Friday 25 June: Britain’s disregard for its younger generations is doing lasting damage

Posted on by Geoff Graham

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

Today’s letters (visible only to DT subscribers) are here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2021/06/24/letters-britains-disregard-younger-generations-lasting-damage/

723 thoughts on “Friday 25 June: Britain’s disregard for its younger generations is doing lasting damage”

  2. Navy defending our values in Russia dispute, says Boris Johnson. 25 June 2021.

    A Royal Navy warship was “sticking up for our values” in an incident with Russian forces in disputed waters around Crimea, Boris Johnson has said.

    The prime minister said the UK does not recognise Russia’s annexation of Crimea and was pursuing freedom of navigation in international waters.

    Mr Johnson denied UK relations with Russia were at an all-time low.

    He refused to be drawn on whether he had personally authorised the HMS Defender voyage.

    Morning everyone. I think the truly scary thing here is that this was not a deliberate provocation; these feeble minded morons literally had no idea what they were doing. It never occurred to them that the Russians might regard this incursion into their territory in a very much different light.

    There is an oddity here in that when Britannia ruled the waves and could do pretty much what she liked she was scrupulous about such things and studiously avoided giving offence to even the most minor players.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-57593411

    1. Yo Minty

      Let us use the same tactics on the rubber boats crossing the Channel daily from France

      I am surprised that the Government have not put the boats up for sale on an Auction Site, after the passenger had been disembarked

      It would be a nice little earner to offset 4* hotel accommodation charges that the incomers are costing us

      1. I would imagine that the RIBs etc belong to the French government and must be returned at British expense.

    2. The British authorities must realise, in this inexplicable bit of bear-prodding in the Black Sea, that Sevastopol has been an important Russian navy base long before Russia took Crimea back from Ukraine. It was Russian before being gifted to Ukraine by Khrushchev in the 1950s. Many of the locals consider themselves ethnically Russian, but that might be because Stalin sent to Siberia those who weren’t.

      The most acceptable reason might be to point out to Putin that Russian subs have been wandering around the British coastline for decades, and we are simply returning the honour.

      1. Morning Jeremy. Of course Russian Submarines are not sailing in UK waters!

      2. It’s not bear-prodding, just a signal that we won’t be intimidated, neither do we recognise his invasion and seizure of the Crimea.

        Perhaps it’s time we reacted in kind to Putin’s aggressively ignoring norms of international behaviour and to Russia’s frequent incursions into U.K. airspace and territorial waters.

    4. They are not Russian waters and the RN has every right to sail in them. Those waters still belong to the Ukraine, not the Russian federation, as recognised by the UN and all but hard-line communist or Russian-sponsored countries. Whatever the past history and ethnic make-up of the Crimea, Putin stole it and the Ukraine hasn’t yet given up despite Putin’s pressure to seize even more of the Ukraine.

    2. He’s setting a glorious example to the rest of us. I’d love to be doing that!

    3. Would a gorgeous millionairess even give him a second look if he were not a senior cabinet minister?

      Power corrupts: absolute power corrupts absolutely.

        1. Just fail miserably in your job; close down the economy, bu88er up the lives of millions, play with the psyche of an entire nation …… and the mother of Talia and Bruno is all yours.

      2. Hey Beatnik, Total Zero + Power = Powerful Total Zero, Dude. This bozo just proves the saying: “Give a small man power and he will demonstrate exactly how small he really is.” Time is going to catch up on these zeros that have hijacked Britannia, Hombre.

          1. Hey Beatnik, Lenny Waronker and Joe Boyd, Dude. We don’t want no short, fat blond people who are ruled by their libido around here, for sure, Bro.

    6. Giving an ex-lover a highly paid job as an adviser in order to resume the affair? Didn’t you know his rules don’t apply to him and his fellow Masters of the Universe? Weren’t you watching the G7 shenanigans? Nothing to see, move on.

  4. The US is facing a summer of crime. 25 June 2021.

    Fearing a summer of disorder in the United States, President Joe Biden has cobbled together a package of measures to address spiralling violence. During the pandemic, many types of crime fell; in 2020, however, the US murder rate rose 25 per cent. Last weekend in Chicago, over 50 people were shot, at least five fatally.

    The lockdown undoubtedly raised stress levels but there was also a spike in deaths following the appalling murder of George Floyd by a policeman in May 2020. Parts of the Left denounced the police and called for them to be defunded. Mr Biden never joined that chorus but nor did his party effectively condemn it, preferring to paint Donald Trump as a reactionary. As the police pulled back, the vacuum was filled by criminals.

    What a surprise! These people encouraged the most blatant outbreaks of violence by Antifa and BLM beside calling for the defunding of the police and now whine about crime!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2021/06/25/us-facing-summer-crime/

    1. Floyd died of a fentanyl overdose and the Chauvin trial was a fiasco that shamed American Justice.

  6. Good morning, all. Damp. Rained in the night. Grey skies.

    Halfcock emulating BPAPM. Perhaps he thinks it is the route to No 10. What truly disgusting people are “running” the country – into the ground.

          2. Can it be a ghastly thought if she has already made herself a millionairess?

            She obviously has form.

          4. Rent-seeking, according to the Financial Times:

            Rent-seeking is a culture in which the principal route to wealth is not creating wealth,
            but taking possession of or benefiting from wealth created by others.

            This takes many forms. On Europe’s oldest highway, the Rhine river, the castles on rocky
            outcrops date from the time when bandits with aristocratic titles extracted tolls from passing traffic.

            In poor countries the focus of political and business life is often rent-seeking rather than
            wealth creation. That helps explain why some countries are rich and others poor.

            Rent-seeking can be effected through rake-offs on government contracts, or the
            appropriation of state assets by oligarchs and the relatives of politicians.

            [or in this case, the mistress and the publican of an important politician]

          5. According to the equally vile (for different reasons) Shapps – the woman went through a “vigorous process”….before landing on Halfcock’s desk.

          6. Coincidently since Shapps was and had been housing minister and MP for Welwyn and Hatfield there have been multipul new builds in the area, including green belt land, a large (Verulam boys) school playing field and on the land of the once famed and preserved for many decades Oaklands agricultural college. Conveniently Re-designated as brown field. He always insists he lives in WGC but it’s not quite true as he lives an a huge house in Brookman’s Park.
            One might wonder how he can afford to live in such a mansion on a politicians meagre salary ?

          8. Errmm “You may think that, but I couldn’t possibly comment”.
            A much used reply in the UK TV House of Cards.

          9. Very interesting, janet.I wonder what her husband and children are feeling?

  8. I’ll be watching my second online funeral today at noon. A slightly older cousin in Scotland. I managed to attend my brother’s funeral in Edinburgh 6 weeks ago. Both deaths were from cancer. I am now the oldest male member of the family.
    Life goes on and this site is a godsend.

    1. I don’t know how close you were to your cousin, but the realisation that another branch of the family tree is gone is very sad. Wishing you peace on this sad day.

      1. Thank you Sue. My late brother was closer to my cousin although in our childhood my cousin and his younger sister came to live with us in the 40/50 s when their mother died of TB. Their father was a policeman and wasn’t able to properly look after his children. My cousin was very fit and a racing cyclist. I have lost track of his sister. She married and she moved abroad to South Africa with her husband.

        1. What amazing memories. How families change over generations, taking in other members and then moving away all over the world.

      1. The moving finger writes; and, having writ, moves on:

        nor all thy piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line,

        nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.

        — Omar Khayyam

  9. I started filling in one of Plusnet’s “Why are you leaving us?” survey emails, but half way through it froze my browser, I gave up. They know very well why of course. This was the answer I gave:

    “When I joined Plusnet, it was run honourably by a breakaway management in Yorkshire appalled by the behaviour of BT, its corporate owner. Since then, BT have been imposing their values and management behaviour.

    Prices have been snuck up for loyal customers, extra charges added, more handouts for millionaire primadonnas through BT Sport. The final straw was the document written in U.S. corporate legalese stating a policy of putting up prices by inflation + 3.5% each year.

    My mother uses her landline a great deal, but was finding monthly bills of £50-£75, whereas a competitor (and I will not say who it is, since it would make them vulnerable to a hostile takeover from BT) charges around £35 for the same service.”

  10. Morning all

    SIR – In the past few days, two of our grandchildren, aged four and six, have been told to self-isolate (due to one infection in their nursery or school).

    The six-year-old has had to cancel her birthday party and the four-year-old his trip to visit the school he will be starting at in September. Our daughter has been forced to take a week off work in order to look after them.

    Although Covid cases are going up, the number resulting in hospitalisation is not rising as fast, and the number of deaths is low.

    Children are not badly affected by the virus, but their emotional and mental health is being jeopardised. Why is it that, again and again, they are the ones bearing the brunt of our country’s response to the pandemic?

    We cannot understand why this very important issue is not being addressed. It is cruel and unfair.

    David and Judy Morris

    Sheffield, South Yorkshire

    –– ADVERTISEMENT ––

    SIR – I don’t recall the younger generations complaining when older and more vulnerable people were prioritised for the Covid-19 vaccination. Instead, they waited patiently for their turn to arrive.

    That patience has not been shown by members of the priority group, who have since been pushing for more freedoms. Don’t those still awaiting their first and second jabs deserve a bit more consideration?

    Sandra Crompton

    Bagworth, Leicestershire

    Placeholder image for youtube video: kykWUEp_6wo

    SIR – I am concerned that many consider younger people to be immune from any serious Covid effects, meaning that they should be permitted to experience the usual events of young life.

    My son is 28 and suffering from long Covid, which he contracted despite following all the rules. His flu-like symptoms quickly escalated to a collapse, and he was taken in an ambulance to hospital. He had a very low oxygen level and was admitted to intensive care for several days.

    He now has the lungs of a 60-year-old heavy smoker (having never smoked), with severe scarring. He is easily tired and struggles to walk for more than 15 minutes.

    Advertisement

    ADVERTISING

    Being safe is paramount, even if this requires lockdown. The sacrifices that young people are having to make – such as missing proms and parties (Letters, June 24) – are nothing compared with long Covid.

    K J Smith

    Warrington, Cheshire

    SIR – On holiday for the first time in over 18 months in North Wales, the real joy was seeing so many people getting on with life.

    Masks were slipped on when entering buildings, but not while walking along the street. Prams, shoppers, visitors, young couples, children running and laughing, the fit and energetic cycling or on foot – they made our holiday a delight.

    Good sense makes this workable. Trust people.

    L F Buckland

    Blandford Forum, Dorset

    SNP priorities

    SIR – I couldn’t agree more with Alan Cochrane (Comment, June 24). When will our First Minister wake up to the real problems in Scotland?

    Our healthcare and education are in a dreadful state. The people of Scotland have been badly let down by the SNP, and it’s time to put this right.

    Marian Gordon

    Greenock, Renfrewshire

    Advertisement

    Placeholder image for youtube video: RxfbESCyXG0

    SIR – A colleague of mine says she has no desire to return to Scotland – the land of her birth, her education and her ancestry.

    The reason? She is fed up with being accused of being English, and hated for it, simply because she does not speak with a regional Scottish accent.

    Is it any wonder that those of us living south of the border are increasingly reluctant to travel north?

    Alastair Graham

    Bagshot, Surrey

    Where to scoot

    SIR – E-scooters are indeed a menace (Letters, June 21), but I fear we are fighting a losing battle.

    In Worthing there is a sign on the seafront that states: “E-scooters are not to be ridden on the promenade”. This suggests that it is permissible to ride them everywhere else.

    Ian Pinington

    Partridge Green, West Sussex

    Dumbing down

    SIR – If the Duke and Duchess of Sussex were concerned about their son being bullied for using the title Earl of Dumbarton (report, June 24), could they not have chosen the other spelling, used by the councils of both East and West Dunbartonshire (where I grew up)? Since the name derives from Dùn Breatann, Dunbarton would be more appropriate.

    Advertisement

    Eldon Sandys

    Pyrford, Surrey

    Placeholder image for youtube video: C9P6EGCcMFI

    SIR – The Sussexes are right to reject the title Dumbarton for their son.

    Not only does it contain the word “Dumb”, suggesting that he’ll be stupid, but it also contains “Bart”, suggesting he’ll be an out-of-control underachiever, and “ton”, implying that he’ll be unhealthily overweight.

    Archie, on the other hand, is made up of “Arc” (another word for rainbow), “hi” (the universal greeting) and “e” – the letter signifying “eco” and all things good. Diversity, inclusiveness and environmentalism all in one name.

    Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

    Northwood, Middlesex

    Unfair housing targets

    SIR – The Government has said it wants 300,000 new homes built a year, although that target has not been reached since 1969.

    Excluding Northern Ireland, the UK has 632 mainland constituencies, so 475 new homes per constituency would achieve that goal. But the anger about planning changes in Chesham and Amersham and across the southern counties is because many councils are having far larger housing numbers foisted upon them. For instance, Horsham District Council in West Sussex is facing an annual target of 1,200 new homes per year. Why?

    Advertisement

    These unrealistic targets are based partly on pre-Brexit and pre-Covid population expansion predictions that are now hopelessly outdated. But the other reason lies in a sneaky element of the National Planning Policy Framework – the “duty to cooperate”. This duty forces councils to absorb extra housing numbers, in addition to their own targets, from nearby councils that conveniently declare they cannot reach theirs.

    The current planning White Paper suggests this duty may be abolished, but the scandal can be solved by making every council liable for its own target. If it cannot fulfil its target, it needs to justify that to the Government, not selfishly dump extra houses on its neighbours.

    Timothy Bidwell

    London SW6

    SIR – When it comes to local planning, the problem of building in back gardens, or backland development as it is officially called, must be faced.

    According to my own local council’s regulations, “backland development is the most inefficient, problematic and unsatisfactory way of accommodating new housing”, yet five houses have been erected in this way in my neighbourhood in recent years, and many more in the town as a whole.

    Advertisement

    Of course, most of the original owners move on, leaving neighbours to suffer the inconvenience.

    Malcolm Allen

    Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire

    Dresden rationale

    SIR – That some people deem Sir Arthur Harris (Letters, June 22) a war criminal is as facile as blaming Churchill for Bengal’s famine.

    Dresden was a military base, industrial centre and transport hub. No one in January 1945 knew the war would end in May (one study forecast it continuing to November if Germany stalled the Soviet progress), nor how advanced was Germany’s nuclear programme. But they did know of the V1 and V2 rockets being used to attack London, and the horrors of the Holocaust were becoming clearer.

    German morale had to be broken, and it was vital to end the war as soon as possible by facilitating the Soviet advance, as some strategists hoped Dresden’s bombing would do, or before it reached too far west, as others preferred.

    John Birkett

    St Andrews, Fife

    Sound and fury

    SIR – I enjoyed Christopher Howse’s article on mispronunciations (Features, June 24).

    Advertisement

    However, he missed the one that annoys me, which is kilometre. It means a thousand metres, not an instrument to record kills.

    David Widdows

    Duffield, Derbyshire

    SIR – As an ex police officer, one word springs to mind: burglary was often pronounced burgalry, even by officers.

    Mike Reding

    Lincoln

    Preserving the freedom to choose what to eat

    Decisions, decisions: fruit piled high at the Monkey Buffet Festival in Lopburi, Thailand

    Decisions, decisions: fruit piled high at the Monkey Buffet Festival in Lopburi, Thailand CREDIT: AFP via Getty Images

    SIR – William Sitwell (“Now chefs feel the heat in the woke kitchen”, Features, June 22) is correct that access to the “global pantry” has helped many of us become more confident cooks at home.

    The British consumer now enjoys access to as wide a choice of safe and high-quality food as you will find anywhere in the world, at a variety of price points.

    I fear, however, that the next obvious battle in the “culture wars” will focus on paternalistic interventions by the nanny state looking to impose rules on what we can and can’t eat.

    I contend that preserving that choice is well worth fighting for.

    Ian Wright

    CEO, Food and Drink Federation

    London WC1

    Pension tax relief is wasted on high earners

    SIR – There are two principal purposes to a formal pension scheme (Letters, June 23). The first is to ensure that people have enough to live reasonably comfortably in their old age. The second is to provide a safe investment vehicle for those who lack the knowledge and means to make their own financial arrangements.

    Advertisement

    Neither applies to high earners, who can provide comfortably for old-age needs and employ a financial adviser if they lack the necessary understanding.

    It’s anomalous that the lion’s share of tax relief goes to these people, who can look to a wider range of investments and don’t need a formal pension.

    Mike Keatinge

    Sherborne, Dorset

    SIR – Twenty years ago, after saving for 16 years in a private pension, my husband inquired how much was forthcoming. He was told he would be losing half (retrospectively). This was due to Gordon Brown raiding funds by taxing dividends. It resulted in companies closing their schemes to newcomers, thereby causing what was the best pension ethos in the Western world to become the worst.

    I had never voted for Labour, but it surpassed my fears of what it could or would do. Now the Conservatives are thinking of carrying out a similar raid. I will no longer be voting for them.

    Patricia M Bryant

    Chatham, Kent

    SIR – Savers who start pensions early have no idea how these funds will perform over the next 50 years.

    Advertisement

    Instead of setting a lifetime allowance, above which contributions to a private pension pot attract tax, it would make more sense to limit annually the contributions on which you can receive tax relief. Then savers would be encouraged to save regularly and not become frightened by a potential tax bill over which they have had no control.

    The Government needs to encourage saving and financial independence to reduce future burdens on the state.

    Diane Makepeace

    Salisbury, Wiltshire

    1. Wishing you a very Happy Birthday, Corimmobile!
      Have a good one and hope the hay-fever stays away! 🎂🎉🍾

      1. Many thanks Sue. It has been raining in North Essex-Suffolk border so pollen should be suppressed.

        Will have a light lunch in a new Tea Room on Glemsford Road and fizzy stuff with neighbours later.

    2. Always worth a second go.
      I’m sure he’ll have drawn up plans for a splendid day.
      Happy birthday as you enter the year of the big seven zero.

      1. Thank you sos.

        Hopefully the year of the big seven zero will see the end of this miserable evil Covid nonsense and the return to some sort of normality.

      1. Thank you Anne. Another year under the belt. No work as such but several clients in hospitality have gone out of business so I cannot complain.

        I have been reading ‘Mere Christianity’ by CS Lewis. The time given to reason by the enforced lockdowns has restored my Christian faith.

    6. Grattis på födelsedagen, Corim.

      Hope the Domain de la Romanée-Conté hits all the top notes. 🍷😉

      1. Many thanks Grizz. Glad to have survived another year and having witnessed the most heinous medical crimes so relieved.

        The exposure of Hancock for the hypocrite that he is was a perfect gift.

      1. Thank you. Lunch at new Tea Rooms on Glemsford Road. Drinks later with lovely neighbours.

        Thankfully the rain has dampened down the extraordinarily high grass pollen count so I should survive with my Sterimar.

      1. Thank you RE. It is a relief to have gotten through another year.

        Great fun to see the exposure of Hypocrite Hancock. A birthday present as no other.

        1. I hope you’re having a decent day and remember you’re only a youngster.
          Having been involved in construction most of my working life I can’t possibly imagine what might have caused that block of flats suddenly collapse like it did.

  12. Everywhere one goes, there are signs urging you to keep two metres apart. HMG (or some wazzock posing as a minister) says that the “one metre” rule is set to be abolished.

    When did one metre apart become two metres apart?

    Anyway, let us hope and pray that the philanderer Halfcock is done for. We need some good news.

    1. If Johnson, the serial adulterer, sacks Hancock for ‘playing away’, wouldn’t that expose Johnson as a hypocrite? Oh, hang on…

    2. Weirdly, at this stage in the farce, Hancock should stay on as he knows the brief and bringing someone else up to speed would take a long time, potentially hindering any practical implementation.

      Let him see it out – then slap him with an arrest for breaking covid rules.

      2. But, but – Halfcock is an “important” person – (© Whittingdale) – so the rules to not apply to him. Or the woman.

    3. The mind just boggles.
      (The strain of being tasteful is killing me this morning.)

    4. The original guidelines were not to remain closer than 2 metres for longer than 10 minutes.

      The 10 minutes bit was quickly abandoned.

    5. I am disappointed that he is done for over hankypanky in a cupboard, though. I suppose he was becoming too much of a liability for government. There have been numerous examples of a lack of integrity in other areas. Will any of them (midazolam, for example) ever be properly investigated?

    6. As many around the world have seen from the filming and still pictures of the G7 summit, there rules didn’t apply there.

  13. Macron backs Merkel over EU-wide quarantine for British tourists
    German Chancellor to criticise EU’s tourism-dependent countries for lack of controls on holidaymakers from the UK

    James Crisp : https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/24/angela-merkel-push-eu-wide-quarantine-rules-british-tourists/

    As expected Mr Macron always does what older women tell him to do. As we know this has nothing to do with Covid and everything to do with EU spite.

    Sorry to bore you with this as I brought up the subject yesterday. I suppose it serves us right for wanting Britain to leave the EU even though Cameron, having promised me a vote in the referendum, went back on his promise so I had no say in the matter even though I am an Englishman living in the EU.

    By the way James Crisp of the DT is a frightful little tick isn’t he?

    BTL

    So Mr Macron wants to destroy our business even though we have lived in France since 1989, run our own business and paid our taxes in France! Our activity also helps young people from Britain to learn French – something that the French president is supposedly keen on.

    This is what we do:

    https://tracey-frenchcourses.weebly.com/

    2. I fear that if the bullies of the EU succeed, that is what you did.

      Good luck.

    3. The EU would always take revenge. It knows no other approach apart from pettiness and abuse.

      Macron is weak, a puppet joke.

      1. I am beginning to wonder if the EU will soon return to what it was at the beginning: just France, Germany, Italy and the Benelux. But I don ‘t know how long the Italians will want to stay.

        1. The Visigrad countries have got what they wanted. Once the money runs out, they will be off, as they have all too recent and painful memories of living under an oppressive regime.

      2. That is why, yesterday, I urged BPAPM to retaliate against ALL EU citizens wishing to enter the UK. Especially “important” ones.

    5. I noticed a rather nasty comment after your own, Richard.

      Denise Carter 25 Jun 2021 3:05AM
      @Richard Tracey Silly language anyway. Let them all speak English. French will die and the sooner the better.

      Flag2LikeReply

      Robert Spowart
      25 Jun 2021 8:21AM
      @Denise Carter @Richard Tracey Rather a narrow minded comment, Denise.

      Delete1Like
      Reply

      Robert Spowart
      25 Jun 2021 8:22AM
      @Richard Tracey Good luck Richard. I feel you may need it.

  14. SIR – I enjoyed Christopher Howse’s article on mispronunciations (Features, June 24).

    However, he missed the one that annoys me, which is kilometre. It means a thousand metres, not an instrument to record kills.

    David Widdows
    Duffield, Derbyshire

    Quite so. A MICrometre is a millionth of a metre, a micROMetre is a small G-clamp.

      1. ‘Morning, Bill, include the pleece and the meja.

        I won’t bring up privacy – too much of a controversy.

      1. Anyone using a miCROMeter as a “small G clamp” deserves to have their fingers amputated!

    3. The mispronunciation of Omega as “oh-MEE-gah” or even “oh-MAY-gah” is what gets me. You wouldn’t pronounce words like ‘megastore’, ‘megahertz’ or ‘megabyte’ in this way. The word is Greek, and the ‘e’ is an epsilon (ε), not an eta (η).

  15. 334762+ up ticks,
    Morning Each,
    More double standards, a blatant one being on obesity
    within children / advertising by the Pm then next day
    billy bunter johnson the fat controller caught in the act of
    waffling the contents of a biscuit factory.

    Now there’s a funny thing,a pigeon race set off from Peterborough, good weather, many a pigeon disappeared, same happening over Europe, could it be a Moby Dick issue ( wales off course).
    Solar activity ? hungary illegals ?

    STE.

  16. Matt Hancock refuses to comment on pictures appearing to show affair with aide in Department of Health
    The Health Secretary is seen in what is thought to be CCTV footage in an embrace with aide Gina Coladangelo in his Whitehall office
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/25/matt-hancock-refuses-comment-pictures-appearing-show-affair/

    I am not sure that this is a loin related matter – Hancock looks low on libido.

    I think he is just trying to follow the example of his fornicating adulterous leader and curry favour that way!

    2. Hancock looks low on libido.

      I’m sure he has Big Pharma working on another little prick to cure his problem.

  17. When you read articles like this: https://www.gbnews.uk/news/climate-change-cut-meat-and-dairy-by-20-say-government-advisors/107943

    I continually realise that government needs to be collared, chained and muzzled because it has no purpose, value or use. It’s attitudes are destructive, idiotic, impoverishing and will cause more deaths than any irrelevant virus ever could.

    All it knows is tax, smack, tax tax and more tax to force changes of behaviour. They are behaving like feudal lords taking 9/10s of our crop.

      1. You could have asked why it is alright for Halfcock to “embrace” someone else’s wife while – at the same time – making it illegal for the rest of us to embrace our nearest and dearest.

        1. You could also ask why someone who lobbies ministers for a living is suddenly put on the Government payroll?

          It would be interesting to discover what expertise she has.

      2. I think that the way a politician treats his or her spouse gives a good indication of how much he or she is likely to care for the people he or she is supposed to represent. This might tell us something about Hancock’s nature

        Johnson has always treated women like dirt – he is not just a clueless buffoon (which of course he is) but he is also a seriously nasty, deceitful man. In fact he stirs up in me similar feelings to those stirred up in Macron and Merkin by Brexit and the British: hatred and contempt.

  19. Good morning all. A pleasantly cool 9° in the yard, dry after the night’s rain but cloudy with more rain forecast.

  21. Good Moaning.
    First question of the day: how do I safely drink coffee while laughing like a drain?
    I am sure all NOTTLers will exercise their natural good taste and not make suggestive remarks on how to spell the Health Secretary’s surname. And I am equally sure that the mother of Talia and Bruno (no, I am NOT making it up) would not dream of breaking covid rules.

  22. BREAKING NEWS…(!)

    “Halfcock leaving government to spend less time with his family.”

  23. Moscow’s record heatwave – in pictures. 25 June 2021.

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/96d0e3b052db8aa283d29a2e03e1f9b3015de2450f9d768103b6ac0754211eb8.jpg

    Moscow has been hit by a heatwave this week, with temperatures reaching a 120-year record high due to the effects of the climate emergency, Russia’s weather service has said.

    Things are looking hot in Moscow!

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2021/jun/25/moscows-record-heatwave-in-pictures

      1. Good morning Anne

        I must confess I much prefer low-brow jazz to high-brow, pretentious, dissonant stuff.

  24. 334762+ up ticks,

    Friday 25 June: Britain’s disregard for its younger generations is doing lasting damage,

    But this has been the case for decades, 6 month training courses replacing 5 year apprenticeships, etc,etc we in the real UKIP calling for Grammar schools only to be tagged as far right racist.

    ALL on account of the adherence to a party before Country tactical keep in / keep out voting pattern regarding the lab/lib/con close shop coalition, the consequences of which have now become too odious to ignore.

  25. Do mayors go on to make good prime ministers? Johnson – the former Mayor of London – has proved to be a disaster. Andy Burnham is the Mayor of Manchester.

    The worst thing about Andy Burnham is that he will probably defeat the Mock-Conservatives in the next general election but can the country stand much more of people like Major, May, Cameron and Johnson at the helm?

    We need a new political party with a reasonable chance of gaining office. Does anyone think this will happen or is Britain finished?

    1. All attempts at forming a centre party have failed – mainly because of personality clashes between the handful of people trying to create them.

      1. They have failed because the voter is inherently stupid. Conversation overheard on a bus trip back from town during the run up to Treasonous and her pigs ear of an election campaign, “I think I will vote for her, she always dresses so nice”. Just two of many voters I suspect.
        How many voters take the trouble to read manifestos or think for themselves, instead headlines like It’s the Sun that won it is so near the truth. Sheep, the country is full of sheep walking around on two legs.

        1. My secretary (those were the days) voted for whichever party provided her with a car to take her to the Polling Station.

          1. My Gran, (staunch Labour) used to refuse offers to the polling station by the Labour Party and always waited for the Tory offer of a lift.
            When asked why, her reply was the car was always a nicer posher car.

          2. Oops, nonunderreadery, but anyway;
            If only the whole country was similarly pragmatic, and all our politicians were so resourceful

          3. I just made a similar comment before seeing yours. The MPs for Bath in those days were Sir James Pitman (Pitman Press) and later Sir Edward Brown who lived in a council house.

          4. If only the whole country was similarly pragmatic, and all our politicians were so resourceful!

          5. My father would take the lift offered by the Tory, a leather upholstered Rover 65 or 90 as opposed to the Ford Anglia offered by the Labour candidate. He then voted Labour.

          7. My nan drove a Ford Anglia and loved throwing it around those little country lanes around Colchester, Subdury and Bury St Edmunds and she was also a staunch Tory made even more so when Thatcher gave her a house for virtually nothing.

        2. Morning VVOF. It’s a sad fact that only a minority actually understand politics. Nottl is unusual in having a very high percentage of people who do so; the normal level is probably around 20%!

          1. Morning Minty, and that percentage reflects the state the country is in.
            I don’t care if people disagree with me and what I think, at least it shows they have given my point of view some thought, as you say there are just so few of them about.

        3. 334762+ up ticks,
          Morning VVOF,
          The wretch cameron, ” “he looks like PM material”, johnson “he makes us laugh”
          Hold your nose,
          keep in / keep out, best of the worst, tactical voting all helps in the downfall of a country.

        4. Most voters can’t think for themselves, they think what the MSM tells them to think.

          Cameron was elected because he managed to convince the entire electorate that deficits were a big problem. The electorate voted to take away the very thing keeping them afloat.

          Most people think that what’s good for households is good for government when really it’s the opposite. A government that saves a little ( Osberk’s surpluses in normal times law) is a government that is constantly removing more from the economy than it put in. The economy only has three sectors, the government sector, the non-government sector and the foreign sector. The rest of the world runs a huge surplus with us. The government wants to run a surplus, and surpluses and deficits over the three sectors sum to zero so that leaves the nongovernment sector running a massive deficit. That is households and businesses spending more than their income constantly. How anyone can convince 40 million people that’s a good idea is beyond me, yet the MSM managed it on behalf of the Tories.

    2. Morning Richard. We are finished! We are living through not only the destruction of our country but the Death Throes of an entire Civilisation!

          2. One of my mother’s sisters was nicknamed Jeremiah after the gloomy Old Testament prophet.

            However dear Old Aunt Bill (although her name was actually Erica) was much loved by the young for her low-spirited wit and humour and her fund of stories. She never had any children and she married a ne’er do well chap who systematically failed at everything he attempted from rubber plantations in the far East to running a strip joint in Soho.

            Every family needs a black sheep or two who never makes good. Indeed I thought that would be my role in the Tracey family but, to the disappointment of my young nephews and nieces who liked the idea of having a wicked uncle, I never really made bad.

          3. 334762+ up ticks,
            R,
            Keep trying, for starters take out lab/lib/con/greens membership.

          4. One of my mother’s sisters was nicknamed Jeremiah after the gloomy Old Testament prophet.

            However dear Old Aunt Bill (although her name was actually Erica) was much loved by the young for her low-spirited wit and humour and her fund of stories. She never had any children and she married a ne’er do well chap who systematically failed at everything he attempted from rubber plantations in the far East to running a strip joint in Soho.

            Every family needs a black sheep or two who never makes good. Indeed I thought that would be my role in the Tracey family but, to the disappointment of my young nephews and nieces who liked the idea of having a wicked uncle, I never really made bad.

      2. 334762+ up ticks,
        Morning AS,
        The fruition of the electoral mass addiction supplied by the lab/lib/con pushers, the voters in the main have been mainlining on political sh!te for decades.

        I want to hear a Northern Irish
        voice LOUDLY acclaim in parliament
        NO SURRENDER the decent peoples reset starts here, if decent peoples power deemed it, it could happen on the 1st of July.

    3. 334762+ up ticks,
      Morning R,
      We had the makings of a very credible party, check out the year of Batten leadership regarding UKIP.
      That got 30000 of us stabbed in the back via a treacherous nec / nige the tory (ino) friend.
      Now the shit has hit the fan BIG TIME
      many of the electorate addicted lab/lib/con coalition member / voters are awhinging woe is us, form another party, then promptly supporting voting lab/lib/con mass uncontrolled immigration/ paedophile umbrella at every opportunity.

      We in the real UKIP had been combatting ersatz Brits for years, truth be told.

      Currently ukip under the same treacherous nec is a poisonous chalice.

    4. I agree, Richard, but the only way I see it happening is if ‘For Britain’, ‘Reclaim’ and ‘Reform‘, stop splitting the vote and getting minuscule returns but rather meet, formulate a joint (maybe compromise) platform and change their name to something that gets them to the top of the ballot paper. In my letter to all three, I have suggested ABILITY.

      Whatever the name, we need this to happen.

      1. It might not be on the top of list list but I suspect
        None of the above might be a winner.

    5. Johnson has been a terrible everything apart from TV presenter where his jovial buffoon personality actually worked.

      I haven’t followed how Burnham has done in Manchester.

      Yes the country can stand many more of those types since those are the types that get elected constantly.

      A new party will take a minimum of 20-30 years to become somewhat election viable. Then it would have to be a party worth voting for, and the things likely to be offered if it was would scare most of the electorate sh1tless as the electorate is totally convinced neoliberalism is the best thing since sliced bread.

  27. No Difference

    Little Johnny returns from school and says he got an F in arithmetic.

    “Why?” asks the father.

    “The teacher asked ‘How much is 2 x 3?’ I said ‘6’”

    “But that’s right!”

    “Then she asked me ‘How much is 3 x 2?'”

    “What’s the fucking difference?” asks the father.

    “That’s what I said!“

    1. We love Venice, the first time we went was in early March there was snow on the roof of the car in front of our transfer bus at the airport. Decking around the walk ways because of flooding and not many people there which was great. I have a photograph of St Marks square with not a soul in it. And we had a free trip in a luxury launch to Murano.

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

    Jess de Wahls: Royal Academy cancels, then un-cancels gender critical artist

    We welcome the Royal Academy’s U-turn over Jess de Wahls, the artist whose work was removed from the gift shop because of a 2019 essay saying she didn’t think transwomen are women and which was inevitably branded “transphobic” by woke activists. After a media outcry, the RA eventually issued an apology and strongly hinted de Wahls’ work would be put back on sale. The artist spoke to Freddie Sayers about her experience for an episode of UnHerdTV. She has received death threats since the case went public.

    De Wahls should never have been cancelled in the first place, but at least the RA recognised how badly it had mishandled the situation – and we can hope that the adverse reaction to its decision in the media serves as a warning to other arts organisations thinking of cancelling controversial artists at the behest of Twitter mobs. The RA’s apology is worth reading in full. Rather than a boilerplate, PR-speak apology, it says: “Plurality of voices, tolerance and free thinking are at the core of what we stand for and seek to protect. These events raise some fundamental issues. Freedom of expression can open up debate, create empathy or respect for difference, it can also at times cause hurt and outrage. This has confirmed to us our commitment to freedom of expression and to addressing complex issues through engagement and debate.”

    We agree with the Times’s view of the episode: “Artistic liberty and free expression are not contingent on the degree of upset they may cause. It is precisely when a public figure encounters an outraged reaction that those principles are most in need of being scrupulously upheld.” Times columnist Janice Turner wrote of the danger of allowing junior communications staff to steer institutions into censorship in response to a Twitter mob. Peter Franklin asks in UnHerd if we’ve now reached “peak progressive”.

    The answer is almost certainly no. Scottish Ballet is reviewing its repertoire to ensure it does not “cause offence to gypsies and travelling people”, the Times reports.

    Free speech rally blocked by Batley Council

    Batley Council has blocked a planned free speech rally to show support for the teacher who is still in hiding after he showed pictures of the Prophet Mohammed to children at Batley Grammar School. The rally was due to be held in advance of the Batley and Spen by-election on 1st July. Officials said the event had not been cleared by the “Safety Advisory Group” and – despite being held outside – would not be Covid-secure. This is in spite of the fact that the Council did nothing to prevent large groups of Muslim protestors gathering outside the school gates back in March.

    Pupils at Batley Grammar School have updated their petition in support of the teacher. We join them in asking the authorities to do everything in their power to make sure this teacher – and his family – can resume their normal lives.

    We wrote to the Department for Education in March urging the Education Secretary to add freedom of speech to the fundamental British values that schools are required to promote. The DfE has responded, arguing that “the importance of freedom of speech” is already covered by “British values” so there’s no need to update the guidance. We disagree and will continue to campaign for an explicit duty to promote free speech in schools.

    Sensitivity and censorship

    The Oxford University Students’ Union is poised to unleash “sensitivity readers” on student journalists to vet their articles for “problematic” content. The use of “sensitivity readers” – morality cops who red-line anything likely to cause offence to designated victim groups – is increasingly widespread. Our founder Toby Young doubts his student journalism would have made it passed a sensitivity reader. Sarah Ditum in the Times writes that students should refuse to accept this sinister edict. Brendan O’Neill, writing in the Spectator, says: “Students should be outraged by the idea that they need sensitivity readers to guard their allegedly delicate eyes and ears from offence. It’s like having a mental chaperone, some technocratic know-it-all who will cleanse the press of certain ideas so that you never feel sad, challenged or conflicted.”

    We recommend reading an article by Dr James Orr of our Advisory Council in the Critic, on “The battle between truth-seekers and social justice warriors at the top of academia”.

    Edinburgh University has been in the headlines constantly for the sorry state of free speech on campus in recent months. Tom Devine spoke to several Edinburgh academics for the Spectator who expressed concern about this state of affairs – although, predictably, they all insisted on anonymity for fear of repercussions.

    Divisive American racial ideas forced on British schoolchildren

    Analysis by the Telegraph has found widespread acceptance of the concept of “white privilege” by local councils, who have included it in educational material for use in schools. It might well be appropriate for older children to debate these ideas, but “white privilege” should never be taught as if it’s an incontestable fact, and certainly not to children in primary schools, which is what’s currently happening. The negative effect of telling poor white boys they’re “privileged” has been documented in a recent report by the Education Select Committee.

    It is not just Critical Race Theory that’s being foisted on schoolchildren, but, of course, gender ideology too. St Paul’s Girls’ School is to rename the role of “head girl” because it is “too binary”.

    Meanwhile in America a cheerleader has won a landmark free speech victory against her school. Brandi Levy was aged 14 when she was kicked off a cheerleading squad for a “profane social media post” on Snap Chat. The US Supreme Court ruled by a majority of 8-1 that the school’s decision to punish her for something she said at home on the weekend breached her right to free speech under the First Amendment.

    More women fall foul of the “no debate” approach to trans issues

    Allison Pearson in the Telegraph takes aim at the persistent attacks on women and their right to express their gender critical beliefs. Lisa Mackenzie was a policy officer for the Royal College of Nursing when she was hounded out of her job for researching gender identity. At a meeting at Edinburgh University where she presented her research findings, the hostility towards her was so intense that one MSP said, “Never in more than 25 years of going to political meetings have I felt the intimidation that I felt then.”

    Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey has been reported to the Speaker for “nasty behaviour” towards SNP MP Joanna Cherry QC. She claims his hostility is inspired by her gender critical views. Cherry has announced that she is returning to the bar to defend Scottish feminist Marion Millar who is being prosecuted for challenging trans orthodoxy on Twitter.

    Former Supreme Court judge Lord Sumption has written an article in the Times about the ever-increasing demands of those who “would like the law to protect them from the distress of being confronted by opinions fundamentally different from their own”.

    The Online Safety Bill

    Our recent FSU In-Depth event on the Online Safety Bill’s threat to free speech can be watched on our YouTube channel here. If you haven’t already, please join the FSU so you too can be invited to our members-only events. David Davis MP says the Online Safety Bill is a censor’s charter. Timandra Harkness has picked the legislation apart in UnHerd, singling out the “duty of care” that will be imposed on online platforms, effectively outsourcing censorship to private companies in America. She calls it a “duty of censorship”.

    Sean O’Neill writes in the Times about the libel tourism killing free speech: “The UK has no constitutional protection for a free press.”

    GB News

    Our founder Toby Young wrote an op ed for the Mail on Sunday about the censorious activists trying to take GB News off the air. He said the struggle against the boycott is “a battle we have to win for the sake of our democracy”. The Express reported his comments. We have written to the companies which have stopped advertising on GB News after being mobbed by Stop Funding Hate’s online activists urging them to reconsider.

    Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden has made a positive intervention in this debate. Writing for the Telegraph he said: “A free media is one that has a diverse range of opinions and voices – and as I said earlier this week, GB News is a welcome addition to that diversity.” Nigel Farage has also welcomed the new channel.

    Offence archaeology

    First England cricketer Ollie Robinson was punished for historic tweets he sent as a teenager; now two more England cricketers – Eoin Morgan and Jos Buttler – are facing an investigation by the England and Wales Cricket Board. The bizarre allegation against them is that in a Twitter exchange in which they called each other “Sir” they were lampooning Indian cricketers.

    Defending truth from trolls and cancellers: in conversation with Jonathan Rauch

    In his 1993 book Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought, Jonathan Rauch sounded an early warning about the threats to free speech. His new book The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth argues that the enemies of free thinking may now take different forms, but are no less dangerous.

    What, then, is knowledge? What is truth? Why is free speech the central pillar of liberal science? What exactly is the “constitution of knowledge” and is it strong enough to survive? Can Big Tech be trusted to guard against disinformation or are they just another group of powerful censors? How can we fend off the righteous mobs who gleefully ruin the lives of those deemed transgressors?

    Join the Free Speech Champions – a group of young free speech advocates jointly sponsored by the Free Speech Union and the Institute of Ideas – to discuss these questions and many more with Jonathan Rauch, a Senior Fellow in the Governance Studies program at the Brookings Institution and a contributing writer at the Atlantic. Jonathan and Inaya Folarin Iman, a former Director of the FSU and the founder of the Free Speech Champions programme, will be joined in conversation by writer and Free Speech Champion Daniel James Sharp, a recent graduate of the University of Edinburgh and the Arts and Books Correspondent of Areo Magazine.

    Tuesday 6th July, 7.30-9pm. On Zoom. Register here.

    For a taster, listen to Toby interviewing Jonathan Rauch about The Constitution of Knowledge for the Quillette podcast.

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

    Debbie Hicks, the anti-lockdown campaigner who was arrested after she filmed what appeared to be an empty hospital ward in December last year – and posted the film on Facebook – has been charged with a Public Order Offence. She is now raising funds for her defence. Whether you agree with Debbie’s views or not, this is an important free speech case – her legal team will be running an Article 10 defence – that deserves our support. Once donations to her CrowdJustice fundraiser climb above £3,000, the funds can be released to her defence team – so please give something. It is very nearly there.

    Sharing the Newsletter

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

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

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

    Best wishes,

    1. Good morning, Grizzly

      I watched Toby Young on GB News last night who talked about the appalling news that The Cherwell, the oldest Student newspaper at Oxford -written and edited by students, is now going to be subjected to woke censorship so that nobody is offended and any off-message articles are eliminated.

      And, as well as talking about free speech, Toby Young talked about his time at Oxford where he was a contemporary of Boris Johnson.

      He said that Boris Johnson was very popular with the girls and his girlfriend, Allegra Mostyn-Owen was the most sought after girl at Oxford of her generation and that she was spectacularly beautiful. She became Johnson’s first wife. I looked at pictures of them on the Internet and I was struck by the fact that Boris Johnson was very physically attractive as a young man but the ‘Dorian Gray in reverse’ effect has set in and he is now exceptionally unattractive and ugly and the picture of the young man is hidden away in the attic.

      It is strange how beautiful children do not always grow into beautiful adults and that relatively plain young people often become considerably more attractive as they age.

      1. Good morning, Rastus.

        I think those blessed with the ‘gift of the gab’ progress more quickly in affairs of the heart than the more taciturn amongst us.

    1. Good Day, O Monarch of the Glen.

      I think one of the most amusing aspects of this fatuous “duel” is Mrs Murrell accusing the vile Burnham of “playing politics”…

      1. Good Day yourself, Bill.

        Yes indeed. A politician “playing politics” – who could have imagined such a thing?

          1. Is that what happened to Gerard Batten…? So sorry, but I did Macbeth for ‘O’level!

          2. At the age of 12, I played the part of Macbeth. I knew the whole play by heart. Not many people know that!

    2. Ooooh …… did Eyeliner Andy pull her plaits?
      Or is that a privilege only granted to the Brussels Babe?

    3. Wasn’t Heath mentioned as well? “Where the place…?”
      Good Morning, Mr. Mac!

  32. Hapless should watch out. His wife has used her maiden name, not his, on his daughter’s birth certificate. Perhaps she was worried about Lili’s being teased (eg “where’s Batten? Lili wants to mount him”) or is she just a narcissist, reinforcing her need to feel that she decides and show that she’s beholden to no-one and no convention. Furthermore, given that traditionally the father registers the birth, Hapless is clearly under the thumb to enter it.

    As an aside, if Harry’s wife doesn’t want the title of Earl of Dumbarton, can I have it please? My kids are quite happy to risk being bullied in return for the kudos and perks that the title brings. Or perhaps it could be raffled off for charity, such as those working and campaigning against bullying doing far more harm than some rich kid calling another rich kid names.

    1. The form shows that Brash also appears to be unfamiliar with his actual name (rather than the Toytown title).

    2. (Poached from elsewhere) – he could always settle for the Earl of Scunthorpe or, at a stretch, Penistone.

    3. It could have been worse………….. the Earl of Blackburn or even Scunthorpe.

      1. Or this even

        Wharton 28 January 1718 Philip Wharton, Marquess of Wharton Wharton Extinct 31 May 1731

        Rutland 29 March 1703 John Manners Extant

    4. ♫ “Dumbarton’s drums they sound sae bonnie
      When they remind me of my Archie
      Such fond delight can steal upon me
      When Harry kneels and crawls tae me” ♫

    1. And also, who cares? I don’t care who sleeps with whom, but I object to nepotism and corruption and the waste of public money.

    1. Oh dear I’ve just been in contact with a chap in India regarding the dreadful service we get from Virgin Media. Shall I go and wash my hands ?

  35. Here’s another pratt of a politician, in his constituency thousands of new homes have been built on green belt land re-designated as brown field for convenience.
    Perhaps god knows how these homes will be heated and powered and where all the water comes from. Where the children will go to school etc. etc. Not very green is it Grant ?
    https://www.msn.com/en-gb/cars/news/a-third-of-motorists-don-t-know-what-green-numberplates-mean-as-government-s-plan-to-boost-electric-car-sales-falters-amidst-grant-cuts/ar-AALobWZ?ocid=msedgntp

  38. Today Coventry kicks off it’s reign as City of Culture. I only know this because I caught a segment on the BBC this morning in which a black female presenter extolled the virtues of a long ago black actor/manager whose portrait has just been painted on a 20 foot high wall. He was the first black actor/manager in the UK and was also responsible for the UK abolishing slavery. She then spoke to an actor/manager involved today. He is a black man.

    I only have two questions, although there may be more later. Whose City is it? Whose culture is being celebrated?

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000wvnn

    2. I want to see a beautiful naked lady with long hair instead please.

      Riding on a horse, as they do in Coventry.

  40. Afternoon all…backlashes seem to be all the rage today.
    I’ve just had a quick delve into the UK media and anyone who’s anyone is either suffering a backlash or in fear of a backlash.
    Does anyone know how i can avail myself of one of these?
    I know a few who could do with a good backlashing.

        2. I had a friend with the surname of Savage.

          Also a young lady called Miss Box. She married Mr Silver. They chose not to double barrel their names. I kid you not.

          1. Many years ago I heard of a young lady called WildRose who married a man with the surname Bull.

          4. I had a study mate at school whose girl friend called Ophelia Balls.

            I never knew if the poor girl’s parents named her as they did for a joke or whether it did not dawn on them what the name sounded like.

  41. 334762+ up ticks,
    This is wrong in one respect and an important one,
    Anne Marie Waters as with Gerard Batten has been warning of the dangers of islamic ideology for years NOT just of late.

    Check the comments,

    https://youtu.be/Ejc8-CCjz88

    1. And of course Douglas Murray has been drawing our attention to this sort of problem for some time. Have you read his book on the matter: The Strange Death of Europe?

    2. And of course Douglas Murray has been drawing our attention to this sort of problem for some time. Have you read his book on the matter: The Strange Death of Europe?

    2. Vaccination turns men into homosexuals? I’m not sure that I am following this…

      1. 334762+up ticks,
        Afternoon HP,
        If after receiving the jab you have an urge to kiss the male nurse you’ll know for certain.

  44. What’s driving Hungary’s culture war? Spiked. 25 June 2021

    Anti-LGBT legislation in Hungary is closely tied to a much wider ‘pro-family’ agenda underpinning the social policy of Viktor Orbán’s government. The most recent example of this came in May, when Hungary and conservative ally Poland spearheaded a ‘pro-familia’ declaration, alongside their Visegrád Four allies, asserting the importance of the traditional family model.

    The innocuous document contained no reference to LGBT rights, but garnered criticism nonetheless as a supposed pretext for regressive policymaking. Earlier, in December 2020, a constitutional amendment sparked controversy by stipulating that ‘a mother is a woman and a father is a man’.

    …a mother is a woman and a father is a man.

    Wow. That’s seriously heretical stuff in EU circles! It shows the sickness that lies at the heart of Cultural Marxism and the EU.

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/06/25/whats-driving-hungarys-culture-war/

      1. Morning Harry. Yes it seems to be so. One wonders if it is anything to do with the fact that they are all former Communist Polities!

        1. Could be.The Russian Orthodox Church,who have big support are very pro-family.
          Didn’t Putin have it written into the Russian Constitution last year?
          I’m pretty sure he did.

    2. Destroy the traditional model of family. Destroy education. The UK and the USA are well down that road. All part of the plan.

      Our Government is actively pursuing this agenda.

    3. There’s no such thing as ‘cultural Marxism’. Marxism is an economic theory. It says nothing about traditional conservative values or social liberalism which is actually what you call cultural Marxism. Every administration since Macmillan has been socially liberal. Every single one.
      The EU is based entirely on neoliberalism and market economics mixed with social liberalism which isn’t surprising since it’s not only the UK that has been socially liberal since the early sixties.

      1. Marxists have realised that military marxism doesn’t work, so they play the long game of undermining western society by destroying its culture. They have infiltrated education, they very roots of our successful society, and have brainwashed a great part of the modern generation with their ideas.

        1. Marxism is the economic philosophy behind the class struggle. The observations, the problems, and the possible remedies. Again it says nothing about social values whether they be liberal or conservative or even religious.
          Your ‘Cultural Marxism’ is just social liberalism. There’s no conspiracy to undermine the nuclear family, or the entire education system, or western society.
          The people aren’t brainwashed, they were brought up under different laws and values. In your day it was fine to use all kinds of racist slurs at every brown or black person you met and it was ok for a husband to rape his wife. Now those type of things have been properly made illegal you seem to think that’s a step backwards.

          1. You need to wake up and look around you.

            Call it whatever fancy name you wish, there is no doubt whatsoever that Western Judaeo-Christian values are being destroyed by the left.
            You may think the objectives of Antifa, BLM, the woke et al are benign, but you are very badly mistaken.
            The boot has been put on the other foot and if you are white you will find your new masters are every bit as racist and misogynistic as “we” were, and they will be a damned sight more ruthless.

          2. It’s funny that as usual with the Left antifa fail to understand that they’re the fascists. After all, they’re the ones smashing up a shop and intimidating people who disagree with them. Maybe if instead of suggesting the inferno of carnage and devastation is ‘mostly peaceful’ they could just be called what they are – Nazi scum’.

            Personally that horrific memorial to the criminal floyd should be melted down and burned. The remains used to commemorate a true hero, the retired police officer who the Lefty scum killed while robbing his white friend’s store: David Dorn. That is why the Right minded are better. We always will be. Hell, that the Left exist at all is because of our decency and tolerance, not their vicious, idiotic thuggery.

          3. No they are not they are being destroyed by liberals in predominantly right-wing governments. We haven’t had a left in power since Wilson, and we haven’t really had a left at all in politics since Michael Foot led Labour.

            What exactly are western judeo-christian values and how have they been destroyed?

            Quite frankly I think expecting current generations to pay for what our ancestors did is ridiculous. I wouldn’t call any of that shit benign but I do agree with a lot of socially liberal values, perhaps not the exact wording of acts but the general thrust. We all know that coloured people were put upon, but we’ve rectified that now and that’s as much as we can do. Many of the abuse laws are a step too far as they have ruined free speech and literally saying anything can cause somebody to feel abused.

          4. “predominantly right-wing governments”

            Ha ha ha

            Proof that cannabis has destroyed your brain.

          5. We’ve had right wing governments since Harold Wilson. Callaghan had a minority government that was taken over by the IMF, in 79 came Thatcher til 90, then Major til 97, then Blair til 2007, then Brown til 2010, then Cameron, then May then Johnson. Where’s the left-wing government there?
            Every single one of those administrations were right-wing. They all favour a liberalised rather than socialised economy.

            We can do the same for USA. Who was the last left-wing president of the US? The GOP isn’t left-wing at all, and the democrats are about as left-wing as New Labour, so again not at all.

            Now again what are western judeo-christian values and how are they being destroyed by the left? That’s the left that hasn’t made any laws in the past 40 years.

          6. Are you to the left of Mao and Stalin, because from where I stand Wedgewood Benn is to your right.

          7. I’m a centrist, a supporter of a mixed economy, I’m very libertarian, and I’m a Georgist, a land taxer. I’m egalitarian but that doesn’t mean i’m left-wing and certainly not left of Stalin and Mao.

            Mao and Stalin both run centrally planned socialist economies. That’s what a real left wing government looks like not the liberal, progressive or social democratic governments of the west which revolve around a capitalist market favoured economy.

            How they run the economy is what decides if a government is left or right wing. The social positions tend to be bipartisan.

            Talking of Stalin, if you want a good laugh watch…

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukJ5dMYx2no

          8. Land tax is regressive.
            If it can’t be used sufficiently to pay the taxes and can’t be developed by the owner what happens? The state must confiscate it.

            If that isn’t Maoist Stalinist what is?

          9. The owner sells it to someone who can in the market economy for land. Same as happens now. No big deal.

          10. Except there is no class struggle. It’s an invention of those who want to whinge that their conditions are someone else’s fault.

            The reality is more complicated and, ultimately comes back around to taxation.

            Actually, there is. The state hates the nuclear family. The removal of tax relief, the sharing of tax allowances, the gradual erosion of individual liberty, of MIRAS, mortgage allowances, the promotion of single parent families, the freebies given to the feckless and wasteful.

            There is no room for big fat state in the nuclear family. It’s erosion and ideal eradication would suit big government very well and so it continues to tax and punish married earners by rewarding unmarried, disconnected societies. Why do you think there was practically no knife crime amongst white children in, say Wokingham and yet there is amongst black kids in Brixton? Do you refuse to see the parallel evidence?

            No, it has never been ‘fine to use all kinds of racist slurs.’ The difference is that now the very definition of racism has become irrelevant because those complaining and proclaiming the UK is racist are, by their own organisation’s name, racist!

            Society is going backward because of Lefties. Once we can throw the cultural Marxists 9|who wouldn’t understand Marxism if they met it), the idiocy of universal franchise, stop pandering to the moronic greens – or, even better, make them live in the world they want and restore family values and scrap all those idiotic and destructive legislation that promotes single parents, provides for division, dissent – such as the ‘ooman wights act’ and diversity nonsense and simply said ‘ No one cares. Get over it. If you’re black and followed about, maybe that’s because black youths rob shops and mug and stab people. Now, let’s address why that is and do something about it – such as imposing discipline, two parent, male female family structures, consistent laws and stop pandering.

          11. Only 40 years ago every indian was a ‘paki’ and every black person was a ‘w*g, or ni&&er’. I saw that loads when growing up in the seventies and early part of the eighties. It was so commonplace. There was no comeback using those terms except the odd fist to the face if you used them on the wrong person.
            Comparing a small town of predominantly middle-class whites with blacks living on an inner-city council estate is never going to be a fair comparison.
            You voted to get rid of tax benefits for couples and families. It was all in the various manifestos. That started with Lawson’s 1986 Green Paper called ‘The reform of personal taxation’.
            Society is going backwards due to liberals not lefties. All of our laws since 1979 have been made by right-wing governments and a parliament with barely a handful of left-wingers in it. The British ‘left’ is dead and has been since the mid-eighties.
            Strange too how the most ‘left’ government we’ve ever had was also one of the most successful governments of the 20th century. They set the course for the next 30 years and made Boomers healthy and wealthy. I speak of course about the Attlee administration.

      2. Errr… no.

        The EU is NOT based on market economics nor neoliberalism – whatever you’re defining that as. It is an authoritarian dictatorship *using* economics as a weapon.

        If it believed in market economics it would be determined to create a protectionist bloc. It wouldn’t have been set up to corner the coal and steel market. It was designed as a war machine to control and dominate nations.

        1. Protectionism is fine with market economics, not all trade as to be free, in fact there are times when free trade is the height of stupidity.
          The EU is all about markets, healthy competition, private sector businesses. It’s really not socialist in any way. Economically speaking it’s right-wing. Socially like everywhere else these days apart from a few places like the Philippines, or North Korea, it’s liberal. Almost all liberal governments are very authoritarian.
          It was the 50s that the forerunner to the EU was set up to ‘corner the coal and steel markets’ and free trade largely wasn’t a thing for most states until the 80s.
          It’s not a war machine at all.

    4. It’s so tricky, isn’t it? Likewise, a locomotive is not an aeroplane, and a submarine is not a space station.

    1. I’ve had to close down that picture because I find that looking at (and listening to) that fat, talent-free, obnoxious cretin to be quite emetic.

      1. I have never understood how this adipose aardvark ever became so popular.

  47. Breaking News – Matt Hancock has heterosexual affair with his assistant in Pride Month, offends the entire gay community.

      1. I think it furthers those who favour a “cockup” theory of government.

    2. Looks like she was carpeted for being a naughty girl. Perhaps that should be Matted.

          3. Just watched the “Oh dear God” moment on the Isle of Man…scary stuff!

        2. Kalle would have been a one year old at home with his mother while dad took second behind Colin McRea.

    1. Whilst that might be accurate it’s also slightly misleading.
      A better figure would be the percentage of those who have caught it and survived.
      Even that figure would tend to show that in the great scheme of pandemics Covid doesn’t rank particularly high.

      Another useful figure might be to show how many have died of Covid and how many new births there were, almost certainly a small fraction, and also how many total deaths including Covid and all other causes and how many births there were.

      I can almost guarantee that the world’s population has increased.

    2. Can you also give the stats for people who have actually had Covid and died from it?

  51. It has taken me a while but I may have now understood the “Defender incident”. HMS Defender* left from Odessa in the Ukraine to sail across the Black Sea to Georgia. The ship could have sailed across the middle of the Black Sea with no problem at all. Instead the captain decided to “cut the corner” and sail past Cape Fiolent (Mys Ayya?) entering the territorial waters of Ukraine (or Russia, just pick one) in order to do so. As the territory is disputed and actually controlled by Russia, it was maybe not altogether a bright idea. The Russians took exception to this, just as we might do ourselves in respect of a Russian warship appearing in the Minch without a by-your-leave.
    I do think that the US may have suggested this, making us a catspaw for their anti-Russian policies. They would, of course, wash their hands of any consequences.

    *We used to call our warships sensible names, like Bellerophon, Thunderer, Defiance, Swiftsure, Dreadnought…

      1. Could be fun. The reaction of the PM suggested that this incursion was ordered from above.

    4. My great great great grandad was on the Swiftsure 74 from 1797 to 1801 (when he lost it to the frogs, whoops).

  52. Against my better judgement I have just tried to get a Covid Pass from the NHS website. After a considerable effort of entering information, waiting for codes etc I got a QR code which is my Covid pass – it expires on 27 June 2021! Absolutely feck all use! The written version which I downloaded says it’s valid for “30 days from date of issue” – then why does mine expire in 2 days??

    1. The website says, “2 doses of a COVID-19 vaccine – your pass lasts for 28 days and then automatically renews (check the expiry date before you travel)”

  53. The Daily Human Stupidity.

    “She doesn’t understand the concept of Roman numerals. She thought we just fought in world war eleven.”

    Joan Rivers.

  54. Hancock is probably safe for the time being.

    Even Boris Johnson must be able to see that he cannot sack Hancock for moral turpitude and flagrant sexual profligacy without being a total hypocrite.

    I would be amused to hear John Major make a few comments about the sanctity of marriage and the importance of government ministers setting a good moral example to others.

    4. All the time he was sticking his tongue down her throat, neither of them were doing the job they were paid to do.

      I hope his wife divorces him and because of the public humiliation she has suffered, takes him for every penny the little snake has got.

      2. Afternoon Phizzee. His wife is an Osteopath; a profession I equate with Public Relations and Psychoanalysis!

      3. She’s a nice looking lass too.
        Mrs. Hancock that is. The other is rather a Butter Face.

    5. While driving around in the Noddy car, I brooded on this matter.
      My take on it is that this affair has been known for weeks and the information was deliberately held back until it was useful.
      The moment this covid farrago was allowed to drift past 21st. June, Matty was toast.
      He has been thrown under the bus as a sacrifice to Bozza’s indecision.

    6. Whether they do “it” together, or he does”It” alone he ‘Is, was and for ever more shall be”

      A Barclays Banker

      W⚓

      Own hand operated sexual mechanic

      A waste of Oxygen, Victuals and Space

      and those are his good points

      1. I rather liked the phrase used by Tom Sharpe to describe one of his characters:
        “Sexually Zipser was self-sufficient.”

        1. Porterhouse Blue was a good read.

          I seem to remember they made a TV show out of it with David Jason playing Scullion.

          2. I need to find that and rewatch it. I saw it when it first showed but seems like donkey’s years ago now. Lol 1987. It was yonks ago. God I’m turning into an old man.

    7. Whether they do “it” together, or he does”It” alone he ‘Is, was and for ever more shall be”

      A Barclays Banker

      W⚓

      Own hand operated sexual mechanic

      A waste of Oxygen, Victuals and Space

      and those are his good points

    8. I’m sure JM would agree that most egg production in this country is infected with salmonella.

  55. 334762+ up ticks,

    breitbart,
    Ministers Will Ditch Their Masks ‘as Soon as Possible’

    A decent peoples win double, ditch both masks and ministers.

  56. So Hancock has apologised and admitted he broke his own rules (not to mention his marriage vows). Does this mean that it is now officially one rule for them and another for the plebs?

  57. What’s going on here? From https://www.aftenposten.no/verden/i/0KMobG/smitten-sprer-seg-igjen-i-israel-nesten-hver-tredje-nye-smittede-er-f
    Smitten sprer seg igjen i Israel. Nesten hver tredje nye smittede er fullvaksinert. (Infection spreads again in Israel. Nearly every third newly infected is fully vaccinated.
    Oh bugger. More lockdowns coming?
    Apparently it’s the delta variant that’s now the problem (but – if the effect is cold/hayfever-like, why does anybody care?)

    1. That’ll be three holidays in two years we have had to cancel. I’ve Not seen Elf & Safety Hat man today ??

  58. Andrew Neil takes a break from GB News as he admits to ‘rocky start’. 25 June 2021.

    The 72-year-old veteran broadcaster announced during his show on Thursday night that he would absent for the “next few weeks” as he admitted the network had endured a “rocky start”.

    Colin Brazier, a former Sky News presenter, will take over Mr Neil’s 8pm slot until he returned before the end of the summer.

    Mr Neil, who is also chairman of the broadcaster, added: “Yes we had a bit of a rocky start at the launch of GB News. We are a start-up. They are always a bit rocky these start-ups, but we are up and running as you can see.

    To those of us who remember the cause of Roland Rat’s appearance the faults seem quite modest!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/06/25/andrew-neil-takes-break-gb-news-admits-rocky-start/

  59. Grown men are weeping into their microphones on BBC Radio 4. What is/was special about the building in Miami that collapsed recently? 4 dead and 90+ missing. Why are they sobbing and fainting with grief? People are dying all over the world, what’s so special about this ‘disaster’? Most bizarre.

    1. I’ve just seen the news and seen Mexican people being interviewed. I wonder if this is significant, I wonder if the block was on a danger list and filed with migrants.

      1. The building was due its 40 year re-certification. Given that and the sinking story i would have sold and moved out.

    2. It seems it was slowly sinking since the 90s but nobody did anything about it.

      2. I watched a video of it collapsing. The roof of one section appears to collapse onto the floor below, that floor collapses on to the one below, and so on at ever-faster speeds. After a short pause the adjacent wing continues in the same pattern. It’s claimed that roof repairs were being carried out. I therefore doubt that sinking played a significant part.

        1. According to Twitter it is something to do with the death of McAffee. I think revealing memory sticks were said to be in the building…. so not a sinking job would fit.

        2. Photographs resemble the aftermath of Ronan Point. It is likely progressive collapse where the removal of a panel by whatever means causes the floors to collapse whether from the bottom up or from the top down.

          At Ronan Point the contractors failed to provide the necessary steel rebar in-situ stitching to fasten the external concrete panels to the floor slabs. A gas appliance explosion blew out an unstitched panel causing progressive collapse of the floors above.

    3. If it was the UK the Prime Minister would already have visited and given them compensation!

  61. I may have totally got this wrong, but my records show that today (June 25) is corimmobile’s birthday. Happy birthday to you, old bean!

    2. Thank you Elsie. As luck would have it Carol is preparing rhubarb crumble as another treat for later.

      I just telephoned the surgery to book a blood test. Care navigator (what happened to plain old receptionist) asked for my date of birth. To my astonishment she replied “Happy Birthday”.

        1. Thank you Bob. A most enjoyable day has concluded with a couple of glasses of Champagne and a supper of Asparagus and raspberries with cream and meringues. Rhubarb Crumble was late on parade so will be ready for tomorrow.

        1. Many thanks NtN.

          Look forward to another year and more of intelligent debate with friends of like mind (mostly). I learn a lot from this great forum and it helps to keep me on my mettle. I particularly appreciate and value your comments. Thank you.

    2. To my place, for a discussion on the state of the Crimea/Ukraine* – she looks good to me.

      *Uganda is so yesterday, darling

    1. Four divorce lawyers are rubbing their hands, at the thought of these marriages ending

  64. Given that the Hancock CCTV images are alleged to have been taken on 6th May I am fairly sure the timing of this leak is deliberate. Someone has held it back for a reason.
    I wonder what other bad news is being buried under this smokescreen.

    2. Check out his hairline – much more pronounced than it is today. I would say it was taken a year ago and archived until necessary. Perhaps a deliberate set-up by all?

        1. Probably the leaker – part of the plot to demonstrate his boss is merely extremely incompetent rather than culpable when those chickens come flying home to roost.

  66. More skillful evasion:

    The Government has responded to the petition you signed – “Require halal and kosher certified products be prominently labelled as such”:

    We plan to launch a consultation this year on what can be done through labelling to promote high standards of animal welfare, to ensure that consumers can have confidence in the food they buy.

    The UK maintains high standards on the information that is provided to consumers on food labels and packaging. The fundamental principles of our food labelling rules are that information provided to the consumer must not mislead and must enable consumers to make informed decisions.

    The Government is reviewing food labelling to ensure that consumers can have confidence in the food they buy, and to facilitate the trade of quality British food at home and abroad.

    We have a longstanding position in this country of respecting the rights of Jews and Muslims to eat meat prepared in accordance with their beliefs. We are also aware that there is public concern about meat from animals slaughtered in accordance with religious rites, being sold to consumers who do not require their meat to be prepared in this way. Therefore, as part of our review of food labelling, we are planning a consultation, to be launched this year, on what can be done through labelling to promote high standards of animal welfare across the UK market.

    When launched, this public consultation will be accessible on the GOV.UK website online. You are encouraged to submit your views on those proposals when it opens.

    We expect industry, whether food producers or food outlets, to provide consumers with information on which to make an informed choice about their food. Any information provided on the method of slaughter must be accurate and not misleading to the consumer. Many operators already voluntarily label meat as halal or kosher.

    Farm assurance schemes also apply standards of production that include slaughter requirements. For example, Red Tractor and RSPCA Assured Schemes require stunned slaughter.

    We are reviewing food labelling to improve transparency and ensure that consumers can have confidence in the food they buy.

    Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

    1. I would hardly call the evasion skilful. It is absolutely clear that the government has no intention at all of addressing the matter.

    2. “…done through labelling to promote high standards of animal welfare across the UK market….”

      Easy. Forbid halal slaughter. Tell the muslims to lump it. This isn’t their home.

    3. It is not just about animal welfare. Many Christians may be unhappy about buying meat that has been sacrificed to Satan, aka mohammed.

  67. The pardoning of Hancock by a more experienced fornicator makes me think of the words Shakespeare gave to senile old man who says he is still every inch a king even though he has abdicated and been kicked out by his cruel daughters:

    “When I do stare, see how the subject quakes. I pardon that man’s life. What was thy cause? Adultery? Thou shalt not die. Die for adultery? No. The wren goes to ’t, and the small gilded fly does lecher in my sight. Let copulation thrive!“

    1. Keep him there; blowin’ in the wind – so’s to speak.
      Also a constant reminder to the plebs that their rulers are hypocrites of the first water.
      TBF – maybe if the guidelines had stuck to feet and inches, Matty would have understood. Maybe he’s never got to grips with funny foreign measurements.

    1. I’ve often wondered why her breasts seem to have gravitated to round about her “waist”! Mine haven’t and she’s younger than me! Does she not have a bustenhalter?

      2. You are tempting someone to say, “Show us yer tits” – but I know that no NoTTLer would dream of such a thing…{:¬))

    2. I realise I have a puerile sense of humour but I’ve never yet managed to see a Rathaus without being tempted to snigger. Mind, I’ll probably be spared that temptation in the future anyway.

      2. You are not alone, Our Susan. Being puerile is what keeps me going – and G & P, of course.

  70. You may remember a few days ago I posted a comment regarding integrity being shown by politicians in years past, the example I gave was Lord Carrington resigning over the invasion of the Faulklands and how that honesty and integrity is sadly lacking today.
    The buffoon and Handoncock has just given a perfect example of what I was writing about, shame on them both and shame on each and every Conservative MP who fails to stand up and publicly criticise them both.

    1. It did occur to me too that the 1st Duke of Wellington got away with having mistresses and even prostitutes because he was rather good at his day job? Sexual indiscretion is the last straw with someone like Hancock because he’s lied to Parliament, used deception to raid the public purse and caused mass suffering, to name but a few of his sins.

        1. Erm, his view was, “Being born in a stable does not make one a horse”. His response to being accused of being Irish. He was born in Dublin.

          4. Just so. It was interesting to see the Dutch soccer team the other night. Half of them were quite black. Like “British athletes.

          1. Irish as they come.He was even an Irish MP in the Dublin Parliament for a while.

  72. Awkward………..

    The man who demanded that you download an app to track your movements
    The man who made you sign into every venue you went to
    The man that is selling your private medical records

    Has just asked for Privacy at this difficult family time
    #I’mDone

    1. #I’mDone – I downloaded no app; I never sign in to venues; I’ve opted out of sharing my medical records.

      This hypocrite is not worth my time.

    1. Hilarious, but on the downside high results is just the excuse Hancock and co need to justify further lockdowns. No wonder so many people who test positive appear asymptomatic if they are guzzling while they queue.

      1. Good point. Having been brought up not to eat and drink on the street, I’d forgotten about the constant grazing.

    2. You may remember that the late President of Tanzania, John Magufuli, stopped testing for covid in Tanzania because a goat and a papaya had positive test results.

  75. Trust the British to rise to the occasion. BTL comments in the Tellygraff.

    Bernard Jones 25 Jun 2021 11:23AM

    In that photo I think Matt Handcock is trying to flatten a curve.

    David North-Coombes

    25 Jun 2021 11:31AM

    @Bernard Jones At least two I would say.

    Louise Lawrence

    25 Jun 2021 12:08PM

    @Bernard Jones Squashing the sombrero?

    Caroline Morrell

    25 Jun 2021 2:08PM

    @Bernard Jones boom boom. Excellent.

    Mick Collins

    25 Jun 2021 11:16AM

    I see that the Minister in charge of administering Pr1cks to the nation has been taking some work home with him..

      1. As i am sure you know it is a copy. As are the other 10 on the other walls. The other two each of side of that one are somewhat louche, but then Jack did like erotica. They are all painted gouache style, so not much talent needed.

          2. Spoilsport. I was fishing for a gotcha.

            The tissues are for hayfever/Covid/Summer sniffles….

      1. I can’t swallow the fentanyl/midazolam/diamorphine without Coca cola. Or that is what 100,000 people would have said before they were carted off without autopsies.

      1. I wish !

        I have bought some wonderfully solid furniture from BHS. Obviously all the old people murdered by Matt and the Downing Street Crew didn’t shop at IKEA.

        1. We’ve been sending bits and pieces to auction and some of the prices have been very surprising.
          I stopped HG from taking a pair of hideous candle holders we had inherited, to the Red Cross our usual charity, on the off chance they could be sold rather than given away.

          160 Euros!

      1. I know. I only managed to shuffle it in and then re-arrange everything else. Then get the screens set up and the wiring and then the bloody rug got damaged. Dolly then started barking and then Gin happened.

    1. From the DLA (Dundonald Liberation Army)..hence the crossed water-pistols.
      They do some good stuff.

  81. Green light for Ratcliffe-on-Soar waste incinerator angers campaigners

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-57572003

    More climate change madness. It’s unusual to hear Paddy Tipping spouting garbage because he’s a more sane voice (relatively speaking) in the Labour movement.

    The amount of plastic waste in the rubbish to be burnt will be small, assuming collecting and sorting removes most of the recoverable material. The piffling amount of fossil-fuel CO2 produced by incineration will be a tiny proportion of the UK’s globally trivial output.

    ‘Climate change’ is becoming noise pollution.

  82. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex were concerned about their son being bullied for using the title Earl of Dumbarton

    Perhaps, they should check out their own title

    Sussex

    Suss to realize, understand, or discover something:

    Sex. The act of coitus

    or

    Sex is also a trait that determines an individual’s reproductive function, male or female(or did)

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex

    and there-in lies a bag of worms

    2. We have suspected for a long time that Hancock is utterly without any sense of right or wrong.

    3. 334762+up ticks,
      Afternoon SB,
      The “nige” in defence of henry bolten,
      ” What has he done wrong” ?.

  84. HAPPY HOUR – I just can’t take a Lilibet more…..

    ….. just when you thought it was all over.
    Harry and Meghan to star in a movie.

      1. The Palace did say that they would fight back.

        That is the most appalling representation of Her Majesty.

        1. Hair is almost right, though. The bloke playing Brash looks far too bright.

          2. Hal looking attentive to his granny.
            Meagain looking condescening.
            HM looking like we have never, ever seen her before.

            Time for a car crash.

      1. Utterly off topic, but while you’re here.

        We have a a lot of holes in the walls of the Château. I don’t fill them in because I enjoy the birds and bats that occupy the spaces.

        At the start of the bird season this year we had a redstart in one place, the youngsters fledged and the hole was promptly taken over by tits and when those had fledged there was a bit of a fracas and the hole has now been taken over by sparrows. Is this unusual?

        Generally we only see one variety per hole and usually get two, sometimes three sets of fledglings over the season.

        1. It’s not at all unusual for different species to use the same nesting sites. Most species like the convenience of an already excavated site. Brood parasitism is also commonplace. I’ve had nests of blue tits containing eight blue tit eggs being ‘enhanced’ by the arrival of an extra five eggs … from a coal tit!

          When making a nest box for small birds, such as tits, make the hole 1⅛” in diameter since this will stop it being taken over by house sparrows. Drill it 1¼” and the sparrows will move in. I have two spade bits, one at 1⅛” and another at 28mm for that purpose.

          1. Many thanks, the sites are between stones in the walls.

            So many that there’s probably no need for boxes.
            I would guess there are at least 10 species nesting at some point during the season.

  85. Just received birthday present from brother. A copy of Financial Times from 23 June 1961!
    Some headlines:
    – Mr Kennedy has a 3-day virus
    – Stern warning by chancellor on wage spiral. Overseas aid by Governmemt must be limited
    Fascinating pressie! Quite unusual (and smells of mothballs, like an Army clothing store!)

    1. I sense your brother doesn’t like you much… :@)

      What is wrong with some silk pyjamas?

        1. That was quite a lot of money when ones pay was £4 a week – before tax…)

          1. What is really disturbing about that statement is that one paid tax on such a wage.

            NI I can accept, but income tax? Even in 1961 £4 wasn’t a huge wage.

  86. 334762+ up ticks,
    There is no thought of how this is going down with the people’s on grounds of morality just that proper procedure was followed, that would be a two step maneuver.

    Step one encircle opposite partner with arms,

    Step two with unrivaled passion firmly grip the opposite
    person’s / it’s buttocks.

  87. Just had this email from B-i-L

    I nearly fell for an excellent scam today

    It looks pucka from the NHS about getting a Covid Passport but its from the email address below :-

    digital@whilefly.com

    Pass this on as it looks legit but its a con

    cheers

        1. Come on, Harry, you should know, she’s a Jackeen, like my first wife. Outside Dublin, they’re Colleens. Yes?

          1. The English might call them Jackeens but Dubliners refer to themselves as Dubs.

          2. My first wife, Antoinette Dooley, was born and bred in Dublin up to age 16, when she came to England and it was she who explained the difference between a Jackeen and a Colleen.

    2. 334762+ up ticks,
      O2O,
      Those who WANT to hear will listen Og,
      the others will vote lab/lib/con.

    3. 334762+ up ticks,
      O2O,
      Apologies offered really thought Anne Marie Waters was born in the North of Ireland, I stand corrected courtesy of
      H Meeney, she always describes herself as British.
      My parliament post still stands.

    4. Now there’s someone I’d be happy to vote for.
      Can’t disagree with anything she says – as she put it herself, nobody else is going to talk about these issues.

      1. 334762+ up ticks,
        Evening BB2,
        If it was horses for courses she would be the perfect fit, the proof of the situation regarding islamic ideology as being bad now and bordering on dangerous is the teacher in hiding and that will escalate to anyone being forced into hiding.

  90. I see the Frau Doktor is to visit the UK next week. Hope she is FORCED to quarantine.

  91. Evening, all. Apologies for any typos, I’m using the laptop this evening and I find the small, flat keyboard quite difficult to use.

    2. I expect Oscar is “helping” by lying on it.

      Good evening, Conwy. All well

        1. They are out killing things – well, Pickles is; he is a real hunter-killer. Gus goes all girly when confronted with a corpse. Prolly a vegan!

          1. I’m a lot better since I got Oscar, thanks. Oscar hasn’t been sick since he started on the Paracetamol (although I have changed his diet slightly; I think the salmon helps) and I’ve just ordered some miracle dust from a vet called Lazaris (not a typo) to see if that will help when I sprinkle it on his food. It has all sorts of vitamins, probiotics and gut enzymes. Anything is worth a try.

          5. Indeed. He tried very hard to get me to buy all sorts of other things and increase my order, but I stuck to one jar. I want to see if it works before I invest in any more, despite the 90 day money back guarantee.

          8. Really?

            I thought it was Laz ‘r Us
            {:-((

            I’m starting to wonder if the dust isn’t called Lazaris but the vet actually is.

    5. A vicar, an imam and a rabbit went to give blood.
      The vicar found out he was type A
      The imam found he was type AB
      The rabbit found he was a type O

  92. Halfcock:

    “Hullo, darling – I’m home. I nearly fell over a suitcase in the hall -I’ll just put it upstairs, shall I?

    Oh, and I have asked the Bonas’s round for supper tomorrow. You remember Gina – she was the pretty one at our wedding.”

    2. From the pics that were published his wife was cool calm and collected.

      She already knew this news was going to break.

  93. Night All
    The cartoonists and the internet are having fun………
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b7870bc424adface60536f16b90ba54e002d1a4d1ecc5f4f7f6210cf7de5a5f6.jpg
    http://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4c07d70deb62d49f41718a26ce3112f4e7fda22722a4f90e544886affa14d407.jpg
    http://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/35df05238f9766d5e4739048b7bddcfe64d7425cce0d24ddd8cf4acd4ad77eff.png
    http://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/432aa9a09ce6e9c4dceb0ea3ce3434adce1582a3ff1b7f737854f6f3ecb6b334.jpg

    1. On a more serious note.. What do you think of this ?

      Calls for MI5 probe into leak of Matt Hancock footage: Henry Jackson Society leads demands for urgent inquiry amid fears for security in Whitehall
      Think tank calls for MI5 to investigate where footage of Matt Hancock came from
      Henry Jackson Society said leak of the footage ‘suggests a security breach’
      The images of Mr Hancock appeared to have been captured from CCTV

      https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9725049/Calls-MI5-probe-leak-Matt-Hancock-footage.html

      1. Shirley, it is a Perlice matter, although as it is male/female ‘Cockup’,,it may be outside their understanding of 2021 Life and sexuality

      2. It is not a security breach.

        Number 10 has MI5 in situ.

        They also have their friendly (to them) Nudge Unit.

        The reason it was leaked was because of a Powerplay.

        Weaken him = Strengthen someone else.

        Possibly Priti who looks much like the slut that netted Hancock.

  94. Say Hancock resigns. Then what? His replacement will almost certainly another cowardly Covid-compliant creep. Johnson’s not going to appoint someone who will stand up in the next Cabinet meeting and say “Prime Minister! About turn!”

    More of the same….

    1. The Chinese nabbed them (see my post yesterday) and they are now flying home WITH COVID-21 – THE WORST VARIANT EVER….

      Other than that, good news – a rarity these days, Mags.

    2. I suspect that unless they’ve pied most homing pigeons will recover quickly and…

      err…
      home.!

        2. Moh’s parents had a neighbour who had a pigeon loft , and my word , the hard work and dedication of pigeon fanciers and the training of those birds was a real eyeopener . They are such clever birds.

          Our Queen used to have an aviary of homing budgies and pigeons , she was interested in all sorts of country sports . My late aunt used to meet HM and chat to her at field trials in Norfolk , HM had handlers who worked her retrievers and labrador trials and working cocker spaniel trials as well , she loved competition like that , so did my dear late aunt.

  96. Interviewer – Did Matt break social distancing rules?
    Boris – No I don’t think so.
    Interviewer – well are you saying that be never crossed the line?
    Boris – Well he might have just got a leg over, once or twice.

    1. Boris- He’s a f*ucking good lad – Joined the Shaggers Club. Gina? Phwor….

  97. That’s me for this eventful day. The people “running” the country sink deeper and deeper into the mire. They really are a despicable shower.

    I’ll join you tomorrow – DV. Tonight we are mainly watching the second half of an interview attempted by Botney with Mel Brooks. It is extremely funny. If I can make a weak joke when I am 94 (or, even, remember my name) I’ll be happy.

    A demain.

        1. Indeed.
          She’s warned us off.
          For that she has earned our eternal gratitude.

          };-O

    1. I have no doubt he is in custody – the perlice having immediately arrested him.

      (sarc)

      1. Oh yeah, not a chance , they are the protected tribe who are inheriting the UK.. they exercise coercive control over all of us , and not even a pandemic will stop them !

    2. Oops.

      I agree with the Muslim man’s complaints, listen to what he’s saying.

      LGBT indoctrination of children isn’t acceptable.

        1. We see that LGBTetc is not the norm and shouldn’t be made so, but your Islamist sees it as a topping offence. Who cannot see that the country is going to the dogs, apologies to dogs.

          1. There are times when I start to think that the woke mania we are experiencing might well be a topping offence.
            The abnormal is becoming compulsory and oi don’t loike it.

          2. I always said about the legalisation of homosexual practices that it would soon become compulsory. I thought it was a joke, but not any longer. One is no longer free to express disgust at the practices without falling foul of “hate crime” legislation.

          3. You’ll be tossed off of the highest mosque before you can say ‘Poofs matter’.

          4. I thought similarly over such things, once upon a time.

            When I understood:
            “life means life”
            “Abortion will not be on demand”
            “freedom of speech is sacrosanct”
            “we will accept the results of the referendum”

          6. Learn the words, Connors:

            My name is Clarence,
            I live in Leicester Square,
            I wear satin pyjamas,
            and a rosebud in my hair.

            cho: Yes we’re all queers together
            That’s why we’re going upstairs
            Yes we’re all queers together
            Excuse us while we go upstairs.

            I went for a ride on a trolly bus
            It was crowded, I had to stand
            A little boy offered me his seat
            So I felt for it with my hand.

            In Hyde Park I dropped a shilling,
            So bright it was lying there free,
            A little boy bent to pick it up,
            But I was behind the tree.

          1. There are days, when I want to wake up and find myself back in happier, more gentle times. Then I woke up!

          2. Yes, when did the point of social disintegration actually occur, or was it more of a slow and deliberate happening? If deliberate, who could possibly imagine that the world world be better off for it?

          3. The people who think they know better than us. And yes – it rather sneaked up on us!

          4. Well that’s your problem.

            Don’t woke up, wake up.

            Dr sosraboc’s fee will be 5 guineas, payable to the charity of your choice.

          5. Ah! I feel sooo much better! And the bedside manner is stunning! However I’m on the SNHS! Nae bawbees for you!

          7. Well that’s your problem.

            Don’t woke up, wake up.

            Dr sosraboc’s fee will be 5 guineas, payable to the charity of your choice.

          1. I don’t like his approach, but I’m afraid I agree re LGBT indoctrination of the young.

          2. Imagine you are Gary Kibble. Half-a-dozen like him turn up at your door.

            Now have a debate…

          3. I don’t disagree with your comment.

            However, what I won’t accept is that it is perfectly OK for the Stonewall, PIE and other behind the scenes LGBT crew to be forcing teachers to follow the new woke agenda.

            I don’t want my under 10 year old grandchildren to be taught to change sex, to “discover” anal sex, to learn how to use dildos or be lesbian/homosexual long before they’ve reached sexual maturity let alone having had time to form opinions from personal experience.

            To be honest, I would be delighted if half-a-dozen like him turned up at Peter Tatchell’s door and all the other mermaid/tranny pushers’ homes.

            Now, let’s debate.

            You tell me you agree with the opposite.

          4. “You tell me you agree with the opposite.”

            Whoa there!

            That’s a twist worthy of this forum’s banished.

          5. Well, come on then, tell me you think the Muslim is wrong in his attitude to what is being openly taught in schools and with what I am assuming is the tacit approval of the educational authorities.

            And blimey, do I find it weird defending an Islamist’s approach to anything.

          6. Stop it, Sos, and NOW!

            The principle, yes, the practice, no.

            Let us not forget that this is the culture that makes its ‘troublesome’ young women disappear, often to Pakistan to be coupled up with retarded, gap-toothed, hare-lipped goatherds, and which sweeps broken young white girls off the streets for the sexual pleasure of its hypocritical followers.

            That any of us might agree on a single principle with this appalling man is not a reason to do anything other than keep a very great distance from him and his kind.

          7. We agree on the principle.
            As to the rest; that’s why I wrote:

            And blimey, do I find it weird defending an Islamist’s approach to anything.

          8. “You tell me you agree with the opposite.”

            Whoa there!

            That’s a twist worthy of this forum’s banished.

          9. Of course not, but it’s strange how conservative Islamic views coincide occasionally with our own less extreme views (or perhaps not).

  99. Latest: Wog kills three in Wurzburg and wounds two others.

    That’ll be a talking point with the Frau Doktor next week, Boris……

  100. Allison Pearson goes ape:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/25/hypocrisy-small-word-matt-hancocks-betrayal-publics-trust/

    “Hypocrisy is too small a word for Matt Hancock’s betrayal of the public’s trust

    Those who govern us are drunk on absolute power, and it’s made men like Hancock reckless

    25 June 2021 • 5:25pm

    On the 6th May 2020, Kay Burley, the Sky News presenter, asked Matt Hancock, the Secretary of State for Health, for his reaction to the news that Neil “Professor Lockdown” Ferguson had broken Covid rules he had a big hand in imposing on the British people by inviting his mistress over for the afternoon. “It’s extraordinary,” said Hancock, that look of faux-concern furrowing his blameless brow, “I am speechless. Professor Ferguson took the right decision to resign.” The social distancing rules, he said, “are there for everyone and are deadly serious.”

    On 6th May 2021, exactly a year later, Matt Hancock was caught on CCTV giving his aide, Gina Coladangelo, a sixth-form-disco snog in the corridor outside his office. Old friends from Oxford, the pair’s “brazen” affair has apparently been the talk of the health department during the pandemic. This time, it was our turn to be speechless.

    When the image appeared on the front page of The Sun on Friday, the breakfast tables of Britain spontaneously combusted. The marmalade hit the roof, well, it did at Pearson Towers. Thousands of people posted reactions on social media. Some were bitterly mocking the official mantras: “Hands, Face, Back to My Place”. “Saving Lives, Shagging Wives”.

    Others were simply devastating: “I wasn’t even allowed to kiss my dying father because of Hancock.”

    The anger and disbelief were palpable. Was this really the minister who told us on the 17th May that, after fourteen months of physical and emotional self-denial, we were free to hug our loved ones, when, a fortnight earlier, he’d been giving mouth-to-mouth to some glamorous chum he’d put on the public payroll? Knowing Hancock, he’d call it First Aide.

    At least we know why he’s had that manic smirk on his face for the last year. How exhausting it must be to deliver pious, finger-wagging homilies to the nation, warning the doubly-vaccinated that they still aren’t in the clear (breaking an earlier Hancock promise). Then, after menacing people to carry on observing the rules, there’s just time for a quick “pilot scheme” with the mistress before dashing home to the wife and three kids in north London. Apparently, Mr Hancock was happy to run the risk of giving “this lethal virus” to his poor family, even though such behaviour was strictly prohibited under his own regulations.

    After an initial claim that the Health Secretary had “no comment on personal matters” and “no rules have been broken”, with public fury growing Mr Hancock had no choice but to apologise. “I accept that I have breached the social distancing guidance in these circumstances,” he said, “I have let people down and am very sorry… I would be grateful for privacy for my family on this personal matter.”

    Seriously, does he think that will do? Why would he, who has interfered in every crevice of our personal and family lives, expect privacy for his own? It was the Prime Minister who visited a biscuit factory this week, but it’s his Health Secretary who’s the artful Jammie Dodger, trying to squirm his way out of trouble. You see, Mr Hancock didn’t just breach “guidance”. The snogging session with Mrs Coladangelo happened during Step 2 of lockdown. Under the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) Regulations 2021, gatherings of two or more indoors were illegal except for permitted purposes such as “work”. But a work gathering had to be “reasonably necessary” to fall within the exception and be legal. We know that Matt Hancock has more front than Blackpool, but even he wouldn’t dare claim that his bit on the side was either reasonable or necessary. The minister broke the law and he must resign immediately or be sacked.

    Am I being too harsh? “Give the guy a break!,” I hear some readers cry. At a time of national emergency, Mr Hancock has had one of the most stressful jobs. The pressure must have been immense. Surely, we can extend some leeway if he strayed.

    Under normal circumstances, I would agree. We are all humble sinners and a man or woman’s private peccadillos shouldn’t disqualify them from doing their job. But no such understanding or humanity – not a sliver of mercy – has been shown by the Secretary of State or this Government to members of the public who have broken often cruel and arbitrary rules. Remember how we watched in horror as police arrested a retired nurse as she tried to drive her 97-year-old mother away from a care home. Hundreds of thousands of people have departed this life without a last touch or kiss from their best beloveds because the restrictions forbade it so relatives sobbed in the carpark because Matt Hancock said it mst be so. Almost 30,000 children have been put on anti-depressants yet just one positive test (without any Covid symptoms) can still send an entire year group home to self-isolate for ten lonely days. Parents know this is insanity, but they must suck it up because that prating popinjay Hancock tells them it’s vital to keep us “safe”.

    Do the authorities turn a blind eye to the suicidal publican who tries to find wriggle room in the guidance so he can pay bills that loom like warships in his nightmares? They do not. What do the couples who have to fill in a 25-page risk assessment this weekend so their guests can sit masked and far apart at their wedding, and not “mingle” or dance like the morning suits at Royal Ascot for fear of a £10,000 fine, think of the conduct of Matthew Hancock?

    “I hate him,” says one bride simply. I hate him too. How dare Matt Hancock think he can flout the rules with impunity, rules which have caused an ocean of suffering to the good people of this country who have strived to do as they were told by this utter charlatan. Hypocrisy is too small a word for this betrayal of public trust.

    I will leave it to others to plumb the murky depths of how Ms Coladangelo, who has a pitiful smattering of qualifications on her LinkedIn profile, landed such a juicy position with her old friend in Government. One thing, however, is crystal clear. The Hancock scandal has broken at the exact moment when even the meekest citizen is starting to question the Prime Minister’s prevarication over lifting restrictions and the ever more flagrant Them and Us application of exemptions.

    If I had a gasket left to blow it would have exploded when Culture and Sports minister John Whittingdale explained this week how up to 3,000 Uefa officials will be allowed to arrive in the UK, without quarantine, for the Euro semis and finals. “We’ve always said that for some people who are important…”, said the hapless minister, accounting for the fact that normal people would be held to different standards.

    “All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.” I never ever thought George Orwell’s satirical take in Animal Farm on an arrogant, unaccountable elite patronising the masses would apply in our country. More fool me. We’re all in this together, eh, Matt?

    You know what I think happened? They got drunk on power in Downing Street. Maybe we can’t blame them. How intoxicating it must be to have absolute control over a previously strong-minded populace. Suddenly, we were jittery puppets on their string. But absolute power made men like Hancock reckless. If he could say and do anything he liked then why not have a thrillingly illicit affair while telling young people they couldn’t meet and fall in love, or have sex, for a year? Was the pleasure even greater when you knew it was denied to others?

    We were told to stay in our bubbles. The Secretary of State for Health stayed in a bubble alright – a bubble of his own monumental self-regard and arrogant delusion. When the Prime Minister told Dominic Cummings that Hancock was “totally fucking hopeless” he was right. For the mass deaths in the care homes, for the glib fibs about PPE, for allowing the NHS to become the National Covid Service, creating a waiting list over 5 million long. He should have been sacked for any or all of those things.

    Now, with fresh and overwhelming proof of his unfitness for high office, it seems that the PM still won’t fire him. What more will it take? The statement from Number 10 said: “The Health Secretary accepts that he has broken the social distancing guidelines. The Prime Minister has accepted the Health Secretary’s apology and considers the matter closed.”

    Trust me, it’s not closed. There are millions of us, and we are raging now, and we will not allow it to be closed. If the Government permits one law for Hancock and “important people” and another for the rest of us then it is morally bankrupt. Boris must act this very day to restore the people’s faith, to prove that we haven’t been mugs.

    “What about Ferguson staying on?,” Kay Burley asked Matt Hancock after Professor Lockdown broke the rules.

    “That’s just not possible in the circumstances,” replied the Secretary of State.”

      1. Sometimes it may well be better the devil you know. We could well have nadhim zahawi in his place.

    2. In answer to Allison’s plea, “Am I being too harsh? “Give the guy a break!,” I hear some readers cry. At a time of national emergency, Mr Hancock has had one of the most stressful jobs. The pressure must have been immense. Surely, we can extend some leeway if he strayed.”

      I can only say, “If you cannot stand the heat get OUT of the kitchen!”

    3. Video leaked by Cummings most likely. All part of Cummings’s plot to demonstrate that Johnson is incompetent. Johnson accepts the Health Secretary’s apology. Thus he is seen once again to be incompetent. And not, no never, perish the thought, involved in anything remotely regarding criminality like depopulation… just incompetent…

  101. This has possibly already come up below.
    “Mumford & Sons’ lead guitarist has quit the band following backlash to a tweet supporting a right-wing author.
    Winston Marshall took time away from the band in March after saying journalist Andy Ngo was “brave” for his book which says far-left activists have “radical plans to destroy democracy”.
    Winston says he regrets the distress to his bandmates caused by his tweet.
    “I could remain and continue to self-censor, but it will erode my sense of integrity,” he wrote in a blog post.
    He blamed a “viral mob” for his decision to leave the band permanently.
    “I failed to foresee that my commenting on a book critical of the far-left could be interpreted as approval of the equally abhorrent far-right.”
    “Nothing could be further from the truth,” he said, adding that 13 members of his family were murdered in concentration camps during the Holocaust, in the Second World War.”
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-57608397

        1. Can’t agree with you, sos. The guy has done all he can do. I take my hat off to him.

          1. I don’t disagree, but if he wanted out it was the perfect chance.
            I doff my cap to him, he’s done something most would not.

      2. These apologisers just don’t seem to be able to accept that being unwoke is not the be all and end all of life.

    2. I’m very sorry for this young man. Cancelled for liking a book! Ngo is an investagative journalist looking into Antifa.
      He has been harassed and abused by the usual online trolls, and while it’s easy to say “ditch social media” he and his band mates have tried that. The bastards have won and he has done all he can to let the band go forward.

    3. There is no ‘abhorrent far-right’ that presents the threat that it did in the past and which the far left does today.

  105. I was amused by an article about how pop singers pretend to come from humbler origins than they actually did. Indeed many of them come from wealthy backgrounds and went to ‘posh’ public schools. Most of us here, I am glad to say, do not disguise our origins and take people as we find them regardless of their backgounds

    ‘Top of the Toffs’: The long history of surprisingly posh rock stars
    Given their love of working-class street cred, it’s striking how privileged many musicians are
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/music/artists/top-toffs-long-history-surprisingly-posh-rock-stars/

    This is a BTL comment I posted:

    And it is the same in politics. I wrote a song about Tony Blair many years ago and mocked his trying to make out he was more ‘of the people’ than that he actually was – just like Call me Dave Cameron:

    The Blair song started with:

    I’m a populist prime minister from a minor public school
    I love your adulation so I’ve made Britannia cool

    and in a later verse:

    Now socially I’m nouveau lower upper middle class
    But my Oxford plum vowels I’ve exchanged for flatter Os and Ahs
    I despise the aristocracy – I’m an inverted snob
    But I look down with contempt upon that Prescott loutish yob.

    1. I well remember listening to a recording of Harold Wilson speaking when he was at Oxford – well modulated, standard RP, no flat northern vowels. Then he got into politics as a Labourite and lo! Regional accent it became.

        1. Linguistically it’s known as code switching. Usually that means RP for business/professional life and non-standard dialect/accent for home.

          1. I would get a clack round the ear if I dropped an aitch at home. I’ve been unknowingly ‘code switching’ since I was 5 or 6 years old.

      3. If I recall correctly, HW achieved the highest first of his year. 17 out of 18 alphas in the exams.

      4. I liked the way that he used his pipe as a prop to give him time to formulate an answer.

        No off the cuff answers, the pipe would come out and he would tamp and tap away until he was ready to speak.

      5. I don’t believe he was a pipe smoker; promotion of ‘Gannex’ (raincoats) was a favour to a friend – and Marcia Williams (later to be Lady Falkender) was a resident aide in No 10 Downing Street.

        Quite probably the most powerful woman in British politics before Thatcher, Williams was Wilson’s closest confidante and according to some suggestions his lover –though that was denied.

        “Behind every great man there is a great woman, they used to say back in the mists of time before feminism and Margaret Thatcher. And behind Harold Wilson, the two-time Labour Prime Minister, was his secretary Marcia Williams, or as she later became, Lady Falkender.

        Quite probably the most powerful woman in British politics before Thatcher, Williams was Wilson’s closest confidante and according to some suggestions his lover –though that was denied.

        Such speculation may well have been promoted by jealous men who refused to accept that her position of influence was attained simply because Wilson trusted her and valued her counsel – despite her widely reported tantrums and putdowns. Most secretaries do not get away with calling their boss a “silly little man”, certainly not when he is Prime Minister.

        They were an odd couple – the little pipe-smoking national leader in his Gannex raincoat and the tall, slim secretary, towering over him. When The Move’s manager decided to promote their record Flowers in the Rain with a cartoon of the pair in bed together, Harold Wilson sued and won.

        The judge ordered that all royalties from the hit single –the first ever played on Radio 1 – should go to charities of Wilson’s choosing, a ruling that has reportedly cost songwriter Roy Wood millions. Beneficiaries include the Jewish National Fund for Israel, the British Film Institute and Bolton Lads Club.

        Williams was successively Wilson’s private secretary, political secretary and head of his political office – in modern parlance an aide. She was feared, loathed and respected by politicians, civil servants and newspaper editors.

        Cabinet minister Tony Benn wrote in his diaries that Wilson was being “run” by Williams, but he did not think that was necessarily a bad thing.

        Roy Jenkins, Wilson’s Chancellor of the Exchequer and Home Secretary, once said Williams had the best judgment of anyone in his inner circle… until the resignation honours that is – the notorious “Lavender List”, high honours for personal friends not only of Wilson but of Williams.

        It was widely suggested that it was Williams’s list rather than Wilson’s and had been written by her on lavender notepaper. Beneficiaries included Lord Kagan, the boss of the Gannex raincoat company, who helped Williams buy a house in Marylebone and was later jailed for fraud, and James Goldsmith, a Conservative backer who helped pay for the education of the two sons Williams had with a former political editor of the Daily Mail.

        In an interview last year Williams said: “It was Harold’s list, of course it was. Most of them had long histories with Harold… He had all these names written on bits of paper which he pulled out of his pockets and gave to me.” Wilson wanted to add other names, which Williams jotted down as they walked along a corridor, on a piece of notepaper, which, for the record, was “pink not lavender”.

        However, Wilson had supposedly admitted in private that he did not know some of those on the list and that they were “mainly Marcia’s friends”. Whatever the detail of authorship and the colour of the paper, Wilson’s resignation honours caused lasting damage to his reputation.

        Williams was born Marcia Matilda Field in Northamptonshire in 1932. Her father managed a brickworks. He was a Tory, who latterly had his own building company. Her mother was reputedly an unacknowledged illegitimate offspring of Edward VII when he was Prince of Wales.

        She studied history at Queen Mary College London and was chairman of the college Labour Club. She married Eddie Williams, who was chairman of the Conservative Club. They divorced after he went off to the US to work as an aeronautical engineer.

        If she had entered the political arena today she might more readily have pursued elected office, but instead Williams took a secretarial job at Labour Party headquarters in London and was soon working in Wilson’s office.

        This was the mid-1950s. Wilson had already held Cabinet office, but it would be several years before he became leader of the party, helped by Williams, who kept him informed of all the plotting and manoeuvring taking place. She was already his right-hand woman when he became party leader in 1963 and PM the following year.

        In 1974 she became Lady Falkender, which was her mother’s maiden name, after Wilson became PM for the second time, outraging the Tory press. Private Eye called her Lady Forkbender, a rather random reference to the self-
proclaimed psychic Uri 
Geller, to whom she had no connection.

        Williams managed to combine her considerable political career with being a single mother – she had two children in the 1960s with political journalist Walter Terry, who worked for a succession of right-wing papers. He was separated and Williams hoped they would marry. In the end he went back to his wife.

        This was a time when a public figure having children out of wedlock could still cause a storm of publicity, but nothing appeared in the press until 1974 when Williams was elevated to the peerage. The Times decided it was valid to refer to her illegitimate children because she was now a public figure.

        Wilson resigned in 1976, despite Williams’s attempts to dissuade him. It effectively signalled the end of Williams’s influence on government, though she continued working with him. She also continued to sit in the House of Lords. She voted, but never made a speech.

        Both she and Harold Wilson’s wife Mary were at Wilson’s bedside when he died in 1995. In 2007 Williams won damages from the BBC after it broadcast a docudrama called The Lavender List and suggested she had an affair with Wilson. She is survived by her two sons.”

        The SCOTSMAN
        1 March 2019

    2. I well remember listening to a recording of Harold Wilson speaking when he was at Oxford – well modulated, standard RP, no flat northern vowels. Then he got into politics as a Labourite and lo! Regional accent it became.

  106. Goodnight, all. We’ve just had a good downpour, which will help the newly planted roses (I finally got round to extending the rose bed) settle in.

  107. Goodnight, all. We’ve just had a good downpour, which will help the newly planted roses (I finally got round to extending the rose bed) settle in.

  108. Totally off topic.

    Today was hot and sunny and the orchids have set seed and the marguerites have also dried sufficiently to spread, so I took the small tractor mower around the wild bits close to the house. It doesn’t collect, merely spits out the cuttings, so seeds are spread for next year.

    Swallows appeared from nowhere, dozens of them, swooping quite low as I was mowing.
    They’ve now gone but dragonflies have appeared in abundance and all the small birds are going crazy, it’s a delight to watch.

    The smells have changed from freshly mown grass to the slightly intoxicating aroma of fresh hay.
    The hares have also arrived, nibbling the bits of stalk that the mower has made more accessible.
    The hedgehogs will follow, I seldom see the blighters but they leave their “presents” on the paths and terraces.

    As dusk falls I am watching the bats tumbling from the walls and eaves and their flights in pursuit of insects have to be seen to be believed. F35 pilot and you think you’re manoeuvrable? Eat your heart out

    Life is wonderful and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

    Unless, of course, you live in a violent inner city.

    I count my blessings every day.

      1. Great analogy, they really are like that and tumbling is the only word to describe it.
        Although, to be honest, I must admit that I wish the little buggers didn’t shit over everything in the boiler house.

          1. I found the remains of a bat and a hornet in our loft.
            It would appear that the bat had caught and killed the hornet but the hornet’s sting had killed the bat.
            Great chance to see a bat’s skeleton close to, though.

          3. I should have photographed the two together in their death throes because the bat’s skeleton was exactly like that diagram and the skin was still in place, although totally dried out.

            A moment during the mowing threw up a great bunch of feathers, I assume a hawk had taken and plucked a smaller bird, I would guess a wood-pigeon from what was left.

    3. Idyllic.

      We settle for swallows chasing the bug of the week. No longer mosquitos, we are onto deer flies now.

    4. Gorgeous , I can imagine how you feel and envy what you see and hear.

      I don’t want to sound doom laden , we have the patio doors open , trees and bushes around us , and farmland fields 100yds away that have been mown .. Five years ago we had several varieties of bats , moths would be fluttering indoors attracted to the lights , the stillness as the sky darkens in the west is strange .. we also HAD swallows and swifts and housemartins swooping and screaming … we have none of these now.. So many people have commented on the lack of insects ..please don’t tell me it is the cold weather , there is something more sinister , NATURE is shutting down .

      1. I think we have more insects around here this year and it’s been a better year for swifts flying around our house. But swallows and Martins are much more scarce. We’ve got three insect hotels up now and most of the holes have been used. We never use pesticides in the garden and we have wild patches.

      2. There are parts that only get cut once a year, in late September/October and the cutting is done using a type of mulcher and left in place to rot down over winter. We get insects galore, sometimes too many but it means we also get numerous types of bird. This year butterfly numbers and variety have been outstanding, one of the best years I can recall.

  109. Interesting happenings in the halls of corruption in Ottawa.

    Several years ago, two Chinese scientists were escorted n disgrace from the level 4 icrobiology lab in Winnipeg – cause not revealed. Prior to firing they had shipped some virus samples from Winnipeg back to our favourite lab in Wuhan.

    The Conservatives have been pushing to see the cause for the scientists dismissal but have had no success, the Public Health Agency have ignored demands for information from the House Security Commission. This week the commons issued a public censure to the head of the health agency, he still refuses to hand over the documents and cites security concerns.

    Now Trudeau has referred the demands to the Supreme Court asking that the House declare the health agency workings are beyond parliamentary oversight.

    What on earth is going on, did these Chinese scientists develop the covid virus using Canadian resources?

      1. This Trudeau government have become increasingly averse to disclosure of any information and are going to great lengths to stop debate

      1. I would be surprised if Trudeau had knowingly contributed to the covid development but he seems to be in love with China so it wouldn’t surprise me if we were taken advantage of.

    2. And yet, and yet… she attended the G7 meeting in Cornwall without a mask and without distancing herself.

  112. One for Grizz:
    Mark Twain:
    “Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe.”

  113. One for Grizz:
    Mark Twain:
    “Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe.”

    1. I would guess, Maggie, that 72-year-old Andrew Neil (and his young Swedish wife, Susan) need a break after launching the 24 hour, GB News – a monumental undertaking.

      IMHO, it is a great success; they should celebrate with a summer holiday.

      I no longer tune in to Lefty-Greenie-Woke BBC NEWS – nor Lefty-Greenie-Woke SKY News.

  118. I am now completely sure that the mendacity of our government regarding Covid-19 is bloody obvious. Whether the analysis is on the utter hypocrisy of one rule for them and another rule for the rest of us or else the accusation that the unvaccinated are likely to cause the next outbreak of infections, the whole narrative is a crock of shit.

    We now need a change of government. The Tories are a dishonest bunch of cretins.

    We require an investigation into the lot of them. The billions squandered on their hopeless medical initiatives, the actual cost of their closing down of vast sections of our economy and the sheer waste of our resources in pursuit of bogus vaccines must be subject to a national Inquiry.

      1. Well thank you mola.

        Another year, another dollar if I am lucky. No signs as yet that we might have recovered from the hopeless vaccine promotions.

    2. 334805+ up ticks,
      Morning C,
      Almost Shakespearean well quilled, and have a good one.

    3. We need a viable alternative. Starmer is a member of the Trilateral Commission.

      Hope you had an enjoyable birthday!

      1. Thank you Sue. I had a nice day.

        My birthday is memorable for two political events viz. the day we voted Brexit and the day Hypocrite Hancock was exposed.

    4. Woops, corim – I’m late as usual!

      I hope you’ve had a very happy birthday and have many happy returns!

      1. Thank you, I had a good day. The icing on the cake the exposure of Hypocrite Hancock, a man I despise along with Johnson and the pseudo scientists.

    5. Woops, corim – I’m late as usual!

      I hope you’ve had a very happy birthday and have many happy returns!

Comments are closed.