Friday 22 September: The PM has finally shown voters that he can govern like a Conservative

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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407 thoughts on “Friday 22 September: The PM has finally shown voters that he can govern like a Conservative”

  4. Good morrow, Gentlefolk, today’s story

    The Railway Children
    A few days after Christmas, Johnny’s mother was working in the kitchen and listening to him playing with his new electric train in the living room. She heard the train stop and Johnny said, “All of you sons of bitches who want off, get the hell off now because this is the last stop. All of you sons of bitches who are getting on, get your butts on the friggin’ train and sit your butts down because we’re leaving.”

    Johnny’s mother stormed into the living room and said, “We don’t use that kind of language in this house. Now go to your room for two hours. When you’ve settled down, you can play with your trains again, as long as you use proper language.”

    Two hours later, Johnny came out of his room and resumed playing with his train. Soon, the train stopped and the Johnny’s mother heard, “All passengers, who are disembarking the train, please remember to take all of your belongings with you. We thank you for riding with us today and hope your trip was a pleasant one. For those of you just boarding, we ask that you stow your hand luggage under your seat and we hope you enjoy your trip.

    For those of you who are pissed off about the two-hour delay, please see the friggin’ bitch in the kitchen.”

  5. The PM has finally shown voters that he can govern like a Conservative. 22 September 2023.

    SIR – Just by reviewing who has thrown the toys out of their pram following Rishi Sunak’s speech on net zero, it is obvious that he has managed – against his track record – to do something that will be both right in the eyes of the electorate and actually Conservative.

    Phil Coutie

    It is a scam Mr Coutie. A clever one I admit but still just a scam. All that Rishi has done; even if we believe that he will stick to them, is to postpone by five years the policies he originally espoused. Nothing has really changed except that he has passed off these policies as acceptable to the gullible.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2023/09/22/letters-pm-has-shown-he-can-govern-like-a-conservative/

    3. Five more years to wipe his fingerprints off of the blunt instrument the climate clowns are using to kill off the UK, more like.

  7. It looks like they are going to mess about with exams again, is it more bringing into line with the EU.

    They ought to let children that struggle with school to leave at 15 and learn a trade, we need schools that can train young people in trades to give them a head start and rely less on importing tradesmen and women.

    1. They should have a scheme where they can leave at 15 but go back again when they’re about 30 when they’ve found out what they want to learn about. So many adults regret wasted schoolyears.

      1. I think Sweden operates a system like that. If I had a pound for every time an ex-pupil said, “I wish I’d paid more attention/worked harder” I’d be fairly rich by now!

    2. By 14, many pupils have got out of school all they will ever get. Some may decide later on that they need more, so, as Stormy suggests, that facility should remain.

  8. Good morning
    They always warn us in advance….

    The Bank of International Settlements (central bankers’ central bank) released a report a couple of days ago, that estimates the size of the derivatives market, and the parts of banks’ business that don’t appear on the balance sheets.
    I do not pretend to understand much about this, but the takeaway that I got is that (1) there’s a giant pile of derivatives that represent nothing except bets made by bankers, and they will all need to be paid off at some point and (2) The business that banks do that is not on their balance sheets is much larger than the business that is on their balance sheets, and is totally unregulated.
    It seems clear that this fragile system could easily come crashing down.

    A lot of people sneer at silver, and say that it’s just another industrial metal nowadays, so I was interested to note that the report starts by estimating the value of all the silver in the world. China wants the price of silver to rise at least fourfold in today’s money, btw, to help prevent it all being used up.
    I take BIS figure for billionaires’ wealth with a giant pinch of salt, as I think people would want billionaires’ heads on pikes if they realised what a large share of the world’s wealth is actually owned by a few families.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OjkAfP6r1Q

  12. Good Morning all,

    Sunny at MPhee Towers but not for long. Showers expected this afternoon. Breeze generally Westerly and cool at 9℃ rising to 14℃ today.

    The US Congress leads the way! The US House Committee on Finance has approved the “CBDC Anti-Surveillance State Act.” This act prohibits the Federal Reserve from issuing a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), a digitised form of the fiat currency operating on Digital Ledger Technology (DLT).

    Rep. Patrick McHenry, the committee’s chair, stated that the Bill would ensure that any US CBDC gets explicitly authorised by the Congress. He stressed the importance of safeguarding American citizens’ privacy and the financial system’s integrity in facing potential CBDC-related risks.

    A significant ‘win’ against the WEF/Gates/Rockefeller/Soros et al? If (when) this becomes law in the US there is surely no way the UK could be any different. Is there?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MmuQfr4s5E

    https://www.forbesindia.com/article/cryptocurrency/us-house-committee-approves-bill-to-block-cbdc-issuance/88433/1

  13. 377008+ up ticks,

    Morning Each,

    Letters: The PM has finally shown voters that he can govern like a Conservative

    Trouble being his alliances lie (not lay) another way he has chosen the repress,replace,RESET with, seemingly, the royal seal way

    :” The PM has finally shown voters that he can govern like a Conservative”

    Straight off a lie, where has he “shown”? he mimics honest rhetoric but in reality lies,deceives and manipulates to the WEFs requirements.

    As for charlie, in days gone by he ( also of WEF stock) would at least have had his nut (nuts) shaved for fratenising with the enemy and giving domestic comfort to the invading hordes via 5* hotels whilst many of his ex troops bed down under viaducts

      1. By the C18 wheels had been discovered.
        I wonder if sedan chairs were a tourist trap like the bicycle rickshaws in London.

        1. The royals and the upper classes have always been wary of new inventions. Best wait till the peasants have tried them out first, losing a few thousand should show whether it is safe enough or unsafe for the aristocracy.

  15. Joe Biden repeats same story almost word for word just minutes apart as age concerns grow. 22 September 2023.

    US President Joe Biden has sparked further concerns about his age after he repeated the same anecdote within minutes during a speech.

    Mr Biden, 80, twice told a campaign reception in Manhattan on Wednesday about the 2017 Charlottesville riots during a 20-minute talk.

    TOP COMMENT BELOW THE LINE.

    CM MO.

    The most manipulated man in the history of our country and possibly history itself. The most appalling incident of age abuse in the history of the world. A senile, born stupid, corrupt, pedophilic, long term, well known traitorous and treasonous US government employee, easily compromised by the pernicious left wing revolutionaries who are presently running the United States with their Irish mafia straw man that they keep as a marionette , and you are just noticing his cerebral impairment ?

    I was going to write something myself on the lines of who is actually running the United States but I have to give ground to this!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/09/22/joe-biden-repeat-same-story-gaffe-age-concerns-us-president/

    1. The author of that paragraph omitted another word that fits his president but I think reading between the lines we can deduce that the author believes his president is also economic with the truth.

  18. Morning, all. Overcast and misty at the moment.

    I sowed some grass seed late yesterday and gently watered it in and then Nature arrived in the form of rain to add its magic. Perfect English autumn conditions for grass to germinate i.e. warm soil and rain: what’s all this nonsense about the Earth boiling to death? Results expected to appear in a week or so.

    If anyone thought that the ULEZ cameras were being provided solely to capture car number plates in an effort to first, raise money for Khan to pi$$ up any wall he can find, and as a very distant second, to improve air quality (who believes Khan on this issue?), please watch the video.
    It’s total surveillance and eventually total control.

    https://twitter.com/AntiExtension/status/1704939394015138258

    1. Is this to spy on all the immigrants who are now the majority in London? Perhaps a bit of marketing to the immigrants on that theme might get them tearing them down.

  20. ‘Morning, Peeps. A relatively dry day in prospect at HJ Towers, unlike the ‘dry’ forecast yesterday when it rained several times during the day and then decided to deliver some serious precipitation during the evening.

    This letter caught my eye, following various posts yesterday:

    SIR – On the Today programme yesterday, Ed Miliband, the shadow energy secretary, asserted that the lifetime cost of an EV is already lower than that of a petrol or diesel car, and claimed that by 2030 the upfront costs will also be lower.
    If that is true and there is adequate provision of charging points by 2030, why does he think there is a need for a ban on new petrol and diesel cars by that date? People will naturally go for the cheaper option.

    Moreover, if we impose a ban before other countries, we will be exposed to huge and focused competition from China, which would undermine British car manufacturing and threaten jobs.

    Ian Cunningham
    Welwyn, Hertfordshire

    The answer, Mr Cunningham, is that the architect of all this green bullshit was the same Milliprat and who, as we realised a long time ago, is a fantasist and a liar. Hope this helps.

  22. Morning all.
    Cat update: Swift appears well enough but isn’t interested in food still.
    I have builders in this week so I think she’s a bit discombobulated due to the house’s being a bit upside down. Bold seems to be coping better although she is normally the more skittish of the two.
    They’ll be here until next week so I hope she adjusts soon.

    1. Morning, Stormy.
      I think your pussychology is spot on.
      Spartie was discombobulated when we had the wardrobes and electricals done. Even after he knew the chaps involved, we had one very edgy small dog – particularly when furniture had to be moved around.

  23. Good Moaning.
    Now I’ve had my second coffee, my natural good taste has kicked in.
    To put it delicately, certain technical questions spring to mind.

    “NHS staff fat-shamed a 38-stone mother-of-four who was ‘terrified’ to return to hospital before she died just a month after undergoing a C-section operation, an inquest has heard.

    Shelley Harlow died in the early hours of May 25 at the Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother Hospital (QEQM) in Margate, Kent after suffering a blood clot following a caesarean operation the previous month.

    Her mother Wendy Pearson has now told an inquest that her ‘kind’ daughter had been ‘absolutely terrified’ to go back to hospital after previously being ‘fat shamed’ by NHS staff who said she would need a ‘big room’ and a ‘special bed.”

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d1fdf8277825c1eab289731a78398d648cf448ed71f8d2febccb0ae3d9d3b269.jpg

      1. Bariatric beds.
        A practical measure to deal with an increasingly (ho, ho) common problem. Nothing to do with ‘fat shaming’; unless the ‘victim’ realises she shouldn’t be so bonny. To employ a euphemism a neighbour applied to her bloater of a son.

        1. I thought about fifteen years ago that buying shares in a company that makes bariatric furniture might be a good bet. I looked around but couldn’t find a company to invest in and forgot about it.
          I wish I’d persevered – I’d be rich as Croesus by now.

    3. I expect the poor lady knew all this, having been called fat names all her life, being mercilessly teased for being overweight and otherwise being got at all the time. That kind of shit handed out by people who think they are being smart and funny is mentally scarring, and has the opposite effect – since everybody is being a bitch to her, she likely retired into food for some comfort.
      Even the “professional carers” of the NHS made a joke of her.
      And so, she died when maybe she would not have. A tiny baby has to grow up without a mother as a result. At least the unpleasantness has stopped – for her, anyhow.

        1. Indeed, but slagging someone off all their life for being fat isn’t helping, it just makes them feel excluded and miserable, and leads to more eating of comfort(sweet) foods.

          1. I agree that name calling is unacceptable, but telling someone they’ll need a bariatric bed is just telling it how it is.

    4. Good morning Anne

      I am being quite crude here , but how would a male appendage have navigated it’s way through lumps of blubber to impregnate her?

      My mind boggles , to tell you the truth.

      If course a C section would have also been a nightmare for the poor surgeon to perform , bit like segmenting a giant pumpkin !

    5. As millions of modern-day Americans can testify: if you insist on eating sugar-laden, carbohydrate-rich, processed food … your body tends to balloon.

    6. Judging by the size of many NHS workers I’ve come across it would be the pot calling the kettle black.

  24. 377008+ up ticks,

    I wonder, will he have the same views on his way down from BUCK house roof on the day of the islamic take over ?

    breitbart

    King Charles Brands Climate Change World’s Largest ‘Existential Challenge’, Calls for French-UK ‘Sustainability Agreement

    2. He’s probably too stupid to notice the threat of Islam.

      The Idiot King is the United Kingdom’s answer to Joe Biden!

      (Our idiot is a greater idiot than your idiot!)

  25. SIR – Wrongfully convicted postmasters have been offered £600,000 each in full and final compensation for the Horizon scandal (report, September 19), before the inquiry has published its final report.
    Victims of the infected blood scandal (report, September 17), meanwhile, are dying at a rate of one every four days, yet the Government continues to sit on its hands, insisting that it must wait for the infected blood inquiry’s final report before a compensation scheme can be announced.
    The postmasters have, of course, suffered, and are deserving of compensation – but so, too, are the other victims of state negligence and incompetence, who have waited for years already for proper redress and are repeatedly told to be patient.
    What the Horizon compensation package highlights is that the Government could do the right thing by infected blood victims if it wanted to. Instead, however, it chooses to continue pushing the matter of compensation for this scandal into the long grass.

    Jason Evans
    Director, Factor 8
    London E16

    Quite right, Mr Evans. There is a clear inconsistency here, not that the sub postmasters don’t deserve their award – in fact every time I read about the Horizon scandal and its 700 good, honest and upstanding victims accused of serious wrongdoing, with jail for some, and bankruptcy, the loss of career and reputation for all, I feel my blood pressure rising at possibly the worst disaster in British legal history. As things stand, more than a year into the belated inquiry, not a single person has been held to legal account, from Vennells to the managerial class of the Post Office to Fujitsu to the civil servants responsible for oversight. It just goes to show that covering up a travesty and blaming it on its employees does work, no matter how bad it gets.

    1. Paula Anne Vennells, CBE (born 1959), is a British businesswoman and former Anglican priest.

      And this sadistic medusa has escaped scot free!

  27. A truth bomb for the Government and the MoD:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/25d4f84a522acbe8597185a6ca32c84eb641c41dbe839a0e6134e64a92776e14.png

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/09/22/britains-jet-less-aircraft-carriers-national-embarrasment/

    This is what I, a former RAF fighter pilot, was saying over a decade ago to anyone who was interested in the topic. “Cats and traps” mean full interoperability with the US Navy and any other NATO country which has a proper carrier or two (I think France is the only one, Spain and Italy have small Harrier carriers). If we had to have the F-35, the ‘C’ model (non-VSTOL) with greater range and payload capability was surely the one we should have ordered.

    But it gets worse. Bae Systems could have produced a navalised model of the Typhoon for our carriers. We chose not to.

    https://www.defencetalk.com/naval-eurofighter-an-aircraft-carrier-version-under-development-31926/

    Therefore, absent a navalised Typhoon, F-18s off the shelf, a successful and proven naval fighter, are what we should have bought. A couple of hundred of them.

    The incompetence of the MoD is mind-blowing.

    1. Their being inept I could understand, what bothers me is that they never pay the price for their incompetence.

    2. Good morning F/M

      If people like you voiced your concerns years ago , who wasn’t listening at the time , and why weren’t the concerns of people like you taken into consideration , you were all front line bods?

      1. It’s not the way of things, True Belle. I’m long retired from the RAF but I can tell you a couple of things about the 1980s:

        When the Tornado came into service in numbers from 1983 onwards it did so using WW2-stock ‘dumb’ bombs as the primary weapon (apart from nukes). Therefore we still had to overfly targets at low-level to attack them. No new weapons with a stand-off capability or precision capability had been developed to go with the aircraft. All we front-liners at the time were astounded. It took over 20 years for the Tornado to reach it’s full operational capability with a suite of new weapons and self-defence systems.

        The Air Defence Variant, the Tornado F2/F3 was deemed in a report by test pilots at Boscombe Down to be ‘unacceptable’. A strong word. But it went ahead. It’s raw performance was inferior to the aircraft it replaced, the McDonnell-Douglas F4 Phantom, and it took years to get the Foxhunter radar to work as advertised. Instead, we should, as we said at the time, have bought 165 McDonnell-Douglas F15 Eagles from the USA for air defence. Subsequently, the Tornado F3 had to be kept away from the battle-front in the 2003 Gulf war.

        The trouble is that criticising the judgement and decisions of superiors, speaking truth to power, never goes down well just as Adolf Galland, the Luftwaffe ace, found when he is reported to have said to Goering “Give me a squadron of Spitfires”.

    3. Well said, FM. And a further irony – during the construction of these two white elephants, it was decided that cats and traps should be fitted after all. And then, to save money (£600m) they were abandoned. And that is how these ships were semi-neutered. Idiots.

    4. You weren’t the only one pointing this out. It’s been mentioned several times on Nottl, most especially when Brown was indulging in his pork barrel politics commissioning the carriers. Ex-RN and ex-RAF bods here complained at the time.

  29. SIR – Eleanor Steafel (Features, September 20) shares some interesting vignettes from the history of Tower Bridge, but does not mention my favourite event: the flight through the bridge by an RAF Hawker Hunter jet fighter on April 5 1968.
    The pilot, Flight Lieutenant Alan Pollock, was pilloried by the top brass but remains something of a hero to the rest of us.

    Colin CummingsYelvertoft, Northamptonshire

    Ibdeed! What better way to demonstrate one’s utter disgust at the failure of the government and of the RAF to mark the 50th anniversary of its creation?

    More here:

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawker_Hunter_Tower_Bridge_incident

  30. SIR – Those of us unfortunate enough to live in Wales have begun driving everywhere at 20mph (Letters, September 21).
    The situation here is an absolute shambles.
    First, with the alcohol tax, we were told what we could and couldn’t drink; then, with the three-for-two ready-meal tax, we were told what to eat. Now we are being told how fast – or, rather, how slowly – we can drive.
    What next? Will we be told what type of clothes we must wear, how many hours’ sleep we must get – or how many times a day we can flush the lavatory?

    Alan Bolton Chepstow, Monmouthshire

    The problem is, Mr Bolton, that as a result of Covid our politicians saw a wonderful opportunity to exert unlimited control over the population, and unfortunately they enjoyed the experience so much they can’t break the habit. It’s like the unfettered spending that went with it – they loved turning on the taps and to hell with the consequences. Will we ever see the return of the correct master/servant relationship? Somehow I doubt it.

    1. What next? Will we be told what type of clothes we must wear, how many hours’ sleep we must get – or how many times a day we can flush the lavatory?

      Yes Mr Bolton. Tyranny has no limits!

    2. The solution is to stop voting for the people who introduce these policies. Either that or move out of Wales.

    3. Talking of genies being out of bottles, Someone invented digital phones which went press 1 for. ., press 2 for …

      Now they cant/won’t let us speak to anyone.

    4. Well, Mr B, that’s what happens when you keep voting in Labour. As for the lavatory – shortage or water means almost certainly yes! You are already being prepped for only being allowed a certain number of items of clothing, so coupons can’t be far away.

  31. Good morning all,

    Fine blue sky here , cold September morning, 10c, no breeze and Moh is golfing in his shorts !

    Re the DT letters

    SIR – In the past year, when discussing “going green” with my young, I’ve used the mantra: you have to be rich to be green. I am pleased that the PM has acknowledged that fact.

    Peter Gore
    Tenterden, Kent

    Ageing multi-storey car parks ‘could collapse’ under the weight of heavier electric vehicles, experts warn
    Electric vehicles are typically much heavier than petrol or diesel cars . https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/electriccars/article-11956197/Ageing-multi-storey-car-parks-collapse-weight-heavier-electric-vehicles.html

    Could heavier cars and buses also play havoc on our flimsily filled tarmac roads ?

    I’ll bet no one has considered that , have they?

    1. I bet they have considered it and then decided to ignore it as it doesn’t fit the narrative.

    2. Moh is golfing in his shorts
      Must be very baggy shorts, to have space to swing a club in… ;-))

          1. Pink shorts were very popular with many of the yotties whom we met in the Med.

            They were more than happy to be greeted when we met them with:

            “Bonjour matelot”

      1. We last had CH in April 2021. This morning is sunny (though there was a torrential downpour seven miles away half an hour ago) and still and quite mild. Have hung out the washing.

      2. Good, good You can go without heating all winter if you put your mind to it (I did last winter)
        A blanket and couple of microwave beanbags and hope there’s not a mini Ice Age outside the door.

        1. Not when you’re old, Stormi. Joints ache, the elderly can’t move around as quickly and often have poor circulation. Even my old boy, who is 82 now, feels the cold earlier in the autumn than he used to, and earlier in the day. Back in the day it was as though he had his own personal radiator tucked within. Having said that, we’ve not needed to put any form of heating on yet.

      3. We’ve had the heating on the last few evenings and this morning. But my OH is 80 now and feels the cold.

      4. Ah, but you are in the microclimate of Ramsgate. It always seems to be mild and sunny there. You wouldn’t have the windows open here in the Marches; it’s only 14 degrees C and windy.

  32. This BTL comment appeared below the Alison Pearson article about the Net Zero scam/con.

    Colonel PR
    10 HRS AGO
    The FACTS on NetZero are now being demonstrated and there is NO benefit.
    It was W E F ‘useful idiot’ Khan who stupidly ‘outed’ the use of faked science to pursue his ULEZ cash grab, blew the lid off , and led the public to realise that the NetZero ‘science’ was likely a scam too.
    In the end, it is FACTS that have scuppered NetZero – and these are presented in a humble but deadly fashion by this guy:
    Dr Christy , who has been called 3 times before US Congress to explain the facts scientifically.
    https://youtu.be/ttNg1F7T0Y0?si=ABb8hoYG5UuImfUl
    2/3rds of the world is covered by water.
    Dr Christy specialises in modern Satellite real data – as opposed to computer modeling forecasts from the 1/3rd stations which are on land.
    The results are a shocking eye opener.
    There is NO ‘climate emergency’. And NetZero is pointless virtue signalling.
    Dr Christy is funded solely by his University salary, and not by any vested interests.
    Watch him deftly dismantle the whole global warming ideology.
    Impressive.

    Although this is 7 years old it is real science not settled science. The video is over an hour long which is, probably, too long for the Net Zero zealots to sit through.

          3. Me, too. I recently had to do some training to obtain a certificate and it was all video-based. I could have done it in half the time (and still got the right answers) had it been transcripts of the scenarios. I suppose many of the people who have to do it are illiterate.

      2. The question for our grandchildren to answer (if they are still there) is: ‘Were we more deluded to swallow the Covid jabs scam or the climate change scam?’

        Both of these cynically repulsive scams will probably blight our descendants’ futures for many years to come.

    1. Unfortunate timing, as the US attempts to push through more spending plans. I read the time limit is the last week in September.

      1. I think a lot of things are going to converge at the start of October. Another thing is that the holiday on student debt comes to an end.

  35. Larry the cat wins battle for No10 against Sunak’s dog Nova. 22 September 2023

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ffcc273695de6b953a63a4348210e290f67cd404c1995c6c85071e9ac76c34f2.jpg

    Larry the cat is often seen strutting around Downing Street, keen to show who is boss.

    The pet has been pictured perched outside the black door marking his territory, but many have wondered how he behaves within.

    We would be better off if Larry were Prime Minister. He must know the ropes by now!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/09/22/rishi-sunak-dog-nova-downing-street-larry-the-cat/

    3. Cats are usually the leaders – it was certainly the case with our dog, a boxer called Rumpole and our cat, Chaucer, whose ancestry was a mixture of European and Asian.

      The significant difference between us and our pets was that Rumpole adored Chaucer, his accepted and undisputed leader, while we hold most of our political leaders in complete contempt.

    1. Meteorologist and founder of the Weather Channel, John Coleman, utterly demolishes the human-induced “climate change” narrative, in under three minutes.

      No, he doesn’t demolish it. He hasn’t the time in that small slot to do so. Nonetheless, he challenges it in very robust terms.

      1. I wonder if I would be happier if I believed the PTB’s and MSM’s line on the efficacy of Covid jabs and their assertion that Net Zero is the right answer to an invalid question?

        Happiness used to be a warm puppy – now it is to have an unquestioning belief in what we are told to believe.

      2. 377008+ up ticks,

        Morning DW,
        Agreed but, by the same token you do not need a multitude of words from a larger platform to state the climate change issue is total bollocks.

    1. Just last month, Sarah Vine referred to Andrew Wakefield as a “charlatan.” I used to enjoy her column, but she just pushes the establishment line with no regard for truth or evidence.

      I didn’t have the triple MMR, but I had very poor gut health for years when I was younger, that stole what should have been the best years of my life. I can’t help wondering whether the vaccines that I did have affected that.

      1. The accepted line on psoriasis is that it’s hereditary but my mother always refused to accept that since only me and my youngest brother have ever displayed the symptoms. Recently I had a conversation on TwitX with someone who identified himself as a chemist and said he believed the polio vaccines to be the likely cause. Now this makes sense since said brother and I are also the only members of our family to have been given the polio vaccines as children. I haven’t mentioned it to my brother as one of the arguments he uses in defence of the covid injections is that the childhood vaxxes did us no harm.

        2. It’s only since covid that I have started to wonder whether the poor health suffered by at least five of my generation in my family could have been vaccine related. In particular the poor gut health that affected me and my daughter. I’ve always wondered why it hadn’t been seen in previous generations if it’s hereditary.

        3. There was a girl at my school who had terrible psoriasis. She must have suffered greatly. I don’t know what happened to her as she didn’t come to any of the reunions over the years.
          My youngest brother in law also had very bad psoriasis with arthritis as he got older. I didn’t know until quite recently that he died suddenly after his first covid jab.

        4. Curious. I developed psoriasis ten years ago in my late fifties. I’m not aware of any family members having it. Luckily, after the initial onset and some sleepless nights, I have only small outbreaks which are easy to control with a thing called Dovobet.

      2. Could well be.
        My two missed the MMR but had a single measles one.
        I still have the record for my younger son – he had an odd reaction to the first DTP one – very pale, looked a bit shocked, quiet, passed a strange looking motion. Otherwise, it wore off after a couple of hours. But although he was developing as normal, his weight didn’t increase for quite a few weeks. I stupidly didn’t mention it to the dr next time we went and he had the others with no incident. But it’s not something I could forget.

    1. A century of feminism has got us to the point of statues of women being covered up and men pretending to be women protected by law.

    2. Presumably one contributing factor to Birmingham going bankrupt if they were flinging money around on nonsense such as this.

    3. In the spirit of cultural relativism it should have rocks flung at it until it collapses in a heap on the ground.

    8. It’s actually in Smethwick which is near Birmingham so our bankrupt city council isn’t funding this monstrosity.

  43. Grim, but plausible scenario being put forward by Ed Dowd and Tucker Carlson i.e. a 💥Hot War💥between the West/USA and Russia to cover up the attempted democide/genocide.

    The ‘real elites’ will have their bunkers well stocked and the useful idiots e.g. complicit politicians, media types, faux medical leaders etc will be left out in the cold with the useless eaters, or will that be very hot?

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a68c4c8e955482a20ed540417a4551ab807ec20d57a7736fc4d2e3e19a823df7.png
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f895fd24c5f823121ce6ccb2a9368ea33628fea4eabd694cf88a982dd790db2e.png
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/58629176af5ff2d71b37902245148ba355bb0f07776adaf845a0bee55a964f13.png

    Article at:

    Vigilant Fox – Ed Dowd Chilling Prediction

    1. Perhaps Tucker Carlson has an insight denied to most of us. I think it’s pure speculation. Then again, he no longer has a mainstream media platform on which to air his views and might be missing the limelight. We’ll have to wait until 2025 to find out who’s wearing a smug expression.

      1. Politicians have often used war as a diversion from problems at home, and the power that is losing reserve currency status has historically been very likely to plunge into wars at the end of their time at the top.
        Ed Dowd’s background is in statistics. Tucker Carlson has very good connections near the US government.

        I hope this prediction won’t come true. If it does, nobody human will be looking smug.

        1. When words such as “murder” are so readily applied, my instincts are to reject the entire thing, even the parts which might have merit.

          1. Naomi Wolf is still digging away, and has now published evidence that the US government knew how dangerous the vaxxes were before they were given out. What do you call it when someone promotes a medicament to the general public that they know will kill a certain number of people? What do you call it when they make it a condition of keeping a person’s job?
            I don’t think “murder” is too strong a word.

          2. The jabs also seem to disproportionately harm younger people. So it was not immediately apparent when the oldies first queued up for theirs.

          3. Isn’t that just because when someone who’s in their 70s or 80s dies, it’s harder to prove that it was jab damage?
            Plus of course, the pension companies have got too many liabilities…

          4. I recall that 26 elderly people were shuffled off this mortal coil in a residential home in Norfolk 2020 just before Christmas 2020 in the two weeks post-jab. Word got out that staff had never seen anything like it. It was all swept under the carpet and, of course, in those two weeks post-jab deaths and adverse effects are not considered to be due to the ‘vaccine’ by the state as a person is not considered to be ‘vaccinated’ until 14 days have passed. And the greater part of deaths occur in the first three days post-vax. A criminally cynical move by the state.

          5. That’s part of it, but as someone in my 70s, I had no reactions (yet) to the AZ jabs I had more than two years ago now. On the other hand, my husband, now 80, had always been very fit and sporty, till last autumn, when he suddenly developed heart trouble. He had three Pfizer jabs.
            I was thinking more of the young men and boys who got myocarditis, which appears to be very much jab-related. Also the effects on ovaries.

          6. There was an article about a sudden and “unexplained” death of a chap in a Shrewsbury supermarket in my local rag. He had a cardiac arrest. My first thought was “jabbed”.

          7. Caroline plays the organ at church funerals. Many people in the parish have died of unexpected heart problems years before their time was due.

            Nothing to to with the vaccine, of course!

          8. Yes. The post office lady I waas chatting to yesterday was of th eopinion that her 61 year old friend with a sudden outbreak of ovarian and stomach cancers was jabbed. It will be terminal for that poor woman. she had previously been diagnosed with indigestion – she could have had the ovaries removed months ago.

          9. This Naomi Wolf?

            Torching your own reputation is usually a onetime engagement. Credibility is finite, and once it’s gone, there is not much left to burn. A reporter who got their sources mixed up once will surprise no one next time they bungle a story; a writer who spreads conspiracy theories is soon known as a crank.

            Those rules have somehow not held true for the writer Naomi Wolf. A notable feature of her career has been her ability to repeat the act of self-immolation over and over, singeing others along the way. In the first year of the pandemic, Wolf reliably drew fresh surprise and dismay when she made outlandish claims about the tyranny of public health measures and the dangers of vaccines. Each time that she declared, usually via Twitter, that Anthony Fauci was Satan, or that children who wore masks had lost the ability to smile, that the vaccines were a “software platform that can receive uploads,” or that she had uncovered a plot by Apple “to deliver vaccines [with] nanopatticles [sic] that let you travel back in time,” ripples of consternation followed. Was this really the same Naomi Wolf, the author of a widely read feminist treatise, The Beauty Myth; a longtime contributor to the liberal newspaper The Guardian; a familiar face on MSNBC—a fixture in liberal media since the 1990s? What had happened to her?

            These questions proved remarkably durable. The latest Naomi Wolf development was a frequent spectacle on Twitter, and the subject of a steady drip of think pieces. “A Modern Feminist Classic Changed My Life. Was it Actually Garbage?” Rebecca Onion asked of The Beauty Myth in Slate, in March 2021. A few months later, Business Insider documented “Naomi Wolf’s Slide from Feminist, Democratic Party Icon to the ‘Conspiracist Whirlpool,’” and this magazine contemplated “The Madness of Naomi Wolf” in June that year, after Twitter suspended her account. The fascination persisted perhaps because Wolf was herself such a rich subject: her claims so haphazardly, deliciously laced with obvious errors and misapprehensions (the nanoparticles story turned out to be based on a conversation she overheard in a restaurant about the Apple Watch); the targets of her outrage so bizarre (as when she tweeted “No! No!!” at a photo of a teddy bear wearing a mask).

            https://newrepublic.com/article/175254/naomi-klein-naomi-wolf-doppelganger-journey-unnerving-world

          10. Oh come on David. She started digging into the documents that Pfizer wanted to keep hidden for 75 years, and her team discovered all kinds of stuff from Pfizer’s own tests that the company clearly didn’t want to be public.
            Of course she’s going to be called a crank and a weirdo! That’s how the supposedly independent media operates.

          11. Truth’s a dog must to kennel; he must be whipped out, when Lady the brach may stand by the fire and stink.
            [King Lear’s Fool]

            Of course the sordid MSM and the PTB try to cancel, slander or libel those who seek the truth they want to hide.

          12. Naomi Wolf’s reputation has been sullied by her own incompetence and delusions. If people don’t trust anything she might say about the Covid-19 vaccines, that’s down to her.

          13. COVID-19 Vaccination Doesn’t Increase Miscarriage Risk, Contrary to Naomi Wolf’s Spurious Stat
            August 24, 2022

            Studies have repeatedly found that COVID-19 vaccination does not increase the risk of miscarriage. Bogus claims that 44% of pregnant women in the ​​Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine trial miscarried rely on a faulty tally of miscarriages that counted each miscarriage twice and included miscarriages from people in the placebo group.

            https://www.factcheck.org/person/naomi-wolf/

          14. The fact checker was funded by Google and Facebook specifically in order to produce pro-vaccine information – this is on their website.

            A more balanced treatment of the miscarriage risk comes from doctors here:
            https://www.hartgroup.org/falling-birth-rates-a-cause-for-concern/

            The falling birth rate shortly after vaccination across Europe is grounds for halting vaccination for women of childbearing age until it has been proven safe. And that’s before even considering all the other logical arguments such as the vaccines being designed for a variant that had long since come and gone.

      3. It is of course speculation. But that does not mean that it is not a possible conclusion to these terrible crimes against humanity from an out-of-touch group of people who consider themselves to be the élite.

    8. Congratulations on your Golden Wedding, Datz (Uncle Beastly?). I hope you are both enjoying an exceptional day.

      You posting this, on this very day, has alerted me to an incredible coincidence, one that had passed me by until you reminded me of the date. On exactly the same day, 22 Sept, 1973, I also got married for the first time. Alas, in my case, it didn’t last the course.
      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3ca90970b991c5858a1c2f1a70efc12fa141f8d69c4760889a13254bc5974f73.png

      2. You were just 22½ at the time. Nice velvet suit. Nice side whiskers and a very pretty bride.

        I waited until I was 41 and Caroline was 26.

        35 years married which to some Nottlers makes us almost newly weds!

    9. Congratulations! I got married in July, but we only made 42 years. Still, it was until death do us part.

  46. Just had a delivery. One came in a big box…..so….lots of scrunched up newspaper. A sprinkling of doggie treats. Cut a little door in the side. Lots of rummaging and crunching going on. Hours of fun.

          1. It doesn’t last long before pups want to start tearing things to pieces. Rico loves the sound of ripping velcro, especially if he can do it himself by pulling apart an old pair of my sandals.

          2. Reminds me of that couplet of Hilaire Belloc’s :

            Like many of the Upper Class
            He liked the Sound of Broken Glass.

  47. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e273bf749dea6c463cd91ac21baccb0c9d5603d80daa11063c958203d008b904.png
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/09/21/sunaks-battle-against-political-fairytales-only-just-begun/

    BTL Ratty Wrattstrangler

    He’s already postponed action on the trans issue until after the election and not used the legal means he could have used to stop ULEZ.
    What’s the betting against his Net Zero delays being kicked into the long grass too?

    1. He is trying to pretend he wants to win the general election but he is already making sure his green card to work in the USA is still oven ready.

    2. I think Sunak is worried about all those people that are going to move to one of the new parties rather than trying to upstage Starmer

    3. His revised Net Zero timetable will be cancelled by the Labour Party after it forms the next government some time next year.

          2. A political Manifesto is a Licence to Lie.

            The last Conservative Party Manifesto was a lie – why does anyone thin the Labour Party’s will be any different?

          3. In that case I look forward to seeing Labour’s policy to reinstate the 2030 deadlines in their next manifesto as a sign they will do no such thing.

      2. It could be a coalition with the Lib Dems. I was speaking to someone when I was out shopping this morning and he said he had half a mind (no comment!) to vote for the LDs to avoid Starmer.

  50. 377008+ up ticks,

    The unvarnished ,undeniable truth.

    All the while we were operating under the Gerard Batten leadership building a very successful opposition party the lib/lab/con coalition supporters / voters were working against us, protecting the coalition party, the very coalition that is still flooding the country with potential troops / NHS patients.

    Gerard Batten,

    Ha, ha, ha! The problem with UKIP was that it was infiltrated by the Tories! Farage being the top one.

    Positions if power were given to Tory refugees, & quite probably MI5 stooges. The purpose being to prevent UKIP from becoming a populist patriotic party.

    When I became Leader I tried to turn that around in 16 short months, but Farage working with the MSM made sure we were destroyed at the polls.

    Real genuine UKIPPERS wouldn’t touch the Tory party with a ten foot pole.

          1. How can people do this sort of thing to anyone – let alone their own?

            Reminds me of those horrific lines from the Scottish play:

            Blood and destruction shall be so in use,
            And dreadful objects so familiar,
            That mothers shall but smile when they behold
            Their infants quartered with the hands of war,
            All pity choked with custom of fell deeds,

    1. Laurence’s fifth point must have been mis-phrased . He says that the four points above it are taught but actively discouraged. Given his opposition to those points – he calls them extreme yet likens them to climate denialism – and his claim that children are being indoctrinated, surely he means that opposing those points is discouraged.

      Laurence Fox
      @LozzaFox
      I spent lots of the day speaking with educators. They openly openly admit to teaching that

      ◾️You can be born in the wrong body.
      ◾️Social transitioning is the school’s responsibility, not the parents.
      ◾️Preferred pronouns will be taught.
      ◾️White privilege is part of the curriculum.
      ◾️Extreme opinions are the above (plus climate denialism) and are actively discouraged.
      ◾️Diversity, equity and inclusion is the religion in education.

      They are indoctrinating your children.

      Instead of teaching them.

      Amongst the replies he has received – some just downright insulting and not worthy – are these more thoughtful ones by Tom the anti-declinalist. Whatever is being taught in some of our schools, it’s not being universally applied.

      Tom the anti-declinalist 🌸
      @tjerubbaal
      ·more thoughtful
      7h
      As the husband of an educator I am puzzled by this given I’ve gone through much of her curriculum (she teaches science); I’ve never seen anything like this (maybe just lucky – it’s a Catholic school).

      I think this isn’t as widespread as you think Lawrence: voucher system now.

      Tom the anti-declinalist 🌸
      @tjerubbaal
      ·
      57m
      Perhaps it’s being in deepest darkest Yorkshire that’s inured me to this; my eldest 2 are at her school & my youngest is at a local state primary, & beyond the odd rainbow I’ve seen nothing; it’s an impressive job hiding it given my wife’s placement & my kids openness with us.

      Tom the anti-declinalist 🌸
      @tjerubbaal
      ·
      55m
      Basically: it would border on Pelican-Brief levels of cover ups if myself, my wife (who is way more conservative than I am), & grandparents all missed it, but I will concede that I could be the exception in getting 2 schools who aren’t peddling this bilge, hence my skepticism.

      1. I’ve spoken about this with my hairdresser whose daughter attends a Catholic school. From what she says catholic schools do not teach all this “woke” rubbish, it’s only non catholic schools have this indoctrination. Excluding Muslim schools, of course.

        1. France is very emphatic about the fact that it is a lay state and it is illegal to teach religion in state schools. However this rule does not apply in private schools and most private schools are catholic.

          As private schools are often better than state schools and cost very little – as the state pays the teachers’ salaries – in some regions there are many catholic schools where the majority of pupils are Muslim!

          1. That seems perverse! Our dinlaw is a Catholic and wanted to enrol grandson in a Catholic school. It wasn’t easy as son is CofE.

    3. When I read anti-Muslim polemics such as that, I see it as an example of Elon Musk and X’s openness to vile diatribes, unlike the Twitter of old. I trust that Raymondo trouserpress will be similarly open to receiving threats from Muslims to slit his throat, all in the interests of supporting the free exchange of ideas.

      1. I suppose freedom of speech is an excellent thing as long as the people you disagree with or disapprove of get censored or cancelled!

      2. Raymondo is not threatening anyone with violence or suggesting that anyone should use or threaten violence. How does an unwelcome opinion justify threats of violence.

        1. I might very well be minded to punch someone in the face if the were to speak about me in that fashion.

    4. Whilst the tXeet is amusing, one of my relations married a muslim lady; she is successful, professionally qualified, charming, highly intelligent and has achieved a lot for the UK economy etc. Remind me, were the Kray Twins British?

      1. I don’t think Raymondo trouserpress is at all amusing – I prefer sitcoms such as The Big Bang Theory – but I do value your counter-example, tim. There will be many more like her.

      2. Unless he converted to islam, she will be regarded as an ex muslim by muslims for marrying out. Those who reject Allah must be killed according to their texts.
        Even among north Africans, who are freedom-loving, I only know one woman who married a non-muslim – and she came from a rich family.

      3. It bothers me greatly that while most immigrants are referred to by nationality or ethnicity, some are recognised by an ideology as though it were a physical characteristic.

      4. They were but unlike moslem terrorists, they were not in any way typical of British society whereas violent conquest is an integral part of Islamic ideology and has been at least since 637 AD.

        I too have known charming and intelligent moslem apostates, especially Persians, since Iran is an occupied country and many of its people are not willing moslems. Islam decrees the death penalty for such as they.

      5. We met and made friends with some delightful, civilised Muslims in Turkey.

        We have come to the conclusion that the best Muslims stay in their native countries or regions and the worst ones come to Britain and France.

        1. Turkey is changing but under Ataturk and for as long as his influence survived, yes, secular values were protected.

          1. No, he’s not remotely 100% accurate. That depiction was unrepresentative of huge numbers of Muslims.

  58. Metal-mining pollution impacts 23 million people worldwide
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-66880697

    Read this and see how the BBC skips around a certain subject: “Mining for the new electrical age will have to be planned ‘very carefully’ but instead we’ll bang on about the terrible legacy of mining in the past.”

    TBF, by writing about the 7,000 year history of mining, we get a let-off for the Industrial Revolution. For now…

    1. It’s only a matter of time before the UK is called upon to recompense the rest of the world for starting the Industrial Revolution and destroying what were once Gardens of Eden.

        2. The video clip made points I was thinking of. Well, sorry Sweden. Were it not for Britain’s 18th century masterminds of environmental destruction, Sweden would have been spared Volvo, Saab, Abba and Ikea.

    1. But the press will always find a nice Uyghur woman in western dress who’s articulate and terribly nice and has witnessed Chinese atrocities…

    1. I’d question the sanity of anyone who trusts God seen as that’s fiction, not fact. I worry far more about the 30% of people who trust the government. Those people are really, really dangerous.

        1. My quibble would be that I don’t necessarily trust my family. I love them but I don’t always trust them.

        2. My quibble would be that I don’t necessarily trust my family. I love them but I don’t always trust them.

  63. Afternoon, all. I’m here early because I’ve got to attend a meeting later. The headline letter-writer is naive at best and deluded at worst. All evidence shows that the moment they have the votes safely counted, all promises and common sense will go out of the window.

  65. How many Pet Shop Boys does it take to change a light bulb?
    Two. One to change the lamp the other to look bored in the background.

  68. Ref the Welsh 20 mph malarkey. We noticed on our trip to Brittany three weeks* ago that there was a proliferation of 30 kph zones everywhere. Combined with massive speed humps that made you wonder if the bottom of the car was still there…

    *And in the sarf of France in June.,

    No one seems to object. Very law-abiding, yer French…

    It suggests that there is some EU wide requirement which the UK (and the Red Guard in Wales) are anxious to follow.

    1. I hear Drakeford has banned Rees-Zammit from further participation in the RWC after watching him score his latest try.

  69. That’s me gone. Quite a nice day. Bit of gardening. More importantly, have arranged to see an Osteopath on Tuesday about my lower back agony pain. Might help a bit. It is nearly seven weeks now…. And to have an eye test to see if the cataracts are ready to be lasered.

    Have a spiffing evening drinking hard.

    A demain.

    1. My dear friend. For back problems yoga type exercises can help.
      Stand by your bed. Lift your left knee to the bed and lean over and lean over to your right. Slowly and gently. Then do the same in reverse. Do these exercises slowly.

      1. Couldn’t even face trying that. The only respite is when I am in the bath,

        But thanks for your thoughtful comment.

    2. For the eyes, go to Specsaver, they own a firm called Newmedica.

      A referral from Specsaver, I saw a cataract man, 3 days later I had the first eye decataracted on the NHS

    3. I have early cataracts and keep being told by all and sundry how wonderful the surgery is, including by the doc I was seated next to at the Barts 900 do. He was positively dismissive. Oh don’t worry about that, that’s easily sorted, said he! Hopefully he’s right.

      1. My worry is that the op is 95% successful. To me, that suggests that 5% of those having it come home blind…..

        Inevitably, I’d be in the 5%…..

        3. Not necessarily blind, Bill, but sometimes a disappointingly minor improvement, none at all or even a worsening of eyesight. Total blindness is a far less likely outcome.

      3. It is just a case of lying down, looking up at a 60’s style disco light, feeling water around your eye, then after abot 10-15minutes getting up and walking away.

        Important , as your vision in the eye will have changed: you will need the lens for it removed from your specs

      4. I’ve heard it’s quite a routine op these days, although nothing seems routine when it’s you that’s on the receiving end.
        I’m sure all will be OK though, Sue.

      5. I have not been done myself but many people that I know have had cataract surgery.
        Maybe a few grumps in the first few days but without exception they talk about how much their vision has improved and how colours are so much bolder and brighter now.

        The hard part is how to survive when just one eye has been done and no longer needs glasses but the other eye is as pathetic as ever.

        2. Quite. The transitional phase of waiting for the first eye to settle, then awaiting the go ahead to proceed with the other eye and then waiting for that one to settle, takes several weeks – at least 13 in my estimation – before you can then progress to an eye test for the reading glasses which most cataract surgery.patients will still need even after their general vision has much improved.

      6. I’ve had one done. The surgeon agrees the other one needs doing but the NHS says no. She will invite me back in a couple months and told me not try too hard on the eye test.

    1. Well done. Another par for me.

      Wordle 825 4/6

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

      1. Me as well

        Wordle 825 4/6

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

          1. Rather than building on just the two misplaced letters found in guess 1, I normally use three starter words . This normally gives me enough letters that I can make reasoned guesses from.

            Not many eagles or birdies with this approach but mainly pars or bodies- like my golf game.

    2. Par here.

      Wordle 825 4/6

      ⬜🟩⬜🟩⬜
      ⬜🟩⬜🟩⬜
      ⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩
      🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

  72. Evenin’ all, two days later we arrived around lunchtime at our very comfortable lodge near Mawgan Porth. Cornwall.
    Son, daughter in law and grandchildren arrived half an hour before us, after leaving home in Herts around 7 am.
    Over night stay in Somerset drinks and dinner with old friends from Mill Hill. Lovely evening laughter drinking and reminiscencing.
    Lots of heavy down pours on the way.
    I find it hard to believe how fast some morons drive 90 plus during these down pours.
    A couple of pints in the pub by the beach And now waiting to eat again. Mind you only a banna for breakfast and nothing since.
    Hopefully will watch the sunset. From our balcony.
    Slayders.
    Padstow tomorrow.
    I think we might have an early night.

      1. Excellent. You must know the area well.
        If it wasn’t for our family living in Hertfordshire we would have moved to Cornwall years ago.

  73. Evening folks. Late signing in as I was delayed by a recalcitrant lock. A top paddle wouldn’t open to let water in. A bottom paddle wouldn’t close fully to keep water in and the gap between the two bottom gates was so wide that it let more water out than was coming in. C R T chappies were summoned and they suggested jamming my 12 foot pole down between the gap between the bottom gates. In due course the lock filled enough for them to heave open a top gate and let mine and a hire boat through the lock.
    Earlier I saw the boat named

    LLamedos and couldn’t but help laugh out loud. The name struck me as being ideal for a new political party for those in despair of the riff raft masquerading as mainstream politicians.!

      1. On first reading I thought it was a Spanish name. Returning to it several hours later, all became clear.

    1. Should have finished the meal with charcoal biscuits. They would have been getting rid of carbon. And it would have stopped them farting.

    3. I’d feel horribly ill at ease at such a function. I wouldn’t know what would be thought of as polite small talk; the dishes would almost certainly include items with which I’m unfamiliar and uncertain how to eat in polite company, I’d be self-conscious about my attire; I’d be unsure how I’d be expected to be behave if introduced to esteemed guests… all told, I’d far rather be in one of my local pubs or the nearby social club.

  75. Right, off piste now, because I have to finish reading this month’s book club book (THE GLUTTON) and I have a large number of chapters to read before we meet on Monday evening to discuss it over a meal. Good night, chums, and sleep well.

  80. Rishi Sunak’s green policy shift is the beginning of the end for net zero

    For the first time, a party leader is raising seriously the question of cost, but the plan is also unravelling across the world

    CHARLES MOORE • 22 September 2023 • 7:29pm

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/442e77b53493077546d969d9b59511d69c505a7b5f9868f0ffc9658faeb2f220.jpg
    Barring a technological miracle, net zero’s chances of success are slim [CREDIT: Angus Mordant/Bloomberg]
    _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

    On Tuesday, I attended a private lunch given by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, the climate-sceptic think tank on whose board I sat until quite recently. Jacob Rees-Mogg was the main speaker. I am revealing no secrets by reporting more optimism in the room than I had ever previously seen in that company.

    Since the Uxbridge by-election, which the Tories held by campaigning on popular resentment of Ulez, politics have changed. Ulez is, in fact, a pollution tax, not a climate-change measure, but the unexpected Tory victory in Boris Johnson’s old seat crystallised a feeling.

    Plans to force the replacement of domestic oil boilers with heat pumps after 2026 and of petrol or diesel cars with electric vehicles (EVs) after 2030 annoyed millions. The gulf between airy, excited talk of saving the planet – which, to politicians, is free – and the hard here-and-now, day-to-day cost, particularly to poorer people, of the remedies allegedly needed, gaped wide. This public annoyance was predictable and – by most of us associated with the GWPF – had been long predicted. Now it had arrived, we rejoiced.

    Several at the lunch rightly pointed out how appallingly cavalier successive Conservative prime ministers have been on this subject, but the prevailing mood was that Rishi Sunak had some understanding of the problem and was well placed to change direction in time for the election. Would he dare?

    That very evening, we had our answer. The BBC revealed what he was about to do. Perhaps it hoped, by its leak, to unleash a tide of rage which would sweep his wicked plan away.

    This has not happened. Adroitly, firmly and showing mastery of the detail, the Prime Minister saw off Nick Robinson’s attack on the Today programme on Thursday morning.

    There is some resistance, of course. Throwing the political neutrality expected of a charity to the wind, the National Trust accused the Government of “undermining everything from food security to our health and well-being”. But I wonder how many green-minded Conservative MPs who are standing again will risk their seats by condemning measures that will allay most people’s fears about the expense of motoring and heating at least for the whole of the next Parliament. Such postponements will seem sensible to most potential Tory voters.

    Mr Sunak is scarcely turning radically against the climate consensus of policy elites. He explicitly refuses to blaspheme against the angry god of net zero: he merely suggests less painful ways of propitiating it. [In other words, it’s a timid gesture but it at least has people talking.]

    A rather bedraggled gathering of Gaia worshippers at the Political Purpose Awards – Caroline Lucas, Zac Goldsmith, Sadiq Khan – protested. Chris Packham exhorted that audience to punish the Government at the ballot box. But the Labour Party, which must think more carefully about the ballot box than does Mr Packham, is notably circumspect. It will keep the ban on new petrol and diesel cars by 2030, but otherwise avoids commitments.

    Even the “Blob” has hesitated. Yesterday morning, the BBC thought it could use a tweet issued by Tony Juniper, the head of Natural England, as soon as Mr Sunak’s changes had been rumoured, in order to stir up resistance to the Government. But Mr Juniper, for whatever reason, was not playing. Appearing on Today, he did not repeat his Twitter talk of “the very future of our civilisation” being at stake. He cautiously said that motoring and heating issues were not his affair: his job was questions of species diversity and suchlike.

    Probably Mr Sunak’s net zero changes will not be enough to keep him and his party in Downing Street after the next general election, but they will help. Critics who turn them into an election issue will fall into the trap he is setting. He is the conscientious one concerned about strains on voters, he implies; they are the wild-eyed ideologues who want to glue themselves to roads.

    Yet if I were a net zero believer, I would be highly alarmed that Mr Sunak’s changes will ramify much wider than he claims. Even if he sincerely accepts the 2050 destination and is simply adjusting the means of getting there, he is in fact breaking the all-party consensus that has already done us so much harm.

    For the first time, a party leader is raising seriously the question of cost. This should be asked of literally all political projects but, on this subject, it has been consistently suppressed. Green zealots, aware of cost horrors, have structured the five-year carbon budgets in order to protect them from democratic scrutiny. It was important that Mr Sunak said the public have been “misled” about cost. Who misled them? The list is long, but it includes every prime minister this century, Tory and Labour.

    Once cost is at issue, net zero is, barring a technological miracle, bound to lose. The “behaviour change” required by the Climate Change Committee to achieve emissions reduction is, in its prescription, a bigger element than is “green energy”. People must be charged more for living as they currently choose to do and/or be banned from doing so.

    Mr Sunak is now highlighting this problem. Green energy is unlikely to make nearly enough of a difference. No bids were made in the Government’s latest auction of offshore wind rights: without government subsidy, the business won’t pay.

    Once this is publicly understood, both financially and politically, the illusion becomes ever harder to sustain. It is a bit like the “golden era” of our relations with China. For years, this withstood protests about persecution of Tibet and the Uyghurs and repression in Hong Kong, but eventually, when China made the world ill through Covid and insecure by its spying via Huawei and many other means, the golden era came to an end. Trust collapsed. [For many, there was never any trust to begin with.]

    The equivalent is now happening with net zero. It is visible in most major Western countries. Look at America’s divisions. Look at Germany’s energy-driven slide into recession and the consequent rise of the AfD. Look at the Netherlands. [What’s wrong with the AfD?]

    Look, in particular, at the European Union’s decision in March not, unlike us, to ban the internal combustion engine (ICE), but instead to allow it to continue, after 2035, so long as it uses only “sustainable” fuels. This decision undermines the presumption upon which the rush to EVs was made. And when, as is probable, sustainable fuels cannot justify their cost, the ICE, one of the most brilliant of all prosperity-producing inventions, will be there, ready to continue with petrol or diesel.

    As the politics and economics of climate change alter, so will business. At Westminster Tube station this week, I spotted BP’s new advertisement designed to form the opinions of passing parliamentarians. It speaks of “And, not or”. The emphasis is on renewables working with fossil fuels, instead of the company’s previous rush to ditch the latter, promoted by their outgoing chief executive.

    Bets are being hedged. How many of the $130 trillion assets under management promised by the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (led by Mark Carney) will now be there when anyone needs them?

    Finally, there is the global scene. It cannot be said too often that hitting net zero depends on China, Russia and India, who produce almost half the world’s carbon emissions. They are not even pretending to hit the 2050 target. It has been said slightly less often that the war in Ukraine makes their non-cooperation certain. To them, net zero is a decadent Western vanity on which they are capitalising.

    Rishi Sunak is not the brave, lonely boy who cries out that the emperor has no clothes. He is more like a clear-eyed courtier edging away from the emperor’s person before others perceive the nakedness which he has already noticed.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/09/22/sunaks-green-policy-shift-beginning-of-end-net-zero/

    1. The car producers are still stuck with their quotas of 80% EV sales, though. This little show by Sunak is very half-hearted – I for one, don’t believe it will make much difference. IMO our only chance is with someone who has the balls completely to repeal, not to tinker with, the net zero legislation. We can get “cleaner” gradually, without any aiming for “net zero” (whether moved around or not).

    3. Rishi Sunak’s green policy shift is the beginning of the end for net zero

      God, I bloody hope so.

    4. It isn’t a pollution tax (otherwise it would apply on the M25 as well as under it); it’s a motoring tax.

  81. Rishi Sunak’s green policy shift is the beginning of the end for net zero

    For the first time, a party leader is raising seriously the question of cost, but the plan is also unravelling across the world

    CHARLES MOORE • 22 September 2023 • 7:29pm

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/442e77b53493077546d969d9b59511d69c505a7b5f9868f0ffc9658faeb2f220.jpg
    Barring a technological miracle, net zero’s chances of success are slim [CREDIT: Angus Mordant/Bloomberg]
    _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

    On Tuesday, I attended a private lunch given by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, the climate-sceptic think tank on whose board I sat until quite recently. Jacob Rees-Mogg was the main speaker. I am revealing no secrets by reporting more optimism in the room than I had ever previously seen in that company.

    Since the Uxbridge by-election, which the Tories held by campaigning on popular resentment of Ulez, politics have changed. Ulez is, in fact, a pollution tax, not a climate-change measure, but the unexpected Tory victory in Boris Johnson’s old seat crystallised a feeling.

    Plans to force the replacement of domestic oil boilers with heat pumps after 2026 and of petrol or diesel cars with electric vehicles (EVs) after 2030 annoyed millions. The gulf between airy, excited talk of saving the planet – which, to politicians, is free – and the hard here-and-now, day-to-day cost, particularly to poorer people, of the remedies allegedly needed, gaped wide. This public annoyance was predictable and – by most of us associated with the GWPF – had been long predicted. Now it had arrived, we rejoiced.

    Several at the lunch rightly pointed out how appallingly cavalier successive Conservative prime ministers have been on this subject, but the prevailing mood was that Rishi Sunak had some understanding of the problem and was well placed to change direction in time for the election. Would he dare?

    That very evening, we had our answer. The BBC revealed what he was about to do. Perhaps it hoped, by its leak, to unleash a tide of rage which would sweep his wicked plan away.

    This has not happened. Adroitly, firmly and showing mastery of the detail, the Prime Minister saw off Nick Robinson’s attack on the Today programme on Thursday morning.

    There is some resistance, of course. Throwing the political neutrality expected of a charity to the wind, the National Trust accused the Government of “undermining everything from food security to our health and well-being”. But I wonder how many green-minded Conservative MPs who are standing again will risk their seats by condemning measures that will allay most people’s fears about the expense of motoring and heating at least for the whole of the next Parliament. Such postponements will seem sensible to most potential Tory voters.

    Mr Sunak is scarcely turning radically against the climate consensus of policy elites. He explicitly refuses to blaspheme against the angry god of net zero: he merely suggests less painful ways of propitiating it. [In other words, it’s a timid gesture but it at least has people talking.]

    A rather bedraggled gathering of Gaia worshippers at the Political Purpose Awards – Caroline Lucas, Zac Goldsmith, Sadiq Khan – protested. Chris Packham exhorted that audience to punish the Government at the ballot box. But the Labour Party, which must think more carefully about the ballot box than does Mr Packham, is notably circumspect. It will keep the ban on new petrol and diesel cars by 2030, but otherwise avoids commitments.

    Even the “Blob” has hesitated. Yesterday morning, the BBC thought it could use a tweet issued by Tony Juniper, the head of Natural England, as soon as Mr Sunak’s changes had been rumoured, in order to stir up resistance to the Government. But Mr Juniper, for whatever reason, was not playing. Appearing on Today, he did not repeat his Twitter talk of “the very future of our civilisation” being at stake. He cautiously said that motoring and heating issues were not his affair: his job was questions of species diversity and suchlike.

    Probably Mr Sunak’s net zero changes will not be enough to keep him and his party in Downing Street after the next general election, but they will help. Critics who turn them into an election issue will fall into the trap he is setting. He is the conscientious one concerned about strains on voters, he implies; they are the wild-eyed ideologues who want to glue themselves to roads.

    Yet if I were a net zero believer, I would be highly alarmed that Mr Sunak’s changes will ramify much wider than he claims. Even if he sincerely accepts the 2050 destination and is simply adjusting the means of getting there, he is in fact breaking the all-party consensus that has already done us so much harm.

    For the first time, a party leader is raising seriously the question of cost. This should be asked of literally all political projects but, on this subject, it has been consistently suppressed. Green zealots, aware of cost horrors, have structured the five-year carbon budgets in order to protect them from democratic scrutiny. It was important that Mr Sunak said the public have been “misled” about cost. Who misled them? The list is long, but it includes every prime minister this century, Tory and Labour.

    Once cost is at issue, net zero is, barring a technological miracle, bound to lose. The “behaviour change” required by the Climate Change Committee to achieve emissions reduction is, in its prescription, a bigger element than is “green energy”. People must be charged more for living as they currently choose to do and/or be banned from doing so.

    Mr Sunak is now highlighting this problem. Green energy is unlikely to make nearly enough of a difference. No bids were made in the Government’s latest auction of offshore wind rights: without government subsidy, the business won’t pay.

    Once this is publicly understood, both financially and politically, the illusion becomes ever harder to sustain. It is a bit like the “golden era” of our relations with China. For years, this withstood protests about persecution of Tibet and the Uyghurs and repression in Hong Kong, but eventually, when China made the world ill through Covid and insecure by its spying via Huawei and many other means, the golden era came to an end. Trust collapsed. [For many, there was never any trust to begin with.]

    The equivalent is now happening with net zero. It is visible in most major Western countries. Look at America’s divisions. Look at Germany’s energy-driven slide into recession and the consequent rise of the AfD. Look at the Netherlands. [What’s wrong with the AfD?]

    Look, in particular, at the European Union’s decision in March not, unlike us, to ban the internal combustion engine (ICE), but instead to allow it to continue, after 2035, so long as it uses only “sustainable” fuels. This decision undermines the presumption upon which the rush to EVs was made. And when, as is probable, sustainable fuels cannot justify their cost, the ICE, one of the most brilliant of all prosperity-producing inventions, will be there, ready to continue with petrol or diesel.

    As the politics and economics of climate change alter, so will business. At Westminster Tube station this week, I spotted BP’s new advertisement designed to form the opinions of passing parliamentarians. It speaks of “And, not or”. The emphasis is on renewables working with fossil fuels, instead of the company’s previous rush to ditch the latter, promoted by their outgoing chief executive.

    Bets are being hedged. How many of the $130 trillion assets under management promised by the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (led by Mark Carney) will now be there when anyone needs them?

    Finally, there is the global scene. It cannot be said too often that hitting net zero depends on China, Russia and India, who produce almost half the world’s carbon emissions. They are not even pretending to hit the 2050 target. It has been said slightly less often that the war in Ukraine makes their non-cooperation certain. To them, net zero is a decadent Western vanity on which they are capitalising.

    Rishi Sunak is not the brave, lonely boy who cries out that the emperor has no clothes. He is more like a clear-eyed courtier edging away from the emperor’s person before others perceive the nakedness which he has already noticed.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/09/22/sunaks-green-policy-shift-beginning-of-end-net-zero/

  82. Oh horror. Zelensky is being hosted by the idiot Trudeau in a no holds barred self admiration extravaganza in Ottawa.

    Smug faces all around, I wish that they would just get a room and carry on with their game in private.

    1. Europe in recession is now expected to continue massive payments to Ukraine in order to keep the war going. The Americans are now handing off the future cost of their disastrous failed neo-con policies to Europe and that includes the UK thanks to that dolt Boris Johnson and his truly ignorant successors.

      Trudeau is presently feting the poison dwarf Zelensky and will inevitably be burnt. Anyone who thought Russia was just a gas station are getting a rude awakening. Russia is the largest country in the world with vast areas ripe for development and abundant resources.

      Ukraine is a mere sink hole for American investment and ultimately exploitation of its resources. It is effectively a remote state of the USA but provides the means by which money is both laundered and recycled back to the evil DC politicians of both stripes.

      Obama, the Clintons and the puppet Biden have a lot to answer for. As with Blair, Johnson has blood on his hands. We need a clear out of Westminster just as Washington needs much the same.

      Washington and Berlin have been the largest donors to Ukraine, the rest such as Poland, Great Britain and France have also depleted their resources by giving their old legacy armaments to Ukraine. Stocks are now low and production facilities cannot keep up.

      Wars by contrast are won by those countries who are able to match armaments production to the task at hand. Russia has this capacity and its industrial flexibility means that it it is able to ramp up production very rapidly and it has.

      Ukraine and the collective West have lost this war in Ukraine. The cost has been much more than the loss of materiel but the evisceration of the young men of Ukraine, losses in life and limbs exceeding half a million persons.

      Boris Johnson wrote a not very good biography of Winston Churchill but by his latest speech yet has now denied the involvement of Russians in the defeat of Hitler. He carefully ignores the fact that Ukraine was the seat of the Nazi SS, a seat which has survived and exposed itself in the Azov Battalions, the murderers responsible for the annihilation and persecution of Russian speakers in the Donbass which led to the current war.

  83. A run through today’s activities. Yes I know, a bit mundane but it might JUST take your minds off other, more global matters.
    First, my eyes appear to be excellent condition for their age and The Van has two new front tyres and is lacking a nail from one rear tyre and lump of stone from t’other.
    As a result of the above my recently recharged bank account is already down £3500 with another £130 or so due out when I tank up tomorrow.

    I’m still having worries about step-son, he was supposed to have been moved to a flat in Stoke yesterday whilst his flat in Derby is refurbished, but uncertain if the move took place as I am trying to distance myself from his affairs and force the Social and Mental Health Services to take up the slack and do their bloody jobs!! HA HA, BLOODY HA!

    It appears a tenant from another flat has been staying in his flat. Aforesaid other tenant is in an even more pitiable state than step-son. WTF are SS & MHS up to?

    Bright sunny start, so got a load of wet washing hung out before I went into Matlock and the DT had to bring it back in at lunchtime when the unforecast rain started!

    And with that, I’m off to bed!

    Goodnight all.

    1. Ouch! for the bank account and commiserations for the problems posed by your stepson, his temporary flatmate and the less than helpful local social services. Unexpected rain fell here, too, in short, sharp bursts. I was too idle to do the laundry and now bask in the self-satisfaction of having the intuition not to do it today.

    2. Night night, Bob. The country really is falling apart. The Age of Care & Compassion is over, finished, gone. It has morphed into the Age of Self.

  84. Some Oxford folk may be a bit up themselves but not everyone in that unfortunate place deserves the misery of the MadLibs 15-minute city. However, the nutty councillors aren’t responsible for the problems on the Botley Road, the main road heading west out of the town. The railway bridge over the road is to be widened. Work began in April and was due to be finished next October (2024), with two six-month closures six months apart.

    Unfortunately, the closure looks like lasting the full 18 months. Work was already behind schedule when excavations were halted by the discovery of about 150 yards of abandoned Victorian brick culvert, the removal of which threatened to undermine the foundations of the existing railway bridge. Yes, they found an unexpected item in the digging area.

    Small businesses along the Botley Road are fed up with it all, especially the bike shop.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-66521747
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-66848589
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-66859782

  85. I’m back! Good meeting for a change and not too long. The reason I’m later returning is I stopped off for coffee and a “putting the world to rights” session before I drove home.

  87. Remember to do whatever you usually do when the northern hemisphere begins its astronomical autumn quarter at 7:50 BST (6:50 UTC) tomorrow.

  88. ‘Morning chaps! Just flying over Thessaloniki on our way home! Have paid my €4 and will have Wi-Fi all the way back!

    1. Good morning, Sue! Happy landings and safe journey home! I’ve just got up to let the pup out, he was desperate, bless him, and it was 7 C here in s.Cambs! We are both now cosily tucked up in bed once again. Welcome home to bonkers Britain! 🤣 xx

      1. Thanks pm! It was very hot last night and what little sleep we had when we got back from Aegina was accompanied by a hi speed fan! Can’t imagine how wet and chilly it’s going to be!🌧️💨
        How is the new(ish) little pal? Thriving I imagine?

        1. He is growing by the second, mushrooming, Sue, he is much bigger than a Yorkie! We are worried that the poodle cross is not miniature, as we were told, but standard poodle! 🤣 Yesterday he took a flying leap vertically into the air and grabbed a knife from the table and ran around the room with it, laughing all the while. He loves to climb. And his eyes nearly pop out of his head when he sees the wide open grassy spaces of the village green, he loves to run freely, he is very agile and nimble.

          4 euros sounds like a bargain to me to be entertained by us on your homeward journey! We are promised a sunny day here on the western slopes of east Anglia!

          1. What a star! Sounds very adorable and, although not replacing, he is filling!
            I was fibbing about the route we took out of Athens, and we’re currently over Monte Carlo! And I thought €4 was pretty good!

          2. Very definitely not replacing, I still long for her every day – she was a doggie soulmate but Rico has given us something else to think about, no doubt about that – anything that is put down within reach is whisked away pronto. It’s like having a very beady-eyed toddler around…..!

    2. I have lamb chops marinating in garlic and oregano. Your holiday has worked wonders on me. Hope you enjoyed it too. :@)

      1. Thanks pet! I’ll be in touch! Cant quite believe we’ll be home by lunchtime – it’s been a long couple of days!!😘

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