simon Case, the Cabinet Secretary, has long been tipped to leave the role in the New Year after overseeing Labour’s move into office. The Telegraph understands that he is expected by figures close to the process in Whitehall to announce his departure next month, after the party conferences.

    Figures close to Mr Case have always insisted that he is planning to step back, in part because of ill health. He took a period off work earlier this year owing to an undisclosed illness, missing his originally scheduled appearance at the Covid-19 Inquiry, with treatment said to be ongoing.

    Multiple figures who have worked with Ms Gray, Sir Keir Starmer’s chief of staff and the most powerful adviser in No 10, have also suggested she has a fraught relationship with Mr Case, dating back many years.

    It emerged this week that Ms Gray is being paid more than the Prime Minister, with a salary of £170,000, higher than Sir Keir’s £167,000. Ministers’ insistence there was no political involvement in the decision on her pay was branded “nonsense” by Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson’s former chief of staff.

    The leaking of her salary – information known only by a small number of people at the heart of the Government – has raised questions about No 10 in-fighting.

    Ms Gray was overlooked for the most senior Civil Service job in the Northern Ireland Executive, a decision which is said to have brought disappointment and frustration.

    Mr Case, who at the age of 45 is two decades Ms Gray’s junior, was given the most senior role in the Civil Service by Mr Johnson in 2020.

    Ms Gray carried out the politically fraught task of investigating Mr Johnson and his team over parties during Covid lockdowns after Mr Case stepped back from involvement.

    A senior civil servant was quoted by Politico in March 2023 saying of Ms Gray: “She thinks that officialdom didn’t support her – Simon and a couple of others who were involved in the centre when she was doing the report.”

    However other anonymous sources have been quoted in media reports suggesting the tensions are overblown and that she has respect for Mr Case as another long-serving civil servant.

    Sourcing the leak
    The focus on Ms Gray’s position and influence in No 10 is a point of frustration by some of those at the centre of Sir Keir’s inner circle in government.

    It in part reflects the prominent public profile she enjoys – and the infamy in the eyes of some Tories – for her role investigating the “partygate” scandal that helped topple Mr Johnson.

    Mr Case, as Cabinet Secretary, is in effect now leading efforts to work out where the leak of Ms Gray’s salary came from.

    It is not unusual for the most senior civil servant to leave their role after overseeing a change in government between political parties, as has just taken place.

    Resigning in October would allow the formal recruitment drive to find a successor to play out in the late autumn and winter, with a replacement ready to take up the role in early 2025.

    A Cabinet Office spokesman said any suggestion that Mr Case’s departure is linked to Ms Gray is “inaccurate”.

    The spokesman added: “The timetable for the Cabinet Secretary’s departure is driven solely by medical considerations.”

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

    Michelle lancaster
    12 hrs ago
    After getting rid of a sitting PM, she should have been nowhere near power, instead Starmer rewarded her with a top job, bigger salary than his, and her son was parachuted in as an MP.
    The sleaze oozes from crocked Starmer and Labour.

    Achim Gussgen-Ackva
    12 hrs ago
    Well, she reminds one of Madame Mao. She is not serving the state, she is serving herself only.
    Her downfall will come some day in a not too distant future. One predicts that she will trip over some issue she will have thought too unimportant or she will make enemies among the women in the Cabinet. The PM looks more and more foolish over all this.

    1. The more I hear about Susan Gray the more I realise that Cake-gate was a set up by her and other anti-Tory Civil Servants.

    2. So she's more powerful than the Prime Minister then?
      Power in the UK is a slippery thing and resides mostly in Basel and Threadneedle St, but Sue Gray appears to have more than her fair share of it.

    3. "He took a period off work earlier this year owing to an undisclosed illness, missing his originally scheduled appearance at the Covid-19 Inquiry …" Stress at the thought of appearing in front of an enquiry?

  11. Case for ending mass migration could not be stronger. Robert Jenrick. 20 September 2024.

    Mr Jenrick was responding to a report by the Adam Smith Institute (ASI), a free market think tank, which recommended the abolition of all graduate Visas

    The report suggested net migration should be capped in the tens of thousands, a pledge made in recent weeks by Mr Jenrick as well as Tom Tugendhat, one of his Tory leadership rivals.

    I find this cynical hypocrisy literally sickening.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/09/18/robert-jenrick-ending-mass-migration-strongest-yet/

    1. When cartoonists such as Matt are making jokes like that you know that the reputation of the subject, 2TK, has been entirely trashed.

  13. Good morning, chums. And thanks, Geoff, for today's NoTTLe site. (Only just made Wordle in 6.)

    Wordle 1,189 6/6

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    1. Good morning Elsie! Similar here…
      Wordle 1,189 5/6

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  15. Why Ed Miliband risks a smart meter shock. 20 September 2024.

    Smart meters, for many owners, have failed to live up to the name. Online forums are filled with complaints from people who have received huge bills or ridiculous consumption figures after energy suppliers installed the internet-connected meters in their homes.

    In one case, a customer was billed over £1,000 a day for gas when his smart meter ignored the decimal points in his reading. In another, a smart meter in a communal hallway, home to just two lightbulbs, led to an estimated annual charge of £6,150.

    This is the reason, apart from giving someone else remote control of my electricity supply, that I ignore their threats.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/09/18/smart-meters-faulty-dumb-problem-for-net-zero/

    2. It just proves that politicians know nothing about anything. He's jumped onto a band wagon trying to justify his appointment.
      Before they poke their uneducated noses in. Listen to, read and learn from public opinion.

  17. Good morning all.
    A dull but dry 9°C start this morning with an auction collection run up to Ossett planned.
    Hope to get away by 08:30ish.

  18. ' Morning All
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/40ecaf95fafdf75af859c333a907a70fa94630ba3333ff4cf9554ee8cd0f0670.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5c19640d436f587877c69c9ed5d09000382f777a4a93ba9c11ce568bd3c4af64.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7e72141c721ff0a8d9131af2e7b5d26169ceda37965e9e918d5a0fb6abb70789.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/388fc376c5d9dd715e2b24c5990c4f150f283f490c56e6f42aa3024b430679e1.jpg
    http://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9e896caa02b7c05dd0892996769aea124089cb05f01670690387a1bf82dffd4a.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e5e0f3a8accf74400bd945dd972f4e9584a4443aac402164f4491f44ba81a4bf.png
    To finish remember one of my memes from yesterday???
    https://x.com/dannyjokes/status/1836823264775262505?s=61&t=OIhBwK4IuJecyhwVe9U2Jw

    2. Spot on as ever.
      The first one reminds me of a joke.
      The neighbour is in her garden and can see the young girl next door digging a hole in her own garden.
      She tells her neighbour that she is going to bury her goldfish. The neighbour replies, but that's a big hole for a little gold fish. The little girl replies,…….well, it's inside your cat.

  19. Good Morning Folks,
    Cloudy mild start here, stormy weather predicted for later.
    The cloud seeding is working.

  20. It’s not inevitable that assisted dying would endanger the vulnerable

    More evidence that we are being farmed by the globalist powers that be and all the measures are being put in place for the human husbandry to run smoothly.

    2. There is a genuine issue here, but any assisted dying law brought in will not be the solution for a just and compassionate society, though it certainly will be a final solution for many people.

      THEY (The Hierarchy Exploiting You) are doing their usual thing of creating a problem then offering people a 'solution'

  22. 'Morning, Peeps.

    it's been a long time coming:

    "Rolls-Royce lands SMR deal
    Rolls-Royce SMR has been chosen by the Czech Government as the preferred partner to develop small modular reactors in Czechia".

    The question is – when will RR have the contract to build SMRs in this country – or is Minibrain going to prefer unreliable bird-choppers?

    1. 1. Nuclear? Never, Hugh J.
      2. Minibrain prefers bird-choppers and solar panels; all objections from farmers and local communities will be overruled.
      3. He takes no account of hook-up and transmission costs.
      4. Minibrain's energy regime will be very unattractive to any energy-intensive industry.

  23. Back in the day, politicians used to receive brown envelopes, allegedly, also known as a bung and it was considered very sleazy and career ending if caught, even jail time.
    Nowadays the PM has got rid of the brown envelope sleaze.
    He has brown packages instead, all now considered just part and parcel.

    1. If they still used envelopes, only Amazon would have enough of them, workforce to fill them and trucks to deliver them.

      And Amazon would tell the polytishuns to get stuffed

    3. They got rid of Elizabeth Filkin and now help themselves to what has become known as 'expenses'.
      But the bungs will still be part of the act. But well disguised.

  25. I like the way this chap thinks…
    "I think battery metals and the whole battery metals theme is possibly the stupidest thing I've ever seen in the mining sector," said Irwin. "How on earth can you run a battery metals fund when you have no idea what metals are going to go into batteries? They're changing every three to six months."

    "And that whole EV nonsense—any copper company I'm involved in, I say, 'whatever you do, please don't put a stupid EV in your presentation,'" said Irwin.
    https://www.kitco.com/news/article/2024-09-19/please-dont-put-stupid-ev-your-presentation-rosseau-asset-managements

  26. That's me dressed, had two mugs of tea, travel mug of tea prepared and ready for the off.
    See you later.

    2. There was a young lady from Ossett
      Who went into a railway closet
      But when she got there
      It was nothing but air.
      Which wasn't a pennyworth was it?

        1. Another privy thought:

          I feel I must write a complaint on this wall:
          The seat is too high and the hole is too small.

          Reply:

          I feel I must write the obvious retort:
          Your bum is too big and your legs are too short.

        1. Ossett was known for its production of top class shoddy (recycled wool, also known as rag wool), It was bombed by a lone German aircraft which was probably lost and intended for a larger nearby town. Ten bombs were dropped No one was killed, but a number of chickens perished.

          2. I had the honour to be an occassional guest cricket umpire for cup matches in the Heavy Woolen League.

            The district is made up of parts of the modern day boroughs of Kirklees, Leeds and Wakefield in West Yorkshire, England. Located around the towns of Dewsbury, Batley, Heckmondwike and Ossett, the area extends to the towns and villages of Liversedge, Gomersal, Gildersome, Birkenshaw, Mirfield, Cleckheaton, Morley, Tingley, East Ardsley, Birstall and Horbury.

  27. Morning all 🙂😊
    Again unfortunately solid grey in the vast sky.
    I'm not quite sure what to make of today's headline. I guess it will depend on the circumstances and who may be in charge of the situation.
    Is there a working list of candidates at the moment ? 😉

  29. Good morning all
    Bluish sky , sunshine slight breeze, 15c. and what was that warning about thunderstorms .

    Re the DT letters about butterflies .

    My observations are .. Sterile cow pooh.. once upon a time years ago , piles of cowpats were nice and ripe and soggy looking , they attracted lots of flies , beetles , and sometimes thirsty butterflies .

    These days , cowpooh are just lumps of brown matter , dries out pretty quickly and not one cloud of insects , dung beetles or even a passing butterfly sitting on the clod .

    Cattle , sheep and horses/ponies are probably so chockerblock with whatever farmers dose their animals with , no wonder insects are low in number ..

    What do you think?

  30. Good morning everybody.

    Free speech has new articles on a usually (conveniently) neglected aspect of the African slave trade and, if you missed it, a good piece by Demosthenese on Huw Edwards on the cesspit of perversion that is now the BBC.

    Hope you'll read and comment.

    freespeechbacklash.com

  31. Why did Lammy, Foreign sec in trainers, rabbit on about global warming being responsible for the great trek to Britain , and why didn't he suggest the growth of Islamification was the real cause of discontent and people movement .

    The same as in the fifties and sixties in this country , the great trek of those emigrating on £10 tickets to Australia etc was Socialism and Commie attitudes in the UK.

    2. I'm still sceptical about why we never heard about this until now. Yet according to this article, Starmer was in possession of the damning facts twenty years ago but they never leaked out?

      1. Oh come on please don't be so naive. Why was he refused British citizenship? If I knew stories about him, then surely all of Harrods female staff would have been aware of the situation.
        And as for those sadfaced goodtime girls, the bright ones would have picked up six months wages for a weekend in the South of France. Travelling by private jet, so well away from anyone who might have recognised them.

        1. Did you know stories about him that corroborate the ones being circulated now?
          Also, Fayed was involved in two high profile events in the nineties in London, and made a LOT of enemies. I just have no opinion based on bad stuff said about him that only surfaces years after his death.

          1. 100 ladies hoping for a no-questions-asked bonus payment 20 or 30 years later, now that the boss is no longer available to remind them about the gold jewellery, envelopes of cash and weekends abroad. He may have been despicable, but he was a businessman. Assaults possibly, but r*** is a crime of violence.

    4. Apparently the case "didn't cross his desk".
      It would actually be easier to list the cases that did cross Starmer's desk during the five years he held the post.
      When counting them, I doubt you'd run out of fingers.

      1. "didn't cross his desk"

        Most likely 'under the counter'.

        'Under the counter" – something that is sold/traded secretly and illegally. It can also mean unauthorized or clandestine. In British and Irish colloquial usage, it describes doing something in an underhand or sneakily unofficial way, especially related to payment or tax avoidance.

        The man has previous.

      3. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/politics/2024/09/19/TELEMMGLPICT000394594232_17267662480880_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqfAKFeavpUYQdeD-qo-8t2AMv3jdrIYhX2t8ylRnqnWA.jpeg?imwidth=680

        Chris Renier
        1 min ago
        Perhaps he is a closet Tory, who is trying to trash this government.

        Jonny James
        14 hrs ago
        So…at least two senior members of the government, including the PM, are in the pocket of Alli, a Muslim peer. Does this explain Starmer & Co’s policy towards shunning Israel and the very obvious policy of appeasing pro Palestine marchers in London ? I’m afraid the gullibles who voted this corrupt and greedy bunch in to power should apologise – and we the people of Britain are now in a very bleak and dangerous place.

    2. Perhaps some of the other people in Parliament will get their finger's out and hold a rebellion. Get rid of them all before they do any more harm and damage.

  34. Morning, all Y'all.
    Foggy again.
    Had to log in this morning, and what a performance! Forgotten password, finally the system relented and allowed me in.
    :-((

    1. It seems all our dull weather is coming from your neck of the woods Obs……'ave a word matey. 🤔😂

    2. Learnt the lesson some time ago when a computer went kaput. Now I have a small book in which I record all passwords and other essentials. Never fully trust the computer.

  35. Another good guess. There are between 8 and 60 thousand five letter words in the English language, depending on who's counting, and to get it in three attempts is remarkable. I pick a word at random then search for words that contain any of the successful letters. No cheating.
    Wordle 1,189 3/6

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    2. Pure luck. It was between this and that and I figured that was more likely.

      Wordle 1,189 3/6

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  36. 393187+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    My view ? leave as is,

    We have "shipmans" walking among us, that creature was NOT a one off, then we have the "excess deaths question still to be answered or are those political / pharmaceutical elites seeking a legal tag ? consent or NO consent.

    Can the silhouette of Auschwitz be seen in the near distance ?

    Dt,

    Friday 20 September: It’s not inevitable that assisted dying would endanger the vulnerable

    1. 393187+ up ticks

      O2O,,
      Are the political / phama. elite jabbers looking for a James Bond licence may pne ask?

    2. It seems to me fair that if a person is in full command of his/her faculties they should have the right. What bothers me far more is the practice of putting DNR on peoples medical information when the person has not requested it but some bureaucrat has decided. That, apparently, is far more common than we would like to admit. And, on top of that, the Liverpool pathway is downright cruel. A method in which your mouth ends up stripping away the flesh in your mouth through lack of moisture. So you are starved of food and denied water. A quick needle is better.

          1. I was brought up a Catholic and taught that suicide was an act of despair, the unforgivable sin.
            Attractive though it may appear as an easy exit from appalling illness in my interior I cannot avoid believing that it is the worst mistake you can make in your life.

          2. If the media put as much effort into suggesting possible solutions as they do into trying to persuade people to support legalised killing of non-financially productive people, we’d all have the answer to that one! Meanwhile I believe there are fora on the internet devoted to this subject…

          4. That is because I’m not an expert in suicide. My point is that a lot of pressure is being put on people to outsource killing to the state, instead of exploring ways in which people could kill themselves without the state getting involved. Can you think of anything that the state does better than well-informed, solvent individuals?

          5. I would be quite content, and I suspect the majority would be too, if the government allowed a formula that one could buy and would insure a quick and painless death. Leaving it up to the private sector would invite the same thing as people selling LSD laced with horse tranquillizers and the like. my point is, obviously, that the state has to be involved in order to prevent that sort of exploitation.

          6. I believe that such things are already available legally in other countries but as I said I am not an expert. What the proposed law change will give us is state executions like the one described in the Telegraph (?) article in Canada, which is a very different thing.

          8. Sorry about you losing your friend Conway. Death is inevitable but nothing actually makes it good.

    3. From Coffee House, the Spectator

      A chillingly seductive glimpse of assisted dying
      Comments Share
      A few weeks ago, I was present when my aunt, a Canadian citizen born in the UK, chose to die through euthanasia, or as it is euphemistically called in Canada, Medical Assistance in Dying or MAiD. Being British, I wasn’t familiar with the process. What I saw horrified me, but it was also chillingly seductive.

      My aunt was 72 and in the early stages of motor neurone disease. She had lost the use of one arm but though frail, was living independently and had perfect mental acuity. She was an artist who had worked in the theatre for 40 years designing beautiful and elaborate costumes. For several decades following her divorce she had lived determinedly alone and was not prepared to become an invalid. She made the decision to die freely and against the wishes of her family. She was, by any measure, the perfect candidate.

      My aunt made the decision to die freely and against the wishes of her family. She was the perfect candidate
      It was frighteningly easy to organise. Having been diagnosed with a terminal condition in February, she had received instant pre-approval. She made a phone call on a Sunday afternoon (yes, you can dial-a-death at weekends but try getting a regular medical appointment) and arrangements were made for her to die on Tuesday at 7 p.m.

      My aunt had wanted me with her at the end. She knew that I am a practising Christian (there is nothing like being brought up in the 1980s by self-proclaimed ‘radical vegans’ to drive you into the arms of the church) and I sensed that deep-down she was conflicted about religion – that beneath all the crystals and dream-catchers there was still a remnant of the faith that as a teenage art student in late-1960s London she had dismissed as stuffy and old-fashioned.

      I was very honest with her in the days and hours before her death. I made it clear I didn’t approve of euthanasia and would be saying prayers for her as she died. She responded with her usual flippancy: ‘Oh no, it’s not going to be too Goddy is it?’ I didn’t tell her that I intended to read the Anglican prayers for the dying and was left with a conundrum: how to give her what I knew she wanted but which might nevertheless upset the rebellious part of her even in her final moments.

      At lunchtime on Tuesday, a chatty, -pleasant-enough nurse turned up at her house and made conversation about local goings-on while she made repeated attempts to insert a cannula into my aunt’s skinny arm. I found myself becoming angry and had to step outside. How could someone in a supposedly compassionate role treat life so cheaply? I was worried that I would feel uncontrollable anger towards the doctor coming later. My cousin, my aunt’s son, had taken to calling him ‘The Killer’.

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      Job finally done, I heard the nurse leave with a cheery and oh-so-mildly–Canadian goodbye. As the afternoon bled into early evening my aunt’s two closest friends arrived and I found myself withdrawing to prepare for what had become a fait accompli. As the hour drew closer, I thankfully entered a state beyond emotion and was fixed entirely on my role as a minister of sorts.

      The doctor, a tall, awkward, middle-aged man, known jokingly in the town as ‘Dr Death’, arrived at 6.45. With him was a nurse, whose job was to assist by handing him the appropriate syringes containing the lethal cocktails of drugs. In a surreal scene – a new form of rite which will doubtless be coming to the UK soon – we gathered in the living room to witness my aunt’s imminent death. There were ten of us in total: my aunt, her two friends, five family members including two young granddaughters, and the doctor and nurse.

      There followed an emotional interlude involving many tears from my aunt’s teenage granddaughter which the bemused doctor and his nurse were forced to witness. He then muttered a few platitudes about it being my aunt’s decision not to suffer any more than she had to and injected her with sedative.

      In her last few moments of consciousness, I read out a short prayer which I had translated into Welsh. My aunt looked up in momentary surprise and delight at the sound of the language her father had often spoken at home, although, not being a Welsh speaker herself, she didn’t know that it was definitely Goddy: ‘Into your loving arms, O Lord, we commend your servant…’

      As the next syringe went in and the life drained from her, I was able to read the prayers for the dying aloud. The friends and family members in the room told me afterwards that they appreciated them, grateful that this traumatic occasion had been made into a solemn ceremony. The doctor, though, seemed unmoved. Less than a minute after declaring his patient dead, I heard him in the kitchen saying his goodbyes and chuckling at something, perhaps in relief that what had probably been an unexpected ordeal for him was over. I remained in the living room with my aunt’s body as her two friends closed her eyes and continued to hold her hand. The lovely, irreverent woman, with whom I had spent the morning going through her studio and picking out prints of her work to take home with me, was gone.

      For some reason, the nurse remained in the room a little longer than she needed to. I overheard her say to my aunt’s friend that hearing the prayers had ‘got to her’. It occurred to me that those who opt to die this way must seldom be believers. The clinical process of putting someone down – and I use the phrase advisedly – to which she had become inured had been met on this occasion with a belief in the soul, in God, in consequences.

      Fifteen minutes later, funeral directors turned up – they coordinate with the MAiD doctors and have a slick operation going (MAiD is now the fifth most common cause of death in Canada). My aunt’s body was zipped into a black nylon bag and trolleyed out to a van. She had bought a small wooden casket for her ashes so they wouldn’t end up in a plastic bag in her son’s kitchen cupboard like her late ex-husband’s, and arrangements were made for it to be delivered to the funeral home.

      By 7.30, all was quiet. It was all so easy and clean. My aunt hadn’t had to suffer a lingering illness like her two older siblings are still suffering, she never had to have a nappy changed and she got to leave her pension fund and house to her family instead of it being eaten up in care costs. The Canadian state also had a big win – a patient dying slowly from a wasting disease would have cost its national health system a considerable sum.

      There was a beguiling sense of emotional closure. Despite our protests, she had simply left
      There was also a beguiling sense of emotional closure. Despite our protests, she had simply left. There were no months and years of future suffering to contend with, no guilt at not having visited enough, no wrangling with doctors and care homes, no resentment at her money being bled away when it could go towards her granddaughters’ futures. It was difficult not to feel that in some ways she had given her family a gift.

      It also remains hard not to admire her bravery. Even with seconds to go, she was joking. When the doctor asked her whether she wanted to be upright in her chair or reclined, she said: ‘I don’t know, I’ve never done this before.’ Earlier that day, when we were discussing what music she would like to hear at her end, her son, still hoping to dissuade her, had suggested AC/DC’s ‘Highway to Hell’. She laughed. As the whole thing played out, there was also – and it’s horrible but necessary to admit – a macabre fascination in seeing someone alive and joking one minute, voluntarily dying the next.

      Dial-a-death proved, even for someone as implacably opposed to euthanasia as I am, seductive. It offered a small glimpse into how evil works: remove the sacred boundary and it becomes commonplace. Easily digestible. The norm. A planned review of MAiD in 2027 may see it extended to the mentally ill. Already in Canada, the default answer to prolonged physical and mental suffering is becoming what remains in the UK as -murder-suicide.

      ‘Satan himself masquerades as a shining angel,’ wrote St Paul. From what I saw, that turns out to be an uncharacteristic understatement.

      1. Satan has already invaded medicine. The disemboweling of living patients injected with paralysing drugs so they can't cry out, the injection of slow-acting toxins into people's bloodstreams, abortion based on the baby simply not having enough desired characteristics (eg being female), the eradication of people with Downs Syndrome. And that's before we even get to medical testing.
        These things are sold to us as saving lives through organ transplants and vaccines, pro-choice and the eradication of Downs Syndrome.

      3. Thank you Rob232. This is a long one.
        I cannot prevent myself from re-posting this item which I posted in nttl.blog on 13th December 2022, three days before my own bed-bound, dementia-suffering wife died, while on the Liverpool Pathway of Nil food or drink and Midazolam plus Morphine for sedation. She lived (or perhaps starved) on for 8 whole days, days which I never wish to re-live. Here is what I posted:

        Medical Assistance In Dying
        The article from the Spectator on MAiD (Medical Assistance In Dying), posted on December 11th by Sam Ashworth-Hayes made me angry. My own dear Wife of 57 years' marriage is hovering at End of Life and will almost certainly not last the week, or even tomorrow. I contacted a very close friend in British Columbia, who had recently attended the MAiD of an elderly friend. She gave me permission to publish her reply on NTTL. Here it is:

        My friend (a former Head Teacher and a committed Christian, whose late Husband was a Lay Canon in British Columbia) responded:

        QUOTE:"Canada is euthanising the poor, the mentally ill, the elderly, and those who are costly to treat” Not True.

        "The incentives for individuals and the state to behave in diabolical ways are simply too strong to be ignored” I do not accept that Canada is behaving in diabolical ways and the implication that Canada is killing people to save money really makes my blood boil. I believe that claim is, as you put it, “a gross distortion”.

        She continues: I learned the total Deaths per year in Canada is about 297 thousand. 10 thousand of which are Medically Assisted. Of these 65% had terminal cancer and over 80% were already in palliative care which means they had medication for anxiety and pain but no further treatment, and like Sue [my dying Wife] they had no real life at all.

        There are several steps in seeking Medical Assistance In Dying.To be eligible person must:
        • have a serious illness, disease or disability (excluding a mental illness until March 17, 2023)
        • be in an advanced state of decline that cannot be reversed
        • experience unbearable physical or mental suffering from your illness, disease, disability or state of decline that cannot be relieved under conditions that you consider acceptable

        You do not need to have a fatal or terminal condition to be eligible for Medical Assistance In Dying.

        People must also make the decision for the themselves and there must be evidence that they are not being forced into making that decision by others. For that reason mental illness was initially excluded. One could however, approve that the decision could be made by a named other in one's will and I suspect this is what will be confirmed in March ’23.

        My friend was 84. She was not terminal but had COPD and Crohn’s Disease; was on blood thinners and was exceedingly deaf. After two rectal haemorrhages, losing enough blood so that a transfusion was needed she was told she would have to be moved to another hospital for extensive exploratory surgery in order to find out what had caused the bleeding. She refused and elected palliative care. After a week of lying in bed she requested MAiD.

        There is a ten day waiting period and the doctor questioned her again regarding her request and then a day was set.

        As a Christian I believe in an after life although I have no idea what that might look like. Although I miss my late husband like crazy, I am not asking to die but I am certainly not afraid of it. The Anglican Church in Canada accepts a persons right to make the choice given the process above.

        So yes I do think the article is a gross distortion. MAiD is for the consolation of an individual and their caregivers, not for reasons of economy and getting rid of street people.
        END QUOTE.

        When I have had enough, my ideal exit would be by having access to at least 300 ml of Morphine Syrup. Glug it down and say Goodbye. Hopefully no need for assistance. But my father lived until almost 99, his sister until 103, my mother's sister until 100, so it may be a while.

        1. An afterthought while out trimming my hedge:
          Denying food and drink to a domestic animal for a week gets you locked up. Discuss.

    4. Every murderer that's ever been could claim that what they did was "assisted dying". The matter is complicated by the fact that the commandment actually states Thou Shalt Not Murder and not Thou Shalt Not Kill, therefore there it is necessary to differentiate between lawful and unlawful killing. War for the defence of the nation and execution for the crimes of treason and murder where proven beyond doubt should be the limits of lawful killing.

      1. 393187+ up ticks,

        Morning SE,

        I believe in the American system
        life means life No capital punishment.

        War instead of jaw is also out the window with me,especially when a third party, Country, pokes its beak in, innocent life losing / ammunition supplying , money making deals are the outcome.

      2. Sue, off topic, just a thought. Does the BBC hold any rights to Lawrence of Arabia the movie? (you know, like all those b&w films from Ealing or some such studio)
        The web being such a gigantic rabbit hole, I accidentally read that Phyllis Dalton the costume designer is still alive and aged 98, soon to enter into her hundredth year. She must be the last surviving senior member of the L of A production team, and also an Oscar winner, so the good lady might be worthy of a BBC tribute when the sad moment eventually arrives.

        1. Lawrence of Arabia was Columbia Pictures so will now be owned by Sony. Now that I sit in BBC Studios, I’m out of the loop as regards whether Programme Acquisition have any deal with Sony to show their movies. It’s quite possible that they do and that the studio will collaborate if a tribute is planned.

  37. On the theme of limericks , copied and pasted , but I have a wry smile.

    Keir Starmer
    There once was a fraud called Keir Starmer
    A caucasian type of Obama
    Not really forensic
    More like influensic
    Who turned out to be just a charmer

    David Lammy
    Our new Foreign rep David Lammy
    Whose theatrics should earn him a Grammy
    To Israel he flew
    Snubbed by Netanyahu
    The lesson is: don’t sell your granny

  38. Good Morning all you happy campers. Sunny day here in West Sussex. Did you know that we get more sunshine than any other English country? Could have fooled me.

    I see that my enquiry to the group has been answered by the Telegraph this morning. Lammykins our Foreign Minister, I use the term lightly, did indeed put his foot in it about the poor Armenians. To quote:

    “The Foreign Secretary’s reference to Azerbaijan’s ‘liberation’ of Nagorno-Karabakh is shockingly callous and ignorant,” he said.

    “In fact, exactly a year ago, Baku ethnically cleansed the region of its 120,000 Christian Armenian inhabitants in violation of an order from the International Court of Justice.”

    So that's alright then!!!

      1. If there are any foxes in your area, stick to chickens. Even guinea fowl are more intelligent than peafowl.

    2. Very sweet, but surely a fake? Don't tails.for display come with adult plumage? (I know nothing about peacock development, mind.)

      1. I don't think so. There were two different birds in the clip – the first had a crown, the later one didn't, unless it was the same peachick phographed later. The display feathers are NOT tail feathers either. http://www.birdzilla.com/learn/peacock-displays/ says:
        The peacock tail, commonly known as a train, is the species’ main trademark. It is made up of an array of elongated feathers in vibrant blues, greens, and iridescent hues. Contrary to popular belief, these feathers are specialized elongated upper tail coverts, not true tail feathers.

      2. I don't think so. There were two different birds in the clip – the first had a crown, the later one didn't, unless it was the same peachick phographed later. The display feathers are NOT tail feathers either. http://www.birdzilla.com/learn/peacock-displays/ says:
        The peacock tail, commonly known as a train, is the species’ main trademark. It is made up of an array of elongated feathers in vibrant blues, greens, and iridescent hues. Contrary to popular belief, these feathers are specialized elongated upper tail coverts, not true tail feathers.

      3. I don't think so. There were two different birds in the clip – the first had a crown, the later one didn't, unless it was the same peachick phographed later. The display feathers are NOT tail feathers either. http://www.birdzilla.com/learn/peacock-displays/ says:
        The peacock tail, commonly known as a train, is the species’ main trademark. It is made up of an array of elongated feathers in vibrant blues, greens, and iridescent hues. Contrary to popular belief, these feathers are specialized elongated upper tail coverts, not true tail feathers.

  40. Bad weather coming in quicker than I thought .

    When you have read this link and the article , who is Starmer modelling himself on ? https://formalverse.com/2020/10/03/odd-poem-prime-minister-clement-attlees-limerick/

    However , times are different now but I liked this observation .

    Perhaps surprisingly he failed to see the value of the beginnings of the EU, preferring a stronger Atlantic alliance if possible. He is alleged to have said in a speech: “The Common Market. The so-called Common Market of six nations. Know them all well. Very recently this country spent a great deal of blood and treasure rescuing four of ’em from attacks by the other two.”

    1. Some while ago I read an article by an economist who had studied and compared the economic growth of different countries after WWII. One notable conclusion was that the socialist economic policies of the Attlee government, with its nationalisation of various industries, had substantially stifled the growth of the economy and the wealth of the UK until the Thatcher government reversed them. That was about 30 years of missed opportunity that had to be caught up.

      Then there's the basket-case money-pit of the NHS, designed to a socialist top-down control model, that still hasn't been corrected.

  41. Alli, TTK and IHT
    After my dear wife died in Dec 2022, as executor I made her successful Probate application. Although legacies between spouses don’t attract any inheritance tax, no matter how large, it made me realise just how much IHT my surviving children might have to pay on their inheritances, especially gifts of money, when my time comes. So I have been putting my own probate documentation together for my own executors ahead of that event.

    There are plenty of stories of surviving spouses and executors who had no idea what assets their dead partner or parent held, or where to find that information, often held in password-protected spreadsheets on the family computer. One big problem is gifts that the dead person may have made to children or third parties over time.

    Sorry about this long preamble but I thought this morning about the possible situation if Lord Alli suddenly died or was killed in an accident next week. His executors would have to use many pages of form IHT403 [just Google IHT403 – it'll frighten you] to list all the gifts he has made over time to beneficiaries, so that HMRC can pursue those beneficiaries to pay tax on those gifts.

    You can see where this thought process is going, in connection with the largesse that TTK and his spouse have been receiving recently. I wonder if he will personally have to pay tax at 40% on those recent and very generous donations. Or perhaps, being a lawyer, he has set up a unique personal arrangement, like his own pension, so that he pays no tax on any of the gifts.

    1. Keeping financial records
      In his 1970 book "Up the Organisation", Robert Townsend, who as CEO took AVIS Rental to second in the world, said, if I recall correctly (or maybe paraphrase) "…and DON'T keep detailed records. When the IRS come looking, after your departure or death, let them WORK for the figures!"

      Although it might be a nice idea, for my children's sake I don't subscribe to those recommendations. I just keep good records that prove the gifts were from INCOME, not SAVINGS, so that they fall outside the IHT trap.

      1. and DON'T keep detailed records..
        Or, keep the correct detailed records.. if you know what I mean.

    2. 1/ No tax is due on any gifts you give if you live for 7 years after giving them – unless the gift is part of a trust. This is known as the 7 year rule.
      2/ Another rule.. usually when men die they have a neat and tidy file marked "Death" at the ready. Not so for the women.
      3/ Then, there is the trump card to be played when the whatsit hits the fan regarding lack of records, receipts and gifts.. "Dementia".

      1. I have a Death file at the ready. I favour the King James Version. As for financial assets, the company that looks after my investments keeps a record of my worth. I've discovered that one only needs a few thousand in savings and an ISA in order to be classed as having "personal wealth".

      2. Oh dear, Kowloonbhoy, did you really think I didn't know about the 7 year rule? And, for the information of other Nottlers, there's a 14-year rule for IHT if any of your legacy is in Trust – which mine is. I deliberately said "if Lord Alli suddenly died or was killed in an accident next week"., so that the 7 year rule of 40% IHT for Gifts would hit the fan in full.

        I hope you already have a neat and tidy file marked "Death", that includes all your passwords. I know of very few men (or women) who do, or have even thought about it. Fortunately my sister-in-law was the finance person in the marriage when my brother died before her.

        An elderly lady friend, wife of a successful builder, spent over 6 months, with my help on his computer, untangling his investments, gifts and purchases before she could provide numbers to her Solicitor for a Probate application. And I guess you know that Inheritance Tax falls due and has to start being paid within 6 months of death, or else interest is due. And then the Courts and Tribunals Service (AKA the Probate Office) takes at least 16 weeks just to deliver a Grant of Probate, if you are applying through a Solicitor that is. My wife's Grant of Probate took just 23 working days as I was applying as a mere member of the Public. I was lucky.

        Finally, re your item 3/ my dear wife died after a long descent into Dementia, so for me that's a bit of a downer too, hardly a trump card. Have you any evidence that it is? If so, I'd like to hear (or see) it.

    3. Never did I think that I would be able to raise a grim smile over inheritance tax and Labour bribes!
      That would certainly be an amusing scenario – not forgetting of course that in the sad event, his executors would be personally liable if they omitted any of the gifts from the list!

    1. So true.
      And Something else that the "Me Me
      Me ", political classes have obviously effed up. By not sitting and talking it all through properly.
      If a fridge can destroy lives and a block of flats in London, imagine the problems that EV charging would create in the same type of building any where else in the world.
      Let alone a long row of old terraced houses. With double yellow lines outside.

  43. Debt Hits 100% of National Income For First Time in 60 Years

    Public debt has hit 100% of GDP, the first time since the 1960s, landing a major headache for the Chancellor ahead of her October 30 fiscal showdown. Borrowing has blown past expectations, hitting £13.7 billion in August. Thanks to ballooning public service spending on pay and benefits….

    The ONS says debt now matches the entire economy, with the government £6.2 billion over its borrowing target this year. With a £22 billion black hole looming, analysts say a rosier economic outlook might give the Chancellor some breathing room – or force her to shift the goalposts. Don’t say the Taxpayers’ Alliance didn’t warn you…

    Guido September 20 2024 @ 09:16

      1. A new 'Green' law has been introduced by the Labour government and they must all be built underground to preserve the landscape.

  46. From GBNews
    Immigration and woke ideology has put 'English identity at risk', Robert Jenrick warns

    English identity is under threat from mass immigration and the metropolitan elite, Tory leadership frontrunner Robert Jenrick has warned.

    The Conservative hopeful has raised concerns over the effects of a mix of "unprecedented migration… the dismantling of our national culture, non-integrating multiculturalism and the denigration of our identity" – which he said has "presented huge problems".
    though he called the UK an "open and tolerant nation, perhaps more so than any other country on Earth" where "people of every background have not just come to England, but, over time, become both English and British", he raised fears over the sheer scale of immigration to this country.

    The influx of migrants has taken its toll on England's "culture, customs and cohesion" – putting the "very idea of England at risk", Jenrick wrote in the Mail.
    While economically, a surge in mass migration has left neither England nor the rest of the UK any richer, he said.

    Despite the public having "consistently voted against all of this", he said the mood among the metropolitan elite – who "actively disapprove" of this country's culture and history – is far removed from that of everyday English people.
    The establishment has "denigrated and mocked expressions of English identity" – while its members "seem happier celebrating other cultures instead", he added.

    Jenrick cautioned how "those in Westminster are underestimating the depth of anger in the country" – and warned how it will be impossible to "heal our divided nation if we refuse to confront complex issues about identity".

    1. jr, In paragraph 3 of your post above, can I make a small change? "…multiculturalism and the denigration of our identity" – which he said has "presented huge problems". Whoops! knock on the front door…

      1. I have started posting on X. But I do not use my real name and always make sure that I'm in Azerbaijan or some other distant place, Cambodia is fun. It is, I think, essential for everyone posting anything either to do with politics or history, to have a VPN otherwise the knock on the door can become real. According to Rafe Heydel Mankoo we now live in a situation where: "It's the British State v. the British people." And according to Harry Miller of Fair Cop', we now live in a police state, in which the separation of powers between the police, the judiciary and the government have been removed.

        Former Police Officer Exposes Two-Tier Policing
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KsIwc2gx4o

        1. I had a Polish uncle, now long deceased, who used to warn that we were sleep walking into a police state. He wasn't taken seriously.

    2. Where has he been for the past 14 years to finally come to this obvious conclusion.
      Oh wait, he is seeking the leadership, now he thinks saying this will garner a few more votes.

      1. Amazing how they all suddenly realise this when they want something, yet have done absolutely nothing about it during their time in office.

      1. I think he noticed a long time ago, as have the rest but, as a member of the elite he must do a charade.So, he is up for erection, and so is pretending to give a flying intercourse.

    1. Hey, Guys! Take a look at what I just found stuck in the sofa! (Ten billon here, ten billion there…)

      2. Apparently if your joint income is more than 332.95 (or something similar) per week you are not entitled for heating allowance. Irrespective of whether you own your own or rent a property. Apparently if you have any savings, unless you draw down the savings are not included in your overall income.
        Surely it should be estimated after existing monthly expense. Which would mean most people would have zero income. And qualify as do all immigrants, for endless subsidises.
        Helpful benefits are Seemingly not applicable if you have worked all your life. Suported and brought today's tax payer's into the world.

        1. These bastards WANT you to die – quickly; so that all their slammer pals can move into your house….

      3. Apparently if your joint income is more than 332.95 (or something similar) per week you are not entitled for heating allowance. Irrespective of whether you own your own or rent a property. Apparently if you have any savings, unless you draw down the savings are not included in your overall income.
        Surely it should be estimated after existing monthly expense. Which would mean most people would have zero income. And qualify as do all immigrants, for endless subsidises.
        Helpful benefits are Seemingly not applicable if you have worked all your life. Suported and brought today's tax payer's into the world.

    2. P-Mum, it will be a VERY popular U-turn if they do decide to reverse the WFA fiasco for pensioners.

    3. I believe the government has said it will not restore the Winter Fuel Allowance despite the actions of the Bank.

      1. Aye, the WFA is an act of spite, not financial need. After all, 20 bn was found to pay back the unions and another 11 thousand million to spaff on 'green'.

    4. People don't understand that the pound is FKD. We've been living beyond our means for more than a century now, since we went off the gold standard it's been paid for by printing money.
      All the parties are equally to blame, as are voters who demanded more and more bribes.
      Removing the winter fuel allowance is just a forewarning of the end of the government looking after you from cradle to grave.
      It's payback time now. Not the oligarchs who pocketed most of the wealth – they won't be paying anything back. It'll be the common people who greedily lapped up the crumbs without asking where they came from who will now have to pay for the whole meal.
      And that is how the same small clique of banking families stay in control, generation after generation. Socialism for the rich.

      1. I agree – this is why voting should be restricted to net tax payers, past and present.

        This disenfranchises the entire public sector and all the welfare recipients.

    5. Having the BoE fiddle with the currency solely to let the government fiddle with policy is utterly putrid. It just demonstrates the collusion of Left wing institutions. The tax payer pays one way or the other.

      2. I don't have any gas at home. My building has a gas supply to the communal boiler room but not the individual flats. When there's a power cut, I go down to the reception area, which always has light plus the duty porter does the communications with the leccy company. The local power substation is in our garden so we have a better idea of what's going on than our neighbours (and know when the leccy company are lying about already having someone working on it).

  49. Another headllne from this larf-a-minit "government:

    "Jess Phillips: I’m ‘apoplectic’ domestic abusers were freed without tags"

    Well, pet, blame the government of which YOU are a part…..

    1. Of course if released criminals were issued with handy pocket pagers, Jess would be among the first to squeal about ooman-roits.

    3. It is a bit funny how they forget that it's actually their responsibility to speak up. Too busy climbing the greasy pole.

      1. He's normal then. No one – no one – likes sprouts. Or cabbage.

        People eat them – and chew them for 30 years – because they mistakenly believe they either like them or that they're good for you. It is a form of Stockholm syndrome. The conviction that you like sprouts when, quite clearly and obviously, no one does.

        They're disgusting.

          1. That's ok. People can help you with this psychosis. It's OK to admit you are normal and don't like them.

            Take the off the boil, save the water. Put the awful things in the bin. You can do it. You are worth more!

      5. The like or dislike of sprouts has been shown in some people to be genetic, depending on whether an individual can or cannot taste a particular bitter flavour chemical that sprouts contain. The ability to taste the flavour is genetic, those who have the gene to taste it cannot bear to eat sprouts, those without that gene cannot taste the bitterness and can like sprouts.

  52. Heading north to Calais. I stayed just outside Troyes last night in a quirky old French hotel. The owners were mad as a box of frogs…or drunk…I think both.

      1. I’ve used the ferry in the past but the tunnel this time.

        On the way over, I arrived in Folkestone an hour early and was offered an earlier train which I took.
        I’ve been sitting in Calais for two hours having arrived at 2.00pm for my booking at 6.15pm (Frog time) but there are signs up saying there are unexpected delays and my reservation might be pushed back. Pas heureuse.

        1. When we went to France two week ago today – there was a two hour delay. Returning last Sunday the train left (only) ten minutes late.

          Eurotunnel’s problem is that their rolling stock is now 30 years old and needs to be replaced. Most trains will have travelled a million miles. But they cannot afford to do so. Thus the problems will just get worser and worser.

    2. Was it one of those places with very violent wall paper which went over the door as well? I got lost in one of those one night when trying to find the loo.

  53. What is the real news that the al Fayed story is supposed to be distracting distracting the public's attention from?

    2. I don't suppos al Fayed was an especially nice person but I still despise the modern trend for trashing the reputations of dead men when it's clearly done for personal gain.

      1. Agree Sue. It is at the extreme end of kicking someone when they are down. It actually strikes me as cowardly.

      2. According to a friend, Mrs Fayed is an especially nice person, kind and generous. As for her late husband, his proclivities were well known and I would imagine that he rewarded most, if not all, of those young ladies. Regret is not the same as r*pe.

      3. Apparently they reported the incidents at the time and they were not followed up. Were the police complicit with the fat millionaire? They wouldn't be taking bribes from some very rich person, would they? No, not possible, especially when the Chief Prosecutor was such a prominent and well trusted member of the community.

      4. He opened a restaurant/gift shop at Shin Falls near Lairg in Sutherland. Excellent food at a decent price although the gift shop bits were expensive. He owned an estate near there and there was a full size replica of him on a plinth in the restaurant wearing a kilt (the cheek of it). Many people would lift up his kilt on the way past just to see if the rumours were true.

      5. Giving his wealth and propensity for suing the arse off anyone who offended him, I suspect that, as much as they may have wanted to take action before he died, I can fully understand why they waited.

    4. Next week there is a UN meeting where they are pushing forward with all sorts of sinister stuff like digital ids and Agenda 2030? Gold is hitting all time highs?

    5. As you read this, the closing days of the 11th INB meeting are unfolding, and the WHO is in its final push to ram through the articles of the Pandemic Treaty.

      These articles will dictate what you can and cannot do, in the event of a future pandemic, stripping away your freedoms and handing unprecedented control of your life to unelected global elites.

      These last moments are critical.

      The WHO is desperate to get this treaty signed, rushing negotiations and hoping we’re too late to stop them.

      But we still have a chance—your voice can make a difference in these final hours.

      Stand up now and sign the petition urging the UK Ambassador Simon Manley CMG to reject the WHO Pandemic Treaty before it’s too late.

      We cannot afford to lose this battle.

      The choices made in these final negotiation rounds will determine the future of your freedoms. Time is running out, and the stakes are incredibly high.

      Please act now to protect your rights and ensure that our voices are heard before it’s too late.

      Thank you for your unwavering support.

      Sebastian Lukomski and the entire team at CitizenGO

      P.S. If you have already signed, please share the petition with your friends. Every signature helps!

    1. There is a theory that if we all stood shoulder to shoulder, we'd fit in to Texas. Anyone fancy testing the theory?

      2. Who do you mean by we Sue? If you mean the English we are tiny. Our entire country is only one third the size of Texas.

        1. Well quite. The theory is that the whole of humanity would fit in to Texas – by way of illustrating that the world is not overpopulated. Therefore it would definitely accommodate all anti-globalist dissenters?

          2. Physically fitting and living are completely different. Each of those people needs 10 litres of clean water a day, a certain amount of protein, vitamins and minerals from live stock and plants.

            They also require clothing, fuel and work as just standing there would have us all die from exhaustion very quickly.

            We are a grossly over crowded country. We shouldn't be so. It is an odd conceit that Lefties ignore everything they use, as if it magically appears.

  55. DM headline "Elderly driver, 70, pleads guilty to killing eight-month-old baby when her pushchair was hit by car outside hospital"

    This is a very sad case. But, "elderly"? At 70? Really?
    The implication is that the driver was some doddering old fool who shouldn't have been behind the wheel. Surely that's not the case for an average seventy year old? One can have a terrible accident at any age.

      2. Three score and ten in the Bible is the active lifespan. Thereafter is decline, though more rapid for some.

    2. Anyone thinking I'm a doddery old driver can come for a spin in the van with me.
      I think the road from Cromford to Clay Cross via Lea Bridge, Lickpenny and Ogston Reservoir will change their minds!

  56. Morning all, it is a cooking morning in the VVOF household today where over a dozen meals have been prepared, cooked and is now cooling ready to be stored in the freezer.
    Of course it is no coincidence that earlier this week I was notified of the price increase in my energy costs starting in October.
    I am starting to consider a move to Africa, I hear they have an £11.6bn bung heading their way. That should help with my energy costs.

    1. What makes you think that any of that eleven billion will work it's way down to the peasantry – or are you thinking of becoming an instant emporer?

      1. Thinking through this "aid" malarkey, we give large quantities of cash to African rulers in return for them seniding millions of their people to Europe. Yet people who did that 300 years ago were the bad guys?

        1. Hell no, Canada has given VW billions to build an EV factory but they have only just reached the “Breaking ground” stage.

          1. It won’t be VWs they’re buying but Merc’s and Beamers for all he cronies. The will want petrol or diesel not EV’s.

  57. Well, that was a good run up the M1 & back, despite the 50mph restrictions on over half the mileage!
    Off at Jn40, a bit under 1 mile to the auction depot, pick up and back onto the M1 well within 30 minutes!

    If anyone wants some small, hand held Union Flags for a village event or celebration, let me know, I've a few hundred to shift and I'm certain we could work out a deal!

    3. How about donating the flags to MP Emily Thornberry? She could make amends for her white van man accusations of a few years ago as well as being given a reminder that Foreign Affairs committees should look out for the indigenous!

  58. DT Live report

    11:12AM
    Foreign Secretary chairs Cobra meeting
    David Lammy, the Foreign Secretary, held an emergency Cobra meeting on Friday to discuss the escalating crisis in the Middle East, Sky News reported.

    Mr Lammy met with senior Foreign Office officials after a wave of pager and walkie-talkie blasts killed dozens in Lebanon on Tuesday and Wednesday.

    I very much doubt if our nation's enemies even noticed this item but the thought of David Lammy chairing any meeting surely scares me.

    1. Did he happen to mention that he was disappointed not to be offered any new suits etc from a mystery donor, only a pager and walkie talkie.

    1. Mongo steps on my face. It's a bit of a shock. He doesn't mean to, I think he thinks he's patting me on the head but his paws are the size of new loo rolls.

      1. Yes, offering a paw is probably also an attempt to stroke us, by way of reciprocating that gesture of affection?

        1. In Kadi's case, a prod with a paw is usually a reminder than I'm late giving him his tea (or I've forgotten to clean his teeth after his breakfast – which really means he wants the Dentastix that follows).

    2. The caption says: The Triumph of Bacchus. I wrote this ages ago and forgot to press 'post'. Perhaps that's what that object by the computer was supposed to remind me of.

    3. I think the picture is 'How to get down from an Elephant..'

      But of course the answer is: You can't get down from an elephant, only from a duck!

    4. The picture represents the moral of not being able to achieve your desires by aiming too high.

    7. Amongst other thing Bacchus is the God of fertility, perhaps his falling off is to hope the newly weds were not quite as as fecund as George III and Queen Charlotte who were a tribute to his powers. They had 15 children.

  62. I don't know the name of the Guest On Vine this morning but she had dyed red hair.
    She seemed to be suggesting that Nigel Farage was inciting violence because of some of the things he has been saying.
    If certain people react in a violent way towards him perhaps they feel guilty and therefore he is actually making his honest and correct assessments to the current situation. Apparently he's also had violent threats towards himself.

    2. The Beeb has just reported that he received a standing ovation at the end of his address to the party. I'm certain I could hear the studio crew swearing and spitting in the background.

      1. Nigel Farage's address to the Party conference is scheduled for 4p.m. According to my watch, that's two hours hence . . .

  63. BBC Look North – Leading story today: A full Smartphone ban (no phones on site, including smart watches, headphones) at Sheffield Secondary School , Forge Valley High..

    No pagers either? How are they going to control the little blighters?

      2. Life imprisonment for wanton cruelty – unless he is a paedophile, in which case a top post in the BBC or a cabinet appointment with special privileges and immunity from prosecution.

    5. Every right thinking man should be relieved to know how such satisfaction can be achieved particularly if their highly paid right hand man is a woman!

  66. Just had my profession's (IET) magazine delivered today and and an article shows the various global contributors to greenhouse gas emissions (in CO2 equivalents) by sector -source https://ourworldindata.org/ .

    Our net zero supremo should note that by far the greatest culprit is the increasing generation of electricity and power which exceeds agricultural emissions by a factor of three.

    I can only conclude that the current Government's plans to convert agricultural land in the UK from farming into electrical power generation and distribution is not a sustainable solution for the UK's population.

  67. Blimey, we can now add Fayed to the list off monsters that have been missed by Keir Starmer.
    He does appear to have butter fingers.

  68. DON'T TELL UNCLE BILL THE RESULT. HE GETS VERY ANGRY WHEN SELFISH PEOPLE SPOIL HIS FUN.
    https://i8.cmail19.com/ei/j/8C/565/229/csimport/GettyImages-2172302135.130227.jpg
    Southampton: Cricketers from the Island Sailing Club and the Royal Southern Yacht Club play their annual match in the middle of the Solent on the Brambles sandbank, which appears for around 30 minutes at low tide. The victor is decided before the game is played, with teams taking alternate turns at winning.

  69. Mouse crawling out of meal forces plane to make early landing. 20 September 2024.

    “Believe it or not. A lady next to me… opened her food and a mouse jumped out,” wrote one passenger, Jarle Borrestad, on his Facebook page, along with a photo showing him smiling next to two other women, also smiling.

    A spokesman for SAS, Oystein Schmidt, told AFP that “in line with our procedures, there was a change of aircraft” and the passengers were flown to Málaga, Spain, on another flight.

    “This is something that happens extremely rarely,” he said of the incident.

    There’s no answer to that.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/20/mouse-crawling-out-of-meal-forces-plane-to-make-early-landing

  70. One has to ask what exactly is assisted dying.

    Electrical cardioversion is no more than assisted dying because it is neceaasry to completely stop the heart to get it back into a sinus rhythym – yet that short period of death is not considered harmful (unlessthe heart cannot be restarted afterwards).

    Just shows that some accepted treatments can be truly shocking!

      1. Yes, but the only way of irretrievably coming back from the dead is for the heart to start beating within a specified period – and what would that be?

        After three minutes without your heart beating your brain would be knackered – you’d not be really dead but brain dead.

        https://www.nth.nhs.uk/resources/what-happens-if-my-heart-stops/

        If you are brain dead you will probably lack capacity under the Mental Health Act to make a decision about the management of your health – without having designated a Power of Attorney for Health matters your treatment will become the responsibility of the Court of Protection.

        https://www.gov.uk/courts-tribunals/court-of-protection.

        1. I just thought with her getting the drop on news one day early she might already have access to tonight’s lottery results….

  72. The law really is a ass.
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13873301/Burglar-phobia-kitchens-stabbed-prison-canteen-payout.html

    A convicted burglar left with a phobia of kitchens after being stabbed 16 times whilst working in a prison canteen has been handed a massive £5.5m compensation payout after suing the Ministry of Justice.

    Government lawyers had argued that because burglar Steven Wilson, 36, had 'next to no history' of having earned an honest penny in his life, a multimillion-pound payout would be 'out of accord with what society would perceive as being reasonable'.

  74. And a secular song by Divna Ljubojevic. I posted her singing the Lords Prayer last Sunday.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJa_x_qbo6A&list=TLPQMjAwOTIwMjSNdAOZoxIzRQ&index=3
    I thought people would like a translation.

    Since I loved you
    Don't say anything to me now
    I'll recognize whatever you're thinking
    Just don't say you don't love me tonight
    I'll get over anything you do to me
    I'll do anything you want
    Tonight, just don't leave me

    Refrain
    Who did you hide from?
    The entire world is being wasted inside of me.
    Since I loved you
    My mind won't listen to me.

    Can anything hide
    On the face when the light pours over
    since I loved you
    Time does not go on

  75. What Britain will lose when Starmer guts the House of Lords

    An aerospace engineer, an undercover trucker and the man who put wheelchairs into taxis – Labour’s plan is a great brain drain

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2024/09/19/TELEMMGLPICT000392564587_17267667714550_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqjFpV3zLghMB3wGuClV8MJt9GB2zKrobWE2su8igHC98.jpeg?imwidth=680 The Government is moving to reform Parliament’s unelected upper chamber by removing the 92 remaining hereditary peers Henry Nicholls/AFP

    Iain Hollingshead
    20 September 2024 12:20pm

    Close observers of the news could be forgiven for thinking that it’s currently September 1999, not 2024. Not only are Oasis back in the spotlight, a barrister from north London with no previous ministerial experience sits on a three-figure majority and a Labour government is trying – again – to reform the House of Lords.

    Under the Weatherill Amendment in the House of Lords Act 1999, Tony Blair’s government reached a compromise whereby an electorate consisting primarily of 759 hereditary peers voted to save 92 of their number. In one of the stranger elections in British political history, turnout was recorded at 56.6 per cent, only marginally lower than that for the general election in 2001.

    A quarter of a century later, the government is coming for the remaining 92, citing unfinished business. “The hereditary principle in law-making has lasted for too long and is out of step with modern Britain,” says Nick Thomas-Symonds, Minister for the Constitution. “The second chamber plays a vital role in our constitution and people should not be voting on our laws in Parliament by an accident of birth.”

    Many will sympathise with a position that was clearly outlined in Labour’s manifesto and King’s Speech. Britain is one of only two countries in the world retaining a hereditary element in the legislature – the other is Lesotho.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2024/09/19/TELEMMGLPICT000000528142_17267671850580_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqzpLIMkIGUMcygT0RwMtmykikPYR0xYwuEBLwP9UFqPg.jpeg?imwidth=680
    Starmer’s plan for the House of Lords is a throwback to Tony Blair in 1999 PA

    It has, however, left Sir Keir Starmer open to charges of short-termism, party politicking and hypocrisy. There are no signs of other reforms called for by constitutional experts such as Sir Vernon Bogdanor, including statutory restraints on the Prime Minister’s power of patronage, public financing of parties and limits on political donations. And no one is suggesting removing the 24 Anglican Bishops who voted against the Conservatives 98.2 per cent of the time in the last session.

    Removing the hereditary peers will also focus minds on what will be lost in a process that Lord Roberts, a life peer, describes as “cutting a link with our collective past that goes back to the period of Magna Carta”.

    With the exception of a recent, snippy article in The Guardian, which decided to focus on the Duke of Norfolk, who has voted 12 times in 21 years (seven relating to hunting), and the Earl of Shrewsbury, who was suspended in 2022 for financial misconduct, even the most hard-hearted of neutral observers would concede that Parliament will lose an extraordinary breadth and depth of expertise when the hereditary peers finally step down.

    “We’ve already lost the voice of the military and the countryside,” says Lord Strathclyde, a former minister, chief whip and leader of the House of Lords. “We want to keep what we’ve got: peers such as Lord Remnant, who is a director of a FTSE 100 company, and Lord Trenchard, who knows more about Japan than anyone else in Parliament.”

    “It’s been very useful being a professional here,” says Charles Courtenay, a practising barrister in a regional firm and the 19th Earl of Devon. “The Environment Act was one of the first things to come my way in Parliament and I was able to change the law on conservation covenants. The loss of hereditaries will narrow the scope of the House of Lords – to its detriment.”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2024/09/19/TELEMMGLPICT000125060988_17267670818780_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqALc_t5KjuK6SvfNY518gx-YAaEPzjSynPgoekumHtZs.jpeg?imwidth=680
    Besides being a peer, Charles Courtenay, the 19th Earl of Devon, is also a barrister whose legal experience is of great benefit to the House of Lords John Lawrence

    Similarly, Earl Howe is widely praised for his contributions to the Health and Care Bill 2022, while the Earl of Caithness and the Duke of Westminster campaigned vigorously for cleaner waters in our rivers.

    “Why would you not want an expert on media in Parliament like Viscount Colville?” says Earl Attlee, grandson of the post-war Labour PM. “Or an engineer like Lord Ravensdale? The House of Lords is hideously London-centric. Whereas we came into Parliament without knowing anyone in the Westminster bubble.” Ravensdale is currently chief engineer at AtkinsRéalis, a Canadian engineering giant, and has a first-class honours degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Sheffield.

    Lord Attlee took his seat in 1992, served on numerous committees, twice held government posts and is currently focusing on the “harassment of heavy haulage industry by West Midlands Police.”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2024/09/20/TELEMMGLPICT000393726104_17268305547090_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqqVzuuqpFlyLIwiB6NTmJwWPw2b5__oFarkj5WlWIJuI.jpeg?imwidth=680
    Having first escorted a tank transporter in 1976, qualified as an army HGV driving instructor in 1981, ran NGO aid in Rwanda for much of 1995 and worked as a Battalion technical officer in Bosnia in the winter of 1997/8, the 67-year-old Earl decided to accompany a heavy haulage crew transporting beams for HS2 on May 3 to see for himself what was going on.

    Maintaining his cover when stopped by police (“Lord Attlee was careful to say as little as possible as his perceived socio-economic group was not consistent with being a driving assessor”), he has written up a full report on behalf of the road haulage industry that had asked him to intervene.

    “There’s no one else in Parliament who could do that,” he says. “And that’s what you’re going to lose.”

    Lord Borwick, a Conservative hereditary peer who entered the House of Lords in 2013 after a distinguished business career, agrees.

    “There are things that don’t work well in practice, but do in theory,” he says. “This is one of them.

    “The average hereditary peer is younger than the average peer. A higher proportion serve as whips, front benchers and committee members. And a much higher proportion contribute to speeches and amendment.”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2024/09/19/TELEMMGLPICT000002596101_17267671364970_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqzBsUlVM-NaGHrgIRCAjjqpj8BHc_kdmqG1IhlHAdzOo.jpeg?imwidth=680
    Conservative hereditary peer Lord Borwick, pictured in 2007, entered the House of Lords in 2013
    As chief executive and chairman from 1987-2003 of Manganese Bronze Holdings, which manufactures London black taxis, Lord Borwick was the first person in the world to make a taxi wheelchair accessible. Last year this saw him heavily involved in the Automated Vehicles Bill, chairing a group overseeing trials in Greenwich. He drives his own black taxi to Parliament, where he once overheard a policeman in the car park say to a colleague: “At least one peer has a proper job.”

    So will Lord Borwick, aged 69, and others fight the imminent loss of their latest jobs? “I have no right to complain,” he says, “but I think it’s a shame because you have a lot of people willing to put work in for virtually nothing. There are fantastic volunteers in charities across the country, but not so many in government.”

    Lord Carrington, a former governor of the Royal Shakespeare Company and chairman at Schroder, is now the King’s representative as the Lord Great Chamberlain, responsible for Westminster Hall, the Royal Gallery, the Robing Room and the King’s visits to Parliament, so he has to be diplomatic. But he “will be telling people what I’ve just told you, which is that, although my role is largely ceremonial, I would be less effective if I have both hands tied behind my back and don’t sit in the House of Lords.”

    Others are more bullish. “There is very much a mood for a fight,” says Lord Strathclyde. “Because what we’re talking about is the governance of the country. We want the House of Lords to be better than it was in the past. So this is an important constitutional question. There was a desire to consult in 1999, but we have no idea what the Labour Party have in mind now. There’s nothing proposed in its place: no introduction of democracy, no age or term limit. That’s what we object to most.”

    “We’re not the soft targets we were in 1997,” says Lord Attlee. “Any one of us can justify our position in Parliament. But to be honest, I’m fed up with being criticised constantly and unfairly by some parts of the media. So I’m quite happy to retire.”

    “I’ve enjoyed it,” says the Earl of Devon, “fully in the knowledge that as soon as we got a Labour government, our days would be numbered.”

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

    Nicholas Millman
    2 hrs ago
    Would rather have all the hereditary Lords back than the current crop of political cronies, failed politicians and consolation prize appointees. It worked fine before Blair wrecked it.

    Schrodinger's Parrot
    1 hr ago
    But it is okay to appoint the likes ‘Lady Lawrence’ to bleat ‘de pleece is rayciss’ and pay her more per day than a British pensioner gets to live on for a fortnight!
    Labour, the party of the working class!

      1. Or who have unsuccessfully stood, but failed to be elected as an MP. I only know of one case personally, which was of a local LibDem councillor, [edit I have taken out the name of the person concerned] who failed to be elected as local MP, but who was kicked upstairs into the Lords during the ConLibDem farce, under Cameron.

        I am not making any comment about the merits or otherwise of that particular person but simply that having failed at something should not make you a member of the HoL. Any more than being hairdresser to a PM's family, a donor who is wanting to buy a peerage, a race-baiting mum of a black person who was killed (how about Lee Rigby's mother getting a peerage?) or simply a political stooge is a reason for someone to have the ability (if not the brains or the knowledge) to affect the passage of our laws? Oh, and to be paid £300 a day just to sign in.

    4. May I politely mention that with a no-selfies rule on NTTL, there is no need for an image of Sir Blair accompanied by a load of political hereditary peers.

    5. I'm with Nicholas Millman [surely a NOTTLER?] – Keep the hereditary peers and bin the bunch of failed politicians, sports stars (?), and other over-recognised dross!

    6. The hereditary peers have a genuine connection to the land. Their forebears fought for it and preserved it and passed on a great heritage. Communism requires that to be swept away and replaced with the corruption we see engulfing the Commons. If the peers are to be barred from the Palace of Westminster then the monarchy too must go.

      1. "The hereditary peers have a genuine connection to the land."

        That's why Starmer wants to get rid of them.

      2. People who own half of Britain aren't going to betray the country. That's why snakes Blair and Starmer want them out.

    7. Couldn’t we get rid of the 717 life peers (failed MPs predominately) and just have the 92 heredtaries.

      2. This is a good cause for Farage's Reform Party to champion!

        Get rid of the placemen and former MPs and the bishops!

    8. The hereditary system isn't perfect, but it's a darn sight better than the assorted toadies, troughers and crooks that replaced it.

  76. Judge Censors Rotherham Child Rape Gang Survivor’s Demand to Deport Pakistani Abusers

    https://media.breitbart.com/media/2024/09/blank-white-landscape-7sn5o1woonmklx1h-640×480.jpg
    Mohammed Amar, Mohammed Siyab, Crown Prosecution ServiceCrown Prosecution Service

    Kurt Zindulka20 Sep 2024129
    4:06
    A British judge reportedly blocked the victim of a child rape gang victim from telling the court she wanted to see her abusers deported back to Pakistan.

    During the latest trial involving historic child sex crimes in Rotherham, the Sheffield Crown Court is said to have ordered that the unnamed female victim remove her pleas for the government to send the convicted grooming gang members back to their native Pakistan.

    According to a report from GB News, Barrister Matthew Bean said that “whether they [the abusers] remain in this country or not” is something that should be decided by the Home Office and should not be influenced by what “the victim should say one way or another.”

    In her original uncensored victim statement, the woman, who began to suffer sexual abuse from grooming gang at the age of 11, had planned to tell the court: “I’d like to request that after sentencing and upon Rudy [Mohammed Amar] and Showabe’s [Mohammed Siyab] release, that they should be deported back to Pakistan as this is where they originated from and came here to exploit children. Thank you.”

    Mohammed Amar, 42, was sentenced to 14 years in prison after being convicted of two counts of indecent assault, while Mohammed Siyab, 49, was sentenced to 25 years behind bars after being convicted of two counts of rape, one count of trafficking, and one count of having sexual intercourse with a child under the age of 13. They were among six men sentenced last week.

    Responding to the decision to curtail her remarks to the court, the woman told GB News: “If someone’s not born here and they’re here to exploit children, after the sentences they should be deported. There’s nothing to say that they’ll stop exploiting children. We can deport them and let their own country deal with them.

    “The Foreign Office should absolutely give Pakistan full punishment if they refuse to accept grooming gang rapists,” she added. “Those men need to be deported or Pakistan should have its visas restricted.”
    *
    *
    https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2024/09/20/judge-censors-rotherham-child-rape-gang-survivors-demand-to-deport-pakistani-abusers/

    1. Isn't it mandatory for foreign-born convicted criminals with a prison sentence of more than one year to be deported after their release?

  77. Words can provoke a few naughty chuckles. Here is an extract from a piece about Macron vs Barnier, dans la belle France:
    "On Friday, it emerged that he had proposed Ms Garnier – ……….. – as families minister to succeed Sarah El Hairy, a centrist who was the first female minister to make public her homosexuality and her pregnancy resulting from medically assisted procreation. "
    Sarah the Hairy, or Hairy Sarah? Edit, like a character from the Life of Brian.
    Particularly curious about the phrase 'medically assisted procreation'; would that have been the traditional turkey baster or a young doctor in his spare time?
    PS no disrespect to the happy mother, but her Moroccan parents could have made an effort to adapt their surname.

  81. The Russian pensioners sent to their deaths on the front line. 20 September 2024.

    Russian pensioners are being killed on the front lines of Ukraine after signing up to collect generous financial rewards for joining their country’s invasion force.

    An investigation into the deaths of Russian soldiers revealed that 250 volunteers aged over 60 years old have died since the beginning of the war in February 2022.

    I’m a pensioner. I can barely make it to the bus stop let alone the Assault Course.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/09/20/russian-pensioners-killed-at-war-in-new-wave-army-volunteer/

      1. From Coffee House, the Spectator

        The wickedness of Mohamed Al Fayed
        Comments Share 20 September 2024, 11:24am
        The allegations against Mohamed Al Fayed are dreadful: the former Harrods owner has been accused of raping five women and sexually abusing at least 15 others when they worked at his department store. A BBC investigation, which detailed the allegations, claimed that this abuse took place from the late 1980s to the 2000s.

        The name of the ‘phoney pharoah’, as Private Eye so aptly christened him, should live in infamy forever
        The consistent thread of the allegations against Al Fayed – who died last year aged 94 – was that he used his power and wealth to target women who worked for him at Harrods. Al Fayed, it seems, had a well-established modus operandi; he would prowl the floors of his store, looking for assistants or workers whom he found attractive. When he did, he would ply them with champagne before forcing himself on them. On occasion, he would take them to the former Parisian home of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Villa Windsor, and rape or assault them there. As one victim of his, Sophia, succinctly put it, ‘He was vile.’

        Al Fayed was always regarded with suspicion and distaste by the British establishment during his lifetime, and with good reason. Although he won a degree of public sympathy when his son Dodi was killed in the same car crash in 1997 that ended the life of Princess Diana, this sympathy soon evaporated when he made consistently false and self-publicising claims about the Royal Family’s complicity in his son’s death. He had a particular obsession with the idea that Prince Philip had masterminded the conspiracy, and would discuss the subject vociferously and tediously when given the slightest opportunity. He was a baleful, corrupt presence in public life, who achieved notoriety for bribing Conservative MPs with envelopes of cash to ask questions on his behalf in the House of Commons. For some bizarre reason, his actions were not believed to amount to a crime worth prosecuting.

        If the allegations against Al Fayed are true, it is clear that this was a man who should have rotted in prison. Questions must be asked how this mysterious, mendacious figure was able to use his wealth and connections to come so close to the Royal Family and within an inch of becoming father-in-law to the most popular former member of ‘the Firm’. We now know that, even as he was scheming his way into positions of influence, he was raping women with impunity, secure in the knowledge that his wealth and power would protect him from the reckoning that he so richly deserved.

        It is inevitable that, after the first flood of allegations, there will now be a torrent of further distressing stories about his behaviour. The new owners of Harrods can expect to be paying many millions in pounds in compensation for assaults that took place at the shop when he owned it. But financial reparations by themselves will only go so far. The name of the ‘phoney pharoah’, as Private Eye so aptly christened him, should live in infamy forever, alongside Jimmy Savile. His memory should be one of contempt.

        In the last two seasons of The Crown, Al Fayed appears as a major character, played by the actor Salim Daw. Although Al Fayed is introduced with classic villain music, all sinister chanting and drumming, he is portrayed at least semi-sympathetically in the show as someone who might be a Machiavellian schemer but is also a loving father and a tough, if unscrupulous, businessman. For all The Crown’s much-criticised sensational elements, it is now increasingly clear that its representation of Al Fayed was, in fact, far too generous, even rose-tinted. Al Fayed was a monster, a rapist and sexual predator, and it is astonishing, a year after his death, that the stories of his behaviour were not more widely known during his lifetime.

        1. How are the present owners of Harrods responsible for his behaviour and subsequent reparations. The benefactors of his estate should cough up

          1. IMHO no one should 'cough up', except possibly the Crown Prosecution Service if they suppressed any police investigation. Allegations are not evidence.

    2. .Me too – but shame after that start.

      Wordle 1,189 3/6

      🟩⬜🟩⬜🟩
      🟩⬜🟩🟩🟩
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

    3. Here's mine. Cant even remember the word.

      Wordle 1,189 4/6

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

  84. Here's a rare thing – a sensible piecce from Fraser Nelson.

    Farage may just have found the secret recipe for beating the Tories

    All parties need members to prosper. But they are a fast shrinking breed. Only Reform is bucking the trend

    Fraser Nelson • 19 September 2024 • 7:38pm

    The largest Tory majority in the country is held by Rishi Sunak, who had the obvious advantage of being prime minister. The next largest was won by Andrew Griffith in Arundel and South Downs and I recently went down to West Sussex to meet the campaigners who accomplished this feat. Their homemade canapés are to die for (walnut and mascarpone on watermelon!) and their cheerful common sense evidently persuaded thousands. But they seemed to regard Tory HQ with scepticism, even contempt. No one I met was planning to go to the Conservative conference, which was described to me as a "lobbyists' snakepit".

    That's a bit unfair (even the lobbyists are abandoning the Tories now), but it's true that party conferences are now more for corporate sponsors than ordinary members. The Labour conference in Liverpool will be crawling with outfits hungry for taxpayers' money (which, it seems, Keir Starmer is dispensing quite freely). The Tories are laying on a leadership race but expect fewer than 4,000 members. The best hope of finding rowdy, upbeat and energetic activists is at the Reform UK conference.

    Nigel Farage has rented a conference centre near Birmingham airport and not very many lobbyists are likely to attend. But the Faragistas are opposing the smoking ban and the net-zero agenda, backing net-zero immigration (not a daydream, as Sweden recently proved) and are waving the flag of liberty. This ragtag band of mostly-unknown MPs may well succeed in luring more activists than the Tories. And, in so doing, stand as a rebuke to all other parties.

    I'm no great fan of Farage. He's not a racist or Putin apologist but strays too close to this territory (tactically, to make the audience gasp) for my liking. The deliberately-careless way he speaks about Muslims, his blaming the EU for Russia's invasion of Ukraine: there's too much darkness to overlook. But he's the most effective political entrepreneur of modern times. He is playing a vital political service: showing all parties what happens if you take members for granted.

    Not so long ago, every conference was at a seaside town: Blackpool, Brighton, Bournemouth. They were chosen for their cheap accommodation, to suit ordinary members with ordinary budgets. Slowly, this gave way to cities – Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham – with better restaurants for the lobbyists, journalists and others who were all putting their trips on expenses. Then, the parties charged lobbyists so much that conferences raised huge amounts of money. They stopped being for the members.

    I've seen for myself how corporate involvement can narrow debate. The Spectator seeks sponsors for discussions and last year had a cancer panel with Karol Sikora, a renowned oncologist. He is critical of the NHS and the sponsor, an NHS supplier, told us to drop him. We instead dropped the sponsor, losing £20,000. As editor, I had the freedom to take these commercially painful decisions – but not everyone in my position does.

    Next week, I'm hosting a discussion at the Labour conference asking if Ed Miliband's 2030 grid decarbonisation target is realistic. A dangerous topic, it seems. Gary Smith, who runs the GMB union, has agreed to speak: he thinks this key pledge is laughably unworkable. An important point for discussion, surely? Not a single Labour MP is willing to debate him or defend the policy. Sponsors don't seem wildly keen, either. It's a shame. Party conferences should be a festival of political debate, not a domestic Davos.

    Instead of members, today's conferences are crawling with people who are (or want to be) in the business of politics. With government spending at its highest in history and waste everywhere, it's certainly a lucrative business. When I was in West Sussex, I passed a mansion owned by someone who has built a fortune sending supply nurses to the NHS. So you can see why the conferences are seen (by everyone) as fundraising bonanzas. But you can also see why ordinary members stay away – or don't join in the first place. Too much of the debate is fake. Too many important topics are kept off the agenda.

    When William Hague was Tory leader, a party that once had two million members was down on its luck with just 400,000. It now has less than half that. When Jeremy Corbyn deprived Theresa May of her majority in the 2017 snap election, Labour had 540,000 members. It's now down by about a third: saner, but fewer. The 80,000 members that Reform UK claims to have is still small, but double the pre-election total. Farage intends to pass more power to the members so they will have the ability to remove him, hoping to make membership meaningful. And keep the momentum running.

    The real test will be the local elections in May next year. Farage is aiming to win more seats than the Conservatives and prove that his July result was not a freak but a staging post. It seems perfectly plausible. We've just passed the tenth anniversary of the Scottish independence referendum, where the "no" victory saw a surge in membership of the SNP: at one stage, one in every 50 Scots had signed up. Nicola Sturgeon had given them what Farage has given his members: a cause to rally behind.

    The Tory members I spoke to in West Sussex had more to say on this front. Why, they asked me, did Tory HQ send out such awful candidates as potential MPs? Why are talented, experienced people being blocked?

    One of them asked me if Kemi Badenoch (who polls show is the members' favourite to be the next leader) will be kept out of the final two – because if the members get to vote for her, she'd triumph. This cuts to part of the dilemma over Badenoch. Many Tories see her as too ideological, too scrappy. The members I spoke tended to see, in her, someone unafraid to fight – and knows what to fight for.

    "We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road, said Nye Bevan. "They get run over." Without a cause to rally around they also lose members and, eventually, voters. For as long as both the Tories and Labour struggle to find such a cause, Farage really does have all to play for.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/09/19/farage-reform-tories-membership-politics-british-uk

    1. The deliberately careless way he talks about muslims?

      The muslim should b talked about carelessly. They're the cause of most of the problems this country is suffering from.

    2. Just been listening to Nigel’s conference speech. Apparently the party structure is about to be normalised so that the members own it and there’ll be constituency associations etc. He’s still talking a bit of rot about routing out “extremists” but apart from that, he’s trying to get the membership fired up about local elections next year.

    4. If the EU and NATO hadn't been interfering in Ukraina, Vlad would never have needed to intervene. Fraser just can't give up, can he?

  85. As mad as a March hare…publish and be damned

    Lord Alli demanded crackdown on ‘bullying’ newspapers

    Prime Minister’s biggest personal donor called for offence of ‘corporate intimidation’ and restrictions on media ownership

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/politics/2024/09/20/TELEMMGLPICT000394594232_17268367261780_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqYBEWvMdcMFfUabU60-4H73wSCF1R0VweJ7DS2UnVMSQ.jpeg?imwidth=680
    Lord Alli has given Labour almost £1 million in donations, heightening fears the party could give into his demands MARTIN ARGLES/THE GUARDIAN

    Daniel Martin Deputy Political Editor. Jacob Freedland
    20 September 2024 1:57pm

    Lord Alli, the Prime Minister’s largest personal donor, called for restrictions on the number of newspapers that a proprietor could own.

    He also called for a new offence of “corporate intimidation” to tackle what he called the “bullying” of public figures by newspapers.

    On Wednesday night, Lisa Nandy, the Culture Secretary, said she had not met Lord Alli to discuss any of these ideas, and said she had no plans to tighten regulation of the press.

    The forthright comments by the peer may heighten fears that the party could give into his demands to restrict press freedom in return for his donations.

    Press intimidation
    Lord Alli, who made his fortune in the TV industry, has given Labour almost £1 million in donations, including clothes for Sir Keir and his wife worth in excess of £25,000.

    He also allowed Angela Rayner, the Deputy Prime Minister, to stay in a $2.5 million flat in New York over New Year’s Eve, which is listed as his current residence.

    In a speech in the Lords in the wake of the Leveson Inquiry into the British press in 2013, he proposed making it a new offence for the press to coerce individuals into giving them information about their private life.

    “Like others, I am a little disappointed by some elements of the newspaper industry, who have deliberately misrepresented the report in order to scare the public in pursuit of their own self-interest,” he said.

    “I would like a new offence on the statute book to deal with the issue of press intimidation. When a newspaper group uses information on an individual to coerce them into revealing details of their own or others’ private lives in return for protection or non-publication, it feels to me like blackmail, and we should make it a criminal offence.

    “The lobbying of newspaper groups on their own behalf in their own papers needs to be looked at again.”

    He also used his speech to argue for a state-funded press regulator.

    Media ownership laws
    A year later, in an interview with the Financial Times, he criticised Tony Blair’s New Labour for being too close to tabloid newspapers.

    “I think we [in New Labour] started it, and we got it wrong,” he said. “In that rush to feed the 24/7 media, we just forgot to regulate it, and it forgot to regulate itself.”

    He said politicians had let journalists intimidate them in the same “shameful” way that Militant once intimidated Labour, adding that he had spoken to party colleagues about his idea of instituting a new offence of “corporate intimidation”.

    “When companies or newspapers use their power to intimidate individuals or politicians, it is no more acceptable than when the Mafia does it to a shopkeeper,” he said, adding: “It is blackmail.”

    He also said he wanted to change media ownership laws so that no company could own three or more newspapers, “because it just upsets me”.

    He added: “The thing about Rupert Murdoch that’s so brilliant is, before he walks in the door people are trying to work out what to give him.”

    Lord Alli also defended the licence fee in the Lords, saying: “The licence fee system, where we as citizens jointly pay for the BBC, should remain in place.

    “It is right that the licence fee should be increased in line with inflation through the charter review period. I believe that there is a strong case for more money to be invested in the BBC.”

    A source close to Ms Nandy said there are no plans for further legislation on press regulation, and Ms Nandy is opposed to the idea that politicians should be telling the press what they can and cannot say.

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

    Straigh White Male
    3 hrs ago
    Ahhhhh so he WAS after favours

    Anna Rossi
    1 hr ago
    Reply to Straigh White Male
    These are the ones they admit to. What about the others?

    Joani Walsh
    28 min ago
    Reply to Straigh White Male – view message
    I'd be more concerned with the pressure he may apply re Islam and maybe even therefore Israel. He CHOSE Islam; his sibling chose Hinduism.

    Aberrant Apostrophe
    3 hrs ago
    Don't you just love our politicians. The best money can buy!

    3. So, now it begins. Cash for favours. The payback is demanded. Starmer will cave, the UK will be a bribe-oriented country (if not already). Sleaze will be the rule, and even less will work because of it.

    4. So, now it begins. Cash for favours. The payback is demanded. Starmer will cave, the UK will be a bribe-oriented country (if not already). Sleaze will be the rule, and even less will work because of it.

  87. That's me for today. Unexpectedly sunny afternoon. Soldier neighbour coming for a drink, shortly – so must bull my boots for her!

    Have a jolly evening.

    A demain.

      1. Many years ago there was a bullying assistant to the area manager who gave my staff Hell when he and his boss did his "reviews".
        He used to wear patent leather shoes, so I told them it was so he could look up women's skirts.
        They never feared him again, and treated him with utter disdain.

  89. Apologies, this is long, but very amusing!
    It's a free post from the substack of eugyppius at https://www.eugyppius.com/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

    "Help! my child is becoming right wing!"
    "This obviously charming, cheerful and not all withered or overwrought woman is named Eva Prausner (there is a photo in the article – Bb2) She is a social worker, and she directs something called the “Project for Strengthening Parents,” which provides “Training, networking, and counselling in the area of family and right-wing extremism.” This means that she runs around telling parents what to do when they suspect their children are succumbing to political wrong-think. And this in turn makes Frau Prausner the woman of the hour, for never before in the history of the Federal Republic have so many undemocratic children bloomed under the noses of so many upstanding democratic parents.

    It is very hard to understand how this happened. The leftists and the Greens have been doing the Lord’s work teaching leftism and Greenism in schools for decades now, and despite their valiant efforts we are rapidly losing our youth to malign antidemocratic forces. It can’t be that elevating leftoid lunacy into an establishment ideology has backfired, transforming the once cool, counter-cultural left into a political movement for middle-aged scolds and schoolmarms – the kind of thing from which teenagers flee in terror. No, nothing could be less plausible. The real reason for the pandemic of right-wing children must simply be that we haven’t indoctrinated them enough. If parents will not do their part and bring indoctrination also to the home, our democracy will collapse and it will be 1933 all over again, just like it was 1933 all over again two weeks ago after the elections in Thüringen and Saxony.

    For these reasons, Der Tagesspiegel, Berlin’s largest daily newspaper, interviewed Prausner on her advice for parents who find themselves forced to deal with their evil, right-leaning spawn. The product is a prescient write-up for the ages bearing the headline “Help, my child is turning right-wing! Eight tips for democratic parents with undemocratic children.”

    The rightward shift in East Germany is a shift above all among the youngest, as the elections in Saxony and Thüringen have shown. One in three young people there voted for the far right. In Thüringen, as many as 38% of 18- to 34-year-olds cast their ballot for the AfD – more than in any other age group. Many a parent who values living in a democracy will have wondered: “What have we done wrong?”

    In Brandenburg, too, it is becoming clear that even the youngest are now leaning towards the right. In the under-16 vote a week before the state election, the AfD came out on top with around 30% … In the state elections on 22 September, the AfD could become the strongest force, thanks in part to young first-time voters.

    Do parents still have any influence over their AfD-voting children?

    Alas, Prausner is not very certain that they do, but she believes that democratic parents “should at least try” to rescue their undemocratic offspring from political heresy. Children in Brandenburg are particularly endangered, because Brandenburg is largely rural, and Prausner has discovered that the countryside is a breeding ground for “condensed prejudicial attitudes.” There is so much racial prejudice in the Brandenburg air that it is collecting on cool surfaces, like windows and beer glasses, that is how bad things are there. Also all children everywhere are in danger because the internet is a powerful right-wing force that helps bad organisations like the AfD pump their fascist mind virus directly into millions of young yet-forming cerebral cortices.

    There is, in short, every reason to be very terrified of your kids, and as a parent, the first thing you need to do is learn how to recognise whether they’re becoming literal Nazis right under your nose. Unfortunately, according to Prausner, modern-day Nazism is largely asymptomatic, yielding “fewer and fewer clear signs.” While it may be “difficult to identify a child’s political attitude from their clothing,” “racist, sexist or queerphobic language” can be an “indication.” Of course as we’ve seen the smartphone is basically a digital portal direct to fascism, and so you should keep a close eye on your kid’s mobile:

    Looking over your child’s shoulder at his smartphone – a central vector of creeping radicalisation – can also provide insights. Prausner advises a proactive approach, especially if the relationship is still intact. “What are you doing on TikTok? Do you follow any AfD accounts?”

    If these questions aren’t fruitful, Prausner thinks an unauthorised look at the phone is justifiable. “I don’t encourage parents to do that. Parents have to respect the personal rights of young people. But if there is a danger to be averted, an unauthorised look at the phone would be legitimate for reasons of care.”

    There is absolutely no way that this kind of political policing will backfire, because teenagers have never been attracted to subversive counter-cultural movements of which their parents disapprove. There are no examples of this in recent history at all.

    Anyway, so now you’ve snatched your kid’s phone and found that he is indeed an ardent subscriber to all manner of AfD TikTok accounts. After you’ve gotten over the “shock” and associated “feelings of shame,” Prausner advises you to seek professional help as soon as possible. Ideally, you’ll go straight to her Project for Strengthening Parents and become one of the two to four families that she counsels over the telephone every month. There is some chance that your child is only going through “a phase,” but if his attitudes have become “entrenched,” you’re facing a long and difficult path. Your relationship will not be “intact” for much longer; there will soon be a lot of “anger” and “frustration,” and you’re going to need “patience.” Political reeducation is no easy thing.

    The next thing to do, is remember to stay in touch with your kid – however many evil fascist things he says to you. Ideally, you should respond not with direct disagreement, but with “first-person statements that express your hurt and shock.” Statements like: “When you speak so disparagingly about people, it hurts me. I don’t want you to discriminate against your fellow students.” You should also try to scare your kid by telling him that being a fascist will destroy his prospects. Prausner advises saying things like “You’re ruining your future with this.” What you can’t do, though, is deploy “authoritarian tactics” against “right-wing views,” I guess because that’s what right-wingers do. As good progressive liberal democrats, we know that a surfeit of screechy words, a steady nagging and verbal dripping always on the same spot, manipulative appeals to your own emotional distress and hyperestrogenic histrionics are the only way. While there is absolutely chance that any of this will have the opposite of its intended effect, it’s probably not be a bad idea to give the whole matter a rest now and again. On occasion, Prausner says, “you can have a pizza together and try not to cause any offence” with the Nazi nagging.

    Okay, so you figured out from your kid’s iPhone that he’s a fascist, you’re harassing him about his fascism almost every day except when you order pizza and everybody is frustrated and angry. What now? Well, you need to try to understand your undemocratic child’s motivations. If you’re dealing with a case of male fascism, it’s all about masculinity. Your boy has become a Nazi because “right-wing communities offer young men the chance to empower themselves,” primarily by “devaluing women and people whom they perceive to be inferior in their racist worldview.” Girls, however, mainly go fascist because they “feel overwhelmed by social expectations to pursue a career, have a family and also be attractive.” Fascism tells girls that they can just be a mother and a housewife and that’s much less complicated. Fascist girls are are therefore much less likely to have the racism comorbidity. One less demon to exorcise!

    Now that we’ve worked out why your kid’s a National Socialist, it’s time to find other ways to satisfy his needs. Your masculine son, for example, should replace his fascisms with gym workouts. Unfortunately, this is dangerous, because a lot of fitness clubs and trainers also turn out to be right-wing fascists for some mysterious reason. Prausner warns in particular that sending your boy off to martial arts training might just serve to entrench his fascism further. When it comes to your daughter – assuming that you’re dealing with the merely fascist and not the dual fascist-racist variety – you’ll need to scare her by telling her that fascists are super violent. Girls don’t like violence so if you impress this upon them hard enough they’ll give up their Nazism and return to democracy. “I’d argue that the right-wing scene is extremely violent,” Prausner says, “particularly when it comes to domestic violence, with all that sexism going on.”

    All right, so, just to keep track – you snatched your kid’s iPhone and discovered he was a fascist, you embarked upon the periodic-nagging-with-occasional-pizza-break routine, you’ve traced the aetiology of his fascism to injured masculinity, and you’re looking high and low for a non-fascist athletic pursuit where he can be a man more democratically. Everyone is still mad, your son still thinks the AfD are cool, and he’s additionally pissed off that you insist on quizzing all his gym friends on their politics. Is there anything else to do – anything else at all?

    Yes, there are two final things. Penultimately, you can “involve the community” by staging an antifascist intervention. “It helps,” Prausner says, “when young people are confronted with a group that disapproves of their behaviour.” Recruit your kid’s “wider circle of friends,” get his “grandparents, teachers, uncles and aunts” over to your house to join you in scolding him for having political preferences that differ from yours. This is absolutely the ticket, your child will absolutely, positively thank you for this. Should the intervention somehow fail to eradicate his fascism, however, you must remember the last thing, which is not to “lose heart” and to continue “exemplifying democratic values and taking a stand against prejudice and discrimination.” Also, because by now you have surely unleashed an unending torrent of interfamilial discord and disharmony, you “must not lose sight of [your] own needs.” Maybe schedule a few extra no-fascism-scolding pizza dinners and understand that you, too, “need a supportive environment.”

    2. That’s very funny. Thank you for posting. Whoever said German jokes were no laughing matter!

    3. Most notable in that entertaining account is the leftist bias – if people vote left that's democracy, if they vote right that's undemocratic. Exactly the same terminology as used in the name of the previous East Germany: the German Democratic Republic. Where no matter how you vote the leftists always win – probably because anyone who votes against the regime got 'disappeared'.

    4. The children see what is happening to their friends and draw their conclusions.
      And those conclusions are that the "imports" should be exports.

  90. Electric cars are up to twice as expensive as petrol or diesel vehicles to run, new figures have suggested.
    Running an electric vehicle (EV) can cost more than 24p per mile, while a diesel vehicle is 12.5p.
    It costs as much as 80p per kilowatt hour to charge an EV using a rapid or ultra-rapid device on the roadside, according to data from the app ZapMap.

    A typical electric car will travel 3.3 miles for every kWh of electricity used, meaning rapid and ultra-rapid chargers currently cost the equivalent of 24.1p per mile, calculations by The Times suggest.
    Slower chargers cost 16.4p per mile.
    This is about double the average diesel car, which will do 43 miles per gallon, resulting in a cost of 12.5p per mile at current prices. A typical petrol car costs 14.5p per mile, according to the analysis.

    For the record I never average less than 60mpg in my 190 bhp vehicle in economy mode..

    1. The past couple of tank fulls on my Vivaro have given me just below 40mpg.
      And I'm not a particularly gentle driver either.

        1. Talking of Barges & shopping here's an extract from my journal;

          "Arriving at Rugby, we moored just below bridge 58 (most if not all bridges are numbered for ease of reference when navigating the inland waterways). At bridge 58 there is a footpath leading from the canal to the centre of Rugby. It is notable for a number of features. The first being a Tesco Superstore, a handy shop for hungry or thirsty boaters just a few minutes’ walk from the canal. A little further on there is a stream where the locals have been playing “pooh Sticks” a game in which two sticks are dropped simultaneously from the upstream side of the bridge to see which one emerges first from under the bridge on the downstream side. Only the locals seem not to have quite got the hang of the game in a couple of regards. Firstly, the game is supposed to be played with sticks and not supermarket trolleys, so handily supplied by the aforementioned Tesco’s. Secondly, it is customary to throw the sticks into the water on the upstream side of the bridge. Of the eight trolleys lying forlornly on their sides in the stream only one local appears to have got it right by throwing the trolley in on the upstream side of the bridge. As empty trolleys are incapable of floating, it is clear that some locals do not understand the rules of the game. Equally I may have completely misjudged the situation. It could be that the tradition of ignoring rules is still alive in Rugby. After all it was Webb Ellis who ignored the rules of football picked up the ball at started the game of Rugby. Or perhaps those that hurled the trolleys into the stream were merely testing Newton’s Law of Gravitation, which as Professor Cox explains in his book “Forces of Nature” tends to generate spherical objects, just like the hypothesis I’m putting forward here."

    3. I saw one of my neighbours plugging his EV MG in to charge it this morning when I walked Kadi. I nearly told him to make sure it was fully charged before they cut the electricity supply to be able to work in the area next week.

  91. Shift pattern data used in the Lucy Letby trial was “scientifically worthless” a meeting of the Royal Statistical Society has heard.

    One of the most damning pieces of evidence presented to the jury at Letby’s trial was a chart indicating that the nurse was always on duty at the Countess of Chester Hospital when babies collapsed or died.
    The table, which covered a 13-month period between June 2015 and June 2016, showed that while the 38 other nurses were in attendance on just a handful of occasions when suspicious incidents occurred, Letby was at the scene of all of them.

    However, statisticians were so concerned about the chart that they convened a meeting at the RSS headquarters in London on Thursday to discuss how statistics are used in court cases.

    Dealing specifically with the Letby data, the meeting heard how the rota pattern was a “scientific fake” which could not be reproduced independently.

    Statisticians said there were “issues with the selection and collection of data” used in the chart and warned there may be “many other possible causal factors not being considered that might explain these deaths”.

    ‘Bigger impact than it deserves’
    The duty roster evidence was described as “feeble” and “had a way bigger impact than it deserves” with experts arguing that not enough attention had been paid to alternative explanations, such as the different shift patterns of the nurses and whether some were more likely to be on duty than others.
    The meeting, which was held in private under Chatham House rules which allow attendees to remain anonymous, heard that statistical evidence was “worthless” and there had been no concrete evidence of a spike in deaths at the hospital.

    1. However, if the babies were murdered, such evidence goes to opportunity. If, of all the babies considered murdered, Letby were the only person present in all cases then the evidence is rather compelling. No-one else had such consistency of opportunity. So unless there is a suggestion that more than one person was murdering babies over this period, Letby was the only one with this opportunity on every occasion. Unless you are suggesting that the babies were not murdered at all. another argument altogether.

          1. A number of serious concerns have been raised to warrant an expert review of the evidence presented at the trial Something which I would support.

        2. Six more babies died in 2016 after she had left the unit in (?) June.
          The long term average was approximately 2 deaths per calendar year.
          There is a line between selectively presenting evidence and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.

        3. Six more babies died in 2016 after she had left the unit in (?) June.
          The long term average was approximately 2 deaths per calendar year.
          There is a line between selectively presenting evidence and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.

        4. I’m sure they did. Babies do die, the point about the deaths for which Letby was convicted is that they were both unexpected and considered unnatural.

  93. Evening Standard has an article on a Boeing that declared emergency, landed at Gatwick & taxied to the gate, headed by a picture of a Boeing where the left main gear had collapsed. So, false news, then. Good one, Standard.

  94. Quote of the day

    ‘We don’t want extremists. We don’t want bigots.’

    – Nigel Farage addresses the Reform party conference in Birmingham today.

    Well, that's us done for.

      1. Pour megots uniquement, that's us (the PMU is the Pari Mutuel Urbain, the French equivalent of the Tote).

    2. Perhaps he has enough clothes? Donations of accommodation, event tickets, holidays etc gratefully received??

    3. But how dim and cloth-eared can he be? Did he not realise how sleazy and pathetic it sounds, even if above-board? Dear God, and somebody thought it a good idea that he was made PM! Should have been drowned at birth, like unwanted cats.

    4. Speccie

      The analysis

      The leader, the donor, and the wardrobe Keir Starmer has partially U-turned on his wardrobe freebies, with Downing Street saying this afternoon that the Prime Minister, Rachel Reeves and Angela Rayner will no longer be accepting clothing donations. This follows the drawn-out row over free glasses, suits and other items of clothing from Labour donor Lord Alli. The questions weren’t going away, other ministers were being increasingly unhelpful in their broadcast comments – and then the Financial Times revealed that Rayner and Reeves had declared clothing from Alli and another donor, as general office support. This latest line – not accepting any future donations – is not helpful at all. Not only is it the sort of chopping and changing that undermines authority in communications, it also raises a plethora of further questions. The key question is if you’re not accepting donations any more, does that mean it was wrong to accept them before? And if it was wrong to accept them before, will you either be handing the (multiple pairs of) glasses and suits back, or paying back their value? Someone will have to answer those questions and annoyingly for Starmer and everyone around him, it will be the Prime Minister when he gives his traditional Labour party conference interview on Sunday morning. This is not the topic he wanted to dominate the headlines as the party faithful flock to Liverpool to celebrate being in government.

      1. Please please don't let them stop.

        The last thing I want to see is these turds parading around naked.

        1. What a pathetic bunch of shits they are. Can't even pay for thir own garmets, like every body else has to, and on smaller incomes than the pm and his slimeball cronies.
          Dear God, what kind of a country has the UK become? Grifter slimeballs, the lot of them.

          2. I have never been ashamed to be English, until this came out. Now, the place of my birth is shown to be grubbier than so many places where ministers are bought for cents… the PM, for God's sake. For a suit!

  98. Evening, all. Enjoyable lunch for me and a friend today. So nice not to have to organise anything.

    I salute the blinkered naivety of the headline letter writer. He/she/it needs only to look at what happened over abortion to see mission creep and for euthanasia, Belgium offers a horrific foretaste.

    2. "Assisted dying" (they call it MAID) has become very contentious over here in Canada.
      Numbers are going up. There were 13,000 assisted deaths in 2022, 30% more than the previous year. This accounts for over 4% of deaths in Canada.

      For many a compassionate assisted death may well be a blessing but there are a few that reek of being wrong.
      Several people have requested MAID because they are unable to access needed healthcare treatments. It's one thing to top yourself if you are suffering from a painful terminal illness but when treatment is just withheld because of cost or bureaucracy, there is something wrong.
      Patients are supposed to initiate requests for MAID not the doctors, that doesn't always work. There are even cases of veterans being denied financial and psychological help and being offered MAID as the preferred treatment.

      It will probably go even further off track when they start allowing mental illness to be a valid reason to request MAID. You voted against Trudeau, off to the soap factory with you!

  100. "SIR – At just after nine o’clock yesterday morning, my beloved wife of 42 years passed away following a six-year battle against bowel cancer.

    Although she died in her sleep, her final days were not easy. True, we had multiple daily visits from hospice staff and NHS nursing teams, all trying to make her as comfortable as possible, mostly by increasing her morphine dosage. However, it was a soul-destroying, agonising, drawn-out wait. By the end, I just wanted the uncertainty to be over. I wanted my wife to die.

    I have no quarrel with the dedication of all those who cared for her in her last weeks, but there must be a better way of dealing with this issue.

    Gerard Somers
    Atherstone, Warwickshire"

    And why not, I don't want to be in either of their shoes but dragging a painful life out does nothing for anybody.

    1. I read a lovely comment, I think it was on NoTTl, a while ago. It made me cry, anyhow.
      The writer wrote that their (grand?)mother was apologising for hanging on and taking so long dying and causing the family so much disruption, and the answer was lovely: They were delighted tht she was hanging on, as it allowed them the chance to show the same selfles love to her that she'd shown to them all their lives.
      Beautiful.

      1. It's all a personal view. and how would you respond to a relative who said that? You'd just say "Don't be daft, we want you here with us."
        But it's not really true, is it?

        1. Difficult.
          But yes, I'd rather have live relatives than pictures.
          Also, what one says to those who are dying might not be the truth, as it might be hurtful without the other can do anything about it, and so would be (potentially) desperately upset without being able to fix it. Due to dying.

          2. Me too.
            Hate bullshitting, but with Mother in a mental fog, how would upsetting her help? I'd prefer she was happy and calm, rather than anxious over how her parets, beloved husband, and others are dead.
            She mentioned, when we had the priest round, that "he was my life". Took me a while to get to understand the extent of that. I'd not like to reveal to her, in her fog, again that he's dead. Shit, it's not much fun for me, either.

    2. That's pretty much how my mother died. It was OK once they pumped her so full of morphine that she didn't wake but oh those last few weeks leading up to that were very painful for her.

          2. As long as it doesn't hurt; and that she's convinced she's loved. She needs convinced of that y'all love her and she's the focus, not a burden. That'll help her let go, happy that she's done all she can.
            It's hard, man.

          3. As long as it doesn't hurt; and that she's convinced she's loved. She needs convinced of that y'all love her and she's the focus, not a burden. That'll help her let go, happy that she's done all she can.
            It's hard, man.

          4. As long as it doesn't hurt; and that she's convinced she's loved. She needs convinced of that y'all love her and she's the focus, not a burden. That'll help her let go, happy that she's done all she can.
            It's hard, man.

          5. As long as it doesn't hurt; and that she's convinced she's loved. She needs convinced of that y'all love her and she's the focus, not a burden. That'll help her let go, happy that she's done all she can.
            It's hard, man.

  101. It's Been a busy time socially for our family.
    Our golden wedding aniversery 31st of August.
    My birthday 12th September, eldest sons today my good lady's birthday tomorrow. Virgo season nearly over.
    Family Lunch at number ones home tomorrow.
    Gives us a break.
    I spent the afternoon chopping apples and juicing them, sofar one demi Jon.
    Only 4 more to go.
    Feeling very tired now.
    An early Good night all. 😴

      1. The cider just gets better with time.
        Problem is, I like the stuff a lot, so time it doesn't get… 🙁

  103. We cidered the glass apples a fortnight ago. 30 litrres bubbling away… next weekend, the eating apples. Need to keg up the glass cider, though, first.

    1. I've got another load of 🍏 apples to come from our other neighbour.
      I'll keep the varieties separate.
      I'll end up with 6 full.

      1. We gave up on the homebrew cider because it came out stronger than wine. All we could do was sip a small glassful before the fuzzies started.

        2. It’s good fun, as you say it can exceed recognised alcohol content.
          Mine is made with juicey cookers and extra sugar needs to be added. Hic 😂

  105. I'm sorry, man.
    That's hard.
    Mother is sufficiently far away with the fairies that she doesn't realise it. Doesn't know me, is always waiting to be collected by her Father to visit her Aunt… something for her to look forward to, I suppose.

  106. The true face of Communism:

    From the DT:
    Song (a young woman) had been a student leader of the revolutionary Red Guards at the Girls’ Middle School, attended by the children of the party elite, in 1966 when Mao, in an attempt to regain the initiative after years of failed policies by purging the Communist Party of ‘‘capitalists’’ and “class enemies”, lit the spark for a decade of chaos by urging young people to rise up against their parents and teachers.

    Song and another student, Liu Jin, put up the first poster denouncing teachers at the school before things became violent.

    Bian Zhongyun was an obvious target. A 50-year-old mother of four and the daughter of a banker, she was responsible for discipline at the school. Students tested her by asking if they should save a portrait of Chairman Mao if there was an earthquake. Her reply – that they should leave the classroom quickly – condemned her as a counter-revolutionary and proved to be her death sentence.

    In her book Red Memory (2023), Tania Branigan described how Red Guards broke in to Bian’s home, burning her books and leaving behind posters threatening to “rip out your dog heart, lop off your dog head”. At the school she was beaten and humiliated by students in “struggle sessions”, dragged on to a stage in shackles and forced to kneel while they kicked and beat her with iron-banded wooden rifles: “When she fell they hauled her up by her hair and began again.”

    In her final hours, Bian was beaten with nailed clubs and forced by her tormentors to clean the lavatories and drink from a dirty bucket. When she passed out they loaded her on to a rubbish cart and left her to die in the hot sun, foam dripping from her mouth, while some girls went to buy ice lollies."

    1. I'd prefer to unread that, but it's too late.
      As it was recently about two young lads hanged for homosexuality in Iran.
      And my beautiful friend, Elaine, who killed herself, despite loving husband and two fine sons.
      They form a space in my memory that I cannot erase, and it comes out to trouble me when I cannot sleep.
      Maybe, when that space takes over, I will have to join the other side to fight it, "thy sword and they staff, they comfort me".

          2. "And in the fields the corn
            Sways with metallic clicks
            Whilst man hammers nails in man
            High on his crucifix"

            Stephen Spender

          1. I quote Jeremy Clarkson on this one….

            'There are two ways a truly civilised and advanced nation can be defined. One, it has a fleet of nuclear submarines, and two, it does not have the death penalty. That leaves you with France and Britain. And that's about right.'

            I agree…..

  109. The Tree Fellers, four of them actually, were busy up the hill today.
    Had a scrabble up there earlier and made a small start at recovering the usable logs.
    It's going to take AGES to get it all sorted!

    And with that I'm off to bed.
    G'night all.

    1. From Coffee House, the Spectator

      Farage plots his next US trip
      Comments Share 20 September 2024, 6:30pm
      It’s his sworn ambition to become Prime Minister of the UK by 2029. But is Nigel Farage perhaps spending a little bit too much time in the States? Barely had the Reform leader finished addressing his party conference, then ‘ping!’ An email arrived in Steerpike’s inbox touting Farage’s latest trip across the pond. The former MEP is billed as one of the headliners at the New York Young Republican Club’s gala dinner in December. Tickets at the black tie bash at Cipriani Wall Street start from $499 and go up to $30,000 for varying levels of exclusivity. Kerching!

      Farage is billed on the event as ‘a great friend of President Trump and leader of the Brexit movement’. Having ‘fought for his country’s independence from Brussels since the early 90s’ he then – apparently – led Ukip ‘to numerous election victories’ before ‘his world-changing European referendum win in 2016.’ The event adds that ‘Farage attended Dulwich College, is a popular personality in global media, a keen fisherman, a father of four, and even has his own line of gin!’ Other speakers include Steve Bannon and Raheem Kassam as MC, with attendees promised a ‘Cipriani’s signature Bellini upon arrival, an open bar featuring top-shelf liquor, butler-passed hors d’oeuvres, and a multi-course dinner.’

      Talk about a jet set life. Perhaps the next time Farage addresses his party conference he should eschew Eminem for Pitbull’s ‘Mr Worldwide’.

      1. I have no idea whether Farage had any say in his billing, but 'numerous election victories' is stretching it a bit.

        1. I dont think so – he certainly won the 2014 Euro elections for UKIP (the biggest party, astonishingly) and was paramount in the 2016 referendum, which again you might say he 'won'!
          Then there's Clacton – he won that one too – how many do you want??

          1. I don't doubt his role or contribution, but I think more is down to Boris Johnson than Nigel Farage.

            The terrifying thing is, Boris vacilated comically. Far too many of the Leave politicians did so solely for personal political advantage, not as a deep rooted core belief.

      2. I have no idea whether Farage had any say in his billing, but 'numerous election victories' is stretching it a bit.

    2. Doctors' surgeries could probably do with a similar exercise, given that they get paid by the number of people on their registers.

      1. Indeed. Despite me repeatedly telling my surgery my au pair left England to go back to Germany 8 years ago, under “data privacy” they won’t take my word for it. So they will be paid for having her on their books now till the end of time

      2. Absolutely. I worked in the 1990s for the Breast Cancer screening 7 year trial, where our staff went round all the GP surgeries to record all ladies eligible for the trial. They found many instances where women had died or moved away but the practice was being paid for them all. Don’t suppose much has changed!

  111. Well, chums, it's almost bed-time for me (10 pm). So I will wish you a Good Night. Sleep well, and I'll see you all tomorrow morning.

  112. Yes, but we don’t have the death penalty. And we have the evil kneeler 2TK n his ilk – who knows what they might do – it was Starmer who ensured some years back, that immigrants got Legal Aid. B*stard.

      1. I didn’t say that it did. I said we we had no death penalty (in response to Sir J’s point). I then said that we also have 2TK (who, if Tony Blair’s example is to go by, could cause seemingly irrevocable further damage to our justice system). So I am not sure what point you are making.

    2. If we scrapped child benefit and housing benefit he'd leave. They'd all go. They're here because they're parasites, living off our efforts.

    1. Lammy, as foreign secretary, should hav enothing to say about any other country. He is there to represent the UK abroad, to get the best for our interests.

      The Foreign office, conversely, exists to do our country down so other nations get one over on us, at UK tax payers expense.

  118. Football match postponed after disquiet expressed over signing of transgender goalkeeper

    Sutton manager Lucy Clark, who is also transgender, has said she wants to field a team of entirely of transgender players

    Oliver Brown • Chief Sports Writer • 1st September 2024, 7:39pm

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7f26ca19b702227a0a28e0e89909b4347cd5d0f8f1a332cf3de98d67254133e3.png
    Sutton United's women's team abruptly postponed their scheduled match at Ebbsfleet United on Sunday amid mounting anger over their signing of goalkeeper Blair Hamilton, a biological male.

    The notice of postponement was issued so late, within three hours of the scheduled 2pm kick-off time, that Ebbsfleet ended up donating their matchday supplies to a local food bank. Sutton offered no explanation for their failure to assemble a team, but it is understood that the cancellation was related to increasing disquiet about Hamilton's involvement and its implications for sporting fairness.

    Within hours of Telegraph Sport reporting Hamilton's controversial call-up by Lucy Clark, Sutton Women's transgender manager, the club sent an email to Ebbsfleet, at 11.12am, confirming that they had been unable to put a team together but offered no reasons. Parents of several players in the London & South East Premier Division, in which Sutton compete, have privately expressed unease about a player who has the physiological advantages conveyed by male puberty competing in women's football.

    The last-minute decision to withdraw from the game was not well received by Damian Irvine, Ebbsfleet's chief executive. He wrote: "Very disappointed to be advised this by Sutton United Women. A full hour later, they've advised their own fans so I'm so sorry for those planning on setting off. We do our best to promote and support the sport, but this doesn't help."

    Sharron Davies, who has received significant correspondence from people concerned about a biologically male goalkeeper taking the place of a woman, argued that the furore was symptomatic of a wider problem. "I've received so many emails from distressed parents of young female footballers who feel their clubs and their association have abandoned them," she said. "I'm heartbroken about the injustice being handed out to our young female athletes."

    Last November, four teams in a Sheffield women's league boycotted matches against a side who fielded a transgender player accused of causing a season-ending injury to an opponent. That episode sparked a fierce backlash, with more than 70 MPs and members of the House of Lords demanding urgent action to protect female players from the injury risks of competing against those with retained male advantage.

    The presence of Hamilton in the women's game has drawn protests during their previous spells for Hastings United and England Universities. Despite this, Clark, 51, the world's first transgender referee, signed the 34-year-old. She [sic] has shown little compunction about making such choices, and said, in 2022: "At some point we will field a team solely of trans women for the first time in history. How good is that?"

    Telegraph Sport has approached Sutton United for a response.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2024/09/01/sutton-transgender-goalkeeper-football-match-postponed

    Well done to the rest of the Sutton team for, er, striking (it would be fair to assume that is what happened). I expect they'll all be named and shamed, followed by conviction under Harman's mad Act of Parliament.

  119. Football match postponed after disquiet expressed over signing of transgender goalkeeper

    Sutton manager Lucy Clark, who is also transgender, has said she wants to field a team of entirely of transgender players

    Oliver Brown • Chief Sports Writer • 1st September 2024, 7:39pm

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7f26ca19b702227a0a28e0e89909b4347cd5d0f8f1a332cf3de98d67254133e3.png
    Sutton United's women's team abruptly postponed their scheduled match at Ebbsfleet United on Sunday amid mounting anger over their signing of goalkeeper Blair Hamilton, a biological male.

    The notice of postponement was issued so late, within three hours of the scheduled 2pm kick-off time, that Ebbsfleet ended up donating their matchday supplies to a local food bank. Sutton offered no explanation for their failure to assemble a team, but it is understood that the cancellation was related to increasing disquiet about Hamilton's involvement and its implications for sporting fairness.

    Within hours of Telegraph Sport reporting Hamilton's controversial call-up by Lucy Clark, Sutton Women's transgender manager, the club sent an email to Ebbsfleet, at 11.12am, confirming that they had been unable to put a team together but offered no reasons. Parents of several players in the London & South East Premier Division, in which Sutton compete, have privately expressed unease about a player who has the physiological advantages conveyed by male puberty competing in women's football.

    The last-minute decision to withdraw from the game was not well received by Damian Irvine, Ebbsfleet's chief executive. He wrote: "Very disappointed to be advised this by Sutton United Women. A full hour later, they've advised their own fans so I'm so sorry for those planning on setting off. We do our best to promote and support the sport, but this doesn't help."

    Sharron Davies, who has received significant correspondence from people concerned about a biologically male goalkeeper taking the place of a woman, argued that the furore was symptomatic of a wider problem. "I've received so many emails from distressed parents of young female footballers who feel their clubs and their association have abandoned them," she said. "I'm heartbroken about the injustice being handed out to our young female athletes."

    Last November, four teams in a Sheffield women's league boycotted matches against a side who fielded a transgender player accused of causing a season-ending injury to an opponent. That episode sparked a fierce backlash, with more than 70 MPs and members of the House of Lords demanding urgent action to protect female players from the injury risks of competing against those with retained male advantage.

    The presence of Hamilton in the women's game has drawn protests during their previous spells for Hastings United and England Universities. Despite this, Clark, 51, the world's first transgender referee, signed the 34-year-old. She [sic] has shown little compunction about making such choices, and said, in 2022: "At some point we will field a team solely of trans women for the first time in history. How good is that?"

    Telegraph Sport has approached Sutton United for a response.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2024/09/01/sutton-transgender-goalkeeper-football-match-postponed

    Well done to the rest of the Sutton team for, er, striking (it would be fair to assume that is what happened). I expect they'll all be named and shamed, followed by conviction under Harman's mad Act of Parliament.

    1. The world's first trans referee… I don't care. I honestly, truly couldn't. It's that person's choice. If it impacts their ability to do their job then they should be sacked. If it doesn't, it's irrelevant.

      As for men competing against women : that is unfair, it's cheating. Plain and simple.

      1. Putting IHT on farms would bring the secret plan out into the open.
        One would have to be blind and deaf not to realise that the state is systematically reducing the amount of food that can be grown in the country by various different methods, but incredibly, most of the population doesn't seem to have woken up yet.

        1. The psyops has been going on for years. Demonising butter and animal fats. Eggs and dairy. Now red meat.
          They come at it from all different angles by so called experts who in fact are paid lackeys.

          There isn't a day goes by without reports in the media saying those food stuffs will give you cancer or heart attack.

    2. Taxation, to Labour, is not a system of providing public services. To them it is a method by which they force their misguided, insane conceit of 'fairness'. Thus they use tax policy to take what others have earned and give it to those who have not.

      Tax is there to pay for essential, shared public services. Nothing else. In recent years the state has deliberately perverted that to use tax to pay for it's ideological fantasies and it's own expansion, with service provision an annoying irrelevance it puts last.

      This is why services are so appalling and yet taxation so high. The fundamental premise has been abandoned in favour of arrogant, abusive statism.

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